To Goulburn, Gillard, and getting over it

Trucks, hi-viz outfits, and a massive sheep (on the move) – this is my town, folks.

1.

Three years ago I was waiting nervously – completely and utterly anxiously – to see what would happen to the Australian Government.  After six months of tarting up my tiny ex-guvvy grey-brick box in Canberra, the thing was ready for the market; in a rare fit of good but not entirely risk-free decision making, I’d decided that my house was the ticket to a better life, one where writing would be the core of each and every week.  (For years, decades, it had been the core, but it was a struggling core, exhausting, and something had to give.)  So there I was, house ready and real-estate agent on standby.  But we had a problem.  A massive problem.  If the Conservatives won the 2010 election they’d strip the bejeezus out of the public service, ejecting bureaucrats from the capital, and house prices would plummet.

2.

Of course, there were plenty of better reasons to fear the Conservatives returning to power.  Tony Abbot, a former seminarian, and boxer, and Rhodes Scholar, was a key player in John Howard’s backwards-looking, xenophobic and homophobic government.  Now he was leader of the opposition, who knows what he’d do.  He was famous for saying that climate change was ‘crap’, that women had a different physiology (exact quote: ‘I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons’), was anti-abortion, and maintained the anti-immigration and anti-marriage-equality stance of his political godfather.  Being rusted on to small-government ideology, if Abbott got in there would be carnage in the capital, and I’d lose $50,000, the $50,000 I needed for my new and better life to begin.

3.

That year, 2010, Abbott almost did get in.  It was a terrifying two-week wait to see if Labor’s Julia Gillard could form an alliance with the independents.  I remember watching that press conference in which the three key independents would reveal their decision – it was the most excruciating 20 minutes of my life.  When Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott eventually announced that they’d be supporting a Gillard-led government I threw my arms in the air as if my favourite footie team had just scored the game-winning try in the final seconds (if I had a favourite footie team, that is).  Not only did I want the Mad Monk and his insidiously grinning gang to lose and for Labor to continue moving us forward (if only inch by inch), I wanted to be able to ring my real-estate agent and shout, ‘GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD!’

4.

The show did go on the road.  My house was sold and I now could move to regional New South Wales and live a cheaper, more frugal life in order for writing – creativity in general, the arts, all of it – to be my reason for existence.  So, while Gillard managed to keep her precarious government together, stoking the fires of the economy while the rest of the world went down like the Devil wearing velvet trousers, and putting a price on carbon, and enabling a massive – and wise – investment in education, and establishing the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and continuing with the National Broadband Network (try downloading something as short as a 30-second video where I live and you’ll see why we need this infrastructure), and increasing the tax-free threshold from $6,000 to $18,000, which is an enormous reform for those struggling to make ends meet including artists, and allowing her party to officially endorse a policy of legal recognition of same-sex relationships (while she personally opposed the policy, which, to my mind, was a gross misjudgement on many levels), and – let’s indeed be critical where criticism is due – failed to find a humane and effective way of welcoming refugees to this country, yes, while all this was happening, I moved house, I went interstate.  And now, more or less, I live the life I’ve always wanted.  How luck I am.

5.

There are approximately 23,000 people in this regional New South Wales town of mine.  The place is working class, it’s welfare oriented, there’s some old rural money but not much despite the Big Merino stuck there out on the Hume.  There are cracked faces, broken bodies, some broken spirits.  There are pubs, some of which look like they haven’t been changed in 50 years, and the carpets probably haven’t been changed either.  The mainstreet is packed with 2-dollar outlets, hi-viz stores, and there’s a run of takeaway shops that I swear goes for 300 metres.  But this is home.  For someone like me, who was born and bred on Sydney’s North Shore, who spent his formative adult years in Canberra, which is one of the most enlightened and progressive jurisdictions in the world, in many ways Goulburn is not my natural habitat.  And when the wind howls and the sky comes over grim and grey, it’s really no place for anyone.  But in my little old house with sparrows in the guttering I read and write and read some more.  When I take a break from the words and me and my misshapen tracksuit pants and uggboots go out to see what the chooks are doing, I feel more myself than ever.  At the end of the day, when I pour myself a glass of wine, light the fire, and put on the most miserable music in my collection, I know that this somewhat struggling but good-natured old town is being very good to me.

6.

At times like these I raise a chipped, cracked, coffee-stained mug to Julia Gillard and say thanks for (a) being as decent as you could despite all the shit that was thrown at you (and even though your judgment seemed to go AWOL at times, and your mass-media communication left many of us wondering what you really did mean), and (b) for making all this happen to me.

7.

Today, however, it’s election time again and Tony Abbott, the love-child of John Howard and George W. Bush that he is, will most likely romp across the line.  Despite Labor’s undoubted achievements, the party’s leadership dramas have been appalling – it’s been like having to put up with a couple of junkies fighting in the fruit-and-veg aisle of my local Woolies.  It has to end, and hopefully it ends tonight, when Abbott, all Botox forehead and flapping jug-ears and budgie-smugglers already set out for an early morning swim, takes to the podium.  Perhaps it’ll end a bit more when Kevin Rudd vainly announces his resignation, or doesn’t have to do such a thing because he’s lost his seat.

8.

I’m not a social conservative, and I don’t believe that markets are necessarily the be all and end all, and I don’t believe that wealthy nations can ignore our responsibility to care for those who are wracked by poverty and political turmoil.  So I can’t put a mark in the Coalition’s box, and I can’t ever see myself not thinking in a progressive way.  But I do hope this weekend marks the beginning of a refreshed, enlivened voice for the Left, which may or may not be the Australian Labor Party.

9.

Even though it may well be true that at heart Australia is a fearful, inward-looking country, frankly, as they say around my home-town, you’ve just gotta get the fuck over it and find a better way.

10.

Here’s cheers to Goulburn, to Gillard, and to bright new chapters.

Like picking pink flowers

Male, female, masculinity, femininity: making crap up as we go along.

Proscrastination

This morning, after breakfast was done and the dog fed, and after sorting out the chooks for the day, I, feeling the need for just a few cheeky extra moments of procrastination, cleaned the loo and the sink and the mirror.  When done, I went into the garden and cut a small clump of pink geranium flowers, popped them in a little clear-glass bottle, filled the bottle with water, and set them out.  There: a sparkly, sparkling bathroom; and it always makes me feel brilliant.  Until I walk down to the writing-room with a strong mug of coffee in hand, turn on my computer and think, Oh Christ, I can’t remember where I’m up to.

Just activities

The point of all this? Manhood.  Or, at least, gender.  The thing is I’ve spent much of the last few weeks (on top of much of the last four and a half decades) thinking – worrying – about gender.  Along with most of Australia, probably.  Gender, sexism, equality: this is the stuff that’s currently flooding our radios and TVs and websites and newspapers.  But I don’t understand what any of it really means.  Last week over at Verity La I wrote an editorial about gender equality in terms of what the journal publishes, and I introduced the piece by saying that I simply don’t know what makes a man and what makes a woman.  Of course, we can talk in general terms, we can make observations based on assumptions.  Even though gender isn’t always black and white, it’s actually the notions of masculinity and femininity that are the hardest to define.  Is fixing a car a masculine activity?  Is cooking chicken soup a feminine activity?  Is tinkering in the shed with hammers and nails a masculine activity?  Is, oh I don’t know, blogging a feminine activity?  In the end the only rational conclusion is that these are just activities.  But if anyone knows of a logical definition of masculinity and femininity, do feel free to share it.

Political tedium

Yet one of the core precepts of human life is gender and what this enables and entitles us to do between being born and kicking the bucket.  In Australian political life, men wear dark-coloured suits with blue ties; woman wear whatever they want, more or less, though a pearl necklace, it seems, should be seriously considered if you’re in a leadership position.  Men can say whatever they want, even swear (hopefully off-camera), but it wouldn’t be right for women (even off-camera).  Men can be ruthless, but when women do the same we’re advised to approach with caution – she may be dangerous or mad, or even a witch.

The welfare of a child

Closer to home, I’ve been thinking about the welfare of children raised by same-sex parents.  I used to believe that as long as, say, the son of a lesbian couple had access to a good father-figure (an uncle or high-quality family friend), then all would be right with the world.  But what exactly is that father-figure meant to do?  Teach the son how to kick a footie and do air-guitar to AC/DC?  It’s just rubbish.  So my thinking evolved to this: as long as the son has access to masculine and feminine influences (both of which could be found in his two mothers) then all would be right with the world.  But does that mean one of the mothers has to be good at climbing onto the roof to clean out the gutters (a supposedly masculine trait) while the other has to be good at getting down on her hands and knees to clean the kitchen floors (a supposedly feminine trait)?  It’s totally absurd.  So recently my thinking has evolved to this: as long as the son is loved and protected and encouraged and challenged all will be right with the world; one day he might even climb the food-chain to be deputy prime-minister.

‘Brokeback Mountain’ by Annie Proulx: the best prose ever, as voted by me.

Best-ever novels, Fred Nile and the Australian soccer team

But here’s a thing: even closer to home, when I think of my favourite novels, you know, the ones that I’d rescue if the house was burning down around my ears, all but one (Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx) are written by men, and all of them (except, ironically, The Blackwater Lightship by Colm Tobin) are about men finding their way in the world and, quite honestly, fucking it up as they go here, there, and everywhere.  Further, as I pointed out over at Verity La, there is a distinct bias towards male writers in the work the journal publishes – and I’m the one who makes the decisions.  Surely it goes beyond my personal sexuality (which, sorry Fred Nile, is genetic) to something sinister: in society, and in the way we move through and within society, men have an access-all-areas voice while women must know their place.  Cue: the coach of the Australian soccer team and his completely and utterly ridiculous ‘private joke’.

Making crap up

It’s pretty handy that as Australians we live in an environment where these matters can be discussed so freely and openly (though I’d be brave to the point of stupidity to chew this stuff over with some mates down at my Goulburn local).  It’s also interesting that these issues have been brought to front of stage by a female prime-minister who is, rightly or wrongly (perhaps both), and consciously or unconsciously (perhaps both), using her gender to bolster her government (which has, it should be said, achieved a lot despite almost crippling political and economic circumstances).  But it would be good to reach the chapter – I thought we had already, but clearly I was wrong – where actions are just actions: they don’t have sex or genders.  Like picking pink flowers for the bathroom.  But it’s likely this is me just being a bit of a fairy.  And, as always, making crap up.