Citizen Journalism

Australians For Honest Politics

Roaring at the man drilling tattoos into my sensitivities

  March 3, 2013 at 11:24 PM

Survivor Family of Unthrown Children – 2001

By Nancy Cato
March 3, 2013
At my usual early hour on a sunny Melbourne Saturday, I pushed back the covers along with the urge to go back to sleep and wondered why I felt discomforted.
I’m a happy soul, usually.
And then I remembered; the images of Scott Morrison’s many interviews the day before on his pea-sized understanding of the asylum seeker debate were drilling tattoos onto my sensitivities.
Before I had much chance to let my brain catch up to my outstretched hand. I’d sent out this message via Twitter for all to see:
Your words @ScottMorrisonMP have punctured my skin, entered my bloodstream & sadly for you, boosted my adrenaline levels. #fightnotflight
 I stand by them.
Mother Nature knew what she was doing when she equipped us with the instinct to take flight or stand and fight when sensing danger. The animals of the wild also know it well, and you Mr Scott Morrison have turned me into a wild Mother Lion today. A very wild one.
You see, Mr Morrison, I have two tiny granddaughters. They’re innocent, loved and free and I want them to remain that way, at least while I’m around to tear anything to pieces that would destroy their rights or foul the very air they breathe.
That’s just what you’re threatening to do, Mr Morrison. Do you realise that? Do you have the faintest idea of the impact your words have the minute they settle somewhere, anywhere?
No?
Of course you don’t. You’re far too busy stirring your inner crucible aren’t you. Let’s take a look in it shall we? I hesitate, but see it for what it is we must.
Ugh.
It’s bile. It’s slimy and deep. Look, I can see the ingredients that refuse to integrate: superiority, affluence, ambition, greed, power and opportunism. And what’s that down at the bottom? Ah yes. Hatred, all fine-tuned to the latest recipe of racist thought your alignments dictate.
Can you see what your words turn into, the minute they leave your mouth and mix with the hot air you’ve summoned around you Mr Morrison?
No? I’ll tell you.
They become as blowflies. Each one blowing in the wind to settle and leave its new hatching to poison and rot the environment we love and care about.
Oh yes, I’m a Mother Lion today but not just for my grandchildren. I’m roaring in rage for all the children who hope to grow up in this beautiful country of ours, free from the despicable discrimination that you wish to impose on their thought. And I’ll tear into you as much as you deserve – albeit just with my words.
You do not seem to understand, Mr Morrison, that it’s far too late for you to pretend that this society of ours is pristine white and problem free. Like it or not we already are a Multicultural Society with skins ranging from black through red and yellow to white.
Like it or not, in our grab for this land we originally were boat people – mostly crims and sundry others – who imposed themselves on our indigenous folk and started a crime rate that continues today.
Like it or not we already have disadvantaged and marginalised people.
Like it or not, some of our citizens already live in fear and struggle to be accepted.
Do you really think that giving a few asylum seekers from across the seas the chance for a peaceful new life will make one jot of difference to our lives? Do you really think that by helping a few, we’re endangering the lives of those of us already here because the crime rate will suddenly skyrocket? Shame on you.
Look at our children. We have privileged children, but we also have terrified children, different-coloured children, hungry children, spoilt children, disabled children, disorientated children, fleeing children, abused children, children in despair… They all look different, they all come from a multitude of backgrounds, they all  behave according to their upbringing or circumstances. You insult every one of them and us with your insinuations that ‘one who looks different’ is certain to commit a crime.
I have forebears from all over the world and live with a disability. I too, am different. Am I likely to commit a crime? Should I have been thrown overboard from the birthing table?
We get one go at life Mr Morrison. We can choose to do the very best we can to advance the society in which we live by the way we live, or we can choose to soil our nest.
You’re not advancing our society, Scott Morrison. You’re peeing on it.

Credit Alan Moir – Fairfax

Citizen Journalism

Australians For Honest Politics

Looking for my Aunty

  February 17, 2013 at 4:14 PM

By Nancy Cato
February 17, 2013

Nancy Cato

Yes – silly isn’t it. I feel rather foolish making this awful public confession that I’ve sort of lost my Aunty, but it’s a fact – if a fact can be ‘sort of’. Anyway, I do my share of complaining about the lack of any sort of facts in much of today’s media, so ‘fess up I must. It’s embarrassing. Aunty Ambidextra Balancedia Clarificia (ABC for short) has been in our family for – well, since she was born really, in 1932 – making her only 7 years 5 months older than her niece. It happens in families.
Mind you, she’s not just my Aunty and she’s not really my Aunty at all – as in a blood relation or anything. My Mum and Dad just happened to take her in as a tiny baby and reared her as my Aunt. This also happens in families. Goodness knows where her parents were – she seemed to be surrounded by fusty, old, white, politically-absorbed males at the time – but that’s for later.
When Aunty arrived in our house she was just a noise – no visual accoutrements at all – but she sure made her presence felt. Dad was a busy dentist; his surgery attached to our house allowed him to sneak home regularly, in-between patients, to listen to Aunty holding forth on one thing or another of national importance. He’d get up at some ungodly hour like 4am to listen to Alan McGilvray commenting on the overseas Test Ashes Series and managed to know exactly what was going on in the much-loved serials The Lawsons and Blue Hills every lunch hour.
It was in those early days that Aunty did three things of enormous significance for my family; three things that formed a bond between my Aunty and me, changed the course of my life, and caused this current rising panic because I can’t find her.
First Significance: Dad was a cricket tragic and as soon as I was old enough to appear to be able to understand what he was saying, he explained the system that Aunty had used 2 or 3 years earlier in 1938, to telegraph Test results back home from England. Apparently, I was sitting on the floor playing with my toy monkey and had my back to him. He was tapping a pencil on the kitchen bench to show me how the broadcasters in Aunty’s Studio simulated the sound of  bat hitting ball. I showed no interest. Dad tapped louder, but not even clap of hands and stamping of feet made any difference. I don’t remember that bit of the story, but I DO remember getting swooped up suddenly into an enormous, heaving bear hug and trying to wipe my dad’s tears away with Bunky’s tiny hands.
Aunty had inadvertently alerted my parents to the fact that I was unable to hear a word said. I was deaf.
Second Significance: Dad was a Menzies man. He thought the world of Pig-Iron Bob, Prime Minister at the time of my birth in 1939. Bob could do no wrong, say no wrong, think no wrong. And because Dad understood that lip-reading was useless for radio, he started to interpret what was being said via Aunty, right as it was being aired. Faithfully he imparted News Bulletins, Political Debates, The Country Hour and countless discussions of life in the 1940s.

 

I’m not sure at what point I started to question my Dad’s political wisdom, but question it I did. I suspect it was during Bob Menzies’ second stint as Prime Minister from 1949 to 1966. Life as Dad explained it seemed to be all about ‘privilege’, and this seemed at odds with what I saw around me. My best friend in the whole world – a girl of similar age but vastly different lifestyle to mine, would only come across the word ‘privilege’ by reading Jane Austen, which she did, avidly. As a flow on from The Great Depression of 1929, her dad was out of work and their lives were those of devastating hardship and deprivation. It took five minutes in the local milkbar one day after school to realize that people could be judged by their perceived wealth or lack of it. I was served at the counter; my friend was ignored. She was nine.
Aunty had forewarned me of the world of privilege, aspirational politics and ‘The Born To Rule’ mentality – where those who HAVE can want you to WANT to have but not necessarily HAVE. And from that moment in time, although my 1940′s schooling forced me to become ambidextrous, I made sure my natural left-handedness kept me from straying too far to the right to taste the Tea Party scones.
To his credit, over the years Dad did everything in his power to relay the messages coming out of Aunty’s mouth. We argued loud and strong and learnt to be fair and balanced with each other’s points of view, just as Aunty was.
Third Significance: One day in the late fifties, just before Aunty blossomed and started manifesting herself publicly, wearing all manner of costumes in the new Black and White medium of her choice, she did something else for me. She financed celebrated stage and radio actors Patricia Kennedy and Wynn Roberts to tour country Victorian Regional Centres to record a series of radio plays with local talent. I was extremely fortunate to be one of the chosen and my new career was on the way.
Aunty offered me – a country teenager with a profound hearing impairment in times he of gross ignorance of disability – the opportunity to audition. That led to training with top professionals like Keith Eden, George Fairfax, Wal Cherry and Corinne Kirby (Whitbread); professional performances of radio and television plays; living with and learning from Patricia Kennedy, one of the finest actresses Australia has produced, and perhaps most importantly of all, continuing my love of hosting Children’s Television in its own ‘Adventure Island’.

I owe you so much, Aunty Ambidextra Balancedia Clarificia (ABC). I love you and I want to say ‘Thank You’.
But where the Hell ARE you?
You taught me to trust you. I knew I could turn to you. I knew you’d deliver the news of the day in an unbiased, dignified, professional fashion no matter which political party held the upper hand. You quenched my thirst for information with savvy discussions, widely drawing on the knowledge of men AND women who were experts in their field.
You were fair. You acted on principle. We could trust you. You gave us FACTS.

 

 

And now I seem to have lost you. Why?
Why have you abandoned your principles, Aunty?
Why have you chosen to disguise yourself so?
In the days of Prime Ministers Keating and Howard, each thought that, although they were badly done by, you were fair. You didn’t rush to seek the view of the Leader of the Opposition about every detail, big or small including the inner workings of the Government. Why are you doing that now?
When Kerry O’Brien was in full flight on the 7.30 Report a couple of years back, you allowed him to make mince meat of anyone who avoided questions, blatantly lied or gave the responses of a Dodo. So why treat Jon Faine of ABC 774 with such public shaming and then refuse to answer questions such as those posed most recently by Peter Clarke of @MediaActive.
Why are you insisting on using the same tired old faces of often politically irrelevant, white, mosty-male Opinion-Singers with – it has to be said – the charisma of turtles farting. Have you seen the terror on their faces if ‘same-sex marriage’ or ‘Asylum Seekers’ are mentioned? Why don’t you try a few other words, like, say ‘Ashby/Slipper/Brough? Tampa anyone? Mr Reith?
Why are so many of your journalists not asking the hard questions instead of “Where did you get your glasses?” of politicians of all political persuasions? Why are they relentlessly seeking out opinion over facts?
And what’s with the over use of representation of only one Think Tank on your panels? There are others apart from the IPA.  Do you really believe they’re the smartest brains in the country to give an expertly informed explanation (as opposed to an ideologically based one) on – let’s pick a subject – Climate Science? You might just as well leave the studio-stable door open and let the Bolt horse around with his nonsensical charts.
Why have you abandoned your principles, Aunty? Why have you abandoned me?
You have made me sad. At 73 years of age I cannot afford to be sad. I want to live what’s left of my life to the full and be informed. I want people to have what is rightfully theirs. I want you back, Aunty, just the way you were.
Please come home.

Nancy Cato

Farewell...in a good way...you've made me weep.

Saturday 20 October 2012

This morning started off so well. Staring at a fast-approaching departure time for Paris and deciding to ignore potential Pffts, Ahems' and Lulz-at-my-expense I decided  to do my ‘Farewells’ today.

I did not get very far.

Within a few minutes I was bawling my eyes out - consoling myself with a hot muffin and glass of red - or was it the other way around?

Everyone was being so damn kind and thoughtful and loving that I should have been on a high(way) to Heaven…and here I was blubbering.

Not sure which had the effect – the red or the muffin - but regardless, it set me thinking about the nature of ‘weeping’…and the power of Social Media.

Since I joined the Twittersphere a year ago, I’ve done a great deal of it –weeping, that is… some of it from joy… some from empathy for poor souls undergoing hardship… and lately and probably most telling…some from sheer exasperation. Same sort of tears – vastly different instigators.

I’ve seen arguments of late – or is it wishful thinking - mainly from a few Mainstream Media sources of the irrelevance, nay, absolute impotence of Social Media in its ability to faithfully reflect and report on, the thoughts, feelings and political implications of the ‘real common man’ – you and me.

A few Mainstream Print journalists have gone head to head (or should that be finger to finger) against Internet bloggers at 100 paces; perhaps not realizing that other journalists are getting on with it and straddling both worlds with aplomb. [This so reminds me of the 50s and 60s radio actors who feared that those who could perform equally well in radio as they could in that new-fangled television, were going to kill their golden goose.]

Like it or not, we’re all aware that the recent digital uprising from certain Joint-Destroyers against a certain loose-lipped Shock-Jock has startled the doubters by its ferocity and effectiveness.

Sponsors who’ve removed their advertising from within range of said Shock-Jock are very clear that they feel the people have spoken – and significantly so.

But only days ago I noted the suggestion from within Twitter itself, that the campaign against said Shock-Jock was ‘a tad Big Brotherish’ with overtones of Russian Spy movies rather than that well-known Reality Show.

Is there any justification to be had for people in a community to rise up via Social Media and attempt to stifle the right for Shock Jocks and their ilk to say what they like?

I say ‘Yes’.

If the safeguard of stopping to think of ramifications caused by their words does not come from within the very hearts of those who say them – from whence should it come?  As yet – no set rules have had any effect; surely if a community feels someone has gone beyond the bounds of the standard of decency they wish to have in their midst; if they feel that that someone is inciting anti-social actions in others – then they have the right to have their say too.

Let’s look at the point here: If we are in any position of communication-power; be it via print-media, radio, television or the internet…that power (amplified one zillion times of that put out by the funny, sweet and sad little tweets that I received this morning) enables us to make people weep...distressingly.

And who weeps in this way?

I dare you to show me one person on my Twitter Timeline who is not at some stage of their lives going to either: Grieve for the passing of a loved one; agonize over a departed lover; be bullied; despair at a child’s illness or her inability to again conceive; fight off violence; know poverty; feel guilty, unloved, neglected, shy or debilitated by depression…without weeping about it at the same time as trying to lead a ‘normal’ life.

These are our vulnerable times – the times when one word, normally dismissed can push us over the edge. One thoughtless act, one jibe too many, one more show of neglect.

Did Malala Yousafzai weep as they shot her in the head for daring to campaign for girls to be educated?

Did Amanda Todd weep as she put that rope around her neck because of cyber-bullying?

Did Jill Meagher weep as the hands of another took her life away because she chose to walk alone?

Let us ALL think well before we dash off that last word on air… in a tweet …or on paper and ask ourselves this:

Will my words incite someone to anti-social behaviour or make someone weep?

You - my Social Media friends, have embraced me overwhelmingly - and this, on my point of departure is my thank you to you.

I love that you know I cannot hear and yet you send me YouTube Songs; I love that some of you remember the bond we had when you were children; I love your words of kindness and your confidence that I can still mend a graze on your heart with a kiss through the air; I love that you send me links to your own efforts of word and image or articles of great scholarship – (and your faith that I will understand them).

You’re from every walk of life and every level of education; you’re every shade of green regardless of your opinion of deity; and you are as politically diverse as it’s possible to be.

You have (perhaps unwisely) given oxygen to my ridiculous sense of the ridiculous. You have laughed with me, shared secrets and tut-tutted with me. You have let me agonize, hypothesize, empathise and advertise. Above all – you’ve shown such respect and love for one who teeters (but is not yet there) on the edge of the Chasm of The Wisdom of Years that I again fight back the tears.

I DO love you all.

So - Social Media’s irrelevant?

Don’t make me weep!

Back soon.

IS Freedom of Speech really free? Really?

Thursday 4 October 2012

Last night I had a very brief Twitter exchange with a learned friend about the notion – seemingly quite prevalent on the airwaves at the moment - that Freedom of Speech comes with freedom of responsibility.

I do not share that view.

It’s a great defence and it goes something like this: He said/she said this and that so suck it up princess – we’ve got freedom of speech in this country.

Well here’s my disclaimer: I’m about as far away as the moon from being an academic or scholar, philosopher or intellectual. I am but a person who has lived and experienced life for not quite her four score years - let alone her four score and seven as Titus Andronicus would have us say.

  

And here are my thoughts:

Regardless of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there IS a time in each of our lives when we enjoy complete and utter freedom to do whatever we can or want to do. From the moment we’re born to the moment our wits adjust to the fact that there are certain boundaries to our behaviour… we do as we jolly well please. We wee and poo wherever and whenever we feel like it; shake our fists and hit out at anything and everything; kick and scream and drive everyone bonkers; and some of us are lucky enough to be loved for doing it.

But gradually as our eyes come into focus and cognizance of our environment takes hold, we realize that our actions bring certain other actions… and results. Some will be pleasant – bring relief and our needs met; for some however, the reactions will not be so pleasant. We will all learn accordingly.

And thus it is when we emerge – either by free choice or forcible ejection - from our house, squalid hut, riverbed, igloo, orphanage or mansion into the wide world of freedom - we’re supposedly mature enough to take care of ourselves and be responsible for our actions.

Sadly it is not so.

Some of us will have been shown an age of reason by means of reasonable discourse; some by a thump, starvation or a stick.

Some of us will emerge as everyday citizens going about our business; some will emerge as preachers, brimstone firing on all cylinders; and alas – some will emerge as thieves and thugs… and bullies. All shapes, sizes and colours, we bear the markings and the trappings of those who trod before us.

But emerge we do - given or left to repeat or repeal and find for ourselves values, morals, attitudes, abilities and standards by which we shall live.

And it’s into a country with remarkable personal freedom that we do this emerging. With some notable exceptions Australia is a free country in a myriad of ways. We can largely ‘do our thing’, dress, choose friends and religion and what we say, at will. Albeit ever so slowly, the freedom in the Scales of Equality between the sexes is adjusting, the female dish no longer dragging its bum on the floor; and in spite of fears of Bestiality and Group Unions, Australians in their number appear to be growing in favour of Same-Sex Marriage. Perhaps one day we will even see that in this wide, brown land of ours, there is ample room to share the things we have with those who have nothing.

Halleleuyah!

But how well or wisely are we using this gift of freedom? Are we taking personal responsibility for it? I remember with sadness that it took legislation before we saw the wisdom of rejecting our freedom-to-be-tossed-around-and-mashed-to-pulp in favour of using seatbelts in our cars.

Even in the USA where there’s a constitutional right to ‘keep and bear arms’, one is not allowed to pull a gun out and shoot another for putting insufficient salt in the soup, without taking responsibility for it.

And thus it is with our Freedom of Speech. Are we taking responsibility for the things we say? 

No matter the model we assume, no matter the repeat or repeal of behaviour we take on – are we realizing there’s not one thing we say or do that does not have its consequences of one kind or another?

Earlier I made a disclaimer to address the fact that I am not a Learned Person qualified to speak about Human Rights and the laws of this land. I speak not of Laws against any Incitement of Violence or Hatred.

I speak merely as a member of the Human Race; I speak because I care about the wellbeing of my fellow Man.

Is it not possible that we tread this earth for better reason than to gorge or gloat or indulge ourselves; or rape, murder, brutalise, bully, embarrass, vilify and give pain to another human being?

Is it not possible we’ve been given the freedom of speech that we may uplift the confidence of those around us; that we may encourage, support, share ideas and pull together resources to ensure we leave our world (and those who occupy her) in better shape physically, emotionally and mentally than our forefathers could ever have imagined?

Is this not bringing to the forefront a sense of Human Decency?

Look at the outpouring of grief over the senseless rape and murder of a vital, young woman in Melbourne recently. How many of the tens of thousands who trod the March of Peace knew her? Jillian’s death has come to symbolise the massive Call to Arms against Violence towards Women, against the continuing brutality and misogynistic behaviour some women suffer every day of their lives. 

The message is very clear: Take heed those of you who verbalise publicly, that any words of brutality, hatred or violence will no longer be tolerated. Say what you want by all means; but should you publicly go against the grain of ordinary, common, human decency be prepared to take full responsibility for your actions; and should this cause you loss of income, loss of power and certainly loss of any dignity you may have enjoyed… so be it.