Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Labor, heal your hate

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A Writer’s appeal to progressives.

I WAS reminded recently about the depth of hatred that courses through the Australian Labor Party, by a friend who admitted she is a ‘hater’ in the Paul Keating tradition. Her special kind of venom is reserved for Kevin Rudd.

She’s not a lonely hater, far from it. Plenty of others rail on Facebook about Bill Shorten’s shortcomings as an opposition leader, with a vitriol bordering on hatred.

Still another camp exists – the Julia Gillard haters – especially those in the Deep North who won’t ever forget what she did to their Kevin.

“Imagine what you’ll do when Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd eventually bury the hatchet.”

In an arc from Whitlam’s sacking, to Keating’s toppling of Hawke and Gillard’s of Rudd, a ripple of Labor-red retribution runs through the left-leaning party and its followers so pervasively I wonder why anyone ever agrees to lead the rabble.

Whenever a Rudd or Gillard hater comes out of the woodwork, a rarely expressed question forms for me: If you hated (insert whichever Labor leader you like) so much, why did you vote for them?

Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Did all the Rudd haters vote for John Howard in 2007? Did all the Gillard haters vote for Tony Abbott in 2010? Does the hate exist before these people lead the country, or does it develop later?

Maybe with all my questions I’m missing the hate’s purpose. Is Labor’s pulsating hating principle some kind of energy source to help progressives ‘take it up’ to conservatives?

LABORING THE FRIENDSHIP Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, 1991 (Photo: Peter Morris).
LABORING THE FRIENDSHIP Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, 1991 (Photo: Peter Morris).

If so, it’s not working. Since Paul Keating was popularly elected in his own right, all hate seems to have done for the party is truncate ALP leadership regimes. After acrimony borne of fundamental internal divisions, they collapse after about three years in power.

At its best, Labor’s ability to hate moves mountains. It toppled Work Choices, John Howard’s attempt to obliterate the workplace standards delivered to this country by the Trade Union movement.

Labor’s hatred of Malcolm Fraser’s meddling in Medibank ushered-in Medicare, one of the defining ALP social reforms.

And then there is just about everything Gough Whitlam did with his single-handed hatred of conservatism, from fault-free divorce to laws allowing home brewing.

All these were fine, upstanding examples of collective hatred directed at Labor’s common enemies.

Thanks to many in the Australian media we get regular encouragement for our Labor hate. For every David Marr and his revelations about ‘Rudd rage’ there is a Michelle Grattan calling for Julia Gillard to quit.

Some make no secret of their contempt. Chris Uhlmann springs to mind, whose Rudd hatred became patently obvious at the press conference the day KRudd became Prime Minister for the second time.

Someone – perhaps Kevin – had asked the ABC to televise each journalist as they asked their questions, an interesting angle which seemed to keep the media nice.

“Did a whole stack of ALP Rudd haters actually vote for Abbott at the 2013 federal election?”

When it came to Uhlmann, he turned Rudd’s embryonic policy on asylum seekers into war with Indonesia in a heartbeat, long before the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders ever hit the airwaves.

An attempt to shape the news, make the news, or just throw Rudd off? Whatever it was, the Rudd haters must have loved it, but it took a non-hater to see it.

I’ve had my own hate happening, I admit. The night of the 2007 election my husband and I watched the ABC, and once it became clear Howard was out, I said to Richard: “Why can’t we have her as Prime Minister?”

“Who, Julia Gillard?” he said.

“She’s very well spoken, she’s well turned-out and I like what she says; and she’s not religious.”

We shrugged and went to bed, happy the conservatives were defeated.

Apologies to the Stolen Generations, the signing of the Kyoto Protocol and an approaching price on carbon necessarily preceded the wave of legislative changes that impacted very positively on our household, when Kevin Rudd kept his election promise and changed over 100 laws that discriminated against same-sex-attracted de-facto couples in Australia.

Nevertheless, I celebrated on the day Gillard became Prime Minister, not because I hated Rudd, but because I felt Australia had grown up a little. Naively I thought others would see things the same way, but when I saw people upset at the news, genuinely confused and angry, I thought shit, this isn’t good.

So I turned my thoughts to the possibility this new atheist leader in a de-facto relationship would usher in marriage equality, since she seemed to understand the need for choice when it came to relationships, right?

Wrong.

Because she never explained her anti-marriage stance on an issue of equality, I hated Julia Gillard, for a while.

But I still voted for her. I would have voted for her again in 2013. Instead I voted for Rudd, even though it was boring as heck that he got back in, and it did no one any good, but I wasn’t ever going to vote for the alternative.

Which makes me wonder: Did a whole stack of ALP Rudd haters actually vote for Abbott at the 2013 federal election?

To keep your ideology away from power to spite them … now that is hatred.

IT'S TIME to busy the hatchet, but not in one another's back ...
IT’S TIME to bury the hatchet, but not in one another’s back.

I say it’s time to heal your hate, Labor supporters. That means marrying Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard into one awkward, stumbling, problematic but progressive six-year relationship which saw great social advancements – from the National Disability Insurance Scheme to record numbers of women in cabinet – all of which is being swiftly undone while we keep hating one or the other of the leaders who brought it all into being.

To encourage you in your hate healing, imagine what you’ll do when Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd eventually bury the hatchet. If Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser could find common ground after all that went down between them, it’s entirely possible for Gillard and Rudd to come to terms with the position each put the other in.

creating-waves-cover
BUY NOW

And remember, both of them gave you something, and that is not reason to hate, it’s great cause for hope.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

This article appears in Michael’s eBook Creating Waves: Critical takes on culture and politics.

LGBTIQ Equality, Politics

‘New-fangled mob’ Down Under

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THOROUGHLY MODERN The interrelated Modern Family of ABC's comedy series.
THOROUGHLY MODERN The interrelated Modern Family of ABC’s comedy series.

A Writer looks at modern families.

IT was charming and kind of awkward when Australians welcomed the cast of America’s ABC comedy Modern Family (what Aussies might prefer to call a ‘new-fangled mob’) to our shores earlier this year, for the production of a special Australian ‘destination’ episode.

The series has consistently rated highly with Australian viewers and the locally filmed episode was always going to please and offend us.

Did they hit the mark and show us something about ourselves that’s not already apparent from any number of fantastic Australian television families, from The Sullivans to The Moodys?

The answer might lie in comparing the fiction with the data.

“There is simply no mainstream equivalent on Australian television.”

The first major difference is in Modern Family’s portrayal of three family units with kids – it’s simply not representative (what Aussies might prefer to call ‘average’)  of this country.

A trio of multi-generational groupings, including biological, adopted, and step-children, is not the Australian way, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Two out of three Australian families had children in the 2011 census, in fact, couples without children made up the dominant chunk of the pie chart, at 37.8 per cent of family units.

A beloved and core element to Modern Family’s make-up is the male same-sex couple (Mitch and Cam). Despite pushing boundaries in the United States for its honest (and to many, not honest enough) portrayal of the realities of same-sex families with children, this is not Australia’s reality.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that Australian same-sex couples with children are overwhelmingly female (a whopping 89 per cent).

Australia is undoubtedly ready for Mitch and Cam adopting children on our television screens, but our communities are a long way behind.

The first legal adoption by a same-sex couple in Australia took place in 2007, in Western Australia, where adoption had been legal for same-sex couples for five years prior. Currently, four Australian states and territories allow same-sex couples zero adoption rights.

Racial and cultural diversity is a core principle of Modern Family’s casting. Out of a total of twelve main characters, 33 per cent of the show’s key cast could be defined as racially diverse, including Latin-American and Asian-American representation.

There is simply no mainstream commercial equivalent on Australian television, an issue which continues to plague the industry, while a racially diverse audience of just under one-quarter of all Australians remains barely represented on our small screen.

Modern Family’s Australian episode did not hit the mark with everyone on home soil – The Guardian Australia’s review carried the headline: ‘Modern Family’s Australian episode was a cliched travelogue’.

WE'RE WAITING
WE’RE WAITING Jessie Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet (Mitch and Cam) in their Australian Marriage Equality video.

But there was one sign that the show’s content could drag Australian television content, and our nation, into the 21st century.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet (who play  Mitch and Cam) released a video produced by Australian Marriage Equality, comically expressing (what Aussies call ‘taking the piss’) their astonishment that same-sex marriage is not yet legal in Australia.

So, not until a racially diverse, childless lesbian couple inhabits our television comedies, will Australians become a truly ‘modern family’.

Until then we’ll need fictional outsiders to show us what we could be if we tried.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.

Politics

Surviving the heat while the world’s watching

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A Writer on how the story often gets told regardless.

THE world will be watching Brisbane, Queensland, for the upcoming G20 economic summit in the city. For a few weeks, if they’re savvy, international media (and social media) will be capturing stories straight from the heart of the Australian state named for Queen Victoria.

The last time this heightened media attention occurred was the focus on Russia’s gay and lesbian rights track record in the lead-up to February’s Sochi 2014 winter Olympics opening ceremony.

“Once the disenfranchised have a name, they can never remain a blind spot, even for an entire nation.”

At that time, equality advocates in Australia really had nothing to crow about.

When the same inquiring analysis cast its eye over Australia’s human rights standards at the Sydney summer Olympics in 2000, we were found wanting, and I don’t believe we’ve ever really recovered.

International press attention found the majority of Australians ignorant when it came to knowledge of Aboriginal culture and politics, and with Aboriginal athletes and performers taking centre stage at the world’s largest sports carnival, there really was no excuse for us to have so little idea about even the basics.

Fourteen years ago, I doubt most Australians could name the traditional Aboriginal nation in which they resided. I thought I did, until I realised I was living right at the junction of at least six of them.

ABORIGINAL NATIONS of Australia.
ABORIGINAL NATIONS of Australia.

I learned this not from my formal education, but from maps exhibited at Australia’s interpretive show for the world about the history of this land, once considered a ‘new’ world by European explorers, but in reality an island continent inhabited by the oldest established culture on earth.

These days, the names of Aboriginal nations are commonplace. The issue doesn’t stop there, of course, but once the disenfranchised have a name, they can never remain a blind spot, even for an entire nation.

In time, I believe an observable change in Aboriginal equality will stem from the year of the Sydney Olympics, because after the world witnessed the human face of our country, Australians had no more excuses for ignorance.

During the penultimate moments of the Olympic flame lighting, a technical glitch caused the rising movement of the cauldron structure to malfunction. It was supposed to rise around Kuku Yalanji and Birri Gubba woman of Far North Queensland, and international athlete, Cathy Freeman.

The four-minute pause allowed the world to take a longer-than-planned look at a living, breathing, self-defining Aboriginal Australian woman. Australians were in the box seat for the viewing – we probably needed to witness it more than anyone – and with the technical fault’s tinge of embarrassment, the reality of Cathy Freeman can never be extricated from the moment.

BANNED BANNER One of many which will not be seen by international delegates at the G20 in Brisbane.
BANNED BANNER One of many which will not be seen by international delegates at the G20 in Brisbane.

Australians should consider ourselves lucky we got off very lightly compared to other Olympic human rights controversies, and we should not point the finger so quickly at others. If we do, we’re forgetting the sting of the Olympic human rights flame as it shone the light on us.

It will be interesting to see if the cream of international political conservatism is allowed to learn anything while they’re staying in Turrbal country in the place known as Meanjin since long before it was renamed Brisbane by European settlers.

Early signs from the G20 are not promising, after billboards promoting action on climate change were banned by the Brisbane Airport Corporation, and Aboriginal offices have been forcibly closed by Brisbane City Council without adequate explanation.

We can only hope for a technical glitch to get the real story to the world.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.