Eve of a New Day

Born Free

I didn't know much about Julia Gillard before she became Prime Minister two days ago. I knew about some of her decisions as the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and as Deputy Prime Minister, but not a lot. Just another politician, I thought.

But after seeing Gillard interviewed on the 7.30 Report, I have changed my mind. She was gutsy, honest, intelligent, decent and likable. I agree with Joan Kirner, the first female to be Premier of Victoria, who said that Gillard is going to make politics fun again.

We also watched the 2006 Australian Story about Gillard. My favourite part was the story her mum, Moira, told about when her daughter was in high school:

Julia could never understand why the girls should stay in class to tidy up the classroom while the boys were just running around having a good time. So she said to the teacher that was not fair. Why couldn’t the boys do it one week and they do it the next week. He said to her 'Are you into women’s liberation, Julia?' And she said, she looked at him with utter scorn and said 'I don’t need women’s liberation, I was born free'.

The Hopenfogels

My lil ol' blog is two years old today, and to celebrate, I have decided to create an award.

Every year on the 29th of May, we here at the Land of Meg will announce the winner of The Hopenfogel award. Hopenfogel means Hoopoe bird in German.

Hoopoes were considered sacred in Ancient Egypt, and symbols of virtue in Persia, but I have chosen them as the namesake for my annual award because Hopenfogel was my great grandmother Edith's maiden name, and it brings to mind all the impressive women in her lineage.

There are no criteria for the award. Some years there may be more than one winner, some years there may nominations in several categories, some years I may forget all together, but for this year's award, there is a single winner.

And it is Norrie.

From The Age, March 10, 2010:

This Mardi Gras, Norrie received a gift that no other androgynous person in NSW has had before.

The night before the parade, the postman brought a certificate from the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages that contained neither the dreaded ''M'' nor its equally despised cousin, ''F''.

Instead, it said ''sex not specified'', making the 48-year-old Sydneysider, who identifies as neuter and uses only a first name, the first in the state to be neither man nor woman in the eyes of the NSW government.

(Norrie has since had zie non-specified gender status withdrawn by the government who said that it is not permitted in law to state anything other than male or female on legal documents.)

But to us you are a winner. Congratulations Norrie! This inaugural Hopenfogel belongs to you.

Fresh Knickers

How often do you buy new knickers? Actually, that's none of my business. Sorry.

When we made the decision to only buy second hand clothes, I hadn't really considered the issue of buying underpants and bras. Occasionally we'll find plain cotton underwear in our sizes still in their packets at the op shop, and until recently that's been enough.

But the other day when PJ caught me wearing two pairs, I knew it was time to do something about it. (One pair had functional elastic at the top, and the other pair was still OK at the bottom.)

I guess we could learn to sew our own or we could go without, but this time, we bit the bullet and bought ourselves some new ones. And just in time, as I recently read that:

Police will soon have sweeping powers to search people at random, including strip-search, even if there is no reasonable suspicion those targeted have done anything wrong.

Got Milk

I woke early thinking about milk today. Perhaps because it looked like our neighbourhood had been dunked in a big glass of it. And perhaps because I had arranged to get some fresh milk today from a cow who's weaning her calf.

I had wanted to find the cow to thank her and snap a pic, but she couldn't be found in the fog. Here is H who looks after the cow, filling my bottle in her kitchen.

Over on PJ's blog, he has a discussion going about the ethics of food that has got me thinking a bit more about what we eat (and drink) and why.

We buy a litre of organic milk a week and I assume that that's good enough. But is it? It comes in a carton from Bendigo, 45 minutes (by car) away, which isn't so bad, although I'm sure a lot of energy is used in the production of that humble litre.

Did you know that due to health regulations it's illegal to buy and sell milk that hasn't been pasteurised? People get around the laws by selling it as 'bath milk'. I don't know the laws in other countries but in Australia, this is the case.

I put the bath milk in my tea today, and can happily say I look forward to meeting Elly the cow next week when I stop by for my litre.

Breaking with Tradition

I read somewhere recently how odd a thing it is that the laws of our nation's future are created according to a constitution created over 100 years ago.

Walking up the stairs of our local town hall yesterday to get to the boardroom, I really felt the heaviness of that tradition.

In 2005, our local council established the Women’s Honour Roll to pay tribute to women in the Shire whose contribution, courage and example have led to significant social change. For the last 4 years, the award ceremony has been held on March 8, International Women's Day. But this year it was held 2 months late, because the usual March date didn't fit in with Council's schedule.

There was much community uproar that the local event was not held on International Women's Day, a day that has been commemorated since the early 1900s, the world over. And so I volunteered to be on the Honour Roll committee, to ensure that this year's ceremony was held on or close to, International Women's Day.

This is the food that sat in the middle of the boardroom table the committee sat around:

This is the mantlepiece I sat across from as I thought about my own contradictions:

On one hand I couldn't believe how stuffy and outdated the town hall was, while on the other hand, I was only there to uphold a tradition that had been broken.

Equal Love

Photo

Yesterday was the National Day of Action for Same-Sex Marriage, which culminated in 150 couples getting illegally wed outside the Australian Labour Party National Conference in Sydney.

I am ashamed of the Australian government's policies on many issues, but I am especially regretful of its refusal to budge on its homophobic Christian stance on gay marriage and same sex civil unions.

Have you seen that video that's doing the rounds at the moment of the couple and their bridal party dancing down the aisle? It's oh so cheesy, but I must admit that I have clicked replay on it more than once. There's something really lovely and liberated about the way the bride dances down on her own; no man to give her away, she's doing it on her on terms. My one wish for that couple is my one wish for all couples: that their love and commitment to one another be mightier than all the statistics stacked against them, and more honourable than our policy makers are.

Anti-Social Climbing

It's been nearly 18 months since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made his sorry speech to the stolen generation and still, tourists are allowed to climb Uluru, which is a sacred site for local Aboriginal people.

This week a draft management plan has been released for the Uluru-Kata Tjuta national park, calling for, among other things, a ban on people climbing Uluru. The plan also points out the environmental impact of climbers, such as erosion along paths and the effect on wildlife of rubbish left behind.

Earlier this week, Julian Morrow from The Chaser dressed up in mountaineering gear and attempted to scale the spire of St John's Anglican Church in Canberra, where Prime Minister Rudd was giving an address and where he and his wife were married in 1981.

When it was reported in the news, The Chaser's stunt was called inappropriate and of poor taste.

But why? Because spiritual sites should not be climbed?

Comparing Junes

We've had our solar panels since the end of last year. It's always exciting to receive a power bill to see how little electricity we are using compared to the same period last year. I'm not sure if you can read the words of my blurry photo, but the columns on the far left and far right are for the same quarter, one year apart.

We bought our panels through the solar neighbourhood scheme, where 50 local families all signed up to buy their panels so the supplier could buy them in bulk. This helped bring the cost right down, but what made it truly affordable was the Federal Government's Solar Rebate scheme, which has just been axed and replaced by the less than encouraging Solar Credits scheme.

Under this new scheme, we would only have received half the amount of money back as we did, which would have meant we were not able to afford our panels. So while the government is congratulating itself on the popularity of its solar rebate program, it is sabotaging the success of any future schemes by making it harder for everyday folk like us who just want to do their bit.

Tank Man Tango

Yesterday I received an email from my friend Trudy:

Your participation is welcome to this international memorial for Tiananmen Square, on the 20th anniversary: 4 June, 2009. It's an ephemeral memorial made of dancing bodies in homage to the lone man who stood up to the tanks. A dance routine has been choreographed based on the movements of this man. This commemorative dance will be known as Tank Man Tango, it will take place in dozens of cities around the world and will be streamed on the Internet.

This afternoon I joined a group of people gathered to do the Tank Man Tango. Here some of us are, posing for the photographer from the local paper. Kerry stands in the foreground, embodying the Goddess of Democracy, the 10 meter tall statue created by the Chinese students as part of the Tiananmen Square protests.

I live in a small peaceful town, faraway from places where democracy is not tolerated, where violence is the answer if you dare ask the question. I thought that I would go this afternoon, do the dance and come home to cook a nice hot dinner. But as I moved my body, and shook my arms in defiance, I thought: I stand for something.

I opened up the paper this morning and read about still more violence perpetrated against Indian students and now Chinese students too. I stand for these students. We all shook our plastic bags, imitating the man who stood bravely before the tanks 20 years ago. I stand for that man. I try to avoid buying anything packaged in plastic, so the irony of waving my toxic pompoms was not lost on me. I stand for what the plastics industry doesn't give a shit about.

We stomped out the movements of one person's dance of anger against his government. I stand for just one person. He swung his arms and stomped his opposition onto his rightful place to be free on his land. I stand for his freedom. I stand for his right. I stand for the rights of all people to stomp their dance on their own land. I stand for their dance. I stand for your dance. And I stand for the people who don't have hands to flail, who don't have bags, who don't have legs, who don't have land. I stand for the land.

Extra

I was a movie star yesterday. 

Actually, that's a big fat lie. I did spend all day on a film shoot, though merely as an extra.

As part of the bushfire recovery package, the Victorian Government is spending $7.3 million on a three minute advertisement to highlight all the great things about the region I call home.

Fifteen of us from our town were in it, making all the boring bits of waiting around and doing the same thing over and over and over really fun.

I don't think that any of the virtues espoused in the ad are the region's finest (but I'm still looking forward to seeing the ad when it airs).

In fact when I think about it, the qualities that marketers always attribute to this region concern decadence and indulgence; the very things that lead to global warming, to the bushfires and the need for this ad to be made.

Pedal Power

Photo by Diana

So far I have blogged four posts that mention Victorian premier John Brumby, and of those four all of them have been negative.

Today however I have something favourable to say about him. Why my change of heart? Because he has finally come to his senses and yesterday pledged to spend $115 million on a cycling strategy that declares VicRoads will now be required to consider bike lanes in every major road project.

Under the plan, 23 bike paths around Victoria will be completed in the next 18 months, and 33 bike cages built at train stations around Melbourne.

"For the first time in Australia, bike riding has been formally recognised as part of the core transport system," said Bicycle Victoria chief executive Harry Barber.

Pretty good stuff! But before I take out my quill to write Mr Brumby's name in my good book, he first has to do a little soul searching and weighing up of good and bad of his own.

The Australian Grand Prix is set to start on Thurdsay, which means there are still a couple of days to call it off. 

What's it going to be, Mr Brumby?

The First Lawn

From One Green Generation:

Have You Heard? There Will Be An Organic Food Garden At The White House.

Michelle Obama is tearing up part of the South Lawn and planting an organic food garden for her family. How cool is that!

Michelle Obama has never grown a vegetable garden. The White House hasn’t had a garden on the South Lawn since Elanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden during World War II.

So How Did This Happen?

The Obamas have been lobbied to create a garden since before they entered the White House - even before Obama was elected!

Roger Doiron and Kitchen Gardeners International led that cause with their Eat The View Campaign. Roger created a YouTube video that became viral, a Facebook campaign continued the charge, the cause was joined by Alice Waters and other famous chefs, and people like you and I joined the cause by signing the petition, forwarding the idea to our friends, and so on.

The Obamas’ pediatrician had a hand as well. You see, the chaotic life of politics led the Obamas to eat out a lot, to have fast food and packaged meals regularly. Then Malia and Sasha gained weight! So the pediatrician gave Michelle a lecture in nutrition, and the family began to change their eating habits.

The family’s Chicago chef, Sam Kass - who came with them to the White House as assistant White House chef - is an advocate of the local food movement. He’ll be overseeing the garden himself.

The White House Executive Chef, Cristeta Comerford, and the Pastry Chef Bill Yosses will both be arranging their menus around the garden.

One of the White House carpenters, Charlie Brandts, is a beekeeper and has offered to keep two hives to provide fresh honey.

And you and I - who have come together to create a movement of local, seasonal, fresh, organic, home-grown food - we have had a large hand in making this happen. We have helped make it popular, we have helped make it important, we have helped redefine normal. Together.

From here, the White House garden will inspire many, many others to grow their own food, to pay attention to nutrition, to support local food systems. And we will all continue to do our parts as well. Together, we are changing the world.

Free Birth

Our friend Jacinta, who gave birth to both her sons at home, organised this peaceful protest this morning.

Photo: The very talented John Mayger

Click for bigger image

As of July 2010, all midwives in Australia will require insurance in order to be registered. Hospital employed midwives are covered by their hospital’s insurance policy or by membership of the nurses’ union. Private midwives need to be insured too but no insurer is willing to cover them. The Government supports private obstetricians with insurance but now refuses to help private midwives. 

No insurance = no registration.

Private midwives will have to cease homebirth practice, move overseas to work or face prosecution. Homebirth will be driven underground. Some women will birth at home alone without skilled, professional support. 

Whether you would choose homebirth or private midwifery for yourself is not the issue. As of July 2010, women’s choices around birth will be even more restricted than they already are. If women lose this option now, they will never get it back.

Doesn't every woman deserves the right to choose where, how and with whom she wants to give birth?

Laneways

There's no point waiting for governments to take the necessary steps towards a more sustainable future for the planet. We haven't got forever.

If premier Brumby isn't going to pledge adequate funding to create more bike paths in his car-centic Transport Plan for Melbourne, maybe it's time we created our own?

More here.

In other laneway news, if you're in Melbourne tomorrow, my sister Emily is playing at the St Jerome's Laneway Festival at 2.30pm on the QV stage.

The Tall Man

I finished reading this book a couple of days ago but wanted to blog about it today on November 19, exactly four years after Cameron Doomadgee's death, the event around which this book is based. He died while in police custody on Palm Island, an Aboriginal community off the north east coast of Australia.

Doomadgee was arrested one morning for drunkenly swearing at the tall policeman Christopher Hurley. Forty minutes later he was dead.

I share journalist Mark Dapin's sentiment:

This book is everything it should be: a sad, beautiful, frightening account of one man's pointless death, interwoven with the brutal history of Palm Island and a golden thread of Aboriginal mythology. Every sentence is weighty, considered, even, restrained. Every character is explored for their contradictions, every situation observed for its nuances, every easy judgement suspended... It is The Tall Man's triumph that Hooper finds the common humanity in the accused and the accuser, the police officer and the street drinker, the living and the dead.

I read this book in a few days, a testament to the absorbing story but more so to Hooper's writing. She is present in the narrative but never intrudes. She provides just enough space – between the protagonists' motivation and her own – for readers to inhabit and make up their own minds.

It's not a space I want to inhabit. It's not a series of events I enjoyed reading about. But as a white Australian I feel it is a history that I cannot turn away from just because it makes me feel uncomfortable, just because it makes me feel ashamed.

Earlier this year Kevin Rudd formally apologised to indigenous Australians. His speech began:

I move that today we honour the indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment.

The Prime Minister's apology for past cruelties was way overdue. But what of the mistreatments that are ongoing? Or is that the subtext of Hooper's book's title? The tall man, aka the middle finger, extended.

Truganini

I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon clicking refresh on the New York Times website to get updated voting results. And as the perfect antidote I spent the whole of today with my hands in the soil.

Our trees don't care about Bush. Our worms don't understand red and blue States. Our hens can't tell the difference between Tina Fey and Sarah Palin. Our seedlings aren't interested in the significance of an African American president.

Our earth does so much, but knows nothing about our hierarchies of dominance and enslavement. It has no fists to fight back, no voice to yell stop, no feet to kick out in defence.

I felt inside the earth today, my hands ache from their digging.

Yesterday I was gloating and global, today I am soil-coloured and voiceless just as Truganini was before her bones were stolen and exhibited as testament to something that reviled her.

Seed Hunter

Last night we watched Seed Hunter, the fantastic ABC doco about the Australian scientist, Ken Street. Street is charming and candid and oh so likable as we follow him and his team on their noble crusade.

The spiel:

As Australia and much of the world wrestles with hotter weather and a dwindling water supply, mass starvation at a global scale is on the cards if we can’t find ways to improve crop resilience. Scientists are exploring many solutions to adapt our food supply, including going back to mother nature herself to locate the genes that can withstand our changing climate; genes that, thanks to a high yielding monoculture, have almost disappeared. Australian scientist, Dr Ken Street, aka the ‘Seed Hunter’, spends his life searching for the tiny seed that could play a role in helping food producers around the world.

Two and half months ago I wrote about the harvesting of the first GM canola crops since the GM ban was lifted. Then yesterday I read that this harvested canola is now on its way to our grocery shelves.

We might think we can avoid GM ingredients if we want, but we can't. How can we when the canola oil that's being sold to us as cooking oil is not labelled as being GM? How can we when this oil is being mixed into our processed foods, and the leftover meal fed to our livestock?

While biotech giants such as Monsanto are racing towards their desired 100% seed ownership, Ken Street and his crew are scouring the globe in search of ancient seeds that will help ensure the survival of all Earthlings. There's no question as to whose team I'd rather be on.

Sorry, Guys

Thanks R!

Great Walls of Fire

From Boing Boing:

Australia's Great Firewall: Just Like China, Syria and Other "Free" Countries

In a move that seems to be happening without comment from the Australian media, the Australian government is introducing a censorship regime ostensibly targeted at stopping teenagers accessing online porn.

But rather than being an opt-in system, it's "opt-out." I use the scare quotes because, and this is the most insidious part, you can't actually opt out - you can merely be placed on an alternative blacklist which, instead of blocking "content inappropriate for children," block any material deemed to be illegal.

The fact that it will likely reduce everyone's internet performance is secondary; It will most likely incorrectly block 1% of sites, and now what you are allowed to view online is determined and controlled by the state (although most likely quite inaccurately).

The rationale is that since they're setting it up anyway, they're morally obliged to block traffic deemed illegal:

"Illegal is illegal and if there is infrastructure in place to block it, then it will be required to be blocked — end of story."

I don't think I need to go into too much detail about the potential threat to our civil liberties.

People of Australia, please write to your MPs to voice your opposition to this.

More here.