Joy To The World
This is Sam on his 16th birthday with his mates Todd and Bill. It was a successful day; he's organised his own party's for the last ten years and they've always gone smoothly. I remember organising his sixth birthday, the last one he let his parents organise, in a small park in the backstreets of Newtown, swings under the giant damp trees and the wind scuttling between rats and cockroaches; the damp mouldy smell of Sydney even darker here. I was desperate to provide him with a good time, to make up for the disaster of the breakup, to give him the gift of a normal childhood. Solid waves of impending tears couldn't block the pretense, or make anything real; and of course the party went perfectly well; truckloads of parents, or so it seemed, arriving and leaving more or less on time. It was a social must that the children be dropped and picked up on schedule, for other parents all knew that organising a kid's party was really no fun at all.
I wish my life was longer; it barely seems to have started before you're staring down the gun barrel of old age. There was lots of fun to be had; it was just a matter of grabbing the apple off the tree. Polly made me laugh because so many things she said were exactly the way I think, it was uncanny really. Michael introduced us the other night, he's always trying to match make his galaxy of friends, and sits there chortling like Yoda if there's any sign of success. I don't know about any of that, but she was certainly great company. Michael, Polly and I sat on the rooftop of a boutique hotel in Kings Cross, $195 a night for God's sake, and were joined by an architect from Melbourne and we all talked and talked.
Polly was in Sydney for a week to buy an apartment, flying in from New York and returning via Perth; and things had got a bit over-crowded at Michael's, with Kath and relatives.
Michael's an hospitable bloke, but there's only so many beds in a Bondi apartment. The rooftop was surrounded by smart apartment blocks and you could see all sorts of people going about their business; here with some of the best views in Sydney, sweeping down across Woolloomoollo. Polly had worked for UNICEF as head of their land mines unit. She was caught in an explosion of a suicide bomber at the UN headquarters in Baghdad, when 23 people were killed. Pestered for detail, she gave a vivid account of the day. As a consequences she's got a UN pension of something like $US6,000 a month, which is enough translated into Australian dollars to live very comfortably indeed. She was flown through the air, like being banged in the head by a kitchen cupboard, and for a fraction of a second didn't know what had happened. She's mates with the authors of Emergency Sex, an account of the antics of a group of UN aid workers which got lots of attention recently; and had lots of tales to tell. Her house in Islamabad was popular amongst the expats as a late night spot. Already feted, her memoir has all the indications of being another best seller. And as I, too, am struggling to finish off a book, we talked and talked. There's been a few years marked by difference and isolation rather than good old belly laughs; and with Michael and Polly, more than anything I just appreciated the company.
THE BIGGEST STORY:
ABC:
TONY EASTLEY: The New South Wales Opposition leader, Peter Debnam put a brave face on the outcome, citing that four seats had been taken from Labor and that was reason enough to take heart.Here's part of his speech.PETER DEBNAM: First off, can I just say thank you to all those people across New South Wales who voted for us, the Liberal and National Party, all of...(Sound of cheering and applause) ... everybody who voted for us across New South Wales, obviously both in the Lower House and in the Upper House. A lot of people came home to the Liberal Party and to the National Party tonight and we want to say very much from the bottom of our heart, thank you to those people right across the state.Ladies and gentlemen, the people of New South Wales have given Labor one last chance to fix the problems in this state. That's the clear message from the election today, one last chance to fix all those problems we've talked about for so many months, indeed for so many years.Ladies and gentlemen, to win this election was always going to be like climbing Mount Everest, and we've had that discussion a number of times over the last 18 months.But what we've achieved today is a really healthy result. As I've indicated...(Sound of cheering and applause) ...as I've indicated, a large number of people have come home to the Liberal Party and the National Party tonight, right across the state. In fact, we've got the first swing away from Labor since 1988.(Sound of cheering and applause)Today's result, tonight's result is really about consolidation for us. Not only have we laid out a framework of policy that we'll fix the problems in New South Wales, but we've also put the best candidates in every single one of the 93 seats across the state, whether Liberal or National we put out there great candidates and we've got some of them into Parliament and I'm going to mention a few of them in a minute.We've also campaigned very hard - not just for a few weeks or for a few months, but indeed for 18 months, running up to this election and I'm very proud of the results we've achieved right across the board.(Sound of cheering and applause) TONY EASTLEY: New South Wales Opposition leader Peter Debnam speaking there.