The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, had been meticulously planned for over a year. It was the expression of a sophisticated strategy designed to implement barbarism as a means of achieving Hamas’ political goals. The primary goal of Hamas, as part of  the regional alliance led by Iran and its other proxies Hezbollah and the Houthis, is to bring permanent war to all Israel’s borders in order to ” annihilate Israel “.   

The timing was targeted to shatter a trilateral deal between the U.S, Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalise relations and change the face of the Middle East. 

There are 5 key elements to the Hamas strategy of barbarism.

It is hard to forget the cries of “intergenerational tragedy” that greeted the latest Intergenerational Report released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers. The lively reaction to a potential “tragedy” in Australia in 40 years time stands in sharp contrast to the failure to deal with Australia’s present generational tragedy unfolding in real time.

The problem is not just the alarmist nature of the IGR with regard to the ageing population. It is that the IGR reflects the ageist thinking of governments and society in general. Older generations are seen as a threat to national wellbeing. They are calculated as a national liability and an unbearable burden on future budgets.

The countries that will be the most successful with ‘generational change’ will be the ones that provide the best integration and opportunities for older people. Put that in an Intergenerational Report, Treasurer.

Google offers over 999 words to describe an old woman, and they are uniformly pejorative. The top 4 are: “ distressingly ancient; squat and dumpy; dismal and lonesome; insanely suicidal.”

Some common names for old women are: old bag, granny, biddy, crone, hag, witch, harridan, bedlam, old bat, old boiler. And if that’s not bad enough, you can also resort to descriptions such as: “withered and bitter; almost well-dressed; unnaturally lusty; crazy and uncanny; entirely uninteresting; exceptionally invaluable.”

What’s in a name, you may ask. The answer is – a minefield. Language reflects and reinforces prejudice and discrimination and has terrible consequences. Arguably, there is a direct link between this gendered ageism and the social crisis that Australian older women are now experiencing. It is a multi-faceted crisis that is distinctive to this demographic. It negatively affects their employment, housing, livelihood, and mental and physical health. Older women are ending up on the dust heap of the nation’s economy.

The theme of NAIDOC 2023 was ‘ For Our Elders’. This theme highlights the connection between the Voice and the Elders and underscores the compelling reasons why we must vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum.

The Elders are the custodians of Indigenous heritage, culture and knowledge handed down from one generation of Elders to another. They have ensured the survival of the oldest Indigenous peoples in the world for 65,000 years. Elders are respected, honoured and listened to by the community.

But current statistics about Elders are very worrying. The ‘gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous life expectancy stands at around 15 years.

Remarkably, it appears that even in official documents there are two categories of Older Australians.

No Australian Government is equiped to close the gap without meaningful, informed consultations with the Voice, and that means listening to the Elders.

There is an excellent TV series ‘Julia’ now streaming about Julia Child, the multi-award winning American chef. With a first-rate cast led by Sarah Lancashire as Julia and an intelligent script, the series focuses on Julia’s battle to put her cooking show on American television in 1963.

From our perspective today this doesn’t appear to be a big deal. But it was. Remember, feminism didn’t really become a major movement until the late 1960s and 1970s. Before that, women were pressured not to enter the workforce if they had someone to support them, not to enter the universities and not to pursue careers.