Andrew Miller: Treating each other with decency and dignity is more important than ever

How should we spend the gift of a precious Australia Day long weekend?

Having free time, or more precisely time available for discretionary use, makes me anxious. It’s like those competitions radio stations used to have, where you had 60 seconds to stuff as many small denomination banknotes into a bag as you could — good training for bank robbers, come to think of it.

It’s a lot of pressure, so I keep a messy to-do list for inspiration in the event that the clouds open up and God says: “here’s a few hours — get your life sorted out you clown.”

Just kidding, God has not been personally interested in red-headed men since Esau.

Why should they be bothered with our blood test and dental appointment logistics?

After even a casual glance at the news, one would be justified in concluding there are bigger fish for any omnipotent deity to fry.

Perhaps preventing innocent people from getting shot or ensuring presidents exercise some geopolitical restraint.

We are on our own in this daily battle against the mundaneness of modern existence, so we must embrace the imperfection. Unless there is a gadget that can help, in which case the dads will probably buy it.

I’m not saying I could sit and watch our new robot vacuum with mopping function all day, but I have become an oddly riveted spectator as it hums back and forth across the living room and kitchen floors, devouring crumbs that the seven-year-old generously sprinkles. As it victoriously clears a little path through some tricky debris, my excitement sometimes verges on Australian Open tennis level.

Incremental persistence, it reminds us, gets big jobs done. Focusing on the thing in front of us, doing it well, and not expecting to be finished immediately. Never complaining, just getting stuck occasionally on another discarded hair tie.

We didn’t have the term neurodiversity when I was in school, but we certainly should have. My little class was rife with moderate examples of what they now call “neurospiciness”. Everything was made harder than it would have been, had the grown-ups understood the scientific truth that there was more wrong with the one-size-fits-all system than with the kids. Everything is always improved when the facts are established, and we are the adults now.

We need context in which to live laugh love, and this Australia Day our collective place in the world is unclear, because of seismic international and even local disruption.

What does it mean in 2026, when we proclaim Aussie Aussie Aussie? Uncertainty always helps us focus on that which we hold dear but might lose.

Yuval Noah Harare reminds us, with his particular genius for clarity, that nation states only exist as a shared human concept — a mutual agreement to act on an idea called, for example, Australia.

In this way, strangers can co-operate and achieve many things that are only possible with assumed shared ideals. For example, industry — which relies on peace and predictability to prosper.

It’s in the interest of the common good to mind your own national business, but that gets forgotten when addled world leaders ignore the ancient principle that getting along decently reduces angst and expense for everyone.

We can’t control the world, but we can double down on maintaining good things, like equitable civil democracy, at home.

We can contribute internationally by using our influence to encourage peace and stability, but we must make sure we walk the walk by also treating fellow Australians with charity and decency.

Being Australian means gratefully sharing a relationship with this extraordinary place and its richly diverse society. We have an incredible range of food, climate and wildlife. There’s a kookaburra on our veranda just now.

Giving everyone a fair go is easy to proclaim, but hard to practice because the task never ends — like vacuuming.

Luckily, our wonderfully diverse nation has ample ingenuity, good hearts and the winds at our back.

Oi oi oi.

Andrew Miller is an anaesthetist and director of the Federal AMA.