An Australian expert on agricultural research says that we are not doing enough to deal with climate change, a sentiment likely to be shared by anyone who watches the news on television.

Collectively, we are doing too little too slowly, too partially, and too timidly, to tackle the obvious challenges that have been well understood by scientists for decades.

The key word is ‘timid’.  Or, if you prefer, gutless. 

According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary,  the word ‘timid’ means ‘subject to fear; easily frightened; wanting boldness or courage; fearful, timorous.’  The Macquarie has ‘subject to fear; easily alarmed; timorous; shy.’ 

Let’s stick with ‘easily frightened or alarmed.’

The suggestion that we as a nation are too easily frightened or alarmed is certainly warranted in the case of climate change.  Tens of thousands of people are dying in front of our eyes, and whole areas of the planet are becoming uninhabitable or uninsurable, and yet we are still too timid to do what we should to save those who will come after us.

And you can say precisely the same thing for our failure to deal sensibly with other issues like same sex marriage, housing, corruption, and taxation. 

It is obvious that if we wish to continue with the same level of government services – and the addiction dates back to 1788 – we will have to pay more in tax to pay for those services.  But as one European MP correctly observed: ‘We all know the answers – but we all want to be re-elected.’ 

So, one weakness of democracy is that voters and the elected may be too timid to make what might look to be hard decisions.

And nowhere has our timidity been more on show than in our treatment of the First Nations people.  The Commonwealth has pussy-footed over this since it was born. 

So, a considered suggestion is made – that we the people give them a voice in the government of this nation.  What could be simpler?  Who in good faith could say ‘No’?

But we are told it is not simple, and there are risks.  And the timid wire is tripped yet again.

And that wire is set by just the people who set it on same sex marriage, housing, corruption, and taxation.  They are people of dark corners.  They do not appeal to the contented among us, but to the discontented; they confuse being reactionary with being conservative; and they are much stronger on demolition than building.  To the extent that any of them appeals to an Australian under forty, that is a sad accident of history.  They do in a few ways resemble those who delivered Boris Johnson or Donald Trump.

And this most recent appeal to the timid is so brazen as to be contemptuous.  ‘If you don’t know, Vote No!’  ‘Just accept that you’re just another bloody idiot, Short-arse, and leave everything to dear old Uncle Rupert.’

It is so sad a flaw in a young nation that should have everything before it.  We are being held back by naysayers who apparently don’t want us to grow up.

And if we have had this problem with the issues I have referred to, just think of the bloody mayhem that awaits those who would like to have an Australian head of state.

It is no small thing to call someone out for being timid.  If you said it to an Australian cricketer or footballer, you would be looking at a bunch of fives.

But we the people just keep toddling along ,and rolling over like bunnies back to our burrows, at the whistle of suits in Canberra, and an outcast in New York – and we mock the myths of the bronzed Anzacs, Ron Barassi, and Shane Warne.

Well, we are no longer the lucky country, but we are still run by second rate managers, who have run us out of luck, and who exist to inflict their own timid mediocrity on the sunlit plains extended.

Exeunt, with a dead march.

Voice – Murdoch – Horne – Liberal Party- conservative.