Crowd watches as contradiction is unveiled in Tatura

About 400 people watched and applauded as a social conundrum was unveiled recently in Tatura.

Tatura's bronze statue of World War
One Victoria Cross winner,
Private Robert Mactier.

However, the unveiling of the two metre high bronze statue of World War One Victoria Cross winner, Private Robert Mactier, was more of a contradiction than a conundrum.

Whatever, it defies logic in a society troubled by violence from that which is domestic through to war mongering on a national and international level.

From now on the people of Tatura, along with most other communities throughout Australia are forced to confront each day what is the societal acceptance of violence.

Victoria’s Deputy Premier, Peter Walsh, told those watching the unveiling at the refurbished Tatura war memorial precinct, that the bronze image of Robert Mactier was not about celebrating war rather, simply recognizing his courage and sacrifice.

That may be so, but the subliminal message is rather different.

Taturians are repeatedly told, and inherently know, that a successful community, state or nation is one that is collaborative and compassionate, and one in which firearms, of any sort, are irrelevant to those aims.

In passing the Hogan St life-size image of a pistol brandishing Private Mactier, who received sweeping social recognition for exploits that in other circumstances that would have been less than admirable, they are forced into mental gymnastics to remind themselves that was then and this is now.

That sounds fine except there is still a man with a gun in a public place (true, it’s only a statue) whose killing of others was feted and recognized in bronze.

The complications are manifest for few of us truly understand the context of “then” and beyond that even fewer of us can make a meaningful connection between what was and “now”, and the malleable minds of many become ensnared in the perverse intricacies of violence, subduing the other and the indecency of war.

Private Mactier was obviously a brave, daring and decent man who played his part in what was then a perceived need, but surely a century of maturity is sufficient for us to judge our mistakes and understand that the liberty we seek is not to be found in humbling our fellows and have them adhere to our behaviours.

Australia’s relatively peaceful history is credited almost without fail to the actions of those such as Private Mactier, but considered practically Australia’s physical remoteness has been its greatest ally.

Beyond a few incursions in World War Two, and the arrival of the first fleet in 1788, modern Australians have, without fail, travelled beyond their borders in pursuit of war.

Like a gang of thugs, or a street hoodlum we have gone looking for trouble and Private Mactier was integral to that dynamic and his “presence” in Hogan St ensures its preservation

Fuel excise rises should remove cars and build great public transport systems

Rises to fuel excise charges are a good idea, but!

Increases to the fuel excise should be
 such that they remove motor vehicles
from our roads and then pay for a
modern and sophisticated public
transport system.

Just as smokers have been discouraged from inhaling nicotine through increased prices, we should be driving motorists off our roads through increased costs, and fuel excise rises will help with that.

And this is where the “but” comes into play for if we make it more expensive for motorists to drive their privately owned cars on publicly funded roads we need to provide an alternative.

The alternative is a public transport system that is efficient, clean, modern, comprehensive and sufficiently structured to make sure everyone can get quickly and easily everywhere they want to go, at a reasonable cost.

Sound impossible? Unquestionably, but to go back two centuries and suggest we aim for what we have now, there would have brought howls of utopian madness.

The collision of world circumstances, led by our misunderstanding of what impact our carbon-intensive lifestyles would have on human habitation, along with that of many other species, clearly indicates that public “everything” demands precedence over privatization.

We already have, and understand, what it is we need to do to produce electricity in a genuinely sustainable way and so that could be used to power an intricate, efficient and timely public transit system.

Presently, the public spends lavishly to build and provide an infrastructure from which private enterprises profit handsomely and although the public get some momentary benefit, the resultant riches go primarily to a privileged few.

The equation looks pretty straight forward – make motoring the preserve of the enthusiast and wealthy; invest heavily in the public transport/transit system and in doing so create many thousands of jobs in the construction, running and maintenance of this wonderfully people orientated way of sharing our resources.

Along with building, operating and maintaining our new public transport/transit system we could set about dismantling the centralized and dirty fossil fuel power sources and employ vastly more people creating, building and maintaining our democratic renewable energy sources, including solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy and in limited way the one fossil fuel, gas.

The idea of dismantling the privatized road transport system and replacing it with a sophisticated and cutting-edge public system is loaded with complexities and difficulties, but so was, and is, what we have now and if we had known before what was ahead, including the untended consequences, we would never have set out on the journey.

Ideological liberals who preach a smaller and less intrusive government have had two centuries, at least, of market-driven  and privatized opportunity to legitimize their claims, but the fallacy of their argument, now illustrated by the increasing world-wide economic chaos and brutal inequality, demands they step aside and allow “public everything” to predominate.

State level naivety prevails at Shepparton meeting

State level naivety prevailed at a recent Shepparton public meeting.

Victoria's Minister for
 Agriculture, Peter Walsh.

Victoria’s Minister of Agriculture said the state’s farms would double their production by 2030.

Mr Peter Walsh, who agreed earth’s climate was changing, argued human ingenuity and technology, along with the will to achieve an outcome, would see climate change lowered in importance.

In keeping with the stance of most climate change deniers, Mr Walsh supported his arguments saying it had been dry and wet before, and would be that way again, with a poignant example from his family’s history.

That story, with huge emotive power for the 200 at the meeting, overlooked it being an isolated event from the 20s and 30s that does not compare to 2013, which was riddled with significant weather catastrophes around the world, driven by a seriously disrupted climate system.

Obvious during Mr Walsh’s vision for the future was an ignorance, wilful or otherwise, of the collision of world circumstances making the realization of the Minister’s dream strikingly difficult, if not impossible.

It will be problematical to bring this cornucopia of food imagined by Mr Walsh to market for various reasons, among them the fact that a disrupted climate will change every growing circumstance; the implications climate change will have on water supplies; a serious depletion of energy, both in terms of oil and electricity; and a shortage of the fertilizers used in abundance to enrich Australia’s ancient and less than fertile soils.

The reality is that the earth is warming, humans are responsible and we can no longer expect the same result from the same effort, using techniques and ideas that filled our larders, even as recent at two decades ago.

Farming as we know it has a limited future and because of the atmospheric damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels, along with the inequality arising from the ruthless focus on profit and growth, we stand on the cusp of a future in which localism will prevail and the imagined riches of the South-East Asian markets will be out of reach.

Minister Walsh visualizes record harvests of grain, meat, fruit, dairy products and anything else that can be extracted from Victoria’s less than giving soils, with that produce being funnelled to the hungry and welcoming Asian people.

The reality that farming is not again going to be what it was, ever, was not something that could be discussed rationally and reasonably at the Shepparton meeting as farmers were not there to hear how success tomorrow depended upon them rejigging their operations

They were there to hear a debate between the Government and its Opposition, but within the confines of what they knew and understood, not how they needed to invent a whole new way of farming.

Energy is the foundation of life

Energy is the foundation of life in the Goulburn Valley.

Whatever form you choose: it makes our cars go, warms and cools our houses, makes the trees and grass grow, fattens our animals, takes us around the world and takes our kids to school, allows us to make and use things and, in a more intimate sense, literally makes our heart beat.

Energy in all its varied forms is what has allowed humans, who have understood it best, to build and develop a complex society which, without energy would collapse.

Read Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted” and you begin to understand that fossil fuel-based energy upon which modern civilization is founded came from two specific periods in earth’s history, 90 and 150 million years ago.

It is unlikely the world will ever exhaust its fossil fuels, rather they will become so expensive and difficult to extract that economically, we will be forced to leave them in the ground.

Beyond that, there is the further complicating factor – the burning of fossil fuels has altered the chemical makeup of earth’s atmosphere and is changing weather patterns to such a degree that humanity is edging closer to the abyss.

Some people have thought deeply about this challenge and on Friday of next week, the Shepparton-based group, Slap Tomorrow, will present a forum in Mooroopna at which the idea of powering tomorrow will be explored and discussed.

Leading discussions will be the Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales, Dr Mark Diesendorf.

Dr Disesnedorf, who has written the book “Sustainable Energy Solutions for Climate Change” is convinced, and can illustrate how Australia could be powered now by renewable energy, if we only had the will.

With him will be a director of Applied Horticultural Research and an adjunct Professor of Horticultural Crop Physiology with the University of Sydney, Dr Gordon Rogers

He has a PhD in crop physiology, and 24 years in agronomy and crop physiology specialising in sustainable horticultural production systems, crop water uptake and irrigation in horticultural crops.

Dr Rogers can help farmers understand how they can apply renewable energy to their agricultural processes.

Dr Mark Diesendorf.

A third speaker is a PhD student from the University of Melbourne, David Coote, who has focussed his studies and research on community-scale woody biomass energy systems, the integration of bioenergy with solar power, small scale on-farm use of renewable energy and biodiesel manufacture.

Overseeing the September 26 forum will be thinker, comedian and advisor to the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne, Rod Quantock.

The world’s conventional energy sources are either past their peak, or unusable and next week’s Slap Energy forum will shine a light on a new and renewable energy future.

Governments profit from fear and we need to 'invent peace'

Many governments had profited by and strengthened their hold on power through the creation of fear.

Fear is the foundation of violence and it appears an eccentric behavioural contradiction to claim your intent is peace, but which you seek through fear, laying the footings for violence.

Peace is not simply the absence of war or violence rather, it is a concept foreign to humanity and so something we have to yet invent.

Wim Wenders and Mary
Zournazi's have written about
"Inventing Peace".

War and violence have a strange pathos and it appears unable to meet or sate the human need for such anguish and bleakness, but from which spills a perverted heroism, bravery and honour, all of which are misunderstood and misplaced.

Early this century the U.S. Government initiated a “war on terror” and along with killing many people and causing untold damage, it did little except militarize and psychologically wound its own people and alienate millions in countries around the world.

Violence simply begets more violence and now Australia, in the thrall of a similar rhetoric and ideology that led the U.S. to its “war”, is reacting similarly with the “Team Australia” chant and a confected fear of terrorism.

Obviously there is a core of people who have earned the epithet of “terrorist”, but many who assemble behind them are little more than ordinary disaffected and disillusioned people who feel excluded from their society.

Governments, whatever their persuasion, must create an inclusive environment in which social equality is the rock upon which individuals and communities specifically and society generally rests.

With an increasing number of young Australians finding it difficult, if not impossible to secure a foothold in our complex modern society, we are creating fertile grounds for oranizations to recruit youths to stand with them as they prosecute their “blood on the streets” causes.

Rather than spending millions of dollars combatting perceived terrorism, we should be looking at from whence it comes – largely people who are disillusioned by and excluded from our society.

Peace does not produce heroes in the traditional war-embodied sense, rather it produces heroes who are quiet, unassuming, and respectful and who know clearly, that violence begets violence and that we don’t need entrepreneurs who thrive and benefit from confrontation, but what we do need are people who understand and profit from peace.

Instead of spending to protect our borders we should be working at understanding how we welcome, embrace and make these people a part of our society; instead of spending to frustrate home-grown terrorists, we should be building an inclusive and collaborative society of which they are an integral part; instead of spending billions on our military forces, we should be using that cash to both understand and invent a world first – peace!

Newspaper readers can help make an idea a reality

Newspaper readers have much to do
 beyond just read - they have a critical
role in  the achievement or world peace.

Readers of this newspaper (first published in the Shepparton News) have a significant and important individual role to play in achieving world peace.

Should that sound outlandish, just remember world peace is simply an idea and nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Interestingly it is an idea that appears to have wide currency for frequently people declare that world peace is what they most desire.

Maybe such an answer sounds politically correct and simply gives the respondent a warm and fuzzy feeling as it makes them feel as if they are at one with the universe, even if for a moment.

That said, there is a difficulty for the intent, or wish seems to get lost, or at least politically distorted, when it is contaminated by the rush, wants and needs of the real world, and so the statement is simply rhetorical and never makes it into the realms of practicality

Such a suggestion does the idea of peace a serious disservice for the absence of confrontation, violence or pugilistic-like behaviour is what is real; what’s not real and absent all remnants of civility is the so-called “real world”.

In that “real world” we argue, and frequently resort to killing each other, over almost anything.

The 20^th century was passionately violent and the “great peace”, as described by some, from after WW2 through to the beginning of the 21^st century fell that way as humanity lolled about gorging itself after discovering the keys to nature’s pantry – fossil fuels multiplied fabulously the efforts of every individual.

Distracted by that energy abundance we partied and built like there was no tomorrow, seemingly oblivious that there is actually a tomorrow; a tomorrow populated by people we haven’t meet yet and to whom we have an ethical and moral responsibility.

And so we return to peace.

Ask most people and they are eager to leave the world in good shape for those that follow, or that is what they say.

We need to husband what energy we have for while it does many things, it leverages peace, but peace, real peace begins with you; your thoughts, your speech and your behaviour, and, of course, how you treat your fellows.

Peace in its finality is a complex beast, but it begins and is built on a simplicity that is foreign to the complexities of our modern world.

Most believe they contribute naught to the violence that pervades our world, but we need to be careful; careful in many ways, but particularly in whom we hand responsibility for we don’t need leaders and other decision makers who militarize the language.

The solution is not in subduing the other and winning, rather it is collaborating and co-operating to stand side-by-side rather than face-to-face.

Climate should be discussed and notice taken of W.B. Yeats

Climate change must be the first order of business at Brisbane’s November G20 forum.

W.B Yeats - "“Things fall apart;
the centre cannot hold”.

Those at the forum should not or cannot avoid the topic.

An understanding of the science explaining how our world is changing would allow those at the forum to make informed and reasoned judgements about international economic cooperation.

Any decisions made without first recognising and allowing for the differences climate change will bring to our market-driven society are irresponsible.

Economic growth, as understood by most, is entirely dependent upon a benign climate and the uninhibited access to the earth’s finite resources; resources that have taken billions of years to accumulate.

Those ageless resources are now so depleted and subsequently becoming so scarce and expensive that to enhance a process depending on unlimited “everything” is  reckless and in the eyes of some, a crime against humanity.

Strong words: words that elicit thoughts of the post WW1 Yeats poem, “The Second Coming” in which he writes: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.

The equations that will drive our ultimate demise are not complicated and to understand them requires little more than primary school mathematics and nothing of the arcane, convoluted and bizarre intellectual trickery the will prevail at Brisbane in November.

Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, one who stands among those who deny global warming, has already declared that climate change will not be allowed to interfere with the “important” talks at the Brisbane forum.

Contrary to that, Mr Abbott should be encouraging his international counterparts to consider the undeniable realities of climate change, while adhering to its stated aim: “We will identify the remaining key obstacles to be addressed and reforms needed to achieve stronger, more sustainable and balanced growth in our economies”.

These obviously highly-intelligent people appear to be locked into fantasy-fuelled belief that technology will rescue humanity from this collision of economic chaos, resource depletion, over-population, governance disorder and seemingly endless military confrontation. It won’t, we need social solutions.

G20 leaders say their immediate task is to break the cycle of low growth and diminished business and consumer confidence, something it says it is well placed to achieve in Brisbane.

Should they be serious about global economic security then they must first consider climate change; restructure the global economy to ensure financial equality for all, end the hugely disparate earnings around the world; understand what “sustainable” really means; ensure gender equality; invest heavily in building resilient communities; and educate and help people understand how they can grow and provide much of their own food.

Organic growth, and resilience, will sprout from communities of a type sadly unlikely to be considered at Brisbane in November.

Quoting Yeats again: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.