It’s Australia day, a celebration of nationhood, opportunity for pollies to grandstand, excuse for a piss-up, whatever floats your boat.
Perhaps it should be a day for articulating our national challenges, in a manner that encourages rational debate based on data, whilst offering a real philosophical underpinning for decision making, rather than the current flatuant rhetoric and partisan maneuvering for short term political “advantage” .
That’s what I tell my clients to do, then often assist them through the exercise with mentoring and a set of readily available tools.
If it can be done for a business, is a basic discipline for survival, why can’t it be done for a country? Why shouldn’t we, as Australians, the shareholders in this Australia P/L demand it of our Board of Directors?.
So, my call for today, is to dismiss all the puffery, glad-handing, and mutual admiration, throw it in the bin, and replace it with an agenda for the evolution of an Australia we would like to live in.
I would be talking about education, real education that sets up our engineering, operational and manufacturing competitiveness for decades, the means by which we demonstrate our humanity, to our elderly, those who want to come and share this great country with us, and to our disadvantaged, how we strike a balance between the short term expediency, and long term sustainability in all sorts of areas, and how we relate to those with whom we share the world, and finally, how our society pays for itself.
Not a word about gay marriage, the machinations of political parties, who has the best looking dog, the latest shark attack, or nominations for an Academy award. All are irrelevant distractions, the detritus of life, ignore it, and consider something a bit more meaningful, and what you will do to push it, to put some meaning back into the day, and perhaps bit by bit, make the joint a better place.
Well said.
You will have missed it, watching thiose petro-enhanced sunsets over there, but the venom created by the non issue of gay marriage, or not, dominated newspapers for weeks. Absurd, particularly when the loudest voices seem to be fundamemtalist religious ones, yet they seem not to care that the current PM is “living in sin” in a taxpayer funded house.
I shake my head at all the hypocracy, and it is starting to hurt.
Absurd, indeed. Denying people the right to a legal marriage because of their gender is pathetic. Religion should be separated from marriage in the same way as church ‘should’ be separated from state. This is an example of how our society, economy and environment are inextricably linked: They’re cutting down trees to print vacuous and vicious wordcount … for money. Talking of which, I’d better get back to writing my own vacuous wordcount. 🙂
Having an Australia Day bash and a bit of back-slapping is small fry compared to the Brit pollies (for example) who, (apparently) believe that their debt-burdened taxpayers would feel MUCH better about Govt. corruption if the Queen was given a GBP65m yacht. Maybe that’s to take their mind off the GBP32 BILLION (plus interest) they’re going to be paying, on top of everything else, for a highspeed link between London and the North that will shave an essential 20 minutes off existing times? Of course, the next generation will have 30 years to pay it off. “Stop clinging to mummy and get to work kids. You’ve got a mortgage, and a crapped-out environment to sort out, but hey! we’ve established a hedge fund for your future.” The craziness is global and the only sunset we can sail into has those pretty petrochemical tints. And, BTW, I’m all for gay marriage, we should love and marry whomever we choose: you’re quite right, it shouldn’t even BE an issue. Fresh water is an issue. Food is an issue. Education is an issue. Freedom is an issue. Happy Australia Day! 🙂
Unlike me to miss a comment and respond, as I did to this.
However, while 4 years late, I can confirm that gay marriage is ‘legal’ but nothing else has changed, apart from the pommies doing a Brexit, which will surely fix their trading position, they still cannot play cricket, but they picked up a few new citizens via the review of our parliamentary citizenship rules.
Is it that the wheels turn slowly, or are we asleep in the wheelhouse and having nice dreams?