Club Politique by Che Tibby

Back in Wellington it was the Southerlies that were the ones to watch out for. Here? Northerlies. 39 degrees yesterday, and nowhere to hide. Yay. Luckily the cool change came through around midnight and today is a pleasant 29. Good news.

In the bad news stakes though is the same weather patterns causing these fires in South Australia. Before Christmas I remember reading some Sydney reporter for the NZ Herald waxing lyrical about how great all the rain in NSW had been, you know, verdant lawn and all. My first thought? Munter. After a big rainy season it takes about 5 minutes for a 44 degree day to turn that stuff to the perfect tinder. Let’s hope for no more loss of life.

Meanwhile, in both the good and bad news stakes is how much I depend on the web for good information. It’s bad news because I’m still out in the boonies, net-less (but enjoying the space and privacy). It’s good news because isn’t the web the best source ever? I miss it. I remember back in the day, having to do stuff like buy newspapers, or consult things like books or magazines to find out great stuff, but no more!

One of my favourite stories is of a mate back in ’92 who told me he had a “modem”. I said, “What, like in that film wargames? Let’s crank it up!” We spent the next 20 minutes perusing the text-only bulletin boards at the Victoria University server, looking for the results from the local chess club. Hi-tech and awe-inspiring stuff let me tell you. I was gob-smacked by it.

I mention this because without the interweb (and still living in Clayton) I can only talk about two things. The crazy neighbours, or the work I’m doing on the thesis. Lucky you.

Oh, I could also talk about the news I’m seeing on TV, but all I’ve noticed recently is Howard making the mistake of referring to “his decisions, and those of his government” in a particular kind of way. But I don’t want to be the one to warn him about hubris. My spidey-sense tells me he’s in for trouble if this gets too grandiose.

Greatest Aussie PM ever? Only if you consider being ruthless enough to exploit the Tampa in 2001, and to ‘progressively’ adopt all of Hanson’s policies since ’96, mumble mumble....

Anyhow. My thesis. At the moment I’m reworking the introduction, and it’s requiring me to take a ‘big-picture’ look at what I’ve written. It’s interesting, like all projects I do I’d now like to rewrite a substantial portion of it, but my commonsense tells me that the threat to my pride at not producing the ‘best thesis ever’ needs to take a back-seat for awhile.

But hey, I’ve been looking at the subject of nations and nationalism for near on fifteen years and I still don’t know everything. So maybe I just need to be a little more humble and just produce the best I can in the time I have. Or, to be more precise, in the time I’ve had. Six years on one project is more than long enough.

It seems like only yesterday that I was consulting with people at and around Auckland University about the prospect of taking up a Ph.D. I pretty quickly noticed that people were using words like ‘ordeal’, ‘loneliness’, and ‘arduous’. I should have listened.

The thing is, pretty quickly you become one of the few experts in your chosen field, if not only because there’s so few people who want to be such a specialist. Consequently, you end up being unable to talk about the details of what it is you know with normal people, and it means you can enjoy the bestest and mostest fun social life ever, but there’s always this weird and intangible ‘distance’ between what you know and your ability to explain it.

This must be what being Batman was like. But hey, it’s better than waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘I will be a dishpig forever’.

To be honest, I wouldn’t give up the last six years of character-building for anything in the world. I undertook this task because I knew it would be the most difficult thing I’d ever undertake. I knew that it was the pinnacle of my chosen field. Sure, I’ll never get the same kind of recognition as wearing that silver fern, but I know that I’ve accomplished something that few others have.

Except for the 10,000 Ph.D.’s that graduate very year in India. But most of them are in computer science or telecommunications, so sweet as.

FYI, I’ve entitled the thesis ‘The National Cell’, because it captures nicely the main motivation behind the project, which is to justify diversity in contemporary nation-states. The aim is to illustrate how in countries like New Zealand and Australia the people form a kind of ‘organic whole’ in terms of their social and political interaction.

The analogy I like to use is of an apartment complex, with each residence forming a kind of ‘cell’ that contributes to the overall dynamic of the entire complex itself. In one cell you have the smell of curry, they’re English, in another you have the sounds of a didgeridoo, they’re Japanese tourists, in another you have really loud talking, they’re Canadians trying to explain why they’re not American.

My interest is the interplay between each of these individual cells. In a real apartment block people can come and go, but if your apartments are the individual minorities in a nation-state then each type of person is pretty much stuck with one another. Sure, you can try and isolate yourself from the types of people you don’t like, but most normal people will try to find a way to get on.

In my experience the main cause of trouble in these types of circumstances is usually misunderstanding. So you can always try to make the complex more harmonious by ensuring that every apartment is stocked with the same kind of person, but this is a fallacy. If one thing is true in the real world it is that people always form cliques, and sometimes on the flimsiest of excuses. This means that harmony is always under threat from argument.

My opinion, based on the opining of a lot of other people who like reading, is that you don’t have to try to entirely stop conflict. Instead, you make sure that the structure and systems of the apartment block minimise the opportunity for conflict, and encourage communication to prevent misunderstanding. In a practical sense, you make sure that the feng shui of the building is good, you know, no one interrupting other peoples privacy or what they consider 'their business'. And you make sure the English have good extractor fans, the Japanese have good sound proofing, and you quietly reassure the Canuks that no one thinks they’re American, because Americans don’t say ‘aboot’.

Conflict in the form of arguments will still occur, after all it is natural. Some people just like to argue. But instead of freaking out about the possibility of conflict, you expect it, and make sure you can prevent it from ever becoming violent, a far scarier proposition.

In essence this idea pivots on the word engagement. You want to make sure that it’s no one group that calls all the shots in the apartment block. Sure, a group committee might decide to ban curry, but it has to be a collective decision that allows for the fact that the English seem to depend on this stuff, and might not be able to do without it (or might be willing to put up a fight to keep it), and make sure the English are included in the decision.

Translating this idea into academic jargon is of course 'fun' and challenging. I'll keep you posted on the progress, and in the meantime enjoy the rest of what holidays you may have.

Call me gullible, but I watched The Day after Tomorrow a couple of nights ago, and now I'm way too edgy about the weather. Thing is, as soon we start to get regular rain I get all suspicious and excited, as if that's at all unusual.

Sure, sure, sure, I know that I shouldn't link anything as vague as a piece of eye-candy with the real thing. But, after some of the dry-spells I've experienced over here I start to be on the constant lookout for rain, if not only to break the monotony. Is it my fault that every time we get a bit I think, this is 'the big one'?

I guess my only real excuse for resorting to a film like that one was desperation and boredom. Looked great, sure, but it had a plot so thin I wouldn't let my daughter out of the house in it, and dialogue so boring I thought seriously about just switching off the sound altogether and listening to a CD instead. My only bad, but stock standard excuse, has to be that I'm only house-sitting for mates and it's their fault.

For those of you who know Melbourne, I'm taking care of a place (with no internet) out in the country. I mean this place is too far from the local telephone exchange to get broadband!! The section is HUGE though, the backyard alone being bigger than my entire flat back in Carlton, and the nearest shops are an over-priced petrol station, a dodgy pizza place and an under-stocked dairy. As I write I’m pausing to look out the kitchen across a vista of daisies and dandelions to the back fence, way in the distance past the Mandarin tree.

Where am I? Clayton.

OK, so I can't lie well. Clayton is actually barely outside Zone One, but it's still a half hours drive from where I usually live, which is 10 minutes north of downtown. And for those of you unfamiliar with PT here, the train/tram/bus system uses 'zones'. You can PT anywhere in Zone One for up to two hours on the one ticket, and all for about $A3. Outside of this is Zone Two (unsurprisingly), and is pretty much the 'Burbs. The most obvious difference is that they can’t get trams. And outside of that, somewhere, is Zone Three.

I think. Or at least I heard a rumour. One day I'll have to go see if it's 'real'. I'm actually suspicious that this whole Zone Three thing is a story made up to scare children. You know, "be good or we'll go live in Frankston".

And, to be even more honest, Monash University is out here, and I spent my first year in Melbourne living on campus. But only because I had to! Pesky damn non-negotiable leases and desperation for a place to live. Pretty much as soon as I could make up any excuse I could I bailed.

The one thing about being out here that's blog-worthy though is how culturally different it is to Carlton. My neighbourhood is so damn white. Plenty of Italians and Greeks sure (my barber likes to tell every Kiwi he meets about 'us' saving them on Crete), but still, white. I went out in the car to find food yesterday and it really struck me how multicultural the local shopping strip is (of course, in Carlton I can walk to the shops). There's the ubiquitous Italians and Greeks, but also Vietnamese, 'Chinese', all kinds of 'Indian', Africans, Polynesians, Crackers, a Subway.

Anyhow, I digress. The opportunity to rifle through a friends private things without actually burglarising them aside, this house-sitting lark isn't too bad, as I'm sure you're all aware. Thing is, I've been thinking about making the move to living by myself for a fair old while now. What's kept me back is mostly the cost, but equally important is that I just like being around people. So this staying here in Clayton alone thing is a bit of a litmus test to see if I can cope.

Thus far no worries, just being away from the NOISE housemates make is fantastic. No hushed humping. No being accused of responsibility for someone else's mess. No wondering, where in the hell did my [insert object here] go, and who the hell took it? No bad cooking smells. No having to watch 'Everybody loves Raymond'. No being hassled about lying in a bean-bag for 14 hours playing Xbox and eating tim-tams and KFC and sinking bears while only wearing boxers (it was a Sunday).

I mean, this morning I got to walk from the shower to look in the fridge, naked. There wasn't even any food! I just wanted to strut! And with only the baby Jesus to tutt-tutt disapprovingly! Bliss.

Oh, and 'ladies', you're going to want to picture some seriously pasty-white skinny-male action there.

There's every chance that I'm just rehashing some good stories that everyone else has already written, if not only He died with a falafel in his hand, but here's a few housemate stereotypes I won't miss should the fortress of solitude ever eventuate.

The Pilferer. The one you find chowing down on your or flat food at 3am, night on the piss or not. They inevitability "promise" to replace it, usually with supermarket-generic shyte you wouldn't even use to wipe your dairy air.

The Stinkers. The ones who just plain stink. They can't seem to do anything about it. They just stink. Their room is often worse, and the stink seeps into the hallway and towards your room like a rolling miasma of festering stench. It's especially great when they have the room nearest the front door, so it steps up to welcome you home, every, single, day.

Mr. Lover Lover. Need I say more. The ones who try to fill that hole in their empty lives with bonking. They inevitably have hordes of boy/girlfriends over, all of whom you get to share the couch with at some stage before they make weak excuses to never be seen again. The best, in my experience, was a housemate who deliberately brought a guy home at 7pm, so I'd know (or approve of?) who she would later hump, loudly, at midnight. I was in a six-month dry-spell. Thanks for the picture.

The Accountant. They always have money for booze, drugs, baccy, but can't get it together to pay the bills any earlier than a month late. They also constantly borrow "one or two bucks for the tram", that adds up to hundreds by Christmas time.

The Parental Unit. Most often a single person wishing they weren’t, the Unit is the one who disapproves of nearly everything. Nothing is ever clean enough. There’s too much loud music, booze and bonking, and not enough flat outings. There’s too much time spent on the PC/xbox. Are you wearing a hat when you go out in the sun? We’ve all lived with these. Usually the flat outing is when things catch up with the male version of this type.

The Pilferer Mk.II. You can NEVER leave more than your 'very last beer' in the fridge. And they'll still try to take that one ("I'll buy you two beers tomorrow!").

The Pedestrian. They'll constantly offer you $5 to drive them to: their dealer, the bottle shop, their partner, work, the airport. And all as if $5 will compensate for the hassle of being regarded as a personal chauffer. And you can never get that perfect shape you had in the bean bag back again once you get home.

I could go on, but this is an old gag and I'm sure you've heard it all before. We'll see if I can afford the luxury when 'real' work rolls around in February, when the thesis WILL finally be submitted.

And, as a final note, it's great to see so many people digging deep to help the Tsunami countries. But, watch who you're donating money to. Dodgy internet scams aside, I've heard that allegedly some of the major aid organisations only let as little as three percent of the donated cash get to the ground. The rest apparently disappearing in 'costs'. So, if you're looking to save the children with anything like a significant proportion of your own or someone else's money, you might want to do a little background checking.

From multicultural Clayton, Talofa.

Look, to be honest, there's little reason for me to do a year 2004 round-up. It was shit. I spent the better part of it either locked in my 2m by 2.5m office freezing my end off or up to my elbows in muck trying to make ends meet. Was summarily dumped by a girlfriend returning from overseas, spent months eking out a living on the dole, and watched that rat-bastard Howard romp back into power.

And that's not to mention unpleasantness happening to other people, like thousands of innocents dying in big explosions, gunfights or natural disasters.

Shit. Ess, Aych, Eye, Tee. Shit.

Instead, we're going to wander back in our collective minds eye to happier times. Instead, we'll cast our collective thoughts back to a more blissful existence before all this unhappiness cast its shadow. Instead, we'll think about a better vintage, 2001.

Unlike many of you nutters who freaked out about the Millennium and the end of the world in Y2K, I was one of the freaks who nutted out the problem of 2001 being the real Millennium.

It all started with a bang of course, way out in Zone Three somewhere watching what we thought were the fireworks in Melbourne Central going off. You can imagine our embarrassment when we realised it was some ethnic guy over the road letting off rockets from his front yard (illegally I might add, in my best 'disapproving Aunty' tones). Ah well, pretty lights and alcohol.

The year progressed fairly well after that, I had moved out of a flat in Camberwell to get away from this bunch of countrified drunks I had been living with. By way of example, one of them got so blotto in the local that they denied her even water, and just asked her to leave. She was so offended she called ‘000’ to complain, and ended up with a ‘slap on the wrist’ fine for prank calling. Couldn't happen to a nicer person.

Anyhow, from that beer-soaked environment I ended up flatting with PhotoGuy and his psychotic Scots Terrier 'Wally'. Vicious little bugger that one. It had a thing about its ears, if you touched them, it bit you. Fair enough I would say, until it bit a partially blind girl who came around to see the flat. How that nasty little shit made it through the successive drawing of so much innocent blood, I'll never know.

It even bit my fingers up to the knuckles one time. I was feeding it a left-over bone and he kind of sidled up to it, and then in a flash of white pointy teeth moved like lightning. I'm not a violent type of bloke, but I over-reacted and sucker-punched the fucker right between the eyes for that one. Never bit me again after that. Even let me touch his ears.

While living with PhotoGuy (he was a photographer for Holden, only took photos of cars), Wally, and successive canine-frightened housemates, I was offered the opportunity to fly to Los Angeles for a mere $A1k. Having not been back to the States since 1990 I jumped at the chance and flew out in mid-March.

That trip I must have mentioned before. It turns out that it was cheaper to drive to Texas that fly, so I hired the smallest car I could from Avis and took off. Turns out that the guy behind the counter thought I was an “OK, Ozz-tralian dude”, and for the same price gave me a 2.0l sports cars that absolutely flew, instead of the 1.4l hatch I thought I’d hired.

Although it only had 3000km on the clock when I got it, it had 14000 when I returned to LA. You should have seen look on the Avis guys face. Heh heh.

Despite all this good fortune, when I got back to Melbourne the current girlfriend and I broke up. My fault. And it goes to show, karma can take awhile catch up with you, ay?

The remainder of the winter was spent trying to avoid having that damn dog bite me, or any of the friends I had over, celebrating my thirtieth birthday, and getting stuck into several more difficult chapters of the Ph.D. before spending December back in New Zealand.

Of this time, the one thing I really remember is the efforts I was making to compile primary material for the thesis. While the first two years in Melbourne were spent getting up to speed on stuff I neglected to learn in New Zealand, 2001 really was the year I started to understand exactly how 'race-relations' works in Australia.

I was living in Richmond, which you may remember from another post, and was often surrounded by Vietnamese people. Meanwhile, I was gathering untold amounts of 'stuff' about Aboriginal people and the way in which the British systematically dispossessed them from their lands in Victoria. Even though I wasn't to compile this information into a coherent chapter until late 2002, the stuff I was finding was gut-wrenching.

It was around this time I was beginning to understand why some people just block this kind of stuff out of their minds. The Reconciliation Marches of 2000 were long gone, Howard had snuffed out any chance of an apology to the Stolen Generations in favour of 'practical reconciliation', and the Right were happy to continue to cotton-wool wrap themselves away from all this unpleasantness.

Maybe, I thought, maybe it's just too much for some people to deal with. While many of the left seem to wallow in their collective guilt and immerse themselves in means to meddle in the lives of Aboriginal people, many others seem happier to simply block it out.

As I say, a big year.

It's these kind of revelations, the ones that really force you to look at yourself and your world-view, your umwelt, that must be the reason people do humanities degrees. I mean, 2001 fundamentally changed the way I look at people and the world in general.

Sure, you can write it off as 'growing older', or 'becoming cynical', but I used that trip to the US as a means to better see the people themselves, and through them, myself. I used the time wandering around Richmond as a means to really understand how a multicultural society can work as a series of intimately related sub-cultures, and located myself in that society. And I sat in shock as the details of what a benign, but ultimately arrogant power, can do to a powerless people unfolded before me.

And then “the night we all love to talk about” came.

I was asleep and got up to bitch about the housemates making too much noise. My youngest brother was flatting with us at the time, and he and the others there at the time were talking loudly. I got out of bed, saw what was going on and immediately called a number of friends to make them turn on the TV. Not long afterwards that second plane hit. We sat up all night in empathy to watch the horror, while the housemate Maria cried silent tears of sorrow.

I’m more than certain anything that can be said about 11 September has already been written, but as a nod to all those Doomsayers who claimed the Millennium to be the year everything will change, you were right. Everything is the same, yet nothing is the same. And now we live in an age of vengeance.

It’s amazing isn’t it, how the world can turn on a pin? How everything you know can turn 180 degrees like that without you ever having seen the consequences of where fate is taking all of us? How anyone can find these welters of hate to use if given the right trigger?

We all know that the Millennium didn’t bring the Apocalypse, that the Sun will rise again this New Years Day. But on reflection, that year brought untold changes big and small that, to this day, personally affect me very deeply. On top of these are the big-picture changes that continue to force me consider myself a better person because of them, and that force me to constantly consider the way I understand all of you, because I seek to understand at all.

So, my advice is to be nice to your neighbours, pesky bastards that they are. Be charitable to strangers, stinky, loud or pushy assholes and all, and don’t be afraid to embrace change if it makes things better for everyone.

From here in sentimental cheeseville, it’s goodnight kiwi till next year.

Almighty I'm exhausted. Knackered. Fifteen days straight working as a dishpig is nothing but hard work. Luckily a fellow dishy who needs cash demanded to work Tuesday, so I have the night off. There's an outside chance I'm going to sit out by the mint garden and sink my new favourite beer, Boags Draught.

With a couple of mates over to help me out it should be a festival of the Darkness album (for old times sake, it was RockGods' album of last summer), and a great new find, Gossip (this summer's album, courtesy of the new housemates, the Canuks).

So, what's kept me going without all this fun I hear you ask? It's a little dish called the Mafiosa. Originally we invented it when the SARS epidemic was on, and labelled it the Anti-SARS. Natural evolution turned this into the Mafiosa, probably because it has 'an issue' with influenza, and you can see the sense of the original title if you check out the ingredients. As this dish is single-handedly responsible for keeping serious illness from the door for two winters, I thought I'd share it with you all.

In December. But there's no explaining some things. Maybe the vego’s can use it for Christmas dinner.

To begin, chop a heap of garlic, and I mean a heap. We're talking as much as you and your nearest and dearest can handle. Fry this very lightly with a little butter and olive oil. The butter helps to stop the garlic burning.

Next is the tricky bit, add pitted or whole olives to season. Don't add extra salt, use the olives themselves as a guide. Then add, chopped whole red chillis for pepper, shredded parsely to colour (too much will make the dish 'grassy'), and enough olive oil to sauce the pasta.

Finally, add well-cooked, but not over-cooked drained, fresh pasta. You can use dried pasta, but try not too. The focus of this dish is the pasta, the rest is just to flesh it out.

I cooked this dish for some mates in New Zealand, and added good feta and some artichoke hearts to make it more meaty, but it's not necessary.

Besides the Mafiosa, a good but ballsy dish, I've partaken in some good and some sublime food in kitchens over the years. There's something about a dishpig who puts his back into it and sweats like a bastard that inspires begrudging respect in even the most cold of chefs. That, and keeping them constantly supplied with clean plates and an endless supply of pans, will result in a font of chicken, rabbit pies, braised pork ribs and balsamic reduction, burnt caramel panacotta, home-made ice-cream, chargrilled tuna steaks, and calamari to varying degrees.

I tried an eight-week aged beef steak the other day. If you buy steak from the supermarket, stop. Get a butcher to age it for you on the bone, and pay the extra damn money.

The next thing to say is for you all to spare a thought for these people this Christmas. If you've never read Kitchen Confidential, do. It's not a bad fictionalisation of the grumpy, surly, alcoholic, drug-fucked, mad, and sometimes outright insane characters you'll encounter in any kitchen anywhere in the world.

And why? These places are hot. It was thirty-eight degrees outside the other day, and must have been at least fifty in the kitchen, hotter over the grill. Spare a tender thought for the dishpig, it's that hot and they're perched next a machine producing steam at eighty degrees, and work without breaks for four and five hour stretches, longer during the dinner rush (actually, also watch Dinner Rush).

Construction workers? Truckies? Fishermen?

Pussies.

The chefs I'm working with routinely work sixteen hour days for a pittance. I earn more than most of them, and the longest I've worked in the past two weeks is a ten hour stretch. No wonder they go troppo.

So while you're out there nibbling on croutons and bitching because your steak isn't well-done enough (munters), these guys and gals are sweating like hogs and swearing like nothing you have ever heard before. What was the moment I was first 'accepted' by my current kitchen? When I abused the entire kitchen, calling them a "fucking bunch of cunts" for pushing me too far one day.

And then, I made up little sea shanty using those exact words, dance and all. They loved it.

OK, so maybe don't spare a thought for your service workers, they are assholes after all. And to be honest, they hate punters and the public, which explains why they're not waiters or airline hosts.

Pesky social deviants.

I'd better end this on positive note that also reinforces my comments. I'm sure you all associate chefs with the wonderful Jamie Oliver, that prissy, speech impaired choir boy. After all, he is pretty and famous, great range of cook books etc.

One of the things my current boss wants to do is publish a cookbook, but has decided to steal the title from a mates catering company. Apparently, this guy exclusively catered to bands and their road-crews, which isn't the glamorous job it sounds, as you can tell by the title.

And the name of this cookbook that will speak what he really thinks to the world, and sell a million copies in hard-back?

"Shit food, for cunts"

I think the most shocking thing I've discovered since getting back here is that there really are still people like Keith Windshuttle around. Much New Zealand's Elizabeth Rata, this guy seems to be a disaffected academic who's decided to stick it to the man rather than admit they have a professional leg to stand on.

A nice irony in this accusation is that Henderson, who's accusing Windshuttle of being a "Marxist turned conservative waging a personal war on the very left-wing interpretation of Australian history that he once embraced and proclaimed", is something of a Conservative and is effectively turning his back on what he might otherwise have endorsed.

This little difference aside, that Windshuttle can even try to claim that the White Australia Policy didn't exist, or is justifiable, is totally beyond me, and smacks of the worst kind of historical revisionism, of which Henderson is guilty (if I remember correctly).

Windshuttle is part of a larger 'culture war' that's been going on and off over here for a number of years now. In brief, the culture war is all about what to do with all that unsightly past Australians seem to not know what to do with. But, sweeping it under the carpet is only likely to make walking through Australian history like a stroll in a bouncy castle.

What Windshuttle subscribes to is a version of Australian history I've heard called 'three cheers for Australia', or the 'white blindfold' approach. He first came to prominence a couple of years back with a book called The Fabrication of Australian History, where he argued that Tasmanian Aboriginals weren't actually killed by settlers, but died of disease and inter-tribal warfare.

I haven't actually viewed the pages of Windshuttle's book, I don’t want to dedicate my scant time to being pissed of by it, but it irks me to think that someone is even writing this kind of stuff, but I am pleased it raised enough hackles amongst historians for an entire conference and published reply.

Essentially, his argument is fairly sound and logical. There's simply not enough evidence to suggest that Tasmanian settlers systematically massacred Aboriginal people. He concludes therefore that it never happened, and is instead a myth perpetuated by 'the Left' to maintain their university tenure. Big call, and an explicit attempt at under-carpet-sweeping.

Naturally, this line of reasoning was embraced by 'the Right' as part of their campaign against what in the late 1980s another guy called Geoffrey Blainey called the 'Black Armband' version of Australian history. Blainey was on form during this time in joining with John Howard in his condemnation of multiculturalism and the need to reappraise letting too many Asians into Australia.

This stoush continues to centre on how the individual wants to understand Australian history, either as an ongoing drive to create a prosperous and modern nation, or as a litany of exploitation and imperial domination. Naturally enough, there's all kinds of positions between these two poles, but what both boil down to is the kind of nation-state citizens of Australia want to imagine themselves belonging to.

Certainly, there is a little liberal white guilt in the Black Armband version, and a little cultural Darwinism in the White Blindfold, but both indicate that no-one is really happy with the nation's past.

Accentuating this problem is the ongoing reality of Aboriginal people's marginalisation in Australia. While the comfortable white people argue about what they have and haven't got to be sorry about, Aboriginal people are dying in droves as young as their fifties, and the remote communities are an absolute shambles.

It's interesting therefore that the only real news over the past few weeks has been the Hikoi conducted by an ex-Aussie Rules player named Michael Long, and the acceptance of a new paradigm in Aboriginal policy by several Aboriginal leaders. Interesting because the old 'rights' based arguments of the 1970s and 80s seem to have gone out the window in favour of a new approach.

Now, while any approach that stops Aboriginal kids from suffering pre-WW2 diseases like glue ear is OK with me, but what the new system seems to like is a nicely maternal system where Aboriginal communities are essentially placed on 'good behaviour bonds' in return for Federal money. Some commentators are calling this a paternal system, but this is a misnomer in my estimation. Exactly the same idea was tried in the Mission stations here in Victoria in the early 1920s with the imposition of 'matrons' to teach 'manners' to the inmates.

The new paradigm in this case turns on getting some traction on disparity statistics in remote and rural Aboriginal communities by using a system called 'mutual obligation', which argues in layman's terms that 'you can't get something for nothing'. A prominent Aboriginal social critic called Noel Pearson has been arguing this idea for something like ten years, and it's interesting to see that veteran Aboriginal rights activists like the Dodson's changing their tack to affirm Pearson's ideas.

What seems to have occurred is that Aboriginal activists have realised that Howard isn't going away, and a grim determination to work with Him has gelled. The real test though will be whether Howard's 'spritely' version of Australia and the way he wants it to be will actually deliver anything for Aboriginal people.

As it is the new accord is being called a 'new deal' for Aboriginal people, and involves Howard appointing a fourteen member 'council' that is used as a consultative body much like the old New Zealand Maori Council. The threat is of course that this National Indigenous Council will be used as a means to rubber stamp ideas like the 'washing for petrol' scheme that is, as mentioned, essentially a good behaviour bond.

What Pearson really talks about is the need to find means to make Aboriginal people in the remote communities feel that the dole money isn't 'free', but that they've got to give something back to their community in return. Howard on the other hand, is using mutual obligation as a way to appear to give a toss about Aboriginal communities, even though he withdrew untold funding from the former peak Aboriginal representative body, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), and used the behaviour of its Chairman Geoff Clark as a justification for finally abolishing it.

The trick in this instance is the shifting of the onus onto Aboriginal people. By indicating that the need to 'get on with it' is the responsibility of the Aboriginal people themselves, failure to improve outcomes for the minority can be blamed on them. And, yes, this is a very cynical approach, as Chris Pearson over at the Australian points out. But, my gripe with this approach is that it smacks of an 'all care, but no responsibility' approach by White Australians not willing to deal with their own role in putting Aboriginal people in this position in the first place.

And, even worse, I was appalled at the entire panel of Insiders, a current affairs talk show I watch on ABC on Sundays, Conservative and Liberal, agreeing that the privatisation and individualisation of Aboriginal communally held lands was a necessity. Something also argued by Warren Mundine, national Vice-President of the ALP and member of the National Indigenous Council. These people need to read about the Maori Land Courts of the 1800s.

Sure, individual title itself won't be a problem, but in a political atmosphere that specifically wants to see Aboriginal people integrate into the Australian nation as 'dark-skinned' Australians, the threat to what remains of the once-rich tapestry of Aboriginal culture and community is profound.

Finally and on a more positive note, it's interesting that a post of four words gets more mail than anything I've ever written. Maybe we all watch too much TV.