All Is Not Safe

*

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

WH Auden

As if everything was lost, the mellow squiggles, he held himself tight and laughed; they were a perennial outrage, on the edge. They liked their own difference, their sense of separation, the entre into a secret club. In Melbourne we stayed with Don Dunstan, then Tourism Minister for Victoria, an appointment Labor had made as a loyalty gesture. We were in town from Sydney, which wasn't the toxic dump it is today. It wasn't the place we all love to hate, snakes crawling over each other, dogs rounding on the wounded. The only way to establish rapport with a taxi driver is to moan about how Sydney just isn't the place it used to be. And that, my friend, is very true. The malaise that has destroyed this once wonderful place, this Amsterdam by the sea, the party town of the Pacific, the smell of frangipanis and white terrace houses under cloudless blank blue skies, has many origins, not least the rapid growth in population. Places like Fairfield in the western suburbs have 70% of the population born somewhere else.

There's no natural, organic sense of community. There's dog eat dog and ethnic group eat ethnic group; all it will take to turn this dispirited mess of warring factions into a conflagration is for a Lebanese gang member to rape the girlfriend of a Vietnamese gang member and whoosh, away we go. Try and find out a simple thing: how many Christian churches are vandalised in Sydney each year? Strangely, the statistic is unavailable. They do their best to conceal the truth. They do their best to peddle the official lies; that multiculturalism is an unalloyed success; this gift of ideology from the Canadian left, their gift, as they say, to the world. Thanks guys. Thanks for undermining the culture that was. Thanks for creating a new world, with its many pluses and minuses. Babel has arrived, for good or ill.

The official version howls down the idea of a white retreat; as old timers in once unremarkable working class suburbs cower inside, while outside flash families from all over the world, loaded up on the welfare dollar, drive past in their big black or silver four wheel drives. As the upper classes embrace the greater variety of restaurants and the routinely educated middle classes embrace the difference, dismissing, as their professors have told them to do, the past as a painfully narrow and bigoted monoculture, they cower, they despair, dismissed as old, as racists, as white.

But more fundamental than these demographic changes is the absolute contempt the population feels for their governing bodies. As they sit in the choking traffic and despair at the parasites feeding off them; the endless tolls, the parking cops, the fight for survival. The ill health that threatens them all. The mind boggling incompetence of a state government rolling in billions of GST dollars; feeding their Labor chronies, their mates. In the cafe Steve quotes the Bible at him; Revelations I think. No one will be able to trade without the marki of the beast; on hand and head. The hand for action, the head for intellect.

You will be stained with belief; and if you do not believe, if you are not a Labor convert, you will be ostracised. You will be persecuted through every available channel. Through the darkness and the light and the quivering dawn; through a tender, tentative embrace. The malformed images that had dominated his brain had dissipated. Let it go, let it go, promise me, Mick said, holding his hands and insisting, in a country where men do not hold hands, repeat after me, I will let it go, I will let it go. I don't deserve this. I never deserved the beatings, the brutality, the injustices. The shadows that had stalked his every waking moment. The fear that they were out there, determined to get him. As the conservatives crumbled into a disappointing heap; and everything we had ever worked for vanished. In traffic, in chaos, in the feeding frenzy of the tax collector, drunk on their own excesses, bus lanes, noise cameras, constant monitoring.

And as the crowds sit in their miserable cocoons, on the trains, on the buses, their faces blank, unwritten, as they gaze out the window with a unique blankness. And anyone who can think wants to escape. No one in this city has the slightest faith in their government, local, state or federal, although Rudd gave the population a brief flush of hope; at least he wasn't Howard. Howard who betrayed himself and the country and left the conservatives in a tragic mess; Howard who took us into an immoral and unpopular war in Iraq, Howard who spread the tentacles of bureaucracy into everybody's life; far more than any left wing government could or would ever have dared to do. With the GST every single financial transaction except the black economy now attracts a tax. The spread of welfare into the middle classes means Centrelink now has a relationship with more than 90 per cent of families.

The once proud independence of the population is lost. Yet they are expected to believe in governments so bad they virtually defy description. And so people go about their dreary lives, the snail trails we all form in this rotten town in order to make life bearable, the putrid platitudes of morning television hosts glossing over virtually everything, chattering in the background, shuddering at the hatred building up in the population. This deep discontent. This darkening psyche. The dipping morale. Be careful, he warned, all is not safe.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/nelson-quits-seat-and-calls-on-liberals-to-renew-themselves-20090216-89dh.html

THE former Opposition leader Brendan Nelson has delivered the Liberal Party its second shock in one day by announcing he would quit politics at the next federal election.

Only hours after Julie Bishop stepped down as shadow treasurer, Dr Nelson told a meeting in his safe North Shore seat of Bradfield that it was time the party renewed itself.

Dr Nelson was a minister in the Howard Government, holding the education and defence portfolios. He beat Malcolm Turnbull to become Opposition leader after the Coalition's 2007 election defeat.

Mr Turnbull deposed him in September last year. Dr Nelson eschewed an offer to serve in shadow cabinet and went to the backbench.

His decision to retire paves the way for a preselection battle in Bradfield, and it will place pressure on other Howard government veterans occupying safe NSW seats, such as Philip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop, to make way for new blood and allow the party to rejuvenate itself.

It will also cast the spotlight on Peter Costello in Victoria, who most expect will seek preselection again.

The Liberal Party is alive with suspicion that Kevin Rudd could go to the polls as early as the end of this year, rather than late next year as scheduled.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25064492-5006785,00.html

THE man accused of lighting a bushfire that killed 11 people has made an insurance claim for fire damage.

Brendan James Sokaluk, 39, lodged the claim with the RACV a day after fires ravaged Victoria.

Mr Sokaluk's identity was revealed yesterday after a magistrate said it was likely many already knew who the accused was.

But the magistrate continued a ban on Mr Sokaluk's photo or street address, saying it was likely to lead to attacks on his property.

Magistrate Jon Klestadt yesterday lifted a suppression order on Mr Sokaluk's identity.

The Churchill man chose not to appear at the brief remand hearing in Melbourne Magistrates' Court, and last night was in protective custody.

He is alleged to have sparked the horrific Churchill blaze by setting fire to a timber plantation on February 7.

In lifting the suppression, Mr Klestadt said it was likely many people already knew Mr Sokaluk's identity.

His social networking page was disabled late yesterday.

Mr Sokaluk was an enigma in the town where he grew up, but yesterday everyone was talking about him.

"Everywhere you go people are talking about it, even at the shops," one resident said.

Despite all the talk, few people have penetrated Mr Sokaluk's private life.

A loner who went to a special school, he tried to become a CFA volunteer for years but was always knocked back.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/17/2493099.htm

Police have appealed for patience as they work to establish the final death toll from the Victorian bushfires.

A further eight people were confirmed dead on Monday, taking the number to 189.

The latest figure includes 128 killed in the Kinglake fire, 10 at Churchill and 43 in the fires at Marysville.

Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe says it may be some time before a final death toll is known.

"We have been working closely with the Coroner's Court to enable us to get to this point tonight," he said.

"The families and friends of bushfire victims would expect us to ensure that we get this right and that we treat the victims with the dignity and the respect that they deserve."

Mr Walshe says Disaster Victims Identification teams are focusing on the area around Marysville, where 43 people are known to have died.

"It's a difficult issue there because most of the work there is building searches, so building searches will take a more lengthy period of time than the open areas to actually locate remains," he said.

Police say the death toll from the bushfires will continue to rise as more bodies are identified in the devastated areas.

The kids at Lunar Park when they were younger.