1. One well-being index takes off. The father of GDP, Simon Kuznets, identified the weakness of the measure in his very first report in 1934: the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income. The debate about an alternative has continued since then. There are now many alternative ways of measuring well-being – but now have taken off in the same way. Perhaps none have had the simple usefulness for business of measuring market size. None have spread. None have served purposes well enough to secure themselves in governing culture. The launch of the Fairfax press well-being index may change that. Let’s hope at least one major political party picks it up and works with it or an alternative. Surely, we all should be proud that we are number 2 on the human development index.

2. Kevin Rudd challenges and loses. Kevin Rudd is a talented man. He deserves another shot at PM. I could not read from his last press conference as PM whether or not the full personal tragedy of how his character led to his demise had altered anything about his mind or his behaviour. I suspect not. Thus, he should have another shot at being PM, and his colleagues should have the sense to say no to him. His endless pouting from the corner might at last end then. In addition, we need political leaders who are not written off for their careers at the first sign of adversity. Defeating a challenge would enlarge Julia Gillard’s character and her Prime Ministership, and may even spur some changes to her government.

3. Malcolm Turnbull challenges and wins. I adore Tony Abbott’s use of language. In a different way, I admire Malcolm Turnbull’s unabashed display of intelligence. There is in Turnbull something that people also admired in Rudd – an intellectual who has not succumbed to the institutional populism of Australian politics, and is prepared to talk to the public (at least parts of it) assuming they too are intelligent, well-read. As a future leader of the Government I would prefer Turnbull. And if my second wish also comes true, we would see in both parties leaders who have faced and overcome adversity and setbacks through making real changes of consequence for governments and politics. Not recycled brands for the jejune marketing outfits of our decaying political parties.

It is always important to think of a concept from the perspective of those who make their lives in the concept.

Three I’s: alliteration is not always the best guide to thinking but it does help with memory.

This statement I asserted in an argument today with a distinguished professor with far more academic authority than I. But I was right.

Now i am developing a sophisticated theory of culture as dynamic open systems, and the place of government in changing culture through institutions.

Let’s call it the triangle of structure, behavior and culture.

So culture does matter, professor.

Culture seemed the last thing on the minds of the dear people who wrote the goals for this policy. Diversity, technology, nationalism, contributions to society and economy. But next to no culture.

I wish I could have kept my contribution – if I had had my wits about me I would have preserved the responses somewhere.

I now can only hope they pay attention to my urgings to attend to traditions and cultures that transcend borders and to the restless urgings of the human spirit, regardless of the economic value or benefits of the arts.

But no, there is a flowering of the use of evidence as a category of arguments and judgments, distinctive and separate of themselves. So we have evidence-based and evidence-informed. Usually, these terms are low sniffs of academics at those curmudgeonly bureaucrats and politicians – those poor schmucks who have to govern the splendid minds of the knowledge bureaucracies – who express and form their arguments in forms other than the refereed journal, and who must make decisions without the aid of low-grade statistics dressed up as science. Or as Bernard would say, it’s one of those irregular verbs: I form my opinions on the basis of evidence, you argue informed by evidence, and they just dream stuff up.

In my 20 plus years in government I have yet to see a policy that was not based on some form of evidence, and yet to see a view presented without an argument and assessment of facts and evidence in support.

I have seen endless processions of academics and others bound within their convictions, servile to their preferred discipline’s status and publications records, denounce uncertainty and questioning and the openness to the other, to experience and to the unpredictability of action

Wicked problems are not made easier by academic cabals turning the difficult task of acting on the unknown into statements of what they believe “the evidence shows what works.” All policy problems forge a river only once – they can never enter the river again.

Governing, after Nietzsche’s aphorisms, is to sail not among facts but interpretations of interpretations, and convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.  So let us put aside the weak toy of calling my interpretations true, and yours false.

The generation, creation, authorisation, mandating, vetting, trading, and seeking of benefits or penalties for identities consumes much political speech, and much administrative time. We affiliate with organisations. We seek asylum as refugees. We claim disabilities, profess skills, avow weakness, apology or illness at our heart.

We create language rules to describe these identities, and remorselessly change these rules in response to subterranean shifts in sentiment, and orchestrated campaigns to mandate language and protected identities. We said black, aborigine, indigenous, ATSI, Koori, Kulin nations… and so on. We said new Australians, then migrant, non-English speaking background, and now the excruciatingly dumb culturally and linguistically diverse. We said homosexual, then gay, then gay, lesbian, transgender and intersex (mustn’t forget the intersex!). And on it goes.

Mostly, we meekly pick up the new argot and move on. But to ignore that careers are made of these language and identity games would be stunningly naive. So to question and to challenge some part of this web of social rules does not strike me as racial discrimination. It may cause offence; but many challenges and questions do. It may be a question that springs from dubious assumptions and poor research – but many insights do. It may sit uneasily with the unspoken conventions of the language games – but that is the sovereign power of a speech act.

Such a speech act does not attack the self. It does not corrode the integrity of these persons. It does not debase them. It is an act that demands a speech act in return – not the twisting of legislation from its purpose of encoding freedom into a weapon to attack the freedom of an enemy.

So, without having read Justice Bromberg’s decision nor Andrew Bolt’s article, my judgement is this is an error of law or judgement which needs to be corrected more urgently than the correction of factual mistakes or disclosure of murky social assumptions in a newspaper. If we did that our newspapers would be one long apologia to the sanctimonious.