From May 2005 until December 2008 I wrote a weekly Opinion column in Melbourne's Saturday Age newspaper, with a readership of around a million people. I enjoyed a wonderful freedom to write what I felt passionate about and committed to. It served as a brilliant bedfellow to my radio show on 3RRR. Sadly this relationship is no more – but here are some of my favorite columns that spanned that time…
There’s about 30 here – these links should take you to The Age archive. Thanks for reading! If you like them feel free to tell The Age!
AGE COLUMNS
2005
DOWN AND OUT IN ROSEBUD AND MELBOURNE - May 12, 2005
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The Age archive
HAS TEN SCOOPED THE POOL OR BOUGHT A PUP? - June 22, 2005
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The Age archive
TRACING OUR FOOTPRINTS ON COOKS FATAL SHORE - December 17, 2005
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The Age archive
2006
A POSSUM STARES EXTINCTION IN THE FACE - February 18, 2006
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The Age archive
TIME TO MEASURE OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT - June 3, 2006
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The Age archive
A HELPING HAND IN TOUGH TIMES - July 8, 2006
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The Age archive
DAVID WAINGGAI, THE FORGOTTEN MAN - July 22, 2006
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The Age archive
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The Age archive
LEARNING THE DIFFICULT LESSONS OF GLOBAL WARMING - September 23, 2006
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The Age archive
WE NEED TO HEAR YOUNG VOICES - November 11, 2006
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The Age archive
2007
FACE IT, OUR FLAG IS A DIVISIVE SYMBOL - January 27, 2007
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The Age archive
TURNING A BLIND EYE TO THE BAD BOYS - March 24, 2007
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The Age archive
STOP THE DROP - March 31, 2007
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The Age archive
CRYING FOR THE PLACE WE COULD BECOME - June 2, 2007
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The Age archive
A COINCIDENCE: BIG WARSHIPS NEED A REALLY DEEP CHANNEL - June 23, 2007
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THE PATIENT RESOLVE OF A PEOPLE UNDER SIEGE - August 4, 2007
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The Age archive
TIME TO REMEMBER THE TAMPA DEBACLE - August 25, 2007
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The Age archive
FOR A MAN OF SHAME - November 24, 2007
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The Age archive
EXCITING, DEFINING TIMES FOR WOMEN - December 1, 2007
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The Age archive
2008
WELCOME TO THE MAD HATTERS TEA PARTY - January 12, 2008
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The Age archive
BIG, UGLY, SMELLY, THAT’S MELBOURNE - January 19, 2008
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The Age archive
DEBATING THE POLITICS OF RACE AND GENDER - February 2, 2008
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SORRY ALL THIS HAS TAKEN SO LONG - February 9, 2008
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RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO SAVE OUR GREAT BAY - February 16, 2008
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The Age archive
FROM A LITTLE SORRY BIG THINGS MAY GROW - April 26, 2008
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The Age archive
JUST WAIT UNTIL DADDY RUDD GETS HOME - June 14, 2008
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The Age archive
NATASHA STOTT-DESPOJA - June 28, 2008
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The Age archive
STRICKEN WITH CLIMATE GUILT - July 5, 2008
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THERE’S SOMETHING ROTTEN IN OUR BAY - July 19, 2008
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GREER’S LATEST RAGE MORE GLIB THAN LIB - August 16, 2008
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ONE MAN’S DRUG IS ANOTHER’S CASH COW - November 22, 2008
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BRITT LAPTHORNE - October 11, 2008
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The Age archive
2009
ALL THIS SOLDIERING ON IS MAKING ME SICK - July 11, 2009
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The Age archive
DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS - September 26, 2009
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The Age archive
World Environment Day - June 2006
Pic - Peter Casamentos
For a taste of life in the world of unemployment, take a trip to Centrelink,
writes Tracee Hutchison.
It'S 8.50 on a Thursday morning and the queue at the Rosebud Centrelink is snaking out the door. About 20 people are clutching yellow forms, oblivious of the faces that smile down from the job-seeker posters that surround them.
I'm here for a 9 o'clock compulsory seminar that will tell me everything I need to know about what used to be called the dole. Now, of course, its all about Newstart and mutual obligation and diaries designed to help Australians reach their goals and full potential.
A mobile phone bleats into the silence. "I'm at Cennalink." A 20-something bloke is losing patience. "Cennalink!" he screams, and gives us all an uncomfortable insight into what life might be like at home.
Somehow goals and potential feel like luxuries few here can afford. Without the means to pay the bills we are all equal in our vulnerability.
And for me, after a 20-year career in the media that has taken me around the world, I am back in my home town signing on to a federal benefit for the first time in my life.
I take my seat at the window and look across to the playground of the primary school I ran around in 35 years earlier. As a five-year-old in the late 1960s, my days in this sleepy little seaside town seemed permanently sun-filled. I doubt my thoughts at this time of morning would have run much beyond play-lunch.
But now I'm just another 100-point tally of ID points passport, bank statement, tax file number and driver's licence. Blank stares of resolve and resignation fill the waiting room and I feel an overwhelming sense of invasion. On my senses. My privacy. And my pride.
My professional life runs through my head like a highlights-showreel. I'm filing for SBS television from a burning Tahiti airport as the city riots after the resumption of nuclear testing at Mururoa; I'm at the ABC hosting the opening ceremony of the 2000 Paralympic Games; I'm at book launches, my own; and I'm at my beloved 3RRR.FM as program manager hooting wildly over a record radiothon result last year.
We file into the seminar room and a woman, let's call her Vicki, starts talking about rules and responsibilities. The video is on the blink so we can't watch how easy all this finding a job business really is on the big-screen telly. Somehow wandering into Centrelink and being sat down to watch telly seems oddly amusing. But everyone here is very sombre and very serious. Especially when the high-energy Job Network woman walks in.
Something else that's apparently compulsory in the job search equation.
My mind drifts in and out of sentences about breach penalties. I start studying the blonded-dreadlocks of the would-be career surfer decked out in No Fear in front of me. He's next to a young woman about the same age top to toe in Best and Less. A bloke in Blundstones starts boasting that he walked out of the video in Frankston so he's glad ours is stuffed. Vicki's more entertaining. We hand around pens to tick boxes and sign forms that say we've shown up. We won't have to watch the video again for three months. I wonder how many of this strange group will be back here then. No one says a word.
I'm due back in an hour to meet someone called a customer service officer, let's call him Peter. I wander across the highway and stare into the bay. Pond-like and etched on my memory, it stretches out towards the distant, but distinct, big-city shape that breaks an otherwise perfectly horizontal shimmering line.
Tracee Hutchison! My name booms across the still-silent but thankfully less congested Centrelink office. The man who must be Peter says hello, and I follow him into an open-plan maze of desks, each with what seems like regulation-issue two red seats for people called clients.
"This is a sickness benefit. Did you know that?"
"Well I can see your certificate there, so I do now."
I hand him WorkCover documents and medical certificates that detail the re-activation of a respiratory illness that has put me in hospital me twice this year. They reveal the reason I have been forced to step off the workmill and get my health right.
Peter seems relieved that his client has brought all the documents listed as mandatory. He'll repeat this process a dozen times today with less efficiency and I start wondering what would make anyone want to work in a place where people are rarely at their best. Demoralised and immobilised by a life that hasn't quite gone to plan. "Are you receiving compensation?"
"No, I was injured at work during the time Kennett made it illegal. So here I am signing on to Mr Costello's payroll. Kind of ironic, don't you think?"
Peter opts out of a conversation that we might have had had we met somewhere else. Today he's doing the Government's work, so instead we exchange thoughts on surviving on $200 a week. From his place behind the desk he's seen yellow forms and diaries become a way of life. He says this without judgement and I get an inkling that there is a good heart in front of me, drawn to this place because it is, at least, a safety net for those who need it most.
I walk out into the morning sun. The first-play bell is ringing and a rush of five-year-olds stream out onto the same asphalt that delivered my first encounters with mecurachrome.
Somehow, now, skinned knees seem trifling. But the heavy thud and piercing scream of a little girl downed in the rush for the monkey-bars sharpens my focus.
It's a beautiful day in Rosebud. The air is clean and crisp and I fill my lungs with it. I have come home to heal.
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HAS TEN SCOOPED THE POOL OR BOUGHT A PUP? - June 22, 2005
Seven and Nine may have twigged that we're getting tired
of Mr Wood.
You could almost hear the incredulous victory shouts from Pyrmont HQ blowing all the way south of the border through Melbourne's wintry streets. Somehow, Channel Ten had outmanoeuvred and, more crucially, outbid its heavyweight commercial rivals and nailed the story of the year: an exclusive interview with the man now commonly known as the Freed Iraq Hostage Douglas Wood.
The promos started rolling through Big Brother's live nominations on Monday night, which was unnervingly apt given we had all become bit players in this bloke's life, tuning in day after day to find out whether it was time for Douglas to go or not. And what form his eviction would actually take.
But the Big Brother network had won the day. They had waved the biggest chequebook and Sandra Sully would go head to head in a network exclusive with the Freed Iraq Hostage. On Sunday night. On Sunday night? Yes, that big ratings-pulling 6.30 timeslot on Sunday night on Ten, wedged between The Simpsons and, yes, Big Brother.
Surely big Sunday night stories are the exclusive domain of Channel Nine's 60 Minutes? Surely the TV news and current affairs featherweight network couldn't have coughed up more than Sixty? And what about the pulling power of Naomi and all those former Nine heavies running Seven these days? Why weren't they still at the table battering the featherweight into rightful oblivion?
Quite apart from the fact that everyone knows Ten doesn't have any money and it surely doesn't spend what it does have on news and current affairs exclusives. This was surely a first. And one to be welcomed gleefully by the chaps at Pyrmont who stitched up the deal. Surely?
Was it at the behest of our newest beer-drinking celebrity that Sandra won the day? Did she fit somewhere in the Freed Iraq Hostage's expatriate views of Australia, alongside the Geelong Football Club and Waltzing Matilda? Or was it more likely the hostage would receive kid-glove treatment from a charming woman, whom I count among my favourites when it comes to reading news but whose mettle is yet to be tested when it comes to asking the tough questions?
Was it just another crass commercial call of chequebook journalism with the spoils to the highest bidder? But surely this was the well-worn turf of Seven and Nine. Not Ten.
Or was it simply that the story was dead in the water the minute the hostage revealed himself to have none of the grace or dignity dished out to his brothers and looked like a blustering buffoon at his airport news conference when responding with a "definite maybe" to the question of going back to Iraq. And the savvy heads at Seven and Nine knew it as soon as they heard the news grab.
It was enough that his words "God bless America" had been played over and over on his release, but the 20 years Douglas Wood has spent as an expat Australian in America were played out in all their cringe-worthy ingloriousness when he decided to meet our media singing a song about a sheep thief who would rather die than be caught for his crimes . . . oh dear!
I guess we all have these loveable larrikins in our families, but I wonder how many of us feel that good about the way he is being feted as a national hero in a war, it must be said, that so many of us still feel extremely uncomfortable about and even the Americans are trying to find a gracious way to get out of.
Sure, the story kept its pace thanks to the media, but it was absolutely, and categorically, power-driven from the front seat by John Howard and Alexander Downer. That made it different from the get-go. It became a national priority to "get our man home".
I can't say for sure, of course, but I fancy I was not alone when I slunk away from the telly muttering unkind things under my breath about the hostage and his "business opportunities" in Iraq. And I bear him no ill will. Nor his loved ones, for they have surely suffered and I am delighted they have their man. But have we got ours?
And so I'm back to the chequebooks and Channel Ten. Winners or losers? Like 'em or loathe 'em, chequebooks have become an integral part of commercial media, but perhaps what we are seeing is the first example of a discerning call by the veterans of the game. Have they let the story of the year slip from their grasp, or have they sniffed the breeze and decided that by Sunday we won't care?
Looking on, it seems some very graceful forward pikes have been executed by those seasoned gents at Seven and Nine, while it's hard to make much of all the splashing about the floaties over at Ten.
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The face of Captain James Cook adorns the logo of the Sutherland Shire Council, home of Cronulla. It's a shire proud of its claim as the birthplace of Australia, its significance and its modern history firmly ensconced in the psyche of generations of its residents.
This is the place where Cook dropped anchor in 1770 and the Kurnell Peninsula, the headland north of Cronulla, is known as The Foot, the place where Cook's foot first connected with Australian soil.
If you're driving south from Sydney on the coast road, the only way to get to Cronulla is over a bridge named in his honour. That's how you find its famed golden beaches - the ones made famous in Puberty Blues, Elouera, Wanda, North and South.
One stretch of beach, four different names: territory has long been a part of the nature of this place. As a Sydney resident, and novice surfer for many years, I found that the "locals-only" legend that surrounded the fiercely parochial Sydney beach-breaks like Cronulla and Maroubra on the south side of the city loomed large.
I remember well my only encounter with its ferocity when my surfing girlfriend and I decided to paddle out one sunny afternoon at Maroubra.
Our day in the surf was cut short just beyond the shore break when one of its notorious tattooed locals paddled up to me and, with his face just centimetres from mine, demanded to know what the f--k we thought we were doing at his beach and made it clear we should leave the water immediately.
It rocked us to the core. I'd never seen such anger in anyone's eyes, especially so close, and it seemed so horribly at odds with the appeal of communing with nature in the surf. We did what women generally do when they are verbally abused or taunted by men. We removed ourselves.
Over a decade after that particular incident, I have watched the week's events unfold with the same dismay and despair that much of the country seems to be expressing. I'm even more dismayed to admit that I haven't been surprised. In many ways the history of conflict can be reduced to difference and geography.
We have seen it at its bleakest hour this week, with the nerve-jangling, and ominous, words of a prime ministerial victory speech providing the soundtrack: "We will decide who comes to this beach."
Is it useful, or just plain trite, to ask where, when and how did we get it so horribly wrong? Is it hopelessly simplistic to reduce these events to ugly tribal clashes between underemployed men? Is it more accurate to describe it as the byproduct of a generation of people whose views have been shaped by the culture of fear and loathing that has been masquerading as national leadership for the past decade?
I can't help wondering if it is merely a coincidence that the site of this week's final loss of national innocence also marks the birthplace of the systematic destruction of our indigenous population.
Its original inhabitants, the Dharawal nation, knew Cronulla as Kurrawulla the place of small, pink, seashells - and their stories can be found in the 1000-year-old shell middens beneath Cronulla's sandy shorelines, the same dunes that Captain Cook and his men wandered across, gathering samples of flora and fauna and "studying" local Aboriginal culture. Perhaps he needed to look harder or we needed to look differently right from the beginning.
It seems oddly unsettling that just a couple of weeks ago I walked around Princes Park with thousands of Melburnians as part of Michael Long's Long Walk II. It was, Long told us, a walk for all of us. A walk that we needed to do hand in hand, with compassion and understanding, a walk that echoed the sentiments of the Sorry marches in 2000 when, walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a spectacular Sydney day, I felt like we could change this country for the better. I felt the power of our numbers and I felt the most proudly Australian that I have ever felt.
The unsightly and festering underbelly of unresolved tension in this country has finally been revealed to the world.
We can't ignore it any longer. But I wonder if it might mean that we are a little closer to digging deeper to the real first-history of this country. To perhaps begin a path together that addresses the root of our national disquiet.
Our problem with living together in harmony is not with multiculturalism. Our national disquiet started over 200 years ago and lives on as a national disgrace. Until we find a way to make peace with our past we cannot make peace with our future.
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A POSSUM STARES EXTINCTION IN THE FACE - February 18, 2006
There's a giant mountain ash tree in Victoria's Royston Range with a pink H spray-painted onto its massive trunk. It's taken more than 200 years for it to reach its 60-metre height and, inside, it is likely that a family of tiny possums is nestling in its hollows.
They are Leadbeater's possums, so small they would fit in the palm of your hand. The pink H on the tree means these little creatures were safe from the chainsaws that clear-felled around them this week - their house is a designated habitat tree.
After presuming the species extinct, scientists found the last surviving colonies of Leadbeater's possums living in Victoria's Central Highlands in the early 1960s. Just 2000 of them remain. They are a protected and endangered species and Victoria's state fauna emblem.
On Monday night these little possums would have looked out over what was left of their neighbourhood and wondered what had happened to the furniture. And their food source. The sap from the once-plentiful alpine ash and their much loved wattle are gone. So are the blackwoods.
In the distance, they might have seen one or two old-growth trees still standing - also marked with an H to save the other English-speaking possums in the forest. They'll be among a handful of forest-dwelling creatures to survive this week's logging in the stretch of state forest that runs between the Yarra Valley National Park and Mount Bullfight Conservation Reserve.
Studies of forest activity by eminent environmental scientists such as Dr David Lindenmayer from the Australian National University indicate most animals die when a forest is extensively disturbed in a clear-felling operation. There are no early warning signals. Adult animals have a strong affinity with their home range and are reluctant to move.
In the daylight, the H-trees protrude from the forest floor like an Absurdist's version of a Russell Drysdale painting. It is a macabre and disturbing sight. The H-trees are too far apart for the possums to skip between branches and there is a sense that the forest has screamed all night but only the survivors will remember the sound.
For them, there's a looming regeneration fire, which will burn through the logging debris on the forest floor. The heat intensity of an often chemically fuelled regeneration fire will make life inside one of these H-trees almost unbearable - that is assuming the fire also speaks English and is smart enough to burn around them. Surviving this fire will be a challenge for a creature with very little body weight.
The complex eco-systems of old-growth forests don't like regeneration fires very much either. They tend to suit eucalypts, which grow back - plantation-like - relatively quickly. This works well for future logging and suits the industry these forests service rather nicely. But Leadbeater's possums don't like young eucalypts very much. They don't form hollows so it's hard to make a house. They need old-growth trees to survive.
This week many of these possums will have thought about moving to a place with more H-trees. They will have scouted for wattle and alpine ash sap.
But, as we see in other aspects of the Australian experience, newcomers aren't always welcome in unfamiliar territories - especially if you're a minority and have particular living requirements. It's a precarious predicament. About 80 per cent of the old-growth trees that came out of Royston this week will be chipped. By now the logs will have reached the Midway woodchip mill in Geelong and might be on their way to Japan. Others will have arrived at the Paperlinx mill in Maryvale where they'll end up as sheet paper with a lifespan of about a week. It's not much to show for 200 years of breathing life into the planet.
Royston Range is one of the last old-growth forests within a comfortable drive from Melbourne, just two hours due east along the Maroondah Highway. Walking though this forest, you can't help but be reminded of how blessed we are to have these precious, centuries-old ecosystems exist at all, let alone on the doorstep of a capital city.
Australia has the worst record for plant and mammal extinctions in the world in the past 200 years. We clear land faster here than in any other developed nation. Our planet is heating up and the best our governments can do is gag the scientists who would hold us to account and prop up the industries that contribute to the problem.
Unless the Victorian Government puts an end to old-growth logging in the state forests of eastern Victoria, the legacy of Premier Steve Bracks may well include the extinction of a tiny possum. For woodchips. For the paper on which history will record the state-sanctioned passing of our fauna emblem. It is madness.
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TIME TO MEASURE OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT - June 3, 2006
Sometimes you just feel like Kermit the Frog. With so many green messages pulling us this way and that, it's hard to know how green your green choices really are.
Should I go solar or wind? What about GM-free, chemical-free or free-range? Are they better than CFC-free, triple-A rated or energy-efficient? Perhaps a small army of mice would be best.
Even in your quietest, energy-saving moments you can wear yourself out just thinking about minimising your ecological footprint on the planet.
Should I tear open the tin roof and add to our landfill problem so I can install solar panels? Should I insulate the fibro-sheeting walls on the house and create asbestos-havoc in the neighbourhood? Is it enough that I only flush for No 2s and always turn the water off during teeth brushing or should I overhaul the plumbing and reticulate the grey water via planet-killing plastic tubing all through my garden?
Maybe I should reassess my long-held view that there is nothing safe, clean or green about nuclear power and put a yellowcake plant under the flowering gum? As long as the neighbours don't mind me throwing the waste over the back fence, apparently I'll be all right.
Or should I just go and find an old-growth forest that hasn't been logged and set up camp in a tepee?
On present international trends, Australia's ferocious consumption of nature faster than we can regenerate it has landed us with one of the biggest eco-footprints in the world - more than three times the global average. We are not treading lightly on the planet, we are stomping on it. According to a recent WWF Living Planet report, if everyone else on the planet consumed resources and energy and produced waste the way Australians do, we would need approximately four Earths to support us. Way to go, Australia!
At least I'm reassured to know I'm not the only one struggling with my footprint.
In my pocket calculations, I trade off the greenhouse-reducing effect of planting more trees on my block of land against the greenhouse-producing emissions of the car I have to drive to get anywhere expediently because public transport in my neighbourhood is almost unheard of. I've come to think of the backyard as a mini-carbon sink - the eucalypts, wattles and coastal tea-trees breathing as fast as they can to compensate for the car fumes.
I give myself bonus points for hand-watering the garden from my water tank, but these are negated by the washing machine, which is the constant reminder that I still haven't sorted out my grey-water reticulation. My clothes might be clean but, alas, they are not green.
But I am a passionate composter and have been known to form quite harsh views about people who throw food scraps in the rubbish. Composting means not having to worry about the phantom electrical load on the appliances that I forget to turn off when I leave the house. Especially the answer-phone; I maintain that there is not much point having one unless it's switched on when you're not home.
I get points for walking and cycling - one of the great things about not living in the city. And I always take a canvas bag to the supermarket, which offsets the fact that I've taken the car to carry the shopping home without overbalancing on my bike or having my arms pulled out of their shoulder sockets by the heavy load.
It has to be said that there is nothing like the smugness of the canvas bag carrier hunting and gathering at the supermarket. At least you can pretend to have some awareness of global warming, deep-sea pirating and environmental refugee issues.
Was this tuna dragged gasping from the ocean without killing cute things such as dolphins or seahorses? Does the Australian flag on the label mean Australian-made or Australian-packaged and does it really matter? Are these tomatoes gleaming with natural health or is it really cochineal? And should I wipe my bottom with recycled or tree-free paper?
These are the big questions facing ordinary Australians trying to relieve our over-perspiring planet every day. So what are we really doing about it?
How about these for starters: Australia shirked its international responsibility by refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse targets and Victoria is still home to the dirtiest power station in the industrialised world at Hazelwood. Year after year, sustainable energy initiatives are sidelined in the federal budget, yet we continue to clear land faster than any other developed country.
Monday is World Environment Day. Spare a thought for our little blue planet by thinking about the size of your feet. It's not always easy being green, but do something now before our footprints wash away for good.
Tracee Hutchison is a Melbourne writer and broadcaster. She will MC the World Environment Day Rally from the State Library at 11am tomorrow.
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A HELPING HAND IN TOUGH TIMES - July 8, 2006
The clientele of Piedemontes supermarket in North Fitzroy is, in many ways, a classic cross-section of contemporary Melbourne. The suburb's earthy mix of European heritage and bohemian chic, which once made it a popular creative hub for students and artists, is slowly giving way to the inevitable gentrification.
It's one of those inner-city suburbs frequently described as colourful. And to its equally colourful locals, Piedemontes is much more than a supermarket. It is a local landmark and something of institution. Lunchtime traffic is a busy mix of business suits, Blundstones, bicycles and Birkenstocks. And it is here, in the middle of brisk midweek lunchtime trade, that I am making my debut as a Big Issue vendor, gingerly stepping onto the pitch of the man the locals know as Damo.
Today I am his trainee and he is happily introducing me as such to his loyal band of regular customers. Some of them have heard us on the radio talking up the 10th birthday edition of the magazine. Some are not so sure why I am there and are wondering, somewhat suspiciously, whether Damo or I will be pocketing half the cover price (vendors buy the magazine for $2 and sell it for $4. And he did!).
But they know The Big Issue and what it has done for Damo because they have watched him reclaim his life by selling it from this same stretch of footpath - a magazine whose sole purpose is to help people help themselves. I have big boots to fill.
I first met Damo on the big screen at the inaugural Big Issue Film Festival a few years ago. His story of a life that had been derailed by the death of his mother and resultant drug addiction had become the subject of the centrepiece film of the evening. It was as much a candid exploration of how closely we all teeter on the edge of lives that can go horribly wrong in a heartbeat as it was a feel-good story about how restoring self-respect and self-determination can turn a life around.
The first thing I thought when I talked to him in the foyer that night was that he didn't have that look that is sometimes familiar in people who are battling addiction. Nor did he look like the kind of bloke who'd be unemployed for long periods of time.
This man was articulate, sensitive, sharp and funny. I realised my own preconceptions about cycles of addiction, homelessness and long-term unemployment probably required some tweaking. But it took a challenge in my own life just over a year ago, when the one thing I'd always relied on, my health, faltered that I realised that even a glimpse of life without a safety net can be very dark indeed. Which was why stepping onto Damo's pitch with a bag full of 10th birthday edition The Big Issue magazines was so humbling. And confronting. I spruiked for a while, cheerily greeting potential customers. It helped enormously that I believe in the product. The Big Issue has always been one of my favourite reads. It has moved and informed me, it has made me laugh and cry. It has introduced me to new writers and the wonderful satirical cartoons of Andrew Weldon. It really is one of the great independent current affairs and entertainment magazines.
Happily my sales were steady and, almost unfailingly, my smiles were warmly returned either in kind or with a transaction. But, there were other moments, when I stood alone on Damo's footpath, with my red Big Issue cap and green fluorescent vest, that I finally understood what he meant when he talked about feeling invisible.
Being ignored when you are trying to do something proactive with your life is certainly a challenge. There is nothing like the disdain of judgement cast in furtive glances by people wishing you would get out of their line of sight. It cuts you to the core. But I had my other life waiting. At the end of my shift, I could hand back the cap, the vest and the proceeds of my fleeting experience of a life that stalks us all.
As I write, I know that Damo and hundreds of vendors around the country are standing outside, holding their magazines aloft, exposing their vulnerabilities and proudly and strongly taking responsibility for their lives by offering a great read with a good deed. To all who have sailed with The Big Issue since 1996: congratulations on your 10th birthday - it's a brilliant achievement.
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DAVID WAINGGAI, THE FORGOTTEN MAN - July 22, 2006
Before it was excised from the mainland as part of the Australian Government's Pacific Solution, Christmas Island was a largely forgotten Australian outpost west of Darwin in the Indian Ocean.
And, despite its current reputation as a go-to port for asylum seekers, Christmas Island has never been the most inviting place on the planet. Its rugged coastline made it a difficult place for early settlers to inhabit but a haven for bird life, which built up the phosphate reserves that have bankrolled its economy for more than 100 years.
About 1600 people live on Christmas Island. And about a million red crabs. Visitors say it is one of those strangely out-of-time places. But in recent years the island's proximity to Indonesia has thrust it into an unexpected limelight that began in 2001, when the MV Tampa got caught in an international crossfire as it tried to land 420 asylum seekers, picked up in international waters from a sinking fishing boat.
Last year the Government started building a $200 million Immigration Reception and Processing Centre on the island so that up to 800 people could be housed while someone in Canberra worked out what to do with them.
It was in this facility that David Wainggai celebrated his 30th birthday alone last weekend. To the Immigration Department he is Wainggai 06024PT. David is the 43rd man, the forgotten man, in the political game that began when a group of pro-independence Papuans arrived on the island seeking asylum on January 17.
Born in Papua in 1976, to a Papuan father and a mother who had renounced Japanese citizenship in the 1960s, David embraced the pro-independence aspirations that led to the incarceration of his father.
David's father, Dr Thomas Wainggai, was one of the founding fathers of Papua's pro-independence movement. Jailed over a 1988 demonstration where the Morning Star flag was raised, he died in custody in 1996. Ten years later, David set sail for Australia under that same flag.
Had the 43 been picked up in Indonesian waters flying that flag they risked being charged with a treason-related offence. They made it to Cape York but were taken to Christmas Island by immigration officials.
Two months later, the entire group bar David was granted refugee status on the grounds of having a well-founded fear of being persecuted if forced to return to the Indonesian province. The fallout from Indonesian was instant. The ambassador was recalled and the Australian Government scrambled for a scapegoat.
Somehow the spurious Japanese connection based on a near-expired visitor's visa was enough for our Immigration Department to make David Wainggai the fall guy. While his 42 companions were relocated to Melbourne on temporary protection visas, David remained locked up on Christmas Island.
The decision to deny him refugee status is mystifying. The 13-page judgement makes it plain that he would have a real chance and a well-founded fear of persecution if forcibly returned to Indonesia.
The decision acknowledges David Wainggai's claims of detention in Papua for taking part in pro-independence activities as credible and consistent with country information. It also cites a UN report dated March 1, 2006, describing reports of abuse in Papua as worrying and continues by saying that human rights abuses by police and military in Papua continue to occur.
It concludes that the applicant could not return to Papua nor anywhere else in Indonesia for reasons consistent with the Refugees Convention.
The decision to refuse David's application for refugee status is baffling and also raises questions about the possibility of political interference. That one man's life was traded as diplomatic goodwill.
Even more compelling are the details of David's successful Federal Magistrates Court bid for a please-explain from the minister that claimed unlawful directions had been made within the Department to either stop or refrain from making a decision to advance relations with Indonesia.
The minister maintains the case was decided on merit.
As David Wainggai wonders where he will spend his next birthday his situation looks increasingly fragile. He is entitled to refugee status and it should be granted immediately.
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SO WHAT’S WRONG WITH GREER’S COMMENTS? - September 9, 2006
I can't help thinking that if Clive James, a fellow traveller with Germaine Greer in the great exodus of Australian intellectuals to London in the 1950s and 60s, had made the same observations as Greer did this week about the outpouring of Australian grief over Steve Irwin's death it would have been viewed very differently.
To me, Greer's assertion - that Irwin was a cross between an old-time lion tamer, modern Peter Pan and dinky-di Aussie larrikin who had no place being canonised in life or in death - was right on the money. He'd lived as he'd died: a daredevil entrepreneur who had deftly ridden on the back of Paul Hogan's Dundee coat-tails all the way to the bank and good on him.
I've got no problem with how he made his money, his political persuasions or his fondness for shouting "crikey" loudly into the eardrums of unsuspecting creatures. His circus-like act entertained millions all over the world and there are surely worse things to do with a life's work. And I don't doubt for a moment that his motivation for buying huge tracts of land as habitat protection was in the best interests of the animals he shared a stage with.
The problem I have is the way this country has turned Irwin into some kind of wildlife saint in death when most of us seemed to have had scant regard for his antics in life and simultaneously turned with such vengeance on Greer for expressing a view that has been deemed to be out of step with those of ordinary Australians.
If Steve Irwin's story was a celebration of the boy who wouldn't grow up, then Greer's is a modern equivalent to the witch-hunts of Salem.
The outpouring of grief at Irwin's death has been matched only by the outpouring of vitriol poured on Greer. It has been astounding. Men, mostly, have lined her up and taken aim with the kind of venom you would associate with the kind of snake Irwin was most fond of handling.
And the message has been heard loud and clear; if you're a woman of a certain age in this country - and a childless one at that - don't you dare step out of the shadows and shout out that the emperor might not be wearing any clothes. You will be shouted down and marginalised and your situation will be thrown back at you as a weapon.
In our increasingly family-focused Australia, the perspective of the lone childless woman is not only the least credible, but it seems it is also the least defensible of circumstances. It has become the most potent of dismissals and the most loaded and discriminatory of accusations that carries with it implicit allegations of heartlessness, selfishness and elite myopia.
And it is fascinating that men seem to find this particular description so necessary when their intention to demean women is at its most ferocious. John Birmingham did it this week. I had thought better of him.
Somehow because Greer has not had the blessed revelations of the mothering kind, she is by natural extension some kind of shrieking harridan whose views should be roundly discredited, her character undermined and her unsightly behaviour removed from public view.
Suspicion, disdain and pity have coloured most of the commentary on Greer's thesi. It has been revealing not only for what it has brought out in our men but the complicity of so many women in the process.
As a childless product of The Female Eunuch generation, Germaine Greer's influence on my life has been profound. The book predated me but its influence loomed large in the decisions women of my generation embraced. The women Helen Reddy told to roar. And we are, to a large extent, a terrifying entity.
It is for this reason I have empathised and identified so strongly with the prevailing sentiment of what underscored Greer's perspective as it shone like a beacon of reassurance and likemindedness in an Australia - and a world - still dominated by an overwhelmingly male sensibility.
Very little of the anti-intellectual hot air blown about this week has been about what Germaine Greer may or may not have thought about Steve Irwin. It had everything to do with a dominant male power-base telling women to be seen and not heard. Of marginalising a particular kind of woman and reducing us to condition and circumstance. Of reminding those of us who like to speak our mind to watch our step, to remember our place and to shut up and agree with the menfolk. We are all a lot poorer for the unsightly fallout.
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LEARNING THE DIFFICULT LESSONS OF GLOBAL WARMING - September 23, 2006
The inconvenient truth just isn't cricket . . .
Hello, class. Today we have a special guest coming to show us a very important film. But before we meet him, let's go over last night's homework. Howard! Macfarlane! Put down your Biggles books, and eyes to the front. Johnny, can you come up to the blackboard and spell carbon-neutral please?
Sorry, Miss, I had cricket practice. I can't spell it.
Seems like an early start to the season. Do you have a note from your parents?
Well, they said they'd never heard of carbo-nuisance. And they think what you teach isn't factual, and I've got a better future as a spinner, anyway.
That's disappointing, Johnny. There was a whole section about the school's carbon-neutral ambitions in last month's parent-teacher newsletter, after we all got inspired by the Melbourne City Council's new ecologically sustainable green building. Carbon-neutral is the new black. Everyone's talking about it. That's why we're having the tree-planting day. Aren't they coming?
I'm not sure, Miss. I think Mum has carbo-ambitions, but I thought it was about Tim Tams. But she likes black. She says it makes her look thinner.
That's a different concept, Johnny. What about you, Ian? Can you spell carbon-neutral?
No, Miss. I was at cricket too.
What about geothermal?
Is that like geo-sequestration? I think our dog had that when he was a puppy.
No, Ian, that's a different concept again. How about global warming? Will either of you tackle that?
I'll have a go at the first part, Miss. G.L.O.W.B.A.L.L
No, Ian, that's actually a concept related to the factual question.
I don't understand, Miss.
Well, it's about the shape of the Earth, Ian, and it's round, just like a cricket ball. And the early start to the hot weather might be great for a snarling pitch at the Boxing Day Test, but the groundsmen will be watering with recycled sewage because it doesn't rain enough anymore.
What! You're lying to us again, Miss! No one in their right mind would think of putting recycled wee and poo on the 'G. It's sacrilege. I'm going home to tell Mum on you.
Johnny, please, sit down. Our guest will be here soon. This is what we call a big-picture discussion. It's very exciting and it's all about your future. Its about changing the way we think about power and energy sources and water, and taking control of how much we use and when. And it's a scary thought because some governments like to keep all the power themselves, but this is about everyone being responsible for our future by starting with the little things, even if they seem inconvenient.
My Dad says we don't do things by halves in our family.
Well, little things make a difference over time, John. Little things, such as changing the flow-control on our taps and choosing renewable energy sources from the electricity company. It's about having rainwater tanks on all our buildings and grey-water reticulation and solar panels like the ones the school is saving for from our annual snowball drive.
I hate snowballs.
Ian, please, snowballs are important! And many of them are disappearing faster than we can make them. And if the ones at the bottom and the top of the world keep disappearing at the current rate, then the famous pitch in Galle will be completely underwater before Murali's kids are old enough to play.
That could be good for the game, Miss.
That's not very sporting, Johnny. Of course it's not good for the game. The pitch at Galle is part of cricket heritage and it's only just recovering from the tsunami. But let's talk more about it after we've watched the movie.
Class, can you bring your permission slips to see the film up the front? Ian? Johnny? Do you have your permission slips?
No, Miss. Our parents don't want us to see that film. They said it's just misleading entertainment and it says bad things about our Uncle George in America.
But really important Americans like the Murdochs, and even the Terminator, are on board with carbon-neutral. Have your parents seen the film?
No, Miss. They said that the guy who made it is a loser. And that he is just inventing stuff to make us scared.
What kind of stuff?
That one day the world will get so hot it will turn into an ice block and there wont be any central heating. Besides, Mum says people who talk about the weather are boring.
Well, it might be boring now, John, but wait until it's too hot for cricket and the players want to call off the Ashes.
No! Stop! Youre lying again! I'm really telling on you now. Nothing will stop the cricket on Boxing Day. Nothing! N !
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WE NEED TO HEAR YOUNG VOICES - November 11, 2006
A Couple of weeks ago, Silverchair's lead singer Daniel Johns made a bold political statement with a spray can at the annual ARIA awards. Having paid homage to ARIA Hall of Fame inductees Midnight Oil with a powerful rendition of the Oils' 1981 anthem I Don't Wanna Be the One, 27-year-old Johns spray-painted "PG 4 PM" on a strategically placed piece of plasterboard.
It was a fascinating moment. Not least for how reminiscent it was of the cult-like following Oils frontman Peter Garrett commanded in the band's heyday a following that harnessed the idealism of a generation. But two decades after Garrett's ideologies loomed large in the lives of twentysomethings around the country, Daniel Johns' gesture screamed like a cry from the heart for someone, and something, to believe in. Now.
While not widely regarded as an overtly political band, Silverchair have had their share of politically inspired moments, most notably the video clip for the 2003 single Anthem for the Year 2000, which opens with the lyric "We are the youth, we'll take your fascism away", and featured footage of the Iraq war, anti-war protesters and a parody of George Bush's and John Howard's relationship.
But the post-ARIAs hand-wringing over what the Oils' Rob Hirst described as the lack of complaint rock in his acceptance speech only reinforced a perceived musical disconnect with the political process.
Hirst wasn't entirely correct when he said that the social activist singer/songwriter John Butler was doing it on his own on the music front these days he's just the most visible. In truth, there are probably more bands making political statements in their lyrics now than there were when the Oils were in their prime. It's just that the Oils were an extraordinary rock'n'roll band first and foremost and their powerfully persuasive lyrics came wrapped in wonderful melodies, so their message reached more people than most.
The critical issue now isn't apathy, it is cynicism. And a deep disdain for the political process.
When Garrett entered politics in 2003, expectations he would carry the Oils' spirit to Canberra weighed heavily and his transition from rock star to MP hasn't been easy. But with the environment at centre stage, this should be the carpe diem moment for Garrett's political career. Yet the man with some of the best green credentials in Parliament and more charisma than much of the shadow cabinet put together has been rendered voiceless on the issue by his own party.
Daniel Johns' graffiti should be a missive to the ALP.
The apparent misreading of Garrett's voter collateral is a symptom of a broader malaise. The impending departure from the Senate of former Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja sends a message that politics eventually grinds down the best of intentions.
Now, more than ever, young, and not so young, people are looking for something, someone, to show them the way.
How else can you explain U2 lead singer Bono's ability to persuade 50,000 fans at U2's Brisbane concert to send a text message to the Make Poverty History organisation while pointing their mobile phones at the moon?
Exactly how 50,000 texts to the ether helps anyone but the shareholders of the phone companies is a mystery, but it is an indication of how much people want to believe they can make the world a better place, to be part of the zeitgeist.
While I'm still not sure how rock concerts alleviate poverty, next weekend's Make Poverty History concert at the Myer Music Bowl will try.
Concert organiser Dan Adams, 19, is almost evangelistic when he talks about making poverty history. He's not alone. Young people all over the country are finding meaningful involvements with aid agencies, environment groups and social justice networks. They are passionate, idealistic and leading by example, but they are not choosing the political process to do it.
Activist-turned-Greens leader Bob Brown aside, the absence of inspired political leadership in Australia has never been starker. And the need to give people something to believe has never been more crucial. As a twentysomething, Peter Garrett sang about not wanting to be the One. Maybe so. But we need more Garretts, Browns and Stott Despojas engaged in the political process and we need them being heard.
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WHO would have thought? The same week that Malcolm Turnbull is elevated to the plum cabinet post of environment and water, the nation stoops to new lows in its increasingly unedifying quest for that pesky little thing called identity, writes Tracee Hutchison.
What an exquisite irony it is to recall that the man who was once the face of the Australian Republican Movement and who denounced Prime Minister John Howard as the man who broke a nation's heart when the republic referendum was defeated in 1999 was also once a director of Ausflag, the organisation that campaigns for a new Australian flag.
Oh, what a difference a decade makes. The reborn Turnbull now has the evangelical air of a Howard true believer, the republic is all but dead in the water and our flag has become a participant in something that could easily be mistaken for a white supremacist movement.
If ever there was a week to remind us of opportunities lost, this was it.
What happened to that glorious moment when Cathy Freeman draped herself in our colours and boldly told the world who we are? What happened to the pride we all felt as each of her long, graceful strides carried the hearts and minds of a nation's aspirations for all we could be along with her?
What happened to that momentum? That feeling of belonging and inclusion that allowed even the staunchest of republicans to feel united under our flag? That brave vision of Australia as a self-assured, independent, cultural and political sophisticate making its own way in the world?
Was it all just a dream?
Instead, we are kicking around words like integration and assimilation at a time we need them least. We might as well turn the clock back 200 years.
And with so much at stake, it is hard to work out how any amount of bluff and bluster about values and mateship and notions of a fair go make it any clearer.
Yet instead of addressing the root cause of increased cross-cultural tensions, politicians and commentators of all persuasions chose to beat up a couple of concert promoters who dared say out loud what is rumbling in the underbelly of Australia. Sadly, our flag says very different things today from what it did in 2000.
Big Day Out promoter Ken West was brave enough to give it a name when he astutely described the creeping trend of patriotism cloaked in national colours as racism. To some, he correctly observed, the flag has come to represent the colours of a gang. And it is ugly. Uglier still was the ferocity of the disdain that shot down the messenger while the message got buried in a whirling dervish of denial.
Granted, Sydney's Big Day Out passed without incident despite huge numbers of patrons defying the leave-the-flags-at-home urgings of organisers, but imagine the outcry had a bunch of flag-clad idiots done some real damage? Imagine if someone was badly injured in a flag-induced frenzy?
Imagine the recriminations that would have been indulged in if organisers had not made every effort to ensure the safety and security of their patrons?
Promoters West and Vivien Lees have paid a heavy price for breakdowns in their security systems in the past. A young woman had a fatal heart attack in the mosh-pit in Sydney in 2001. It's fair to assume this tragedy haunts both men. Surely West's plea to keep his event free of the race-based tensions that are bubbling throughout suburbs all over the country should have been seen for what it was and not beaten up beyond recognition.
Instead it became a convenient smokescreen that worked beautifully for the Prime Minister as he renamed the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
In one insidious manoeuvre, we've been coerced into forgetting that Australia is actually a multicultural success story. Something we should celebrate, despite its being deftly dismantled over the past decade and replaced with the divisive bumper-sticker mantra "Australia: Love it or Leave It".
This week's hysterical flag furore is just the latest in a series of distractions from the main game that notion of an Australian identity that is inclusive not exclusive.
Perhaps the time has finally arrived to come up with a flag that unites, not divides, us. To be reminded of a country that welcomes not rejects. A country that makes peace with its past and looks to its future with self-determined optimism and hope. A country we can all feel proud to be part of.
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Two days before Ben Cousins pushed his luck for the last time with his football team by not turning up to training, the Brownlow medallist and former club captain was named as the West Coast Eagles best afield in its 20-point practice match loss to the Western Bulldogs at Subiaco Oval.
That was last Saturday. By Monday afternoon Cousins' football career was in serious jeopardy as his football club was finally forced to suspend one of its brightest stars indefinitely.
It's a telling statistic because it pretty much sums up why and how everything has been allowed to go so horribly wrong for the naturally gifted midfielder.
Here was an elite athlete with, as has now been revealed, significant substance abuse problems coping brilliantly in the one place his mind and body was put under its most intense pressure. It almost defies logic that Cousins could keep performing with such consistent finesse on the football field while off field his world has clearly been collapsing for some time.
It must have been. These kinds of abuse problems don't happen overnight. They are also not the kind of problems that
go unnoticed, as a litany of Cousins' misdemeanours attest: the booze bus incident, the Crown Casino incident,
the unfortunate association with shady underworld characters.
The media in a two-team football town were complicit in keeping its boyishly handsome Golden Boy from the city's Golden Team the benefit of the doubt.
But that is precisely why both he and his football club have been able to convince themselves that his substantial personal and private problems weren't really a problem at all. As long as Cousins was on song on match day everyone could conveniently behave like ostriches for the rest of the week. It was too easy. And all of it protected by a pervasive blokey culture that encourages excessive behaviour.
Despite being stripped of the captaincy after running away from a police breath test, Cousins remained in the West Coast leadership group. It was a curious role-modelling decision, to say the least.
Yet out on the field where it mattered most to the football team it was Cousins, not Captain Chris Judd, who was the Eagles so-called spiritual leader.
And it was there for all to see on grand final day last September when Cousins, looking like a deranged Peter Pan, held the Premiership cup aloft with Judd.
It spoke volumes about what else is going on at the West Coast Eagles, a club that many AFL insiders believe has become the victim of its own success and untouchable status in its home town. There's a feeling that they've been allowed to get away with too much for too long, boys behaving badly because they can.
But what's happened at West Coast is just a symptom of a broader cultural malaise in Australia that allows boy-men to place themselves above reproach and be rewarded for it.
While the well-heeled opportunities that reign supreme in AFL football circles could not be further from the working-class grit and struggle of suburban Maroubra in Sydney's south, the boys behaving badly stories being played out on either side of the country right now are a strangely compelling comparison.
The much-touted Bra Boys, the self-crowned stars of the film of the same name, are ostensibly a bunch of glorified surfing thugs who rule the roost on their home beach and think nothing of going the biff out in the surf if some misguided non-local dares to wander into the infamous Maroubra swell.
The film, an uncritical gangsta-style documentary that canonises the notorious Abberton brothers Sunny, Jai and big-wave surfer Koby is a celebration of pumped up masculine bravado that solves its problems with intimidation, abuse and violence, all under the pretence of protecting their own. Boys behaving badly because no one will stop them. The Abbertons are enjoying the trappings of Sydney's celebrity A-list.
While it's easy to dismiss Ben Cousins' fall from grace as yet another casualty of the immensely privileged lifestyle AFL footballers are afforded, it is also a cop-out. Clearly the AFL's three-strike drug policy is a sham that has fostered a culture of deceit in its player group, but it goes much deeper than that.
We have become experts in turning a blind eye by celebrating wild Aussie larrikin behaviour then we wring our hands when someone gets hurt. It shouldn't come as such a surprise.
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STOP THE DROP - March 31, 2007
Now, 24 years since we sang and danced our nuclear fears away at the bowl, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle again and tomorrow's Nuclear Fools Day concert at the bowl feels like groundhog day, writes Tracee Hutchison.
A MONTH before Bob Hawke became prime minister in 1983, a couple of friends and I painted a huge banner with a mushroom cloud in the middle of it. The banner was long enough to span the stage of the Sidney Myer Music Bowl and emblazoned in big yellow letters on it were the words "STOP THE DROP". To maximise the dramatic effect of the anti-nuclear message we fashioned the mushroom cloud around the H in the "THE".
The concert of the same name, in February 1983, featured INXS, Midnight Oil, Goanna and Redgum. And the prevailing mood among the tens of thousands of people who were there suggested a looming fear that the development of a nuclear industry would be bad for our health and our future.
With the fallout of the 1979 Three Mile Island reactor accident still casting a long shadow, we sang and danced and shouted our opposition to nuclear proliferation and anointed people such as anti-nuclear campaigner Dr Helen Caldicott as our patron saints.
As the '80s rolled on, Hawke introduced the ALP's famed three-mines policy and confidence in nuclear power as a viable and legitimate energy source continued to wane, thanks largely to the 1986 nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl that sent a radioactive cloud across much of Europe exposing 5 million people. The price of uranium plummeted.
Now, 24 years since we sang and danced our nuclear fears away at the bowl, the nuclear genie is out of the bottle again and tomorrow's Nuclear Fools Day concert at the bowl feels like groundhog day.
Exactly when the tide turned on nuclear power is hard to pin down. Was it English scientist Dr James Lovelock's declaration that he'd happily store nuclear waste under his home as a heat source? Is it a triumph of economic rationalists with short memories or simply boy-men with warmongering tendencies? It's anyone's guess. But somewhere along the way Australia, with 32 per cent of the world's uranium, became a major player in the nuclear industry.
Without a real clue on alternative energy options or a strategy to combat global warming, Prime Minister John Howard became the nuclear industry's pin-up boy, stacking an inquiry into nuclear energy options in Australia with nuclear advocates and appointing its chairman, Ziggy Switkowski, to a plum job heading the country's top nuclear research and lobby group ANSTO before the pro-nuke report was handed down.
Somehow the Federal Government also managed to persuade itself that sending our uranium to non-signatory countries to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty with little post-it notes saying "Not for Weapons" was a reasonable enough guarantee that we're not part of a nuclear arms race.
Suddenly the idea that some of that uranium that had underscored the resources boom would have to come back to its country of origin in waste form was firming as our responsibility.
And just when you'd think the ALP would step up and take a strong stand on the nuclear issue it buckles. Suddenly the three-mines policy is up for grabs at next month's national conference. Suddenly Queensland Premier Peter Beattie is eating the words he took to the electorate that returned his Government to power just six months ago and dumps a pro-nuclear bombshell from the safety of an overseas junket.
Suddenly South Australian Premier Mike Rann is approving a fourth uranium mine, subject to the Feds giving it the green light, with the charming name of "Honeymoon". And suddenly NT Chief Minister Clare Martin is suggesting that the lady may well be for turning.
Somehow all of this is supposed to be good for Australia. Yet none of us wants a nuclear reactor or a nuclear waste dump in our backyard. Ask around. I doubt you'll find any takers. And contrary to Martin Ferguson's rhetoric the unions are not on board.
No other mineral is connected to the most destructive weapon ever built. It needs to stay in the ground.
As Caldicott said on the cover of her most recent book, Nuclear is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else, it is not the magic non-polluting answer to protracted inaction on alternate energy strategies.
And this is not the time to forget that accidents do happen. See
you at the bowl tomorrow.
I just wish I still had that banner.
‘Stop the Drop’ concert - Midnight Oil (1983)
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CRYING FOR THE PLACE WE COULD BECOME - June 2, 2007
I'VE always believed in the power of music as a potent catalyst for social change. I believed it when I first heard Bart Willoughby's voice out front of No Fixed Address in 1981 proudly proclaiming We Have Survived. I believed it when Shane Howard's band Goanna made the first non-indigenous musical statement about land rights with Solid Rock.
I believed it as I sang my lungs out in tiny pubs in Sydney watching a band from Papunya called the Warumpi Band in the mid-1980s. I believed it when a little known act called Yothu Yindi, from Yirrkala, Northern Territory, turned up in my Triple J radio studio in 1986 with an acoustic version of a song called Treaty.
I believed it in Joe Geia's anthemic Yil Lull. And with every listen to Paul Kelly's Bicentennial.
I believed it when the Oils wore Sorry T-shirts at the Sydney Olympics and I believed it last weekend standing with a solid crowd at Federation Square and singing about walking together with former AFL footy star turned activist Michael Long.
Onstage with Longy were a couple of the architects of the genre Archie Roach and Shane Howard and it couldn't have been more fitting. I doubt there was a dry eye in that square as we sang: "Walk with me, come talk with me, set your spirit free, come dream with me, create history."
It seemed so simple all wrapped up in a chorus. As we walked to the MCG for the annual Dreamtime football game, shuffling and bumping along an overcrowded Birrarung Marr walkway, I kept hearing people apologising to each other. Sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry.
Maybe it was just the poignancy of hearing that word over and over as we commemorated its namesake day that made me notice, but it was as though we were all just craving to hear it. And there was something profoundly moving about it. Like we all knew we were better people than our Federal Government would have us believe.
That we desperately needed to find some peace. With our past, our present and our future. And with each other.
And there was a sense that the window of hope is opening again. That anniversaries create more than pause for thought on opportunities lost. And while the Federal Government's been busy turning an arrogant blind eye, it has made itself an irrelevant bystander in this process.
For what kind of government offers a trinkets-style deal to the people of Muckaty Station to poison their Dreaming with uranium waste in exchange for the basic rights of all Australians money for health care, housing and education?
What kind of paternalistic idiocy has informed the English-language impositions on young Aboriginal students by the federal Indigenous Affairs Minister? And how can a Prime Minister who, in the words of Lowitja O'Donoghue "either doesn't get it or doesn't care" be remembered as anything other than a national disgrace for the era he has presided over?
The 40,000 signatories to the Get Up/Close the Gap coalition campaign to demand the implementation of strategies to rectify the 17-year life expectancy gap between black and white Australians is critically telling.
Get Up read the public mood on David Hicks well before John Howard's mob cottoned on. Now Get Up is reading the mood on reconciliation and they're on the money again. And it has to start with Sorry. So we can start moving forward. Together. Because we know that we cannot call ourselves a civilised, humane country while statistics on Aboriginal health, education and incarceration tell us the opposite.
We are sitting on the precipice to own our history, once and for all. The momentum of Paul Keating's Redfern speech and the reconciliation marches of 2000 is kickstarting and it has to triumph this time. It may be the last chance we get.
And, perhaps, it is time for us to start singing from the same songbook. A songbook that celebrates the words of Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter, of Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly, of Joe Geia, Bart Willoughby and Richard Frankland, of Lou Bennett, Sally Dastey and Amy Saunders, of George Rrurrambu, Sammy Butcher and Neil Murray and of Shane Howard, to name but a handful.
"Heart of my country, never surrender. Have to keep your dreaming. Gotta keep believing." To my mind it's Shane Howard's finest moment as a songwriter.
I don't know about anyone else's tears in Federation Square last Saturday night, but mine were for the country I know we can be. Bring it on.
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A COINCIDENCE: BIG WARSHIPS NEED A REALLY DEEP CHANNEL - June 23, 2007
PERHAPS it is just my natural suspicion of authority, but could the real reason the Victorian Government has been hell-bent on blowing open Port Phillip heads to gouge deeper into the bay's shipping channel have been revealed with this week's announcement that Tenix will build two massive amphibious warships at its Williamstown dockyards?
On the face of it, the $500 million injection into state coffers the deal secures could be seen as a spectacular boon for the Victorian economy that's assuming you're not queasy about the money generated by building two floating weapons of mass destruction.
But given the widespread concern dredging the bay will have on its precious marine ecosystems, and the Government's sometimes cavalier attitude to those concerns coupled with the less than convincing economic projections of bringing cargo ships full of plastic trinkets from China you could say that a $500 million injection certainly makes the bay-dredging ledger a little more convincing.
These are big ships, capable of accommodating 1124 troops, tanks, a flight deck for large and medium-sized helicopters and comprehensive medical facilities.
The massive hulls of these amphibious landing vessels set for construction in Melbourne will be built in Spain as part of this Spanish/Australian joint venture and shipped to the Williamstown docks aboard even bigger vessels. When finished, these ships will have a total water displacement of 27,851 tonnes. Empty.
It's true that ships with twice that draught go through Port Phillip heads already. The QE2, for one.
But not knowing exactly how much the collective weight of a quiver of armoured tanks, a handful of choppers and more than 1000 people plus facilities will do to the displacement of these vessels with a full load it's hard to guess its needs at full capacity.
It's worth asking the question, isn't it?
And it's worth asking why the curious make-up of the three-member panel charged with reviewing the environmental impact of bay dredging is headed by a former secretary of the Defence Department, Dr Allan Hawke. It's an interesting coincidence isn't it as are the extensive professional links to defence and port security of another review panel member, Mike Lisle-Williams.
It leads to another question about why the State Government replaced an experienced and appropriately credentialled group of environmental review panellists for the final series of public hearings into the impact of channel deepening with people who, on the face it, read like rubber-stampers.
It could also explain why Planning Minister Justin Madden could say with a straight face that "we won't be giving the green light unless we can be sure that adverse environmental impacts are acceptable".
I guess the term "acceptable" is the one that's open to conjecture. Acceptable to whom? And what? A $500 million contract to build warships?
When South Australia stole the march on a huge naval destroyer contract two years ago the Victorian Government was smarting. But this week's announcement a joint defence force, state and federal initiative puts Victoria back on the map as a major player in these very lucrative deals.
Perhaps there is no link between building bloody big warships in Williamstown, the make-up of an environmental review panel and channel deepening. But it seems to make sense of a set of financial projections that I was struggling to make sense of before.
Maybe my hunch has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory, but it seems to join the dots.
And it just seems to be a little too coincidental that the Tenix announcement would come as the channel-deepening review panel is in session. Coincidences all round.
Perhaps it is also just a coincidental blessing that coast-dwelling Victorians have been treated to such magnificent displays by visiting humpback whales taking refuge in Port Phillip Bay in recent weeks.
And perhaps the inherent message these wondrous sea creatures delivered with their visit as their fate was thrashed out in the international whaling commission hearings was lost on advocates of channel deepening.
But if shoring up Victoria as the state of choice for warship construction has anything to do with deepening the bay's shipping channels then I hope those driving this decision sleep easy with the ethical and moral consequences of destroying the pristine ecology of Port Phillip Bay to build warships.
As I said, it might all just be a heck of a coincidence, but it's a heck of a coincidence nonetheless.
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THE PATIENT RESOLVE OF A PEOPLE UNDER SIEGE - August 4, 2007
FROM the southern tip of the east coast of Australia to the far north-east of Arnhem Land is over 3000 kilometres. As the crow flies. And my journey from the place I was born, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, to the Gove Peninsula is close to a full day's travel by plane but feels as if it has been 20 years in the making.
For me, this journey started in the late 1980s with a band called Yothu Yindi and a man called Mandawuy Yunupingu. North-east Arnhem Land is his country. Gumatj country.
And I have finally come to the place he talked about with a passion and an ancient wisdom I couldn't begin to grasp as a twentysomething when his band, Yothu Yindi, made its first splash on the national music scene and we met for the first time in a radio studio.
He told me then he was a crocodile man. That his was saltwater country. And he said it from a place in his soul that spoke so profoundly of his sense of self that I knew I could only ever scratch the surface.
That meeting, and many like it with other extraordinary indigenous artists I've been fortunate to meet over the years, set me on a path of learning all of it fuelled by an incredible soundtrack of inspiring songwriters who had come before and others who followed.
It was a path that would eventually take me back to my own country. The place of the Bunurong people, on Victoria's beautiful Mornington Peninsula. And it has finally brought me here. To Gulkula in Arnhem Land for the Garma Festival, the major annual festival of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, which Yunupingu founded.
Through my own fledgling reconnections with the spirit of the place I come from, I have learned about an ancient mythical man called Bunjul. An eagle man who shaped the gentle undulations of the Mornington Peninsula. And of his people, the Bunurong, who fished and hunted and gathered on that land until the 1840s when white settlement pushed them north to reserves around Mordialloc.
I learned of the meeting places of his people, still marked by the many middens in the area. And I learned that being born in Rosebud came with Bunjul's eagle as a totem. Even as a whitefella, it was my skin, according to Bunurong elders who still live in the area.
It has been profound and necessary learning. And it couldn't be more timely. Not just for the fact that I am here, in Yunupingu's country, but I am here at a time that the whole concept of Aboriginal homelands of the spirit of place and belonging is under siege from the Howard Government. For, unlike my hosts, I am not under siege in the place I call home. The land I own in the place I was born is not being threatened with trespass or repossession. And the very nature of my character is not being undermined by a national campaign of shaming.
And, yes, there is disquiet here. It is underpinning what should be a celebration of our rich national heritage. The oldest culture in the world. It has permeated the talk and the feeling of this gathering. And it is evident in the presence of about 30 indigenous elders from all over the country who have sat and talked and issued their response to the Prime Minister's attack on the homeland's permit system and the very concept of Aboriginal land rights and demanded he talk with them. It is, indeed, hard to dance when the earth is turning.
Yet there is also a quiet strength here. A resolve borne out of a community whose first contact with white people didn't happen until the 1930s. Of a community whose determined self-belief led to Australia's first native title claim in 1971. A landmark mining rights versus land rights case Milirrpum v Nabalco remembered most famously for the bark petition Yolngu people signed to demand their share of their land's riches. The same bark petition that now, perhaps ironically, hangs in the national Parliament to mark its place in our history. With so much at stake, the politics being discussed so feverishly in this place at this time couldn't be more apt.
For these are telling times for our country. And sitting here, with red dust at my feet and a rich blue sea stretching out into the horizon, the divide between black and white Australia couldn't be more stark.
Yet there is resilience and knowledge and humility here that could teach white Australia a great deal. Of sitting together and learning two ways. Of patience and resolve.
And of crocodiles and eagles and the spirit of this place we call Australia.
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TIME TO REMEMBER THE TAMPA DEBACLE - August 25, 2007
I WANT to take you back six years. To Saturday, August 25, 2001. Back when Australia was still shaping as a model of international citizenship. Back when we thought the rise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation in the late 1990s was just a racist hiccup that had been usurped by the thousands of people who marched across bridges for reconciliation and Cathy Freeman's triumph at the Sydney Olympics.
Back when we believed we were on the verge of something truly GREAT here in the lucky country. Back when Prime Minister John Howard was facing re-election and was in serious trouble in the polls.
Just 24 hours later everything changed.
On Sunday, August 26, 2001 the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa sailed in accordance with ancient seafaring traditions to the aid of 438 people whose boat had sunk in international waters en route to Australia.
After the successful rescue of what were mostly terrified Hazara Afghans fleeing the Taliban, Captain Arne Rinnan headed for the nearest landing point of Christmas Island and radioed for medical help.
The Australian Government sent the SAS instead and for nine days those people sat on the decks of the Tampa while Canberra stared down international condemnation and demands to allow them ashore.
The Tampa was eventually diverted to Nauru as part of the Government's newly enshrined "Pacific Solution", prompting then immigration minister Philip Ruddock to say that the authors of the International Refugee Convention wouldn't want the convention seen as "the enabling tool for organised crime" as some kind of defence for his Government's shirking of its international responsibilities.
Two weeks after the Tampa incident, two hijacked planes flew into the World Trade Centre in New York.
The Prime Minister seized the opportunity to turn border protection into national security.
Less than a month later, on October 8, HMAS Adelaide went to the rescue of another sinking fishing boat, this one in Australian waters close to Christmas Island. It was full of mostly Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers who became political scapegoats in Peter Reith's thoroughly disproved "children overboard" scandal.
Eleven days later, 353 people also Iraqi and Afghan asylum seekers en route to Australia drowned when their vessel, known as the SIEV (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel) X sank in what was reported to be international waters off Java.
Much conjecture remains about the precise location of the SIEV X, how much the Australian Government knew of its circumstances and how much or how little it did to assist its drowning passengers.
But one thing is ironclad. By the time John Howard went to Australian voters a few weeks later on November 11, 2001, Tampa had become a verb, an adjective and a noun synonymous with the darkest of victories characterised by Howard's acceptance speech "we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come".
Time lines are important, especially as we are in a similar one now. They remind us of how quickly and how dramatically things can be manipulated and wedged for political advantage.
In three short months in late 2001, the Howard Government succeeded in recognising a political opportunity existed in a new "Muslim" peril that fused the asylum seeker issue to the threat of terrorism. Since then there have been many dark victories. Our international standing as a good international citizen has been much diminished by the Howard Government's hardline position on asylum seekers and our hypocritical involvement in the same conflicts (in Iraq and Afghanistan) from which these people fled.
In the process, the names of wrongly detained Cornelia Rau and illegally deported Vivian Alvarez Solon became synonymous with systemic flaws in Immigration Department procedures.
It is important to remember these things happened in this country. And it is important that we honour the lives lost and those irreparably damaged in the process.
Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the Tampa's rescue of a boatload of people who were making unimaginably desperate journeys from persecution to a land of promise. Of the 438, only 28 made it to Australia, after years on Nauru. New Zealand welcomed most of them almost immediately the rest went to Scandinavia and North America.
Lest we forget.
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FOR A MAN OF SHAME - November 24, 2007
FOR the past 11 years, Prime Minister John Howard has been fond of reminding us of his favourite Australian traditions and catchphrases. The so-called Aussie values he believes have come to define us such as a fair go, mateship and the Gallipoli spirit.
They've been curious, male-oriented choices wrapped for the most part in empty rhetoric that has served to divide, not unite, us and heralded a zealous campaign to treat philosophical, intellectual and cultural vigour as if it were a plague.
Indeed, one of the PM's self-proclaimed triumphs was to oversee the eradication of another much-touted Howard catchphrase political correctness. Whatever that actually means, we apparently don't have it in Australia any more, much to the PM's delight.
But it was another, more universal, catchphrase that occupied my thoughts this week as John Winston Howard found himself boxed into an ugly corner largely of his own making and was forced to confront a house of cards with race writ large on them all.
Somehow the word comeuppance came to mind as the 11th-hour race implosion in the federal seat of Lindsay derailed Howard's re-election momentum. And it screamed poetic justice.
After years of playing on the nation's xenophobic fears and whipping up race-based frenzies to deliver political victories, it was the PM's former golden girl minister, Jackie Kelly the accidental politician who epitomised Howard's aspirational battlers when she helped sweep him to power in 1996 who brought him unstuck so spectacularly.
Kelly's attempt to laugh off an appallingly ill-judged anti-Muslim campaign leaflet being handed out in her electorate by her husband and close associates had all the hallmarks of Russell Crowe's dynamic performance in Romper Stomper, except it was for real. Jackie just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. And it spoke volumes.
It was an extraordinary finale from a woman once touted as Liberal leadership material but who is now opting for a parliamentary pension. Her train wreck of an interview with Chris Uhlman on ABC radio was, apparently, her way of helping the woman hoping to replace her in Lindsay. The PM, most definitely, was not amused.
The episode did little other than remind us that some rivers still run very deep in the modern Liberal Party. The same modern Liberal Party that John Winston Howard has led so proudly for so long. The same modern Liberal Party that has driven the most decisive of racial wedges through the heart and soul of this country, eroding its essence so comprehensively it will take considerable strength, determination, courage and vision to restore it.
As Howard stood at the National Press Club making his last-ditch stand for power on Thursday afternoon, nothing could rid him of that elephant in the room.. Try as he might to tell us over and over that we've never had it so good, the elephant just kept getting in the way. Try as he might to persuade us he is not yesterday's man, it all came back to the elephant.
And it was the very same elephant that Howard let into the nation's lounge room when he became Prime Minister in 1996. That same elephant that underscored Cronulla, Noble Park, the intervention in the Northern Territory and the proliferation of Australia's draconian immigration detention policies. It is time to tell it to leave.
It is time to make room for change to take place. It is time to make room for hope to be restored. It is time to make way for leadership with vision and compassion to flourish.
Today is the day that we tell John Howard and his elephant it is time for them to go. Today is the day for Australia to reclaim its sense of justice, humanity, equality and pride. Today is the day we tell each other and the world that we are a decent, good-hearted, generous people who reach out and reach down and walk tall because of it.
And today is the day John Winston Howard walks into the hall of mirrors that is the politically, socially and culturally redefined multicultural electorate of Bennelong.
Oh, what an epitaph. That the man whose political party played the race card once too often in his 11th hour is not only tipped out of government, but the man himself tipped out of his now culturally diverse seat by the very people he used so successfully for so long as pawns in his political chess game.
Could there be a sweeter decline?
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EXCITING, DEFINING TIMES FOR WOMEN - December 1, 2007
FOR the past 11 years, Prime Minister John Howard has been fond of reminding us of his favourite Australian traditions and catchphrases. The so-called Aussie values he believes have come to define us such as a fair go, mateship and the Gallipoli spirit.
They've been curious, male-oriented choices wrapped for the most part in empty rhetoric that has served to divide, not unite, us and heralded a zealous campaign to treat philosophical, intellectual and cultural vigour as if it were a plague.
Indeed, one of the PM's self-proclaimed triumphs was to oversee the eradication of another much-touted Howard catchphrase political correctness. Whatever that actually means, we apparently don't have it in Australia any more, much to the PM's delight.
But it was another, more universal, catchphrase that occupied my thoughts this week as John Winston Howard found himself boxed into an ugly corner largely of his own making and was forced to confront a house of cards with race writ large on them all.
Somehow the word comeuppance came to mind as the 11th-hour race implosion in the federal seat of Lindsay derailed Howard's re-election momentum. And it screamed poetic justice.
After years of playing on the nation's xenophobic fears and whipping up race-based frenzies to deliver political victories, it was the PM's former golden girl minister, Jackie Kelly the accidental politician who epitomised Howard's aspirational battlers when she helped sweep him to power in 1996 who brought him unstuck so spectacularly.
Kelly's attempt to laugh off an appallingly ill-judged anti-Muslim campaign leaflet being handed out in her electorate by her husband and close associates had all the hallmarks of Russell Crowe's dynamic performance in Romper Stomper, except it was for real. Jackie just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. And it spoke volumes.
It was an extraordinary finale from a woman once touted as Liberal leadership material but who is now opting for a parliamentary pension. Her train wreck of an interview with Chris Uhlman on ABC radio was, apparently, her way of helping the woman hoping to replace her in Lindsay. The PM, most definitely, was not amused.
The episode did little other than remind us that some rivers still run very deep in the modern Liberal Party. The same modern Liberal Party that John Winston Howard has led so proudly for so long. The same modern Liberal Party that has driven the most decisive of racial wedges through the heart and soul of this country, eroding its essence so comprehensively it will take considerable strength, determination, courage and vision to restore it.
As Howard stood at the National Press Club making his last-ditch stand for power on Thursday afternoon, nothing could rid him of that elephant in the room.. Try as he might to tell us over and over that we've never had it so good, the elephant just kept getting in the way. Try as he might to persuade us he is not yesterday's man, it all came back to the elephant.
And it was the very same elephant that Howard let into the nation's lounge room when he became Prime Minister in 1996. That same elephant that underscored Cronulla, Noble Park, the intervention in the Northern Territory and the proliferation of Australia's draconian immigration detention policies. It is time to tell it to leave.
It is time to make room for change to take place. It is time to make room for hope to be restored. It is time to make way for leadership with vision and compassion to flourish.
Today is the day that we tell John Howard and his elephant it is time for them to go. Today is the day for Australia to reclaim its sense of justice, humanity, equality and pride. Today is the day we tell each other and the world that we are a decent, good-hearted, generous people who reach out and reach down and walk tall because of it.
And today is the day John Winston Howard walks into the hall of mirrors that is the politically, socially and culturally redefined multicultural electorate of Bennelong.
Oh, what an epitaph. That the man whose political party played the race card once too often in his 11th hour is not only tipped out of government, but the man himself tipped out of his now culturally diverse seat by the very people he used so successfully for so long as pawns in his political chess game.
Could there be a sweeter decline?
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WELCOME TO THE MAD HATTERS TEA PARTY - January 12, 2008
IT'S A bizarre set of circumstances when the federal Environment Minister appears in the Federal Court arguing for a project that even those closest to it admit will be an environmental disaster. Even stranger when the minister enlists the services of Alice in Wonderland to help argue his case.
Not that the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, was actually in the Federal Court this week to spin the Port of Melbourne's fairytale on its planned dredging of Port Phillip Bay. Oh, no. This Environment Minister left it to his lawyer to tell the people who care about protecting the bay's environment that gouging a whopping crevice into the sea floor will cause a permanent rise in the tide level.
Apparently this Environment Minister isn't bothered by permanent tide rises. That must be why part of his portfolio was given to his younger colleague, Penny Wong. But Wong was nowhere to be seen either this week just lawyers and a bunch of committed environmentalists who must have felt as if they'd fallen down a rabbit hole.
But it was a tremendous performance by the Commonwealth, which did its best Lewis Carroll impersonation by backing up the Port of Melbourne's premise that it was perfectly OK for the feds to approve the project based on the port's 2002 proposal that says nothing of rising sea levels or underwater toxic waste dumps even though the project has morphed into something much bigger.
(That 2002 proposal, by the way, doesn't even use the word dredging. Amazing, isn't it? Apparently there's a legal loophole that means the port doesn't have to get its new plans the real plans that will see millions of cubic metres of sand, silt and rock ripped from Port Phillip Bay and dumped in two spoil grounds in the bay approved by the federal minister. That's what the court challenge was all about. It's a bit convoluted, I know, but that's when the lawyer for the feds starting referring to Alice in Wonderland.)
As you can imagine, it was all getting pretty fanciful in court by this stage. Especially when the presiding judge indicated that an elephant had wandered into the room. It was an elephant called dredging but no one dared speak its name for fear the courtroom would descend into a Mad Hatter's tea party.
It all but did, anyway, descend into a Mad Hatter's tea party. The federal Environment Minister's lawyer got on a roll and went on to describe a worst-case scenario, outlining what would happen if the Heads disintegrate.
At least it was an "if", although I can't be completely sure that it wasn't a "when" as the worm wasn't on hand to give advice. But apparently, in that happy event, tides would extend from three to 25 metres deeper inland in some sections. Well, knock me over with a looking glass. Who needs climate change when you can dredge the bay? That must be the other reason the federal Environment Minister doesn't have it in his portfolio.
But it was a terrific in-absentia performance from Garrett, who, in a spectacular demonstration of the adage that timing is everything, announced a ban on plastic bags the same day the fate of the bay was being decided. Now, this really was tremendous stuff. And it was terrific to learn that the minister really is concerned about the bay's colony of fur seals getting those hideous things wrapped around their necks. The small problem of replacing the errant plastic bags with a couple of toxic waste dumps in the bay was just a minor detail.
But this Environment Minister isn't big on detail. What else can explain the three weeks it took him to realise he'd referred to Western Port Bay in his approval statement about dredging in Port Phillip Bay? It would have made a Cheshire Cat proud.
And where did our esteemed Environment Minister disappear to this week? Oh, he jumped on a joy flight to Antarctica. Apparently to check on the rising sea levels.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
Just like Alice when she gets greedy and eats that nasty bit of cake, the port's plans have got bigger and bigger. And just like Alice, the port will leave behind a salty pool of tears for the rest of us to swim in.
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BIG, UGLY, SMELLY, THAT’S MELBOURNE - January 19, 2008
I'M BEGINNING to think we really are living in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land. After last week's revelations that the federal Environment Minister's lawyer invoked the spirit of Alice in Wonderland in the Federal Court to explain the unexplainable, this week the Federal Court and Victoria Police's counter-terrorism unit joined forces to convince me Victoria is now officially La-La Land.
After hearing all kinds of references to rabbit holes and rare fish being mistaken for birds which were part of the defendant's case Justice Peter Heerey this week dismissed a Federal Court challenge to the imminent channel deepening in Port Phillip Bay by anti-dredging campaigners, the Blue Wedges coalition.
Legally, the judge had very little room to move. A bloke called Greg Hunt had made sure of that in 2006 when he tabled a handy amendment to the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to create a provision that projects with major environmental considerations could morph into something much bigger without having to be re-assessed by the minister.
Hunt is the federal MP for Flinders. In 2006, when he tabled the amendment to the act, he was the parliamentary secretary to the then federal environment minister Ian Campbell (the man made famous by the orange-bellied parrot and now enlisting the services of whales as a spokesman for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society to restore some credibility).
It's a fascinating link because it suggests that the feds and the Victorian Labor Government have been greasing the wheel for each other on this channel-deepening project for some time. (Defence Force contracts, anyone?)
Now conveniently ineffectual in Opposition, Hunt has been mouthing off about unreleased environmental management plans and the already sick fish stocks in the bay in the hope no one remembers it was actually his handiwork that helped create the loophole for the whole damn project to be approved by Peter Garrett.
Sorry, Greg, but your cover's just been blown. I just thought those blue-ribbon Liberal voters who just re-elected you the ones with the prime bay-fronting real estate that will bear the brunt of the filthy water that will lap up on the shore in your electorate had a right to know.
Then the Victoria Police's counter-terrorism unit stepped in to write a few chapters of this increasingly absurd saga.
Apparently, the Victoria Police contribution went something like this: ring-ring, "Hello Blue Wedges campaigner, it's police major events here. We want to talk to you about your democratic right to peaceful protest that we understand you plan to enlist on Australia Day. How 'bout we sit down and have a cuppa and talk about what you've got in mind? Oh, and don't be alarmed when my email arrives indicating that I'm actually part of the counter-terrorism unit. OK?"
Precisely when does the counter-terrorism unit get involved in community campaigns to stop a whopping great crevice being carved into the bay floor? Last time I checked, the war on terror didn't involve a campaign to protect dolphins and seals and penguins. Even though those bottlenose dolphins might come across all peace, love and harmony, they are notorious for joining forces with seals and penguins.
But, guess what? No one in Melbourne cares. Up there in the big smoke, Melburnians are so used to the murky brown filth of the Yarra mouth and the appalling state of the city's beaches that dredging up a century of toxic sludge and throwing it into the aesthetic Southbank is perfectly fine.
Truth is, Melburnians have never valued the bay as an asset. Still don't. Because, in the end, Melbourne is a port city and port cities aren't about aesthetics. They're about business and infrastructure and Melburnians in their silent complicity in backing this project have turned back the clock 100 years. Forget about Melbourne being a dynamic, forward-looking aesthetic city rich in culture. It's a fantasy. It's a big, ugly, smelly port that is about to get bigger, uglier and smellier.
All we need now is a harebrained scheme to turn seawater into drinking water and pipe it all over the state. After such a comprehensive test case of running roughshod in the capital, those yesterday's men in Spring Street must be salivating at the prospect of doing it all over again on the Gippsland coast all in the name of progress, of course.
Ah, Victoria, the place to be in La-La Land.
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I'VE been having a recurring conversation with a friend about the US elections, especially now that things are really hotting up for the Super Tuesday round of primaries and race versus gender is increasingly dominating manoeuvring.
He is of the view, and a firm one it is too, that there is no way America will put a black man in the White House. I, on the other hand, can't see the self-proclaimed leaders of the free world electing a female commander-in-chief.
My friend is an Aboriginal man, and I, as my accompanying picture attests, am a fair-skinned Anglo-Australian woman.
No matter how many times we talk it and walk it, there is no way for either of us to know the truth that the other holds as self-evident: his as an indigenous man born into an era that considered him part of the Flora and Fauna Act, and mine as a woman in a country where mateship is the dominant currency.
Invariably our conversations end with me stating my belief that Western culture is far more inclined to misogyny than racism and with him shaking his head in profound disagreement. "I'd love to see it," he says, "but I don't think I will."
Perhaps it's because Aboriginal culture is so much more matriarchal than the prevailing non-Aboriginal patriarchy that dominates Australian way of life that it should not be surprising that an Aboriginal man might consider it less of an issue to see a woman in charge than a black man. It's also true that, in a country where Aborigines make up just 2% of the population, issues of minority and race-based discrimination are much more pronounced.
But from my point of view, living in a country that until recently was having national debates about female political leaders being deliberately barren and unfit to govern, I just can't reconcile the inherent sexism that underscores almost every aspect of modern life in Australia. With that kind of conditioning I can't see America embracing a Madam President.
Granted, Australia's last election gave us record numbers of women MPs and ministers but we're still a long way from a 50/50 gender representation.
This is, of course, a highly simplified version of what is really going on in the Hillary Clinton versus Barack Obama campaign for the US Democrats' presidential endorsement. Clinton for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with gender is increasingly looking like yesterday's woman, whereas Obama for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with race is shaping more and more as tomorrow's man. But race and gender are so omnipresent in this campaign it's impossible not to contemplate which runs deeper in the American psyche.
It was, after all, Thomas Jefferson's proclamation that "all men are created equal" that laid the foundations for American democracy in 1776. But it's one of those niggly things about history (his-story) that's always irked me. Was Jefferson talking about "all people" when he said "all men"? Was it linguistic convenience or did he really mean emancipation was more important than suffrage?
History is, of course, a recurring theme in matters of race and gender. We can only look at what has gone before to begin to know tomorrow. And we can only ever engage with history from a very personal perspective. Combined, this is how expectations are created.
That is why I see gender before race and my friend sees race before gender.
In reality it matters little that Obama's story is not of the Deep South. What matters is the question of colour and how, as my friend asks quite rightly, can the US ever overcome the violent divisiveness that underscored its civil rights movement to embrace a mixed-race president? This is a powerful question when asked by an indigenous Australian man.
But, conversely, while Nancy Pelosi has become the first Madame Speaker, could America cope with two women running the show? Not from where I see things.
While Australia is in the early days of adjusting to Deputy PM Gillard, the winds of change that blew through Canberra late last year are still a long way from settling. Gender and race are set to play out in the national parliament when it resumes and we are yet to see how much of a great leap forward we have really taken.
As America moves closer to smashing one of its lingering political taboos, you can be sure there will be many in Australia who will be looking to see what it means for our own future as well.
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SORRY ALL THIS HAS TAKEN SO LONG - February 9, 2008
THERE was a moment, in August last year, that the words "took the children away" were ringing solemnly yet harmoniously in both my ears. In my left was the big, warm baritone of Patrick Dodson who was standing behind me and in my right was the amplified liquid silk of Archie Roach's sublime vocal. The statesman and the songman were in my head and in my heart and I knew then it was a moment that would stay with me for a very long time.
If there are two men who carry more individual gravitas than Patrick Dodson, the man known in Australia as the father of reconciliation, and Archie Roach, the stolen child turned spiritual voice of indigenous songlines, then I am yet to meet them. Together, singing in unison about the lingering hurt of the stolen generations, the pair was to borrow a universal blackfella endorsement deadly.
But I remember, too, the dull ache grabbing at the back of my throat as I looked deep into Archie's face and tried to read the story of his journey in the lines that had formed in his skin. And I remember turning to Patrick as his powerful and heartfelt singing voice defiantly echoed Archie's lyrics "acting white yet feeling black, one sweet day all the children came back" and struggling to see him through watery eyes.
Back then, just six months ago, the idea that a white Australian prime minister would stand in the Federal Parliament and offer an apology to the people embodied in the songs of Archie Roach seemed so far out of reach it had almost disappeared from the aspirations of those still grappling with its day-to-day implications.
After the sea of hands and the sorry marches, the reports into deaths in custody and bringing them home, the candle of hope that we might one day make peace with our black history was teetering on the brink of being snuffed out for good. There was, it seemed, a resigned resolve that any healing that was going to be done in this country would happen quite separately from our national government.
As the intervention marched through the Northern Territory like a modern-day Crusade, the toll on those at the cultural, social and spiritual front line was palpable. And on this particular night, as Archie sang from his very personal songbook and Patrick sang along with him, it was inescapable. There was nothing else to do but sing and hope against hope that our voices entwined would be enough to carry on.
Three months later, just days after the Rudd Labor Government had won the November 24 election, Archie Roach sat opposite me in a radio studio and told me how much it mattered that one of the first priorities of PM Rudd would be an apology to the stolen generations an apology to people like him and his partner Ruby Hunter, who was also taken away from her family as a child.
Outside the studio, Ruby Hunter listened attentively to Archie's words. Never looking up but never missing a word. And inside, as Archie retold his story of being taken away by protective services officers from Framlingham Aboriginal Reserve, something very heavy was beginning to shift. There was something in the songman's face that even he didn't recognise. A dark cloud was lifting. We talked gently and played some songs from his new album called Journey based on his recent experience making a documentary called Liyarn Ngarn with Patrick Dodson and the English actor Pete Postlethwaite based on the death of a young Aboriginal man, Louis St John.
"Liyarn ngarn" is Yawuru from Pat Dodson's Kimberley country that means coming together of the spirit. "Liyarn ngarn," the chorus goes, "oh we've got to make a start, 'cos we've been too far apart, liyarn ngarn, mend all those broken hearts."
I saw Archie Roach again this week. He seemed lighter, as if he was floating. He was on stage with Ruby Hunter, his son Amos, Goanna's Shane Howard and Tiddas' Amy Saunders. They were playing down at Phillip Island, on Bunnerong country, and it was deadly.
Together they sang songs from Archie's songbook and dipped into Shane's most celebrated moment as well. "Solid rock" never sounded so good nor more contemporary as these two cultural warriors sang in the Sorry juggernaut. Those winds of change that Shane Howard wrote about as a much younger man were finally blowing down the line.
After a lifetime of getting ready, there's a change a-comin'. We can finally start mending those broken hearts. Liyarn ngarn. I'm just sorry it's taken so long.
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RUNNING OUT OF TIME TO SAVE OUR GREAT BAY - February 16, 2008
I WATCHED you from the shore this week. Watched as you made your way up and down the small stretch of water you've been allowed to start work in. You were bigger than I thought you'd be. A presence so menacing it took my breath away. All metal and machinery. And you loomed so large on top of the water, dwarfing the jetty and other boats in your vicinity, that you made us feel like the water didn't belong to us any more.
Somehow you claimed it. On that first morning. And it was raining. Not a good swimming day. But I walked out on the jetty just to check what the water looked like. Wanted to see if there was any evidence of what you'd been up to. And I wondered if the time you were on was borrowed or stolen.
It seemed ironic that you started here. In Rosebud. Where I was born and moved back to because of the gentle, old-world pace and the clean, clear water I swim in all year round. And I wondered if it was some kind of macabre joke being played by the Port of Melbourne Corporation on account of how much I've said about what a dumb idea I think it is that you're here at all. Wondered if it was that personal.
But then I realised how ridiculous it was to expect anyone from the Port of Melbourne Corporation to understand what it means to have a deep personal relationship with the bay. Wouldn't expect they'd really get what people mean when they talk about connection to country and spirit of place.
So I watched you. Just stood still in my tracks and watched you. And everyone else I saw on the shore did the same thing. All of us with the same empty look of resignation that you were taking something precious from us. That it didn't matter that we didn't want you here. There was nothing we could do to stop you.
And there was something very oppressive about that feeling. About having something imposed on you that you know is wrong and destructive and nonsensical.
Something that reeks of men in suits who don't give a damn about anything other than money. Men who don't live here. Men who can think of nothing better to achieve in a day's work than the wilful abuse of the environment. But these men haven't come to watch you. Only the locals get to see you close up. They've just sent you, all armoured up, to do their dirty work for them.
They've sent you to gouge and suck and widen and deepen. Those men in suits from the Port of Melbourne and its associated economic and political tentacles who think this is all tremendous, modern-day behaviour. You'd been working here for two days before I swam. It was a classic, peninsula morning. Beautifully still, with the sun peeping up above Arthurs Seat. And I noticed straight away. I could taste you in the water and I could see you in my goggles. There was metal in my mouth where salt had been before. And, through goggled eyes, my underwater vision blurred into the distance. It was different. The water had changed. Just two days after you'd arrived. When you swim week to week, all year round, you know these things.
I tasted that metal taste all day that day. And when I woke up the next morning it made me think again about my morning swim. That invigorating, life-affirming, health-preserving ritual so many of us swear keeps the doctor away. But you made me think twice about it. And so I didn't go. I didn't want to spend the day tasting your handiwork. And I haven't been since. Can't bear to go near the water. Can't stand the thought that I will taste you and see you in it. Don't even have the heart to bear witness.
So I've just been looking at the pictures of the filthy plume you've been generating and watching it get worse day after day. And I've been listening to the other locals swimmers, divers and fisherman who are all saying the same things about reduced water quality. And we have two more years of this.
But apparently it's all going to be fine for the marine ecosystem. That's what the Port of Melbourne and the state and federal governments say.
So now it is crunch time. One last chance to rally this weekend and one last roll of the dice next week in the Federal Court. What's at stake is our beautiful bay. If we lose it now it may be forever.
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"AS PRIME Minister of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the Government of Australia, I am sorry. On behalf of the Parliament of Australia, I am sorry."
In the heady whirl that has been Kevin Rudd's first five months in office it's been easy to forget just how much Australia has been changed by this particular change of government. The indigenous apology, Kyoto and the Pacific Solution were all quickly marked off like items on a shopping list as the Ruddolution rolled across the continent at breakneck speed.
Yet in the absence of really important things to complain about, it didn't take long before we went looking for aspects of the Ruddolution to bicker about. The shortcomings of the 2020 talkfest, the endless committees investigating everything, even the marathon hours the PM himself was putting in and demanding of his staff were all cause for consternation.
But when I heard those historic words from Rudd's landmark sorry speech again this week as part of a re-recording of an anthemic song about Aboriginal land rights due for release on Monday few things could have convinced me more of the magnitude and significance of the metamorphosis this country is experiencing on a daily basis.
I had the privilege of standing on the lawns outside Old Parliament House in Canberra on February 13 but I will never be able to fully explain the experience of watching and feeling a sea of grief collide with a wave of hope.
If anything was going to come close, it was hearing Rudd's "sorry" words in the preface of a version of the Kev Carmody and Paul Kelly song From Little Things Big Things Grow, which I've been listening to on high rotation in the past few days.
When Carmody invited Kelly on a camping trip to his country, the Murri, in Queensland in 1988, it's doubtful either man could have imagined the journey they would embark on together and individually. The story, as they tell it, begins around a campfire, with Carmody telling stories about his young-man days spent droving along the dusty stock routes in outback Australia. Inevitably, the story moved quickly to the famed 1966 Wave Hill walk-off and a man called Vincent Lingiari who stood his ground and won his ground against the odds.
Duelling guitars carried a melody and a message that would resonate long after that night.
Nineteen eighty-eight was, of course, a big year for Australia. While many partied, other sections of the Australian community quietly contemplated the impact of 200 years of white settlement. Kelly commemorated this with the release of one of his finest but darkest songs, Bicentennial, and went camping with a bloke who sounded like a cross between Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. The big difference for Carmody was that he didn't have to imagine the injustice or the prejudice that Cash and Dylan sang about, he'd lived it.
What started as a heartfelt campfire singalong ignited a musical spark that refused to go out. And last year, when Kelly collated an album of Carmody songs performed by a who's who of Australian musicians, many of us who'd watched that spark flicker and falter in trying times gave quiet thanks for the songwriting gifts and inspired sensibilities of the Kelly-Carmody campfire connection. We felt a resurgent hope that the power of music could transcend the most challenging circumstances.
Twenty years after those seeds of musical change were sown, a big thing is materialising in a new version of From Little Things featuring Carmody, Kelly, Missy Higgins and others with excerpts of Rudd's "sorry" speech and Paul Keating's Redfern speech in 1992.
It's released on Monday courtesy of the Get Up Mob the online activists who've campaigned to free David Hicks, support asylum seekers and, now, to bridge the 17-year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
This is a critical and long-overdue campaign. Yet it doesn't seem long ago that the idea of this song forming the soundtrack to what is ultimately a test of the nation's maturity would have been considered fanciful. I feel sure I am not taking a liberty in suggesting that even at its campfire conception, neither of its creators would have dared to imagine this song might one day grow such determined wings. A little thing is growing. We have a chance to sing from the same songbook. And we can dare to be hopeful again.
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JUST WAIT UNTIL DADDY RUDD GETS HOME - June 14, 2008
OH, BOY, Belinda's in big trouble. Mum just got fed up and did her quiet angry thing. So instead of talking to Belinda direct she dobbed her in to Dad. Boy. That's a biggie. Everyone knows how much Dad hates being interrupted at work. Especially when he's overseas practising his diplomacy skills. Boy. What a shocker. He had to rearrange his entire morning schedule to phone Belinda up to tell her off. Did his block apparently. Told her she's gotta get some help for her anger problems. Wow. That's a biggie.
And all because she let off a bit of steam at the pub and on the football field. Shame she's not a Victorian. Our footy players do that kind of thing all the time.
People love that stuff in Victoria. Apparently she was swearing like a Victorian copper. Maybe that's what pissed Dad off. Now Mum and Dad are banging on about Belinda's patterns of behaviour. Coming over all sanctimonious like no one in the family has ever done anything wrong before.
God. What about cousin Mark? Bloody hell. He broke a cabbie's arm but Mum seemed to think the sun shone out of his backside. It wasn't until the rest of the family kicked him out that she realised she'd backed the wrong horse.
But geez, she was loyal to him. Nothing he did seemed to faze her. They just danced the conga whenever the shit hit the fan. That's why we were all a bit surprised that Mum went to Dad about Belinda. It's just not Mum's usual pattern of behaviour to be that squeamish.
But everything is different now. Even Uncle Morris looks like slipping off the Christmas list for not grounding cousin John sooner. Uncle Mo just took John's word that it was all a bit of a misunderstanding with him and Belinda at the pub. Apparently that's what cousin John told the people at the pub as well. Or that's what he told the people at the pub to say to him. Or something like that. Anyway. Mum's always saying they do things differently in NSW. I think Mum and Dad are getting a bit jack of them.
But boy is Belinda gonna cop it when Dad gets home. It's just a shame that Dad was out of the country this week cos he could have talked to the Dalai Lama about some anger management classes for Belinda.
Everybody knows the Dalai Lama is great with that stuff. But both Dad and Mum had diary clashes. Apparently Mum was packing for a trip to New Zealand to see Aunty Helen. But she still found time to tell everyone about Belinda's behaviour problems. Seemed odd to me.
So Uncle Chris and Uncle Stephen met the Dalai Lama instead. And someone from the other side of family called Brendan. Apparently he's a livewire but I haven't met him yet.
But Dad's diary clashes are starting to look a lot like a pattern of behaviour. Like that one he had when the Olympic torch was in Canberra but he had to be in Sydney for the HMAS Sydney memorial. A few people said something about the Chinese being the problem. But Dad loves the Chinese and it was the Germans that sank the Sydney so I don't know what they meant by that.
Anyway. Belinda's really gonna cop it when Dad gets home. Already there's a taskforce being put together to come up with a strategy to manage her anger. God. It's gonna be another bloody summit. Poor Belinda. I just hope Dad doesn't make the rest of us turn up to take notes. Christ. Another bloody talkfest.
I'd never even heard of Belinda until this week. Well I knew we had relatives in NSW but no one ever said much about her. But apparently she's been all over the Sydney papers and talkback radio there. That's why Mum's got her knickers in a knot. Especially cos Dad's off travelling with our step-Mum.
I just wish someone had helped them pack before they left. Dad's been fine with his one black suit but our step-Mum looks like she's been picking up stuff as she goes.
I just wish one of our fabulous local designers would ring up the Lodge and offer up a wardrobe so it's all taken care of. It worked a treat for Aunty Annita and Akira Kurosawa. Admittedly someone like Lisa Ho might be more appropriate given Dad's penchant for Chinese. But I reckon Charlie Brown would be perfect. Anyway, it's just a thought.
Wouldn't want to get distracted from the main game of controlling our Belinda's anger problems. Boy oh boy. Just wait til our father gets home
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NATASHA STOTT-DESPOJA - June 28, 2008
I REMEMBER the great joy and the palpable sense of possibility I felt when Natasha Stott Despoja, at age 26, became the youngest female elected to the Federal Parliament in November 1995. Finally, here was one of us elected to the people's house. A Doc Martens-wearing senator who was proudly and determinedly herself, blowing the winds of change through the Old Boys Club in Canberra.
Though she was several years my junior, I could still relate to her youthful daring. That heady mixture of self-belief, smarts and naivety that gave her a trajectory that I suspect even she was not fully prepared for despite her maiden speech identifying one of her most crucial battles: "Today, only 20% of our elected representatives to the Federal Parliament are women," she said on May 1, 1996. "In fact, Parliament House, as you all know, has a glass ceiling, literally, as if to emphasise this political difficulty for women."
Intended or not, in one fell swoop Natasha Stott Despoja became an inspiration to a generation of women, held a mirror up to another and very quickly transformed herself into a media darling. The Good News Week senator. The JJJ radio regular. She was clever and sassy and funny. She made young people and young-at-heart people want to engage with the political process. She spoke like us. She acted like us. Incredibly, Natasha Stott Despoja made politics sexy.
And, more than anyone before her, she made young people believe politicians could be trusted. It was a hell of a load. And a hell of a juggle as she simultaneously courted generation X and tried to appease and please the Boomers that surrounded her.
When she wrested the Democrats leadership from the political mess that Meg Lees had created by handing the Howard government the numbers it needed to pass the GST (Stott Despoja famously voted against the GST, Lees famously posed with Howard wearing a coquettish grin while Howard's salivating euphoria at having won over Lees still makes my skin crawl) Stott Despoja took on something of a presidential air. It was early 2000. Natasha Stott Despoja and her deputy, Aden Ridgeway, became the dream-team leadership ticket in Australian politics. Australia had its own gender and race-busting leadership team. And the Democrats blew it. To me, it remains one of the greatest tragedies of modern Australian politics.
Stared down by Ridgeway, along with colleagues John Cherry, Lyn Allison and Andrew Murray, forced her resignation in a party-room showdown just 16 months into her leadership.
I remember Stott Despoja's press conference in August 2002 as she announced her resignation as Democrats leader as one of the saddest political moments I can recall. All that hope and potential smashed by what seemed to be territorial myopia of Boomers who didn't get it. The Democrats never recovered.
Its a salient point to remember that in 2001, with Stott Despoja as leader, the Democrats got six people elected in six months, including four Senate seats. There hasn't been a Democrat elected since the South Australian state election in 2002.
Stott Despoja had her own views on that fateful twist for her party as she departed politics this week. "I have no doubt that my colleagues and party members have reflected on that over the past six years."
Instead of leading the Dems to what should have been a Camelot-like resurgence as a political force, Stott Despoja went back to the business of legislating. And watched her party disintegrate in a slow, torturous death throe. It must have been difficult.
But the formidable South Australian senator certainly maintained the rage
and stayed true to the adage of her party. She has been a loud and proud advocate for social justice and a loud and proud advocate for women.
It was no surprise to learn that the ALP's youthful rising star, the 30-year-old South Australian Sports Minister, Kate Ellis, was in the Senate to hear Stott Despoja's valedictory speech this week. Kate owes Natasha. And I really don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say that every recently elected woman to state and federal politics is similarly indebted and inspired.
That is her lasting legacy. Natasha Stott Despoja has been a ceiling-smasher of the first order. She has been a diligent girly swot and behaved with extraordinary grace under fire and I, for one, shall miss her in the Federal Parliament.
So long, Senator. Job well done. I hope we see you again sometime.
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STRICKEN WITH CLIMATE GUILT - July 5, 2008
I THINK I'm suffering climate-change fatigue. Bad timing, I know. It's just that every time I do something I think will make a difference something else happens or someone else does something that wipes out any dent I thought I might have made on the problem.
I make a vow to ride my bike to work and it buckets with rain and blows a
gale for days on end. So I drive. And because I drive I'm home in time to watch the evening news trumpeting travel-time success stories on the new EastLink freeway.
I change my light globes over to those newfangled eco-friendly ones only to discover that if I accidentally smash one on the floor I'm likely to be poisoned by its toxic contents. So I seriously contemplate the meaning of changing light bulbs and wonder if we haven't already become the sorry punchline of a very bad joke.
And then the Premier gives the go-ahead for another brand new coal-fuelled power station in the Latrobe Valley. At the same time he's taking COAG money for the Murray. And I thought my timing was bad. Do they know where the minute hand is on the climate-change clock in Spring Street? Blimey. Was that meant to be black-balloon humour or just outright stupidity?
But then, because I'd been so distracted by political dumb-cluckery, I forget to take my canvas bag to the shops. Twice. And because I'm now too ashamed to put anything into a plastic bag I spill an
entire armful of dinner ingredients all over the footpath while trying to unlock the car door with one hand while holding dinner in the other.
And all I can think about is the fact that if I'd cycled and not driven I would
have triumphantly (and no doubt very smugly) emerged from the shops with my detachable bike basket full of dinner instead of forlornly watching it roll into the gutter.
But it was raining and blowing a gale probably because of climate change. So I drove. Which is why dinner ended up in the gutter. Which also made me think about how wasteful and culpable our throwaway culture has become. And all I wanted to do was pick up some things for dinner.
So I torture myself over the climate-change ethics of picking up a quick takeaway in a plastic container. I seriously try to conceive the arithmetic of whether a plastic takeaway container is worth more or fewer black balloons than a plastic shopping bag. I give myself a headache and decide to go home and have tea and toast cooked with electricity but countered by the fact I need to lie in a quiet, dark room to stop my head spinning like a planet on climate-change acid.
The next day a king tide gives Melbourne's premier rowing clubs a climate change trial run and nearly washes them down to Studley Park. I try to work out if it might have had anything to do with the recent dredging at the mouth of the Yarra and wonder if anyone in Spring Street took a moment out from doing high-fives over EastLink and dirty power supplies to similarly muse.
I quickly suspect not and opt for another quiet lie-down in the dark. For a fleeting moment I feel like a lay-down Sally but resolve to ride my bike to work the next day. It's raining sideways when I wake up. I drive to work. Again. And I'm racked with guilt because of it.
And because I drive I'm treated to Professor Ross Garnaut's report on emissions trading all over the car radio.
I start thinking about negotiating an emissions trading scheme in my block of flats and wonder how the introduction of an odds-and-evens system for electric blankets in winter might go down with my neighbours.
I'm distracted when I'm honked by the car behind me and almost skittle a cyclist I haven't seen through the rain. I'm overwhelmed with shame when he eyeballs me.
By the time I get to work I'm exhausted. I should have ridden. I'd be enjoying a much more exhilarating kind of exhaustion if I had. I settle in to another day under the reflected modern glory of a screaming fluoro light and a computer screen.
Yet, battle-scarred and weary, I resolve to fight on with my confused but well-meaning climate changed life. I will keep separating my garbage and turning the tap off during brushing. I will only use my electric blanket if the temperature falls below 5 degrees. And I will ride my bike to work in the rain.
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THERE’S SOMETHING ROTTEN IN OUR BAY - July 19, 2008
A COUPLE of weeks ago some dead fish washed up on rocks near a popular Williamstown fishing spot known as The Warmies. The local police dutifully warned fisherfolk not to eat anything caught in the lower Yarra River near the Newport Station and the Environment Protection Authority began an investigation into the likely cause of the fish's demise.
At the time, the EPA said that warm water discharged from the nearby power station and you guessed it the content of sediment dredged during channel deepening in the area would be investigated as possible culprits.
Somehow this week seemed like a good time to talk about dead fish washing up in the former premier's electorate. That's Steve Bracks, in case you've forgotten. The bloke who was premier of Victoria when the wheels were set in motion for the Port of Melbourne Corporation to gouge a whopping great crevice into the sea floor of Port Phillip Bay. This week the Australian Conservation Foundation released its first report from independent scientists who've been monitoring the environmental impact of dredging in Port Phillip Bay and you guessed right again they've found that the dredge plume of sediment is spreading much further than the Port of Melbourne Corporation predicted.
Well knock me over with a dead fish from Willy. Who would have thought?
In fact, the sediment plume from bay dredging is spreading so far across Port Phillip Bay it's visible from satellite pictures. Yes. This pollution event is so big you can see it from space. (When I first heard that I actually imagined state Tourism Minister Tim Holding contemplating selling tickets, they're so desperate for a theme park.) But I digress. Back to the fish.
The dead fish are important because despite the best efforts of the EPA no one will ever know for sure what did them in. And that is the billion-taxpayer-dollar-funded conundrum. Same as no one can say for sure whether it's the farts of a billion cows or decades of land-clearing and burning fossils that should stand accused as the greatest contributor to climate change. All we know for sure is climate change is a monumental problem, now.
Those fish that washed up in Willy a couple of weeks ago exemplify the slow burn of environmental catastrophe. Because it's cumulative. And once the effects are omnipresent it's too late. It's impossible and largely irrelevant to point the finger after the fact. That's the great tragedy of bay dredging: when the seagrasses, and the marine ecosystem it supplies, are irreparably damaged and depleted in two, 10 or 20 years it won't matter what caused it. It's game over. And the people who made the decisions will be long gone. Like Bracksy.
That this appalling environmental carnage is happening right under our noses while the Port of Melbourne maintains it is meeting its environmental requirements under the federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act is a disgrace. The ill-named act is a legal laughing stock.
The Port of Melbourne says its 11 monitoring sites in the bay confirm everything's A-OK. What it won't tell you is that none of the port's monitoring sites is in the northern part of the bay where the plume is at its worst. Nor will the Port of Melbourne tell you that the ACF has more than three times the number of monitors in the bay.
But in the very same week the ACF revealed the sediment plume was much worse than official estimates and was a potential threat to marine life, the Blue Wedges Coalition was found liable for costs in a court case that was all about proving the sediment plume would be much worse than official estimates and was a potential threat to marine life.
Despite the ACF report pretty much proving the Blue Wedges folks are probably right, the technicalities of the act virtually ensured their attempt at testing the law in court would fail. And then the federal Environment Minister announced he would pursue cost recovery. Nice one, Pete.
And to think he is the same man who was once president of the ACF. Ironic, isn't it? That a community group should be pursued for costs for presenting a case that has clearly been in the public interest is anathema to our democracy. Much like watching protesters carted off by police for daring to oppose the involuntary acquisition of their land to put in a hare-brained desalination plant in Gippsland.
Seems as if you disagree with government at your peril in Victoria these days and, quite frankly, it stinks like a Williamstown fish.
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GREER’S LATEST RAGE MORE GLIB THAN LIB - August 16, 2008
I WATCHED Germaine Greer on the ABC's Q&A show this week. It was, as anyone familiar with the program would know, an arduous task, but Germaine was on the telly with Tony and I figured the potential of that combination would make it worth enduring the format for a few moments of intellectual gold.
Greer's intellect shines like a piercing beacon, especially when she is lined up with panellists such as Julie Bishop and Greg Sheridan. And there were some brain-food pay-offs from the exercise.
Like many women of my generation, I'm fascinated with Greer. And professionally indebted. I was high-schooled under the influence of '70s feminism by women who held The Female Eunuch as a triumphant and liberating doctrine. There was no mistaking the message that choosing babies over careers was failing our potential.
I remember a T-shirt from my twentysomething wardrobe that depicted a '50s-style housewife with the caption "Whoops, I forgot to have children". Back then it didn't occur to me that not
having children would become the greatest conundrum of my generation and the greatest source of grief.
So it was fascinating to see Greer on the telly and wondering if she was content with her choices, particularly as her new book is a 10,000-word thesis on rage.
Her latest commentary on the Australian condition is reserved for Aboriginal men. People, she has decided from her home in England, are so consumed with rage they are destroying themselves and the people they love most with alcohol and violence. Rage, not grief, according to Greer, is the catalyst for the great undoing of Aboriginal men. She said so again on telly. And I was fascinated by the distinction.
Her book drowns in these kinds of sweeping generalisations and stereotypes about men she describes as silent and defeated. While her observations about the cultural and social crisis in Aboriginal Australia are astute, her cause-and-effect arguments fail spectacularly.
Her account of the apparent absence of Aboriginal people particularly men bearing witness to the formal apology to the stolen generations in Canberra this year starkly reveals her ignorance of what happened that day.
Greer, I am assuming, made her assessment from television coverage beamed to her in England. From it she has gleaned, and recounts in her book, that the majority of people who gathered to hear the apology were white. As someone who was present on the lawn outside Parliament House on February 13, I know that is wrong.
Thousands of Aboriginal people were on the lawn that day. But, unlike the whitefellas who were there, Aboriginal people many of them men made use of the protective overhang of the trees lining the lawns, giving them a dignified distance from the TV cameras.
But the TV coverage was enough for Greer to get some traction on her thesis on rage and Aboriginal men. Had she been there, she would have been consumed by the unmistakable grief emanating from the shadows. Grief, not rage, Germaine. Sheer bloody grief. It might manifest as rage but in its purest form it is grief.
Increasingly, Greer's commentary on life in the colonies is done at arm's length from the comfort of her English garden.
And even when she does have an opportunity to form an informed view of something emanating from the antipodes, she opts out. Her recent spat with Melbourne playwright Joanna Murray-Smith over the latter's parody of feminism and Greer's role in it in her play The Female of the Species is another case in point.
Having not read the script or seen the play despite being invited to Greer thundered that Murray-Smith was an insane reactionary who held feminism in contempt. Ah, wrong again, Germaine. It's a recurring theme in Murray-Smith's work and she comes from a family of leftist intellectuals. (Surely you know that, Germaine?) I know because her mother, Nita, taught me English at high school. And her late father, Stephen, is revered in literary intellectual circles.
But it didn't stop Greer flying off in a verbal rage yes, rage about a woman who would have grown up with a dog-eared copy of The Female Eunuch as bedtime reading.
One of Greer's closing comments on Q&A was: "If I was more animal and less pseudo intellectual I'd be a much happier person."
There was something profoundly sad about that. And extremely confronting to the feminist ideals she trumpeted all those years ago. One could almost rage
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ONE MAN’S DRUG IS ANOTHER’S CASH COW - November 22, 2008
THERE is something ironic about the St Kilda footy club shaping up as one of Ben Cousins' last chances to resurrect his AFL career. A former bad-boy club, St Kilda is certainly no stranger to the wayward behaviour of troubled stars, but in recent years it has worked hard to turn around its tarnished image and this week the St Kilda board not the football department will decide if Cousins is a risk worth taking to boost its odds for a premiership.
St Kilda, like many AFL clubs, had a problem with alcohol. Some still do. And many, like the AFL itself, receive substantial sponsorship from advertising the product. The AFL is sponsored by Carlton Draught and more than a third of the
16 AFL clubs are sponsored by one of the Foster's Group's products Carlton Draught (Adelaide, Carlton, Collingwood and Geelong), Foster's (Fremantle and West Coast) and Carlton Mid-Strength (Brisbane). Foster's is the AFL's largest sponsorship partner, investing $9 million a year in football, both at elite level and through its regional partnerships.
Trawling through club websites reveals the pervasiveness of alcohol sponsorship in this sport, and elite sport in general.
And it renders the AFL's three-strikes policy on drug use increasingly hypocritical. How can the AFL continue to take millions of dollars from the nation's biggest beer brewer and yet work itself up into a frothy frenzy over one player's addiction to recreational drugs?
I am aware that alcohol is a legal drug and the kinds of drugs Cousins is in recovery from are not. But, just as I couldn't get past the glaring double standards of AFL administrators when they delisted him 12 months ago, I can't get past them now.
The much-touted onerous conditions Cousins' must comply with to stay in the game should anyone pick him up simply make a mockery of the turning-a-blind-eye and elaborate hand-wringing that has accompanied a seemingly constant stream of alcohol-related peccadilloes from other players. And particularly when Cousins has been accused of bringing the game into disrepute.
Can I be the only person who thinks drinking for seven hours in a strip club and then jumping into a car (out of which a gun was fired) with a now-convicted murderer might also be worthy of that accusation? What about leaving the scene of a car accident under the influence of alcohol? Or being caught in flagrante delicto in a lavatory with your team captain's wife? How about king-hitting a couple of blokes and a woman outside a pub? Wouldn't these incidents fall into the same category? Not, apparently, in AFL football. And not, quite obviously, if alcohol is your drug of choice.
But develop a personal addiction to amphetamines one that's pretty obvious but goes unnoticed while you're winning premierships and you're out there on your own, kiddo. You're a pariah. And we'll only have you back if you agree to jump through fiery hoops and let us test your hair follicles.
There is something seriously wrong with the inequity of punishment and so-called crime here. And right in the middle of it is the relationship between elite sport and alcohol, especially the insidious way alcohol has become central to the branding of the code through advertising.
Surely it is time for a serious re-assessment of the appropriateness of advertising alcohol in an elite sport market. Surely a cost-benefit analysis of public perceptions is overdue? It is simply incongruous to think that the pervasive presence of alcohol advertising isn't having a subliminal impact on young boys, in particular, who become accustomed to the association from the minute they start watching the elite game.
Clearly, what is a long bow to some is a short step for others. But to my way of thinking, while the AFL continues its lucrative association with alcohol advertising it is on increasingly shaky ground playing judge and jury with other drugs of dependence. Singling out Cousins might have given the impression the AFL is serious about drugs in sport but, in reality, it has merely deflected the spotlight from others and exposed the organisation's glaring inability to tackle the broader complexities of the issue.
I hope Ben Cousins is given a chance to play AFL football in 2009 but more than that, I hope he comes to signify everything the AFL did wrong trying to get its drug policy right when it came to honesty, equity and consistency.
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BRITT LAPTHORNE - October 11, 2008
IT'S doubtful that anyone following the disappearance of 21-year-old RMIT student Britt Lapthorne who was last seen on September 18 in the Croatian seaside village of Dubrovnik hasn't made their mind up about what they think has happened to her. Thanks to a constant stream of information and no doubt misinformation from the media and internet postings on Facebook and Myspace, speculation and innuendo about this young woman's activities on that last fateful evening have run rife.
And it didn't take long for the propriety of a young, attractive solo-travelling woman to be questioned. It didn't take long for a sexist and morally coded subtext to emerge. Suddenly this apparently sunny-natured, seasoned traveller was "promiscuous and a known drunk" according to the son of the owner of the hostel where Britt was staying before her disappearance. The implication was unmistakable. Whatever had happened to her, she had brought it on herself.
I suspect a lot of women who did exactly the same kind of solo travelling in younger days would have shuddered at how this sorry situation reminded them of their own near-misses, especially in places where clashes of culture formed the backdrop to the experience. I know I did. I still remember being called something that loosely translated as "filthy whore" when I arrived at the Vatican in shorts and sandals and a sleeveless top in the middle of a European heatwave.
And my heart still drops when I recall an evening stroll on the streets of Rome that resulted in two teenage national servicemen aiming their military issue rifles at me because I'd wandered down a street I shouldn't have. The thing I remember most about that moment was that there was not another single person in sight. Just two very young men with very large rifles talking to me in a language I was still struggling to grasp from a pocket-guide. I was 19.
I remember sleeping on trains and crossing endless borders in a haze and arriving in places that were dots on maps with nowhere to stay in the middle of the night. I remember eating and drinking alone in places where I have no doubt my propriety was being sized up by restaurateurs and hosteliers for the simple reason I was alone. And wearing shorts or quite probably a mini-skirt. I remember the close calls and the naive risky behaviour that even now makes me thank the universe for getting me out of those situations unscathed.
And so every time I see a photo of an always-smiling Britt Lapthorne alone or with a group of also-travelling new-found friends I see myself. Every time I see her parents struggling to cope with the excruciating reality of their situation I see my own parents. Every time I see her shell-shocked brother I see mine. And every time I see her devastated boyfriend having to defend her honour I see my own boyfriend of that time. And I wonder how on earth they would have coped. And what they would have said as my reputation became increasingly sullied and the chances of my safe return diminished as my absence turned into days and weeks.
Time and time again we see trial and moral judgement that is whipped up by an ever-hungry media colour our views and reactions to these types of awful situations. The disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the associated innuendo and implication of her parents in whatever happened to their little girl was not unlike the witch-hunt that resulted in Lindy Chamberlain being wrongly convicted and jailed for the disappearance of her baby Azaria. Remember the brutal dissection of Lindy's "cult-like" clothing and the name analysis of Azaria somehow being attributed to "sacrifice in the desert"? I am quite sure many people still refuse to believe Lindy Chamberlain is innocent.
These are precisely the times for restraint, respect and the observation of dignity. As Dale Lapthorne said with such heart-breaking humility from Dubrovnik, this is not a backpacker, this is our daughter.
Australians have always been great travellers. We have always sought adventure and challenged our somewhat sheltered existence here at the bottom of the world by seeking out new and exciting experiences in places that operate with very different moral codes and political persuasions. It is a rite of passage.
But there can't be too many of us who are not thinking right now: There but for the grace of the guiding spirit go I.
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ALL THIS SOLDIERING ON IS MAKING ME SICK - July 11, 2009
I'VE lost count of the number of ads on the telly at the moment for cold and flu fix-its. There's the one that dries up your runny eyes and nose and stops you sneezing, the one that doesn't make you drowsy and the one that does. There's the one that cools a fever and relieves aches and pains. And then there's the one that unblocks your ears, clears your head and soothes your throat all at the same time. Incredible.
There's the rub-ables, the inhalables, the chewables and the dissolvables. And enough vitamins to sink a ship. But nowhere is the one that says: "Hey, why don't you go to bed?"
Isn't it just a little bit weird that not that long ago every health professional in the country was saying that if you've got a cough or a sore throat or a fever, then you should stay home and rest?
Somehow the epidemic that is or apparently was swine flu, or H1N1, is already yesterday's news, even though the flu season is technically only just beginning and most of our major hospitals are full of people with pneumonia.
Yet soldier on we are told to do. Soldier on. And if you don't, you're letting the team down. Don't worry that by soldiering on you might end up giving this year's version of the flu to one of your unsuspecting, undeserving colleagues. As long as you're soldiering on, telling anyone who'll listen that you never get sick, you'll be right. It's an odd mindset we've created, isn't it? That somehow giving in to illness is a sign of weakness. Unless you get the Really Big Serious One and then everyone suddenly has a very different take on being sick.
Even now when some poor person succumbs to H1N1, we learn very quickly that they had an underlying condition, like somehow it was their fault it knocked them off. That H1N1 itself is actually a pretty mild version of the flu. It just happens to kill people occasionally. Of course your average non-swine flu is quite capable of killing you on its own, but let's not get bogged down with details. Soldier on.
I'm quite sure that before the various incarnations of pseudoephedrine currently used in modern soldiering-on medicine were developed, households and workplaces managed to function quite well when people got sick. Someone else carried a bit more of a load in the office, or someone who wouldn't normally do a load of washing or cook a meal pulled their finger out.
And guess what? The unwell person went to bed for a few days. But instead of lying down we somehow feel compelled to soldier on. "I have to go to work because I've got X, Y and Z on and without me the whole deal will fall over." And so on.
Well, let me say that whoever was due to meet you about projects X, Y and Z won't thank you when you've shared your apparently indispensable know-how with them along with your germs.
The great irony of all this soldiering on, of course, is that the strains of the flu-bugs that try to stop us doing just that are getting more resilient to modern soldiering-on medicine, which is making our annual cold and flu problem worse each year.
And it's not just our immune systems that are taking a battering. What's been lost in all this silly soldiering-on business is our ability to stop and listen to our body when it says: "Could you just slow down a bit?" Instead, all we hear is the somewhat deluded, egocentric voice that says: "I'm indispensable."
Instead of going to bed with a hot lemon and honey drink to reflect on where all this soldiering on actually gets us, we're dragging our sorry, aching bodies to the chemist shop and clearing the shelves of whatever looks like it will keep us on our feet the longest.
On and on we go. And in the event we do get sick, just make sure we've got all those over-the-counter fix-its at the ready so nothing gets in the way of all the really important things we're supposed to be squeezing into each day.
Perhaps next time you feel a flu coming on, try staying home and lying down. The world will keep spinning without you.
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DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS - September 26, 2009
You know it's September in Melbourne when the weather behaves like a Crowded House song and the city starts talking in tongues about the footy. The long, chilly winter is finally behind us and glorious sun-filled afternoons watching man-machines do battle is exactly what weekends are for.
And you know you're in Melbourne when spring's first blush is consumed with the Buddy factor, even though he's not playing. When Lloydy's number comes up, for the last time. When interlopers are reminded of their place in the pecking order of this, Our Victorian Game. When heartbreak befalls the Dogs, again. When the consistency of the Collywobbles is somehow reassuring and the two teams left standing are the ones that should be there.
You know where you are when you know what it means when talk turns to Chas and the Norm. When watching the vote count is a birthright and the mention of Skilts makes your chest swell.
And you know all is well when the favourite romps it in, shaking the old man's monkey from his back with the help of a spray from Timmy Watson. When Gazza's medal and Lauren's smile somehow means the footy gods are circling the Cats. Lining up the planets for redemption. Such is the nature of things when they happen in Melbourne in September.
But you know that St Kilda is in with a huge chance to break 43 years of grand-final drought when the suburb's trussed up in liquorice-like tri-colours and Warney's been spotted at Moorabbin. And you know what they're playing for when you find out your next-door neighbour is the daughter of a former club president who remembers '66 like it was yesterday. And you want the Saints to win it just for her.
And when wistful talk about Harves and Maxi gives way to old-fashioned football pragmatism, you know you're living in Melbourne.
Yet you're thankful someone at AFL HQ finally got it right when they locked in Barnsey and Mark Seymour to sing their combat anthems on footy's holy turf on footy's holiest of days, because there's plenty of sentiment there.
And you know the last Saturday in September is upon us when the city starts pulsing of its own accord; a rich, deep lifeblood flowing through its arteries, licking round the Nylex clock and over the hill to the 'G. When the feel of it is palpable and you're reminded once again that footy knows no bounds.
When you know in your bones that all is well in the world because the footy gods have delivered precisely the contest we all want to see - First versus Second on footy's day of days - you know it's September in Melbourne. With Saint Nick working one end of the ground and the son of God working the other, who could ask for anything more from four quarters of football? It just doesn't get any better than that.
Ah, yes, it's a particular kind of Saturday in Melbourne when all roads lead to the MCG - even if you haven't got a ticket. Somehow we all end up there in spirit, regardless.
And so this is it. That one day in September when a city stops for two hours of football and you could blast a cannon down Swanston Street quite safely. When doing something other than watching or listening is, to put it quite simply, unVictorian behaviour.
So who is most deserving of their hands around the silverware when the sun sinks below the Ponsford Stand this afternoon? When the Cats are playing for two out of three, but the Saints are so desperate for one. When your head says the Cats have probably got momentum, but your heart says the Saints 'cos someone you hold dear is finally at the right club at the right time after a lifetime in the game. And you hope with all you've got that this is his moment.
Round 26. To the victors the golden spoils of childhood dreaming; to the vanquished the harsh realisation that there ain't no second prize. Saints in a nail-biter would do me just fine.