Something’s been on my mind a lot lately; perhaps it was brought about by the mining tax issues, or some of the disagreements that I’ve had with some people that I’ve been involved with regarding my business dealings, but they’re both the same kind of issue: the importance of free speech.

Let’s look at the mining tax; few people would argue that citizens of a nation have a right to the profits derived from the resources of that nation – it certainly seems to make sense that the nation – and the people in it – should profit from the mineral wealth of that nation. Fair minded people would probably agree that companies who go to the trouble of raising the capital to extract such mineral wealth are entitled to turn a profit from their endeavours.

But that’s not what this debate is about – the actual matter rests on the fact that mining companies are making super profits – ridiculous sums of money, akin to the stratospheric payouts given to departing CEOs. However, you won’t hear mining companies mention the fact that they’re making super profits in their ad campaign – and that’s the part that really annoys me. According to the mining companies, they’re facing the possibilities of going broke if this new tax goes through. According to the mining companies, people are going to lose their jobs, investment will suffer and so on and so on. It’s hard to believe that that could be the case if the tax doesn’t even kick in until these companies start making ‘super’ profits.

Now we come to the heart of the matter; the mining companies deliberately ran a campaign – and personally, I think they perverted the truth – to influence public decision. Fair enough, you argue. That’s free speech, and in a democracy, free speech is one of our ideals. Nothing can get in the way of free speech. I agree, at least on those principles – but here’s a thought for you – free speech is predicated on the fact that everybody has the same right to that speech (and the same access?) However, the mining companies had vast amounts of money to ensure that their speech was heard, in the form of advertisements across all the major networks, while other points of view were drowned out due to lack of access to ready funds. That doesn’t seem vaguely fair, does it?

I reckon a similar situation happens on a daily basis. Let’s have a look at this example. A person makes some unflattering (but true!) remarks about his or her employer. Suddenly, that person is faced with the sack or disciplinary action. They protest, arguing that they haven’t said anything that was untrue but the business responds by arguing that they’ll take it to court to challenge that. Of course, this poor, foolish (but honest!) person cannot afford a lengthy court battle, so has to retract their statement. I know I’ve simplified it, but once again it seems less like democracy and more like totalitarianism…

Traditionally, Freirean pedagogy and popular education and its derivatives (most notably popular theatre) have worked with adult communities in informal settings. This setting has, of course, it’s own particular advantages and disadvantages, but it is worth noting that the applications of Popular Education is not solely restricted to either the informal education domain or the adult education domain.

Indeed, a number of scholars have been exploring the implementation of Popular Educationa theory and methodology in the area of high school education, an area that might be considered to the be the polar opposite of the traditional application of Popular Education. As opposed to adult education, educators working in this domain work with children. And instead of an informal setting, teachers in this area have to work within the boundaries of a strictly formalized curricula and setting.

However, the application of Freire’s work in such an area is an appealing prospect; to me, it seems that few institutions in a state seem to contribute to the acceptance of hegemony as much as schools. After all, one need only examine the work of people like John Taylor Gotto and you quickly come to a realisation that many schools (but not, I think, all) actively seek to not only oppress their students through the rigid application of coercive power, but also condition students to further accept such oppression in their wider and later lives. As an example, one might take the New South Wales History curriculum, which seeks to privilege the contributions to Australia made by certain groups – and in certain ways – over others. Furthermore, the way this curriculum is traditionally delivered – the Banking model that Freire described – only conditions students to further accept their role as passive objects with no further power to become more fully human.

Therefore, the idea of a theory that could empower students in this setting is a tempting one. However, it is a challenging prospect for teachers for a number of reasons. I intend to explore just one, in this blog posting – that of context. Freire’s work often highlights the importance of context, and it is especially pertinent in this discussion. Moving out of adult education into school education, one must recognize that both the age and the motivations of the group have changed. In addition, there are a number of constraining factors, like the demands of government bodies for teachers to cover certain skills and content, of which raising critical consciousness might come a long way down the list.

In addition, whereas traditional popular education works exclusively in the realm of marginalized groups, it is possible that when working in the school environment (and especially in a systemic religious school, like I do) one might be working with students who might be perfectly satisfied with the status quo. In this case, popular education might become more about recognizing privilege than understanding oppression. In this case, one must ask, what is the purpose of the popular educator? Is it to encourage students to recognize this privilege? And then to encourage them to commit, as Freire describes it, class suicide? It’s a confronting thought.

Even more confronting is the research that has been done regarding how an uncritical approach to privileging student experience might lead to the actual encouragement of oppressive views. In some examples that Kathryn Choules writes about, teachers attempting to apply a Freirean methodology to students from mixed groups might only encourage those who benefit from the status quo to speak out, thus concreting marginalised groups thoughts about oppression and their place in society.

Next blog post – Making the Method Fit the Message!

I’ve been watching with great interest the recent debate about the correctness of the Resources Super Profits Tax here in Australia. Although I’m by no means knowledgeable about taxation or taxation law, I do think that there are certain conclusions that can be drawn from the course of the debate that illustrate the ideology behind many of the corporate decisions that take place in Australia.
Firstly, though, a little background. Recently, the Federal Government of Australia (at that time, a slightly left of centre labor party) received the findings of the Henry Review. This review looked at Australia’s archaic tax system and made a number of recommendations about improving the system, in the interests of making it more equitable. Some of these recommendations specifically related to replacing the old system of royalty-based mining tax (where all mining companies had to pay a certain fee for using the land and taking minerals from it) with a system that charges a tax once the profits of a mining company exceeds a certain point. It is, to be fair, a tax that is placed upon all the other kinds of taxes, like company tax and so on.

Economists and academics around Australia agreed that this was a way forward for Australia; it made the system fairer and, by not taxing companies until they were making  a profit it would actually encourage investment, rather than hindering it. Here’s a link to an article about that: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Economists-back-RSPT-pd20100526-5SU45?OpenDocument&src=tnb

So far, so good, right? Well, that’s where it all seemed to go wrong. As soon as the tax was announced, the owners of the mining companies immediately used every resource (hah, hah) at their disposal to convince the public that this tax was an outrage, and it would damage the ‘little people’. Basically, you, your job, your house and everything about you was at risk because of this tax. What was particularly interesting was they way that some of the richest people in Australia, like ‘Twiggy’ Forrest, managed to make it look like he and the mining companies were on the side of the average ‘joe’ working hard for a dollar.

Seriously, the whole thing is ridiculous; what isn’t made clear is that this isn’t a new tax at all, but a reform of old ones. In all likelihood, it will make mining in Australia stronger, rather than weaker, and that will provide employment for more Australians. However, what it will do is charge those people who are taking vast sums of money in profits from mining companies more of their earnings. Naturally, this doesn’t make these shareholders happy and thus the stream of invective directed at the Federal Government.

So what is my particular interest in this? Well, I see it as another very clear example of the lack of critical consciousness present amongst the general populace, as well as an example of the ideology of the dominant capitalist hegemony in Australia. Let’s examine the ideology part of this first; one of the principles of ideology requires it to be presented as ‘common sense’. This has been done by the mining companies through their overwhelming use of the media and the tagline ‘If mining’s strong, Australia’s strong.’ However, at no point do they actually explain this tax; instead, they repeat things about people losing jobs and how it will affect all of us. And, here’s the clincher: because they have the power to influence the media, and purchase advertising space, this becomes the message that people hear more often, and therefore come to believe. It’s a short step, then, to adopt it as common sense.

However, if people had learnt to challenge this ideology, and resist the power of the mainstream media; that is, if people were becoming critically conscious, then I believe (and I hope) that this would be a different story; ideally, we might be able to see the vested interests and conflicts that lie behind both the mining companies arguments and the way the media has presented the opposing views to us. Until that point, are we to remain slaves to the capitalist hegemony?

It’s an interesting topic, isn’t it? Personally, I think it’s a lot more than interesting, and I’ve certainly been thinking about it a lot recently. I’ve been speaking to a lot of people about this issue recently, in the light of Mr Rudd’s sudden departure. According to a lot of these people, the issue of boat people was a major one in this decision. Rudd was seen as doing the wrong thing regarding Boat People for a number of different reasons; firstly, he wasn’t ‘tough’ enough on ‘queue-jumpers’ and secondly, he’d stopped listening to the electorate – and members of the government on this and other issues.

I think that, at times like this, it is easy to allow emotion to carry the argument; this should be avoided at all costs. I accept that emotion will play some part in the argument, and that is fine, but an argument that solely relies on emotion is deficient; it is more akin to an appeal than an argument. Of course, in my opinion, this is the direction that Tony Abbott seems to be heading – by convincing Australia that every single person on that boat is a terrorist threat waiting to kill your children, or that they are going to take away your job, your house and your Holden. It’s a bit of a truism in politics that, to win elections, fear is a bigger vote-getter than rationality. I’m reminded of the section in ‘The American President’ where the actor playing the president – Michael Douglas, I think – explains that you win elections by making people scared.

So let’s try to introduce a little bit of rationality to the argument:

Point 1: More people are in Australia, illegally, from overstaying their visa  than have arrived via boat. The numbers themselves are limited. The last figures I heard put it at less than 5000 people since 2007. As a percentage of the Australian population, that’s less than a quarter of 1 percent. Hardly unstemmed hordes of boat people flooding the country.

Point 2: Australia is not getting the vast majority of refugees in the world. Countries like Germany take in 80 000 refugees every year.

Point 3: Asylum seekers do not automatically get into Australia – they are subject to stringent security processing (which causes the delays in detention centres) and those that fail testing are returned.

Point 4: It is not a matter of simply ‘turning the boats around’ or, as I’ve heard some conservatives argue, ‘sinking the boats.’ This argument smacks of selfishness; I don’t believe that we have the right to turn away genuine refugees simply because we fear that our way of life might be in danger. In my opinion, it’s danger to human life trumps creature comforts every time.

Point 5: We did sign the UN Declaration about Refugees. Most of the countries that these people might pass through on the way to Australia did not – for example, Indonesia. Therefore, we are obligated to help them. Others are not. The fact that the UN is a toothless tiger and cannot enforce any sanctions due to a failure to uphold the declaration does not matter.

Point 6: Refugees have previously made a significant impact in Australia. And I mean a positive impact. For example, the Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s (again, like those coming from Afghanistan, fleeing a war that Australia was involved in…) are now important members of the Australian community – they haven’t been assimilated (and how I hate that word, and its similarity to ethnic cleansing); instead, they have broadened the scope of Australian society simply by being part of it. For as long as I’ve been at school, we’ve had students that had names like Trinh or Nguyen, who might have eaten sandwiches or noodles, or might have liked cricket or not, who might have spoken Vietnamese or not. The point is that they are genuinely Australian – by any sensible measure – so why do we imagine other refugees might not be able to do the same?

Remember, ‘we’ve boundless plains to share….’

I had the opportunity to have a chat with David Bradbury, the Federal MP for Lindsey, recently. Before I start the main part of this article, let me make it clear that I am a member of the Labor Party, and have been for a number of years, so I guess you can read everything that I write through that kind of lens.

Anyway, David and I were talking about the tumultuous events of the last week as Ms Gillard become the Prime Minister. I won’t really go into too much detail about what was said, because a lot of it was behind closed doors and I really don’t think the internet is the best place for that kind of discussion.

However, what I will talk about was how impressed I was with David Bradbury. I know that his profile – nationally – isn’t exactly sky-high. He doesn’t have a ministry or anything like that, and you have to hunt through the news to find any mention of him outside of Lindsey, but he does have a reasonably strong local profile. Anyway, what really impressed me was the calm, measured approach that he took to dealing with these particular issues. As he discussed the decisions he had made, he carefully explained to me the thoughts behind each decision and why he felt that he had to decide in the way that he did. I got a real sense of calm, clear, rational decision-making which I think is a skill that is often lacking in politicians these days.

Another thing that impressed me was how seriously he took his role as the peoples’ representative to the Parliament. Every decision that he made was based on what his constituents wanted – or what he thought that they wanted. He was completely focused on what the people of Penrith and other areas were saying about the major issues – and through his use of mobile offices and things he was trying to get in touch with those people; I got he impression he generally wanted to listen to people’s opinions about ETS and RSPT and Boat People and Rudd-Gillard. And after he listened, he wanted to talk about it too.

The final thing that I found impressive was the moral standing of David Bradbury. Populist is a bit of a dirty word in politics, despite, as far as I can see, populism being the main (and often only) basis for policy decisions. If it gets us votes, we’ll do it seems to be the dictum for most politicians. David, on the other hand, seemed to be arguing for the need to educate the public about the reasons behind certain decisions, and therefore allow them to make more informed decisions.

On Sunday, Mrs Heggart and I took part in the Red Shield Appeal, raising money for the Salvation Army. Maybe it’s a thing left over from my army days (brief though they were) but I’ve always had a lot of time for the Salvation Army; anytime I see them at shopping centres or pubs, I have to donate money, even if it’s only the change in my pocket.

Anyway, the way the red shield appeal works is that each district (ours was South Penrith) gets as many volunteers as possible to come to a central point; these volunteers get organised into collection teams of 4 with 1 driver, and then they get a specific area to door knock to collect money.

We rocked up at Jamison Public School at 0830 to a scene of, to put it mildly, total confusion. The organisers were generally trying to get the groups into teams of 4, but everybody was resolutely staying clustered in their little groups they arrived in. Oh, and one more thing; unbeknown to me, most of the Red Shield collectors are schoolchildren. And while Mrs Heggart and I might look good for our age, no-ones going to mistake us for 15 years old. Talk about looking like a fish out of water.

Anyway, we got organised eventually into a team with Jesse, Erica and Lizzie, as well as Mrs Heggart and myself, and our stern-faced driver, John. We hit the area we’d been assigned, which was like a maze of cul-de-sacs and battle-axe blocks. Anyway, that brings me to the point of this blog: sure there was the occasional grouch, like the old codger who told us to go collect money off Kevin Rudd, ‘cos he’s got lots, apparently, but on the whole, I was amazed at the willingness of people to donate money. We started doorknocking before 0900, on a Sunday morning, which meant we were getting a lot of people out of bed; they answered the door in their pyjamas – or not – as the case may be, but in every street we went down, people willingly scraped together what change they had to donate what they could to the Salvation Army. There was even one guy who just chucked in a $50 note!

The point I’m trying to make is that, even though society seems to be getting a kicking lately, what with all the arguments about increasing violence amongst young people, the fact we are all too fat or unhealthy, families don’t talk anymore etc etc. I mean, the media is full of it. Even with all this, perhaps there’s hope for us, yet; I mean if we can recognise the needy in society and find some way of helping them, then surely society isn’t that bad?

I know, I’m an incurable optimist. But for the record, in less than 3 hours collecting, we raised more than $500. Not too shabby.

It’s funny; when I was too young to know much about it, I went with a friend to a few Young Liberal meetings. I enjoyed the ideas behind it – the theatre of voting and seconding motions – more than I had any real passion for the politics; to be honest, I wouldn’t have been able to explain to you any of the facets of the ideological basis for Liberals. Or for Labor, for that matter.

Anyway, after my time in England, where I was more heavily involved in the Trade Union Movement, coupled with revulsion for the Howard government’s approach to indigenous Australians and refugees, I joined the Labor Party on my return. I thought it was about time I got serious about what I believed in, and if I believed in community involvement, then, doggone it, I needed to be involved in the community.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the process so far; it’s certainly been eventful. I’ve met the local federal Member for Lindsay (David Bradbury) and saw the whole Karyn Paluzzano affair as well, which was very sad, especially as I had respect for both Karyn and her husband, Robert.

Enough back story. On to the central question. Anyway, I was having dinner with Mrs Heggart and a very good friend of hers (who is now a very good friend of mine). Somehow, we got talking about politics which is always a minefield, even at the best of times. We were talking about the upcoming federal election, and I suggested that it was an election that would be won or lost on economic principles. I suggested that I wouldn’t vote for Tony Abbott, simply because

Our friend – let’s call her Miss Y, for the sake of this blog – announced that she completely disagreed with this. She argued that Australia is always better off under a Liberal government than a labour government, and suggested that she’d be voting for Abbott in the next election. I said, ‘Whoah, hold up. Better off for who?’ She said, ‘Better of for me.’

And that’s the crux of the matter: I can’t argue with Miss Y’s assertion. She would be better off under Abbott. She’s a wealthy white woman, highly educated, with a job at an international corporation that pays her very well to sell things and manage products. It’s a good job, and she’s very good at it.

But this is where it gets interesting; I’m not a labor voter because I think that I will be better off under a labor government. I don’t lean towards the left because it will earn me more money. I situate myself there simply because I think that this kind of government (and I have grave reservations over some of the current administration’s policies) is the best for all people – not just me.

However, are people on the right only thinking of themselves? I know this is topic that might raise a few hackles, but I think it’s interesting. Liberal Conservative governments generally stand for the reduction of big government, cutting of taxes, especially those of big business to increase the economy. It stands for conservative values as well.

Taking this into account, let’s look at a topical issue through this lens: boat people. As a left-leaning member of Australia, I argue that we should encourage more boat people to enter into Australia, from the simple reason that, morally, it’s the right thing to do. Of course we need security checks and so on, but generally, the vast majority of these people are genuine refugees and we, as signatories to the UN declaration on refugees, should do everything possible to accept and assimilate these people. It’s not like we haven’t done so before in Australia. From this point of view, I’m arguing what is essentially a selfless argument – I don’t benefit from this in any way. It’s even possible that I am worse off, because the money spent on supporting these refugees is money that doesn’t go to be spent on Australians.

On the other hand, through a conservative approach, we should ban boat people, because we have to spend money on them, and that money comes from taxes, and if we cut taxes we could have higher investment, which means everybody in Australia would be better off – or at least the people that own the companies that we buy from would be.

I know I’ve simplified the issue, but essentially, I think the question does come down to this: Are liberal conservatives just selfish? If they act in a way that suits their best interests – at the cost of others’ welfare (like the RSPT), then the answer must be yes.

Once again, the government has got it very wrong. Following a report by the Grattan Institute, and inspired by the successes of New York, it appears that we are moving towards a situation where we will shortly be adopting performance based pay for teachers. You can read the report here and the related news coverage here. I haven’t read the full report, so I will limit my comments to this: the person who wrote the report is Dr Ben Jensen, who has worked for the OECD Education Directorate measuring school performance. Interestingly, though, Jensen has a PhD in Economics, not education.

What we are seeing here is the commercialisation of teaching. In keeping with the neoliberal priorities of the Rudd Government, we are moving towards an education sector where teachers are simply technicians – they use the tools provided by the government upon the children in their classrooms because – and only because – this is the best way of improving the country’s GNP. As we move into an era of accountability and performativity, it becomes vital that governments have ways of measuring the performance of teachers and therefore assigning capitalist worth to a person’s education. So we have nation wide testing to define an individuals worth and we take the concept of value-added to explain the worth of a teacher.

Quite frankly, if you’re nodding along to this as if it all makes perfect sense, it’s probably far too late for you. I know people like that. Even worse, there are teachers who think this is a good idea. Mostly young teachers, who’ve been convinced that they really are no better than technicians – in fact, worse than this, they are competitive technicians. Sure enough, schools will soon become a marketplace, with teachers, rather than working together in a spirit of collegiality. Teachers will spend hours coaching their classes to perform better in the exams – we will be literally teaching to the test – and all those other, vital things that schools provide will be disregarded and ignored. Even in the Victorian model, the principal will most likely assign bonuses to those teachers who work longer hours – or do more visible things – rather than those teachers that necessarily do the most good.

My real issue lies with the fact that teaching is not like being a technician, or a salesperson or really any other kind of job. It’s a job that navigates the nexus between motivation, intelligence and cultural and social upbringing. It’s a deeply personal job, linked to both the teachers starting point and beliefs and cultural values, and those of the student. It requires compassion, understanding and tolerance, not to mention a higher than average level of emotional intelligence. It is an impossible job.

It is not a simple equation where you get out certain values depending on what you put it. To say so is to insult the whole teaching profession.

While we’re at it, you and I both know that there are ordinary teachers out there. I’ve worked with some that I wouldn’t want teaching my children. I’m all for measuring teaching excellence – but we have not found a good way of doing it – yet. Until we do, everything else is simply garbage. Economic rationalism will not help us to create better citizens, although it might help us to create wealthier ones.

I think that this Labor government needs to return to its social democrat roots.

I was at the Penrith rugby league game last night (Penrith beat the Doggies, go the panthers) and, while I had a great time, a few beers with the brother-in-law, steak sandwich, hurled abuse at the touch judge etc etc, there was one part of the evening that struck me as a little strange.

Basically, one of the main sponsors of the Penrith Panthers (Go the Panthers!) is the Department of Education for NSW. As concerning as it is that the Department needs to sponsor a football team instead of spending the money on training staff, that’s not what concerns me.

What does concern me is the tagline that goes with the recruitment drive; the announcer at the game said it about 5 times – before the game, at half-time and at the end of the game. The tagline went like this: ‘Are you looking for a career that is innovative and creative and means you still have time for sports, friends and family?’ I mean, seriously, you still have time for sports, friends and family!

I was horrified when I heard it, to be honest. Immediately, I started thinking: is this the best way to encourage people to become teachers? And are people who are interested by this ‘time for sports, friends and family’ likely to be our best teachers? Would you entrust your children to someone who’s just teaching to fill in time before he or she can go play football?

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the importance of work-life balance and I think that teachers come in two sorts: those who have it and those who don’t. But I don’t think anyone should become a teacher solely because it offers opportunities for a good work-life balance. To me, teaching is a vocation, not a job you do because you need to earn money somehow. The responsibility that you, as a teacher have, for the nurturing and development of young minds is far too important to be done by someone who doesn’t really care about it.

There’s been a lot of media coverage in the last couple of days that’s focused on the idea of courage. For example, Jessica Watson was loudly – and in Rudd’s case – embarrassingly lauded for the courage that she showed in sailing around the world unassisted – and that’s probably fair enough, too, despite the wowsers who put her down, calling her irresponsible and so on. Then there was the story of the Australian soldiers injured in Afghanistan, and finally, there was the whole David Campbell sex club affair.

It got me thinking about courage and fear and the way these interact in our lives. Jessica Watson is a pretty special case; I can’t begin to imagine the mental toughness it must have taken to face that challenge and triumph, and I certainly admire her for it. Equally, the Australian diggers in Afghanistan; one can’t fault the dedication to their duty, and their courage they are showing in the face of adversity.

I mean, this is the kind of courage that we see all the time, isn’t it? It’s certainly reported in the media a lot. If you’re courageous, you carry babies from burning houses, and rescue swimmers from drowning. It’s the courage that our heroes in films and TV shows demonstrate – they place themselves in physical danger for the sake of saving someone else. I’ve heard some people say that courage like the examples above – let’s call it physical courage, because it requires the person showing this attribute to risk injury or death – are growing more and more common. They suggest that, as a human race, we are becoming better at confronting death and injury because we’ve come to expect people do that, simply because we are so over-exposed to this idea through the media. I guess it’s a kind of learned behaviour. This is possible, but it’s equally possible that the media is simply presenting more and more of these ‘human interest’ stories, so it simply appears that there are more examples. Either way, I don’t think it matters much.

So far, fair enough, right? But what about different kinds of courage? What about social/ moral courage? Is there such a thing? If physical courage is the ability to overcome your fear to place yourself in danger, does that make social courage the ability to overcome the fear of needing to belong to place yourself at risk of ridicule or social alienation? Phrased like that, I believe there are plenty of examples of social or moral courage. People demonstrating this would be the people that protest against injustices in society – perhaps environmental protesters do this? Or people protesting against racism or sexism? In most of these cases (although by no means all) there is limited risk of actual physical injury. However, there is probably great risk of alienation and ridicule or being seen as part of the ‘lunatic fringe’ by their colleagues or peers. Of course, many people seem

Which brings us neatly back to Rudd and David Campbell. Here were two opportunities for social courage – standing up for what they think is right, and yet, both men failed. Rudd, speaking about the ETS, claimed that it was vital that Australia took action now – something that most climatologists agreed on, saying national progams were essential before international programs could be implemented. Yet, when it came to the crunch, he folded like a dodgy beach chair. As for David Campbell, here was an elected representative who appears to have masqueraded as heterosexual for his whole public life, while living the opposite. Hardly inspiring of trust in our politicians, is it?

I guess at the heart of this post, I am suggesting what might be termed ‘critical courage.’ (Gee whiz, I’m inventing more terms than Shakespeare in this post.) I guess this courage would not only require the overcoming of fear, but also an analysis or assessment of the purpose of the courage – a thoughtfulness about the reasons for action – or, indeed, inaction. Perhaps this is what makes courage heroism? When you think about it, even some pretty nasty people can show courage – Somali pirates probably overcome fear everyday of their lives, but, while they might be courage, you’d hardly call them heroic, would you? So not only must heroes be courageous, they must be acting in accordance with their principles – and in a world where there are infinite shades of gray (as opposed to the very black and white world that comic book heroes like Batman operate in, where the bad guys might as well wear signs and namebadges), this adds a new dimension of morality to the issue at heart.

Where does this leave people like Jessica Watson or the Diggers in Afghanistan? Are they heroes? Or just physically courageous? This is where it gets tricky – personally, I think Australia’s position in Afghanistan is close to indefensible. Although you can argue that soldiers just do what they’re told to do by politicians, I’m very hesitant about such wholesale abdication of responsibility. That’s how things like the Holocaust took place. And while the work being done there might be valuable, is it enough to justify soldiers being over there in the first place?

I don’t have the answers, but I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that we are all ultimately responsible for our actions; if that is the case, then we have a responsibility to think critically about our choices. We must act courageously, but we must also act justly.