Some 38 Australians died in the skies over Ukraine and so Australia
unhesitatingly wades into the resulting international intrigue, spending vast
sums and expending, both frivolously and wastefully, social and political
capital.
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| The tragedy over the skies of Ukraine pales when compared to the self-induced tragedy right here in Australia. |
In contrast, recent research clearly shows some 15
Australians will die every day from drinking alcohol and that attracts only
questions about the accuracy of the research; a few jokes; some chest beating
and then, nothing of any consequence.
Alcohol will kill some 5500 people this year and nearly 160
000 will be hospitalised because of alcohol related difficulties.
Along with those startling realities is the unseen and
somewhat unmeasured tragedy of alcohol in which families are torn apart;
private and public property damaged and destroyed; careers disrupted and
ruined; and all that is good about being human debased.
As sad as the Ukraine airliner tragedy might be, it is
irrelevant in the extreme compared to the non-stop tragedy right here at home
that this year will kill, we know, more than 5000 people.
Rather than stomping around the world spending our money and
untold goodwill attempting to untangle the web of eastern European complexities,
our politicians should be using our money and their time and effort to help
their fellow Australians understand that the answers they search for are not at
the bottom of a glass.
Echoes of the ANZACS reverberate around the Flight MA17
phenomenon.
Both events have had a huge, and understandable, emotive
pull on Australians and have been exploited by our politicians of all stripes,
Many Australians, and New Zealanders, died nearly a century
ago at what is now known as “Anzac Cove”, and now a comparatively few Australians
died when Flight MA17 was shot down over Ukraine.
Those who fought and died to become “ANZACS” in the
uncertainties of the First World War have been mythologized and successive
governments have spent lavishly to burnish the ghastliness of death in the name
of your country.
A purposely painted picture of humble clerks or council
workers, or countless other ordinary men and women, simply scrambling to stay
alive in fearfully desperate circumstances as “heroic warriors”, has been a
major political bonus for nearly a century.
The polish used to mythologise those who fought and died in
wars is now being applied to the victims of flight MA17 and so our nation’s
emotions have been roused to the point where almost any solution, at any cost,
is permissible.
We are losing perspective – MA17 is important, but rather
than focus on one event in a relatively remote part of the world over which we
had no control, our nation’s energies should be concentrated on easing a
domestic problem over which we do have ultimate control and could save the
lives of more than 5000 Australians.
But we won’t do anything. Why? It’s simply too hard; it’s
politically divisive; alcohol and its consumption is a populist issue with our
addiction crossing all boundaries, political or otherwise.
Answering MA17 questions will lionize our politicians;
slowing the deaths from alcohol, along with the urgent and essential changes,
will make them villains.
