The PR Blog

I lost my cat a few years ago. She wasn’t just a pet. She was my sounding board. My companion. My silent ally. For twelve years, she listened without ever interrupting, rolled on her tummy without judgment, and knew when to stay and when to stay closer. When she passed, something went quiet in me too.

This morning, my Mum -  93 and still sharp as a splinter -  said something that stopped me.

"Maybe that’s why people love their cats and dogs," she said. "Because they don’t talk back. They don’t betray."

And that was it. The start of something I didn’t know I was writing: not an article about AI, or censorship, or ducks in disguise (though there were ducks) ... but about connection. About trust. About what we used to give our children, and what we no longer do.

Once we debated. Now, " they"  accuse.

And who are they? Talk about diversity. They come in all colours, all causes, and all hashtags. Some scream for justice, others for tradition. Some are young, loud, and online. Others are older, bitter, and wield bureaucratic power. What unites them isn’t belief - it’s certainty, and the weaponisation of offence. No debate required. Just accusation, echo, and cancellation.

From playgrounds to parliaments, the art of debate is being replaced by hashtags, headlines, and hostile mobs.

What began as dialogue has hardened into dogma - and truth, once pursued through reasoned argument, now risks exile in favour of certainty without substance.

In this reflection, I ask:

What have we lost?

And what must we regain before the noise becomes all we know? Today, disagreement ends not in understanding but in accusation.

Solar generators won’t run on moon-beams – they fade out as the sun goes down and stop whenever clouds block the sun. This happens at least once every day. But then at mid-day on most days, millions of solar panels pour so much electricity into the grid that the price plummets and no one makes any money. And after a good hailstorm they never work again.

Turbine generators are also intermittent - they stop whenever there is too little, or too much wind. In a wide flat land like Australia, wind droughts may affect huge areas for days at a time. This often happens when a mass of cold air moves over Australia, winds drop and power demand rises in the cold weather. All of this makes our power grid more variable, more fragile and more volatile. What do we do if we have a cloudy windless week?