The Australian: Morrison Government Ministry 2019 |
Showing posts with label Australian society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australian society. Show all posts
Thursday 18 July 2019
Yet more opinions that the 46th Australian Government - the Morrison Government - will not end well for the nation
The
Monthly,
9
July 2019:
As
Australia’s economy falters, the government’s fiscal heart is
hardening, not softening. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s determination
to deliver his much-vaunted budget surplus for 2019–20 and retain
Australia’s AAA credit rating – which is hardly in danger – is
of a piece with junior minister Luke Howarth telling the homeless to look on the bright side. In
prospect is more of the same punishing austerity towards anyone doing
it tough; it’s the flipside of celebrating those who aspire and get
ahead, and who are rewarded with taxpayer largesse through subsidies
and tax loopholes. Last week’s $158 billion tax-cut package is
going to accelerate the trend to an increasingly unequal Australia,
which has resulted from the Coalition’s agenda since it was elected
in 2013. As former treasurer Joe Hockey said when defending his first
budget, the worst-received in living memory: “Governments have
never been able to achieve equality of outcomes … It is not the
role of government to use the taxation and welfare system as a tool
to ‘level the playing field’”.
Flanked
by his assistant minister, Michael Sukkar, and the tax commissioner,
Chris Jordan, Frydenberg today announced [$]
that more than 810,000 Australians had already filed their 2018–19
tax returns and could be receiving their rebates of up to $1080 by
the weekend. But, resisting calls from the Reserve Bank governor,
Philip Lowe, he stressed that there would be no further stimulus,
citing the “non-negotiable” imperative of reaching a budget
surplus this year, and saying that the government would be focused on
reducing debt….
Doing
the same thing over and over while hoping for a different result is
clearly not working. Today’s NAB business confidence survey showed that
the post-election bounce has been short-lived, and the first of the
RBA’s two recent rate cuts has failed to improve conditions. A
small uptick in employment growth is positive, but NAB’s chief
economist, Alan Oster, says the overall decrease in business
conditions has been “relatively broad-based across states and
industries – suggesting that there has been sector-wide loss of
momentum over the past year”. The share market is jumpy, selling
off sharply today as APRA, in a sign of nervousness, lowered its
capital requirements for banks, and bond markets are reportedly
“screaming
economic downturn”…..
And
so it passes, the greatest assault on the safety net from which
Australian life is built. Scott Morrison’s tax cuts are through and
the revenue base that provides for health and education and social
welfare is shredded. The legacy of the 46th parliament is there in
its very first week: the destruction of the social compact that made
this country stable.
On
analysis by the Grattan Institute, to pay for these cuts at least $40
billion a year will need to be trimmed from government spending by
2030. The Coalition argues it will not cut services. It says jobs
growth will reduce spending on welfare. A surplus will mean less
interest paid on debt.
The
assumptions are heroic and unsustainable. They show an extraordinary
indifference to reality. More than that, they are indifferent to
need. People will be worse off under these cuts. They will face
greater hardship, have less access to health and to quality
education. The people worst affected did not vote for Scott Morrison.
Half the country didn’t. The damage done is near irreversible. It
is infinitely easier to cut taxes than to raise them. This is a
triumph of greed and political cowardice. The Labor Party waved it
through.
The
principles of this policy were first written on a paper napkin in
1974, when the conservative economist Arthur Laffer sketched out his
famous tax curve for Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. That serviette
is one of the most pernicious documents in modern politics. It made
the case for what became trickle-down economics. It became the lie
through which governments gave money to the rich and pretended they
were helping the poor.
The
year Scott Morrison became treasurer, the Australian Chamber of
Commerce and Industry brought Laffer to Australia for a speaking
tour. He met with Josh Frydenberg. His doctrine has its most explicit
contemporary expression in the cuts passed this week…...
In
his first major speech as prime minister, Morrison said he didn’t
believe people should be taxed more to improve the lives of others.
He said people had to work for it: they had to have a go. “I think
that’s what fairness means in this country,” he said. “It’s
not about everybody getting the same thing. If you put in, you get to
take out, and you get to keep more of what you earn.”
This
is a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of taxation. You
don’t pay tax in exchange for services. You pay tax for a society.
Under Morrison, you pay less tax and you have less society. The
obliterating self-interest of this week will be felt for generations.
Morrison’s victory is a huge, huge loss.
Friday 12 July 2019
Australian society in 2019
It
seems when it comes to personal wealth only the poor admit the truth
of their financial situation.
Those who are financially well-off in Australia apparently refuse to recognise their good fortune.
This rather strange state of affairs was very obvious during the 2019 federal election campaign.
Last month the national public broadcaster asked its online readers to guess where they stood on the income scale and this was the result.....
This rather strange state of affairs was very obvious during the 2019 federal election campaign.
Last month the national public broadcaster asked its online readers to guess where they stood on the income scale and this was the result.....
ABC
News,
2 July 2019:
People were asked to estimate which bracket they sat in, and were then asked to enter their weekly take-home pay.
After removing certain outliers with outlandish responses (we're looking at you, Mr or Ms $1 trillion a week) there was a marked difference between those in the top and bottom halves of the income distribution when it came to estimating their place.
Respondents in the top seven brackets (earning more than $800 per week) fared far worse at guessing their place than those in the bottom six brackets. In fact, our lower-earning respondents were 2.6 times better at estimating their place than their higher-earning counterparts…….
But it was those in the third-highest bracket — earning between $1,750 and $2,000 per week — who fared the worst at estimating their position.
Only 2.85 per cent of respondents in this bracket correctly identified their place and the average guess was 3.2 brackets lower than reality.
Labels:
Australian society,
Income,
inequality,
Wealth
Saturday 15 June 2019
Quote of the Week
“First Nations
children account for almost 90 per cent of the suicides of children aged 14 and
younger. The nation should weep.” [National Critical Response
Trauma Recovery Project Co-Ordinator Gerry
Georgatos writing in The
Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 2019]
Saturday 8 June 2019
Tweets of the Week
I really cannot get to grips with people suggesting that hearing of same sex relationships in school will influence children to 'become' gay.— Ami Vet (@ami_vet) May 31, 2019
I've been studying camelid medicine in somewhat intense detail lately and despite being ~quite~ impressionable, I have not become a llama
Monday 27 May 2019
Australia 2019: women are still dying violently in unacceptably high numbers
Counting Dead Women, 25 May 2019 |
I say "at least" because the figure above is mainly based on media reports of deaths - how many go unnoticed by the nightly news or daily newspapers is unknown.
Looking back on past posts on North Coast Voices it appears that an average of 1 to 2 female deaths by violence per week is how the years since 2014 have ended.
Despite the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government periodically talking up its approach to ending violence against women the situation is littled changed because women are still dying in unacceptably high numbers.
Sunday 26 May 2019
via @AnitaHess |
Labels:
Australian society
Tuesday 21 May 2019
A NSW Northern Rivers perspective on the 18 May 2019 Australian federal election results
A political and social perspective in thirteen tweets........
Yes, this is the #Australia #trump or #brexit moment. But not in the way talked about in this piece.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
This is about the manipulation of our electoral system by wealthy and powerful individuals to achieve a specific multi-billion dollar outcome.
This is not a conspiracy theory. https://t.co/DoANEoxeV9
The entire #UAP campaign was about grabbing 4% of the vote and directing it to the LNP. It worked spectacularly well in Queensland.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
These will turn out to be highly disengaged voters, the undecideds from a week out. Excluded from polls (explaining how the polls were so wrong)
If Clive spent $50 or even $80 million, don’t you think he spent some of that on analytics.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
On targeting messages to the most receptive.
He was never trying to win seats, just keep #Labor out.
Clive’s pay-off is a Government and a group of very grateful Parliamentarians already keen to do his bidding.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
So his #Galilee Basin mine isn’t rendered worthless. So a new #coal fired power station is built in North Qld.
It’s worth Billions to him.
Why did it work?— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
The LNP played its part. The Presidential style campaign was designed to focus everything on Bill Shorten.
Labor was vulnerable. Bill Shorten, even after My Mum and Hawkie, never became likeable Bill.
Like the #trump campaign, it was proceeded by years of tearing down the most likely challenger.#Hilary was damaged goods in the same way as #Shorten— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
Nothing like a sham Royal Commission to make your opponent appear shifty.
#Trumps win was based on suppressing the vote in key states in a voluntary voting system.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
Here, it was capturing the vote of the people that didn’t want to be there in our compulsory system.
As to the links to #brexit— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
I’m assuming a man throwing $millions to influence an election is going to hire people with some experience in this endeavour.
I’m sure this mining magnate & former Liberal Party Treasurer has got the right connections.
And yes, like #brexit and #trump our largely supine media simply watched the shells and forgot all about the peas.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
The show was everything.
And the chorus from the Murdoch stable was deafening.
It’s #GameOfMates writ large.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
The same dynamic that drives the destruction of the #MurrayDarling and rewards the Nationals in NSW and Qld is working for the coal barons in North Qld.
It’s a system that preys on the disengaged. To get them to vote against their interests.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
It relies on the belief that they’re all bastards...and then seeks to tell them who their true enemies are.
The point of this rant, however is not about how we was robbed.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
As Bill Shorten put it, we didn’t get enough votes. Simple.
The question is, how do we reach the disengaged?
How do we leave ourselves less vulnerable to this attack in the future?
Because ranting about stuff on twitter does didly squat.— Keith Williams (@Captainturtle) May 20, 2019
Sunday 19 May 2019
Saturday 18 May 2019
Tweet of the Week
Labels:
Australian society,
religion
Tuesday 9 April 2019
Speaking truth about “the rightness of whiteness”
The
Guardian, 3
April 2019:
The Labor senator and
Yawuru man Pat Dodson spoke about the links between Australia’s massacre
history and the terrorist attacks in Christchurch, while addressing the censure
motion against Fraser Anning in
the Senate.
The
motion condemned Anning for his “inflammatory and divisive comments
seeking to attribute blame to victims of a horrific crime and to vilify people
on the basis of religion, which do not reflect the opinions of the Australian
Senate or the Australian people.”
Dodson said Indigenous
people carry the consequence of murderous prejudice “throughout our entwined
history”.
“First Nations’ peoples … know the impacts of
murder wilfully carried out and morally justified by hatred of minorities,
misplaced power and bullying superiority,” Dodson said.
“In Gurindji country,
they talk of the Killing
Times.
“Mounted Constable
Willshire was stationed at Victoria River Downs in the 1890s. He was a mass
murderer in uniform, who took it upon himself to protect the interests of
cattlemen by dispersing the traditional owners of the lands at gunpoint.
“He took to print,
justifying his actions with boastful pride and emboldened by the rightness of
whiteness and condemned the First Nations’ people to death.
“Willshire wrote about
the killing on Wave Hill: ‘It’s no use mincing matters. The Martini-Henry
carbines at the critical moment were talking English in the silent majesty of
these eternal rocks.’”
Dodson said he has
walked through some of the sites
of mass murder in Australia with descendants of the victims and
“sometimes too with the descendants of murderers.”
“In South Australia I
visited a monument erected by both sides in the small community of Elliston to
commemorate the mass murder of men, women and children pushed over the steep
sea cliffs by charging horsemen and barking dogs.
“I have visited the
sites of massacres, of mass murders in Balgo, in Forrest
River, and at Coniston.
Those mass murders took place in living memory.
“I have sat down with
old Warlpiri men and women who luckily survived those murderous attacks as
young babies, hidden from the attacks.
“1928 was not that long
ago. My mother was just seven years old.
“But we are in 2019 now
and a mass murderer, rejecting the richness of difference, driven by religious
hatred and xenophobia, empowered by military-style weapons, has waged his
atrocity in Christchurch,” Dodson said.
“The murder of 50
innocent people does not just happen. It arises from the feeding of hate,
irresponsible language and the demonising of people of colour, and difference.
“We know, and senator
Anning knows, the real cause of the bloodshed in Christchurch. The real cause
was prejudice, hate, and a passion for violent action, aided and abetted by the
availability of military-style weapons.
“We call out those who
exploit fear and ignorance for political gain: who mock the traditional dress
of women of another culture; who seek
donations from the manufacturers of weapons of war to override our own laws;
who argue that it
is “alright to be white”.
“Their values would
plunge our country back into the Killing Times.
“We should instead turn
our face to the light of a new future, a peaceful, non-violent, tolerant
country of hope, respect and unity.
“A country where no
innocent man, women or child is ever again the victim of mass murder.”
Wednesday 3 April 2019
Est. 32 per cent of Australian farmers still haven't come to grips with the reality of climate change
ABC News, 31 March 2019:
When the Reserve Bank
announced recently that it was factoring climate change into interest rate
calculations, it underlined a mainstream acceptance of potential impacts for a
warming planet.
Climate change now had
economic consequences.
But resistance to the
premise of human-induced climate change still rages, including in regional and rural
communities, which often are the very communities already feeling its effects.
"When you look at
the results of different surveys going back a few years, farmers were four
times more likely than the national average to be climate change deniers,"
said Professor Mark Howden, director at the ANU's Climate Change Institute.
"That was about 32
per cent versus about 8 per cent for the population average."
So, why do so many
people in regional and rural areas not believe in climate change?
ABC Central West's
Curious project put that question to some experts, who say the answer has more
to do with human nature than scientific reasoning.
Professor Matthew
Hornsey from the University of Queensland has dedicated his academic career to
understanding why people reject apparently reasonable messages.
"The metaphor
that's used in my papers is around what we call cognitive scientists versus
cognitive lawyers," he said.
"What we hope
people do when they interpret science is that they weigh it up in an
independent way and reach a conclusion.
"But in real life,
people behave more like lawyers, where they have a particular outcome that they
have in mind and then they selectively interpret the evidence in a way that
prosecutes the outcome they want to reach.
"So you selectively expose yourself to
information, you selectively critique the information, you selectively remember
the information in a way that reinforces what your gut is telling you."
This is known as
motivated reasoning — and online news source algorithms and social forums are
only enabling the phenomenon, allowing for further information curation for the
individual…..
Professor Hornsey says
there is another force fanning the flames of distrust between the scientific
and non-scientific communities.
"One thing that can
be said without huge amounts of controversy is that there is a relationship
between political conservatism and climate scepticism in Australia," he
said.
To better understand
this, the professor's research took him to 27 countries and found that for two-thirds
of these, there was no relationship between being politically conservative and
a climate science sceptic.
But Australia's
relationship between the two trailed only the United States in strength of
connection, he said.
"What we were
seeing was the greater the per-capita carbon emissions of a country, the
greater that relationship between climate scepticism and conservatism."
Professor Hornsey argues
that per-capita carbon emissions is an indicator for fossil fuel reliance,
which in turn creates greater stakes for the vested interests at play.
"When the stakes
are high and the vested interests from the fossil fuel community are enormous,
you see funded campaigns of misinformation, coaching conservatives what to
think about climate change," he said.
"That gets picked up by conservative media and
you get this orchestrated, very consistent, cohesive campaign of misinformation
to send the signal that the science is not yet in."…..
Professor Hornsey
believes current discourse can make farmers feel as though they are at the
centre of an overwhelming societal problem, triggering further psychological
rejection of the science.
"I feel sorry for
farmers around the climate change issue, because this is a problem that has
been caused collectively.
"Farmers are only a small part of the problem but
they are going to be a huge part of the solution, so I think they feel put
upon.
"They feel like
they are constantly being lectured about their need to make sacrifices to adapt
to a set of circumstances that are largely out of their control."
In 2010, in response to
a drought policy review panel, the Commonwealth initiated a pilot of drought
reform measures in Western Australia.
John Noonan from Curtin
University led the program, which went on to have staggering success in
converting not only participating farmers' attitudes to climate science, but
also in restructuring their farm management models in response to a changing
climate.
"First of all, when
talking with farmers, we didn't call it the drought pilot — we used the name
Farm Resilience Program," Mr Noonan said.
"If you go in to beat people up and have a
climate change conversation, you get nowhere.
"We got the farmers
to have conversations about changing rainfall patterns and continuing dry
spells, rather than us telling them what to do.
"And they told us
everything that we needed them to tell us for us to reflect that back to them
and say, 'Well, actually, that's climate change'.
"If you take a very
left-brain, very scientific approach to these matters, you are going nowhere,
and what we used was very right-brain, very heart and gut-driven — and it
worked."
Mr Evans agrees,
underscoring the deeply personal connection farmers have to the land, its role
in their business approach, and why the message must be managed psychologically
rather than scientifically.
"Ultimately, for a
farmer to confront the reality that this new climate might be permanent,
requires them to go through the five stages of grief: denial, anger,
bargaining, depression and acceptance."
Tuesday 2 April 2019
Serco operated high security prison in Queensland found to be one of two privately run gaols at risk of significant corruption
This is what Serco says of itself at www.serco.com:
Serco is trusted by governments and
organisations around the world to transform and deliver essential services.
Employing over 50,000 people, we operate across more than 20 countries in
Justice, Immigration, Health, Transport, Defence, and Citizen Services.
Serco provides essential
justice services in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, from the safe and secure
operation of prisons, young adult, and escorting services, to managing the
reintegration of ex-offenders into society. We help governments deliver a more
efficient and effective justice system, by employing the best people, getting
the basics right, championing service innovations, and forming community
partnerships.
By taking a
rehabilitative approach to justice, we help to make it less likely that people
will return to the criminal justice system, help to rebuild lives, and reduce
the financial and wider costs of crime to the public…….
Serco has been operating
correctional services in Australia for almost 15 years. As a prison operator,
safety and security is always our first priority. The new Clarence Correctional
Centre is our most recent contract, which will begin operations in 2020. Once
completed, this 1,700-bed state-of-the-art facility will be the largest
correctional centre in Australia.
The Clarence
Correctional Centre is being delivered by the NSW Government in
partnership with the Northern Pathways Consortium. To learn more about the
project visit northernpathways.com.au.
This is the
current reality in Australia…..
Sydney
Criminal Lawyers,
28 March 2019:
The Queensland
Government has announced that it will spend $111million over the next four
years, returning two privately run prisons to state management.
The Arthur Gorrie
Correctional Centre and the Southern Queensland Correctional Centre (SQCC), two
high-security prisons, are currently run by private operators.
However the
Government will now take over these contracts in response to recommendations
from the Crime and Corruption Commission’s Taskforce Flaxton, which last year
conducted an investigation into the entire Queensland prison system.
The post-investigation
report was scathing as a whole, finding a string of systemic issues, that put
prisons ‘at risk of significant corruption.’
These included
over-crowding, excessive use of force, misuse of authority, introduction of
contraband and inappropriate relationships all within prison walls. The report
also found that the number of assaults on staff was higher at privately run
facilities, due to lower staff numbers and therefore less supervision.
The South East
Queensland Correctional Centre is run by Serco.....
Serco
came under fire in 2017 after the release of the Paradise Papers which
detailed that Serco’s UK lawyers expressed written concerns that their client
had been engaging in fraud, covering up the abuse of detainees at Australian
detention centres, and even mishandling radioactive waste. The firm described
Serco as a “high-risk” organisation with a “history of problems, failures,
fatal errors and overcharging”.
Internationally, the
company runs prisons in the UK and New Zealand. In Australia it has been
operating for more than 15 years, managing prisons in Western Australia and
Queensland as well as 11 immigration centres. It also holds several defence
contracts and is currently building a mega-correctional facility near Grafton
in New South Wales.
The Clarence
Correctional Centre roughly 12 km from Grafton, NSW is due to open in June 2020.
Hopefully UK
based Serco Group Pty Ltd through
its subsidiary Serco Australia Pty
Limited will by then have addressed all
the issues in its chequered past.
Labels:
Australian society,
NSW prisons
Saturday 30 March 2019
Quote of the Week
“People generally
conform to the mores of their society, and if they believe racism to be
acceptable they are more likely to behave in a racist way. Racist concepts are
kept alive through communication of racist viewpoints and social mediation and
the use of racist scapegoating as acceptable aspects of political debate. Where
there is ‘social permission’ to be racist, racism is a permissible way of
releasing frustrations and aggression. Conversely, discouraging racist
attitudes and behaviour is likely to cause racism to decrease.” [Tamsan
Clarke, February 2005, RACISM, PLURALISM AND DEMOCRACY IN AUSTRALIA: Re-conceptualising racial vilificationlegislation]
Labels:
Australian society,
racism
Saturday 23 March 2019
Political Cartoons of the Week
Labels:
Australian society,
elections 2019,
racism
Friday 22 March 2019
"Please don’t run away from this so fast we fail to learn anything by it. Call out racism. Call out bigotry. Then call it out again, and again."
The Daily Examiner, 20 March 2019, p.28:
The
Grafton community is in shock, left heartbroken after news that Friday’s terrorist attack
in New Zealand was perpetrated by a man who grew up here.
So
it’s understandable we want to try to distance ourselves from what is now one
of the worst mass killings in modern history.
We
feel for our city, we feel for the local family caught up in this, and we feel
for the people of New Zealand.
What
is apparent though is a lack of acknowledgement of the people who were
specifically targeted in this murderous rampage. Muslims. People, including
children as young as two, who were killed because of their faith and their
race.
And
don’t for one minute think it’s not about race, it’s a package deal for white
supremacists, and the 28-year-old who grew up here is one of those.
So
why do Clarence Valley spokespeople gloss over such details like they are
trivial facts in this horrendous story?
If
a Middle Eastern gunman of Muslim faith walked into a Catholic church in
Australia and open fired on white Christian families there would be no such
leniencies extended to the perpetrator or his ilk in the conversations that
follow.
But
here we are in protection mode. This isn’t our Grafton. This isn’t our
Australia.
This isn’t us. Which is correct if we judge the perpetrator only on
his actions on Friday.
But
we have to come to terms with the fact these things don’t happen overnight.
There is an innate beginning to a journey that takes you to a place where you
are capable of planning an attack of this level of calculation and carnage,
write an extensive manifesto to showcase the act, film it and broadcast it
live, and, after being captured, smirk to the media as you face the first of
the many legal consequences of your actions.
So
if it’s not us, who is it? Pakistan, Finland, any other country? Is it the internet
or social media? Computer games? Is it the moment he left Grafton? The moment
he was ‘radicalised’?
Ultimate
responsibility lies with our society and the attitudes we foster. The
conversations we have and behaviours we encourage and allow.
Everything
contributes to this. What we hear from governments, what we hear from the
media, what we hear from our family and friends. What we are exposed to growing
up, what we talk about when we are old, the messages we share in pubs and on
social media.
So
in the Clarence, our Muslim-free narrative is very telling. So, too, the
idealistic version we create of ourselves.
Please
stop telling me how wonderful this place is. I already know it is; as long as
you look like me, you go OK.
But
describing the Clarence Valley and Grafton as a diverse and multicultural
region that prides itself on being inclusive, while it makes a great sound bite
or quote in a news story there is plenty to fault in these broad overviews with
little evidence to back them up.
About
80 per cent of Grafton is made up of white people and more than 70 per cent
identify as Christian (national averages are 65 per cent and 52 per cent
respectively).
Our demographic is made up of Australians, English, Irish,
Scottish and Germans predominantly. Our indigenous population falls under the
Australian component and makes up 7.4per cent of that, representing the major
group as far as our cultural diversity goes. It is more than double the state
average at 2.9per cent. Our representation of other people of colour is
negligible by comparison.*
So
to call us a culturally diverse place is a stretch. Inclusiveness is easy when
we all look the same and have the same beliefs.
Our
indigenous locals may have a different take on what that looks like.
When
it comes to sport and the arts, sure we champion inclusiveness with First
Nations people, but when we are really tested, like we were with the Coutts
Crossing name debate, we demonstrate a low tolerance. Same with national issues
like changing the date of Australia Day.
When
our Citizen of the Year expressed her support of that in her acceptance speech
she received random boos from an audience that also included members of our
indigenous community.
Every
October when we are – to quote someone well known for her lack of regard for
other races – “swamped with Asians”, our lack of tolerance for the influx of
visitors eager to photograph our beautiful trees is demonstrated with the
barrage of abuse they receive from passing motorists.
But
it’s not about race, they’re just idiots standing in the way, right? Like the
booing of Adam Goodes wasn’t because he was an Aborigine, he was just a bad
sport.
What
if the Muslim community came en masse to Grafton to mourn their slain? What if
they came to a town where they don’t exist?
It’s
impossible to have all those other conversations about our wonderful town
without having this one.
As
difficult as it is, not mentioning the war as we wait for things to blow over
isn’t an option. It’s no longer Grafton’s story to tell, or its agenda to set.
The city will forever wear a horrific international act of terrorism as part of
its story and in its history books.
Interest
will follow us for a long time as the world learns who the perpetrator was,
what kind of place he grew up in and how he ended up committing an act of
hatred so obscene it stopped the world.
Like
all the official spokespeople out there, I too love the Clarence Valley, but
I’m not blindsided by that affection so much I believe we are incapable of
being a breeding ground for racism. We aren’t the only Australian town to have
this potential, but we are the town caught up in this mess.
Please
don’t run away from this so fast we fail to learn anything by it. Call out
racism. Call out bigotry. Then call it out again, and again.
*2016
ABS Census
LESLEY APPS
Labels:
Australian society,
bigotry,
Clarence Valley,
racism,
xenophobia
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