Creating a Better World Together Archives - Clover Hill Diaries

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 Power trains itself to expect access and compliance, then reacts with disbelief or rage when either is withdrawn.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?

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

This Threat Can Destroy a Nation – And It Starts in Your Head

Carl Jung once said:

“It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is mankind’s greatest danger, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.”

What he meant is simple but unsettling: our biggest threat doesn’t come from outside forces like famine or disease, it comes from inside our own minds.

What’s a “psychic epidemic”?

Jung was talking about what happens when destructive ideas or emotions spread through a community or a nation. Think of it as mass hysteria, but on a much bigger scale. People start feeding off each other’s fear, anger, or prejudice until it snowballs into something far more dangerous than any one person could cause on their own.

History is full of examples: witch hunts, Nazi Germany, the Rwandan genocide. These didn’t happen because of earthquakes or floods, they happened because people’s minds got caught up in a destructive collective belief.

Why it’s worse than a natural disaster

If we face a flood, a fire, or a disease outbreak, we can often rebuild, treat, or protect against it. A psychic epidemic is different. There’s no vaccine. Once it takes hold, it can destroy trust, compassion, and reason. And unlike a virus, it can keep spreading long after the first outbreak.

The scars it leaves, mistrust, division, hatred, can last for generations.

The modern outbreak

Today, the tools that connect us can also spread dangerous ideas faster than ever. Social media algorithms push us toward outrage. Misinformation circulates in hours, not months. Conspiracy theories grow into movements.

We’ve built a world where ideas, good or bad, can go viral. And once they do, they can be hard to stop.

How we protect ourselves

We can’t put up a quarantine zone around human thought. But we can:

Slow down before we share or react.
Listen to different viewpoints, especially ones we don’t already agree with.
Teach and practise critical thinking.
Value respectful debate over point-scoring.

None of this is easy. But if Jung was right, then protecting ourselves from collective madness might be the most important public health measure we have.

Because the real danger isn’t just in the storms nature throws at us, it’s in what happens when our minds become the storm.

#DangerousIdeas #CollectiveThinking #MassPsychology #CarlJung #PsychicEpidemics #MindsMatter #CriticalThinking #TruthMatters #SocialAwareness #MindsetShift

Why I Wanted to Learn the Hard Truth About Gaza – And Why I’m Sharing It

I’ll be honest: I didn’t know the full story.

Like many people, I grew up hearing bits and pieces about the Israel -Palestine conflict, but never enough to understand how Gaza and the West Bank came to be divided, why Palestine isn’t recognised as a state, or how Israel became one of the most powerful military forces in the world.

And I certainly didn’t feel equipped to ask the big question that’s been gnawing at me lately:

How can a government formed in the shadow of the Holocaust be responsible for what looks, to so many, like mass suffering on that same scale?

So I started reading. Asking. Listening. And here’s what I’ve learned as someone who’s been trying to catch up.

Gaza and the West Bank: Why They’re So Far Apart

Once, it was all one place – Palestine under British rule. But in 1948, after war broke out following the creation of the State of Israel, the land was divided up by who won and who lost.

Egypt took Gaza.
Jordan took the West Bank.
Israel took the middle – and everything in between.

That’s how Palestinians ended up geographically and politically separated. No corridor. No unifying government. Just a people divided by decisions they had no say in.

Why the World Hasn’t Just “Given” Palestine Statehood

Because politics doesn’t reward fairness.
Palestinians have land, a population, a flag, and a national identity but not enough international recognition.

Western countries like Australia, the UK, and the US still don’t officially recognise Palestine, largely because:

They don’t want to upset strategic ties with Israel
They say there’s no “unified Palestinian leadership”
And they insist statehood must come through negotiations even though negotiations have led nowhere.

Why Israel Is So Militarily Powerful

Because it’s not just defending itself, it’s strategically useful to Western powers.

It gets billions in annual military aid from the US
It has a top-tier weapons and intelligence industry
It has mandatory military service
And most importantly, it’s seen as the West’s stable, democratic ally in a region full of instability

In other words: Israel is protected, armed, and rarely held to account – no matter the cost.

And What About Now? The Justification for Gaza?

The Netanyahu government says it’s targeting Hamas, not civilians. That it’s acting in self-defence. That reports of mass suffering are propaganda.

But when tens of thousands of children are dead, whole neighbourhoods are flattened, and aid trucks are blocked, it’s hard not to see this as something else.

Critics, including Jewish scholars and Holocaust survivors, are asking:
How can a country shaped by genocide justify collective punishment of another people?

It’s not about comparing tragedies. It’s about recognising when one tragedy is being used to shield another from scrutiny.

So Why This Blog Post?

Because I wish I’d known this sooner.
Because too many people feel embarrassed to admit they don’t know the history, or afraid to ask the wrong question.
Because if you’re feeling what I felt, overwhelmed, unsure, angry, and heartbroken, you’re not alone.

And because I don’t believe we can claim to care about justice and human dignity if we only do it when it’s convenient.

If you’re just beginning to learn, you’re in the right place.

And if you’re sick of spin, labels, and empty political slogans, I hope this gives you something more grounded to stand on.

We don’t have to be experts to care. We just have to stop looking away.

Suggested Resource for Young People

If you’re looking for a clear, thoughtful explanation designed for younger people, this guide from UNICEF Australia is a great place to start:

🔗 UNICEF – Making Sense of the Israel–Palestine Crisis

It breaks down what’s happening in a way that’s respectful, fact-based, and easy to understand, especially for those who are just beginning to learn about global issues and want to respond with empathy and awareness.

You Don’t Have to Stand for Council to Stand Up

Someone recently commented on one of my posts, suggesting that if I’m going to be critical of Council, I should “stand for Council”.

It’s a common reflex and I get it. This post explains why that line of thinking doesn’t land with me.

Firstly, informed criticism is part of civic life. It’s how systems improve. It’s how communities stay engaged. It’s how people know they’re not alone when they have concerns.

I’ve spent time reporting on Kiama Council and local government. I’ve done the policy reading, watched the meetings, interviewed councillors, and watched how bureaucracy works and sadly too often it doesn’t. That experience matters. So does yours.

In Jamberoo we already have a councillor who represents our community and advocates for us at every turn. They don’t need to carry the burden alone. What they need is a community that has their back. A community that speaks up, stays informed, and lets Council know that when our representative lobbies for us, it’s because they’re listening to us.

Not everyone needs to sit behind the Council desk. Some of us are researchers. Writers. Listeners. Connectors. Watchdogs. Builders. Carers. The strength of a community lies in its diverse roles, not a single title.

This is what real democracy looks like, not just voting once every few years, but showing up in between. It’s not urban rage. It’s urban democracy. And it’s not about shouting the loudest, it’s about feeling confident that your voice matters.

And here’s the truth: when people are shut down, told they’re too negative, too vocal, too persistent, what they’re often being told is that their discomfort makes power uncomfortable. That’s not a reason to stop. That’s a reason to keep going.

I wont be standing for Council. I am and always will stand for community.
And I’m standing with everyone else who knows that the health of a local democracy depends on all of us using the tools we have, to speak, to share, to question, to care.

#UrbanDemocracy #CivicVoice #LocalLeadership #CommunityMatters #ParticipatoryDemocracy #SpeakUpKiama #AccountableCouncil #PowerOfThePeople #DemocracyBetweenElections #CollaborativeChange

For Jamberoo Residents, Kiama Council Gaslighting Continues

As a member of the Jamberoo Valley Ratepayers and Residents Association, I recently read two pieces of correspondence from Kiama Council that left me flabbergasted.

In both cases, residents offered practical, low-cost solutions to very real local problems. One involved flooding. The other raised safety concerns about a proposed cycleway extension. Both ideas were constructive. Both could have sparked a genuine Council–community partnership.

Instead, they ran headlong into that familiar force, a masterclass in bureaucratic deflection.

You can read the full exchange for yourself here and here.

Here’s the short version:

Residents offered helpful suggestions.
Council replied with historical references, legal limitations, and a general tone of “nothing to see here.”
No invitation to meet. No curiosity. No sense of shared purpose.

The pattern is clear

Raise a concern, offer a solution, and Council will reply with:

A plan from 2005
A rule they’ve decided is immovable
And a warning that any change might require redoing a flawed $200,000 design

All of it technically accurate. None of it helpful.

It was a masterclass in how to appear responsive while ensuring nothing changes, a reply carefully worded to close down the conversation and leave Jamberoo residents seething.

Lest we forget, this is the same Council that already left Jamberoo with a $970,000 shortfall in infrastructure funding.

How hard is it to write a response like this?

“Thanks for raising this. It’s clear you’ve thought it through. While there are some process and legal considerations, we’d be happy to meet, look at the specifics, and explore whether a collaborative approach might be possible.”

Not revolutionary. Just reasonable.

We can do better

It makes you seriously wonder what direction staff are getting from the top. Because this isn’t about policy. It’s about showing up with a willingness to listen, to think, and to work alongside the people you serve.

It takes no courage to quote the rulebook. It takes courage to say, “You might be right. Let’s find a way.”

When thoughtful, constructive ideas are met with polite obstruction, something deeper is lost. Not just confidence in the process — but faith that the process was ever meant to serve the community at all.

The rules are not the issue. The absence of imagination is. The absence of leadership is.

And that, unlike drainage or bike paths, is not so easily fixed with a shovel or a line on a map.
It takes people willing to say, We can do better. Let’s begin.

Update

After publishing this post, I received a formal request from Kiama Council asking me to remove links to two emails sent by Council staff in response to community advocacy.

To clarify: those emails were sent to a local advocacy organisation. They relate to infrastructure and safety concerns raised on behalf of residents.

It is accepted practice to assume that Council’s correspondence would be shared with the people affected. That’s how transparency works. It’s also how democracy works.

Council’s objections appear less about privacy and more about controlling the narrative. In that sense, the complaint reads like a local-government-scale SLAPP – a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation – intended to intimidate rather than inform.

I have declined their request.

That Council is now reading the blog is encouraging. May it be the beginning of more open dialogue, not the end of it.

FYI for other advocacy groups:

Council cannot claim privacy or confidentiality while engaging in correspondence with a publicly transparent group.
Their email responses are part of a public conversation, not a private one.
Attempting to restrict further distribution is a retrospective attempt to control optics, not a legitimate legal position.

#KiamaCouncil #LocalGovernment #Jamberoo #CommunityVoices #CivicLeadership #BureaucraticFailure #CouncilAccountability #PublicEngagement #InfrastructureMatters #WeCanDoBetter