Archive | December, 2013

Abbott dumps on low income Australians from the ski fields of France.

30 Dec

There can be no doubt that the proposed government tax of $6 on visits to the doctor will only seriously affect those already struggling to keep heads above water, and one has to ask, why would any government decide to make things even more difficult than they already are for a considerable number of its citizens?

Pensioners and those holding concession cards will be exempt from the charge, however, this exemption does not cover low-income earners ineligible for such assistance.

The proposed GP tax is intended to be  “a simple yet powerful reminder that, as far as possible, we have a responsibility to look after our own health, not simply pass on all the costs of, and the responsibility for, caring for ourselves to fellow taxpayers…” reads the report provided to the government by The Australian Centre for Health Research, a conservative think tank, why am I not surprised.

Of course those of us who are able ought to take as much responsibility for our health as possible, and visiting the doctor when ill is taking responsibility, whether we’re well off or not. There is little more irresponsible than self-neglect, except of course a government that places a group of its citizens in a situation where self-neglect becomes their only option.

As is usual with conservative think tanks, no allowance is made for those who are as morally responsible as anyone else, but lack financial means.  One could be forgiven for taking this one step further, and assuming conservative think tanks and their masters conflate a lack of means with moral turpitude and its attendant irresponsibility. The outcome of such thinking is that those who are too poor to pay for their own health care really should be left to die, as there is no place in a conservative world for anyone who can’t, for whatever reason, fund their own lives.

As the purpose of the new tax is to relieve the burden of demand on our health care system, conservatives are obviously of the opinion that it is the less financially fortunate among us who are burdensome. No middle class individual goes to her or his GP unnecessarily, it is assumed, as a mere $6 is unlikely to dissuade them from this practice. No, only the poor are responsible for draining our medical resources, presumably because of all the burgers, fries, & coke they consume instead of the healthy food they could afford, if only they would stay home from the doctor’s long enough to put their minds to their budgets.

Obviously a $6 charge whenever one visits the doctor isn’t going to be an oppressive discouragement for those who are reasonably well off, though depending on one’s state of health and number of children, it could quickly add up. However, if finances are already stretched in a household, an additional $6 for every doctor’s visit could conceivably lead to a decision not to make that visit in circumstances where it’s necessary.

It will almost certainly lead to increased pressure on already stretched hospital accident and emergency facilities, as an option for those unable to afford the tax.

That a government even considers creating a situation in which any citizens are discouraged from attending to their health and the health of their children is an obscenity. The message Prime Minister Abbot is sending from the slopes of the French Alps where I understand he and his family are enjoying a ski ing holiday, is that below a certain level of income, the health of Australian citizens is of no interest to him and his government. It is, it seems, incomprehensible to the leader of this country that for many people there is simply not $6 to spare.

Such failures of imagination are predictable in a politics in which middle class welfare and protection of the wealthy are the priority of government that increasingly appears to govern in their interests.

Or as Gerry Harvey unforgettably expressed it when offering his views on charity for the homeless:

“It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.

“So did that million you gave them help? It helped to keep them alive but did it help our society? No. Society might have been better off without them but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged and so we do it. But it doesn’t help the society.”

It’s a slippery slope you’re ski-ing Mr Abbott.

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Happy holidays?

22 Dec

It’s here again, that time of the year. I don’t know whether to wish everyone happy holidays, or send best wishes for your survival, emotional, spiritual, physical and mental. I’ll do both, to cover every eventuality, unless of course you voted for the government, in which case I AM NOT FEELING THE LOVE.

But more of that later. In the meantime we say love one another if you can, and if you can’t, stay away from sharp implements.

 Caloundra Xmas 2013

And here’s one of my favourite Bob Dylan songs, Forever Young. Listen to the lyrics, (which are here if you can’t hear them) they are everything No Place for Sheep wishes for everyone.

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Marriage equality: what is it good for?

8 Dec

Marriage Equality

I realised during an enthusiastic debate on Twitter yesterday with @amicus_AU and @chronicfemme on the question of marriage equality, that apparently both ends of the continuum fear that same-sex marriage will result in an apocalypse for their cause. Marriage conservatives fear equality will bring about the death of marriage in an inexplicable metaphysical erosion of heterosexual values, while some in the queer community fear it will bring about the death of queer, as queer couples reject the radical demand to abolish state-sanctioned commitments altogether, and instead seek acceptance within the heteronormative paradigm of marriage.

The marriage equality debate inevitably becomes conflated with the debate about the institution of marriage, which is unfortunate, to my mind. They are two separate and equally important issues, and neither is done justice when they are intertwined.

Nobody wants the state in their bedroom. It is not the state’s business whom one chooses to marry, or live in a de facto relationship with. At the same time, when such arrangements break down, there must be protections in place for the wellbeing of vulnerable parties, usually women and children under current arrangements, who are likely to come off second best in serious matters such as property settlements, child support, access to a parent and all the other miserable detritus that commonly litters the personal landscape when things go wrong.

Humans being what we are, and being even more what we are in times of relationship breakdown, many of us cannot be trusted to behave reasonably when we are in the grip of extreme emotion provoked by the collapse of hope and future and the losses involved. We need laws at these times, and state-sanctioned relationships provide us with these laws.

If the argument is for no state involvement at all then we cannot argue for recognised de facto relationships either, as these are also governed by the state at times of breakdown, though not in precisely the same way as is marriage.

If it is heteronormative for queer couples to marry, is it also heteronormative for them to be covered by the protections offered to de factos?

Are queers arguing against marriage equality actually arguing that creating a couple is heteronormative? This is to my mind an interesting argument, and one that takes us into the fascinating territory of theories of constructed desires, et al, however, in practice as a society we have to contend with coupledom and its consequences for the vulnerable being currently rather more in our faces than theories of desire, and requiring our urgent practical attention.

Which is not to say people shouldn’t think about these things if that is our inclination, and radically interrogate entrenched norms.

I’m at a loss to imagine a system of relationship in which the state is not involved. It cannot be left up to individuals to fairly sort out the messes that occur when intimate relationships break down. Therefore, it is absolutely unjust for that protection to be denied to couples other than the heterosexual. There is simply no valid argument to deny marriage equality: every human being is entitled to the same protections, regardless of sexual orientation.

If you don’t “believe” in the state having anything to do with your relationship, don’t call upon its laws to protect you if your relationship breaks down. Find a radical new paradigm, rather than simply calling for our current arrangements to be abolished. I haven’t heard or read any discussion of viable alternatives that can achieve what state intervention achieves when marriages and de facto relationships collapse, and people have to salvage what they can of their lives and the lives of any children involved.

As for the supernaturally destructive powers invested in marriage equality by opponents of all kinds: if your ideology is so fragile that people loving each other in the manner they choose is going to destroy it, maybe it’s time to find a new ideology?

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Save the last dance for me

1 Dec

When a performer has reached the age of  seventy-nine one can be forgiven for fearing every appearance might be his last, and it was clear at Leonard Cohen’s concert in Brisbane last night that thought has also crossed his mind.

Though he is enviably fit (he drops to his knees with strength of feeling, and there’s not a catch in his voice when he rises again without even putting his hands on the floor) and his voice has thrillingly deepened since I saw him last some three years ago, he is an old man and I have prepared myself for last night to be the final time I see him.

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey 
I ache in the places where I used to play 
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on 
I’m just paying my rent every day 
Oh in the Tower of Song

The man was on stage for well over three hours, finally remarking that he really wouldn’t mind if we all decided to go home, but nobody wanted to go home, nobody wanted to leave him,  and we stamped and clapped and yelled “More please, more please,” like two-year-olds presenting our empty bowls for refills.

And refill them he did. Perhaps it’s to do with his sojourn in a Buddhist monastery, but Cohen has a talent for living in the moment that allows him to sing every song as if it’s the first performance, with a freshness and passion that lets the audience hear the lyrics anew, even though some of us can recite them in our sleep. He’s surrounded himself with musicians who can do exactly the same thing, performers for whom Cohen expresses the most gracious respect, granting them time and space to shine as he steps quietly away, his hat doffed, his head bowed in deference to artists such as Javier Mas, the “sublime” Webb Sisters, and long-time collaborator Sharon Robinson, whose breathtaking interpretation of Cohen’s “Alexandra Leaving” I present here for your pleasure.

Music is, of course, from and for the emotions, but it takes a rare talent in any genre to convey the kind of feeling that deeply moves the heart, mind, body and spirit. Cohen and his fellows share the ability to imperceptibly nudge their audience out of the everyday into the realms of poetry, that is, to evoke meaning over and above the prosaic, the obvious. Cohen stirs the emotional imagination, the man can’t help it, a brief account of his journey through the Brisbane tunnels on his way to the Entertainment Centre becomes a metaphor for life. The tunnels were therapeutic, he says. He entered them feeling not so well but by the time he emerged he was feeling splendid. Through darkness into light: there is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.

Although Buddhism became a significant part of Cohen’s life, like Bob Dylan he is also fascinated by Christian imagery, and often references the traditions of that faith, especially in his latest album, “Old Ideas.”

I have to add here that there’s not much else Dylan & Cohen have in common attitudinally. Cohen assumes everybody likes him and won’t hold it against them if they don’t. Dylan assumes everybody is his enemy and especially hates them if they like him. I could write a thesis comparing the two, and I might well one day.

“Old Ideas” has the feeling of a man preparing for the end of his life, especially the quite lovely “Come Healing:” Behold the gates of mercy in arbitrary space, and none of us deserving the cruelty or the grace…

Yet it is a measure of Cohen’s astounding talent that he can imbue the 1960’s Drifters classic “Save the Last Dance for Me,” recorded by, among many, Dolly Parton, the appalling Michael Buble, Ike & Tina Turner, Harry Nilsson, Emmylou Harris et al, with such poignancy, as he performs it as his last song of the evening (no matter how much we shout and plead he’s skipped off stage, yes, he skips, and he won’t come back) and the familiar song takes on the quality of a farewell to the audience that he loves, but knows he must finally leave, and he wants us not to forget him, he wants us to save our last dance for him cos he loves us, oh so much.

Ah, Leonard. Right back at ya.

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