Tuesday, August 21, 2007
HOMES LOST
The Age’s Traceeee Hutchison on Saturday, rejoicing in a stockmarket downturn:
Sometimes the twists and turns of life are so deliciously ironic there’s no escaping the idea that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. That there really is a higher power — be it God, Buddha, Allah or the Rainbow Serpent — watching over the madness we’re creating here on Earth and reminding us how stupid and shallow we are.
Hutchison, of all people, needs reminding?
As the international financial markets went into meltdown, causing analysts to shriek that the end of the world as they knew it was nigh, stocks plunged and home owners all over Australia prepared to lose their homes.
Politics of fear! Politics of fear! Naturally, within a day or so:
The Australian share market enjoyed its biggest rally in a decade as the All Ordinaries index surged 256 points to 5,927.
The rise of more than 4.5 per cent added around $60 billion to the value of listed Australian companies.
Back to Traceeee, surrounded by imaginary former home owners currently blocking the nation’s streets:
But there was no time for musing in the Northern Territory. This week the folk at Yirrkala, in north-eastern Arnhem Land, wasted no time kicking out the Government’s so-called survey team of public servants and military who’d gone in for a reconnoitre as part of “The Intervention” ...
These are the same local people who have just hosted thousands of people from all over the world to their internationally renowned indigenous cultural festival, Garma. The festival is a healthy injection to the local economy through attendance fees, art sales and the capacity-loaded planes that fly in and out.
Note Hutchison’s approval of this “healthy injection to the local economy”. Yet her concluding paragraph reminds us:
... of how poor our prevailing dollar-driven values system makes us all in the end.
Sounds like she’d support the abolition of that “internationally renowned indigenous cultural festival”, what with its “healthy injection to the local economy through attendance fees, art sales and the capacity-loaded planes”.
Dollars are bad.