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I regard myself as an ordinary Australian. Nothing more and nothing less. I do not regard myself as left-wing or right-wing, nor am I a member of any political party.

I am an Australian and proud of it.

Being Australian and probably because of our beginnings being rooted in prisons, chains and the lash I firmly believe in freedom of the individual.

That is freedom to be who we are, believe what we believe as long as it brings no harm to anyone else.

However, my life has taught me that there is always some bugger trying to take your freedom away. There is always some tin pot despot wanting to make you conform to what they regard as the way to be. They want you to toe their line and if you don’t they will try to punish or destroy you.  This may be religiously, politically socially but often it’s not the way most of us want to be.  In other words, they want to impose on us ways of life we don’t necessarily want to take up.  We are quite happy to live by the code of “Don’t do anything to anyone else you wouldn’t want done to you”.

To achieve these aims, despots use fear in all forms of threats, armies, walls and structures they regard as strong, brutal, impregnable and forceful.

But the smell of freedom is like love, it’s like the wind. The wind blows where it blows. It blows through the windows of buildings; through the cracks in and over the walls and in the hearts many of those who hold the weapons.  It is everywhere and anywhere and timeless and endless.

Whips rot, chains rust, buildings collapse into piles of sand, the armies fade away but the wind blows for ever and cannot be stopped.

It lives in every human heart.

I have no doubt in the course of time the Kurdish people will gain their freedom to be themselves. To live in their own unique Kurdish way; to speak in their own language and to use their own Kurdish names. Ultimately, I believe, they will live in their own state in their own land.

It is our job to listen to the wind as it blows freedom and live to it.

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