Reflecting on the view from beyond

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

Time, once again, to reflect on the view from beyond. 

To accompany your reflection, please listen here to Samuel Barber's exquisitely beautiful Agnus Dei performed by the Choir of New College, Oxford. 

Earth viewed from Space Shuttle Discovery. A distance of 500 km.

 A distance of 45,000 km.

Earth viewed from the Moon. A distance of 385,000 km.

Earth and the Moon viewed from the orbit of Mercury. A distance of 183 million km. Farther than our normal distance from the Sun due to the orbits of the two planets at the time.

Earth and the Moon viewed from Mars orbit (using Mars Global Surveyor's high resolution camera). A distance of 142 million km.

Earth viewed as a morning star from Mars surface (using Spirit Rover's Box Brownie).  

Earth viewed from Saturn (using Cassini's high resolution camera).  A distance of 1.5 billion km.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbour life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”  Carl Sagan.

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” Mahatma Gandhi.

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”  "For most of history, man has had to fight nature to survive; in this century he is beginning to realise that, in order to survive, he must protect it." Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” Neil Armstrong.

"Never have the nations of the world had so much to lose, or so much to gain. Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames. Save it we can and save it we must. Then shall we earn the eternal thanks of Mankind and, as peacemakers, the eternal blessing of God." President John F. Kennedy in an address to the UN General Assembly, September 25, 1961.

"We rich nations, for that is what we are, have an obligation not only to the poor nations, but to all the grandchildren of the world, rich and poor. We have not inherited this earth from our parents to do with it what we will. We have borrowed it from our children and we must be careful to use it in their interests as well as our own. Anyone who fails to recognise the basic validity of the proposition put in different ways by increasing numbers of writers, from Malthus to The Club of Rome, is either ignorant, a fool, or evil." Moss Cass as Australian Minister for the Environment and Conservation in an address to the Environment Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, November 13, 1974.

“The Earth does not belong to us; we belong to the Earth. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”  Attributed to Chief Seattle.

A quick proposition

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

Dateline: Australia, Federal Politics 2013.

Just a quick proposition today.

I wonder how it would've been viewed if the new cabinet consisted of 18 women and one man?  That would've been OK, wouldn't it?

Yes, of course it would have.  Perfectly acceptable.  Perfectly acceptable, absolutely.  

Very short and very sweet. A final word.

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

A final word in this post election 'Short and Sweet' series.

Once again we've had an election. Once again we've seen a change of government. Once again this has occurred with a minimum of fuss.

The people have expressed their will; their view has been respected; the result has been honoured.

This has not been the common experience in human history; indeed it is very much the exception. 

This is something of which we should be very proud; something we should cherish deeply; something we should protect fiercely.

So that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."

Not so short, but definitely sweet. It's Time.

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

With ardent monarchist and traditionalist, Tony Abbott, about to enter the Lodge, one's gaze naturally becomes fixed on Australia becoming a republic, and one or two other long overdue matters.

The Australian Republic.

For those of you who are keen to see Australia become a republic, or even if you are not, I thought you might be interested in this process for selecting a president.

I believe it deals with the reservations that were raised at the Constitutional Convention held in 1998 about the public wanting to elect a president, as opposed to having one imposed upon them by the politicians, and how that would lead to competing mandates.  It deals with the problem that the political parties would politicise any election process and also with the issue of having the President stand above politics.  It does not and cannot deal with the issue of wanting to keep the tradition of the British Monarch as our Head of State.

As for the issue of reserve powers presently available to the Governor General, these would transfer directly to the President.

This process could also be adopted at the state level for the election of state governors. 

Step 1: Public nomination process, such as that used by The Australia Day Council for The Australian of the Year.  Any member of the public can nominate any other member of the public, with the only disqualification being that no nominee is or has been a politician or a political candidate at the federal, state, territory or local level, or a member of any political party.

Step 2: An apolitical committee, like the Australia Day Council, selects 12 nominees from the list.

Step 3: A federal cross-party parliamentary committee selects 3 nominees from that list of 12.

Step 4: Those 3 nominees then need to be endorsed by 75% of Members and Senators in a joint sitting of Parliament.

Step 5: The 3 nominees then submit themselves to a public vote of the Australian electorate, with a simple preferential vote of 1, 2, 3, so that the winning candidate gets a minimum of 50% of the preferred vote.

In step 5, there is no campaigning undertaken by the candidates, political parties or anyone else on their behalf or third party endorsements.  There would be a publicly funded information campaign run by the Australian Electoral Commission outlining the achievements of the candidates and the candidates would be required to give a two minute TV address explaining to the public why they would like to be the President of the Australian Republic, which would be replayed several times on all TV and radio networks as well as on-line.

A president would be in place for a fixed five-year period.

The parliament could remove the President with a 75% vote of a joint sitting of Parliament.

Our process to date has managed to select many fine governors-general and governors (not to mention Australian's of the year) who have been above politics and have served the nation well.  I see no reason why the process outlined above would not continue to do so.

The Australian flag.

This is much easier.

Step 1: Members of the public submit flag designs to an apolitical committee, like the Australia Day Council.

Step 2: The committee selects five alternatives from the list.

Step 3: Those five alternatives, along with the current Australian flag (which makes six in total) are voted on by the public on a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 preferential basis, so that the winning entry gets a minimum 50% of the preferred vote.

The winning entry becomes (or remains) our nation's flag.

The Australian National Anthem.

I've no idea how much appetite there is for a change to it, but my personal preference has always been the tune of Waltzing Matilda with new words more fitting of a national anthem.  Although, a bloke pinching a sheep from a landowner and then that landowner calling in the cops, only to have the bloke do a runner and jump into a lake, is quintessentially Australian.

Have a listen to the tune (without the words) and ask yourself if it isn't the perfect melody for this nation listen here

The History.

Since 1972, when there was a strong feeling that we were about to see a change of government and a reforming one at that, it was pretty clear to me that three things that also needed to change were:

1. The national anthem.  Remember back in 1972 God Save the Queen was still our national anthem.  Yes citizens, while it might be hard to believe now, Shane Gould received her three gold medals to the national anthem of the UK at the 1972 Munich Olympics.  Could you imagine that happening today?

2. That the Governor General needed to be replaced by an Australian President.

3. That the Australian flag needed to become an Australian flag, without the flag of another country in its left hand corner.

In that time only the national anthem has changed to Advance Australia Fair.  The republic proposed in November 1999 was defeated (see results below), and any suggestion to alter the Australian flag has been met with boisterous opposition.

To be clear, I loved and still love God Save The Queen.  Loved singing it as part of a combined schools choir at the Sydney Opera House in 1974, and can still sing the 'D' part and would be happy to so for anyone who wished to hear me.  But it was clearly the anthem for the UK, not for Australia, and looking back now it seems very odd that it was ever any different.

So too with the British Monarch.

I think Elizabeth II is a great monarch, and who can't but be fond of Phil The Greek.  But they are for the UK, not for us.

Same for the Union Jack.  

I think it's a terrific flag, one of the best in the world, visually and symbolically; but again it's for the UK, not for us.

To coin a phrase, surely 'It's Time' to consider seriously these issues once more.  Especially as the Prime Minister-elect would almost certainly be sympathetic to the cause.

Eureka regards, from your fellow citizen.

Please note: The Eureka flag is not my personal preferred choice for an Australian flag, but rather symbolic of a struggle.  And, of course, 'Eureka' is a Greek word, meaning "I've Found It'.  

"The exclamation 'Eureka!' is famously attributed to the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes. He reportedly proclaimed "Eureka!" when he stepped into a bath and noticed that the water level rose—he suddenly understood that the volume of water displaced must be equal to the volume of the part of his body he had submerged. He then realised that the volume of irregular objects could be measured with precision, a previously intractable problem. He is said to have been so eager to share his discovery that he leapt out of his bathtub and ran through the streets of Syracuse naked." [Wikipedia]

Many's the time I've done exactly the same thing when I'd discovered something new and exciting in the polling data, though the local townsfolk don't get to see me frolicking about naked, just my wallabies do.

"Lordy me! What's he up to?"

Short and sweet, dreams.

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

On June 27 2011, legendary social researcher, Hugh MacKay, explained on ABC Radio's The World Today program, that what people always want to hear from their political leaders is "Let's hear your dreams for a better Australia."

Dream is a very powerful word.

It's the same word used so compellingly by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his immortal "I Have a Dream" speech over fifty years ago, which I recently wrote about here 

It's also the same word that George Bernard Shaw used in his play Back to Methuselah:  "You see things; and you say 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say 'Why not?'"

President John F. Kennedy, inspired by George Bernard Shaw, referred to these words in his address to the Irish Parliament on June 28 1963.

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, equally inspired, used similar words in his 1968 presidential campaign: “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.” 

Senator Ted Kennedy quoted Bobby Kennedy word's in the final part of his very moving eulogy for his brother on June 8 1968:

"My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

"Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world."

"As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.'"

If you've never seen it, I would urge you to view it.  A most moving experience see here.

I'd like to believe Ted Kennedy was speaking on behalf of all us, for all of the dreamers who are so crucial for humanity's future.

So crucial, so rare and, so often, so cruelly stolen from us. 

Ted Kennedy delivering the eulogy for his brother Bobby.

Short and sweet too

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

Today's post is also short and sweet, but, again, feel free to smoke 'em if you got 'em.  

On 17 December 1962 the ABC, CBS and NBC networks presented a one hour interview with President John F. Kennedy in prime time.  Yes, that's right, one hour in prime time, which was also carried by all major radio networks, called "After Two Years - A Conversation With The President". The interview was jointly conducted by Bill Lawrence of ABC News, George Herman of CBS News and Sander Vanocur of NBC News (who is still with us, aged 85) and was held in the President's office at the White House.

It's an interview I've referred to before because of the high quality of the questions and answers and the respect shown by the journalists to President Kennedy and the respect he showed to them and the audience.  Today it's this response to this question from Bill Lawrence that I wished to highlight as something to think about seriously for the incoming Government and Prime Minister.

Bill Lawrence: As you look back upon your first two years in office, sir, has your experience in the office matched your expectations? You had studied a good deal the power of the Presidency, the methods of its operations. How has this worked out as you saw it in advance?

President Kennedy: The problems are more difficult than I had imagined them to be. The responsibilities placed on the United States are greater than I imagined them to be, and there are greater limitations upon our ability to bring about a favourable result than I had imagined them to be. And I think that is probably true of anyone who becomes President, because there is such a difference between those who advise or speak or legislate, and between the man who must select from the various alternatives proposed and say that this shall be the policy of the United States. It is much easier to make the speeches than it is to finally make the judgements, because unfortunately your advisers are frequently divided. If you take the wrong course, and on occasion I have, the President bears the burden of the responsibility quite rightly. The advisers may move on to new advice.

Short and sweet

Colleagues and scholars from coast to coast, across Bass Strait and all the ships at sea.

Today's post is short and sweet, but still feel free to smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Following the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, veteran journalist Mark Shields said on the PBS Newshour:

"There's a terrible temptation on the part of the press after an election. If you win, you're a genius with an I.Q. north of 300. If you lose, you're somehow a dullard who probably isn't able to tie your own shoes."

As you were.

Insiders - Poll of Polls 1st September 2013

You can view the final Poll of Polls of this electoral cycle here