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My coal mining friend told me a story one day that still sends shivers down my spine.

He was working many kilometres underground with his friend. They were digging out coal, sometimes called ‘black Gold,’ under the mountains that make up the Wollongong escarpment.

He and his friend had completed a long shift extracting coal from the depths of the mine.

They were travelling in a group in a coal train from the coalface back to the surface.

His friend had his legs dangling over the edge of the rail car as they sped along. On one of the bends, the coal train carriages leaned over a bit too much, and his friend’s legs and feet were crushed between the rock and the side of the unforgiving steel rail car. Even his steel-capped gumboots could not save his feet from being terribly mangled.

His friend did not say a word or make a sound. He simply shrugged it off. The others on the rail car did not realise the terrible damage he had sustained many kilometres under the mine surface.

The men continued to joke and talk all the way back to the surface. It was not until his friend took off his steel-capped gumshoes, now filled with blood, that they all realised how dreadful his wounds were.

His injuries were very serious, and an ambulance was called. He spent time in hospital, and it was many months before he got back on his feet.

Men’s Health in Australia

In many ways, the state of men’s health in Australia is much the same as the miner with the mangled feet and the shoes full of blood. Our government and the compliant media are in self-denial about the crisis in men’s health and the problems men face.

So are we, the men who face them. As Pogo said famously, “I have met the enemy, and the enemy, he is us”.

As Dr Tim O’Neill, GP, medical adviser to Dads4Kids, said in his speech introducing a report from Dads4Kids to the Senate Select Committee on Men’s Health on 7 April 2009.

Putting it simply, as I see a steady stream of men pass through my office, many men are hurting and hurting badly. As Henry Thoreau once said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”

The harm done to the emerging Australian male through the absence or under-performance of fathers and the lack of fathering skill being passed on to sons, is now shaping Australian men’s health more than any other single factor…

Is it any wonder that quiet desperation stalks the minds of an increasing number of Australian men and their lost voice?

What shall be the government’s response? The answers sought by men for this growing despair are multifactorial: spiritual, social, psychological and physical. They are not quick-fix answers. No government can effectively work in this area without a considered response and such a response must outlast the term of any one parliament. More than a decade ago, the Office of the Status of Women championed the cause of suffering women.

It is now time for an Office for the Status of Men and Fathers to be formed to serve and advise the current and future governments in this critical task.

Staying Alive: Men are Struggling

Dr O’Neill has spoken well on behalf of Australian men and men worldwide. After almost 50 years of militant feminism, with the enduring theme that all men are bastards and masculinity is toxic, men are struggling with their health much more than women are.

The mainstream media, with few exceptions, has been highly feminised and is only too willing to fall behind the woke feminist Marxist ideology of toxic masculinity. This, combined with the epidemic of fatherlessness sweeping the Western world and male apathy (quiet desperation), has resulted in a disaster for men’s health of epic proportions.

Men are living longer but dying faster than ever before. Our children are feeling the pain.

Men are living lives of quiet desperation and the continuing four-year mortality gap between men and women, a common figure in most western countries, is a silent testimony to the pain within.

The shocking suicide statistic that three men kill themselves for every one woman also demands a speedy response from the Government.

The Need for Government Assistance

That speedy response from the Government has been a long time coming. Way back on 25 June 2003, a Liberal government minister, along with Mark Latham, then a Labor MP, helped Dads4Kids launch the The 12pt Plan.

What Dads4Kids was asking for back in 2003 was an Office for the Status of Men and Fathers. It seemed radical at the time, but today it is needed more than ever. Many media elites laughed at our audacity to release a document such as ‘The 12pt Plan’ to strengthen and support men and fathers. The sad truth is, it could have been written yesterday because it is still desperately needed today.

Point 11 of ‘The 12pt Plan’ says:

“Being male is associated with a number of health disadvantages. For males, this results in higher rates of:

• Hospital admissions for most injuries and illnesses
• Premature death by unnatural causes such as suicides and accidents
• Undiagnosed mental illnesses
• Suicide
• Alcohol and drug abuse
• Addictive anti-social behaviours
• Addictive gambling problems

The National Fathering Forum seeks to promote fathers’ health and well-being and to reduce the health disadvantage of being male. This needs the assistance of the Government through increased government-funded initiatives.”

Point 12 of ‘The 12pt Plan’ summarises the above and finishes with these words. “These issues require an urgent response from both the government and non-government sectors.”

The above words are virtually word-for-word from an article I wrote for Men’s Health Week in June 2018. Sadly, I repeat, it could have been written yesterday.

Minister for Men? Use Your Voice!

However there are glimmers of light in the darkness. Men’s Health Week from 9–15 June, 2025, is a case in point. It began at the second World Congress on Men’s Health in Vienna, Austria in October 2002, with Australian inspiration. This was the same year Dads4Kids was founded.

From small beginnings big things grow. Men’s Health Week is now an international institution and there is no telling how many men’s lives Men’s Health Week has saved internationally.

Now thankfully the re-elected Labor Government have announced the appointment of Federal Labor MP Dan Repacholi as a “Men’s Health Envoy”. During his election campaign, Dan mentioned that the idea of a federal Minister for Men is a “no brainer”.

Maybe Dan has been reading our Dads4Kids 12pt Plan created in 2003 which advocated that we need a Ministry for Fathers or for Men. Whatever the case, our mainstream media and our parliamentarians need to hear from you. Men need more than an envoy.

Listen to Andrew Gray encouraging men to use your voice in the video below.

We plead with you to reject the idea of silence or ‘quite desperation’. Don’t be like the miner with mangled feet who did not tell anyone of his dire need. His silence almost killed him. If you don’t speak up for yourself, and for other men, who will?

Lovework

Check out these words from Johnny Farnham’s hit song “You’re the Voice” for inspiration. “You’re the voice, try and understand it… Make a noise and make it clear… We’re not gonna sit in silence… We’re not gonna live with fear.”

Celebrate your health with your children and your wife or get together with a group of friends in the lead up to Men’s Health Week. Tell them that you need to build stronger relationships together because that will help you all live longer. Because Men’s Health Week is all about you ‘Staying Alive.’

Yours for ‘Staying Alive’,

Warwick Marsh

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Originally published at Dads4Kids. Image via Unsplash.