Can you tell us how we, the people, convince the United nations to act as a genuine force for good in the world by bringing together the might of the world’s most powerful nations to rectify, at its source, the trauma these individuals are enduring? Or can you suggest other ways we can act? I’m asking this question out of sheer frustration that we can do nothing more than be compassionate to the world’s victims AFTER the event. People power has achieved results before, so perhaps those caring people can do more now – but how?

Living with mental illness (my own and that of my husband), I am bombarded with jingoistic slogans like ‘R U OK?’, parroted by gurus of ‘Mindfulness’, and by their minions who wave yellow balloons in my face, or consultants who advise employers to host endless parties, or feign empathy in exchange for docility, or friends who assume we need an ideological revamp. If wellbeing crusaders really cared how we felt, they would be quieter and let us have our contemplation; or ask a complete sentence with rounded vowels, including the last two letters of ‘you’. If a person cannot ask ‘How are you feeling?’ without abbreviating it into an acronym, clearly they have no time to hear us. If we had the power to define mental health, perhaps it would differ from current expectations? Who would the ‘sick’ ones be then?

The NDIS is one enormous quango (QUasi-Autonomous National Government Organisation). My gut feeling is that three or four fold the amount of money given to people with a disability through their NDIS funding package has gone on the salaries and infrastructure of those setting up the system and those administering it. In my opinion, just one of the many downfalls of the system introduced.

So many of today’s Grandparents fulfil the role of the Carer for their Grandchildren. On occasion, the Grandparent’s own methods of responding to / dealing with the behaviours of children may differ from that of the child’s parents. What is the expectation in the event this occurs?

We seem to spend a lot of time telling people they’re wrong (and even stupid) – in politics, in the media, on social forums. Nobody ever seems to change their mind. It all seems a bit boring and pointless. Can we change the way we communicate and actually have an effect?

We often have a choice between doing what we know is right, and doing what will gratify or benefit ourselves (even at the expense of others). So, why be good?

As mass surveillance by companies and government increases, digital privacy becomes more and more important. Information professionals have many skills that can contribute to educating and informing citizens about the importance of intellectual freedom.

I am perturbed by the conflicting stories around whether Harper Lee actually consented to publication. And that plays with a bigger question in my mind about artist’s legacies and what happens to their unpublished or unreleased work posthumously.

As a first world country, Australians experience a high quality of life. Yet everybody suffers and hurts, and could our experience of suffering, through illness, abuse, loss, break-up, poverty, discrimination, fear etc be put into a different framework where it is recognised for what it can bring and enable, individually and on a bigger scale? The biggest national identities of white Australia seem to be based on and through hardship and suffering.

It seems to be a common pattern, and one that creates waste.