IS IT just me or does anyone else wonder why they’re busting their balls to make a piss-weak contribution to saving the environment when most of the world, the Government and a fair whack of our neighbours continue to turn environmental vandalism into an extreme sport?

Don’t worry, I’m going to keep doing it, and so should you, but it does shit me at times because it seems so futile. Me and my little green bags and bucket-back, while Hazelwood is churning out emissions 24/7 fagging our way to global lung cancer, and China’s flat out taking 10 years off the human habitableness of the planet every day with their chain-smoking emissions.

People are arrogant. We just think: “The earth won’t fry us. She loves us. We’re humans, we’re the best.” The earth doesn’t care. It’s just an organism with no heart and no favourites. It just heats up and cools down to cope with its conditions. To the earth we’re just insects and if we fry, we fry. She doesn’t give a rats. Humans are the new dinosaurs.

At our place we’ve shifted down to one car, cycle where possible, pack the kids’ lunches in bread bags and reusable containers, buy in bulk, shop locally, reuse wrapping paper and packaging, switch appliances off at the wall, flush the toilet with the kids’ bath water, buy when we need, not when we want, and we even have chooks. Sure, we’re not living in a hessian sack under a tree eating cockroaches but we’re doing our bit. Or at least a bit. But it never seems enough. I vacillate between being wracked with guilt and thinking, why bother?

What good will my little drop in the ocean do when the Government should have had a decent solar-powered energy solution 20 years ago yet keeps banging on about clean coal? Repeat after me: there is no such thing as clean coal, there is no such thing as clean coal, there is no such thing as clean coal. Even I know that and I’m an idiot.

The aspirationals continue to build their McMansions an hour’s drive from where they work and then hop in their fuel-guzzling monster trucks every morning to pay for their five wide-screen televisions, air-conditioning to counteract poor design and petrol to fuel their “lifestyle”, which is basically shopping. Am I the only one who’s a bit happy when the price of petrol goes up? “Good,” I think. “Make those dickheads suffer.”

Because nothing will make them think, or change.

They bleat: “We can’t afford to live closer.” Yes, you can. You just won’t have a double garage, a parents’ retreat, a rumpus room, a home cinema and five bedrooms with en suites. While industry and farming continue to squander drinking water by the gigalitre we had a 7000-litre water tank installed. Yes, I know, we’re legends. I mentioned to the bloke who installed it that we’d need one of those TANK WATER IN USE signs. The bloke said: “Stuff ’em. Just let ’em dob you in and when they come over, show them your tank.” I liked that idea, then I had a change of heart. We put the sign up to show people that you can have green grass if you install a tank. That is if you can afford a tank. So much environmental responsibility is simply a privilege of the wealthy.

If I turn up at a supermarket without my calico bags I’m consumed by so much guilt I want to whack on a hair shirt and self-flagellate. Yet the Government still won’t legislate against plastic shopping bags even though, according to recent reports, a billion more bags were handed out in supermarkets and shops last year than in 2006, which is an increase of more than 40%. Maybe they’re on to something. Why bother when you can walk into a supermarket and buy items such as sliced apple. Ready-to-eat, all cut, with plastic wrap and packaged. Isn’t an apple already ready to eat? If you want it sliced, use a knife. And as far as coleslaw’s concerned, I cut my own. Hopefully it’ll save the world. I was in one of those $2 shops the other day and found myself surrounded by crushing aisles of imported useless plastic crap. And I realised it’s impossible for environmental sensitivity to coexist with capitalism.

We feel guilty and our kids feel guilty. And they worry. I’ve heard about kids who say: “I’m not allowed to eat strawberries from Queensland because the carbon emissions are too high.” We voted for politicians to protect us by consulting smart people and acting on their advice so we could be insulated from this kind of impending catastrophe. They didn’t. And now we feel as though it’s all our fault.

My pointless efforts do make me feel better. At times to the point of smug. When you don’t know what to do, do anything. Unfortunately we can’t do everything. But we can cut our own apples.

HOW can anyone not agree with free universal high-quality health care? How can anyone think that our current public/private marriage of political convenience is beneficial to all Australians both now and in the future? How can anyone think that our nation is getting value for money? It’s not.

Private health insurance is a rip-off. Public health needs the $3 billion government subsidy that is propping up the private health insurance industry. And a truck-load more. People don’t need a 30 per cent rebate on their private health insurance premiums. They need not to feel terrified into having to pay the premiums in the first place.

My solution? Make it mandatory that politicians and their families are forced to use only the public health system.

Government subsidy of private health is theft from the public health system. It’s a disgrace. Where is the choice if you are on benefits or a low income and you can’t afford private health insurance? “Chicken or beef, sir?” That’s a choice.

Having private health insurance is not a choice. The poor, the old and the vulnerable wait in pain. The rest get served first. Why is pain and loss of quality of life not as important if the person is old, poor or on benefits? It’s discrimination. It’s an economically adjusted pain scale. “They’re doing it tough so a bit more pain won’t hurt ’em.”

Last week I found myself on the Medi-Go-Round. It was one of those “it’s probably nothing, it’s probably nothing, it’s probably nothing, maybe it’s cancer” scenarios. After six months of niggles that had grown to excruciating discomfort, I was off to the doctor. There was talk of having something removed. I don’t have private health insurance. I’ve never had it. I’m politically and philosophically opposed to it.

But I also have the confidence of my convictions to tell you that if I was facing six months on a waiting list or six months of misery, I was happy to pay out of my own pocket and jump the queue. It’s not fair that I can do that. I want my taxes used efficiently, or to pay more tax so that we can all be treated in order of need and not of wealth.

Start talking to people about why they have private health insurance and you’ll realise that hospital waiting lists are the best advertisement and incentive for private health insurance there is. The Government has no interest in reducing the waiting lists because the waiting lists are saving them money that they can spend on important things, such as the parliamentary super fund, $9000-a-roll silk wallpaper for the Prime Minister’s plane and more defence toys and war bling.

People will tell you that they have private health insurance because they were sucked in by the fear of waiting lists, getting into “the breeding zone”, the 2000 run-for-cover campaign or simply “because my accountant told me to”. None of them will tell you that they think it’s value for money. Most of them are opposed to it. Necessary evil. They will tell you that they don’t notice the payments and any rebate feels like a bonus.

If negative optimism is “it won’t happen to me” then positive optimism must be “maybe it will”. Once people sign up to private health insurance they are reluctant to pull out because: “What if I get hit by a car tomorrow?” And for the people who convince themselves that having private health insurance is taking pressure off public hospitals, it’s not. It’s making the situation worse.

It’s clever how the Government is taking away with one hand and giving back with the other. “Oh look at what a mess the public health system is in! Whoever did that should be smacked. And look at the Medicare levy surcharge. Outrageous! Here’s a rebate on your private health insurance and a lovely safety net. What did you say? A safety net will only encourage the increase of fees and not benefit the public in any way shape or form? Don’t be so cynical. We’re your Government and we love you.” It’s all smoke and mirrors, ladies and gentlemen.

I pay the Medicare levy surcharge and I want it to go to Medicare. At present, it doesn’t. It probably goes to pay for John Howard’s nose-hair clippers, or some more taxpayer-funded government advertising.

Tomorrow Michael Moore’s documentary on the US health system, Sicko, opens in cinemas around Australia. When you watch this movie think of it as “here’s one we prepared earlier”.

There is a proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” With free high-quality universal health care there will be shade for our children. With the increase of private health there will be no shade because there will be no trees.

I love a good rant. I feel better now.

P.S. One day I will write something asking why dental is not covered under Medicare. Why is the mouth separate?

I’VE wanted to write about the social apartheid and false economy of private schools for a while. And the Government’s “privatisation by stealth” of the education system. So a few months ago I hunted down the speech that writer Shane Moloney made to Scotch College. Reading it, I cheered, thumped the table and yelled “hallelujah” at the sheer brilliance and balls of Moloney. I then slumped in a heap thinking, “Well, there’s no point me writing anything because he’s said everything that I want to, but much better.”

A recent chance meeting with Moloney had me gush about the speech and explain my quandary. He encouraged me to basically “just say it all again”. So Shane Moloney, if you’re out there, this one’s for you. And for the 70 per cent of parents who send their children to government schools. And for the 70 per cent of students who attend them.

Here’s something in the budget that you may have missed: federal funding for private schools will increase from $5.8 billion to $7.5 billion over the next five years. Funding to public schools will rise from $3.1 billion to $3.4 billion over the next five years. Shame on us.

Here’s where I stand: private schools should not receive funding. That’s it. We have a police force funded by the Government. If you want a bodyguard or private security, you pay for it out of your own pocket.

The same should go for schools. If you want your child to go to a school where they wear blazers so you can get over your own insecurities, or the chip on your own shoulder, you should pay for it. Every single cent.

And it should be compulsory for all politicians to send their children to government schools. And use only public health care.

It’s liberating not to be worried about where my young sons will be going to high school. It will be one of the closest government high schools. If things don’t work out, we’ll try somewhere else. It’s not their education. It’s their school. Not the same thing. The school a child attends has no bearing on their future success or happiness. I’m disgusted by parents’ nauseating obsession with the perfect school for their perfect child. Parents panic that any “wrong” decision may mess up their kid’s potential trajectory. They seem to believe that kids can simply be programmed by their parents’ desires. Here’s a tip: instead of both working full time just so you can send your kids to a private school, cut down your work, be less stressed, stop outsourcing your life, send them to the local secondary and be home more. Teenagers need, and want, their parents to be around.

Sending children to private schools seems to be less about parents doing what they think is best for their child and more a case of parents wanting their children to have something better than every other child. Education is the entire community’s responsibility and the outcome affects us all.

I am torn between saying that the public schools desperately need more funding and writing about how wonderful they are. Both of which are true.

The lessons kids learn in government schools — resilience, motivation, community and tolerance — hold them in much better stead than hand-holding, spoon-feeding, mollycoddling and segregation.

When I think of kids less fortunate than my own, I think of kids stuck in middle-class, single-sex, white ghettos from the age of five (or four if they’re “gifted”).

The independent and Christian schools are divisive, discriminatory, reliant on hand-outs and implicitly teach children that some kids deserve nicer playgrounds than others. Even within their own tribe. The preps at Burke Hall surely don’t deserve better facilities than the preps at St Gabriel’s in Reservoir. Give me a child when they are seven and I’ll show you an invoice for $12,477 (excluding uniforms, excursions and music lessons) for something they could get around the corner free.

I added up the cost of fees for what it would cost to send my three children to a middle-of-the-range private school for six years. Not counting uniforms, excursions, transport, building funds etc. And it was about $330,000, give or take. My first thought? No one can be getting value for money. My second thought? I could buy my kids a degree for that amount of money, and I might have to if education keeps heading the way it is. But I’m hoping that my kids will all be tradies. Because the happiest blokes I know are the tradies. People say, “Stop funding private schools? It’s not as easy as that.”

Yes it is. Like smoking in hospitals, gender-based pay and taking babies away from unmarried mothers, funding private education is something we will look back on and be ashamed of.

God is not only bullshit, his agents are tax cheats.

The expert scholars who have written the papers quoted below are happy to answer questions.

February 7 Q and A for those who missed it. 

February 8 me talking on radio with Paul Bevan on 1223 ABC Newcastle 

Are you okay with how much religion is gouging from Australia’s spending?

(Statistics can be easily massaged – $30 billion is in theory possible but  more  is likely. If this is not correct can someone supply us all with the figure that supports religion (not charity, not all charity work is religious) costs us. For more info on the shameful amount we fund religion read The Purple Economy by Max Wallace)

Some other ways to raise money off the top of my head…

Cut the national school chaplaincy program, there’s $437 million right there.

PUBLISHED BY THEAGE ON OCT 23 2008.

Here’s one to file under “What would chicks know?”, or “Sheilas, if they didn’t wear skirts we’d throw rocks at ’em”, or possibly “Stand back ladies, have a cup of tea and talk about your feelings while we fellas run the world”.

Yes, I do have penis envy this morning; I wish I were a bloke writing this because I’d have a better chance of people taking me seriously. They’d be seduced by my authoritative voice, convinced by the myth of my genetically superior intelligence, hypnotised by my sense of entitlement and comforted by my grey suit and crisp white shirt.

The next bit’s a bit dry but go with me. The Millennium Development Goals were cooked up by the UN to help make the world a better place. The eight goals are: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development.

You’ll be thrilled to know there’s an event beginning tomorrow here in Melbourne called Business For Millennium Development Summit. It’s not as sexy as it sounds, trust me.

Pen pushers, number crunchers, professional capitalists and captains of industry from all around the world are meeting to chat about the practicalities and challenges of implementing the eight goals in business.

I expect the conference will kick off with some lukewarm coffee and flaccid croissants and end with a dinner, which will be part hot bed of adultery, part celebration of the choreographically challenged.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s fabulous the folks with the cash and the jobs are bumping heads and chewing the fat trying to work out how best to implement these goals. What I am appalled, incensed and almost amused by is that on the original program of 24 speakers, all were men.

That’s right. Twenty-four speakers. All men. Just to be clear, in an attempt to make it appear that it isn’t a festival of gender apartheid, the moderator is Jenny Brockie. I imagine her role consists of using her feminine charm to diffuse potential testosterone-fuelled shirt-fronting: “Righto boys, settle down, take that biffo outside. We’re trying to save the world here.”

The decision to select Brockie as moderator (who’s not only smart, wise and incisive but also very pretty) aligns perfectly with the corporate world’s mission statement: Women As An Afterthought And Only If We Have To.

One woman equals 24 blokes. Where do I start? Jane Sloane, executive director of the International Women’s Development Agency, was outspoken and constructive in her response. She called the organisers of the conference, pointed out the absence of female speakers and gave them a list of suggestions. Which may explain why the number of speakers on the website has suddenly jumped from 24 to 32 and the number of women has skyrocketed from zero to three. You’ll find them at the bottom of the page of speakers.

“Yet, again,” Sloane points out, “we have a major summit on critical issues facing the world, with women almost completely excluded from the discussion.” It’s not enough for women to be there. They have to be setting the agendas.

Wouldn’t we need gender equality embedded as a default setting for the other seven Millenium Goals to have any hope of being successful? If the organisers approached an equal number of women and men in the first place, there’s no way they’d have ended up with an all-bloke line-up.

If there were an equal number of women and men in the organisation to start with, this probably never would have happened. Now it’s a game of “if my aunty had balls she’d be my uncle”. The truth is, if my aunty had balls she’d have a better chance at being approached to speak at this forum. Or any forum, conference or symposium.

The response is always “We just got the best speakers and they just happened to all be blokes”. Wow! What a magic trick! Imagine if the line-up just happened to turn out all women. I’m certain one of the mostly male organisers would have said: “Hey! Where are the blokes?” But it took women to tap them on the shoulder and point out there were no women and show them where to look.

Suddenly they found three women speakers. Just like that. Imagine if they’d tried looking earlier than the last minute how many may have ended up contributing to this important discussion. Apparently conference organisers find it hard to find women speakers. Here’s a tip. Try looking.

IT’S OFFICIAL. The Catholic Church is fully sick. And so is George Pell. And I’m not talking about his health. The man is like massively random in a totally wicked way. Respect!

The Pellmeister has just launched a Catholic social networking site. On the electric computer. I know, futuristic! You heard that right brothers and sisters, the Micks now have their own Facebook. It’s called Xt3, which stands for Christ in the third millennium.

It’s way cool, all the other religions are like totally raging that their church isn’t as hip. Check it out! Who are the chosen people now? Bite me. Xt3 is a social networking site for Catholic yoof. There will be no poking before marriage. Gay? Don’t ask, don’t tell. Back in the ’70s rock masses, liturgical dancing and hippies playing guitars got young bums on pews. But that was 30 years ago! It’s time to get with it! Log on, hook up and interact for Jesus!

That Catholic Church is so modern. Yes, the same church that treats gay people and women as second-class citizens, requires their priests to take a vow of celibacy and considers it a sin for a 13-year-old rape victim to have an abortion. The same church that rejects the use of condoms to fight the AIDS pandemic in Africa. That same church is so progressive and in touch with the third millennium they have a social networking site.

Xt3 has been launched to help young Catholics link up for World Youth Day and keep in contact with the yoof after the excitement of a week of prayer, trust exercises and rosary bead trading is over. World Youth Day will be held in Sydney from July 15 to July 20 and culminates in a Mass celebrated by the Pope. Yo! Big Ben is in the house. All the Bernadettes and Gerards will be able to chill out with The Main Dude. Check out the World Youth Day pilgrim apparel. Not only can you buy hoodies and baseball caps but rock on down to the online store and buy a Funky Cross Belt Buckle for $19.95 (inc GST). World Youth Day. The Time Of Your Eternal Life.

I had a cruise around the website and thought that being an atheist youth must really suck sometimes. Someone needs to organise them a jamboree. As far as weddings and funerals are concerned churches are still doing a pretty good trade. And there are grassroots Christian groups that are doing phenomenal work with the poor, the broken, the sick and the lost. Not in a “you read the Bible and we’ll give you something to eat” way, but in a non-judgemental compassionate way. With open arms, closed eyes and a no-questions-asked spirit. There’s plenty of work being done in the community that turns a blind eye to official church bureaucracy. Mavericks who are thinking “what would Jesus do?” and doing it.

On a weekly basis traditional church attendances are dwindling rapidly. Mega churches such as Hillsong, on the other hand, are going off like a frog in a sock. Prosperity teachings, rock and roll and use of the word “awesome” certainly have people taking Christ as their personal saviour and buying a DVD and a caramel mochaccino on the way out. Have you heard about Pillsong? Apparently ravers drop a couple of ecstasy pills and head down to Hillsong for some hugging, loving and rapture. How could you ever come down from that?

Once upon a time the word of the Lord and the fear of eternal damnation was enough to fill the pews. It’s 2008 and time for churches to rethink their approach. A church round the corner has installed a colourful playground to get the young families in. What are the traditional churches going to do to stay alive? Most churches are medieval, cold and uncomfortable. Wooden pews, organ grinders and, if there is carpet, it reeks of suffering. Will churches soon start installing gold-class seating, free wireless hot spots, PlayStations for the kiddies and a Gloria Jean’s coffee shop to save souls?

You’ve got to admire the Catholic Church’s attitude. They stick to their guns. There will be no backdown on our anachronistic dogma that is at our core, but we will give you an illusion of progress. Back in April the Vatican abolished limbo, which means (apparently) unbaptised babies now have a place in heaven. I don’t know whether that includes Muslim babies, Hindu babies and aborted babies. And they’ve updated their mortal sins to include drug dealing, environmental vandalism and “manipulative” genetic science.

If traditional churches want to stay relevant it’s time for them to stop selling the sizzle and start selling steak. Which may be hard for some to swallow.