In the arms of a poet, you know what it means

This week, I have found myself collecting information about how I suspect we really “are that mean, you know, as a country”. The well-attended internet forums seem to be awash with people who are angry. Angry about, well, pretty much anything you can imagine.

Mothers, for example:

“If you can't afford to have kids and look after them, you shouldn't have had them. What about all the women on benefits who don't work”

Yeah, I think they’re called “mothers”. Even the Howard Government loves them, surprisingly enough. I’m not entirely sure how we got to this stage where we decided that the government had no role in supporting people to have children – a practice that has been in place for well over 100 years. At the risk of reducing Grizzlewick to a resource, he is part of the future economy and therefore worth the country’s investment (as was I, and judging that the variety of commenters on these forums are not 100+, YOU).

I’m never sure where people are going with this argument, as the same people who argue this way would have a PINK (or perhaps navy) FIT if you suggested that anyone who was pregnant without planning it should have an abortion.

“Either stay at home and look after your kids or foot the bill for childcare yourself. I'm sick of subsidising other peoples lifestyles”

Uh-huh. Working seventeen hours a day to keep your family off the streets is a lifestyle. Farming, on the other hand is….what exactly? I love farmers, they grow the food that keeps us alive. But in this era of drought, what part of farming is not a lifestyle choice, propped up by government subsidy? And don't tell me farming women couldn't do with some childcare assistance.

“I'm sick of rich women telling me that I need to fund their childcare experiments…some of these broads love throwing their babies in childcare, and asking the taxpayer to foot the bill. I'm no fool.”

Now I won’t argue that childcare isn’t expensive. But you know, you’re right. I’ve never met a working mother – sorry, broad - who doesn’t throw her child from a moving car while talking on her mobile phone and on her way to an Armani fitting before having her nails done.

Or feminists:

“Its about time people stop pandering to these silly feminist groups and idelogues (sic)”

I’ll be happy to take my place at the back of the bus, the minute that all parties stop “pandering” to “idelogues” like One Nation, Exclusive Brethren, lone fathers and the Australian Business Council.

“If all the marginal people would read this and see how Labor's pandering to the minorities will make Australia worse off, we might get the right leader in power”

So women are a minority now? Er, no. Nor are mothers who work for an income a minority. Sorry about that. Notwithstanding that I have a major bone to pick with the definition of “minority” here, I have to ask – given that the mainstream can look after itself pretty well, why not provide government support for groups that are more disadvantaged? Or should they just “get themselves together”?


They’re also crazy-mad about Indigenous people:

“[Indigenous people should] Thank your lucky stars you met polite bumbling Englishmen in 1788 and not Germans looking for Lebensraum in 1939. It could have been a *lot* worse!”

Wow - comparisons to the Holocaust are popular these days, aren’t they? Is this a bit like Tony Abbott’s “any boss is better than no boss at all”? Or maybe the idea is that if I have a terminal illness, I should cheer the f-ck up, because SOME people have died?

“Lotitja O'Donohue (sic). She is the only person I have ever encountered who thinks having an honorary doctorate entitles her to laud it over others as though she has actually completed a Ph.D, when she hasn't. She is just a bitter hateful Old Woman with a low IQ”

How about Shane Warne? Or Sting? Or any one of the other thousands of people with honorary doctorates who are more than adequately rewarded in their own fields. Notwithstanding all of this, I wasn’t aware that academic qualifications were a pre-requisite for having an opinion. In fact in some quarters, it seems it is downright offensive for academics to comment on anything at all.


And migrants:

“The White Australia Policy was never called such by anybody but pinko posers”

Pinko posers like the Australian Immigration Department?

Or Keith Windschuttle?

“If this country doesn't suit, you do not have to live in it you know”

Ah! Of course! The inevitable response to any criticism of society!


I could go on. But then I may have to put my head in a bucket and scream until next Tuesday.

Things that happen when I'm not paying attention dot com

This is what happens when I'm not paying attention!

This!

What to make of it?

Is it possible owners of said site will let me cash out so I can live in lap of luxury for one week?

What it would be like if I talked to popular music # 3

Okay, so I know I should be election-blogging, but instead I've decided to have another conversation with popular music. This week, I'm talking with 'You're the Voice' by John Farnham...


We have….the chance to turn pages over

Unless you’re using finger paint, in which case it’s best to leave it to dry for a few hours.

We can write what we want to write

Defamation laws notwithstanding.

We gotta make ends meet before we get much older

And okay, this might be a vehicle that works for you. Pity the local office cleaners who use these lyrics as the basis for a fair wage case, though.

We're all someone's daughter, we're all someone's son

Although presumably not both at the same time.

How long can we look at each other….down the barrel of a gun?

About five minutes. Squinting like that is completely exhausting.

You're the voice try and understand it

Are you mocking my comprehension abilities? Or just being patronising?

Make a noise and make it clear

What do you mean? Can you give an example?

Whoa oh oh

So when you say “clear”, you mean “guttural noise that has no known meaning”

We're not gonna live in silence

That’s a shame.

We're not gonna live in fear

Except the fear that ‘Sadie the Cleaning Lady’ might be played on television or radio.

Whoa oh oh
Here he goes again….

This time…we know we all can stand together
But not with Liberal front-benchers, right*?

We have the power to be powerful

And also the beauty to be beautiful, the care to be careful, the laws to be lawful and the stress to be stressful.

Believing we can make it better

You know, I hate to sound like the Federal Government, but believing isn’t enough, buddy. You have to get out and actually do something. And by “something”, I don’t mean “insert bagpipe solo here”.


No, I said DON’T insert bagpipe solo here.



Well, if you can’t have a civilised conversation without resorting to aerophones, I’m off.

* In Farnham's defence - there weren't many (Federal) Liberal frontbenchers at this point....

Try to see it my way/do I have to keep on talking til I can't go on?

Peter Costello seems to think that his elevation to “co-Prime Minister” means that all of a sudden the Liberal Government has a team.

His ongoing assessment of the Labor team ended with his characterisation of Julia Gillard’s leadership as “scary”.

What might be so frightening to Costello?

Costello is a lawyer.

So is Julia Gillard.

Costello is Deputy Leader.

So is Julia Gillard.

Costello has held a range of party positions.

So has Julia Gillard.

Costello has a keen interest in industrial relations.

So does Julia Gillard.

They have some pretty fundamental philosophical differences, that is true. But Julia Gillard is not a radical, nor is she unstable. She is intelligent, forthright and clear in her positions.

Given all of this (notwithstanding that it issues forth from the Julia Gillard appreciation society, population Gigglewick) will some one please tell me what is so scary about Julia Gillard? What is more scary about her than, say, Tony Abbott? There may be a view among Liberals that she is an ideologue – but in that way how is she any different to Costello? How exactly does one become an activist without starting with an ideology or belief system?

Even the most nutty of nut-bars is an adherent to an ideology – but if you can’t bring people with you, you’re essentially screwed. And Costello has had eleven years to try and convince people to like him, or at very least to get on board with his political vision, which appears to be “have more babies, here’s a tax cut, the economy’s booming except when there’s an interest rate that’s not my fault”.

So it won’t be any surprise to anyone to hear that I’ll be voting for my local Labor candidate – if only to put one more vote in favour of a Julia Gillard-led Australia. I think that would be a fine place to live.

Let me tell you how it will be

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend about the nature of public debate in this country. The starting point for me was that I often feel like I am at far-left odds with the country. My evidence for this point of view was the 2001 and 2004 Federal elections, where lefty ideals (welcoming refugees, free healthcare for the elderly, support for public schooling, saving the trees etc) were trumped by arguments about economic and national security.

I argued that we were so far beyond the idea of a treaty for Indigenous communities or engagement on work/family balance for single mothers that it would take five years to peg things back to a social justice framework, assuming we could ever get there.

My friend H. looked at me sadly. “I just don’t think we’re that mean,” he said. “You know, as a country”.

If we’re not that mean, then why is it that personal labels, which were once worn with pride, are now a dog-whistle for instant credibility loss? I still call myself a feminist, but I know many women who don’t. One woman I met recently told me that she wouldn’t use the word feminist in her workplace, “for fear of losing all credibility”. Another person I know refuses to engage on issues of importance for women because he believes that men have, for too long, dominated discussions surrounding women’s rights. While this may be the case (thousands of years of patriarchy tend to back him up there), what he fails to recognise is that his lack of contribution to the debate is one less feminist voice – that his silence implies approval of the ill-treatment of women.

This is also the problem with the way the debate is framed here with regards to the use of taxes, and who deserves to benefit from prosperity.

What irked me was that the government’s announcement of major tax cuts allegedly aimed at increasing the workforce participation failed to acknowledge that their current “incentives” package aimed at keeping (some) women at home with their kids, may be having an adverse effect on labour market participation. The baby-bonus policy, whether it meant to or not, drove a wedge between mothers who work outside the home and those who don’t.

The other by-product of this debate, in concert with WorkChoices, was that the emerging cultural practice of shared-parenting regardless of gender roles, was diminished as fundamental rights were either stripped away or perceived to be stripped away from families seeking to balance work and family life (or just get a day off when the kids are sick). This is not 1950. More and more blokes want to spend time with their kids - and a shared parenting model which allows them to do so should be part of our workplace culture if that is what people want.

Lin Hatfield-Dodds, the awesome President of ACOSS, observed last night that, when asked if they would like more money put into services, people invariably say yes. I know that I would forego a tax cut, even though I will personally benefit greatly from the Coalition’s so-called “tax relief” I would rather that money go to some one who needs it far more than me. The working poor – nurses, school support officers, aged care workers, teachers, for example. And if not those people, in whom we entrust our most vulnerable citizens, then how about infrastructure?

For many people working part-time, the cost associated with increasing their workload is only marginally (excuse the pun) about the tax system. For some, working part time is a lifestyle choice which is aimed at reducing their need to use OTHER government services (like the health care system, for example). Working part time can give people all kinds of opportunities to contribute to their community in other ways - volunteering, for example.

For others, working part-time is a choice they make in order to further their education, and they can no longer afford to study full time without bringing in an additional wage. For others still, it is the cost and availability of childcare which limits their workforce participation.

None of these things are solved by a tax cut, but all of them could have been reduced with targeted government spending on key services already provided by government.

I elect a government to spend my money on the services the country most needs, and to maintain a level of service which I myself cannot provide.

I don't elect a government to give it back in a cynical vote-winning exercise.


My name is Gigglewick.

I am a feminist.

My vote is not for sale.

I've been on tenter-hooks/Ending in dirty looks

Now I’m not one for studying the runes, exploring the tea-leaves or any other fortune-telling shenanigans, but I did get to wondering what other interesting things had happened on our forthcoming election date.

Does history have something to tell us, or was Neil Finn in fact correct?


So here’s a run-down of 24 November in history, and thanks to all those hard-working historians, public servants and internet nerds who have made my research that little bit easier.

Disturbingly Relevant Omen

On November 24 in 1987, ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ was at the top of the charts

Readers of RYWHM will see where I’m going with that one….



Other random events from this day throughout history….

1995 – Irish voters legalise divorce – with the referendum passing by a narrow margin

1991 – Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, dies

1977 - France performs nuclear test at Muruora Island

1976 - The Band, appearing at the Winterland in San Francisco, announce that this was to be the group’s last public performance

1964 - The Beatles begin recording sessions for "Sgt Pepper"

1963 – Jack Ruby murders Lee Harvey Oswald in the first ever “televised murder” (ew)

1874 – Barbed wire is patented

1859 – Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species published

1848 – Death of Melbourne (the Lord, not the place)

1642 – Abel Tasman “discovers” Van Diemen’s Land


Has anyone had party plans affected by the election? I for one am pleased to note that my friend's party on Dec. 8 will now be election-free....

* If you are at all inclined to believe in jinxes/curses or "the mozz", then I advise you disregard this statement.

Forty thousand years can make a difference to the state of things

It’s hard to blog when you’re so enraged that your only reasonable action seems to be to grimace in pain and wave your fists about like a disgruntled chimpanzee.

Mr Fix and I spent much of last night screeching about Howard’s about-face on a statement which recognises Indigenous people in the Constitution. The ‘c’ word was used several times (not by me – I was busying myself with the ‘f’ word, the ‘b’ word and the phrase, “lying evil little weasel”).

Howard had this chance already. I seem to recall a Constitutional Convention. And a discussion about the preamble. And an intransigent PM who wrote a ridiculously wordy preamble that would offer Indigenous peoples no greater recognition than “kinship” with the land.

This is a man who has fuelled the fire of racism in this country. Who refused to condemn Pauline Hanson's ill-informed rants about multiculturalism. Who, with his own actions and by his own admission, so alienated Indigenous leaders in this country that the dialogue between government and the Indigenous community completely evaporated.

So, in the absence of the will to write exhaustively about this issue, but with a heart that hurts with the cynicism this latest Howard outburst evokes, I end with a quote from Lowitja O'Donoghue, by way of The Age:

"He wants to keep breaking our hearts…He has had 11 years and he has failed us."

Talking loud/With your four-track friends

Facebook Groups I would join if they existed


“I don’t care what Mark Phillipoussis is up to right now”


“People who secretly want to be on Temptation but are terrified of public humiliation”


“Yes. Yes I am. People who are happy to declare their over-use of this speech pattern”


“Just because I support Labor doesn’t mean I am a right-wing fascist, but you should feel free to continue to think that way if you like because basically it doesn’t matter what I say you will still think I am the devil incarnate”


“People who refuse to eat at restaurants because their exterior decorative elements remind them of human excrement”

No Bye/No Aloha

Mr Fix observed at the weekend that “fashion just goes in one big circle”*. He is certainly correct. Some things I had happily judged fads DO seem to be coming back in a way that is very confronting. I saw some one wearing a scrunchy on the weekend. And there are certainly more people wearing ‘Choose Life’ t-shirts than is probably advisable.

Of course because I will blog about anything, that got me thinking about some things which seem to have gone missing, things like.....

Clag

I was starting a post on things that have gone the way of the dodo, and found to my amazement that, despite the clear superiority of the glue-stick, Clag is still available. I’m yet to run out and buy some, but what a relief to know that if I wanted some only half-effective, wet and lumpy paste, it would be available at a store near me.

What you can’t get any more is coloured glue sticks. I had a purple one which was used often in my Year 7 class to scrawl things like “BROS”** all over my friends’ photocopied sheets as they were affixed to loose leaf paper. Goodness – is there even loose leaf paper anymore? Yes. It’s okay. Loose leaf paper still exists….if only the book orders of our public school system.


Stirrup pants

I’ve been personally advocating for stirrup pants to stay well and truly in the fashion closet. But they’re out there….on eBay, where some enterprising sods are selling them as “vintage”.

Those heartless bastards.

Poor young ‘uns of today have no idea that once they team an enormous t-shirt with the ankle-obscuring stirrup pants they will have all the fashion allure of a balloon animal. Say no to stirrup pants, kids. You’ll be glad you did.


Lifesavers – Musk and Thirst flavours

I can’t find Thirst lifesavers anywhere, although it appears that you can still get Musk. I was amused to read a few years ago*** in Paul Lukas’ ‘Inconspicuous Consumption’ that “musk” as a notion, although one of the food groups in Australia, did not have the same presence in other markets.

I did find out that Nestle have removed all the GE ingredients from their supply chain, in a pro-active way that only marginally reduces my hatred for them. You can get more information about that at True Food, who have helpfully done all the thinking for you when it comes to reducing your GM intake.


Bum-bags, aka “fanny packs”

I don’t care what you call them. They were seven kinds of wrong. Of course, you can still get these on the internet too – high fashion if you’re on some over-60s tour, apparently. My favourite google search response on this particular query included the phrase “bum bags for survival”. Which is either a secret organisation for crazed Appalachian bum-bags, or implies that they have some kind of life-saving property of which I’m unaware.


Caramel Tracks Paddle Pops

I’m still not entirely sure why they stopped making these. My friends MW and Buddy were OBSESSED with them, to the point of buying out a whole milkbar’s supply in outback Victoria when they discovered them six months after Melbourne stores stopped stocking them. Meanwhile they’re still peddling the sick-making “rainbow” flavour. What I need is some kind of lobbying tool. Perhaps GetUp might like to be involved?





* You have NO IDEA how hard it was not to make a joke at his expense just now.

** As regular readers will have figured out, it was not ME scrawling BROS all over things....I was too busy mooning over Christian Slater.

*** whoops – make that TEN years ago.

And Tuesday comes and goes/Just like any late night bus

I don't know about you, but here is what I have been doing this week

Enjoying my new “ice-cold” handcream (which is nicer than cold-hand ice-cream)

Thanks to my friend L, I now have an ace new “icy” handcream by L’Occitane en Provence. It is awesome. I thoroughly recommend it.

Freaking out my grandmother

One of our family members sent a group email announcing some news with possibly negative outcomes for her (the family member, not my grandmother) this week. I was talking to my grandmother on the phone and shared this piece of information. She hadn’t seen the email. It’s possible I started some kind of family vortex of concern/hysteria. Whoops.

Getting irate about the government’s attitude to academics

Academic dudes – it’s not your fault. Bear in mind that history will be the witness, and while you’re still struggling under the collective weight of Joe Hockey, Peter Costello, Tony Abbott and John Howard as they grind your faces into the mud, you have still scored a goal for rigorous research.

Marvelling at my son’s new found interest in trying different foods

For a start, he now eats peanut butter and claims it is “his favourite”. Then on Monday night he ate chorizo. Okay, so he bolted two glasses of water “to get the hot out of my mouth”, but he didn’t spit it out and claimed to like it, even in this aftermath. Weird.

Shopping for holidays

To my utter dismay (or joy, depending on my mood), it is going to cost more to go to the Sapphire Coast during the Christmas break than it would to go to Fiji, Vietnam or Bali for a similar period of time. And potentially, it is going to take less time to travel to any of these destinations than it would take for us to drive to the Sapphire Coast. What is clear is that it is necessary to book something in advance to get our arses into relaxation mode – forward planning ahoy.

Wondering why I can’t get past more than about two paragraphs about any issue

Usually, my problem is editing to reduce the size of my rants. Lately, my problem is adequate words given to any particular issue. It’s not that I don’t have a lot to say, just that I’m struggling to put it down on paper.

Hating, damning eyes, etc.

I have had a series of encounters this week that have really made me question people’s interest in living amongst, you know, other people. In some cases, if there were enough caves in the immediate vicinity, I’d recommend a bit of imposed hermitage time for the lot of them. Sure, bushwalkers would have to deal with some (literal) shit-throwing as they wandered through the national parks. But on the other hand, the racial epithets and general unpleasantness in my immediate vicinity would be greatly reduced.


And now I'm off to make (cups of) tea for my parents, newly returned from the 'Nam. Have a great weekend, dudes.

I saw you caught between/All the people out making a scene

I’m getting pretty bloody sick of this (Federal) Government and their attacks on academia and research.

Now, before I start this rant, please bear in mind that I am not an academic. Nor do I “love them and want to have ten thousand of their babies”*.

The latest research to feel the ire of the government is the Australia@Work report, authored by John Buchanan and Brigid van Wanrooy. It’s part of a five-year study, funded in part by the AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH COUNCIL (ARC) to determine people’s attitudes to working and working conditions. In a study of over 8000 people, they found that lower-paid workers were likely to be around $100 worse off under an AWA than they would be under a collective agreement. This was dismissed by Joe Hockey, Peter Costello and John Howard as being union-sponsored tripe, carried out by former union officials and wannabe ALP hacks.

This is not the first report which has found AWAs wanting. And most reports have also found that some workers will be better off through their negotiation of better packages. But the Government doesn’t want to acknowledge that while SOME workers might be better off, they are at this advantage at the distinct cost to lower paid workers who cannot negotiate their pay from the same starting position. Howard’s claim that the ABS had found WorkChoices to be good for workers was also dismissed by the Bureau themselves yesterday, they have not even done the kind of research he quoted and are not due to do so until May next year.

Before this report came out, the Government was busy dismissing a major report which suggested that women are much worse off under WorkChoices, conducted by leading academics Barbara Pocock and Sara Charlesworth (among others). The women this report followed were not the blustering, hearty workers who could blithely negotiate a stack of extra cash and more holidays. They were, in many cases, lacking the language or education to negotiate a better deal, and in many cases ended up with a significantly worse one, because they desparately needed to keep their jobs.

These are just two of the many reports which have been released since the advent of WorkChoices, all of which have been dismissed by the Government as union-sponsored government bashing. They’ve also been at pains to dismiss their own research, claiming that it was ‘too early to tell” what the effects of WorkChoices would be.

Before WorkChoices, it was ‘A Time to Value’, Pru Goward’s ground-breaking research on a national Paid Maternity Leave scheme. Goward undertook the research as Sex Discrimination Commissioner, a Government funded position. This didn’t stop Tony Abbott, then Workplace Relations Minister, that any such scheme would occur “over his dead body”. Goward and her team spent thousands of hours testing propositions regarding paid maternity leave with the public, business, unions and peak bodies around the country. I went to two separate events facilitated by Goward herself – her approach was balanced and probing, and despite our underlying political differences, I cannot fault her methodology, which was intelligent and thorough. This didn’t stop her being rubbished by the Government.

‘Bringing Them Home’ is another classic example. Howard started undermining the report before it had even been released. Ronald Wilson, author of that report, was not some lefty-biased super-liberal (certainly anyone who remembers WA Inc. would know that this claim was superficial at best). He was just some one trying to get to the truth of what had happened. But rather than heed his report, the Government claimed that the report had got it wrong by heeding too closely the views of those “wronged”, and not paying enough attention to the possibility that children were better off outside their family homes.

And don’t even get me started on the bevy of highly credible researchers who have offered the Government their findings on global warming (or as it is now popularly known, climate change).

Now it’s not that I don’t respect the Government’s right to take an alternative opinion. That is of course their choice. It’s the adversarial system of politics. But what I object to (in the most strenuous way possible) is the immediate dismissal of a report without due attention to its contents.

Not one of the reports listed above asked people about their voting intention. Not one of them was conducted by a market research company in the interests of determining which way the political wind was blowing. Perhaps, given the panicked reaction of Government to the string of bad opinion polls, that was their flaw.

One of the underlying reasons for my fury is that the same people who argue strenuously that the report findings are the stuff of paranoid fantasy, also argue that research in of itself is next to useless. Research isn’t useless – it’s essential. Policy should be based on more than a feel-good (or spend-good) notion, it should be based on strong and ethical research frameworks which inform the development of policy and its implementation.

Sometimes that research is going to find governments (of all stripes) lacking. But that’s reality. Governments don’t always get it right, and sometimes it’s important to take one on the chin and admit that mistakes have been made.

It's really not that hard to say sorry.





* Not even Pru Goward’s, and SHE wants me to have paid maternity leave.