"Hi Pot, this is Kettle" - Miranda Devine screams hypocrisy on behalf of the right

This is the original Devine piece in question, from The Daily Telegraph...

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And this is my response...

The temptation with anything written by Miranda Devine is to immediately dismiss it as shrill and unreasoned, based on a long and established history of writing shrill, hysterical op-ed pieces for Fairfax, and now Murdoch. In any other forum she would be labeled a troll, and the best evidence of this is in the dreadful tone of the majority those commenting on her blog. Perhaps they are trolls themselves, but the tone is so uniformly dreadful that one has to assume these people actually think this way.

But, despite this temptation to dismiss Devine’s latest blog post, I will attempt to address a couple of the points she makes.

 First, I find that the use of the word hypocrite is fraught, not least of all because it tends to attract a “tit for tat” series of accusations. “That was only one time, but it wasn’t as bad as when someone else did some other much worse thing.” “Yeah, but what about when this guy said that thing about that other guy?” ”Sure, but remember when you called me this after I said that?”And so on, ad nauseum. Achieving nothing.

But, that said, let’s do some of that anyway, ergo… Devine railing against the Abbott effigy-decapitators and the Abbott-haters on Facebook. Any reasonable person will argue that that kind of extreme protest is unhelpful at best, utterly destructive at worst. As Australians, I would hope we’re collectively better than that. And someone needs to explain this to Andrew Bolt, for instance, or to Larry Pickering, who is adored by a small fringe on the right, but otherwise ignored and dismissed as the rabid loon that he is by pretty much every reasonable Australian. See what I mean? Both sides of the debate can play the indignation game, which leads the concept of hypocrisy into an Inception-esque meta spiral of dreams within dreams, hypocrisies within hypocrisies. So it’s a potentially endless exercise in accusation and counter-accusation.

What is equally pointless as an exercise, be it academic or practical, is to waste time pointing fingers at the previous government and accusing them of causing this mess. The culpability of Labor/Greens in contributing to the failure of Howard’s border policies is undeniable. Lives were lost. Many lives. Contrary to what many on the Right would have us believe, no one was happy about this. No one was crying “crocodile tears”- to suggest such a thing is despicable (if not surprising) on Devine’s part. So yes, under Howard the boats had stopped. The camps were largely empty. However, what this admission doesn’t address is the methods the Howard government employed to develop, enforce and maintain those policies, aided in part by Peter Reith’s proven and willful omission of truth around the children overboard affair (for instance) and the rising tone of public outrage which followed (and ultimately ensured an unlikely election win). But even Howard and Reith in their worst moments were nothing compared with Abbott and Morrison, for reasons I’ll attempt to explore momentarily.

The reason this endless blame game is so pointless is because it doesn’t fix the problem we are faced with now. Right now. Not just locally, but internationally. Not just in terms of actual, skin-and-bone and mental human suffering, but in terms of our international reputation (as if that matters one bit when compared with real personal suffering.) Naval vessels wandering into Indonesian waters up to six times in a month, turning boats around against the wishes of our peaceful neighbours, and a growing feeling overseas that Australians are, well, hypocrites (to quote a teacher here in Hong Kong this very week, who marvelled at our ostensibly anti-immigration stance considering we are, if nothing else, a nation of immigrants.)

Again, none of this is fixed by tossing around accusations of hypocrisy. And none of this is fixed by trying to deny that with the possible exception of the impossibly idealistic Greens, leading into the last two elections both sides of our political scene were entirely willing to exploit a growing xenophobia by endlessly chanting the “stop the boats” mantra.

And certainly none of this is being fixed by Scott Morrison, who is, in my view, approximately 180 degrees from the “competent, methodical” operator that Devine would have us believe he is. Rather, I see him as completely out of his depth. None of it is being fixed by using sneering, snarky descriptors like “crocodile tears” when the concern being shown by the “hypocritical” left. And in addition to not being fixed, it is being exacerbated by Morrison’s steely refusal to tell us anything. When he does tell us something, it turns out to be half-cocked, or just plain wrong, even a barefaced lie. The man who died last week was not outside the compound (and therefore outside of his department’s care) as Morrison plainly told us, but very much inside. And whilst he was not murdered by Morrison (an admittedly inflammatory and mischievous turn of phrase by Milne) he was almost certainly murdered. He did have his head crushed, possibly his throat cut. It’s hard, even impossible to know specifics, since more than a week  later, an autopsy has not yet been performed on the body which is being guarded by the very people suspected of causing his death. And as we know from history, when there is an information vacuum, suspicion and conjecture emerge to fill it. If there’s nothing to hide, perform the autopsy and tell us what happened. Unlike almost everything else to do with this situation, this bit is actually quite simple. Unless there’s something to hide.

On that point, Devine waxes outraged about Angus Campbell being asked if there is a political cover-up. “How dare he,” she shrieks. Well, personally I think it’s a fair question. We’re not at war, and yet we’re apparently on a war footing, at least where information is concerned. A military commander is overseeing a clearly tense situation, but is gagged by his minister, citing “operational matters”. The situation is not allowed to be covered by the press. Parliamentary questions are restricted to Dorothy Dixers without supplementary follow-ups. Cameras and SD cards are confiscated and wiped at the behest of a private security company, apparently acting on orders from the minister. Translators lose their jobs for simply saying what they saw, ministers storm out of press conferences after ducking and weaving… again, if it’s NOT a political cover-up, tell us what we need and deserve to know, so we can understand the real situation. And don’t tell us that the silence is to keep the people smugglers in the dark – the LNP wouldn’t shut up about boat arrivals pre-September 2013, but now any discussion of the situation amounts to “shipping news”.

Part of the remit of the minister is to take ultimate responsibility for what occurs within his portfolio. But Morrison shows no sign of this. In fact, he only seems interested in blaming the last government for this mess, rather than doing anything about it. We get it – the last government’s policies were costly. Terribly and tragically costly. We get it – Morrison didn’t personally murder anyone, just as Rudd, Gillard and Bob Brown didn’t drown anyone. We get it – it’s a complex situation. But while ever it remains shrouded in this kind of secrecy and we accept it, we end up with the odd bloodstain on our own hands.

Who do we really want to be?

Earlier today I promised a rant, and now I'm almost ready to write it. 

But where to begin? With Tony Abbott insisting the a national public broadcaster has a certain unwritten obligation to cut the government some slack, and giving the navy the benefit of the doubt? With the Defence Minister seeing no need to look into significant allegations against military personnel, preferring instead to assert without investigation that there is no case to answer, and that anyway, the ABC is being treacherous, borderline treasonous? With 22 perfectly reasonable questions to Messrs Abbott and Morrison being met with the same ubiquitous catch-all: "In line with the policy of not discussing what happens at sea, the Government has no response on the issues raised"? Or perhaps we could go international with our outrage, and question the political implications of this government treating our sovereign neighbours with the same contempt they show the Australian people who put them in power. Perhaps the apparent ineptitude of naval crews to read a GPS and chart well enough keep their vessels out of Indonesian waters. Or maybe the boast that no asylum seeker boats have reached Australia for x number of weeks, mainly due to them being intercepted by armed patrol boats and turned around.

No, I'm going to keep it simple, and talk about this picture, published by the Guardian a couple of days ago. And rather than a rant, it's going to be more of an appeal to common decency and human empathy. You know, all bleeding heart "small-L" liberal. The kind of thing that gets Sarah Hanson-Young labelled as "evil" by some on the right.

So, to the details as we understand them. 34 people, including children as young as 18 months, were ordered into a purpose-bought orange lifeboat, turned around, and sent back. Not even taken to an Indonesian port, but simply turned around and told, "You have enough fuel to reach Java", after which they had little choice but to do just that.

Now imagine the scene, 48 hours since they've eaten, running ashore on an uninhabited coastline, opening the door and disembarking. What happens then? Where does one go? 34 people standing on a beach in the dark, hungry and lost.

Of course the response from some will be that these people should have thought of that before they paid people smugglers to ferry them to Christmas Island. I imagine that's what the government is hoping - that prospective asylum seekers will think twice. What little information the government has given us would suggest that this is exactly what is already happening. So job done, I guess.

Under the circumstances I think that Marty Natalegawa is being remarkably restrained when he describes the tow-back/turn-back policy as "not really helpful". I would suggest that a better way to describe such unilateral decisions around sovereign boundaries might be "potentially damaging". This has the real potential to cause diplomatic headaches that will make the temporary ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia shrink into utter insignificance. As the Guardian says, "Indonesia's navy held a meeting this week to discuss the boat turn-backs and has decided to boost personnel numbers on Java's southern coast." Does this mean more staff with boat-hooks and fenders to stop the lifeboats from landing? Does it mean having Indonesian navy vessels on patrol and ready to repel Australian ships that "accidentally" wander into their waters? A standoff on the high seas while an orange lifeboat bobs innocuously between them? All real possibilities.

So what is to be done? I don't think anyone considers it an easy problem to solve. (Well, except for those who argue that we should just shell the boats out of the water, but those kinds of nut-bars don't get a say.) For some time now both sides of politics have been culpable in demonising the desperate. I guess it's about playing for the middle ground, but that doesn't make any of the slated policies satisfactory. And it certainly doesn't excuse this bullying approach from the current government, not just towards the asylum seekers, but towards Indonesia, and towards the free press and Australian electorate who quite rightly expect better responses than "no comment". 

I think it's time to ask this question, and to answer it honestly: how do we want to the seen by the rest of the world? What kind of people do we want to be? Who have we become collectively, and are we actually happy with that? Modern Australia is a multicultural country made up predominantly of boat-people, a nation which has always prided itself on how highly it values mateship and a fair go for all. It's kind of hard to make that claim at the moment, wouldn't you say? The way things are going, we're going to have our work cut out to represent ourselves overseas as anything more than a bunch of privileged, whining xenophobes who don't give a shit about how hard things are for anyone else. 

But perhaps worse than that, we'll be seen as a democratic nation that is happy to vote in a government based pretty much entirely on who they aren't, before settling for letting them do whatever they please without expecting any kind of accountability. Are we really that country? God, I hope not.

An open letter to Kevin Rudd

Dear Mr Rudd,

It was good to see you over the weekend, or at least, good to see you on the TV. I don't attend church much these days, so I was always unlikely to run into you there, but I did catch a bit of footage of you patting your minister on the arm and sharing a joke of some kind as you went into the House of God. And I have to say, you looked ever so relaxed and happy, with your cable-knit over your shoulders like a Hilfiger model. And you had every right to be relaxed - it was a beautiful day, you were amongst friends who were almost certainly telling you what a great job you were doing, and I'm sure that you and Therese had a lovely traditional lamb roast lunch planned for afterward. Aren't clear Australian winter days just the best? How lucky are we to live here? But I'm sure you know that.

I can imagine your other reason for looking so relaxed is the knowledge that pretty soon you won't have to worry about losing the job you've taken back after you lost it the first time. I know how much it hurt to lose your job like that – the wobbling chin was a dead giveaway. So of course you did the only decent thing a visionary such as yourself could do: rather than acknowledge that people couldn't work with a micro-manager as ill-tempered as yourself who liked to speak grandly of our most important challenges without doing anything about them, and thereafter throwing your considerable talents behind the elected leader of your party, you took every possible opportunity to white-ant her. Of course I take your point that it was for the good of the party and the country, although I can't help wondering (forgive me for thinking out loud here) that your nemesis' – sorry, democratically elected leader – might have been better able to focus on policy and earning recognition for the hundreds of pieces of legislation she managed to steer through hostile parliamentary waters, rather than having to fight on several fronts. But that would have hurt even more, I guess, if she'd actually been recognised as an effective PM rather than a dead duck. Not that you could have done much about that as foreign minister. Oh, wait, my mistake – there was quite a bit you could have done as a senior front-bencher with such peerless oratory gifts. But that's all water under the bridge now, I suppose.

Oh yes, you certainly had your eye on the prize, and for that I must give you credit. You established what your goal was, then you stopped at nothing until you achieved it. After all, some things are more important than others, aren't they, and when you see regaining the leadership at the expense of your own party as your most important personal challenge, you go for it. So yay you! We Aussies like a battler. (Not if they're a red-headed female battler with a big bum and a voice like a dentist's drill, obviously, but your kind of battler. You know, the kinds of people who have survived Kokoda and been interrogated by David Koch.)

I've got to give you a gold star for something else, Kevin. You said that you've learned a lot from your time 'out in the cold', and I believe you. After all, you seem to have learned that you can't fight on too many fronts at once, which is why you've introduced party rules to make sure that the next upstart Labor MP with the audacity to suggest that your posturing, bullying and policy capitulation is incompatible with your high office will be slapped down with a copy of the ALP Constitution. In other words, you're leader until you decide you don't want to be any more. Now that you're in. Because the first time it happened hurt just too damn much, and no one should have to go through what you went through, right?

And speaking of pain, I applaud the perfectly reasonable plea you made to the Lower House the day after you phoned for Julia's taxi. You remember the speech, where you suggested that politicians try be more gentle with one another? I had the TV turned down quite low at the time, but I'm certain I heard you say, right at the end, 'Starting … now.'

You know who else implored us to be a little more gentle with one another? Jesus. You know, the guy from the church. He also said something about taking in the weary and the needy and the oppressed and the hungry, if I remember correctly, although it's been a while since I was in church, whereas you were there on the weekend.

Look, I know you're going to claim that you just want people to stop getting in those boats because when they do, they drown. You might have a point, but it's not a terribly good one. Unless it's just me – I mean, I found myself agreeing with Paul Sheehan this morning, so maybe it's me who's lost his marbles. All I know is that a long time ago I used to wear a wrist band with WWJD inscribed on it. (The 'J' is for 'Jesus', by the way.) And I'm very confident that of all the things Jesus might do, announcing a policy like yours would not appear on the list.

You know what else Jesus would do if he were living in Australia right now? Refuse to sing the second verse of our national anthem. I'm sure you know it – it's the verse that talks about people coming across the sea, and how we have boundless plains to share. I reckon Jesus might have a bit of an issue with the disingenuity of that one. What do you think?

Oh, it's very complicated, I know. No one's suggesting it's not, Kevin. Besides, there's the very real possibility that you could effectively use this hardline policy to blunt Abbott's 'stop the boats' mantra, and thereby get yourself another three years as PM. And if you do, then maybe you'll be in a position to review and soften that policy. Except we all know what happens when a Labor PM says they'll do one thing but then does another, or says they won't do something, then goes ahead and does it after the political circumstances change. Like Julia Gillard saying we'd never have a GST under any government she led. Wait, that was someone else – hers was the carbon tax. But you take my point, I'm sure.

Look, please don't get me wrong. I sincerely hope you give Mr Abbott the mother of all canings when election day arrives. I want to see his lip quivering as he realises that it wasn't enough to just be constantly negative without outlining any alternatives. But that doesn't mean I'll ever like you, Kevin. In my opinion such an eventuality would hinge on exactly the same reasons as your win back in '07 – elected not so much for who you are than for who you're not. Heaven help you if Malcolm Turnbull decides to roll his leader.

Anyway, I should leave it there, since it's time for lunch. I think I'll stroll down to the shops and use that  walking time to decide what I'll get. So much choice! Do I want sushi, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, some pasta or a pizza, maybe a gozleme or a pide, perhaps a curry. But most likely that great Aussie dish, the kebab, which is really just a lamb sanga, after all. Can I get you anything while I'm there?

Writing quote XVI

I want to do a piece where I go to the Alps and talk to a mountain. The mountain will talk of things which are necessary and always true, and I shall talk of things which are sometimes, accidentally true.  

(Bas Jan Ader, Dutch performance and conceptual artist)

Ader’s body of work is not large in volume – a few photographs, a handful of short films – but to many in the artistic community his work is considered profound, especially when one looks at his personal story and his deep grief around the death of his father, wh

o was executed by the Nazis for harbouring Jews when Ader was a very young child.

When Ader was 33 years old, he packed a tiny sailing boat with a few supplies and set out to sail solo from Cape Cod to the other side of the Atlantic. Ten months later his yacht was found drifting, but his body was never recovered, leading to speculation: did he fall victim to his own harebrained scheme, was he literally on a suicide mission, or did he simply expect to probably fail, thus turning his final voyage into his ultimate piece of performance art?

I thought of Ader when I was watching German Wanderlust, a BBC2 documentary by Julia Bradbury. In it, she visits one of Ludwig II’s hunting lodges near Neuschwanstein in Bavaria. The proprietor of the place, which stands in the shadow of a great mountain, owns a number of old photographs of the lodge taken in the time of Ludwig. Showing her one, he says, with typically Teutonic dryness, ‘This is the house - you’ve seen it [as you were] coming up. It’s quite different now, because the roof is very different.’ Then he points at the mountain in the photograph. ‘[But this] is the same mountain, because mountains don’t change every two hundred years.”

The natural world isn’t permanent – we know this all too well. But some aspects of it change more slowly than others. Under most circumstances, a snowflake is far more delicate than a tree. Glaciers are slow but measurable, the ocean permanent but far from still. But significant geological formations like mountains are perhaps more permanent – more solid, if you like – than pretty much anything else in the natural physical world.

To Ader, the Alps offered solid emotional and philosophical grounding that spoke of permanence. He needed to hear that, to be reminded that there are truths beyond what we understand. His contribution to this conversation would be one of subjectivity, humility and accidental enlightenment. 

Writing Quote XV

It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Gerald Brenan (British author and historian)

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? I can’t tell you how many times people, on learning what I do, have said, ‘Oh, I’d love to write a book!’ To which the obvious, if not slightly antagonistic response would be, ‘Would you like me to lend you a pencil?’

What we writers do is a seductive proposition. At its core, our lot is to tell stories – lies, even – for a living. We get to make things up, say what we think, research topics that interest us, create worlds, play God for a season, discover wonders we might never have discovered otherwise. And at the end of that, the fortunate amongst us see our work produced and handed over to an audience, at which point the tight shoulders and long nights and innumerable cups of coffee are magically forgotten. Yes indeed, it’s a very seductive proposition.

But it doesn’t come easily. It very rarely happens by accident. Like anything that’s worth having, it takes serious work to acquire and maintain.

There’s nothing wrong with being an amateur. After all, an amateur has something no professional has – the option of walking away when it gets too hard.

So, which are you?

Writing quote XIV

I have a critical nature, in the sense that when I look at something I often look for the flaws. 

Donald Fagen 

At first glance, this quote might suggest that Donald Fagen is a negative person, and perhaps he is – I’ve never met him. What I do know is that I love his music, and the music he's made over the years with Walter Becker, under the name Steely Dan.

In one sense, when he speaks of looking for flaws, Fagen could be speaking about the idea that comes up all the time in any art-form – that without pain, or flaws, or loss, or imperfection, there is no art. A perfect relationship offers very little to sing about, unlike a broken heart. 

However, I think I prefer to look at this quote as a reflection on the way a raw idea is turned into a rough representation then, after close attention to the flaws, it reaches a state approaching perfection. Anyone who has ever listened to a Steely Dan song or any of Donald Fagen’s solo work will immediately recognise the attention to detail. Even if the kind of music Fagen writes and performs isn’t quite your bag, what's indisputable is that he values perfection as much as if not more than any other single element. Whether he’s looking for the perfect production, the perfect chord, or the perfect phrasing, he’s always looking. Steely Dan concerts are renowned for the quality of the mix, and I’m sure it’s because Fagen would settle for nothing less. Famously, on the classic 1977 album Aja, finding just the right drummer for each track was such a priority that six different drummers were employed on seven tracks.

The editing process isn’t a single step. It’s a long process, where you get to the end, then turn back to the first page and begin again. Over and over, looking at structure this time, consistency of voice the next, a particular character after that, then how that has affected structure. Yes, by all means we should strive for perfection, but as well as admiring the greater shape and form, we shoudn't forget to look for the flaws.

Writing quote XIII

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (Roman philosopher, statesman and orator – b. 3 January, 106BCE)*

So, it seems that even two thousand years ago parents despaired that their kids’ generation would be the downfall of society, that everything that they’d worked for would be swept aside by the narcissism and self-importance of the ‘modern youth’.

What does this tell us? Simply, that people are the same now as they’ve ever been. The same things drive them to behave the way they do now as they ever did – lust, greed, power, fear, love.

But there’s more. Look at the last part of the quote: ‘…everyone is writing a book.’ Really? More than two thousand years ago, people were reading books, laying them down when they’d finished and saying to themselves – and each other – ‘Huh! I could do that!’

Of course, the publishing mechanisms were very different then. The printing press was still more than 1,500 years away, e-readers more than five hundred beyond that. Even so, it would seem that there were people in Ancient Rome who believed that they had something worth saying. That their words were worthy of preservation. That their views deserved to be heard just as much as those of anyone else. And of course, there would have certainly been those who felt that they were absolutely entitled to any success that came their way.

It’s probably safe to assume that there were people being ‘published’ back then who were hacks. Perhaps they got their big break because of family connections, or because they just managed to jump on the crest of a zeitgeist. Perhaps they slept with the editor. And by that same token, we can be confident that there were some remarkable writers mooching around Rome who never quite got that break, no matter how undeniable their talent.

And now we're all writing books. Not everyone should, perhaps, but if we want to, we can. One of the freedoms we hold most dear is the ability – the liberty – to express ourselves. The truth is, no one has the right to tell you that your creative dream is frivolous or worthless or silly or unattainable. But at the same time, no one is entitled to success. 

So go ahead and write that book, but keep in mind that you’re not the only one doing so. Which means all you can do is work hard to make your writing better than everyone else’s, and hope for the best.

* This quote is somewhat apocryphal. It’s usually attributed to Cicero; however, unlike most of his other quotes, no one seems to be able to name the work from which is taken. The other possible sources include an Egyptian priest, an Assyrian clay tablet, and a stone inscription from Turkey. But since these supposed sources are much older (2,000 to 5,000 years older, in fact) than Cicero’s relatively recent observation, that simply reinforces the point I’m making. For more, go here: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/