Australia is still evolving

My Australian dream has finally shattered. I still love my country - more than ever - but I realise now that it has many serious and interconnected problems. Quite late in my life - I am now 63 - I realised the need to take up burdens of public involvement, working with other people of goodwill and integrity and knowledge, to try to help our country rebuild some of what it has lost in the past 60 years: trying to make this a better country; a country that does not make war on others; that does not scapegoat any of its own citizens; that behaves as a responsible and less selfish global citizen in the coming battle to save a decent human environment on this planet.

There is a huge agenda now. The situation may seem hopeless but we have to make a start. I’ll be spending the remaining years of my active life working on those things.

Now I recognise that my rich multicultural family history and my present extended family including my grown-up sons, my sister’s family, and my new Australian-Cambodian young family, are all gifts from God, giving me opportunities for a wider perspective on many of these issues.

I realise now that Australian history has always been about growth, change, and disruption: settlers and displaced Indigenous people, ascendant Protestants and underclass Catholics, class conflicts, the post-1945 Anglo-Celtic ascendancy and the non-Anglo immigrants.

There has always been prejudice and human hurt in our history, as well as warmth and generosity and decency and openness. Australia is still evolving, as I am. We have many moral choices to make in the struggle to build a better society here and in the world. Though the last 10 years have been mostly a time of moral decline in Australia, we still have the chance to get it right.