Four teeth now; you’ve got four teeth. Soon enough you’ll be walking without the couch for assistance, and you’ll be calling out “DAAAAD!!” for another story, another blanket and more toys.

I’m old enough now to confidently remember twenty years back, and it’s possible, I think, to look twenty years forward (and dammit, we’d better have our jet packs by then).

Where will you be, what will you be doing in twenty years time? Paying more tax, that’s for sure. Like I’ve already paid more tax than your Granddad did over his working life, you’ll end up paying even more in tax than I’ve taken home. Oh yeah, and you’ll get a whole lot less for it than I have, by the way.

Should you make a mistake or two as a teenager, and let’s face it that’s what adolescence is for, you won’t have access to a morning after pill if you’re under twenty-one without my written authority. Don’t worry, I’ll sign it. The doctor will already have fulfilled his legal obligations by emailing me a transcript of the consultation. By the way, well done for finding a doctor. Remind me to tell you about bulk-billing one day.

Not that I want it, but control over your fertility will be the only control I’ll have over you, legally, as the mobile phone contracts you entered into and the credit cards you signed up for at thirteen won’t require my signature or even my knowledge, at least until the Sheriff knocks on the door.

Keep your money under the bed, my darling, because what you earn in interest (less than one percent of what you’ll pay on your debts) you’ll lose in tax and fees. That’s if, as an individual, you have any kind of access to a bank as I know it at all. That 17% of your wages that goes into Superannuation you can forget about, too. Given that it’s taxed three times and your fund “manager” takes a fee whether it earns or loses, you’re better off trading on eBay.

Don’t worry about the police, sweetheart. By the time you’re old enough to care, 10% of them will be chasing traffic tickets, and the other 90% will spend all their time investigating the first 10%.

As for national security, you should be okay. You’re fifth-generation Australian, Scots-English, blonde and I don’t own a gun, so you won’t show up on the radar. Consult your fridge magnet for further details.

Remember to guard those old DVDs carefully, too (not the ones from Canberra – I’ll get to those some other time). The ABC won’t exist in its current form, and I think it’s important that you have access to media that’s owned by the people, rather than media that owns the government. By the time you’ve consumed enough media, Littlemore and Marr will seem a bit strange, but I beg you, persevere; they come from my time, a time when the media still carried a shadow of its original purpose. Don’t let me forget – I must explain to you how the editor of a newspaper used to be independent from its business manager and how the story was all-important, not the possible impacts on advertisers or media legislation.

Listen to my CDs, please (if they’re lost, dust off the old iPod). You don’t have to enjoy the bands I listen to, just accept them. They’re not commercial, but they’re available, and they’re real. Whatever mass-produced, market-driven, committee-spawned crap is on display at the front of the music shop, there’ll be something hidden away in “Really Alternative” that constitutes actual rock. Iggy, Lou, Rollins, Floyd, Tool, the Ramones, the Cain, TISM, the Beasts, Dave Graney et al have nothing to say to you now, but they said plenty to me, and they say something to the bunch of deadheads your age who need to create and play music. Seek out the deadheads, buy their music and go to their gigs, if there are any pubs left that show live bands instead of poker machines, that is. For every Nickelback there’s a Motorhead; for every Britney, there’s a PJ Harvey, for every Justin Timberlake there’s a Nick Cave. Take the time to find them, it’ll be worth it, I promise

Please keep in mind, as my cheques keep arriving in the mail, and as you’re working three part-time jobs, that university was once free. Of course, once a certain generation had got their free degrees, they decided that my generation, and yours, should pay. So I don’t mind if you stick a pen in the throat of that dumb rich kid who sits next to you at lectures. You earned the right to puncture his jugular through your hours and hours of study and hard work, and your good genes, and it really pisses me off that his marks are worse than yours but he’s still there.

Of course, your degree won’t be worth much, because it will be accepted wisdom in the workplace that 75% of degrees were bought from desperate, cash-strapped universities by the wealthy parents of dumb kids. Those universities somewhere along the line forgot that they were there to educate people rather than just to fight each other for private funds.

When you enter the workplace, spare a thought for the poor old bugger in the corner who rants about unions – he comes from a deluded time when workers were allowed to gather in groups and organise for their own benefit (now that right only applies to big companies). Throw him a biscuit. Make his day by saying “comrade” once in a while.

When you see yet another story on Channel 9 about welfare bludgers, please consider this – back when you were still in nappies, big business received more in grants and tax benefits and “R&D” allowances than any poor battler in a Ministry of Housing (remember I told you about public housing?) flat. God knows if we’ll even have a welfare system in twenty years, but I know for a fact that overseas companies will still get tax breaks for “vertically integrating” our farms.

When you’re a barrister (or you have some as pets), try this on: look at the legal work that goes into ensuring that the Packer family pays about $1.50 in tax. Put the same effort into appealing a withdrawn Centrelink payment (if Centrelink still exists). The precedent you’ll set will turn the country upside down in a way I never could…

Law isn’t made in Parliament anymore, it’s made in committees – influence is sold for campaign funds and vice versa. The real work, of selling out our nation to multinationals and ensuring Parliamentarians’ retirement funds grow is done in places and by people that none of us mere working stiffs will ever, ever see.

There is no regulation, no control over what business can do to you or sell you, or how it can treat you as an employee. But the regulations over you, your life, your children, your parents, keep coming. They all want “small government”; that means government just small enough to fit in your bedroom.

I look at you now, my beautiful, innocent little girl, and I regret having to say it. But the only advice I can give you that might help you survive in the world we’re leaving you is this: Be Angry, Be Strong and Don’t Stop Fighting.

+ 1

+ 1