Now she’s got it! Young Greta’s tweaked to the only way to protest for progress. You go to gaol for your beliefs. This is a sad fact but its actually whats gotta happen. You’ve got to challenge bad laws and you’ve got to stand face to face with Fascism. You’ve gotta push back.

Here in the lucky Country are we prepared to do it? Is GetUp – who let’s face it are really the only organisation who are able to mobilise mass support – prepared to stand, not only with the kids, but with the Unions, the kids parents and the First Nations people, and movements like ‘Extinction Rebellion’ in a demand for a new Constitution and a Bill of Rights. After all it is all in the common interest against Fascism, and without a democratic Constitution based upon a Bill of Right no one, other than the Kings favourites, is going to get the things the world needs without a good old fashioned fight, boots and all.

The Australian Labor Party have shown that they’re not prepared to stand up for the most basic Civil Rights nor to challenge a government that tramples those rights in such blatant anti-democratic and draconian ways. (Believe me, that was one helluva hard sentence for me to write! It’s brought tears to my eyes just reading over it. I can’t tell you how proud I am to be an Aussie and how ashamed I am of this neo-Australia in my old age.)

Its all fine for the ‘papers’ to report things like Greta Thunberg’s – may the King’s great Gods bless her – comments, but will they – at least those that say they stand for social conscience, justice and reason – actually pull their fingers out and support Democracy? … And not bow to the fear of unjust laws and ministerial discretion that Pistol Pete and his henchman are so intent on cowing us with? Is there any longer an Australia that values independence and the freedom to express it? Is there an Australia with enough true character to fight for it?

This rule by fear of law has no place in Democracy. Its not what our ancestors fought and died for – those diggers. What they fought against was precisely the Australia that neo-liberalist Divine Right has delivered up to us today. I read Paul Oosting’s address to the Press Club the other day and see that he says that one of GetUp’s principles is a ‘stronger Democracy’. By this I do hope he means a real democracy, because at times GetUp do appear to care not for everyone’s democracy despite Oosting’s fine words they seem to fall silent at exactly the time when they should be shouting the loudest. Admirable as Oosting’s professed principle are he seems to believe that they’re achievable under the King’s cloak – call it demockracy if you will. They’re not. The Australian System corrupts democracy and protects itself against true Democracy – its inherent in its design, and by the time the King and his Merry Little Men get through with it, whoever inherits it will find themselves boxed into it and then at pace subsumed by its petty divine rights.

So, I do hope that despite the lack of comment on young Greta Thunberg’s call for her fellows to stand up to the police, and challenge unjust law, and draconian thinking, from the would be Free Press – who, of course, call for us individuals to support their cause; which is undoubtedly our cause – the kids are going to take a leaf out of the democratic youth of Hong Kong and ‘Extinction Rebellion’ and actually get out onto the streets and show their cowed elders just how it must be done! It won’t take much to remind us, after all we all practiced it when we were kids.

Last night I had the Ambos up here twice – not for me, someone else on the block – the Gemfields are the heart attack capital of Qld, so I’m told. Another shocking thing to have to admit, but hell, its going through my head continually … I thought, I wonder if this is one of Pistol Pete’s night patrols out on the prowl for illegal communications signals. Trawling the streets like Joe Stalin’s KGB did. I have these thoughts quite often now – a pack of Blackshirts swarming through the garden, all guns and clubs, warrantless of course, to take me in for dissent or sedition … They’ll tell my friends and family that its for my own good and to protect them from things they don’t need to know. Ha! I don’t actually think they’ll tell my friends and family anything .. more likely to raid everyone else in my address book.

“In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better that a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind old men as guides.” – Heinrich Heine.