Invasion day

Officially, Saturday 26 January was Australia Day. It commemorates the day the Captain Arthur Phillip landed at Botany Bay and instituted 200 years of colonial rule and genocide of the indigenous people - let's PARTY!

Oddly enough, I didn't join in the general revelry, but joined a rally through central Melbourne, then stayed on for a concert in a park at a place called Treasury Gardens. It started with a traditional welcome and a few speeches. One of the things that struck me was a sense of outraged helplessness that the seasoned campaigners seemed to have. Gary Foley, who's been working on these issues for 30 years, talked about how the struggle has become harder in that time, particularly due to the last 10 years of neo-conservative policies under the Howard government.

To me it underlines the importance of articulating as frequently as possible, and drawing attention to, the real costs of neo-con policies - even by their own terms - and, better yet, the alternatives. That these alternatives are not just the ramblings of people bent on securing power for its own sake, but can be seen in practice across the world.

I recently read an article, though, that says we need to examine not just why persistent struggle exists (from research on Malay peasants) but also why it doesn't succeed. I'd have thought that the answer to this was obvious - lack of resources (labour, capital and symbolic), combined with the fact that businesses persist. If I take on a corporation, you can be sure that even if I win, the corporation or the ideology behind it will live beyond me. And it will continue struggling against my victory.

I'm not sure the way out of this - but it isn't going to happen in Malaysia unless we can come together to articulate alternatives, and build new institutions outside the current defunct system. Perhaps what we need to do is boycott the elections AND run alternative elections. Let's see how that works! And have elections that are meaningful - to adopt the phrase from my favourite 3CR show (Anarchist World This Week) direct democracy not Parliamentary rule. What does this mean?

Extend Haris' Parliamentary initiative. Initiate people's councils. And have representatives that can be recalled by the voters if they support actions that 20% or more of the electorate disagree with.... okay, if you insist, 40%. It's the way it works in democracies not too far from us.

So much for avoiding politics. As a counter, I did go for a Bollywood dance thing in the park last night, which was fun. I may even take up Bollywood dance classes. Then went home and was invited to watch 'There's something about Mary' - which I can't stand. For political reasons. La la.


Did the Monday morning brekky show with Damaris and Dave this morning, had fun with the papers, but wasn't too happy with my interview and stuff. Frank Hytten, from Reconciliation Victoria (promoting ties between indigenous, non-indigenous Oz) made lots of great points, but I was not, as I told Zoe, particularly sparkly. One of the good points he made, and pertinent to my earlier rant was that the best thing non-indigenous people can do for indigenous people in Australia is to not interfere - don't think we know best, etc. Now, if we can only get ALL the governments of the world to see the same way.