(Today we re-post one of John Clarke’s more important poems, first posted here 27 April 2014)

Today’s poem by Billy ‘The Swank’ Gilbert is from John Clarke’s 2003 anthology “The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse” 

Billy was best known for his work with ‘Nifty’ Sullivan, a musician he met at a party.  Together they wrote HMAS Apronstring, IoSilver, the Mickydoo, Ruddibore, Foreman of the Yard and a number of other bits and pieces that are still preformed today.

THE PIRATES OF penzance.com

CEO: I am the very model of a modern chief executive,
Regardless of agenda items random or consecutive,
My salary’s enormous and related to performance,
In determining the role of which I’m always in concordinance;

My package isn’t income-based in any technicality,
Appreciating more in line with concepts like reality,
In options and in super and through trusts that list as charities,
I represent a movement in fiduciary disparities.

ALL: He represents a movement in fiduciary disparities.

CEO: I studied all the history from Adam Smith to Maynard Keynes,
And peppered it with knowledge that relates or even appertains,
To custom laws and extradition, warehousing and arbitrage,
Being photographed at hospitals and other forms of camouflage.

ALL: To custom laws and extradition, warehousing and arbitrage,
Being photographed at hospitals and other forms of camouflage.

CEO: I learnt the work of real estate and how they work for foreigners ,
I leveraged consulting fees to lenders and to borrowers,
I parked it in the market, there was never any fraud at all,
And if there was I cleaned it up when I became the auditor.

We always act within the law, we’re utterly meticulous,
We put out a prospectus and to say we don’t’s ridiculous,
In strictness of compliance either now or retrospecutive
I am the very model of a modern chief executive.

ALL: In strictness of compliance either now or retrospecutive
I am the very model of a modern chief executive.

CEO: I understood the principles that underlie insurances,
An actuary’s algorithms coupled with endurance is,
A scientific formula for risk in every continent,
And if you lose a billion you can say you were incompetent.

ALL: And if you lose a billion you can say you were incompetent.

CEO: My wife is unaware that she controls through being the signatory,
A unit trust that constitutes a fiscal death with dignity,
Amounts have disappeared for reinvestment by the million there,
I think I’m right in claiming that our schnauzer’s a hectibillionaire.

When dividends are slow and normal salaries laborious,
My severance clause in contracts is the Hallelujah chorious,
In short in my objective that a fortune is pre-requitive,
I am the very model of a modern chief executive.

ALL: In short in matters decorative and dissolute and wreckutive,
He is the very model of a modern chief executive.

Trainee Chief Executive. (Above)

Today’s dispatch is  ‘Magic Moments’.  Originally dispatched on 20 March  2016

As-salaam-alaikum tovarichi,

When our family first came to live in Central Australia, Yuendumu was a neo-colonial outpost. Long white socks and Bermuda shorts and an open necked shirt were the apparel de rigueur for mostly white men. They even had a name for it “Territory Rig”.

When Nangala started work as a teacher in Yuendumu, she was initially installed into a “Health Flat” with our children (I was working for an exploration company in the area, and was tolerated as a “house husband”). The Matron told Nangala, that she shouldn’t allow those ‘Native Children’ into the flat. Those ‘Native Children’ were her students and they had names and they came to play with our children whom they’d befriended at school.

The policy of ‘self-determination’ slowly eroded such attitudes.

This from a recent article by Martin Flanagan, the Melbourne Age’s Sports Writer:

“ Three of the most momentous days of my life occurred in 1987 when I attended a football carnival at Yuendumu on the Warlpiri tribal lands north-west of Alice Springs. In three days, the glass tower of my preconceptions about Aboriginal Australia was shattered. I could tell a dozen stories as to why, each as important as the last…..….And I went to a party where a traditional man with initiation scars all down his chest played the electric guitar like Jimi Hendrix and a white geologist who lived in Yuendumu accompanied him like a jazzman on a trumpet. In that room, that night, Aboriginal people and white people mingled in a spirit of fraternal respect. Walking back to the car I was sleeping in, I thought there has to be some way of taking that spirit to the rest of Australia.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3JsuWz4xWc  (Jimmy Hendrix- ‘Hey Joe’ one of the songs we often used to play) 

Louis Armstrong was born on the 4^th August 1901, exactly 42 years before yours truly. The Yuendumu Sports Weekend has been going for half a century and coincides with Satchmo’s birthday. On 7^th July 1969 the Louis Armstrong version of ‘Give Peace a Chance’ was released in the U.S., one day short of two years later Louis Armstrong shuffled off this mortal coil (or in Yiddish: ‘schlepped off this mortal coil’)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6p5P2X8cbA (enjoy, and pay particular attention to the bass player).

I never tire of telling, that on one such birthday party, Japangardi did an impressive traditional dance with a spear in our lounge room. He miraculously avoided hitting the ceiling with the long spear. Jungarrayi and his ‘gang’ where clicking their boomerangs in a steady rhythm with great gusto. It was then I noticed (or imagined) something that may explain to some extent why traditional Aboriginal music sounds so different to western ears. The clicking of the karli was a fraction of a beat behind. Not an off-beat (like Brubeck’s ‘Take five’) but a fraction, and always the same fraction and identical for all the members of Jungarrayi’s ‘gang’.

The loud music emanating from a gramophone player, was the Rolling Stones.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5zZpMIrWu8  (The Rolling Stones: ‘Brown Sugar’). So what is rhythm? As Fats Waller once famously said : “If You Got To Ask, You Ain’t Got It!”   

Over the years many visiting musicians joined with Yuendumu’s local musos (some are readers of these Dispatches). A lot of assimilationist, ethnocentric nonsense is written about Reconciliation and ‘Closing the Gap’. Racism and ‘Culturism’ are confused. Racism is plain ignorant and nasty. ‘Culturism’ is a Trojan Horse: “Everyone has the right to live and be like me”

On one such occasion, Neil Murray, after he’d just released his album ‘Calm and Crystal Clear’ played ‘Ocean of Regret’:                                                 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOkBbGn0Mpk

Our local musicians instantly backed him up to brilliant effect. Putting in the odd trumpet lick whenever I saw an opening, was most enjoyable. Years later Neil remember that occassion and said it was a “magic moment”

Many a magic moment happened over the decades in Yuendumu.

Warlpiri people consider people they get to know to be family. A musician friend of ours, when our different attitudes to possessions caused a slight disagreement, remarked: “We are not a good family, but we are a good band!”

Being the optimist that I am, I think that true Reconciliation could be found in music (and dancing)…

‘Lets Dance’- David Bowie and Tina Turner:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=619kF0Y7zE4

Sadly, Martin Flanagan’s “there has to be some way of taking that spirit to the rest of Australia” hasn’t eventuated. Instead that spirit is being strangled by ever tightening control of people’s lives. It isn’t a huge leap from the ‘seatbelt police’ to the ‘thought police’.

But hey, the flickering candle of that spirit is alive and well. Just check out Warlpiri Art:
http://warlu.com/

Shalom and mazel tov

Frank

Matt Canavan. How Much? Prefers business deals, any deal to be done in carparks

Dear reader, for weeks and weeks we’ve been banging on about the death of the Great Barrier Reef and know that in the greater scheme of things no one really cares. No one cares that the mangroves have all died off in the far north, and no-one gives a stuff that all the other markers of runaway climate degradation fall are on deaf ears. Matt Canavan is thumbs up for Coal and will do anything he possibly can to give Mr Adani a taxpayer funded gift to fuck up what’s left of a dying eco system. It’s frustrating. It’s Queensland. It’s the kleptocracy at work.

And as Rupert owns 85% of the media, the politicians, the people who are meant to represent us don’t seem to care either. The scientists used to say words to the effect of : “when global climate change really kicks in people will stand up and listen”. Well maybe some of them have, but for the vast majority, they’re way way more interested in negative gearing, housing affordability, paying the kiddies school fees and re-financing the car.

And those people who are really really affected by global warming , are usually Eskimos or those in sub Saharan Africa, and we don’t give a hoot about them either.

The recent floods in Queeensland, a consistent string of 1 in 100 year floods in the past three years validate the connection between global warming and extreme weather events. Perhaps only when the impacts of climate change hit our capital cities will people listen.

Critically endangered eco-system. Nobody cares.

And it’s happening.

‘Sino-Georgianism’, a virulent outbreak that remains unchecked.

In Balwyn and Balwyn north the ravages of Sino-Georgianism, (the housing industry’s crown of thorns) remains unchecked.
“This strain of sino-georgianism is virulent. Vast swathes of post war fabric are threatened’, says social anthropologist Phil McCracken. ‘Worse than the 1919 influenza epidemic, it threatens to completely destroy the niche environment of middle ring post war suburbs. Its origins are complex and represent a tsunami of converging influences. In-house corruption at council, loopholes in planning law, real estate self interest, and greed. And whilst the area being consumed is reaching alarming preparations the reaction for government agencies is to date non existent. What can be done to protect this fragile environment? How can the encroachment be stopped? Like HG Well’s Martian fungus there may be an answer. Could it be Microbes?

A new strain of ‘Domestics vulgaris’, the middle ring Neo-Georgian culture pathogen is on the rise. The symptoms, are positively surreal. Victims are rendered inert. Death follows swiftly. There is no cure. These suburbs become dead communities. We liken it to coral bleaching. No further life is evident and no chance of recovery. Curiously it’s the sole instance of a species of animal ‘sino communo-cadre-ensus vulgaris’ has willingly determined to kill itself. By creating thees anaerobic, non organic environments they’ve destroyed the host echo system. Only demolition can save them. The Federal government has recently applied for a one billion dollar loan, (from the North Balwyn infrastructure development fund) to convert the rest of the neighbourhood to Neo- Georgianism under the mantra of “ jobs and growth”, yet the public is stirring into action.

The jury is open, we await the outcome with great hope and fear.

The tide may yet turn.

And prove that money may yet, not be everything.

John Clarke died yesterday. In the great tradition of the former leader of the opposition Billy Snedden, he died doing something he loved. He will be sorely missed.

John projected a humour that quietly laughed at the human condition. And in a dry, observational wit, he dissected our collective absurdity. He dissected absurdity with a surgical touch, and gave it back to us straight faced and wry.

There are very few comedians in Australia who possess that level of observation. Fewer still who can resist the temptation to resort to an over-blown caricature. John was studiously under-blown. A native of New Zealand he resisted the temptation of others to be famous elsewhere, and chose to stay. That is not the pattern of those who are brilliant. They always leave, and leave us to the also-rans, the second tiers, the bureacrats, the politician or worse still, the rusted on second level ABC humorist. They’re in the ascendant. Inheritors of the american stand up tradition, obvious, confrontational, sensationalist and superficial they are to comedy what tabloids are to journalism. And they’re so closely scripted, the art, the genius of spontaneity is lost to them. John could compress a novel, Dostoyevskian or child-like into a short sentence. His version of current events dissected the eternal stupidity in all of us, and served it cold. There was colour in his craft. A deft economy of words. The standard definition of contemporary television humour is to offer a series of sound bites. John gave us the whole cake and invited us to eat it with him. That’s his largesse, and generosity at work. John learnt the art of the silent pause, and in that pause invited us, (as great film directors do ) to fill in the gaps.

But all is not lost. Bad comedians, like bad artists are in the ascendant. It’s all part of the information age. As information, on any subject is at our fingertips, our ability to read language, and understand is now more diminished than ever. It was good thing for John to leave, because good art always has its imitators.

Rex Tillerson;’The.U.S will stand up against anyone who commits crimes against humanity” Comedy GOLD!

Rex Tillerson, has decided the U.S will not tolerate human rights abuses. John would be severely happy. Irony is often lost on the Yanks, and clearly John has established an influence which is global. On Q & A last night, the panel earnestly enthused about euthanasia and a political solution to the war in Syria. They did this, straight faced and serious as missiles from both sides rain down on whats left. John would have loved that one. And as a keen environmentalist, would have been unable to script the delicious irony that the world’s greatest living organism is all but dead. And through the fog of politics, the federal government remains resolutely silent.

Tony Jones. Gave us the intervention and served up unintelligent bias as entertainment. Comedy GOLD!

John would be so happy that what’s left of Australian resources are being sold off without any benefit to the Australian people, and happier still in the knowledge that ex bankers talk God-like about the need to continue negative gearing and the benefits of the trickle down effect. And why would he be so glad? Because it will ensure that what’s left, what hasn’t been sold, and cashiered for the few, will encourage the rest of us to maintain a healthy disrespect for pomposity and a delicious sense of irony. So that we can all laugh together, when panelists on Q&A pretend they’re engaged in active debate rather than just being another part of the entertainment industry.

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.