Barry Jones

I joined the Australian Labor Party in February 1951, and 75 years later I remain a rather queasy life member. With a Victorian state election due in November, I am constantly asked to explain policy decisions or statements by Premier Jacinta Allan. I am acutely aware and embarrassed that I cannot understand, let alone explain or justify, policies or decisions I find baffling or abhorrent.

A most important national challenge to all involved in our political process – especially government, opposition and media – is to restore social cohesion. Surely one of our great national successes was to build a tolerant and effective multi-ethnic, multireligious and multicultural nation, one that has as part of it the world’s longest surviving culture, and which until recent times was the envy of the rest of the world.

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. – Dylan Thomas (1951) Australians often seem rather uneasy about attempting to examine the range and depth of their religious beliefs. Like most people, other than fundamentalists, I feel shifty and inconclusive, because of a deep uncertainty about what I believe. That a God, however defined, exists? Probably. That Jesus was a uniquely powerful and charismatic teacher? Yes.