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Australia Day

January 26, 2015 / Catherine / 9 Comments

The National Australia Day Council (we have a council for this?) apparently think that we ought to stop everything at midday today and sing the Australian National Anthem.

It’s hard to know where to start, frankly. The satire practically writes itself.

I mean, I love the idea of asking the nation to pause for a minute of silence and then to sing a song that includes the line ‘for those who’ve come across the seas we’ve boundless plains to share’. We should absolutely do that. Actually, I’ve been to quite a few rallies and the like for asylum seekers that have done just that. I’m a little surprised to see Tony Abbott getting in on the idea, but hey, how can this be a bad thing..?

Thinking about Charlie Hebdo

January 12, 2015 / Catherine / 10 Comments

I’ve been trying for several days to write about what has been happening in Paris. To me, these attacks feel very close to home – much closer than the siege in Sydney last December (which, as far as I can tell, sprang from an entirely different, and rather more common, set of motivations). While I haven’t been to Sydney for years, I was in Paris earlier this year, and spent several days exploring the Marais area, which is close to the Charlie Hebdo offices. A very dear friend of mine was in the Marais at my behest the day before it happened. And then there was the hostage situation on Friday, which occurred just a few hundred metres away from where I stayed on my last visit. Paris is a city where I have always felt at home when I’ve visited, but it has also always felt like a wonderful dream to me.

So reading about the killings, about reactions to the killings; reading all the anger and fear and distress and horror that comes out of it hurts not just because I feel for the people living in Paris right now, but also because it feels like a loss of innocence. It feels personal. I know I have no real right to these feelings, but that’s how it is for me.

This post is not going to be an organised post. While I feel compelled to write, I don’t have any conclusions, or any words of wisdom. Just a lot of confusion and a lot of sadness. And a lot of things I just don’t understand.

Frankly, I find the whole situation unfathomable. While I understand on an intellectual level what has happened, a part of me simply cannot grasp how it is possible for anyone to think that killing people for writing a cartoon is the right thing to do. Interestingly, when Cherif Kouachi was interviewed, he consistently refused to acknowledge having killed anyone – he had ‘avenged the prophet’, but he avoided the word ‘kill’, except to repeat that he would never kill a woman or a civilian. Evidently, despite what he had done, Kouachi had difficulty with the idea of killing outside of a war context – and so journalists and cartoonists are re-classified as non-civilians in order to justify his actions. This makes me angry, but also incredibly sad. The whole train of thinking – the whole denial of having killed anyone, even at the same time as admitting to have done so – says to me that he wasn’t conscienceless – he just let his conscience be overruled by his religious beliefs.

And in doing so, he has destroyed the lives of the journalists and police he killed, he has destroyed his own life, and he has almost certainly made life harder for those who share his religion, even while they abhor his extremism.

(There is, clearly, a distinction between ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islamist’. I know Muslims make this distinction. Do Islamists?)

I don’t understand how he could do that. I don’t understand how he could possibly think his God wanted him to do that.

One article I read suggested that in fact destroying Charlie Hebdo was never the goal of the attack. The goal, it is posited, was rather to polarise Europe, and divide Muslims from non-Muslims, in the hope of creating more supporters of Al Qaeda. The logic is that one organises a big, public act of violence, and the inevitable backlash against the Muslim community will drive Muslims into the arms of extremism.

I find this possibility horribly plausible, and even more repellant than the attack being simply an end in itself, because it requires a mind that is willing not only to kill ‘enemy’ civilians, but also to injure its own in order to further its agenda. And yes, there have been ‘reprisal’ attacks on Muslims. Of course there have been. People feel attacked, and so they attack back, and it’s incredibly hard to break the cycle, because you need everyone choosing to be thoughtful in order to fight this strategy – and only one person willing to be a violent idiot to promote it.

(Incidentally, I see that the head of Hezbollah is being quoted as saying that islamist violence is harming Islam far worse than the cartoons ever could. I’m torn between thinking “Good on him” and thinking, hang on, since when is Hezbollah non-violent…?)

I’m trying to be hopeful that this won’t work.

It was heartening to see Mourad Hamyd’s schoolmates proclaim his innocence, and that they, at least, saw their classmate as a person first of all, and not as a stereotype. (Hamyd, who turned himself in after he saw his name in the media, was released without charge on Friday)

I was glad to see the article about Lassana Bathily, a Muslim shop assistant at the Jewish grocery store attacked on Friday, who hid and protected fifteen people during the siege, and then escaped to provide the police with information about what was going on inside.

Finally, I love the #jesuisahmed movement, celebrating Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman who was shot defending Charlie Hebdo’s offices, is also a beautiful one. I was ambivalent about the #jesuischarlie movement, simply because while I feel deep sympathy and solidarity for those killed or hurt and their families, I really do find a lot of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons pretty objectionable. (Speaking of things I don’t understand, why do people draw cartoons that have no purpose but to offend? I honestly don’t get the appeal.) But Merabet embodied Voltaire’s words – he may not have agreed with what Charlie Hebdo had to say about his religion, but he defended to the death their right to say it. A true martyr for free speech, if that’s what you are looking for.

This is how we fight extremism. We see the people around us as our brothers and sisters, and we help them, defend them, and care for them, regardless of their religion or colour. Just as these students did, and just as these two men – and many other men and women like them – did.And we refuse to grant prejudice a toehold.

And right now, we grieve for the dead, and we grieve for Paris.

A few more articles about Charlie Hebdo that I think are worth reading…

The Charlie Hebdo Massacre and how we think about religion

Dismantling Prejudice and Misconceptions

Understanding is the least we owe the dead

Cartoonists don’t live by the sword, we live by the pen

Drawing the Prophet: Islam’s hidden history of Muhammad images

And another massacre that has gone under the radar, because it happened in Nigeria

Islamic extremist attack in Nigeria named the deadliest massacre in history

2014 in Review, and a New Year’s Revolution

January 3, 2015 / Catherine / 2 Comments

And not only that, a new look for this blog! I’m not totally happy with it – blue codes right wing in Australia and even if it didn’t, I’d prefer red or purple – but it’s ridiculous to buy a premium account just so that I can have a pretty colour scheme! (Also, of course, if I make my blog too pretty, there’s the risk that some people will dismiss it without reading it. Bizarre thought. But I’m pretty sure that pink and purple stripes do not shriek “serious political blog!” to those passing by. Alas.)

So. 2014. The first full year under the Abbott Government.

Look, I’m not going to re-hash all the things that Tony & Co did to make me weep or gnash my teeth in rage last year. If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a couple of months, you already know what they are – and if you don’t, there are hundreds of blogs out there that have already summed up this first year, with greater or lesser degrees of delight or woe. No useful purpose is served, I think, by depressing ourselves further on this score.

Instead, I’d like to look at a few things that gave me hope in 2014. Hope for Australia, hope for the state of politics, and just generally an increased sense of hope in my fellow Australians.

The New Legislative Council – some preliminary thoughts

December 11, 2014 / Catherine / 23 Comments

So, the new Victorian Legislative Council is looking reasonably established. It’s… quite something. Though I’m not sure what, precisely. A shambles? A nightmare? A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a multicoloured cloth of sheerest what-were-they-thinking? A gift to comedians?

Here it is, in all its awe-inspiring, terrible glory

Liberal Party – 14 seats
Labor Party – 13 seats
Greens – 4 seats
The Nationals – 2 seats
Shooters and Fishers Party – 2 seats
Sex Party – 2 seats
Country Alliance – 1 seat
Democratic Labour Party – 1 seat
Vote 1 Local Jobs – 1 seat

Let us take a moment of silence to contemplate this truly diverse and weird array. And to bow our heads in compassion for the Andrews government, who are going to have to try to get legislation through it.

I mean, seriously, what do you even do with that?

A few disjointed thoughts, because this has been a very long few weeks for me.

Hey, all those commentaries of mine weren’t a waste of time after all! Five micro-parties! Woohoo! Except – oh dear, did we really, truly need five of them? And did quite so many of them have to be on the right? (Though I am counting my blessings that we didn’t get People Power, at least. Or Rise Up Australia. Or the LDP. Actually, there really were a number of worse options in the mix.)
Good grief, people, why must you vote above the line? Why?
And as for you, ALP and the Coalition, what the hell were you thinking with your preference deals? Is dealing with one or two more Greens in the Upper House really worse than this mess? Truly?
Wow, the rural electorates are really pissed off with the Nationals, aren’t they? Only two seats for the Nats, with one picked up by the Country Alliance and two by the Shooters and Fishers. Assuming that this is what the electorate actually meant to do – and in Northern Victoria, at least, I think it was – that’s a pretty loud message that the electorate does not trust city folk, and also doesn’t trust the Nationals to protect their interests. (The whole Hazelwood debacle and Napthine’s response to it quite clearly didn’t help in Eastern Victoria – Morwell went from being super-safe Nationals to marginal, with an 11% swing towards Labor). The Nationals might want to have a think about that.
Despite a swing of 2.5% statewide towards Labor in the Lower House, they actually lost seats in the Upper House, going from 16 to 13 out of 40 – but they didn’t lose them to the Liberals, who went from 18 to 14, or the Nationals, who went from three to two. The seats were lost to the Greens, who picked up one, the DLP, and the four new senate parties.
Seriously, Labor, you need to start to work with the Greens. You’re winning seats off Green preferences, you’re losing the left of the political spectrum, and, quite frankly, half the electorate already thinks you are in an alliance with the Greens anyway. If you’re going to suffer for this association (and you are clearly doing so in some areas), you might as well get some benefit out of it, too.

I think if the Victorian Electorate sent any message this election, it was a resounding “No” to both major parties. True, we wanted the Liberal Party out, but it seems we couldn’t quite stomach voting the Labor Party in. Add to this some ill-advised preference deals, and the rural electorate being well and truly (and justifiably) pissed off with the government and you get this mess. Does it actually represent Victorians? Well, maybe. It’s very difficult to tell.

My mother texted me a couple of weeks before the election to tell me that she thought she had made up her mind, but then she had heard Daniel Andrews speaking, and she wasn’t sure if she could bring herself to do it… (I suggested she make absolutely sure she didn’t hear any Greens speaking, or else she might find herself stuck voting for the Sex Party. She didn’t thank me.)

There’s an Isaac Asimov story about a future election in which they poll one person, carefully selected for his embodiment of the zeitgeist of the electorate. He doesn’t vote, he just answers a number of questions, and the computer discerns what the political outcome should be.

I suspect that this time around, Asimov’s futuristic government might have chosen my mother. Because while I can’t imagine her consciously selecting either four Greens or two Shooters and Fishers, there really was absolutely nobody who she truly liked the look of.

And, sadly, I think she speaks for the whole electorate in this.

(Coming soon, if I have the energy – a fun little tour through the ALP’s proposed policies, and what’s likely to happen to them with this Legislative Council in the mix… because just in case you weren’t paying attention, nobody has a majority here. Not even close…)

[Edited to add – while about 93% of the vote is counted, there is, of course, still room for change. Nonetheless, these parties do all look to be highly likely to gain seats, and I think we can be quietly confident that the Council is still going to be a complete debacle. Certainly, the chances of either Labor or the Coalition achieving a majority in their own right are vanishingly small.]

Election Eve

November 28, 2014 / Catherine / 14 Comments

We have come to the end of our journey through the small parties and independents who aspire to the Legislative Council, and this means that there is only one thing left for us to do.

Tomorrow, we vote.

Tomorrow, you vote.

And this is important.

I know it doesn’t always feel particularly worthwhile to go to the trouble of casting your vote, especially if, like me, you live in a safe seat, but trust me, your vote matters. It does count. And, as we saw in Indi in 2013, or in Bennelong in 2007, even a safe seat can be lost if enough people decide that they’ve had enough, and change their voting habits.

In the Legislative Council, your vote matters even more, because there is no such thing as a safe seat there. Certainly, we know that most of the seats are going to be held by Liberal and Labor, but there’s a very good chance that those precious final seats in each region could go to… well, just about anyone, really. Over on the ABC website, they have a Legislative Council Calculator, where you can enter percentages of the vote for each party, press go, and it shows you what would happen if everyone voted above the line. Some of the possibilities are alarming.

So here is my plea to you. If you have been reading these posts, please, make your vote count. Vote intelligently. Vote compassionately. And above all, vote below the line. Don’t let someone else decide where your preferences go – decide for yourself. Yes, it takes longer, but it’s much more rewarding.

Victorian State Election (Pascoe Vale): Meet Sean Brocklehurst of the Socialist Alliance!

November 27, 2014 / Catherine / 7 Comments

And now it’s time for the last candidate who I will be reviewing for this election! Sean Brocklehurst is one of two Socialist Alliance candidates contesting this election (the other is in Geelong), but since he is the one in my electorate – boy, is he in my electorate, there are flyers everywhere! – he’s the one who gets reviewed this time around.

His tagline is “Community Need, not Corporate Greed”, and he uses it every chance he gets. It’s a good tagline, but it’s reaching drinking-game status in my slightly-obsessed little world…

Since Mr Brocklehurst has his own election site, and since the Socialist Alliance have a *lot* of policies at the federal level, I shall stick to reviewing what Mr Brocklehurst has to say about himself – which, since he has his own website and also appears to be a journalist for Green Left Weekly, is plenty! For a more detailed look at Socialist Alliance policies, I refer you to my review of them earlier this year.

Mr Brocklehurst’s How to Vote Card is much as one might expect – Greens, Labor, Independent Francesco Timpano, Liberal, and Family First. Straight left to right, in other words, in best socialist style.

Victorian State Election (Pascoe Vale): Meet Francesco Timpano!

November 27, 2014 / Catherine / 6 Comments

Francesco Timpano is running as an independent in the seat of Pascoe Vale. He is a local architect, who ran for council in the rather bizarre Moreland Council Election a couple of years back, when everyone and their dog ran for council and several candidates engaged in such dodgy and underhanded – and occasionally illegal – shenanigans that we even started getting written up in The Age for our general dubiousness. So nice when the Northern suburbs get some attention.

Mr Timpano, however, was one of the better-behaved candidates in this election, so I am disposed to view him mildly favourably. (But I did just re-scan the Lower House Ticket for Pascoe Vale, just to make sure the really shonky candidates hadn’t joined any political parties and come back to haunt us. It seems not.)

Mr Timpano has a FaceBook page for his campaign, and it is fairly shouty. He likes to tell us things IN BLOCK CAPITALS. WITH EXCLAMATION MARKS!

Here’s his manifesto:

Now running for the seat of Pascoe Vale at the upcoming state elections.

WHY?
Because its the only way to get OUR FAIR SHARE & stop getting ignored and short changed by the major parties.

The MAJOR PARTIES SHOULD HANG THEIR HEADS IN SHAME!

AN INDEPENDENT SEAT IS THE ONLY WAY WE WILL GET BACK OUR FAIR SHARE & FIX THE DECADES OF NEGLECT OF SERVICES, INFRASTRUCTURE & EMPLOYMENT.

Meet the Independents: Clive JACKSON, Richard GRUMMET (Group F, Southern Metropolitan)

November 26, 2014 / Catherine / 5 Comments

The end of this insane project is finally in sight, as I reach the last of the Independents on the Legislative Council ballot in Victoria! (After that, all that remains is for me to address my local Lower House parties and independents in Pascoe Vale – oh, and also figure out who I’m voting for before Saturday. It would be a little embarrassing if I forgot to do that bit…)

Clive Jackson and Richard Grummet are running as Grouped Independents in the Southern Metropolitan Region, but actually, they are representing the Australian Democrats. And this makes me sad like a very sad person, because it is always difficult to observe the last days of an endangered species, and the Democrats seem to be about at that point. From the balance of power in Federal Parliament, to not being able to get their party registered in the Victorian State Election is a long and painful fall indeed.

The Democrats would like us to know that they are A New Vision for Victoria. On their front page, they have a rotating banner next to their How to Vote Card, which includes “Aboriginal equality – now”, “Getting ready for peak oil”, “Towards a Sustainable Population”, “Compassion for Asylum Seekers” and “Sustainable Energy”. Other headlines inform us that “Victoria needs a manufacturing renaissance, or face failure” and “Link and network public transport first, say the Australian Democrats.

Mr Jackson and Mr Grummet have their own page, with brief bios for each candidate. So we learn that Mr Jackson cares about heritage buildings and the environment, public transport, education and jobs, that he is a statutory planner, a pianist, and barracks for Geelong. And likes steam trains. Mr Grummet, on the other hand, is passionate about wind, water and solar energy, is a teacher and sports coach, has worked with the disabled, and helped Save the Fitzroy Pool.

That’s all very well, I hear you cry, but who are they preferencing? A good question, which I will now answer.

Meet the Independents: Luzio GROSSI, Crystal JAMES (Group R, Southern Metropolitan)

November 26, 2014 / Catherine / 2 Comments

Lucio Grossi and Crystal James are running as grouped independents in the Southern Metropolitan Region, so my opinion of them doesn’t matter terribly much, if it ever did, which is a pity, because I’m inclined to like them. Also, they want us to Get Real.

According to his Twitter page, Luzio Grossi is a “Photographer, Journalist, Actor, Artist, Independent Upper House candidate Victorian State Election Nov 29th 2014”. He is running in the Southern Metropolitan Region,

As a professional photographer, Mr Grossi has done candidate shots for a number of politicians contesting election before deciding to join their ranks himself. Personally, I’m just enjoying the Star Wars Storm Troopers playing the trumpet and the violin on his business website. If a candidate isn’t going to serenade my ears with a song and a YouTube clip, the least he can do is provide me with storm troopers playing the violin, and I’m glad to see that Mr Grossi has passed this vitally important minimum bar…

Lucio Grossi’s main political site is his FaceBook page, which means one does have to dig a bit to find all the policies. He was also interviewed on 774 FM a few days ago, so I will use this interview to further inform his policies.

The other half of Group R is Crystal James, also on Facebook, who is a Board Director of the Council of Single Mothers and their Children, a community organisation run by and for single mums, which provides telephone support, referrals, advice and emergency relief to single mothers and their children throughout Victoria, as well as acting to lobby government and media. She is definitely going for the mum vote:

My message is simple – I want to be the voice for MUMS in the Victorian Parliament. I have no party affiliations or political agenda other than a passion and commitment to achieve socially progressive policies that support and empower MUMS.

I’ll look at each of these candidates separately, but since they are voting as a group, I’ll start by seeing just where their group votes are going…

This is another very left-to-right sort of Group Ticket, with a bit of an emphasis on personal freedoms. Number one on their preference list is the Group F Independents, also known as the Stealth Democrats (which is to say, they are members of the Australian Democrats, running as Democrats, but the Australian Democrats didn’t manage to achieve party status in this election. A sad day.), followed by the Animal Justice Party, the Cyclists, the Voluntary Euthanasia Party, People Power, the Sex Party, and – at least – the ALP, Greens and the Liberals. At the bottom of the ballot we have the four parties from the Christian right, with our friend the Ungrouped Independent, George Neophytou at the very end of the list.

It’s quite a good ballot paper, actually. Though why, why, why is everyone giving such high preferences to People Power?

Meet the Independents: Peter ALLAN, Nicola THOMSON, Nicole BATCH (Group N, Northern Metropolitan)

November 26, 2014 / Catherine / 6 Comments

Peter Allan, the lead candidate of the Group N Independents in the Northern Metropolitan Region asks if I am “Tired of Melbourne’s North being ignored in State politics”. Oh, I am, Peter, I am! Apparently, I should therefore vote above the line for Peter Allan. Which is a losing argument, because as you all know by now, I never, ever, vote above the line for anyone…

Mr Allan calls himself a ‘Community Independent’, and a brief look at his online presence suggests that he is pretty media-savvy – and particularly strong on social media. Not only does he have a Facebook page and Twitter account, you can even get Peter Allan Twibbons to show your support on Twitter (I find this mildly hilarious). He took part in the recent Candidates’ Forum in Brunswick and has been interviewed on 774 FM. I’ll be using this interview and his main website to write this article.

According to his biography, Mr Allan has lived all his life in Melbourne’s North, and has ‘a strong record of community action across social justice, educational and environmental issues’. Sounds like my kind of candidate. He is apparently one of Australia’s foremost authorities on recycling and sustainable resource management (and we’ll be hearing more about that later), and was recently recognised as Moreland’s Citizen of the Year. His track record is an impressive one if you live on the left-side of politics. Projects he has been involved in have included getting cigarette advertising banned, phasing out leaded petrol, expanding solar installations (and payments), and introducing household recycling. There’s a lot of good stuff here.

His motivation to become a state parliamentarian is based on his energetic commitment to social justice and environmental protection, his concern about the current state of corruption in Victorian politics, and a desire to be a strong voice for services in the often neglected North.

An excellent start, I think.

A brief note before we get on with the preferences. While there are three un-grouped Independents on this ticket, it is very much the Peter Allan ticket. I can’t find information about his running mates anywhere, so I’m guessing that they are largely here so that he can have an above-the-line presence on the ballot. I’m not sure why he needs two people for this (the minimum for an above-the-line group is 2, and he has three), nor am I aware of the significance of them both being named Nicole/Nicola. But I am positive there is some!

Cate Speaks