I missed her on At the Movies, where actor Veronica Sywak seems to have told the same story, so my blood ran cold (really, it did) yesterday in the car when I caught her on local ABC radio talking about the Australian indie film The Jammed, currently on in Adelaide at the Palace Eastend and getting very good press, in which she stars as a more or less innocent bystander who gets caught up in the deadly world of human trafficking.
The chill came partly from the fact that I happen at the moment to be reading a novel, The Nubian Prince, about this very subject; it's chillingly narrated by the 'scout' who travels the world sniffing at the aftermaths of financial, political and geological disasters in the sorts of places that Christophen Hitchens has described as 'armpits of the world', in order to 'save the lives' of whatever exceptionally beautiful children and adults -- the more racially exotic the better -- he can find to take home to the Barcelona branch of an international operation and get groomed for the luxury end of the sex worker trade.
God knows that most of us are all too prone to think of our fellow human beings as commodities at the best of times (witness Kerri-Anne Kennerley's blisteringly intellectual analysis of Catherine Deveny's recent spray about women who take their husband's names: 'She probably can't get a man') but this open, naked trading is beyond understanding. Like most bottom-feeders, the narrator makes it worse by constantly thinking up justifications for his behaviour and trying to represent himself to himself as someone with more than the moral sense of amoeba, which of course he does not have; one would have more respect for the sort of criminal who says 'I'm a bad bastard: now stand aside or I will atomise you.'
Anyway, Sywak spoke to an audibly gobsmacked Carol Whitelock about the realities of human trafficking in Australia, and about her experiences bravely knocking on brothel doors to try to talk to sex workers and find out how much they knew about this trade and how much they were prepared to talk about it. And here, from the At the Movies transcript, is the story that nearly made me drive off the road; I knew the Cross was seedy (and indeed have known it for the decades since I read Dymphna Cusack and Florence James's Come In Spinner, in which something very similar is going on in wartime Sydney) but I will never look at it, or walk up it, the same way again.
'And when I was speaking with one girl in a suburban brothel,' says Sywak, 'I think in Burwood in Sydney, I was speaking with her about the issue of human trafficking and this was just - I have to clarify this was a legal brothel and the girls were there on their own accord and I was talking to them and they said - I casually mentioned that I was going to go up to the Cross to learn - to discover more about human trafficking and try and contact or try to come face to face with some of these girls who have been enslaved.
And this woman said to me, she stopped, she said, "Sweetheart, if you go up to the Cross and ask about human trafficking, you're going to be dead by this afternoon."'
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Bookerblogging: Lloyd Jones's Mister Pip
Okay, so this is sort of cheating, and it is also an experiment. I'm too busy to write any but light-hearted / short / batty / photographic blog posts at the moment so here instead, for those who follow these things more closely than I am currently doing, is the review I wrote last September for the SMH of New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones's novel Mister Pip, shortlisted (trust the Poms at the Times to describe New Zealand as "nowhere", but the article itself is good) for the 2007 Man Booker Prize. I don't even know whether stuff written for the MSM is likely to work as a blog post or not. Guess I'm about to find out. Ahem:
What, you might well ask, can the 1861 London publication of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations possibly have to do with Papua New Guinea’s blockade of Bougainville in the early 1990s? What chance hinge connects these two wildly disparate things, with so much time and distance between them?
New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones’ hypnotic novel is set on the island of Bougainville after the blockade has been imposed and all the doctors and teachers have left the islanders to fend for themselves. There is only one white man left: Mr Watts is known to the children as Pop Eye and is married to the mad and mysterious Mrs Watts, a native of the island, whom he met in New Zealand and has followed home.
The schoolchildren have been left with no teacher and Mr Watts is asked to step in. He agrees, but he has only one book from which to teach: an old copy of Great Expectations.
The story is told by Matilda, one of the children, who almost immediately becomes enchanted with Dickens’ Pip; she writes his name in the sand and decorates it with shells. Neither Matilda nor the reader can possibly foresee the appalling consequences this will have.
This novel about another novel is a skilful allegory of colonisation, using Great Expectations in some of the same ways as Jean Rhys used Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea. Peter Carey’s 1997 novel Jack Maggs is another useful point of comparison, taking as it did the character of Magwitch the convict from Great Expectations as its central idea.
For the people of the island, as represented by the young narrator Matilda, there is little to choose between the oppressive army of ‘redskins’ and the rebel ‘rambos’. They all look alike to the children: mad and dangerous enemies whose motivations cannot be fathomed and whose actions cannot be foreseen. Matilda narrates throughout with a kind of deadpan matter-of-factness that, as the book progresses, comes to look more and more like a symptom of shock.
Shortly after Mr Watts has finished reading the book to the entranced children, it goes missing. He sets them the exercise of trying to re-create it: each time one of them remembers a moment, a scene or a phrase from the novel, he writes it down in an exercise book he has been miraculously able to save from the wreckage of his own and everyone else’s possessions. This echoes yet another widely-read 20th century novel – no doubt deliberately, since this is very much a novel about other novels – in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which features a group of characters who in an era of book-burning have committed one book each to memory.
As Jones has pointed out himself, this act of willed, group recollection is an image of the colonial experience, where the old-world culture is desperately but imperfectly remembered. It also gives the reader an idea of what that experience of extreme isolation and danger might be like. ‘I can remember where I was and what I was doing for every fragment I managed to retrieve,’ says Matilda. ‘Otherwise, I have no sense of time passing in the normal way. Along with medicines and our freedom, the blockade stole time from us.’
Jones has done something very difficult with this novel: he has taken a recent and brutal piece of contemporary history and has told a story that not only reveals these events to the wider world but also shows what they mean in the larger and more abstract field of human behaviour. A brutal and senseless episode – the atrocities committed during the Bougainville blockade have been compared with events in Rwanda -- becomes something from which a lesson may be learned.
It’s also a novel about imagination and about the power and value of art as a potentially redemptive force in a nightmare situation. Pip gives Matilda a focus for an increasingly precarious and fragile life: ‘I had come to know this Pip as if he were real and I could feel his breath on my cheek. I had learned to enter the soul of another.’ It’s not really a plot spoiler to reveal that eventually Matilda makes it out of there alive, for, if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be around to tell the tale. And Dickens eventually gives her a way to emulate Pip and ‘better herself’ in life.
For so brutal a reminder of atrocities so close to home, this is still an oddly satisfying book that goes on resonating long after you get to the end. It helps to read up on the history of the Bougainville blockade, though that’s not a happy experience for any Australian with a conscience. And it will almost certainly lead you back to read Great Expectations again – or perhaps for the first time.
What, you might well ask, can the 1861 London publication of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations possibly have to do with Papua New Guinea’s blockade of Bougainville in the early 1990s? What chance hinge connects these two wildly disparate things, with so much time and distance between them?
New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones’ hypnotic novel is set on the island of Bougainville after the blockade has been imposed and all the doctors and teachers have left the islanders to fend for themselves. There is only one white man left: Mr Watts is known to the children as Pop Eye and is married to the mad and mysterious Mrs Watts, a native of the island, whom he met in New Zealand and has followed home.
The schoolchildren have been left with no teacher and Mr Watts is asked to step in. He agrees, but he has only one book from which to teach: an old copy of Great Expectations.
The story is told by Matilda, one of the children, who almost immediately becomes enchanted with Dickens’ Pip; she writes his name in the sand and decorates it with shells. Neither Matilda nor the reader can possibly foresee the appalling consequences this will have.
This novel about another novel is a skilful allegory of colonisation, using Great Expectations in some of the same ways as Jean Rhys used Jane Eyre in Wide Sargasso Sea. Peter Carey’s 1997 novel Jack Maggs is another useful point of comparison, taking as it did the character of Magwitch the convict from Great Expectations as its central idea.
For the people of the island, as represented by the young narrator Matilda, there is little to choose between the oppressive army of ‘redskins’ and the rebel ‘rambos’. They all look alike to the children: mad and dangerous enemies whose motivations cannot be fathomed and whose actions cannot be foreseen. Matilda narrates throughout with a kind of deadpan matter-of-factness that, as the book progresses, comes to look more and more like a symptom of shock.
Shortly after Mr Watts has finished reading the book to the entranced children, it goes missing. He sets them the exercise of trying to re-create it: each time one of them remembers a moment, a scene or a phrase from the novel, he writes it down in an exercise book he has been miraculously able to save from the wreckage of his own and everyone else’s possessions. This echoes yet another widely-read 20th century novel – no doubt deliberately, since this is very much a novel about other novels – in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which features a group of characters who in an era of book-burning have committed one book each to memory.
As Jones has pointed out himself, this act of willed, group recollection is an image of the colonial experience, where the old-world culture is desperately but imperfectly remembered. It also gives the reader an idea of what that experience of extreme isolation and danger might be like. ‘I can remember where I was and what I was doing for every fragment I managed to retrieve,’ says Matilda. ‘Otherwise, I have no sense of time passing in the normal way. Along with medicines and our freedom, the blockade stole time from us.’
Jones has done something very difficult with this novel: he has taken a recent and brutal piece of contemporary history and has told a story that not only reveals these events to the wider world but also shows what they mean in the larger and more abstract field of human behaviour. A brutal and senseless episode – the atrocities committed during the Bougainville blockade have been compared with events in Rwanda -- becomes something from which a lesson may be learned.
It’s also a novel about imagination and about the power and value of art as a potentially redemptive force in a nightmare situation. Pip gives Matilda a focus for an increasingly precarious and fragile life: ‘I had come to know this Pip as if he were real and I could feel his breath on my cheek. I had learned to enter the soul of another.’ It’s not really a plot spoiler to reveal that eventually Matilda makes it out of there alive, for, if she hadn’t, she wouldn’t be around to tell the tale. And Dickens eventually gives her a way to emulate Pip and ‘better herself’ in life.
For so brutal a reminder of atrocities so close to home, this is still an oddly satisfying book that goes on resonating long after you get to the end. It helps to read up on the history of the Bougainville blockade, though that’s not a happy experience for any Australian with a conscience. And it will almost certainly lead you back to read Great Expectations again – or perhaps for the first time.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Thursday, September 06, 2007
All kinds of things can make a person cry
Lymphopo of As the Tumor Turns, formerly Liz of Grannyvibe, has got her scans back. The longer you have been following this saga the more you will appreciate the quality of the smile.
Actually, if you've never heard of her until now this post will probably do it for you anyway.
Actually, if you've never heard of her until now this post will probably do it for you anyway.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Less stuff, more staff: the mature woman's wishlist
Some years ago now, I heard something by chance on the radio that has stood me in good stead ever since. A feisty, lively and very smart woman in her seventies was doing her regular guest spot on some sort of gardening program on ABC radio; it was the week before Christmas and thus the program had a yuletide theme, and the host eventually asked her what she'd asked for in her letter to Santa.
I will never forget her reply. 'Actually,' she said, 'I'd like a great big pot of good-quality slow-release fertiliser. At my age you've got enough vases.'
She then elaborated. 'I don't want any more stuff: I'm trying to get rid of stuff, not accumulate it. I want consumables. Fertiliser, nice wine, chocolates, perfume.'
Now I am nowhere near my seventies yet, though I hope to get to them sooner or later, but even here in my relatively youthful fifties there is no question but that I too have enough vases. (Seventeen, to be precise. Some of them are very beautiful, but still.) So ever since I heard that gardening show, I have emphasised the consumable in my birthday and Christmas lists: champagne, Chanel No. 5, Haigh's butter truffles and Fox Creek wines, Body Shop moisturisers for my pre-Jane Fonda skin, and beeswax or otherwise scented candles for when the power goes off.
Today, however, I have had a radical new thought about what it is that I really want in life. I want help.
Late this afternoon, having done a day's work and a pile of weeding, I spent an hour and a half shopping. Since I got home I have unpacked the car, put away the shopping, washed the dishes, changed the cat litter, put out the garbage bins and paid a couple of aback-taking bills online, one grotesquely large power bill (as they usually are this time of year) and one heftier-than-usual water bill (and what water might that have been, pray tell? Oh I see, they've put the value of the house up again). Do I feel like cooking the lamb and zucchini? No, I do not. I feel like collapsing in front of Thank God You're Here with a large glass of champagne and a cat in my lap.
... LATER THE SAME NIGHT:
So, yes, if I could have anything I wanted in life, it would be a personal staff of nine. I work between 60 and 70 hours a week. This is not the whinge I am making it sound, because what I mainly do for a living is lie on the sofa reading novels, but that takes up as just as much time as it would if I were not having fun. It doesn't leave a lot of time for shopping, cleaning, cat care and household maintenance, much less, you know, the occasional movie or dinner out.
You wouldn't think that a small two-bedroom house and two cats would take much looking after (the Bloke is not in residence, or even much in evidence), but you'd be wrong. There's the huge yard, for a start. And the cats are semi-longhairs who live entirely inside, which means there are siginificant hair, litter and furball issues. So here's what I need.
A P.A.
Three days a week. S/he could answer the phone, do the filing, deal with the snail-mail correspondence, and keep my work diary and social calendar up to date.
A GARDENER, TREE-LOPPER AND HANDYPERSON
Part-time position after the first four weeks, during which s/he would be expected to do something about the bastard bougainvilleas, the garage being pushed down by the burgeoning eucalypt, the bottle-brush whose roots are interfering with ancient plumbing, and the nine-foot stinging nettles down the backest bit of the back yard. After that it would get easier.
A CLEANING PERSON
This one is self-explanatory.
A CAT WRANGLER
Two hours a day. By the time you've kept them fed and groomed, kept the litter tray cleaned out, played with them enough to give them a bit of exercise, marvelled and cooed over the miracles of felinitude and vacuumed up enough cat hair to knit another cat about once a week, that's a working day a week gone.
A LAUNDERER/VALET
I don't have that many clothes, which is all the more reason to Keep Them Nice.
AN ACCOUNTANT
One day a week. Each financial year I have between ten and twenty different sources of income, most of them involving tiny amounts of money and paperwork in inverse proportion to the amount in question. And they all have different methods, different templates for tax invoices, different methods of delivering the money and different ideas about what constitutes prompt payment.
A DIETICIAN AND CHEF
Fulltime position, with perks. This sensitive person would plan, shop for and cook my very healthy meals, except when I felt like getting creative in the kitchen.
A DRIVER
I would only need this person when I wanted to venture into the Barossa Valley, the Adelaide Hills or the Fleurieu Peninsula -- that is to say, north, east or south (to the west there's the sea) -- because in all of those regions they drive like drunken, brain-damaged cowboys, and in the Hills in particular I just know there is always a bikie on crack coming round the blind corner on the wrong side of the road at 150 kph, with a sheer cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other.
A PERSONAL TRAINER
Being a traditionally built lady has its drawbacks. Me and Precious Ramotswe, we could use a bit of discipline.
I will never forget her reply. 'Actually,' she said, 'I'd like a great big pot of good-quality slow-release fertiliser. At my age you've got enough vases.'
She then elaborated. 'I don't want any more stuff: I'm trying to get rid of stuff, not accumulate it. I want consumables. Fertiliser, nice wine, chocolates, perfume.'
Now I am nowhere near my seventies yet, though I hope to get to them sooner or later, but even here in my relatively youthful fifties there is no question but that I too have enough vases. (Seventeen, to be precise. Some of them are very beautiful, but still.) So ever since I heard that gardening show, I have emphasised the consumable in my birthday and Christmas lists: champagne, Chanel No. 5, Haigh's butter truffles and Fox Creek wines, Body Shop moisturisers for my pre-Jane Fonda skin, and beeswax or otherwise scented candles for when the power goes off.
Today, however, I have had a radical new thought about what it is that I really want in life. I want help.
Late this afternoon, having done a day's work and a pile of weeding, I spent an hour and a half shopping. Since I got home I have unpacked the car, put away the shopping, washed the dishes, changed the cat litter, put out the garbage bins and paid a couple of aback-taking bills online, one grotesquely large power bill (as they usually are this time of year) and one heftier-than-usual water bill (and what water might that have been, pray tell? Oh I see, they've put the value of the house up again). Do I feel like cooking the lamb and zucchini? No, I do not. I feel like collapsing in front of Thank God You're Here with a large glass of champagne and a cat in my lap.
... LATER THE SAME NIGHT:
So, yes, if I could have anything I wanted in life, it would be a personal staff of nine. I work between 60 and 70 hours a week. This is not the whinge I am making it sound, because what I mainly do for a living is lie on the sofa reading novels, but that takes up as just as much time as it would if I were not having fun. It doesn't leave a lot of time for shopping, cleaning, cat care and household maintenance, much less, you know, the occasional movie or dinner out.
You wouldn't think that a small two-bedroom house and two cats would take much looking after (the Bloke is not in residence, or even much in evidence), but you'd be wrong. There's the huge yard, for a start. And the cats are semi-longhairs who live entirely inside, which means there are siginificant hair, litter and furball issues. So here's what I need.
A P.A.
Three days a week. S/he could answer the phone, do the filing, deal with the snail-mail correspondence, and keep my work diary and social calendar up to date.
A GARDENER, TREE-LOPPER AND HANDYPERSON
Part-time position after the first four weeks, during which s/he would be expected to do something about the bastard bougainvilleas, the garage being pushed down by the burgeoning eucalypt, the bottle-brush whose roots are interfering with ancient plumbing, and the nine-foot stinging nettles down the backest bit of the back yard. After that it would get easier.
A CLEANING PERSON
This one is self-explanatory.
A CAT WRANGLER
Two hours a day. By the time you've kept them fed and groomed, kept the litter tray cleaned out, played with them enough to give them a bit of exercise, marvelled and cooed over the miracles of felinitude and vacuumed up enough cat hair to knit another cat about once a week, that's a working day a week gone.
A LAUNDERER/VALET
I don't have that many clothes, which is all the more reason to Keep Them Nice.
AN ACCOUNTANT
One day a week. Each financial year I have between ten and twenty different sources of income, most of them involving tiny amounts of money and paperwork in inverse proportion to the amount in question. And they all have different methods, different templates for tax invoices, different methods of delivering the money and different ideas about what constitutes prompt payment.
A DIETICIAN AND CHEF
Fulltime position, with perks. This sensitive person would plan, shop for and cook my very healthy meals, except when I felt like getting creative in the kitchen.
A DRIVER
I would only need this person when I wanted to venture into the Barossa Valley, the Adelaide Hills or the Fleurieu Peninsula -- that is to say, north, east or south (to the west there's the sea) -- because in all of those regions they drive like drunken, brain-damaged cowboys, and in the Hills in particular I just know there is always a bikie on crack coming round the blind corner on the wrong side of the road at 150 kph, with a sheer cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other.
A PERSONAL TRAINER
Being a traditionally built lady has its drawbacks. Me and Precious Ramotswe, we could use a bit of discipline.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Do you have any blondes?
Right, that's done it: I will be renewing my subscription to crikey.com.au whenever it comes up and whatever it costs, and they won't hear a peep out of me except for the rustling of my money.
I mean, where else could you find out completely priceless stuff like this?
'Former tax office auditor and legal brothel industry lobbyist Chris Seage writes:
While many Sydney CBD businesses are crying fowl because of the APEC presence, some of Sydney's brothel barons are cock-a-hoop at the potential for big business during the forum. Brothels located outside of the city's declared and restricted zones, particularly in Surry Hills, have been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks.
The most frequently asked questions from our economic allies are:
How many entrances are there to the brothel?
Is the brothel in a discreet location?
Do I need a booking?
Does the brothel have a stringent privacy policy?
Is there discreet parking available instead of off-street?
Can the car park spots accommodate big cars?
Can a client be taken immediately to a room?
Do you have any blondes?'
So here's a question: are the taxpayers of these visitors' countries paying for their recreational needs?
And here's another question: are any of the APEC visitors women, and if so, are any of these intriguing inquiries being made on their behalf?
I don't know, I really don't. On the rare occasions when I get to go to Sydney for work, I spend the evenings either networking over a working dinner or sitting in my hotel room frantically preparing for the meeting/conference session/writers' festival panel/whatever-it-is that I have come to Sydney for. And after that I try to get the sleep I know I'm going to need in order to function properly at whatever event I'll be taking part in the following day.
But even if I had the requisite time and stamina, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't choose to spend the evening forking out fistfuls of my own or somebody else's hard-earned for the thrill of shagging expensive strangers.
I mean, where else could you find out completely priceless stuff like this?
'Former tax office auditor and legal brothel industry lobbyist Chris Seage writes:
While many Sydney CBD businesses are crying fowl because of the APEC presence, some of Sydney's brothel barons are cock-a-hoop at the potential for big business during the forum. Brothels located outside of the city's declared and restricted zones, particularly in Surry Hills, have been fielding phone calls from overseas for the past two weeks.
The most frequently asked questions from our economic allies are:
How many entrances are there to the brothel?
Is the brothel in a discreet location?
Do I need a booking?
Does the brothel have a stringent privacy policy?
Is there discreet parking available instead of off-street?
Can the car park spots accommodate big cars?
Can a client be taken immediately to a room?
Do you have any blondes?'
So here's a question: are the taxpayers of these visitors' countries paying for their recreational needs?
And here's another question: are any of the APEC visitors women, and if so, are any of these intriguing inquiries being made on their behalf?
I don't know, I really don't. On the rare occasions when I get to go to Sydney for work, I spend the evenings either networking over a working dinner or sitting in my hotel room frantically preparing for the meeting/conference session/writers' festival panel/whatever-it-is that I have come to Sydney for. And after that I try to get the sleep I know I'm going to need in order to function properly at whatever event I'll be taking part in the following day.
But even if I had the requisite time and stamina, I'm fairly sure I wouldn't choose to spend the evening forking out fistfuls of my own or somebody else's hard-earned for the thrill of shagging expensive strangers.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Hot August Day
Yesterday was Adelaide's hottest August day on record.
Not that I think the globe is warming or anything silly like that.
Not that I think the globe is warming or anything silly like that.
Tell us how you really feel
While I am sometimes in less than full agreement with the Age's Catherine Deveny and don't always think her columns are 'good' (unlike many bloggers, I think there's a very clear distinction between those two things), I have just decided that I want her for my new best friend.
That's because I've just caught up with her Wednesday column (my secret Terrist name is Pavlov Bin Busy), in which she expressed the feelings of -- I'm guessing -- about three-quarters of the Australian populace, thus:
You can shove your citizenship test up your poxy date.
Like many others, including -- again -- many bloggers, she then goes on to provide her own citizenship test, and I must say this is the best one I've seen so far. After long consideration I've decided that my favourite question is #1 under 'Customs':
'Macca, Chooka and Wanger are driving to Surfers in their Torana. If they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a brown eye and having a slash?'
(Zoe from crazybrave may well be able to answer this correctly, but I don't like anyone else's chances. Those who have had the experiences are unlikely to have been doing the arithmetic.)
That's because I've just caught up with her Wednesday column (my secret Terrist name is Pavlov Bin Busy), in which she expressed the feelings of -- I'm guessing -- about three-quarters of the Australian populace, thus:
You can shove your citizenship test up your poxy date.
Like many others, including -- again -- many bloggers, she then goes on to provide her own citizenship test, and I must say this is the best one I've seen so far. After long consideration I've decided that my favourite question is #1 under 'Customs':
'Macca, Chooka and Wanger are driving to Surfers in their Torana. If they are travelling at 100 km/h while listening to Barnsey, Farnsey and Acca Dacca, how many slabs will each person on average consume between flashing a brown eye and having a slash?'
(Zoe from crazybrave may well be able to answer this correctly, but I don't like anyone else's chances. Those who have had the experiences are unlikely to have been doing the arithmetic.)
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Why don't we just send them up the chimneys and down the mines?
From Anna Lamboys in today's issue of crikey.com.au:
'There’s a document circulating around Yuendumu, Central Australia’s largest Aboriginal community, that suggests federally appointed Government Business Managers on Aboriginal communities in the Territory will have the power to direct police activities on those communities.
Northern Territory coppers are to be ordered to round up kids wagging school and conscript them into work gangs so they are "worked until visibly tired" ... The document "Yuendumu – School Attendance Proposal" has been drawn up by Noel Mason, the newly appointed Government Business Manager at Yuendumu.
Explaining that the kids from Yuendumu "enjoy staying away from school in Yuendumu far too much", Mason states that "the names of children staying up late at night will be collected and those children will used to assist with the clean up the town site the next day ... The aim is to make children who want to avoid school, have a busy, tiring day."
He goes on:
"Children listed will be ... questioned about why they are not at school, then moved to an area of rubbish in the town site and will be required to collect rubbish as punishment. Family elders, Police, Night Patrol staff and CDEP staff, will manage the rubbish collection. Students will be worked until they are visibly tired. Water and fruit will be available for them whilst working."'
Great. How about rubber gloves, face masks, free antibiotics and emergency responses to needlestick injuries?
I don't even recognise this country any more.
One ray of light is that the Northern Territory police are already publicly very unhappy as it is about the Feds' latest foray backwards in time; many of them have extensive experience in the Aboriginal communities and already know what works and what doesn't. I hope for, and expect, harsh words from the boys in beige in charge.
UPDATE: Or, if you are obliged to use grown-ups to do your dirty work, here's another cool new bit of government enabling: now you can ensure that they are expendable icky foreign grown-ups that nobody cares about.
'There’s a document circulating around Yuendumu, Central Australia’s largest Aboriginal community, that suggests federally appointed Government Business Managers on Aboriginal communities in the Territory will have the power to direct police activities on those communities.
Northern Territory coppers are to be ordered to round up kids wagging school and conscript them into work gangs so they are "worked until visibly tired" ... The document "Yuendumu – School Attendance Proposal" has been drawn up by Noel Mason, the newly appointed Government Business Manager at Yuendumu.
Explaining that the kids from Yuendumu "enjoy staying away from school in Yuendumu far too much", Mason states that "the names of children staying up late at night will be collected and those children will used to assist with the clean up the town site the next day ... The aim is to make children who want to avoid school, have a busy, tiring day."
He goes on:
"Children listed will be ... questioned about why they are not at school, then moved to an area of rubbish in the town site and will be required to collect rubbish as punishment. Family elders, Police, Night Patrol staff and CDEP staff, will manage the rubbish collection. Students will be worked until they are visibly tired. Water and fruit will be available for them whilst working."'
Great. How about rubber gloves, face masks, free antibiotics and emergency responses to needlestick injuries?
I don't even recognise this country any more.
One ray of light is that the Northern Territory police are already publicly very unhappy as it is about the Feds' latest foray backwards in time; many of them have extensive experience in the Aboriginal communities and already know what works and what doesn't. I hope for, and expect, harsh words from the boys in beige in charge.
UPDATE: Or, if you are obliged to use grown-ups to do your dirty work, here's another cool new bit of government enabling: now you can ensure that they are expendable icky foreign grown-ups that nobody cares about.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive
Blackbirds 1, Dirty Great Bright Green Garden-Eating Caterpillars 0.
God I love Spring.
God I love Spring.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Pavlov's Law #49
Pavlov's Forty-Ninth Law states that every glass you break will be the first of a set. The house will thus be full of sets of glasses numbering three, five or seven.
There are, however, two silver linings here.
Silver lining #1: it further encourages one (as though any further encouragement were needed) not to hold dinner parties of the Noah's Ark variety, the kind to which people with no official/acknowledged/visible partner (of the opposite sex; this convention must drive gay and lesbian couples straight up the wall) never get invited unless the hosts accidentally find themselves with a 'spare' guest. In such cases, one is usually invited on the afternoon or even early evening of the dinner in question.
One should accept such invitations only if one knows the food is going to be good. While Noah's Ark dinner parties are usually dramas with double or triple parallel subplots -- extra points if any of the subplots are, so to speak, intra-couple -- to rival Shakespeare's, the dialogue is usually substandard.
Silver lining #2: The kitchen floor gets swept. Properly.
There are, however, two silver linings here.
Silver lining #1: it further encourages one (as though any further encouragement were needed) not to hold dinner parties of the Noah's Ark variety, the kind to which people with no official/acknowledged/visible partner (of the opposite sex; this convention must drive gay and lesbian couples straight up the wall) never get invited unless the hosts accidentally find themselves with a 'spare' guest. In such cases, one is usually invited on the afternoon or even early evening of the dinner in question.
One should accept such invitations only if one knows the food is going to be good. While Noah's Ark dinner parties are usually dramas with double or triple parallel subplots -- extra points if any of the subplots are, so to speak, intra-couple -- to rival Shakespeare's, the dialogue is usually substandard.
Silver lining #2: The kitchen floor gets swept. Properly.
This Writing Life, or, Someone's trying to tell me something, but I can't quite work out what
Some readers of this blog will be familiar with the work of J.M. Coetzee, and will know that in his novels and essays there is much food for thought on the ethical treatment (or more to the point, the unethical treatment) of animals. The vegetarian Coetzee is known for his literary variations on the theme of human cruelty, and his most straightforward and least complex writing is to do with cruelty to animals and all that that implies.
So as I sat down at the keyboard this morning and was poised to bash out the first word of the last draft of a review of his most recent novel (late, and if my editor is reading this, you are being very nice about it -- the not-being-badgered thing will have its reward when you get this copy later today), wholly concentrating on the keyboard, on the screen, and on the syntax and diction of my opening sentence, the phone began to ring.
And it was nice old Alan from the RSPCA, asking which of their fund-raising lines of merchandise I'd like to buy this time. I don't know why I don't just give them money and tax deduct it, but, for whatever reason, I have amassed an extensive collection of teatowels and chopping boards with wombats and toucans on them. I ordered the 2008 calendars -- Australian Birds and All Creatures Great and Small -- and trudged back to the study.
Begin again from Square One, for the nascent sentence has atomised and blown away. Start from scratch, if I could find it. Ah yes, I was going to say this, and put it together with that, and then I was going to segue to ...
'PRRRRRT?'
Tortoiseshell leaps into lap, kisses my ear, and settles down with her front paws across my right forearm, a position not known for its typing comfort.
Sentence shatters and blows away a second time.
Coetzee would enjoy this scenario, I think, but it's not getting the work done. I'm not game to start again a third time quite yet; I might invoke an elephant, coming trumpeting into this not very big room.
So as I sat down at the keyboard this morning and was poised to bash out the first word of the last draft of a review of his most recent novel (late, and if my editor is reading this, you are being very nice about it -- the not-being-badgered thing will have its reward when you get this copy later today), wholly concentrating on the keyboard, on the screen, and on the syntax and diction of my opening sentence, the phone began to ring.
And it was nice old Alan from the RSPCA, asking which of their fund-raising lines of merchandise I'd like to buy this time. I don't know why I don't just give them money and tax deduct it, but, for whatever reason, I have amassed an extensive collection of teatowels and chopping boards with wombats and toucans on them. I ordered the 2008 calendars -- Australian Birds and All Creatures Great and Small -- and trudged back to the study.
Begin again from Square One, for the nascent sentence has atomised and blown away. Start from scratch, if I could find it. Ah yes, I was going to say this, and put it together with that, and then I was going to segue to ...
'PRRRRRT?'
Tortoiseshell leaps into lap, kisses my ear, and settles down with her front paws across my right forearm, a position not known for its typing comfort.
Sentence shatters and blows away a second time.
Coetzee would enjoy this scenario, I think, but it's not getting the work done. I'm not game to start again a third time quite yet; I might invoke an elephant, coming trumpeting into this not very big room.
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