The Prime Minister announces a 10 billion dollar water plan and is acclaimed for his vision. It would have been vision if he'd announced it soon after being elected in 1996. In 2007 it is catch-up, necessity and a canny response to Rudd in an election year. Still, better late than ever but I have a few questions: 1. Why are vast the majority of Australians being asked to suffer water restrictions and change their shower heads to save a few litres when agriculture accounts for three times as much as household use (Aust Bureau of Statistics)???? Of course our farmers must grow our food but when so much of our food is being imported why are we using so much water to grow rice and cotton???? If we imported these two products imagine the water we would be able to redistribute. What a con job this water thing is. What I mean by a con job is that with vision equivalent to that which produced the Snowy Scheme we could harvest the oceans of water that go to waste every year in Australia's inland. We have put in place pipelines of enormous length to shift natural gas around the country. Other nations have built pipelines to carry oil thousands of kilometres. Right now huge areas of inland Australia are awash with floodwaters. By not harvesting these annual natural oceans and diverting them to the cities is like not having a rainwater tank on your house to take advantage of the next storm. If Cubby Station can catch annual overflow water in quantities greater than several Sydney harbours WHY CAN'T GOVERNMENTS DO THE SAME THING ON A MUCH GRANDER SCALE?
The Palm Island review is complete and the policeman is to be charged with Mulrunji’s manslaughter. See my aussie values blog link opposite.
The Pommies can only make 110 on Australia Day. Fortunately those great Aussie values of compassion and fair go and support for the underdog preclude a class action by those fans who, throughout the summer, have expected Test Matches to go 5 days and One Dayers to go 50 overs an innings.
Tim Flannery is (deservedly) announced by PM Howard as Australian of the Year and five minutes later sticks it into Howard for not doing something about climate change sooner. Irreverence for authority is an Aussie value that is alive and well and Flannery is to be commended for not succumbing to the sycophantic role that Howard’s spin doctors probably hoped for. Howard would most likely have preferred Shane Warne but saw an environmentalist as a more astute election year choice that might bolster his Johnny-come-lately environmental credibility.
Kevin Rudd included ‘community’ in his Australia Day list of Aussie values. I saw ‘community’ in full swing in the Buderim celebrations. A lot of hard working community minded people put on a great breakfast and then an impressive parade that featured a lot of groups that comprise volunteers who work to serve the community. No doubt Australians role up their sleeves in large numbers to provide physical and financial support for many causes. Of course I don’t know whether other societies and cultures do this to a greater or lesser extent but I suspect that when people need help anywhere there are many who put their hand up to share what they’ve got or to offer help.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Wave or Waiver the Flag on Australia Day - 26 January
How predictable (and timely) that John Howard should leap on the Aussie flag controversy that the Big Day Out organizers started by trying to ban it. He can’t help but leap on anything that offers him the opportunity to portray himself as the defender of Aussie values and the champion of anything that is true blue. Yet there are a lot of deadshits out there who would use the Australian flag for purposes that are quite contrary to the values it is supposed to symbolize. Would Howard agree with the Cronulla rioters who cloaked themselves in the flag in order to give some legitimacy to their supremacist views? Would he agree with those deadshits who reportedly demanded people kiss it at last year’s BDO and assaulted those who refused. He says: ‘The proposition that the display of the Australian flag should ever be banned anywhere in Australia is offensive and it will be to millions of Auistralians’. Well, John, the flag is banned at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane so what are you going to do about it?
Sunday, January 21, 2007
A Quick Trip To Port Macquarie
Last week I did a 3 day drive to Port Macquarie in NSW (1500Km all up). The drive took me through the northern coastal river country of NSW. The country from Tweed Heads to Coffs Harbour could never look better. It is so green as to be almost luminous. The section around the Bangalow- Byron Bay area is an especially beautiful part of Australia. The rolling green hills that stretch away to the beaches are covered with macadamia orchards and coffee plantations and many other sub tropical fruits. I marvelled at the huge Moreton Bay fig trees that are sometimes close to the highway - they are just massive and their broad span could shade a hundred cattle. One of the reasons I always like to take the coast troad is to see the mighty northern rivers. The Tweed, Richmond, Clarence, Macleay, Hastings - Wow! The volume of water passing into the Pacific daily from these rivers is mind boggling. I can't help but think as I drive over their bridges that they would go a long way to solving the water shortages of Brisbane and Sydney. Of course I'm not suggesting that they should be ripped off to the point of damaging their ecology but surely carefully computer monitored harvesting of the excess that just flows away is feasible. Perhaps it is too simple in its concept and too difficult politically! Heaven forbid that Queensland should take 'NSW water' from the Tweed 20 kilometres to supply the thirsty Gold Coast (the fastest growing city in Australia).
I must mention the beautiful river towns of Ulmarra and Maclean. These are fabulous historic river towns on the Clarence. It is not hard to imagine the hustle and bustle of their busy river life when they were centres for river boats coming and going in a pre highway and pre heavy truck era. Now they are quiet and charming places for travellers to stop and reflect and be awed by the magnificent river.
The purpose of my trip was to visit my Aunty Betty. She is my mother's sister and only sibling and has a special place in my life. No one on the planet has known me longer. We had a great day together that included a 3 km walk along the creekside boardwalk through Port's paperbark forest. The walk begins and ends at the fascinating, original Port Macqaurie cemetery which dates back to 1821. The rest of the day was taken up with coffee downtown, lunch at a local vineyard, drives around Port's beautiful headlands and beaches and finally some Aussie Open tennis on the TV. Betty was pretty tired after all this because as she kept telling me 'I'm not a spring chicken anymore'. Nevertheless at 82 she is an inspiration with her energy and positive attitude. No matter what life throws at you, Betty says you just have to cope and get on with it.
I was pretty tired my self when I got back to Buderim but glad I'd done the trip and travelled through such beautiful country. No doubt the green of this area is a luxury and a total contrast to the dry, thirsty places further south and west. But then to be driving through 'Eden' while listening to reports of bushfires, evacuations and droughts in other parts of the country typifies Australia and always has.
I must mention the beautiful river towns of Ulmarra and Maclean. These are fabulous historic river towns on the Clarence. It is not hard to imagine the hustle and bustle of their busy river life when they were centres for river boats coming and going in a pre highway and pre heavy truck era. Now they are quiet and charming places for travellers to stop and reflect and be awed by the magnificent river.
The purpose of my trip was to visit my Aunty Betty. She is my mother's sister and only sibling and has a special place in my life. No one on the planet has known me longer. We had a great day together that included a 3 km walk along the creekside boardwalk through Port's paperbark forest. The walk begins and ends at the fascinating, original Port Macqaurie cemetery which dates back to 1821. The rest of the day was taken up with coffee downtown, lunch at a local vineyard, drives around Port's beautiful headlands and beaches and finally some Aussie Open tennis on the TV. Betty was pretty tired after all this because as she kept telling me 'I'm not a spring chicken anymore'. Nevertheless at 82 she is an inspiration with her energy and positive attitude. No matter what life throws at you, Betty says you just have to cope and get on with it.
I was pretty tired my self when I got back to Buderim but glad I'd done the trip and travelled through such beautiful country. No doubt the green of this area is a luxury and a total contrast to the dry, thirsty places further south and west. But then to be driving through 'Eden' while listening to reports of bushfires, evacuations and droughts in other parts of the country typifies Australia and always has.
Friday, January 19, 2007
A GOOD MOVIE
I watched the movie Babel last week, the day after finishing reading The Unknown Terrorist. Coincidentally it is about innocent people who find themselves in unusual circumstances which, because of stereotyping and misinterpretation, quickly escalate out of control. Even though the main players in the story are often the victims of stereotyped views and politically and ideologically driven officialdom, it is the humanity of ordinary people that triumphs. The Director, Alejandro Inarritu, says he wanted to 'talk about the overreaction of the US empire towards the Muslims. I also wanted to observe the problems of the borders between the US and Mexico, and to talk about the millions of Mexicans who live in a very harsh reality in America. I was interested in solitude, and deserts - not only actual deserts, but also urban deserts, where you are surrounded by people but totally isolated'.
This is a top movie.
This is a top movie.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
A GOOD BOOK
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
I finally got around to reading this novel which was published in 2006. I really enjoyed it. It is a thriller with plenty of social and political comment. Set in post 9/11 Sydney it involves a Kings Cross pole dancer caught up in a whirlpool of murder, media hype and politically manipulated fear of terrorism. Readers will recognize the Australia that Flanagan portrays so clearly. The Australia where the ‘War on Terror’ has created all sorts of fears and uncovered the Australian racism that mostly lies dormant just below the surface of our fair go-tolerant-she’ll be right national persona. With disarming precision he taps into the Sydney psyche that we tend to ignore or at the least pretend is not really the Sydney we know and love: the obsession with real estate, the power of the radio shock jocks and the media, the disdain for the poor, the weak, the druggos, the Aborigines and the suspicion of all that is different from Muslims to Asians to those that only read either the Telegraph or the Sydney Morning Herald. Flanagan concentrates on the hard edge of Sydney and by extension Australia and there is little doubt that he attributes this hardening to the period since the election of the Howard government in 1996. When his hapless pole dancer walks past a street person getting beaten, the thugs ‘kept on for a few minutes more, kicking him as if he were to blame for everything in that dirty, dead decade they were all condemned to live through, a sack of shit that had once been a man, in a place that had once been a community, in a country that had once been a society’. Of course the government’s role in turning Sydneysiders and Australians inward, with all the xenophobia and paranoia that accompanies that, is aided by the media. Flanagan is caustic in his treatment of the media’s role in falling for the Governments agenda of fearmongering. His TV current affairs celebrity presenter is instantly recognizable and his contempt for Sydney shock jocks is palpable no less than through the name of his Sydney radio king, Joe Cosuk. Cosuk’s anagram is milked and its potentially abbreviated epithet adds to the readers’ distaste for this influential character.
Without doubt a major message in The Unknown Terrorist is that the terrorists have won. They won the moment those planes hit the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. They unleashed their most pervasive and formidable weapon: fear. The fear that has been generated and exploited, especially in the coalition of the willing has resulted in extraordinary legislative curtailments of democratic rights; a legitimizing of prejudice among many; a deadly fiasco in Iraq; and the nightmare of Guantanamo Bay. In so many ways the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. We have sacrificed so much of what we say we are protecting and in the case of Iraq, trying to export. Flanagan has shown us this in clear relief. Politicians, police, journalists, bureaucrats – those who are supposed to be the ‘goodies’ have succumbed and have compromised their own values to create an Orwellian world where the forest has been overtaken by the trees.
Richard Flanagan interview by Kerry O'brien on 7.30 report, Nov 2006. Please see the link opposite for this interview
Connections with my novel, Kadaitcha.
It was interesting reading a post 9/11 Australian novel on terrorism. The first coincidence was early, on page 21, when there is a bomb scare at Sydney’s Olympic stadium. It is the threat of an explosion at the stadium that becomes the driving force for the fear and hype and hunt for the perpetrators that Flanagan weaves together in his novel. Where Kadaitcha gives considerable weight to the motives behind its main character blowing up the stadium at the Olympics Opening Ceremony, Flanagan does not touch on motive at all. He doesn’t have to because 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ have made terrorism a cause in itself. Mention terrorism and the fear, suspicion and the stereotyping will provide an automatic response that makes details of the cause irrelevant. Like Flanagan I tried to make comment on aspects of contemporary Australia. We run parallel on a few issues and vary our respective emphasis. Although I target the media I don’t do quite the hatchet job of Flanagan. My radio shock jock, Stan Dawes is not quite as big a prick as Joe Cosuck (forget the pun!). Where Flanagan and I are in complete synchronization is in our attack on the Howard government. My attack was focused on his treatment of Aborigines and his winding back of the Wik decision from the moment he was elected in 1996. I sat through debates in Parliament on the Native Title Act Amendment (remember his 10 point plan!) and was stirred to try and put this latest blow in the context of a disturbingly long history of repression. Of course Flanagan writing much later, when Howard had been in power nearly a decade, had more shit to deal with, especially when 9/11/2001 provided Howard the catalyst to take Australia into waters that many thought we had sailed away from forever.
I finally got around to reading this novel which was published in 2006. I really enjoyed it. It is a thriller with plenty of social and political comment. Set in post 9/11 Sydney it involves a Kings Cross pole dancer caught up in a whirlpool of murder, media hype and politically manipulated fear of terrorism. Readers will recognize the Australia that Flanagan portrays so clearly. The Australia where the ‘War on Terror’ has created all sorts of fears and uncovered the Australian racism that mostly lies dormant just below the surface of our fair go-tolerant-she’ll be right national persona. With disarming precision he taps into the Sydney psyche that we tend to ignore or at the least pretend is not really the Sydney we know and love: the obsession with real estate, the power of the radio shock jocks and the media, the disdain for the poor, the weak, the druggos, the Aborigines and the suspicion of all that is different from Muslims to Asians to those that only read either the Telegraph or the Sydney Morning Herald. Flanagan concentrates on the hard edge of Sydney and by extension Australia and there is little doubt that he attributes this hardening to the period since the election of the Howard government in 1996. When his hapless pole dancer walks past a street person getting beaten, the thugs ‘kept on for a few minutes more, kicking him as if he were to blame for everything in that dirty, dead decade they were all condemned to live through, a sack of shit that had once been a man, in a place that had once been a community, in a country that had once been a society’. Of course the government’s role in turning Sydneysiders and Australians inward, with all the xenophobia and paranoia that accompanies that, is aided by the media. Flanagan is caustic in his treatment of the media’s role in falling for the Governments agenda of fearmongering. His TV current affairs celebrity presenter is instantly recognizable and his contempt for Sydney shock jocks is palpable no less than through the name of his Sydney radio king, Joe Cosuk. Cosuk’s anagram is milked and its potentially abbreviated epithet adds to the readers’ distaste for this influential character.
Without doubt a major message in The Unknown Terrorist is that the terrorists have won. They won the moment those planes hit the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. They unleashed their most pervasive and formidable weapon: fear. The fear that has been generated and exploited, especially in the coalition of the willing has resulted in extraordinary legislative curtailments of democratic rights; a legitimizing of prejudice among many; a deadly fiasco in Iraq; and the nightmare of Guantanamo Bay. In so many ways the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater. We have sacrificed so much of what we say we are protecting and in the case of Iraq, trying to export. Flanagan has shown us this in clear relief. Politicians, police, journalists, bureaucrats – those who are supposed to be the ‘goodies’ have succumbed and have compromised their own values to create an Orwellian world where the forest has been overtaken by the trees.
Richard Flanagan interview by Kerry O'brien on 7.30 report, Nov 2006. Please see the link opposite for this interview
Connections with my novel, Kadaitcha.
It was interesting reading a post 9/11 Australian novel on terrorism. The first coincidence was early, on page 21, when there is a bomb scare at Sydney’s Olympic stadium. It is the threat of an explosion at the stadium that becomes the driving force for the fear and hype and hunt for the perpetrators that Flanagan weaves together in his novel. Where Kadaitcha gives considerable weight to the motives behind its main character blowing up the stadium at the Olympics Opening Ceremony, Flanagan does not touch on motive at all. He doesn’t have to because 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’ have made terrorism a cause in itself. Mention terrorism and the fear, suspicion and the stereotyping will provide an automatic response that makes details of the cause irrelevant. Like Flanagan I tried to make comment on aspects of contemporary Australia. We run parallel on a few issues and vary our respective emphasis. Although I target the media I don’t do quite the hatchet job of Flanagan. My radio shock jock, Stan Dawes is not quite as big a prick as Joe Cosuck (forget the pun!). Where Flanagan and I are in complete synchronization is in our attack on the Howard government. My attack was focused on his treatment of Aborigines and his winding back of the Wik decision from the moment he was elected in 1996. I sat through debates in Parliament on the Native Title Act Amendment (remember his 10 point plan!) and was stirred to try and put this latest blow in the context of a disturbingly long history of repression. Of course Flanagan writing much later, when Howard had been in power nearly a decade, had more shit to deal with, especially when 9/11/2001 provided Howard the catalyst to take Australia into waters that many thought we had sailed away from forever.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A GOOD EDUCATION STORY
An 85 year old Aussie, Fred Hyde, and his team are building and running schools in Bangladesh with outstanding results. They are onto their 30th school! They operate within self help communities and on budgets that see almost 100% of donated money going into the school projects. What an amazing example of Aussies showing compassion in a practical way!! So... if you are interested have a look at the website in my Links. I guarantee you will be impressed.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
A Good News Story
I want to mention an enterprising young Sunshine Coast man that you may find interesting. Anton is 16 and when told he was too young to go on a formal/Non Government Organisation overseas aid project he just went independently anyhow. He has installed solar panels in an Indian village. Check out his blog in my Links (the Solar mission link) to see how his project unfolded.
Anton is now organising surgery to correct the club foot of this young Indian boy:
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Peter Bulkeley
Hello!! I've decided to have a personal blog and this is my first post. I doubt that I will be religiously consistent with my postings but I will try and put occasional things up that show what I and others in my family and circle are doing.
Today is a lovely drizzly day on the Sunshine Coast with a pleasant 27 degrees. Some contrast to Melb where it's going to be 36 today. Just spoke to my lovely sister-in-law Sue who fiiled us in on the family news from Melb.
There has been a riot at Arukun in northern Qld and that reminds me to put a link here to my Aussie Values blog where you can see some of my comments on the Palm Island/Mulrunji case that has attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks
Today is a lovely drizzly day on the Sunshine Coast with a pleasant 27 degrees. Some contrast to Melb where it's going to be 36 today. Just spoke to my lovely sister-in-law Sue who fiiled us in on the family news from Melb.
There has been a riot at Arukun in northern Qld and that reminds me to put a link here to my Aussie Values blog where you can see some of my comments on the Palm Island/Mulrunji case that has attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks
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