Australia is not the country it used to be. We have become too accustomed to peace; too complacent, nay? We've become dull and sluggish and uncaring, indifferent and brutally cold to the less fortunate. We wallow in wealth and we've become bloated with fortune, and I'm scared of it.

We must never forget that war, that unrest, that death, arises from the most unlikely, the most peaceful of places. The longer we sweep our problems under the carpet the more inevitable violence becomes. We are fuelling a time bomb, here.

I'm not afraid of war. I'm not afraid of injustice. I wouldn't say that I don't care if any repercussions come from speaking my mind, but nothing will silence me. I am no fearless, but there are some things I am not afraid of. I'm not afraid of death. But I'm afraid of what we are becoming, what we have become. Atrocities, in the name of politics, in the name of God, in the name of the greater good. Why? Why? Perhaps it takes someone as young and as green as me to ask it. I'm not the sort of person who can accept things as they are, I'm not the sort of person who can turn a blind eye at sin. We all have blood or shit on our hands, one way or another.

We don't know what's around the corner, we don't know what Fate has in store for us, or what end of the stick Fortune will throw at us. Perhaps I will live and die in peace and prosperity. Perhaps I will be a Jew under the Gestapo. Maybe I will be Sophie Scholl, the rash and brazen martyr. Maybe I will be a genius, or maybe I will be nothing. I don't know which of the above I am more afraid of.

This endless paradise makes me uneasy. History tells us that peace is not made to last.