After Susan Ley’s exit from politics, she embarked on a bucket-list bus trip across the USA from North Dakota to the bottom of Texas. She reports meeting a veritable potpourri of fellow travelers - prisoners returning home, veterans, nuns. She observed a clear disconnect between the elite political class, and her fellow travelers, battered by a lifetime of being overlooked. The most striking observation Ms Ley made was of a dispassionate and divided nation.

Source: ABCTV 7.30 Report

I am not going to make any comment on Ms Ley’s observations. Instead, I pose the question:

What would Ms Ley have observed had she made a similar trip across Australia? Would she travel along the eastern seaboard, or east to west, perhaps Adelaide to Darwin?

Small rural towns under the siege of out of control youth.

Hi Aries54,

What she wouldn't see is a carbon copy of America, thank God for that! Despite all the naysayers and pessimists, Australia is still a great place to live.

http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

What Susan would see in both nations would be young people brainwashed into believing it to be okay to do physical harm to people and things they disagree with.

Why are young Australians being taught hatred to the extent that they want to kill people they disagree with?

I'm certain that no insight will come from the Royal Commission looking into the causes of antisemitism.

The light bulb moment will come when people realise that Nazis and Commies are differing orthodoxies of the same hateful ideology and totally unrelated to conservatism.

Hi Fester,

Me thinks you err too much on the side of pessimism, when the true picture is one of optimism. The vast majority of Australians, regardless of their age or background are decent people, we should be thankful for that.

Nazi's, Communists, I agree they are extremists that have more in common with each other, than any differences. Conservatism is not a bad thing in itself, but when it resists good progressive change, then it is a problem, conservatism resisting all change is bad in my view. With our liberal democracy allowing for progressive change, is why I believe Australia is a better society today than it was 100 years ago. I'm not saying that just in a material sense, but in the context of social improvement, we are a better society. Australia is not a Utopian society, which can simply "stay as we are" with a totally conservative outlook, progressive change is still necessary.

Fester,

You say:

“I'm certain that no insight will come from the Royal Commission looking into the causes of antisemitism”.

You are right. They are now back to yapping about guns and spending lots to buy them from decent, honest people who would never go out and use them against their fellow human beings.

If they are so concerned about the presence of guns in the community, why did the Daddy terrorist of the Islamic duo have a gun or guns?

The creep was not an Australian citizen, and non-citizens are not supposed to have firearms. But this terrorist actually had a permit! Whoever granted him a gun licence should be hauled before the Commission.

The Commission will be a dud, as such things always are in Australia. It doesn't attend to antisemitism or Islamic immigration, the only two things that were behind the massacre. The ALP is antisemitic. A large slab of the Australian population is antisemitic.

Jews are moving to Israel where, despite rockets and military armaments, not just guns, they are much safer than they are in Australia.