FOR SOME TIME NOW there has been something niggling in my mind about our society that I have been unable to identify. Last week, I think I identified it and it came by courtesy of Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch. I did think of playing it this morning but it would take too long. If you want to see it, simply Google ‘Monty Python dead parrot’ and you can see it on YouTube. It’s about a guy who returns to the pet shop with a dead parrot and the shop owner denies that it is dead. ‘It is just sleeping.’ And then follows a hilarious scene of shouting into the parrot’s ear, and banging it on the table. ‘This parrot is dead, dead, dead.’ The matter is never resolved, and that is what makes it so funny—the lack of reality, the inability to recognise and deal with the real situation.

Let me give some examples:

1 The present political scene is one. Here we have a Prime Minister who thinks he is the Messiah who refuses to consult, and miners who are making enormous profits, making hay while the sun shines. The debate has got to the ridiculous stage with full page adverts costing the earth, full of half truths and in one significant instances, making no sense at all. The Government advert contains half truths, for example, the discounting of tax on income from savings. I quote, ‘There will be a tax cut on bank and other interest income. This will reward Australians who put
money away for their future.’ No it won’t. What is not said that the limit for interest income is a paltry $1000. Sheer dishonesty. The miners’ advert is little better. Royalty payments as I understand it are deductible—and you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have it as a credit and a debit. But the classic advertise-ment appeared yesterday. It was a full page advert that made no sense whatsoever—not one skerrick of sense, and it probably cost $100 000 to place. (Nev showed the advert in which the relevant figures, the whole message of the advert, had been omitted!)

It typifies the present debate with tens of millions being used on advertising and getting nowhere.

Incidentally, the answer is quite simple. Forget about the whole fancy scheme of government guaranteed losses. The Petroleum Super Profit scheme provides the answer. When the profit is above the bond rate plus 5% then you pay 40% tax. All we do is to add iron ore, coal and gas to the Petroleum Super Profit Scheme.

2 Two Judges retired last week with both of them pleading for a little reality. Their point was that jailing people does not work and that, as they stand at the end of a process of social disintegration, society should not depend on the legal system to provide many answers to problems such as child abuse. Earlier intervention is required. But what do we do? We go on listening to the cry for more police and heavier penalties. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’ We live in a world that is becoming increasingly insane.

3 It is true too of the financial scene and the Global Financial Crisis. I am reminded of words from President Roosevelt’s inaugural speech in 1933. ‘The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.’ That was 77 years ago. and since then the finance sector has behaved in ways that are unethical, irresponsible, greedy and fraudulent. They have lent without limit, gambled recklessly and profited massively—and we can look forward to another Global Financial Crisis—perhaps better described as a Global Financial Casino because Credit Default Swaps and naked selling is nothing more than glorified gambling. The insanity of continuing on our financial merry-go-round is staggering.

4 My next sermon is on Climate Change and how the Christian faith relates to it and in the preparation of it I found myself using the phrase, ‘high on hope and low on reality’, It sums up much of what we are trying to say today. The failure of the Copenhagen Conference was a foregone conclu-sion. To solve an international problem, you need an international community and we haven’t got to square on in that respect. We go on repeating the mantras of ethnicity and patriotism.

5 This being high on hope and low on reality is also seen in the personal sphere. For example, we all hope that we will die in our sleep, but the reality is likely to be quite different and we may well end up in a so-called nursing home where we will eke out a mindless vegetable existence. It is now technically possible to keep people alive for a very long time—and that is precisely what we are doing. We are putting off the reality of death—and what I want this morning is to bring you up to speed about what you can do to bring a little reality to what for many of us will be our immediate future.

(Neville then outlined the Advanced Health Directive and the Enduring Power of Guardianship which came into operation on 15 February 2010, and indicated some possibilities of using them. For information about these, and for the relevant forms, go to
www.health.wa.gov.au/advancehealthdirective
or www.publicadvocate.wa.gov.au.


Address at First Sunday Forum 6 June 2010