I have just finished reading John Carroll’s The Existential Jesus (Scribe, 2007). In answering the question Why another book on Jesus, JC (that’s John Carroll, not… you know…) says that What emerges is a mysteriously enigmatic, existential Jesus whose story has not been retold elsewhere, and whose teachings have not been spelt out as they are here.
This is a big claim, but, in my opinion, it is justified.
Carroll focuses on the Gospel of Mark, the first written Gospel which set the agenda to which the others responded, and argues that the Gospel of John was the only other Gospel that really got what Mark was on about, and enlarged Mark’s story of Jesus into an account of Jesus the Christ. (Carroll says that the other two Gospels subvert and dilute Mark’s message to make it palatable to an audience incapable of hearing Mark’s story – namely, the church.) Along the way he gives riveting accounts of other players. His Peter and Pilate are breath taking, and not simply because he turns the traditional view of both men on their heads. Jesus, the main player, far from having foreknowledge of his identity and mission, makes mistakes, has to regroup, is disappointed in just about everyone and everything, and in the end dies as a failure in his own eyes. In other words, it’s an account of a Jesus who did not have the benefit of two thousand years of another point of view – the existential Jesus.
The significance of this is that you don’t have to be “into religion” to find this interesting, moving and relevant. This is a man who has had, and continues to have, a very big influence on humanity. This book explains why.
Over thirty years ago a Jesuit, Bede Lowry SJ, RIP, who was temporarily residing at St Joseph’s Parish, Giru, (near Townsville) told anyone who cared to listen that the Gospel of Mark was a scorching account of Jesus’ ministry that made the other Gospels look like Sunday School stuff – actually, it was the other Synoptics; like Carroll, he saw John as the other Gospel that challenged conventional assumptions. Unfortunately, I didn’t get what he was on about at all. Mark just seemed shorter than the others to me. But Carroll’s book has certainly shown me what BL may have been talking about.
I was startled to find that Carroll is not a practicing Christian. Yet he has lavished an astonishing amount of work on this book. I too am not a practicing Christian. At least not from the perspective of people who call themselves practicing Christians. I was until J-P II declared (more or less) that gay people are kidding themselves if they think they are Christians. Reading Carroll’s book makes me suspect that choosing to accept JP IIs definition of what is, or is not, Christian was the right one. On the other hand, I have also been reading the theologian James Alison who is gay and Christian. His work http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng52.html has stirred me too, but quite differently to Carroll’s. One of his messages, if it can be summed up in a (colloquial) sentence is Don’t let the bastards tell you who you are. I must say I jump for joy when I read his stuff. But I also feel deeply motivated by Carroll’s messages: 1) If you are any sort of being you have a right (responsibility) to participate in the mystery of being. 2) There is a role for church – in social justice (anything else – such as presuming to define the nature of God and presuming to control the keys of the kingdom of heaven – is atavism). At least that is what I think he’s saying.
Towards the end of the book he say that there are two gifts: touch and story telling. And at the end of chapter 11 he ask What does it mean to tell a story? How can John’s particular achievement be generalised to other human beings living their very different lives? He go on to say Retell the story from yourself, from within your own particular being emerging from the shadows… I can’t tell you how much that startled me, because I am about to embark on a project in which I hope to explore aspects of the Jesus story without ever mentioning his name. Something else Carroll said reinforces (if not legitimises) that goal: somewhere in the book he said that it is not actually Jesus but his story that matters. (I think Paul of Tarsus would certainly endorse this.) Well, I’m not sure he put it quite as bluntly as that, but I think the sense of it was that Jesus is the exemplar of participation in the mystery of being but not the mystery itself – he demonstrates the journey but is not the destination. And he illustrate that by his discussion of Mary Magdalene who, by not clinging to Jesus, “becomes” him (the word becomes having two meanings, the actions of which are indispensable to each other).
As you would expect, Judas plays a significant role in Carroll’s telling of the story. He says Judas is the archetype of “I am not!” Carroll effectively endorses the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. So I wondered what he thought about Francis Moloney’s collaboration with Jeffrey Archer in writing The Gospel According to Judas (Macmillan 2007), in which Judas does not commit suicide, but fades into quiet obscurity, leaving it to his son (I think) to tell his story.
I have to say that Judas has always been a puzzle to me. Nothing I have ever read about him convinces me that he is not a hapless victim. Not even Carroll’s account. Especially Carroll’s account. It is the one part of his book that I will have to re-read, and possibly re-re-read…. I cannot come at predestination. If he is right then Judas was not just a hapless victim, but someone with a good case against God! (Have you seen the movie The man who sued God?) Maybe this simply reflects the limitation of my mind. I am not God and therefore cannot know the mind of God – as Job patiently points out.
I do however, see some way forward in something else he says in his book. He deals with the life of Jesus as story – as distinct from his story oops, I mean history. He can talk about Jesus dancing on the water without being bothered with whether or not he could actually do such a thing. What matters is how the incident works as story – not how it may have been possible. (He is scathing about the search for the historical Jesus.) If this is so, then maybe doctrine works in a similar way. Predestination is not necessarily a fact but a … a … what? A concept that works in the psyche or the unconscious to get a result that cannot possibly be got by calculating weight, distance, angle of refraction, specific gravity….
His account of Pontius Pilate, on the other hand had me cheering and dancing. I have never been able to stomach the sneering contempt of church people for this man. As a student of history I have always suspected that the Roman Governor of one of the most difficult provinces in the empire could not possibly be the venal sook he is made out to be in sermons and 1950s movies. And I was just bowled over a discussion about Billy Budd – the one opera that actually made me cry – with outrage!! (I didn’t know it was a novella by Herman Melville.) Suddenly I see Captain Vere in a very different light, and I am so glad to have a framework within which to imagine Pilate and other leaders – not to mention “enemies”.
Having got to this point I have to try to draw what I’m saying together. Let’s just say that I can’t believe it’s not butter. You know, I bet George Pell and his ilk have condescending things to say about Carroll and his work. They would regard Raymond E Brown as butter. Well, I can’t believe Carroll’s not butter – maybe even better. His reference to art from Greek tragedies to Benjamin Britten is awesome. He is attributing to people a role in the ongoing telling (retelling) of the story on an immensely enlarged scale. He shows how we are involved whether we intend to be or not.
Even if you have no interest in religion in general, and Christianity in particular, I believe you would find this book disturbingly engaging. Or should that be engagingly disturbing? Trust me on this. And if I’m wrong, sue me.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Saturday, 17 May 2008
ANZAC DAY 2008
Anyone who read my blog entry on Anzac Day 2007 will probably be surprised to hear that I went to Anzac Day 2008 and had a very good time. I explained last year why I had been a regular truant but ended with these words:
All I can say is: Look fellas, it’s not you. It’s me. And that’s the truth – although I don’t rule out the possibility of getting over what ever it is that I don’t like about living in the past. Perhaps when it is long enough ago and I can be certain that THAT is not me, I will be able to go back and enjoy the memory of the most astounding year of my life: 23 July 1969 to 23 July 1970.(emphasis not in the original.)
Well the possibility came to pass sooner than I imagined when I wrote those words. I had a “road to Damascus” experience while reading something written by the theologian James Allison, whom I have referred to elsewhere in this blog. Here’s what he wrote:
I suggest that only someone who is really aware of being liked, who is really complacent, is able to defuse someone else’s place of shame and make it spacious. And it is out of complacency that liking flows to those who are like: because I am not frightened of being like someone, liking them, being liked by them.(my emphasis in both quotes)
[By the way, JA’s use of the word complacent above must not be taken to mean what it normally means. If you would like to follow up what he means see Chapter 5, Confessions of a Former Marginaholic in his book On Being Liked, DLT 2003.]
I told James that I had fallen off my high horse (why it is a “road to Damascus” experience) when I read the words emphasised above. As I said to him, I’m still not sure that the relevance of his words for mine is really as self evident as it seems to me, but for me they certainly flashed like lightning when I read them. In the light of his words I felt compelled to examine my position. At the time I wasn’t sure that it would result in my going to the Anzac Day Dawn Service and march, but I saw that I probably had to make an even bigger leap and rejoin the Returned Services League. He replied that he’d be interested to hear how the melding of the two sentences highlighted above affect me as Anzac Day comes closer, and my re-membering continues.
Well, I deliberately did not work on drawing out the case for going to the Anzac Day activities. I decided to act on the flash of insight and see what happened. I thought it would be more fruitful to reflect on the experience rather than run the risk of pushing the experience in a direction it might not be capable of going. So I went with the expectation that there was something in store for me that I not only wanted, but needed. And so it was. It was as though I had always been there. And look, I can’t help myself, a certain parable comes to mind – “These late comers have worked only one hour, yet you have paid them as much as we who bore the full day’s burden and heat.” [If you don’t know the parable and would like to know what I am talking about, it’s Matthew 20: 1-16]
DAWN SERVICE AND BREAKFAST
The day started with the Dawn Service at 4:30 am – the time of the Gallipoli landing. There was no formation, just people standing around in the dark with the president of the local RSL calling on people to lay wreaths and sing hymns. It was a surprisingly moving hour – surprising because when I was in the army I found military ceremonial utterly barren – even though I was good at it: I was the right marker for my rookie platoon and most subsequent units. But this, of course was not military ceremonial. It was blokes and the wider community remembering. The last post and Reveille were played on a bugle by a young man I later met and found to be in year 12 at the local high school. The singing was by a mother an daughter team – the daughter known to me and seen regularly at school dancing and singing extravaganzas. The mother was obviously someone who had had serious voice training – which probably explains the daughter’s regular stage appearances. The number of people there surprised me. Apparently I wouldn’t have been the only one surprised at the size of the turn out. I later heard that 450 attended breakfast – they had catered for 160. Not everyone who attended would have gone to breakfast – though it seemed that most did. I wondered if the later collected 12 baskets of scraps.
Because of the unusual circumstances of my being there I was not only participating in something I had mostly avoided in the past, but very actively observing that participation. As I waited in line for breakfast, therefore, I realised, with considerable clarity, one of the reasons that I had stayed away in the past. I was feeling vulnerable because I couldn’t see anyone I knew, apart from a couple of people on the RSL executive, and I didn’t think it would be right to attach myself to them – they would have more to do than protect me from my sense of being a stranger – how presumptuous would it be for someone who had not been involved to cosy up to the leaders. My first strong impulse was to flee. But too much was at stake. I knew I couldn’t ever succeed in what I was there for if I chickened out. So as I moved slowly towards the food service my mind frantically worked on opening lines and topics of conversation that might be useful when I found myself sitting at a table with people I didn’t know.
As it happened I sat at the same table as the bugler and found an instant opening line. Well done that man with the bugle. He was grateful but self critical. There was spit in the bugle which made a couple of the notes problematic. The conversation immediately turned on out mutual interest – music. He told me he was in the Lismore Symphony Orchestra. I confessed that I did not know there was a LSO (other than in London, of course) and told him that I was in the Mullumbimby Amatori Choir. He asked me if I had considered singing at the Dawn Service, which took me by surprise, because it had indeed crossed my mind during the service that it might be a role I could play as a veteran and singer. Next thing he has me meeting the president of the local RSL and it’s arranged for next year. Struth!! How fast was that?
Later at breakfast I met someone with a medal I had not seen before and asked him what it was. It turned out to be a medal to which I am entitled but knew nothing of. So there’s another gong to add to my collection. What was particularly interesting about that conversation was the warmth of it. This bloke didn’t know me from Adam, yet he engaged with me instantly as though I was someone he could call a mate and mean it. Context is everything. If you’re here you must be OK, so to speak. Would I get the same reception from the same person in a different context? It struck me like a thunderbolt that that depends, not on the context, but on me, and that I was here to begin the journey towards being the kind of person who would get the same reception regardless of the context. The measure with which you give you shall receive. In the next hour or so as I moved around the hall saying g’day to people I didn’t know was so utterly painless that couldn’t help laughing to myself about my initial anxiety – and even invoked a piece of advice from quite a different context: Do not be concerned about what to say. The words will be given to you. It was the second time in a month that that advice had emerged from my unconscious. Maybe the message here is that I am a control freak who needs to trust the universe. Universe?! Wooooooooo! Hold that thought! I’m definitely not ready for reconciliation with the New Age.
The people I was sitting with left as I got up to get a cup of tea. When I returned to my seat I saw someone I knew at the next table and asked if I could drag up a chair on the end. He was with a couple from Brunswick heads and friends visiting from Melbourne, who were specialists in personal development. Me too I said. So we talked about a range of interesting things until it was time to go. At no time did I feel I was in alien territory. It was probably about 7:30 when I went home and took a nap before returning at 10:30 for the march and parade.
THE MARCH, PARADE AND LUNCH
By then I was much less apprehensive about being unknown, and it took no time to “be there”. People I approached greeted me as “one of them”. They had no way of knowing that until that morning I hadn’t been “one of them”. It didn’t even phase anyone when I pulled out my medals and asked which one goes on the left, which on the right and how the others fit in between. Haven’t done this for a while, eh was the remark. Haven’t done it ever I said. Well it’s good you finally made it was the reply are you coming to lunch after the march – would you like my wife to pin those on for you? I almost laughed. Someone who sews and makes biscuits, vacuums, washes and irons, you know, sensitive new age guy stuff, doesn’t need someone else to pin his medals on. So I thanked him but declined, and made a huge mess of pinning my own medals on. Maybe I’m not such a control freak after all. If I were I would have persisted until they were in a straight line. But hey, I’m just a few months away from being a pensioner. I don’t have to be perfect anymore. Not that I have ever been perfect – other than a perfect dickhead, of course.
Speaking to people before the parade prompted me to remember things I wouldn’t otherwise have thought about ever again in my life. And it was interesting to catch a glimpse into life in the Australian base early in our engagement. One person told me about building the base at Nui Dat where I first went. He mentioned the air field built by the Engineers (my Corps). I mentioned my alarm when I saw it for the first time coming in to land on it – it runs over a hill! Being able to identify that seemed to make a difference to the bloke I was talking to – he knew for sure that I wasn’t bullshitting about being there. Let me explain that. A problem I have had, not just with veterans but people in general, is that I have always looked too young to be a veteran. People have always given me dubious looks when I have said I was there. One of the people I had breakfast with me asked me how old I am. He was visibly taken aback when I said sixty in a few months. He told me he must have been in the same National Service intake as I. I didn’t tell him that he couldn’t have been in the same intake as I, because I didn’t wait to be called up. I volunteered for Nasho early. One in eight Nashos were volunteers. Why I volunteered is too long a story for here.
One slightly unnerving incident was that one of the members of the RSL executive saw me and asked, Are you the opera singer? I was absolutely confounded by this. I sing, I said, But I’m not an opera singer. I’m in a choir. To which re replied, Yes, you’re the bloke who’s going to do the singing next year, aren’t you? Struth! Talk about no where to hide. If I was planning to test the waters anonymously, which I wasn’t, I would have failed outright. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, I returned, I made an offer not an arrangement. I don’t want to upset the people who are already doing a fine job of it. It’s something that would have to be discussed with all interested parties. So no, I’m not yet the person doing the singing next year, although I might be if no one minds. Fortunately I was rescued from any further discussion of this point by the signal to start the parade.
It was late starting, and it was led off by a tracked vehicle festooned with children. Small town, I mused. No one concerned with OH&S issues here. As we marched down the main street of Mullumbimby I scanned the crowd gathered and clapping as we passed, for people I knew. To my surprise I didn’t see anyone I knew at all, even John who was definitely there. Yet the people I didn’t know were not strangers. This was my town out to celebrate. When we arrived at the cenotaph we formed up for what was to be a much longer ceremony than the Dawn Service. This time there were speeches. Fortunately there was cloud cover so it was not as difficult as it could have been. Nevertheless one person fell over and was taken away in an ambulance. That brought back some memories. Parades were always ordeals in training units. Someone always fainted – and was charged later for (I forget what the wording was, but it was ludicrous.) That’s the military. There was a poem The Power of Kokoda by Dean Travaskis, a local lad from Ocean Shores, who had walked the Kokoda Track and subsequently won the Blackened Bush Billy poetry competition in Tamworth. It was quite moving. When the parade was dismissed I was delighted to discover that I had forgotten the dismissal drill – unlike the first time I attended an Anzac Day parade (mentioned in my blog post of Wednesday 25 April 2007).
As I went in to the RSL for lunch I reverted to type fretting about who I would find to sit with. I made the cowardly choice of sitting with the same people as at breakfast. Calling it cowardly is not intended to reflect on the company, but to admit that I had not really gained courage from what I had learned – about myself and the universe – earlier that day. The bugler was there with two of his brothers. On the other side of the table, where I sat, was a WWII veteran and his son – a bloke about 50 years of age who turned out to have had a fascinating career in biomedicine. What was rather special about lunch is that it was served by the RSL catering staff. Roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding and three veg, followed by apple and rhubarb crumble with ice cream. Later on port was served. I had forgotten about that aspect of military life. The Queen is toasted with port or water for those who don’t drink. Interestingly enough, the Queen was not toasted – a fact that I noted but did not comment on. My conversation with others at lunch was not about the war – any war – but life in general. It was remarkably easy. Not at all fraught like others I had had in previous years. These were not blokes reliving the past but engaged with the present and alert to possibilities of the future. Maybe it was the fact that it a small town with no garrison. You know, the Capital of The shire. I’m sure if I’d have looked around I would have seen Bilbo and Frodo.
As I said earlier, the majority of people who saw me there didn’t know that it was my first time there. Most of them were probably regulars (not a military term in this instance)and probably would have assumed that I was too, if they thought about it at all, which they wouldn’t have, because they would have no reason to do so. But you see what I mean. It was like I had always been there. And it is my intention to be there from now on – as a regular. My next visit is this coming Sunday. There’s a monthly RSL meeting. I have an arrangement to make for next year. I was thinking maybe something from St Matthew’s Passion, but probably not. I mean it’s in German after all. It might be the RSL, but, you know… don’t mention the war.
All I can say is: Look fellas, it’s not you. It’s me. And that’s the truth – although I don’t rule out the possibility of getting over what ever it is that I don’t like about living in the past. Perhaps when it is long enough ago and I can be certain that THAT is not me, I will be able to go back and enjoy the memory of the most astounding year of my life: 23 July 1969 to 23 July 1970.(emphasis not in the original.)
Well the possibility came to pass sooner than I imagined when I wrote those words. I had a “road to Damascus” experience while reading something written by the theologian James Allison, whom I have referred to elsewhere in this blog. Here’s what he wrote:
I suggest that only someone who is really aware of being liked, who is really complacent, is able to defuse someone else’s place of shame and make it spacious. And it is out of complacency that liking flows to those who are like: because I am not frightened of being like someone, liking them, being liked by them.(my emphasis in both quotes)
[By the way, JA’s use of the word complacent above must not be taken to mean what it normally means. If you would like to follow up what he means see Chapter 5, Confessions of a Former Marginaholic in his book On Being Liked, DLT 2003.]
I told James that I had fallen off my high horse (why it is a “road to Damascus” experience) when I read the words emphasised above. As I said to him, I’m still not sure that the relevance of his words for mine is really as self evident as it seems to me, but for me they certainly flashed like lightning when I read them. In the light of his words I felt compelled to examine my position. At the time I wasn’t sure that it would result in my going to the Anzac Day Dawn Service and march, but I saw that I probably had to make an even bigger leap and rejoin the Returned Services League. He replied that he’d be interested to hear how the melding of the two sentences highlighted above affect me as Anzac Day comes closer, and my re-membering continues.
Well, I deliberately did not work on drawing out the case for going to the Anzac Day activities. I decided to act on the flash of insight and see what happened. I thought it would be more fruitful to reflect on the experience rather than run the risk of pushing the experience in a direction it might not be capable of going. So I went with the expectation that there was something in store for me that I not only wanted, but needed. And so it was. It was as though I had always been there. And look, I can’t help myself, a certain parable comes to mind – “These late comers have worked only one hour, yet you have paid them as much as we who bore the full day’s burden and heat.” [If you don’t know the parable and would like to know what I am talking about, it’s Matthew 20: 1-16]
DAWN SERVICE AND BREAKFAST
The day started with the Dawn Service at 4:30 am – the time of the Gallipoli landing. There was no formation, just people standing around in the dark with the president of the local RSL calling on people to lay wreaths and sing hymns. It was a surprisingly moving hour – surprising because when I was in the army I found military ceremonial utterly barren – even though I was good at it: I was the right marker for my rookie platoon and most subsequent units. But this, of course was not military ceremonial. It was blokes and the wider community remembering. The last post and Reveille were played on a bugle by a young man I later met and found to be in year 12 at the local high school. The singing was by a mother an daughter team – the daughter known to me and seen regularly at school dancing and singing extravaganzas. The mother was obviously someone who had had serious voice training – which probably explains the daughter’s regular stage appearances. The number of people there surprised me. Apparently I wouldn’t have been the only one surprised at the size of the turn out. I later heard that 450 attended breakfast – they had catered for 160. Not everyone who attended would have gone to breakfast – though it seemed that most did. I wondered if the later collected 12 baskets of scraps.
Because of the unusual circumstances of my being there I was not only participating in something I had mostly avoided in the past, but very actively observing that participation. As I waited in line for breakfast, therefore, I realised, with considerable clarity, one of the reasons that I had stayed away in the past. I was feeling vulnerable because I couldn’t see anyone I knew, apart from a couple of people on the RSL executive, and I didn’t think it would be right to attach myself to them – they would have more to do than protect me from my sense of being a stranger – how presumptuous would it be for someone who had not been involved to cosy up to the leaders. My first strong impulse was to flee. But too much was at stake. I knew I couldn’t ever succeed in what I was there for if I chickened out. So as I moved slowly towards the food service my mind frantically worked on opening lines and topics of conversation that might be useful when I found myself sitting at a table with people I didn’t know.
As it happened I sat at the same table as the bugler and found an instant opening line. Well done that man with the bugle. He was grateful but self critical. There was spit in the bugle which made a couple of the notes problematic. The conversation immediately turned on out mutual interest – music. He told me he was in the Lismore Symphony Orchestra. I confessed that I did not know there was a LSO (other than in London, of course) and told him that I was in the Mullumbimby Amatori Choir. He asked me if I had considered singing at the Dawn Service, which took me by surprise, because it had indeed crossed my mind during the service that it might be a role I could play as a veteran and singer. Next thing he has me meeting the president of the local RSL and it’s arranged for next year. Struth!! How fast was that?
Later at breakfast I met someone with a medal I had not seen before and asked him what it was. It turned out to be a medal to which I am entitled but knew nothing of. So there’s another gong to add to my collection. What was particularly interesting about that conversation was the warmth of it. This bloke didn’t know me from Adam, yet he engaged with me instantly as though I was someone he could call a mate and mean it. Context is everything. If you’re here you must be OK, so to speak. Would I get the same reception from the same person in a different context? It struck me like a thunderbolt that that depends, not on the context, but on me, and that I was here to begin the journey towards being the kind of person who would get the same reception regardless of the context. The measure with which you give you shall receive. In the next hour or so as I moved around the hall saying g’day to people I didn’t know was so utterly painless that couldn’t help laughing to myself about my initial anxiety – and even invoked a piece of advice from quite a different context: Do not be concerned about what to say. The words will be given to you. It was the second time in a month that that advice had emerged from my unconscious. Maybe the message here is that I am a control freak who needs to trust the universe. Universe?! Wooooooooo! Hold that thought! I’m definitely not ready for reconciliation with the New Age.
The people I was sitting with left as I got up to get a cup of tea. When I returned to my seat I saw someone I knew at the next table and asked if I could drag up a chair on the end. He was with a couple from Brunswick heads and friends visiting from Melbourne, who were specialists in personal development. Me too I said. So we talked about a range of interesting things until it was time to go. At no time did I feel I was in alien territory. It was probably about 7:30 when I went home and took a nap before returning at 10:30 for the march and parade.
THE MARCH, PARADE AND LUNCH
By then I was much less apprehensive about being unknown, and it took no time to “be there”. People I approached greeted me as “one of them”. They had no way of knowing that until that morning I hadn’t been “one of them”. It didn’t even phase anyone when I pulled out my medals and asked which one goes on the left, which on the right and how the others fit in between. Haven’t done this for a while, eh was the remark. Haven’t done it ever I said. Well it’s good you finally made it was the reply are you coming to lunch after the march – would you like my wife to pin those on for you? I almost laughed. Someone who sews and makes biscuits, vacuums, washes and irons, you know, sensitive new age guy stuff, doesn’t need someone else to pin his medals on. So I thanked him but declined, and made a huge mess of pinning my own medals on. Maybe I’m not such a control freak after all. If I were I would have persisted until they were in a straight line. But hey, I’m just a few months away from being a pensioner. I don’t have to be perfect anymore. Not that I have ever been perfect – other than a perfect dickhead, of course.
Speaking to people before the parade prompted me to remember things I wouldn’t otherwise have thought about ever again in my life. And it was interesting to catch a glimpse into life in the Australian base early in our engagement. One person told me about building the base at Nui Dat where I first went. He mentioned the air field built by the Engineers (my Corps). I mentioned my alarm when I saw it for the first time coming in to land on it – it runs over a hill! Being able to identify that seemed to make a difference to the bloke I was talking to – he knew for sure that I wasn’t bullshitting about being there. Let me explain that. A problem I have had, not just with veterans but people in general, is that I have always looked too young to be a veteran. People have always given me dubious looks when I have said I was there. One of the people I had breakfast with me asked me how old I am. He was visibly taken aback when I said sixty in a few months. He told me he must have been in the same National Service intake as I. I didn’t tell him that he couldn’t have been in the same intake as I, because I didn’t wait to be called up. I volunteered for Nasho early. One in eight Nashos were volunteers. Why I volunteered is too long a story for here.
One slightly unnerving incident was that one of the members of the RSL executive saw me and asked, Are you the opera singer? I was absolutely confounded by this. I sing, I said, But I’m not an opera singer. I’m in a choir. To which re replied, Yes, you’re the bloke who’s going to do the singing next year, aren’t you? Struth! Talk about no where to hide. If I was planning to test the waters anonymously, which I wasn’t, I would have failed outright. Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here, I returned, I made an offer not an arrangement. I don’t want to upset the people who are already doing a fine job of it. It’s something that would have to be discussed with all interested parties. So no, I’m not yet the person doing the singing next year, although I might be if no one minds. Fortunately I was rescued from any further discussion of this point by the signal to start the parade.
It was late starting, and it was led off by a tracked vehicle festooned with children. Small town, I mused. No one concerned with OH&S issues here. As we marched down the main street of Mullumbimby I scanned the crowd gathered and clapping as we passed, for people I knew. To my surprise I didn’t see anyone I knew at all, even John who was definitely there. Yet the people I didn’t know were not strangers. This was my town out to celebrate. When we arrived at the cenotaph we formed up for what was to be a much longer ceremony than the Dawn Service. This time there were speeches. Fortunately there was cloud cover so it was not as difficult as it could have been. Nevertheless one person fell over and was taken away in an ambulance. That brought back some memories. Parades were always ordeals in training units. Someone always fainted – and was charged later for (I forget what the wording was, but it was ludicrous.) That’s the military. There was a poem The Power of Kokoda by Dean Travaskis, a local lad from Ocean Shores, who had walked the Kokoda Track and subsequently won the Blackened Bush Billy poetry competition in Tamworth. It was quite moving. When the parade was dismissed I was delighted to discover that I had forgotten the dismissal drill – unlike the first time I attended an Anzac Day parade (mentioned in my blog post of Wednesday 25 April 2007).
As I went in to the RSL for lunch I reverted to type fretting about who I would find to sit with. I made the cowardly choice of sitting with the same people as at breakfast. Calling it cowardly is not intended to reflect on the company, but to admit that I had not really gained courage from what I had learned – about myself and the universe – earlier that day. The bugler was there with two of his brothers. On the other side of the table, where I sat, was a WWII veteran and his son – a bloke about 50 years of age who turned out to have had a fascinating career in biomedicine. What was rather special about lunch is that it was served by the RSL catering staff. Roast beef with Yorkshire Pudding and three veg, followed by apple and rhubarb crumble with ice cream. Later on port was served. I had forgotten about that aspect of military life. The Queen is toasted with port or water for those who don’t drink. Interestingly enough, the Queen was not toasted – a fact that I noted but did not comment on. My conversation with others at lunch was not about the war – any war – but life in general. It was remarkably easy. Not at all fraught like others I had had in previous years. These were not blokes reliving the past but engaged with the present and alert to possibilities of the future. Maybe it was the fact that it a small town with no garrison. You know, the Capital of The shire. I’m sure if I’d have looked around I would have seen Bilbo and Frodo.
As I said earlier, the majority of people who saw me there didn’t know that it was my first time there. Most of them were probably regulars (not a military term in this instance)and probably would have assumed that I was too, if they thought about it at all, which they wouldn’t have, because they would have no reason to do so. But you see what I mean. It was like I had always been there. And it is my intention to be there from now on – as a regular. My next visit is this coming Sunday. There’s a monthly RSL meeting. I have an arrangement to make for next year. I was thinking maybe something from St Matthew’s Passion, but probably not. I mean it’s in German after all. It might be the RSL, but, you know… don’t mention the war.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
April Bulletin
Groooooooooooooooooooooan….The older I get the less able am I to experience pain with grace. I got what ever’s going around recently. Then John got it. We’re both over the worst, but neither of us are ready to party. I also had the strange experience of being bitten by a “non poisonous” spider a couple of weeks ago. I’d hate to see what happens when one is bitten by the real thing, because the friendly bite (get it… you know, like friendly fire) resulted in the left hand side of my body doing strange things – like I couldn’t sleep on my left side because my left hip was so sore… that sort of thing. Bur speaking of parties…..
25th celebration
Our 25th went off well on 29th March. There were actually three celebrations in one. Helen of Elanora turned … um… twenty something … a couple of days before; and Andy and Denis got together in the same year as John and I. So most of the usual suspects came and some others who couldn’t come emailed us on the day. Many thanks for your presence and your presents. I know we would not have thanked you enough on the day, so I hope mentioning it now proves we remember that we got them. You know we always say you shouldn’t have, and mean it, but when someone insists, we are grateful. A very special thanks to Helen who took over in the kitchen and put stuff that John had prepared in the oven. Pictures of the party on Flickr on the link that follows. Regrettably, the camera made itself temporarily unavailable for a good part of the afternoon (in other words, I put it down somewhere and forgot where it was) consequently not everyone who attended appears in the pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/sets/72157604308325818/
New laptop
John has a new best friend. He bought a lap dancer recently. Um, that should be a lap top (or note book if one’s keeping up with the terminology). He’s spent a lot of time communing with it. So now all he has to do is coax it into writing all those essays for him that are part of his Advanced Diploma in Ceramics. One of them is 5000 words.
Movie talk
We saw a couple of good DVDs last month: Bonhoeffer; and Veronica Guerin. The first is about the role of a German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the assassination plots against Hitler before and during the Second World War. It’s a very moving account of how a pacifist reconciled himself with the need for violence, and how he almost got away with it; and the vindictive reprisals of the Gestapo who executed him fifteen days before the end of the war, knowing that it was all over bar the … well, bar the hanging. The punch line moment is so understated that it’s almost possible to miss. Which, of course, is the point. Justice is anything but glamorous. The second is similar in many ways. It is about an Irish journalist who took on organised crime and almost got away with it. Though she was murdered on the road, her campaign, courage, refusal to be intimidated even after being brutally bashed, galvanised the Irish government to pass some of the most effective anti-corruption legislation in the western world. And the icing on the cake: all but one of the people who were involved in her murder were convicted and gaoled. The one who got away is doing a Tony Mokbel in Spain and will get his – unless he does a Christopher Skace.
Bobby Flynn Concert
We went to a concert in Bangalow on Friday 4/4/08. The star of the show was Bobby Flynn. Well, actually, Bobby Flynn and Omega 3. The show would not have had the impact it had without what would normally be called the backing group. It’s too long a story to tell here, but it’s written up on the blog -
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/search/label/Arts%20commentary
Job Hunting
For reasons too painful to think about I am in the job market again. It has been an interesting vindication of my job as a Job Search Trainer. One of the key messages was about canvassing. 70% of people in the workforce did not apply for advertised jobs but made themselves known to potential employers. I sent a dozen canvassing letters and got three responses. Even though I should have expected such a result it came as a surprise. The crisis I now have to resolve is what do I do if I get offered a job, because it was actually a bit of a dog chases car exercise. Ever wondered what a surprise it would be, not least to the dog, if one ever caught a car by the wheel and stopped it in its tracks? [just kidding, of course]
Love your enemies
You may recall my saying in an earlier bull tin that I have planned a number of Adult and Community Education courses, one of which is called Love your Enemies. When researching it recently I came across a lecture by James Alison called Love your enemies – within a divided self. The first ten or so paragraphs, in which he talks about a new field of research into how we develop our sense of who we are, would be of interest to anyone and is worth knowing about even if some would not want to read the rest of the article – which goes on to explore what it might mean to love one’s enemies. If you wonder why such matters have to be discussed in religious language, I’m here to tell you that the point of my course is to find a way to do otherwise. But I would like to say to anyone who is willing to take the risk of reading something that might lie outside of your normal frame of interests, you will not be disappointed if you read the whole article. You will not necessarily be convinced, but at least you will have seen just how critically informed and accessible, not to mention relevant, theology can be.
Here are links to three of James Alison’s articles. The first one is the lecture mentioned above. The other two will help to explain why I might be on the verge of un-lapsing – if you get what I mean.
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng50.html
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng52.html
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng27.html
We wish you all a very splendid and happy un-birthday, and hope that Santaclause is a daily, rather than merely annual, contributor to your well being – or sense of well being, depending on your philosophical preferences and or sensory proclivities. And on the day on which a thousand ideas bloom, may you find a chicken in every pot. And never mind that the foregoing makes no sense at all. It is enough to wonder, silently or out aloud as you ……
25th celebration
Our 25th went off well on 29th March. There were actually three celebrations in one. Helen of Elanora turned … um… twenty something … a couple of days before; and Andy and Denis got together in the same year as John and I. So most of the usual suspects came and some others who couldn’t come emailed us on the day. Many thanks for your presence and your presents. I know we would not have thanked you enough on the day, so I hope mentioning it now proves we remember that we got them. You know we always say you shouldn’t have, and mean it, but when someone insists, we are grateful. A very special thanks to Helen who took over in the kitchen and put stuff that John had prepared in the oven. Pictures of the party on Flickr on the link that follows. Regrettably, the camera made itself temporarily unavailable for a good part of the afternoon (in other words, I put it down somewhere and forgot where it was) consequently not everyone who attended appears in the pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7899872@N08/sets/72157604308325818/
New laptop
John has a new best friend. He bought a lap dancer recently. Um, that should be a lap top (or note book if one’s keeping up with the terminology). He’s spent a lot of time communing with it. So now all he has to do is coax it into writing all those essays for him that are part of his Advanced Diploma in Ceramics. One of them is 5000 words.
Movie talk
We saw a couple of good DVDs last month: Bonhoeffer; and Veronica Guerin. The first is about the role of a German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the assassination plots against Hitler before and during the Second World War. It’s a very moving account of how a pacifist reconciled himself with the need for violence, and how he almost got away with it; and the vindictive reprisals of the Gestapo who executed him fifteen days before the end of the war, knowing that it was all over bar the … well, bar the hanging. The punch line moment is so understated that it’s almost possible to miss. Which, of course, is the point. Justice is anything but glamorous. The second is similar in many ways. It is about an Irish journalist who took on organised crime and almost got away with it. Though she was murdered on the road, her campaign, courage, refusal to be intimidated even after being brutally bashed, galvanised the Irish government to pass some of the most effective anti-corruption legislation in the western world. And the icing on the cake: all but one of the people who were involved in her murder were convicted and gaoled. The one who got away is doing a Tony Mokbel in Spain and will get his – unless he does a Christopher Skace.
Bobby Flynn Concert
We went to a concert in Bangalow on Friday 4/4/08. The star of the show was Bobby Flynn. Well, actually, Bobby Flynn and Omega 3. The show would not have had the impact it had without what would normally be called the backing group. It’s too long a story to tell here, but it’s written up on the blog -
http://twogreytoes.blogspot.com/search/label/Arts%20commentary
Job Hunting
For reasons too painful to think about I am in the job market again. It has been an interesting vindication of my job as a Job Search Trainer. One of the key messages was about canvassing. 70% of people in the workforce did not apply for advertised jobs but made themselves known to potential employers. I sent a dozen canvassing letters and got three responses. Even though I should have expected such a result it came as a surprise. The crisis I now have to resolve is what do I do if I get offered a job, because it was actually a bit of a dog chases car exercise. Ever wondered what a surprise it would be, not least to the dog, if one ever caught a car by the wheel and stopped it in its tracks? [just kidding, of course]
Love your enemies
You may recall my saying in an earlier bull tin that I have planned a number of Adult and Community Education courses, one of which is called Love your Enemies. When researching it recently I came across a lecture by James Alison called Love your enemies – within a divided self. The first ten or so paragraphs, in which he talks about a new field of research into how we develop our sense of who we are, would be of interest to anyone and is worth knowing about even if some would not want to read the rest of the article – which goes on to explore what it might mean to love one’s enemies. If you wonder why such matters have to be discussed in religious language, I’m here to tell you that the point of my course is to find a way to do otherwise. But I would like to say to anyone who is willing to take the risk of reading something that might lie outside of your normal frame of interests, you will not be disappointed if you read the whole article. You will not necessarily be convinced, but at least you will have seen just how critically informed and accessible, not to mention relevant, theology can be.
Here are links to three of James Alison’s articles. The first one is the lecture mentioned above. The other two will help to explain why I might be on the verge of un-lapsing – if you get what I mean.
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng50.html
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng52.html
http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng27.html
We wish you all a very splendid and happy un-birthday, and hope that Santaclause is a daily, rather than merely annual, contributor to your well being – or sense of well being, depending on your philosophical preferences and or sensory proclivities. And on the day on which a thousand ideas bloom, may you find a chicken in every pot. And never mind that the foregoing makes no sense at all. It is enough to wonder, silently or out aloud as you ……
To get up or not to get up
Anyone who thinks GetUp is aligned to a political party should actually look at how it is constituted and how it works. Let me give you an example of how GetUp actually remains impartial when encouraging people to participate in the resolution of issues of significance.
In the lead up to the 2007 election GetUp published an interactive How to Vote Card (H2VC). It asked people to respond to a number of policy issues and only then generated a customised H2VC which ranked the candidates in the relevant electorate according to the policy preferences of the person it was made for. In other words, if you were a coalition voter it would have given you a H2VC that identified candidates who would support your views in Parliament.
But wait, there’s more. This process was so impartial that it was capable of producing H2VCs that displeased the recipient! Let me tell you about the H2VC it produced for me. On the basis of my policy preferences it placed the candidate for the Citizen’s Electoral Council at no 3!! Naturally I didn’t vote that way. But it gave impartial advice on how I should vote given my expressed preferences. An organisation pushing a left-liberal agenda, as distinct from encouraging people to participate and facilitating that participation, would not have put the CEC third on anyone’s ticket.
GetUp is not beholden to any political party or point of view. It is a vehicle for the prosecution of issues held dear by people who care about the future of the country. Anyone who thinks it does not take an interest in their concerns has as much right as anyone else to have input. If enough people provide input on any issue it will get an airing from GetUp. And why wouldn’t it? How short sighted would it be to ignore what a significant number of people are concerned about.
Anyone who thinks that they are unlikely to get a look in at GetUp is, of course, free to get their own activist network up to work on behalf of whatever specific agenda they think is being ignored. All that’s needed is a coherent world view and some ability to say what it is; and use it to identify issues of concern; and to publicise those issues; and provide a means of responding in writing to the appropriate stakeholders; and facilitate public participation in the identification of opportunities for community development as well as issues of concern in local communities and the nation as a whole.
Nation!? Oh, I forget. Someone on the right of politics already tried something like that. It was called One Nation, remember? Except of course, it never was a network – just a black hole into which a prodigious amount of good will poured, never to be seen again. People were betrayed by a “gang of four” whose tools of choice were misrepresentation, manipulation and grubbing (sic) for power. People who feel that GetUp doesn’t address their issues, would do well to learn from One Nation in getting an alternative network up.
In the lead up to the 2007 election GetUp published an interactive How to Vote Card (H2VC). It asked people to respond to a number of policy issues and only then generated a customised H2VC which ranked the candidates in the relevant electorate according to the policy preferences of the person it was made for. In other words, if you were a coalition voter it would have given you a H2VC that identified candidates who would support your views in Parliament.
But wait, there’s more. This process was so impartial that it was capable of producing H2VCs that displeased the recipient! Let me tell you about the H2VC it produced for me. On the basis of my policy preferences it placed the candidate for the Citizen’s Electoral Council at no 3!! Naturally I didn’t vote that way. But it gave impartial advice on how I should vote given my expressed preferences. An organisation pushing a left-liberal agenda, as distinct from encouraging people to participate and facilitating that participation, would not have put the CEC third on anyone’s ticket.
GetUp is not beholden to any political party or point of view. It is a vehicle for the prosecution of issues held dear by people who care about the future of the country. Anyone who thinks it does not take an interest in their concerns has as much right as anyone else to have input. If enough people provide input on any issue it will get an airing from GetUp. And why wouldn’t it? How short sighted would it be to ignore what a significant number of people are concerned about.
Anyone who thinks that they are unlikely to get a look in at GetUp is, of course, free to get their own activist network up to work on behalf of whatever specific agenda they think is being ignored. All that’s needed is a coherent world view and some ability to say what it is; and use it to identify issues of concern; and to publicise those issues; and provide a means of responding in writing to the appropriate stakeholders; and facilitate public participation in the identification of opportunities for community development as well as issues of concern in local communities and the nation as a whole.
Nation!? Oh, I forget. Someone on the right of politics already tried something like that. It was called One Nation, remember? Except of course, it never was a network – just a black hole into which a prodigious amount of good will poured, never to be seen again. People were betrayed by a “gang of four” whose tools of choice were misrepresentation, manipulation and grubbing (sic) for power. People who feel that GetUp doesn’t address their issues, would do well to learn from One Nation in getting an alternative network up.
What a sorry lot
One has to feel very SORRY for the opposition in the Australian Parliament. At a time when the rest of the country was agog with enthusiasm about the 2020 Summit – or expectation, at the very least – these poor things had to adopt the role of critics. Alas they are so bereft that that couldn’t find anything coherent or even pertinent to say.
Starting weeks ago Brendan the Brief discredited himself as a political operator by asserting that the Rudd government has no ideas of its own and had to call on the public to help it out. Actually, Brendan, the Summit was evidence of the government’s ability to harness a really good idea that has the ongoing potential to re-engage the nation with its own future – a process that was viciously attacked by the Howard government every time anybody with something significant to say spoke out.
Another who covered himself in dis-grace was Christopher Pine who knowingly misrepresented the way in which the Summit would work by saying that each idea would get 39.6 seconds of attention. This is so absurd that you’d have to wonder why he’d run the risk of looking like such a goose. Not that anyone, not even people with no idea how a thousand ideas would be processed in one and a half days, would imagine that he could be serious. But they would be entitled to ask, if he can’t say anything substantial about the process, why say anything at all? Why not, in fact, offer his best wishes for the success of the enterprise?
And then there’s Julie Bishop who also couldn’t help making herself look like a substance free zone. Those attending, she solemnly declared, will have every reason to feel cheated if Kevin Rudd pays no attention to their recommendations. This is soooooooooo self evident that it is ridiculous to say it at all. So why say it? Not just because she has nothing of substance to say, but because if she could just play the spoiler, some people who might otherwise have remained open to the possibility of a positive outcome will be encouraged to be gloomy about its prospects, and therefore be less likely to participate at a later stage when momentum gathers for significant social and political change.
Brendan Nelson’s comment after the event was that he met a representative of sex workers and a union official, but found it hard to find anyone from small business and the Australian Medical Association. How could he confine himself to such a trivialising comment. He’d just been involved in a pivotal moment in Australia’s history. A thousand people had earlier given the Prime Minister a standing ovation. Um… or was that nine hundred and ninety nine? His parsimonious account of his experience can be explained by one of two possible dynamics. The first is that he went determined not to be captured by the enthusiasm of the other 999, and succeeded; or he felt that as opposition leader he had to find fault with what the other 999 very clearly found exhilarating. See what I mean when I say we have to feel SORRY for him and his sorry lot.
Oh, and what about Dilly Downer? Responding to the tsunami of support for a republic from the Summit, he predicted that those who opposed the republic would be ridiculed. And that would be a bad thing? Anyone remember the sneering contempt of just about every Howard government minister, not just for their predecessors, but for people who persisted in holding views labelled elitist and politically correct; not just in the immediate aftermath of the 1996 election, but at every election campaign since? It was in this vein that he Downer wrote off the whole Summit as a revival of Keatingesque political correctness – the word Keating intended as a term of abuse. In less than a minute he the spat the word Keating out of his mouth as though it were a vomit lolly from the Harry Potter zone that kept forming in his mouth. Well, a vindication of Keating the Summit was indeed, and it’s so good that you noticed, you flouncing punce. Keating will be honoured in history, while the best thing anyone will ever say about you is that you were the son of a Federal Cabinet Minister, and grandson of a Premier. But the prize goes to his saying that a few conservatives were “roped in to give it a vernier of respectability.” What a pompous fart. Only someone who thinks respectability has something to do with “breeding” could come up with that one. But hey, you globular cluster of sequins and fish net stockings, keep it up. Oh please!! Keep it up.
Malcolm Turnbull’s response to Summit’s enthusiasm for a republic shows that “conservatives” really would rather that the plebs were not involved in running the country. Let’s recall that it was Malcolm who single handedly sunk the Constitutional Convention. As head of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) he went to the convention with an elitist model – the President to be appointed by the Parliament. Other’s took other models, most of which involved the popular election of the President. It was a rare moment for courageous engagement with the future when it became clear that there was am impasse and the logical thing to do was to sit down and do some actual negotiation. But no, the ARM simply refused to accept any compromise or alternative model. It was to be Malcolm’s way or Howard’s (which, of course, was no republic.) Malcolm Turnbull had the gall to accuse John Howard of breaking the country’s heart when he put up a referendum question that everyone knew would fail. The point to revisit here is that it was Turnbull who refused to budge from the elitist model that was not acceptable to the majority of other republican delegates. Never mind what the people think. I know what will work best. It was hardly surprising, therefore that when the Summiteers championed the republic, he sneered at its prospects, saying that the issue should not come up again until QEII is no longer the monarch.
Of more far reaching consequence is the deliberate misrepresentation of the role of GetUp in the Summit by [National Party politician] who complained that no one from his electorate was going to Canberra, in contrast to over 100 GetUp members which he falsely described as an ALP instrumentality. This is a disgraceful misrepresentation of GetUp and the way the Summiteers were selected. (See separate post on GetUp) People were not picked because they were in GetUp. They were picked because they could make a worthwhile contribution. A significant minority of them happen to be members of GetUp. Oh, and by the way, a significant minority of the Summiteers were Catholics; another significant minority were people who went to public schools in NSW. How ludicrous would it be to single out either of the latter two minorities for scrutiny?
“Conservative” politicians and commentators who misrepresent the government’s intentions and the way the Summit would operate, and who attempt to undermine its outcomes, and attack the success of community based activism, do so KNOWINGLY. Every politician in Australia, and every commentator who has bothered to look into GetUp, for example, knows that it is not politically aligned, and that it does respond to people’s concerns as distinct from parties’ concerns. You would therefore have to ask why certain politicians misrepresent GetUp the way they do. And if they really do think GetUp is partial, why not sponsor another organisation that promotes a “conservative” agenda? Here’s my suggestion: if they lie about GetUp people who might otherwise be curious about the way it works might be persuaded not to investigate – not to get involved. It’s people getting critically involved that they don’t want, even if it were with an alternative to GetUp that promoted a partisan agenda of their liking, because involved people are difficult to manage. Look how they treated Pauline Hanson and One Nation after the latter ceased to be useful to them.
The very people who accused “the left” of elitism, shut down participation of diverse opinion even within their own party. Is it any wonder they are terrified of the Summit and what it will trigger in this country? Is it any wonder they speak such embarrassing drivel? For to speak truthfully would be politically self incriminating.
Starting weeks ago Brendan the Brief discredited himself as a political operator by asserting that the Rudd government has no ideas of its own and had to call on the public to help it out. Actually, Brendan, the Summit was evidence of the government’s ability to harness a really good idea that has the ongoing potential to re-engage the nation with its own future – a process that was viciously attacked by the Howard government every time anybody with something significant to say spoke out.
Another who covered himself in dis-grace was Christopher Pine who knowingly misrepresented the way in which the Summit would work by saying that each idea would get 39.6 seconds of attention. This is so absurd that you’d have to wonder why he’d run the risk of looking like such a goose. Not that anyone, not even people with no idea how a thousand ideas would be processed in one and a half days, would imagine that he could be serious. But they would be entitled to ask, if he can’t say anything substantial about the process, why say anything at all? Why not, in fact, offer his best wishes for the success of the enterprise?
And then there’s Julie Bishop who also couldn’t help making herself look like a substance free zone. Those attending, she solemnly declared, will have every reason to feel cheated if Kevin Rudd pays no attention to their recommendations. This is soooooooooo self evident that it is ridiculous to say it at all. So why say it? Not just because she has nothing of substance to say, but because if she could just play the spoiler, some people who might otherwise have remained open to the possibility of a positive outcome will be encouraged to be gloomy about its prospects, and therefore be less likely to participate at a later stage when momentum gathers for significant social and political change.
Brendan Nelson’s comment after the event was that he met a representative of sex workers and a union official, but found it hard to find anyone from small business and the Australian Medical Association. How could he confine himself to such a trivialising comment. He’d just been involved in a pivotal moment in Australia’s history. A thousand people had earlier given the Prime Minister a standing ovation. Um… or was that nine hundred and ninety nine? His parsimonious account of his experience can be explained by one of two possible dynamics. The first is that he went determined not to be captured by the enthusiasm of the other 999, and succeeded; or he felt that as opposition leader he had to find fault with what the other 999 very clearly found exhilarating. See what I mean when I say we have to feel SORRY for him and his sorry lot.
Oh, and what about Dilly Downer? Responding to the tsunami of support for a republic from the Summit, he predicted that those who opposed the republic would be ridiculed. And that would be a bad thing? Anyone remember the sneering contempt of just about every Howard government minister, not just for their predecessors, but for people who persisted in holding views labelled elitist and politically correct; not just in the immediate aftermath of the 1996 election, but at every election campaign since? It was in this vein that he Downer wrote off the whole Summit as a revival of Keatingesque political correctness – the word Keating intended as a term of abuse. In less than a minute he the spat the word Keating out of his mouth as though it were a vomit lolly from the Harry Potter zone that kept forming in his mouth. Well, a vindication of Keating the Summit was indeed, and it’s so good that you noticed, you flouncing punce. Keating will be honoured in history, while the best thing anyone will ever say about you is that you were the son of a Federal Cabinet Minister, and grandson of a Premier. But the prize goes to his saying that a few conservatives were “roped in to give it a vernier of respectability.” What a pompous fart. Only someone who thinks respectability has something to do with “breeding” could come up with that one. But hey, you globular cluster of sequins and fish net stockings, keep it up. Oh please!! Keep it up.
Malcolm Turnbull’s response to Summit’s enthusiasm for a republic shows that “conservatives” really would rather that the plebs were not involved in running the country. Let’s recall that it was Malcolm who single handedly sunk the Constitutional Convention. As head of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) he went to the convention with an elitist model – the President to be appointed by the Parliament. Other’s took other models, most of which involved the popular election of the President. It was a rare moment for courageous engagement with the future when it became clear that there was am impasse and the logical thing to do was to sit down and do some actual negotiation. But no, the ARM simply refused to accept any compromise or alternative model. It was to be Malcolm’s way or Howard’s (which, of course, was no republic.) Malcolm Turnbull had the gall to accuse John Howard of breaking the country’s heart when he put up a referendum question that everyone knew would fail. The point to revisit here is that it was Turnbull who refused to budge from the elitist model that was not acceptable to the majority of other republican delegates. Never mind what the people think. I know what will work best. It was hardly surprising, therefore that when the Summiteers championed the republic, he sneered at its prospects, saying that the issue should not come up again until QEII is no longer the monarch.
Of more far reaching consequence is the deliberate misrepresentation of the role of GetUp in the Summit by [National Party politician] who complained that no one from his electorate was going to Canberra, in contrast to over 100 GetUp members which he falsely described as an ALP instrumentality. This is a disgraceful misrepresentation of GetUp and the way the Summiteers were selected. (See separate post on GetUp) People were not picked because they were in GetUp. They were picked because they could make a worthwhile contribution. A significant minority of them happen to be members of GetUp. Oh, and by the way, a significant minority of the Summiteers were Catholics; another significant minority were people who went to public schools in NSW. How ludicrous would it be to single out either of the latter two minorities for scrutiny?
“Conservative” politicians and commentators who misrepresent the government’s intentions and the way the Summit would operate, and who attempt to undermine its outcomes, and attack the success of community based activism, do so KNOWINGLY. Every politician in Australia, and every commentator who has bothered to look into GetUp, for example, knows that it is not politically aligned, and that it does respond to people’s concerns as distinct from parties’ concerns. You would therefore have to ask why certain politicians misrepresent GetUp the way they do. And if they really do think GetUp is partial, why not sponsor another organisation that promotes a “conservative” agenda? Here’s my suggestion: if they lie about GetUp people who might otherwise be curious about the way it works might be persuaded not to investigate – not to get involved. It’s people getting critically involved that they don’t want, even if it were with an alternative to GetUp that promoted a partisan agenda of their liking, because involved people are difficult to manage. Look how they treated Pauline Hanson and One Nation after the latter ceased to be useful to them.
The very people who accused “the left” of elitism, shut down participation of diverse opinion even within their own party. Is it any wonder they are terrified of the Summit and what it will trigger in this country? Is it any wonder they speak such embarrassing drivel? For to speak truthfully would be politically self incriminating.
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