I’m having an interesting time trawling virtual and dusty papers from that fun period of 2002 - 2006 when immigration detention activism was all the rage. Do any readers know of/have any critiques from that time (within loosely ‘anti-detention’ activism/debates) regarding the work of groups like ChilOut and the Circles of Friends?
I take a break from lolpopes to bring you this:
Olympia, now aged 11 says she is proud of the photos and the Prime Minister’s comments are out of line.
“I’m really really offended by what Kevin Rudd said,” she said.
Genius.
“A national framework for child protection is necessary, we can do better and must do better for the protection of our little children.” - Kevin Rudd.
Having worked with the child protection system I am much less excited about this comment than I should be were I to take the above comment at face value. A national framework has been advocated for years as a very basic policy intervention, and always seems to end up being hijacked for other violently paternalistic ends (if it’s not how such Interventions start off in the first place).
“Little children” really are the ultimate signifier into which to empty out all sorts of misdirected rubbish.
Is this for real? I’m sure I’ve got a drunkenly written film script sitting around somewhere that involves Mal Brough being presented, via Keith Windschuttle, with a medal from a society of the same name.
I couldn’t have scripted for this, though, so it must be true. See you all outside COAG next month.
Images on the front cover of Managing the Border: Immigration Compliance, DIMIA 2004-5:
1. Part of Harvey’s Isles, Queensland, 1802
2. Cape Jervis looking from Kangaroo Island, South Australia, 1802
3. Entrance of Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, 1802
4. North side of Cape Bowen, Queensland, 1802
5. Cape Schanck, Victoria, 1802
“William Westall was born in Hertford, England on 20 October 1781. In 1801 he was chosen by Sir Joseph Banks as the artist aboard Matthew Flinders’ Investigator expedition to explore the coastline of New Holland. His works chart the progress of Flinders’ circumnavigation of Australia from King George’s Sound in Western Australia, across the Great Australian Bight and on to Port Jackson and the Gulf of Carpentaria. He is best remembered as the first professional artist to depict the Australian landscape as well as Aboriginal Art. His works, 160 of which are held by the National Library of Australia, are considered of a very high standard. William Westall died in 1850, aged 68, while working on a painting of his shipwreck experience on the Porpoise.”
Some current containers for unfocussed loathing that has very focussed results.
1. Little Children are Sacred, the report which justified the Intervention.
2. “Sexualised” teenagers in a series of images by Bill Henson; seized by the police in the war on child pornography.
3. Islamic school children; apparently intended for taking over the town of Camden (“My kids can’t read Islamic … how are they going to go to that school?”)
* Kevin Rudd.
Young Liberals making recordings of lefty lecturers: do they really think we can’t tell which ones they are? Or will they perhaps disguise themselves in faded surf brand t-shirts a lá the undercovers at the G20 protests?
Put another way - this guy generally stands out in a Political Economy lecture:
(NSW Young Liberals President - from the Daily Telegraph article on the same issue)
I just found Austrade’s Globalisation Posters and Activities Books.
A reminder, to me anyway, of how to explain why nationality and sexuality should be, and are, studied together:
“the national project - animating the raison d’etre of every country and political society in the history of the world - maintains itself in complicated ways by regulating kinship, that is, by enforcing rules that reproduce the membership of that society and by establishing zones of legitimate sexual relationships.”
- Jacqueline Stevens, ‘The Politics of LGBTQ Scholarship’, GLQ Forum, 10:3, 2004.
Australians are a tough people, a people of mateship, who can handle anything but Change. CHANGE WILL RUIN US ALL! Especially a Change as drastic as going from this:
To this unknown, untried, offbeat, off the freakin’ planet option:
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