Imbroglio.  (Dispatched 24 August 2017)

G’day mates (just reinforcing my Australian nationality),

My family arrived in Australia on the Dutch ship ‘Johan van Oldenbarneveld’ (yes we were ‘boat people’) nearly half a century ago in January 1958.

Not long before, Sukarno had deported a large number of “Dutch East Indians”. He denied them dual citizenship.

On our ship I remember a young man who played a ukulele and regaled us with Indonesian songs on the deck. The young man told us that his brother was denied entry into Australia because he was too dark. Later during my studies I was to become familiar with Soil Colour charts. I now think the use of these charts wasn’t confined to soil science. I suspect the “populate or perish” apparatchiks ( “a blindly devoted official, follower” by one dictionary definition) stationed in foreign shores, made use of the CSIRO soil colour chart when enforcing the White Australia policy.

The exquisite irony was that as we approached the equator the East Indian moved down the colour chart and disembarked almost as dark as the uniforms worn by NT Police.

It is around this time I read ‘Het Dodenschip” by B.Traven. I suspect that if our leaders had read such books, such travesties as warehousing people on Nauru and Manus Island wouldn’t have happened. Neither would over-policing and high levels of incarceration and removal of children be seen as the best way to deal with Indigenous Australians.

The Plot-from Wikipedia: Set just after World War I, The Death Ship describes the predicament of merchant seamen who lack documentation of citizenship and cannot find legal residence or employment in any nation. The narrator is Gerard Gales, a US sailor who claims to be from New Orleans and who is stranded in Antwerp without passport or working papers. Unable to prove his identity or his eligibility for employment, Gales is repeatedly arrested and deported from one country to the next, by government officials who do not want to be bothered with either assisting or prosecuting him (my emphasis). When he finally manages to find work, it is on the Yorikke the dangerous and decrepit ship of the title, where undocumented workers from around the world are treated as expendable slaves.

Over the years there have been cases in Australia (how many isn’t easy to tell because “transparency’ is not a feature of our Immigration services -now relabelled ‘Border Force’) whereby people arrived as children with their immigrant families only to fall off the rails in later life. Sometimes they are ‘conveniently’ found not to have become Australian citizens and are thus deported (convict transportation in reverse) to find themselves on the streets in a foreign land whose language they don’t understand singing “I still call Australia home” to no avail.

I still call Australia home – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYg97BGmmLE

For those who don’t live in this Sunburnt Country, also sometimes referred to as the ‘Lucky Country’ or even the ‘Clever Country’ (the latter not always without a tongue firmly lodged in the cheek), we are currently witness to high farce in our Parliament. (A Dictionary definition of ‘Farce’: “an event or situation that is absurd or disorganized”)

This link is to a timely article by Chips Mackinolty: https://dailyreview.com.au/i-am-you-are-we-are-australian/64212/

I am, we are, you are Australian:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjkrjYitgeA

What Chips describes with such panache is far from being an isolated case. Here in Yuendumu we have known some people (not necessarily old) who didn’t officially exist. Through some circumstance their birth did not involve the “authorities” and their birth was not officially recorded. To get a birth certificate (to be able to get a driver’s licence) often involves a trip or two to Alice Springs, a distance equivalent to the distance between the southern and northern extremities of my country of birth each way. Trips often by unlicensed drivers in unregistered cars running the increasingly tight gauntlet.

What is happening in our Parliament is that a number of parliamentarians turn out to maybe be dual citizens which according to the Australian Constitution precludes them from being allowed to sit (in the Parliament). The single word that best describes what is happening is ‘Imbroglio’ which the Oxford Dictionary defines as:

“an extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation”.

The single word which best describes how I feel about all this is ‘Schadenfreude’

Auf wieder sehen

Franz

I repeat one of my favourite songs: Across the Wire by Calexico

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkryXbJ14dE

those with so much and no show of heart…..