Let me start this week’s essay with a lovely quote from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibrain. And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, “Speak to us of Children.” And he said: Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through […]
Many of us are appalled by the seemingly inexorable deterioration of Australia’s educational outcomes relative to other nations. Despite the fact that in recent decades our funding of education has greatly increased, our children are leaving school worse equipped than they ever have to make a positive contribution to our society and to help us […]
Identity politics seems to raise its ugly head everywhere these days. It took me a while to digest the good Dr Phil’s admonition that “nobody is special”. But then it occurred to me that I had come to believe many years ago that we all are as one. And surely this amounts to the same […]
Every day when I read the papers I am disappointed to find myriad instances of social dysfunction. There will be stories about domestic violence, road rage, bullying, vandalism, children and young adults involved in petty crimes, and so on. More and more the response to this malaise is for an outraged member of parliament to […]
In the past I was foolish enough to write a number of essays purporting to give Tony Abbott some advice as to how he should do his job better when he was Prime Minister. It was, as you know, a waste of time. Despite these setbacks I find I cannot resist the opportunity to offer […]
Trigger Warning: For any poor sensitive souls reading this essay let me warn that it eschews political correctness, and additionally, contains a lot of nonsense! How wonderful it is to live in a modern democracy like ours where so many people are concerned for our welfare. By and large, these all-knowing benevolent folk, not only […]
Terror has been in the news again in the last two weeks. First there was the atrocity in Brussels and over the weekend a major terrorist attack in Lahore. The motive behind the killing of defenceless people in these mass murders is almost incomprehensible to most of us. The nature of these bombings was on […]
As I sit down to write this week’s blog essay, Easter is almost upon us. Well, traditionally Easter is the most sacred celebration in the Christian calendar but for most of the population it has become little more than a very long weekend and a spurious opportunity to indulge children with Easter eggs and such […]
A common expression that you are all familiar with is “looking at the world through rose coloured glasses” which implies that the person is unduly optimistic or idealistic. The saying propagates a myth. It implies that everyone else sees the world directly and consequently, more realistically. But as much as we might want to think […]
Growing up in a country town in North Queensland I had little exposure to other cultures. I went to school with quite a few indigenous children but I knew little about indigenous culture. In fact now I come to think of it they didn’t make a fuss of it either, but seemed determined just to […]