If you really want to, you can solve society’s most intractable problems like this

If you want your Government to embrace clean energy, then don’t punish them at the voting booth because they did not provide the jobs (that dirty energy provides in greater numbers.)

If you want to save Qantas, subsidise them by buying their over-priced tickets, not by handing out tax collections. (Or at least don’t ask me to hand over mine.)

If you want the Public School system to be world class, send YOUR kids to it. (Even if they are smarter and you think they deserve better. Fact is, even these kids will eventually live in a society that is determined by those ignoramuses and unfortunates you wanted to disassociate yourself from. It is called ‘democracy’.)

If you want your kid to do well at school, don’t do their homework and let the teachers do their jobs without interference. (YOUR job is to educate your child and instill values and the teacher will take care of the reading and writing part.)

If you want your children to be able to cope with what life throws at them, stop protecting them when life starts throwing stuff. (That includes not acting like every disagreement, every taunt and every scuffle is a bullying EVENT.)

If you want your medical insurance to come down or stay low, don’t go to the doctor with every sniffle. (Because ‘everyone else’ does it is a pretty lame excuse.)

If you want to change the gambling culture/problem in Australia, then don’t encourage/ allow office sweeps and footy tipping comps. And for fuck sake, don’t turn a horse race into a public holiday. Those are the little things that suggest that gambling is OK and as we know, from little things big things grow…

If you want to stop the loutish behaviour that follow excessive drinking, don’t protect people from those consequences. If they are drunk and get hurt, don’t subsidise their medical costs. Charge them ‘full freight’ for the service provided by hospitals and cops and the like. (Victims can be taken care of in the system, not perpetrators.)

If you want racial vilification to reduce or maybe even disappear, stop recording it on census forms and application forms. Don’t measure, endorse, acknowledge or support any one in any way based on race. NO special areas or privileges. If you act as if there in no difference then there will be no difference. (Sure you will lose the ability to celebrate diversity, but that is the price you pay. Society must choose between diversity and harmony - and despite our best intentions, human nature dictates that they won’t co-exist peacefully.)

If I had to summarise these suggestions, then I suppose it will be best done by that old cliche: you can’t have your cake and eat it.

Everything has a price:

Clean energy costs jobs.
Local pride in a national carrier with local, decent jobs charges more for a ticket.
Not having a gambling culture means that you forfeit the seemingly innocent ‘fun’ gambling activities too.

That is just the way it is.

You may not want it to be so, Maybe it shouldn’t even have to be so. But that is how it is.

The biggest problem of all?

We look to GOVERNMENT to fix it, when really, they simply pick the solution that will get them voted in at the next election.

The solution is in our hands.

It is just a decision.