Monday 26 January 2015

Australia Has A Lot Of Growing Up To Do

Australia Has A Lot Of Growing Up To Do



Australia Has A Lot Of Growing Up To Do



By Amy McQuire





Amy
McQuire doesn't celebrate 'Australia Day'. She does, however, hope one
day for a mature conversation about changing the date.




Every
year on January 26th, Australians are given a license to act like
immature children, as if to mirror the illusion that Australia really is
a “young country” and not an ancient land with 70,000 years of history
written over its surface.



If you step out to beaches and parks across the country, ‘Australia
Day’ is about booze and bikinis, and being “proud” to be “Australian”.

But if you fall outside the narrow margin of Australian ‘values’, and
refuse to accept this historical amnesia, Australia Day becomes one of
exclusion.




I remember a few years ago, a flag-wielding young patriot drunkenly
shouting in my face “Aussie Aussie Aussie” only to be confounded when I
stared back at him blankly.




“What?! How do you not know it? Are you even Australian?” was his response.



This isn’t an uncommon experience for those who don’t subscribe to
the national jingoism of January 26, but it’s one that sticks in my mind
because of the comically confused look on his face.



There was a complete inability to understand how anyone could feel
marginalised by this date, and a damning ignorance of the deep pain and
disgust felt by many, even by a growing section of non-Indigenous
Australia.



Whilst it is still a minority, there is a building chorus that agrees
we should not celebrate a date that for generations of Aboriginal
people has been one of mourning.



Blackfellas have mourned January 26th for decades because the arrival
of the First Fleet not only announced the invasion of the British, but
also heralded the massacres of entire tribes, poisoned waterholes and
flour sacks, stolen children and stolen land, the dispossession of
thousands of Aboriginal people onto missions and reserves, the deaths in
custodies, the rising incarceration of men, women and children, and the
attempted destruction of an ancient culture and the endangered
languages.



If Aboriginal people are to be included in ‘Australia Day
celebrations’ why is this unpleasant history washed away by a sickening
sea of jingoism encased in cheap Reject Store trinkets?



The refusal to even consider starting a national conversation about
changing the date, as suggested by former Australian of the Year Mick
Dodson, was met with aversion by the public, who acted like whinging
children threatened with the possibility of one less public holiday.



But the refusal to open up a dialogue about changing the date shows
Australians would much rather stay stunted in this phase than progress
towards puberty.




An example of just how far we have to go in our race relations can be
seen in the year endured by Aboriginal footballer Adam Goodes as
Australian of the Year.



Despite being a member of a league worshipped as religion in many
states of this country, Goodes has had to field a barrage of criticism
whenever he dares state a truth about the current situation for
Aboriginal Australia.



It was only last November when Goodes drew an angry response from
3AW’s Neil Mitchell for mentioning Australia’s atrocious history of
racism on British Radio.



Goodes’ comments were in no way radical. In fact, they were
optimistic about the ability of Australians to change, stating he felt
education about Australia’s black history would help Australia move
forward.




But any mature conversation about Goodes’ comments was completely
pushed off the table by Mitchell, who said he was “sick” of the
“continued sniping”.




“Goodes seems not to like Australia. He’s trying to change the
country. Yes parts of our history are not decent but we have moved on
from that”.



The fact is, of course, we haven’t moved on, and to begin to even
suggest this to Aboriginal nations across the country is as offensive as
the day itself.




How can you move on without justice? How can you heal when every year on January 26th your history is deemed unimportant and marginal?


The weight of history burdens every Aboriginal community, because the
denial of this past creates a false diagnosis of the deep pain felt
across the breadth of Aboriginal Australia.



It misleads Australians about the intergenerational trauma that has
left many blackfellas mired in bad statistics. If you don’t have the
correct diagnosis, how can you begin to medicate and heal?



How can you expect black and white Australia to unite when the power
is overwhelmingly weighted on one side? You can’t wash away a black
history so easily.



Australia Day is, and always will be, a day of shame, regardless of
the marketing and press releases pumped out by the National Australia
Day Council. 




It does nothing to represent ‘fairness’. Instead it represents
compounding pain and the inequalities that stem from a history that is
continually denied.



To celebrate this denial means you are complicit in the current
suffering of Aboriginal Australia. And to not even consider a
conversation about changing this date means Australia still has a lot of
growing up to do.





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Sunday 25 January 2015

Shorten WTF are you doing?

Shorten WTF are you doing?













Shorten WTF are you doing?





Shorten WTF are you doing?


Bill Shorten, Mr 40%
Bill Shorten, Mr 40%

When the ALP announced that they were going to change the criteria
and allow the R&F to have more of a say, I thought that might be a
good start and a new direction for a factional mishmash that was slowly
but surely killing itself.



Little did I know!


Albo, Mr 60%
Albo, Mr 60%

The fact is, that with around 60% of the R&F voting for Albo, and
only 40% for Shorten, the members made it perfectly clear who they
wanted, and yet the factions, once again stepped in to make sure their
bloke got over the line.



Now at the time, I made my feelings clear, along with a large
majority of the R&F, that Albo was the man to rebuild the party and
take us to the next election.



I said that Shorten had too much baggage from the last two terms,
that he doesn’t inspire, that he’s from the right of the party, and they
desperately need to return to their roots and core values.



I have to say I was pissed off that once again the powerful factions
got their way, over the membership, but many said  “Wait and see” and
“At least give him a go”



Well I waited, albeit somewhat sceptically, and I saw!


And what I saw, was not a Labor leader, but what looks more like a
right wing plant, who’s softly softly approach is seeing this once great
nation relegated to the last century, where all the gains we’ve worked
so hard to achieve, are being either seriously eroded, or completely
wiped out on the back of  rabid right wing ideology!



Make no mistake, if Abbott as LOTO could have mustered the numbers in
the senate,, during the Gillard term, he would have happily blocked
supply to bring down the government, but he didn’t have either a valid
reason, or the numbers.



When Hockey brought down his horror fudge-it, it was, to use Abbott’s
own expression, CRYSTAL clear, that he lied to the public, to gain
office and was, as such, a perfectly legitimate reason to use those
numbers to block supply and force a DD.



Billy, Billy, Billy… WTF are you doing?
Billy, Billy, Billy… WTF are you doing?

But what did Shorten do?… NOTHING?


In fact, he did worse than nothing   :shock:    he guaranteed supply, leaving the door wide open for Abbott to do deals with the new senators and Palmer


He  has sold out Labor, and Gillard’s legacy, but worse than that
he’s sold out Australia to the rabid right wing ideologies, and voted to
take us back to war, on the say so of a man (?) who is a proven, and
some would say pathological liar, and  who’s only goal is to maintain
power at any cost.



Their dishonesty and hypocrisy are astounding, and over the last
couple of days, we’ve seen yet another example, as Morrison signs up for
an asylum seeker deal to resettle genuine refugees in Cambodia, one of
the poorest and most corrupt countries on the planet, handing over a
cool $40 mill, for a commitment to take only 4-5 refugees on a trial
basis, and that’s not including the resettlement costs, which works out
at 8 – 10 + million $’s each?   W…T…F???



And yet we all remember when they rejected Gillard’s Malaysian
solution, because Malaysia wasn’t a signatory to the UNHCR convention, a
decision that resulted in some 300 more deaths at sea?



Coincidentally a convention that these hypocrites, effectively tore
up at the same time as they signed up with Cambodia, and committed us to
a war in which even more people are becoming refugees!



We are now witnessing our hard fought for rights and freedoms being
taken away and shoved in a cupboard to “protect them”… WTF?        And
the most incompetent, and arguably corrupt government in our history,
stirring up hysteria and fear, for the sake of their own political
advantage.



And all the while, Shorten’s opposition is not only MIA for much of the time, but complicit in many of these decisions… W…T…F???


The thing is that I along with many others, tried to warn Australia of how Abbott would destroy this great country   :roll:    and he has more than lived up to our expectations!   :shock:


And likewise with Shorten   :mad:


In his first year, Abbott has done damage that will take decades to
fix, if in fact it can be fixed, and all for the sake of his own twisted
ambitions and ideologies.



And in his first year as LOTO, Shorten has basically made the ALP irrelevant.


I did hope hope he would prove me wrong… He didn’t!


I did try to give him the benefit of the doubt… But he just confirmed all my fears at every turn!


But I’m still prepared to give him a go   :shock:


So Billy boy, If you do genuinely care for this country and the once great Labor party, the only Go that I can still give you is… GO AWAY!


Do the decent thing and resign your position as LOTO, and let the will of the R&F prevail!


We need a LOTO that will reform the party, whilst taking the fight up
to Abbott and his mendacious mob of mistits, hitting him with both
barrels, not a limp lettuce leaf!



Cos too many times over the last year, too many of us have asked the question:


Shorten, WTF are you doing?


Abbott's mini me
Abbott’s mini me

Friday 16 January 2015

It's time to get on with it - The AIM Network

It's time to get on with it - The AIM Network





It’s time to get on with it














To Bill Shorten and the Labor Party,


You are no doubt aware of the growing concern amongst progressive
voters about your performance.  And by performance, I don’t mean pithy
one-liners delivered at Question Time or the meal you cooked for Annabel
Crabb.



I mean your failure to hold the Coalition to account, your silence
when we should hear outrage, and your refusal to offer a better
alternative.



I understand that you have countless strategists planning your moves
but they are also failing in their job.  We need to hear from you.  You
need to prepare the road for the way ahead.



Stop beginning every sentence with “Tony Abbott”.  The phrase “Tony
Abbott’s unfair budget” has become as grating as “Labor’s debt and
deficit disaster”.



What you should be saying is “We do not support the Government’s proposal because……Our plan is to……”



You need to delineate clear differences between the Labor Party and
the Coalition because at the moment you are being referred to as the
lesser of two evils, and not by much, which is a damning indictment
considering how badly this government is performing.



You don’t have to pay millions for advertising to tell us how bad
this government is – we already know – just go back through the quotes
from the Coalition and show their hypocrisy and lies.



You don’t have to pay consultants to come up with ideas – the
internet is full of them, many with the accompanying research already
done for you.  You could do worse than reading the articles and comments
here and on other independent sites to get you started.



You don’t have to conduct polls and focus groups to find out what
people think – it’s all there on blogs and social media, in letters to
the editor and phone calls to radio hosts.



The latest Roy Morgan poll shows Australian electors are not
convinced how well Bill Shorten’s handling his job as Opposition Leader;
40% (down 2%) disapprove and 37% (unchanged) approve although a much
higher 23% (up 2%) still can’t say how they view the Opposition Leader.
After more than a year in the job, almost a quarter of the electorate
don’t have a view on how Mr Shorten is going.  That’s a telling figure.



It’s time to get on with it – tell us your thoughts.  Give us some
choices.  You don’t have to commit to a detailed plan, just throw up
some alternatives.  Get the conversation started.




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