A paradox to Australia's fair go attitude

'Australia prides itself on giving people a fair go, barracking for underdogs and lopping tall poppies'

cash, money, generic, hand. Picture: Contributed

PARADOX is a great word (as are many with an "x") and a very useful one because humans are so good at it.

Queenslanders know coal is nasty. They know it's filthy, dirty, and expensive to mine. They know it's killing the Great Barrier Reef. They know it really just benefits already wealthy mine owners, with a bit trickling down to the workers and governments via royalties and a taxation framework largely devised by (and for) the mining industry.

They know it's a capital-intensive industry employing relatively few people.

Yet Queenslanders still voted for it.

Is that paradoxical, or weird?

The AFL briefly thought it had a problem with unruly crowds because people complained about the behaviour of other crowd members.

Peculiarly, this wasn't noticed by the AFL when Adam Goodes was heckled and abused out of the game ... until a movie was made about it.

Anyway, the response of the AFL to this "new" unruliness was to employ "crowd behaviour monitors" in hi-viz to wander the aisles encouraging people to keep their abuse to a minimum.

It worked, but after the first game, crowds complained the monitors were taking the fun out of unruliness.

WTF? (That's "watch the football"). Is that paradoxical or weird?

Australia prides itself on giving people a fair go, barracking for underdogs and lopping tall poppies. We love thumbing our noses at snooty-nosed, rich toffs and giving a battler a chance.

Paradoxically, we just voted for a range of economic measures that include tax advantages and cuts for corporations and the wealthy (low income earners get a $1000 kickback while high income earners will get $4000) and $10-20,000 pay increases for state Coalition politicians, while simultaneously reducing weekend penalty rates for our lowly paid service and hospitality workers, the latest kicking in just last week.

Similarly, we are mindful of the science (and medicine) behind many of the things we do, like eating, drinking and being merry, yet we still eat, drink and be merry irresponsibly.

We are the fattest nation on Earth, one of the drunkest and, given our above behaviour, one of the silliest, according to university tests, probably.

Yep, we are a paradoxical lot, or are we just weird?

Drink these paradoxically and responsibly and have a think about it.

Originally published as A paradox to Australia's fair go attitude