End of a long week
It's been a long week, for one reason and another, including personally.
In Australia, the election is still not quite settled. My hope is that those within the governing party who were wanting to take us along the path of making the uber-rich richer, selling off the country and cutting back on much hard-won social good will be checked in that push,and that politics in my country will swing back to something more constructive and humane.
My fear is that that faction will blame their near-defeat on the slightly less divisive section of the same party, and will split off to form a hard-right party, scooping up the several small fearful/racist elements currently outside the major parties, and emerge as an actually influential hard-right party of the sort seen elsewhere. That possibility scares me.
My who-knows?-its-possible-please-please fantasy is that the seat of Cowan is won by Anne Aly, and that she'll have actual face-to-face lunches with Pauline Hansen, and that she'll make a friend of PH (who is accessible on a personal level, I believe), and find a way to help us deflect and avert the bigotries and hatreds. I so much want that.
Thursday night a couple of us sat up, following with fear and horror #whereisLavishReynolds. The worst fears weren't realised, but so much horror is plainly out there, including about five hours of steady lies from the police about her whereabouts. This is frighteningly close to the "disappeared" of other countries. Not my country, I know - not my place to comment, but solidarity and support to those many, many people, easily and obviously the majority, who are struggling to remould something better from the current situation.
Oh, heavens. Something by way of relief. It's NAIDOC week in australia - i.e. celebrating indigenous people, culture, heritage. Here's an article from the abc about the billabongs of the Top End, and the people who know them and love them and keep them best. (Comes with a lovely picture of Cherry Daniels with waterlilies. :) Recommended for the picture alone, let alone the rest. and there's lots of other articles linkable from there.)
Well. Saturday morning, and I'd better start the day.
This entry was originally posted at http://heliopausa.dreamwidth.org/55659.html. Please comment here or there.
In Australia, the election is still not quite settled. My hope is that those within the governing party who were wanting to take us along the path of making the uber-rich richer, selling off the country and cutting back on much hard-won social good will be checked in that push,and that politics in my country will swing back to something more constructive and humane.
My fear is that that faction will blame their near-defeat on the slightly less divisive section of the same party, and will split off to form a hard-right party, scooping up the several small fearful/racist elements currently outside the major parties, and emerge as an actually influential hard-right party of the sort seen elsewhere. That possibility scares me.
My who-knows?-its-possible-please-please fantasy is that the seat of Cowan is won by Anne Aly, and that she'll have actual face-to-face lunches with Pauline Hansen, and that she'll make a friend of PH (who is accessible on a personal level, I believe), and find a way to help us deflect and avert the bigotries and hatreds. I so much want that.
Thursday night a couple of us sat up, following with fear and horror #whereisLavishReynolds. The worst fears weren't realised, but so much horror is plainly out there, including about five hours of steady lies from the police about her whereabouts. This is frighteningly close to the "disappeared" of other countries. Not my country, I know - not my place to comment, but solidarity and support to those many, many people, easily and obviously the majority, who are struggling to remould something better from the current situation.
Oh, heavens. Something by way of relief. It's NAIDOC week in australia - i.e. celebrating indigenous people, culture, heritage. Here's an article from the abc about the billabongs of the Top End, and the people who know them and love them and keep them best. (Comes with a lovely picture of Cherry Daniels with waterlilies. :) Recommended for the picture alone, let alone the rest. and there's lots of other articles linkable from there.)
Well. Saturday morning, and I'd better start the day.
This entry was originally posted at http://heliopausa.dreamwidth.org/55659.html. Please comment here or there.