Australia did not set out to keep more than 100,000 people in the country after their asylum claims were denied. That is where we have ended up anyway. Not through policy, not through principle but through drift, hesitation and a government that no longer seems willing to enforce its own decisions.

For years this sat quietly in the background. Then the housing crisis exposed it.

The housing crisis is no longer something you read about. It is something you see. It is people sleeping on footpaths. It is families with children living in cars. It is workers finishing a shift and then bedding down wherever they can because there is nowhere else to go. This is not a distant problem. It is happening in our suburbs, outside our shops and in places that used to feel stable and predictable.

There is something deeply confronting about that. Not just the hardship but the humiliation. The quiet, grinding humiliation of a country that can no longer provide the most basic security to its own people while insisting everything is under control.

Yet we are told none of this has anything to do with migration.

We are told the problem is “complex”. We are told it is simplistic to connect population growth with housing supply. We are told, in effect, not to trust what we can see with our own eyes. At times, it feels like the public is being treated like idiots. At other times, it feels worse than that. It feels like we are simply being managed.

The reality is not complex at all. If you bring in 500,000 people, those people need somewhere to live. That means around 200,000 homes. We are not building anything close to that. Not even half. When demand surges and supply does not, a shortage becomes a crisis. That is not ideology. That is common sense.

What is missing from the conversation is just as obvious.

Australia currently has more than 100,000 people in the country whose asylum claims have been assessed, reviewed, appealed and denied. These are not cases in progress. These are final decisions. The system has already said no.

Yet nothing happens.

Those 100,000 people occupy roughly 40,000 homes. In a country where people are sleeping in cars, where parents are trying to shield children from the reality of homelessness and where working Australians cannot secure a basic rental, that number matters. It matters enormously.

This is not a marginal issue. It is a pressure point sitting in plain sight.

The uncomfortable truth is that these individuals are now here unlawfully. That is not an insult. It is a fact. The process has run its course. A decision has been made. A country that cannot act on its own decisions is not being compassionate. It is failing and that failure is not neutral.

It is felt by the family sitting in a car at night trying to make it feel like a home.
It is felt by the person working full-time who still cannot secure a roof over their head.
It is felt by communities watching something fundamental slip away.

It is also felt by the migrants themselves, many of whom have been left in limbo for years. Not accepted, not removed, not given a future here and not supported to return home. That is not kindness. That is avoidance. It traps people in uncertainty and calls it compassion.

This is what happens when a system loses the ability to finish what it starts.

Other countries manage this. Claims are assessed, appeals are heard and when the process ends people leave. Not harshly, not punitively but clearly. There is an outcome. There is certainty. There is an end point.

Australia has lost that.

Instead we have a system where “no” does not mean no. It means wait long enough and nothing will happen. Where decisions exist on paper but not in reality. Where enforcement is avoided because it is politically uncomfortable and inaction is dressed up as decency.

All the while we are told there is nothing that can be done about housing.

That is simply not true.

There is something deeply wrong when a government can look at a crisis this visible, this human and still refuse to connect the dots. When it can tell people sleeping rough that the causes are too complex to explain, while ignoring the most obvious pressures sitting in front of it.

A serious country does not operate like this. A serious country enforces its own decisions.
A serious country understands that housing is not optional and a serious country does not allow its people to slide into homelessness while pretending the causes are beyond comprehension.

Until we are prepared to say these things plainly, nothing changes.

The crisis deepens. Trust erodes and more Australians find themselves without a place to call home in a country that insists, quietly but firmly, that none of this is connected.

A public holiday is not just a paid day off, it is a collective signal. It says this matters enough that we pause together. When a country declares a day to mark an event, it is asking its citizens, however loosely, to acknowledge that moment in the national story.

Yet an increasing number of large companies now allow employees to take an alternative paid day off instead of observing Australia Day itself. Allowing people to quietly opt out, take another day instead and still be paid empties the occasion of that shared meaning.

Australia Day is a good example because it has become emotionally and politically charged. People can disagree about what it represents or how it should be marked, but the day itself exists for a reason. If someone fundamentally rejects that reason, it is reasonable to ask why they should receive the benefit attached to it. You wouldn’t expect to skip ANZAC Day commemorations because you “don’t connect with it” and then nominate a different paid day that suits you better. The point is the commemoration, not the entitlement.

What some companies call “flexibility” is often really moral outsourcing. Rather than making a clear decision, they hand responsibility to the individual while keeping the virtue points. The result is incoherent. The business still publicly recognises Australia Day as a public holiday, still benefits from the national framework that created it but privately treats the day itself as optional symbolism. That is not inclusivity, it is avoidance.

There is also a quiet unfairness in paying people for something they explicitly refuse to acknowledge while others participate in good faith. It creates a one-way tolerance where opting out of Australia Day is rewarded but opting in is treated as morally suspect or old-fashioned. Over time, that corrodes social cohesion. Shared rituals only work if they are actually shared.

Social cohesion has been at the forefront of public discussion lately, spoken about as something fragile and in need of repair. Yet here we have large companies actively undermining it. Instead of encouraging a sense of shared belonging or pride in the country that sustains them, they normalise disengagement and call it progress. It is time these corporates stopped drifting with cultural fashion and started pulling with the country, rather than contributing to the erosion of social cohesion. You cannot build cohesion while quietly teaching people that national identity is optional and collective moments are disposable.

None of this means people should be forced to feel pride, joy or agreement. A free country allows dissent but dissent normally comes with a cost, not a perk. If we turn Australia Day into a floating personal leave entitlement, we shouldn’t be surprised when the idea of a nation feels thin and transactional.

At some point, a society has to decide whether its public holidays are about common identity or just another line item in an enterprise agreement.

I am not able to make sense of it or ready to offer comment, but this article by Matt Goodwin (a British writer) gives voice to questions many of us are quietly asking and struggling to express. It is confronting, but it speaks to the moment we are in.

A clear, confronting piece that gives language to what many Australians are feeling but struggling to say. “This is not compassion — it is surrender. This is how nations destroy themselves from within.” -Click to view full article.

Article by Matt Goodwin, originally published on Substack.

The Unseen Guest

I used to think I knew what it meant to protect my children.
When they were little, it was the ordinary things — traffic, deep water, crossing the road, the stranger who lingered too long. The dangers of childhood were visible then, and I could stand between them and harm.

Now they’re older, the dangers are invisible. They arrive not through doors or windows, but through screens — glowing softly in their hands, whispering through headphones, shaping their thoughts while I’m unaware of what they’ve heard.

The other night, one of my boys said something that stopped me cold. It wasn’t rude, exactly — just certain. A big opinion in a small voice. It carried the kind of conviction that only comes from repetition. When I asked where he’d heard it, he rolled his eyes and said, “Everyone knows that, Mum”.

Everyone doesn’t.
It was something the world had delivered to him — packaged, polished, persuasive — and I had no idea it had arrived.

That’s the new shape of parenthood. You can feed them, teach them, love them — and still have no idea what’s being poured into their minds each day. Their devices have become little portals of influence, endlessly learning what makes them stop, laugh, worry or react, and feeding them more of it.

It isn’t a conspiracy; it’s a business model. The algorithm doesn’t care whether it’s teaching them truth or nonsense, kindness or cruelty. It only cares that they keep watching.

That’s what frightens me — the sheer indifference of it.
If a stranger sat my children down and showed them hours of anger, vanity, self-doubt and despair, or whispered to them about identity, victimhood or vengeance until they started to believe it, we’d call it grooming.
When an app does it, we call it “content”.

For children, the line between information and belief disappears quickly. They’re still learning how to think, how to question, how to weigh an argument. Algorithms don’t wait for maturity. They feed conviction before comprehension — which is why you can have a twelve-year-old telling you the world is burning, that everything is corrupt, or that their country is evil.

Sometimes it feels like I’m competing with something I can’t see — something cleverer, faster, more patient than I am. It doesn’t sleep. It never tires. It knows exactly which clip will keep them watching.

I can talk to them about kindness, courage and curiosity, but those things move slowly. The feed moves at the speed of impulse. It doesn’t ask for understanding; it offers reaction.

I sometimes hear them laughing in their rooms — that perfect sound of childhood — and then I catch the rhythm of it, the clipped bursts of the videos they’re watching, and I feel a pang of unease. Who’s talking to them now? What tone is being normalised? What values are being stitched into the rhythm of that laughter?

The world that reaches my boys through those screens is tireless and it’s shaping them in ways I can’t always see. It tells them what to find funny, what to fear, what to admire. It tells them they need to look a certain way, talk a certain way, be a certain way.

We would never leave our children alone with someone who wanted to exploit them. Yet every day, we hand them a device that studies them more closely than any human ever could, and we call it normal.

I don’t think my boys are in danger of becoming radicals. They are, however, growing up in a world that rewards shallowness and outrage — a kind of radicalisation in itself. Not towards violence, but towards cynicism. Towards believing that nothing’s true, that adults are hypocrites, that everything is performative.

The algorithm doesn’t care whether it breeds an activist, a nihilist or just another distracted consumer. It only cares that they stay.

We — parents, schools, governments — have let it happen. We’ve allowed technology companies to become the quietest and most persuasive educators our children will ever have. They don’t lecture; they suggest. They don’t argue; they nudge. They don’t impose; they seduce.

I can’t shut the world out. I can, however, keep showing them the parts it can’t monetise — the quiet, the real, the steady things. The backyard at dusk. The smell of rain on the road. The sound of people talking without trying to go viral.

Some nights I pass their rooms and listen to the stillness. Their faces, finally, are peaceful again — boys, not targets.
I think to myself: how strange that we’ve built a world so connected, yet so careless with its children.

John Anderson is a sixth-generation farmer and grazier who spent 19 years in the Australian parliament, including six years as deputy prime minister.

Part 3 of 3 — The Unmaking of a Nation Series

We’ve seen what happens when a country stops making things and how our dependence on foreign chips has left us exposed. Beneath both problems lies something even more fundamental: energy.

Every act of making, whether it’s smelting aluminium, producing fertiliser or manufacturing chips, begins with power. Energy is the bloodstream of industry. Without it, nothing works.

Australia has no shortage of resources. What we lack is affordable, reliable energy to turn them into value. We dig the coal, extract the gas, harness the sun and wind — then pay some of the highest industrial power prices in the developed world.

Factories don’t run on promises. They run on kilowatts.

The Energy Squeeze

For two decades, energy policy has swung between ideology and indecision. Coal plants were allowed to age without successors, gas exports were prioritised over domestic supply, and renewables were rolled out faster than firming capacity could follow.

The result is a grid that’s greener on paper but costlier and less dependable in practice. When the wind drops or clouds linger, we fall back on gas bought at global prices. When demand surges, prices spike. Smelters, glassworks and chemical plants can’t plan production around the weather, so many have scaled back or shut down.

Manufacturing needs certainty. Without it, investment goes elsewhere — to nations with cheaper, firmer power.

The Limits of “Cheap” Renewables

We’re told renewables are the cheapest energy source and on the generation side, that’s mostly true. But the real cost isn’t in the sunlight or the breeze, it’s in making them reliable.

Each turbine, panel and battery must be connected by thousands of kilometres of transmission lines, almost all built with imported materials. The infrastructure costs alone are driving up prices.

No one disputes the need to cut emissions. The question is whether we can do it without crippling the industries that keep the country afloat.

The Missing Middle

The debate has become polarised: coal versus renewables, as if the only choices are the past or a fantasy future. The truth sits between.

A resilient grid needs balance — renewables for sustainability, gas and hydro for flexibility, and firm, zero-emission power to hold everything steady. That anchor could be nuclear, if we were willing to talk about it rationally.

Anyone serious about energy knows the word dunkelflaute — the dark lull when there’s little wind and no sun for days. Europe plans for it, yet we act as if it can’t happen here. But southern Australia experiences its own version every winter: calm, overcast spells lasting three or four days, when renewable output plunges just as heating and industrial demand rise.

Batteries can steady the grid for hours, not days. No fleet in the world can fill a multi-day gap. That’s why every advanced economy pairs renewables with firm generation — hydro, gas or nuclear. Without them, the lights don’t stay on.

The World Moves On

Across the globe, nations are acting on that reality. Canada, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Japan, South Korea, China and India are all expanding or reviving nuclear programs. Even smaller nations like Slovakia are investing in next-generation reactors.

Many see nuclear not as a relic, but as the clean, firm backbone of an industrial future.

By contrast, Australia remains one of the few countries on earth where nuclear power is banned by law. Why are we still the outlier?

Over an 80-year horizon — the lifespan of a modern reactor — every major study tells the same story. When you count the cost of storage, transmission, rebuilds and backup, a mixed grid of renewables, nuclear and limited storage is more reliable and, over time, cheaper than a 100 per cent renewables system.

CSIRO’s GenCost reports, AEMO’s integrated modelling and international data from France and Canada all show it: renewables alone require massive overbuild and endless storage; a mixed system keeps power firm without runaway cost.

The Price of Inaction

If we keep treating energy as a political trophy, we’ll keep paying for it like one. High prices will keep hollowing out industry, pushing jobs and emissions overseas.

The irony is stark: we’ll end up importing the very goods we once made along with the carbon we thought we’d avoided. That’s not progress; it’s displacement.

A nation that loses its manufacturing loses its balance. Without affordable, firm energy, there is no revival — only rhetoric.

The Way Forward

Australia could build an energy system that’s both clean and strong.

Use renewables where they work best — solar and wind supported by short-term batteries.
Rely on firm generation — nuclear and hydro — to carry the load through calm, overcast periods.
Keep gas as a transitional safeguard until firm, zero-emission power is fully established.
Plan transmission where it’s needed, considering natural habitats, farming and forests, not just to satisfy political optics..
Tie every energy decision to what it enables — steel, fertiliser, glass, chips — the industries that sustain us.

We have the minerals, the engineers and the sunlight. What’s missing is courage, leadership and a plan that treats energy as infrastructure — the foundation on which every factory, farm and future depends.

Reclaiming Industrial Power

If we want to rebuild what we’ve lost, we must think like builders again — not just consumers of technology, but creators of it.

Energy is where it begins. Affordable, abundant power turns resources into industry and industry into independence.

In the end, power isn’t just what flows through the wires.
It’s the capacity to create, to build, to stand on our own.
That’s the power Australia needs to find again.

Part 2 of 3 — The Unmaking of a Nation Series

In the old economy, a nation’s strength was measured in steel, ships and oil. In the new one, it’s measured in semiconductors — the chips that power everything from tractors and tanks to hospitals and homes.

They are the invisible nervous system of modern life. Every grid, machine and satellite depends on them. Yet in 2025, Australia, a country that once built cars and aircraft, cannot make a single advanced chip.

We mine the materials that go into them. We use them in every industry, but we don’t produce them.

The Great Dependency

There’s a phrase used in defence circles: hardware is sovereignty. It sounds dramatic, but it’s true.

You can’t secure borders, run hospitals or keep the lights on without hardware you control. Software might be clever, but it doesn’t exist without silicon and almost all of that silicon comes from somewhere else.

Around 90 per cent of the world’s advanced chips are made in Taiwan and another nine per cent come from South Korea. The rest are scattered in small volumes across the U.S., China and a few others. Australia’s share? Essentially zero.

We design small, specialised chips for defence and operate a few compound-semiconductor labs like BluGlass and Silanna, but there’s no high-volume fabrication plant on Australian soil. None.

If those supply lines were cut — by war, blockade or shortage — Australia would feel it within weeks. Power grids would falter, communications would stall, hospitals and logistics would grind down. Even our military would be affected, because many imported systems can’t be repaired locally.

The Silent Weakness

We talk endlessly about being a “smart economy,” yet most of what we call innovation sits on top of other people’s hardware.

Our software runs on chips we don’t make. Our medical devices depend on sensors we import. Even renewables — solar inverters, battery controllers, smart meters — rely on microelectronics built in Asia.

When COVID shut down factories in China and Taiwan, chip deliveries blew out to more than a year. Car plants stopped. Local producers of audio gear and farm equipment had to scale back because parts simply weren’t available.

That was a glimpse of what dependency looks like.

The New Arms Race

The rest of the world learned that lesson fast.

The U.S., Japan and the EU are now pouring hundreds of billions into local chipmaking. Even India is investing heavily. They’ve all realised that semiconductors are the new oil — the thing you must control if you want to stay independent.

Everyone except us.

Australia talks about “sovereign capability,” but the money never matches the rhetoric. We have research strengths in materials science, quantum computing and photonics but no industrial policy to turn that into production. We’re brilliant in the lab but absent on the factory floor.

Why It Matters

This isn’t about competing with Taiwan or the U.S. It’s about having enough domestic capacity to function when the world tilts.

Think of it like food security. We don’t need to grow every crop, but we need enough to feed ourselves if trade stops. The same principle applies to technology.

If we can’t make or repair the chips that run our systems, we don’t really own those systems. We just rent them.

Who controls the chips controls the data — and who controls the data controls the decisions.

What We Could Do

Australia can’t match the superpowers, but we can build strategic capability.

We already have the raw materials — silicon, gallium, rare earths — and strong research institutions. What we lack is coordination.

A national strategy could link universities, defence and private investment to develop mid-range chip production — the kind used in vehicles, agriculture and energy.

We could partner with trusted allies such as Japan, South Korea and the U.S. We could train engineers instead of importing them. We could treat technology as infrastructure, not as a luxury.

The truth is simple: if we can’t manufacture or maintain the technology that runs our systems, then those systems are not truly under our control.

The Question That Follows

In the twentieth century, a country without steel couldn’t build its own future.
In the twenty-first, a country without chips can’t even maintain it.

Our prosperity still lies in the ground, but our future lies in silicon. The nations that control it will shape the century. Those that don’t will simply follow.

That brings us to the next question — and the third part of this series: Powering a Nation: Why Low-Cost Energy Is the Key to Rebuilding Industry

How do you power the industries you want to rebuild?
The ability to make things depends on something even more fundamental than silicon — energy.

Part 1 of 3 — The Unmaking of a Nation Series

Australia still calls itself a wealthy, modern country. Yet scratch beneath the surface and you’ll see how fragile that wealth has become. We don’t make much anymore — not the things that keep a nation working.

Industry by industry, we’ve dismantled the foundations that once made us strong. We dig up the raw materials — iron, coal, gas, copper, lithium — ship them overseas and buy them back as finished products at a premium. It looks like prosperity on paper, but it’s really dependency dressed up as growth. That dependency carries a cost: the slow erosion of control, capability and confidence.

The Unmaking of a Nation

Once, we built things that lasted.

We made our own cars — Holden, Ford, Toyota and Mitsubishi — names that carried pride. Within a decade, they were gone. The factories closed, the suppliers folded and the towns built around them lost their heartbeat.

We refined our own fuel. Eight refineries once kept the nation moving. Today, there are just two — Ampol’s Lytton in Queensland and Viva Energy’s Geelong plant in Victoria — both surviving on government support. Almost every litre of petrol and diesel now arrives by ship. If the tankers stop, so does Australia.

We produced our own plastics and chemicals, the quiet building blocks of modern life. Qenos, our last polyethylene maker, shut its doors in 2024. The Gibson Island fertiliser plant in Brisbane, which once supplied half the country’s ammonia and urea, closed two years earlier. Now our farmers rely on foreign fertiliser to grow food in their own soil.

We made our own paper until the Maryvale mill stopped producing Reflex copy paper in 2023. Reflex, once proudly Australian, now comes by container ship.
We made glass until Oceania Glass in Dandenong entered administration and production began winding down.

Every time a factory closed, a quiet knowledge disappeared with it. Toolmaking, machining, glass-blowing, chemistry, pattern-cutting the skills that once defined us now scattered and faded.

The Thread We Let Unravel

We still grow the best wool in the world, around 280,000 tonnes of merino each year, but we’ve stopped doing much with it.

Almost all of it now leaves our shores unprocessed, mostly bound for China, where it’s scoured, spun and woven into fabric before returning as finished clothing. The mills that once hummed in Geelong, Goulburn and Launceston are gone. Only a few holdouts remain: Waverley Mills in Tasmania, Australian Country Spinners in Wangaratta and Merino Country in Queensland. Brave survivors, not an industry.

We export the raw fibre, import the fashion and call it a fair trade.

It’s the same story everywhere — cars, paper, glass, textiles, tyres, fertiliser, packaging and other essentials. One by one, we’ve outsourced the means to keep a country working.

The Fragile Future

We tell ourselves this is efficiency. That global supply chains are smarter, cheaper, inevitable. Yet what we’ve really done is trade resilience for convenience.

When COVID hit, we couldn’t even make our own masks or medicines. That was the warning shot. The next disruption — a trade war, conflict or shipping shock — could cut off the essentials: energy, food, communications.

If we can’t refine fuel, we can’t move.
If we can’t make fertiliser, we can’t grow.
If we can’t produce or repair the components that keep our systems running, we can’t function.

This isn’t nostalgia for the past, it’s about sovereignty — the ability to feed, fuel and defend ourselves when it matters most. Because a nation that stops making things doesn’t just lose jobs; it loses memory and control.

The Choice Ahead

Australia still has what it takes to rebuild — the resources, the intelligence and the people. What we lack is leadership and conviction.

We could restore manufacturing that adds value to what we mine and grow. We could invest in energy that industry can afford and in the skills that let us make, not just manage — because when you stop making things, you start losing control and once that’s gone, no amount of money can buy it back.

This isn’t about going backwards, it’s about remembering what independence truly means: the ability to build, fix and sustain ourselves when the world shifts.

So here’s the quiet question that leads us into the next part of this series:

What happens when we no longer control the technology that keeps the country running?

That’s where Part 2 begins — The Missing Brains: Australia’s Dependence on Foreign Chips.

The past few months have brought more twists and turns than I could ever have imagined. Life with my two gorgeous, high-needs boys is always full of energy and extra attention, but recently it feels as though every time I’ve caught my breath, something else has landed.

My husband had been unwell for a while. True to his “strong, silent type” nature, he carried on without complaint until the day he could no longer ignore it. Within days of finally admitting something was wrong, he was lying on an operating table having open-heart surgery.

You’d think that would have been enough drama for one season of life. But while he was still in the fragile stage of recovery, the unthinkable happened. In the car park at our local shopping centre, while getting into his car, he was struck from behind without warning. The thief knocked him to the ground, stomped on his head—breaking teeth, fracturing his skull—before stealing his car and his gold jewellery.

When the phone call came, my mind did what minds often do in moments of shock: it raced to the strangest places. After the immediate fear—“Is he alive, is he going to be okay?”—my next thought surprised even me: did they take his wedding ring? Odd, perhaps, but that ring was made from my father’s wedding band. In that brutal attack, I could have lost not only my husband, but also a priceless piece of my past and family history.

Since then, I’ve found myself slipping into reflection more than usual. Normally, life keeps me too busy to sit with thoughts like these. I’ve never been religious. As a child I sometimes tagged along to Sunday school with a neighbour, picking up just enough of the stories to understand where many of our traditions come from.

Somehow, I stumbled across a piece of poetry that stopped me in my tracks. Poetry has never been my thing—I’ll happily enjoy a cheeky limerick or the wit of Banjo Paterson, but most of the time it washes over me. I just don’t get it. This one was different. Hearing it read aloud by the author, I felt as though it was speaking directly to me. Why, I’m not exactly sure. Maybe it’s because of everything that’s happened recently, or maybe because sometimes words find you exactly when you need them. Whether it still resonates with me in the future is yet to be seen.

Either way, it touched me, and I wanted to share it. You’ll find the video below. 👇

Australia has been told that the only way to save the planet is to carpet the countryside with solar panels and wind farms, string thousands of kilometres of high-voltage wires across forests and farmland and build vast batteries in the hope they’ll store enough power to run a modern economy. We are told this is urgent, that it is moral, that it is the only way.

But step back for a moment. On the world’s current trajectory, if Australia reached net zero by 2050, the effect on global temperatures would be measured in a few thousandths of a degree. Almost unnoticeable! That’s not opinion, that’s arithmetic. Our sacrifice, no matter how painful, will have a negligible impact on the climate, yet we are acting as though bulldozing forests, scarring the countryside, repurposing good farmland and pushing up power bills is a noble crusade. It is not. It is folly.

The Damage We Pretend Not to See

Take Victoria’s wind rollout. The Western Victorian Transmission Project proposes 190 kilometres of new transmission lines slicing through prime farmland, cutting across communities, and devaluing properties — all to service a scattering of wind farms. Farmers have protested for years, warning of loss of arable land, bushfire risk, and visual blight, but the project rolls on.

Or look at New South Wales, where the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone is turning productive farmland into an industrial zone. Locals are watching sheep country disappear under solar panels, while the promised “regional benefits” often amount to a handful of temporary jobs and an eyesore that lasts decades.

Tasmania, once the “clean, green” state, is facing the massive Marinus Link project to export power to the mainland. This means tearing up wilderness and farming country to build 240 kilometres of overhead lines for a scheme that many experts say is uneconomic and unnecessary.

All the while, we are felling old forests in places like Victoria’s Latrobe Valley to make way for “green” infrastructure while sacrificing habitats that can never be replaced. Forests that took centuries to grow are bulldozed in weeks for technology that will need replacing in 20 years.

The Silliness of “Renewables + Batteries Only”

Even if we accept this damage, the numbers don’t add up. South Australia has more wind and solar per capita than anywhere in the world, yet it relies on gas to keep the lights on when the wind dies and the sun sets. The much-touted Hornsdale “Big Battery” near Jamestown can power the state for just a few minutes — not hours, not days. The new Waratah Super Battery in New South Wales is designed to keep Sydney stable for only 20–30 minutes in an emergency. Is this really the backbone of a modern industrial economy?

To replace baseload coal and gas entirely with renewables and batteries would require land on a staggering scale, constant mining of rare earths and lithium, and replacement of hardware every 20 years. That means we’re not just paving over farmland once, we’re committing to do it again and again, forever.

For what? To shave a minuscule fraction of a degree off global warming, while China, India and others continue to expand coal power at a scale that dwarfs our entire grid?

A Smarter Way Forward

This is not an argument for inaction. It is an argument for sanity. A “Go Gently” pathway means cutting emissions in a way that preserves what matters: food security, forests, habitats, and industry.

That means a balanced energy mix — renewables where they make sense, but supported by firm, low-emission power such as nuclear and hydro. It means using rooftops, carparks and brownfields before we touch productive farmland. It means co-locating power lines along existing transport corridors where possible instead of carving new scars across the landscape.

It also means broadening the focus. Our seas absorb about a quarter of all human carbon emissions and soak up around 90% of the excess heat. Without this, the “1.5 degrees” everyone chants about would be closer to 3.5 by now. The seas are now choking with plastics and waste, but ignored during our obsession over carbon. Our forests, which absorb and store vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere are bulldozed, sacrificed for “green” infrastructure. Climate matters, but it is not the only thing that matters.

The Futility of Needless Sacrifice

Australia’s leaders have convinced themselves that wrecking the countryside in the name of net zero is an act of moral virtue. But what virtue is there in destroying forests to save the climate? What sense is there in covering sheep paddocks with panels while China builds another coal plant every two weeks?

We should lead by showing how to cut emissions without destroying the very environment we claim to be saving. Net zero should be the destination, but the path matters and the path we’re on is not only unsustainable, it is absurd.

It’s time to go gently: steady, sensible, and balanced. Protect the climate, yes, but also protect our food, our forests, our wildlife, our economy. Commonsense needs to reign.

We need an energy system that works for everyone — the environment, the country, industry and the people. Renewables with batteries alone can’t carry the load, especially for heavy industry. A truly reliable, emissions-free grid requires a balanced mix: renewables and batteries, backed by firm nuclear and hydro.

Australia’s leaders insist we can do two things at once: have net zero emissions by 2050 and run record-high immigration levels of nearly half a million people a year.

It sounds nice. It isn’t true.

On paper, the slogans sit side by side: green earth, carbon footprint, climate leadership, but scratch the surface and the maths turns ugly. Every extra person who settles in Australia adds to our emissions tally and at current levels of migration, those additions are massive.

The Numbers Our Leaders Don’t Say Out Loud

Every year’s migration surge adds around 8 million tonnes of CO₂ at today’s carbon-heavy settings. That’s the same as putting 3.5 million more emissions-producing cars on our already congested roads.

Even in a so-called “net zero” future, when the grid runs largely on renewables and cars are electric, those same half-million people would still add 2.5 to 4 million tonnes annually. Why? Because there are parts of the economy that simply don’t decarbonise easily. Farming releases methane, cement and steel emit CO₂ in their very chemistry, aviation fuel remains carbon-heavy. These are called residual emissions. They’re smaller than today’s footprint, but they never disappear entirely.

Net Zero Isn’t Zero

This is the critical point politicians gloss over: net zero doesn’t mean no emissions. It means balancing the emissions we still produce with removals — forests, carbon capture, offsets, or other sinks.

Credible modelling for 2050 still leaves around 153 million tonnes of gross emissions each year that must be cancelled out with removals. That’s around 5 tonnes per person to offset. Add half a million more people, and suddenly you need an extra 2.5 million tonnes of removals every year just to stay balanced. Without that, the country slips back into “net positive” territory, and the “net zero” promise unravels.

In other words, every new migrant still comes with a carbon bill. The cleaner the system, the smaller the bill, but it never falls to zero.

The Construction Spike Nobody Talks About

This is all before we even consider the building boom. Housing 500,000 new arrivals requires roughly 200,000 new dwellings. Each one carries a carbon price tag. A recent study found that a typical detached home releases about 185 tonnes of CO₂-e up-front from bricks, cement, steel and other materials. Taken together, if most new builds are detached houses, that’s a one-off spike of up to 37 million tonnes of CO₂-e in the first decade of growth.

Then layer on the rest: the necessary new roads, rail lines, schools, hospitals, shopping centres, and power lines. All of them add to the upfront emissions load. In short, before new arrivals even switch on a light, the carbon budget is already blown out by the materials needed to house and service them.

The Fantasy of Doing Both

Could we technically stay at net zero with mass migration? On a spreadsheet, yes. But in practice, it would mean:

• Doubling the already breakneck pace of renewable rollout;

• Slashing per-capita emissions faster than any country on earth; and

• Somehow conjuring millions of tonnes of new offsets (which are dubious at best) every single year to balance the extra load.

That isn’t a plan. It’s a fantasy. It’s like promising to run a marathon while adding a 20-kilo backpack every kilometre. The maths alone makes the target unachievable.

Australians Asked to Carry the Cost

Meanwhile, ordinary Australians are told to do their bit. Pay higher power bills, buy expensive EVs, retrofit their homes all in the name of climate responsibility.

But at the national level, government policy wipes out those sacrifices by importing more emissions with each new wave of arrivals. It’s like trying to drain a bathtub with one hand while turning the taps on full bore with the other.

The contradiction matters. You cannot demand sacrifice from people while pursuing policies that cancel out those sacrifices at scale, it’s dishonest. Worse, it erodes trust in climate policy altogether.

A Smarter, Balanced Path

No one is arguing for shutting the door completely. Australia will always need skilled workers, students, and a humanitarian intake but scale matters. Half a million a year is not sustainable for housing, for infrastructure, or for the carbon budget.

A sensible migration policy would match intake to what the country can actually provide: homes, services, jobs and crucially, a carbon budget that isn’t already overspent. That means a lower, steadier intake, coupled with a genuine plan to decarbonise in a responsible way.

Until then, politicians need to stop selling the lie that Australia can have it both ways. We can have net zero. We can have mass migration (that is another discussion to be had) but we cannot have both — not at the same time and not at the scale our leaders pretend is possible. To try would be irresponsible and destructive.

Here’s the thing about Australia: we’ll argue all day about climate targets, pronouns, or whether the four-day week is a blessing or a curse, but the one resource that actually keeps us alive barely gets a mention.

Water.

We live on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, and yet we treat water like it’s endless. Just turn the tap and it will be there. If it gets tight, no worries, someone will build another desal plant. Meanwhile, immigration keeps rising, our cities sprawl further, and governments keep assuring us it will all somehow work out.

But, Where’s the plan?

The Numbers We Pretend Not to See

Sydney and Melbourne are bursting at the seams. By 2060, Sydney alone could be pushing eight million people and still drawing from the same catchments that shrivel every time a drought rolls through. Adelaide leans heavily on its desal plant, and Perth has already shifted a large percentage of its supply to desalinated water. The Murray–Darling, once the pride of Australian agriculture, is now little more than a bitter courtroom drama over who gets what.

Then comes population growth. Hundreds of thousands of new arrivals each year. Every one of them needs water to drink, wash, and cook. Where is it coming from? Nobody says. We just keep growing and hope the sky plays along.

Where’s the plan?

The Droughts We Choose to Forget

Australians have short memories when it comes to water. We live through devastating droughts — the Millennium Drought of the 2000s, the “Big Dry” of the 1980s, the crippling drought that left whole towns carting in water by truck in 2019. Each time, we vow never to take water for granted again. Yet as soon as the rains return, so does the complacency.

Every drought leaves scars: crops failed, stock destroyed, rivers reduced to cracked clay. Country towns watched businesses fold and young people leave. Cities flirted with running out altogether, Sydney’s dams hit 34%, Melbourne’s slipped below 30%, and entire communities across NSW and Queensland queued for water deliveries. These aren’t distant possibilities. They have already happened.

And still, we keep piling millions more people onto the same fragile system.

More Precious Than Power

We worry a lot about blackouts, and fair enough, but let’s be honest, if the lights go out, you can light a candle. If the taps run dry, you’ve got nothing. That’s when life in a modern city doesn’t just get difficult, it gets impossible.

Try telling your kids they can only flush once a day. That’s when the politics of scarcity gets personal.

The Tensions Ahead

Water isn’t just a resource, it’s a fuse waiting to be lit. We’ve already seen the fights over the Murray–Darling. Now add millions more people, and the squeeze only gets tighter. Farmers will be told to cut back. Cities will be told to ration and environmental flows will quietly vanish. If you think Australia is immune to real conflict, you haven’t seen what an empty dam does to neighbours.

And again: Where’s the plan?

A Country Without a Plan

What’s our big strategy? Mostly wishful thinking.

• Desal plants? They help, but they’re expensive and hungry for electricity.

• Recycling? Talked about in whispers, but rarely sold honestly to the public.

• Dams? Politically toxic.

• Population growth? Treated as if it’s got nothing to do with water at all.

We aim for growth but don’t plan for the water to sustain it. That’s not policy. That’s gambling.

What Needs to Change

If Australia wants to avoid its own “water wars,” we need to start being honest. That means:

• Facing up to the limits of what the land can give.

• Linking population and immigration targets to actual supply.

• Investing in recycling, aquifer storage, and smarter stormwater use.

• Building a national water strategy instead of leaving states to fight it out.

• Telling the public the truth: water isn’t endless, and we all have to share the load.

The Quiet Question

So here’s the question Canberra won’t ask: how much water do we really have, and how many people can it actually support? Until we face that, we’re just writing cheques the climate and our rivers can’t cash.

Where’s the plan? Not the promise, not the press release — the actual plan.

The time to act is now. Demand honesty from leaders. Ask the awkward question — where’s the water coming from? every time they talk about growth, because once the taps run dry, it won’t matter what else is on the agenda.

And when that day comes, don’t expect Quiet Australians to stay quiet. Nothing sparks a fight like a dry tap.

Want your voice heard?

If you want to put them on notice and ask Where is the Plan? the email addresses of the Minister and Liberal Shadow Minister for Environment and Water are below. Nowadays, a letter can have more impact. If that is what you would like to do their postal details are also below - let them know how you feel.

Senator the Hon. Murray Watt

Minister for Environment and Water

• email: senator.watt@aph.gov.au

• GPO Box 228, Brisbane QLD 4001

Senator Ross Cadell

Shadow Minister for Environment and Water

• email: senator.cadell@aph.gov.au

• Ground Floor, 28-30 Bolton Street, Newcastle NSW 2300

An AFL player recently announced he is bisexual, and within minutes the news was splashed across every media outlet. The headlines, the social commentary, the talkback radio chatter, all of it centred on who he chooses to sleep with. Which begs the question: why is this anyone else’s business?

Sexual preference is deeply personal. It has no bearing on someone’s talent, their character, or their contribution to the community. It doesn’t affect, fans, or the scoreboard on Saturday. Yet, we keep turning it into a spectacle, holding it up as if it’s some defining revelation about a person’s worth.

We’re told that celebrating such announcements is a step forward. Yes, visibility has mattered in breaking down prejudice. but there comes a point where the constant spotlight creates the very divide we claim to be erasing. As long as we keep singling people out by sexuality, by label, by declaration, they will never be able to simply be part of the community. They will remain set apart, defined not by who they are, but by what box they tick.

Isn’t the whole point of equality that we stop seeing people through a single lens? True inclusion means no longer having to announce it, defend it, or wear it like a badge. It means being just another teammate, neighbour, or mate at the pub, not “the bisexual footballer” or “the gay colleague.”

What most people want is simple: to live peacefully, to love who they love, to be treated like any other member of the community. When every private relationship is turned into a headline, it makes that normality harder, not easier, to achieve.

Australia prides itself on being a fair and welcoming society. Fairness isn’t about labels or declarations, it’s about respect. Respect for the fact that what happens in someone else’s bedroom has nothing to do with us. Respect for the idea that a person’s identity is richer than one headline word about sexuality.

It’s time we moved past the stage of “big reveals” and let people get on with their lives. True acceptance isn’t found in endless press conferences or front-page spreads, it’s found in the quiet, unremarkable truth that who you love is your business, and nobody else’s.

That’s the Australia worth striving for. One where every individual – regardless of orientation – is simply free to be part of the team, part of the community, and part of the everyday fabric of our lives.

We’ve seen them march. Thousands upon thousands crossing bridges, waving flags, chanting slogans, demanding action for a conflict far from our shores. Every week the spectacle plays out: another round of “solidarity” for Gaza, another disruption splashed across headlines.

Yet — when was the last time you saw that same energy for Ukraine?

Here is a country invaded, brutalised, stripped of its land and its people. Men and women who were living ordinary lives — working, raising children, building futures — are now soldiers, refugees, or mourners. By official counts, more than 13,000 civilians have been killed since Russia’s 2022 invasion, and tens of thousands more soldiers have fallen. The UN says those numbers are almost certainly undercounted. Whole cities have been levelled.

But the darkest statistic of all? Nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been abducted, deported into Russia, and put through “re-education” indoctrinated to forget their language, their families, their country. This isn’t speculation; it is documented, prosecuted, and has already led to arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for Vladimir Putin himself. If ever there was a line that humanity should not allow to be crossed, it is the theft of children.

So where are the marches? Where is the Harbour Bridge covered in blue and yellow?

Why the silence?

Some of it comes down to narrative. The Israel–Palestine conflict has been framed, rightly or wrongly, as a story of coloniser and colonised. It’s simple, binary and resonates with the activist networks that have built decades of infrastructure to mobilise in Australian cities. Ukraine, by contrast, is presented as a dry matter of geopolitics: state versus state, East versus West. No room for the moral theatre that fuels a protest movement.

Some of it is fatigue. The Ukraine war has stretched into its third year. The images are less constant, the headlines more sporadic and in a distracted age, attention shifts to the fresher outrage.

Some of it is complacency. Because Australia already sides with Ukraine. Because we’ve sent aid and imposed sanctions, we tell ourselves the job is done. But outrage isn’t just about government policy — it’s about insisting that atrocities are noticed, that victims are not forgotten, and that perpetrators know the world is watching.

The consequences of selective outrage

When we ignore Ukraine, we send a message. To Russia, the message is that war crimes can be normalised, that child abductions can be survived politically. To our own societies, the message is that outrage is a performance, reserved only for conflicts that fit a fashionable script.

At home, the imbalance corrodes trust. Australians see vast crowds rally for one foreign cause, while another equally worthy, perhaps even more clear-cut in its moral stakes, is met with shrugs. That double standard divides us.

Outrage where it’s due

No one is saying the suffering in Gaza doesn’t matter. It does. But so does Ukraine. Both deserve our moral clarity, our compassion, and our voices.

If nearly 20,000 children stolen for indoctrination doesn’t move us to the streets, what will? If tens of thousands of lives extinguished in the defence of sovereignty doesn’t stir our conscience, what will?

Outrage is not a finite resource. It is not something to ration. The quiet of the world when it comes to Ukraine’s stolen children should disturb us far more than it does.

Because if we can’t summon outrage for that, perhaps the silence says more about us than it does about the war.

We seem to be living in an era where basic logic is treated as optional. The latest example? The unions’ push for a four-day working week with five days’ pay. It’s the kind of idea that sounds like a dream over coffee but collapses the moment you test it against reality.

Common Sense Test

Here’s the thing: you can’t fit five days’ work into four and if you can, it means you’re not producing enough in the five you’re already being paid for. That’s not innovation, that’s inefficiency, plain and simple. Common sense says if there’s room to chop 20% of the week and still meet targets, then something has been wrong with work productivity all along.

The Union Promise: Job Satisfaction

The unions argue that fewer days will boost morale and job satisfaction, therefore workers will produce more in less time. It’s a seductive idea. Who wouldn’t want a long weekend every weekend? But satisfaction doesn’t always translate into output. If it did, our current workplace arrangements with public holidays, personal leave, long service leave, and flexibility would have us punching above our weight on productivity. Instead, our national output per worker is stagnant, and our competitiveness is slipping.

The Coverage Problem

Then there’s the reality of industries that simply cannot shut the doors after four days. Hospitals, aged care, retail, logistics, utilities, hospitality, and manufacturing all need to be manned five, six, or even seven days a week. Under a four-day model, these sectors would need 20% more workers to cover rosters — which means 20% higher wage bills. In the private sector, that pushes up the price of everything. In the public sector, taxpayers foot the bill. Either way, it’s unsustainable.

A Productivity Reality Check

Australia’s productivity is already in the doldrums. We’re working fewer hours, effectively producing less per worker and losing ground against international competitors. Energy costs are high, infrastructure is stretched, and skills mismatches are holding industries back. Adding a shorter week with the same pay doesn’t solve any of this — it makes it worse. It’s like deciding the best way to win a marathon is to run fewer kilometres. You might feel fresher, but you won’t reach the finish line.

The Real Answer

If we want higher wages, better living standards, and a stronger economy, the answer isn’t to do less work — it’s to produce more, and do it better. Real prosperity comes from higher productivity, not legislated leisure. Pretending otherwise is wishful thinking dressed up as policy.

The truth is simple: you can’t legislate prosperity by cutting the workweek and keeping the pay the same. That’s not progress — it’s a shortcut to nowhere.

On a cold, drizzly afternoon not long ago, I sat down to watch an old movie. Something gentle and nostalgic, the kind that reminds you of a simpler time. As I watched, I heard a phrase I hadn’t thought about in years: “the age of innocence.” It struck a chord. Maybe because I have children of my own now, or maybe because that concept, the innocence of childhood, feels like it’s quietly slipping away.

There was a time when we believed in protecting childhood. When parents, teachers, and communities saw it as their duty to shield children from adult concerns. We believed in letting kids be kids, giving them space to learn and grow at their own pace, emotionally and developmentally. That sense of protection has all but disappeared.

Today, children are being asked to carry emotional and ideological burdens that aren’t theirs. Conversations about climate catastrophe, colonial guilt, gender identity, and protest politics now find their way into classrooms. Instead of focusing on literacy and numeracy, many schools seem to have embraced activism over academics. It’s no longer just about education — it’s about instilling a worldview before children even understand what that means.

What used to be the job of parents, to raise emotionally resilient and morally grounded children, is now being taken over by strangers following policy checklists. If your child questions or hesitates to conform, they’re often labelled difficult, resistant, or even harmful.

I see this playing out with my own two boys. One is analytical and emotionally sensitive — always observing, always thinking, always feeling. He weeps when he sees suffering in the world. The other barrels through life with relentless energy and a stubborn spirit, fiercely protective of his brother and me. Neither of them needs to be told that they live on stolen land, or that they are responsible for fixing the climate. They need time to grow, to play, to understand the world gradually and safely — not be pressured into carrying the weight of adult agendas.

There is a cruelty in forcing children to see the world through the lens of ideological guilt before they even know who they are. We are not teaching them how to think critically or solve problems, we are teaching them how to perform outrage. We hand them slogans before they’ve mastered spelling, and activist scripts before they’ve formed their own sense of self.

This is not just misguided. It’s reckless.

We must reclaim the age of innocence. Childhood should be a time of imagination, exploration, and discovery — not guilt, confusion, and politics. Let children form their own identities, feel proud of who they are, and learn how to navigate the world without being weighed down by agendas too complex for their years.

Because once their childhood is taken, we don’t get it back.

Want your voice heard?

If you want to let them know how you feel- the email addresses of the Minister and Liberal Shadow Minister for Education i

n August 2025 are below. Nowadays, a letter can have more impact. If that is what you would like to do, their postal details are also below. If you really feel strongly, why not do both?

Minister for Education- Hon Jason Clare MP

• Email: Jason.Clare.MP@aph.gov.au

• PO Box 153, Bankstown, NSW, 1885

Shadow Minister for Education - Jonathon Duniam

• Email: senator.duniam@aph.gov.au

• GPO Box 453, Hobart TAS 7001

Hands Off the Family Home: Why This Bizarre Tax Idea Deserves to Die on Arrival

𝘉𝘺 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘭 𝘚𝘢𝘷𝘷𝘢

The ABC this week ran a headline that could have been lifted straight from a satirical website: “Taxing the family home could help more people become homeowners.”

Two little-known academics have floated the idea that the solution to Australia’s housing crisis is to tax people for living in their own homes. Not just any tax, mind you, but a levy on the so-called “rental value” of owner-occupied housing. In practice, that means imagining you are your own landlord, then paying the government for the privilege.

Absurd? Of course it is. This belongs in the let’s-just-throw-anything-at-the-wall basket, not in the pages of serious policy debate.

The Australian Psyche Will Never Buy It

Home ownership is stitched into the national fabric. It is not merely a financial milestone; it is a symbol of security, independence, and the knowledge that you have “made it” through your own effort. Australians work long hours, take fewer holidays, and save for years to scrape together a deposit — not so they can later be presented with an annual bill for the roof over their heads.

The Australian psyche rejects this sort of thinking outright. You do not “rent” your own home from the government. You own it because you earned it.

Reward Effort, Do Not Penalise It

We hear endlessly about inequality, “privilege,” and the need to “level the playing field.” Fair enough — nobody wants to see those doing it tough left behind. Somewhere along the way, however, policymakers forgot a basic truth: reward matters.

Australia was built on the ethos that if you turn up for work, put in the hours, save carefully, and pay your taxes, you deserve to enjoy the fruits of your labour. The family home is the clearest embodiment of that ethos. Penalising homeowners for achieving it is not fairness — it is envy dressed up as economics.

A ‘Homeowners’ Welfare State’? Please.

The architects of this scheme claim that tax-free home ownership amounts to a “homeowners’ welfare state” that widens inequality. This is an academic parlour trick — language designed to make everyday Australians sound like freeloaders.

Let us be clear: there is no welfare payment for owning a home. No cheque arrives for mowing your own lawn. No subsidy appears for repainting the spare room. The only “benefit” is not paying rent to a stranger — because you are the landlord.

The Problem Is Not the Homeowner

If these thinkers genuinely cared about affordability, they would go after the real obstacles:

• A housing supply throttled by red tape and sluggish approvals.

• Tax settings that reward speculative investment over first-home ownership.

• Governments addicted to population growth without building enough homes to match.

Instead, they have chosen to target those who did the right thing — the political equivalent of punching a hole in the lifeboat because some passengers are sitting higher than others.

The Slippery Slope

Make no mistake — if this idea ever became law, it would not stop at “just a small levy.” Governments never give up a revenue stream once they have it. Today it might be 0.5 per cent; tomorrow 1.5 per cent. Before long, people could be selling the homes they have lived in for decades just to meet the tax bill.

A Simple Rule for Policy-Makers

Any “housing affordability” plan that punishes those who worked, saved, and sacrificed is not a housing plan. It is class warfare masquerading as reform.

Australians will not stand for it. Not in a month of Sundays. Not in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Not ever.

Hands off the family home!

Once upon a time, Australia had a pretty solid idea of what fairness looked like. You worked hard, you had a go, and — if you were up to scratch — you got the job. It didn’t matter where your parents were born, what colour your skin was, or whether you ticked a demographic box. That was the promise of Australia’s anti-discrimination laws: a level playing field.

Fast forward to now, and that promise is looking a bit frayed.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — DEI for short, has crept into every corner of public life. Government departments, schools, corporates, the arts, the ABC — you name it. What started as a push for tolerance and opportunity has ballooned into a kind of ideological HR crusade. One where identity too often trumps merit, and where being the “best person for the job” is no longer the gold standard — unless, of course, you happen to be the right kind of diverse.

Here’s the kicker: DEI might sound like a good idea, but in practice, it’s clashing with the very laws that were meant to protect all of us from discrimination in the first place.

What the Law Says (and Where DEI Crosses the Line)

Australian anti-discrimination laws are pretty clear. You can’t treat someone unfairly because of things like their sex, race, age, disability, political beliefs, religion. That’s the backbone of acts like the Sex Discrimination Act, Racial Discrimination Act, and the Fair Work Act. These laws protect individuals — not identity groups. The focus is on fairness, not outcomes.

But DEI programs are increasingly less about removing barriers and more about manufacturing results. Want an example?

• Gender quotas in leadership roles mean a man may be passed over because he’s a man, even if he’s the most qualified candidate. That’s not equity. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

• Race-based recruitment streams in government and corporates have been designed to exclude anyone who doesn’t fit a specific racial profile. In the name of inclusion, we’ve normalised exclusion.

Yes, there are legal loopholes to allow for “special measures” under the guise of redressing disadvantage, but when these programs start shutting people out based solely on identity — rather than improving access for all — they’re walking a fine legal line. Make no mistake, that line has already been crossed in several recent court actions.

Who’s Really Being Left Out?

Here’s what no one wants to say out loud: the “average” Australian — the one who works, pays taxes, volunteers on weekends, and doesn’t shout about their identity — is being quietly pushed to the sidelines. Their demographic is considered too represented, too privileged, too… boring.

But when institutions start selecting people to tick boxes instead of choosing the best candidate for the role, we all lose. Australia loses.

Merit isn’t just a buzzword — it’s the engine that keeps this country running. Whether it’s the teacher in the classroom, the engineer designing our infrastructure, or the nurse making life-and-death decisions, we need the best person in the role - period, not the most photogenic team line-up for a diversity brochure.

Lowering the bar doesn’t just hurt the individual who missed out. It weakens the system. It risks performance and breeds resentment, not just from the people being excluded, but from those who got the role and know, deep down, that they weren’t the top choice.

That’s not inclusion. That’s tokenism with a smiley face sticker.

What’s It Doing to Society?

It’s not just workplaces feeling the effects. DEI culture is now baked into schools, universities, councils, and even the arts. We’re raising kids to see the world in categories, not as people with shared humanity and character but as group identities in a hierarchy of oppression.

And here’s the damage:

• It divides. When people are constantly being told they're either “overrepresented” or “marginalised,” we stop seeing each other as equals. We start resenting each other. That’s how nations unravel — not in chaos, but in quiet, simmering distrust.

• It silences. Good people are biting their tongues. Teachers, nurses, public servants — they know something’s off, but they’re too afraid to say it. Nobody wants to be branded a bigot for asking, “Shouldn’t we just pick the best person for the job?”

• It diminishes real inclusion. Because when identity becomes a shortcut to opportunity, the genuine obstacles some people face are trivialised. We all deserve equal respect, but equal respect doesn’t mean equal outcomes no matter how much the DEI consultants charge to say otherwise.

The Quiet Pushback

More and more Australians are starting to feel it. That quiet unease, that sense that something is shifting beneath our feet. This is not because we’re against diversity. This country is diverse and most of us are proud of that, but because we’re watching fairness be redefined in ways that no longer make sense.

We’re not allowed to say “the best person should get the job” without being accused of ignorance. We’re not allowed to question quotas without being told we don’t care about inclusion, yet, every time someone’s passed over for not fitting a DEI profile, or every time someone’s told to “step aside for the greater good,” a little more trust is lost, a little more unity is chipped away.

So Where to From Here?

Australia doesn’t need to choose between fairness and diversity. We just need to remember what fairness actually means.

It means removing barriers, not creating new ones. It means treating people as individuals, not avatars of race, gender or background. It means backing talent, effort and contribution no matter what box someone ticks, because if we keep choosing people based on what they represent instead of what they can do, we won’t just be short-changing individuals, we’ll be short-changing the whole country.

Want your voice heard?

If you want to tell them that DEI has gone too far- the email addresses of the Minister and Liberal Shadow Minister for Employment are below. Nowadays, a letter can have more impact. If that is what you would like to do their postal details are also below - let them know how you feel.

Amanda Rishworth MP

Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations-

• email: amanda.rishworth.mp@aph.gov.au

• mail: 232 Main South Rd Morphett Vale SA 5162

Tim Wilson MP

Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations and Employment

• email: tim.wilson.mp@aph.gov.au

• mail: 677 Nepean Highway Brighton East VIC 3187

Regularly, we get a gentle knock on the door.

And when we open it, there she is, our neighbour from across the road, holding a plate of homemade buns, warm biscuits, or a jar of plum jam made from the fruit in her backyard. She never comes empty-handed. She never stays for just five minutes.

We welcome her in, and soon we’re sitting around the table, cups of tea in hand, letting the conversation wander through news, memories, and the small stuff that makes up life. She’s in her eighties now, warm, wise, and wonderfully sharp. Every visit feels like a gift.

Over time, she’s shared her story. Her escape from communist Poland. The long, uncertain journey to a new country. The loneliness of starting over in a place where she didn’t know the language. The weight of raising children in unfamiliar surroundings while trying to keep hold of her culture and make sense of ours.

I haven’t had to do what she did — leave everything behind, carry hope across continents, and begin again with nothing but grit and faith. Sitting across from her, I often wonder if I would have had the same strength, the same resilience, the same quiet determination to build something better not just for myself, but for my children and their future.

She is what a successful migration story looks like. Not a headline. Not a political talking point. A real woman who came here with nothing, worked hard, gave back, and raised a family that now calls Australia home.

A Testament to What Migration Can Be

It’s easy to take things for granted when you haven’t had to fight for them. I’ve never had to flee oppression, learn a new language as an adult, or prove my worth in a country that didn’t quite know what to do with me. She has and she did.

She didn’t just survive, she flourished. Her children are good people, kind-hearted and deeply loyal to this country. She gave Australia more than it gave her. She never complains.

We hear a lot these days about the “cost” of migration — what it might mean for housing, for jobs, for services, but rarely do we talk about what we gain. Make no mistake, people like my neighbour are an immeasurable gain.

They bring more than food and culture. They bring wisdom born from hardship. They bring humility, gratitude and a sense of perspective that’s sorely needed in a world that often seems obsessed with grievances and entitlements.

The Real Return on Investment

Migration has given this country some of its most dedicated citizens, people who value freedom because they know what life without it looks like. People who take nothing for granted because they’ve lived through the alternative. People who work hard, raise respectful children and build bridges between cultures without asking for applause.

If Australia’s migration program were measured not just in economics but in human character, in courage and in community contribution, people like my neighbour would be its gold standard.

She’s not a guest in this country, she’s part of its heart. We are all better for having her here.

A Country Enriched by Courage

That gentle knock on the door isn’t just a neighbourly gesture. It’s a quiet echo of the kind of country we can be, one where people are welcomed, where stories are shared, and where the fabric of society is stronger because it’s been stitched together by people from all walks of life.

In a time when we’re often urged to look at what divides us, I look at her and I see what unites us.

She reminds me that being Australian is not about how long your family’s been here. It’s about the values you hold, the effort you make, and the home you help to create for others.

And for that, I’m deeply grateful

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Well done, England. In the latest act of national self-sabotage masquerading as progress, it seems the voting age will be lowered to 16, because if there’s one thing this exhausted, incoherent era needs, it’s more opinions from people who still require parental permission to go on the school ski trip.

Of course, this will be breathlessly framed by the usual suspects as a “triumph for democracy” — as if the whole point of democracy is just handing out votes like party favours at a Year 10 formal. And yes, expect endless pious commentary about how this will “engage young people” and “make them feel heard”. Never mind that these same young people were recently judged too emotionally fragile to cope with competitive sport, exams without “special consideration”, or a teacher using the wrong pronoun.

Too Young to Fight a War, But Old Enough to Start One? Sure, That Tracks.

Let’s be clear: 16-year-olds aren’t allowed to join the army and fight in a war. Not because the government is mean, but because they are — rightly — deemed too immature to carry a rifle, too emotionally vulnerable to cope with combat, and frankly, too busy worrying about who fancies them in fourth period maths. And yet, in this latest feat of legislative genius, we are now expected to believe they are perfectly equipped to help elect the government that could start that war. Marvellous.

You can’t serve on the frontline, but you can help decide whether we send other people’s children to it. That’s the sort of ironclad logic that only passes for wisdom in modern politics.

The Teenage Brain Is Not Exactly Westminster-Ready

Neuroscientists — killjoys that they are — will tell you the human brain doesn’t finish developing until about 25, particularly the bit responsible for decision-making and impulse control. This is why teenagers do things like lick frozen poles and think it’s a laugh. But sure, let’s put them in charge of deciding national tax policy.

Have you seen a 16-year-old’s internet history? Have you observed their attention span when not tethered to a phone? Have you tried explaining to them how a mortgage works? We’re not talking about future policy wonks here; we’re talking about people whose chief experience of governance is having their phone confiscated for vaping in the school toilets.

No Skin in the Game, But Why Should That Stop Them?

The entire premise of democratic responsibility used to be linked — however loosely — to having something at stake. You worked, you paid taxes, you contributed. You had some skin in the game. Sixteen-year-olds have no skin anywhere near the game. Most of them don’t pay tax. Most still live at home, being funded by adults. Yet we’re handing them the power to vote on pensions, energy security, national debt and industrial relations.

They’ll vote on policies that won’t meaningfully touch them for another decade while the rest of us are left to deal with the consequences of their adolescent idealism and TikTok-informed worldviews.

There’s Already a Youth Vote — It’s Called 18-Year-Olds

The argument that young people need a “voice” ignores the obvious: they already get one at 18. If your political maturity cannot wait two more years, that’s not society’s problem. Eighteen is already a generous concession in many respects; historically, voting was tied to property ownership or service precisely because those things signified responsibility. Now we’re expected to believe we should let people too young to legally drive alone at night determine national outcomes?

Politics Is Already Childish. Why Add Actual Children?

If you thought modern politics couldn’t get any more juvenile, strap in. We already live in a world where politicians obsess over Twitter, policies are designed around hashtags, and Prime Ministers behave like reality TV contestants. So perhaps it’s fitting that we now invite actual teenagers to the party.

Expect manifestos carefully crafted to woo this vital new constituency: more free stuff, more moral absolutism, more performative outrage. Climate strikes, identity politics, feelings over facts — it’s a teenage dream. And the grown-ups? They’ll be reduced to pandering to this demographic for fear of losing elections to whoever promises free Wi-Fi and a ban on homework.

England’s Example: Progress or Pathetic?

England’s decision isn’t some beacon of progress. It’s the latest symptom of a civilisation so terrified of upsetting anyone that it now elevates adolescent self-expression above adult responsibility. Voting is not therapy. It’s not there to make you “feel heard”. It’s there to make serious decisions about war, peace, taxation, and government.

England’s descent into this farce will soon infect others. Australia won’t be far behind. Nor will New Zealand, or Canada, or anywhere else desperate to look progressive on the world stage, no matter how ludicrous the policy.

Conclusion: Voting Is for Adults. Grow Up.

Voting is about adult decisions with adult consequences. If you can’t buy a beer, sign a contract, or be trusted to drive a car after dark, you have no business helping elect governments. Sixteen-year-olds are not adults. They’re children in transition — which is fine. But we don’t hand children the keys to the nuclear codes, and we shouldn’t hand them ballot papers either.

Democracy doesn’t need more voices; it needs better judgement. And better judgement rarely comes from people who still list “Snapchat streaks” under their life priorities.

If you want to fix democracy, stop infantilising it. Start raising the standard, not the volume.