Creating a Better World Together Archives - Clover Hill Diaries

The Shit Sandwich and the Sacred Calling

Last week’s budget was described, by at least one prominent politician, as a shit sandwich. In the days since, my feed has filled up with variations on that theme. Angry posts from farmers and farming families, several of them quoting scripture, most of them warning that the government is now taxing Australians in life and in death.

There is no death tax in this budget. There is no inheritance tax. What there is, among other things, is the end of the pre-CGT exemption for assets bought on or before 19 September 1985. From 1 July 2027, those assets get a market value reset, and any gain after that date becomes taxable. For a family sitting on land a grandfather bought in 1972, that is a genuine change. The pre-2027 gain stays exempt, but the planning assumption that the asset would never attract CGT is gone.

That is worth being angry about if you are directly affected. It is not the end of civilisation, and it is not a death tax, but it is a real shift in the rules for long held family assets. The small business and farm CGT concessions remain in place. The 50% CGT discount is being replaced by cost base indexation, which is a return to how the system worked between 1985 and 1999. Trusts get a 30% minimum tax from 1 July 2028, with several categories exempt.

That is the factual picture. The emotional picture is different, and it is the emotional picture that gets shared.

The post that prompted this one quoted Proverbs 13:22, a good person leaves an inheritance to their children’s children, and built an argument that modern tax policy is in tension with biblical stewardship. It is a familiar move in rural commentary.

Farming gets framed as a sacred calling, a multi-generational legacy, the soul of the nation. The argument runs that ordinary commercial rules should not apply to it, because what farmers do is not ordinary commerce.

Here is the problem with that framing. A farm is a small business. It happens to involve land and livestock rather than dry cleaning or panel beating, but the structural features people invoke to mark it as different, capital intensity, weather risk, commodity price exposure, thin margins, succession planning, asset values shifting under policy changes, exist across the small business economy. A suburban café owner whose parents bought the shop in 1980 faces the same pre-CGT change as a grazier whose parents bought the property in 1980. Only one of them gets Proverbs quoted in their defence.

Farmers already have a substantial suite of concessions that other small businesses do not. The small business CGT concessions, the farm-specific rollover, farm management deposits, primary producer income averaging, fuel tax credits, drought assistance and the farm household allowance. By international standards Australian farmers are lightly supported. The EU and US are far more generous. But by domestic standards, against other small businesses, the deal is good.

Which brings me to the honest version of the argument, the one farm lobbies rarely make out loud because it undercuts the rugged independence branding.

The rebates exist because food has to stay cheap. Australian consumers pay one of the lowest proportions of household income on food in the developed world. That is not an accident. Production costs are subsidised at the input end. Fuel, finance, drought support, levies matched by government. The saving flows through to retail. Governments of both major parties have made the same political judgement for decades. It is cheaper and less visible to subsidise farm inputs than to let food prices float to their true cost. A $12 loaf of bread ends governments faster than a fuel rebate scheme that nobody outside agriculture understands.

There is a second piece, which is food security. Most developed countries support domestic agriculture for the same reason they support domestic steel or semiconductors. You do not want to be wholly import dependent for something essential. That is a legitimate public interest argument and it is the one that should be made.

What is striking is that this argument almost never appears in the angry posts. Instead the framing is persecution. City elites who do not understand us, governments that hate producers, taxes designed to crush the family farm. It is emotionally satisfying and politically effective, but it obscures what is actually going on. The rebates are not charity. They are not a moral reward for choosing a noble profession. They are a consumer subsidy delivered through producers, designed to keep retail food prices down and maintain sovereign production capability.

If the argument were made that way, it would be harder to dismiss. It would also be harder to wrap in scripture, which may be why it is not the version we hear.

The budget is not a shit sandwich. It is a set of policy choices, some of which deserve sharp criticism. Pretending otherwise does the people most affected by the real changes no favours at all.

This is about asbestos. It is also about memory, power, and who gets protected.

Toxic City: Asbestos, Amnesia, and the Collapse of Care lays out a story many in Shoalhaven already recognise. Swift action when risk sits inside council walls. Silence when that same risk sits in a small village, under roads, near creeks, beside homes.

This is collaborative community advocacy at its best, from Spark Shoalhaven in Politics. It opens with a preface by Cat Holloway and centres the long, sustained work of Peter Allison. His work is seminal. It shows what happens when ordinary people keep records, keep asking questions, and keep going long after institutions move on.

This is about asbestos. It is also about memory, power, and who gets protected.

How many versions of this reckoning do we need before we all stand up, in some way, no matter how small.

First they came for a small place.
Then they came for people without power.
Then they came for something they should never have ignored.

If you live in Shoalhaven, read it.
If you care about how councils work, read it.
If you wonder how systems drift away from accountability, read it.

And if you are part of a group somewhere else, watching something similar unfold, this is an invitation. We are learning that shared stories, shared evidence, and shared pressure travel further together.

I have a habit of pulling things apart to see why they work

I will follow up and get a link for you to buy these sweaters

I’m a curious person. I like understanding what turns ideas into action, what shifts something from theory into behaviour. When I saw this sweater being advertised, that instinct kicked in. What held my attention wasn’t the message itself so much as the way it had been framed.

It struck me as a sharp example of something done well. Understanding why turned out to be the more interesting part.

So I spoke to a marketing strategist and asked her to look at it purely from a framing point of view. What is this doing?

She started with the reference.

The line draws on Martin Niemöller’s poem First they came…. The poem is widely recognised. Its progression is familiar. The sweater relies on that familiarity.

“That tells you who it’s speaking to,” she said. “It assumes recognition.”

From there, the sentence pivots. “Because I know the rest of the goddamn poem” isn’t about remembering history. It’s about timing. The speaker places themselves earlier in the sequence, before the final lines, before the regret people talk about later.

That’s the point where the clock starts tapping its foot.
Recognition is treated as the starting point. The line moves straight to choice.

She pointed out how this reframes familiarity.

Quoting the opening line of Niemöller’s poem has become a kind of shorthand. People recognise it, feel aligned, and move on. This line removes that pause. Knowing carries responsibility.

Then there’s the delivery. A sweater. Something worn, seen, carried through ordinary spaces. The message travels through daily life rather than sitting in a book, a speech, or a memorial context.

“That’s where behaviour shifts,” she said. “Inside routine, normalising action.”

She also drew my attention to where the sentence ends. One line.

“It stops at the moment of commitment,” she said.

That was the explanation I was looking for. The sweater works because it treats recognition as the starting point.

Most of us want agency. We want to move through the day, or get to the end of it, with the sense that we made a difference. That we stepped in early enough to matter. That we chose action while choice was still available.

This line offers timing.

I know how this ends. I’m acting before it does.

That’s why it works. As a prompt. As a reminder. You read it and feel slightly behind schedule.

And it does it in one sentence.

Full credit to the person who wrote it. I’m filing it away at the front of my brain for the next time I feel the urge to quote something and hope people do more than read it and nod.

Are you feeling swamped by the world’s biggest problems?

Do you feel overwhelmed by the biggest issues shaping everyday life climate disruption, housing pressure, food prices, insurance, government spending? I did too.

For a long time my response lived in my head. Reading more. Arguing better. Feeling frustrated that public debate kept sliding into blame. None of that helped. What shifted things was doing something much simpler. I joined groups. I went to workshops. I put myself in rooms with people who were already translating big problems into practical action.

I have written before about the victim triangle and how easy it is to slip into it when the world feels out of control. What I learned through participation is how people climb out of it. Not by pretending the problems are smaller, and not by blaming others, but by reconnecting with responsibility and control.

One of the clearest examples for me has been Farmers for Climate Action. What works in spaces like this is not ideology. It is community. You learn alongside others. You share uncertainty. You are shown where effort counts. No one is cast as a villain or a victim. People are treated as capable decision makers.

That pattern repeats across other community based organisations like Landcare. Workshops, peer networks, and practical forums all do the same capacity and capability building work. They replace overwhelm with participation. They turn big abstract issues into things you can act on with others.

This is the shift I wish we talked about more. When people feel powerless, blame becomes a coping mechanism. When people feel supported and capable, responsibility returns.

If public debate feels stuck, it may be because we keep asking people to care without showing them how to act. The way forward is not louder arguments. It is clearer pathways and communities that make engagement feel possible.

That was the circuit breaker for me.

HT to Maryvonne Norman whose excellent Fb post prompted this article

A moment in The Choral that shows how lived experience changes everything

I recently saw The Choral . It is a magnificent movie. It broke my heart in a good way.

Partly because it is so beautiful. Partly because it is so powerful. And partly because of one moment that keeps opening out into other moments long after you leave the cinema.

A choir member who is also a Protestant minister stands and says there is no such thing as purgatory. In his faith, the soul goes straight to heaven or hell. No in between.

Then Clive speaks.

He has come back from the war with one arm. He says purgatory is real. It is the space between two sides fighting, the moment when you step forward and you don’t know whether you will live or die.

The room goes completely still.

I am confident that minister would never stand up and say there is no purgatory again. I don’t think anyone else in the room would either and everyone who sees the film.

What moved me was not only the moment itself, but what it unlocked. How often lived experience cuts straight through belief. How two people can stand in the same place and see entirely different things, shaped by what they have lived, what they have lost, what they carry in their bodies.

It felt like a reminder to slow down in conversations. To listen more carefully. To leave room for the fact that someone else may be standing in a place you have never been.

What we choose to record shapes what future generations believe

This image I shared on Facebook talks about blame, the habit of pointing elsewhere so we do not have to look too closely at ourselves. It struck me because at the moment I am immersed in recording local history. Old farms, family stories, council decisions, moments that felt ordinary at the time but now explain how a place became what it is.

History has a quiet power. What is written down gets repeated. What is repeated hardens into truth. What is left out quietly disappears.

Working through local archives has reminded me how selective memory can be. The stories that survive are often those that suited someone at the time, those that deflected responsibility, those that made complex decisions look simple and inevitable. Over generations, those shortcuts become culture.

We are seeing that play out again now.

As my Facebook post says I am uncomfortable with how responsibility keeps being pushed onto Anthony Albanese, or onto Australians more broadly, particularly Australian Jews, as if proximity equals culpability. That misdirects the conversation and lets those making the decisions step out of frame.

If accountability matters, it has to sit with alleged war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, who repeatedly claim to act in the name of all Jews. Many Jewish people around the world have said clearly that this is not true. Ignoring that distinction does real harm.

What also sits beneath this moment is something older and far more corrosive. Millions of prejudiced ideas about Jewish people were written down, taught, repeated, normalised. Those ideas travelled across borders and centuries. They did not arrive by accident. They were documented, handed down, and rarely challenged.

We cannot change millions of people’s prejudices overnight. But we can change how we tell the story now.

We can challenge media narratives that look for someone to blame and promise quick fixes. We can refuse lazy conflations that confuse governments with people, criticism with hatred, complexity with disloyalty. We can insist on context, on history, on evidence.

Most importantly, we can defend the public’s right to make informed choices. That requires more than outrage. It requires resisting the urge to absolve ourselves of responsibility by pointing elsewhere.

As someone recording local history, I am learning this: the stories we choose to document today will shape what feels possible tomorrow. Getting that right matters, not only for our towns, but for the world we hand on.

#AccountabilityMatters #WhoWeBlame #HistoryAndMemory #WhyDocumentationMatters #ChallengePrejudice #MediaResponsibility #Antisemitism #CollectiveBlame #InformedChoices #PublicJudgement #PowerAndResponsibility #TellingTheStoryDifferently

Two trees, eight generations and a view that keeps calling you closer

There are two trees I think about a lot and they sit about five hundred metres apart.

The Witness Tree is a 200 year old plus Moreton Bay Fig

Down in the valley, on another working dairy farm, stands what I call the Witness tree. The tree has watched generations of stock, families and seasons pass beneath it and it keeps doing the same job it always has. On warm days the cows head straight for it, lining up in the shade as if there’s a roster. Farmers know where the herd will be before they even look.

The Witness tree has watched generations of cows come to the same conclusion. That spot. That shade. Case closed.

Up on the side of the mountain is our place. This farm has been worked since 1840 by two families across eight generations. Same land, different times, plenty of early mornings. The volcanic soil is rich but the rock shows itself quickly, which did not stop me fifty years ago from planting a lemon scented gum in the front garden. It took to the challenge. Today it marks the house, scents the air on warm afternoons and gives you a fair idea of what the weather is about to do.

Lemon Scented Gum on the side of Saddleback Mountain

I take photos of the cows in the front paddock the way other people take photos of their kids. Different light, different moods, different characters every time. They never ask why, they never pose, they never complain

The distance between those two trees tells you almost everything you need to know about Jamberoo. In a short walk the land drops from rocky hillside to deep valley soil. The shape changes. The work does not. Cows are milked, grass is managed, and people read the land closely because that is how farming here has always worked.

As I drive down to the road, I can see the Witness tree holding the valley together, paddocks stepping down one by one. Up on the side of the mountain, the sea sits at the end of my view, never the same twice. Some days it looks calm, other days restless, but it always feels like an invitation, come closer, see what I’m doing today. It is all close, layered, and slightly cheeky in how much variety Jamberoo fits into such a small space.\

This is the paddock I see from my front verandah. Well managed farms don’t just produce food, they shape the landscape we all enjoy driving past, walking through, and quietly admiring. The view is not an accident.

Eight generations on one farm teaches you this. The land has its own ideas. Trees know their jobs. Cows organise themselves beautifully. And Jamberoo keeps reminding you that practicality, persistence and a bit of humour travel very well together.

#JamberooValley #DairyFarming #WorkingFarms #LandscapeAndPlace #RuralAustralia #GenerationsOnTheLand #SouthCoastNSW #FarmingLife #SenseOfPlace #SaddlebackMountain

We get 2000mm of rain and still hold our breath every time it falls

What makes this time of year properly exhilarating, and exhausting, is that we are heading into a season where everything can flip overnight. We can go from 36 degrees one day to 20 the next, from cows seeking shade and water to cows standing in pouring rain wondering what just happened.

That swing matters.

In summer, rain is not about volume, it is about relief. Relief for pasture that is holding on. Relief for soils that dry fast on the hill. Relief for animals coping with heat stress one day and humidity the next. A cool change with rain can buy time. A hot northerly without follow up can undo weeks of careful management.

This is why summer rain is watched with such intensity. Not because we expect miracles, but because timing is everything. A storm after a 36 degree day can reset a system. A storm followed by another hot blast can vanish almost before it has soaked in.

So yes, we get excited when it rains, even averaging 2,000 mm on paper. Because summer reminds you very quickly that farming here is not about averages, it is about adaptability. One eye on the sky, one eye on the forecast, and a deep appreciation for every break in the heat that gives grass, cows, and people a chance to breathe.

#JamberooValley #DairyFarming #RainfallReality #AustralianAgriculture #SupportLocalFarmers #ClimateVariability #HighRainfallFarming #FarmingLife

The hero of today’s story is the photograph

Moos in the Mist

The past couple of weeks have been full on, and my head has been running its own agenda. “The book” has taken over completely. It does not seem to matter if it is two in the morning or two in the afternoon. The scenes arrive when they feel like it, and once they land, I have no choice but to deal with them.

And of course, in a book written by me you can expect strong female leads. That was always the plan. No Tess of the d’urbervilles anywhere to be seen. What I did not plan for was the problem I have now created for myself. I think I have fallen a little in love with the male lead. I am turning him into the perfect man and now I cannot stop thinking about him. If that is not a sign that I need to get out of my own head occasionally, I do not know what is.

And speaking of the male lead, my book might be fictional but it is based on true facts. On Friday I discovered that his first name was far too close to the real man’s name. Too close. A name I had used four hundred times. Thank goodness for Control F. I hit that button, held my breath, and watched the entire manuscript light up like a Christmas tree. Then came the not so romantic part. Control F Replace. Fictional man reborn.

It is much safer when these scenes arrive at two in the morning. Nobody sees me wandering around the house writing and rewriting them, half sentences in the dark. When they arrive in daylight, it becomes a public event.

A few weeks ago I went to Minnamurra for coffee with friends. I got out of the car thinking about a scene and stopped right there in the middle of the road to record it on my phone. Thank God it was Minnamurra and not Terralong Street. I can only imagine the commentary if I tried that in peak hour.

And then there are the drives home. A scene arrives, I need to catch it, and I start looking for somewhere to pull over. If you know the roads around here, you know how unrealistic that is. You cannot pull over. Not safely anyway. Ask the bicycle riders. They could give an entire TED Talk on the subject.

So yesterday morning, when I stood on my veranda, I felt grateful for my little piece of paradise. It gave me a short reset before diving back into all the things demanding attention, including one fictional man who is taking up far too much space in my head.

And that brings me to the hero of today’s story – the photograph. I have taken many photos from my front veranda, yet this one sparked something. A couple of people have already asked if they can paint it. I am not entirely sure why this particular image resonated more than the others, but it did.

What do you think, readers?

I am a bit partial to this one

#writinglife #novelinprogress #writersbrain #creativeprocess #rurallife #aussiestorytelling #amwritingfiction #strongfemaleleads #scenesfromtheveranda #lifeonafarm #writinghumour #behindthebook

You Don’t Have to Be Angry to Be Brave

This blog is a follow up to an earlier blog “When Advocacy Turns Dangerous: The Moment You Can’t Stay Silent”

Are you like me, someone who wants to speak up when you see or hear something unjust, but sometimes hesitates because you don’t want to make things worse, or make someone feel small?

That hesitation comes from care. Most of us don’t want to hurt people; we want to make things better. But we were never taught how. We were taught to keep the peace, not to have hard conversations with grace.

I recently watched Sarah Crawford-Bohl’s TED Talk How to Speak Up — Even When You Don’t Want To.

She shows that courage and kindness can live in the same sentence. You can hold your ground without pushing someone else off theirs.

The Four Phrases That Can Change Any Difficult Conversation

It doesn’t take a big speech. Sometimes it’s the smallest phrases that shift the whole tone of a conversation:

Instead of “With respect…”, try “I see it differently.”
Instead of “That’s wrong.”, try “Can we look at that another way?”
Instead of “You can’t say that.”, try “That might land differently for some people.”
Instead of silence, try “I’m not sure that sits right with me.”

These simple swaps are powerful. They keep people in the conversation rather than shutting it down.

Why Teaching Kids How to Speak Up Might Be the Most Important Lesson of All

Even after years of negotiation training, I still catch myself slipping into an overly forceful tone when something matters to me. It’s hard to unlearn. But that’s exactly why this work matters, because if we can teach young people how to use their voices with strength and empathy, maybe they won’t have to spend years unlearning the habits we did.

It’s the same truth behind that short film Justice, the moment when a teacher unfairly dismisses a student and everyone stays silent

and the playful How to Start a Movement clip, where the brave first follower turns one person’s awkward dance into a movement.

In both, the real change begins when someone chooses courage over comfort.

Speaking up doesn’t have to make anyone feel small. Done with care, it can make everyone in the room a little braver.

#SpeakUpKindly #EverydayActivism #CivicCourage #RespectfulCommunication #LeadershipStartsHere #EmpathyInAction #TeachThemYoung #ChangeTheConversation #FirstFollower #KindnessIsStrength