Wednesday, November 21, 2007
DEVENY DEVOLVES
Their policies are practically identical, but the government is evil and the opposition is angelic, according to the Age’s Catherine Deveny:
When you find yourself at the ballot box on Saturday, remember, my friends, that this is a rare opportunity to make a difference to the soul of Australia.
Beginning as she means to continue, Catherine offers a platitude that would repel even Kevin Rudd.
Our participation in public life is limited to five minutes every three years ...
Doesn’t get out much, does she?
... and an election like this only comes about once in a lifetime.
Once every three years, actually. There’s a clue right there at the start of the sentence.
In four days you will have an impact on the history and the direction of our country. Your vote will affect people who haven’t even been born yet.
Unless you live in a safe Labor or Coalition seat, which is most of them, as it happens. Vote any way you like; no change. Bad luck, unborn!
You’ll have an opportunity to stand up and say, “We’re better than this.” Braver than this. Smarter than this. And more compassionate than this. And bigger than this.
What is this “this” to which Catherine refers? Is it voting? Are we bigger than voting?
We are not afraid of the future. We are shamed by our recent past. But united by the possibility of the future. And hope.
The possibility of the future? Oh, I think it’s gonna happen, Cathy. Bet on it.
This election is an intelligence test.
For some reason I’m picturing Cathy emerging from a voting booth with a pencil stuck up her nose.
A test to prove we can see past the spin, the dog whistles, the short-sighted rhetoric, the scare campaigns, the pork-barrelling and the fearmongering. A test to show that we are smarter than the Government gives us credit for.
A test to show if we can spot the fake tradesman.
If we do not seize this opportunity for change we will go down in history as the most greedy, gullible, mean-spirited, selfish, short-sighted, tight-fisted generation in the history of Australia.
When it comes to mean-spiritedness, Deveny is a hard act to follow.
How will it feel sitting in front of that $5000 plasma TV watching reruns of American reality shows, wearing clothes manufactured in a sweat shop and sitting on a sofa made by Third World slaves?
We’ve been buying imported televisions, clothes and furniture for decades. How will voting Labor make any difference?
How will that feel when our public education and hospitals have been gutted ...
Ask state Labor governments, to whom these responsibilities fall.
... and our environment corroded to a point of no return?
A few lines previously Deveny was urging us to see past “scare campaigns” and “fearmongering”.
How will it feel knowing we have turned our back on people who need us most: the poor, the broken, the scared, the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable?
After eleven years of Howard, how is it these people are even still alive? Surely more than a decade of vicious neglect must by now have finished them off.
How will it feel when you turn to your children and say, “I believed him”?
More interesting: how will the children feel? Probably a little concerned about mother’s daytime drinking.
On Saturday, you can prove that what is in your heart and on your conscience is more important than what’s in your hip pocket.
Vote for less money! But Kevin Rudd swears he’s an economic conservative who won’t cost us a cent. You calling him a liar, girl?
You’ll be able to say to your grandchildren that you voted for better. You voted for truth. You voted for imagination.
At which point the grandkids run from the room.
You voted for all of us, not just for the white middle-class working families who have never had it so good.
Whoa ... ”white”? Is there a racial component to this election we’ve all missed somehow?
Our family has never been better off because we are one of those white middle-class working families.
So you’re among the majority of Australians. Howard should have used Catherine in campaign ads.
But not all of us are working. We are not all white. We do not all speak English. We are not all heterosexual. And we are not all families. But we all deserve a life of dignity, peace and fairness.
Deveny’s righteousness isn’t at all diminished by the fact she’s white, speaks English, is heterosexual, a mother, and - by some miracle - employed.
I don’t have to imagine how it feels to be an outsider. I know. I know how it feels to be a child and have our home sold from under us.
How does that happen, exactly? Some rogue house-selling gang holds an auction when you aren’t looking, and before you know it your house has been sold and you’ve got to go live somewhere else? Wow.
I know how it feels to live with parents crushed by poverty and paralysed by hopelessness. I know how it feels when you can’t afford to go to camp and instead have to wave the bus goodbye. I know how it feels to know that you are poor.
Hey, happened to me, too. During the Whitlam years. But Catherine really should stop obsessing over her hip pocket; what’s in your heart is more important!
But like many people from the working classes, I also know how it feels to be given a chance. And the thrill of achievement beyond your wildest expectations. To live the better life for which our families courageously fled poverty, war, persecution and famine.
Why, this sounds like nothing more than white middle-class working family triumphalism.
Opportunity is created only through vision, tolerance, acceptance and imagination.
The mark of a completely meaningless sentence: it remains precisely as meaningless no matter how you mix it up. “Tolerance is created only through vision, opportunity, acceptance and imagination”; “Vision is created only through opportunity, tolerance, acceptance and imagination”; “Imagination is created only through vision, tolerance, acceptance and opportunity”. By the way, imagination won’t be supplied by any of Deveny’s hated workers, for, as she’s previously written: “Blue-collar Australia has no imagination.”
Look back at the past 11 years and imagine the next decade as more of the same.
Can we imagine it without any more Deveny columns? Please?
On Saturday you will have a rare opportunity to prove to our past, to our present and to our future that we are better than this.
Take that, past!
And we are not stupid enough to swallow the short way round but the long way home.
Speechless.
At my grade 6 graduation, I stood side by side with Greeks, Yugoslavs, Macedonians, Poles, Italians and Maltese and we sang: “I’m as Greek as a Souvlaki, I’m as Irish as a stew, I’m as Italian as spaghetti, I’m as Danish as a blue, I’m as German as a dumpling, Middle Eastern as a lamb. I’m an Aussie, yes I’m an Aussie, yes I am."
And we believed it.
Is Catherine suggesting that Greeks, Yugoslavs, Macedonians, Poles, Italians and Maltese have become disenfranchised under Howard? Hard to tell, given these paragraphs seem unrelated to the rest of Catherine’s column.
Over the past 11 years, I have lost faith in the Australian people.
Including the Greeks, Yugoslavs, Macedonians, Poles, Italians and Maltese?
I’ve felt shame at the spin they have swallowed, the politicians they have believed and the values they have embraced. I’m horrified at how politicians have chosen to lead our country using fear over faith ...
She’s a member of the faith-based community!
I just hope I am not alone. There’s plenty for all of us.
The worst political speech of the whole campaign ... and it wasn’t delivered by a politician.
UPDATE. Age letter-writer Edward Butler:
Congratulations to Catherine Deveny for spelling out a reason to cast a vote this election that is not about ourselves and, most importantly, our wallets. I have grown weary of the election being conducted along the lines of how a Liberal or Labor government will make ME better off. Consideration for other people rarely, if ever, warrants a mention.
During times of financial plenty, it is incumbent upon us to show the greatest care towards those who have not benefited, to help raise them up and give them opportunities that we have enjoyed.
Deveny acknowledges that “working families” have “never had it so good”. It’s almost as though they’ve been “raised up” and “given opportunities”.