The airport lounge in Rome was full of Australians, all waiting to board the red eye for Dubai and then onto Brisbane. I’d been walking most of the day in Rome, after checking out of our apartment in the morning. I was grateful for the chance to have a shower, as was everyone who got within sniffing distance of me. Freshly scrubbed until my belly button shined, I filled a glass with free champagne and sat down to start reintroducing myself to Vegemiteland.
Welcome home JB. I’m currently in a transit hotel in Singapore trying to get some sleep after the world’s longest flight from NYC and before heading onto Brisvegas in about 11 hours. Not looking forward to the crowing of the No bodies when I get back. The only up side to the whole Israel shit storm is that nobody in New York is paying any attention to what happened in our referendum, so I didn’t have to deal with the shame. Following politics on ABC news has been hilarious. Jacinta Price to move to the Cook electorate and become PM. Tell ‘em they’re dreamin’.
I rendering forth of Jacinta Price as the New Indigenous Voice was a predictable consequence I didn't see coming. So much more IPA-friendly than Noel Pearson, who was only cool when he talked about cutting welfare dependence. And given the tax dodgers' dontthink tanks provide the bods for the ABC to plaster wall-to-wall on their chat shows and interview programs, she's basically already there.
My real response to JB's article though is, yes, okay, we know our enemy here.
But I can't help but focus on the bloke who stands between Dutton and the Lodge (possibly for three terms, given how Labor will react to any loss). Elmer Fudd just has to go. So naive, so feckless, so inarticulate, so utterly uninspiring. He stands for almost nothing and still can't deliver it. His constant default of 'avoid all controversy' is simply a long series of payments that will add up to an electorate that asks what is the point of the man. Dutton is just one Murdoch-manufactured crisis away from stepping out of the shadows.
I was hoping that the better angels etc would prevail, but also bitterly not surprised at the result. My only comfort was that the Independent Sovereign Nation of Westralia, assumed from the start to be a bastion of No, turned out to be less racist than the mouthbreathers in Qld and SA. Grim fucking comfort, but we take what we can get.
Y'know JB this whole thing with the Voice has worn me to a thread. I stopped reading the news a few weeks back cos I just couldn't bear it anymore. I seriously considered blocking at least one family member on FB, one cousin in particular, who persistently posted the lies and misinformation being constantly vomited up by the No campaign. I've been studiously avoiding her posts for several weeks now until yesterday when she came out with a post celebrating a First Nation's uni graduate. The hypocrisy of that was genuinely breathtaking after the nasty stuff she'd been posting for so long. Like she was saying, "Look at me! I'm not *really* a racist". It wasn't the Voice which divided us... It was Dutton, the moment he legitimised the racial bigotry that still infests our country like a particularly persistent case of crabs. *sigh*
I have a rusting Facebook presence for a small business I used to have. I checked into it the week of the referendum, hunting for contact details for a local community group. There were the posts of a former boss of mine, a bloke with whom I had a very strained relationship after I dismantled a racist post he'd put up some years before.
Seems he became a huge fan of voting 'No', posting much material from First Nations activists who saw a 'No' vote as a path to a treaty. Others were repeats of the 'if you don't know vote 'No' theme. The comments of his friends and his replies made it very clear his opinions were little different to the KKK.
My French friend, who had a lot to do with boomer tourists when I worked with her, predictaed the outcome as soon as I told her there was a referendum on:
"The problem with you Australians, is you just need to be given an excuse because you are both racist, and too cowardly to admit it".
There's a map floating around the interwebs showing the yes/no vote by regional location. Regional Northern Territory and other areas with a high proportion of indigenous voters strongly voted yes. This makes me very sad and very angry in equal measures. (And I'd like to see Dutton or Price call them woke elitists...)
Didn't take the forces of darkness long after the Yes was defeated to choose their next target either with Expelled Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming’s motion for an inquiry into transgender and gender-affirming health care. Thankfully defeated by the ALP and Greens in the Victorian Parliament, despite her former Liberal colleagues coming to her support. And now the gang of four's proposed private member’s bill introduced in Parliament this week by South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic, along with One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, UAP’s Ralph Babet and National’s Matt Canavan to ban gender-affirming care for those aged under 18. Do these regressives have anything original to suggest other than reheated US culture warrior bullshit.
I voted Yes in the People's Republic Of Kooyong, happily one of the electorates with a majority of Yes - but it's cold comfort when the No vote prevailed overall
Grayndler (my electorate) managed 77% I believe: all we skiving elitists. Even the cab driver over the road told me that he was going to vote yes. (His reasoning pragmatic: so that they can get back to fixing the real problems.)
I used to live in Grayndler country! Many moons ago it gave One Nation the worst result they had ever recieved up to that point- a grand total of 246 ( I still remember the number decades later!) On ya Grayndler! My Cosy Canberra electorate did pretty good too.
If you work off the equation that 50% of people are below average intelligence, and mix in a good dose of fear and misinformation, its a wonder the 'yes' vote got above 40%.
Dutton may have had a victory, but he holds an empty cup.
It has been very ugly and was a good time to be away JB..unfortunately I followed the campaign pretty closely and frankly was perplexed at the lines being served up, the total misunderstanding of the hand being extended by FNP was at times bewildering..I read the Uluṟu statement from the heart, read the question closely, referred to former High Court justices for legal guidance and concluded that this was a safe proposal..nothing to fear as was the case following Mabo and Wik..collectively we have turned our backs on FNP and that is very sad indeed..
I followed it too (and have followed the movement for years). Which is why I couldn't understand how anyone could vote no, last week. But then I read Guy Rundle's post-vote article in Crikey and did a bit of extra thinking and realized that it was exactly that study and understanding that marked me (us) as that elite. The rest of the country hadn't been paying attention. The situation of indigenous people has _not_ been taught in Australian schools for the most part, and neither has the history of settlement and the "frontier wars (massacres mostly)". From a position of ignorance of the problems, the Voice proposal was a pretty strange sort of thing to be a solution. It wasn't sold very well. There needed to be a lot more education about the systematic problems on the ground, over a long time.
Even so: the proposal couldn't really have negatively affected anyone. Indeed wouldn't affect most people in any way, so I was hoping that it might be carried on a general sense of generosity. But it wasn't. I think that post-Howard Australia is fairly mean-spirited, like the man.
Yeah, I don't think mine will be popular. My old Twitter name isn't much of a handle to use on the Twitterverse. But then, I've been on there for about 13 years. Started just so we could stay in touch with the kids when we moved up to the tropics in 2011. Same with FB. I see where your problem is though. I've kept my YouTube channel though. I upload random nature stuff and whatever pleases me. Got some nice python battle footage on there. I won't name it because I'm not spamming. Cheers, mate. Love ya work.
I would be interested to know the gender breakdown for yes and no voters. Has anyone seen or heard about it? I found in my own circle that the women were yes voters and generally the men were no voters but that could just be that my female friends are similar to me. Obviously there weren’t enough women voting yes to carry it over the line though.
Well, that was depressing. My electorate voted Yes, which was honestly a pleasant surprise. But it also voted in a Teal after being Liberal since forever. Some comfort, I suppose.
Oh, and the people at the Yes marquee gave me a cool t shirt that said Vote Yes. I have now modified to say 'I voted Yes' so it remains relevant.
Welcome home JB. I’m currently in a transit hotel in Singapore trying to get some sleep after the world’s longest flight from NYC and before heading onto Brisvegas in about 11 hours. Not looking forward to the crowing of the No bodies when I get back. The only up side to the whole Israel shit storm is that nobody in New York is paying any attention to what happened in our referendum, so I didn’t have to deal with the shame. Following politics on ABC news has been hilarious. Jacinta Price to move to the Cook electorate and become PM. Tell ‘em they’re dreamin’.
Ugh. That NYC flight is brutal.
I rendering forth of Jacinta Price as the New Indigenous Voice was a predictable consequence I didn't see coming. So much more IPA-friendly than Noel Pearson, who was only cool when he talked about cutting welfare dependence. And given the tax dodgers' dontthink tanks provide the bods for the ABC to plaster wall-to-wall on their chat shows and interview programs, she's basically already there.
My real response to JB's article though is, yes, okay, we know our enemy here.
But I can't help but focus on the bloke who stands between Dutton and the Lodge (possibly for three terms, given how Labor will react to any loss). Elmer Fudd just has to go. So naive, so feckless, so inarticulate, so utterly uninspiring. He stands for almost nothing and still can't deliver it. His constant default of 'avoid all controversy' is simply a long series of payments that will add up to an electorate that asks what is the point of the man. Dutton is just one Murdoch-manufactured crisis away from stepping out of the shadows.
I was hoping that the better angels etc would prevail, but also bitterly not surprised at the result. My only comfort was that the Independent Sovereign Nation of Westralia, assumed from the start to be a bastion of No, turned out to be less racist than the mouthbreathers in Qld and SA. Grim fucking comfort, but we take what we can get.
I voted early, so there was still hope.
I've been seething with anger ever since.
It was absolutely gutting to see the results come in and know that the referendum had failed before polling had even closed in WA.
Yeah, I was pretty fuckin' disappointed in my fellow South Australians.
Racist cunts!
Have read a lot of your timetrav books. Always fun.
Cheers guv
Y'know JB this whole thing with the Voice has worn me to a thread. I stopped reading the news a few weeks back cos I just couldn't bear it anymore. I seriously considered blocking at least one family member on FB, one cousin in particular, who persistently posted the lies and misinformation being constantly vomited up by the No campaign. I've been studiously avoiding her posts for several weeks now until yesterday when she came out with a post celebrating a First Nation's uni graduate. The hypocrisy of that was genuinely breathtaking after the nasty stuff she'd been posting for so long. Like she was saying, "Look at me! I'm not *really* a racist". It wasn't the Voice which divided us... It was Dutton, the moment he legitimised the racial bigotry that still infests our country like a particularly persistent case of crabs. *sigh*
I have a rusting Facebook presence for a small business I used to have. I checked into it the week of the referendum, hunting for contact details for a local community group. There were the posts of a former boss of mine, a bloke with whom I had a very strained relationship after I dismantled a racist post he'd put up some years before.
Seems he became a huge fan of voting 'No', posting much material from First Nations activists who saw a 'No' vote as a path to a treaty. Others were repeats of the 'if you don't know vote 'No' theme. The comments of his friends and his replies made it very clear his opinions were little different to the KKK.
My French friend, who had a lot to do with boomer tourists when I worked with her, predictaed the outcome as soon as I told her there was a referendum on:
"The problem with you Australians, is you just need to be given an excuse because you are both racist, and too cowardly to admit it".
There's a map floating around the interwebs showing the yes/no vote by regional location. Regional Northern Territory and other areas with a high proportion of indigenous voters strongly voted yes. This makes me very sad and very angry in equal measures. (And I'd like to see Dutton or Price call them woke elitists...)
I've already seen people questioning the legitimacy of the vote count in those NT booths.
Didn't take the forces of darkness long after the Yes was defeated to choose their next target either with Expelled Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming’s motion for an inquiry into transgender and gender-affirming health care. Thankfully defeated by the ALP and Greens in the Victorian Parliament, despite her former Liberal colleagues coming to her support. And now the gang of four's proposed private member’s bill introduced in Parliament this week by South Australian Liberal Senator Alex Antic, along with One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, UAP’s Ralph Babet and National’s Matt Canavan to ban gender-affirming care for those aged under 18. Do these regressives have anything original to suggest other than reheated US culture warrior bullshit.
To paraphrase Orwell, "We are at culture war with Eurasia, we have always been at culture war with Eurasia."
I voted Yes in the People's Republic Of Kooyong, happily one of the electorates with a majority of Yes - but it's cold comfort when the No vote prevailed overall
Yeah. My electorate was 56% Yes. Cold comfort
Grayndler (my electorate) managed 77% I believe: all we skiving elitists. Even the cab driver over the road told me that he was going to vote yes. (His reasoning pragmatic: so that they can get back to fixing the real problems.)
I used to live in Grayndler country! Many moons ago it gave One Nation the worst result they had ever recieved up to that point- a grand total of 246 ( I still remember the number decades later!) On ya Grayndler! My Cosy Canberra electorate did pretty good too.
If you work off the equation that 50% of people are below average intelligence, and mix in a good dose of fear and misinformation, its a wonder the 'yes' vote got above 40%.
Dutton may have had a victory, but he holds an empty cup.
It has been very ugly and was a good time to be away JB..unfortunately I followed the campaign pretty closely and frankly was perplexed at the lines being served up, the total misunderstanding of the hand being extended by FNP was at times bewildering..I read the Uluṟu statement from the heart, read the question closely, referred to former High Court justices for legal guidance and concluded that this was a safe proposal..nothing to fear as was the case following Mabo and Wik..collectively we have turned our backs on FNP and that is very sad indeed..
I followed it too (and have followed the movement for years). Which is why I couldn't understand how anyone could vote no, last week. But then I read Guy Rundle's post-vote article in Crikey and did a bit of extra thinking and realized that it was exactly that study and understanding that marked me (us) as that elite. The rest of the country hadn't been paying attention. The situation of indigenous people has _not_ been taught in Australian schools for the most part, and neither has the history of settlement and the "frontier wars (massacres mostly)". From a position of ignorance of the problems, the Voice proposal was a pretty strange sort of thing to be a solution. It wasn't sold very well. There needed to be a lot more education about the systematic problems on the ground, over a long time.
Even so: the proposal couldn't really have negatively affected anyone. Indeed wouldn't affect most people in any way, so I was hoping that it might be carried on a general sense of generosity. But it wasn't. I think that post-Howard Australia is fairly mean-spirited, like the man.
You are on the fucking money, JB.
He went for a win at any cost. I don't even want to write his name.
I hear ya, John. I shut down my Facebook and Twitter accounts on the Saturday night.
I've still got mine even though I dont use them anymore. I dont want to let some troll take over my handle.
Yeah, I don't think mine will be popular. My old Twitter name isn't much of a handle to use on the Twitterverse. But then, I've been on there for about 13 years. Started just so we could stay in touch with the kids when we moved up to the tropics in 2011. Same with FB. I see where your problem is though. I've kept my YouTube channel though. I upload random nature stuff and whatever pleases me. Got some nice python battle footage on there. I won't name it because I'm not spamming. Cheers, mate. Love ya work.
I would be interested to know the gender breakdown for yes and no voters. Has anyone seen or heard about it? I found in my own circle that the women were yes voters and generally the men were no voters but that could just be that my female friends are similar to me. Obviously there weren’t enough women voting yes to carry it over the line though.
This sounds intuitively legit.
The news has been grim indeed. I was able to hide from it for a while, but then I finished WW3.1.
Good to see you Mr. Mr Birmingham. Things have been awfully dull around here. I hope we're going to see some gratuitous sex and violence.
Well, that was depressing. My electorate voted Yes, which was honestly a pleasant surprise. But it also voted in a Teal after being Liberal since forever. Some comfort, I suppose.