What a weird, upside down world we inhabit.

In South Africa, a rich, famous white guy kills his girlfriend, is only sentenced to five years jail and is getting out having done about 10 months. (I can hear my not-so-white friends saying, “Nothing changes.”)

Our government has always justified it’s draconian policy of ‘stopping the boats’ (of refugees), by claiming it saves lives and stops the people smugglers. Now it seems that they have paid the people smugglers to take the refugees somewhere else. How is that right? (How is it legal?) All I can think of is that their policy isn’t about stopping boats and saving lives; it’s about stopping refugees from finding a safe haven in Australia. Maybe if they were all rich, famous, white people it’d be a different scenario?

IS (ISIL/ISIS whatever the hell they call themselves. They change their name more often than the performer formerly called Prince.) Anyway, you know who I mean. They specialise in barbaric forms of torture, mass slaughter of innocents – including children – and the sexual exploitation, abuse and slavery of women. It’s always confused me as to why men would join that satanic mob but I’ve put it down to susceptible youths being sucked in, or adult psychopaths who would enjoy having free reign to do whatever their sick little psyches tell them. But now women are joining IS. Women, who have a free and affirming life here in a democracy that allows them equal access to education and equal standing before the law, willingly join the men who are sexually abusing, exploiting and trafficking women and children. Can anyone explain what the attraction is? Are they psychopaths, too? How can any sensible, right-thinking person think this is ok?

Coal is coming to the end of its viability as an energy source. Scientists have been warning us about this for years. Instead of being sensible and funding the development of alternative, and greener, forms of energy, this government has sung the mantra: Coal is good; wind farms are bad. One of the big power stations (coal powered) in my state is closing down because it’s no longer viable. The people in that area have been begging the government to fund a solar farm in the area. There are even foreign investors who would love to back the initiative, if only our government would let them. Instead, hundreds will be out of work and many small rural communities may become ghost towns and just a week ago our Prime Minister was singing the same old song: Wind farms are ugly, noisy things but open-cut coal mines are a thing of beauty. I may be just a cynical old bag but I find myself wondering: Besides handing him bucket loads of money, does the mining industry have some secret knowledge that they’re using to blackmail him? If it’s that he’s paying people smugglers to smuggle people to somewhere other than here, that one’s out of the bag now.

No wonder I love to lose myself in the world of fiction. At least there the bad guys get their comeuppance. The wicked eventually, finally, get their just desserts. Good triumphs over evil. The little people are looked after and love wins the day. Has it come to this, that the only place we can find true justice and decency is in ‘fiction’?

Writers: we need more books that show the world how things should be. The world needs our stories to remember what its true destiny is. It may well be that our art is one of the few things keeping the barbarians from plunging us all into darkness again.