armagnac'd

As days become years

2011-12-29T09:47:00.010+11:00

As Beloved peeled off to bed, I went out for a walk. Like so many evenings capping days that drag on, circling around the screen, files, briefings and other bureacratic occuclutter. Evenings that fail their promise of something to make the day seem worthwhile. Worth more than merely paying the bills.

We are tired. Everything makes sense. But that doesn't change the wait each day for the third part of life, the one where you are adults with your own agency living your own life, to engage, even if just for an hour.

I told an older relative, with a comfortable looking nuclear family life in Surrey, England, that we are thinking of getting someone in the bungalow out the back, perhaps an au pair. It sits empty, unvisited, and we thought if there was a boarder who could babysit from time-to-time we might be able to do things like go out on occasional dates.

...Beloved and I, to be clear!

And anyway (as Bear says when you pause in a conversation with her) they replied that it sounded like I was pining for the past, going on dates and all that; better to adjust to life as it is now. And not for the first time in recent months I found another person's helpful view of my stage in life almost suicidally depressing. And realised that even a happy-looking twee family in Surrey can be the post-script to some compromise that forever consigned some romantic notion like, well, romance, or affection, to a cold little graveyard in the far corner of the park.

Perhaps going out together is not important to those people. Perhaps all of it became less important. But in the words of a Black Crowes number I've been messing around with a bit on my old, scarred, nylon-string:

She don't know no lover,
No man I've ever seen,
To her that ain't nothin',
But to me it is, it is everything.

I walked along the ridge above Merri Creek, where the street lights are infrequent and muffled by dominating trees. It was dark, quiet. Now and then a house was fantastically lit with Christmas lights. A lone skateboarder peeled off into a driveway. A couple of dogs murmered unconvincingly.

All my closest slept. No war threatened them, no fire or floods approached our suburb. There was food in the cupboard. These things are all good and I am thankful. But we only live once, and if we spend our days apart, grinding our faces into computer screens in giant hives, then at some point surely we need more.

After transition, a transition

2011-11-29T11:04:00.004+11:00

We are just weeks from school. Bear tries on her dress, I well up. She is excited. I am, and yet. It is the start of it all.

We went to transitions together, Beloved being in a new job. Daddy daughter mornings of nerves and bouncing excitement (respectively). I milled awkwardly with instant coffee and biscuits, staff room life, chatted to the odd parent. Mostly mums, many knew each other. I shuffled my handouts, listened to the primers about how good it will be. I am sure it will. And yet.

Bear bonded, mostly with her buddy from this year's prep. And a tall girl who can already use the monkey bars. Like me, Bear is quite a bit of work off being able to use monkey bars. She drew, listened, had fun. Then we walked home together, put on the kettle, I made her a hot chocolate, and we sat on the step that edges our back garden, side by side. Questions and anecdotes. She told me about her classes and I asked about friends. We pottered a while there each day before I put on my suit and took her to childcare, an afternoon of obiter, chronology and general administrain waiting in the office.

Work was extra hard those days. I direct my hopes to her fortune. I hope she is happy.

Grandparents in Queensland - a brief (dis)engagement

2011-11-23T08:58:00.005+11:00

We went to Queensland. A few months ago now, this blog has lost some of its grasp on chronology.

It was fine. Fine in the sense that nothing catastrophic went down. I avoided the big topics. My parents made a modest effort at times, while hardly making our considerable effort, emotional and logistical, worth it.

With 4 days to share with the kids, neither of them could be bothered hanging out in the play centre when it was raining heavily and there was no-where else to go. It seemed to be too much to just be. With the kids, just be. At the huge playground next to the lake they made fanfare out of feeding the ducks. Always feeding the ducks. They lingered long after the kids moved to the swings and climbing frames, focused on the ducks.

At the gardens they engaged while showing us around. The steam train was a hit. Then we fed the ducks again. My father snarled at Mitts for throwing a large piece of bread to the ducks. Apparently it can harm them. Apparently feeding them bread is otherwise a good idea. Apparently snarling inappropriately at your 2 year old grandson because he failed to correctly apportion bread is less concerning than a duck being overfed. I moved in between, creating distance while commenting on 'grumpy granddad'. I resisted the strong temptation to shove him into the water, a real, visceral temptation derived from a strong sense of my need to protect my son from such unapologetic unpleasantness.

We got to a playground, a perfect context for relaxed engagement, big seats, shade, palms waving overhead, a benign and calming context. They both walked off and sat in the nearby cafe for an hour.

There were some nice moments. Mitts found some pumice on a beach nearby - again we were there sans grandparents, who thought it might be easiest if they just waited at home - and was keen to keep it to show granddad. Look granddad, Pu-misss. Yeeers, says graddad, allowing half a smile. Not many though. So much berating, not sitting on furniture properly (those 2 and 4 year olds are so out of control these days!) was a big one. Our efforts to get them to move dinner forward slightly to have it with the kids were mostly resisted.

We went to Hervey Bay, just us, not them too. The beach was long, wide, uncrowded. Sand in toes &c, its a common cliche for a reason. Saw the tails of 2 dolphins or Waloos from the beach. That was nice. More of that please from this day forth.

The unfinished business of repairs

2011-11-16T10:19:00.003+11:00

Speaking with my birth mother last night. She is here, finding her space as one of the grandparent constellation.

Closing the circle. That is how I see it: repairs that can never fully be made to the fabric of her and my relationship, just because (because my guilt sets boundaries, there are others, and because of stories she can't fully tell). But with them there is no obstacle, none indeed for any of the grandfolk willing to step forward and have a relationship. Step, adoptive, birth, right pain in the arse or otherwise.

They can take a few giants steps together this week.

Landmark was on TV. The cult, movement, positive thinking self-help whatever. We spoke of repairs, to the past, the complexity of wanting or wanting to give forgiveness. And apology. Someone in her life - nothing to do with me or adoption - went to Landmark, with its clear simplicity and demands for change and movement. They came to her, seeking something. She gave something approaching apology, hoping for something back; acknowledgment, concession, perhaps something approaching apology. She got nothing. They asked for their apology. She gave it, still hopeful.

They went off with their head full of positive thinking, new starts and all of that, Landmark's simplicity directing them to the cool rainforest of Northern Queensland.

Fixing the past doesn't necessarily mean hurling yourself on coals. But no matter how much you clutch assertions, tropes, rhetoric, or other cultish devices, the repairs don't fix themselves. Not completely. People may move on but you shouldn't ask for absolution if you can't roll up your sleeves and fix that tap that has been leaking since 19whenever.

Barbara Ehrenreich nailed it.

Approaching 40 - time to give up?

2011-11-14T13:12:00.006+11:00

"If you have not self actualised by 40, isn't it time to give up?"

I had been dealing pretty well with being in my late 30s. I had no 40 issues, really none at all. Until that statement, made by a well-meaning late-20-something.

Perhaps it is time. Perhaps that last rung on the hierarchy of needs is an illusion. Many seem too obsessed with it, with something they haven't yet found. If 'too' is defined by missing the good things right in front of you.

But when I toyed with the notion, not writing that novel or thesis, losing the idea I've been gnawing away on that I might look again at career with the kids in school, consider the possibilities like an undergraduate, when grasped it and peered in, I saw a hard, lightless landscape, I saw slowly lifting one foot, then the other, forwards, towards the same. It was just bleak, a shade of ashen grey about 3 shades short of black.

It was a statement made with the same sense of certaintly I felt at that age, by now I would be everything I am and more, whatever more is, and perhaps most importantly of all I would have 'found it' and would be entirely sated by what it is that I put my energy into. Not only that, but money would be bouncing off my shoulder blades and as I straddled a perfect balance of material sufficiency and ethical purity. Saving the world, then recuperating on a ski field in Japan or a reef off the coast of Manado. As I write it the words are silly, the utopianism self-contradictory and absurd, yet it was a firm belief.

The young person, the sense of certainty, both are easy to put into perspective. But the words pierce my defences against a far broader sweep of pressures that are less passing, less easily ignored. From family, from Beloved, my kids and my own guilt, outwards.

Should I be mourning the 30s as the last time in my life I might have been entitled to do something radically different? Are the unfinished 8,500 word novel, the Masters that never turned into that Phd scholarship, the two writing jobs for which I got to second interview stage, the dream policy role that came at the wrong time, the artefacts of the final period of settlement on the rest of my life?

I have so much I am happy about. I know I should be grateful. I just don't know what I can tell my children, in complete honesty, it is all for. I know some of you have the answers, have passed this date by a while and will find the very notion here perplexing or even offensive. I hope so anyway, as I need to hear something that isn't from the maw of conservative late-30s career-life, a maw that presently has me in its teeth...

The Age of Divorce

2011-11-07T10:54:00.005+11:00

There was a time of heightened marrying, and among those unmarried several equivalent partnerships. You know at the time that they can't all last, perhaps, in some cases, you already know they shouldn't.

Then there were children. Parenting is by necessity myopic and distorted, everything appears behind the lens of a world that so completely envelops your time and energy. You mingle by mutual interest: mother's groups switch everyone's attention to a group of others in the same place, and even within existing friends fathers seek each other out to compare notes, reassure, share an understood release over beer-soaked conversation from quarter to quarter.

Now a succession of separations and divorces. I should not overstate it, there are only 3 on my mind although a couple of other unions are clearly on the rocks. They all have small children. In at least 1, probably 2, it is a result I might have predicted if I were forced to lay down money back then. The couples, indeed the children, may be better off, and having brought wonderful children into the world through those unions there must be a caveat on any regret. In one case they are working well together to share responsibilities and avoiding vitriol.

None of which reduces the general melancholy I feel when I look across that landscape of friends and imagine the disappointments, the sense of failure most would feel, perhaps deep down the speculation - no doubt quickly suppressed out of guilt and love for their children - as to how things might have been different.

Happy photos now weigh heavily in albums, threatening to push through pages. Smiles seem strained, sunny beaches a prelude to storms. I want to hold mine close and never leave the afternoon in the back garden, grass, gently-clunking toys, Beloved with a handfull of snippings under the olive tree.

The prodigal son drags his family north

2011-07-14T14:19:00.004+10:00

I have blogged about my father. Hit 'personal', go back, it's there. I am now in a better place. He has received the all-clear after an encounter with cancer followed by enough chemicals to kill the Great Barrier Reef. They are both pretty unwell, and against some better judgement we are paying them a visit.

Despite the one-sided nature of the effort involved, I feel I have to give the possibility of a relationship between grandparent and grandchild a chance. A small, guarded, chance. And my poor mother, stranded in a town she never wanted to go to, deserves something.

I have not fought with him for many months. I refuse to talk about work. Or asylum seekers (or anything touching on race, not that he's a racist, but..). We have some ongoing contact and it is tolerable.

As once suggested on this blog, by Zoe I believe, I took a few sessions of counselling directed specifically at our relationship. It was good. Partly from that, and from reflection, I can see things from a slightly removed place. I have additional perspective and it helps. In particular I spend less time fretting about whether our relationship is part of some adoption issue. That may be there, but it is also a lot clearer to me that I am only part of an immovable story of control and inflexibility.

Counselling helped me see wider patterns. Anything that can't be controlled becomes a threat. The only child he could have raised and never fought badly with would be one who never fully grew up, never pushed out and became an individual. No matter how similar their wiring (to use his phrase), one decent step towards independence and it would be on. My mother's acquiescence in so much of his crap frustrates me, yet I can see that it is a survival mechanism for their relationship. As he gives no room, and offers no mediation between positions, any serious push back would be like a car hitting a wall. No give. A mess.

I know what I would probably do if I were her... well I know because I have effectively done it. I said 'no thanks', 'stop saying that', 'I don't want the same things you do', 'I disagree'. Started saying it at the end of my teens, and have had a turbulent relationship since. The normal adjustment into the adult-adult relationship is not possible, because there can be no adjustment. So where I have learned from those fights at 18, 19, and long since moderated many things that led us there, he has barely changed one iota. He has pulled out insults long since buried, as if we hadn't done the burying by going through a hostile, stressful, awful process of razorblade iteration.

But. Months of carefully circumscribed conversation, the insights of counselling, and my own reflection have brought me to a better place. There are limits to our engagement, and I know I can't improve on that.

Visiting is not ideal. I need to consciously avoid both trigger-topics and opportunities, which usually come in the form of initially-benign conversations, in fact often pleasant, a glass of scotch in front of each of us, with my mother and Beloved wandering off to do other things, and my defences going down, and then the poison comment arriving like a concealed screwdriver through the ribs...

Signature noises and tweety-bird pogues

2011-07-11T15:23:00.003+10:00

Mitts has a sound, everyone is impressed and Bear is slightly put out. He raises a warble at the back of his throat, I think it's his tongue flapping away loosely, and can raise it, lower it, pretty much sing tunes with it. I would write rrlrrlrrlrrlrrlrrlrrl or rdlrdlrdlrdlrdlrdl or simply rrrrrrrrrrr, yet none really capture it.

When I sing to him he say "STOP SINGING". However on my looking offended he sometimes relents, "Sing Daddy". He relented for Nature's Boy, a version involving his name every couple of lines and references to sitting in a tree (he and Bear have discovered that it's fun to be stuck up in the fork of the tree out the front by Daddy, who then sits under them fretting and waving his arms around behind them ready to make some attempt at catching).

Bear decided her signature noise would be speaking in a high squeaky voice, which is a bit of a thing she has, perhaps not the one I'd have chosen to show off. I'd have gone for some singing instead. She pulled out a few Coldplay lines the other day, but the best moment came from sitting in the very same tree, telling me she was a bird, then singing:

Tweet tweet tweet tweeeeeet,
Tweety tweet tweet tweeeeeet,
Tweet tweet tweeeeeeeeet,
Tweety tweet, twe-tweet....

and so on, being, OF COURSE, Dirty Old Town by the Pogues. Note for note. Which we had on in the car a few weeks ago.

A Bear likes her music, in her own way. My little brother was with us. He was out the back playing and singing, very nicely, a very talented lad. I was feebly picking along improvising, feeling very outshone. But Bearsy, every time another song started, demanded 'Play your notes Daddy' before she would dance.

Enjoying every moment.

.... Enjoying every moment apart from trying to change Mitts' clothes and apart from being woken violently at 6am...

Back to where Raquel came from...

2011-06-29T09:54:00.003+10:00

What this show demonstrated more than anything else is what most refugee advocates have long believed: the hard line reflects a failure to empathise that reflects a failure to imagine.

Raquel copped it, but right from the start others riled me more. Surely those dishing out the vitriol in her direction could see at least some of the causes- a lousy education and modest circumstances (to put it mildly). Her racism was honest and refreshing in one sense; it is plainly not an uncommon view of the 'other' in this country but it is one furiously and aggressively denied. She said it, and said it simply and without malice. And as the show developed she made the most remarkable progress.

A couple of the others made far less sense in my view, having the benefit of more time in and understanding of the world. The homicidal hatred expressed by the ex-disability advocate was astounding.

But all of them improved markedly during the show. All showed capacity to reflect and learn. Which just sadly emphasises how far public opinion might shift if people were able to imagine their plight, and empathise. It casts light on the role of selective reporting as well. If each image of a boatload of Afghanis were accompanied by images of the Taliban hunting down schoolgirls it's not beyond hope to think that many people's reaction would be a little less hateful.

Hard for a boy, it is

2011-06-27T14:02:00.004+10:00

Mitts is struggling with life at 2. He has started being physically and verbally assertive (to put it mildly) and I am sure the collective weight of correction from both ourselves and others is getting him down. He can't get away with hitting or shoving. On the other hand with the bulk of his playmates being girls there is a tendency for him to be at the rougher end, noted as such by the parents of girls, without necessarily being the instigator. Part of learning is not to hit, part of learning is not to snatch or boss other kids about. And dare I say being hit by their friends when they try to wrestle a teddy away from them is one of the ways kids learn that they aren't an island. Which is to say that it ain't always his fault.

Still. He can't hit and we will keep making that clear. And there are a few ways he is testing ground, asserting himself, pushing boundaries, most of which need some curbing at the fringes. But perhaps we need to add some other carrot. I think a boy is sad and world-weary.

He held on today, as he now often does, at childcare. His chin slumped on my shoulder, yet his grip around me was firm. The new normal, before which he was better than fine and he'd adjusted well to childcare from the start. As with Bear who hurls herself in, loves her kinder teacher, and currently strikes a nice balance by waving to me from the window but then leaving to return to her friends before I have driven off.

Men have a lot of lessons to learn as they grow up. There are a lot of contradictions in those lessons. He will be baffled many times. My job may be to guide him through those lessons, teach him to be a decent man, but it is also to make sure the weight of contradictions and the size of the task of tackling life itself don't overwhelm him. At first, he needs love and reassurance. While keeping the rules firm, I need to find more ways to give him that love and reassurance.

And hang out throwing mud and stuff.

On writing - starting midpoint of a listless journey?

2011-06-21T14:18:00.002+10:00

From blogs, to where? How many of us want to write more, to connect with the enduring power of a novel, or even that rare poem or short story that hooks in?

For the 140,045th time in my life I am pondering the writing ideal. It could be worse, having whinged much about my jobs at least I sometimes get to hone the craft here, albeit through the distended language of policy or law. I write this in my belated lunch break. I can do that now I have belated lunch breaks.

How do you simply sit down and write something good? Ask a bunch of writers and you get the sprawl you deserve I guess, but reading this article, printed off and stapled, on the train, one of the scattering of suggestions was keeping a diary. I thought 'well I have a blog', then realised, perhaps embarrassed at the realisation that most of us out here probably want to write a wonderful novel (and more than one visitor to this site is a published, seasoned writer), that I have barely put words down on this quest.

At times I have written as I would always want to, but there are at least 3 voices I have been happy with. A brooding, emotional language where pain and happiness are drawn out with raw imagery (a little perhaps in the preceding post...). Funny - I love doing funny but it is so hard to hit the spot, it just seems to come out right from time to time. And dry, political analyst. I also do a pretty good academic essay but you don't really see that here.

As well as voice confusion, and genre/fiction v non-fiction/purpose confusion, there is also the simple reality that as often as not I don't hit the spot at all. I know it, readers show it. The blog is, at least, a great place to test this. With posts such as this- navel gazing, rambling, and self-serving! Still, a diary the writer said so here is the first jot on the epage. I will start by collecting a history in a dozen lines or so...

Writing great little horror stories at age 11, until told to desist or get expelled from thick-skulled catholic school. Hardly wrote again until adulthood.

Random efforts in poetry and short stories from the end of school into university, a play somewhere that I submitted for drama but have since lost.

The real trigger was a series of long emails I wrote to friends from the end of Uni, some of which were quite experimental as a way of breaking the 'travel email' tedium, on topics from Andalucia to skiing to the emotional experience of winning a welfare appeal. Then I started to get a few responses suggesting more than polite flattery, a friend or two really did seem to think this was something I should explore. No doubt at this point I am not alone among the triptillion would-be writers out there.

Under the blanket of rain in London I started a novel. Got about 3 pages in. Read Stephen King On Writing and -inspired- ditched the excess description, looked around, saw a beggar with a dog and started again. Attempting to meld something close to horror or the magical with rambling, observant depression. A bit over 8000 words later I had lost momentum, mostly because the colourful detail drawn from expatriate life in London was threatened by my move to Melbourne. Also, the underlying theme of loss of sanity from the circular relentlessness of single life was polaxed at first base by the arrival of Beloved.

King says don't plan, just write, but this did make it hard when the inspirations became distant. Where exactly was this going? I have no idea, it still sits in a draw somewhere. Subsequent attempts involve a lawyer going crazy (always plenty of personal inspiration for that one and I do like the idea of subverting the lawyer genre, given it captures none of the darkness and frustration involved with real lawyering) among others, none of which got far. I dabbled in non-fiction and had articles published. I came close to switching into journalism. I wrote essays for a Masters, and while they often queried my poor referencing, argumentative structure or general gist, they normally liked (sometimes loved) the writing.

I bunged out a couple more poems and songs along the way. Oh, and some blogs. Dry and political, then ponderous and emotional, then something crazy about a cat (still my most loved effort I think), then drabs of each continued to appear on this, the resulting, long-lasting diary of several years of random thoughts.

Which I love on many levels. I also know that if 1/4 of the energy put into this went into other types of writing, I would probably have a novel, or a few published articles, or something... when it comes to the creative and unpaid, time is precious and game theory applies. One replaces another, unless you want to be up at 3am.

So on I go. If you got this far and have your own tips or links, posts on your own journey, please leave them below the dotted line...

With a sick boy at midnight

2011-06-16T14:19:00.006+10:00

Not that bad the Doctor said, but by 5pm sheer tiredness overwhelmed him and he slept. Until 11pm.

A succession of thumps announced his awakening. He stood in the dining room squinting, thrown by the lack of routine and order. Saw us approaching and smiled.

Beloved was wrecked and left me to put him to bed. He was awake and needed to adjust before sleep might come again. Clutched a bottle of water and asked to sit with me. I hugged him close, flicked over the channels but realised nothing was suitable, least of all the biker violence I had drifted into. This late I wanted a compromise, no Fireman Sam or In the Night Garden DVDs with my remaining Shiraz. We settled on A River Somewhere and sank deep into the couch.

"Car", "House", "Moo Daddy Moo" were pointed out to me. He leaned his head back on my shoulder and I told him I'd missed him that day. As Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner waded up the Howqua River, water spraying off their airborne fly lines, he asked: "Daddy and Mitts did it?"

Perhaps one day little man- if you aren't a vegetarian. But it still made a small warm place in me. After the episode he asked for "read it?" and we snuggled through a couple of short kids' books. It was midnight. He wanted more. We stood together, he wrapped his arms around the back of my shoulder, and I went into the bay behind the curtains. Outside it was dark, cold and still, the world on pause.

"Sleep time". He still wanted another book but the protests were weaker. I tucked him in and kissed his forehead. Bear snored peacefully beside us. He smiled and blew kisses with an audible smack as I walked out of the room.

Eva Cassidy, Clare Bowditch, and the Fields of Melbourne

2011-05-02T09:30:00.003+10:00

Beloved came home from the Eva tribute breathless with excitement, almost teary with emotion and told me firmly I was to go see the final show Sunday afternoon. She would mind the kids and it would be done. I simply could not miss it.

Eva Cassidy has perhaps the most beautiful voice I've heard. Her story is told elsewhere, but it is short and tragic, and reflects not only the essential unfairness of life but also the cold, anti-creative machine that is the music industry. I discovered her posthumously, like almost everyone, at the tail end of my time in London.

I am a closet singer. Correct that, there is nothing closet about it, I've had lessons and sang a song I had written at my wedding. But closet in the sense that if I had half Eva's (or Clare's) voice I would be weaving tales of woe through the venues of northern Melbourne on a regular basis.

My version of crooning was wrapped up in my early romantic haze with Beloved. The first night we got it together, I asked if I could get her something, she joked 'sing me a lullaby', and I picked up the guitar in the dark and warbled out 'Van Deimen's Land'. She wrote home about that effort! The night before she was to leave, on a separate journey to our chosen home in Melbourne, we huddled together and rocked on the step of the bathroom, and it was 'Waltzing Matilda' (the sad, reflective version not the rugby cheer squad version!).

As she left she handed me a present, Songbird, and told me that when we met she expected me to have learned, and to sing to her, Eva's version of Fields of Gold. And I did. And we are married with Bear and Mitts. So there is back story...

I couldn't help tearing up in that song, beautifully rendered. Clare did a wonderful job. The show intersperses songs with anecdotes about Eva, and some from Clare's life that are a bit like the one above, symbolic encounters that give subjective response to the narrative. The musicians were exceptional- you could hate the songs and Clare's voice (well you would be a robot, but anyway...) and still enjoy seeing several incredible musicians. This was perhaps the only time I can remember when I had an emotional - in the soulful, balladic sense- response to drumming!

When I bought Clare's album afterwards, and asked her to dedicate it to Bear and Mitts, she added 'Top Dad'. I was rather chuffed. I decided to spare her the story about how she got the last 2 car seats in Darebin right in front of Bear in the queue.

I came home and picked up the guitar. I was still singing in the car this morning. Dreams and all that. Although the conclusion I reached is that with musicianship like that around I would do better to put my creative energies into bonsai.

Bashing reffos, now bashing the miserable

2011-04-14T09:39:00.001+10:00

What a miserable, self serving policy-free zone the Gillard government is in.

"Sorry I'm late sweetheart"

2011-02-24T15:39:00.002+11:00

"Daddy got held up at work"...

Bear rolls away, faces the wall.

"You always do that".

...

*stomach tightens*

"Sorry luffy, it'll improve soon..."

In fact work has been getting a bit saner. But that doesn't stop the parent guilt or my desire to improve things further.

That feeling stayed with me all the next day, I was running for the lifts when I finally got out. Got home just in time, but thankfully Bear gave out a big hug and seemed satisfied with my efforts. But I swear she said something like "Improvement..." Mitts just laughed and tackled me, as always...

And now your kids are slightly cross...

2011-02-08T13:52:00.003+11:00

They are stepping up to a higher level of crossness, and we are being held to account!

Beloved went on a well-deserved couple of nights away staying with a good friend, and the kids were fine, asking a few questions, but generally having a good play with me and behaving. I was a little surprised, as it is the first time mummy had been away for more than a few hours (I know, she needed it!). But then she got home, and with Mitts it was on. "Naww" he grumbled, waving his hand 'away', as she repeatedly tried to bond and catch up, while latching onto my legs and frowning at her.

Harsh. It probably took over an hour for him to soften and let her have a proper hug.

I had a couple of late evenings in a row with work, and it was Bear's first Kinder day, so I called up just before bedtime to ask how her day went, and she wouldn't speak to me. She said something odd like 'Don't do that ever again', and I think she knew I was calling because I couldn't get home in time, and was saying 'that doesn't count'.

I got home and went straight in to check on them and she was still slightly awake, and she squeezed on to my hand then said 'Tomorrow daddy I want you to come home from work early'.

!

It stayed with me all the next day and I did, indeed, come home early to a wonderful reception.

Work has been relentless and as always the balance between boredom and insanity seems hard to find in a job. I'm glad I'm here, but hoping for change down the track as I get better.

And I'm not looking forward to the reaction, from Mitts in particular, when I return from a week away next month.

On re-acquainting with my family

2011-01-04T10:30:00.005+11:00

I have spent time with my family. Consecutive days worth of time, without the buzz of work in my head, playing with my children all day, chatting with my wife at night. It was good, a little too much so, as I return to work and the grind.

I was bored and sought out a new job. It is a good job, actually it's in many ways the best I've held. The work is high level, relevant, and I like reading the judicial decisions and journal articles that form the intellectual underpinning of my daily bread and butter. But work is so often all or nothing, or as a famous KC (going back over a century) once said of being a barrister; all bed and no roses, or all roses and no bed.

I'd settle on a nice bundle of herbs and a reclining chair as a compromise...

So I went from having 1 page letters changed over and over by people who couldn't write, to being out on a limb running things well beyond my ordinary capability, and although I didn't take on the kind of hours common to the Paris end of Collins, 9 and a half hour lunchless day followed 9 and a half hour lunchless day, week after week, with my arse in the wind as I ran things well beyond my comfort zone, and I was often still staring out of a scratched train window as Mitts went to bed.

At the same time Beloved's work, family unfriendly at the best of times, went manic, and her official (ie paid) 3 days a week went from the usual 'in practice' 4 days over 3 to something approaching full time, picked up in late night telephone conferences and urgent documents turned around on weekends.

By the time we got on the Spirit of Tasmania, we'd just about had it. The holiday didn't start at that point, not with long delays getting on board, rough weather, and the realisation that for a boat full of families with kids they'd provided 1 tiny annex room with a few toys, while a huge casino area and multiple bars hosted a handful of over-serviced adults.

But once we'd cleared Tassie customs (all I can say is !! - they claim it's about fruit but I think it's just that the process remains as hectic as it was back a decade or two ago when aboriginals and homosexuals were being weeded out) we were off and for the next 10 days we were on the island, away, mobile phone (in my case anyway) largely left off, bantering with the kids about Santa, relatives, maps, music on the car stereo, and slowly losing the toxins of several crap months.

I barely thought about my father and his issues- I've been putting some work into that, an old suggestion of Zoe's, and am gradually bedding down the new paradigm (it's really just the old 'understanding', with some new clarity, after my stretch of hope and expectation that came with the kids). I barely thought about work.

Leaving this morning I realised how long it had been since I spent so much consecutive time with my family. I didn't get sick of it at all. I was not happy as I walked to the train. However, inside, I'm a whole sunbeam happier than I was a month or so ago.

Happy unears...

About 9 months since my political divorce

2010-12-11T21:00:00.002+11:00

It has been an uninspiring year, hasn't it?

I suppose various wikileaks have backed the Rudd removal a bit. Well, they've confirmed things people would already know, if they exercised some judgement.

Australia, the party I left included, are sh!thouse at foreign policy. And lie and lie about it. Afghanistan being just an example.

Be prepared to go to war with China, we've said. Well. Be prepared for an entire generation to be wiped off the face of the Earth, on the basis of assurances given by panic-stricken politicians incapable of independent analysis.

China has basically told us they're just supporting North Korea in public, but view them as nuts. So why, knowing even China is working on them, would the US indulge in brinkmanship on their terms?

We learn nothing. Nothing.

Anyway, over that, now I'm just a dad, tired of the world, happy when I'm in my garden, watching my kids run around. Sitting there this morning with my feet on the grass, quartered vegemite sandwich in front of me. Mitts sits beside me, then shuffles up against me, Bear sits on the other side, we all eat our vegemite as the olive tree rocks gently in the morning breeze.

Or with all of us in the city, Beloved holding Bear's hand and me with Mitts on my shoulders, the way Bear was 2 years' ago, looking at the Christmas windows. Mitts looking around in awe- at the city, the buildings, all those trams, all that pointing and naming. The friendly, uncommercial Santa who's always in the square below Collins.

Or when I bent down to scoop one of them up and they both hugged me as hard as they could.

I still notice politics. There is just no home for me there at the moment. Not for a while I suspect. And 2011 does not fill me with optimism.

Breaking Sad

2010-09-23T08:55:00.005+10:00

'Something's gotta give.'

So Beloved declared last night, as we found ourselves half-seriously considering a suggestion that we move to Cairns. She'd caught up with a friend who lives there, having moved from Brunei after her Aussie pilot husband explained that cheating was just part of the pilot lifestyle and shrugged.

The friend had offered to babysit, all the time, as she loves kids but is over the relationship game for a while, and frankly that's the best offer we've got on the table.

I've been a bit perkier lately, since starting a new job in which I'm well over my head but at least feel stimulated and surrounded by what seem to be *touch wood* nice people. I still talk to my father, though despite the great 'offence' he took last year, where I 'got him wrong' and mistook his words for criticism, he has since made several nasty attacks on my career (a topic I don't even discuss with him any more) and dug up his intense dislike of music with the suggestion that if I encourage it in the kids they'll wake up in a gutter somewhere with a needle hanging from their arms.

I'm attempting to keep him at arm's length without cutting him off completely, and the idea of counselling to find ways to deal with this is becoming attractive.

But Beloved is also disappointed. Her parents keep making excuses to find other things to do on their weekends, watch aeroplanes or dig garden beds or other priorities. They are choosing not to be a meaningful part of the kids' lives, and I think we are both still struggling with this.

My birth mum used to talk of moving to Melbourne. She has a great bond with Bear, and makes a great effort when we visit. If she came up, even for a couple of years, she could be part of their lives, and ours. But I know for a range of reasons this is improbable.

I think being wandering, independent types we probably underestimated the amount we would want family. Now we have kids, and see other families where everyone gathers around and is involved, even families where everyone is interstate where the effort, and enthusiasm, is on another level. I think also because they banged on for years about how much they'd like grandkids, we never imagined Beloved's mum choosing to potter in her Canberra house weekend after weekend, instead of spending the mortgage-free largess on a few 1 hour plane tickets to Melbourne. Or my mum choosing to stay in Bundaberg when my dad refused to come down for Christmas.

So. Why don't we move to them? Well, in the case of my birth family, in Hobart, I would have too much guilt, it could wreck the already uncertain relationship with my parents in Bundaberg. Unfortunate, as I get the sense we would get some support there. Parents in Bundaberg- my mum would try, but you don't have to read back far on this blog to get a sense of the ongoing poison that drips from my dad. Despite hints of caring and reflection coming through in recent times, as he works through the darkness of chemo. That might work well for years, only to have him tell Bear she needs to lose weight when she's 9 or something similarly in-character, whereupon I would probably do something that would risk my incarceration.

Beloved's dad and stepmum make a pretty good effort, when we're there, but apart from my concern that their love of money, expensive aeroplanes, cars and the like might rub off, they live in the middle of nowhere near a small, sad, violent town. Beloved enjoyed growing up there, but the ball might bounce differently next time around. And Canberra, her mum, sister, other family? I probably could have been tempted, but the ongoing mediocrity of interest shown by her mum has not only put that option to bed, but is slowly but surely pushing Beloved further and further away.

Perhaps, as it is for me and my dad, what was previously tolerable now just looks unpleasant in the light cast by small children.

We work, relentlessly. She works about 4 and a half days and gets paid for 3. Late night phone conferences are frequent. There are no breaks. We go out maybe 3 times a year together. Time with the kids is lovely, there is never enough. It is lost standing on crowded trains that are stuck, yet again, at Clifton Hill. We get up, we process the day, we flop into the couch, we sleep. Day after day, week after week.

I know you might say what people always say, what we already know, that we just need to get over it, stop expecting more from family, adjust. I know. We want to. It just isn't easy, the disappointment clings on hard.

Last night I watched a show about kids who are selectively mute. A granddad was taking so much time out to be with his granddaughter, taking her boating, chatting to her, patiently trying things until one day she speaks into a phone and leaves him a message. His eyes watered. So did mine. At him, his devotion and care.

So. Cairns? Adelaide? Volunteers Abroad on a small island? The UK?

Or just hang in there and hope it gets better, easier, one day...?

Something's got to give.

The not so Awesome Dancer...

2010-08-28T12:43:00.004+10:00

So what exactly is disruptive misbehaviour in a 3 and a half year old?

Beloved and I are both feeling a bit thrown, well, quite upset, after getting bailed up by the teacher at Bear's dance class. She wasn't subtle. Bear doesn't always do what she's told, and when she [gets bored?] wanders off in a different direction or doesn't follow instructions properly, a couple of other kids (who I note approvingly must look up to her a little) do the same.

This particularly riled the teacher, who emphasised that because these other kids (who are Bear's friends from outside class) followed her, she was disrupting their learning.

Gutted. And not quite knowing in which direction to feel bad. Is Bear's behaviour, which is not loud or aggressive, age-inappropriate raucousness? We push child care to tell us if anything's up, but they've described her as generally obedient, patient, and a good sharer. This last point particularly comes out when we observe her with her other peers, and she seems to us to show mature conflict-resolution skills and tolerance.

Are we being those parents we don't want to be, who can't see that their precious little angel is really wild, undisciplined and in need of more discipline? If we aren't, perhaps someone (who teaches classes of much older kids as well) has a slightly impatient and even age-inappropriate attitude. Certainly the fact that she said

I don't want to shout at them, but...

twice, might have been telling. Because I wanted to reply 'great, I don't want to put a call in to the department administering your Working with Children Check'. But again- perhaps we're wrong, and 3 and a half year olds should know to remain tightly disciplined in dance classes.

Perhaps they should accept personal responsibility (or in lieu we, as their parents, should suck it up) if their own conduct leads others astray.

After all, Bear isn't 3 and a bit anymore, you've got to grow up sometime.

...

My childhood (and beyond), so much boredom, so much unfed creativity, so much annoying teachers with my inability to focus on their head-slapping repetition, all rushed into view. Bear already makes up songs, paints, loves to just get into an activity and explore. Are we letting her off the leash, setting her up for trouble? Should responsible parents get in and crush the dissent early so that their children have the best possible chance to thrive in school, being, per the Prussian model it evolved from, set up in much the same structured, one for all, way?

Kids are full of so much creativity and joy. Looking around, at the way we become as adults, I suppose it's not surprising we try to crush it out of them early.

Age appropriate kid versus impatient teacher, or feckless fawning parents? Certainly this will preoccupy Beloved and I for several wine-fuelled chats on the couch...

Media outrage at slight glimpse of human error

2010-07-21T10:14:00.003+10:00

The incident involving Conrad French approaching Abbott in a pair of speedos embodies everything that is wrong with politics, and the under-educated over-powerful media that shapes it, in this country.

My hyperbole? Let's take a deep breath and have a look.

A labor staffer- so for the first bit of perspective, not an elected member (just an underdressed member, but I digress), likely to be on a pretty average salary and to work very hard for it- pulls off a stunt that:

* shows a lapse of judgement in the current political environment, and given his position;

* would have made complete sense otherwise, given Abbott's history, as a minor, inoffensive, non-aggressive (he desisted pretty much immediately) prank.

Wait, let's use some caps here: A MEMBER OF THE POLITICAL CLASS FELL OFF MESSAGE AND ACTED HUMAN FOR 30 SECONDS!

That's it. Abbott laughs it off. Brandis agrees it's not that big a deal. Yet according to The Age Gillard is under pressure to sack him.

Sack him. Take away his job and career. For wearing speedos.

'Under pressure' from whom? The media. This kind of tawdry, senseless scandalisation of the unremarkable is what we have come to expect as normal. It doesn't seem odd that there is 'pressure' to sack someone, for running in a pair of budgie smugglers.

[As an aside I think everyone who wears them should be subject to some cruel and unusual punishment, however this should not be meted out arbitrarily in this case!]

I have met Conrad. He seemed fine, he works hard for that party which I was a member of. I don't have any special attachment to him though and I'm not writing this out of bias- he's part of the machine that ultimately let me down.

But I've chosen to comment on this as I think it's a great glaring paradox of our system that we, and the media, rabbit on about wanting human beings in politics, then any time there's a minor slip off the company prompt card the hysteria is deafening.

He'll be dwelling on his embarrassment, and nurturing that awkward sense that this will be used against him for years to come. Only the media cares, because if he isn't sacked then the scandle-cycle hasn't worked properly, and they miss an additional news story.

Monkeys. Go find some other peanuts.

Alone

2010-07-20T10:38:00.007+10:00

The only vestige of family with any sort of active involvement in our lives has gone. Beloved's sister and her partner have moved back to the town of circling cars (Canberra). We feel alone and Beloved in particular is sad and disappointed.

It was very nice having at least a couple of family members close. Yet something stood in the way, they didn't engage the way we, Beloved in particular, hoped they would. They were fantastic with the kids, when we saw them. But being 15 minutes away this didn't seem very often, and yet I suspect in their view it was more than ample- duty done, slightly older family with kids attended to, back to the fun stuff. I suppose we hoped to be included as fun stuff which, when you're loaded up with kids and chores, I guess is hard to pull off.

The memories of when we did things together, several days at the beach for example, are special. But they are also sad memories because there are so few of them, over a couple of years living just a suburb or so apart.

The days at the beach preceded Mitts' expected birth date by just a few days. They were our support, particularly as this time around we had Bear to consider, and no-one else who could easily take care of her. Yet they also had friends renting a house in the country, out of mobile range, and when the opportunity arose there was no hesitation extending that from a weekend to several nights. Several nights for which we cobbled together a series of emergency contacts and kept our fingers crossed, wracked with stress. They were back just in time for the birth, but in a way the symbolism can't be altered- they easily could have missed it.

That can never be taken back, the symbolism - involving those whose role in his life would be second only to ours- stark and painful.

Yet they've done more than anyone else, so they shouldn't wear the full blanket of our deep disappointment. They came, they helped, babysat, played. Not as much as we'd have liked, and perhaps partly out of obligation, but at least it happened.

There are four families in our constellation. The kids don't really know any of them. Two or three people have built slightly better (than nothing) relationships and are remembered by name, but that's about it. Early experiences travelling around convinced us that there was no Shangri La of loving familial support waiting if we were prepared to move. There are certain individuals (my two mums come to mind) who would probably jump at the chance to spend more time with the kids, but who for various reasons will not be moving closer in the short term. Which is sad, the kids would love to play with them now, it'll be different in 10 years...

Beloved and I returned from London, where I had been working, at the end of 2002. Sometimes I miss London. One of the biggest reasons for not going back would be the effect on the kids' family relationships. We emerge from 3 years of incredibly hard graft and effort, less support than most of our friends, almost no time to ourselves, having dragged the kids around endlessly trying to get those extended family ties up and running. There is only modest gain to show for it.

Sometimes I miss London and can envisage, without much loss, a life built elsewhere.

The kids themselves are fine, we as an immediate, nuclear family are fine, tired but happy. They are so full of energy and joy at the moment, I am just getting over the fact that no-one else in our family constellation wants to share that with them.

I know, swallow a bag of cement and harden up, that's life, not meant to be easy, &c &c &c*... Beloved and I are just taking stock, and feeling quite sad about it all.

(*Love the use of ampersand-c in the old texts I've been reading...)

3 year old politics: 'Where's Kevin Rudd?'

2010-07-19T11:00:00.005+10:00

'That's Julia Gillard', I say, as the PM appears on TV in full electioneering mode, 'she's the Prime Minister.'

Bear, 3 and a half years old: 'Where's Kevin Rudd?'

I'm stumped. I want to give her a neutral take, let her get all the positives from seeing a woman in a position of power. Despite my own disappointment at the consummate sell-out she, and Labor, now represent (oh and wasn't that dirty little ad with the border security garbage in it just an insult to the intelligence of the much feted masses?)...

'He's not Prime Minister any more...'

'Why?'

'Because he, um, his polls were bad, he was having some problems.... *thoughtful pause* ...so he stopped being Prime Minister and now it's Julia Gillard.'

...

'WHY?'

....

'I don't know love. But it's good because she's the first woman to do this, so now girls can do it too.'

Bear thought about this in silence. She was processing something about change, the inadequacy of the explanation for Rudd's removal- why has this man who was on the TV and in the papers, who daddy said was pretty important, just disappeared? And perhaps: why is she the first, why would girls not be able to do everything boys can do?

It's the machine, lovvie, and now he's just a ghost therein....

...Oh and you can lovvie, you can, we're just coming out of the triassic now...

The Best Kind Of Sick Day

2010-07-14T13:03:00.007+10:00

Yesterday, I had a magic day.

Mitts had a very mild case of conjunctivitis. Because it's highly contagious, he was sent home early from childcare on Monday and we were told to keep him home the next day. However, icky as it can be in bad cases, conjunctivitis is normally the most benign affliction from a functional point of view. The upside of this is that a parent is stuck at home with a child who is not in any functional sense sick.

So Mitts and I did some bonding. We started running around the house like nutters, throwing balloons at each other, laughing every time one of them bounced out of our hands. We stopped to read a book, it had a xylophone in it so I pulled out a real one and Mitts got stuck into it while I shook a maracca and gave him a round of applause after each atonal solo.

In the garden we kicked a ball along a few times. Then he made up a game where we sat on the top step of the granny flat, then on the lower, then sat back up again, each time with Mitts making the move then patting the step beside him while looking at me. I did actually think this was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen, though I kept an earnest straight face.

We went to some parkland, morning and again in the afternoon, walked on the grass, him holding my hand, something he's just learned to do, or sitting on my shoulders. There were ducks (All Nations Park) and moorhens (Darebin Parklands) and we sat for several minutes as he looked and pointed at them.

At Darebin it started to rain, I pulled him off my shoulders and, carrying him like a bag of potatoes, half-ran back up the hill, across the grass to the car. He smiled the whole time.

And even when I had to pretty much pin him to the floor to get the eye drops in, he took it well. The tears didn't last.

It was the best kind of day.

Oh well, off to Nauru perhaps?

2010-07-12T18:14:00.003+10:00

Dili says take your colonial crap and shove it.

Abbott says the Labor Government should try Nauru.

Abbott's probably right, from her point of view. After all, the fact that Nauru is not a signatory doesn't prevent a centre on Nauru from processing in accordance with the Convention principles.

It isn't, after all, as if Timor Leste has the capacity to meet the obligations in full and provide asylum on its tiny land mass in the way we do. The plan was, I assume to do the processing then find people a home.

What a place to get to.

Reffophobia and apologia on the left- or why it's ok to be angry

2010-07-12T17:41:00.003+10:00

There's a lot of work going into examining the motives of those attacking Ms Gillard, particularly in respect of whether some may be motivated by misogyny, or ignorance, or some other explanation.

Sure, examine away. That's legitimate. So too is questioning what is behind people who claim to care about refugees leaping stridently to her defence.

There probably are some gender bigots among those hammering her. I hammered Rudd on the same issue.

There are probably also some racists, and a far larger contingent of awkward hand wringers and ill-read ignorant-types (who really do find some elements of truth in all those references to people smugglers, queues, overcrowding et al), among those springing to her defence. The stats suggest there must be a bit of crossover, as much as we're a marginal dictatorship the asylum message has clearly touched otherwise generous and not-at-all xenophobic people across the country.

In these discussions it's been said that anger is a clue to some unreasonable or irrational motive. Sounds as gendered as 'blood under her nails' to me. Women get angry, men get use their fingernails in combat, but we know which gender each image is more usually paired with.

I'm angry, what of it? You see desperate people rotting in boats and camps while the politics of race flairs out and you don't get angry, well, don't start on some other progressive issue then. Go be calm under the wonderful status quo. And don't get angry about some other issue that for you is important, if it doesn't involve people as vulnerable as the ones I'm upset over. I often vent about thinks that upset me here, sometimes it's in the realm of anger. But I don't go around feeling anger every other day. This issue, those words said, these policies, make me angry.

There's an argument Gillard's getting special treatment. There may be some merit in this. I tend to think it's more related to a mix of timing and policy- she came in now, and was compelled to address ugly policy issues, and some of us are particularly upset at how she did that. But timing aside, looking at the Lawrences, the Kirners, the Kernots, the nasty little comments that have been directed at Gillard over her familial status, there's no doubt there are some big double-standards out there. So bring on the analysis. Bring on, for the likes of myself, the self-reflection. Perhaps we've vented too quickly at Gillard, as opposed to Labor in general. She's been appalling; but equally so has the party machine, and so was Rudd c2010, so let's keep some perspective and work on our even-handedness.

I liked her until recently. I promise to try to like her again. If her policies improve.

So, there's something there to work with.

And there's some pretty gross human rights abuses going on, now, on Gillard's watch. Some stupid policy fumbling, some making the ignorant, the bigoted and yes, the at-times outright racist, feel loved and understood. There's one of the most repellant speeches given since the middle of the Howard term.

And there are people who call all forms of bigotry. And those who seem more angry, sorry -earnestly upset, about the fact that Gillard is not being given an appropriate honeymoon.

Is it legit to be annoyed, or even angry, if it appears she's getting unfair treatment due to her gender. Damn straight.

Does it say something about people if they can't comprehend or empathise with the very strong emotions some of us feel about refugees, race, that whole awkward Cronulla *thing*? Maybe, in some cases, it does.

Maybe just as 'blood under her fingernails' is gendered, so too 'I hear you bogans and I heart your right to be ignorant' is dripping with this country's deep, nasty narrative of fear and race.

Am I suggesting perhaps at least 1 in 3 of those who are not getting it might not hold the same level of concern (to put it nicely, ever so nicely) about refugees, race, that whole awkward Cronulla *thing* that those of us who are more angry, hold?

Yes.

But - and read this before you take the slightest bit of umbrage or in any way misunderstand me- as a wise and decent person once said to me:

If it's not about you, then it's not about you.

People Smugglers as Slave Traders?

2010-07-08T10:42:00.004+10:00

Plopped in a thread at LP...

It’s unedifying to read of otherwise progressive types picking up on the whole ‘people smuggler as slave trader’ narrative, without at least unpacking the differences between perhaps the odd overlord making handsome profits out of it all on the one hand and poor boat crews putting nasi in the mouths of their families on the other.

Wheel it right back to the ‘danger’ thing. Ever been on a boat, indeed any sort of basic transport used by the masses, in a developing country? I’ve caught rides on Indonesian fishing boats while backpacking, you sleep on the deck, in all weather, no safety rails, large families with chickens and bags of rice sleep there too, cramped on. You hope it doesn’t sink, as they sometimes do. If backpackers do this sort of thing by choice (and I’m not the only one, if you spend some time working through the eastern islands of Indonesia), is it really hard to imagine desperate refugees making the choice? Does it really prove the boat captains are exploitative? Are you sure they don’t put themselves at similar risk, going to work each day?

When I spent time in Papela, a ‘sea gypsy’ settlement on the island of Roti, I was shown the fresh graves. Tropical storm here, diving for sea cucumbers while breathing through an air compressor there. Dead children. Dead fishermen.

The truly evil smuggling cases I’ve read about- people packed into shipping containers, or having their documents removed so they can be held as bonded labourers, don’t seem to feature among those we demonise. Mostly, we just seem to be suddenly (and in a most faux act of unconvincing generosity) extending wonderful, first world expectations of reasonable care, as if the OH&S Act can be extended more easily that the right to claim refugee status or have that assessed through Australian tribunals.

The construction of the dreaded demonic, evil, people smugglers is one of the great acts of declaratory securitisation in a nation with a less than robust history of peering behind the rhetoric on matters foreign.

Here and there I’m sure they exist- nasty, exploitative figures making handsome profits while turning their back on the risks and consequences. But I never see any effort to distil these from the mass of general boat captains and crews, most of whom I suspect do not deserve this characterisation at all.

It doesn’t do anyone any credit to just simply adopt the dominant talking points on this.

Oh Noes, Restless Natives

2010-07-08T09:15:00.001+10:00

If only someone in Sussex St or Julia Gillard's office owned an Atlas, they might have found their way to Timor Leste and explained what is expected by the great southern benefactor. Now instead of saying 'yes sahib', the locals are getting wobbly on the message, fancy that.

Rumours the initial delegation flew to Lord Howe Island by mistake are, of course, unfounded.

The Timor Solution

2010-07-06T14:46:00.001+10:00

The best I can say is that my worst fears were, slightly, worse than this.

The renewed due process for Sri Lankan applicants is welcome.

The ongoing freeze for Afghanis is baffling, even more so to anyone who saw 4 Corners last night, recalling both the extent of the ongoing violence and the specific discussions of what happens to people who annoy the Taliban or help the outside forces.

The no-longer-Pacific solution? The devil, or something redeeming, may be in the detail. However it smells like an old fish served up under a fresh dollop of sauce.

And Abbott has slyly offered a small biscuit to the asylum lobby, by breaking ranks and offering to actually increase the intake from the mythical queues.

What a petty, grubby, unedifying little 'debate'. What a stupifying waste of public funds.

... Greens-pushing bloggers may not yet have convinced me that I'd want to join that party, but they've probably, at least, earned my primaries. I'm not the only one either.

Sometimes I love the Black Letter Law - Saeed v the Immigration Minister

2010-07-05T17:19:00.002+10:00

Let's be realistic, you wouldn't get the same result in this recent High Court case if you went overboard on the purposive approach.

Go on, try to follow the Court's reasoning. Who needs Sudoku anyway?

Dad insults career redux

2010-07-05T11:46:00.000+10:00

So anyway he's decided to avoid discussion of his prognosis and treatment and talk politics. Pretty soon, knowing how much we disagree on the topic, he's pushed on to asylum seekers. It's been a very long day and I'm weak, so I don't shut down discussion immediately.

Let's just be neutral on the politics for these purposes and accept he's entitled to a different view. And even assume that my robust defences of my own position, as I keep being bated with the kind of garbage people rabble on with when they phone up Alan Jones, have not been baited by someone deliberately not letting go. After all, I do know better, I should have just shut it down straight away. Still, with all that being said, and knowing what a vicious little vole he can be, I was still stunned when he started on the personal.

OK, I'm probably (for obvious reasons) speaking on the issue in a less than diplomatic manner. Phrases like 'ignorant shits' are probably passing my lips, and references to the lessons of 1938 remaining unlearned. Suddenly he lunges for a new tack (his voice edgy with snarling hostility at this point):

How do you get on at work? If you speak like that your career can't go very far... (repeated in similar terms, several times)

So we had the previous career insults. Me raising them. Him telling me I misunderstood him and therefore we are wired not to get along. And now, clearly more misunderstanding- he wasn't referring to my career, he wasn't implying (again) that I could be so much more in his eyes if only I had or lacked some quality. I'm just an ungrateful shit who doesn't understand him.

The subsequent discussion, which descended further as I (and dear reader I am SO SORRY I take offence and become angry at misunderstandings like that above, I KNOW I need to be a better son, grateful I was taken in, etc. etc.) let go of the reins on references to the fact that no, in my workplaces full of well-informed people I don't usually run into the same issue and, whoops, are we projecting again given I'm not the one who didn't go far in an organisation dominated by aboriginals or people sympathetic to their concerns as he grumblingly harboured reactionary views, and so on.

I tried to stay in the other part of the house but as I put down the phone, Bear asked "Are you alright daddy?"

I gave her a hug and told her yes, people just disagree sometimes.

And wondered whether I have to play some sort of martyr now he's so ill.

So I have recently made a vow not to discuss career with him, a vow I've been keeping, avoiding that marred, ugly topic. I've heard his frustration as he tries to ask more questions, as this is the only thing I have to hold back that he really cares about- not because he wants me to be happy, but because he likes to live vicariously through it, proudly talking it up to friends, taking credit, even as I get the putdowns and unwanted advice on what I'm doing wrong.

Perfect son = a long way away, no effort, no responsibility, but ongoing credit for career as some sort of achievement of the father.

So recently as part of cleaning up this festy little corner of my life I've stopped talking about it, and I've been good, resisted that 'still 12' temptation to tell him all the latest. Now, more lessons learned, no. more. politics.

From now we shut down to talk about health, house and family. Politics, as of my hanging up the phone last night, joins career on the paternal Do Not Call register.

And now I just have to work out what remains. Whether I should be dragging my family up there, despite his abject lack of effort, despite the stress it causes Beloved (me, I'm about on par here or there, it's the content of what he says and does that I find offensive), because he's ill, and that's what sons do? Because I hope that if I've ever offended my kids this much (and if I've done so in the way he's turned on me so often, then please hunt me down and kill me) that they would try and try again with me.

So I saw posterous

2010-07-05T10:58:00.003+10:00

And I thought, looks great, posting by email would be much more office-friendly. Why can't I do that with blogger?

Apparently I can, so here's testing.

Update; so it worked, but now all my info has gone to the bottom of the page, and the colours aren't loading up properly. Is this happening to you, dear reader, on my site? Any idea why?

The White Kind Of Migrants?

2010-07-05T10:06:00.004+10:00

Pursuant to the previous post, I hadn't heard this particular line she's wheeled out. But all that banging on about political correctness takes on a clearer tone when you understand that what Australia needs are the right kind of migrants.

Of course we do. People like my dad couldn't agree more.

Gillard warms up for the mother of all sell-outs

2010-07-05T09:13:00.007+10:00

If you celebrated the notion that Gillard's ascension marked some sort of turning point in the system, a change from the old order, you might be reconsidering.

First the vicious execution, now the sell-outs.

Apparently she sees political correctness everywhere, especially in relation to asylum seekers. I'm flumoxed, here I was thinking we lived in the same country- that would be the one where the overwhelming national voice is screeching about the thousands of boats threatening to overwhelm us, the fact that they're full of murderers and terrorists, the fact that they make up 200% of our immigration take etc., but apparently the quiet, humble ordinary folk are being shut down by political correctness.

So it's not about race or culture, not about bigotry? Could have fooled me- as per my heated argument with the old man last night, or more genial discussions had with a couple of relatives holding the same views not long back, it soon becomes ALL ABOUT our 'way of life' and protecting 'our culture' and signposts in other languages and all those Sudanese waiting to jump on boats (I know, they're actually the ones in queues, you explain it, they don't get it, foreigners are foreigners...).

So we wait. Minority deluded politically correct loryars like me waiting to see what she's warming up for here. If in fact she's 'acknowledging' concerns prior to doing the right thing, then I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Part 2, unloading about the old man and the latest string of insults he managed to bark out under the guise of the abovementioned discussion, coming shortly.

Gillard: please don't execute your Ricky Ray Rector

2010-06-28T13:33:00.006+10:00

It'll be all too tempting for Gillard to extend the farcical suspension of due process for refugees. It's all too easy to viciously kick the least empowered, when the window-licking hordes want to see them viciously kicked.

To any right thinking person, Bill Clinton's integrity was laid bare when he saw through the execution of a cognitively non-functional man on the eve of his presidential election.

Gillard will tell us all we need to know about her worth as a purported leader of the centre left when, any day now, she has to make a call on extending the suspension of processing. Given she's just extended our involvement in the Afghan war, and in the background the UN is trying to gain access to Sri Lanka to investigate possible crimes against humanity, I hold out some hope that she will see that these people, from those clearly dangerous regions, at least deserve to have their claims heard, and heard fairly.

Suspending due process is like suspending the Racial Discrimination Act for the NT intervention; it speaks for itself on all the wrong levels.

This is the great moral challenge of her time. If she fails it, we can stop with all the hoo-har about her gender, her eloquent advocacy, her toughness... all mere warbling in the background if she shows that she has no basic ethical or moral fibre.

Please Ms Gillard, I know you can't deliver me utopia on this unpopular issue, but please don't sell out any further. You will, seriously, end up sitting to the right of the liberal party. And if you do that, people really will start putting Abbott above you in the preferences.

Et Tu Gillard- The Ides of June

2010-06-23T23:39:00.003+10:00

In the fuzzy hallway footage, Gillard strolled along with that same measured, slightly ungainly walk, as instantly recognisable as Sting's voice, almost wandering through the door to drive the blade into the back that carried her into power.

Blood is all over the carpet. I've been a politics addict since around the time Hawke had just made PM, I can't recall an act of such cold, political ruthlessness to match this.

I don't know if it's a good thing or a massive case of blinking too hard, too soon. I have no personal love left for Rudd, it started draining away when I heard what an appalling hypocrite he was in the treatment of his advisers and senior public servants. I can't help saying in schadenfreude:

THAT'S WHAT YOU DAMN WELL GET for brutalising your people, effectively ruling any people who have families they care about from your team, anyone over 30, for relying on controlling spin doctors rather than policy experts.

And the love of course was pretty much gone by the time I'd digested the great asylum betrayal. But still...

Still....

It didn't take them long to dump him, did it? He may have blinked in the face of Abbott, but he's not the only one, clearly.

And was Julia Gillard really unconnected to all the crappy policy decisions over the past few months or so?

And in her core area, education, we've had, what, hardarse fighting with teachers and principals, a few buildings, a few laptops, some lost in the mail or something? Where's the huge injection of funds needed in poorer schools, where's the genuine revolution in the nature of the teaching profession? Where's the drive to get all kids receiving the analytical and critical skills needed to find their way through the glut of information and garbage they will be swimming in by the time they turn 21?

It'll be nice to point to her on the screen and tell Bear that the top job has at last gone to a woman.

It'll be good to see Gillard head-to-head with Abbott. To date she's tended to eat him for breakfast (but noting Keating used to do exactly the same to bumbling Howard...).

It'll be fascinating to see if the chance is taken to recalibrate any of the policy positions, if (at the most possibly optimistic) the Labor Party starts standing for things again.

It'll be fascinating to see what they do with the mine tax (needs a sensible recalibration to remove it from the issues list), the ETS, refugees (if as Rudd has suggested there is a move to take it to the right, I think I really will walk out and donate my kidney to the Greens- but I trust this won't, CAN'T happen...).

But I have to say, with all this, with all my disappointment in him, it is still tragic to watch a man who was Labor's Caesar, who beat Howard, who gave us the apology, signed Kyoto and at least had a good crack at the ETS, who has worked so hard for the Labor Party, hobble out of his office on his knees, blood streaming from his back, to face probable death in what appears to be a wholesale rejection by everyone around him.

Rudd, you've pissed me off on so many levels. But all the best tomorrow, wherever it, and life, takes you. And you know what, I reckon history, poring back over the sheer size of the financial crisis and the way it would have hobbled your better spending plans, the way we came through that, some of the things you've done or had a go at, history may not end up liking you but I'll wager it will look more kindly on you than the polls do right now.

The Child Bigotry Double Standard

2010-06-21T13:40:00.007+10:00

So Pleb A is standing there at work, chatting to Pleb B. Pleb B pulls out their phone and says:

"Hey Pleb A, I want to show you a pic of me hanging out with my bandmate, here's us with guitars grinning at the camera."

Pleb A looks then pulls away quickly.

"I'm not into black people. Nothing personal, I don't have anything against them, and yours is an ok one I'm sure, but I just don't like them myself, prefer not to see pictures of them."

So the other day a workmate I really get along well with does precisely this, but in respect of a picture of my kids. I don't send these things around every other day, it was in fact the first time in several weeks of working together that I waved such an image in her general direction. (acknowledging that there can be overkill in this department, and that sometimes the kid-waving thing can be insensitive...)

I just don't get the 'thing' about not liking kids. Different to not liking some, particularly badly behaved kids, or even not liking kids in cafes or some other more particular circumstance. This is just the whole 'I don't like kids at all' thing. Even when I was younger, in my 20s, dating and drinking and whatnot, I didn't have, or get, this particular dislike.

Each to their own I guess, and I do have a couple of friends who fit this description but are civil and tolerant. That's a fair enough compromise, we can be mates and not take the matter further.

But I really struggle with the situation where someone treats even a glimpse of a photo as if they're being asked to put fire ants up their nostrils.

Bearing in mind I'm psychotically protective of my kids, and view them as an absolutely indistinguishable part of who I am, it throws up a bit of a barrier to a better friendship.

In defence of the jury system

2010-06-04T09:47:00.002+10:00

My jury's still out on its value, but if prosecutors aren't going to exercise some sane discretion in cases like this, thank the traditions of the common law for 12 decent human beings.

Defence exhibit A.

Defence exhibit B.

Brumby's welcome backflip

2010-06-03T09:08:00.004+10:00

Victoria's getting an anti-corruption commission. It's about time, and we need to be cautious about getting too excited until the detail is parsed over.

But in the predictable holler of 'backflip' going around, and having earlier had a dig at the Premier's attitude and silly comments about lawyers myself, I think a modicum of credit should be given.

He commissioned a report, it recommended he change policy, and he did. With many years of frustration in the public service behind me, can I say the shame is that this does not happen more often.

Politicians should not be condemned for 'backflipping' in the face of evidence. It is nothing less than proper conduct.

Bring it on.

Australia- are we just international hypocrites?

2010-06-02T09:55:00.008+10:00

As you'll gather from my previous post, I am in a bit of stroppy contrarian mood when it comes to selective invocation of international law. I don't like whaling, ditto Israel boarding those Gaza-bound vessels. Still, do we have an issue with consistency when we suck down on a few VBs and venture to tell the world what to do, worse, lecture them on international law?

Because we would never act like pirates and send blooded, armed commandos onto a humanitarian vessel that was acting in accord with international law, would we?

If a couple of refugees had freaked out and tried to grab the SAS soldiers' weapons, they would have had no alternative but to fire. This may in fact be true of some of the Israeli commandos. It's like the old self-defence adage about not pulling out a knife unless you are prepared to use it. If it's not absolutely necessary, don't pull it out. Don't attack civilian ships with commandos. It's a gutless abuse of the licence society has given you to train those commandos and have them at your fingertips.

(OK, without changing the heading as published because I know that throws feed readers, I concede on immediate reflection that it's a bit tabloidy! We're more than 'just' such, we aren't the worst global players. Obviously I still have an ongoing dose of the Mr Sh!ts...)

Suing Japan- Australia turns gamekeeper on international law

2010-05-28T15:09:00.006+10:00

I don't resile from my eariler thoughts on this action.

I'm pleased we're back to supporting the notion of international law, it's been a bit hit and miss in recent times. I trust the plenary rule against use of force, resolution of future boundary disputes by international tribunals, and proper adherence to the refugee convention are all back in vogue. And that, instead of brandishing some 'privileged' advice from some hack in Canberra that allegedly says it might be legal, we'll willingly hand any of these highly disputed positions to an independent tribunal of international legal experts for appropriate resolution.

Tuvalu should start working up their climate claim....

Still, when it comes to managing our delicate relationships in the construct known as Northeast Asia, at a time when China is using secret 'trials' to pressure companies into doing favourable resource deals and the Koreas are taking us back to the most fragile moments in the Cold War, getting litigious with one of the only democracies in the region over whaling is entirely about putting populism above moderately intelligent policy making.

Refugees can wait for their due process, but the whales will have their day in court.

In other news, Australia has switched sides in the bluefin tuna debate and is to ban eating meat from all animals smarter than a pippie...

And of course any suggestion the decision to litigate now has been taken with a firm eye to the inward-looking nationalism and mistrust of other cultures that's become, yet again, the centrepiece of an election, is entirely misplaced.

Liberals leaving conservative parties

2010-05-26T09:22:00.004+10:00

Malcolm Fraser has finally done what he should have done years ago. Beloved mused on why it took him so long. I can only assume that as it took me a long time to leave Labor, having given so much loyalty to it, for an ex prime minister it would be a wrenching step.

If the likes of Russell Broadbent, Judy Moylan, Petro Georgiou, George Brandis and Malcolm Turnbull were to do likewise, and seek to create a liberal party, politics would suddenly get more interesting.

Meanwhile, back at my local branch, another long term branch member who has consistently been involved in grass roots work, branch administration, hitting the hustings, who I emailed to tell about my own decision, has now also left. His tipping point was the policy asplosion that is the net filter. That wasn't on my top 5 list, but in terms of what appears to be a policy fail that will not even achieve its plenary aims, I concur.

Still, I might have to reconsider my earlier assertions about foreign policy. In some broader sense I know what I meant, but I forgot to account for the incumbent shadow foreign minister, singularly one of the least competent people in parliament. Ex union hacks might not make great analysts of the finer nuance of international relations, but that doesn't mean running a commercial law firm is any better. Julie Bishop, you moron.

And didn't she breach some security-related law with that bluster? I'm sure its true, I'm sure our security agencies do use all manner of spy-widgets in their work, but isn't the real issue that Mossad used passports belonging to real Australian citizens in an assassination?

A bit like cancer

2010-05-25T10:30:00.001+10:00

Cancer. It is like a cancer, isn't it? I need the metaphor to explain the disease itself; the way you deal with a scare, get the all clear, then wait for the next one to arrive. And sooner or later it does.

No all-clear this time. Someone in the family, not Beloved or the kids, but still close enough, has had some precautionary lumps removed, only to find one of them isn't benign. It's in a place where prospects are not always great.

If you're a regular reader you'll know who someone is, because this comes in the middle of a rift, a rift that came in turn on the back of decades of struggle, some hits, many misses. Although I haven't blogged about it much lately, things have improved a bit since I wrote a fairly raw post a few months ago. In his usual, screwed-up way he's moved on and acted as if nothing was up, sending me books he thinks I'd like and getting chatty again on the phone. In some ways when I stop to think about it this makes me quite angry in itself, but I've generally resolved not to dwell too much and just accept it as the latest instalment in a long melodrama.

In fact the angriest I've felt since was when someone told me I needed to forgive him completely or I would never be able to move on. I couldn't fathom the logic of this, as much as the person may have meant well. I've relinquished, started talking to him again, decided that even though he won't make the effort to visit us I would still give his relationship with his grandkids a chance and visit them, from time-to-time. I'd partly-accepted, if not entirely excused, his conduct (and indeed a lifetime of it) as that of someone who was badly abused as a child, who is emotionally damaged and imperfect. What the fcuk is forgiveness in this context? A dishonest act of quasi-religious ascetic transcendence? In my heart I won't forgive the rejection entirely, and frankly with a personal philosophy that believes people should be held to account, it would create cognitive dissonance within me to try.

I found the statement, delivered in lecturing tones, akin to blaming me. After all, if forgiveness is what we should do, and we can't do it, then we aren't doing what we should do and apparently any lingering sadness or disappointment we carry is our fault. Isn't it possible we aren't actually the cause, that's the emotionally-abusive party who rejected us? And while clinging to daily bitterness won't make us happy, trying to take a happy-clappy view of things won't either? Isn't letting them slip back to normal like nothing happened, continuing to facilitate what contact they choose to have with their grandkids, continuing to talk to them and effectively accept the screwed-up status quo they have insisted on defining, isn't this all enough?

So. Cancer.

I will put my (apparently unacceptable) residual anger aside. I will take the family up to visit soon, far sooner than I previously intended. I will let the most important things take precedence, provide the opportunity for grandparent and grandchildren to find moments together. Perhaps because, despite my previously posting the worst of my fears and concerns, I believe this deeply repressed and self-centred man still cares. He may leave this world wondering why he didn't make more out of the past 3 years, regretting pissing his days away between the garage and the garden while his grandkids were growing up. He should. I won't do anything to make it worse.

We haven't got to that point yet, but the prognosis is currently uncertain. He's an old bugger, but I don't want him to die.

Aker's not homophobic but...

2010-05-20T15:35:00.003+10:00

"Some footballers think there's something wrong with people, they have some kind of disease."

Some people think there's something wrong with footballers, they have some kind of retardation.

We know there are dumb bigots, racists, and people who can't understand what's wrong with s3xual assault in footy. Sometime in the past decade or so most people who haven't fallen on their small heads coming out of a particularly high mark came to the realisation that this isn't a good thing...

A well founded fear...

2010-05-19T15:00:00.003+10:00

Jake Lynch, Crikey:

The government’s ill-fated bid to defuse “controversy”, by suspending asylum claims for people arriving from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, looks sicker still this week after a report from the International Crisis Group reminded us of the violations visited on the Tamils in the final months of the civil war, this time last year. Tens of thousands of civilians were killed, it says, citing witness testimony, satellite images, documents and other evidence: most from systematic army bombardments of areas that had been officially declared “safe”.

No wonder the Sri Lankan government is cracking down on journalists and NGOs: it has plenty to hide. More than 100,000 people are still interned, with reports trickling out of maltreatment, r-pes and the mysterious “disappearances” that have been the signature MO of the security forces there for decades.

And what I think is on-the-money comment on political pragmatism gone wrong:

You can’t triangulate on race. It’s a lesson the Rudd government is learning all over again. There is no limit to how far a declared party of the Right will go, in search of a wedge: so the supposed “centre ground” simply moves further and further away from the comfort zone of a government still aspiring to hold together a “progressive” base of support.

Ay, some of it has cracked the sh!ts with being 'held together'.

Wiggly Party & a Deskbound Daddy

2010-05-19T11:02:00.001+10:00

As I jot this down, in a quick 5 minutes mental transition between 2 tasks on my desk, Beloved, Bear and Mitts are sitting 4 rows from the front at a Wiggles concert.

I know, I should be more concerned about the branding and so in. Indeed, I think they've made the same mistake as many adult rock bands in transitioning to bigger, more polished settings, sounds and albums. But when push comes to shove (and I'll bet there'll be some frenetic shoving at knee level today!) they aren't bad musicians, their messages are healthy and inclusive, and they get the kidlets singing and dancing. So I'm excited for them, for Bear in particular, and a bit disappointed that I'm missing out.

This morning Beloved went in to wake Bear up, talking up the gig. And Bear responded:

"I want daddy to come to the Wiggles concert too..."

*sigh*

Abbott caught with insufficient art...

2010-05-18T13:20:00.003+10:00

Despite ending my Labor membership, I certainly don't like Abbott one iota, and I should still be taking visceral pleasure in his squirming discomfort on the subject of the truth.

I am certainly happy that he is in trouble. He is undoubtedly from a dark, wet place in the dungeons of the far right that I do not want to see anywhere near the reins of power. I enjoyed watching last night (and if I enjoyed it, Kerry looked like he was being given a small country for Christmas).

It would just be a lot more enjoyable if it reflected a deep, ethical adherence to the truth among both the political classes and the fourth estate. If his opponent were spotless, and 100% reliable in his word. If people actually, really, gave a toss.

It's just ironic that Abbott may suffer damage for being relatively artless about that which is usually practised through more sophisticated craft...

Labor trolls- a short time coming

2010-05-18T09:45:00.009+10:00

Mere nanomoments between breaking lockstep, and drawing ire from trolls. Here's Dr Adam Carr in a Crikey thread:

"What a pathetic whiny spineless whinger. First sign of rough weather and he/she throws up over the side and demands to be put ashore."

I'm not sure what service Dr Carr, or the Greensborough Growler, or any other sources of vicious vitriol I pick up have given to the ALP. Perhaps it's substantially more than my 15 years. I am still stunned at the speed people I might have been standing at the hustings with can turn, or at the remarkable assumption, plugged here by someone who posits himself as an intellectual political analyst, that after such time, and dozens of compromises sucked up while standing on the hustings copping abuse from aboriginal-hating rednecks in the NT, or from Greens and Liberals alike in Northcote, relentlessly doing my bit for the party, I can't make a decision to leave.

I will resist the impulse to flame back; it's inconsistent with my flame-delete policy here, and in any event if any of those people visit I'd rather give them the opportunity to look again at my last few posts under politics and reconsider. You can disagree with someone without instantly resorting to mindless hatred.

15 years, and every territory or state election, and every federal election, as well as the republic referendum, becomes, in this thoughtful analysis, the first sign of rough weather.

If you feel like responding here, don't be vicious, cowardly, or senselessly vitriolic, or you'll be deleted. On the other hand if you want to explain why someone who's put in 15 years then leaves because the party fails to line up with most of his key policy positions is a mere spineless whinger, and can do so in reasonable tones, fire away.

In my hiatus post, where I tried to pull together my strongest reflections after several years of blogging, I wrote:

Being flamed by the other side is unpleasant, slightly. Being flamed by your own is sickening, it turns your world on its head, makes you wonder why you have found common political ground with someone like that.

Indeed. I suppose the difference now is that it makes me feel better about my decision. It's still unpleasant.

On Leaving Labor

2010-05-14T11:43:00.001+10:00

Done. And it hurts a bit.

Done without vitriol, just disappointment.

Done without joining the competition, without any clear home for my politics. A centre-left secular humanist, with liberal tendencies restrained by some cynicism towards the market, lacking attachment to unions, per se. There is no home for me in Australian politics.

Done, taking me back to the mid-1990s, when my friend at university was campaigning for a seat, and I joined his campaign, then his party and faction. They were the 'moderates', a uniquely NT mish-mash of right and centre, pragmatic at a time when that seemed more acceptable. Decades of corrupt, hard-right rule by the Country Liberal Party made any compromise acceptable back then. And in the NT you didn't have to be part of a key union, large 'labor family', or other inside player in order to get involved. Membership meant real involvement, meeting the players, having a substantive say.

Done for a vow, one that was never clear in the execution. It involved dumping on refugees, a 'never again' following the Tampa capitulation. Yet I'm a centrist, I understand that my views aren't those of the people in the marginals and I do accept compromise. I didn't expect utopia- indeed, I can see that at some point refugee numbers could need restraint, and that decisions must be made that leave some people, whose lives aren't that great, on the wrong side of an application. I grumbled through a few 'toughening' steps, and kept the faith. But when it became arbitrary and irrational I knew the line had been crossed.

Done during the Great Rudd ALP principles-dump. A decision was made to dump a succession of ideals, to clear the decks for a debate on the economy and perhaps health, backed no doubt by some IR scare campaigning. The decision involved taking people like me - let along substantial numbers of party members well to my left - for granted. That taking-for-granted is pretty much standard operating procedure in Labor, based on a perceived need to pander elsewhere for crucial marginal seats. But taking several huge hits in succession just made my post-Tampa vow all the easier to keep.

Done during my year of clearing the decks. I haven't ruled out trying to re-join in the future if things improve. But the way forward is now hazy, in a year where I'm trying to stocktake the things I put energy into, to prioritise, to work out how I can do something worthwhile with my life.

Done to relieve the cognitive dissonance. I'm pretty straight-talking, the eternal compromise is always very unsettling.

Done because the one issue on which the ALP is genuinely left of centre- the continued influence of the unions- is not really my issue. Partly due to that issue and the influence of a couple of huge unions in particular, the party is pretty much as conservative as the Liberals when it comes to social liberalism and the continued comingling of church and state in this country. Those, by contrast, are my issues.

Done because the ALP are dumb on foreign policy. No better way to put it, it's a lack of knowledge and competence. On balance I will agree with more of their positions, but viewed objectively the Liberals actually seem to have more people who know what they are talking about. Who read books and stuff, even if they aren't books I agree with. This is a big area for me, miniscule as it is for the electorate, and I find the directionless floundering under Rudd's stewardship (let's face it, Smith is a patsy in this portfolio) highly frustrating. Ultimately I'd like to see us revisit our brainless sycophancy and flag-waving militarism, to find a completely new settlement with our place in the world as a small-to-medium power with quite different policy needs from either the US or UK. I'm tired of our foreign policy being resolved on bases that a year 10 student could rip apart. Which leads to...

Done because I believe in good policy. Policy I don't agree with is one thing, but policy I don't agree with that was hatched without, or against the prevailing analysis, simply on poll-driven impulse, is just an ongoing offence to our nation and polity. I really do think I believe that it would be better for the party to formulate some strong positions it genuinely believes in, that are backed by evidence, and to fight for those at the hustings. To just dump all perceived risks and run on the smallest of differentiations is to rob the people of their choice.

Done because, unlike many hard-wired members of political parties of all persuasions, I really do believe that the nation, and the policies, are more important than the -any- party.

Done.

Pneumonia & the Care Bear

2010-04-29T13:46:00.004+10:00

My throat had been sore for over a week. On Friday my right chest started to hurt. On Saturday everything hurt. We had a wedding to go to so I pushed on. Picked Bear up from her new dance class then took both kids to the park until my Dr's appointment (Beloved had other, wedding-related appointments). I was a bit shaky. The appointment was close to an hour over time, about half of which I spent with both kids in the crowded surgery. It wasn't pretty, but we managed.

He didn't actually call it pneumonia, or anything other than a bacterial infection that was attacking pretty much everything. My chest was sore by now, and water on chest from bacteria lines up with pneumonia, but then again there was pain all over. Even in my right knee! I felt like I'd been on the armagnac the previous night- sadly untrue. Driving the kids home felt a little irresponsible, although generally still switched on I could feel my concentration starting to waver. I resolved not to drive again until I was better.

Beloved eventually got home, and I curled up in bed for a while. But time ticked on and I had to get up again soon to get ready. I could see Beloved really didn't want to cancel the wedding and I didn't want to let her down. We don't get many nights out to ourselves, either.

We caught the tram. I started shaking. Beloved told me the air was moderately warm. Waiting for the ceremony I felt like I was lying naked in snow. I shook, but I worked every muscle in my body not to shake more. People still looked at me like a crack addict.

My latest painkillers sank in after the ceremony and the shaking went down. It felt more like a chilly Autumn breeze blowing under my shirt. I made skeriks of conversation. Talk commenced of going home. I became aware of people telling Beloved to put me in a cab. She was weighing it up a bit, out of guilt towards the hosts. It all made me a bit angry.

Marriage is about going home with your spouse when they are violently ill, I felt like saying to them.

You know I wouldn't have thought twice about it I whinged ruefully to Beloved when she did take me home, soon after, and she agreed. I'm not good for many things, but I come through with that stuff.

At the gate, I fumbled, my hands were now shaking violently. I gulped down tablets then walked straight into bed, a bit after 9pm.

I woke many times, shaking yet also an inferno. Beloved put a cool cloth on my head and contemplated running me to hospital. Me, I've felt worse. Actually a few hours earlier was worse, almost on a par with when I caught Typhoid in Indonesia. But at 2, 3, 4 in the morning I got a perverse satisfaction from the idea that the intense heat would kill the little fcukers!

By morning I was back a bit. I got up slowly, moved about slowly. Both kids watched me. Bear knows what sick is, but Mitts is also a sensitive little boy and he stared at me, waiting for me to suddenly explode back into play. Sorry little man, I didn't have it in me. Beloved took him for much of the day, so he could charge around and burn off his unending wells of energy.

Bear sat with me. She brought books, read them to me (she tells the stories in her own way!) or vice versa, or simply lay her head on my arm, sucking her thumb, as we threw the rules in the bin and veged in front of the TV. Progressively, with rest, veging, and the empathy of a loving daughter, I got better.

The End.

Tax Cuts- Is Rudd taking the piss?

2010-04-29T13:35:00.002+10:00

After breaking a core promise on childcare Rudd is hinting at tax cuts?

*faceinhands*

If nothing can be done to assist the atmosphere, or ease the viciousness towards asylum seekers, could he not at least find some -surely electorally saleable- socially progressive ground by giving a bit more to health or education?

Civil Fraud? Ellis & the deliberate misuse of childcare stats

2010-04-27T11:32:00.004+10:00

The assertion seemed incredibly smelly to anyone remotely connected to the real world of kids and child care (i.e., not Kate Ellis, nor absent parent Kevin Rudd). A surplus of places? Is my suburb, group of friends, favourite parenting discussion board populated by people living in unusual or exceptional pockets of the country?

Or is the Minister telling something a bit slippery & porky?

Well, no doubt on some level she's technically correct, but Susie O'Brien at the Hun has torn any sense of substantive truth out of her assertions, and I felt it useful to share highlights on the remote chance someone who passes here doesn't otherwise come across it.

So anyway...

Rudd Government informed us last week it had dumped a core election promise of building 260 new childcare centres.

...what I still remain to be convinced about...

shameless, dishonest misrepresentation of statistics it employs to justify its decision

....is the idea that...

The figure averages out all long daycare centre vacancies (as opposed to occasional daycare vacancies) and doesn't present any breakdown according to the age of the child and the specific location of the centre. In effect, therefore, it's a total con

...we can never expect...

It's like saying the average Australian household income is $66,000, so there mustn't be any poor people in Australia

...politicians, because of some vague notion that it's needed for politics to work...

What good are places for three-year-olds in Frankston if you are a pregnant first-time mum in Richmond staring down a two-year waiting list

...the kind of vague notion that propped up 'caveat emptor' for so long...

most centres tend to have a larger number of vacancies for older kids, because many children go to kinder instead. But in many Melbourne suburbs you can't get a place for a one-year-old

...an absurd notion, finally on the way out in commerce...

the Government is being deliberately misleading when it says new centres are no longer needed

...anyway that we can never, ever expect them...

Back then, Labor knew the con was on. Labor's Jenny Macklin insisted at least 260 new centres were needed because: "There's no point having a childcare place available for a four-year-old if you have a two-year-old."

...or more particularly hold them viscerally to account (except by the usual love us or leave us, choice of 2, ballot box option)...

In just under three years, Rudd and his ministers have, in effect, become everything they criticised about the Howard government.

...Precisely! Thanks Susie! Sorry, I was saying... to hold them to account for lying or deliberately misleading the people they are trying to sell their political product to.

I do not accept that we have to accept, for evermore, that it is acceptable for a politician to flagrantly set out to mislead us, and that our only recourse comes once every few years at the ballot box.

I don't know the simple way forward, how to calibrate the test, how to adjudicate and enforce, but if we at least seriously questioned the premise, the accepted state of affairs, then maybe one day we can do better than this rot.

And before I have any further digs at Kate Ellis, I must say I have the same inside reservation about this that I have about the insulation fiasco- that it is not the Minister copping the flack who has really made the key decisions....

In just under three years, Rudd and his ministers have, in effect, become everything they criticised about the Howard government.

Ay, it's not just a bacteria that's putting my insides into turmoil at this eleventh hour.

We need to talk about Kevin... Kate Ellis... Labor...

2010-04-23T10:24:00.020+10:00

An explosion of ethical and bad policy misfires may not of itself damage voting prospects, but it is giving me palpitations in membership renewal month.

Kate Ellis has proved (who would ever have thought?) that being young and the 'sexiest politician' or somecrap doesn't actually make you good at the helm of national policy. The astonishing broken child care promise is yet more evidence of why not everything should be run from Canberra. Oh, you have stats that show vacancies do you, somewhere out in the nation? How about coming down into the suburbs and finding them so that people like Priscilla Davies can go to work:

The Clifton Hill woman is on the waiting list for five centres, but has been told to expect an 18-month wait, which has forced her to abandon her plans to return to work in June.

18 MONTHS NO WAY YOU LIE, Kate Ellis must be saying. Except, funnily enough, that's the same wait time in most of the surrounding suburbs as well. Including ours.

Good Labor outcome, Kate.

What else is news? Well down in Victoria we don't need a Royal Commission. In case the fact that a gangland boss can be killed while in almost-complete isolation under video surveillance in maximum security when he was a known hit target etcetera, etcetera, got you a bit concerned. Now you know, it is ALL RIGHT.

He denied he wanted to hide anything, and suggested ''greedy leftie lawyers'' were pushing the issue.

Greedy leftie lawyers.

Well, one can understand Brumby's point. After all if you were a very powerful person you might not want your supporters, funders or associates exposed to a greedy leftie lawyer. Just think what Saturday dinner gatherings they might have omitted to mention.

Covered the asylum backflip/kowtow already. Here's hoping this appeal manages to tap some of the judicial clawback embodied in the recent High Court decision of Kirk. Better yet, how about a declaration from that Court to the effect that there can be no ouster of jurisdiction on any land (sea or air) over which Australia claims sovereignty? A little bit of rule of law can only scare people who like breaking it.

Speaking of which, elsewhere human rights have been dumped. Someone, somewhere, felt threatened. And teachers need to shut up now they've been given laptops. And Kev is still proud that he's officially the worst employer in the nation.

No irony, that's the thing I'm getting from all this. Never mind the ethics, or the lustful adoption of policy-based evidence making, there's no sense of irony. No shame.

Damn. So disappointing.

Rudd's Reffo Bashing Redux

2010-04-13T15:02:00.006+10:00

This isn't a post about policy. Not directly, not in the sense of asking the same questions about why this tiny number of desperate people are such favoured scapegoats for poor government, insecurity, and the self-evident failings of our education system. That's just too frustrating, coming as it does at the end of a minor-thesis-writing process that involved, in part, exploring the irrationality of so many Australians, the left as well as the right, towards the region, people in boats, the usual themes that have been used to de-secure life on an apparently vast and remote continent for well over 100 years. Prodeo's onto it, anyway.

No, this is a post about the meaning of 'never again', a mantra so many in the ALP, such as myself, hoped would prove true following the humiliating nonsense of Tampa. Some left back then, joining the Greens or retiring from political involvement altogether, while others such as myself sucked up the bad realpolitik and thought 'well, this has been a particularly nasty period in Australian history, but perhaps once the poor-bugger-me set have had their little vent, and the aftermath of 11/9 has settled, we can reach saner ground on this issue.' Quietly we waited, watching things improve a little, trusting in people's decency and empathy to slowly eat away at the policies. And for a while it appeared things had changed. Not remarkably, but perhaps enough to remove reffo-baiting (nonsensically known as 'border security', as if there were any threat whatsoever to the integrity of the border, as such) from the prime issue tray.

We were wrong. Abbott, the great prodigy of St Ignatius Riverview, my alma mater, with its Ignatian slogan Men For Others...

...The term has come to mean that if one person graduates from a Jesuit school lacking a sense of social justice, the school has not achieved its primary mission...

...has ramped up the hatred for the Samaritans, and in response Kevin Rudd- not desperately trying to get elected like Beasley, in fact from a position of notable political strength, has screamed 'ME TOO!'

Pathetic. And palpably dishonest. Any idiot who follows international affairs knows neither Afghanistan nor Sri Lanka has demonstrated any improvement in respect of the treatment of its vilified minorities. In Sri Lanka's case it's a bit like claiming that the Tutsis were safe once the Hutus had successfully taken power (or indeed, as the worm turned back, the other way around). But in any event that is a moot point, because if people cannot show the requisite risk of persecution then the process, stacked against them to begin with, should weed that out. The fact that Rudd has suspended the process demonstrates complete lack of confidence in the very argument he is asserting.

So where does this leave the 'never again' contingent? Did I in fact vow to leave the party if it ever stooped that low again? Perhaps assuming it couldn't possibly do so twice, that last time was the result of a particularly bad confluence of events and the sheer surprise factor of Tampa...?

Bizarrely, I'm to the right of many in Labor, at least theoretically. But I found myself arguing with a comrade at the last branch meeting I went to, she was from the left, and she was running the old 'better off than the other side' line I've run so often, and I found myself really struggling with it. Labor has been better, pound-for-pound, than the Howard Liberals, but is that the test we should be applying? There is another test, the opportunity-cost test, one I've often held the Greens up to. It goes a little like:

If there wasn't an ALP, in its present form, dominated by unions and factions, controlling the space it does, obtaining consent from the likes of us, what else could there be?

Or- is the only choice we have a choice between two social conservatives, with a hard left party sniping away from one side and some illiterate nutballs hurling bibles from the other?

If everyone who doesn't like the status quo just rolls with it, and accepts the apologia articulated by my comrade, will it ever improve?

Do I roll out my credit card again before May, keep up the membership, hope for something better if we win again? Wasn't that the hope the first time around?

Would I do more good dumping this policy shebang and going back to law, finding a way to a spot where I'm fighting tooth and nail to at least achieve some small wins for people who are getting screwed over?

Will we ever, ever, get over the fact that we're Girt by Sea?

Coming up smelling of rose-tinted glasses

2010-04-07T13:26:00.002+10:00

Mitts staggers, almost runs. He is into tackling Bear at the moment, giggling the whole time. She's softened up on him I think, and is content enough provided she gets some 'her time' reading the Dinosaur book (COMP-sog-NAY-thus!), drawing or playing the Ladybug game.

The other day she drew a face, put the eyes where they should go, then the mouth, then the hair. I was rapt- parenting is all small miracles and found corners of happiness.

Mitts asks for cuddles (Mama!), his daddy (MAMA!), the cats (MA-MA!) and his mum (...ay!), but on other topics is quite happy to warble out all sorts of semi-intelligible noises. He chases balls, ALL THE TIME, something he hasn't got from his parents, both of whom are utterly incompetent with all things sporting. Still, I'm only going to encourage him, despite my preference for Brasilian Ju Jitsu if he is going to do some sort of contact sport.

The cats are exploring their new gardens, jumping fences and putting themselves in harm's way, so we're in the middle of feline AIDS injections.

I'm doing my usual career hand-wringing, Beloved is taking it all in her stride, and we are otherwise good.

Leaving me back here once more...

Lentil As Anything gets a pink slip of thanks

2010-03-31T10:18:00.003+11:00

Abbotsford Convent pushing out Lentil as Anything. Wanting to get more rent. Is this all there is to it? Is a place that, as I understand it, lives on public benevolence for vaguely articulated notions of the wider good, going to shaft one of the most respected and original businesses in Australia, one that gives so much back by skilling up welfare recipients and refugees, so it can rake in some more moolah?

Is there more to it? Some hitherto undisclosed dispute?

If not I'm appalled. Why don't we just take the whole damn complex, sitting as it does in prime DINKy million dollar real estate land, give it to a developer with a mandate to go up 15 stories, and let the market completely speak for itself? If that's all it comes down to.

Congratulama

2010-03-22T15:11:00.001+11:00

Congratulations Obama. Now come visit.

'Abbott Failed Health' says Angela Shanahan

2010-03-17T14:01:00.002+11:00

When a conservative columnist sums up an argument that should neuter Abbott's claim to Prime Ministership, any arguments he has with Rudd on health, and serve to demonstrate the emptyness of his strident self-serving attacks on Peter Garrett, it is worth savouring:

After all, a lot of people may remember that as health minister under John Howard, Abbott had a chance to fix hospitals and didn't.

That's it, that's all that ever needed to be said. The only problem seems to be that 'a lot' is far less than a crucial majority...

Tony Abbott and the over-under estimation problem

2010-03-16T16:27:00.006+11:00

Just a few days ago I sat with several of my left-of-centre brethren, discussing the state of play in Federal Politics. The general view was that Abbott is a good thing because he will not get elected. This optimism overestimates the polity as well as underestimating the man, who is clearly cunning, wiley, vicious, and not-stupid (I can't write that in the positive, I just can't).

And contrary to the painting of him as an ambition in search of policy, while this may be true at the level of fine detail he has clearly (as confirmed by Four Corners' unnerving portrait of the punching psychopath last night) held an immovable, focused hatred of most things socially progressive for decades.

And, while we're at it, Turnbull, who could just as easily have ended up in a different party, and who was not afraid of spineless expediency when it suited, was not the conviction-driven Judy to Abbott's poll-driven Punch. It is clear, based on the policy positions that have been adopted by the Liberal Party since the previous Malcolm left, that Abbott is the one in the party that complements his ideology.

All of which is an aside from my point(s). Despite disbelief on my side of politics, and probably true centrist liberals as well, the key bits of the polity, the people whose votes matter, are not as sensitive to small-minded meanness as we might like. They've shown that a cunning, flagrantly political animal with a mean streak and one foot firmly planted in the '50s can in fact embody all of the traits required for a successful and protracted streak in office.

I hope he's their Latham, as many predict. I just think my comrades should never, ever perform either of the acts of over-and-under estimation I've discussed here. Not in This Country. Not ever.

Abuse and Benediction

2010-03-16T15:49:00.004+11:00

I can add absolutely nothing of value to this excellent post, from In a Strange Land, which draws the threads together on Tony Abbott's principal policy adviser and the endless circle of partial-apologia and obfuscation that seems to be the Church's approach to its rich history of producing and protecting abusers of children.

How this can still be going, now, on this issue, after so many cases...? Just a bit fcuking awful really.

Isn't the problem with Australia taking Japan to the ICJ over whaling...

2010-02-24T15:18:00.003+11:00

...the potential for this to open up for scrutiny our generally unrecognised claim on Antarctica, as well as the way we assert our maritime boundaries?

We didn't want that explored when East Timor was the potential plaintiff, in fact we didn't think much of the ICJ full-stop back then.

This is a thought that's occurred to me, rather than a well-researched hypothesis. But it does seem likely that the government will not take its rhetoric any further due to the risk that international litigation might prove to be a double-edged sword that swings back and maims us.

That and the possibility that it will hold that the whaling is sufficiently scientific, thereby robbing opponents of their legal objection...

UPDATE: well, well, it appears I might have been wrong. In my defence I didn't count on race and nationalism being such a hot spot in this Australian election. Again.

Best children's stories - Tubby The Tuba

2010-02-21T08:13:00.002+11:00

Beloved's favourite story from when she was a little girl... her old LP had long since disappeared, and it wasn't in the shops, but here's the audiobook. We just took a listen and both of us had moist eyes... Bear pinching my hand, thoughtfully, while Mitts just rampaged off and tried to climb the couch.

Tubby, a Tuba, just wants to play a melody like all the other instruments...

Enjoy, Tubby The Tuba.

Environment Minister Goes Bush!

2010-02-16T12:59:00.004+11:00

Clearly, for the world to be in balance, this headline should have read:

State OH&S Regulator Goes Bush And Inspect Snakes

Well, my jury's still out on the extent of Garrett's culpability, but despite the crowing and braying the case against him seems pretty average at this point. And the political hypocrisy is mind-blowing.

In a pretty one-sided media scrum, Helen puts the counter-argument pretty persuasively.

Garrett has sucked a pretty dry mango since joining the ALP. I'm not The Greens' biggest fan overall, but it seems he would have had a far saner, more tolerable run if he'd gone there. I suppose he didn't know Climate Change (which back then looked interesting and progressive on the ALP platform) would get hived off.

I don't think the ALP have mounted a serious counter-attack, and I'm starting to wonder why. Perhaps he is earmarked for a slow demotion?

After all, can't lists be compiled of people who died because of coalition ministers' programs? This seems to be the extent of their point. Abbott on Health, Hockey on Human Services- there must be dozens of people who died missing out on hospital or support beds under their watch, if that's what it comes down to.

Back to The Greens, and even at the time I thought it was unnecessary for Bob Brown to burn the bridges the way he has done with Garrett. Because even at the time Garrett made the call, I thought of Cheryl Kernot, and wondered... whether Garrett would have some regrets once he'd tasted the inside of the party and parliamentary machines... and if the door had been left, even partly, open...

I don't know, do you think they still would, or could?

Hanson answers the paradox!

2010-02-15T16:40:00.004+11:00

Interviewer: "So, you don't like the way this country's been heading the past 40 years, don't like Aborigines, don't like Asians, spit on our national anthem... why exactly are you still here?"

Pauline Hanson: ....

...(tilts head)....

"GOOD POINT!"

I hope she's done her research. Certainly she'll find a few corners of old blighty filled with her ilk, but they won't take kindly to a foreigner, a convict no less, trying to teach them how to do fish and chips.

In my couple of years there I tended to find that the cranky old "This is MY country" types over there had a particular bee in their bonnet about Orstralians. Sometimes, what they said even felt like racism.

I wonder what will go through her head as she's sitting in the pub one day, listening to some half baked, under educated, whining chav rattle on about "what really annoys me about you lot is you come 'ere, goin' on about how good orstralia is, think you own the place, an' I wish you'd just go..."

And in one final humiliation, she's dumping Australia because it's not a land of opportunity. WTF? This from an uneducated, aesthetically and verbally challenged simpleton who was able to start a political party, get into Parliament, change politics forever then drag the experience out on various reality TV shows?

Did she want her face on the flag as well?

G'luck in blighty. I'm sure your stellar combination of skills and natural attributes will spark numerous opportunities in that famously egalitarian land. Maybe she'll sign up for Ladette to Lady...

Trackback to LP where the focus is on Tony Abbott's role in her political downfall...

Bear breaking out in song

2010-02-15T11:09:00.002+11:00

Yesterday: "You can't always get what you want-want... you can't always get what you want-want"...

Saturday: "This time ba-by I'll be-ee-ee bulle-e-tproof!"

Spanning generations, my girl chalks up some serious cred with Rollings Stones and La Roux, respectively. Particularly impressed that when I started singing the former with her, and we did the "try some time, you just might fi-ind", she hit the dominant fifth to create the perfect harmony for "get what you nee-eed".

[While I'm pottering about music, KD Lang.. wow. Hallelujah should now officially be banned from reality TV shows and minor diva cover albums for evermore. It has 3 owners, that's enough.]

They're good kids. Yesterday I was sick, and sickly, and flopping around with sallow eyes and no energy. She gave me hugs, Mitts gave me concerned looks. I felt loved.

Poo Anguish

2010-02-12T11:29:00.003+11:00

Poor little buddibuds has a stomach thing going on. His poo has been lousy for a little while, with ups and downs, but this last week it seems to have taken a turn for the worst. He is clearly in discomfort, at least some of the time, and taking a crap has given him a rash and even made him cry.

Last night he wouldn't sleep for a while, he was clearly in some discomfort, wriggling, breaking into tears even as his eyes stayed closed and his mind tried to sleep. I was sad and frustrated, sad for him, frustrated with everything else. I broke a scrubbing brush trying to remove a frustrating lump of flek off the sink. "Fcuk YOU" I declared at the flek, the brush and the sink.

You will be pleased to know the kids did not witness this outburst.

Sometimes a dad has the touch, but last night rubbing his back, holding across my shoulder, pacing back and forth in the room, even the 'sweet spot' all failed. He needed mummy, and it was only after she got back from shopping and administered cuddles that he finally relented.

He had one of those persistent boogers too, did I mention? The kind that keep catching at the top of their throat just when they've drifted back off to sleep...

We think it might be milk, soy or both. We had him on rice milk a few days and it helped. Don't really know, don't know where to start. Starting with the Dr, this afternoon.

Poor lil' man...

What sort of hiatus is this?

2010-02-11T16:42:00.005+11:00

I don't know. It's like Murphy's law, you make a call you've been building up to for months, bereft of inspiration, then suddenly the blogwaters break.

A little.

I don't know. I do know I'm particularly bad at this whole 'stop blogging', 'stop this blog', 'start a different blog to discuss X' thing. It's probably a certifiable condition under the DSM, but at least I'm not putting anyone in mortal danger.

Damn.

Blast.

Nang.

Getting ridiculous - Racism's left-right swap and the national interest

2010-02-11T15:10:00.006+11:00

It is ridiculous when you find yourself agreeing with Greg Sheridan and Ted Baillieu on the one topic.

And offended by the sharp conduct of people you thought you respected, on the same topic.

It's politics, I get that. And nobody in electorland wants to offend the bogans, I get that too. So what's needed here, in the national interest, is for the Foreign Minister to use the external affairs power in the Constitution to take conduct of the issue, as far as possible, off the Victorian Government. It's not so much a case of legislating or litigating, but rather of Rudd and Smith strongly reprimanding their stateside brethren for damaging Australia's regional relations, economy, and potentially even national security.

The denialism is, in itself, grossly offensive to our neighbours, and is damaging a strategically-crucial relationship in the name of placating people in marginal seats. Imagine how we as a nation would be taking it if Aussies were being so consistently targeted in another country, and we were being fed some tosh along the lines of 'well they're asking for it, the way they hold their mobile phones'...

That's right, we'd crack it. The bogans would be baying for war. And our trash papers would be treating the truth as selectively as theirs are. There's been some hype and exaggeration in India, but nothing that can't be easily understood with just a smattering of knowledge about the effect the long tail of colonialism has on these issues through most of the non-white world.

Rudd, Smith, step up and take control.

I'm not a die hard centralist, to say the least. In fact what I'd conclude with is that THIS is the sort of issue Rudd should be wading into, before water rights or hospitals. It's national business and it's about time it was taken into hand and dealt with firmly.

Redux? Sibling rivalry and punishment

2010-02-09T12:32:00.004+11:00

No no it's still in hiatus I just had something I wanted to quickly, belatedly, post.

So there's a bit of rivalry going on, if I can call it that. Perhaps Bear captured it best when she described her feelings about Mitt, in a particular context, as 'Frustration'. She's frustrated.

And sometimes it gets physical, I see that expression, the same one I get when I set my jaw and hit the cupboard that hit me. I mean to say, hit the cupboard that I stupidly walked into because I wasn't looking where I was going. A sudden welling of emotion that says 'Right! I'm taking action! I don't care!'

So your answer is going to be 'she gets it from you' but honestly I've managed to maintain a remarkable (if I may say so) amount of composure around the kids, pretty much all of their lives. Not only don't they ever get physically punished, but most of the time I think Beloved and I do pretty well at not losing our cool (too much) when getting cross and delivering admonishment or punishment. The latter usually involves a short period of 'thinking time', or loss of some expected privilege.

Which is the kind of response that gets dolled out if she hits Mr Man, pushes him over, yanks on his arm, or otherwise unleashes some unacceptable aggression. But it's hard, and I don't think it is straightforward, despite what the 'kids today need discipline' crowd might argue.

How much is she interpreting such admonishment as 'I shouldn't hit people' (the generic language we try to use, to take the focus off Mitts), how much is it 'I'm in trouble for hitting my brother' (not so good), and how much is it 'Mitts annoyed me and they've taken his side'?

Sadly I suspect a bit of the last creeps in. But what do you do with unacceptable, and sometimes dangerous, amounts of physicality when they are unleashed?

Thankfully there are reasons to be optimistic. Much of the time they play well, they are now sharing a room on her request and she is coping (though frustrated when he wakes and cries), there is giggling, cuddling, and plenty of good attention. Also, he's almost as big as her already, so give it a few more months and I think she'll be learning, one way or another, to keep her hands to herself.

But damn, it's hard.

By the way, as a post-script to this post-script, did I mention how proud I was when she selected the word frustrated to describe her feelings? I know, I know...

Memo to the Net: 5 years worth of thoughts on blogging and life... A post-script in assorted figments...

2010-02-04T14:20:00.013+11:00

I've fallen into hiatus again. It may be the last time. This may be the last post, sans bugle.

Sometimes its nice to vent and talk for a moment about life. Sometimes its nice to live in the moment. Sometimes there aren't enough moments.

You can't do it all on one blog. Funny doesn't want to read dry, dry doesn't want to read teary. You can't help but care.

It's hard getting too close to a movement you aren't part of.

Being flamed by the other side is unpleasant, slightly. Being flamed by your own is sickening, it turns your world on its head, makes you wonder why you have found common political ground with someone like that.

I started poliblogging 5 years ago with a firm belief that my side of politics held most of the decent people. I now hold the firm belief that it holds a marginal majority of decent people. I have come to be suspicious of extremes, I like the line that joins the yin and the yang.

You can't capture the emotions of parenting on a blog, not fully. It's an experience best enjoyed in person.

Men and women, even those who are trying hard, are still a long way from understanding each other. It is worth the effort, but there is still a long way to go. Very few people are really trying to understand the other.

Debates about music and sport are pointless, logically. They can, however, be a great test of the character of both yourself and those you think you respect.

A room full of bloggers is a study in asymetry and disjunct. It is also a guaranteed source of excellent conversation.

Keeping confidences can be hard. When someone has coffee with you and talks about how they're considering joining either Party A or Party B, then joins the latter and within weeks starts virulently attacking Party A and all of its supporters on their high profile blog, you don't break the confidence. But its frustrating, and you learn about the nuance that underpins so much polemic.

The more people you tell, the less you can write about. Anonymity is the friend of fine personal blogging (see my first 10 or so posts...).

Before LOLCATS was big, I gave you Chairman Mao, don't forget it.

An idiotic blog about a talking cat is an amazingly popular idea. A talking cat is a very funny, and telling, way to discover that some of your favourite threads are populated by people with an irony bypass.

It was also my wife's favourite.

A post about a 60 year old bodybuilder will attract daily visits from people who have searched for 60 year old bodybuilders on Google. It will prove to be the post with the longest tail. You will find yourself wondering at the meaning of life. (redux, perhaps?)

The kids are doing fine, thank you. Mitts is walking around holding on to things, taking steps, and Bear is jumping, painting, helping me water our new mini herb garden and still taking no prisoners. Beloved is back at work, enjoying the return to adult interaction. Minh and Mao are enjoying the new house and the greatly increased time spent outside.

I'm on tolerably better terms with my father, and with myself in respect of my father. In his own, emotionally retarded ways, he's been making small efforts. He still isn't being a proper grandfather, but perhaps the worst interpretations I started to put on his actions were excessive. I hope so, disappointed as I am.

Being a parent is complex. Try to listen to the narrative of the person, allow that to sit apart from the narrative you've adopted. For my part, I'm tired of existing narratives. All of them.

The second hardest thing to capture in a post is raw emotion. The hardest is humour.

It will be reasonable to call for an end to anonymous blogging when it is illegal to hold anything a person has said on a blog against them in a place of work. When you see pigs fly, let me know.

I have learned about mutuality and ethics. I learned not to flame, as I don't like being flamed. Something my mummy said about doing unto others springs to mind.

In this and other things I believe blogging has made me a more thoughtful person.

Blogging is often more like talking than the kind of writing we associate with articles and books. The world does not understand this.

As large group and corporate blogs take over the 'sphere, I reflect that the art of the editor, now much maligned, was always at least as important as the art of the writer.

Writing posts is quite easy. It can be done efficiently and balanced with a decent workload. What drains your energy and time is going back to comment threads to see what people are saying about your last assertion.

Godwin's Law is a crock, designed to allow history to repeat itself. It is based on the negligent conflation of two distinct acts: asserting equivalence and drawing analogy. If you see people cracking down on dissent, or touting racial nationalism, or calling for war at the drop of a hat, history is there to remind us of why we find these things so repugnant.

Feed readers, facebook and twitter have all been invented in the time I've been blogging. What does this say about a policy focussed on teaching primary school kids to use laptops?

When I was in primary school, Ataris had just been invented. I wish I'd learned to work one of those Ataris inside out, I'd have been so much better off when I hit the workforce in the late '90s.

People have given me some touching and profound advice on this blog, and shared the most personal and instructive experiences. Thank you, I am grateful. This has been a highlight.

Once you start keeping 'a record', such as things your kids are doing, a blog can become a source of incredible guilt if you are not diligent and thorough.

Long posts that talk about all sorts of unrelated crap are rarely read. I know.

Part of the reason for previous blogging resurrections was a sense of wanting to reconnect with my online peeps. Facebook has now been invented, there was always email. Mine's armagny [atsymbol] gmail DOT com.

The answer to that is, I don't know, maybe.

Work is hard to find satisfying once you've turned down 2 or more opportunities to do jobs you'd prefer. Even if they were on less pay, or in Canberra.

The Oz Blogosphere is ostensibly saturated. But there are major topics that are all but ignored. I'm not sure why, or whether there is value in exploring them, but I do think there is still room for more, well-placed, writings.

Ditto political parties. On a left-right axis the space is largely filled. On a more nuanced, multi-axis analysis, there are some large empty spaces, and they sit surprisingly close to the middle ground.

Australia is an inherently conservative country, and the likes of Tony Abbott or Barnaby Joyce should be treated with the respect that you'd give to a Taipan in a sleeping bag.

Like music, and probably other creative arts I know less about, writing can sap your emotions as much as it can buoy them.

Child hatred is as common as doting parental blogging. Sometimes, when I'm reading some bigot's rant about prams in cafes or pregnant women, I wonder "Do they vote the way I do?" I hope not, but the thought is troubling and not easy to dislodge.

A way to test the true mettle of your favourite bloggers is to experiment by joining in the same old threads under a different ID. See who treats you like an outsider, see the snobbery and exclusion embraced by some of your favourite blogerati. It can feel like the sandpit all over again.

All good posts must come to an end. So must messy, tatty, incoherent ones.

So must messy, tatty, incoherent blogs. I have, after all, given you an engagement, a wedding, 2 cats, 2 kids, and an outstanding reason to explore old Brandy.

Back to hiatus, perhaps not for long, perhaps for ever.

Love yaz all.

A.

The Mitt, the Fox, the Bear and Cinderella

2009-12-16T14:29:00.007+11:00

Mitts is on my lap, I'm flicking loosely through the weekend papers, suddenly there's Megan Fox in full page glossy. With several bemused witnesses, Mitts throws his arms out, hands shaped into claws, and says "ARRRRR!!"

I'll say no more.

He's chatting a bit now, getting close to articulating clear words. Actually he uses all sorts of words, I'm just not sure what language they're in. Anderss, Zizzess, Daadahh, DATZ... (well, I know the last one is "cats") ... The proto-words are strung into phrases now, making sense in their own way just like his quite rhythmic table drumming and xylophone pounding.

Close to walking (holding himself up and moving along things) and close to talking, his frustration is palpable.

Random speech-related segue to Bear. Yesterday evening she's opened up a book of Fairy Tales, arrived at Cinderella, and promptly started telling her own story based on the pictures. It went something like this:

So they put the cat up on it and and yeah the cat was on there and.... these ones went over here and then there's the cat. (turns page)

A fairy there is a fairy and she BOUGHT A PUMPKIN there is a pumpkin and the fairy went, yeah! (turns page)

So YEAH there was a wedding and there LOOK they went and there was a WEDDING and, and THERE they are.

A girl is determined to read, I'm as proud of this as her efforts at coming up with a story (she's not familiar with Cinderella yet).

Nobel Nothings- Could Obama become the next Kissinger?

2009-12-11T12:45:00.003+11:00

While he made a bad situation worse by defending war during the Nobel ceremony, a nasty possibility is emerging from his decision to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan.

Among the allegations Christopher Hitchens levelled in his book 'The Trial of Henry Kissinger', which I admit I read several years ago, was a fairly convincing argument along the lines of 'Kissinger and Nixon took unilateral steps to flummox peace discussions late in the '60s and drew the war out, largely for political purposes'. Resulting in tens of thousands more people dying.

While it may not be clear for many years, what if Obama is essentially making his decision to continue in Afghanistan against a preponderance of the advice he has received, at least in relation to the likelihood of success there? What if, instead, this Nobel Prize winning Democratic President has made a decision to continue the war, increasing its intensity (and therefore the casualties that will inevitably follow on all sides), because he believes this is essential to his own domestic political survival?

Hugh White's recent article in The Monthly suggests, by implication, that this might be the case.

We might yawn at the idea of becoming upset at politicians acting cynically to get votes, but when it comes to waging war, this could open him up to allegations (as Hitchens tried to do to Kissinger) that he has committed a breach of the laws of war, maybe even a war crime.

Ironically, Bush and Blair may have had better justification for going in at the beginning (to shut down Taliban terrorist training camps, which we know existed and which were used to attack the US) than Obama has for 'surging' the troops at this point.

I hope this hypothesis is wrong, I still have reams of respect for the man, and I hope (against the odds it would seem) that he actually succeeds and brings peace there.

Tuvalu is 'developing', China is a superpower

2009-12-10T11:08:00.006+11:00

On Climate Change Tuvalu has a different view to China and India. That is because Tuvalu really care about climate change, for obvious reasons.

'Developing country' is a relative term, so that countries can claim such status if they have less wealth per person than the US or Western Europe. But in the case of China and India, countries that are part of the strategic environment affecting Australia, that choose to spent an astronomical amount of their wealth on military capability and that are nuclear armed, are effectively asking us to take a bigger hit on their behalf.

I think far more than $10 billion should be pledged by the 'wealthy countries' to support poor countries as part of this process, but allowing China to access that support, while racing to built its already ridiculously large military up to intimidate the neighbourhood, seems a bit foolish. The issue probably goes far beyond Copenhagen to a debate about where the world's developmental welfare should be directed.

In my view China does not care much about emissions. They simply aren't that sort of nation, they would see no major issue with replanting millions of people away from the coast. They are an old-style realist strategiser and they are basically looking at this process to advance their position relative to the other players, in particular the US.

Which seen entirely from their vantage point, is probably understandable. But if Australia ends up giving them handouts that would be a bit bizarre.

Sharman Stone was soft on Asylum Seekers

2009-12-08T15:59:00.005+11:00

One of those moments where you wonder where some people will stop. Sharman Stone, apparently, was trying to steer a middle course between moderates and "the Right" on this issue.

....?!?

If she was the voice of moderation, I owe her an apology for streams of vitriol already hurled at my TV set. There I was thinking this woman must eat babies for breakfast, and in fact she was a moderate, possibly even being forced to run a harder line than her own conscience preferred?

Well, apologies to Sharman, I'm sure it's not biologically possible that you are some of the things I called you anyway. But what exactly do The Right want? The Right who are now in the ascendency, apparently responsible for dumping Sharman from her post. What do they want to do to refugees that she wasn't already advocating?

Do they want to kill them? I'm being serious, there's not much left. Do they want us to finally, once and for all, dump the Convention itself and its core rule of non refoulement? Just send people back to war zones, overt oppression, torture, genocide, whatevs?

Go back to picking out the white ones?

Or just burn the boats and shoot them in the water? I mean, Sharman was basically banging on about how Rudd's policy, which still uses offshore detention, is too soft. If she was a pinko by the standards of something called "the Right" that's apparently even further to the right, what exactly do they want?

I can't wait to find out. Race and security politics, the high water mark of Australian civilisation.

Oh Don't Go There

2009-12-08T12:04:00.004+11:00

I must admit I was a bit shirty on the phone to my mum last night, putting in the odd dig at my old man that probably could have been left on the shelf. Occasion for the call- to suggest she suggests he calls his old school mate, who he's also been in the process of brushing off and rejecting, because his old school mate is about to die from cancer.

Possibly it wouldn't hurt you to let him chat about what's on TV for ten minutes, Pa?

Anyway, I tell her happily about where Mitts is at: pulling himself up on things, standing (in fact yesterday he started 'stepping' along the edge of the couch while standing, an exciting milestone!), blabbing lots of semi-articulated words like "da da dgggst" and "anderzz" and "itstst", yanking at books, and bashing enthusiastically on the xylophone.

"Ooh dear" she says, unenthusiastically. Then, without directly relating it to her comment, she starts to babble on about how you can start to tell if kids are going to 'be musical' at this age.

Context- Mitts is 11 months old.

She continues. At this age apparently I was waving my arms around like a conductor to my favourite music, Gilbert and Sullivan (I'd like to point out my tastes did evolve, thankfully). Mitts has actually done the same to Mussorgsky but I leave this out, because this already ridiculous piece of historical fluffery takes an ill-advised turn.

"I knew you would be musical then", she slaps in for effect.

... (pause as my blood pressure goes up a few dozen kilopascals)

"Shame that was discouraged" I understate.

"OH but we BOUGHT YOU saxophones and lessons and things" she jumps back, the usual themes. I was bought something. What more could a kid ask for?

"Yes but you-know-who then actively discouraged me" I reply, still holding back about 5 cannons of rising anger.

"Well you've got to get over it sometime" she retorts, again a bit too quickly.

"No. I. DON'T".

She shifts topics and moves away, wisely. I fume long after we finish.

Yes I got some lessons when I was very young, and a guitar, and much later was able to convince them to switch from a small car to a sax for my 21st present. I don't deny this was financially fortunate. But it counted for sweet F.A. because when this became my overwhelming passion, something I was practising several hours of every day, something I was actually getting very good at, my father attacked this love of mine with a venom I still can't fully make sense of, as part of generally attacking everything about me that he didn't identify with.

In fact in a big worked-up rant about how music was a waste of time and I had no talent anyway, he said he would support me studying "anything EXCEPT music".

This in the context of whining on all his life about how his father didn't support him going to Uni, and how I was so lucky because I'd be given all the support I needed. As it happened there weren't any relevant courses available within 1000 miles of where I lived, and the only courses I was aware of charged fees, so just as when he was a boy, in this particular context, a complete lack of support did make a difference (I actually applied for the Army so I could afford to send myself to music school, a story for another day).

Coupled with constant put-downs about how if I had any talent it would be more obvious, I'd go nowhere, be a loser and so on, this kinda fell short of encouragement.

My mum didn't actively participate, but she didn't do much to contradict this message either, until I was in my mid 20s. I remember vividly the day she said something that sounded vaguely encouraging, remember being touched by it, while reflecting on how it was an offer of hay to the horse that had already bolted. I'd ground myself up with frustration and self doubt for about 4 years when music was all I wanted to do. The dreams had blurred, the time mostly passed.

So it wasn't her fault, but in her constant babble about how when I was a little bub I did this and that before I was the age dot, I don't need her to make some claim on me being a child prodigy, or that being something she spotted and encouraged. Leave it alone, for fcuk's sake.

And here's a message to people who have at some point colossally screwed up a relationship: moving on is possible, but don't ever, ever tell us to get over it. That's a way of saying you don't really think you did anything wrong. And that's just a way of inviting a whole pile of visceral anger to leap out of the place it's been buried and fly down your throat.

I'll finish on a lighter reflection, on the merits of the internet. At the time of the arguments above I was living in Darwin, and my knowledge of the courses available to me was limited by what was on offer, or in the library of, the local Uni-Tafe. I did not know, and had no immediate way of knowing, that there were courses at places like Box Hill College that taught exactly what I wanted to learn.

It is sometimes hard to imagine that just a few years ago that sort of functional information simply wasn't available. If you didn't know something was out there, or where to start looking, then that was that. All I knew about was the Conservatorium in Sydney, and a whole bunch of fantastic music schools in the US that I could attend if I saved about a year's salary....

Turnbull is no crusader for moderate liberals

2009-11-27T11:45:00.004+11:00

Not this time. He had the potential. But even as he started tying the rope for himself on the ETS, he was still reffo bashing and playing to an even darker, more right wing audience than the ETS doubters.

So it actually makes no sense that he made a stand here. And while it may be tempting for we of the left to allow him the glory of his purported martyrdom, seen in context his conduct has little to commend it.

He chose to join the party that hogs the nomenclature of 'liberal' while taking, in most cases, conservative positions. He then fought hard, successfully, to lead it. True, he argues that he came to reform and modernise, but if anyone out there had the contacts, wealth, reputation and sheer bull headed confidence to start a new party it would have been him.

More importantly, when things started to sour, post Utegate, he did not hesitate to go into the muck with the very worst of the Right's dog whistling, race baiting, divisive, misleading use of the wretched asylum seeker as political pawn. Never mind the ETS, this was the real test of his 'liberal' character, ethics and bona fides. He failed spectacularly. He got into bed with Sophie Mirabella, she gave him fleas then unsurprisingly joined the deserters yesterday.

The 'fleas' will never leave him. No matter how high minded he feels about his present stand, it will always stain his record that he failed a handful of miserable people, fleeing a well documented war, well documented concentration camps in Sri Lanka, well documented bigotry and official discrimination, and in the process failed small L liberalism and any notion of modernising his party.

Which begs the question- why such a vehement stand on the ETS? I think it is an incredible case of pride and poor political judgement, rather than a noble stand for the future of humanity. I may be wrong, none of us can see inside Turnbull's head. But leaving the policy aside, and my personal preference for progressive action on emissions, his conduct in relation to his party and fellow parliamentarians was appalling, aggressive, and ultimately delusional. And surely if he had offered a conscience vote on the issue there would have been enough votes to get the ETS over the line, while allowing the god-and-sheep botherers their own version of integrity.

He's on his way down now. I don't mean to dig into him too hard, because on his failings I feel disappointment as much as anything. I resent, but understand, the unpleasant pressure and political compromise that led him to the path he took on refugees. I don't believe he believed in the gutter trawling policy position he allowed attack dogs like Mirabella to take.

He may yet spring up in politics somewhere, in a guise that more closely matches his more progressive liberal politics, perhaps even a party or organisation that would swear itself off race baiting, flag waving, god bothering and reffo bashing. You never know. And if he does, good luck to him...

Blood as Bear bites tongue badly

2009-11-17T12:07:00.005+11:00

It happened so fast I barely turned my head and it was done. She was wriggling forward on a fold-out chair, not minxing, just moving to the edge to get down, when it unbalanced- slammed - forward, her mouth hit the edge of the table, her head flew back and she fell underneath onto the paving.

She cried hard, in wave after wave, for a long time. Blood streamed out of her mouth, reminding me of the rivers of blood when I once bit through my own tongue, slamdancing to Lithium in the Sari Club back in the old days in Bali. My shirt was bright pink. I swapped her to the other side so she wouldn't see it, I held her for a long time, swaying, trying to say soothing stuff, failing.

I plopped her on the couch, she sobbed and sobbed there until, exhausted and shell-shocked, she fell asleep. We didn't have any kids' painkiller. Parents, simple lesson, always carry some baby Panadol or Nurofen when you travel. I walked with one of our nice hosts down to the nearest Chemist. It was closed. He drove me to another, where I nearly bought the older kids version before learning that Baby Panadol is more potent. Went for potent.

Beloved administered a generous dose to a rewoken Bear, who was sobbing again. Then we had to go to a wedding and leave Bear and Mitts with our trusted friends. I felt a bit sick.

The friends were wonderful, and soon after we left Bear calmed, perhaps helped by the drugs. She sat up past bedtime watching Monsters Inc, whatever that is, then announced when she was ready that she'd like to go to bed. I meanwhile spent the whole wedding telling people how I was the kind of dad who sits next to his daughter but fails to grab her in time as she falls off chairs and sustains bloody injuries.

There is still a big flap loose on her tongue. The nurse at Royal Children's said it's fine. But every time I think about it I feel a little queasy.

Institutional Care - stuff we still do

2009-11-16T09:25:00.009+11:00

Watching ABC2 this morning brought out historical experiences involving trauma, separated families and socially-endorsed institutionalisation. It was very moving. So were the stories from the people who experienced that in the past.

The earnest voices talked, with grave condemnation dripping from every word, of a time when children would be removed from home and placed in institutional or foster care, not because they were being raped or bashed by their parents, but because dysfunction or socioeconomic circumstances meant they weren't able to take care of their kids. We didn't have the same social welfare back then, they said.

I thought 'What, 5 years ago?' And did it really get better under the dying days of Howard as the pressure on the unemployed, single parents and the disabled was ramped up exponentially? Because I've encountered, for example, a situation where the only thing preventing a child from being with their family was the need for a particular support (for example drug and alcohol monitoring, or anger management counselling), but because of a waiting list or some other funding-related obstacle that support was not available, and so a child, a vulnerable, developing child, was removed or kept out of their family home.

We've all observed (or quietly looked the other way as it occurred, the natural consequence of hard nosed policies endorsed by the polity at the ballot box) the state going hell for leather to recover debts incurred accidentally by poor people who are supporting children- that is, to be clear, hauling those debt amounts out of the meagre budgets that would otherwise put food in kids' mouths.

The link between poverty, dysfuction and the state removing children is still alive and well. Choices, based on considerations ranging from budget priorities to voter-friendly headlines, are still made to the detriment of the individual family as a coherent entity. Or to the detriment of the 'best interests of the child'.

The story also included footage and discussion of these poor institutionalised kids being forced to march, decked out in military gear. Awful, said the tone of the announcers. Well, it seems it's horrific if decades ago they were doing that to orphans and wards of the state. It's not horrific if a kid today is sent to boarding school, or enrolled in cadets and taught to march and fire weapons, that's different because they have a choice. Their parents might make it for them, and they might do so under illusions created by fallacious notions and glossy brochures, but they are somehow part of a 'choice' that distinguishes them from other institutionalised kids.

We're so much better today, aren't we? I don't even need to get started on asylum kids, those queue-jumping ratbags aren't worthy of empathy until they have permanent residency.

Sure, things are better. Even between when I went to school and got the cane for being punched in the head, or for not making my bed in time, and the present, there has been notable improvement. But with such ritual distancing of the past as we are seeing today, we seem to be saying we're now civilised, that such things can't happen today.

Which is utter crap.

Update: Senator Fielding reveals his own abuse at the hands of a scoutmaster. There are not many times when I'm going to give him credit, but I think discussing this would be extremely painful and humiliating for him and he's brave for bringing it up.

Lest We Forget - The Abject Horror of Total War

2009-11-11T10:19:00.006+11:00

What do we remember? What are we trying not to forget?

It is never clear if we are remembering solely to honour the fallen, a worthwhile task in itself no doubt, or whether we are remembering the democidal horror of war, of total war in particular, and the extraordinary folly and evil that combines to unleash it on humanity.

Memory is selective. Reflecting on my past couple of posts, there a proposition out there that anyone who reaches for the 'Hitler/Nazi' analogy should automatically lose an argument. I have some sympathy with this, but there is also an argument that says we have not learned the lessons of the past, whether from Nazism, Vietnam, or the Great War, and that lively recollection and debate about their relevance does no harm.

History weighs on my mind in many of Australia's racial, ethnic and population fault lines. I don't think about it because I want to be specious, I think about it because I've always been interested in history and I feel a certain churn in my stomach when I see things I thought and hoped I wouldn't see in my country. The Right has long relied on an extraordinary link drawn between the brutal totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th Century and wet, soft, democratically accountable government interference in the economy or the like. If such a self-evidently long bow, no not even a bow, a bamboo suspension bridge drawn into a hoop, can be given credence by any sane person, what is it about the Cronulla riots, the targetting of anyone of vaguely mediterranean appearance for brutal violence, the overt racial nationalism, that doesn't bring to mind the horror of the late 1930s and the vicious, paranoid bigotry unleashed upon the Jews?

It is not that there are pogroms, or mass murder. It is however that one thing led to another.

Behind such particular, smaller scale, analogies and partisan arguments, played out in nations largely benefitting from a sustained pax, there is the big thing that happened in the two World Wars. There is total war. Slaughter of millions. Loss of entire generations. Loss of cultures, great historical buildings and artifacts, loss of humanity.

I don't think we remember that, not really, and I don't think it's an issue of left or right. My greatest fear is not World War II, the model of the rampant dictator who can't be placated, but of the Great War, the combination of belligerent (if not quite Hitler-esque) leaderships, appalling diplomatic blunders, and the suction created by a set of interwoven alliances that draws nations that have no real gripe with each other into an unending slaughter.

Over all the others, all the other sacrifice, all the blunders and all the worthy causes properly fought for, it is the Great War I remember.

It is the Great War that we are most at risk of repeating. We, being Australia, not America, not China, not Japan. Australia. Lest we forget.

More comment on what I've suggested here over at LP.

Learning to Love Ratios - border security edition

2009-11-10T14:05:00.003+11:00

240,000,000:21,000,000

1:120

9:10

(all approximates)

Clues: Indonesia, boat arrivals, successful asylum seekers, overall migration, Australia.

Non-refoulement- just like Climate Change, only crunchy!

2009-11-10T00:05:00.005+11:00

Barnaby Joyce is right, of course. The solution is we should send them home. They include terrorists, there are millions of hundreds of them, we can't fit them all, there's a queue after all, just inside the gate of the biggest Tamil internment camp, self determination is a lefty plot to overthrow the world and replace it with latte, imagine if we'd said yes to all those Jews back in the late '30s, after all?

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, took place on this date in 1938. Jews weren't particularly popular with the moral majority back then...

Codified within the 1951 Geneva Convention and 1967 Protocol, the principle of non-refoulement arises out of an international collective memory of the failure of nations during World War II to provide safe haven to refugees fleeing certain genocide at the hands of the Nazi regime.

Memory indeed, lest we forget.

Stay at home dadding

2009-11-09T14:00:00.002+11:00

I've take a few days off to cover Beloved's return to work, a day a week, up to the end of the year. I took the first last week. Though as longer term readers will know I was on a 4 day week for a while with Bear alone, this was the longest I've spent on sole care of the kids, now there are 2.

It was hard of course, but fun. I had learned a lesson from the early days with Bear that if you try to fit complex things into your day it can all go pear shaped. This is more flexible once you've been doing it for a while, know the routine inside out and can balance 2 poos in one hand while finishing off a Thomas the Tank Engine jigsaw with the other.

As a moment of relief from my gibbering, I present an old school friend, one of the recipients of the email that led to my reunion post, who is now a proper home dad and blogging about it: Aussie House Dad.

Beloved is sometimes pretty strained on those long days at home with 2 kids, especially when Bear decides to push the boundaries at crucial moments of stress. I did appreciate this, but lasted approximately 3 hours before my own best efforts started to deteriorate. Mitts was starting to holler for food (quite reasonably) and I was zooming around pulling lunch together in the kitchen. I'd agreed to make Bear some eggs (a fave, along with sushi -!?!) and the balancing act was getting delicate. Bear decided to start pulling everything out of the cupboard and the poor girl accidentally poured couscous everywhere. In a slightly raised, firm voice I said something like "If you do that again SWEETheart I will NOT have time to cook your eggs!"

She ran immediately out of the kitchen and I followed her, realising instantly I'd been a bit too harsh. She went straight to the naughty corner and stood there, looking mortified. I didn't have a mirror dear reader but I am sure I looked pretty mortified too! A few hugs later and we were back in business (with another hug for Mitts of course on the way through) and food did, eventually, get served.

*LONG EXHALE*

Bonding. Through triumph over adversity (my incompetence being a specific case of force majeure in the children's lives that must be overcome) we will have us some bonding.

Boi-Boi's daddy phase

2009-10-23T11:01:00.004+11:00

We spent a week on the road, long hours in the car up to the farm, onto Canberra, and back again through the rolling countryside of Yass and back down the Hume. Beloved drove while I pulled faces, poked, tickled, made oddball noises, passed food and toys and generally tried to stave off the worst-case scenario of 2 kidlets screaming with frustration in a splendid duet. I largely succeeded.

In Canberra there were Beloved's old friends to catch up with, there was my mother-in-law's wedding to prepare and attend, and for much of the time I was the one on primary kidlet duties. It wasn't easy but it brought us closer, and seems to have triggered a daddy phase in Mitta, Boi-Boi, Big Rocks or (if you ask Bear) variations on Lalilolilo.

We talked a lot- he said urgh, grunt, dadada, a-Dah, and I explained exactly why, what, how or where. I lolled around on the floor, playing absently. We trashed newspapers together. And while I did and have done all this with Bear as well, it was, for father and son, an unusual amount of bonding time. We bonded.

He is reaching for me as I walk past, leaning out and extending his arms. He watches me moving around the room, smiles when I speak to him. He does for me what he has done so consistently for Beloved. It's all goodness.

One morning about 4am, Beloved had gone to pat Bear and had fallen asleep in her room (as an aside, no, sleep wasn't part of the package on this trip!). Mitts cried, I picked him up. I was too tired to stand and rock so I collapsed back into the bed, my arm wrapped around him and his head on my shoulder. We both drifted off to sleep, pretty much where we'd landed. I listened to his breathing, felt the instinctive relief all parents must feel from the immediate proximity of a safe, content, healthy child.

He is Zen with the world, but he also gives Zen back.

John Safran's race and pan tee* sn$ffing oddities

2009-10-22T14:50:00.007+11:00

Hi, I'm John Safran. I'm latching onto the noble cause of tolerance and general inter-racial fraternisation. We're naturally attracted to other races.

No way, you say, because you're all so conservative compared to me. Well, I'll pass on some astonishing facts.

Did you know lots of white women are attracted to black guys?

... pick yourself up, there's more:

I, John Safran, am attracted to part Asians.

NO WAY, OMG! I know, I know, this completely tips on its head all cliches out there. Oh did I mention, part Asians go for me, look at my photos, here's 3 I've been dating... etc etc. OK, let me steal some panties and sniff the genitalia of women without their consent and we'll see what I can prove...

Is it just me or was this a string of sometimes offensive splats that failed to connect? I'm up for being shocked. Love any topic to do with the juice of attraction, don't mind getting into the way people of differeing races do it, etc. I read Houellebecq, I'm not particularly sensitive on this stuff. But I think interracial p00rn probably makes a more compelling case for love between colours than what was served up on ABC last night.

The sperm donor stuff was a bit foul, and proved nothing. Other than reminding us that so many people still could not give a rat's about the child's right to know anything. To me it was hard to separate conceptually from the 'purpose' behind the rapes carried out by Serbian and Croatian soldiers as part of the ethnic cleansing that went on there. Consent, effectively, was removed, so a different race could be promulgated. Witty stuff.

The p&nty sn1ffing escapades are a set up I'm sure, it would certainly be a criminal offence to do that, probably acts of gross indecency as well as theft, so he's either faked those bits or sought permission. If he didn't it's sexually invasive and abusive.

And why did he bring the Minister from Togo into it? I found that just, well, here's a white guy from a rich country granted an audience most likely because they're poor and desperate for any recognition, and he just wants to bang on about why black guys in Australia get an unfair advantage?

His obsession with part Asian girls does not bear out his theory. It just shows he has an obsession with part Asian girls. As a white male obsession it's about as novel as white women into by black guys. In a general sense, Asian girls look very young by Caucasian standards. Black men look particularly physically strong and imposing. Viewed that way, neither is a particularly novel source of attraction signifiers.

His theory, about genes and opposites, would be better demonstrated by people who go for people of all other racial backgrounds. Which, based on last night, he is not.

My limited knowledge of the whole genes and opposites thing is that there's truth there, but 'race' is just one way to find such 'opposites', and is a means to the priority ends from a genetic point of view which is strengthening immunities and eradicating weaknesses. So a Jewish girl who had complementary immunities to him should be just as attractive to him. And given he lives in a city full of people from all corners of the globe, if it was all about being attracted to the 'other' why did he keep bounding back to one particular obsession?

I don't know, it was all just a bit um really. I have liked a lot of Safran's stuff, but in this case I didn't think the ends connected at all to the means. It just seemed an indulgence of a privileged, powerful man having fun at others' expense and acting like an adolescent boy. Clearly I missed some witty connection between the dots so I'll wait to have it pointed out...

* I don't censor my headings very much, but was getting just a wee tad too many of the wrong type of searches...

A Silly Peace Prize

2009-10-12T13:12:00.002+11:00

I have nothing to add to debates out there. I certainly think it is telling that the paranoid right in the US is able to use this against Obama. It isn't his fault.

In his statement where he offered to share the prize with the woman walking silently, taking a bullet, he got to the nub of what is wrong with many of the nominees and winners of this prize. Whether it is those idiots in Israel/Palestine being rewarded for merely acting like human beings for a change, or Obama being rewarded for not being the most hated man in the Western world, the prize often seems to simply fail to get to those who actually do the important work in seeking and maintaining peace.

Sure, the hawks are not going to like most deserving recipients. Being hawks, that is having a propensity to seek and support military solutions to international problems, their notion of 'peace' is unlikely to dovetail with any notion acceptable beyond the borders of their own nation.

But particularly political decisions just give them ammunition, damage the award's credibility and most importantly fail to identify and shine light on the work of those truly putting everything on the line for a better world.

Just. Silly.

School reunion: one of the strangest days of my life

2009-10-05T11:15:00.013+11:00

This is the year of cleaning decks, facing demons, giving up on errant parents and generally moving on. A trigger point for this resolution has been the looming, now-actualised, 20 year reunion of my year 12 class from St Ignatius Riverview. The 2 years I spent there conincided with and partly triggered the darkest period of my life, a source of recurring anger as well as drive and determination. Facing them has drawn out bleeding wounds and gnashing demons from my soul, and together with the process of considering my own children's education this prospect has created a quiet but nagging feedback loop in my mind, shutting down the subsequent, largely happy and successful decades and triggered the white noise of awkward uncertainty, vulnerability, revenge fantasies, and more benign hopes of restitution and deliverance.

It didn't shape up as a picnic. The prospect gave painful focus to my pushups and bag work and wound its way into most deep-and-meaningfuls with my wife. I went alone. I flew in and out the same day. I psyched up pretty hard to remain on my best behaviour. And while I slipped about 3 times I otherwise, largely, made it through. There was some deliverance, and it was, on balance, a good thing to have done.

Perhaps tellingly, many of the people I liked the best weren't there. This is a slightly edited version of what I emailed to 4 of them, capturing the moment as a disjointed set of impressions...

It was surreal. I've been completely out of touch with nearly all those guys for 20 years, and of those I would have liked to catch up with most, few were there... despite a big turnout (maybe close to 100?) yourselves notably together with the likes of Bolivia, Bonney, Foreshaw, Mitch, Forrest, Evo and others I looked around for were either unrecognisable to me or absent.

Of course, I have to say I understand. I had to face certain demons otherwise I might have stayed home and cut my toenails or something. As it happens, it wasn't too bad. There were upsides...

'Goodo' was probably an upside.Though I'd psyched myself to stay completely away from him, as he'd built up in my head as a sort of arch nemesis, I saw him on the night looking quite laid back, not really fitting in there, a bit indie, so I changed my mind. He turned out to be one of the nice surprises, apologised profusely for ever being less than decent, and talked of having dropped out of chartered accountancy to pursue meaning in music, films and more recently trying to become a music lawyer. I realised he'd felt more of an outsider at the time than I knew, perhaps explaining some of the behaviours I resented. I walked away liking the guy as he is now and largely dropping my personal indignations towards his youthful self. An apology, even 20 years later, can work wonders if it seems genuine.

Though largely on best behaviour, I slipped here and there. I told my old maths teacher in what was meant to be a compliment that although he was a real prick sometimes, he'd also been one of the best teachers I ever had. He used this as the opener to his speech (!) and finished with a return backhander about "who'd have thought that fella would turn out so well"! Fair enough, I asked for that and indeed it became an ice breaker from then on!

I was also approached by a brick shithouse of a country bloke who'd been expelled in year 10. His one past encounter with me was to walk over once and shove me down an embankment. As he didn't look like he'd changed and I was getting a bit tired of nice small talk, when he asked how we knew each other I told him exactly. That kept us nice and short! I did try to smile.. and wished him a pleasant life!

[I'd meant no antipathy but you dear reader know I'm prone to speaking my mind and I think my superego just faltered for a moment's rest, allowing the id to poke through... I'm sure he's now a nice guy, or something... actually ran into another of the guys who were expelled before I started, and he, also a man mountain, was one of the nicest people I spoke to all day. Ran a martial arts school of all things. I digress...]

Speeches were interesting. One guy gave a slow, melancholy rant that was a bit sad, I didn't pick up much of it. Another did a big spiel about some "lezzos" that was as charming as it sounds. At least I wasn't the only one who didn't laugh.

Someone did an old hardcore warcry which was kinda fun, kinda surreal. I think at that point 2 clear thoughts crystalised for me at the same time:

1) these guys aren't as bad as I remembered, as individuals, most are pretty nice in a laddish sort of way; and

2) the collective judgements about class, privilege, and the limits of an exclusive education that I made at 16 were actually bang on the mark.

Andrew O'Keefe [aside from Tony Abbott, our most famous Old Boy] stepped up and was, of course, hilarious. There was something about his swagger that said 'I'm THE success story here, and you WILL stop shouting "DEAL OR NO FCUKING DEAL" and actually give me some deference!' But he WAS very, very entertaining! He was always so.

I got a lot of "gee you are so much taller", which I am, compared, and I suppose is a good result at a reunion! It may be because I was a scrawny runt who was too young for my year in school, but you've got to take compliments in all their forms.

People were nice, generally. Some definitely had wanker vibes going on but what did surprise me is that a lot of others seemed also to be a bit nervous, awkward. The number still palpably bursting with the pent up pressure of expectation and social place was notable for someone like myself who mixes with a lot of 'lefties, losers and artistic strays'. It made it easier to like them, while at the same time feeling there is little I could stake out in common with the majority.

Apart from the 'honest moments' above, I found myself congratulating a lot of people on their lives, and meaning it. I lost most of my antipathy towards the school experience in a matter of hours.

And at the same time I realised that some of my past judgement wasn't just derived from being depressed and awkward at 16. Those schools, environs, swirling pools of self-perpetuating privilege, all do something funny to people. It doesn't make them evil, but it does explain why 'that end of town' can at times be so heartless, callous, and detached from the rest of the world.

I walked out into the rain in the early evening, in a good mood. Some surprises, some things exactly where I expected. I missed my family and my life in Melbourne, and knew a massive wound had just been cauterised....

When I got home Bear and Mitts were asleep. I kissed their heads, told them how much I love them. I sank back into my little Melba townhouse and decided that this is a good year. The world is not such a bad place.

Clearing the decks at 37, TBC shortly...

Bad news gets harder to stomach

2009-10-02T14:09:00.002+10:00

Maybe it's just me, I suspect not though: my ability to watch stories like those coming out of Samoa and Sumatra has deteriorated since having kids. In fact even since genuinely falling in love, something I now know I've only done once.

When you care about someone, or ones, so much that life itself becomes unimaginable without them, stories of death and loss seem different. I realise how relatively indifferent I was, and probably still am, to my own death.

A person comes on the screen now and talks about losing all of their children, or the love of their life, and my gut churns as I dwell, momentarily, on how that might feel. Not that I know how to properly empathise with such unimaginable horror.

There is nothing else to add. I hope the numbers prove too pessimistic, I hope many more of the missing turn out to be sheltering somewhere, protected by something, alive.

Why should Polanski get away with rape?

2009-09-29T13:17:00.000+10:00

This simply beggars belief- various Eurotrash, from French politicians to privileged actors, venting outrage at the arrest of Roman Polanski for unlawful sexual intercourse.

And they barely contain the fact that it's because he's such a great artist that they believe he should be treated differently. How dare anyone arrest a director, at an artistic festival?! Merde!

His victim keeps getting wheeled out, but her understandable pleas for the case to be dropped have come from the fact that she wants to get on with her life. Not because on reflection she thinks he was a nice man being cuddly. If Polanski cared less about her getting on with life, he'd have faced the music long ago.

If you accept her story- and there seems little reason to think she's exaggerating given she wants the matter dropped- the underage sex charge he pleaded guilty to is only a third of the story. A plea agreed to in order to avoid dragging the victim back through a trial. In fact she has said he drugged her, and raped her against her will:

"I said … 'No, I don't want to do this' … So I was just scared, and after giving some resistance, I figured, well, I guess I'll get to come home after this."

Rape is what that sounds like. The rape of a 13 year old girl. And all he has to do is face the music for the far lesser offence he actually pleaded guilty to. The notion that he should be granted some sort of pardon merely because he's just too good a director to face the music, or because the French think raping a young girl is just part of being a libertine, or because, I don't know, what could possibly be going through the minds of the people affecting such absurd hysteria?

His statement that he will fight this just proves he still feels no remorse. It isn't the US Police's fault that the poor victim is seeing this splayed across the media in a protracted battle, it is Roman Polanski's.

Message to people wanting to randomly express outrage, find a real cause.

Dangling Posticiples

2009-09-28T14:24:00.001+10:00

I just love the phrase "dangling participle", having first encountered it in a comedy skit where someone erudite and witty (Fry comes to mind though my memory's vague) used it in a pun. Intersection of grammar and sauciness needs no elaboration.

This post merely updates a few things raised earlier, I just wanted a more interesting title than 'updates' or 'stuff I talked about earlier, redux'.

We got the finance, we are mortgagors, souls and all.

My parents have confirmed they won't be coming for Chrissie. In their usual frustrating way they've also given us a sizeable cheque to 'make the house a home', a very nice thought given they aren't very well off. Lime tree, ladder, rainwater tank, lawn mower, gardening starters kit and outdoor setting are all on the possible uses list.

My 'horn envy' posted a couple of weeks back has not abated. I made a random purchase on iTunes and it turns out I picked a classic: Sonny Rollins' 'Saxophone Collossus'. Got lost in his laconic improvisations on the train this morning. Got excited when I saw the clip for a dark, Seattle number involving members of the Screaming Trees, Alice in Chains, and a random, avante-garde tenor sax player (Mad Season 'Long Gone Day'). Felt a tinge of inspiration.

Found my latte flannie. Bought it. Hint of aqua emphasises my 'soft' credentials.

Mitts has pushed forward, officially 'crawling' in a technical sense, though the technique for sustaining this more than about 4 inches is still beyond him. Still, each time he lifts his head, grunts, and plants his face into the carpet I give him a big cheer.

And of course the Saints lost, though I'm happy with their efforts. We all watched the dying minutes, even Mitts. The result didn't need explaining to Bear, given she knows their colours and at the end there were numerous shots of lads in Saints colours bawling their eyes out. Understandably.

Life goes on. This can be their year for regrouping. It will be my year of slate-clearing. The work has already begun...

Saints Go Marching In

2009-09-22T14:36:00.001+10:00

"Who's your footy team Bearsy?"

"Saint KILL-dah!"

So it goes. Some things are guardianship decisions, life matters that parents take it upon themselves to decide until the child rebels a few years down the track. Religion, or in our case lack-thereof, is another.

I'm not huge on any of the boofballs, neither is Beloved. I sort of see them as a proxy for a rather outdated form of group combat, the ball being a mere red herring in what is clearly designed to be an emulation of apes smacking each other with branches. Accordingly I prefer to strip away the veneer and go to the martial source, fascinated by all things hand-to-hand combat from the meditative qualities of Tai Chi, Bagua or Iado to the crunching realism of Arnis or Brasilian Ju Jitsu.

Beloved isn't convinced; she recently woke on the couch to find I'd 'accidentally' allowed cage fighting to appear on TV. "Revolting" she observed rather truthfully before going straight back to sleep.

Anyway, it's Melbourne, and the process of becoming Melbournians is inextricably wrapped up in our sense of ourselves as a couple. We moved here together shortly after hooking up in London, and here we've stayed, married, had children and now bought (touch wood!) a house.

The footy has woven its way into that narrative. We've started watching it together, picked a team (see above) together, rocked down to the 'G and sat in the stalls in the rain, huddled under plastic ponchos eating Four 'n Twenty meat pies, sipping (normally untouchable) Carlton Draught, whooping and cheering...

To the point where I'm tempted to find a local team to also follow, just for that experience- cars parked around the oval, honking horns with each goal, running onto the ground with the kids to kick a ball during half time.

I used to do the lefty thing and harp on about how soccer is the world game, domination imminent, and so on. It seemed sophisticated and inclusive. Nearly 3 years in the UK made me rethink that, and besides, why not take pride in a small vestige of local culture? There should be room for both...

So here it is. We've been here almost 7 years. The team we picked, St Kilda, were underdogs back then with some promising young talent. They've grown as we have. They've let themselves down more than once. And now, the first season in which Bear can actually tell you that what's on TV is "footy" and pick the colours of her team, we are in the final.

It's a rare experience, but I'm nervous and excited. I wouldn't bank the house on a win, Geelong (our family '2nd team'- a long story in itself!) appear virtually unstoppable. But it's still good to be in the final. A strange sense of bonding with long-suffering fans across the state, the nation.

GO Saints!!

Searching for Latte Flannie

2009-09-18T15:04:00.002+10:00

I am looking for a shirt, I'll know it when I see it.

Flannies are back in, or at least variations on checks that do look suspiciously like flannies in some guises. As much has been recognised by the fashionati.

I've fetished such since seeing a couple on the back of the singer from TV on the Radio. It takes a lot to impress me in a band these days, but TOTR impress me. It's not surprising that something he was wearing a year or so ago is now popping up everywhere.

It's of course entirely sensible that I model my sartorial style on a large black male rock star, as I am all of these things and more.

The challenge, for a dedicated inner city latte type like myself, is flannie-lite; the shamelessly pretentious goal of achieving aspects of the whole drunken mountain man look in a shirt that's also got a few effete touches, like a nice Euro fit and material that's, um, not flannie.

I'm not alone, James Matheson, that hard rocking bourbon beast, was on TV in one the other day. Beloved liked it so much she went out and bought a carbon copy for Mitt-Mitts. To wear to a wedding!

(With post topics like this, I'm surprised I haven't cracked the 1000 visits a day mark!)

Not Crawling Rolling

2009-09-17T15:02:00.000+10:00

Just a lighter note on Mr Man's progress. He's on the cusp of crawling, trying hard, getting frustrated. "ARRRK" he'll say, "Eeiirgg"- guys, I wants to movings! What's with this floor, these toes, my bum not staying in the air long enough?

Then he'll get there anyway, with a couple of quick flips and a wriggle backwards! Using only the abilities to roll and push himself backwards, he manages to cross the floor in no time at all and is constantly being retrieved from the mess next to the toybox, or from wedging the lower two thirds of his body under the couch, or from the slightly terrifying tangle of cords and crap at the bottom of the blinds.

Still, he may only be grunting and rolling, but my boy can *smile*. Last night when I got home he beamed ear-to-ear and lurched towards me in his mummy's arms, throwing his arms around my shoulders as I grabbed him. He cackled, we yackled, I blew some farts on his cheek and his chest and he cackled some more. All was good in the world.

And when I leave each morning, after the others have said goodbye and turned back to their distractions, he's always watching, twisting his head, until the door closes...

The fabric of other possibilities

2009-09-14T14:58:00.002+10:00

It is true that I must simply learn to accept situations and move on. Allow people such as my father to bed down in their chosen roles, as limited and disappointing as they may be. I will, I am.

The undue focus on grandparents and expectations derives I think from my concept of this as a formative period for those relationships, where certain unknowns (the relationships of each grandparent, or other close relative, with my children and with us as a parental unit) are being shaped. There is a vague analogy with that early period in the lead up to our wedding, where I was determined to do my best to iron out any bugs and get things settled well before the big date. In that case it largely worked, the entire familial constellation came on board and things went well.

Now it's on a far larger scale; we, and the various grandrellos, are building this new set of relationships that will carry forward for decades.

My mother has given my father a bit of a bucketing, but ultimately it will be up to him to decide whether he digs himself into an isolated rut. When he sookily suggested she visit us on her own for Christmas, she responded that she might not come home, a threat that, which although a concerning prospect from our end, was a very reasonable response from a woman who has put up with a hell of a lot over the years.

We will survive and move on, putting time back into those who are willing to put time into us, and in particular the kids. It's just inevitably sad if some choose to be disengaged.

On our recent visit, there was a moment when his barriers were at their lowest, when my father and Bear played on the grass, he was blowing bubbles for her to try and catch, she ran around in circles, giggling and flailing about, they did this for several minutes, she loved the game, and the attention, he clearly enjoyed it too, and it was like the curtain at the back of the stage tore and behind was another scene, the alternate possibility, a grandfather opening up and having fun again they way he once did with me.

The man who taught me to catch a fish, to climb steep cliff walls in Kakadu, to bowl a leg spinner. Letting go and allowing the simple joy of playing with his grandkids to take over.

I know I can't force that but it's just sad. A tear opened in the fabric that day, I saw another possibility, then it closed again, and now he seems determined to sew it up again for the long haul.

My dad shelves our relationship # fathers # grandparents # adoption # rejection

2009-09-11T10:11:00.001+10:00

A few days ago we told them about the house, and I extended an invite to my parents to join us for Christmas. We've never had Christmas together as a family though my mum's dropped plenty of hints. My dad, who has never travelled down to see either grandkid, running through an endless litany of excuses from weather to health to money to just the fact that he doesn't like Melbourne, immediately started backing up and scrambling for an excuse, muttering something panicked and incomprehensible about it being "too late I mean too early, the mother's recovering and, and..."

Last night, having thought through the various excuses he's made for years, he decides on our recent argument - well to be precise the fact that Beloved and I are too precious and take his comments (you remember, that the way we feed Mitts could technically be rape, and the one about me being a QC if only I was more eloquent?) the wrong way. Apparently it's too hard for him, he feels he's stepping on a minefield, so it's easiest if he doesn't come to visit. Period.

We are still welcome to go there, and he might visit if one of his old friends who lives in Melbourne passes away... both of which demonstrate a wee inconsistency with the excuse he'd just given.

Once again, as I have so often found in the last 20 years or so, I found myself being almost apologetic, doing the pleading: "We can work through things, it's ok, why don't we just agree to note politely at the time that the comment might cause offence and then you could simply clarify or withdraw it.. etc etc".

But he chose, in the same weary "I'm just a reasonable misunderstood old man" voice, to politely push those suggestions back at me, and insist it's for the best that we minimise our contact and stick to talking on the phone. It's just easier, was the message. I don't want difficult, I can't be bothered with difficult.

Sadly, when so many grandparents will endure far greater schisms to spend time with their grandkids, his barely rated a mention.

This is going to end up an excruciatingly long post but I have to give this context. I have long worked through oddities in my relationship with my father using certain mantras to ground me. The mantras sound like this:

"It's just his way"

"Of COURSE he loves me, he's my father"

"He's very generous with money"

"He's much better than HIS dad was"

"He didn't really mean it like that, it just came out wrong"

and underpinning them all:

"He didn't have to adopt me, so he MUST love me."

You may pick up that I am not the original source of apologia in my parental household, that is my mother, from whom all of these mantras have directly or slightly-indirectly come from.

There is some truth in all of them, and I have enough evidence that at some level, he loves me and cares about what I do. But you can only use mantras for so long, at some point a long history of actions starts to accumulate. You can take it that both being adopted and having spent over 3 years working in Child Protection and Juvenile Justice I have read reams on not only fathers, but also all of the variations on classic, simple biological relationships and the particular difficulties men often (far from always, but often) have with those relationships.

I don't need to spell out how some of these things start to play from my end. In particular when so little excitement or interest has been shown in my children.

Before you write my reaction off as simple, knee-jerk, or wanting of more time, understand some more context. In relation to the grandkids as I've noted there have been an endless list of excuses for not visiting or showing much interest. But in relation to the meta-narrative of our father-son relationship, the big milestones stitch together from about the early teens, when things started to really go awry. They include:

- telling me I'd been playing up and having too much fun at boarding school, when I'd been depressed, bullied and lonely, before taking back an offer of student exchanges I'd got all excited about;

- telling me I was a loser and a failure in as many words, several times over, after I didn't do well in year 12, then pretty much turning his back on me until I'd found a backdoor into Uni;

- in the heat of one of our most vicious 'arguments', which like most were a succession of putdowns that I reacted to, he suddently said with great clarity "I like seeing you like this, I like making you get upset like this";

- the one time he got physical with me, repeatedly pushing me hard until I warned him not to try it again, because I turned the TV off and demanded he talk to me, it was me who had to breach the gap and start talking again(and move out of home);

- when I was living in the UK and hadn't seen him for over 2 years, he pretty much stated he'd never visit me and when I started planning a 2 week visit he told me it was too long and I should spend some of the time in Bali (I stayed away and went to Greece, an excellent decision), something especially hurtful given our relationship then seemed to be very good;

- he's only popped down for the wedding and for a friend's funeral, the whole time (since end of 2002) we've been living in Melbourne; etcetera, etcetera...

I could write more but I think this post will get too long, I can follow up with a separate list for anyone who's read this far, and I do want you dear reader to read it because this in its own way is a significant turning point, like saying "I do" or Beloved screaming out with excitement from the bathroom when she did the tests, and it is all I can do as a writer to set it out here and say that I am very sad, but I have done everything I can and it is time, at 37, that I started accepting that there has always been a wedge there, for my dad, and it is something I could never have changed in all the legions of times I've gone to him to make up, to work at it, to try and cling on to the very idea of a father, my father.

I told Beloved that if I ever become like that with my kids she is to blow my brains out. I meant every word.

Lost child, lost minutes

2009-09-08T11:56:00.001+10:00

Beloved had an incident. I wanted her to write about it in her own words, a guest post, but she's not showing any enthusiasm. I will relay things as best I understand them and let her add an account if she chooses.

They went for morning tea at Beloved's place of work, an event that included one of Bear's peeps, the daughter of Beloved's workmate, who is a few months older than Bear and accordingly gets lots of Bearmiration. They played well, apparently, while the adults yarned about their corporate stuff and traded gossip.

Time to go, and the girls ran ahead together as the group walked along the hall, apparently just a couple of metres in front. Beloved rounded a corner to see that the lift door was wide open and the girls had entered it in anticipation. The doors shut at that exact moment.

The girls screamed "Mummy mummy" and the lift moved off somewhere. The mums rightly felt a bit terrified and one set off for the ground floor while the other ran floor-to-floor checking each.

Meanwhile in the basement the janitor got a surprise when the lift he'd called arrived, the doors opened, and 2 toddlers stared at him in teary disbelief!

Things were quickly rectified.

It just goes to show that every time you start taking on board the idea that you can return to even partial sanity and stop being a complete safety freak, something will happen to scare the complete and undiluted crap out of you.

I was supportive and understanding. I know any lessons there have already been learned. If lifts had an overide-open button, if they didn't shut quite so quickly, if, if... it's yet another example of how so much of the environment around us is utterly child-unfriendly, and how as a parent you have to operate on zero trust for those around to have ever taken into account the assymetric risk that is constituted by a momentarily freed child.

As for Bear, she thought it was all an adventure, especially given she was with her idolised slightly-older pal. She was more than happy to brag to me when I got home...

Big News! Calibung Big!

2009-09-05T13:45:00.003+10:00

We had almost given up on the house generally, after more than 3 years in the market, on and off. Certainly the idea of getting our original dream, a Californian Bungalow with feel and character that didn't need to be rebuilt from the ground up, somewhere within cooee of the patch we've come to know and love so well, seemed beyond hope.

It got the brush off first time we saw it on the web. Needs a spruce here and there, maybe a bigger garden would be nice, and anyway it'll go for too much.

Yesterday, the day before auction day, we had a rethink. Maybe it would be worth popping in, watching, seeing what happened. We slept on the thought.

This morning we woke and Beloved claimed to be feeling lucky. I remained blase but got a sudden flutter in my stomach on the drive over. This was strange; I've bid in several auctions now and was only nervous in the first one.

The house felt like a home. I felt bad for the young student types living there, they were nice, and clearly treated the big old place with respect. We confirmed with the agent that we'd seek a long settlement, past the end of their tenancy, walked through a few times, picking up a few minor foibles but liking the feel, then found a shady spot outside.

The street was fairly low on traffic, the houses either side pretty, dated but well looked after. The area, around the borders of Thornbury and West Preston, is a nice, green pocket with a small bunch of shops - organic grocer, bakery, Latin-themed cafe and wine bar - a nice little primary school, lots of young families moving in.

I was slightly excited but still had few expectations. The area took off about 2 years ago and some phenomenal prices come out of the rare sales there. There was a small crowd, but not the worst I've seen. Hope started rising, slowly, tentatively.

Bidding kicked off miles below a realistic level, and with a couple of people kicking in there, well below the obvious reserve, I held back to watch. It went up quickly in tens of thousands, fcuk TENS of THOUSANDS it's stupid money, I can't get my head around any of this really.

I came in once it slowed. Did my deliberate contrarian thing: asking Bear what she thought, stopping to eat her sultanas while everyone waited a few seconds, going up small amounts, then jumping a few, then bringing it back to increments of a grand. Up it crept. Nemesis kicked in late, he was a dark horse, looked grumpy, looked stressed. I stayed calm, poked on up towards our maximum.

5,3,1 and we were on it, sitting on the very sum we'd agreed. Although I intended to lean in to Beloved and negotiate $5k more, the sense of being on the edge of a cliff made me giddy. And. As. He. Dragged. It. Out. For. An. Interminable. Time (a nice couple behind us, clearly with us, kept saying 'do it, end it!). Things. Wavered.

*Smack* and I swooned like I'd taken an unseen uppercut on the chin. I spun around, Beloved was kneeling keeping both kids consoled, she looked at me with disbelief and I leaned in and kissed her, kissed Mitts, then picked Bear up and threw here a couple of metres into the air:

"Bear- We bought a house... at laaast!"

The clapping followed, people congratulating, hand shaking, talking, signing and it's all really just a blur now.

We bought a house. A big old family house with a soul. It will be a home, our home. And gawd, wait until the grandparents hear about the bungalow out the back!

Pasgetti dabollognaise and other Bearsicals

2009-09-02T22:50:00.003+10:00

Today Thomas the Tank Engine attacked my daughter. Well, to be a little more accurate, she slipped and picked up a nasty shiner (I know, no REALLY, it really was Thomas!) while playing around a big blue Thomas. I heard on the phone, I made a note for hometime. I stopped by the corner shop. The previously grumpy lady in the corner shop goes into hysterics whenever she sees Bear, she became very serious when I told her Bear had been hurt. She sold me the iced cream but I felt like she wanted to lean across and thwack me with a ruler.

Bear did look pitiful, but she flew into excited giggles when she saw the massive breach-suspension-waiver of the rules in the form of a strawberry Heaven, gave me a big hug then demanded it be torn open. The rest was soon history and a smear of chocolate on a smiling face.

"Pasgetti Dabollognaise" she informed me she had for dinner, and I kept a serious face with some effort. I just love her funny quirks at the moment, she's a funny girl, sometimes deliberately, sometimes while being deadly serious and needing to be treated the same.

Take the haircutting game: she sits me down, deliberately picking a spot on the couch I don't habitually use. I have a clear sense control is being asserted! With a dead serious expression she informs me I'm getting a haircut. Given I have as much hair on my scalp as my chin (she calls both my "Beer") this is already amusing. Come to think of it the game started after I last got shaved, she asked a number of times what had happened! Anyway, a number of Play Doh buckets are lined up, along with a plastic pair of Doh cutting scissors. She shakes the buckets at my head, informing me that 'water' of some indiscernable type is being applied. She pokes my skull with the scissors, 'Snip-snip', then often wanders off to find a flannel to dab some imagined mess on my chest or back.

She doesn't smile once during this serious, business-like operation. Inside I am in hysterics but with some effort I hold a deadpan expression. It would be unacceptable to fail this test, clearly.

She's speaking well, but there are still some fantastic improvisations:

Arbledarblearbledarblearble...

Leeloh, Lilloh, Leeloh....

Docka docka docka....

Pasgetti Dabollognaise...

And to cap it off the other day she wrote a song. I can't even remember the topic, I think it had some made up words, some stuff about her brother, humming bits, but it was definitely improvised on the spot.

I know, I know, I'm just a dad, loving every moment...

Starting School: the case for holding back a year

2009-09-01T09:38:00.002+10:00

While we're on contentious issues of over-under parenting, and you dear readers are weighing in to the discussion, let me put another one to you.

Both Bear and Mitts are at the younger end of the age spectrum in which they can enter their designated years, to the point where their entry is considered optional. Presently they are on the conventional track, but we're certainly giving it some thought.

There is quite a bit of literature about suggesting there are advantages to starting school a wee bit later than the present 'standard', particularly (see for example Steve Biddulph in Raising Boys) for boys. I didn't need to read this to have my own view that it isn't great being at the younger end of the year. I was. Coupled with being a lateish developer and rather skinny anyway this left me feeling small, underdeveloped, overwhelmed, and unconfident.

The case for getting them in and through school in a hurry has never persuaded me either. But on the flipside I found school slow and intellectually boring until about year 11 (when my lack of study habits slammed up against a suddently ramped-up curriculum) and don't want to inflict even more boredom on my kids out of a desire to overcompensate for my own miseries.

As with the public school debate, this quandrary has an element of public good versus personal interest: if everyone holds their kids back, even when they are a fine age for normal school entry, then this just pushes some of the problems out a year for kids at the younger (or smaller, or less developed) end.

School planning is also listed as a reason to stick to 'the program', although given the state has planned so badly for our own kids and is only just starting to catch up on the baby boom(for example the kinder expansion now belatedly being built at a centre in Northcote) this argument doesn't persuade me.

Reflecting on what a good child care centre we have has softened some of the Kinder angst expressed in previous posts. This starting age question isn't a teeth-gnasher, it's simply a choice we are faced with and an interesting dilemma. And we simply can't tell whether such a choice might have a minor, or a profound, impact.

Public schools: what do we angst about?

2009-08-26T16:22:00.003+10:00

Helen's done a two part post (Uno, Dos) on public schooling issues. She is discussing the campaign by some parents in the Seddon- Yarraville area, suburbs pretty similar demographically to my own, to get their 'own' public high school rather than having to send their kids to one in a neighbouring suburb. One that's a little different, shall we say less fortunate, demographically.

This had me thinking about my own attitudes and the extent to which there is cognitive dissonance between my ethical and political ideals on the one hand and my expectations in a school for Bear and Mitts on the other. I dumped some thoughts, brain in a whirl, and although they aren't the pinnacle of clarity and reason I wanted to capture the gist here to record and discuss some of this confusion on my own site. Extracts from the thread:

We’re all formed by the negatives we ourselves experienced. I’ve been to rough bogan schools where violence was rife and intellectual and artistic qualities were pretty much looked down on (in real life, not in the rosy view seen by most parents or in brochures), and an extreme snob school with vicious bullying based on wealth and status and very narrow aspirations based on high flying white collar careers (in mundane areas like law and banking!). I’ve been to a school with some palpable ‘reverse racism’ too, and it largely caused me to have a reactionary phase in my mid teens, something that eased off once most of the perps had been expelled.

I dislike all these extremes. I would like a safe environment with as little anti intellectual crap as possible and a focus on intellectual and creative development rather than ‘tooling up’ future employees. A reasonable if not ridiculous selection of subjects including good music and languages. A mix of kids and backgrounds. Bit of sport but not abject worshipping of all things ball related.

Public schools that appear to leap those hurdles are then top of the list, and that’s probably 60% in our overall region. I wouldn’t want my kids to go to Carey or Scotch even if they were offered full scholarships, I equate that with class ambition rather than education. But the poppets are on the list for a couple of mid level private schools that seem to be one back from the extreme of snobbery, but that have good languages and music and seem to be roughly in synch with our beliefs.

Public schools I’m struggling with include those that have particularly rotten school results, offer few academic and creative options, overly emphasise the tooling up side, make the news for all the wrong reasons, are heavily dominated (ie a step up from mere interesting diversity) by another cultural grouping such that I think my own kids will get excluded, or simply have an excess of aggressive little sh*ts in fauxhawks or gangsta gear. I’d be willing to take a look, but I’d need some convincing that first impressions lacked substance.

I found Helen's argument persuasive but would need to visit the school and know a lot more before feeling confident. An argument in defence of the Yarraville-Seddon clique is that they may have chosen to live in those suburbs because, along with Northcote-Thornbury, these are among the only places in Australia of their type: lefty to green, socially and sexually tolerant, and rife with artists and other outsiders from the general boganalian diaspora.

They come from a pretty marginal grouping themselves- it is, in my respectful view, overly simplifying the matter to equate their angst with the general ladder-climbing characteristics of the holus-bolus middle class. But that being said, there is clearly some overlap, and probably some latent class and race discomfort coming out for many of them as well.

Thoughts?

Everyone needs protection from violent assault

2009-08-25T12:58:00.001+10:00

While I can understand the angry reaction to the bashing of Sergeant Brett Ward, it seems odd that people are calling for mandatory higher sentences for assaults on police, per se. It seems the response to violent attacks in Victoria is constantly being tracked away from the main problem (people being violent, full stop) towards proposals that focus on certain exceptions: assaults on police or public officers, assaults in a group, assaults motivated by race, alcohol as a cause, late nights as a cause, and so on.

How about this: violently assaulting another person without an extremely good explanation (self defence, or a complete lack of sanity at the relevant time) should result in some of the heaviest sanctions in the legal system.

Where psychiatric problems are a cause, this should result in appropriate treatment rather than senseless punishment. However the community should be protected by some level of restriction and supervision until it can be certified that the risk of repeat offending is low.

Wrist slapping gave us this:

He had a criminal career laced with extreme violence and Justice Coghlan was asked to take into account his 60-plus prior convictions. Many included the use of weapons and a number of his assaults were against women.

So why, why, WHY was he walking around on the streets?