It’s at times like these, when there is so much discontent and so much inequality between those at the top and those lower down, that we need some reminders that it doesn’t have to be like this. Indeed in times past, it was very different.

A friend shared this recently …

An inspiring article from the Sydney Morning Herald is worth passing around …

Mate ship values were enhanced in WWII, when Colonel Edward “weary” Dunlop developed a collective (socialist) approach to looking after his men, ensuring the fit looked after the sick, and the young looked after the old, especially on the deadly Japanese Burma railroad.

Tom Uren learnt those values from Weary Dunlop, and Tom mentored Albo with them, so that Albo made a great promise to all Australians on election night.

The best excerpt is:

“In 1987, he took Albanese to South-east Asia – the young man’s first trip abroad. In Thailand, Uren took Albanese to Hellfire Pass.

Albanese held the big man’s arm as they walked into the deep cutting, fearful Uren would faint beneath the storm of his memories.

All these years later Albanese, opening the election campaign that led to the prime ministership, declared: “We will look after the young, we will look after the sick, we will look after our older Australians. No one held back. No one left behind.”

It was a rewriting of Weary Dunlop’s wisdom that Tom Uren had made his own when not much more than a boy, struggling to survive in a pitiless bamboo jungle.”

A more expanded background story can be found here: Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop, Aus War Memorial

And this story from the SMH: ‘I love the boy’: The gift our PM received from a bamboo prison

7 min video clip – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMqfMhw5l9w&t=397s