When I was young, just before I entered parliament, the comment about Canberra was that it "looks like Chatswood, votes like Cessnock." However, I think it has slightly more to offer the eye than Chatswood.  

 

Canberra people are polite and say hello. They haven’t grown so big that they have become impersonal. Its parks are beautiful and the walk around the lake is something that really takes you back down through the gears.

Soon the pollies in the z-sleds will be cruising the town. They will be decamped from the corners of our nation to hotels, motels, caravan parks, spare bedrooms, garages or their own little flat next to another little flat with another pollie in it.

Like going back to boarding school there are the prefects, the bullies, the bells to tell you where to go and when. It has its own in-house jokes and believes that it is the only school in the nation. Peer groups are formed and enforced. Excess frivolity can lead to expulsion. It is the big white boarding school on the hill only this time it is co-ed and grog is thrown in but the school newspaper will take no prisoners.

The crazy, wonderful and flummoxing thing is that it represents you. Canberra allows you to see the play, the spectacle or the circus which is your nation’s Government within a short drive of where you live.

 

Now, States matter during state elections but even then, and at every other time, your town is the main game. Taxes, wars, natural disasters, social issues, the mad left and the very sensible right. It is all here in all its colours, the fascinating tapestry.

So when you see that z-sled with the arrogant, conniving, greedy, self aggrandising representative of the people of Australia, remember, that unlike Egypt currently, you can vote them out. Also remember that the greatest honour in their working life is to work in your town.

 

In Egypt we are seeing the complete disintegration of the status quo. We hope that they get a government that is truly representative and regularly tested by the people at the ballot box. The concern is that there may be a possibility that every person gets one vote once and the inaugural democratic election ends up being the final election, followed by a despotic theocracy.

 

This could lead to the further marginalisation and further removal of the rights of minority groups such as Coptic Christians. In the previous century, Coptic Christians represented in excess of 20 per cent of the population and now they represent around 10 per cent.

 

Many Copts have their economic rights precluded by being confined to the slums and the garbage in a collection of catacombs on the edge of Cairo. Imagine the hue and cry if you were of a certain religious belief and you were sectioned to live homeless on the edge of Mt Ainslie.

 

Of course this situation has played out against similar minorities in Iraq, Iran, Libya and sections of Lebanon. One hopes Egypt gets to the other side of this tumultuous Rubicon to a place where the dignity and individual rights of men and women of any faith or none can live in harmony.

 

As I go around Lake Burley Griffin I see so many people who are happy. They are minding their own business, they live and let live and I ask myself what have we got that brings about a harmony where in other countries there is such disharmony even though human beings are as a group homogeneous in their genetics and psychology.   

 

I can only come to the answer that it is our culture, the unwritten rules that make our everyday life liveable in a way that accentuates the freedom of the individual. So it seems a terrible shame that we appear at times to be somewhat embarrassed about where we have come from, who we are and what we represent.

 

We give succour to this cringe culture that we must change the flag, we must change the anthem, we must change everything we say and do until we have changed to a neutered and pallid expression of nothingness. If those who aspire to this arrive at their Elysian field, then maybe we too will inspire, by reason of the vacuum we create, the same disharmony that we see on our televisions at night somewhere else.