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EMMA RAVES ON ABOUT: POLITICS & MARRIAGE EQUALITY
There is an old saying that you should never, under any circumstances, discuss politics, religion, or sex, with your friends. Hence, I shall start with politics….
Although we weren’t aware of it at the time nor cared, most of us, as little kiddies, grew up under the tail end of long conservative leadership in this country. The men that ruled us wore black suits with sensible ties and usually had Grecian 2000 or Brylcream in their hair. Many had Clark Gable-like moustaches and smoked unfiltered cigarettes on camera. The really successful ones had lovely speaking voices, the timber of which reverberated out of the deep speakers of the household wireless. Locally in South Australia we had Sir Thomas Playford who apart from a little blip in the late 1960’s, ran this state continuously for decades. Federally, we had the giant shadow of Sir Robert Menzies and the political organisation he founded, The Liberal Party. Both, it must be said, were products of their time. Playford oscillated from complete stupefying inaction on anything at all to grand projects still giving benefits to the state 60 years later. He was smart enough to know that South Australia had to populate and populate fast to gain relevance in a country struggling to find its place in the new markets opening up to it both here and across the world however to do that he needed to encourage enormous droves of migrants, particularly from Great Britain, to up anchor and make a new home in his suburban “utopia” at Elizabeth to work in the expanding industries we were developing in the North.
The downside of all this for Sir Tom was that the vast majority of these immigrants were unlikely to vote for him under any circumstances. He built the town, brought the businesses in, subsidised the cost of bringing the people here, created the SA Housing Trust so that they had cheap places to live in and even named the place after their Monarch yet these people were escaping the stifling conservatism and class divides that was post-war Great Britain and they loathed the ruling classes. Anyone with a “Sir” at the start of their name was the sworn enemy. Old Sir Tom was canny enough to know this as well. Where better to stick them all but out in the previously barren landscapes of the north where they could be corralled together? In the late 1950’s there was plenty of spare land around in the suburbs for a massive General Motors plant (in fact two were happily ensconced in the suburbs prior to this) but imagine if all those sweaty unionists were living in the suburbs? Perhaps in suburbs where Liberal MP’s sat and, heaven forbid, could be dislodged?
Nationally, Sir Robert Menzies had tracked along a similar path but used social engineering to achieve his aims. The threat of international communism was forefront in his thinking and he was the man who popularised the term “reds under the bed” creating a generation of paranoid elderly Australians. He had seen firsthand the fall of Russia, China, Greece, Italy, Germany, and later Cuba, to either communist or fascist regimes and socialism in any form scared him to death. A staunch monarchist who happily and somewhat embarrassingly cowed to the Old Country at every opportunity, Sir Robert set forth on a path to ensure Australia was not amongst the sweeping grasp of the Red Peril. Like Sir Tom, Sir Robert was also stupefyingly inactive on almost any subject you can name that we take for granted in Australia today but he was smart enough to have worked out that unless you had a bit of money behind you back in those grim days immediately post-war then you and your family had to rent a home to live in. You also had to use public transport or walk everywhere. You were poorly paid and worked six days a week at a hard manual job in most cases. You really had just the bare basics to survive. Sir Robert’s highly successful plan to reinvigorate the country post WW2 and deflect the socialist/communist scourge was to get basic wages up, subsidise ex-service personnel, and put home ownership within the reach of an average family….he reasoned, quite rightly, that a man with a mortgage and lawns to mow was unlikely to be thinking about revolution. With home ownership and more disposable income however expectation builds. The man with the house and the lawnmower also wants a car, a TV, new furniture, and maybe a nice greenhouse for his tomatos. He doesn’t ask for more money he demands it. He wants a publicly funded welfare system too that will look after his elderly parents, free hospitals that will care for them and his family if he needs them, unemployment benefits if the business he works for goes broke, better roads, parks, and services in general. He wants his children to have the educational opportunities he never had. To achieve these demands for the average working man the nation was often gridlocked by industrial disputes and strikes.
So for all the good stuff these old dinosaurs did they really wrote their own death warrants and underestimated what the “people” were capable of. Their sense of entitlement overrode any thoughts that the common man may aspire for much more than he was born in to but for all their faults there was still much to be thankful for back in those innocent days in a country where the most important thing you were judged on was your nice-ness. The only problem of course was that we as a nation looked introspectively and didn’t much consider the wider rapidly shrinking world.
The tornado of change swept dramatically through the length and breadth of this land with the election of Don Dunstan here in SA and then, more significantly, with Gough Whitlam’s rise to power nationally in 1972. Suddenly, those black suits starting being replaced with safari suits and kaftans and facial hair topiary was abundant. Theirs was a social agenda, giving opportunity to those who had never had it and embracing the marginalised, who of course also voted. For the vast majority of us who are either homosexual or have homosexual friends, it is hard to fathom that in the reasonably recent past it was a serious criminal offence to be attracted to the person of your choice. If caught you would be prosecuted and jailed to the full extent of the law – if you were lucky. Many were just savagely beaten and some, like Adelaide University Professor George Duncan, were murdered and the perpetrators, although known to be serving police detectives, were never convicted of the crime. Dunstan repealed the law making homosexuality a crime and at the time there was massive backlash from the church and the moral outragers but 40 years on it is now just part of the landscape everywhere in Australia. Dunstan also famously repealed the law requiring hotels to close at 6pm and introduced Sunday trading, built the Adelaide Festival Centre, and promoted South Australia as a leading cultural hub. For those of us with a degree, Whitlam made it possible for us to get exactly the same education as someone who had just been fortunate enough to be born into a family with money. Free medical care was available. That, along with the abolition of conscription, should be reason enough for our generation to grovel at his feet. The downside of the massive social reforms that the Whitlam government brought in was what was deemed in the day complete financial mismanagement. After the Menzies years, wherein if a Public Service clerk wished to obtain a fresh HB pencil the request went to a Parliamentary Sub-Committee, the Labor Party had sat in opposition for so long watching the screwing over of the working classes that the result was once they were elected a raft of agendas built up over time were enacted almost overnight and we could not afford a lot of it. Most of our natural resources had been sold off to overseas interests over the previous decades so Whitlam went about buying them back. Medibank, extensive welfare reforms, free education are all extremely worthy but cost a lot of money. As dire as it seemed in 1974-75 after decades of conservative spending the amount the country owed externally must have seemed insurmountable. It would probably not even rate a mention today compared to the giant sinkhole of debt Australia finds itself in currently – sums which we can never in our wildest dreams hope to pay off.
The point is, that long before fitbits, mobile phones, hot yoga, and House Rules came along to enrich our lives, and regardless of which side of the political spectrum you sat on, and for good or for bad, people elected to our government generally had some sort of clear vision which we could understand. They saw well past the 3 or 4 year election cycle and fought for things that really mattered and that could move us and our country forward. The two major parties were clearly defined: Generally, The Liberal & Country Party as they were known then were full of lawyers, graziers, and old money families. The Labor Party was full of train drivers and union organisers. Where have all the statesmen gone? Unless they have a name tag on them it is impossible to tell parliamentarians apart now and even harder to tell them apart when they open their mouths.
There used to be an argument put up (probably by backbenchers) that we pay such low salaries to parliamentarians that we don’t attract the right people. Really? Federal parliamentarians from all sides receive between $150k and somewhere in the $400k-500k region. That doesn’t sound like bad dough to me. The state members don’t fare much worse and STILL we have extremely ordinary representation. If Tom Koutsantonis (Labor SA Treasurer) and Scott Morrison are so shit hot at managing money why aren’t they running Beach Energy or Telstra? They would earn gazillions at either of those places….the reason they aren’t of course is that they are no bloody good at it. The Feds last year made a huge deal of the fact they spent 36 hours straight in the Senate prior to the federal election reclassifying how many votes you needed to become elected – an issue that only concerned them. I wish they’d spent half that time working out why my electricity bills are so fucking high or why when I try and speak to a government department I have to sit there listening to stupid chamber music for hours on end before hanging up in frustration and attempting then to access the almost hysterically poor MyGov website. Honestly, if Facebook can build a platform for 300,000,000 users worldwide that can do practically anything from a nerdy university student’s laptop why can’t any government do things so much better?
Nationally, the two major parties are fractured and they face more issues from their colleagues than they ever seem to from their opponents. I think Malcolm Turnbull is probably a good bloke but he is knobbled by the deals he has had to do to get where he is and I have no idea why he even bothers. The Member for New Zealand…err I mean New England, Barnaby Joyce, is a clown. Christopher Pyne presents himself unashamedly as an elitist with so little empathy or knowledge of ordinary Australians that it is no wonder he is charged with Defence Infrastructure and Parliamentary business and not something he could do real damage in like Health, or Indigenous Affairs. Bill Shorten presents himself with such a strong smell of insincerity you could cut it with a knife. Penny Wong is a gun but far too smart to go to the House of Representatives (did you know she was once SA Premier Jay Wetherill’s girlfriend? Absolutely she was). Doug Cameron is the same (although I don’t think he was ever Jay’s girlfriend). The Greens, well intentioned though they may be, are laughable. Sarah Hansen-Young may well be the most stupid person in Australia. This party started with a bit of an interesting platform and could have been something quite significant like the Democrats were in their heyday but, no, they’re just playing the game now. Safe in the knowledge that they could never possibly get elected to power they come up with ludicrous proposals or preposterous “policies” to save the pygmy water squirrel or demand road taxes for people who don’t use natural fibre seat covers whilst they hold duly elected governments of both persuasions to ransom . Another pathetic bunch of individuals is One Nation……having boldly stated during the US Presidential elections that even the silly Americans wouldn’t be that crazy to elect Donald Trump I’m loathe to just dismiss this ragtag bunch of rednecks, homophobes, and misfits. Thankfully Queensland is their stronghold (the banana benders DID keep electing Bjelke-Petersen for over 20 years it must be said) and I’m not sure that they have much of an influence anywhere else but groups that promote hate and fear are always dangerous and they tap into the base fears of people who actually have nothing to fear at all. The only reason Pauline Hanson gets media air time is because she is so excruciatingly poor at getting her point across and the problem with self-crucifixion is that you can never hammer that last nail in.
It is time to face facts. We have no leaders/statesmen/or visionaries. Probably the last one we had in the statesman category anywhere would have been John Howard. Before him, whether you agreed with any of them or not, Keating, Hawke, and Fraser were all statesmen post-Whitlam who was possibly the last great one. There has not been one anywhere since and none on the horizon that I can see. It is complete blandness. I, for one, out of what must be said is a highly competitive field never thought I would see the day that a government minister could be as inept and incompetent as our local Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Youth, Minister for Veterans Affairs and Minister for Volunteers, Zoe Bettison. I heard her interviewed on the ABC last year and I was listening slack jawed as she defended a proposal of hers to fine pensioners for not maintaining their own properties to what her department deemed to be “acceptable standards”. And not little fines either – something like $20,000 if your roof leaks! I’d heard it all then….since when were Labor in the business of screwing over little old ladies in Valley View or Plympton? Thankfully that proposal did not go any further as Premier Jay shut it down pretty quickly.
As a life-long Labor voter I see little to inspire me locally and they conduct their business with an arrogance that beggars belief sometimes. Having said that, State Labor is a virtual cornucopia of talent compared with the State Liberals. What a dry, feeble, useless bunch of spineless parasites they are. I met state opposition leader Steven Marshall a few months back and that did nothing to change my opinion. He is like the class dobber at school constantly pointing out the obvious….he has no policies, nothing new or interesting to say, and no one standing behind him that is any better. Our pollies in SA are reactive to everything and seem to operate under a siege mentality where everyone is the enemy. I remember Neville Wran saying in an interview once “by the time you get to the top in politics your hands are so covered in blood you have forgotten why the hell you got into it in the first place”. I think most of ours here in South Australia sit around waiting for someone to tap them on the shoulder and say “ah, excuse me, but you’ve been found out so now you will have to go”.
I NEARLY voted for Liberal candidate Caroline Habib at the election before our last one because I met her at Coles at Park Holme and I thought she was hot. Seriously.
So we have a few options as I see it. One, we can just put up with embracing the mediocrity because little voices can’t change anything. Two, we can all enter the polling booths next election and draw giant penis’s all over our voting papers. Or, Three, we can build a Time Machine to transport us back to some gentler place where we can spend our remaining days living naked in a commune unspoilt by the machinations of Candy Crush, Paywave, and Reversing Cameras.
All the above considered, I think unless something drastic changes that we are going to be in trouble with the so-called “plebiscite”. The Marriage Act was previously changed with the stroke of the pen of John Howard back in 2004 with no debate or requirement to do so. What has changed? The language around it certainly has for one. If you are an opponent, then you refer to it as the “Same Sex Debate”. If you are for it, it is referred to as the “Marriage Equality Referendum or Debate”, with attendant rainbow motif’s. The whole thing makes parliamentarians extremely nervous and not just on the conservative side. I think Malcolm, if he could, would just enact it overnight and be done with it but because of the deals he has had to do to win and retain power he can’t. Bill Shorten has hardly been overly vocal on this issue and has left most of it to Penny Wong, who due to her own declared sexuality, is off-limits for attack on this issue. DO NOT underestimate the influence the Catholic Church still wields within the Labor Party – it is far from cut-and-dried in the Labor heartland. Stalemate.
Anyone who has even a few brain cells knows that the whole subject of being able to legally marry the one you love is a no-brainer. The argument from the extreme Right mainly centres on the ability to procreate (whilst deftly avoiding the reality that thousands of Australians are single parents anyway – Immaculate Conception perhaps?) and “forcing” the ministries of the various churches to solemnise marriages they don’t ecclesiastically believe in. Well…shock! Horror! They’ve been doing that forever anyway. If I am a member of the Uniting Church and my Significant Other is a Lutheran and we pop along to the local Catholic Johnny he can refuse to marry us anyway on the basis we are not of his ilk.
I know a lot of us have felt pretty comfortable with the groundswell of public opinion that has been evident since this question raised itself again. But declarations on Facebook and wearing rainbow motifs will not get it over the line. How many of us thought the Republic Referendum was a done deal prior to the vote and how did that work out?
Do not take anything for granted sisters…..make sure you are enrolled to vote and make sure you do it otherwise those pathetic individuals in Canberra will get off scot free once again and claim “the people have spoken”. If the vote ends the way I hope it will the battle may not still be won but we’ll be a significant step closer and then at last I will see if Vanessa, or Adrian, or ANYONE will marry me and make an honest woman of me. Well sort of anyway….xx
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