Good essay … and I can almost smell the molasses! 'Out on the patio ... we sit ...'

Although Brisbane born and bred, both my parents were from North Queensland and I’ve had an ongoing affectionate contact with the region since the seventies. Over that period, it’s moved with the times – as with anywhere else.

What is sad is that we even need to write and read essays like this. But they are a necessary reality check in a nation where metropolitan interests dominate our cultural debates and reduce our vibrant regional centres to the status of provincial ‘otherness’.

What I like most about Queensland as a state is that, unlike Victoria and New South Wales in particular, it has retained a healthy metropolitan-regional balance. I’d hate to see the rise of the mega-SEQ juggernaut put this balance under serious threat

Enjoyed this. Contrary to pop opinion, FF aren't serious contenders. It's people like Katter and the late Peter Andren who know that local issues over ride neo-lib agendas by the big two parties.

Good point about southern money and the gays, grey ghosts and the cornucopia of interest groups. Nth Queenslanders (espc on the coast) are a diverse lot but at the end of the day, they'll go with a candidate who is credible (there goes FF) and who will advocate for locals.

I believe both Nth Queensland and SA are prime states for independents to have a crack at both houses of Federal parliament.

Australia, as you reason your vote, remember us.

Regions like Cooktown and Cape York have but a tiny voice.

Consider why we ask for meaningful change.

Wilson’s article names the geo- complexities well.

On the positive side, Cook Shire is vast with a tremendous future. A small populace enthusiastic, a local enterprise wanting. Mixed agriculture begs for water. There is potential in cottage industry and the cultural arts, for life-style living and tourism.

However, we need thoughtfulness to counterpoise this rough rugged land. It is the crocodile-hunters cold-bred hunger and a puppets bias that holds back our sustainability in normal everyday things.

On a dark side, there is a shadow. Something explicable, dictative, unyielding and stern. Injustice shrouds a weary smile deep, worn against a reddening sky.

Our leadership is grass sour. Its energy resentful, fermenting, smoking, cheerless without due flame.

Regions like Sydney, Melbourne, or the NT are not the only areas experiencing cold-blooded callous cohesive breakdowns.

Rural regions suffer when a political climate becomes bankrupt of its true representation and need for balance.

Remember how democracy was battled in Orwell’s ‘Lord of the Flies?

Remember the leadership struggle for power, and how seriously one sides exploitation impeded the human state and survival of the other.

Are we but to remain like animals of the fringe to be slayed in the dead of night?

Populations starving of “fairness” is a sign of neglect, and in a democracy, this is ever serious.

It takes a political election, with all eyes watching, to instigate fairness, a trade for productive change.

‘If men alone define the situation as real, they are real in their consequences’. These oats sow desire, status, domination, a hunger for their own sense of self-righteousness on all matters to maintain a grip on their political security.

I am no crusader, and my blood is worth more than the raspberries the Liberals offer for pudding.

See Part Two of this miacat Paste Below
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Wake Up Australia, we have some dishonourable unclean Politico’s.

To contine a watchful gaze on the inhouse version of a story extended from above... and for the minds of just due citizenships, I continue sharing the connections through the following;

“Teddy Bears Hiding and Failing to Share the Picnic”.

http://www.miacat.com/Media_Pan_One/REGIONAL_Pacific_News/Local_Cape_York/Shire_Matters/Shire_Matters_1.htm

With an arrow of might, justified and with directive purpose, here’s the politics dressed in its subtleness. Give it ground level intricacy. The tad is mis-spelt for its discomfort as the idiosyncratic speaks NAIF of a Ms Elsie Phillips (ALIAS) to expose a public crime structural, seriously juxiposed in the repression of herstory.

“DO WE HAVE A PROBLEM?”

http://www.miacat.com/Media_Pan_One/REGIONAL_Pacific_News/Local_Cape_York/New_campaign/Do_We_Ck_Letter_Open.asp

Put fourth to rest argument, on what we already know, be it so placed on the sleeve of your responsibility. Described openly of a developing science, where knowledge can lead us forward;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_disorganization_theory

And as miacat plays for the citizen of the day, her motive for life is clearly on the desk of those whom we wish to steer;

“Open Letter to PM HOWARD AND MR KEVEN RUDD”

http://www.miacat.com/Open%20Letter_Sept_14th.htm

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Orwell wrote 1984. William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies.

MLK and Cheryl - thanks. I agree that NQ is misrepresented in metropolitan outlets, and that it may well be fertile ground for independent and third party MPs if they get the politics right. Miacat - thanks, I think - best of luck with bringing attention to issues up in Cook shire. Jason .