There were so many ways to take the news, momentous as it was.
Just imagine being that journo with a cameraman in tow, defying shrapnel bullets and stray rounds with a desperate dash down a shattered street into the remains of a building with a microphone ready to thrust towards the mouths of the occupants of the basement—dust-covered mothers, glassy-eyed medics and grey-torsoed babies—to give them the good news.
The Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have issued a joint statement calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Just imagine being a journalist and getting the opportunity. ‘ABC News Australia: The Prime Ministers of Australia, New Zealand and Canada have issued a statement calling for an end to the violence in Gaza. How does that make you feel?’
And if the response was underwhelming, there would be a second bite at a Walkley Award-winning grab just by braving that street again, with ‘Press’ insignia clearly showing, to let those firing the munitions in on the news.
Just imagine staring down at the khaki-clad, big-nosed, curly-haired, beret-wearing person pointing a gun barrel at you and letting them know. You could start preparing the acceptance speech, right?
There would be a good follow-up by jumping into a Landcruiser for a trip into the hills of Southern Lebanon and getting blindfolded before a meeting with someone from Hezbollah for even more drama. Albo, Justin Trudeau, and the guy who replaced Jacinda…..
They are telling the Middle East to put a sock in it!
But there is another way of looking at the news, too.
These are three nations that have utterly screwed their housing markets like no other countries on the planet. That would be Australia, New Zealand and Canada. All three have massive issues with homelessness, unaffordable abodes, and spiralling rents.
At that point, the ten-watt pearl at the back of the skull could come on and identify that there are three national standouts when it comes to running the Population Ponzi at the maximum possible extent and at such an envelope-pushing level that inhabitants of those nations—historically amongst the largest per capita migrant takers—were displaying overt signs of unhappiness. That would be Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, too.
Then, for those wanting to think more deeply about the similarities, there could be the observation that all three have trashed once respected education systems to turn them into visa stamping mechanisms for ‘International Students’.
They paid for a life in the country where they were going to study with employment in the same country, for which they were so desperate. This regrettably had the effect of downward pressure on working incomes and reduced labour opportunity.
Now, at about that point, think for a moment about where Anthony, Christopher and Justin would have the biggest actual, most tangible, effect.
A joint statement on a dispute in a region where the locals have been shooting at each other one way or another for a hundred years and have had serious issues with each other going back a couple of thousand.
or
A joint statement on the absolute disgrace that three developed world nations have made of their housing markets through their use of immigration and failures to manage ‘International Students appropriately’?
At that point, all three could do worse than to consider the words of Kevin Bell, former Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria, with his damning observation in today’s press about housing in Australia. Justin and Christopher can find similar writings about their housing markets daily.
We are experiencing not only a socio-economic disaster. It is a human rights disaster.
Decent housing is a pillar of the whole system of human rights. When the right to a decent home is put at risk or violated on a large scale, as it now is, this impacts a great many other rights.
These other rights potentially include the right life, the right to health including mental health, the right to personal inviolability including the right of women to be safe in their own home, the right to be free of discrimination, the right to work a reasonable distance from home, and the right to be free of the many gross human rights violations that are associated with poverty, inequality of wealth, social exclusion and homelessness.
And at that point, Justin, Christopher and Anthony could ask themselves whether they could realistically expect to influence a global tragedy in Gaza and the Middle East or if it is more accountable to the people who vote in the democracies in their countries to address housing?
We need less virtue signalling and more substance, please.