Raquel is a bogan? So what’s that make the rest of us?

23 Jun

Go back to where you came from: Part Two

I don’t know if it was the confusion of the raid, but it looked to me last night as if two of the Australian men taken along with Malaysian immigration officials for the ride, actually joined in ferreting out those miserable refugees from the rat’s nests they called home, and in sending them into a legal system where they’ll be subject to a variety of possible punishments including caning. I don’t want to believe that, but it’s what it looked like.

Caught up in the excitement of the chase, perhaps. Can happen to anybody.

Young Raquel, who I hear has been subjected to torrents of Twitter abuse on account of being considered a “bogan,” positively reveled in the rounding up of women, children and men, declaring that’s it’s what we should be doing in Australia because these people have done the wrong thing. (Apparently racism is a bogan characteristic.I thought it was much more widespread than that.)

Raquel was later questioned about herself by a UN official at a refugee camp in Kenya where she’ll spend the next few days of her life trying not to go to the toilet. In response to his questions Raquel replied that she does nothing, she doesn’t work, and she stays at home with the dogs. The UN official looked bemused. Life is odd in Western democracies.

I don’t really approve of the Twitter crowd’s attack on Raquel. I’m a subscriber to the opinion that the bogan is a construct created by the middle classes to give themselves something to feel superior to. This indicates terrific insecurity on the part of the middle class, if they need to trash somebody else in order to feel like worthwhile human beings.

It strikes me as ironic that a participant in a program that demonstrates extraordinarily well how comfortable Australians construct a refugee other in order to feel morally superior, is herself subjected to this othering by her countrymen and women. It confirms my suspicion that one of the most common ways human beings reassure ourselves about our worth is to measure it against someone we think is in some way less than us. Boganing is but one example of this, as is the moral condemnation of asylum seekers.

Then there’s those of us who morally condemn those who morally condemn asylum seekers and bogans.

In truth, there’s a bogan in all of us.

As for the program – I find myself wondering what the refugees think of having six privileged white people plus camera crew and gear plonked down in their midst, in the interests of producing a spectacle for everybody back home. The middle class hungers for spectacle, and the miseries of others temporarily satiate that craving. Is this morally repugnant exploitation? Whose interests does this program serve? What difference will it make to those refugees?

Or in the end, is it all about us?

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Gillard government ideology silences victims

23 Jun

Having now published two articles on ABC’s The Drum on the topic of the Gillard government’s National Plan to prevent violence against women and their children, I’m convinced  that there are an awful lot of people who believe that there’s only one kind of family violence worth talking about, and that’s male violence against women.

The number of times I’ve been attacked for “distracting attention” from this form of violence because I’m pointing out that there are also female perpetrators of family violence against women and children, and this should not be ignored by  any National Plan. This gives a troubling insight into an established truth regime created and perpetuated by the  Plan through its own definition of domestic and family violence.

“Truth regime” is a term coined by French thinker and philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault argued that we conduct our lives under the largely unacknowledged control of  “truth regimes.” A truth regime is a construct of political and economic forces that command majority power in society, with which we are obliged to conform to varying degrees, if we want to be accepted and stay out of prison.

Among other things, truth regimes circulate statements that are prescriptions for what populations should consider to be the “natural” order of things.  One of the ways this control is achieved is by ignoring and thus silencing any other perspective when designing and legislating public policy.

The National Plan is a brilliant example of a dominant ideology constructing a truth regime under which we must all labour, in this case, for the next 12 years. The truth they’ve consructed is: domestic and family violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men on women and “their” children. No matter how many voices are raised with stories of family abuse they’ve experienced at the hands of women, they don’t count. They’re invalid. They’re not in the Plan’s agenda.

Note the possessive, “their children.”According to the truth regime, children belong to women. Never mind that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are signatory, has set out a whole raft of children’s rights, including the right for children to have rights entirely separate from their parents. The National Plan says children belong to women.

Responses to my criticisms of the inadequacies of the Nation Plan, which are basically that it will achieve little until it addresses FAMILY violence and not just male violence in families, indicate that there are many subscribers to this truth regime who have a great deal invested in denying all other family violence. This is extraordinary when one considers how hard feminists and others have fought for decades to open the door on domestic violence and give victims a voice.

It seems that we are selective about which victims to whom we grant a voice. Victims of women are out of luck.

The reality is that we’ve been trying for forty years to address family violence from the position that it is all male perpetrated. We have achieved nothing in terms of preventing domestic violence, we’ve just become better at band-aiding the wounds. While one type of family violence never justifies another, it defies all logic that we focus our entire attention on one aspect of a complex situation and expect that we can change it.

Then there’s the common belief that if we acknowledge female family violence we’ll somehow detract from and minimize that perpetrated by men. Are we really so incapable of holding more than one form of violence in our consciousness at the same time? Are we obliged to live under a George Bush type ideology that states the truth as: women are always victims and men are always perpetrators?

The ideology on which the National Plan is based is silencing domestic violence victims and survivors who do not fit into it’s narrow definitions. The truth regime is firmly in place. There are sporadic protests against its dominance, and one can only hope that resistance to the ideology will increase over time, until a more realistic and holistic understanding of family violence takes its place.

The family unfriendly plan

22 Jun

The family unfriendly plan – female perpetrated family abuse neglected by the new National Plan to prevent violence against women and their children – ABC The Drum today.

Go back to where you came from

22 Jun

fuck-off-we-are-full

 

Go back to where you came from, aired on SBS last night,  is a three part series with a unique approach to educating it’s audience on the complex issues of boat arrivals and refugees in Australia.

In part one we’re introduced to the six participants, three men and three women, who have a diverse range of views on asylum seekers, from understanding and compassion, to angry rejection. There’s a young woman Raquel for example,who hates Africans, a position that presents something of a challenge for her when she’s sent to stay for three nights with a refugee family from Burandi and Congo.

Interestingly, while Raquel discovers herself capable of genuine empathy after listening to the sufferings endured by her hostess, she later declares that they were just one nice family, doesn’t mean she’s going to get friendly with Africans per se, whom she still doesn’t like.

The use of reality TV techniques, such as dramatic music and the friendly but authoritative manner of the program’s host, refugee researcher Dr David Corlett, are reminiscent of Big Brother and Survivor. I read this as ironic comment on reality TV shows that similarly challenge participants to take time out of their comfort zone to see what they can become, but unlike the SBS series, take no interest in anything other than the personal emotional journey.

In widening the focus the series becomes part reality TV, part documentary. This is a fascinating combination.

Already the participants have begun a psychological process of decompensation, as they’re thrust into situations entirely foreign to them, including embarking on a leaky boat for an unknown destination, bereft of passports, wallets, phones, money and ID. Just like real boat people. Tempers fray, harsh words are exchanged, and the experience may well have given Rae, a 63 year old retired social worker, pause for thought. At the beginning of the show Rae told us that when the boat was wrecked at Christmas Island last December she thought: “Serves you bastards right.”

While not agreeing with all of their views, nonetheless I very much admire this motley crew. They can never experience the life threatening dangers and torments boat people and refugees actually endure, but they are willing to go way outside of their physical, emotional and psychological comfort zones. This is brave, even if there is a camera crew and later, UN and US troops guarding them as they enter into dangerous territory. It’s a long way from Cronulla beaches, idyllic farmlets and safe lives with people who love you. All credit to them for volunteering to take themselves into something completely different.

The series promises intriguing insights into human behaviour under extraordinary stress, combined with profound insights into what asylum seekers and refugees are actually fleeing. As a social experiment it’s got to be unique. With the wide range of views represented by the participants, there’s someone for everyone to identify with, and this is smart. It wouldn’t have been nearly as useful if the group were like minded either way.

There seems to be little concern about the presence of cameras. I don’t think anyone is performing, though they may certainly be restraining themselves at times. It’s an unnatural situation in every way, and nobody’s going to behave as they do in their own homes without surveillance. Be that as it may, the participants seem to be honest in their expression of emotion and opinion, and this is one of the most powerful aspects of the program as they react, for example, to their initial visit to the Villawood Detention Centre where they talk to Iraqi detainees.

The program is a powerful argument for how people’s attitudes can shift when they are face to face with human suffering. All the propagandists from John Howard on have recognized the need to hide boat people away in desert camps and behind razor wire, to prevent their faces and their stories being known. Dehumanizing them by rendering them faceless continues to be a primary tool in the manipulation of Australian public opinion.

The first rule of propaganda is to stereotype your target.  Go back to where you came from challenges the propaganda head on, and for this alone, I’m glad to see it out there.

 

 

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Rudd cancels party; pot calls kettle black, and it’s all good for the mad monk

20 Jun

This time last year, freshly ousted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised a “first anniversary of my knifing” party for his then staffers.

As the anniversary looms there’s entirely unsurprising and rabid media interest in the proposed gathering, causing the now Foreign Minister to cancel the event for fear of damage to his front lawn, and because of former staffers’ natural reluctance to run the gauntlet of television lights and media exposure to celebrate the occasion with Kev.

However, there should be some formal acknowledgement of this anniversary. After all, the circumstances were unprecedented and historic. Never before have we seen a first term PM chucked out by his party. While insiders may have been aware that something was going down, the event seems to have taken the majority of the media and most of the general population entirely by surprise.

Ever since that spectacle Rudd, a solitary essence, has  haunted the ALP and parliament, inconsolable and unforgiving as the undead. To the degree that we now have such ex luminaries as former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie calling for Rudd to move quietly to the back benches, and then quietly disappear.

This is further proof, if further proof was required, of the ALP’s endemic weakness for magical thinking. The “Rudd fading into obscurity ship” has long since sailed, if indeed, it ever got off the slips.

There have also been calls for Gillard to sack Rudd. But on what grounds? The man is performing well in his job. While his undermining of the Gillard government is as effective as a tribe of white ants secretly gnawing away at the timbers of a Queenslander house, Rudd’s mission is accomplished through innuendo, not the kind of direct attack that could be used as a justification for throwing him out.

And how is it possible to sack an elected representative for giving interviews about how he felt when they threw him out of his job?

Now we have the extraordinary situation of 60% of voters backing Rudd as preferred PM, while a dismal 31% back the woman who replaced him.

Somewhere in the last couple of days I came across an article in which Karl Bitar lamented that at the time of Rudd’s ousting, the ALP did not take sufficient advantage of a golden opportunity to explain to the electorate just how “odd” Rudd is. Had we known Bitar seems to believe we would have been far more accepting of the coup, and joined with Gillard and the faceless men who engineered it, in rejoicing at our liberation from the odd.

Bitar calls Rudd odd? Pot and kettle, anyone?

In the meantime, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott must be overwhelmed by the ammunition regularly supplied to him by the ALP to help him shoot them down. They never disappoint him. They’re always there when he needs them.  Now he wants a $69 million carbon tax plebiscite, telling  ABC’s AM program this morning: “I want the Australian people to have a direct say about the biggest economic change in our history. This is the vote the Prime Minister didn’t allow us to have at the last election. I want this to happen.”

Whether or not Abbott can succeed with his plebiscite proposal is as yet unclear. What he will succeed in immediately achieving is the further aggravation of discontent amongst a great many people who are outraged at the prospect of the carbon tax, especially in view of Gillard’s promise when she took over from Rudd that she wasn’t going to introduce one.

The manner of Gillard’s ascension to the top job caused considerable upheaval in an electorate that might not have been enamoured with Rudd at that particular moment in time, but was certainly not ready to have others chuck him out without consultation. Many of us got off on the wrong foot with Gillard, so to speak. Since then, the ALP has not managed to hold onto any ground they might have initially gained.

This certainly isn’t all down to Rudd. Getting rid of him isn’t going to help, in fact it’s likely to make matters even worse. Rudd is more popular than the PM. Why would anyone in their right minds think that sacking him on what could only be extremely tenuous and dubious grounds, be anything other than another desperate act of self-destruction for the ALP?

The man has too much public sympathy. They might as well have him cast in bronze as a holy martyr, while the mad monk becomes more and more convinced of his divine right to rule.

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Fools for love

19 Jun

In love, the person is always the fool, emptied of prudence, his (sic) desires evident to the world, his transgressions revealed to all, especially to himself. Thomas Moore

Fools for Love is a collection of stories about love that went wrong.

Practically everyone has a break-up story, or knows someone who has. Break-ups are commonplace, but the individual experience of a break-up is unique. Even though everyone going through it describes similar emotions, one of the characteristics of an ending is that it feels as if this is the first time any human being has suffered in quite this way. Just like it felt when we fell in love.

Here is Bernard’s story in his own words, minimally edited for continuity. Names have been changed.

Well, we were married for thirteen years, fourteen years probably because our daughter Josie was about 13 when we separated.

She’s my oldest, then there’s the boys. It was always hard work but I just assumed that with six kids that we’d always be together.

I expected that to happen. Being Catholic made it a bit more “that’s the way it is.” If you’re unhappy you put up with it and Marianne was Catholic too.

Anyhow, we had some bad times, hard times because my ex wife’s a really, really bad spender. I’d think we owed no money and we owed ten thousand dollars or five thousand dollars and we wouldn’t have it to pay. Credit cards and blah blah blah, so we were always under pressure financially, always looking for something better and more money. There was non-stop pressure.

So we’d hit a brick wall and then she’d say “Well, you go and have a couple of days at your brother’s place,” or something like that. “That will give you time to think,” she’d say. So I’d do that.

One night when she’d said to do that (my brother lived not too far down the road) I was sleeping on his lounge and a client rang and said he needed some information that I kept at home. I said, “OK, well I’ll go and get it.” So I rang home and got my daughter and said along the lines of, I said “Where’s mum?” And she said (she was about 12 or 13), “Oh she’s gone out with a girlfriend.” So I said, “Well, tell your Mum that I’ll come home and pick up John’s file ‘cos he wants something out of the file.” She said all right and then she went to bed. Well, when I got home my wife was in bed with another bloke.

So. I was. I was out of the house to help pay off, help our problems and she just had a boyfriend and that shattered me.

I stayed awake all night.

She told me to go, he was in the bed with her. He was a guy called Martin, and I was just devastated so I went back to my brother’s. I couldn’t sleep. First thing in the morning my sister in law Claire gets up and I started to talk. I said, “I had to go home last night to pick up something and Marianne was in bed with a bloke.” And she said “Well, obviously she’s got a boyfriend.” I hadn’t thought of that, I just thought we were having a bad time so everyone sort of knew bar me that I was a mug.

So I rang Marianne’s mum and dad up and said, “Well, I’m going back home I’m throwing her out of the house. Bugger this.” And then they stepped in and said, “Well these things happen,” blah blah blah and Marianne put on the tears so I moved back home and let her stay.

Anyhow that was the beginning of the end of the marriage and I don’t know how long it had been going on before that. Obviously for some time cos it wouldn’t have been the first time she’d organised me to get out of the house because she’d had this bloke lined up again. Instead of her going to his place he came to my place.

All the kids were there, but they were little so they were in bed. So a few months later she did the same sort of thing again. She said, “I’m going to stay with my girlfriend.”

I always believed her, yeah. I only found it out to be lies later. If she’d catch herself out she’d just tell lies. It was so obvious. She’d forget how many lies she told. It was easy ‘cos I believed her but it wouldn’t have been so easy for her to get away with it if I’d been the third party looking in instead of being the injured party.

So a few months later don’t know how many to tell you the truth, might have been three or four she said, “I’m going to my girlfriend’s to spend some time with her.” They were all people she used to play golf with and I got a phone call and I answered the phone and they said, “Is that Martin?” I said, “Oh, no.”

It was my phone.

It was a travel agent and then the people on the other end sort of twigged and got a bit evasive so they didn’t say much but it just made no sense it was a travel agent on the other side of town and I said to my friend who had access then to information he shouldn’t have, but it happens, and he checked for me.

I thought something’s not right, Marianne’s supposed to be at a girlfriend’s. He checked the aircraft departures and she’d taken off  with some bloke again for a week’s holiday and told me she was at a girlfriend’s.

So that was the sort of thing and then she’d come back and say, “I’m leaving you,” and I still tried to get her not to leave. But that was how she left me, then she moved out and we had no money. I had a small income, a reasonable income, but with six kids we had no money and her spending would make sure anything we had had to pay the debts and so she moved out but she rented a place for three or four hundred dollars a week and she just didn’t have it. I used to help her out and go round there and give her money and try to get her to come back home.

A big house, a lovely house and then she said to her bloke, I don’t know for sure, I’m surmising, “I’m free now.” And she took Kyle with her who was then two and a half or three he’s now nineteen or twenty so that’s seventeen years ago, and the girl she used as the babysitter and as soon as she was available all the time the guy shot through.

I don’t know what happened there. All I know is from the time she walked out on me for this bloke he was hardly around. They broke up almost straight away cos why would you want a woman with six kids? It was all right as a bit on the side but no value when she’s available as a full time partner so that hardly lasted and then there’s this old bloke called Bob that Kyle used to talk about who was on the dole

I asked Kyle “Who’s Bob?” and he said, “Oh, he’s an old bloke that’s helping around the house comes and does a few things around the house.

Bob turned out to be another swimmer she was screwing who she ended up marrying because she got him on the rebound. Bob was somebody else’s. She told another set of stories about here’s Bob doing this and this, helping me out.

Bob had a partner I don’t think he’d broken up with his other girlfriend. Bob was a swimmer but he’d left swimming as well, cranky old bastard. He was a schoolteacher and once Mark left Marianne Bob was on the scene.

So next thing you know she got kicked out cos she didn’t pay the rent for all this time. Next thing you know she had to let go of the house so she did a runner and moved in with Bob.

I didn’t have Kyle he was with his mother. My daughter was staying with my sister in law and I had the other four boys who were like 7, 9, 11, and 12. I was looking after the boys and working.

 Yeah. And when Marianne said she was moving out I said, “Well, take what you need out of the house because you’re moving.” So she took everything. All we had left in the house was an esky with some milk and a broken down toaster and three beds for five people. I just slept with the boys. Nothing else in the house. Oh, and the dryer, no, the dishwasher, not the dishwasher, the dryer and the washing machine. There wasn’t any room on the truck to take them so she come back and I said, “You can’t have them I need them to wash the kids clothes.” So we had a fight about the washing machine and the dryer so I had a washing machine and a dryer and a foam esky to put some milk in and a broken down radio. TV and all the furniture in the whole house was gone. A few broken cups and saucers that’s all we had. Very interesting time.

Oh, I don’t know.

I was distressed and then she moved in with Bob. I found out about Bob because what did she do, she did something, oh yes she embezzled money from a company she was working at. She was writing cheques and taking the money and the police come looking for her and this detective rings me up and says, “Blah blah blah,” and I said she wasn’t with me she left seven months ago to live with her girlfriend and the cop said they were looking for her and I said, “Well she’s living with her girlfriend,” cos she’d told me that in Hampton or Fernleigh or somewhere and he said, “Well she’s not living with her girlfriend she’s living with her boyfriend in Kingston.”

I said, “That can’t be right.”

He said, “Mate, I’m telling you.”

So that’s how I found out where she was living. So I was dropping her off to go to her girlfriend’s and she was just walking round to Bob’s place but I didn’t know that for a month or so. Till the police told me. So she ended up getting arrested for embezzlement. I don’t know how she got out of that. Cried poormouth, her Mum and Dad did something about it, but she was guilty of stealing checks and cashing them.

So then she moves in with Bob. Next thing you know she’s pregnant to Bob and she didn’t tell me she was pregnant my brother in law told me. I’ve got no sense of time here but it was five or six months after she moved out. I’d lost my job I had no money, I’d no work I’d sold the house because the house had such a mortgage on it that we had no money at all. Rented a little dump and I mean a dump, a little timber cottage with the boys and I had no source of income cos I’d lost my job. So I had a few clients, about a hundred clients or so and I was working at the dogs as a bookmaker’s clerk and anything else I could get just to a bit of work. One of my cousins worked at this shipping company and he gave me a few hours work doing this and that so that was my source of income. Nothing consistent.

I’d drop the boys off at school and because I didn’t have a job, oh I had a job for a little while and I put them into day care at first go to work then pick the boys up at five and go home. Then I couldn’t get another job cos everyone wanted me to work stupid hours and I had to get the boys to school and pick them up. So I made sure I had no appointments at two o clock or finish at two o clock make some tea for them and maybe go and see someone else in the evening or whatever so I just worked around what had to be done.  Brendan was the only one in high school the others were in primary school and my brother in law then who’s also divorced from Marianne’s sister now said to me, “Oh Marianne’s pregnant.” I said, “No, she can’t be pregnant.” I said, “Everyone knows except me, she hasn’t told me she’s pregnant.” He said, “Oh sorry I didn’t know maybe I shouldn’t speak.”

So I was talking to her Mum and they all knew and I said something along the lines, “Oh now that Marianne’s pregnant.” So she was, it came up when I saw her mother and she said, “Oh you now these things happen.” Again. It’s always when it’s their kids these things happen, when it’s you you’re the worst one in the world, that was the really funny part about it. When Ed and Tania broke up Ed was the biggest bastard in the world because Tania gave him a bad time and he found a girlfriend and got a second job because he was trying to keep things going and it was impossible and Ed was the biggest bastard they’d ever met because he did that to Tania. When Marianne did that to me “These things just happen”.

So it was good to see how the rules changed for people. Anyhow so I was never going to get divorced, never believed in divorce but then when that happened I rang my lawyer and I said, “Look, Marianne’s pregnant, just file for divorce. This is stupid. I don’t believe in divorce but this is ridiculous. She’s pregnant to somebody else, just file for divorce.” I filed for divorce she didn’t bother to come to the court. We put in an application to the judge to say I’d had the kids all the time, this is what I do.

Marianne never refuted anything cos she was busy getting on with her new life with Bob. She had Kyle, and then when she got pregnant, my daughter  went to live with her for a while. That didn’t last long because of her and Bob and we set it out, there was nothing to refute in the Family Law Court I got the kids and the judge said, “Well, can you do that?” and sort of laughed so I got the kids. Course I only had the kids as long as she’d let me have them the father can’t take the kids if the mother says she should come back and look after the kids you just lose them.

Well, she said she was going to come back but she didn’t. She never wanted the kids anyhow she just said she wanted them. So I got the kids and then every six months I’d make them go and see their mother because she’d never take any time to come and see them. So I’d take them over to her place and go and see mates while I dropped them off for a few hours. If I didn’t do that she virtually never came near us.

In all that time I was working on getting her back all the time. She’d sort of leave the door ajar to make sure she could manipulate me. I still loved her. Yeah, I’d say so. Yeah. Um, I really didn’t but I thought I did because she’s my wife and so on and this took about five or six years.

Well I thought it was love. But I looking back now, if we’d have stayed together she would have destroyed us. The best thing she ever did to me was leave me. It just took me seven years to realise it.

And we had tos and fros and she’d manipulate me any number of times, she needed money, she need this and I’d help her out I’d do that and she’d just manipulate the situation.

After about two or they years they moved. They bought a bakery. Bob couldn’t boil water let alone be a baker so it was a recipe for disaster but they had the bakery. Plus Marianne had no head for business.  Michael, who’s now 22 was about 8 or 9, they’d had him for a couple of years she’d talked him into coming up for a holiday with them then she talked him into staying with her so I lost Michael then, so she had Michael and Kyle and I had the other three boys and my daughter was in Sydney. So I didn’t see much of them, the kids would come down for a holiday now and then I just had the three boys and the others were with her for two years but any time she still manipulated me when she needed something.

The business failed and they came back.

I hadn’t given up hope because I was still trying to get her to come back. I wasn’t seeing anybody else as I had the kids I didn’t have much time for anybody else and I had no money then, renting, kids were at school I cooked and washed and blah blah blah so my life revolved around the kids really but I had to still leave them to earn a living so I’d feed them of a night and then say to Michael who was about 12 or 13, mind the kids I’ll be back in two hours. I’d go out and see a client and come back. Course my boys got a bit wild in that time because they didn’t have dad around and they took advantage of it you know what teenagers are like, 11, 12 year olds are like.

I still had my dream of getting her back and having our family again. Yeah.

Anyhow this went on for about six or seven years. And what happened was, I met Christine she used to do massage at the squash club. Christine and I have been together about well it’ll be eight years in December. I’d known Christine from squash so I knew her fairly well but she was married to Morgan then who she came back from overseas with, but then she separated from Morgan and she had the children. We had a Christmas party at the Ram’s Head hotel and she’d been single twelve months or so and we were just together and we were all at a table talking and I don’t know, we just got together chatting and I asked her out the week before Christmas and Marianne was coming back to live nearby, she said and then she didn’t come back again. Her and Bob were just separating then some domestic violence from what I understand.

At that time Morgan was about to be posted overseas, they were separated so it was a bit awkward cos he’d moved out of the place he was renting and was staying with her before he moved cos they got on fine, he’s a nice bloke. So we went out and then she said, “We can’t go out for a while, Morgan’s here till the end of January.” I used to still get massages from Christine because I was already doing that every fortnight sore from squash and everything else and that was her job. So we started going out and then we only went out two or three times and I was very hesitant. I liked her and she was a good sort and she said to me one night, “Well I’ve got something to say to you.” We were out for dinner and I though ah well, here we go nobody’s going to stay with you that long you’ve got these kids. I thought oh well, it looks like I’m getting the flick here.

That’s all right, I was going out with someone else I knew, I was just dating it wasn’t that serious and we’d been out two or three times. Christine says, “Oh, well what do you want to do with us?” I said, “I don’t know what you mean?” She said, “Well I don’t want to muck around, what do you want to do?” I said, “Well I like you, I want to keep going out with you OK?” So we didn’t muck around and we started going out together and then, barely after that, Marianne rings up and she says to me, “I’m coming back to live you’ll have to give me a hand.”

So I said, “I’ll help you set up and live near the boys.” I thought that’d be good if their mother came back and lived near the boys cos she had two young kids to Bob, so it’d be good for the boys if she lived somewhere near us and they could see their Mum. Which never eventuated. She said, “Well I need you to give me a hand to get started,” and I said, “Well its no good anymore, I can’t do that I’m going out with somebody I’m with someone, I’m sorry its just not right now I can’t do it.” And she blew up. “Go on,” she said, “ignore your children and your family and kids and worry about your girlfriend.” I thought that was a good call, she’d left me for two or three blokes had two more kids, remarried had another boyfriend in the meantime and was coming back and I was the one who did the wrong thing.

So she abused me. So then I didn’t hear from her. I was seeing Christine, I’d go over there we’d go out, but I’d always come home. Christine didn’t like that much. I just wouldn’t move in. I did my own washing, even though we were together I’d been single than for six or seven years and the boys were fairly young then compared to now, teenagers so we just gradually stayed together longer and the boys got older blah blah blah.

That was the first time I said no to Marianne. Yeah. I suppose it was a relief yeah.

I’d never been interested in anybody else before Christine I went out with a few people but I wasn’t interested it was more like friends, and I’d also decided never to get married again. I’d been married, I wasn’t going to get married again. And Christine’s the only other person I would say, that would have had me, I think, decide to get married again. So then we just started as a couple and by the time I was fifty we were a couple. But I wouldn’t leave anything at her place she had the shits about that. I didn’t take the kids to her place either. We had our house where they stayed they were older now so I’d go back everyday and be there in the morning and everything else, watch the boys, do everything.

Marianne never said anything about Christine. Not about our relationship, I don’t know what she said to the kids but we’ve had a couple of words about some of my boys. We’ve sat down and she goes into tears and carries on. My ex wife’s still going on 17 and she’s fifty this year I think.

I don’t think she’s with anyone now. No, not that I know of She’s been re partnered a couple of times but after Bob there was a guy called Jim, she was with him for some time, she’s bad with relationships because she’s such an air head she’s so manipulative that people just walk. You can’t defend Bob, he belted her I’m sure I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, you can’t defend it but I can understand why, she pushes you to the limit all the time. She was of those people that does push you to the limit. She told Kyle he ruined her relationship with Bob and then he was ruining it with this new bloke so Kyle rang up and said can I come home to live with the others, and I said course you can.

But Christine said he’s too young to live with his brothers he has to come and live with us cos we’d finally moved in together. So she was really good. So he did and that strained our relationship for a few years. It took a long time for Kyle and Christine to get on. They get on good now, but it took a long time so she took that on. He was in all sorts of strife at school, smart arse.  Kicked out of school but we got him in another school and that was fantastic for him, turned him around.

So that’s pretty much the story and I’m good now life’s good now with me and Christine and all the kids are grown up doing their own thing and business is good. I never hear anything from Marianne the boys go see her sometimes. It wasn’t easy but I never want to go through any of that again.

Ξ

The fool and the lover are inseparable, so much so that if a person doesn’t behave at least a little foolishly, perhaps they aren’t really in love.  

In love people rediscover the fool’s childlike innocence. In love, that innocence is expressed as trust. It’s frequently one of the things people take themselves to task for when love goes awry. Then we can feel like the worst of fools. Naïve, stupid, childish and humiliated to have believed we could trust someone who’s betrayed us.


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Is Turkey now showing the Way?

17 Jun

Guest post today by Gerard Oosterman, artist, farmer and blogger.

Turkey promised to keep it’s borders open for the people fleeing the violence in Syria. Many thousands of Syrians have crossed into Turkey. TV footage shows men, women and children walking into that country.

Even though Turkey is a country with a large population of over seventy million and already coping with an overflow of many other nationalities, it has not lost its humanity in doing the right thing by extending its hospitality to those so much worse off.  They are quickly opening disused buildings and building camps, and constructing a temporary hospital.

If Turkey can do it, where is our compassion?

Lack of ‘humaneness’ is what seems to doggedly divide Australia from most of the rest of the world, with a deeply ingrained hostility towards others. It is especially directed to those hapless victims of endless wars that somehow managed to make it anywhere near our shores.

Our present minister and previous government ministers have exalted in, ‘we must make conditions here as harsh as possible as a deterrent’. The general gist of the messages from our governments has been constant: “No-one, we repeat, no-one should come here on the understanding they will be treated with compassion or care if they jump the ‘queue’ or come ‘illegal’ by boat,”  is what they are saying. The political leaders are well aware that those sentiments will be well rewarded with the approval of thousand of voters.

The latest threat of sending at least 800 refugees to Malaysia just about takes the cake in the manoeuvring of our desperate government keen to further our whipped up xenophobia. The fact that this whipping might be translated to a caning in Malaysia is seen as a mere bagatelle, easily overcome with a few soothing words of a promise that it would most likely not happen. The UNHCR seems less convinced.

While the conversation is continuing and a flurry of visits to New Guinea and Nauru are intended to underline our tough stance once again, some might question where this dreadful fear comes from. Is there something in our history that gives us clues?

We couldn’t do much wrong by visiting our most recent history of how we treated children, both in our mother country of the UK and in our own.

Having just seen the film “Oranges and Sunshine” and previously read David Hill’s “The Forgotten Children”, I wonder if  one day we might admit there was something rotten going on in our culture dating back perhaps hundreds of years. I know of no other country that deported over 130, 000 children in recent times. I also know of no other country that then allowed the further destruction of those children in the Australian institutions that were supposed to care for them.

Is it is the history of bullying children and sending them into the hierarchical system of English boarding schools? The public (private) schools with their corporal punishment, and the degrading treatment of those who grew up in the ‘British system’ of parenting and educating?

This seems to go to the very heart of why Australia has never managed to shake off that bullying that defined us from the very start.

Yet, when it comes to cattle or suicidal whales we get teary-eyed, ban the export of cattle or stand in the sea for days stroking dying whales. Where is the stroking for the flotsam of humans cast on our shores?

Last Monday’s ABC’s Four Corners showed bullying and degradation at the very core of our armed forces. It is totally ‘us’ and not just the isolated few of ‘them’.  Howard, Ruddock, Abbott, Gillard, Morrison, Bowen. What chance did they all have growing up if they were indoctrinated into a system of bullying?

For Australia to regain its humanity it needs to take a good look in the mirror and reject the notion that we are somehow a fair and just nation. We are not. We might become fair, hospitable and friendly only if we dare to look at our inherited demons and reject the bad and accept and nurture the hidden good.

In the meantime we should take a leaf out of Turkey’s book. We will not turn them away, is what the Turkish Minister for Immigration is reported as saying. They are human beings in distress.

I can’t even imagine one of our politicians saying that.

Gerard blogs at  Oosterman Treats Blog

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Gillard’s premature enunciations

17 Jun

The Gillard government’s announcement of its plan to spend 12 million taxpayer dollars on an advertising campaign to sell the carbon tax  beggars belief.

The carbon tax is by no means a done deal. The multi party committee on climate change may not arrive at a consensus. The proposed carbon tax may not progress to the legislative process. The Independents without whom Gillard cannot function are enraged, both by the proposed advertising campaign, and the presumption of their compliance upon which it is based.

Informing these key players just one hour prior to making the plan public would seem to be yet another unwisely arrogant move. While in itself it will probably not affect the Independents’ committment to the negotiations, the move does imply a degree of government contempt for the process, and an assumption that the decision is already in the bag.

Perhaps one of the motives behind this bizarre campaign to sell something that does not yet exist, is a hope that if the public can somehow be convinced by the mere announcement of this campaign that it’s a certainty, the multi party committee will be forced by public opinion to reach the consensus the government wants. Independent Tony Windsor said the advertising decision bordered ”on asking us to endorse publicly funded propaganda”.

This type of tortured magical thinking is quite characteristic of the Gillard government, from the day twelve months ago when it became the Gillard government up until now. Think the East Timor solution, the Malaysia solution, and the carbon tax Gillard was never going to introduce till she changed her mind about it.

Gillard’s assumption that the carbon tax outcome is so certain that the government can already commit 12 million dollars to explaining it is mind-boggling, anyway you look at it, and everyone is scrabbling to find a rational explanation for the move.

Gillard has acquired a reputation for putting the cart before the horse. She did not consult with East Timor before assuming their willingness to take our cast off refugees. The Malaysian solution was announced way before those negotiations were settled, indeed they are on going, and we have no idea what that outcome will be. Now she wants to sell a carbon tax that does not yet exist. Isn’t that false advertising?

Although Gillard appears outwardly calm and in control, her consistently premature and inappropriate announcements reveal an underlying profound anxiety and lack of control. She continues to indulge in premature enunciations that leave everyone embarrassed and unsatisfied.

Gillard may not believe in God, but she seems to believe in some kind of supernatural force, because from day one, her government appears to have operated on a type of blind faith in itself that has no connection with reality. The arrogant assumptions as to the outcome of the multi party climate change committee negotiations is yet one more example of this excess of self belief, now looking increasingly more desperate in spite of Gillard’s outward efforts to appear calm while the boat lurches sickeningly yet again.

In circumstances such as this, Gillard’s much remarked inability to express appropriate affect becomes a positive advantage.

Magical thinking was intrinsic in the overthrow of Kevin Rudd: who else but those with their heads in fairyland would have believed for one moment that Rudd would just go away?  Instead he’s been a fierce and constant thorn in their side, and will continue to be so, publicly undermining, destabilizing and dividing just by his very existence.

Polls reveal he is considered a better contender for PM than is the woman who deposed him. Anybody could have seen that coming, but not, it appears, those who chucked him out. Actions have consequences, and frequently they aren’t the consequences you hope for. Any first year psychology student could have predicted the consequences of that coup.

“I have taken control” Gillard brayed 12 months ago when she ousted Rudd, claiming that the government under  his control had “lost its way.”

If this is an example of taking control, if this is a government that’s now found its way, beam me up Scotty.

The government’s motives in announcing this ad campaign are unfathomable. The use of public money to fund a campaign about something that does not yet exist is nothing more than a cynical exercise in propaganda. It will backfire, as has much else this government has done so far.

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Accolade for the AFP

16 Jun

Australian Federal Police this week busted a paedophile ring, seizing images of child sexual abuse including rape, bondage and torture. Watching the AFP spokesman at the press conference held to announce the seizures, I couldn’t help but wonder, how do they do it?

How do the men and women of the AFP deal with viewing images that are any reasonable person’s worst nightmare, as part of their daily routine?

I’ve experienced a fair bit of secondary post traumatic stress as a consequence of working with adult survivors of child sexual abuse. You have to be able to go there, you don’t flinch, you don’t turn away, you’re the listener who shares the journey. Looking into the dark side takes its toll: it’s powerful, it’s scary, and you underestimate it at your peril.

I’ve never had to look at anything like the horrors the AFP uncover. How do they feel when they go home at night, their minds crowded with images of rape and torture of the young? How do they manage to have any faith in human nature, after seeing first hand what human beings are capable of?

The Internet offers the ideal environment for paedophiles to connect with each other and engage in their vile commerce. Keeping pace with their proliferation must in itself be a challenging task.

Many of us would find it impossible to view images child pornographers disseminate, especially those at the far end of the continuum. Even thinking about what they might look like makes my gut churn in protest. It takes a certain type of courage and a rare kind of determination to commit your working life to bringing these people down.

It isn’t a job that brings them glory, and mostly we never see their faces.

For my money, if anyone deserves the term unsung heroes it’s these women and men. I think we should all honour them for their willingness to descend into the abyss and fight the monsters that dwell down there. If anyone renews my faith in human nature, it’s people who’ll face down the dark side in the interests of us all, and particularly in the interests of the most innocent and the most vulnerable among us.

So this post is dedicated to the men and women of the AFP who take on this battle. I salute you.

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When Management Decisions Get in the Way of Productive Workplaces

16 Jun

Guest post today by Dr Stewart Hase 

It constantly amazes me, despite all we know about human behaviour, that managers can still get the implementation of change completely wrong. Psychology may not be a completely exact science and there is much we don’t know yet but it is better than whim. Moreover, there are some things for which we have ample evidence. For the purposes of this article, these are that employees more fully engaged in their work and more productive if: their job satisfaction is high; the culture is essentially democratic; they are valued; intrinsic reward is the norm; they feel they have autonomy in their work; relationships are fulfilling; the work has meaning and purpose; and there is optimum variety in the work.

It has also been shown that as little as a fifth of all employees in developing countries are fully engaged at work and, hence, fully productive. More importantly, workplaces are potentially psychologically unhealthy, if not managed well, and this has considerable impact on those who work there. There are dire consequences indeed of managers not being aware of what is required to develop and maintain a positive workplace culture. And it is the management of an organisation that is fully responsible for the culture.An experience I once had with an organisation has reminded me of the fact that managers make decisions based more on the quirks of their personality than they do on evidence from the scientific literature. For example, a high controlling, autocratic, punitive, aggressive, micro-management style will result in very specific decisions when it comes to day-to-day management and, in this case, the implementation of change.I was asked to assist a group of people cope with change in their organisation. The program was, inappropriately, called Change Management. The brief for the job was that a change initiative had come a little unstuck and that a group needed help with dealing with the outcomes of the process. Immediately my antennae started quivering. When things go wrong in an organisation it is often decided to conduct a training program rather than look at the reasons for the problem. It is easier, or more comfortable, to implement a training solution than the higher complexity of a systems solution.Closer inspection and on commencement of the ‘training’, the situation became clear. Had senior management carefully designed a change process designed to create enmity, negativity, angst, and dysfunction, they could not have done better than what occurred through incompetence.

The organisation had implemented a quality system and a new quality team to review the work of some 300 others. The change process, if you could call it that,: was completely ‘top down’; had no stakeholder consultation or involvement; devised a system of performance management for non-compliance; produced a complex and ambiguous manual that was intended to be a living document (like the law) on which to base decisions of compliance; created a lengthy adversarial system to manage the inevitable disputes over the decisions on non-compliance; was implemented in a culture that used email to deliver quality reviews due to the distributed nature of the organisation; and there was no attempt to make informed decisions after a lengthy trial when things clearly were not working, other than to conduct a change management program for the quality team (not the whole organisation).

In short, all the tenets of implementing successful change were ignored. This resulted, predictably, in: a classic in-group – out-group situation with all the enmity that this causes, especially against the quality team; high levels of stress for everyone; a high level of angry rather than co-operative disputation; team leaders protecting their ‘turf’ by defending non-conformance formally and informally; avoidance of personal contact between the quality team and the other employees; an adversarial culture; job insecurity; reduced job satisfaction; poor relationships; and alienation.

This could have been completely avoided had senior management bothered to read the change management literature or obtain advice from someone who did. Sadly, this was probably not likely to occur given the personality of the senior manager implementing the change.

The ‘change management’ program very quickly became a strategic planning exercise, based on the needs of the quality team, and was extremely successful. Unfortunately, we needed to have the whole organisation in the room and conduct a search conference, or similar process. Perhaps then we might have made a difference. As it stands this organisation will fail to function at an optimum level for a very long time. Worse it will remain an unhealthy workplace with all the sequelae that it entails. And all due to management by personality.

Dr Stewart Hase

Guest author Dr Stewart Hase is a registered psychologist and has a doctorate in organisational behaviour as well as a BA, Diploma of Psychology, and a Master of Arts (Hons) in psychology.

Stewart blogs at stewarthase.blogspot.com

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