An  “untouchable” earning good coin in cleaning sewers almost for free. Proof of the trickle down effect at work.

Good thing democracy has been hijacked by corporates. Mr Turnaround is in detailed talks with the Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Modi. They’ll talk about India’s burgeoning economy, and when they talk economy it gets them a little excited. That’s the reward for being P.M, you get to hang out with the big knobs. And the big knobs are successful, they know about making lots of money.

And it’s good to see, those economic powerhouses, (China and India) know how to make money. We could learn from India and China. That’s why Mr Turnbull loves international trade. It’s all part of the heavy lifting corporates need to grow the economy whilst keeping a lid on wages. In India, some people work for almost nothing. That’s great for business. If only, (as Gina suggested), the same could happen here. The profits would be tremendous. Give a great big boost for economies, and provide stable employment for millions. And those millions could be paid next to nothing, just for the privelege of good honest work. Walmart pioneered this reconfiguration of what we used to call industrial relations. Good thing that with a Fair Work Commission, we can get workers wages adjusted to grow the economy. That’s what Malcolm will learn from Mr Modi, and as a bonus he’ll get to meet Mr Adani. And he’ll give Mr Adani the ‘Green light’.

Mr Adani knows all about growing the economy. He’s so good at it, all his profits go into his personal tax free bank account in the Cayman Islands. Mr Adani wants the Australian taxpayer to fund a large bulk of his enterprise. And he knows he’ll get what he wants. Malcolm is all for big business and tax cuts. Even those big businesses that extract huge profits from Australia and pay no tax will still get tax cuts. That’s the trickle down effect. And soon there’ll be millions of willing Australians, just like in India and China who’ll work for next to nothing. This is an enshrining principle of the ‘trickle down effect’.

Bloody hard work. Closing down manufacturing and making ” “ordinary” people redundant.

Still there’s more heavy lifting to do. Get mums, and anyone who’s bludging on the system off welfare. Make em work, cleaning bums in old age homes, operating call centres and working in our very own version of Walmart, Seven Eleven or United Service Stations.

Sadly the idea of a truly open and free economy is not to everyone’s taste. Mr Turnbull’s ratings are down the toilet, Worse than Tone’s. People say, “ What does he stand for”?

Good thing then that Donald has given the ‘green light’.

And loyal as ever Australia will be there. Anointing once again, the Middle East with the gift of “Civilisation”. And it’ll give added meaning to Anzac day, and the unquestionable heroic righteousness of Australian foreign policy. Good news all round. Doesn’t matter who started it, reason why, or the lessons of history. Australia will be there, standing shoulder to shoulder.

And prove once and for all in matters of principle Mr Turnbull stands tall.

And you may ask, “What is the green light”?

Go the short term, Bomb Syria, win an election.

Another poem from Ali Cobby Eckermann taken from Too Afraid to Cry,  her 2012 poetic memoir.

Family

Nana yells over the campfires
wiya wanti, whitefella wiya
this my family, they bin taken away
this my family, they bin come back now
we gotta teach them proper way

she laughs and holds my hand
is right now she smiles
sit down on the munda
and the learning begins

now Nana has passed away
how will I learn?
I still can’t talk my language

Aunty yells over the campfires
wiya wanti, whitefella wiya
this my family, they bin taken away
this my family, they bin come back now
we gotta teach them proper way

she laughs and holds my hand
is right now she smiles
sit down on the munda
and the learning begins

Today’s dispatch is  ‘Empty Horses’.  Originally dispatched on 27 February  2016

Junga Yimi (‘ true story’)

In 1975 David Niven’s entertaining Hollywood reminiscences were published. A film director had shouted ‘Bring on the Empty Horses’. David Niven was so amused by this exhortation, that he chose it for the title of his book. The film director’s first language clearly wasn’t English and for those who haven’t worked it out for themselves, the horses were riderless.

Prime Minister Howard was no friend of Aboriginal Australia. A May 2000 quote illustrates his attitude: “We don’t think it’s appropriate for the current generation of Australians to apologize for the injustices committed by past generations.” We out here at the front in remote Aboriginal Australia despised the man and were ecstatic when Kevin 007 defeated him. An additional bonus from that election was that the architect of the Intervention (Mal Brough) also lost his seat.

When Kevin Rudd made his famous speech, many of us were emotionally touched. I won’t inflict on you the whole 9 pages I printed out, just some pertinent extracts:

“ The time has come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past…”

“ We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country”

“ A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again”

“ But let us remember the fact that the forced removal of Aboriginal children was happening as late as the early 1970s”

Thus according to Kevin Rudd, forced removal had ceased around the time ‘Bring on the Empty Horses’ was published.

The 680 page report on the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (‘Bringing them Home’) was tabled in Federal Parliament on 26 May 1997. More than a decade was to pass before a Prime Minister apologized to the so called ‘Stolen Generations’.

“…we say sorry…” occurs three times in Kevin Rudd’s speech.

The Easybeats in their 1966 hit ‘Sorry’ easily beat that. The word “Sorry” occurs 22 times in the song….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEXSY-vmruI

Also in the speech: “ …sufficient flexibility not to insist on a one-size-fits-all approach for each of the hundreds of remote and regional indigenous communities across the country…”

Yet such flexibility was distinctly lacking in the Intervention which Kevin Rudd’s government appropriated from its predecessors. It was Jenny Macklin, Kevin Rudd’s Minister for Indigenous Affairs, who in due course was instrumental in extending the Intervention by a decade under the euphemistically named Stronger Futures legislation. The ‘protection of women and children’ was Macklin’s most used justification for the introduction of disempowering assimilationist paternalistic measures.    

A step-grandson of mine is a relatively small person, his wife is likewise relatively short. They have two lovely small children who go to Yuendumu pre-school. The older girl when she grew up in Alice Springs was considered to be “under weight for age”. Her mother was frequently visited by “welfare ladies” who told her that she was a bad mother and that if her daughter didn’t put on weight they would take her away. It never eventuated because they couldn’t gather enough evidence to prove “child neglect”. Not through lack of trying. The two lovely children will most likely remain “under weight for age” for the rest  of their lives. They are small.

Nangala told me of a recent case: a child had been removed from a young mother who’d gone off the rails and who was perpetually drunk in Alice Springs. This young mother had a large extended family in Yuendumu. When the mother eventually returned to Yuendumu, she’d sobered up and after a lengthy legal process got her child back. The reunion was traumatic. The child who couldn’t speak Warlpiri and didn’t know its mother and wasn’t used to seeing so many black faces spent hours inconsolably bawling its head off. The mother was likewise seriously distressed. So much for the protection of women and children!

In Australia there is a Welfare Industry that systematically monitors and collects evidence supposedly to “protect children” but which ultimately results in a new Stolen Generation.

“ A future where this parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again”

Anybody who  lives on a remote community with their eyes open knows of cases of child removal, and I am not referring to the early 1970s either.

Lest I be accused of gilding the lily to prove a point, I point you to official government data.

These metrics of misery are from the ‘productivity commission report on government service delivery’ released this month, detailing the numbers of children in care on ‘census night’ June 30, 2015 by Indigenous status. In the NT there were 892 Indigenous children (0-17 years old) in out-of-home care, and 125 non-indigenous. On a per 1000 children in population, that is 33.4 Indigenous and 3.4 non-Indigenous. For those that haven’t worked it out for themselves, this means that an Indigenous child in the NT has a 10 times greater risk of being placed in out-of-home care than a non-Indigenous child. The data furthermore shows that only about 36% of Aboriginal children removed by ‘child protection’ are placed back with their own Indigenous kin. The NT has one of the lowest rates of such placement at 28.6%.

As for the June 1988 response by Prime Minister Bob Hawke to the Barunga Statement, a promise that there would be a Treaty between Indigenous Australians and the Australian Government by 1990, Yothu Yindi’s song ‘Treaty’ says it all:

Words are easy, words are cheap
Much cheaper than our priceless land
But promises can disappear
Just like writing in the sand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cbkxn4G8U

BRING ON THE EMPTY WORDS!

Ngula-juku,

Jungarrayi

Malcolm as a kiddie.

Malcolm is a sentimental bloke. He likes the trappings of being PM. Just the other day he visited flood victims in Qld. The volunteers offered him a snag. He politely declined. It may have compromised his vegan holistic organic food diet, and compromised his position on Coal and humanity that he zealously inherited from his predecessor. That’s what we like about Malcolm, he’s a sentimental bloke. That’s why he wants big tax cuts for the big end of town. He’s sentimental about feudalism. And thats why he loves coal. He’s sentimental about coal fired power stations, heating and steam engines. He’s sentimental about black lung disease and satanic mills and that’s why he chose a board of ex coal and mining executives to make up the governments energy taskforce.

Adani Coalmine. Almost as big as the Reef and it’ll employ 1 ;1000th of the people. That’s efficiency!

But sadly there is ‘Push-Back’. Push-Back? It’s the opposite of ‘Base-Load’. In spite of the best efforts of the Queensland and Federal Government to give Mr Adani a free kick, more and more people seem to be pushing back on this excellent development opportunity.

Tony Nutt, retiring. Nothing to do with this piece, but he must be responsible for something.

And the economics stack up. As start up costs for solar power and battery storage fall through the floor and destabilise the whole energy industry, Mr Adani provides certainty. That is the sort of certainty the Federal Government is glad to hear about. Since Mr Turnbull spoke of the “innovation revolution” he’s done his best to turn the tide of innovation and technology around. Kill it “stone-cold dead”! In spite of his best efforts it’s on the rise. The market is making the decision for him. It’s just not cricket!

But the good news is that Mr Adani will be pumping whatever is left of Queensland aquifers to supply his mine with water. He’ll have undisputed rights over anybody else on local water. Local farmers should just bugger off, cos after Adani’s started they wont even have flush water. And the best thing he gets it for over seventy-seven years. That’s a whole lifetime, and that’s the sort of security Mr Adani needs. On top of that, the federal and state government want to give him over a billion dollars of taxpayer money to build a train line to nowhere. Mr Adani’s mine may employ a thousand people, and it’s catastrophic consequences will kill off hundred of thousands of jobs related to tourism and the Great Barrier Reef. That’s why the Queensland and Federal Government’s are keen to kill the reef off. It makes good sense, the reef is stopping the kinda progress the government likes. Killing it off!! is ol school. Bit like wiping out most of the Tasmanian aborigines. It’s nostalgic. And tickles an old sentimental bloke.

Dead kids in Syria, a rotten filthy war.

Mr Turnbull is happy for the gas export boom to be a gift for the exporters. Not australians silly, but the companies who do the heavy lifting. They don’t pay tax, and so will have to be really clever how they distribute the company tax rate cuts. But like Mr Turnbull, they’ve got plenty of merchant bankers on board to sort out the red tape. And they’ll not pay revenue for thirty years. That’s sort of ol-fashioned. That’s how you deal with a third world country. Worked with China during the Opium Wars. Another sentimental journey of sorts.

Almost dead kids in Vietnam, a decent noble good ol fashioned kinda war.

And Donald is waving the sabre at Syria. Killing kiddies with gas is just not on. Killing them with napalm, bombing, death squads, starvation and incarceration is O.K . That’s old style. Donald’s is a bit of a sentimental bloke also. And when he asks us to join him, and turn Syria into another Afghanistan, (twenty years and no end in sight) we’ll do the right thing. The sentimental journey will ensure, obligation unquestioned, to join hand in hand, and jump for Uncle Sam. Hoping this time, the wretched, debased, servile, uncultured denizens of another part of the Middle East will reap full the benefits of Civilisation.

The great things about school holidays is that they’re entirely absorbing.

Reserve Bank Governor questions the unquestionable. Potential ” trouble-maker”.

More absorbing than test pattern or macrame. In fact we have it on good authority that the school holidays correctly monitored and nuanced are perhaps even more instructive than the entire secondary school syllabus of ATAR and Naplan. Crazy! No wonder why the kiddies have loads of homework to do over the school holidays, keeps them on their mettle, and stops them from pausing long enough to question the reason why?

Bit like the Reserve Bank. They’re getting worried about interest only investment loans. “What a Furphy’, we say. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Investing in housing is the only way to protect the gold standard of the Australian economy. Other countries, like Germany for instance, invest in new technologies, infrastructure, education, health care, and innovative ideas to provide goods that the whole world wants to buy. We don’t do that sort of thing in Australia. And by not thinking too hard we keep Australia safe. And that’s not such a bad thing in this unsteady world.

Favourite book of the front bench. With pictures as an added bonus.

The Reserve Bank Governor should just stick to his job and print more money. And whilst he’s at it keep those interest rates down. How else can we enjoy the odd stay at our negatively geared beach house if he starts worrying us about unsustainable and galloping debt. It makes people nervous, and questions the whole apparatus. And if you do that, as a famous man once said; ‘you only need to kick the door in the whole shoddy edifice will come tumbling down’.

So for all you grown ups out there, take heed and look at what the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister are reading over the school holidays. We have it on very good authority that they’ve taken home from the parliamentary library, the entire series of ‘The Faraway Tree’, and the most excellent (annotated and skilfully edited) ‘Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends’. And when asked; ‘Who is their favourite author’?, they replied gleefully, ‘J. M Barrie’. It just goes to show what a classical education can do.

Further enquiries revealed much of the taste of the front bench. Matt Canavan is reading, “Out of the Fiery Furnace’, and Josh Frydenberg is boning up on ‘Biggles’. Christopher Pyne will be reading the complete Harry Potter series in order to get a grasp on the submarine contracts and Eric Abetz, will re-read, the illustrated and annotated Old Testament as a salve against same sex marriage. Even Bill Shorten is joining in the fun with the book given to him by none other than Gina Rinehardt, “The Little Prince”. And sadly, when asked, Peter Dutton was devastated, when informed that ‘Scouting for Boys’,” The Famous Five” and ‘The Man in the Iron Mask” had been stolen. We suggested he try something more contemporary but he walked away, clutching a dog eared copy of Ayn Rand’s most excellent tome ‘The Fountain-head’. No such emotion from Corey Bernardii, who in answer to our discrete enquiry said, “ I don’t read. I’m in a direct link to the voice of God”.

Eric and Corey eschew books in favour of scrolls. ‘Maintaining traditional values’

Blessed be the meek.

The Monochrome set. Quirky 80’s experiemental band.

Dear reader it’s time now for some school holiday specials. Yes indeed, the eternal hazy lazy comfort zone of nothing really matters cept keeping the little darlings fed and trying to stop the hole in your pocket getting larger and larger. So in the spirit of school holidays, laugh with us as we present in the spirit of Blyton and E.E Nesbit the first of our holiday specials; “the Monochrome set”.

Sunbury. A funky Festival

It all began about ten years ago. WE lived on the hill then. On the hill was the prized locale in town. And perhaps because of the location, elevated and remote to the frail and infirm, we weren’t entirely aware of an encroaching tide. A tide that insidiously, bit by bit, was to stifle the very life blood of the community.

Because the hill was quite steep, the only folk we espied for our quaint un-renovated neo-Georgian villa were the hale and the hearty. Those possessed with enough “VIM” to make it up from the shops some 200 meters below us. Consequently when you engaged in conversation, as we were wont to do with passer-bys it would be in the spirit of a congratulatory salutation, for having made the ascent wth bags of shopping. Or just an exultant brief encounter as one imagines treckers do in the slopes of Everest before making the final assault. And thus, a camaraderie ensued amongst those hapless enough to live on the flat, and those exalted types who lived “on the hill”.

Castlemaine, a less than funky festival. A sort of hybrid between a Sunday Art show and Test pattern.

The children were younger then, so the interaction was usually between their peers and their parents. That was ten years ago. And as the cliche goes, times have changed.

Castlemaine has become Tapestry Workshop. When Art becomes Death.

Now, I live in the bottom of the hill, on the “non-Paris end”, opposite the station. The conversation is non existent. When i greet a passerby with a friendly Hullo, I receive a mute stare. It has all the trappings of suburbanism. When I cross to the “other side”, I’m assailed by people intent on being busy when they have nothing much to do. They’re incredibly busy going to the library, attending U3A meetings, discovering pilates, and seeing the doctor en masse. They  book out entire cafes that used to be full of gamboling shrieking children. All erased by this grim set determinist clique of indulgents. Worse still, they’re ostentatiously materialistic. They drive brand new cars and throw their weight about by demonstrating the pile that bought back in 72 was sold for several million. They’re defined by a choice of clothing that divides into two sub types, a sort of folk rock Stevie Nicks amalgam or a beaux arts black and designer glasses wearing uniform. The town is being taken over. During the recent festival, they took it over in its entirety. It’s a sort of dystopian post zombie take-over, and now we’re aware of it, it’s almost too late.

They hang around in cliques, they pretend to be terribly interested in art and literature, and some of them even get involved in local issues that affect them directly. But you wont find em at the local footy club, the cricket or netball, cos they’re busy attending gallery openings book readings and natural healing, tantric, iridology, wholistic mind body spirit classes. There’s a palpable scent of assertive wowserism in the air.

These are not the standard bearers of their generation, the heavy drinkers the poets, the dreamers and the rat bags. They lived life fully, burnt the candle at both ends and are DEAD. These are the survivors who dipped their toes into the waters, and opted for security. Now, retired they’re descending on provincial Victoria like locusts, and sucking the life out of local communities, replacing it (South Park-like ) with the choking, nacreous ooze of SMUG

Exercise is good for the body and soul. But I’d prefer death  to doing it like this.

They are the early baby boomers. They’re flooding out town turning what was once vibrant into a monochrome haze. And now, in their twilight, buying up what’s left of affordable housing. They’ve reaped full the benefit of living an annointed life of free education,cheap housing and they’re now closing in,  laying siege to my town. It would be uncharitable to think of them as the most preened self indulgent generation in history. They talked of the environment and equality, yet on their watch closed it all down. And now, coiffured and caparisoned, they’ve descended on Castlemaine. And they’re here to stay. Their crime? Taking themselves very seriously.

Grey skies envelop all. The bells will not ring. Until, that happy day, when they follow the course of their generation’s trailblazers and they’re all DEAD.

The End.

Poetry Sunday today comes from Brainpickings, a site of immense worth.  Subscribe now!

This Is a Poem That Heals Fish: An Almost Unbearably Wonderful Picture-Book About How Poetry Works Its Magic

Today’s dispatch is  ‘Ngapa’.  Originally dispatched on 19 February  2016

Ngurrju-mayi?

One of the first sentences one comes across when attempting to learn Warlpiri is Ngapa ka wanti-mi (Water is falling i.e. it is raining).

In Luritja and Pitjatjantjara the word for water is Kapi. The indigenous band ‘Coloured Stone’ has a song ‘Kapi pulka’ (Big Rain) …. “ rain, rain, rain on my ngurra”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC5EerCaiTc

Not surprising, water has a deep cultural quasi religious importance to the people of the Central Australian Desert.

In 1964 as a student I was ‘assistant geologist’ on Planet Oil’s Casterton No.1 exploration well. At the time the well was being drilled, the annual APPEA (Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association) conference had just been held in Adelaide. Casterton is half way between Adelaide and Melbourne. My boss, Jim Cundill, a very placid likeable man, was the perfect host to the significant number of conference delegates who took the opportunity to call in at the rig. To my great surprise, I witnessed Jim suddenly go apoplectic and banish two characters from the site. What was that all about, I asked …. (“didn’t you see the forked stick one of them was carrying?”).

Turns out that some speculators had hired the pair as “oil diviners”. “You’re drilling on the wrong side of the road, the oil stream is over there” one of the characters defiantly shouted as he hightailed it off the lease. For those that don’t know there is no such thing as underground oil “streams” and if you miss an oil field by less than 100m, it isn’t worth finding.

When West Australian Jim started his Geology career in Canada, he was seriously ribbed by his Canadian colleagues. Apparently Queensland has the highest number of water diviners/dowsers in the world. The fact that much of the Great Artesian Basin is in Queensland may have something to do with that.

Geologists in general have little time for the mumbo jumbo of the “electricity in the elbow” or whatever. Jim’s circumstances manifested itself in a far more extreme reaction to these snake oil salesmen.

Before I get accused of (heaven forbid) having a dogmatic view on water diviners, let me make clear that I much respect people’s right to believe whatever they choose to, provided that in so believing they do no harm. I was told that the U.S military did a thorough study on water divining sometime after WWII. What they found was that on “home ground” water diviners had a better than average success rate. When practicing their trade in unfamiliar ground, their success rate was no better or worse than random probability.

Underground drinkable and abundant water isn’t easy to find. There are too many variables. Myself I’ve upset a few hydrologists in my time, by asking them where they kept their dartboard! (all with a big grin on my face- of course).

Bruce Farrands, the now retired owner/operator of Rabbit Flat Roadhouse, has been assigned the Jangala “skin name”. The Jangala/Jampijimpa father/son pair are the rain-makers. In the middle of a several year drought, Bruce complained to an old Warlpiri man that he’d been dancing and dancing and he only managed to raise clouds of dust. “Were you wearing trousers when you danced?” asked the old man. “Yes of course” “Well, that explains everything. To have any chance of success you need to dance naked!”

Don’t know if Bruce ever followed this advice, but the drought continued.

The bore field Yuendumu derives its reticulated water from is about 10Km to the south-west. The reservoir is in the Carboniferous Mt. Eclipse Sandstone which usually is what in the industry is colloquially known as “as tight as a fish’s arsehole” ( i.e. watertight). Groundwater at Yuendumu’s bore field occurs in ‘fracture porosity’ which makes it all that more difficult to find and measure. The Power and Water Authority are seriously worried about the aquifer’s future, and are making a serious effort at reducing consumption and waste and attempting to find additional supply.

One of the steps they’ve taken is to replace all water meters on the community with ‘smart meters’. Before drawing long-bow parallels between these ‘smart meters’ and the ‘smart bombs’ that have rained and continue to rain over the Middle East, (and I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?- Clarence Clearwater Revival…)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5zZKawkcBU

I will make some enquiries. How will the ‘smart meters’ help to reduce consumption and waste, or add to the supply of water? I want to know…

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain? – Clarence Clear Water Revival.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUjT5Yt6TbU

As I’m penning these musings a nice steady  rain has begun to fall, and I haven’t even taken off my trousers! But then, in any case, it would have been to no avail… I’m a Jungarrayi.

Ngaka na-nyarra nyanyi,

Frank

Graeme Watson. So good at keeping wages down he couldn’t wait to complain about the tax being levied on his two hundred and eighty thou pension. Onya Graeme.

Dear reader, we’d like to apologise. Quentin is fuminating again. Is there no end to this? Seems he’s terribly upset about social inequity and the plundering of public institutions by self seeking opportunists and sinecurists. Apparently, this latest symptom of the systematic corruption and rorting of our public institutions is endemic. The ACCI is doing the heavy lifting. Ensuring unsubstantiated claims that the worst paid come from wealthy backgrounds as a justification for stiffing wages growth is their latest strategy. Still, it’s comforting to know that the Federal Government is making the prosecution of single mothers and “overpayments” a top priority. Gives us confidence that everyone, is doing their bit. Now read on, ( if you dare).

The Australian Chamber of Commerce, (excuse me dear reader, look at Australian Manufacturing? Need we say any more), are perhaps the most supine, rent seeking, low level opportunists this country has had the privelege to spawn. They’re the architects of the 457 scheme, which sees an army of underpaid, sweat shop overseas workers establish an army of unemployed ice addicted losers who’ll cost the taxpayer a fortune. When the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is not berating society for the fact that they have to pay wages at all, they’re lobbying the Federal Government to ensure that the rest of the unrepresented, voiceless untermensch are paid less and less.

The Chamber is the personification of all that’s lazy, unimaginative and process driven. They should be sequestered to the board of Naplan and ATAR for good measure. They alone have anointed us with the bounty of a fully fledged banana republic. There aint any Rockerfeller’s amongst their ranks mate. These are the ‘inheritors’, the chinless wonders who allegedly represent small and big business. I’m a small businessmen and have watched in dismay as all the pillars of a diverse, functioning, vibrant economy have been piece to piece torn down by the self seeking short termism of this Chamber.

A Star Chamber if you like, echoing the one inch ideology of the IPA and Lord Murdoch.

Its spokesman James Pearson, displays as much. A robot, representing other robots who are the square root of nothing in particular. Talking well and truly within the very very tightly controlled and narrow square others amongst us who are apt to think beyond.

Joe Hockey. Our man in Washington. Champion of the ACCI. Bonus Points for closing down the car industry. Outside his taxpayer funded hut as leader of the Trump Cheersquad, and lifetime sinecurist for standing for absolutely nothing.

Life is pretty expensive these days, have you noticed? And if you live in regional Australia, which hasn’t seen the boom of property prices you can rest assure you’re poorer. At the local supermarket, milk doesn’t sell two dollars for two litres, it’s $2.89 and there’s nothing under $3.00 for dishwashing detergent. And shockingly, Banana’s are up, $4.00 a kilo!! And there’s mark ups on petrol and health care, and everything!! But, you do have the benefit of fresh air. And if you don’t know anyone, you can escape the vicissitudes of life and the grinding wait by taking on a very dispiriting employment training scheme. They’ve proliferated faster than scabies. Or you can just go down the street to the local meth lab, and get yourself absolutely out of it.

From, the ACCI, who allowed the car industry to piss off, not a whimper. They’ve established a dystopian class of bottom dwellers, pursuing exciting careers in the hospitality industry. The fact that cleaning dishes, scraping to plutocrats and wiping arses is even called an “industry” is galling. And their mates in the Property Council are all about making sure that the burgeoning under class of supine underlings, are kept in their correct place.

Head of ACCI James Pearson presents rubber ducky prize, ( symbol of Australian Industry’s confidence in itself) at Crown Casino. ( the ducky was later rescued from a fast food sweatshop).

They lobby the Fair Work Commission, another Orwellian construct and wait with bated breath for another determination from another overpaid ex bureaucrat to determine the fate of the underemployed, the crushed and the subjected, who’ve had the light of optimism completely snuffed-out. Hooray for the Australian Chamber of Commerce for ensuring that imagination and humanity and compassion had nothing to do with it. They’ve created just the sort of society we now live in.

And in the process, found their correct place.

The bottom.

Quentin Cockburn gives a superficial and unsubstantiated look at mental illness, homelessness and domestic violence.

Feather-bedder may have looked a bit like this.

Heard another person on the radio banging on about mental illness. Talked about poorer resourcing, talked about ‘staff, levels, expertise and balance, and picking the right leadership moving forward to progress the current policy initiatives on mental health and international benchmarks’. He prattled on. He then described enthusiastically how his team at the University of Melbourne were committed to ‘long term strategies to impact the mental illness epidemic’, and before he ceased and the obligatory voiceover; “ if you have mental health issues or know of someone who is experiencing mental illness please ring the hot line, before you jump off a tall building, run into a tram, gas yourself, (harder these days) or just blow your brains out’, I was shaking with rage.

The shock was I thought he was talking abut the mental cases on the streets. Nup he was talking about his own “resource needs”

The sinking feeling I had was, this bloke, wasn’t talking about understanding the people on the streets, the dispossessed the deranged, the ice addicted, but furnishing himself and his annointed sinecurists with a deluxe A grade feather bed. That’s the trouble with mental illness these days, it’s spawned an army of mental effectives seeking to improve the lot of mental defectives. Curiously, (aren’t you surprised yet?) hardly any of then really ever get down and dirty and talk to each other. It’s just like white man’s relationship with Aboriginal Australia. Excellent policy initiatives for those who prefer to stay within the comfort zone. And hand’s-off, provided you don’t get dirty with the poor bastards on the other end of your annointed beneficence.

His ‘support team’ may look like this.

It sucks.

Mental illness is everywhere for the simple fact that ice, wife bashing violence, and everything is there. There’s nothing meaningful for the under-skilled to do. There aren’t worthwhile lower tier jobs any more. There aint no cameraderie at the workplace, unless you want to be berated by some managerialist knob on positive thinking around the water cooler. And there’s no end in sight to the manipulative rent seeking training schemes designed to make the unemployed completely and utterly fucking useless.

He could look like this.

And so this sinecurist is the core of the problem. The experts are ex-officio members of an elite. The mental cases, the hard nuts, the refuse are the gonners, who are to be pitied. Because they are symptomatic of a broader undiagnosed mental illness in a society that worships financial capital over social. And if these discards can just go of quietly and top themselves they’ll help with the bottom line, provide more funding for conferences, white papers, discussion papers and a conga line of psychic suck-holes to exploit this human suffering in the name of compassion whilst paying off their investment properties and swimming pools.

WE don’t get mental illness in this country. We have a society that manufactures mental illness, and we do nothing to change the fundamentals, because we can’t see what’s wrong with our very narrow view of winners and losers, outcasts and optimists.

Certified looney with publicly funded support structure.

From personal experience, if you’ve got family support, you may be able to function. Without it you’re a gonner. The institutes, government health specialists and aparatchiks are there to turn your misery into an income stream.

There’s a lot to be glad about for the winners, the indices are off the scale! But for the initiatives? I’m beyond blue. Give people dignity, even if they’re fucking stark raving looney. And if you don’t, ask Corey Bernardii. He’s secured six years tax payer looney funding just for standing alone. At least he stands for something.