When I’m in charge of Defence
In a megalomaniac fantasy moment, I’ve decided to restructure the Defence Forces into the Universal Child Protection Force. Any bastard who threatens to or is hurting children will be confronted and if they don’t stand down will be annihilated.
Occasionally, I’m compos mentis enough to rediscover how beautiful our world and its people are. Earlier this year, I met up with some new friends at a zoo (I really don’t like zoos, but that’s another story). Our group included one friend’s five year old daughter.
As one of our number worked at the zoo, she had been here numerous times before, so was well acquainted with the various animals. Me being the new person in the group, the only bloke and the foreigner who spoke different, was obviously going to be singled out for her attention. She immediately grasped my hand and hardly let go over the next few hours.
I have to admit, along with not liking zoos, I’m not one either for holding hands. Yet, I quickly accepted this and figured I’d better be a grown-up for a moment and just be nice. With that, we quickly negotiated that it was useless me trying to speak the local lingo, which wasn’t much of a problem — her English was pretty good anyway and in between the words I couldn’t work out her unconstrained facial expressions filled in my understanding. And so the ‘tour’ started.
This child was wonderful in her wide-eyed expression and translation back to me of this little world around us. In fact, I think the German ‘wunderbar’ is a far better word to describe the breadth of expression she conveyed. I harmonised completely with her joy of showing me around. I felt energised for those few precious hours and am grateful for the time then that gives me cause to reflect even now.
What this experience enabled me to remember again was how precious our children are — all children wherever they are and whoever’s children they are. I think if we give them our attention in the same way they naturally give us their attention then we can both have an enriching time of connection (I admit I haven’t met this standard very well in the past). At least for us adults this should build an ever stronger presence in our mind of why being an adult carries an obligation to nurture all children we have the privilege to interact with. It also means when we see shit happen to children we should do something about it.
I kind of want to leave things here with that. It upsets me too much (tears on cue…gee I’m a bit soft!) to think about the horrors too many children across the world are being subjected to right now. This said, when I woke up this morning I couldn’t get rid of that horrible, horrible image in my head of that photo from the Vietnam War of that child running up a road away from a napalmed village. I figure you know the one. Fuck war and violence.
Back in my imaginary world…
The philosophy behind the restructure of the Defence Forces is that it re-orientates using force as a political act or of self-interested nationalism. Unfortunately, the current Defence policy claims its primary purpose is to defend the country against armed attack. However in recent decades the concept of ‘attack’ has broadened to such an extent that our Defence Forces have attacked groups in other countries without an armed attack ever being conducted on our soil. While some of these groups aren’t worth a knob of goat shit as human beings, this strategy is still perverse and it is wrong. I want to distance the use of force from such parochial and manipulative uses of power.
Restructuring Defence to the defence of all children fundamentally changes the purpose of using force. Adults, playing their pathetic games of power, will no longer be able to get away with harming children. By defending children from violence, I aim to protect families, in all their diversity, and the community structures that support children. More widely, I am enabling people to live in peace with the sure hope that all the time and other investments they make in their family wellbeing and the networks of support across their communities won’t be destroyed by a nasty egocentric man.
The restructure of the Defence sees them have both a domestic and international role. This recognises even in a relatively peaceful and well-off country such as ours threats and violence against children is intolerable and we will work to eliminate it wherever it is. This means I will work with Police Ministers in each of the states to provide personnel and other support, and also facilitate international linkages with NGOs and best practices to be transferred. State police will remain responsible for prosecuting cases of child exploitation and abuse.
Of course, I will continue to allocate sufficient budget to support personnel in Defence with the appropriate training, technology and equipment to respond rapidly and on a large scale where necessary to intervene in potential or active conflicts that threaten the wellbeing and lives of children. In addition, I intend to work closely with aligning training and support for our Defence Forces with well-respected humanitarian agencies. This will give our personnel additional skills in working respectfully with communities under threat in a culturally sensitive manner. It will also allow us to better support any post-conflict infrastructure and social network rebuilding.
I commend this new structure to you and urge other leaders to follow in a similar way. We must not fail our children. They all deserve to have our unconditional love.
Back to reality…
