Not such a delicious adventure

The women in my family continue to be harassed and assaulted

In the early 2000s, I was a witness for the prosecution in a magistrates court, for the felony theft of an expensive printer. I felt intimidated by the judicial environment, and sat there waiting outside the magistrates court as the cases were processed. The case being heard by the magistrate before mine was of a man who was being prosecuted for hitting his female partner with a brick… and it was his THIRD time in court for assaulting her.

I was so horrified by this, when I took the stand, I was a terrible witness for the prosecution. I stammered and could barely talk. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. The evidence and paperwork provided for the purchase and delivery of the printer given, I sat down and the case proceeded along. The defendant for the printer theft had no coherent defence and it was his first offence and the verdict was deferred for diversion discussions. I was in shock for days, my nervous system was overloaded. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn’t sleep. The thought kept going around in my head, “how many times did he hit her when the police were not called?” 

This was not a delicious adventure.

Later, when I did some corporate training on family violence, I learned that where family violence is suspected or known as an issue, then denying leave to certain female employees over the Christmas period was an act of safety and kindness. In the banking branch frontline, there was informal training to identify female customers who were under duress and needed help - and point them at resources and helplines. 

The number of murders of women by their male partners continues to grow in Australia, a terrible and sad statistic driven by the economic stress imposed by the policies of the Reserve Bank of Australia without any oversight or recourse for the damage that has been done.

There have been instances of unconscionable conduct in the banking industry in Australia, and the most recent Royal Commission into banking revealed a whole set of anger management issues in the male executives that were revealed when they were held to account by the investigations.

These executive men were exposed as arrogant angry individuals who could not deal with being confronted by the evidence of the alleged wrong-doing that occurred on their watch. They clearly did not believe that they should be held to account, despite the huge financial compensation that they were being paid to be accountable. They were accessories to the alleged malfeasance and theft that the Royal Commission had identified. These men were unable to suppress the anger that they felt. The very same uncontrollable anger that drives a man to hit his partner with a brick was also expressed by these banking executive men when confronted by the evidence of their alleged culpability.

Their in-ability to moderate their responses and outbursts resulted in them being removed from their positions after they had presented themselves to the Royal Commission. Sadly many of these men who were removed got to keep their massive compensation packages, and some have been offered cushy new executive positions despite the public exposure of their moral turpitude and anger management problems.

My argument about the Reserve Bank of Australia is this: 

Bad economic policy imposed by the Reserve Bank has created the conditions for increased family violence by men on their female partners. 

As a consequence, the Reserve Bank is not just a blunt economic tool - it is now an accessory to every single murder that has occurred in the families that have been stressed by the economic conditions imposed on them.

It could be argued that this is a massive stretch, and it is the men committing the murders who should be held to account. This is absolutely true, however the question of being an accessory to the murder also needs to be considered. 

The arms-dealers in the Australian defence industry have recently argued that they have no culpability with respect to the recent slaughter of civilians in the Middle-East. 

“We don’t sell weapons, we only sell the parts for weapons,” is what I understand that the position of the Australian politicians is on this. The Australian arms-dealers by supplying the parts for the weapons are undoubtedly accessories to that slaughter despite the political statements to the contrary.

In this sense, my argument is that the Reserve Bank of Australia is just as much an accessory to death, as these arms-dealers are. 

Because it has been proven on multiple prior occasions that the outcome of increased poverty is more family violence of men on women and children. There is no plausible deniability here - this is deliberate unconscionable conduct by the male executives who chose this path knowing that it would impact women and children this way.

If a Royal Commission can hold the retail banking industry in Australia to account for unconscionable conduct in the sale of financial products to customers that trapped them in a cycle of debt, then it follows that the executives of the Reserve Bank of Australia can ALSO be held to account for their unconscionable conduct that has led to the rise poverty that has so rapidly driven up the number of deaths of so many Australian women and children. 

When it comes to debt, the Australian government is equally culpable in driving economic hardship for the most vulnerable. The pay-day lenders and pawn shops are still legally allowed to charge as much as 700% interest on unsecured loans. During these times of economic hardship, this is a debt-trap for the poverty stricken that also needs to be stopped.

The impact of the unfettered post-pandemic profit-gouging by corporations is a global phenomenon - Singapore has been just as much impacted as Australia. In December, the number of personal bankruptcies declared in Singapore were the largest that they’ve ever been, and lawyers who are involved in actions to repossess assets are very busy. If we look at the Australian government approach and compare it with Singapore, then we see an interesting contrast. 

The Singapore government has been visibly proactive and swift to ensure that the people that live closest to the poverty line are looked after. They have recognised the impact of economic hardship on families, and have rolled out many different and wide-ranging initiatives that address the hardship at the grass-roots level. Sadly, the men in the Australian government and the Australian Reserve Bank do not appear to have the same sense of moral duty to the Australian people, as the Singapore government does to its people.

When it comes to anger, it runs through generations in families. And the emotional damage is insidious and long lasting. 

Anger does not discriminate when it comes to gender. However - let us be really clear, it is ok to be angry. Anger is a necessary and healthy emotion that drives us to take action to change a situation. 

It is the cultural belief that violent punishment and death are appropriate responses when men get angry that is the issue.

Punishment comes in many forms. 

It is this doing violent physical harm as punishment to another, or ourselves, is the component of male-culture that needs to change. 

All this talk about “Men need to fix this”, has validity. However this is not just a “men’s problem” - it’s a cultural problem. 

Society as a whole, inclusive of gender, is an accessory to the effects of dehumanisation that allows us to regard physical violence as appropriate punishment.

Hollywood actively exports the culture of violent punishment - that it is acceptable for a person to inflict violence as punishment. To kill, rape, maim and terrify is big profitable entertainment business. Violence is celebrated at the Oscars by Will Smith slapping someone. The fact that Hollywood has shifted the script to include all genders as violent perpetrators of punishment doesn’t make it any less of a male-culture artefact. 

The challenge is that society-as-a-whole actively subscribes to this violent punishment culture. 

Cultural-norms are important. I saw a meme that went something like this “Americans are often offended by the frequent and casual use of profane words like ‘c*nt’ in conversation in Australia, but don’t understand when Australians are offended by the slaughter of school children with automatic weapons.” 

Punishment culture is not just a Puritan cultural artefact that is exported by Hollywood in the name of profits. I think there’s a sense of entitlement to punishment there that needs to be examined because the cultural norm is common globally.

Punishment by violence against women and children is accepted as culturally normal. 

The last 100 years have seen terrible punishments inflicted. 

The gassing of civilians in Syria & Palestine in the 1920s using chemical weapons left over from WWI by the British government was a violent punishment. The bombing of Dresden in 1945 was a violent punishment. Both of these violent punishments were inflicted by the same man. As I write this, this culture of violent punishment is repeating itself in the ruined remains of Palenstine, one hundred years after that first gassing of civilians by the British government. 

The punishment is seen as appropriate by those inflicting it due to dehumanisation - the distinction that some people are judged to be somehow less than human. 

And that it is accepted that we are entitled to punishment because of our dehumanised judgement. 

The recent developments of male “incel” and female “4B” cultures are cultures of exclusion and punishment. The common thread across the two is the entitlement to punishment. They are not an evolution. These self-isolation blame-cultures are dehumanising and strongly express their entitlement to punish others. 

It’s this mediaeval entitlement to punish that we need to change. 

I’m not calling for a revolution - because a revolution almost always comes with an explicit, or implicit, call to punishment for the transgressors. 

I’m calling for an evolution. We all need to evolve here. We need to stop blaming and dehumanising each other. 

We need to recognise that it is our unconscious entitlement to punishment that means that we are all accessories to violence and death.

When I first started to write my books, I thought that if I could help just one man to stop him from harming himself or someone else - then my writing would be all worthwhile. I’ve had feedback that it really has, from several of the men who contacted me after reading my first book “Angry-as-Fuck, but no idea why?”

I didn’t write my books to become a famous zillionaire author kissing Oprah’s ass on stage. I wrote my books because I knew that someone somewhere needed to hear that message in a way that inspired them to embrace the change for the better. 

Since I first published my books, I’ve held the opinion that people need to choose their own path, and that direct intervention was non-consensual. But I’ve changed my position on that, my crisis of spirit is not going away.

The lives of my children continue to be put at risk.

The women in my family continue to be violently harassed and assaulted.

One female member of my family has changed countries simply to find a safer place to live, just like my grandmother’s family had to do in the 1930s. Like millions of refugees do globally every day.

I cannot sit by the sidelines and remain an accessory to a culture of war and violent punishment of dehumanised groups of people. I need to “do my bit” down at the grass roots - and I need to do that now. If I don’t then I too remain an unconscious accessory to violence, just as much as the male executives of the Reserve bank of Australia.

This is my call to action: 

If you know a man that is struggling with anger issues then please help me to give them a choice to change their path, before they harm someone, or themselves. Even if it is anger over something as small as how to stack the dishwasher.

Buy them a copy of my Amazon #1 bestselling book “Angry as F***, but no idea why?”, give it to them and ask them to read it. 

The stories in my book illustrate how famine & war impacted my family and how I found a way out of the culture of anger. Hopefully it will give them some insight into how they too can find their way out of the trap and choose a new path. It’s available in audio-book format, paperback and ebook. 

If you happen to meet me and you want a copy of the book to give someone who desperately needs it then I will give you a copy for free if you will promise me that you will actively intervene with the person that needs the message.

If you don’t feel safe then don’t confront them. But do make sure somehow that you find a way for them to know the book is there for them to read, even if you have to mail it to them anonymously. 

Even if they don’t actually read it, or they only read 10 pages and then toss it in the bin, the very fact that they know their behaviour has been noted may make all the difference to their consciousness, and stop them from doing the violent punishment that we know that they believe that they are entitled to.

Put them on the path to new adventures.