I have just sent off the following email to a bunch of politicians.
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Dear Members of Parliament,
My
various news feeds are full of articles on the adverse impact on human
capital of the recently announced NDIS cuts. I am sure you are well
aware of those so I will limit myself to the following:
- “NDIS falls victim to familiar scare tactics – while untouchables roll on” https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/health/2026/04/22/ndis-cuts-labor-government by Amy Remeikis
When I voted for the NDIS, I did NOT vote for it to be run as a penny pinching, anti-human wellbeing, bean counting game.
I wanted it to cover what it needs to - and, based on my personal experience, it needs to do more, not less.
The cuts that have been announced are not, IMO, justifiable in light of:
- AUKUS;
- undertaxation of extractive industries that is likely to raise concerns about cronyism; and
- the failure to address the leading cause of growth in disability.
I won't provide any news links regarding AUKUS: the concerns are well known (the
massive investment in a technology that will soon be superceded [is
that because the problem misdescribed as "{military} boys and their
toys"?] is probably the most obvious reason to rethink that ... scam), but the battle has been fought and lost in policy platform conferences.
The
battle to stop stuffing around and impose genuine and appropriate
taxation on the LPG export extractive industry is still being fought,
however, and:
- the debate is, IMO, heading towards concerns over perceptions of "corporate capture", and possibly cronyism;
- there is adequate expert evidence that we are not adequately taxing the anti-community whiners in that industry; and
- if proper taxation is not imposed, it increases - IMO - the risk that the ALP will be more likely to follow the neoliberals into political oblivion in ~4 elections or even non-existence in ~6 elections.
The power to help Australians now and in the future, as well as determine the ALP's fate, is in your hands on this matter.
The
final topic is the unaddressed causation of increased disability rates:
neoliberalism, which destroys society's human capital, infrastructure
capital, and environmental capital.
While there has been some narrowly focused work on SOME of these problems, there is a broader focus which almost everyone is missing (the UK political economist Richard J Murphy is a notable exception), which is the interconnectedness of these effects.
I am going to link to an ILO report on psychosocial impacts, but first there are some aspects which need to be noted:
- the
push towards nuclear families as a basic building block of society
denies the communal nature of most of humanity's existence over our
~200-300k years, and of our predecessor species.
Furthermore, the pressure and dysfunction caused by that forcibly imposed change is having unhealthy impacts, including inadequate resources for parenting, mental health problems as a result of insanely unreasonable social expectations, and the promotion of bigotries as a result of social exclusion pressures (i.e., hate against, for instance, LGBTQIASB+ people, which is clearly historically a colonial imposed hate in many nations, and racism or other excuses to exclude people over a perceived threat to resources) and pressures to conform - which has resulted in perpetuation of patriarchal misogyny out of fear of being excluded; - the
push towards arbitrary and limited definitions of productivity has come
with enormous pressures to use medical definitions that downplay or
underestimate problems (the one manager I consider fitted the
definition of psychopath, someone from the 1980s, even tried to get me
to see his choice of doctor, someone who had already indicated he would
say I was fit to work no matter what). That has led to chronic underdiagnosis of problems such as women's pain and problems associated with endometriosis (especially during historic periods when doctors were almost exclusively male), and to narrow definitions of conditions such as the neurodevelopment difference autism, which has started being corrected in recent years. The pressure to conform and be neoliberally "productive"
has led to, as an example, autists masking - at great, but often
hidden, cost to themselves - and to the pressure to work even if ill,
which fortunately was reversed somewhat by the COVID pandemic.
That push has also promoted extremely harmful - personally, socially, and to the entire species - toxic masculinity and toxic feminity, with problems including;
- rape culture;
- the problem I referred to above as "boys and their toys" (which also includes some women);
- loss of human potential (on that, consider: how many Einsteins, Marie Curies, Steve Jobs, Jane Elliotts, Nicola Teslas, Helen Kellers, Eleanor Roosevelts, and Mandelas never got a chance because of their crushing poverty? Or, as Stephen Jay Gould put it, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”);
- mental health problems and, through conspiracy fantasies, sometimes physical health problems;
- many forms of bigotry - often largely based on the problem of women seen as possessions of men (hence women changing their names after marriage, etc), but also the extreme (rabidly so) reaction to variations of gender identity (with amathiac arguments about loss of breeding potential, and farcical & obnoxious allegations of transwomen being threat to ciswomen) and sexuality;
- the exacerbation of disability as a "problem" because the world lacks the basic human competency to design a social environment that is inclusionary, not exclusionary;
- the climate crisis problem of petro-masculinity; and
medical incompetence such as predominantly male / toxic masculinity-toxic feminity plagued research facilities missing the fifth stress response: beyond fight, flight, fawn and freeze is network and nurture - which is MY predominant stress response, and is missed by those predominantly male / toxic masculinity-toxic feminity plagued research facilities because it is not a stereotypical competitive toxic male response; - nationalistic (jingoistic, in older parlance) and fascistic (toxic masculinity) views of social cohesion, which needs to be replaced with what it has been for all by the last few millennia of our ~200-300k existence: human solidarity-cohesion.
The report I mentioned is:
- “Long hours, stress and harassment are causing hundreds of thousands of early deaths, says UN labour agency” https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/04/1167356 “The
way that jobs are designed, organised and managed has a major effect on
the health and safety of workers, and, according to the study –
“The psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways
for action” – the impact is growing, manifesting itself in rising rates
of cardiovascular disease and mental disorders, including suicide”
This report is an opportunity.
One
of the most concerning criticisms I come across regarding the current government is of timidity. Making some forward looking comments about
the broader social situation regarding the effects of neoliberalism
may:
- set a basis for a future government to take action of those issues; and
- help to regain political standing with key voting groups for coming elections.
(I dislike having to mention that second point, but doing so is part of political reality.)
Again, Australia's and our future is in our hands on this issue, and I respectfully urge you to act towards bold, visionary, but sustainable action.
No
reply to this email is necessary.
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Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
If you appreciated this post, please share it. I am now on SubStack, Patreon,
and you can support me at PayPal (or PayPal Repeating Support Options) or Ko-Fi
Any and all support will be greatly appreciated, and will aid me in continuing this work
Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).
#PsychicABetterWorld and may all that I do be of value and actively BPM used for and by the nonphysical BPM because #KindnessIsThePoint
Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear
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