One of the funniest things about watching political arguments online is bearing witness to people on the right call literally anyone who disagrees with them a “leftard”.

Not someone who is actually a left wing extremist.

Not someone advocating some wildly radical position.

Just… someone who disagreed with them.

And then they seem genuinely confused when those same people become less sympathetic or less inclined to listen to their politics.

You are actively pushing people away from you and then blaming the people you pushed away for not wanting anything to do with you.

Taking ZERO accountability for your hatred and contempt toward anyone with a varying opinion.

If you actually want to convince someone of something, why the fuck would you start by treating them like they’re stupid?

“You’re a leftard.”

“Fuck off moron.”

“You’re brainwashed.”

“Typical lefty.”

“You people are all idiots.”

Yep, that’s really going to change our mind. 🙄

Imagine you were going for a pay rise at work.

You don’t particularly like your boss.

Maybe you think they’re a complete wanker.

Maybe you even think you could do their job better?

Would you walk into their office and start calling them a wanker?

Would you publicly berate them and tell them they’re a fucking idiot?

Then, after you’ve finished lashing out at them, you hold out your hand and say,

“Anyway, I’d like you to give me more money and more control over the company.”

Of course you wouldn’t…

Because a reasonable person understands that treating someone like shit isn’t a particularly effective way of getting them to do something you want.

Yet apparently this basic concept goes completely out the fucking window when politics is involved.

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

It’s an old saying, but it exists for a reason.

And this is particularly relevant when you’re talking to people in the centre.

Not everyone who doesn’t agree with you is your political enemy.

Plenty of people have a mixture of views.

They might agree with you on one issue and disagree with you on the next.

They might be undecided.

They might not particularly like either major political side.

To some like myself, good policy is good policy no matter who it comes from.

Those in the centre are the people you could actually potentially persuade.

But if your response to them saying “I don’t agree with you” is to call them a “leftard”,

why the hell would they want to hear anything else you have to say?

You’re not convincing them of anything.

You’re pushing them further away.

They’re not going to wake up one day and say to themselves, “You know what, Steve from Facebook was right! I am a moron”…

Every time you do it, you’re giving them another reason to look at your politics and think, “Actually, fuck these people”.

Which makes the constant complaints about everyone “moving further left” particularly hilarious.

Maybe people aren’t being brainwashed.

Maybe they’re just sick of being treated like shit.

And what prompted this particular tantrum wasn’t even some horrific, hateful political post.

It was a meme.

A fucking meme…

And to make it even funnier, it was based on one the right had made previously.

You dish it out, you think it’s hilarious, you make jokes at everyone else’s expense but the second someone makes the exact same joke back at you, suddenly they’re a hateful extremist and everyone who laughs is a “leftard”.

Come on… 🙄

If you want people to listen to you, give them a reason to listen.

If you want people to consider your arguments, make intelligent and informed arguments.

If you want people in the centre to move towards your position, maybe don’t spend every interaction telling them they’re fucking idiots.

Because you might eventually discover that constantly telling someone they’re a piece of shit is a remarkably effective way of making them decide they don’t like you.

And blaming them for moving further away from you is just… spectacularly stupid. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Pauline Hanson has a new policy.

Wait err sorry, that’s not entirely true.

But she does have the concept of one…

Apparently Australians should be able to access their super early to help with things like mortgage stress and cost of living because it’s “their money”.

I mean, yeah... Technically they already do.

And it is our money.

This is one of those ideas that sounds really good when you first hear it because most people are currently haemorrhaging money every time they open their eyes.

When people are struggling to pay the mortgage and then look over at their super account with $50,000 or $100,000 or whatever is sitting in it, of course there is an immediate part of your brain that goes “Well fuck me, that would be handy”.

And Pauline’s argument is essentially, why shouldn’t you be allowed to use it?

Fair question.

I have several follow up questions:

How much?

For what?

How often?

Who gets it?

How bad does your financial situation need to be?

Are we talking about people about to lose their homes here or just generally struggling with the cost of living?

Because those are two very different things.

Can a 30 year old take out $50,000?

Can they do it again five years later?

What happens when they retire?

Does the government then make up the difference through the pension in future???

I went looking for the answers because I assumed there must be an actual policy detailing all this somewhere.

Turns out, there isn’t.

Or at least not yet…

The details are still being “worked out”.

So this is not actually policy.

This is just a thought Pauline had.

Which is fine… I have thoughts all the time.

This morning I thought about cutting my own fringe.

Not every thought needs to progress to implementation.

And I think this distinction matters because One Nation is currently asking Australians to take it seriously as something more than just a protest vote.

They claim to want to be part of serious conversations about governing the country.

Okay then…

So write the fucking policies??

And I mean actual policies…

Not “Australians should be able to use their own money.”

Thats just a vague statement.

Anyone with half a brain can make vague fucking statements. Pauline is living proof of this.

A policy is the bit where you explain how the thing actually works.

This has become a bit of a recurring problem.

One Nation announces something that sounds simple enough, someone asks a question about how it would actually operate and suddenly everyone is standing around looking like they’ve been asked to explain fucking quantum mechanics.

We just watched this happen with the foreign ownership housing policy.

At some point I started wondering whether anybody involved had actually read their “policy” before talking about the fucking policy.

And now we’ve pivoted to super.

Australians already can access super early under certain circumstances. Severe financial hardship exists. Compassionate release exists.

So we’re not talking about reinventing early access.

We’re talking about making it much broader.

I can absolutely understand someone saying it makes no sense to protect a person’s retirement savings so aggressively that they lose their house at 45.

That’s worth talking about.

But the second you broaden access, you have to deal with the annoying bit.

MATHS…

(Side Quest)

Now seems like a good time to revisit this video of Pauline Hanson pretending to cook spaghetti and demonstrating her capacity for arithmetic.

Pauline left school at 15, which I wasn’t going to bring up because plenty of extremely intelligent people leave school early.

Anyway, here’s the woman who would like us to let her fuck around with a few trillion dollars of our super.

https://youtu.be/GEVFbRjhyxA?si=1B4A5WZUO3BeJdiI

Ok so back to my point.

Taking $20,000 out of your super when you’re 30 doesn’t just mean having $20,000 less when you retire.

That money would have sat there earning returns for another thirty or forty years.

Which is the entire bloody point of the super.

Compound returns are boring as bat shit but unfortunately they exist…

And future you doesn’t get to send present you an angry text saying “PUT IT BACK!”

You’ve basically just mugged a 70 year old version of yourself.

If people are having to raid their retirement savings to afford their mortgage or groceries, are we actually solving anything?

Or are we just robbing Peter to pay Paul?

Housing is where this gets even more questionable for me.

If people are allowed to use more super for housing, particularly deposits, then we need to talk about what that does to prices.

We have this bizarre habit in Australia of trying to make houses more affordable by helping people spend more money on houses.

House prices are insane?

Give buyers more money.

Still insane?

Give them more money.

If you’ve got the same number of people competing for the same number of homes but everybody suddenly has another chunk of money available to bid with, I would quite like somebody to explain why that money doesn’t just turn into higher prices.

Maybe Pauline has an answer. Idk…

Because, again, there is no fucking policy yet.

And I don’t even necessarily hate the idea.

That’s the frustrating thing.

There are situations where accessing super early actually makes sense to me.

If someone is genuinely about to lose their home, I’m not convinced the best possible outcome is protecting their retirement account while they become homeless.

There is a real conversation to have here about whether or not the system is too rigid.

But that conversation gets significantly harder once you move from “people in extreme circumstances” to vague references to “cost of living”.

Cost of living is affecting pretty much everyone.

And if huge numbers of Aussies start pulling money out of super now, what happens in thirty years when they retire without enough?

We know what happens…

The Aged Pension.

Which means the government pays…

Which means taxpayers pay…

So the money doesn’t magically appear.

We’re just moving it around and hoping nobody notices.

Maybe that’s still worth doing in some circumstances, but fucking tell us what those circumstances are!?

Put a number on it.

Put limits on it.

Cost it…

Model what happens to retirement balances.

Tell us what it does to pension spending.

Tell us what happens if millions of people want access during a recession.

Tell us what happens to housing prices.

THEN I’ll decide whether I think it’s a good policy.

THAT IS LITERALLY HOW THIS FUCKING WORKS!

This is probably the thing that bothers me most about One Nation.

They want all the authority of being a “serious political party” without doing ANY of the actual work.

You want to run the country?

Cool.

Unfortunately there is paperwork.

You have to explain things.

People get to ask annoying questions.

Sometimes economists turn up.

Nobody enjoys this.

But that’s the deal…

You don’t get to announce “Australians should have access to their own money” and then just wander off while everyone else is left standing there holding the bill.

And maybe there will be a detailed policy.

Maybe next week Pauline releases twenty pages of modelling and eligibility requirements and I have to sit here and eat my fucking words.

Fine.

I’ll even bring the tomato sauce.

But until then, Pauline’s early super policy is not a policy.

It’s a fucking concept.

And given we’re talking about people’s futures,

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for slightly more than that.

Anyway.

I still haven’t cut my fringe.

So at least one poorly thought out idea has been successfully prevented today.

There is something genuinely funny about watching people who have spent the better part of a decade telling everyone else to “learn to take a joke” suddenly discovering their own feelings.

It’s like watching a David Attenborough documentary.

Here, we see the Australian anti snowflake in its natural habitat.

Usually loud and territorial, it survives primarily on Facebook comments, screenshots of headlines it hasn’t actually read and the phrase “you’d get cancelled for saying that these days.”

Then someone makes a joke about them.

Suddenly the poor little petal is extremely fucking sensitive.

This week, the target was Robert Irwin.

Which is objectively hilarious…

Robert Irwin.

The human equivalent of a golden retriever.

The man looks like he apologises to mosquitoes after swatting them.

And yet somehow he has managed to trigger a miniature culture war by making a joke about Karl Stefanovic at the Logies.

Karl wasn’t there, Robert explained, so they hadn’t needed to hire quite as many bartenders.

Pretty standard Logies material.

Then came the second bit.

They had saved Karl a seat anyway.

Over to the right.

The far right…

And somewhere in Australia, a man with “SCHOOL OF HARDKNOCKS” in his Facebook bio felt a disturbance in the Force.

Because apparently this was too far.

Too political.

Too nasty.

Robert Irwin had gone woke!

I’m sorry.

What???

I thought comedy was supposed to offend people?

I thought comedy was supposed to push boundaries and make people uncomfortable?

I thought everyone was too sensitive now and nobody could take a joke?

I thought cancel culture was destroying comedy?

I thought we all needed to toughen up?

We’ve all been hearing this shit for YEARS.

Apparently there was a tiny footnote we all missed.

It’s just a joke unless the joke is about me.

(The right wing crowd in a nutshell)

You don’t get to spend ten years screeching about “FREE SPEECH” and telling everyone to toughen up, then absolutely lose your shit because Robert Irwin made a joke at your sides expense.

Especially when Karl has very publicly positioned his new media venture almost exclusively around freedom of speech.

Which makes this whole thing even funnier.

Apparently freedom of speech extends all the way to controversial opinions and provocative conversations, but hits an unexpected administrative boundary somewhere around Robert Irwin taking the piss out of you at the Logies.

Won’t somebody please think of the middle aged ex television presenters?

Look don’t get me wrong, you’re entitled to think the joke was shit.

You can think Robert Irwin should stick to wrestling crocodiles.

You can think the whole thing was painfully scripted television humour written by six people in a room eating Twisties.

All fine…

What you cannot do, at least not without becoming the butt of the joke, is spend years telling everyone else that “offence is a choice” and then act like Robert Irwin personally shit in your weetbix.

This is where the whole “snowflake” thing has always fallen apart for me.

There are snowflakes everywhere.

Left, right, centre, whatever…

Human beings are sensitive.

We have egos.

We’re also extremely good at laughing when someone else gets roasted and then developing a sudden interest in civility seconds after the joke turns around.

The difference is that some people have built an entire personality around insisting that they don’t do that…

They’re tough.

They’re politically incorrect.

They tell it like it is.

They’re not offended by anything!

Until Robert Irwin says “far right”.

So perhaps we can finally retire the word “snowflake”.

Or at least admit it was never a particularly useful description of one side of politics.

Sensitivity isn’t exclusive to the left, sometimes it’s sitting very quietly…

over there.

To the right.

The far right.

Sorry…Couldn’t resist.

It’s just a joke, mate. 😏

Sonya Kilkenny has announced a fairly substantial package of family violence reforms this week.

“Landmark new laws” is the government’s description, which naturally made me want to go and find out what they actually intend to do.

The most radical change is that Victoria will be making coercive control a standalone criminal offence.

Coercive control is already recognised within Victoria’s family violence laws and reforms earlier this year expanded those laws to explicitly cover things like stalking, systems abuse and abuse involving animals.

The difference now is that coercive control itself can be treated as the crime.

That means looking at a pattern of behaviour rather than waiting for one incident that neatly fits an existing offence.

Coercive control may look like;

Someone controls the money, tracks their partner’s location, isolates them from friends, threatens the dog or makes them afraid of what will happen if they don’t follow the rules.

Taken individually, some of those things can look relatively innocuous to an outsider.

Together, they can amount to somebody controlling another person’s entire life.

The obvious difficulty is proving it.

Police will have to understand months or years of behaviour and identify who is actually controlling whom.

Victoria has already introduced reforms aimed at reducing the misidentification of victim-survivors as perpetrators, so this is hardly a hypothetical concern.

A woman who has finally lost her shit after years of abuse may look considerably less composed when police arrive than the person who has spent those years controlling her.

Kilkenny is allegedly establishing an expert advisory group to oversee the implementation.

How police are trained will probably tell us more about the eventual success of this law than the announcement itself.

There are also changes aimed at what happens to someone because they are a victim, which I think is getting less attention than it deserves.

Labor wants being subjected to family violence added as a protected attribute under Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act.

In practice, an employer or landlord covered by the Act couldn’t discriminate against someone simply because domestic violence has made their life temporarily complicated.

And leaving usually is complicated.

Court appearances interfere with work.

You may suddenly need to move.

Your perpetrator may contact your employer.

Your rental might have been damaged.

Your finances might be a disaster.

We ask why people don’t “just leave” surprisingly often for a society that can make leaving financially catastrophic and physically dangerous.

Related rental reforms before Parliament would give VCAT greater ability to deal with property damage caused through family violence rather than simply leaving the victim-survivor responsible for it.

The new package also expands relief where perpetrators have used fines as another form of abuse.

There are changes to Family Violence Intervention Orders too.

Victoria has already moved to a default two-year order, with protections able to continue through a perpetrator’s prison sentence and for another twelve months after release.

The latest reforms would also require courts to consider the victim-survivor’s views before extending an order.

Which seems like something we probably should have been doing already, but here we are.

Another change removes “good character” as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

So someone convicted of an offence won’t receive a lighter sentence because the court hears that he’s a respected businessman, devoted father, football coach or generally terrific bloke.

This is something that is loooooooong fucking overdue in my opinion.

Sentencing has traditionally considered the whole person, not just the offence.

But domestic and sexual violence have always had a peculiar relationship with respectability.

Sometimes the abusive man is the guy everybody loves.

His public reputation doesn’t necessarily contradict what happened behind closed doors.

Sometimes that reputation is precisely why the victim thought nobody would believe her.

Personal Safety Intervention Orders will also be expanded to recognise grooming, allowing courts to look at behaviour developing toward abuse rather than simply what happens at the end of it.

Then there are suppression orders.

Labor has committed to changing Victoria’s Open Courts Act so convicted rapists cannot use suppression orders intended to protect victims to conceal their own identities.

It also intends to review interim suppression orders and the grounds upon which they can be made.

This part is of particular importance to me.

I’ve always felt that having enough money and influence to buy freedom from public consequence, is the hallmark of a corrupt legal system.

That particular change has been announced, rather than suddenly becoming law this week.

That’s worth distinguishing because this whole package contains reforms at different stages: some are already law, some are now before Parliament and some are commitments to further reform.

There’s politics behind the coercive-control announcement as well.

The Victorian Opposition introduced its own standalone coercive-control Bill in December last year, after Labor had previously resisted calls for a separate offence on the basis that Victoria’s existing family violence laws already covered coercive behaviour.

Labor has now decided a standalone offence is necessary after all.

I think many of these reforms are overdue, and I’m not going to pretend the timing (months out from an election) hasn’t raised an eyebrow.

Victoria has had years of inquiries, reviews and recommendations telling governments where the system is failing victim-survivors.

Some of these changes could have been pursued long before an election was looming.

That doesn’t make them bad reforms, and I’m not interested in opposing good policy simply because I’m cynical about the timing.

But I do think we can hold both thoughts at once: these are worthwhile changes, and some of them should have happened years ago.

Politics aside, I think there is a useful shift happening here…

Domestic violence doesn’t exist exclusively in the moment somebody gets hit.

It can be the years spent changing your behaviour because you’re frightened of somebody else’s reaction.

And even after leaving, it can follow you into your job, your finances, your rental, the courts and whatever mess you’re left trying to untangle.

These reforms are attempting to make the law recognise more of that reality.

Whether criminalising coercive control actually protects more people will depend on something much less exciting than passing legislation: whether the people enforcing it actually understand what they’re looking at.

We can write the best family violence laws in the country, but if a victim walks into a police station and the system still can’t recognise what’s happening to her, they’re just very impressive words on paper.

References

Victorian Government, Labor Protects Victim-Survivors With Landmark New Laws, 11 August 2026. Victorian Government announcement⁠

Victorian Government, Labor Is Scrapping ‘Good Character’ References In Court, 27 February 2026. Good-character sentencing reform⁠

Parliament of Victoria, material on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Act 2026. Family violence reforms⁠

Parliament of Victoria, Consumer Legislation Amendment Bill 2026, including family-violence rental protections. Consumer legislation parliamentary material⁠

Parliament of Victoria, parliamentary material concerning the Opposition’s Crimes Amendment (Coercive Control) Bill 2025. Coercive control parliamentary record⁠

This article was prompted by a series of unfortunate events.

I pride myself on being a “fixer”.

I have been one almost my whole life.

I also understand that this is likely a behaviour that emerged out of necessity, a psychological survival response to my unorthodox upbringing.

Someone who makes themselves useful will not be singled out or abandoned.

Naturally, this instinct has carried into my adult life, not out of necessity but out of habit.

Most of time, it’s a handy skill.

There is rarely an issue in my household that I cannot fix.

When the coffee machine had a tanty, I fixed it.

When the computer had a meltdown, I fixed it.

When things go missing, go awry or otherwise just don’t work, I can usually stand up to the task in order to resolve it.

I am affectionately referred to as “Techbunny” in my household (originally my gamer tag), the name now lends itself to my ability - tech support for basically everything at home.

Upon a successful “fixing” the family often happily proclaims “Techbunny strikes again!”

However in the last few weeks, three things have happened that I have been completely unable to fix and I can’t help but feel that the universe is trying to tell me that there’s a point to all this.

Firstly, my step father had a massive stroke followed by several heart attacks.

The doctors have told us that any intervention would likely worsen his condition and that keeping him comfortable is all that they can do.

To watch my younger siblings sit with this same uncomfortable inevitably, is something that I’ve been really struggling to come to terms with.

My natural inclination is to FIX IT.

I want him to get better.

I want to shield my family from the impending grief.

But alas, death and dying really is the ultimate “unfixable thing”.

It comes for all of us, despite our protests, despite our health, despite our outlook.

Then (non-comparable but unfixable all the same) our solar hot water system shit itself.

I know… I’ve jumped from the inevitability of death, to something very materialistic in a manner that seems absurd but hear me out…

We’ve been sans hot water for two days now.

Something that most of us would consider a basic necessity these days, was once a luxury.

Back in the old days, hot water obviously wasn’t instant.

It had to be painstakingly collected, boiled, and delivered to where it was required.

Im no stranger to hard work, certainly no princess, but I found myself lamenting the lack of instant hot water to wash my youngest son’s bottles, to use the dishwasher and to simply have a shower.

I had to laugh at myself.

Just reading this back I know I already sound spoiled and stupid.

Or have I just become accustomed to the mod cons of today?

Have I been taking them for granted?

What else have I been taking for granted??

I made a joke to my fiancé (as I often do as a coping mechanism) that I was certain that this is why people in the dark ages only lived to the ripe old age of 40.

They simply lost the fucking will to live because of chopping wood and carrying water all day everyday!

Then again, they didn’t really have much to compare it to I suppose…

This morning I awoke bright and early to get things ready for my children.

The children usually have breakfast while the news plays in the background, then the youngest watches an episode of playschool or the wiggles while I prepare lunch for my eldest and have a quick cuppa before the school run.

Today the Tv decided to give up the ghost as well…

I couldn’t help but laugh out of sheer exasperation.

My youngest is currently going through the absolute chaos of the terrible twos…

No wiggles is simply, unacceptable.

Intolerable even.

He cannot fathom why I cannot fix it.

So he insists.

He begins to whine in protest, his little voice demanding satisfaction.

So I did what any good “fixer” does.

I spent a decent amount of time researching fixes, something I’m usually pretty good at both finding and implementing.

Trying endless work-arounds until one works.

And today??

Well… needless to say, I couldn’t fix it.

I think the lesson here is that not everything can be fixed.

I’m not supposed to be able to fix everything and everyone all the time.

Either that or I’ve been cursed…😅

It made me think about people who appear to have infinite luck.

Even when bad things happen to them, they’re unflappable… they somehow always land on their feet.

I wondered what it was about them that made them that way.

Was it a normal upbringing??

Were they kissed by a leprechaun at birth??

Then I thought about people in much worse situations.

People who have endured truly terrible things, things they have absolutely no hope of fixing themselves, and somehow they keep going anyway.

It made me appreciate their persistence and endurance, ever more.

Maybe it’s not about good or bad luck at all.

Maybe it’s just about resilience.

Suddenly my issues don’t seem so bad.

I guess in some way, everyone goes through these things.

We cry, we struggle, we complain…

But eventually we get up, we push on and we keep going anyway.

Sure, some things aren’t fixable.

But I can fix my perspective.

Maybe the hardest thing for a “fixer” to learn isn’t how to solve every problem.

Maybe it’s learning that sometimes there is nothing required of you except to endure what you cannot change…

And to call the bloody plumber.

Almost every Aussie knows one of these bogan patriot characters.

You know the one… the one that sprang to mind immediately upon reading the first sentence.

He’ll tell ya! He loves Australia more than bloody anyone! Streuth…

He takes a swig from his VB and wipes the beaded sweat from his deeply furrowed brow.

The Southern Cross emblazoned on his Temu singlet, two sizes too small.

Beer belly, thongs and bbq tongs.

Flag in the man cave. Cricket on the telly.

Flea bitten mongrel at his feet.

Probably still drives a Ford Falcon AU.

867, 956 K’s on the clock and four bald tyres…

He’ll then unironically spend the next hour at the family barbie, chewing your ear off about how much he hates Australia.

He scowls, spitting the words out as if the taste of them is somehow more bitter than his now-warm beer.

“The lefties. The moderates. The academics.

The activists. The unions. The immigrants.

The Muslims. Aboriginals. Teenagers.

People with foreign sounding names”.

Anyone who votes differently.

Anyone who questions him.

Peering over the top of his servo-special speed dealer sunnies at you as if you’d personally insulted his dog.

Inspecting you for any possible sign of dissent.

Daring you to challenge him.

Tongs aimed almost threateningly…

“I’ve had a bloody gutful!” he parrots.

At some point you’ve got to wonder,

What exactly do you love?

Because Australia isn’t just the bits that make you comfortable mate.

It’s the whole messy package.

The thing that actually makes Australia worth loving is that we’re free.

Free to disagree.

Free to criticise the government.

Free to join a union.

Free to immigrate here and become Australian.

Free to be conservative.

Free to be progressive.

Free to be wrong.

It’s people shouting at each other in the pub about the footy, then shouting each other a beer five minutes later.

Those freedoms don’t just belong to people you agree with. They belong to all of us.

That’s the entire point.

Somewhere between Corey Worthingtons 15 minutes of fame and Covid, patriotism has become inexplicably confused with conformity.

But they’re actually opposites.

A patriot loves their country enough to accept that millions of people living in it will think differently.

A nationalist is who wants everyone to think and act and look the same.

Australia has never been a nation built on ideological purity.

It’s a nation built on compromise.

Convicts AND settlers. Farmers AND unionists. Soldiers AND protesters. Believers AND atheists. People whose families have been here for 60,000 years AND people who arrived last week carrying everything they own in a single fucking suitcase.

It’s noisy. It’s contradictory.

Sometimes it’s frustrating, for sure.

But that IS Australia.

You don’t have to agree with everyone.

You don’t even have to like everyone.

I know I bloody don’t! 😏

God knows Australians have been arguing with each other (and emus) since before Federation.

But if you find yourself despising almost every group that makes up the country, maybe the problem isn’t the country.

Maybe it’s you?

The common denominator…

The fact of the matter is that it’s pure nationalist fantasy.

To pine for an Australia where everyone looks like you, votes like you, talks like you and believes what you believe.

As I’m writing I can’t help but think it sounds more like North Korea…

Think “state approved haircuts” but everyone gets a mullet. No exceptions.

Luckily, that Australia doesn’t actually exist.

And it never did.

The Australia you claim to love is a country where people are free to challenge you, free to disagree with you, free to laugh at you, free to vote against you, free to protest your ideas and free to live lives completely different from your own.

That’s what makes it so interesting.

Australia working exactly as it should be.

So if your version of patriotism requires removing and silencing Australians until only people exactly like you are left;

You don’t love Australia.

You love the version of it that exists only in your imagination…

There are very few modern political topics capable of generating quite as much comment section hysteria as the humble 15 minute city.

According to the internet’s more imaginative corners, it’s a sinister plot where the government (controlled by the WEF) locks you inside your suburb forever, fines you for driving to visit your nan, and assigns you a single weekly ration of freedom.

Reality is however, much less exciting.

The actual idea is embarrassingly mundane.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy milk, visit a GP, drop your kids at school, grab a coffee, and pick up some socks without needing to make it an hour long round trip?

Because apparently that’s communism now.

Enter Pakenham…

This is where things peak comedically.

One Nation’s candidate for Pakenham -Warren Pickering- has publicly taken a particularly strong stand against 15 minute cities.

Which is an interesting choice.

Because if you’ve ever lived in or around Pakenham as I have, you’ll know the local community has spent years asking for one very specific thing.

A Kmart.

Not because the locals are secretly colluding to usher in the New World Order.

But because driving half an hour down the freeway every time you need a storage tub, school shoes, or a toaster gets old very quickly.

That’s literally the point of a “15 minute city”.

It’s not a prison.

It’s just… having a Kmart.

Which, judging by the local facebook group mums, is all they’ve ever wanted.

The Radical Idea of Convenience

Imagine the horror.

Instead of spending an hour driving to and from Fountain Gate, burning fifty bucks in petrol, sitting in freeway traffic for forty minutes because someone failed to merge properly and caused another accident and dodging potholes that could swallow a small hatchback, you simply buy what you need locally.

Terrifying stuff 🙄

Someone call the UN immediately!

Conservatives Used to Like This

Here’s the funniest part.

Traditionally conservatives have talked about strengthening local communities.

Supporting local businesses, creating local jobs.

Building town centres.

Creating communities where people actually know their neighbours.

Now they argue against the very infrastructure designed to provide it based solely on the rhetoric of a few single digit iq individuals donning their best tinfoil toppers.

Nobody Is Stopping You Driving

This is perhaps the biggest misconception.

If you want to drive to Melbourne for lunch, nobody is placing spike strips at the suburb boundary.

Your hip pocket and tyre rims may suffer, but there aren’t exactly armed guards posted at checkpoints preventing you from leaving.

This ain’t The Hunger Games… although now that I mention it, I can’t help but draw a parallel that Pauline is starting to resemble a slightly more racist version of Effie Trinket with her snazzy new Shein attire…😏

But getting back to the point,

It’s that you shouldn’t have to drive 25 kilometres just to buy a pair of socks.

Freedom isn’t only the freedom to drive.

It’s also the freedom not to.

The Fuel Economy Argument

If you’re passionately opposed to having services nearby, that’s certainly a position you can hold.

Just don’t complain when petrol hits $2.50 a litre, every errand costs over an hour, your Saturday disappears in traffic, and your wallet weeps every time you start the engine.

Being anti 15 minute city is essentially saying:

“I’d rather spend more time, more money and more fuel proving that nobody can make my suburb more convenient.”

Which is certainly… a strategy.

The Punchline

If your electorate has been begging for a Kmart, better roads, more doctors, more shops and more local services…

Congratulations.

You’re campaigning for a 15 minute city!

You just don’t like the name.

Imagine explaining our civilisation to someone five hundred years from now.

Tell them that we carried the total collective works of our species in our pockets at all times.

That the greatest works of philosophy, science, literature and history could be summoned in the blink of an eye.

Tell them that we could translate languages instantly, speak face to face across continents, photograph galaxies billions of light years away, map the human genome, cure plagues and ask machines to solve problems that once seemed impossible.

Then tell them that we confused our confidence with competence, our popularity with truth and our information with wisdom.

Tell them that despite this remarkable and unfettered access to knowledge that we became more hateful… more destructive… more divided...

Tell them that despite possessing more knowledge than any known civilisation before us, that we became remarkably stupid.

History will not remember us as the most knowledgeable civilisation.

It will remember us as the first civilisation to mistake access to knowledge for the possession of it.

For most of known history, ignorance was mostly understandable.

Their access to information was far more limited.

A farmer in medieval Europe was unlikely to know what existed far beyond his village wall because knowledge only traveled as fast as the horses that carried it.

We however, inherited the opposite problem.

Knowledge no longer arrives slowly, borne on the backs of beasts.

It arrives all at once.

The barrier to learning has largely collapsed, but so too has the incentive to learn.

Why remember when your phone remembers?

Why do the sums on paper, when your magical glowing rectangle can calculate it faster for you?

Why wrestle with uncertainty when a social media personality will deliver an answer before you’ve finished asking the question?

Why read the whole book when someone online has already reduced it to a 30 second booktok video summary?

We have forgotten how to learn.

And how to keep learning…

There is no incentive anymore.

The dopamine fix, which was once hard earned through persistence, curiosity, and understanding is now delivered instantaneously.

We chase the immediate satisfaction of an answer instead of the slower, deeper fulfilment of genuine comprehension and understanding.

The most dangerous form of stupidity has never been a lack of intelligence.

It is the illusion of intelligence.

Nothing is more difficult to reason with than someone who mistakes familiarity for expertise.

Read a thread. Watch a video.

Memorise a talking point.

Smug certainty pours from people who have mistaken algorithmic exposure for education.

The internet didn’t create this tendency.

But It did industrialise it…

For the first time in history, every opinion can find an audience that it lands with, every prejudice can find reinforcement and every misconception can discover an entire community dedicated to protecting it from correction.

The result isn’t simply misinformation.

It’s the slow erosion of intellectual humility.

Once, admitting “I don’t know” was the beginning of wisdom, the starting point for opening one’s mind up to new ideas,and not just the ones we like to agree with.

Now it is treated as weakness or stupidity.

Changing one’s mind has become suspicious. Certainty has become a performance.

Nuance is mistaken for indecisiveness.

Perhaps the greatest irony of the information age is that information has become the least valuable part of intelligence.

Information is everywhere…

But discernment is rare.

Attention is rare.

The ability to sit with an idea long enough for it to actually challenge us has become rarer still.

Civilisations are remembered not only for what they built, but for how they thought.

It begs the question:

What will we be remembered for?

Perhaps as the civilisation that confused speed with progress.

The civilisation that could answer almost any question but rarely cared about the answers for any other reason than the subsequent ego boost.

The civilisation that outsourced memory to machines, judgement to algorithms and curiosity to whoever or whatever appeared next on our magical glowing rectangles.

Perhaps future historians won’t marvel at the technology we created.

I fear instead they’ll marvel that with more knowledge than any generation before us, we found so many new ways to avoid thinking.

One Nation has officially named the candidates it hopes will expand the party’s presence in Victoria at this year’s state election, with leader Pauline Hanson banking on strong polling to turn one upper house seat into several.

The line up includes former Liberals, a criminal lawyer, a Geelong councillor, a political animator and a long serving party organiser.

While some candidates are entering politics with very little public profile, others are already carrying significant political baggage.

Warren Pickering

Victorian One Nation president Warren Pickering will lead the party’s campaign in Eastern Victoria after steering the organisation since 2022.

His elevation comes despite months of internal turmoil.

Former members have publicly criticised Pickering’s leadership, alleging a lack of transparency within the Victorian branch and questioning the party’s financial practices.

Among the most serious claims were allegations that a candidate was encouraged to receive campaign donations through a personal bank account rather than an official campaign account. Pickering and One Nation have rejected those allegations and denied any wrongdoing.

The dispute has exposed deep divisions within the Victorian branch at a time when the party is hoping to broaden its appeal.

Aaron Sanford

Family violence and criminal lawyer Aaron Sanford will contest Southern Metropolitan.

Despite being one of the younger candidates on the ticket, Sanford enters the campaign without any significant publicly reported controversies.

Colleen Harkin

Former Liberal figure Colleen Harkin is arguably the highest profile recruit announced by One Nation.

A longtime conservative activist, Harkin previously served as director of education at the Institute of Public Affairs before leaving the Liberal Party earlier this year.

She later became involved in legal action surrounding the Victorian Liberal Party’s financial arrangements following John Pesutto’s defamation case.

During the 2022 federal election she also drew criticism for comments dismissing declarations of a climate emergency.

Supporters view her as an experienced conservative campaigner, while critics see her defection as another sign of the growing divide on the political right.

Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell

Incumbent MP Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell is seeking another term after becoming One Nation’s first Victorian parliamentarian in years.

Her time in Parliament has attracted attention for proposals including stronger legal protections for the Australian and Victorian flags, while she also publicly distanced herself from some of One Nation’s national anti immigration advertising during the last federal campaign.

It begs the question whether her ideology is actually aligned with the parties stance on immigration and how this working relationship is expected to evolve in future.

Mark Nicholson

Mark Nicholson is best known outside politics as the animator behind One Nation’s Please Explain cartoon series.

His productions have attracted millions of online views but have also sparked protests and criticism from political opponents, making him one of the party’s most recognisable campaign figures despite never previously holding elected office.

Chris Burson

Geelong councillor and former police officer Chris Burson brings experience in local government and law enforcement.

Burson has previously run for other minor parties and has been outspoken in his criticism of the Andrews Government, particularly over his experiences providing security to the former premier.

Fiona Lopez

Human resources manager Fiona Lopez has been selected for Western Metropolitan.

Her background centres on community volunteering, including mentoring women escaping domestic violence and assisting students preparing to enter the workforce.

No significant public controversies have been reported in connection with her, though the question of her legitimacy in this party is already coming under fire due to the recent comments from Pauline Hanson on the topic of dv.

Natalie Adams

Natalie Adams will head the party’s ticket in North-Eastern Metropolitan.

The Bulleen office manager has maintained a relatively low public profile and enters the election without any notable public controversies.

Looking ahead

One Nation enters the Victorian election with optimism after recent polling suggested growing support for minor parties. Whether that translates into additional seats remains to be seen.

While several candidates are newcomers, others arrive with well established political histories and, in some cases, unresolved disputes that are likely to attract continued scrutiny throughout the campaign.

As the election draws closer, voters will have the opportunity to weigh not only One Nation’s policies but also the experience, records and public conduct of the people asking to represent them.

In 2024, Anthony Albanese publicly called violence against women a “national crisis.”

The National Cabinet met urgently and promised a “whole of government response”, committing $4.7 Billion in combined commonwealth and state funding over the next five years.

This funding was supposed to go toward legal assistance, frontline dv services, increasing availability of crisis accommodation, stronger justice responses, and prevention initiatives such as behavioural reeducation programs.

Ultimately with the aim to “end gender based violence in one generation”.

And yet, while I sit here writing this very article today, the news reports another woman’s death at the hands of another violent man…

The third in as many days.

This is not to suggest that the commitment to ending gender based violence is a complete failure… it’s only been a couple of years since the implementation of this commitment.

However I can’t help but feel as though the same government that vowed to undertake this massive task has been awfully fucking quiet about its commitment while reports of this very violence continue to roll across our tv screens and iPhones in greater numbers every single day…

We were promised tougher justice responses,

yet the men that murdered Isla Bell have had their charges downgraded and some thrown out completely…

Jana Armstrongs murderer committed his violent crime while already on bail for another legal matter…

The 2024 review made a number of recommendations aimed at reducing the drivers of violence, including restricting alcohol deliveries, banning gambling advertising, and getting a clearer picture of the gap between demand for frontline services and what’s actually available.

But not all of those recommendations were acted on.

If we’re serious about treating violence against women as a national crisis, then we also have to be serious about implementing the recommendations we ask experts to make.

Otherwise, what’s the point of commissioning review after review if the politically difficult recommendations are the first to be dumped in the “too hard basket”?

One of the strongest criticisms has come from the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, Micaela Cronin.

She has pointed out that Australia has already had more than 25 inquiries, royal commissions and inquests, producing thousands of recommendations, most of which have never been implemented…

She has argued that governments need to stop commissioning reviews and start acting on existing evidence.

Despite billions of dollars being committed, the reality on the ground is damning.

Domestic violence services across the country are still reporting long waiting lists, staff shortages and a lack of crisis accommodation.

Victims are still being turned away because these services simply don’t have the capacity to help them.

The government has acknowledged there’s a significant gap between the demand for these services and what’s actually available.

Investment has increased dramatically,

So why haven’t these gaps in demand for services been addressed??

The persistence of high levels of violence raises a difficult question:

Are governments measuring success by money announced, or by lives saved?

How many more lives need to be taken by violence before the government acts accordingly instead of throwing money at the problem and hoping it fades into obscurity??

Now if we turn to look at the oppositions response to the ongoing escalation in gender based violence in this country, we see Jess Wilson promising to implement “Claire’s law” (if elected) within the first 100 days of office.

Claire’s law, if you are unfamiliar, allows someone to ask police whether their current or former partner has a known history of domestic violence.

If implemented, this information would give potential victims access to information that would be life saving…

So why haven’t we already adopted this law??

Why are our lives being treated as a political bargaining chips?

It’s time to admit that our collective response across every level of government, across every political party, and across society itself, is still falling woefully short on its promises to protect us.

If we keep treating each tragedy as an isolated event instead of evidence that something deeper is broken and implementing legislation accordingly, we’ll be having this same conversation again next week, and the week after that.

And nothing will change.

Purpose

To reduce the normalisation of violence, abuse and criminal conduct in publicly hosted online forums by placing a legal duty of care on organisations that choose to host and monetise public comment sections.

The Act recognises that public comment sections influence social norms and public discourse.

Where publishers profit from user engagement, they also have a responsibility to ensure those spaces do not become environments that encourage or normalise criminal behaviour, abuse or victimisation.

Why this legislation change is needed

Media organisations increasingly generate significant engagement through online comment sections.

While comments can facilitate public debate, they can also become spaces where:

• domestic violence is minimised or justified;

• victims are blamed;

• sexual assault is trivialised;

• offenders are praised or defended;

• criminal violence is encouraged.

These discussions are not private conversations.

They are publicly visible, algorithmically amplified and commercially monetised.

Where publishers derive financial benefit from engagement, they should also bear responsibility for maintaining safe public forums.

Core Principle

If a publisher chooses to host a public comment section, they assume an ongoing legal duty to moderate it.

The responsibility continues for as long as comments remain open.

If a publisher is unwilling or unable to moderate comments appropriately, they remain free to disable comments entirely.

Who the Act applies to

The legislation would apply to:

• online newspapers

• news websites

• digital magazines

• blogs with public comment sections

• social media companies operating in Australia

• discussion forums accessible to the Australian public

Any organisation choosing to host public user comments would be subject to the same legal obligations.

Duty of Care

Publishers must:

• actively moderate public comment sections;

• remove prohibited comments within 24 hours of the content being published;

• maintain adequate moderation systems;

• keep records demonstrating compliance.

The duty exists for the entire period comments remain publicly accessible.

Online Community Safety Standards

The Act would establish statutory moderation standards through legislation rather than relying on private companies to determine acceptable conduct.

Prohibited content could include:

• encouraging or advocating rape

• encouraging domestic violence

• celebrating sexual assault

• glorifying coercive control

• encouraging violence against identifiable people

• deliberate victim intimidation

• comments supporting criminal violence

• repeated targeted harassment

These standards would be developed through consultation with:

• legal experts

• victim advocacy organisations

• domestic violence specialists

• free speech experts

• digital platform experts

24-Hour Removal Requirement

Any prohibited comment in the comment section must be removed within 24 hours of the content being published.

The obligation remains active while comments remain enabled.

Publishers therefore have two options:

1. properly moderate discussions;

2. disable comments.

Independent Regulator

An independent statutory authority would oversee compliance.

Responsibilities would include:

• auditing moderation systems;

• investigating complaints;

• conducting compliance reviews;

• issuing infringement notices;

• imposing financial penalties;

• publishing annual transparency reports.

The regulator would operate independently from both government and media organisations.

Financial Penalties

Failure to remove prohibited comments within the statutory timeframe would attract significant civil penalties.

The penalties should be substantial enough that allowing inflammatory content to generate engagement is no longer commercially advantageous.

The intention is simple:

It should never be more profitable to leave harmful comments online than to remove them.

Use of Revenue

Money collected through penalties would not enter general government revenue.

Instead, it would be directed into a dedicated Community Safety Fund supporting:

• domestic violence services

• sexual assault support services

• victim counselling

• perpetrator intervention programs

• respectful relationships education

• digital safety education

This ensures penalties directly contribute to addressing the harms associated with online abuse.

Employment and Industry Impact

The legislation would encourage investment in professional moderation.

Publishers may employ:

• trained moderators

• legal compliance officers

• digital safety specialists

• AI-assisted moderation teams operating under human supervision

The proposal creates an incentive for responsible platform management rather than rewarding neglect.

Freedom of Expression

This legislation does not prohibit disagreement, criticism, political debate or unpopular opinions.

It regulates the responsibilities of publishers who choose to host and monetise public forums.

Freedom of expression does not require businesses to profit from comments that encourage or celebrate criminal violence or abuse.

Just as publishers already moderate spam, pornography and other unlawful content, they should also be expected to remove content that falls within legislatively defined harmful categories.

Expected Outcomes

The legislation aims to:

• reduce the normalisation of violence against women;

• reduce public victim-blaming;

• improve the safety of online discussions;

• encourage responsible publishing practices;

• support victims through dedicated funding;

• reinforce community standards against abuse.

Pauline Hanson recently argued that domestic violence is “a two way street.”

Predictably, the reaction followed the same script we’ve seen time and time again.

One side accused her of minimising violence against women.

The other argued that society ignores male victims.

The conversation stopped being about the actual issue at all.

It has instead become another battle over who is allowed to claim victimhood.

When domestic violence becomes another political identity marker, everyone loses…

Of course men can experience domestic violence.

There are men living with controlling partners, suffering emotional abuse, physical assault and coercive control.

Many never report it because they fear ridicule or simply don’t think they’ll be believed.

Equally, the data consistently shows that women are far more likely to experience repeated coercive control, serious injury and homicide at the hands of an intimate partner.

These aren’t contradictory statements.

They are simply describing different perspectives of the same problem.

But our political conversation doesn’t reward nuance anymore.

Every issue has become a contest…

If someone highlights violence against women, people feel compelled to point out that male victims exist.

If someone talks about male victims, people hear it as an attack on women.

Eventually, nobody talks about how to stop it from actually happening… something that would benefit ALL OF US.

They’re arguing over whose pain deserves the microphone the most.

That is a dangerous place to be.

People living with abuse don’t care whether the violence fits into somebody else’s political narrative.

They care whether somebody believes them.

They care whether police respond appropriately.

They care whether support networks actually exist when they decide to leave…

Every minute we spend turning domestic violence into a gender war issue is another minute we’re not spending asking harder questions.

Why are rates of all family violence remaining so stubbornly high?

Why are children continuing to grow up surrounded by violence?

Why are so many perpetrators repeating the same patterns generation after generation?

These questions are harder because they don’t have convenient political answers.

Domestic violence isn’t caused by one ideology, one political party or one gender.

It grows out of trauma, control, addiction, untreated mental illness, learned behaviour, social isolation and countless other factors.

Reducing all of that complexity to “men versus women” might generate headlines, but it won’t stop another family from ending up in crisis.

If anything, it risks making things worse.

People become defensive.

Victims stop speaking.

Communities split into opposing camps.

And genuine conversations about prevention become almost impossible…

If we actually want less domestic violence, perhaps we need to stop treating empathy like a finite resource.

Believing a male victim does not diminish a female victim…

Supporting women does not mean ignoring abused men…

Acknowledging and addressing the problem is the whole point.

Not arguing in the comment section.

The goal was never supposed to be deciding who suffers more.

The goal is supposed to be reducing suffering altogether.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve obviously forgotten that.

If we’re too busy being divided by politicians playing off of our heightened emotions, our genders, our personal experiences and our political allegiances…

Then we aren’t holding our society to account for its prevention at all.

We spend a great deal of time asking why violence against women persists in Australia.

We talk about policing, education, prevention and funding.

Far less attention is paid to the environments that normalise contempt for women in the first place.

This week, Daily Mail Australia published the story of a woman who alleges her husband spent years drugging her, raping her while she was unconscious, and secretly filming the assaults.

The story itself is disturbing.

What disturbed me just as much was reading the comments underneath it.

People asked how she “never noticed.”

One suggested she simply wasn’t giving her husband enough sex.

One implied none of it would have happened if she’d just “put out.”

Another joked that “marriage has its ups and downs.”

These weren’t hidden away in some obscure corner of the internet.

They were sitting beneath a mainstream news article about the alleged rape of a woman, visible for anyone to read.

And they stayed there…

Before someone inevitably accuses me of calling for censorship, let me make something clear.

I’m not.

People are entitled to opinions I disagree with. “Freedom of speech” matters.

But freedom of speech has never meant that private companies have an obligation to publish, amplify and profit from every opinion submitted to them.

Those are two completely different things.

The general response has been that publishers can’t be expected to police every opinion expressed online.

I agree.

Nobody is asking them to.

But that’s also not how these platforms operate.

Media organisations already moderate their comment sections.

Spam disappears. Scam links disappear.

Comments breaching certain standards are occasionally taken down.

Some level of moderation exists.

The question isn’t whether they moderate.

It’s where they choose to draw the line…

If violence against women is genuinely one of Australia’s most serious social problems, why is it acceptable for stories about rape, domestic violence and murder to become breeding grounds for victim blaming, misogyny and ridicule?

The answer, I suspect, is rather uncomfortable.

Comment sections are valuable.

Every reply. Every argument. Every person returning to see whether someone responded to them. Every extra minute spent on the page.

That’s engagement.

Engagement keeps people on the website longer.

More time on the website means more advertising impressions.

More advertising impressions mean more revenue.

The comments aren’t simply sitting beneath the article.

They’re part of the product…

That doesn’t mean Daily Mail supports the views being expressed.

I don’t believe they do.

But there is a difference between endorsing something and deciding it’s profitable enough to leave alone.

That’s still an editorial decision.

Media organisations regularly publish opinion pieces calling violence against women a national crisis.

They ask what has gone wrong in our culture.

They call for governments to do more.

Then, beneath those same stories, readers encounter comments mocking alleged victims, questioning why they didn’t stop their own abuse, suggesting they owed their husbands sex, or making jokes about domestic violence.

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t publish articles lamenting the state of our culture while simultaneously profiting from the very culture you’re condemning.

The uncomfortable truth is that outrage is good for business.

Whether it’s ethical to profit from the unmoderated comment sections beneath articles like this is a conversation worth having.

Algorithms don’t care whether engagement comes from compassion or contempt.

A hundred people arguing beneath a disgusting comment generates the same clicks, the same time on page and the same advertising opportunities as a hundred people having a thoughtful discussion.

That’s the incentive we’ve built…

Culture isn’t shaped only by the people who make these comments.

It’s also shaped by the institutions that decide those comments are acceptable enough to remain visible.

Institutions that profit from public discourse have a responsibility to think about the kind of discourse they’re rewarding.

If we genuinely believe violence against women is one of Australia’s greatest challenges, then we also need to acknowledge that culture doesn’t exist only in parliament, schools or the home.

It exists in our media.

It exists on our social media platforms.

And it exists in the comment sections where victims are mocked, perpetrators are excused, and thousands of people are taught (whether consciously or not) what this society is prepared to tolerate and reward.

If we’re serious about fixing the problem, we can’t keep pretending those spaces don’t matter, because they don’t just reflect our culture.

They become it.

You won’t find them on a stage.

They don’t have a blue tick beside their name, a camera pointed at their face, or a slogan printed on a hat.

You’ll find them in the Coles checkout, quietly asking the cashier to take the cheese off because the total came to more than they expected.

You’ll find them standing at the servo, squeezing the fuel nozzle one click at a time, stopping at forty dollars because that’s all that’s left until pay day.

You’ll find them sitting in the driveway after work, forehead resting against the steering wheel, stealing sixty seconds of silence before walking inside to become Mum, Dad, husband, wife, provider, counsellor, referee and problem solver all at once.

No audience.

No applause.

Just another Tuesday…

The real battlers are the mums whose work never ends.

The ones wiping Vegemite off school uniforms while bouncing a crying baby on one hip and wondering why the washing machine has started making that noise again.

They’re reheating the same cup of tea for the fourth time because every time they sit down, someone needs them.

They know exactly how much milk is left without opening the fridge.

They know whose shoes don’t fit anymore, whose asthma puffer is nearly empty, which child is pretending they’re okay because they don’t want Mum to worry.

They carry the invisible weight of a family in their heads every waking minute.

Not because someone told them to.

Because love doesn’t clock off.

Then there are the dads.

The ones climbing onto roofs in 40 degree heat.

The ones laying concrete while it shimmers like liquid.

The ones crawling beneath houses, breathing dust older than they are.

The ones whose knees click and ache every morning before their boots even hit the floor.

Men who haven’t loved their jobs in years, but keep showing up because little people are waiting for them at home.

Because mortgages don’t care if your back is shot.

Because electricity bills don’t accept exhaustion as payment.

Because children deserve stability, even if it costs you pieces of yourself to give it to them.

Every year they tell themselves they’ll slow down next year.

Next year never comes.

Then there are the grandparents.

They were promised retirement.

Instead they’re scanning groceries, manning school crossings, delivering parcels and picking the kids up three afternoons a week because childcare costs more than some people’s wages.

Hands that built houses, raised families and paid taxes for 40 years are still punching timecards.

Not because they want to.

But because they have to.

Somewhere tonight a young couple will lay awake in silence, not because they don’t love each other anymore, but because they’re trying to work out how two full time incomes still aren’t enough.

Somewhere else someone is choosing which bill gets paid and which one gets ignored for another fortnight.

Someone is pretending they already ate dinner so their kids have enough to eat.

Someone is praying the car starts tomorrow because there isn’t enough money left to fix it if it doesn’t.

This is Australia.

Not the one in tourism ads.

Not the one politicians point to when they tell us how well we’re doing.

The Australia that smells like damp earth after rain.

That sounds like steel capped boots on concrete before sunrise.

That feels like calloused hands, cracked knuckles and backs that haven’t stopped aching in twenty years.

They endure in silence.

The Australia built by people too busy surviving to tell anyone how hard they’re finding it…

And then there are those who insist they’re the voice of these people.

The self appointed “champions of the working class”.

Forever asking ordinary Australians to dig a little deeper.

Subscribe there.

Support the movement.

Stand in solidarity.

Begging for donations…

Meanwhile, they swan around luxury resorts in Sicily.

Enjoying sunsets over the Amalfi Coast.

Cocktails balanced on the edge of marble balconies.

Five star conferences discussing inequality before retiring to luxury suites.

It’s an extraordinary thing to watch someone ask a single mum working two jobs for a donation before boarding business class to lecture the world about oppression.

It’s stranger still that so many people no longer notice the contradiction.

The real battlers don’t have time to perform hardship.

They’re living it.

They don’t need another activist to explain what struggle looks like.

They saw it when the rent came out yesterday.

They packed it into lunchboxes this morning.

They kissed it goodbye at the front door before sunrise.

The real battlers are the people holding this country together with zip ties, overtime, Panadol, Afterpay, and far too much coffee.

Sheer bloody determination and grit.

Blood, sweat, tears, dust, fires, floods…

They keep showing up.

They’re the reason the shelves are stocked.

The roads are paved.

The hospitals are staffed.

The bins are emptied.

The lights stay on.

They’re carrying Australia on their backs.

So no, the real battlers don’t call themselves battlers.

We call them Dad, Mum, Nan, Pop, Brother, Sister, Cousin, Uncle, Aunt, Son, Daughter…

Think about that next time the pantomime “battlers” lecture us about our work ethic as a nation.

Character isn’t revealed by how we treat people who agree with us.

It’s revealed by how we treat those who don’t.

I believe that social media has become one of the greatest tests of that principle, ever devised.

Every day, millions of people argue about politics, economics, immigration, climate change, religion and every other contentious issue imaginable.

That’s not something to fear, it’s the hallmark of a healthy democracy.

Ideas should be challenged.

Evidence should be scrutinised.

People should disagree.

If we’re unwilling to have robust conversations with those who see the world differently, we learn nothing and democracy is diminished for it.

There is, however, an issue that has emerged and become impossible to ignore…

When a woman expresses an opinion online, there is a certain type of person who has no interest in engaging with what she actually said.

The argument itself quickly becomes secondary. Instead of responding to her evidence, they respond to the fact that she’s a woman.

A quick scroll through the comment section paints a depressingly familiar picture: she’s a bitch, a slut, a whore, too emotional, too ugly, too fat, too skinny, too old, too loud, too opinionated…

She needs to smile more and talk less…

She belongs back in the kitchen…

It’s almost remarkable how often the conversation abandons the subject entirely and becomes an attack on her gender, her appearance or her character.

A post about housing policy becomes a discussion about whether or not she’s attractive.

A video about climate change somehow becomes an excuse to call her mentally unstable.

A debate about taxation descends into comments about whether she’s sleeping her way to success.

The topic itself doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

And that’s the point.

I’ve often wondered what possesses someone to behave this way?

The crazy part is it’s not even shocking anymore.

We’ve heard it all before.

Women who create content online have been dealing with this for years.

Most of us could reasonably predict the insults we’ll receive before we’ve even pressed “publish.”

What interests me most is what this behaviour says about the people engaging in it.

Because insults are not evidence.

Personal attacks are not logic.

Humiliation is not persuasion.

Threats are not debate…

They are all that remains when someone has exhausted every intelligent contribution they were capable of making.

It’s often said that adversity reveals character.

I think disagreement does too.

Anyone can appear “decent” when surrounded by people who share their views.

It’s easy to be respectful when nobody is challenging your beliefs.

Real integrity is tested when someone publicly disagrees with you.

That’s the moment you discover whether your principles are genuine or merely performative.

A person with integrity responds to ideas.

A person with character treats others with dignity, even when they profoundly disagree.

A person with confidence doesn’t need to diminish another human being in order to defend their own position.

That’s what strength actually looks like.

Sending abusive messages to strangers because they hold a different opinion isn’t strength.

Reducing a woman to her appearance because you can’t dismantle her argument isn’t strength.

Hiding behind an anonymous profile while hurling misogynistic abuse certainly isn’t strength.

It’s cowardice.

More than that, it’s an extraordinary admission of intellectual defeat…

If your evidence is stronger, present it.

If your reasoning is better, explain it.

If the facts support your position, trust them to do the heavy lifting.

But the moment you abandon the argument and reach instead for misogyny, you’ve conceded something whether you realise it or not.

You’ve demonstrated that your frustration has exceeded your ability to reason.

You’ve decided that attacking the person is easier than confronting the idea.

The irony of this is that the most prolific offenders see themselves as “defenders of logic and reason”.

They’ll proudly declare that they’re driven by “facts rather than feelings”.

They’ll mock others for being emotional, overly sensitive or incapable of rational thought.

Yet the instant a woman challenges their worldview, all that commitment to reason evaporates.

For people who claim to value “rationality”, they display a remarkable willingness to abandon it the moment it becomes inconvenient.

This matters because misogyny doesn’t just affect the women it’s directed at.

It corrodes public discourse itself.

Every woman who decides the abuse simply isn’t worth enduring is another voice removed from public conversation.

Another perspective lost.

Another person deciding that participating in civic debate carries a personal cost her male counterparts are less likely to pay.

That should concern all of us.

A healthy democracy doesn’t require agreement.

It requires people to argue honestly, challenge each other’s assumptions and allow better ideas to prevail.

None of that is served by degrading women into silence because someone lacks the maturity to engage with what they’ve actually said.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped asking why women receive this abuse and started asking a different question entirely.

What kind of person chooses to behave this way?

Because the answer isn’t “a strong one.”

It isn’t “an intelligent one.”

And it certainly isn’t one with any meaningful sense of integrity.

People of integrity don’t mistake cruelty for conviction.

They don’t confuse intimidation with strength.

They don’t substitute misogyny for argument.

They understand that another person’s dignity isn’t theirs to take, and that if their ideas are worth defending, those ideas should be capable of standing on their own.

The internet has given everyone a voice. Unfortunately, it has also given some people the illusion that anonymity absolves them of character.

It doesn’t.

If anything, it reveals it.

Social media reveals who people already are when they think nobody can hold them accountable.

So the next time you see a woman reduced to a string of sexist insults because someone couldn’t answer her argument, ask yourself what kind of person believes that’s an acceptable way to conduct themselves.

Every disagreement presents us with a choice.

We can respond with reason or resentment, integrity or intimidation, character or contempt.

Which one will people see when they look at you?

Australia has always had a complicated relationship with authority.

We are a nation that has spent much of its history admiring people who looked at the rules and decided they were more of a suggestion.

We turned bushrangers into folk heroes.

We romanticised outlaws who lived beyond the reach of the law.

We developed a cultural affection for the stubborn outsider, the people who refused to be easily managed, who questioned authority and who possessed an almost admirable commitment to doing things their own way.

And in the long Australian tradition of rebellion, defiance and making life unnecessarily difficult for those in charge, Neil is no exception.

Neil is a juvenile southern elephant seal who has achieved something remarkably Australian.

He has ignored instructions, inconvenienced authorities and repeatedly refused to cooperate…

and the Australian public has responded in true Aussie fashion, by making him an icon.

Most animals that wander into human spaces behave as though they understand they are somewhere they shouldn’t be.

They appear uncertain.

They retreat.

They make a reasonable attempt to return to wherever they came from.

Neil appears to have reached a different conclusion.

Neil does not seem lost.

Neil appears to believe he is exactly where he is supposed to be, and that everyone else is simply in the way.

Since arriving in Tasmania, Neil has demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to doing things his own way.

Roads?

Potential resting areas.

Cars?

Perfectly acceptable seal accommodation.

Public spaces?

Apparently available for occupation.

The concept of “moving along” appears to be something Neil is aware of, but has chosen not to participate in.

Authorities have attempted to encourage Neil towards more “seal appropriate” activities.

Neil has responded in the traditional Australian manner of someone who has received unwanted advice:

By continuing to do exactly what he was doing.

And this is where the situation became complicated.

Because normally, when an individual repeatedly ignores instructions and creates disruption, people become frustrated.

Neil somehow achieved the opposite.

Australians watched this 200 kilo agent of chaos inconvenience everyone around him and collectively decided:

He is a national treasure.

Every new appearance carries the same sense of anticipation.

Not:

“Where is Neil?”

But:

“What has Neil done now?”

And perhaps that is Neil’s greatest achievement.

He has become a symbol of something deeply Australian.

Not obedience.

Not conformity.

Neil represents the ancient Australian tradition of looking at authority, considering the request carefully, and deciding that perhaps the request is not entirely reasonable.

He has no political platform.

No manifesto.

No carefully managed public image.

And yet he has achieved what many public figures spend their entire careers attempting:

He has united Australians.

Not through speeches.

Not through promises.

Not through carefully crafted campaigns.

But through the shared joy of watching one very stubborn seal refuse to cooperate and somehow become more beloved because of it.

Neil’s popularity is not despite his stubbornness.

It is because of it…

(Perhaps there’s hope for this Taurus yet!)

Department Findings

Status: Ongoing.

The Department has classified Neil the Seal as a rare example of successful public rebellion without a single identifiable political demand.

The subject has demonstrated:

A consistent disregard for human expectations.

An unwavering commitment to personal freedom.

An impressive ability to create disruption while generating widespread public affection.

The Department cannot determine whether Neil is:

A) unaware of the rules.

B) uninterested in the rules.

C) aware of the rules and considers them poorly written.

All possibilities remain under investigation.

The Department is no longer certain that order is the preferred outcome.

Case closed.

According to the graphic, Anthony Albanese had just handed Narendra Modi our uranium, our gas, $500 million of Australians’ superannuation and a “free island”.

Meanwhile, Australians were still banned from using nuclear power themselves.

That’s a hell of an accusation…🤨

So, I did what I always do.

I opened a dozen more tabs and started fact checking it like it was my fucking job.

I figured I’d start with the uranium because that was the easiest claim to verify.

Australia is moving ahead with uranium exports to India.

That part is true.

The part I couldn’t find, was anything suggesting Australia was gifting uranium freely to India.

The announcements describe commercial exports under Australia’s civilian nuclear agreement with India.

Australian producers sell the uranium.

India buys it.

Those exports are subject to safeguards overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency and are intended for civilian nuclear power generation.

Whether Australia should be exporting uranium at all is a completely different discussion.

People can disagree on that without misinformation thrown in for “good measure”.

Next came the “$500 million of your super” claim.

I’ll admit, this one made me laugh out loud.

If the Australian Government had just handed half a billion dollars from Australians’ retirement savings to another country, that would be front page news everywhere.

So naturally, I went looking for where the figure came from.

The $500 million appears to refer to the National Reconstruction Fund, which has committed up to that amount to support investment opportunities linked to Australia and India in areas including critical minerals and clean energy supply chains.

I couldn’t find anything showing money had been taken from Australians’ individual superannuation accounts.

The Facebook post makes it sound as though someone reached into your retirement savings and wired the money overseas.

The verified evidence doesn’t suggest this at all.

Then there was the “free island.”

That sounded dramatic enough that I expected the paperwork to be equally dramatic.

Shocker- It wasn’t… 🙄

Australia has agreed to expand cooperation with India’s space program using facilities on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

The islands are still Australian territory.

Nothing I found suggested Australia had transferred ownership, leased the islands to India or surrendered sovereignty.

The agreement is about allowing access and joint cooperation.

Calling it a “free island” certainly grabs your attention.

It just doesn’t accurately describe what was announced.

Then there’s the gas claim.

Australia and India are strengthening energy cooperation.

Australia is positioning itself as a reliable supplier of liquefied natural gas.

What I couldn’t find was any commitment requiring Australia to reserve gas for India or guarantee supplies ahead of Australian consumers.

There’s a fair bit of daylight between encouraging energy trade in this one agreement and completely signing away Australia’s gas.

Which itself, is an existing and ongoing concern.

The nuclear claim is where things become more interesting.

Australia exports uranium.

Australia doesn’t generate nuclear electricity.

That’s been true for years, and it’s one of those issues that seems to divide people straight down the middle.

Some see it as common sense to use our own uranium before selling it overseas.

Others don’t think nuclear has a place in Australia’s energy mix.

It’s surprising how many posts described the domestic nuclear ban as though Anthony Albanese had introduced it himself.

The federal prohibition on certain nuclear installations has been sitting in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act since 1999.

That’s John Howard’s legislation.

Labor supports keeping the prohibition in place.

That’s very different from saying Labor created it.

The final claim I checked was the 3,000 visas.

Again, there was a grain of truth.

Australia does have a scheme allowing up to 3,000 Indian graduates and early career professionals to work here each year.

But it wasn’t negotiated this week…

The Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early professionals Scheme, better known as MATES, was announced in 2023.

It did NOT just suddenly appear in this agreement.

By the time I’d worked through everything, the original Facebook post barely resembled the documents it was talking about.

Australia is exporting uranium to India.

True.

Australia and India are expanding cooperation in energy, trade and space.

Also true.

Australians didn’t wake up to discover half a billion dollars had disappeared from their super accounts.

India hasn’t been handed an island.

And I couldn’t find anything guaranteeing Australia’s domestic gas supplies to another country.

That’s the trouble with politics on social media.

Facts don’t usually change.

The way they’re presented does…

That’s why I keep coming back to the source documents.

Not because governments always tell the truth.

They don’t.

But if I’m going to criticise a government, Im going to criticise it for something it actually did, rather than something PHON sycophants on Facebook have twisted into complete nonsense.

⸻

References

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Australia–India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement.https://www.dfat.gov.au

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Australia–India Joint Leaders’ Statements and Outcomes. https://www.pmc.gov.au

International Atomic Energy Agency. Safeguards relating to Australia’s uranium export policy.https://www.iaea.org

National Reconstruction Fund Corporation. Investment priorities. https://www.nrf.gov.au

Department of Home Affairs. Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early professionals Scheme (MATES).https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth). https://www.legislation.gov.au

For the better part of six months, it felt impossible to open social media (particularly Facebook) without being bombarded by pro-One Nation posts.

Videos. Memes. AI slop. Rage bait.

Stories specifically engineered to provoke the same predictable emotional responses.

It didn’t seem to matter whether you followed political events or not.

The algorithm made sure it found you.

Then, almost overnight…

Silence.

Not complete silence, of course.

Pauline Hanson hasn’t vanished from public life. One Nation is still issuing media releases, contesting elections and posting on its official channels.

But suddenly the relentless flood of content that seemed to dominate so many Australians’ Facebook feeds has noticeably eased.

The timing is very curious…

It comes just weeks after journalists began pulling back the curtain on a network of foreign run Facebook pages promoting One Nation content.

Investigations by ABC News Verify, Guardian Australia and A Current Affair found that many of the pages were being administered from overseas, with some researchers describing them as commercial “engagement farm” operations producing AI generated political content designed to maximise clicks, shares and advertising revenue.

Strangely the reporting didn’t allege that ordinary Australians engaging with the content were fake.

Quite the opposite.

Researchers found the comments and interactions were largely coming from genuine Australian Facebook users.

And that should concern every one of us.

Because it demonstrates something we’ve been warned about for years: you don’t need fake voters to influence democracy.

You just need to manipulate what real voters see.

One Nation has denied any involvement with these overseas networks and has publicly said it does not support foreign run pages promoting the party.

That’s an important point, and it deserves to be acknowledged.

But regardless of who created the pages, the broader question remains.

If our social media feeds can be so easily saturated with politically charged content originating overseas, how much of what we perceive as “public opinion” is actually true public opinion?

And how much of it is foreign political interference?

Humans are social creatures.

We judge popularity by repetition.

If we see the same message dozens of times a day, we naturally assume everyone must be thinking it.

Maybe they are.

Maybe they aren’t…

That’s precisely the problem.

The volume itself becomes persuasive.

This is why I find the sudden quiet so fascinating.

Does it mean the paid campaign has ended?

Has Facebook changed our algorithms collectively?

Have engagement farms simply moved on to the next profitable topic?

Has increased public scrutiny made some operators think twice?

I don’t know?

I’m not interested in pretending certainty where none exists. Silence isn’t evidence of guilt.

It isn’t evidence of innocence either.

It’s simply… interesting.

Australian democracy doesn’t depend on everyone agreeing with each other.

It depends on us knowing who we’re actually hearing from.

If a political movement is genuinely growing because Australians are persuaded by its ideas, that’s democracy.

If overseas commercial operators can manufacture the appearance of momentum by flooding our feeds with AI generated outrage until it feels unavoidable, that’s something entirely different.

The strange thing isn’t that these networks existed, it’s how quickly they appeared and how woefully unmoderated they were by meta itself.

And perhaps even stranger, how quickly they seem to have gone quiet.

I think it’s worth asking why.

On the morning of 17th December 1967,

The day started like any other.

It was a warm, sunny summer day.

The kind of day that any Aussie would reckon was best spent at the beach, cooling off in the big drink.

Even Australia’s Prime Minister was enjoying a weekend by the sea side.

But by lunchtime, he was gone…

Not voted out. Not assassinated. Not kidnapped.

He simply walked into the ocean and vanished.

His name, was Harold Holt.

It sounds like the setup to a really bad joke, but it’s actually one of the strangest mysteries in Australian history.

Holt was spending the weekend at Portsea with his friends.

Earlier that morning, he had been watching yachts navigate “The Rip”, the notoriously dangerous entrance to Port Phillip.

Before lunch, he suggested stopping at the nearby Cheviot Beach for a quick swim.

Cheviot Beach isn’t your average stretch of sand.

Hidden behind dunes and cliffs, it was isolated, unpatrolled and well known for powerful rips.

The Southern Ocean funnels through this part of the coastline with remarkable force.

Even the most experienced swimmers treated it with the utmost respect.

When the group arrived, several people immediately commented on how rough the sea looked.

The swell was heavy.

Waves crashed violently onto the rocks and the water surged through deep channels before disappearing into strong offshore currents.

One of Holt’s companions, Alan Stewart, briefly entered the water, only to turn back almost immediately.

He later remarked that the conditions were far too dangerous.

But Holt wasn’t concerned.

He was a confident swimmer, an enthusiastic spearfisherman and loved the ocean.

According to those with him, his famous last words were:

“I know this beach like the back of my hand”.

The group watched with growing unease as he calmly headed out into the surf.

At first, everything seemed normal.

He dived through the breaking waves and began swimming away from the shore.

Suddenly the current caught him.

His companions could see he was making very little progress.

Every stroke cancelled out by the swell.

He was being dragged further and further out, completely at the mercy of the angry sea.

Marjorie Gillespie, who was standing on the beach, later described the moment.

“It was quite calm, and then, all of a sudden… he just slipped away. Like a leaf being taken out.”

Within moments, Holt disappeared behind a wave.

There were no cries for help.

No dramatic struggle.

One moment Australia’s Prime Minister was swimming.

The next, he was simply… gone.

No one else entered the water yet.

The conditions were considered far too dangerous.

Instead, the group searched desperately from the shoreline, hoping he might reappear further along the beach.

He never did.

The news spread rapidly.

Within hours, police, lifesavers, local volunteers and military personnel had converged on Cheviot Beach.

What followed became one of the largest search operations Australia had ever undertaken.

More than 300 people searched the coastline.

The Royal Australian Navy deployed specialist clearance divers.

Helicopters swept the coastline from above while boats searched the surrounding waters.

Divers later described almost impossible conditions.

Visibility was poor.

The rough swell pushed them into submerged rock ledges, and powerful currents constantly dragged them away from the search area.

After days of searching, they found…

Nothing.

No body.

No clothing.

No flippers.

No mask.

Nothing at all…

With no body to recover, speculation filled the void.

Some feared he’d been taken by a shark.

Others suggested he had staged his own disappearance.

The most famous theory claimed Holt had secretly been working for China and escaped aboard a waiting submarine just offshore.

It makes for a great spy novel, but investigators found no evidence to support it.

Other rumours pointed to foreign intelligence agencies or political assassination.

The official explanation has remained remarkably consistent.

Holt was swimming at one of Australia’s most dangerous beaches on a day when even experienced swimmers thought the conditions were unsafe.

He had recently been dealing with shoulder pain and other health issues, but he was also known for his confidence in the water.

Investigators concluded he was overwhelmed by the surf and drowned.

His body was almost certainly carried into deep water and never recovered.

Australians, being Australians, eventually found a way to take the piss in a way that only Aussies can.

Years later, Melbourne opened the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre.

Yep…🤦🏻‍♀️

Australia named a swimming pool after the Prime Minister who disappeared while swimming.

You really couldn’t make this up.

Department Findings:

Status: Sadly, True.

Conclusion: Whether you’re a Prime Minister or an everyday Aussie, the ocean doesn’t play favourites.

Harold Holt almost certainly believed he knew Cheviot Beach well enough to handle it.

That confidence cost him his life.

Officially, he is presumed to have drowned, but with no body ever recovered, his disappearance remains one of the most extraordinary chapters in Australian history.

Around our coastline, the sea has a habit of reminding us who’s really in charge.

Mother Nature doesn’t care about titles, experience or confidence.

She’ll take you without a second thought. Respect the conditions, know your limits, swim between the bloody flags at patrolled beaches and never, ever underestimate Australian waters…

Case closed.

Ref:

National Archives of Australia – Harold Holt's Disappearance

NFSA – Harold Holt's Disappearance Collection

Searching Cheviot Beach (Wikimedia Commons / National Archives)

Smithsonian Magazine – The Prime Minister Who Disappeared

Parks Victoria – Point Nepean National Park