Phatic noise

It is my habit to turn on the radio as soon as I rise in the mornings. When I was in full time work it was always local ABC – listening for anything that would divert our attentions from the defined day’s work.  In semi-retirement I switched to Radio National breathing a sign that I would no longer be bombarded with the minutiae of stories about un-mowed school ovals, closed gates, school students being refused service at the local shops, or yet another debate about dress code.

RN  gives me a good sweep of national and international events – but I am seriously considering cutting the broadcast for the next five weeks and simply reverting to reading the news on my phone, or hanging out in a cave somewhere that  has no electricity or internet service– at least there I can avoid the burgeoning diatribe that is shaping up as election campaigning.

All that shouting, pontificating, name calling, jingoistic, phatic noise that does nothing but obfuscate the landscape,  is just more than I can bear at 6:30 in the morning. Oh for the squawking birds that fly in and out of the neighbour’s gum tree making an unbelievable racket.

And if I cut off the radio, I am certain I still won’t be polled. The tally this end is that my teenage granddaughter has been polled twice in the last few weeks – even though she is ineligible to vote, and my friend has clocked up two opportunities to have her say.  Ok: the ABC did invite me to contribute to their online poll Vote Compass, but that hardly counts as it was a request to the whole nation- or anyone who was watching the telly at the time!

So what I’d like is to see policy: in black and white, that I can print out and read and that doesn’t come with continual dissection, commentary, and opinion pieces that assume I am too thick to make up my own mind. And I want a quiet peaceful place in which to read it; and a cohort of informed friends who are prepared to discuss what we think of it all, and which, if any, benefits the future of our country rather than the future of a political party.

I’ve been doing some polling of my own  lately, talking to amazing young people about how they contribute to their communities and what they get from the experience. The honesty of their conversation, the delight they display about doing something for others, the intelligence and reflection in their responses, their capacity to cogently articulate their views and commitments,  and their integrity, are mind blowing.  

I remember why I loved being a teacher.

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Art Work of the Week 

One of those squawking birds

Kioloa Tweet. Acrylic on canvas

You've got me in a spin

Kevin has me in a spin – not the Kardashian Kevin kind that leads me to fawn and adulate, nor the bowling type that we could use in the ashes, or the how can I get a disguise so that none of my friends recognise me now that Collingwood has been beaten by the Gold Coast Suns sort, but the Abotesque vacant stare, stuttering, kind of spin that comes from so much so quickly that I don’t know which way to look. 

Just when I think I will blog about one thing – along comes another. 

Gonsky has dropped from the lexicon, Carbon pricing falls off the table.

I spent a whole morning trying to devise an amusing take on the refugee issue.

I listened as Les Murray, Soccer commentator, not poet, on Adam Hills Tonight thanked the people who helped smuggle his family to safety after the war and mused about whether the latter’s lines:

This cloud-roof country reminds me
of the character of people
who first encountered roses in soap. 

captured the same feeling that Les the commentator recalled in his anecdote about arriving in Hungary to be greeted by the locals with: Welcome, you are free. 

Last week I happened to catch The Bible on TV. I was a bit flummoxed by the producers decision to go with the topic, but gave myself a bit of a slap and remembered that it was coming out of a god fearing country and I shouldn’t be surprised. 

To get to the point: This episode was the bit about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt and I was left wondering whether God /Moses was a people smuggler? After all, here was a persecuted group trying to escape and helped in their efforts by a man who had been promised heaps if he led the people to freedom- oh, and yes, coincidentally, he did that by sea. 

The preview tells me that when the Israelites set off after the mass drowning of Egyptians, they will attack Jericho and kill many to achieve their promised land. There’s one for the conspiracy theorists.

But, having spent my concentration time on this topic Kevin goes and announces his amazingly canny relocation and resettlement agreement with Papua New Guinea; that he has successfully negotiated with Indonesia to delete the automatic 30 day visa for Iranians; and that he is calling a Pacific conference to discuss a regional approach to the refugee issue. End of story!

Now, I’m not casting aspersions on action, and I can understand that when you have half a blink in which to prove you can make a difference you want to make maximum impact. But what I am worried about is the law of physics that says every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and what that all means for our future and desperate people.

Tony of course was gobsmacked and used stop the boats three times in the space of a four sentence response.

I felt a bit like Tony – now that’s scary!

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Art work of the week

Just a tiny topical sketch today

You've got me in a spin.  Pen and ink on paper.

We have to talk (about) Kevin

I’ve just got back from a fortnight in Vietnam. 

During my trip Singapore airport asked me to rate the cleanliness of their toilets. I just had to jab the appropriate smiley face. Vietnam hotels wanted feedback about whether their staff have served my every need. 

But I still haven’t been polled about my political convictions nor my choice for the upcoming (whenever Kevin calls it) Australian election.

So in the increasingly mistaken idea that someone in the universe is interested in what I think (even if some weeks my most numerous followers are in Romania), here I go again.

 We need to talk, Kevin.

I have only met you once in person, and you were polite, courteous, interested in what was going on at the school you visited, and seemed to connect with the kids and staff. Now that may be politics, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

I have friends who are public servants and who have nightmare tales about working under your former leadership regime. 

So here is my advice given those two direct experiences:

1. Don’t micro-manage. There are excellent people in the world who can do their job without being watched every minute, or without having to provided inordinate amounts of detailed briefings for no real purpose. Be clear about what you want and let people get on with the job.

2. If you want to work 24/7 then that’s fine. But don’t expect your public servants to do the same thing. Expecting people to be on deck before 7am to provide responses to media items is just unnecessary and absolutely disrespectful. People have families and need to be able to balance the demands of their work with the demands of their children, spouses, partners, parents etc.

By the same token don’t create accountability  and deadlines that required working in to the wee hours of the night either. This is not fair, nor reasonable. 

3. Find advisers who have some life experience, brains and education and will provide real advice about what’s going on out here instead of responding to polls that obviously don’t reach the whole population – ever (have I told you nobody polls me). Look up praxis.

4.Don’t let advisers and staff groom you with blandness to the point of disappearance.

5. I’m over ‘cut to the bone’ and I’ll soon be over ‘negative’ as well. The media may like catch cries – advisers may tell you if you repeat the same message over and over so that it is ingrained in the psyche, but I say forget the tired and trite and talk to us like we are intelligent people who understand complicated English.

6. Don’t resort to abuse – you are a leader – you set the tone. There is a time for spitting the dummy- rarely- and then it should happen with intelligence and wit (sic Paul Keating).

7. Drive policy change with backbone, conviction and sound rationale that doesn’t change in an ad hoc response to unpopular comment.

8. And finally, (and again, I can’t believe I am citing Mark Latham) it’s time to do something about the factional and sub-factional Labour system that determines candidacy and policy direction. I appreciate this is a big one and that you are not God.

There’s a lot riding on you Kevin. What have you got to lose?

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No art work this week - have been too busy enjoying the sights of Vietnam.

Can I push this polling?

While the morning was trying to climb above the zero degree mark,  I was motoring down the Highway for an early morning start at my part-time job where my workmates speak tweet and I speak encyclopaedic. I sometimes think I am the bike riding, power station loving character on New Tricks.

I was daydreaming about the 30+ temperatures and humidity I will experience in Hanoi next week but was abruptly bought back to reality by my Radio National driving companion. Craig Emerson was in the spotlight making it plain that he had no book of protocols from which he was speaking, and if the listener wanted they could bring their camera around to his side of the desk and check it out. Oh, such fascinating pollie comedy so early in the morning!

His point was about polls. His claim: everyone does polls – news polls, social polls, lobby group polls, factional polls, secret polls…so the list went on. And while he didn’t quote: the only poll that counts is the one at the voting booth on election day, he couldn't miss the golden opportunity  to reference cutting to the bone and citing events in Queensland as indicative of what might happen should Labor be unsuccessful at the poll that counts.

Now, I’ve been doing research lately and developing and analysing survey results is becoming a specialty. So I thought it might be a good idea to develop my own poll and send it out – since nobody polls me - ever (sic. the name of this blog!). 

Here are some sample questions:

1. Have you or a member of your family past or present come to Australia as a result of famine, political persecution, war, or because you/they were sentenced for the term of your/their natural life?

                                    Yes                         No

         If Yes: you are a refugee and you may need to invest in a lifebuoy

         If No: you may need to check ancestry.com

2. Would you prefer our future Prime Minister to be:

a: a redhead

b: a budgie smuggler

        If a) you may have to buy an I love Pauline shirt from your local fish and chip shop

        If b) you may want to start filling out your NZ citizenship application now.

3. What are your priorities for the nation?

         a) Subsidising multi-nationals so they can eventually close their production in Australia when  it              becomes non-profitable to continue.

         b) Ensuring that you personally help each politician get elected in September as you don’t like to see Aussies lose their jobs. Who cares about the public servants who are out to lunch.

        c) Reducing wages so that big mining companies can make bigger profits. Gina we love you.

        d) Rolling back and repealing any laws made in the last 40 years so that we are once again that grand and glorious society so wonderfully depicted in Mad Men .

       e) Guaranteeing funding for political parties so that they can promote themselves for nine months before every election. Give me more Bob Katter.

       f) Seeing more of Tom Waterhouse on TV because he knows what you want.

       g) Government take-over of the media because we all know that only government knows what is good for us to see and hear.

       h) Returning to teaching the three R’s because children can’t read or write or spell or add or calculate or do anything worth while really. And for that matter, get rid of calculators, mobile phones  and computers too.

       i) Cutting even more funding to universities because they just encourage dissenters and time wasters – get a real job.

       j) Introducing even more gruesome adds on TV that show people dying, wheezing, gasping, being trapped in coffins, or having nicotine squeezed out of their essential organs, so that even though you are a non-smoker you need to be constantly reminded about your own mortality.  

     k) Returning respect for the clergy. Heaven knows they have earned it.

     l) Cutting down all camphor laurel trees and floating them adrift since they are illegal arrivals and need to be severed before they kill all the pigeons in Lismore.

OK, that last choice is silly, but I swear someone made that argument to me in a letter once when they were writing to complain about the proliferation of such trees in school yards in Northern NSW.

When I have all my questions sorted - and I take your point that 12 options is just too many in Question 3 - I’ll give you the link to Survey Monkey and you can fill it in. 

Do you think my careful analysis and report on the data will get front page coverage in the national press?

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Art Work of the Week

I looked for something to go with todays theme and the best I could do was a a painting that is made up of squares...just like my tick boxes will look when my survey is finished!

Carol's rocks. Assemblage of  small acrylic paintings on canvas (detail)