Dad Minus One

Last week, in the lead up to Riley's birthday, I asked if any of you were in a position to support the work we do through the Immunisation Foundation of Australia.

I want to be honest, I never know how those posts will land.

There's always a voice in the back of my head that says people have their own bills, their own battles, their own kids to feed.

That asking feels selfish.

That maybe the moment has passed and people have moved on.

I was wrong.

So spectacularly, overwhelmingly, beautifully wrong.

In the space of a week, this community - you legends - raised over twenty thousand dollars.

I need you to sit with that for a second, because I certainly had to.

Twenty thousand dollars.

For a little boy who lived for thirty-two days.

Some of you gave what you could.

Some of you gave more than you probably should have.

Some of you couldn't give financially but shared the post, told a friend, or sent a message that carried more weight than any dollar amount ever could.

And beyond the one-off contributions, a number of you signed up to give monthly.

An ongoing commitment that means this fight doesn't stop when the birthday passes and the posts slow down.

That's a stake in the ground that says this matters beyond a single moment on a calendar.

I won't pretend I have the words to adequately thank you for that, because I don't.

I've built a bit of a reputation for being able to string a sentence together, but this one genuinely has me stumped.

What I can tell you is this:

Every single dollar goes towards making sure that the next young family sitting in a hospital waiting room has access to better information, stronger messaging, and a fighting chance at never having to endure what we did.

That's Riley's legacy.

Not a statistic.

Not a cautionary tale.

A purpose.

And you lot are the ones keeping it alive.

From the bottom of my battered, bruised, and eternally grateful heart - thank you.

For seeing him.

For remembering him.

For fighting alongside us.

💙

-D-1 🥲

PS Normal service to resume shortly

We need to talk about the absolute contradictory state of justice in this country right now.

On January 20 this year, activist Theo Nolan-Isles tweeted a bad taste joke offering free beer to anyone who caused physical pain to politicians voting for this new hate speech bill.

Dumb s**t?

Sure.

End result?

He’s in jail.

But Theo has some history in this space.

See, in May 2024, Theo was the victim in a case where a man named David Wise planted a literal bomb on Theo’s car because he didn’t like Theo displaying the Palestinian flag.

Wise left a note stating:

"Enough! Take Down Flag! One Chance!!!!" and accompanied it with a homemade device that comprised of a fuel canister with a semi-moist towel stuffed into it, with a disposable lighter and large bolts attached.

Disarming the bomb took the bomb disposal squad three hours and a robot to secure, and it was confirmed as being explosive.

Sound like terrorism?

Well yes, but also - nope!

Wise was found guilty of ‘menacing’ and ‘harassing’ and sentenced to a measly 12 months of jail time.

Not convicted of terrorism.

Think that’s an isolated incident?

Fast forward to just two days ago.

Perth - the Invasion Day rally.

A man throws a homemade explosive device off a balcony directly into a crowd of 2,500 protestors.

Police confirm it was packed with chemicals, nails, and ball bearings.

A literal shrapnel bomb designed to maim and kill on impact.

The only reason it didn’t turn a peaceful rally into a massacre is that the fuse failed to light.

End result?

Unlawful act with intent to harm and Making explosives.

Terrorism charges?

Nup.

He’s the wrong colour (or is that the right colour?)

Now not to mitigate what Theo did (Inciting violence is wrong full stop).

But are we really pretending that a tweet about free beer for punching someone is in the same universe as wiring actual explosives to a car, or throwing a shrapnel bomb into a crowd of families and elders?

I can guarantee if the roles were reversed this would be called terrorism all day long (and rightly so).

I don’t agree with the March for Australia rallies - but if someone threw a pipe bomb into the middle of it, I’d absolutely want them charged as a terrorist.

We can stop pretending justice is blind.

Right now, it’s peeking out from under the blindfold to check your politics and your skin colour before deciding if you’re a ‘menace’ or a ‘terrorist.’

We’re setting a precedent where the punishment depends less on the explosive and more on the ideology of the person lighting the fuse.

A tweet can’t kill you.

A shrapnel bomb is designed to do nothing else.

If our courts can’t distinguish between a bad joke and a lethal weapon, we aren't keeping Australians safe.

We’re just picking sides.

And that s**t should scare the hell out of all of us.

-D-1

True morality isn't found in how we treat those we love.

It’s found in how we treat those we've been told to hate.

We see it everywhere.

Tribes, groups, and movements convinced that they are the righteous ones and everyone else is the enemy.

But as the philosopher Bertrand Russell warned, this is the first step toward something much darker.

We often think of purity and righteousness as virtues to be chased.

However, history (and philosophy) paints a much darker picture of these labels.

When a group begins to view itself as the sole arbiter of what is ‘pure’ and ‘good,’ they aren't just making a moral claim, they are often laying the groundwork for exclusion - or worse.

Anyone willing to divide the world into the ‘righteous’ and the ‘unrighteous’ is often just a small push away from committing terrible brutality.

See, when you label a neighbour as subhuman, an alien, or a monster, you aren’t being moral.

You’re creating a playground for your own sa**sm.

Language matters.

Dividing the world into Saints and Sinners allows the group enforcing the punishment to justify wreaking havoc and cruelty on anyone they dislike.

Blaise Pascal once famously said:

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Whether that religion is traditional or political, the result is the same.

Empathy is discarded for the cause.

We can disagree without abusing each other.

We can even have enemies without wanting to destroy them.

But the second we start using labels like ‘pure’ and ‘unclean’, we make the world a more brutal, dangerous place.

Be careful around those who think they are the pure ones.

Because the most dangerous person in the room isn't the one who is evil - It’s the one who is convinced they are pure.

🚩🚩🚩

-D-1

Yesterday’s post got some terrific feedback and a heap of requests for a deeper dive on specific brands. I’m already digging into the companies you’ve flagged in the comments and my DMs, but while I get those ready, I wanted to talk about another insidious side of society that has crept in while we weren't looking.

The world isn’t just getting more expensive; it’s getting more exhausting to boot.

There was a time when you purchased a thing and then - radical concept - you actually owned it.

But today we’re living through this live action transformative theatre piece I like to call: "you WILL rent everything, own nothing, and be happy doing it, chump."

It’s modern living, only instead of joy and permanent ownership, you get a series of recurring micro-transactions designed to bleed you dry.

It’s exactly why everything feels worse.

We’ve entered a bizarre era where the products you buy are just shells for a software hostage situation.

Take your morning coffee.

For just a dollar a cup you can now experience a hit of morning brown in pod form.

Thanks Nestle! (Spoiler alert: these guys are just about the biggest as****es in corporate history.)

Then you have your home security. You want to use that doorbell with the camera you just bought?

Oop, sorry!

You need a monthly plan just to identify who the f**k stole that Amazon package you had delivered. You know, the one you got with "free" shipping for being a Prime member, so long as you ignore that pesky ten dollar a month fee.

It’s enough to make anyone lose their s**t.

And it doesn't stop at your front door.

Just ask any BMW owner who watched as the company actually had the audacity to try and introduce a subscription fee of $5 a month just to use the seat warmers in the car they’d already bought and paid for.

Everywhere you turn, another big corporation is sticking their hand in your wallet, looking for another avenue to scrape your bank account along with your attention.

I vividly remember being in my twenties and mocking those who paid a hundred bucks a month for Foxtel.

Who would pay for that trash?

Reruns and adverts? Pfft. Not me.

I had Netflix for ten bucks and no ads. I honestly thought I was ahead of the curve.

The joke’s on me though.

To get the equivalent variety that pay TV once offered, you now need Netflix, Stan, Apple TV, Disney+, Paramount, and Binge.

Subscribe to them all and you are paying more than those old foxtel subscriptions by a long shot.

Worse still, the ‘Standard’ tiers now force ads down your throat.

You get to pay for the "privilege" of being marketed to! 🥳

If you want the no-ads experience we were promised a decade ago, you have to pay a purity tax that keeps climbing every six months.

Even our hobbies have been strip-mined.

Video games used to be an escape for me, but now they’re a second job with a high overhead.

I was fortunate enough to grow up gaming in a time where the game you purchased was actually complete.

Now, half the modern titles are released unfinished and buggy. They make you pay just to be remotely competitive, and the entire industry has moved from selling fun to selling the removal of frustration.

Worst of all, if a service claims to be "free," you aren't the customer - you’re the product.

Whether it’s a free Wi-Fi hotspot at Westfield or a simple online tool, the demand is always the same: give us your email, your phone number, and your soul.

We’ve seen from clusterf**ks like Optus and Medibank exactly what happens to data that falls into the wrong hands.

It’s harvested and sold to scammers.

Every time you hand over your details for "free" you’re just paying with your own future identity theft credit card.

The only way this stops is if we stop being "convenienced" into submission and embrace the resistance of the physical.

We need to vote with our wallets by seeking out "dumb" tech.

Buy a doorbell camera that allows for local storage.

Buy a manual espresso machine.

Practice a "one-in, one-out" rule for streaming where you never have more than two services active at once. (Or, better yet, learn to sail the seven seas and set up your own server. 🏴‍☠️ )

The bottom line is that we are being conditioned to accept a life where we own nothing and pay forever.

These corporations want you passive, subscribed, and broke.

F**k that.

Reclaim your autonomy, vote with your wallet, and buy back your freedom.

It’s time to actually own your s**t again

-D-1

We often look at the polarised, anti-science rhetoric of the United States with a sense of distance.

It couldn’t happen here, we tell ourselves.

But if you look closely at the recent actions of the Queensland government over the last 12 months, the cracks are beginning to show.

We are witnessing a dangerous pivot away from expert led policy and a push towards a brand of Trumpian politics that treats public health as a private lifestyle choice rather than a collective responsibility.

This systemic shift ultimately punishes Queensland’s most vulnerable residents and it sees the state sleepwalking into a preventative health crisis.

As of late 2025, Queensland recorded over 95,000 cases of influenza - that’s a staggering 21% increase over the previous year.

At the peak, hospitalisations were up by over 30%, forcing the government to pause elective surgeries just to keep the doors open.

Perhaps the most damning statistic is that 82% of those hospitalised were unvaccinated.

Despite this, you’ve got the Queensland deputy premier and part time cockatoo Jarrod Bleijie publicly stating he remains ‘comfortable’ with the state's floundering, nation-trailing vaccination rates.

His response was a masterclass in deflection, calling his own vaccination status a ‘private matter between me and my doctor.’

The most subtle, and perhaps most dangerous, part of this shift is the erasure of preventative messaging.

I usually love the Queensland Health page. It’s typically a beacon of funny, engaging, great, accessible health info.

But recently, something changed.

Despite this record breaking flu season, we saw their most recent post discussing flu symptoms and care that managed to not mention the word vaccination once.

Now, to be fair. This could be an access issue, but surely when you’re trying to address something like flu, you would at least make reference to the most effective preventative measure?

When a government department stops endorsing the single most effective tool for preventing hospital strain, they aren’t respecting your privacy, they are failing in their fundamental duty to promote best practice policy.

Leadership isn't just about managing the influx at the hospital gates, it’s about making sure people don't end up there in the first place.

And this isn't just a health issue; it’s a systemic shift.

Look at the recent overhaul of the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA).

We’ve seen veteran union linked board members ousted and replaced with figures like the founding chair of the right wing lobby group Advance.

When you replace educational experts and union representatives with political lobbyists, you aren't cleaning house, you’re ideologically tilting the future of our children’s education.

A sitting Government should never be a passive observer.

Its job is to lead, to protect the vulnerable, and to follow the best available evidence.

When leaders refuse to share their vaccination status or endorse proven health measures, they give oxygen to complacency and misinformation.

Queenslanders deserve better than a leadership that prioritises individualism and dog whistling to the fringe element so much, that they let their hospitals crumble and their state’s vaccination rates bottom out.

Political optics over preventative health is not ok, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you sit on.

If the government is allowed to keep pretending that personal choice is an excuse for government inaction, Queenslanders won’t just be losing their herd immunity, they’ll see the slow erosion of the democratic rights they hold and value.

Australia isn't immune to this kind of politics. We are currently living the beginning throes of it.

-D-1