It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I though of the door
With no lock to lock.
I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.
But the knock came again.
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.
Back over the sill
I bade a 'Come in'
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.
So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.
Robert Frost The Lockless Door
At first the news came across as just another odd event in the city, callous cruelty, the banality of evil. Two people had jumped from a balcony in Hunter Street, Waterloo, the neighbouring suburb to Redfern. There wasn't much peace now. Drugs, probably, they thought dismissively, barely able to arouse any interest, beyond the quirkiness of it. Ever since ice became the drug of choice for many of the city's alcoholic-addict-derelict fraternity strange things have been happening constantly. Were you there when she died? the police asked the beggar woman outside the station as I passed. She hadn't stood up when they arrived, and just shook her head.
The police were always trying to move her on; but she was always back within hours. She gave them a mouthful every time they tried. It was curious the depth to which they had sunk. But as the days followed, the story of the couple who had jumped from the balcony took over the conscience of the city, duly horrified. They were young Asian students, 18, 19, boyfriend, girlfriend. The girl died. The boy remains in hospital with multiple fractures, broken pelvis, broken everything. There had been four Asian students in the unit; they often cram together to save money. It had been just another Sunday evening, when hell broke loose. An aboriginal man known as Brendan Peter Dennison broke into their unit; fuelled, the newspaper reports say, on ice. Locals who knew him confirm that he had been seriously into the ice.
Another black man on a short circuit to nowhere, running seriously into trouble. Even shadows dance, here in the sickness. He had allegedly raped them, forced them to have sex with each other. The names of the victims have been suppressed; more censorship, more control. Some newspapers blacked out the faces of relatives, others didn't. Where were the boundaries in these things? Why was there so much control? It was the quiet, genteel, almost delicate lives of the Asian students; face to face with the raging, screaming, terrifying madness of the street, dangerous of soul, dangerous of body. He arranged them in tableaus. He allegedly forced them to do things to each other. He was gripped in the urgent carnality of the drug, able to do anything, driven with desire.
And the shadows flickered outside the unit. Muffled shouts. Disturbances in the ether. Evil has arrived here. Big, powerful, strong, smelly. A towering psycho determined to wreak havoc. He couldn't understand why they didn't like it, as he forced them on each other. Oddly, the newspapers report court documents recording that he touched the boys anus with his tongue. A bizarre clinical analysis. Get down and dirty. So terrified had they become, that they jumped three floors to the concrete; or there is some suggestion pushed. This story gripped the city, people shook their heads. Imagine how terrified you would would have to be to jump from a third floor balcony, 25 metres, to escape from someone, they said. He was captured by blasts from the past, everywhere.
Here we're in shadow, different pasts, different jobs, time enfolding in on itself. He measured the dalliance. He asked strangers for information. They shook their heads. It could happen to anyone, any race, they turn bad. As zombies hobble past in the street, clearly stoned. Odd parallels to the story he was chasing. Each one of these people, or drifting couples, could tell a drug fuelled story of brutality, viciousness. He came down from the country and went off the rails. He stayed with friends until they kicked him out. No one could ever be certain of what really happened. Party, party, they said, chortling, laughing at the limitless opportunities that were opening up. But at the end of the party there was nothing but dead bodies and holes in their memories.
There were always these weird crazy things that were happening in the neighbourhood. Were you there when she died? Clearly someone had overdosed on the street, only a day after the balcony murderer had been caught. He could see the gloved police going through bags, harassing itinerants. It seemed an entirely pointless exercise, persecuting people for their drugs of choice, darkening the shades of time, picked out in a hyper-real light as they bent over to examine the drug paraphernalia in their bags. What was the point? Arrest them and they'd be back within hours, or days. The jails were already full with the city's dysfunctional. The middle classes were out of fashion. Every one wanted to save the world. The c... died in me lap, she said. It was just another bit of weirdness in the city landscape; another echo. Suddenly the police were running, chasing after another woman, cornering her further up the lane. Were you with her when she died, they no doubt asked. As if anyone would admit anything, not to whitie, not to the forces of repression; not here, not now, not ever.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/a-nation-reborn-at-anzac-cove-utter-nonsense-keating-20081030-5enw.html
FORMER prime minister Paul Keating has challenged one of the nation's most cherished narratives: that Australia's nationhood was baptised within the Anzac spirit of Gallipoli.
Dismissing the idea as "utter and complete nonsense", Mr Keating said he had never been to Gallipoli and "never will".
This puts him at odds with former prime ministers Bob Hawke and John Howard and former Labor leader Kim Beazley, who have all made moving speeches at Anzac Day ceremonies at Gallipoli in which they placed the 1915 landing there at the heart of the Australian story.
Mr Keating made it clear that he believed the estimated 20,000 Australians who make the pilgrimage to Gallipoli each year were misguided.
Mr Hawke was in South Korea last night and could not be contacted, and efforts to contact both Mr Howard and Mr Beazley also failed.
"Gallipolli was shocking for us," Mr Keating said. "Dragged into service by the imperial government in an ill-conceived and poorly executed campaign, we were cut to ribbons and dispatched. And none of it in the defence of Australia."
The former prime minister, an avowed republican, challenged the Anzac legend while launching a new book, Churchill and Australia, written by Gough Whitlam's former speechwriter, Graham Freudenberg, who had written of Gallipoli that "in an almost theological sense Australian Britons had been born again into the baptism of fire at Anzac Cove".
Mr Keating said he believed the author was questioning, "somewhat tongue in cheek, whether we needed being reborn at all".
"The 'reborn' part went to a lack of confidence and ambivalence about ourselves — who we were and what we had become," Mr Keating said.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/drought-aid-down-the-drain/2008/10/30/1224956238414.html
BILLIONS of dollars in drought assistance to farmers and rural businesses has been inequitable, ineffective and divisive, and encouraged poor farming practices, the Productivity Commission says.
In a draft report requested by the Federal Government and released yesterday, the commission recommends most forms of drought assistance be scrapped by 2009-10 and replaced by spending on things such as climate research and business training that help farmers better manage risk so they can survive drought without taxpayer assistance.
Struggling farmers everywhere - not just in drought-declared areas - should get temporary income assistance, but with much tighter eligibility criteria.
The report also recommends scrapping $150,000 exit grants - designed to get unviable farmers off the land - because they have attracted only 550 applications.
The commission said: "Most farmers are sufficiently self-reliant to manage climate variability. In 2007-08, 20 per cent of Australia's 150,000 farms received drought assistance, totalling over $1 billion, with some on income support continuously since 2002. Even in drought-declared areas, most farmers manage without assistance."
The report is scathing of subsidies from the Federal Government for interest rates and from the State Government for the transport of livestock, water and fodder because they "can perversely encourage poor management practices. In marked contrast to the policy objectives, current drought assistance programs are not focused on helping farmers improve self-reliance, preparedness and climate-change management."
Interest rate assistance was directed to those "more heavily in debt, farmers who have strong balance sheets are ineligible".
Transport subsidies pushed up the price of fodder for other farmers and exacerbated environmental damage because farmers retained excessive stock for the prevailing conditions.
Exceptional Circumstances assistance is supposed to go to needy farmers in areas that are suffering droughts that come along only every 20 to 25 years, but "it has been common for 30 per cent or more of Australia to be [drought] declared. Indeed, as at June 2008, more than half of the country was declared and some areas had been declared for 13 of the past 16 years. When compared with rainfall records, it would appear that a generous interpretation of the criteria, rather than protracted low rainfall, is mainly responsible for such widespread declarations.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24579240-5013871,00.html
SINGLE pensioners will be the most affected by the price increases to flow from emissions cuts, adding to their claims for reform of their benefits.
Government modelling released yesterday predicts costs would rise by an average of between 1.3 and 1.8 per cent for single pensioners in 2010, compared with 0.8 to 1.2 per cent for the wealthiest singles.
Single pensioners would be left worse off than all other households, including sole-parent households or people on unemployment benefits.
"Lower-income households are likely to be slightly more affected by the introduction of an emissions price than other households, as they generally spend a higher proportion of their disposable income on emissions-intensive goods, and may be less able to substitute away from these goods," Treasury acknowledges in its report.
The average annual electricity bill is tipped to rise by an average $208 to $260 per household when emissions trading starts in 2010, with gas and other fuels adding another $104 to the total.
Inflation will rise by up to 1.5per cent in a one-off shock in the same year, with a second hit at the supermarket checkout likely some years later when the trading scheme widens to take in farming, pushing up food prices.
But Wayne Swan said yesterday households would continue to prosper even under the deepest emissions cuts considered by Government by 2020.
"Real disposable income per capita grows at an annual average rate of around 1 per cent in the policies modelled between 2010 and 2050, compared with 1.2 per cent in the reference scenario," the Treasurer said.
National Seniors chief executive Michael O'Neill said pensioners would hold the Government to its July pledge to increase their payments to compensate for the 2010 price hikes.
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