Electioneering

" .... and if you elect me as school captain I’ll … I’ll stop Asian enrolments, you know their parents throw their children in the ocean to drown, yes they do … true… and … and we will all be allowed to bash Abo’s anytime we want. "

Black Art of Dog Whistling.

Australia’s Prime Minister, John Howard, this week capped off a long career of anti-Aboriginal politics which has earned him my title of Public Racist Number One. His abuse of power runs true to form as he again targets black people after receiving a report into alleged sexual abuse of children in some Northern Territory Indigenous communities. On Monday he received the report, the following week our army is occupying Australia’s black communities, all funds are cut off, bank accounts frozen, administration offices occupied, computers and records are seized and every child is to be medically examined and questioned. Were other measures even considered?

The black community of Mutitjulu at Uluru is now run by John Howard.

I cannot imagine these happenings in any other Australian community under the guise of stamping out paedophilia.

After ten years of knowing neglect, this Prime Minister acts now. Now when his career is almost over. He’s past pension age with public ratings lagging far behind a much younger opponent. Whatever spin John Howard puts on his recent show of force against a totally demoralised minority, I cannot accept it. He has a history of playing racist politics and I believe he is at it again.

I feel despair for the families and communities that John Howard has invaded with calloused regard for the innocent, bloody utter despair.


New South Wales Parliament - Ms Sylvia Hale [15 December 2006 - 3.29 p.m.]:

‘During his first term as Opposition leader, John Howard saw potential electoral advantage in playing racial politics. His comments in July 1988 promising a reduction in Asian immigration if he became Prime Minister established his credentials as a politician willing to play the race card if he thought it would win him votes. He was widely condemned for those comments and forced to withdraw them, but the lesson he learned was not that this sort of politics is destructive and wrong. Rather, he learned that his appeal to racism had to be more subtle. He learned the black art of dog whistling.’







Mutitjulu women hit back at pedophilia claims.


http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/mutitjulu-women-hit-back-at-pedophilia-claims/2006/09/15/1157827160823.html

GREAT ARCHITECTURE

I was struck recently by a friend canvassing a small of group over dinner about what makes great architecture. Is it form, function, frugality, all these things or other things. Great buildings: what immediately came to my mind was Jørn Utzon’s Opera House. This should not be surprising, I live in the city that is the location for this master’s work.

As a designer myself in a past life, I was fortunate enough to be commissioned to do the Scenic Design and Art Direction on a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth which was staged in this venue. It was my workplace for several months, so I was able to absorb the function and form of the building, close up, worts and all.

It is easily the most visually unusual, pleasing and remarkable building I have ever seen. It captivates the viewer, drawing on non verbal aesthetics, stirring deeply felt emotions. The scale of the soft sweeping gothic shells as roofing juxtaposed against brutal geometric lines of the base walls, floors and windows is at times breathtaking beside the sparkling waters of Sydney Harbour.

For those of us who have had difficult clients, imagine dealing with the bureaucracy and machinations of changing governments, fuelled by the out-of-control egos of the politically appointed team of architects, each one harbouring competitive jealousies, plus the economic project managers who ultimately held sway over everyone and every thing to do with the project

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Outraged that his concept was becoming a patchwork quilt, Mr Utzon resigned before construction was completed. His masterpiece had been modified by a committee that cut the quilt to cover their own various agendas

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Financed from the proceeds of a government lottery, cost overruns caused by unique construction materials and engineering methods became a moot point. A gambling nation foot the bill for Australia’s only internationally recognised man made masterpiece

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I’ve been away.

For the past two weeks I travelled north to the petite village of Federal, situated in the hilly hinterlands of Byron Bay. We have five acres there – our slice of paradise, peaceful refuge from the ravages of contemporary society.

Presently we have a three bedroom cedar and glass home, rural rustic, which we plan to occupy permanently next month while we build a new place at the far end of the property 400 metres away, around a bend. Here I will write my next book while taking up a post one day a week, lecturing in the English department at the Southern Cross University, Lismore.

I have three competing storylines that I am compelled to write once ensconced at Federal, but one requires attention right now, it’s will unfurl remarkable social incidents and a great deal of intellectual stamina surrounding a landmark case in Australian law in 1816. Research has uncovered lengthy accounts of the young barristers and old governing farts involved and reads like a generational saga: full of romance, immense wealth created from modest beginnings, and of course large slices of the pomp and egocentric behaviour of the British ‘settlers’, arrogant in the extreme.

We were never meant to live this.

Not all people are on the money system, drive cars. live in crime-ridden over-crowded cities, own guns, are scared to go out at night, work 60-80 hours per week, have 2.2 children, have numerous credit cards, are slaves to bank mortgages against their domestic shelter. Humans simply have not evolved genetically, physically or psychologically far from being hunters and gathers – millions of people still are. It stands to reason that 60,000 years may not be long enough for positive evolution to have modified us to live without ill the way we do.

Not long ago I went to a pedestrian community where money has no value, where people hunt game, fish and harvest fruits and vegetables from wild bushes. I came back to my sprawling city of 5 Million people and I took a hard look at our deteriorating, unhealthy society and my own sycophantic lifestyle.

To me it became clear: we went from hunting and gathering to herding and cultivation, right into market based city-states and into economic rationalised nationhoods, job protection, globalisation and world banks before our physiology and psychology had time to prepare us for such changes

Increasing incidents of crime, terror, mental illness, cancers, ulcers, anxieties, drug and alcohol dependency, obesity, anorexia as well as pollution and global warming are what we now accept as normal crosses to bear in contemporary societies.

Do you believe humans have evolved sufficiently to absorb the rigours of our self-modified new world?
	Yes I do
	No I don't
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