It is coming into federal election time in Australia. This weekend I am off to Canberra to meet with two ngo’s in the health industry, and meet with parliamentarians (See my rural health pages). We have been trying to talk to the Commonwealth Government for some year now about major health reform in the nation. The stakes for the communities are high: a growing aged population and a decreasing child population means that by 2020 the health industry will have almost zero workforce entry and massive more work. The indigenous community has a life expectancy some 20 years lower than the average. In rural and remote Australia we can’t recruit professional workforce. Meanwhile the Australian economy has never been in a better situation for spending more on a major health reform policy. So it is despairing to see the government splashing money on marginal electorates while keeping real reform at arms length. It seems a terribly careless attitude. Still, we shall talk our heads off to politicians to try to persuade some movement.
Paranoia
A muslim friend who is fully active in his local community, believes his phone has a tap. Why would he think of it?
What causes paranoia to rise, and what end does it have? It rises from a sense of mistrust. A criminal act is committed by some people from a particular group. A government becomes paranoid and shows it now doesn’t trust anyone from that group. The members of the group begins to believe the government has targeted them for surveillance and detention over the least thing. The group begins to become secret to avoid the object of its paranoia. The secrecy builds anxiety in the minds of the group’s youth. The anxiety becomes frustration. The frustration becomes anger. The anger desires retribution for something that has never happened to that person. The desire misleads the youth to strangers with malicious intent. The strangers lead the youth to criminal acts.
Government must be welcoming of all the people of the world. The application of justice ensures that criminals are prohibited from harming any of the other people of the world. Harming trustworthy people in an attempt to prohibit harming trustworthy people is ….. well you get the point I’m sure.
Baha’i Perspectives
Warren Oddes-Gillet’ skype interview with me now podcast on http://www.ABahaiPerspective.com
Quality a little hollow especially at beginning but no real problems to listen to, apart from beauty being in the ear of the beholder.
Roosters
Been out to the parent’s farm today. The last 3 day’s weather has been perfect – cool without being cold, sunny and blue, blue sky. Took some photos of the fields of maize and potaotes. Check out my rooster series on flickr. I was doing some clean up of very disorderly barns and an old cockatoo kept flying down for pickings. The hawks were circling.
Hey, Heathrow, your security screening is a joke.
The mind boggles that my nephew, a 19 year old 4th gen Aussie theatre student, on his first OS backpacking trip to UK, spend 4 hours in security interrogation because, Oh me oh my, he only had one night’s accommodation pre booked. Backpacking from day to day. Oh how can you do it? You must be a dangerous person to have such a foot loose attitude to life. Yeh him and 100,000 other young people moving around the planet every day. Get a grip Heathrow.
Owen's Meanderings 