"I followed him to a room on a floor I didn't know existed and he told me to take off my shoes and enter alone in my socks. The two men were seated on a heavy blackwood sofa, beside an aluminum spittoon. They were still wearing their shoes. I smiled. They did not. The lace curtains were drawn and there was no electricity in the city; the room was dark.
"The thinner man drew out a small new radio, said something into it, and straightened his stiff jacket over his traditional shirt. I didn't need to see the shoulder holster. I had already guessed they were members of the Security Service. They did not care what I said or what I thought of them. They had watched people through hidden cameras in bedrooms, in torture cells, and on execution grounds. They knew that, however I presented myself, I could be reduced. But why had they decided to question me? In the silence, I heard a car reversing in the courtyard and then the first notes of the call to prayer."
The Places In Between, Rory Stewart.
There was a great turning of the page; change the Prime Minister and you change the country, went the saying, first coined, if memory serves correctly, by former PM Paul Keating. John Howard used the expression once during the last election, and then immediately shut his mouth on that particular topic. Because everyone went: yes, yes, yes. Everything changed overnight. The openly lesbian, Chinese origin Penny Wong, taking her partner to Kyoto for the signing and the talk-fest. A woman, Julia Gillard, as Deputy Prime Minister and already on a number of occasions acting Prime Minister. A former rock singer, Peter Garrett, as environment minister. Perhaps it will all end in tears. All impossible under the previous "conservative" government; conservative in quotes because most of his social ideas were stolen from Labor as he gazzumped every policy they dreamed up, a demonic helicopter buzzing over them, hoovering up everything they came up with. During his time government control over our lives spread ever and ever deeper; and privacy legislation has shrouded many things in even greater secrecy.
There's some spectacular talent gaps; Simon Crean as trade minister, Steven Smith as foreign, Jenny Macklin as indigenous affairs, but things have moved on, the bolts have clicked, and Australia is a different place.
He felt, in some strange way, a frothy exultaiton he could not explain. Was it happiness? With his brother visiting from America, there seemed even greater emphasis on that far off house common to their past, that far off place that neither of them had seen for many years, but still held some terrible sway over their imaginations. Unprompted he said he wanted to go out to see it; and couldn't find the time. There was so much to confront. Perhaps it was the only way through.
Just as the nation has officially apologised there has been a police crack down on anti-social behaviour in the street, and suddenly everywhere you look the police are hassling street drunks and making life difficult for the vulnerable exposed on the streets and drinking in the parks; those who don't have penthouse walls and mansion gates to hide the world's prying eyes; to prevent exposure in their final decline; the drinking, the dereliction, the bad behaviour, the shouting, the dealing. And of course it's our indigenous brothers who are most affected by any crackdown; and those linked together by the alcoholic gene; their diseased frames and halting gates everywhere in this city; what happens to you if you keep on drinking.
In the end you're not a nice person, no matter who you are, no matter what the talents, how good the motivations were at the beginning of the cylce. They all end in the same place, become the same person. He marched thoroughly through the darkness. He made mistakes, oh so many mistakes. He remembered those great exculting moments of his childhood, when he managed to set the whole valley alight and the sheer beautiful chaos of the screaming fire engines, the spectacularly beautiful leap of flames, the wonderful sense of event and confirmation, it all made the belting afterwards worthwhile. He would endure almost anything to hear the sound of the fire engines, see the panic in the face of the adults, see the flames leaping from one tree to the next, the smoke billowing across their neighbour's houses.
He called time repeatedly, but this wasn't the end. He might have been left a cormorant on a rock, watching a world that was no longer his, a world full of young people, vibrant, enthusiastic, kids who couldn't care less anymore what the adults thought, the aging adults. The baby boomers had finally passed the flame; age and time had got the better of them. They drifted now into retirement, washed away in an instant. There wasn't much to be said, in the end, for a time that had been so self-indulgent, beliefs that had been so radically wrong, creeping dogs who were gone now, their power bases exposed as flimsy, houses on bamboo stilts. The streets throbbed with a new life. No one's older than you, his brother ribbed, sitting on the internal balcony of the fading 80s hotel they were staying in; and everything marched forward in a great surge; a paradise of fresh hope, a truly magnificent fresh hope. It was an entirely new world. He could only be grateful, in his own hobbling way, to still be alive. And that is how he summed it up: At least I'm alive, he said. That's more than you can say for a lot of people I've known.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-rudd-identity/2008/02/15/1202760597274.html
The Rudd identity
Tony Wright
February 16, 2008
SELDOM has Australia witnessed a defter illustration of the political art. As Kevin Rudd wove his spell on Wednesday over the gathered peoples of the old land we inhabit, granting with finely crafted words a symbolic rebirth to the lost and the found, he tossed a rope to Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson.
It was, however, both an instrument of deliverance and a lasso.
Nelson had no choice but to sit there, nodding sagely, as Rudd proposed that he and the Opposition Leader jointly head a sort of war cabinet to tackle — as a start — the lack of housing in remote Aboriginal communities. Nelson had no clue that such a gift was coming his way, and thus could neither refuse it nor accept it. He was, in effect, rendered politically impotent.
Rudd's gesture, though, was so dexterously crafted, he could receive only plaudits. His stature growing by the minute as an inclusive prime minister catching the mood of the country, who would be so meanly disposed to detect a hidden motive, let alone criticise such apparent generosity of spirit?
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23221746-5007146,00.html
With respect, Rudd grasps the moment
By Laurie Oakes
February 16, 2008
IT'S an extraordinary start. Kevin Rudd becomes Prime Minister and, well within his first 100 days, walks straight into the history books. That is the truth about his parliamentary apology to the stolen generation.
And it is not only in Australia where the bipartisan "sorry" vote has made an impact.
The event was world news and Rudd got a flow of positive overseas feedback, including congratulatory text messages from high-level diplomatic contacts and a phone call from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Had John Howard delivered the apology in 1997, when it was first recommended in the Bringing Them Home report, the outpouring of feeling would not have been nearly as great.
Howard's decade of intransigence magnified the importance of the gesture. Rudd saw that and used it to put his own stamp on the prime ministership in spectacular fashion.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23226367-5000117,00.html
Worst of jobs for Libs leader
Sunday Herald Sun
Glenn Milne
February 17, 2008 12:00am
THE man who was most diminished by Wednesday's national apology to the "stolen generations" wasn't there.
While Kevin Rudd and Brendan Nelson were enhanced both as politicians and as human beings by their contributions, John Winston Howard refused an invitation to attend the event.
Before we deal with Howard, a word on Nelson and his role in this symbolic act of national reconciliation.
While there's been much made of people turning their backs on the Opposition Leader, the fact is there is an activist core on this issue that will never be satisfied with the Coalition's position on indigenous issues. And for that, Nelson has Howard to thank.
The truth is that at some of the outdoor broadcast venues on Wednesday spectators started turning their backs on Nelson before he opened his mouth. This is a display of political prejudice rather than a principled stand in support of an apology.
What people fail to appreciate is that Nelson represents the conservative half of Australia on this question. The new Opposition Leader's achievement, after more than a decade of Howard-led recalcitrance, was to get his party inside the apology tent.
The fact that he did is deserving of applause. All the rest is simply nitpicking.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/emphasis-on-the-truth/2008/02/16/1202760661102.html
Emphasis on the truth
Simon Webster
February 17, 2008
Kevin Rudd is treating the office of prime minister with contempt. Ignoring a noble tradition established by 25 previous prime ministers, Rudd is making a mockery of history and insulting the Australian public by doing what he said he would do.
"No, no, you don't understand, Kev," a senior adviser told Rudd last week. "All that stuff we said in November, we were just kidding. It was a joke. Bit of a chuckle. It was the beer talking. Once you're in, you're in. You don't actually have to do anything useful. Look at Morris up in Sydney."
A steely glint came to Rudd's eye. He turned to the window and gazed out over the manicured expanse of lawn at Parliament House. "My word is my bond," he said. "As it has been since my difficult upbringing as a fair dinkum dinky-di ridgy-didge Aussie battler with an accent that is a cross between Outer Hebridean and Punjabi. I shall do great things for this great nation. And I shall make important speeches that will make the great hairs on the great necks of our great people stand up, even if my emphasis is sometimes in the wrong place, and I sometimes mumbleoverbitsandfinishsentencestooquickly."
The adviser fired back: "But the tax cuts, Kev. Surely we don't have to go through with the tax cuts."
"Honesty is the best policy, my faithful adviser. Atleasthat'swhatmumalwayssaid."
A man at the Royal Easter Show.
No comments:
Post a Comment