Several decades ago, the Lubavitcher Rebbe said that the future generations’ wellbeing depended on teaching kids values at school. He urged all schools to start off the day with a minute of meditative and introspective silence, allowing each child to take themselves seriously for the first minute of their school day. He was adamant that the future of the world depended on inculcating good values at home and at school.

The world didn’t listen. Now look where we are. Takeover of public streets by political movements. Street gangs committing murder. Home invasions creating lifelong trauma. Shop lifting on a scale so large that large supermarket chains are factoring these costs into their price of goods!

The government’s response – barely a whimper. Smooth talking. Avoidance. Partisanship. Glib verbal card tricks to change the agenda. (Forget juvenile crime –  more important is some treaty admitting we stole their country! Really? That’s your solution??))  And the people are angry, yelling for justice, screaming for harsh laws, buying guns. Is this the Australia you want to live in?

Step one: Stop the enemy in its tracks.

Stop the harm. Stop prioritising the ‘future lives’ of youthful hoodlums and crims over the citizens of this once proud country. You invade a home – mandatory five-year sentence. You attack someone with a machete (or any weapon at all) – mandatory five-year sentence. You car-jack – five-year mandatory sentence. No more soft, empathic , weepy, concern, for the welfare of future murderers. If you are a non- citizen, then you must leave the country back to where you came from, the same week as case concludes – and at your or your family’s expense. You don’t like tough laws?  Leave now. If you have offended your citizenship oath? You must leave the country. You preach intolerance of other peoples – off to Nauru!

Step Two: Plan education for the next new generation

Yes, that’s a twenty-year plan. But well worth it.  School and home. It consists of all schools, public and private, teaching a curriculum that includes adoption of the highest values that this country espouses. This country has a history including – fair go, fair play, mateship, giving a lending hand, respect for the other, honesty and integrity, belief in a higher power, and a good lager! Don’t tell me about the importance of Physics, Shakespeare, chemistry, geography, Aboriginal history, and maths –  it will not be worth a cracker if this country tears itself apart at the seams, and regresses into fortress mentality. Values must come ahead of ‘facts’n’figures’! And it all begins at home. Take pride in living a life of honesty and integrity – and so will your kids! Take a cynical, uncaring, and anger-laden approach to life and country, and so will your kids. Choose! And stick by it.

Step Three: Pick leaders not party hacks

Choose leaders who are blessed with wisdom. Not leaders beholden to power-groups and fixed inflexible ideologies. Check how the potential leader guides his/her family, treats the petrol-pump attendant and waitress, speaks to the vagrant. Look for consistency and courage. Vote for a leader who displays thoughtfulness, who doesn’t yell into the mike and carry one as if they are G-d’s gift to man. Choose a leader who is willing to represent the people first, and his/her party, second. And most of all, a leader who flies economy class! Don’t underestimate this criterion. It says everything.  The late ex-Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, always flew economy class, and lived his Prime Ministership years in a tiny one-bedroom apartment with his wife Eliza. That’s the kind of leader I would follow.

We are in the month of Ellul. The last twelve days in fact – one day left representing each month of the past year. Analyse what you achieved or didn’t achieve in each of those months. How many people have you assisted? Have you given away at least 10% of your income to Tzedaka? Have you been an influence on your children? What have you done to improve society? Have you grown as a person? Are you more refined, more balanced, more likeable than. You were when the year started?

Have you arrived? That’s the name of this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tavo (“When you arrive to the Holy Land”). Do you measure ‘arriving’? Through your bank account? Shares portfolio? Social standing? Organisational position? If so you have a long way to go.  You haven’t arrived at all.  You have arrived when you have taken on one more mitzva than last year. That’s when you arrive to your personal Land of Israel. Go beyond the entry point. Work the land, till the soil of soul and body. Comes Yom Kippur, be able to face yourself, and face G-d, and feel good about it.

You still have 12 days to start the process. Start tomorrow.  It’s never too late. Who was it who said a journey of a thousand miles starts with a good L’Chaim? I believe it was the Greek thinker ‘Con Phewshs – a wise man indeed.