Category: Society, Justice and Change

Love is who is allowed to stand where

Valentine’s Day arrives each year with its pink insistence.

Hearts. Chocolates. Roses. Public declarations.

I am writing a love story.

It is based on a true story. It is set in a dairy valley at Federation. There is courtship. There are buggies. There will be a wedding.

Yet none of that is what lingers.

What lingers is this.

Who speaks first.
Who waits.
Who protects.
Who grants permission.
Who withdraws.
Who makes room.

In this valley, no one arrives and takes a place.
You are given it.
Or you are not.

A father moves.
A mother sees what others miss.
A young man waits to be called forward.
A young woman chooses her moment.

Not scandal, legitimacy.

Its the small gestures. A father stepping between a young woman and a threat. A quiet welcome offered in passing. A line about being properly home. A wedding that marks recognition, rather than spectacle.

The politics of intimacy unfold long before the church doors open.

I am drawn to earned standing.

Protection without dominance.
Authority without humiliation.
Recognition without erasure.

I am not writing a fairy tale where the man saves the woman.

I am writing the moment when a family recognises her.

Much of my life has circled questions of voice, legitimacy, and who gets to speak without being diminished. It is no surprise that the same questions surface here, inside a dairy valley more than a century ago.

So on Valentine’s Day, while the world sells romance as performance, I am writing about consent inside families.

About being allowed to stand where you stand.

Love is not a fairy tale smothered in roses.
Love is who you are proud to stand beside.
And who is proud to stand beside you.

We Keep Arguing About Grace Tame and Ignore the Real Question

I have watched the commentary around Grace Tame spiral into familiar territory. Some defend her. Some attack her. Some wait for any misstep. The arguments become about slogans, tone, delivery.

Meanwhile, the original political decision sits largely untouched.

Reading through the comments on a right-leaning news site, I came across a thoughtful defence of her right to speak. It reminded me that human rights advocacy does not vanish because someone disagrees with the politics of the moment. Courage is not conditional.

I would have preferred that a particular slogan not be used. It distracted from the substance. Yet focusing only on the slogan misses the larger question.

What was the judgement behind inviting the Israeli president at this time?

Leadership is not only about protocol. It is about reading the room. It is about understanding how divided the public mood already is. It is about recognising when symbolism inflames rather than steadies.

We can debate Grace Tame’s language for days. That is easy. The harder and more necessary question concerns political judgement at the top.

If we are serious about social cohesion, that is where attention belongs.

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.

Do stories about powerful men and sexual abuse keep you awake?

Stories about powerful men and sexual abuse surface with grim regularity. Court cases reopen. Investigations expand. Survivors speak after years of silence. Support networks mobilise around the accused. Each time, the details differ and the structure stays the same.

When I read about these cases, the response is physical. Grief for the survivors arrives first, for what they carried alone and for how long. Then comes a deeper ache, watching support groups for powerful men contort themselves into justification, language bending to protect status rather than truth. Alongside that sits the cold recognition that power has learned to normalise its own behaviour, to treat harm as collateral and entitlement as reason.

and this

Across these cases, women are treated as surfaces rather than people. Their bodies become terrain. Their consent becomes negotiable. Their pain becomes background noise. Power trains itself to expect access and compliance, then reacts with disbelief or rage when either is withdrawn. What shocks many observers is the brazenness. What repeats is the logic. Status rewrites the rules.

Women are framed as disposable, disbelievable, or dangerous once they disrupt entitlement. This is not about desire. It is about dominance, control, and the preservation of rank. When accountability threatens, women carry the cost first, through disbelief, delay, character attack, and isolation.

Threaded through it all is exhaustion of recognition. This pattern has appeared before. It appears again. History keeps looping, each time asking who will refuse to look away.

I interviewed a psychologist to help me make sense of what we are watching play out around Donald Trump. They stayed with the human mechanics rather than relitigating each allegation, the racist imagery aimed at Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, or the Epstein material. Those facts are well documented. The questions that keep me awake at night sit elsewhere. Why does support stay entrenched even when behaviour crosses lines that would end any other public career?

When I asked the psychologist “will understanding bring peace or restore sleep ?” the psychologist said

“Understanding may not soften care or the dull feeling. It helps gives you  a way to make sense of them. You still care. You still feel it. It gives you orientation. You know where to stand, where pressure has impact, and where stepping back preserves strength. Sleep patterns may stay the same, and your thinking can shift. When you are awake, your attention shifts. The mind spends less time circling and more time observing. Helplessness eases into alertness. You stop trying to solve everything. You take in what you have learned, piece by piece.

This is what I learnt.

When politics becomes identity, evidence loses its force

For many supporters, Trump functions less as a politician and more as an identity marker. Criticism feels like criticism of the self. Once politics shifts from preference to identity, facts lose leverage. Evidence triggers defence rather than evaluation.

People protect what they have invested themselves into

People seek material that confirms what they already believe and discard what threatens it. This operates as a protective reflex. Admitting wrongdoing requires revisiting years of emotional, social, and financial investment. The price feels too high.

Power grants itself exemptions without ever announcing them

Supporters grant a special licence. The internal logic goes unchallenged. He fights the people I hate. His behaviour becomes justifiable. Cruelty, corruption, and abuse get reframed as necessary weapons. Standards change without comment.

Dominance feels comforting when the world feels unstable

Trump projects certainty, dominance, and contempt for the status quo. For people carrying humiliation from social change, economic dislocation, or cultural loss, this offers relief. He promises order. The pull intensifies under stress.

The way powerful men treat women tells the real story

A deeper truth sits underneath the rest. These men often relate to women through entitlement rather than reciprocity. Women appear as instruments, rewards, risks to be managed, or problems to be silenced rather than full moral equals. Power distorts intimacy. Access replaces consent. Control substitutes for care. Hierarchy teaches permission, and repeated escapes thin consequences further. Empathy erodes. Boundary crossing becomes ordinary.

Conspiracy restores clarity when reality becomes uncomfortable

As allegations accumulate, conspiracy thinking offers relief. Courts, media, academics, prosecutors, and foreign governments merge into a single corrupt force. The leader stands alone as truth teller. Complexity collapses into certainty.

Belonging carries a higher price than truth

Support remains social. Churches, families, media ecosystems, and online communities reinforce shared frames. Leaving carries cost. Belonging, reputation, and connection sit on the line. Many choose group coherence over reality coherence.

Accountability elsewhere exposes tolerance at home

The investigation into Elon Musk in France punctures the myth of inevitability. When other systems hold powerful men to account, the degree of normalisation elsewhere becomes visible. That contrast hardens defence rather than inviting reflection.

Survival trains expectation

Power shields itself. Wealth, legal firepower, media saturation, and procedural delay blur consequences. Each scandal that ends without consequence trains everyone to expect nothing to change. It lowers the bar. Survival becomes assumed.

Change starts quietly

Many supporters see the racism. They sense the corruption. Loyalty feels easier than confronting what that recognition would demand of their judgement, their community, and their past choices. Movements weaken first at the edges. People stop posting. They stop arguing. They withdraw. Collapse begins there.

and now the most important part. How can we have impact?

The call to action is refusal

Refusal to normalise exemption.
Refusal to excuse abuse as strategy.
Refusal to accept that power equals immunity.

Name the pattern. Support institutions that still act. Protect journalists, survivors, and whistleblowers. Watch the quiet exits. That is where history shifts.

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?

Source Facebook

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

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

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

Housing, Homelessness and the Courage to Lead. Dr Tonia Gray on the Kiama By-Election

Tonia Gray has built a career on connecting people to place. As an educator, advocate, and environmentalist, she has spent decades exploring how communities can thrive when social justice, environmental stewardship, and public policy work together.

Now, as the Greens candidate for the Kiama by-election, Tonia is bringing that same interconnected approach to housing and homelessness. She sees secure, affordable housing not as a stand-alone issue, but as part of a bigger picture that includes climate resilience, community wellbeing, and responsible land use.

Kiama’s current “hidden homelessness” approach means that residents in crisis are often relocated to Wollongong or Bomaderry, placing extra strain on those already experiencing hardship. For Tonia, this raises questions not just about service access, but about the values and priorities shaping local policy.

In this interview, we explore how the Greens would address the housing crisis in ways that integrate affordability, environmental protection, and human dignity and how Tonia believes those principles can be applied in Kiama.

Housing, Homelessness and the Courage to Lead: Dr Tonia Gray on the Kiama By-Election ——

When Dr Tonia Gray talks about housing and homelessness, it comes from lived experience as much as professional expertise. Sitting beside her mother Jeanette at Blue Haven aged care, she reminds us that how we treat our elderly is a true measure of society.

“We want safety, we want care, we want dignity. Isn’t that the least any society should provide?”

For Gray, the Greens candidate in the Kiama by-election, the challenge is not a lack of empty promises, but a failure of execution. Both major parties have let us down in the delivery phase.

“Politicians make all these wonderful promises… but they are not executed, or they’re done so poorly. The execution is what matters. Promises don’t change lives, action does.”

She argues for embedding affordable housing in existing suburbs, not pushing people to the margins. Safe, affordable homes keep people connected to their communities and make those communities safer and more inclusive. Her vision includes banning short-term rental accommodation (STRA) in new developments, so housing is prioritised for essential workers, exploring intergenerational and village-style models that draw on overseas examples, and embedding design principles such as passive solar, water tanks and walkable neighbourhoods into all subdivisions.

“It’s not what you say, it’s what you deliver. People need homes they can actually live in, not just more empty promises.”

Gray stresses that only around six percent of Australia’s 120,000 homeless people are rough sleepers. The majority are hidden, often couch surfing, in overcrowded dwellings or in temporary lodging. In Kiama, rough sleepers are quietly moved on under the radar, from the museum verandah, the showgrounds or camper vans near a church, making the issue less visible but no less real.

The film Frances, screened in Kiama earlier this year, laid bare this reality. It showed how easily a woman who had once lived securely could end up in her car, too proud to ask for help, terrified at night, and clinging to her dog as her last sense of safety. The panel after the screening reminded us that homelessness is often not the result of bad choices or bad people. It can be bad luck, or a sliding door moment in your life, combined with the absence of safety nets. Job loss, illness, divorce, or the death of a partner is sometimes enough to tip someone over the edge.

Older women are the fastest growing group at risk, particularly those leaving relationships they can no longer afford to stay in. Lyn Bailey, who shared her story on the panel, described going from a comfortable family home to the long grind of insecure housing after divorce at 58. She discovered banks would not lend to her because of her age and gender, and the waitlist for social housing was a decade long. Friends were shocked. They were oblivious to the fact that she had been in crisis. Her story mirrors many others, silent struggles hidden in plain sight.

Gray wants to see practical, community-based responses. She points to the Blue Mountains model where households take turns offering short-term refuge and suggests Kiama could do the same. But she warns that homelessness cannot be solved on yearly funding cycles. “To have a sustainable platform, services need five-year contracts that go beyond election cycles. Promises are easy for our vulnerable populations, but execution and delivery are everything.”

For Gray the issue comes down to political willpower. Developer contributions could be used to fund affordable housing, but councils rarely engage the public in how those funds are spent. Strategic sites like Bombo Quarry or Havilah Place could provide innovative housing solutions if multiple stakeholders were brought together instead of pushed apart.

“Real visionary leadership means making bold choices, even when they are unpopular. It means capping short-term rentals, setting quotas for affordable housing, and facing up to the uncomfortable truth that homelessness exists here in our postcode, not somewhere else. Stop promising and start delivering.”

She adds that this is not only about compassion but economics. Poorly executed housing policy costs ratepayers twice, once when it fails and again when the problem returns larger than before.

Every dollar spent on preventative housing and aged care saves multiple dollars later in health, policing and emergency services. Housing also underpins the local economy. When essential workers cannot afford to live locally, three things happen. Staff shortages make it harder for hospitals, aged-care, schools, and essential services to fill shifts, often leading to higher costs for overtime or casual staff.

Reduced reliability means longer commutes and slower response times in emergencies, whether it is a paramedic or a plumber. And a weaker local economy results when workers spend their wages in the towns where they live rather than in the communities where they work.

Liveability, active transport and walkability are also part of her vision. Walkable communities reduce household transport costs, ease congestion, and keep rates lower by cutting infrastructure strain. They lift local business activity and consistently boost property values.

“When we design villages where people can walk to shops, schools, parks and services, we do more than make life easier. We save households money, strengthen the economy and protect the environment at the same time.”

There are successful models already working. Link Wentworth runs monthly Community Support Hubs in the Blue Mountains, Hawkesbury, Penrith and Ryde. These “one-stop support shops” bring together free services to make it easier for people to know what is available and how to access it. The hubs have seen fantastic outcomes and helped countless people.

Whether talking about her mother’s care at Blue Haven, the stories told in Frances, or the hidden struggles of women after divorce, Gray circles back to the same principle: dignity. For her, it is the marker of the society we want to be.

The Kiama by-election is about more than who fills a seat. It is about whether we have leaders willing to listen, act and deliver, and whether we can find the courage to face what we would rather not see. The Greens have actively been championing for housing and homeless reform for decades.  For more information, visit here 

Dr Tonia Gray emphasises that The Greens have long championed housing and homelessness reform. She points to the party’s 50-point plan and policies as the foundation of their costed election platform and ongoing work in parliament and community.

Dr Tonia Gray (Left) also joins the SAHSSI30 White Sands Walk each year, a community walk along the beautiful Jervis Bay coastline that raises funds for domestic violence survivors in the Shoalhaven and local women staying in crisis accommodation.

It is a grassroots, community-driven event that has grown out of a desire to make positive change for women and children in the region. With hundreds of participants, the walk has already raised nearly $100,000 for SAHSSI Nowra Women’s Refuge, keeping the focus on the urgent issues of gender-based violence and homelessness in the local area.

The funds raised by SAHSSI30 have given families living on or below the poverty line access to activities and experiences they would not otherwise have had. Dr Gray warmly invites the community to support this important cause and donate to SAHSSI here.

#KiamaByElection #ToniaGray #HousingCrisis #HiddenHomelessness #AffordableHousing #EssentialWorkers #CommunityCare #BlueHaven #WalkableCommunities #LocalEconomy