Why I Have So Much Hope for Australia & the World
Despite some of the experiences we’ve lived through in the last few years, I will always feel very positive about the future of Australia and the world.
I feel this way because our individual choices and actions as human beings have an enormous effect, and the force that many like-minded people can exert on the world can never be underestimated.
These like-minded people don’t even need to be doing anything particularly special, the choices they make and the actions they take as they go about their everyday business all help move the world in the direction of good.
And even one person can have a formidable impact on their nation and their world.
My sister Lara Jensen provides a great example. In the midst of Covid, and while running two businesses and raising as well as teaching multiple children, she created the group Improve Train Lighting and Level Crossing Safety. She did this to correct a situation where the largest and heaviest vehicle on land is allowed to operate with only a headlight and two small ditch lights that are present only to light up the ditches next to the track for the train driver. This complete lack of safety lighting has been allowed by Australian state and federal governments despite the fact that these enormous vehicles are traversing thousands of unprotected rural level crossings, where drivers need to be able to see a train in order to prevent their certain death.
Lara did this as a result of the death of my brother Christian Jensen and his two friends Hilary Smith and Jess Broad at a Western Australian wheatbelt level crossing protected only by a give way sign in 2000. There was no alcohol, drugs, or speed involved in the accident, which happened on a cold July night. Despite the fact that all three had perfect eyesight, none of them saw the train. They were responsible, capable and beautiful people who lost their lives completely needlessly at the ages of 20, 19 and 18 respectively.
Lara has achieved a phenomenal Australia wide campaign and a well known group which is now even supported by rural legends like Lee Kernaghan and Western Australian legal heavyweight Malcolm McCusker KC. Amazingly, this week even saw the introduction of legislation in Western Australia to light up trains through a private members bill which will be debated in August. Come hell or high water, momentum will continue to build until there is visibility lighting on trains.
It’s important to note that Lara has lived through all the same pressures we’ve all lived through in the last few years. She has far less time than most of us, not more. Through sheer determination and persistence, she makes things happen regardless.
Lara’s work is a good example of the fact that when even one person makes a choice or undertakes an action, there is always a reaction. Newton’s third law of motion states “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” While this is a law of physics that focused on the forces interacting objects have on each other, the concept applies on a much broader level.
We all saw this directly over Covid too. Despite the fact that the government spin machine repeatedly told us that over 90% of the population was complying with emergency powers forcing mandatory Covid vaccinations, the reality was starkly different. We all knew it. Humanity made its own choices, despite the fact that we were contending with threats of business shut downs or loss of employment for non-compliance.
While the media was well and truly muzzled, industry associations like Master Builders WA were reporting an industry and an economy in crisis because many individual contractors and sub-contractors weren’t going to be forced into an injection and simply elected to wait the situation out. Eventually, Covid vaccination clinics stood empty because the population tired of a crisis that had resulted in the loss of their human rights and freedoms for no benefit at all. No one around us was seriously ill or dead from this supposedly perilous disease. We tired of the absurdity of emergency powers that required us to wear a face nappy and to register our identity even when going to the supermarket to buy food. And we no longer wanted to watch our functioning economy become progressively more and more dysfunctional as a result of the actions of governments at state and federal level.
Luckily though, when our economy ended up on life support pressure built up to such a point that things had to change.
The mandates had to be removed.
As they were removed, hope opened up. The oxygen returned to our world.
I was very lucky over this time. Starting a gardening business during Covid, I worked with clients who were older members of the Australian community. They made me so proud of my country. Kind, wise and fair, these people retained a sense of humour, toughness and a state of calm even in the worst possible situation. I am forever in their debt for not only putting food on my table, but also for showing me first hand just how amazing humanity is.
They handed me hope.
I realised that humanity will always prevail, despite what governments and massive multi-national corporations do to us.
My fellow Australians have handled whatever has been thrown at them, and more than met any challenge. So much so that we barely even noticed the fuel crisis that evolved in March of this year. We just adapted where we needed to and got on with life without batting an eyelid.
We all kept working. We all kept looking after each other.
In particular, this year I noticed how Australians running small and medium rural businesses always lead the way. These people continued to get up in the morning and to do what needed to be done, and to front up wherever they went with a smile on their face. There are reasons why these people create the productivity and wealth that this country runs on, despite the weight of whatever governments have imposed on all of us in recent years. These people forge ahead, get creative, adapt even when they think they might have adapted as far as they possibly could. They are stronger as a result of the fact that they’ve had to deal with the heaviest pressures. While business is challenging enough by itself, these challenges are amplified for rural businesses, who face higher costs and who’ve also had to contend with the many impacts that have been associated with an uninspiring procession of state and federal governments interested only in metropolitan votes.
We can always feel hopeful, because we’re making the future ourselves.
© Annemaree Jensen