Public Address - Speaker (Home)

Chicken Coops and Rotten Eggs | Jun 22, 2004 10:22

GUEST Che Tibby's view from Melbourne

I don't know what it is about these Ockers and their fascination with locking people up. I mean, people go nuts with cries of 'witch-hunt' when they put Hanson behind bars for electoral fraud, but the taxpayers keep one bloke on an island at $26k a day and he probably deserved it. For 10 months Aladdin Sisalem was detained on Manus Island in what can only be called solitary confinement. 10 months! And all this as part of Howard's 'pacific solution' to the pesky problem of Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghani refugees trying to make it to a better life Australia.

But hey, a litany of lies in the children overboard scandal got Howard back into the driving seat (probably sitting on two phone books), and the ends justify the means right? We haven't had reports of any boats for months now. But spending $216k a month to keep one bloke from 'queue-jumping', thereby infiltrating and presumably debasing Australian society is a bit steep. They could have re-edumacated him into an Aussie with a good brainwashing technique involving say, big snappy dogs, or electrotherapy, for at least half that price.

But seriously, one of things people seem to think is that refugees are likely to go on the old rock and roll and cost the taxpayer a fortune. What the? Dole for a bloke Aladdin's age is maybe $1100 a month? Even locking him in detention centre on the mainland would cost the princely sum of $4800 a month. And that's more than the average wage in Victoria.

I saw a skit show that offered to lock a few of them up in a disused chicken coop at the back of their flat for the price of a housemaid and some good kebabs. Even worse, god forbid that Aladdin might actually get a job and contribute to the economy! Someone's got to drive the taxis over here. Buggered if I will.

The reason I whinge about this is the over-reaction to Merlin's "free the refugees" statement on the latest tired version of 'Big Brother'. While I'm on the subject, will this shyte never end? Note to self, if you ever find yourself watching and enjoying crap, buy some good webcams and take up real voyeurism.

My (real-life) housemate had a rant the other day about her workmate, who had seen Merlin and stated indignantly that 'children shouldn't have to watch that sort of thing'. Yeah, those political statements are pretty dangerous when the kids have got a transsexual to discuss.

The person involved was apparently more than a little stunned to find out that there are numerous, and I mean numerous, children locked up in these very camps (posing as they do, 'a threat to Australia's immigration policies').

And speaking of big snappy dogs, Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, stated in an obvious case of towing the party line, "he's obviously not very well informed. There are no refugees in Australian detention centres". Apparently people in detention centres are actually called 'asylum seekers'. So silly Merlin, no refugees, plenty of naughty asylum seekers though.

Mind you this is the same Minister who stated in an informal TV interview, at the remembrance ceremony for a prominent Aboriginal pioneer of the Reconciliation Movement, that he was a good bloke who knew Aussies should 'get on with it', and not dwell on the past.

But lets do just that for a moment.

It is estimated that at least 50,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to Mission stations or adopted out to white families for the sole purpose of undermining and destroying their cultural attachments. The desired outcome was to turn them into Australians in the same mould as your typical 2.5 kid suburban family. This involved being prevented from any kin contact, being made to speak English and training in menial, but 'useful' occupations. Collectively these people are called the 'Stolen Generations', and were the subject of a denied apology by Howard around the time he was also stifling the Republican movement in 2000.

What a lot of people don't know is that this forcible removal was really kicked off here in Victoria in the 1860s, around the time Grey was invading the Waikato. Remnant Aboriginal populations were rounded up and forced onto Missions after the majority had been killed by disease, starvation, poisonings, frontier conflicts with settlers and punitive excursions by Police garrisons.

By 1880 almost every Aboriginal person left in Victoria had been rounded up and confined to a Mission, and by 1910 any 'resident' had every aspect of their lives controlled by Missionaries or government-appointed 'managers' or 'matrons'. And I mean every aspect, from what they could wear, to when they slept, eat, washed, worked, to who they could marry, to when, why and how they left the Mission. This was called 'civilising'. The last of these things was only closed in Victoria in 1970.

And, I feel I should state that this isn't 'historical revisionism', a label applied by neo-conservatives here to undermine what they call the 'political correctness' and 'guilt industry'. This detention system is well documented and all too real.

I was speaking to a bloke the other day who born in a shanty town they called a 'humpy camp' on the banks of a river in the north of Victoria. His family had been forced off the Missions when the definition of "Aboriginal" was changed by statute. It seems that feeding residents was too expensive, so anyone with one non-Aboriginal parent was reclassified as "white" and shunted off the Mission to fend for themselves.

Unable to get work from white farmers or townies, many starved or eked out lives on the edges of towns or in local rubbish tips. This was still happening 1956. But of course, this is dwelling on the past, which we don't have to apologise for.

One the things I've always loved about neo-conservatives is the way they're happy to conveniently overlook the impact this type of government policy has had on current generations, while simultaneously blaming the victim for being unable to participate in contemporary society.

When airing my criticisms I even had someone ask me 'why I hate my own people so much', implying that I'm favouring outsiders. I love my people, but hate it when they do stupid, hypocritical things like impose their standards and value systems on others and then bitch that minorities 'can't cut it in the real world'. The value of diversity is being able to present a different viewpoint to anyone, anytime and thereby make them think.

The deceased Aboriginal man in question above (as far as I know, traditionally a name is withheld till the family states they are finished grieving by speaking it themselves), worked for almost 10 years within the system to make Reconciliation mean something, only to die at the ripe old age of 54 and then have himself labelled 'a good boy' by the Federal Minister for 'minorities'.

And meanwhile, people whinge and spew vitriol when a TV contestant doesn't tow the line and diversifies the agenda, much like Judith Collins MP denying our Russell the ability to speak against her viewpoint.

A word to Judith. Love, being 'opposed' to a view contrary to your own is what 'opposition' means. It's one of those pesky democratic ideals in the same vein as 'consensus'. If you want to do a little rant and then have people to agree with you all the time, become a taxi driver. But, just in case, get used to the word, you'll be hearing it attached to your name, just before the suffix 'MP' for a while yet.

Perhaps the only thing that would bring me back to New Zealand in the future is the willingness of some policy-makers to recognise that they don't live in a homogeneous society. National's Treaty policy of the 1990s was something that all New Zealanders could truly be proud of, and that ability to say "Oops. Screwed up, I'm truly sorry. Let's both make sure this will never happen again" is something that these conservative culture warriors need to absorb.

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Political Correction Fluid | Jun 16, 2004 10:06

GUEST Che Tibby's view from Melbourne

OK. So I've realised that I owe the publicaddress community a wee apology. I reread the two comments accepted for posting and it dawned on me that I was foisting a couple of moral vignettes on you. If you managed to sit through my moralising and condescension then more power to you.

But, having absolved myself, let me carry on about the latest bee in the bonnet.

I'm thinking seriously about entering that Maxim Institute essay competition. Trouble is, I'm not a current New Zealand student so am automatically excluded (if anyone out there wants to sponsor me we can split any winnings 75-25). I figure that the best way to win these kinds of things is usually to do some research, so between reading about the marginalisation of Aboriginal people and the comparisons to New Zealand in the 1950s I tried to squeeze in the last winner's essay.

The great thing about doing research is that if you're at all serious about it you're going to have to read opinions and findings contrary to your own. Now while I agree with the premises of the essay, that families are an important unit of any healthy society, I couldn't help but notice a theme that also rears its ugly head here in the land of flies.

Something that pervades the Maxim website is a tendency to rail against that new foe of conservatives, "political correctness". Once again, apologies to the publicaddress community, I don't know why I have such an opposition to conservatives.

Ok, maybe I do. They're dicks. No, really, have a big conversation with any really committed conservative and you'll soon come to the opinion that these people really are, 100% dyed in the wool, dicks.

I'm feeling the need to justify this outburst, just to be sure I haven't offended anyone. So here's a test. John Howard, staunch conservative. Dick. George W. Bush, staunch conservative. Dick. Jenny Shipley? Dick.

What you can glean from this is that if you find yourself identifying with these characters, bad news. You might be a dick.

But! Never fear, things aren't all bad, this problem isn't confined to the ranks of conservatives! I myself am a left-leaning liberal, and have, on many occasions been referred to as a dick. This means then that because I belong to this elite group I can in fact refer to other dicks as being dicks and not have to worry about accusations of bias. After all, I'm an insider. Convenient that.

Mind you, the annoying thing about some of my fellow liberals is that they're pretentious dicks. At least you can guarantee which way a conservative will jump on any issue. Liberals tend to be all things to all men.

Even more annoying, it was just this kind of liberal who invented political correctness. In a nutshell, some people noticed that the kind of language used in everyday settings has a tendency to discriminate. As an aside, if you're the kind of person who's happy to use words like 'coon', 'wog', 'faggot', or a favourite from my time living in Texas 'sand-nigger' (i.e. an Arab), then you'll never really know what I mean.

The result was that as far back as the 1960s in places like the USA you have black people calling themselves 'African-Americans', or in 1970s Australia you have Aboriginal people calling themselves 'Koori', because they are comfortable with these labels.

Along with other sorts of liberalisation like freeing women up from the only jobs they were allowed to do, housework and childcare, this social movement really took off among the ranks of many political groups in the mid-Twentieth Century, around the time the baby-boomers were opting out of having to listen to what they were told they had to do by their 'uncool' and 'heavy' parents.

What we might notice at this point is that the baby-boomers who weren't having fun, taking drugs, getting laid and being involved in social liberalisation were, once again, the dicks.

It's been my opinion for a while though that this liberalisation hit its peak and has started to run out of steam. The trouble is, politics being politics, there was always going to be a backlash, and the neo-conservative revolution we're hearing so much about these days is it.

One of the mistakes the boomers made was to try too hard to force liberal changes into their societies, and it's this that the neo-cons exploit.

What's obvious here in Australia is that the man in the street never really understood why they should have to put up with all the liberal demands made of them, like not calling Aboriginal people 'coons' or 'boongs', and not being allowed to slap round the missus or any itinerant fairies.

Now, I know I said the other week that Aussies are pretty tolerant, but that doesn't mean that people can't speak their minds about their dislikes. The key thing is though that legislation like the Racial Discrimination Act means you can call a spade a spade, but you can't not hire someone because they're not white.

This wasn't good enough for some liberals though, and they tried to suppress even the use of negative or discriminatory language or arguments, eventually giving ammunition to our conservative friends.

People in democracies like to think they can say whatever the hell they want, when they want, to who they want. And that's fair enough. So, if they want to call Arabs sand-niggers they expect to be able to. Now, any liberal can't argue against this type of thing because freedom of expression is vital to a healthy democracy. Any attempt to hush this kind of speak is met with cries of 'political correctness' suppressing public opinions.

This is a real problem for political thinkers because you want to let people be people, but such opinions can be seen as dangerous or inflammatory. But all bans do is push prejudice into private opinions were they sit and fester.

The inability of middle New Zealand to talk about 'race relations' till someone like Brash speaks up is a good example of this stuff boiling to the surface.

The answer to this kind of problem is, in my most humble of opinions, to really let these dicks shoot off all their ammunition. The key though is to let people know that just because they think and say something, it doesn't mean anyone has to listen.
One great indicator is the phrase "I know this isn't very politically correct to say this, but...". In plain English what this means is "I am a dick. Please ignore me."

Remember, political correctness is usually about not saying things or behaving in ways that are offensive, stupid, or just plain uncool. Pretentious liberals will often take this too far and try to be so right-on, 'sensitive' or hip they cross that fine line and also become dicks, but that's another issue.

So what's my moral vignette this time? Say whatever the hell you want. Political opinion, expression and conversation is absolutely vital to prevent people from feeling left out and turning to neo-cons for protection from the things they don't understand. But don't expect the subject of your rants to have to listen. Democracy is also about not having to tout a majority line.

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