Amid the background stories of war, famine, environmental disaster and poverty, the standout issue of the week has clearly been whether the onion should go on the bread before or after the sausage.
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There is now apparently a rule about such things, at least at the 259 Bunnings Warehouse stores around Australia.
After a Queensland farmer slipped on a stray piece of onion at a sausage sizzle at his local Bunnings, the hardware giant decreed that henceforth, onion shall be placed on the bread before the sausage. This rule, clearly a blatant overturning of all barbecue traditions and this year’s classic barbeque-stopper, is intended to minimise the chances of the onion removing itself from the top of the sausage and deliberately creating an OH&S hazard. Who knew onions were so malicious?
Fear of litigation drives much of the regulatory environment most people regard as nanny-statism: the notion of rules being made to protect us from ourselves. Rather than protecting us from ourselves, the reality is that the rules are being made to protect governments and corporations from being sued in the event that someone is injured on their turf. Who bears responsibility in the event of, say, someone stepping on a piece of onion? Is it the person who served the onion, the premises on which the onion is being served, or – here’s an idea – the responsibility of the person themselves?
Nanny-state rules do not protect us from ourselves. They serve to remove from us the responsibility we all bear as citizens. As functional humans, we need to be aware of the dangers around us and to factor those into our daily lives without rules. As functional adults, we need to engender the next generation with such responsibilities. Governments and corporations making rules to protect themselves simply begins to remove our own perceptions of danger.
As a society we need to reclaim our social and personal responsibility, enabling risk decision-making to be based on what we see, hear, feel and experience, rather than a rule to stop us suing someone else.
Letter to the editor
Lest We Also Forget
Lest we also forget the 1200 brave women from twelve nations, including combatant nations, who gathered at The Hague in April 1915 to consider how to stop the slaughter already well under way, though still to get much worse. Post-war they formed the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Their resolutions fed into the League of Nations and thence into the United Nations. Would that we had heeded the wisdom they distilled, in the face of derision, hostility and dismissal.
Lest we forget that WILPF, US President Woodrow Wilson, John Maynard Keynes and many others vehemently opposed the crushing settlement imposed on Germany by vengeful allies, Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes noisy among them. That settlement sowed the seeds of another war, as widely predicted.
Lest we forget that the spirit of our soldiers was not magically formed on the beaches of Gallipoli, it was nurtured by the vigorous, optimistic and progressive young nation in which they had grown up.
Lest we forget that the spirit of that young nation was crushed by some of the heaviest casualty rates of any nation, though the war was distant from our shores and fought much more for sordid reasons of empire and race than for peace and freedom.
Lest we forget that the deep wounds of the survivors, physical and emotional, darkened the lives of their children and are with us still.
Lest we forget that the soul of a nation does not reside in a building, it resides in our hearts and our hopes. Buildings or institutions may symbolise or embody aspects of our nation: libraries, galleries, concert halls, the ABC, parliaments and local halls no less than memorials to sacrifice. We need to tend them all.
Lest we forget that a nation’s soul cannot be defined by bloodletting, let alone be sponsored by corporate arms manufacturers.
Lest we forget that war will not end war. We cannot fight for peace. Peace will come when we have the courage to transcend our fears and reach out to understand those who oppose us, and to find a way forward that will serve everyone’s interest.
Lest we forget the war (and it was called a war at the time) that was fought on Australian soil, with even higher casualties, by credible estimates.
Lest we forget that the descendants of the defeated survivors of that earlier war have reached out to us and invited us to walk together to a better future. Were we, the non-indigenous of this land, to take up that invitation we might learn to grow beyond the timorous national adolescence we have been stuck in for a century.
