Before Everything Became Political

I grew up in a small rural farming community in New Zealand in the 1960s. My friends were Māori, white, Hindu Indian, and Chinese. It was not remarkable. It was simply life.

If I disliked someone, it was because I disliked them -  not because of their colour, religion, or background.
As a child, I never noticed differences between us. I did not think in terms of “us and them” or “haves and have-nots.” I simply saw my classmates.

Some of my Indian friends cooked chapatis on a piece of corrugated iron in the school playground.Some of my white friends, whose families slept on potato sacks, brought slabs of bread wrapped in newspaper for lunch. I never thought about it. I simply accepted it as part of everyday life.

Some friends announced they were going “home” to India to marry. I thought it sounded magical, like a fairy tale. Other friends lived with far less comfort than I did, yet I never judged, questioned, or felt pity. I was simply living the life of a normal little girl in my school and in my community.

We did not see each other as members of tribes, communities, or social classes. We were simply children. 

Political parties were meant to serve the people, but in today’s climate, they resemble warring tribes more than democratic institutions. Blind loyalty has replaced independent thought, and dissent is met with hostility, not debate.

Leaders demand absolute obedience, punishing those who stray from the party line.

But history warns us - when a tribe values survival over truth, it eventually turns inward, consuming its own members in a spiral of self-destruction. Are we watching the slow implosion of party politics, and if so, what comes next? 

We humans have always been tribal creatures. There’s even an idea called Dunbar’s Number, which suggests humans can only maintain meaningful relationships with about 150 people. Beyond that, social cohesion starts to break down, and factions form.

Australia Day 2026: A Quiet Line in the Sand

I began writing something cheerful.

Something about summer skies, backyard barbecues, cricket bats, and the old Australian comfort that whatever happens, she’ll be right.

But I stopped.

Because this year, it doesn’t feel right.

Something is off. Hard to define. Hard to ignore.

So today’s article is not a celebration. It is a recognition that Australia is unwell. And when something or someone you love is unwell, you don’t look away. You ask how it happened -  and what must be done.

How did we get here?

History is never simple, and it should never be reduced to slogans. Australia is not the product of a crime scene, nor the result of a single narrative of guilt or glory. It is just the improbable outcome of ancient ideas, human ambition and extraordinary luck.

Sure, we can acknowledge the deep history of this land and the endurance of the early Aboriginals, but we can also recognise that the nation we inhabit today was built through exploration, enterprise and British civilisation. These truths are not enemies; they are threads in the same story.

To call Cook an “invader” is to misunderstand history and flatten it into ideology. He did not arrive seeking a continent to conquer. He arrived chasing a myth dreamed up by Greeks and Romans two thousand years earlier. What he found was not Terra Australis, but the edge of a land that others had missed through error, indifference and miscalculation.

And if Cook did not " invade "  a continent,  but simply stumbled upon its finest shore, then perhaps the real miracle is not that he arrived -  but that no one else did before him. 

Why modern activism feels less like justice and more like identity

I was watching Rebel Without a Cause the other night, and it struck me that the title feels strangely modern.

Jim Stark, played by James Dean, isn’t oppressed. He isn’t poor. He doesn’t live under tyranny or injustice. He has parents, a home, and a reasonably comfortable life. Yet he’s restless, angry, searching for something to fight against.

He doesn’t really know what he’s rebelling against. He just knows he has to rebel against something.

Because without a struggle, without a cause, he feels adrift. And boy oh boy, don't we see that too much these days? Have we become a society of Jim Starks? Of Rebels Without a Cause?

People who protest for the sake of protesting... and so often have no bloody idea why or what they are protesting...