The Three Pillars of Regenesis

Back in 2023, I published an edited version of my blog writings as ‘The Regenesis Journey’, arguing that Australia’s future should be based on three pillars of regenerative wisdom. In a world crowded with information, I wanted to see if we could land on three ‘simple’ principles, which nevertheless encoded the necessary transitions we need to make in order to leave life-affirming legacies for our children and their children—the generations yet to come.

1. Caring for Country—a bridge that unites Indigenous knowledge systems with their deep ecological, cultural and spiritual insights with the Western sciences of ecology—with resultant changes in nature conservation and restoration, agricultural practices, and management of fire and floods
2. Multiculturalism—inclusive of all ethnicities, religious faith traditions, and gender diversity, plus addressing historical injustices and racial profiling in the criminal justice system against First Nations people
3. A Circular Wellbeing Economy—redesigning industrial activity to zero waste and zero pollution, relying on renewable energy resources, and reorganising budget expenditure and accountability to deliver equitable wellbeing to people and their communities.

I argued that the idea of ‘regenesis’ takes us on a journey to reimagine the Western creation story of Genesis, whereby God created man in his own image and gave him dominion over the Earth and all its lifeforms, privileging humanity over all other life forms. This reimagination requires a new story—of living in a fully animated world wherein we humans are but one member—that all creation is kin, our family.

This is especially important for the overwhelmingly number of us (75%) who share an Anglo-European cultural background, which has been shaped by the human-centric assumptions of the Old Testament Genesis story (V.1:26), along with some of the basic tenets of ancient Greek philosophy, which underpins the strong binary/dualistic nature of Western ways of thinking: male/female; mind/matter; outer/inner; good/bad; right/wrong, etc. Along with this has been the modernist scientific emphasis on the idea of linear progress towards an ever shinier, more technologically enhanced future. Now being represented by the AI revolution.

Much has happened since 2023. However, while there has been some encouraging progress in Australia’s pivot towards circularity in our industrial production systems, there is still much to do. The transition to circularity bubbles away beneath all the noise of the economic and political challenges of the energy transition, cost of living, increasing wealth inequality, homelessness, immigration, climate adaptation and maintaining social harmony in a fracturing social fabric.

As shown in our feature image, we begin by celebrating the work of Bega Circular Valley as they progress their vision to transition their entire region into circularity, and establish a National Circularity Centre to help others explore how to do this in their own regions.

Report on Pillar 3: A Circular Wellbeing Economy

Wellbeing

Despite the political challenge in the ‘cost of living crisis’ impacting low income families across Australia, which has seen the growth of One Nation supporters whose political platform is built on the politics of grievance, we haven’t seen Treasury shift to measuring our ‘standard of living’ on wellbeing statistics rather than GDP.  Or policies that seriously tackle the dynamics of wealth inequality at work in how our economic and political systems actually work—the financialisation of housing, taxation of wealth versus income, funding of private education at the expense of public schooling, and the whole tragic reliance on the $8billion incarceration industry in the ‘punishment/revenge’ response to crimes against persons and private property—a regime that only intensifies resentment and criminality in people struggling with socio-economic deprivation.

Circular Economy

However, we have seen the continued growth of the circular economy movement, spearheaded by Circular Australia. Their stated mission is ‘connect industry, government, and communities to fast-track the transition to a circular economy by 2035. Through partnerships, research, education and on-the-ground action, we help businesses, governments and communities progress circular economy practices to design out waste, keep materials in use and regenerate natural systems for a resilient future.’

Case in point is the work of Bega Circular Valley, located in Yuin Country on the NSW South Coast, with its ambitious plans to establish their National Circularity Centre as a focal point for their vision to transition the entire south coast region around Bega by working with community, business, academia and government to lead and facilitate Bega valley’s circular transition

In their November newsletter, Bega Circular Valley report that they have been focused on the planning, design and construction of the building itself in recent months but, now that process is fully underway, they’re looking much harder at what they’ll actually be putting both in the building and the surrounding landscape to bring the circular economy to life for everyone who visits. To support this, the Bega Circular Valley team undertook research visit to eight of the foremost visitor experiences in Canberra:  Questacon, Canberra Museum and Gallery, National Arboretum Canberra, the National Museum of Australia, National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) and the Australian War Memorial.

Drawing on this process, the Bega Circular Valley team recently pulled together a ‘NCC opportunity summary’ that captures their vision for the visitor experience at the NCC – a document for sharing with both potential circular materials suppliers for the building and partners with the NCC more broadly.  A video to share the vision is  available to view by clicking here.

Report on Pillar 1: Caring for Country

The EPBC Contest

Right now, Australian political leaders are contemplating new environmental protection laws under the EPBC (Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) Act. This is being shepherded through the Senate by Senator Murry Watts.

Who will do the deal with the government—the Greens or the Coalition is the question?

Politicians are trying to thread the needle between Caring for Country, as in environmental regeneration and biodiversity protection, along with respect for important Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural sites, and economic interests involved in mining, energy transition infrastructure and housing and other infrastructure. It’s a difficult needle to thread.

Journalists are reporting that under a potential deal with the Greens, the Labor Government could rewrite the proposed “national interest” test to prevent it being used to approve fossil fuel projects, mothballing new critical minerals projects to allow their approval. However, the Greens are also insisting on better protection for native forests, and the phasing out of fossil fuel projects. Meanwhile, having abandoned Net Zero by 2050 in its Energy Policy, the Coalition will be pressuring Opposition Leader Susan Ley to play tough with Labor and environmentalists on the specious argument that the proposed EPBC legislation is not favourable enough to the mining and other industry groups.

Energy Transition

Meanwhile the real politik of the cost of energy transition means energy prices have to remain high for quite a while into the future, whatever technology is brought to bear on energy production—solar, wind, fusion, nuclear or even coal.

So, all promises of energy prices coming down any time soon are dog whistling.

As the politics of the recent COP 30 in Brazil has shown, getting humanity to come to grips with the impact on the environment from past fossil fuel mining and energy production, along with land clearing for agriculture and animal husbandry, and its differential impact on different countries, is proving an almost impossible challenge. The marriage between western science with its objectification of nature, and capitalism with its capacity for accelerating resource exploitation in the name of improved ‘standards of living’, efficiency, profit maximisation and national interest, has proved poisonous for the Earth’s regenerative capacity, along with human psychological wellbeing.

COP 30 to COP 31

Without a fundamental shift towards Caring for Country based on First Nations eco-cosmologies, it is hard to see how humanity can reverse course from its self-defeating course. However it is important to acknowledge the real efforts made by many people at COP 30, with Australia’s Chris Bowen securing a new role as Strategy Leader, together with a pre-COP31 leaders meeting in the Pacific with a core focus on a plan to make the Pacific the first 100% renewable energy region in the world, fully capitalise the Pacific Resilience Facility and innovate solutions to integrate oceans and climate conservation efforts.

Also, at the last minute Australia joined a number of Pacific islands, Latin Americans and a spattering of Europeans to promote a new declaration for the just transition away from fossil fuels, by far the strongest statement Australia has ever made on the issue.

We continue to turn on one another as climate change and technological innovation accelerates the immigration-ethnic-nationalist conflagration.

Report on Pillar 2: Multiculturalism

Shared Meaning and Values

Australia is blessed with an increasing wealth of published material about the deep insights encoded in First Nations eco-cosmologies provided by a new generation of First Nations university scholars and creatives (film makers, musicians, visual artists and storytellers). In our statement of national identity, we acknowledge that Australia’s multiculturalism rests on the foundations of 65,000+ years of Indigenous living culture, and we have made attempts to acknowledge this in our education system.

Yet modern Australia continues its failure to truly understand and embrace this cultural foundation in the fullness of its meaning. The arguments put forward in support of a YES vote on the National Referendum for a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to Parliament concentrated on the so-called practical issues of addressing social disadvantage and lack of economic opportunity. They paid little attention to the underlying deep eco-cosmological differences between Indigenous ways of thinking and experiencing the nature of reality and those celebrated in the materialism of the modern world. The NO vote campaign argued against any acknowledgement of the unique place of Indigenous people in Australia’s culture, or the validity of their different cultural cosmology, and instead promoted the old assimilationist idea that we all should take on the mantle of ‘white Australia’ in terms of values and aspirations. The very same thinking that led to the whole Stolen Generation saga that saw children of lighter skin colour (presumed European heritage) forcibly taken from their parents to be taken to distant orphanages and shipped to remote missions, all records of their kinship ties deliberately expunged.

The Shadow of White Nationalism

With the success of the NO vote, and in the face of the ‘cost of living’ crisis, with the realisation that living standards might fall rather than increase for coming generations, we see the rise of the ugly face of the old ‘White Australia’.  As Julianne Schultz comments, the shadow of this lingers in the national DNA, and is now being amplified by so-called Christian Nationalists and in lobby groups like Advance Australia. Neo-nazis feel emboldened to become an official ‘White Australia Party’ and to pose, unmasked, in front of the NSW Parliament, while politicians and police scramble to explain how this protest was allowed, while the police vigorously opposed a pro-Palestinian rally only a short time ago.

Strategic Anxieties

Old assumptions around ‘white male privilege’ in the age of modernity begin to crumble. Middle class wealth now lives in China, SE Asia and India, as do billionaires, as well as in the Anglosphere and Europe. Australia’s economic fortunes are tied to our trade relationships with China and Asia, while warns Professor James Curran in the 2025 Boyer Lecture Series, our ‘best friend’ security relationship with the US looks increasingly unreliable under a strident America First agenda.

Women are no longer hidden in the domestic sphere but stride out in politics, academia, the arts, business and the media, while many men retreat down rabbit holes looking for a new basis of their masculine ‘identity’ that doesn’t depend on being the ‘boss’.

Gender Identity

Culture wars continue to break out over gender identity as another viral expression of identity anxiety. While the national vote for marriage equality succeeded, significant sections of the religious faith-based community still reject the legitimacy of same-sex/gender union (homosexuality) as normative. But the battle lines have now moved to issues around transgender identity. The small number of people who suffer from gender dysphoria: their subjective sense of gender identity does not align with their biology. Some women feel more ‘male’ in their identity, while some men long to be able to express themselves as women, in a women’s body. Modern medicine means these ancient issues can now be addressed through hormone treatments and surgery, just as the plastic surgery industry surges to help women and men alter their bodies to achieve personally desired standards of beauty, particularly in the face.

Treaty, Truth Telling and Justice

By 2025, as politicians compete to be ‘tough on crime’, the rate of the incarceration of First Nations people, particularly children, has continued to increase as has deaths in custody, and removal of children from their parents on the basis of welfare concerns. Suicide, drug addiction, unemployment and cultural alienation continue to disproportionately impact people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent.

However, some progress has been made at the State level, with the Victorian State Government signing an historic Treaty in November 2025 with the Victorian First Peoples’ Assembly. The Treaty acknowledges historical wrongs. establishes a new permanent representative and deliberative body, Gellung Warl, for Traditional Owners and First Peoples in the state to advise, inform and engage with the government and the parliament – and hold the state to account. The Gellung Warl will bring First Peoples into the decision-making forums of the state, rectifying their longstanding exclusion. While the Victorian Coalition (Liberal and National Party) have vowed to reverse these measures, there is some hope that the Victoria process of treaty-making can serve as a role model for other States to follow, particularly those States under Labor majority governments.

The Multicultural Social License

The old human-rights focus of Western liberalism is crumbling under the reality of capitalist market forces driving increasing wealth inequality, homelessness and social anxiety. Added to this is the social fracturing wrought by a new media ecosystem that weaponises the emotions of anger, doubt and confusion into hatred and revenge in the vain hope of finding who to ‘blame’—anyone who is not ‘us’ battening down the hatches in our little comfort bubbles or survivalist camps.

Climate change and military conflicts, fed by the international armaments industry, over resources and strategic positioning will continue to drive immigration flows, particularly from Africa, the Middle East, and South America to the ‘rich’ nations of the ‘global north’.

The immigration debate will therefore only get uglier and uglier as nations scramble to manage the volume of humans fleeing drought, conflict and the impact of climate change on their habitats.  The US ICE raids are only the beginning.

In the face of this, maintaining social cohesion in a multicultural society like Australia, still carrying the unfinished business of white colonial settlement and its impact on our First Nations peoples, yet caught up in the relentless logic of growth-capitalism, and the default tendency of the political and media class to weaponise and drive division, our civic leaders are going to have their hands full.

It will be a test of integrity, intelligence and wisdom.
Let’s hope they are up to it.

The Three Pillars of Regenesis offers a clear way forward through the debris of political argy-bargy, but can such sensible proposals find any clear air in our fractious media ecosystem and a culture that glorifies wealth, envy and greed, at the expense of social cohesion.