Nan eulogy

We sometimes think we live in a time of immense and rapid change, but often we’re thinking in terms of gizmos, or the variety of stuff we can buy.

Nan was born in the depths of the Great Depression, when unemployment, homelessness and hunger were common. Australia as a nation was less than 30 years old. God Save the King was our national anthem, and our flag would not be the official Australian flag for another twenty-four years. Canberra hadn’t yet been officially named. The last convict transportees had been shipped to Australia less than a lifetime earlier. Cars were only beginning to come into widespread use, horses played a practical part in everyday lives. ANZAC Day marches were a recent idea, and the participants were all First World War veterans, many of them still young men. Even a roof over your head didn’t guarantee you more than a dirt floor. Her own family lived on what they could grow in their garden and the rabbits her father trapped. Australians divided themselves vividly between Catholic and Protestant. In parts of Australia, Aborigines continued lifestyles that had existed since our European ancestors lived in caves.  The bodyline cricket season hadn’t yet been played.

People don’t just live through transition, they’re active participants. They’re responsible for it. It’s people like Nan who brought us from that – to where we are today.

World War II happened during a formative part of Nan’s life, and while it brought austerity to all and terrible sacrifice and loss to many families around Australia, it also brought violence to her own home town. We can’t imagine the terror experienced by a 14 year old girl when more than 1100 escapees were on the loose after the Cowra Breakout. 231 Japanese and 4 Australian soldiers were killed in or around her home town. Real terror of the type we entertain ourselves with in movies, books, TV and computer games nowadays. It was real and she lived it.

The post-war decades saw incredible growth and prosperity for Australia. Modern homes, a car for every family, refrigerators, leisure time, and jobs that could pay for it all – these things only became a reality in Nan’s lifetime. To come from The Depression to that, filled people with optimism. For a long time it was possible to believe the future could only keep getting bigger and brighter, and this no doubt influenced Nan’s outlook. The first decades of her married life were dynamic – moves from Cowra, to Forbes, Dubbo, Cessnock, the Central Coast, and finally to Canberra, the birth of 11 children, and by the late 60s – grandchildren.

The world was changing in big ways. Nan’s daughters were liberated and this meant greater participation in the workforce in the days before the child care system we have today. Nan played a part in raising my sister Lesa, my cousin Dana and I. We were only the first of many of her grandchildren in whose life she played a practical everyday part. It was often only through Nan’s support her daughters were able to participate in work, and that has a lot to do with the prosperity we as descendants and as a society enjoy today. It’s only in recent years people have begun to think about the value of this unpaid domestic work to our economy. But let me tell you – the contribution Nan made was immeasurable.

To my knowledge, apart from one special exception, Nan is survived by all her descendants – children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and now great-great-grandchildren – eighty-five or six of us in all. From where we sit today it’s easy to overlook how extraordinary this is. When Nan was born, and for every generation before her, mortality rates and life expectancy made such an achievement unthinkable. Incredible change and it was achieved by the people of her lifetime. We might picture some character in a lab-coat, fiddling test-tubes to come up with a vaccine for polio, or new antibiotics, and these things did happen in Nan’s lifetime. However, it’s not just improved ideas in medicine, hygiene, nutrition and safety – it’s how we respond to them, and how we put them into practice. How we become the change. Its Nan’s child-rearing that got us here, and by the example she passed on to her children.

Being so numerous, the people of Australia owe us all a tremendous debt for occupying so much of Nan’s time and energy. Imagine if she’d been free for to pursue her other great interests, such as politics? Nobody here could doubt that she’d have forced her way to the front of the pack. It would be totalitarian, and tens of thousands more Australians would have got their back-sides smacked by Nan’s wooden spoon.

If I told you that Mary Anastacia Norton was a timid person, who liked to keep her opinions to herself, you’d say – “This bloke’s turned up at the wrong funeral.”

Here’s the thing – Mothers Have Opinions! It’s practically the job description. From the day we’re born, mothers have an opinion on every aspect of our lives. Sometimes that brings us into conflict with them.  Mothers are our checks and balances. Mothers and their input keep us true, cause us to look at ourselves, and whether we adjust ourselves according to their views, or we use them to reinforce our own divergent ones, it makes us who we are. When we disagree, that is simply independence.

Every time I saw Nan she’d repeat some old anecdotes about me. How many of us had that experience – rolling our eyes and thinking – ‘here we go again.’ Mostly they were benign – “Remember that time you got your head stuck between the railings on my front step? ” “Remember the time you kids were smoking under the house?” Others would cause you to cringe – reminders of your own limitations, and more importantly – that she knew them.  Last time I saw her there were none of this second type, only fond memories. It was a sign. In her last days all those transgressions were forgotten. That’s a message you can all take away from here today – All Is Resolved.

In a long life there are ups and downs. One constant through all Nan’s life was her friendship with Valda Harper. Friends since they were tiny, Valda was Nan’s bridesmaid. Through all the years, Nan cherished the twice-yearly phone calls on each of their birthdays. Thank you, Valda, for a loyal friendship that made her life so much richer.

One of Nan’s most treasured mementos was the medal awarded to her grandfather, Alf Munz, by the people of Murrumbidgerie, present day Wongarbon near Dubbo, in recognition of his service during the Boer War. This was a source of tremendous pride for Nan. The Boer War is linked in time with Australia’s Federation, our first foray onto the world stage as a nation in our own right – and her own grandfather was part of it. Son of German migrants, by the time of World War 1, Alf found himself labelled “Mun the Hun”, Nan used to say. Nan was not immune to the lessons of her forebears.

One of the greatest experiences of Nan’s life was her visit to Ireland, where she travelled to the places where many of her ancestors originated. The absolute thrill that trip gave her, and the joy it brought her to reminisce about it forever after. Special thanks go to my uncle Glenn for making that possible.

A long and eventful life is not without tragedy. The tragic loss of her brother Jimmy in 1971, a young man with a young family, never left her. Nan cared for her own mother, Maggie, through illness during the last years of her life. Nan keenly felt the heart-break and suffering her mother endured. The scars of these two losses were never too far from the surface. Another tragedy of Nan’s life was the loss of her home and business during the recession of the early 90s. It was a terrible injustice and one can only imagine how powerless it left her feeling, as it must have seemed like all those years of growing prosperity suddenly fell away irretrievably. Though in time she recovered from each, experiences like these alter a person, leaving you never quite the same again.

Nan always left an impact so it was true to form of her to ‘check-out’ on Christmas day. She made sure the day of her passing wouldn’t be forgotten. At least she had the courtesy to wait till the end of the day so we all got a chance to enjoy Christmas with our families.

I was very fortunate to see Nan a couple of times during her final days. That first time I saw her in the hospital I was shocked by how frail she looked. I returned the next day and she was much brighter – she’d had a good sleep. Despite her frailty, in her final days she was more positive and she had greater clarity than I had seen in a long time.

We comfort ourselves in the knowledge that Nan’s journey has ended. Her illness in recent years had left her very dependent on others. There are some types of support in your frailty that you simply don’t want to burden others with, and yet it just happens that way, it’s not like we have a choice. Nan was especially thankful to my cousin Chloe for being there. I know that Chloe, for her part, wouldn’t have thought twice about taking care of Nan.  She was part of Nan, and Nan was part of her. Special thanks to Nan’s nurse, Karen, affectionately known as number 12, whose service went beyond the call of duty. Thanks also to Anne-Maree and Lorraine for nursing and for cleaning.

Most of all, our greatest debt of gratitude is to my grandfather, Ron Norton.  Pop, without you, in recent years where would she have been? For the past 65 years for that matter. You have been the dutiful husband. In sickness and in health you were there, and now in your grief you go beyond. We’re here for you.

One of the happiest things I saw in recent times was an incredible love and devotion between Nan and Pop. It was really inspiring to see them so close and loving in her final days, in a way I have never seen before. Very, very touching.

The last time I saw Nan, like always her conversation included bits of news about her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. She was always aware of every one of us, what was going on in our lives. She felt our losses and took pride in our achievements.  I thought about her own personal losses I mentioned before and how in time she recovered. When I think about her 85 or 86 descendants and look around at many of them today I realise why. You see, you are her greatest achievement. You are her life’s work.

My grandmother, Mary Anastacia Norton, known as "Molly" on the right, with lifelong friend Valda Harper on the left.

My grandmother, Mary Anastacia Norton, known as “Molly” on the right, with lifelong friend Valda Harper on the left.

I remember the quiet

I remember a train to Meiji Jingu
I remember uncertain eyes
I remember a chapter ended,
in the quiet dim of her place in Hakusan

I remember a hero’s mission
I remember his weakness too
I remember a chapter opened,
with bright white at his room in Vaucluse

I remember the author’s depictions
I remember onyx deep nail polish and eyes
I remember the heroine’s Eartha Kitt voice,
timbre thick and warm as a purr

I remember a two-city backdrop
I remember vibrant neon and high-rise skyline
I remember where sleeping sailboats rocked gently
on moonlit harbour waters too

I remember each act in the story
I remember each page that was turned
I remember the plot only deepened
with Hie Jinja’s Shinto rites.

I remember a character’s sacrifice
I remember her alien and displaced
I remember a life newly formed of them
the next story foreshadowed in love

I remember each turn and each dip in this tale
I remember each hope and each loss
I remember, I remember the quiet dim
of Hakusan, where in story they were wrote.

A personal transition

Today’s my last day after 18 years in the service of Her Majesty and the State of New South Wales. I’m very proud to have been part of an organisation responsible for the protection, preservation and promotion of our natural environment and the historic and cultural heritage of NSW including our Aboriginal heritage, and which contributes greatly to the science of our living world. I started with the National Parks & Wildlife Service on a Monday in early December 2000 after moving into a new home the previous Friday and welcoming my wife Chizuru and baby Bryce on the Saturday from Japan. NPWS merged with several agencies in 2003 to form the then Department of Environment and Conservation and I worked in that environment portfolio through it’s various iterations, currently operating under the banner of the Office of Environment and Heritage.

In August 1996 I joined the Legal Aid Commission of NSW, initially in the Mental Health Advocacy Service, a team protecting the legal rights and assuring the State’s responsibilities toward probably our most vulnerable citizens. At the same office we also ran the Child Support Service, integral to a legal system which endeavored to ensure that single parents aren’t left with the sole financial burden of raising children, simply that both parents take responsibility. I worked for some time in Civil Law Referrals who, among other things, at the time ensured that victims of crime could be compensated even if they weren’t wealthy enough to afford a lawyer. For a short period in 1995 I’d also worked for the NSW Legislative Assembly in the office of Hon. Grant McBride MLA who would go on to become a Minister in the Carr Government.

Eighteen years is a big chunk of anyone’s life but I have no regrets about leaving it behind. It’s time to grow in another direction.

 

Hanging Rock within the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park. For five years this was part of my territory as a Metropolitan IT Officer within the Environment and Heritage portfolio.

Hanging Rock within the World Heritage listed Blue Mountains National Park. For five years this was part of my territory as a Metropolitan IT Officer within the Environment and Heritage portfolio.

One of our own.

In 1982 Emmanuel Kondok and his family were imprisoned and tortured. His father was killed in captivity and soon after release his brother died of the injuries he’d sustained through torture. Emmanuel’s dramatic escape, alone at 12 years of age, and his arduous journey through eastern Africa afflicted by drought and war is a compelling story of the refugee experience.

Emmanuel Kondok

I was born in Twic County in the Warrap State in South Sudan. My family were farmers, my father a community leader and a spiritual leader through heredity.  In 1982 as we were on our way to market to sell produce we were intercepted by Government forces and imprisoned. My father was accused of conspiring with the rebel army.

The whole family were imprisoned in the local Garrison and tortured. Each day I was sent down to the river to wash the vehicles of the Government forces. On one of these occasions a stranger helped me to escape by swimming across the river. [This first episode in Emmanuel’s escape must have been a harrowing event, more so when you consider it happened at age 12.  – scribblehead] I had to cross a broad running river swimming underwater holding my breath, knowing that if I surfaced I would have been shot by the soldiers guarding me.

Reaching the other side I was on my own, afraid for my family but compelled by the will to survive. I was picked up by some strangers and joined them as they fled our homeland for Ethiopia. In the three months after my escape my father was assassinated while in captivity before the rest of my family was released. A further three months later my brother was also dead as a result of the injuries he’d sustained through torture.

The same three months my family remained in captivity, tortured and my father killed, I spent walking to Ethiopia with this band of asylum seekers. The three month walk to Ethiopia was arduous, the countryside laid waste by drought, famine and war. There was no food and no water. People had to eat what they could find in the bush, and drink their own urine. Many perished.

Surviving to reach Ethiopia, I was sent to the Pinyudo Refugee camp where I lived alongside hundreds of thousands of refugees who’d fled the brutal war. I was able to receive some schooling while at Pinyudo. However life in the refugee camp was far from ideal. At times there was as little as 400 grams of food per day.

In 1991 after a change of government in Ethiopia the South Sudanese refugees were forced to return home. Another perilous journey. I remember many people dying as they tried to cross the Gilo River. We lived again not only with constant thirst and hunger, but with the fear of wild animals. Some of those who perished were taken by lion or hyena.

Back in South Sudan I lived in the town of Panchalla on the border with Ethiopia. The Red Cross entered the town with food, water, medical aid and shelter. The aid was short lived however, as after three months the Sudanese army attacked the town, and I was forced to flee for my life yet again. The situation in South Sudan and throughout Sudan was still very dangerous, so I made my way down to Kenya, again seeking asylum from the conflict that was raging in my homeland.

When I arrived in Kenya the UNHCR received us and we were sent to the Kakuma Refugee Camp. It was while in Kakuma in 1995 I met and married my wife, Mrs Aluel Deng Piyom.

The conditions in Kakuma were also not ideal, there was often fighting between the locals and refugees, but I still found the opportunity to go to school, and I was able to finish my Secondary Schooling in 1997. Going to school was important. I learnt a lot about the world, and gained more and more knowledge about the bad things within it.

I became a Youth Leader in the camp, working with the Catholic Mission to organise social activities and teaching the children, and also with UNICEF helping to distribute school materials and teaching farming practices. I also worked with different non – government organisations advocating peace in South Sudan and Sudan.

In 2005, twenty-three years after I first fled my homeland seeking asylum, the Australian government accepted me and I moved to Sydney with my wife and two children. When I arrived in Australia I soon found a job in a fruit packing factory. I worked there for four years. I now work to support African communities living in Western Sydney.

My expectations in coming to Australia were that it would be peaceful, and that my children would be able to go school, to learn English, and to mingle with Australian children.

Learning English was difficult, and I also do miss my family in South Sudan. I know I have had a good life here; electricity, public transport and comfortable home. I also know that in Southern Sudan people are still suffering. I’m nowadays working very hard to see that other Southern Sudanese, especially children, will have the capacity to grow, just as I have had the opportunity to do.

In Australia I’ve worked hard to continue my education. I received an Advanced Diploma of Human Resources & Management from Granville TAFE in 2011. I also finished the Diploma of Management with Careers Australia, and I currently study for a Bachelor of Applied Business Management with University of Ballarat.

I founded the Southern Hope Community Organisation Incorporated (SHCO) in 2010, a charitable registered not-for-profit organisation providing help and support to Southern Sudanese African Australians. We provide support to widows, orphans, isolated community members and individuals who cannot do things due to disability.

The SHCO mission is to prepare South Sudanese immigrants residing in Australia to become productive citizens by providing a work and learning environment where they feel challenged, respected & accountable as they strive to meet the demands of citizenship. Our aim is to improve the lives of South Sudanese families and support their smooth integration into Australian life and local Community.

I would say to Australian a big thank you for what you have done for opening the door to refugees from all over the world.

Emmanuel Kondok

Email: shcoinfo@yahoo.com.au

Website: www.shco.com.au or will change soon to www.shco.org.au

Emmanuel Kondok works to help South Sudanese to get on their feet and find their place in a peaceful Australia after so many of them have suffered from the type of traumatic experiences he did.

From the age of 12 Emmanuel endured hardships no child should ever experience. He now works to ensure a better life for Southern Sudanese both in Australia and back in Africa, and also to raise awareness of the issues facing South Sudanese. On the occasion of my 44th birthday what I wish is that Emmanuel’s children never suffer from the intolerance toward refugees that so many in our community like to express, enflamed by our profligate mass media and our defective political leaders, and which has at its root the same evil that infected the hearts of those who forced Emmanuel to endure what he did. My birthday wish is that Emmanuel and his family find peace here, that his children go to school and learn about the good that is in the world, and that he and his children mingle with Australians, where their different origins are respected and appreciated, and among whom they will each be accepted as one of our own. – Scribblehead

Visit the Southern Hope Community Organisation web site www.shco.com.au and consider donating.

This ring I wear for you

Take a close look at it, what do you see?

Just a declaration to the world that I am taken?

Could it be more?

A symbol, a circle? Two ends joined to make a whole?

Look closer.

There are ten thousand tiny scratches on its surface

And a few deeper ones

Each one of them capturing a day’s event

A cricket ball thrown, a flower pruned

A spanner turned, a door opened

A guitar chord changed, a jar opened

A keyboard struck, a door closed

The earth tilled, a child caught

A document shuffled, a child lifted

A hand held…

Your hand.

All together a testament to life. My life with you.

Ten thousand otherwise meaningless occurences etched on its surface

that only have meaning

because I shared them with you.

This particular ring…

…is my ring.

It has become a part of me.

It takes quite some effort to remove it from my finger.

When it is gone you can see that it’s missing

I feel a part of me out of place.

Hold it in your palm it says nothing but me.

Throw it far out in the ocean and it says we’re through

Cherish it right there on my hand and it’s the closest we will ever come to eternity.

This ring I wear.

This ring I wear for you.

This ring I wear for you.

Re: Mark, don’t forget to vote!

reply to Verity Firth’s email urging me to vote for her in the ALP’s Policy Forum:

 

Hi Verity and team

I am ineligible to vote. After 17 years including some very active ones, I cancelled my membership of the ALP on 27 March. I don’t want to be seen to be part of a Party perpetuating the conservatives’ punitive policies toward asylum seekers. The Gillard Government’s policies feed straight into and out of a racial undercurrent the ALP should be leading Australia away from. And incidentally, in the context of the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper it sends the message “sure we’re open and responsive to Asia, so long as there’s a dollar in it.’”

Decades from now historians will look back at the present asylum seeker “issue” in much the same way we look back now at the White Australia Policy.

I can only hope should you reach the policy forum you take this on-board.

Regards
M J MacNamara

A snapshot in time…

…too late you’ve lost me.

This week I got several reminders of the mid-90s. It began last Saturday morning when we turned up for Bryce’s under 13s cricket game at Cherrybrook against West Pennant Hills. We were very quickly being flogged – three wickets in the first over including Bryce. I’d switched my phone on and noticed a missed call and a voice message from Drew Simmons, President of the NSW Division of the Australian Democrats. When I got a chance I listened to the message from the night before and phoned Drew back. Drew apologised – I’d won the most votes in the ballot for Vice-President of the NSW Democrats but my eligibility had been questioned on the grounds I hadn’t been a member long enough. Rules are rules, I said, and it was a very gratifying result at any rate.

Made my way to the NSW Democrats AGM that afternoon and couldn’t help but be reminded of the old days in the ALP – a collective including concerned senior citizens, ex parliamentary candidates and Party veterans, a forthright and earnest vanguard of activists, and one or two of the next generation. I was heartened, and I met a number of very impressive people for whom I hold very high hopes. The future for the NSW Democrats is promising, but qualified by the divisive internal machinations of the Party which permeates from the Federal Executive and is reflected in the State Executive – as I worked out through the course of the day. But like I said, promising. Clearly under Drew Simmons’s leadership the NSW Democrats are on the ascendancy.

I quickly fell into a small kabal with a few fellow new members with whom I share similar interests and geography – all enervated and inspired to work the political system toward the things we believe in. Discussion with my new camarada carried over beyond the AGM and by weeks end I couldn’t help but be drawn out by the various reminders of my time as an activist with the ALP. Yesterday I was asked if I’d crossed paths with Bob Ritten of the ETU and couldn’t recall, but it forced me to run a search on a whole pile of documents from that period. I hadn’t read this stuff since it was written – minutes of meetings of The Entrance-Long Jetty Branch and the Dobell Federal Electorate Council of the ALP, both of which I served as Secretary in that period, and correspondence I’d written on behalf of those Party units. A shapshot in time – letters about party machinations and letters to Gareth Evans and the Central Coast Peace Forum on Chirac’s nuclear testing in the Pacific and UN inaction in Bosnia and landmines, to Wyong Shire Council about parties ripping up sports fields, to Beazley and Willis about bank fees and fee free accounts, to Brereton, to Keating warning a referendum for a Republican president chosen by a two thirds majority of parliament would fail, to condolences for the families of Fred Daly and Ena Griffin and much much more. Some of those things eventually came to pass.

Date-stamped from 1995 to 1997 most are in file formats my current version of Word won’t open, but I can open in notepad. The period is interesting in that it covers the closure of what we now call the Hawke-Keating era. I eventually halted and lingered over a curious document which like the others I’d forgotten I’d written, I have no recollection of writing it whatsoever. I appear to have put it on Dobell FEC letterhead with President Bill Leslie’s name alongside my own, and labelled it ‘Media Release’, but I can’t imagine it ever being published and sincerely doubt I ever sent it. I’d doubt Bill would have let me. All the same there was a reason it stopped me in my tracks. It captured the end of an era in, I hope, a unique perspective.

 

DOBELL FEDERAL ELECTORATE COUNCIL PO Box XXX The Entrance 2261 

Secretary Mark Gallagher (043) XX XXXX     President    Bill Leslie (043) XX XXXX

Fax: (043) XX XXXX 

__________________________________________________

3 March 1996

MEDIA RELEASE

Somewhere around eight o’clock last Saturday night, deeply engrossed in the task of scrutineering in Dobell, I was paying little attention to a nearby comrade with a mobile phone jammed in his ear.  He was calling home to see how the kids were.  I was more concerned with the ballot papers being counted before me indicating some sort of a swing in an unsavoury direction.  I was starting to figure on maybe three or four per cent. 

When James got off the phone he seemed a little worked-up as I caught him in the corner of my eye bounding toward me.  His son had told him we’d lost seven seats in a “landslide”, and “Michael Lee was in trouble in Dobell”.  That was as detailed as the message got.  I thought “Seven seats?  Where?  Queensland?  Not exactly a landslide?!  Four per cent swing isn’t nice but we can hold Dobell on six per cent.” 

These were the first indications I had of the drama unfolding.  I had known it was possible we might lose but reckoned we’d claw our way over the line.  Of course I’d been so passionate all day in telling everybody else around that we’d romp in I even had some veteran Liberals conceding by four o’clock – two hours before polling closed.  None of us could have predicted the severity of this loss.  Not even with twelve months worth of negative polls sitting on the dresser at home.

Within an hour I’m jumping in the car to whip down to the Michael Lee’s electorate office, knowing the results from my booth indicate a five and a half per cent swing.  My booth is traditionally less friendly to Labor so while I’m concerned I figure across the whole electorate we’re probably not in quite so bad shape. 

You can imagine my surprise when I flick on the radio and somebody says “Liberal forty seat majority..”  Then again when I walk into the office to find a high profile Federal Minister at the keyboard trying to calculate how many hundred absentee and postal votes he needs to pick up to hold his seat.  We’re looking at a seven per cent swing.  In the adjoining electorate of Robertson Frank Walker has been frog-marched out of Gosford.  Is this for real?  Surely it’s just a bad dream.

I was thirteen when Labor came to power Federally.  I was concerned but not active enough when Unsworth was scuttled in New South Wales, and did my bit to help put Carr back in there.  After ’93 I was naive enough to believe the ineptitude of conservatives would only deepen until they’d eventually become politically irrelevant.  So here I stand facing my first defeat.  And what a lesson it has been.

I managed to anticipate some of the terms I’d be hearing as I tuned into Channel 9’s Sunday the following morning.  Jim Whaley, for example, liked ‘decimating’.  Someone else thought ‘soul-searching’ was appropriate.  A Liberal interviewee offered ‘go away and work out what they stand for’.  Bob Hawke stumped me though when he used one I hadn’t anticipated.  He said ‘bullshit’.

The official Labor assessment of the defeat is the “it’s time” factor.  No party can expect to be in office forever.  When we assess our performance the length of time one holds office is less relevant than what we have achieved, how our initiative and energy have affected Australia. 

No achievement could be more important than to be the first Government in either Colonial or Federal history to reject the notion of terra nullus – to legally recognise, embrace and promote the broader recognition that human society existed on this continent prior to European settlement – societies with law, religious faith and iconography, social order, education, foreign policy.  Gough Whitlam once said that if he was remembered for only one contribution to this nation he wished it would be for the fight to redress the historical treatment of indigenous peoples.  For Labor this struggle has never been merely an exercise in political correctness or pandering to an interested minority.  As a political organisation whose most fundamental principles are fairness and equity this is more than a cause – a stiring obligation to humanity. 

Much is made of the aparrent de-polarisation of Australian politics from the extremes toward the middle-ground.  Labor is seen to have moved toward the right and now the Co-alition toward a more moderate conservatism.  But there remains an important philosophical difference.  In conservative politics greatest emphasis is placed on the freedom of and opportunity for individual human endeavour, while obligation to ‘the other’ is conditional.  Basically, where Labor and the Democrats share common ground is in a philosophy placing the obligation to society paramount to the freedom of individual endeavour.  Freedom is thus more conditional.  This is not to suggest that freedom of the individual is not an important principle to Labor or that conservatives are bereft of any social obligation. 

So what has a cadet of the labour movement learned from all this?  First of all I am not convinced of what degree we have influenced the conservatives to moderate themselves.  I am convinced they’re not quite so politically inept as they had been in recent years. 

And when it comes to conceding defeat, if you have achieved many important things, if the faith you have held throughout dictates an obligation to humanity, and if you have made this world a little fairer in some way, then there will be no quivering of lips, straining in the vocal chords, or tears for the cameras.  You have not failed and therefore have not really been defeated.

 

And thus began the Howard era. The reference to the Australian Democrats is interesting I guess considering where the road has taken them and me a decade and a half later.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve also been reading the Australia in the Asian Century white paper. It’s a broad and constructive document, an excellent snapshot of where we’re at as a nation and an optimistic statement of intent. It has many of Labor’s of nation-building hallmarks, but it’s not the Party I joined nor the Party with which I found victory in defeat back then. The document demonstrates many of the failings as I see it of the ALP today. Full of wonderful sentiment, but in reality it represents an absolute consultant-fest where at every turn Labor’s capacity to deliver will be consumed by its emphasis on the process rather than results. This is what left the former NSW Labor Government unable to deliver on straightforward projects despite significant investment of time and money – like light rail, or a modern public transport ticketing system after a decade of running the project and $70 million to one consultancy alone. And all this talk of engagement with Asia taken alongside our treatment of asylum seekers – under Labor’s leadership the message our nation is sending to the world is yeah we’re very open and responsive to Asia, so long as there’s a dollar in it.

Light on the Hill replaced by phone app.

Why I quit the ALP

On March 27 I cancelled my membership of the Australian Labor Party. After seventeen years it didn’t seem an easy thing to do, literally letting go of something you believed in. Seventeen years is not a small portion of anyone’s life so I hope I at least demonstrated a capacity to hold on. I’d known for a long time it was no longer the party I joined at the start of 1995. It was either a matter of getting in the middle of it and being responsible for change – becoming active again and influencing the agenda and the platform, or waiting for it to get back on course and once again become the institution that had inspired me to be part of it. In recent times I realised neither of these things were ever going to happen. Surprisingly once I’d done it quitting turned out to be a natural and very easy thing to do. A great weight was suddenly lifted from my shoulders, a new sense of freedom I hadn’t anticipated.

Most Australians have diverse backgrounds so it is not unusual that I should come both from a line of uncompromising arch-conservatives of the countrified variety and from a line of died-in-the-wool ‘Light on the Hill’ types for whom Labor is as fundamental as the blood in your veins. I began to develop a political consciousness from my teens onward, a time when the Hawke Government was leading Australians toward a more inclusive, multicultural society where no-one was left behind, when Howard and other conservatives were still preaching a racially based nationalism and fighting against things like the Mabo Decision in the High Court, which was nothing more than the recognition that the indigenous people who lived on this continent before European settlement were human beings after all, and not part of the fauna. That’s all it said, and yet the conservatives hated it. They stood for placing commerce above all other priorities and not incidentally what all conservatives, politicians and their constituents, had in common was hatred toward some sector of the community or another. The only difference between the conservative politician and the conservative voter was that those who voted conservative liked to express their hatred, whereas the politician for reasons of pragmatism had to be more subtle. That’s why during the Howard era the concept of ‘political correctness’ was so attacked. To all who liked to denegrate and marginalise their fellow Australians, whether that be single mothers, the unemployed (dole bludgers), coons, wogs, refos, poofters, slope-heads, unions – the conservatives were their party.

By my mid-twenties I’d scraped through university full of optimism for the future. Oh yes, like many young people I believed I was going to really make a mark on the world. The reality in the mid-90s was somewhat different however. There was a recession and unemployment was bobbing around above 10% – 11.7% for males I recall at one time (unemployment rate for males was consistently 1% higher than for females). Around me family members were losing homes and businesses. Job hunting was an extended period of trauma. Those years have left me fundamentally altered – not as dramatic but sort of like the Great Depression or WWII had left my grandparents altered. After two years out of university I stopped counting at over 200 job applications, 3 dozen job interviews and 8 jobs (the uncertainty went on for another year but I was too numb to care). Some of those jobs suited me fine but were only temporary roles, or only part-time. The jobs I held longest were as a brickie’s labourer and as part time (15 hrs per week) mailboy at the University of Newcastle Central Coast Campus – jobs I was proud of but simply not long term prospects. It was this period in general and two jobs I had in particular that drove me to join the ALP.

My first permanent full-time job after university (I’d been in the workforce three years before enrolling at uni) came after about a year and a half of job hunting. I had high hopes for it – an office job in a medium-sized growing Sydney company with an international affiliation and a young and vibrant team. Their business was correspondence courses but to say they were providing distance education would have been stretching a very long bow as it turned out. My job was customer service which I soon learned consisted of a number of scripted responses to deflect and perpetuate the duping of disgruntled customers, of which there were many thousands. It was all about the small-print. They more or less exclusively advertised through TV Week and Take 5 magazine because, in hindsight I realise, they knew the demographic they were after. Though there were several courses, probably their most popular product was a “Child Care Diploma”, and this one illustrates the company’s approach as good as any. The Child Care Diploma as I recall cost $399 (in 1995 so I guess in the vicinity of $1000 in 2012 terms). People would either post in a form from the magazine or telephone the company and be sent some paperwork including an ‘enrolment form’. This particular course and the manner in which it was delivered attracted mostly young unemployed women, a great proportion of them stay-at-home mothers without the freedom or confidence to get along to TAFE, and all of them hoping a job in the growing Child Care industry would help get them out of a rut. Sooner or later though they generally worked out that the company’s “Child Care Diploma” wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Sure, they were sent some courseware – some written exercises and multiple choice questions, but for good reason in order to actually work in Child Care a person needs to be certified. This course provided them a fine looking “Child Care Diploma” but no certification nor training or experience relevant to certification, referred to by the authorities and the industry as the remarkably similar sounding “Child Care Certificate”! My job was to field their calls and letters, and the calls and letters from their parents, lawyers, local Members and police, refer them to the fineprint on the back of the form they’d signed, advise them there were no refunds and continue the charade that they were committed even if they were still paying a course off in instalments. Many very sad duped people continued to pay their piddling instalments for months or years after they’d given up on their meaningless courses. Day after day the heartbreak and anger was palpable – one after the other. It was clear this was the company’s business model, they were out to dupe people.

Here I was seeing it first hand, in the middle of greed above any thought for treating your fellow human being with the minimum level of decency. Not incidentally, with their blue suits and designer dresses, their expensive jewelery and expensive cars, their North Shore location and a monthly thank you from the parent company for all the money we’d funnelled back to the UK – these people were the conservative heartland who John Howard stood for first and foremost before any of his ‘battlers’ got a look in. The battlers were being duped, exploited and heartlessly pilfered by them with the same indifference you might expect from the lowliest petty-thieving jailbird trash. The true urban conservative constituency.

The following year, my demoralisation having deepened through a relationship break-up in no small part due to my employment prospects, I stumbled into a job in a telephone sales call centre. It was like a call centre battery (as in battery hen) with a long corridor lined by little room after little room with a dozen telephone cubicles running along the walls of the room. Each room was a different “company”, most of them selling a different set of products but some of them selling the same products as a “different company” down the hall. I was handed the Gold Coast edition of the Yellow Pages – my “territory”, and began calling all of the businesses who my products were relevant to. I quickly learned it was no coincidence my book was very dog-eared, and many potential customers remembered ‘me’ from before. I copped many doses of abuse from customers who learned from bitter experience that my sub-standard products were not fit for the professional purposes they had been purchased.

The origins of the Liberal Party of Australia are, as the name suggests, reactionary. In literal terms in order to be ‘liberal’ one must be ‘liberated’ from some constraint. Though in some countries the political term ‘liberal’ indicates the liberation from social constraints of a moralistic nature or of tradition, in Australian political history (as in Japan coincidentally) it was applied to the liberation of business, commerce and private endeavour. Thus we sometimes hear reference to the small “l” liberal as opposed to the large “L” Liberal. The Labor Governments of Curtin and Chifley steered Australia through WWII and the post-war reconstruction, a time when fiscal and social order were necessarily subject to a great deal of institutionalised control and austerity. This culminated in ’49 with Chifley threatening to Nationalise the banks, who were seen by some as profiteering with no regard to social responsibility (interesting in the current context, Smokin’ Ben might almost get away with it today). The Liberal Party’s rise came out of the Australian peoples’ desire to be free of this – enough with all the austerity and the controls please! The Liberal Party and in particular their founder Bob Menzies were seen as the great liberators of Australian commerce and enterprise and that informs conservative politics in this country to this day. But there’s a middle ground to be struck. Business should not be liberated to the point of being able to exploit and do harm to the vulnerable.

I joined the Australian Labor Party because in those days they stood for inclusivity, for all Australians, for accepting and embracing the diversity that is humanity. Their inclusivity extended not just to our country but they were outward looking, seeing our place in a world that included all of the world, not just an English speaking world, a British Commonwealth, an Anglo-Saxon world or a world populated by people of Western European roots. The contrast with the conservatives was definitive. The conservative parties stood for a narrow idea of Australia from the past based on a racially homogenised society only acheived through the notion of “assimilation” or acceptance of others’ origins only on the grounds that they give them away and adopt our perceived origins as their own. The ALP were the party for people who not only recognised the diversity in the world but treasured it, held it up as an ideal. This empathy for all people was also consistent with Labor origins, though I do recognise that protectionism on racial and nationalistic grounds was part of the small ‘l’ labour movement for a good portion of its first century. That said, to exploit and do harm to others in the name of material self interest had always been what the ALP fought against. They also therefore held the middle ground when it came to the place of business and commerce in society. This last point enabled the ALP to be more open-minded and receptive as a growing awareness of the vulnerability of the natural environment began to gain momentum and this was also a fundamental reason I joined the Party. When the environment was a dirty word for the conservatives, and ‘greeny’ was just another term in the long list the conservatives used to be derogatory about their fellow Australians, Labor was taking leadership on the environment.

It was Gough Whitlam who recognised that Labor’s place in Australia was to take its base in standing up for workers against exploitative commercial self-interest and extend that to all those who would otherwise be powerless or marginalised, not just workers in relation to their bosses but  women in relation to men, minorities of sexuality, racial and religious minorities, the less wealthy. It extended Labor’s franchise and it informed the ideal of governing for all people which remained genuine through the Hawke and Keating eras and was applied not at the exclusion of those in positions of power but by engaging with them, being from within them, and it resulted in many years of Government for the ALP.

 

What went wrong.

During that period Labor continued its evolution into a slick professional political fighting machine. A big part of that was the application of some science to politics. This consisted of commissioning increasingly more sophisticated polling and commercial market research techniques and employing commercial marketing theory. Labor were not alone. One of my casual jobs during that sketchy period of employment was as a door-to-door interviewer for Roy Morgan Research. Howard, Downer and Costello were being mooted as alternative leaders in the years before the ’96 election.

In those days this application of methodology still appeared to only supplement the process of politicing and actual political leadership informed by the moral conviction of the leader still trumpted it. By the time of Beazley though at the turn of the millennium it was all about getting a handle on public opinion and engaging consultants to tell you how to push the right buttons with the Australian public. When the commentators talk about the ‘Labor machine’ nowadays they don’t even realise themselves what they’re referring to is a virtual gaggle of psychologists, both amateur and professional. Thus you get a term like ‘working families’ repeated ad-nauseum until the general public is literally mentally sick from hearing it. Yet the ‘professionals’ stick dogedly to their theory impervious to the distress they’re in fact causing the community, completely and utterly out of touch. People see straight through this as ‘method’ and they only vote for you because you’re the least detestable option at the time. The only ones who are deluded by the ‘keyword ad-nauseum’ theory are the Parliamentary ALP themselves (and possibly, though not necessarily, the consultants they engaged who told them to repeat it beyond sanity). This is what we have in the place of statesmanship and community leadership from the ALP and on this front the Libs have it all over them. As miopic, unfair and un-inclusive as much of the Conservative platform can be at least it comes from conviction. They are able to effectively lead public opinion instead of trying to second-guess it, to follow it, because they’re not afraid to reveal themselves.

The hegemony of methodology in place of a soul at the head of ALP provided the genesis of the Latham implosion. Latham tried to take the reins of the Party believing it was his right and in fact his obligation as leader. However the psychological approach to politics by that time so firmly entrenched in the Party seeks to place the party leader in a straightjacket. Latham reacted the same way many people would, by going mad.

You’ve got to wonder to what extent this same tension between political leadership and methodological politics also contributed to Rudd’s falling out with his Parliamentary colleagues despite his popularity with the public.

The net result is soullessness, a party that may get some political results but without legitimacy, a party not reaching the potential it otherwise would. More specifically, and something I take personally, it’s resulted in a party that did not take its natural place in neutering the dark side of the Howard era of politics but instead perpetuates the inate racism arising out of such things as the ongoing demonisation of asylum seekers. After more than a decade of waiting for a Labor leader to lead in the direction that Whitlam, Hawke or Keating would have I belatedly have to accept that this is not a party that I want to be seen to be associated with.

O.H.M.S. Monday to Friday

Farewell Elizabeth II, our Queen and Sovereign.

I like to use it now and then, I stick it in the subject field on my email sometimes to lighten the atmosphere. I tell my son Bryce I’m On Her Majesty’s Service, me and James Bond. It’s only a generation or so ago public servants stopped using the acronym O.H.M.S.  Only by convention though – nothing’s actually changed in the position, role and purpose of the British monarch in Australia since Queen Elizabeth II ascended to the throne in 1952. I just skimmed the constitution and can confirm it is indeed a fact that Monday to Friday I am in the service of the Queen.

“Ascended” is a definitive word here. The Queen’s legal status in Australia is ‘monarch’ or ‘sovereign’. Check the words out in the dictionary and you’ll find that Queen Elizabeth II is in fact the person who has supreme rank, power and authority, she is above all others in character, importance and excellence, she is independent of outside authority, the supreme ruler, greatest in degree, superior to all others. The legal dictionary in fact says the sovereign is “possessed of supreme power”.

That is a pretty extraordinary position to be in you’d have to say. In fact in literal terms there is no greater honour. There are many out there who would even say it’s a bit extreme. So it is worthwhile taking a few moments to consider how it is the sovereign came to be the sovereign.

Most obviously the Queen is the Queen because her dad was King George VI. George VI became King because his elder brother Edward VIII was forced to abdicate when he decided to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. It was the doctrine of the Church of England that once divorced a person could not remarry, and the Monarch is also sovereign over the Church of England. It was seen to contravene the laws of succession and therefore by the terms of the Statute of Westminster (1931) required the assent of the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliaments of the Dominions including Australia. When Australia’s Prime Minister along with those of Great Britain, Canada and South Africa opposed a change to the law of succession (the Irish Prime Minister was indifferent and the New Zealand Prime Minister had never heard of Wallis Simpson) Edward VIII rightly pointed out that there were “not many people in Australia” and their opinion didn’t matter.

Deeming such a marriage to be in contravention of the laws of succession was stretching a long bow. What was left unsaid, at least publicly, is that Edward VIII had been bonking Mrs Wallis since long before she became a divorcee and that’s where the real moral imperative had been breached. Also she was an American – simply not of sufficient stock. Edward VIII had no chance.

Both George VI and Edward VIII became King because their dad was King George V. During World War I George V was forced to drop the royal house’s German name ‘House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha’ in favour of a newly invented English name ‘House of Windsor’, and also to drop his German titles – partly to distance Britain’s very German royal family from the wartime enemy but also in an endeavour to closer affiliate himself with the British people after his first cousin Tsar Nicholas II of Russia had been overthrown. For this reason he was also unable to offer sanctuary to his first cousin Nicholas II, who less than a year after being forced to abdicate was taken into a basement and summarily executed along with his wife and three daughters, having been separated from his remaining two children whose bodies were only recently identified in the Ural Mountains.

George V became King because his dad was King Edward VII. Edward VII became King because his elder brother Albert Victor died of penumonia in 1892, and also because he himself escaped an assassination attempt in Belgium in 1900 (in protest against the Boer War), and also because his mum was Queen Victoria. Queen Victoria became Queen because her grandfather was King George III, because her dad’s three older brothers all died without legitimate sons, and because her dad Prince Edward died in 1820 when she was an infant also leaving no sons. The term ‘legitimate’ is interesting here. Victoria’s uncle, King William IV had a loving partner Dorothea Bland with whom he had ten children. She was an Irish actress however, and before William IV a single mother. The consummation could never be married.

Queen Victoria survived a number of assassination scares and also a growing Republican movement. She blamed the death of her beloved husband Albert on the burden of worry he carried over her son Prince Edward’s philandering, a conflict which interestingly precipitated over yet another Irish actress.

Queen Victoria was the last British Monarch of the House of Hanover. Hanoverian sovereignty began with King George I upon the death of his second cousin Queen Anne in 1714. Queen Anne had more than 50 closer male relatives who were prohibited from taking the Crown because they were Catholic. Queen Anne was the last sovereign in the line of the House of Stuart. The House of Stuart, initially the royal house of Scotland, took sovereignty over a newly ‘United Kingdom’ in 1603 when James VI (James I of England) succeeded his 3rd cousin Queen Eilizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth had imprisoned James’s mother, Mary Queen of Scots, and had her beheaded in 1587.

Queens Elizabeth I and II, Victoria, Anne and a handful of others all became sovereign because they had no surviving brother to become King. Since 1980 a number of European royal houses have dropped male primogeniture – the preferential succession of the eldest male over all other siblings, and it appears we’ve decided the British monarchy should get with the times. No issue got more media coverage in relation to last month’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting than discussion surrounding the laws of succession. Everyone appears to be in agreement – preferential male succession is outdated, unfair and it’s time for it to change. It excludes half the population of the world after all.  Um… er… hang on a second…

Yes it is unfair when somebody is excluded from something because of their gender. However to hail this as some sort of ‘moment’ in the cause of equality is hollow when by definition monarchy means the rest of us are un-equal. It is not as though half the population of the world are being excluded from becoming the sovereign. Unless you can call the current sovereign your mother or grandmother – everyone is excluded. As a concept ‘monarchy’ on its own is much more exclusive than male promogeniture. What is the point in doing away with the preference for male heirs when monarchy itself is a much more unfair institution? It is a barren conversation and when enacted the gesture will be meaningless for everyone but the Windsors.

We’re not talking about somebody’s life savings or personal property to pass onto our kids when we die. We are talking about sovereignty over you and I, where nothing qualifies the person other than that a succession of distant ancestors raped, pillaged and murdered their way to the top, followed by a further succession of ancestors who continued to intrigue and murder over several hundred years to maintain privilege which had initially been taken by fear and force, followed by a further succession who maintain their position of privilege through no means other than celebrity hysteria. Literally the British Monarch is the assertion that one individual is superior to all others (you and I) because a distant ancestor murdered an Anglo-Saxon king 945 years ago. It’s preposterous in the true sense of the word. It would be laughable if it weren’t so real. Monarchy is a concept thats days have been numbered since the 18th Century and it is a measure of mass simple-mindedness that celebrity hysteria has sustained this institution into the 21st Century.

Edward I is credited with inventing the ritual “hanged, drawn and quartered”. Edward’s treatment of his kin Simon de Montfort in 1265 is depicted here. But they were different times you say? Exactly.