Say what you like about the mental capacities of our esteemed politicians and political commentators, but they have done it again.
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While we are all spitting fury at one another over whether or not a series of lights should be briefly shone on a building the public are once again using their political anger on the wrong agenda.
Put aside the fact that the Opera House was funded by gambling, or that it has been done numerous times before for sponsors of sporting events, or even that the thoroughbred industry employs almost 50,000 full time equivalent employees, or pumps well over a billion dollars into government coffers, and $5 billion into the economy, once again we are missing the point.
If Alan Jones didn’t weigh-in on the debate the show would have already happened and been forgotten about by now, once again though, we have missed the point.
Rather than complaining about lights shining on the Opera House, we should be asking what is powering the projectors shining the lights.
The issues we should be holding higher office accountable for are much greater.
What we should be engaging each other about, and demanding answers for are the floundering education system, the underfunded health system, the skyrocketing costs of living, stagnant wage growth, the aged care sector, unemployment, immigration, the NBN – we could go on and on.
We should be demanding action on the appalling behaviour of this current crop of politicians at both state and federal levels, the kind of behaviour that, seemingly, has most of us distracted from the many more important issues we could be talking about.
Rather than complaining about lights shining on the Opera House, we should be asking what is powering the projectors shining the lights.
We should be asking about what repercussions those who not only allowed but actively encouraged water theft from the Murray Darling Basin are facing.
We should be asking any of a thousand question on a thousand issues that are far more important than the fleeting flickering of some lights on a landmark could ever be.
Here’s another one – on the weekend the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change – a report of over 6000 scientific references compiled by thousands of studies – didn't just recommend, but issued a stark warning, that if the world doesn’t stop burning coal by 2050 the globe will suffer catastrophic consequences.
On Tuesday, our noble Prime Minister, whoever it is this week, simply closed his eyes and said no.
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