With its budget, the Abbott government has made clear what it means by Indigenous ‘advancement’: fewer services, and more funding for lockups by Amy McQuire
first published Thursday 15 May 2014 theguardian.com

The 12 year old Aboriginal boy was small for his age, but appeared even smaller as he sat in handcuffs, shadowed by two burly police officers in the north-western NSW town of Bourke. I was watching as a white magistrate, a fly-in worker who usually lives in the rich suburbs of Sydney, deliberated on whether to send him to detention.

His offence? Police had caught him out on the streets late at night, in breach of his bail conditions, and had thrown him in the watchhouse in the early hours of the morning. The reason he was out on the streets? It was safer than being at home. The magistrate didn’t want to send him back to his family, but with no other option, he was leaning towards placing him on remand as he waited for a court date.

It’s a common situation. About 80% of young people in custody on remand don’t go on to receive a custodial sentence within 12 months – meaning a large proportion of Aboriginal youth are locked up simply because there is nowhere else for them to go. Many of them have been taken from their families at rates now higher than the days of the Stolen Generations.

The distressing number of Aboriginal children in juvenile detention is a consequence of a complex mix of factors, like poverty, the harsh realities of the NSW bail act and, I would argue, the crippling apathy of state and federal governments.

Sadly, in small towns like Bourke, the streets can be like a prison. Society builds virtual walls around you according to the circumstance of your race and geography. It’s hard to break out of these confines, and it becomes even harder if you come into contact with the justice system at an early age.

Towns with large Aboriginal populations also have a large police presence. They are meant to protect the vulnerable, but over policing only adds to the worrying rates of Indigenous incarceration. How can you achieve equality when you are locking up Aboriginal population at rates that beggar belief? Since the end of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, Indigenous incarceration rates have jumped in every state and territory: 90% in the NT, 53% in NSW, and 50% in Western Australia.

On Tuesday night, the scared eyes of that small 12 year old boy in Bourke were chief on my mind as I read over the budget papers, wading through doublespeak like “rationalisation”, “savings”, “efficiencies” and the most offensive of them all: “advancement”.

Aboriginal Australia anticipated a tidal wave of cuts, but seeing more than half a billion dollars ripped out from under a people who have been chronically underfunded for decades still sent shockwaves through our communities (although budget analysis shows Labor has historically been the biggest offender in underfunding Indigenous affairs if you look at total Indigenous expenditure as a percentage of total government expenditure).

We already knew the Coalition were cutting $13.4m from Aboriginal legal aid. The cuts will undeniably affect frontline services across the country, where Aboriginal people already have trouble accessing appropriate legal aid. Any hit to already underfunded services drip down to children like that 12 year old boy in Bourke.

I saw nothing addressing these distressing rates in the number tables of the budget. I saw nothing to slow the torrents of Aboriginal hurt across the country. Instead I saw this: more than $54m pumped into boosting police infrastructure in remote communities. No funding re-directed into keeping blackfellas out of jail, but more for those who will keep locking them up.

Put simply, you don’t make communities safer by locking up their men, in many cases for the “victimless crime” of driving unregistered or unlicensed. You make them safer by investing in adequate health, housing, employment and education opportunities – measures which aren’t explained in these budget papers.

That’s just the beginning. There was no indication in the budget papers of which programs and organisations will have their funding hit by the huge cuts to health. More than $160m will be pulled from Indigenous health funding, which is not surprising, given Abbott’s track record in this area. As health minister in the Howard government, he presided over a $460m Indigenous health shortfall over a time period when Peter Costello boasted of almost $100bn in budget surpluses.

Abbott’s “new engagement” with Aboriginal people is just fluff. It’s paternalism in sheep’s clothing. If you are wondering why Aboriginal people scoff at his claims to become the prime minister for Indigenous affairs, you only have to look to 2006, when he called for a “new paternalism” to put an end to the “rhetoric of self-determination”. That assault against self-determination, against the rights of Aboriginal people to control their own lives and affairs, is in the background of any reading of these budget papers.

In a media release, Scullion talks about the government investing “$4.8bn” to streamline more than 150 individual programmes and services into the so-called Indigenous advancement strategy, “with the sole objective of achieving real results in the government’s priority areas”. That’s just it: the government’s priority areas. Not priority areas determined by Aboriginal people themselves. The Abbott government has made it clear in this budget that it will define what “advancement” means to Aboriginal people.

The decision to de-fund our only national elected Indigenous body – the national congress of Australia’s first people and replace it with the hand-picked Indigenous advisory council only adds to this narrative. The national congress isn’t Atsic, but to pull funding from our only nationally elected representative body is a disgrace.

And if you believe Indigenous advisory council head Warren Mundine has any say over the government’s direction in Indigenous affairs, think again. It’s clear the real power lies with the Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion; Mundine has already had to back down from clashes with the minister on issues like the legal aid cuts and his calls for a radical overhaul of the office of registrar of Indigenous corporations. He has also been unable to make a dent in the Coalition’s plan to repeal section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Mundine remains the Australian newspaper’s chief rent-a-quote, but the wages of the Indigenous advisory council would be the best budget saving the Abbott government could make in Indigenous affairs. Of course, none of this matters to Aboriginal kids like that 12 year old boy from Bourke. Most likely he will not see the “savings” and “efficiencies” boasted by the Abbott government.

by Cahal Milmo

In October 1915, a woman approached George Samson in his native Carnoustie and handed him a white feather.  He became one of thousands of men out of uniform who were humiliated on the streets of First World War Britain by being publicly given the symbol of cowardice.

In the case of Petty Officer Samson it was a slight that could not have been more ill deserved.  Within hours of receiving the feather from a stranger, he was the guest of honour at a formal reception in Carnoustie where he was presented with different tokens of esteem – a smoker’s cabinet and a rose bowl.

The occasion was for the Angus town to celebrate the award to one of its own of the Victoria Cross, for astonishing bravery barely six months earlier during the bloodbath of the allied landings on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula.

While helping soldiers ashore from his ship, HMS River Clyde, the 26-year-old seaman attended to a tide of wounded for an entire day, hauling them to safety despite being wounded himself in a constant hail of machine-gun fire.  It was only when he was cut down by as many as 19 bullets that the Scot, who had lead an extraordinary existence working as a cowboy in South America and a train driver in Turkey, was finally pulled from the battlefield and treated for injuries he was not expected to survive.

The ship’s surgeon, Dr P. Burrowes Kelly, commented: “Whether he lived or died, I knew he had won the VC.”

The symbolic slandering of a war hero was an extreme, though by no means unheard of, example of a practice which had first emerged as early as 1914 thanks to the efforts of Admiral Charles Fitzgerald, a retired naval officer based in Folkstone, Kent, who founded the Order of the White Feather.

Supported by a number of prominent female writers and leaders of the Suffragette movement, the Order encouraged young women to hand out white feathers to young men spotted on the streets out of military uniform.

At the outset of the war, Britain relied on volunteers to fill the trenches and recruiters were not afraid to harness the power of shame and embarrassment to fill their quotas of men to ship to the killing fields of France and Belgium.

One army recruiting poster, addressed “To the young women of London”, baldly stated: “Is your ‘Best Boy’ wearing Khaki?  If not don’t YOU THINK he should be?  If you young man neglects his duty to his King and Country, then the time may come when he will NEGLECT YOU!”

The white feather movement unabashedly capitalised on such sentiment and within weeks young men were being confronted by women bearing their symbols of cowardice.  The effect was often powerful and immediate.

James Lovegrove was only 16 when he was confronted by a group of women on his way to work.  He wrote: “They started shouting and yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names for not being a soldier!  Do you know what they did?  They stuck a white feather in my coat, meaning I was a coward. Oh, I did feel dreadful, so ashamed.  I went to the recruiting office.”

Despite initially being told to go away because he was under age, the recruiting sergeant eventually took pity on him and falsified his measurements.  Lovegrove added: “All lies, of course – but I was in.”

Petty Officer Samson was by no means the only serviceman to be wrongly singled out for a feather, which were also handed out by supporters of Christabel Pankhurst, the daughter of Suffragette leader, Emmeline.

One, Pte Harold Carter, told how he was handed one while standing outside a music hall in civilian clothes when on leave from the trenches and was then abused by a Royal Navy officer who told him a man out of uniform was “nothing more than a worm”.

Carter wrote: “He made me feel about as big as a worm.  I just sat there on my own while people looked at me.  I should like to have jumped up and told them I’d just come from the trenches at Ypres, but I couldn’t.  I came out disgusted and went home.”

The distribution of feathers, which was accompanied by anonymous letters sent to the homes of targeted men, drew a political backlash.  Calls were made to the Home Secretary, Reginald McKenna, to arrest those responsible.

He declined but the authorities came up with a number of badges and arm bands to be worn by men in exempted professions or who were awaiting their call-up papers after conscription was introduced in 1916 to show they were serving “King and Country”.

Others, however, dealt with the attempt at humiliation with humour.  A prominent pacifist, Fenner Brockway, claimed he had received enough feathers to make a fan.  The prize for chutzpah while under fire from the Order of the White Feather, however, goes to Pte Norman Demuth, of the London Regiment, who was confronted by a female detractor while on a bus.  According to an account of the incident, he took the feather and used it to clean his pipe before returning it to the woman and saying: “Thanks very much.  We don’t get pipe cleaners very often in the trenches.”

In today’s post Tarquin O’Flaherty adds to our memory of Nietzsche. 

I agree with Mr Eames regarding ole Nietzsche (See Friday’s Post). He almost single-handedly reminded the world to believe in itself rather than all that faith based, ‘you’ll get your reward in Heaven’ cobblers.

However, we are all standing on the shoulders of giants and old  Friedrich Wilhelm is no exception.

The Christian Church had us by the balls for centuries, taking advantage of our lack of education and native superstition, and using fear(of Hell, excommunication, Divine retribution, etc) to keep us in line.

The minute a broader, more tolerant view began to surface, spurred by the Crusades, economic growth, the invention of printing, plus the discovery that the earth was not the centre of the universe, thinking people began to question the established order

The result of this was the Humanist movement, begun in Italy, where people began to throw off the crude, superstition based machinations of the church and began to believe in their own intrinsic, human worth.

Out of this came alternatives to Pliny the Elder’s belief that hanging jackass testicles from your forehead would cure the pox (or something)

Modern medicine,and indeed all of the disciplines begin with the belief that experiment and research rather than Catholic mumbo-jumbo would provide answers.

So, Humanist thinking, by the time Nietzsche came along, had already changed the world utterly. Despite this, the nouveau riche, the newly created ‘middle class’  of 18th and 19th century  Protestant Europe, became just as repressive as the aristocracy it had ousted.. In the countries where the new Protestantism took hold, Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, Germany, the Low Countries etc. lunatic, tub-thumping, bible bashing re-established itself, and infected everyone with its guilt ridden ‘philosophies’. Something needed to be done.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche took it upon himself to remind the new  middle class of just how important, powerful and God-like Man himself is.

Hitler took him literally at his word and attempted to build the (Aryan) “Superman’.

Which illustrates  precisely why Pope said that; ‘..a little learning is a dang’rous thing…’

This proves, God help us, that this sawn-off and psychopathic corporal only ever read the bits that propped up his already made-up mind. When he read the bits about our being God-like,  Adolf assumed Nietzsche, being German, was talking about the Germans. If the Germans were Gods, then all others were the children of a lesser God, and expendable.

A simple mistake… anybody could make it… pity about the hundred million dead people…

Interesting too that Christianity became powerful by either wholly ignoring Christ’s simple ideas, or ‘interpreting’ them.

We’ve moved on since then, abandoned Christ in favour of Nietzsche, whom we’ve ‘interpreted’ to the tune of millions of dead men and women.

I wonder who’s next for ‘interpretation?

Heigh Ho…Tarquin

with notes by Ira Maine, Poetry Editor

Herrick’s poem is as rendered with the older spelling in my 1964 ‘Seventeenth Century Poetry’  Editor Hugh Kennard. Rinehart Editions.

First dispatched 12 May 2014

Hoe gaat het vrienden,
Many Australians arrogantly believe my adoptive country is in every way the best country in the southern hemisphere. My mother used to say “Australië is het beste land ter wereld, maar in Canberra zijn er mensen die hun best doen om het te verpesten” (Australia is the best country in the world, but in Canberra there are some that do their level best to spoil it).

The denizens of my country of birth are often stereotyped as arrogant and many are. I believe no society or country is devoid of arrogant members. Germany is no exception.

I calculate it to have been in 1991 that a kombi van full of tourists pulled up at our petrol pump. One of my hobbies is to pick accents. I derive satisfaction from getting it right, and embarrassment from getting it wrong. The Dutch guttural, Swiss singing and German hissing accents are the ones I’m most adept at correctly identifying.

Thus the hissing sound emanating from the kombi van prompted me to greet them with “Guten Abend” (Good evening) , “Sie sind Deutch?” (You are German?), “Nein ich bin Holander” (No, I’m Dutch-why confuse them?), “Wass machts du den in dass Arsh der Welt” (I won’t bother to check the spelling) (What are you doing here in the arsehole of the world?). This took me aback. My German is not adequate enough to come up with an instant repartee. By the time I’d worked out what I should have said it was zu späht (too late). No point in yelling out “kommen Sie zurük!” (Come back!). What I should have said was “ Nein dass stimmt nicht- dass Arsh der Welt ist dass zwartze Walt in Deutchland” (No, that is wrong, the arsehole of the world is the black forest in Germany) .

My father’s childhood circumstances resulted in him being fully Dutch/German bilingual. I called him on the phone to tell him ‘ik heb net een ervaring met uw landgenoten gehad” (I’ve just had an experience with your countrymen- ha ha ha, he hated that!) Then, for fun, we switched from Dutch to his excellent German and my so-so German. “Wissen Sie wass die sagten?” (Do you know what they said?) and then I told him, and he said “Hast du mussen sagen……” (You should have said) and rattled off a German sentence I didn’t catch. “What did that mean?” “It means ‘have you got your flags and pendants ready for 20^th April?’ ” “Wass ist dass den?” “Dass ist der Geburtstag der Führer” (What is that?- that is Hitler’s birthday) “Wie alt wird der Kerl sein?” (How old would the old bastard have been?) “Ein moment…. ich glaube hundert und drei” (Hold it…I think 103) “Ah, dann ist er wirklich tot” (Then he is definitely dead) “Ja, aber aufpassen. Er ist tot, aber sein Geist lebt noch” (Yes, but look out, he may be dead, but his spirit lives on).

In Australia the pinnacle of arrogance is achieved by many politicians and public servants, who are certain of knowing all the answers.

Those questions they pose themselves or the dorothy dixers put to them by those singing from the same song sheet, they have no trouble in answering, often several times in the same reply.

For those questions they don’t know or don’t want us to know the answer to, they have raised the non-sequitur to an art form.

As for public servants, far too many don’t serve the public, only their masters.

The last Dispatch dealt with the dire consequence of unbalanced wings. So try power and justice for size!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXJV1Z6ZQoA ¿Que te ha pasado Justicia? (Justice, what has happened to you?)

A group of linguists that are involved with Brazilian native languages came to visit not long ago. This is part of an email I received:

“We’re back in Brazil after our long and eye-opening trip around the land of oz……we saw very little activism during our time there. What we did see, not only in Yuendumu, but also in the Torres Strait Islands, for instance was a lot of outraging government attempts to sabotage all language maintenance efforts and the possibility of living life in a different way. No right to be different in oz, it seems to me…..”  

No right to be wrong …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HhzMRMAhXU

Regarding the dearth of activism, I’ve seen it in (in)action. The power imbalance at cross-cultural interactions makes effective activism almost impossible. Resulting is what has been described as ‘polite disattention’ not to mention that Neville Chamberlain may be dead, but his spirit lives on.

And thus new word forms arise. For instance we all know what ‘googling’ means.

Watch “The Most Interesting Word in the English Language” ….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1i656Ja2I&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Outrage- noun

Outrageous- adjective

Outraging- verb

The bane of Aboriginal Australia- those f*cking arrogant politicians that are in charge. They are forever outraging!

Tot de volgende keer,

En nu een mooi liedje om mee te eindigen…

Frenk

Met wat hulp van m’n vrienden…..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POaaw_x7gvQ

This post is by Groupwork Institute Facilitator Steve Ray

The 8 Steps To Empathetic Communication.
Telling our truth about how someone has made you feel is tricky. We all have to learn to stand up for ourselves and manage conflict in a healthy way, but it’s up to each of us to determine when it’s appropriate or worthwhile to speak up, rather than letting the little things slide. And when we do have conversations that are crucial to determining the state of our relationships, it can be hard to know how to speak out of love instead of anger.

Whenever this topic has come up in groups I have worked with and even in general conversation, the discussion always goes to our own agonising internal dialogue that happens around the importance of speaking our truth versus the impact of how that will play out if we actually go through with it. Usually the fear is around the damage that will be done to the other person if we speak our mind because “they might take it the wrong way.”

Take heart… there is a way to deepen our relationships with others as we commit to greater honesty in our conversations.

1. Know you can – and need to – stand in your truth

The first key to knowing what to do is recognising that we have to stand by what’s true for us if we consider it to be important.  It might not be true or important for anybody else on the planet, but if it’s true to us, then we need the other person/people to hear it.

2. Take a moment

The second key is to understand that whenever anything is important to us, we tend to get passionate and emotional about it and too often we blurt that out.  Often the other party involved is pushing our buttons, and not seeing what’s important for us so we often react quickly because we find it really annoying!  What comes out of our mouth tends to come out in a defensive way and when we are defensive, the other party feels attacked.  At this point, any chance of the other party hearing what’s true to you is lost.  Pausing before you speak could be the most important 2 or 3 seconds of the whole exercise!  If you have the luxury of sleeping on the issue, and preparing your response, then this can really put you into a good space when you speak.

3. Relax, breathe… and speak from the heart

The next key is to speak from your heart – not your emotion.  Getting to know your heart is something that takes practice. But when we relax, breathe and slow down, we will very naturally find ourselves in a more considered, less reactive place.  It’s only when things become heated that we shift into a kind of “fight or flight” place where we can hurt both ourselves and each other!

4. Start with something you appreciate about them.

This will help them understand why you are interested in working on the relationship, rather than walking away from it or letting it deteriorate.

Example: “Look, I need to say something to you because I really value your friendship/insight/leadership/advice.”

5. Acknowledge your own internal dilemma

What you’re trying to say is hard!  It may come out wrong.  You’re probably feeling nervous and fearful of the consequences of your words.  Why not say that?  When we reveal that vulnerability to people, they immediately become more receptive to what we have to say, because in that vulnerability they also sense your willingness to be honest, and that opens up their compassion.

Example: “I’ve got to say, I’m feeling quite nervous about this, because I’m aware that this may not come out right, so please forgive me if I get it wrong…”

6. Explain how you see the situation.

What’s being experienced by you has to be communicated as YOUR experience, the way YOU see things.  For example: “When you say (a, b, c…) I feel like I’ve done something wrong.  You’re very direct when you speak to me and I think that’s what’s causing my anxiety.”  Compare that statement with:  “Why do you treat me so badly?  You’re always ordering me around!”  The first statement really gives the person receiving your message a chance to see their part in the problem whereas the judgemental, emotional, and finger-pointing nature of the second is likely to trigger a defensive response and will block a person’s capacity to hear what you are trying to say.

7. Inquire about them

You’ll only take the risk to speak your truth when the issue is important, and usually that happens because the person or people involved are also important to you. So make sure that comes across.  Often that care is eclipsed by the anger or other emotion we are experiencing!

Example: “I need to tell you that I’m struggling with what’s happened between us recently.  There’s been 3 times when I’ve tried to organise a time to meet with you and each time you have cancelled.  It’s like your unable to keep those appointments.  Have you noticed that yourself?  I’m wondering if everything is alright.  Is there something I’ve done?

8. Prepare to have your view changed.

When you communicate empathically, something shifts in the conversation between those involved so that as a person hears you, they become more able to give you their version of events and what was going on for them.  So what you may have perceived as a behaviour that deeply challenged you (which is what instigated your empathetic delivery in the first place) can now be seen in a new context as the person gives you more background to why they behaved in a certain way.  It doesn’t always happen, but be prepared for a humbling surprise as you see with new eyes, a situation with added perspective.

Being empathic is not about having higher moral ground, just a willingness to put the person and your relationship with them, at the top of the agenda.

By Quentin Cockburn Esq

The upcoming state election should prove fascinating for the electorate.  In this budget the state government has promised a massive upgrading of the public transport system.  The flagship, (if I may mix metaphors) being the superb rail link from Melbourne Airport to Jeffs Shed.  For those unfamiliar with Melbourne, that’s across the road from the Casino.  There has been some concern that the rail link doesn’t actually go anywhere near where the general public want to go.  For users of the Frankston and Dandenong lines, the bell weather seats, this upgrade will add a further 15 minutes to their travel time.  They are not entirely impressed.  I am.  It’s a very good initiative.  Since when did we need to provide rail lines that went anywhere useful?  I like the idea of a big underground network, bit like the Maginot Line costing 15 billion and counting.  It’s designed to look good, feel good, and be very efficient.  By having no stations at places where anyone wants to go it shall be very efficient indeed.  No need to stop off at the University, Carlton, Fitzroy and Sth Yarra as a bigger loop, but a single straight line to plonk people right to the door of Crown Casino.  Now that’s vertically integrated private enterprise for you.

Of course this initiative pales into insignificance against the road budget.  Roads are good for business ad we need more of them.  Oil will soon make these roads obsolete, but a certain dictator learnt that photo ops for BIG infrastructure wont work unless it’s above ground!  Get it!!

Now I’m all for it.  In the early noughties, the Bendigo Rail Line was “upgraded” to become the ‘Fast Regional Rail Link’.  The old dual track made operational in 1862 just wasn’t ‘up to standard’.  Consultants were brought in from overseas, and a special authority tasked with making the rail upgrade ‘Worlds Best Practice’.  People became worried when the central plank of the ‘upgrade’ was to replace the dual track with a single line to Kyneton. Over half the rail would be thus reduced.  They, (the unrepresented non managerial public sans culottes swill) were told that the single track will be cheaper and more efficient.  With ‘state of the art signalling’ run seamlessly.  It sounded good.  Imagine then, a bureaucrat telling you that the local highway will be reduced by half and made more efficient.  Well that’s precisely what they did.

On good days the smart new Bombadier trains do run splendidly.  But most of the time they are late, they wait on the siding at Harcourt for the ‘other train’ to pass and most critically when it’s hot.  Which is apt to happen in Australia.  They either have to run at reduced speed, (60kms per hour) or not at all.  This happens quite a lot over summer.  You see in the upgrade, they neglected the need for expansion joints in the tracks. They could’ve relied on 160 years of railway expertise on tap from amongst the locals, but eschewed it for expert advice from elsewhere, and imported rail (bulk buy) from somewhere else, (Pyonyang has been muted).  As a public we protested to our member, a Labor hack Bob Cameron.  He dismissed us as ‘nuisances’ and ‘troublemakers’. Since then the glossies at the station expound the benefits to the general public.  The public occasionally laugh, (in the Russian tradition) from the amusement of it all.

There is a moral to this. When you destroy public assets and charge that same public a fee for the privelege of abusing them, produce a lot of press releases and glossies.  I would like to quote from Goebbels, and the Davyd, the token gay from Little Britain, (and I paraphrase)’ There’s no point in a little lie when a great big lie will most assuredly do the trick’. And from Davyd, (I paraphrase) ‘The public in Australia are used to taking it up the choof’.

The moral of the story, politicians don’t use public transport, and public transport policy is designed to punish the users.

Finding the perfect studio by Quentin Cockburn Esq

All my life I’ve been searching for the perfect studio.  As a design professional I’m unemployable.  I was once a designer.  I used to work with other designers.  But I felt alienated.  When they all shaved regularly I was unshaven.  And then, when I started to shave they started to look unshaved.  It’s difficult, designers are all individuals, they express their individuality through design and being different from the common man.  That’s why they look the same, dress the same walk and talk the same.  They’re a band of brothers.

Still, I’ve learnt a bit from design.  I’ve learnt ‘Design-Speak’.  It’s a lot like ‘Art-Speak’, but said with much more conviction.  Designers HATE ridicule.  Why say ‘side by side’, when you can say ‘juxtapose’.  Please try it.  When you next see two pieces of toast, one on a round plate, the other on a square plate try saying “Juxtaposition”.  Designers also like to talk about planning.  They designed Docklands so they can talk with some justification about, “Design Issues”.  They are obsessed with the ‘inner ring, active frontages, the  mesh, the grain of things, urbanism, sustainability and metro-centrism’.  Try that – ‘metro-centrism’.  And they feel comforted when they talk about modality, catchment and the grid.

But it’s the places where they work that fascinates me.  It used to be, back in the 70’s an old garage, decked out to look a cross between Ikea and Aingers Auctions.  Then as design kicked off in the 80’s they moved out of improvised environments and into the sort of interiors Stanley Kubrick contrived for 2001.  Lots of white.  Glass and steel beams.  You see all the ‘materiality’, (remember that one?) express a sense of being anchored to the building industry.  Though we all know they don’t know much about construction or builders at all.  Then to compensate for all the white, they started wearing black.  In the late 90’s they tossed out all the aerodyne, scary utilitarianism, for natural timbers, and colour panels to ‘offset’, and juxtapose all the white.  And then most recently they began to buy art in big panels.  Not the sort of stuff you’d want to live with though, as they will sternly remind you;  ‘a studio is not a home’.  But as a centre-piece to be admired for its ‘singularity’.

You see that’s a big mistake, designers don’t like their studios to feel ‘lived -in’, they must be stark and utilitarian.  They may have shelves full to the brim with books but you wouldn’t want to read them.  Bit like George Brandis’s library, impressive for the visual impact and the fact that he may have read one, but a desert for ideas.  No Mann, (Thomas or Heinrich), no Elliot, no Bronte, not even any Bryce Courtenay.  But a lot of books with pictures, and a predominance of Japanese and European magazines.  Designers don’t like local design magazines (unless there is a feature article devoted to them) as they regard quite rightfully, (like manufacturing) that ‘Good Design’ and ‘Australian’ are mutually exclusive.  That’s why they drive smart European cars.

So contrary to this tradition I’ve left my design life behind.  The new studio is indescribably grotty, and feels like a home.  It has been sold, so there’s a sense of ephemera.  Designers hate ephemera.  It was always awkward inviting other designers round to the typical design office, the stain of red on the carpet, the polished boards, with cheese smudges, but now its akin to the Corner Hotel, adaptable, easy going and forever free.  And we like it that way.  I share it with a musician and a theatre manager.  It’s not a design office.  It’s a place for people, laughter and ideas.

Here are some more photos that show the refinements of the Perfect Studio