In defence of the character test

This response to Osman Faruqi’s article, The folly of appealing to Fortress Dutton, published by Overland yesterday, started as a Facebook post. I’m a bit hesitant to write anything at all, but as my recently-deactivated Twitter profile stated, I’m the holder of unpopular opinions. I might as well stick with it.

Faruqi’s central argument relies on a homogenous interpretation of section 501 of the Migration Act 1958 (the ‘character test’) and incorporates frankly tiresome ‘Australian men rape/commit violence against women too’ rhetoric. Sorry, but anyone capable of reading to Year 9 level knows that the majority of sexual violence in Australia is carried out by people known to the victim; there is nothing new or clever in this.

He contends that Ministerial discretion in applying the character test is a slippery slope; invoking a muddle-headed critique of feminists and progressive campaigners ‘weaponising’ immigration controls’ which takes in Gamergate, honour killings, Chris Gayle and the despicable treatment of Faruqi’s mother, NSW Greens MP Dr Mehreen Faruqi, by immigration officials in the US.

The author, Albert Santos, led a campaign against actor Adam Baldwin’s attendance at the Supanova pop culture exhibition. He takes pride in not seeking to have Baldwin’s visa revoked on character grounds, that ‘grovelling at (Immigration Minister Peter) Dutton’s feet’ is an exercise in cognitive dissonance from progressive campaigners – all sans one detail: Baldwin was not invited here to spout hate to small groups of persuadable men and demonstrate how to demean, verbally and physically intimidate women. If you didn’t want to go to Supernova because Adam Baldwin is an A-Grade misogynistic, anti-feminist, anti-abortion, gun-loving, trans-hating, cyberbullying arsehole, you didn’t have to. A hashtag was launched. A Facebook page. Santos’ online campaign – all to have Baldwin ‘disinvited’. Supanova stood its ground, hypocritically claiming to support diversity and inclusion while promoting Baldwin, but he was kept on a tight leash – his abhorrent political views weren’t given a platform. I have little doubt that if he had, the groups Santos (and Faruqi) disparage would have launched a campaign against him through the immigration department.

Unlike Baldwin, Jeff Allen and Julien Blanc came to Australia with one aim, appealing to one audience: Australian men eager to improve their success as sexual predators through any means necessary. For Faruqi to state, ‘progressive campaigners would be better off protesting, organising rallies and boycotts and running public awareness campaigns designed to educate the community’ is an insult to the thousands of people who suffer, or work with those impacted by male entitlement to women’s bodies, including physical contact or intent of physical contact of a sexual nature that a person does not consent to – recorded crimes under the definition used Australian and New Zealand Standard Offence Classification. Allen and Blanc teach men how to commit crimes for profit. RSD tours have one aim: to put the techniques they promote online into real-life. The deficients watching YouTube in their bedrooms bond together in a room, then hunt women in packs, emboldened by, and with encouragement and approval of a group. There is strong evidence that adopting a mob mentality makes men more dangerous to women. What could be more empowering than being told you are an Alpha male, not a Z Grader; that you can convert women into submitting to you sexually by what is (at the very least) unwanted physical contact? That you too, can ‘bang babes’. And when those ‘babes’ don’t want you? When the Alpha male delusion falls apart? The rage must be infernal.

Faruqi goes on to ‘be clear’ that he is ‘not advocating for the public incitement of violence against women’ and that other remedies, including civil disobedience and criminal law, are available to prevent Jeff Allen from doing so. What he fails to consider is that when Julien Blanc was kicked out of Australia on character grounds, visible disruptive civil action was possible because activists knew where RSD’s seminars were being held. This time, RSD went to extraordinary lengths to hide the locations of their seminars, demanding credit card details, doing background checks & not releasing times/dates – people who signed up had to wait for a text messages to find out where they would be inculcated in the ways of the Alpha male sex god who can *make* woman have sex with them. It made protest almost impossible. It also made it difficult to have him promptly charged with inciting violence. So what were ‘progressive campaigners’ left with in Allen’s case? New Matilda editor, Chris Graham, made public how difficult it was to gain information about Allen’s tour. Faced with the hammer of immigration law, or allowing a man to make money from teaching men how to commit crimes, they chose the blunt object.

Faruqi links the use of section 501 6(d) against Allen (tl;dr – it exists to prevent harassment, intimidation, vilification and inciting discord impacting a section of Australian society) with the 2011 amendment targeting the character of refugees and asylum seekers. Advocating s501 6(d) be ignored because the Minister might use it to target refugees and asylum seekers is specious. The provisions Faruqi (& others) rely on to argue the slippery-slope case are not one and the same. Arguing against the application of s501 6 (d) does not stop the Department or Minister from implementing section 501 6(aa) or s197A; allowing Jeff Allen to conduct some sort of covert proselytising operation to affirm to Australian men that they are indeed, the proper owners of Australian women’s bodies because Peter Dutton can apply different powers to target refugees and asylum seekers is a false equivalence.

Very few people argued against the refusal of David Irving’s visa back in the 1990s. Irving failed the character test because he denies facts about the Holocaust. Irving argued that this is a crime that only exists in Germany. The argument that can be made in the Allen case is that the character test is being used to limit speech; that we should accept this bunch just as we should have allowed Troy Newman to come here to show the Right To Life mob how anti-abortion action is really done, or David Irving to come here and deny evidence of the Holocaust. Implied causality between these high-profile cases and the application of the character test to refugees and asylum seekers is intellectually disengenuous. Campaign for the amendments which specifically target refugees and asylum seekers to be removed; but do not draw a bow between the treatment of asylum seekers and the treatment of white dudes who make money by teaching other dudes how to commit crimes against women.

No, I didn’t sign the petition, by the way. I despise the toxicity of the people who abused others who expressed discomfort with the character test being applied to Allen, but I do question the way this argument is structured. Further, there appears to be little space for consideration of an alternate view which holds that Australian women deserve to be protected under Australian law from people who want to come here and exercise normative social influence on Australian men and incite them to commit crimes.

Belonging

Grand final morning. Over the past few days I’ve been asked how I became an AFL fan, and reflected on what it means.

I’ve talked about getting a ticket to a game in 2005 & fell in love with structures & hard slog. It fits the narrative that I needed to be ‘converted’ from old ways, wrong paths. The truth is it took years & involved little change.

I was never good at sport. More accurately, in a family of reasonably handy, athletic types, my only contribution to the trophies displayed on top of the piano was a little medallion, ‘dux of Redhead Public School 1983’.

I was aware of the differences between my siblings & myself. My selected sport was tennis. I went off to lessons at 7am every Saturday for years. Tennis wasn’t a bad fit for a broad-shouldered kid who towered over boys my age, but I knew I would never be as good as my Dad. He was the yardstick. A local champion in everything he tried, but I tried to make my brain fit the programme. I tried to be effortless, like him. I wasn’t. Years of Saturday mornings spent in my own head. I wouldn’t surrender. I couldn’t just go with it. There was no joy, so I quit.

While my brother & sisters were inculcated with the real family ‘sport’ of surf lifesaving, I wasn’t selected. I didn’t press my body into action after lying prone on the sand, sprinting for a flag. I didn’t row boats that were throwbacks to the 1930s. My family would go to surf carnivals around Australia & I stayed home. My Dad’s name was on all of the honour boards, swimming, sprinting, rowing & I was deeply connected to the achievement but not the culture. I understood it. I just didn’t belong.

Strange girl. I’d happily spend Saturday nights watching ‘Match of the Day’ on the little TV in my parents’ bedroom just for a glimpse of my heroes. Devils in red. Robson, Irwin, Hughes. I remember Gary Pallister’s transfer fee and the signing of the archest enemy, the Leeds United captain who became Le Roi Cantona, and a mop haired boy whose feet fairly skipped down the left wing. I loved them, but I wasn’t at the Stretford End. I was in a real life Summer Bay in which I didn’t belong.

I moved to Europe in my mid-20s & how my South London local heaved the night at the Nou Camp. The night Scholes & Keane spent on the sidelines & the sublime substitutes, Sheringham & Solskjær. A fearsome Dane cartwheeling in front of a goal he’d deserted & been ordered back to defend. I knew that this was how it felt to belong to something & it was glorious.

I came back from Europe & found a new team, a new game. Defending governments came naturally. I’d always loved defenders or any kind, the ones prepared to break a leg, their own or an opponent’s, to save a goal. For five years I believed in something & I defended it to journalists and turned defence into offense with words delivered across a brass barrier. I watched & smiled as another team was skewered by mine. I belonged. I was part of something, a team with one purpose.

And then I wasn’t. Even when I came out of ‘retirement’, it was over. I defended ideas & people I had no faith in. I was there, but I didn’t belong. Then things went very wrong for me & there was no belonging to anything or anyone. I needed a purpose to stop the aloneness, not to break, not to stay in my head. I found it in a sea of red & white.

As a way of forcing myself to open the door to my flat, I became a member of a club within a club. I paid so much for my membership that I dare not miss a game, a function, no matter how badly the metallic taste of panic surged.

Of course I’m a fan; I would die in a ditch rather than hear them denigrated for daring to be more than blokes chasing a ball. I’ll ask for a photo & secretly smile when I see a ‘like’ on my Twitter feed or Instagram, but I hate watching the same people year after year chasing them across rooms to sign things I know they have a dozen of & are probably flogging for a premium. I have superstitions which probably qualify as OCD, I wear the colours & I will travel across the country to finals knowing that my little rituals are meaningless & that they can’t hear me shout, cheer or clap, but I like to be there if even for a moment they sense that someone else is on their side.

I belong to something which has given me more than I can ever repay. May the best team win (but let it be my bloodstained angels).

Celebrities speak out for suicide prevention

A little plug for an organisation I am so proud to have worked with on some different projects… Suicide Prevention Australia.

To learn more about SPA, visit the website here.

Media release for World Suicide Prevention Day – contact Kim Borrowdale on (02) 9223 3333

Australian celebrities have joined together to voice the importance of reaching out and getting connected this World Suicide Prevention Day.

Suicide Prevention Australia (SPA) supporter Trish Heagerty, lost her husband to suicide last year. She came to SPA wanting to raise awareness of suicide prevention services and support in a bid to spare others from the pain she and her loved ones have endured since his death; as well as the pain he experienced.

Trish is a food stylist and used her media contacts to partner with creative and passionate crew and celebrities including Steve Waugh, Commando Steve Willis, Jessica Rowe, Justine Clarke, Luke Carroll, Alex Perry, Jesinta Campbell and Mia Freedman.

Convenor of the National Coalition for Suicide Prevention and Suicide Prevention Australia CEO, Sue Murray, said of the video:

“In Australia more than 2500 people take their lives a year. With every 1 suicide death, it is estimated that between 10 and 100 people are directly impacted. That is, 10-100 people that knew that person.”

“This year’s World Suicide Prevention Day theme is all about making the connection. Sadly, we are all connected to suicide and at some time in our lives will be looking to access the right services at the right time – for others or ourselves.”

Sue went on to add, “On a personal note, we are so grateful to people like Trish, with a lived experience of suicide, who have the strength to constructively share their story to raise awareness. Thank you to everyone involved in this powerful and moving project.”

 

 

Key facts

• Every year, over 800,000 people in the world die from suicide; this roughly corresponds to one death every 40 seconds.
• The number of lives lost each year through suicide exceeds the number of deaths due to homicide and war combined.
• Each year 65,000 Australian’s attempt to take their own lives (there are on average 130,000 total deaths per year in Australia) – of these attempts – Australia loses approximately 2,500 loved ones.
• The Australian National Coalition for Suicide Prevention is working to half this in ten years. But they need help from every Australian. As you can see from the numbers, everyone is connected to suicide. It is everyone’s business.

No fairytales

After last weekend’s three-point win against the Sydney Swans sealed its ninth win in a row and eighth place on the ladder, the Richmond Tigers’ second finals appearance in five years was widely hailed as the ‘fairytale’ of the 2014 AFL season. It’s a projection Richmond carried through today on its banner – the only thing those wearing yellow & black ran through this afternoon at Adelaide Oval. There was no fairytale. To steal from Sam Seaborn, Port Adelaide did not seek, nor did they provoke such a story. Instead, they rose and mastered the occasion, and reminded all that their capacity may well be limitless.

On paper, both clubs’ results over the last five seasons are strikingly similar. Two finals appearances and three fairly wretched home and away seasons. Both boast some remarkable individual talent – Richmond’s Cotchin, Deledio, Martin, Rance and dual Coleman Medalist, Jack Riewoldt; Port Adelaide’s Wingard, Westhoff, Trengove, Harlett and Boaks. Each faced financial ruin – Port Adelaide’s red staunched thanks to the SANFL & AFL underwriting millions in debt, Richmond saved from liquidation in 1990 by its members, and its football department’s stocks boosted by supporters in 2011. The difference? The gulf between the top four and the rest should really be the top five. While Port Adelaide’s apparatus will likely hang precariously for the next five to 10 years, a list that has not changed much since the arrival of senior coach Ken Hinkley in 2013 is going onto the second week of the finals for the second consecutive year. Richmond’s onfield performance in the last two finals series doesn’t reflect the energy and ability of its CEO, Brendon Gale, or the commitment of its 60,000 members to erase its debt and give the club a decent shot at a flag.

Those members deserve to collect more than the insipid performance delivered today by players who celebrated like they had won the flag last week – and they deserve better than to represent themselves as Australian football’s traumatic bonders. That the record shows a 57-point loss is bad enough. The reality is Port scored 57 points in the first quarter and played to protect themselves from injury for the final 30 minutes. If I hadn’t been at the SCG to see the Sydney Swans beat Geelong by 110 points in round 11, I’d say this was not the worst performance of the season, but the most shocking. Port took Adelaide Oval like a Panzer division; Richmond had the ignition timing of a Datsun 180B.

In 1890, Port Adelaide were crowned the first ‘Champions of Australia’, defeating the Victorian Football Association premiers – South Melbourne – by three points at Adelaide Oval. I don’t believe in fairytales, but I am superstitious & never happier to see the Swans on the other side of a finals draw.

One vote, one value? Not in the City of Sydney

‘No taxation without representation’.

NSW local government minister Paul Toole wrote in a comment piece for SBS on 18 August, apparently with his tongue firmly planted on his palate. As fond as I am of American history, pinching a line from the colonists to describe a legislative overhaul which will result in a blatant malapportionment of votes within the City of Sydney (CoS) is lazy and misleading.

Under the City of Sydney Amendment (Elections) 2014 bill, introduced by the Hon. Robert Borsak of the Shooters and Fishers Party:

• the General Manager, not the Electoral Commissioner, will be responsible for keeping and maintaining an automatic non-residential roll. The Electoral Commissioner will review it to check the nominated voters are eligible (i.e. over 18 years old, eligible to vote in Australia and not on the CoS residential roll)
• if a corporation is the owner, lessee or occupier of rateable land, the GM will enrol two people to vote based on a majority written nomination
• if no nomination is received, the GM will automatically enrol the first two people from an alphabetical list of owners, lessees or occupiers

Mr Toole likens this malapportionment to four people living in Redfern each having a vote despite occupying the same address. This ignores the fairly basic concept that four individuals on the electoral roll all contribute to, and use services provided by each level of government, and only get one vote in the divisions in which they are enrolled.

Mr Toole is correct that non-residents have the right to vote in the City of Sydney, and that the poor turnout at the last election suggests they find the relatively new re-enrolment provisions cumbersome. I don’t have a problem with business people who have a stake in the way the city is run having a say at the ballot box. I’m no fan of the current Lord Mayor, and after 12 years living in an inner city suburb, I proudly support local, independent businesses. What I object to is the malapportionment of votes. A single business entity with multiple business locations (such as a fast food chain) might ‘only’ be eligible to two votes, but that’s still twice what mine is worth. Further, who is to say that the ‘small business people’ the minister speaks of will actually get a say? An absentee landowner living interstate could nominate themselves over the people who deserve it – the ones who run the business, whose livelihoods are affected by council decisions such as metered car parking. Also, the model proposed by the Shooters Party means a corporation with interests in several separate business entities with a physical address in the City of Sydney could have multiple punts come election day. #Imagen this: just a few years ago, a certain family’s group of companies leased two shops at Circular Quay. Fast-forward a few years and under the same circumstances, that family could arrange for different companies within its control to nominate up to four people to vote in the council election based on holding those two leaseholds alone. Tops.

According to Mr Toole, the ‘Australian Securities and Investment Commission, Land Property Management Authority and business surveys will guard against fraud or scam electors’. Who will pay for, and resource this extra policing of the vagaries of some 40,000 businesses, which could be under administration or investigation, change hands or directors? The minister talks of cutting red tape, but the Shooters Party Bill will create another task for both Federal and NSW government agencies. The minister appears to be unaware the LPMA was itself abolished in 2011, with its three divisions now under the purview of two State government departments.

State MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, has introduced his own Bill into the Legislative Assembly. In addition to pointing out the inconsistencies with adopting a model based on Melbourne city council, the City of Sydney (Business Voting and Council Elections) Bill 2014 address several concerns I have about the Shooters Party Bill, including the CoS GM’s management of the roll. Why should the GM keep the non-residential roll when the Electoral Commissioner is responsible for the residential roll? Regardless of the nature of the elected council, a council employee with oversight of who votes for the composition of the council which pays their salary is low-hanging fruit for vested interests. Further, the Greenwich amendments provide for in person or postal voting, and importantly, does not make voting compulsory for non-residents. Let’s face it: the person who owns my flat may not give two stuffs who’s in charge at Town Hall. Compelling people to vote in an election they give even fewer fucks about will do nothing more than boost the number of invalid/donkey votes. While the changes to the CoS Act don’t affect other local government areas, Mr Toole has signalled his support to roll out the changes to other ‘key cities and economic areas’ such as Parramatta and Newcastle (because having a developer as Lord Mayor worked so well…).

————

I started writing this piece a few days’ ago (c’mon, you don’t think I could read this much draft legislation before midday on a Saturday), only to be beaten to the punch by Secco, who has written a #getClover feelpiece for The Saturday Paper. This, I hope, delves deeper into the nature of the proposed changes and the long-term impact on the residents of the City of Sydney, because it is much more than an attack on the political survival of one person as per the current narrative. The Tea Party-lite sloganeering adopted by Toole, Borsak et al is a reminder that money will equal speech, regardless of how sick to the stomach NSW is of those who sought, and succeeded to steal elections. Set aside political affiliations, apathy, personality-based views: malapportionment of votes; an electoral roll kept by a council employee; more red tape caused by the multi-layered policing of the roll and no clear indication of which corporation will wield the business vote where more than one exists on a rateable property make the amendments unworkable. Let MPs know, and don’t forget it in March 2015.

None so blind…

By the 2011 election, I was so mentally & emotionally done with all things Macquarie Street that when my sister casually mentioned the Liberal candidate for Newcastle, Tim Owen was carpet bombing local television with this ad, I shrugged.

As far as media buying goes, Newcastle is a pretty expensive market. Political parties’ TV spend in State elections is usually devoted to a few generic ads.  A major party candidate producing & buying space for his own TVC? Pretty rare.

Tim Owen’s free-fall from respected senior military officer to politician (a tumble in itself) to bum-fuzzled early retiree from politics to self-confessed liar and taker of cash from Jeff ‘Walking ATM’ McCloy might have come a little earlier if someone – anyone – had done the sums on that ad.

How stupid are you?

So who’s stupid? Not you, of course. Certainly not me. Hey, maybe none of us.

No, that’s not what people were saying today as journalist Mark Sawyer opined that anything less than white supremacy was not racist, parsing a quote from an Australian Army officer condemning the sexual abuse and harassment of women in the defence forces that included the word ‘’standard’’.

Here was another cretinism, depressingly fresh on the heels of Mia Freedman’s insight that Madonna’s poor brown children from a poor brown country were better off skiing with the rich people.

It may pay to look at the bigger picture pays to have a long, hard look at ourselves. We’re living in a an era when evil critical thought is an outmoded concept, when there are no bad people, only bad acts only baddies and more baddies.

Yes, of course, ‘‘the stupid I walk past is the stupid I accept’’, to paraphrase the angry Army officer again vogue reasoning . Sorry #notsorry but I stopped walking past it plenty of times.

I stopped walking past it when a man in Spain told me not to put my Masters degree on my CV, because I ‘look too smart on paper’, when the mother of an old friend asked if I still ‘had my little job’ and when an old lady in country NSW offered me his ultimate accolade a bewildered stare: ‘Press secretary? Are you from the typing pool?’

Hey, I also stopped walking past it when people assert that Australia is a uniquely wicked racist <WAIT… DIDN’T HE SAY TEH EVILS WERE NO MORE?> country. I said Australia wasn’t unique, or wicked, but we are home to a hella bunch of racists.

You see, indigenous Australians once won a court case against Andrew Bolt. From this came the appointment of a Freedom Commissioner to protect us from the oppressive dictatorships which terrorises us daily … what exactly? To fight for the freedom of satirists to call someone a dog fucker on a comedy programme oh wait that didn’t happen.

But how many people alive today are honest to god stupid? You know, willing to grandstand at the school gates like a southern US governor in the 1950s and ’60s on panel shows and say “you shall not pass university without incurring crippling debt”? Refuse to not quit Twitter WHEN YOU PROMISE IT, drama monarchs (© Dan Savage)? Oddly, when Prime Minister Abbott failed to offer his hand to European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton kick Russia out of the G20 there was not a glimmer of protest from those who are “for freedom” and apparently little else. Abbott saw fit to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bully”. Truly, a foreign policy colossus.

Are white South African migrants to Australia racist? Are black Zimbabwean leaders racist for pushing whites off farms? Considering the hierarchy of oppression that is so fashionable now, are any non-white people racist at all? Fuuuuuuuuck… shelve your bullshit “what about Mugabe” logical fallacies.

<INSERT RANDOM EXAMPLE OF RACISM>

For seemingly endless days in May 2013, Australia was obsessed with the Eddie McGuire controversy. The ‘Who Wants to Be A Millionaire/Hot Seat/Hotpants/whatever it’s called these days’ host and President of the Collingwood Football Club doubled down on racist comments about Adam Goodes. He now has to sell the franchise and will end his days as a pariah called a laughable press conference, kept all of his lucrative media gigs, including ‘Press Red for Ed’. Isn’t that enough? Not for Sam Newman, though The Footy Show was not alone. Fox Sports’ AFL 360 anchors weighed every nuance, reading tweets from another brown AFL player Eddie took on the show with him to prove he wasn’t racist, interviewing each other endlessly.

For what? Only because there was bad press at stake for the AFL did McGuire even try and weasel out of his ‘brainfade’. And yet plenty of stupid people think and say and write in the most appalling “English” on any social media platform/online comment section they can find, McGuire’s racism is the fault of the brown person who should STFU & HTFU. I’d rather ask how healthy it is for the leader of any sporting team to be owned by a single plutocrat this level of stupidity to go unchecked. Minimising racism emboldens other racists.

<THANKS, EDDIE. THIS IS A GREAT EXAMPLE OF WHAT MARK SAWYER WOULD CALL “NOT RACISM”>

My contention is that people can say racist things because they are afflicted, temporarily or permanently, with stupidity racism. Why? Because I believe there are that many racists, even if they lack the self-awareness to realise they are, in fact, racist. These would be people <FAIRFAX YOU REALLY NEEDED YOUR SUBS> obsessed with the supremacy of their race feels to the exclusion of facts. They are out there. And their numbers are significant. And the best frontman they can present is not the Prime Minister, as John Oliver found in Last Week Tonight last fortnight, he ain’t growing the brand. Scott Morrison. Seriously. He is my worst nightmare. Because he would win a poll held whenever in a canter. Because of the stupid racists.

I’d wager that the overwhelming majority of us, no matter the colour, are roughly as ‘‘racist’’ our formal education, are is not as stupid as each other <OK WHOEVER PRESSED ‘GO’ WITHOUT SUBBING THIS COLUMN IS DOING MY HEAD IN>. In other words, let’s stop the stupid. Not just the stupid things we say. Stop electing stupid governments. Stop watching unqualified people erect plaster board and selling their bodgy renos to stupid people with more money than sense. Stop labelling basic human decency and not being a racist as “political correctness”. Stop appropriating the future by thinking about electricity bills. Stop decrying learning and instead reach for something beyond ourselves. Just stop being so bloody stupid.

To: Tony Abbott, Shite Minister, Australia. From: M. Tucker, undisclosed location, Spain.

Dear Shite Minister,

DO NOT take this missive as a sign that I am writing to you in any capacity other than to instruct you like a boarder at a De La Salle Brothers’ List D school. My old mate Tex tells me you’ve got a regular Jesuit jizznado for me (something to do with self-flagellating and a flute, Christ on a bike, what is it with you lot?), that you won’t listen to him, or Peta, so here I am, emailing you at TOO EARLY SPANISH TIME.

Some twatweasel from the BBC – Jon high & fuckin’ mighty Donnison, sent to the  colonies after he messed me over some shitwank Parliamentary Committee hearing – thought dropping my name into a story about you winking at some fuckin’ Trot radio presenter when Granny Grindr called the station was a great idea.  The days of me getting Paxman and those other knob jockeys off my back by raising an eyebrow over the phone may be over, but don’t worry about Donnison, I’ve been onto the new Generalissimo and all I can say is, ‘good luck in Goma, gitface’.

I digress.

Abbott (may I call you Abbott? It’s a step up from numpty, so there’s that).

Abbott:

Now, listen to me, son. Listen to me very fuckin’ carefully, because I do not have the fuckin’ space/time thing down (YET) to RAM MY FIST UP YOUR ARSE SO FAR I CAN BREACH YOUR LARGE INTESTINE AND FLAP YOUR GUMS FOR YOU, YOU FUCKIN’ INSULT TO VENTRILOQUIST DUMMIES.

In my many, MANY years of running countries for cunts like you, I’ve never seen someone go from on-message to on-Mogadon so quickly. You’re like one of those French trains on tilt rails. Tilting Tony. Fuck, I thought I had seen it all with Blinky Ben and Nicola fuckin’ Murray. You son, you are a slightly less medicated Tom. You look like a demented Komodo dragon with Tourette’s. Apologies to anyone living with Tourette’s. You’re an insult to people with the fuckin’ balls to live with Tourette’s, you shiny-faced fuck.

Speaking of shiny-faced fucks, will you do something useful, there’s a good lad – tell Peta to check her voicemail (on the burner, not the NSA-approved device), yeah? I saw some gifs of that gommy Hockey on a mate’s Tumblr (don’t you DARE question me about Tumblr) and that bastard looked like he’d been caught ram-raiding on a Vespa. Couldnae help but share them with Jamie, he agrees (if you call cackling like an annoying cock on the weekend ‘agreeing’). If you don’t bang that bawjaws with some Botox PRONTO FUCKIN’ PRESTO there is nothing the Gorbals Goebbels can do for you.

To top it off, you and that great heaving jessie, Pyne then have the fuckin’ TEMERITY to fanny about with the public schedule for ‘safety reasons’? WELL SPIN ME AROUND AND CALL ME SUSAN. All the hats doffed in your direction, Antoine. Pissing your jimmies over some pock-marked teenage pinkos who will be voting Tory in 10 years and calling it ‘protection advice’ from those gawping great gin-soaks at your piss-ant imitation Scotland Yard (have you ever thought of calling it ‘Shitehouse Yard’? I quite like that)… anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, THAT… THAT takes some fuckin’ balls. To be fair, I wouldnae ride Pyne into battle against UNDERGRADUATE TROTS, either. ‘Stop the boats?’ Stop the fuckin’ Cliff’s notes being passed to the despatch box more like.

Right, I’d rather have Ebola than continue this email, so flap those jumbo ears and listen up, scrote with eyes: I am not your enemy and DO NOT START ME ON THAT QUIM-STARVED CUNT TURNBULL. Apparently, you’re such a dozy cunt you gave MORRISON  a private navy? How many punches to the head did you take at Poxford? He looks like a tall Napoleon when that Corsican cunt was conquering Europe (i.e. before all that shite went down outside Moscow fuck just read that thick Russian book, it ends badly) and you’re falling apart like a badly-packed kebab. No wonder you’re not sending him out to sell your Budget. He could probably DO THE FUCKIN’ JOB and you handed him a fuckin’ quasi-Stasi! Operation Sovereign Borders? Operation Shitey Britches. Jesus Howard Ker-ist on rubber crutches you are beyond all repair.

The thing people like you don’t get is that you are DIS-FUCKIN-SPENSABLE. OF ALL THE FUCKS, THERE ARE ZERO FUCKS FOR YOU. PETA?  SHE WILL FUCKIN’ JUMP, OR I WILL PUSH HER INTO NAPOLEON SHITOMITE’S DIRECTION BECAUSE WE ARE THE INDISPENSABLE ONES.

Yours, (not really, but I’ve leaked this to the Graun, bang up job on your daughter, hey?)

Tucker.

PS: DONNISON! Next time you want my attention, son, have the fuckin’ decency to leave a message back at HQ for Jamie. This, ‘sorry Malcs to interrupt your retirement on the Costa fuckin’ Brava but you’re my only hope of getting back to London’ bullshit disnae wash. Neither will you out in the bush, mate, and I don’t mean some fuckin’ air-conditioned tent in Alice Springs trailing after Kate fuckin’ Middleton. Your all-expenses-paid vacay to the DRC starts next week, pal. Drop me a note. Yes, I cocked an eyebrow like a boss and the BBC’s deflector shield was down.

An humble and a contrite heart…

Cornelius Wilhelm Jäger.

Cornelius was born in 1850, in Hallgarten, a village in the Rheinland, the third of 11 children of Wilhelm Jäger & Anna Storzl.

I don’t know why my great-great grandparents swapped Germany for the fledgling vineyards of the Hunter Valley.  All I know is that my great-grandmother, Mary Jäger, was born in 1899, the 10th of Cornelius’ children.

‘Grandma Mary’ died when I was 19.  Her hands. gnarled with arthritis, were a constant of my childhood.  It’s only today that I wished I’d asked her, instead of my WWII-vintage grandmothers, to tell me about her ‘wartime experiences’ in those yearly school assignments.

Not only had she lived through all of Australia’s foreign wars; my great-grandmother was a ‘Hun’.

It’s not as if I was asked in a Fawlty-fashion to never mention the war.  Our ‘German-ness’ was erased long before my birth in 1971; so when people criticise ANZAC Day as the epitome of jingoism & warmongering, I think of that wizened old lady, and what life must have been like for a 15-year-old German girl in country NSW when war broke out.  What it was like to be part of an insular migrant community (all of her uncles and aunts married other German immigrants) reviled as Belgian baby killers.  What it was like to think of cousins fighting for the Fatherland.  What it was like to be the enemy.

What a strange pull of forces.

~~~~~

Stanley Richard Portus.

‘Uncle Mickey’ was born on May 4, 1925.  According to his sister – one of the grandmothers whose ‘wartime experiences’ I gathered – her lovely little brother was gobbled up by the air force as a teenager, trained to fly in a few weeks & sent off to fight the Japanese in the skies over the Pacific.

It is with no small shred of shame that I say I was terrified of the man who quivered and quavered when we visited the small house in Mayfield he shared my great-grandmother.  She would make tea on the wood-burning stove, and Mickey’s hands trembled as he held the cup in his hands.

Mickey was the saddest person I have ever known.  His eyes, watery, held no light.  He spoke, in the sense that he would answer when his mother, sister or niece talked directly to him.  Apart from that, Mickey sat at the kitchen table and stared at things that no one else could see.

‘God help anyone who knocks on that door after dark,’ my Mum would say.  ‘He’s got a rifle with a fixed bayonet in his bedroom, and he’d use it, too.  It’s not his fault he’s like that.  He’s got shell-shock.’

This was the 1980s. We still said shell-shock to describe post-traumatic stress disorder.  To the best of my knowledge, it was never treated.  Mickey’s life ended before he turned 20, but he heard the screams of Japanese soldiers burning alive at the end of his flamethrower for another 60 years.

It may be sweet & fitting to die for your country, but to bury your self, or your history in it… that’s hell.

Our greatest Premier?

A dear friend compiled this list of Neville Wran’s achievements and poses a worthy question: was he our greatest Premier?

• founded the University of Western Sydney
• electrifying the railways to Wollongong and Newcastle
• saving the north coast forests
• Aboriginal Land Rights Act
• working with Blewett on the AIDS response
• beds to the west, including building Mt Druitt Hospital
• all the great arts work for the suburbs and regions eg Riverside Theatre, Campbelltown City gallery
• created the Powerhouse Museum and Wharf Theatre
• gay law reform
• Darling Harbour
• Anti Discrimination Act 1977
• built the Sydney Football Stadium
• NSW Film and Television Office
• democratised the Legislative Council after a titanic constitutional battle with the dinosaurs
• appointed Michael Kirby as President of the Court of Appeal and Mary Gaudron as Solictor-General and QC (first female in both)
• appointed the State’s first female Minister
• created the DPP
• introduced AVOs
• introduced Random Breath Testing
• passed the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act
• set-up the Land and Environment Court
• passed the Heritage Act and Coastal Protection Act
• established the Historic Houses Trust
• Parramatta Stadium
• Sydney Entertainment Centre
• purchased all those ferries that we still have
• restored Macquarie St and Hyde Park Barracks
• the Premiers Literary Awards
• sister-state agreement with Guangdong Province
• commenced the new wings of the State Library, Australian Museum and Art Gallery of NSW (opened in 1988)
• development of the old Treasury building as an hotel
• modernised the coal industry – new coal loaders and rail lines

It’s an impressive body of work which doesn’t rely on, ‘but we passed hundreds of pieces of legislation’ as a measurement of good government.  The Hon. Neville Kenneth Wran AC QC did things.  He invested in the future.  He protected our past.  He acted, where others mouthed the words.  For fuck’s sake – the Shitkansen takes as long to reach Newcastle as it did when the line was electrified.  A great many last week judged a Premier who signed up to an education package that delivered NSW more money as ‘great’ and ‘honourable’, all the while ignoring the fact that he took lifetime medical cover away from people who lose a leg below the knee in the workplace.  As acts of bastardry (not political bastardry, complete bastardry) go, that’s right up there.

Unless all political parties get rid of the cookie cutter hacks who are ‘for’ an electorate (spin me around and call me Susan if there’s a candidate who’s ‘against’ being elected); the venal cyphers who think we are unworthy of the truth while they line their pockets, abuse their influence, reward their mates and generally take the fucking piss; the timid and weak who follow opinion, rather than establish the theme; the empty shirts blathering endlessly to the cameras for next to no return, we will never see the likes of Neville Wran again.  Who am I kidding?  We are getting the public representatives, at all levels and all shades of the spectrum that an exclusive pack of pricks with limited life experience choose for us.  The only time they speak their minds is when the system that suited them fine on the way up screws them on the way down.  Wran had facets of each of these faults, but set against the dreary, small minds in the back seat of too-large white cars, he was a colossus.

~~~~~~~~~~

Enough vitriol, time for a personal reflection on ‘Nifty’, the dapper QC, the brilliant Balmain Boy who never forgot his roots as he rose, inexorably, to what passes for high society in Sydney.

I was awestruck when I met him almost a decade ago.  He had agreed to head a mine safety review my-then boss, Kerry Hickey, commissioned after NSW lost three miners on one of the single darkest days I hope to ever know.

He came into the office for a preliminary meeting. He extended his hand, one of an old man.  The rest – the intellect, the commitment to the cause of ensuring people could do a day’s work and return home to their families, the ‘dash’… it was all still there.  The grin, still blinding, even though the teeth were discoloured by age.

‘I’m Neville’.

The Hon. Neville Wran AC QC defied the truism about the charismatic, that they have the ability to make you feel like you’re the only person in the room.  Neville made you feel like you were an old mate in a room of good friends.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to call you Premier.  ’78 was my first political memory.  You’ll always be Premier to me’.

Again, the grin and chuckle.  ‘You’re too young to remember ’78!’

If you could muster indignation with Neville Wran, that’s what I felt.

‘I was seven! ‘Wran’s Our Man’ was our mantra’.

He chuckled again, and then his face changed.  The eyes ceased crinkling in good humour.

‘We’ve got a lot to do’.

Kerry, Neville, Genevieve, Siobhan and I stood in silence in the middle of the office at GMT.  Kerry had been hit hard by the accidents; the dead were his constituents.  People outside mining communities rarely understand the shockwaves these godawful events send through anyone with a tie to the industry.

There’s a wall outside the CFMEU’s Cessnock office inscribed with the name of every miner killed since the northern coalfields were founded in 1801.  More than 1,800 men and boys – almost four times the Australian lives claimed during Vietnam and a quarter of those who died during the entire Gallipoli campaign.  I have seen the damage first-hand: widows, wheelchairs.  A childhood walking home from primary school and looking for Dad’s bicycle in the garage.

As they say, you never start an inquiry without knowing the outcome.  We were about to wage war, and Neville was our Ajax – powerful, intuitive and intelligent.

The government adopted all of the Wran Mine Safety Review recommendations.  Sadly, two more names will be added to the Jim Comerford Memorial Wall over the coming weeks, and the CFMEU is calling for another review.  If one is conducted, all workers who give evidence (and the government) will be poorer for not having Neville Wran’s expertise and empathy to guide the process.

I know this is a small remembrance of a very public life, a sketch of one of the end notes of a full working life – and that everyone has a Neville yarn.  I’m grateful that of all of them, I’m able to tell this one.