World on fire while our kids ask questions
Clinging desperately to the ever elusive serenity of the summer holiday with the family, amid war, genocide, climate catastrophe, militarism, and silenced dissent.
I managed to get away for a short trip in the new year down to the beach with my family. It was great to unwind after a long year of problems out of my control, and some that aren’t. My kid is looking forward to starting grade three, like every child has done in Australia for generations, but is also old enough to be asking questions about the world outside. And it’s not the same world I’m describing.
Parents must increasingly guard their children’s freedom of thought in a society that is steadily silencing dissent. The sweet nothings parents whisper to shield their kids from the dark complexities outside are nothing new. Yet across the peaks and troughs of human history—full of war and upheaval—the current global meltdown feels uniquely alarming to many.
The crumbling rules-based order
This post-WWII “rules-based” world—with its orders and conventions forged in the Cold War and tweaked during the supposed unipolar “End of History” that followed—is falling apart. The global economy teeters on the edge, climate change alters the homeostasis of the planet, transnational corporate empires dominate a borderless landscape, and AI threatens to upend the global economy. Never before has the world experienced such tectonic flux in the nuclear age. Superpowers rip up the rulebooks they once wrote, powerful individuals pursue self-interest at everyone’s expense, and our minds sometimes wander as a result—even as we cling desperately to the ever elusive serenity of the caravan park holiday with the kids.
In recent years gone by—between the bushfires--there have been floods, pandemics, continental wars, genocide, and a cost of living and social crises. The holidays have not been the same. During this time, the Australian political class has shed any illusion of responsibility and fairness. Its actions in recent decades have increasingly contradicted its rhetoric, overseeing a neoliberal economic wasteland now pivoting toward militarism—led by people who defend the unconscionable.
Meanwhile, parents still speak to their children about good ways of living and teach values and morals, just as they always have—even in a world that may no longer value them. Mums and dads who came of age under Bob Hawke and Kieren Perkins, sons and daughters of those raised under Robert Menzies with affordable government housing loans, now raise children born in the era of Scott Morrison, Trump, bushfires, floods, economic collapse, encroaching poverty, pandemics, genocide, and war. Simply waving a Medicare card, blindly embracing the US alliance, and devising end-stage neoliberal policies for the Productivity Commission and big business won’t cut it anymore.
A holiday interrupted by reality
The youth of this country are growing up in a political environment that sees professionals and public figures—from doctors and teachers to journalists, sports commentators, football captains, and everyday Australians—punished, silenced, or reprimanded for the social cohesion factors linked to opposing a genocide. The government is implementing AUKUS-related STEM pathways and providing ramps for our youth to join the military industrial complex, but it hasn’t implemented a big reform or provided a national housing program, and the children who live in the country today do not have the same opportunities as their parents.
Should we tell our children that the world is worsening, or should we shield them in hope of a return to the past? Which choice harms them more?
Children being raised in this country—born in the age of Scott Morrison—have never known a truly noble leader. As they grow, they cannot take anything at face value; they will need to wade through propaganda and lies because no one in power seems willing to tell them the truth. These same children have lived through a Western-backed genocide that Australia has supported militarily, economically, and diplomatically. They exist in a political environment where currently a small, blindly pro-Israel segment of the population somehow holds the floor in our democracy, blocking out the sun with their demands, and overseeing new restrictions on what Australians can say.
When the party convinces you to “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”, everything that came before it melts away.
Barely weeks after the US rendition of a sovereign leader in Venezuela—and days after signalling intentions to invade Greenland—outgoing Ambassador Kevin Rudd posed for a photo with US Under Secretary of State Elbridge Colby and delivered the exhausted line: “The Australia-US alliance has never been stronger.” Penny Wong well-wished Mossad-backed violent protests in Iran and attacks on alleged ISIS targets in Syria and Nigeria, while issuing ambiguous statements about the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro. Meanwhile, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland spoke clearly of her intent to introduce “the toughest hate laws Australia has ever seen.” And the Australian public tentatively packed up their holidays, returning to a 2026 where nothing feels as it should.
Donald Trump has crossed the Rubicon. His administration is dissolving the republic in pursuit of a fantasy American empire that lies beyond their delusions—and the country now looks unrecognisable. Equal parts self-preservation, domination, and hubris, an era of despotism is being thrust upon the American people. It manifests in scenes like the shooting of a woman by ICE on a suburban Minneapolis street. The President is tied to a Zionist donor class, remains embroiled in the Jeffrey Epstein saga, and forces the world to bend around that reality.
This is the reality we are shielding from our children—and it stands out starkly whenever it slips through the protective nets we build around them. As the world outside grows uglier, the contrast sharpens between the sheltered realities we create and the fleeting futures we promise them.
We have never witnessed the collapse and unravelling of the existing order like this in the nuclear age. For all the saber-rattling of the Cold War, there were guardrails and conventions that all parties followed, and the personalities of the key figures competing imposed more constraint than we see today. Those guardrails, rules, and conventions have now crumbled. The personalities now running things are recalcitrant, compromised, and dangerous.
Down here at the bottom of the earth, it might seem easier to cling to something unsustainable in the hope that the system will somehow correct itself against the grain. Some parents still hold that hope, but others can no longer trust it. In the widening gap between what the world tells our children it is and how they actually experience it, families are left to fend for themselves in an economy that no longer values their needs. We now live in a country where, if you oppose tyranny, imperialism, and war—and want to teach your child the right thing in this world—you must also teach them to question their leaders, their media, and their institutions.
Breaking the silence/time for action
2026 is a year to break the orthodoxies that no longer add up—to stand up for what doesn’t make sense anymore. If we believe the right to public assembly is an Australian tradition that should not be restricted, or that children should not be killed in a genocide while the perpetrators are defended, we should fight to maintain those principles. If it feels deeply wrong to accept hate speech laws dictated by people with loyalty to a foreign country, it’s worth resisting them. And if we see our politicians cosying up to US despots while they turn their nation—and ours—on its head, we need to call it out.
Australians must act decisively: demand an immediate, comprehensive arms embargo on Israel to end complicity in Gaza’s horrors; scrap or overhaul AUKUS to redirect defence billions into national housing, Medicare expansion, and genuine youth opportunity—not militarised STEM pipelines. We need to fiercely oppose the proposed “toughest hate laws” through protests, petitions, and legal resistance to protect free speech and assembly; teach our children to question propaganda, scrutinise leaders and media, and value justice over blind alliances. As parents, we must model courage—discuss uncomfortable truths openly, join ethical community action, and vote for peace, sovereignty, and human rights. Silence enables collapse; collective refusal can rebuild hope
A new status quo is being hammered into place across the planet. It is up to individual nations—and the leaders within them—to strive to protect the future for the children. That is not happening in Australia under our current government. Perhaps we were naive to believe the troubles of the world would never reach us, that our involvement in them wouldn’t hasten their arrival, and that a compromised political and media class wouldn’t serve as harbingers of a future that is uncertain, scary, and bleak. Yet here we are.
Our children are not just inheriting this fractured world but also watching how we respond to it. The beach trips and caravan-park moments may fade, but the example we set endures: do we whisper comforts or speak truths? Do we accept complicity or demand better? In 2026, as laws tighten and alliances wobble, the greatest gift we can give is not protection from reality, but the courage to confront it. The ugliness outside will only grow if we stay silent. For our kids’ sake, let us be the generation that finally says no more.
I'm so afraid for future generations and so angry that a Labor government would betray this country so egregiously. I cannot see a future for my grandchildren, the environment or this country in general. We are heading toward becoming a vassal state ruled by despots.
Great thoughts Joel, I have no idea where all this is headed. I talk to my adult children about politics a lot….too much they would say . They don’t really want to know. But I note a certain recklessness in their financial decisions that tells me ….its play hard today, because tomorrow might not come .