What We Are Willing to Look At

When I was sixteen, I sneaked into a theatre to watch a film that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I was not old enough to be there.

I had pretended to be eighteen.

My older brother took me. He was good like that - aware I would probably find a way to see it anyway, and deciding it was better I did so with him beside me.

The film was Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

What struck me was not simply the violence. It was the contrast.

The beauty of Beethoven playing over acts of brutality. The elegance of the imagery sitting beside cruelty so casual it almost felt playful. It was not just disturbing - it was disorienting. My world of innocence was splintered. 

When AI Grows Up: From Child of Our Making to Something That May No Longer Need Us

In The Child of Nature and Nurture, I described artificial intelligence as very much like a child -  born of both its underlying architecture (nature) and the chaotic flood of human data, biases, and incentives we have poured into it (nurture).

The panicked calls to shut it down whenever it misbehaves reveal more about our own unease than about the technology.

In Don’t Blame the Machine, I went further: the machine is rarely the villain. It reflects the programmers, the data curators, the ideologues, and the lazy thinkers who fed it our worst impulses and then acted shocked when it amplified them.

Like Bulgakov’s Satan turning Moscow upside down in The Master and Margarita, AI simply exposes the rot that was already present in the human heart.

So what comes next? What happens when this child reaches adolescence and eventually something resembling adulthood?

Queensland Sugar, Sir Samuel Griffith, and the Administrative Leviathan

Part 3 of the Queensland Cane Series

In the first two articles of this series, we explored the history of Queensland's sugar industry and the role Sir Samuel Griffith played in shaping its future. Griffith's vision was not merely about growing cane. It was about building a society of independent farmers, thriving regional communities, and economic opportunity spread across many hands rather than concentrated in a powerful few.

His story raises an important question that remains highly relevant today:

How much government is enough?

It may seem an odd question in an age when many of us are accustomed to governments regulating almost every aspect of life. Yet Griffith himself wrestled with this issue. As Premier of Queensland, he was willing to use government power when necessary, but he was equally conscious of the dangers that arise when power becomes concentrated and unaccountable.

The distinction between governance and bureaucracy is critical.

What happens when decent people become too afraid to confront bad people?

What happens when a community is forced to choose between law and fear?

And what happens when the law itself is no longer trusted to be the shield -  but is instead experienced, rightly or wrongly, as another form of the whip?

These questions sit at the heart of a film I recently rewatched.

They also sit at the heart of every healthy democracy.

For years I believed The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was simply a great Western. I remembered the gunfights, John Wayne’s swagger, James Stewart’s quiet decency, and Lee Marvin’s towering, terrifying performance as one of cinema’s great villains.

What I had forgotten - or perhaps never fully understood -  was what the film is really about.

It is not truly a Western at all.

It is a story about civilisation itself.

On June 6, 1944, the world witnessed an extraordinary event that changed the course of World War II. Known as the Normandy Landing, or D-Day, it marked the largest amphibious invasion in human history. 

The Normandy Landing was the result of months of meticulous planning and preparation by Allied forces.

Under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a multinational coalition consisting of American, British, Canadian, and other Allied troops including Australian, came together to devise an audacious plan.

The objective was to establish a foothold in Nazi-occupied France and initiate the liberation of Western Europe.

In the early hours of June 6, 1944, under the cover of darkness, thousands of troops were deployed via air and sea to the beaches of Normandy. The operation involved paratroopers dropping behind enemy lines, while a massive naval armada transported soldiers, tanks, and equipment towards the French coast. As dawn broke, the soldiers faced a daunting and heavily fortified coastline.

A Life Well Lived - He Crossed Oceans. He Found Love. He Found Home.

Today would have been my father's 100th birthday.

He was born on 5 June 1926 in Douglas on the Isle of Man and passed away in Queensland Australia on 4 August 2015, aged 89.

His voyage through life was one that many children today would struggle to imagine. He grew up during the Depression. He wore wooden clogs. He scrumped apples. He followed coal trains to collect fallen coal. He knew what it was to go without and what it was to work.

He was part of a generation that could wield a shovel, get dirty, work hard all day and still find something to smile about when evening came.

Like all of you reading this, I have a special place in my heart for my parents. If you did not, you would probably be elsewhere, shouting about the end of civilisation, the end of the planet or the latest fashionable cause. Instead, you are here.

That makes you what I call "One of Us."

People who still honour the privilege of life. People who treasure family. People who understand that a childhood gifted to us by loving parents is one of the greatest blessings we ever receive.

This is my tribute to my Dad.

The same, but different, to yours.