Travel and Sameness

Travel is many things; Inspirational, Educational, Entertaining, Revealing and so much more.

When overseas, I do not watch TV, listen to radio or read newspapers including Australian on-line papers.

My lack of knowledge of the German language meant that from Berlin, I sent a message to Australia asking who won the German election.

I arrived back in Australia this morning and grabbed a copy of the Melbourne Age at the Airport Lounge eager to catch up on what is important locally.
Having scanned the first few pages and finding nothing to inspire in depth absorption by my jet lagged brain, I turned to the sport. I read the few paragraphs of trade discussion concerning Gary Ablett.

I returned the paper to the stand.

I simply had no interest in what were fundamentally the same articles and story lines as 10 days before.

It was like a slow-moving soap opera, the ones where you catch an episode after 2 or more weeks absence and it really doesn’t matter.

It appears the same people are still advocating for coal fired power and regulating the gas supply.
The quality of the Marriage Equality debate has not changed.

A high-profile sportsperson has been charged following a bar incident; same story, different name.
A certain President continues to be outrageous on Twitter and grand final entertainment is yet again detracting from the spectacle of the contest of skill and athleticism of the teams actually playing in the game.

We need leadership, particularly in areas of energy, transport infrastructure, environment, economic, social and technology. We need leaders that have the courage to make decisions for the future and commit to them for the long term. We need leaders with courage.

Instead, we have a former Prime Minister, the current Federal Attorney General and Leader of the Party that holds much power in the Senate talking about a song to be performed at a sporting contest that most attending would not know, if they did would not know what it was really about and is being performed by an international act that most would not know about.

My return from a period removed from the news cycle revealed just how futile, petty and juvenile our Leaders have become.

We deserve better.