The issue of refugees in Australia

I have had an interesting week with regards to asylum seekers. It all started when the partner of one of my very good friends, Elysha Hickey, asked Kevin Rudd a very good question about Asylum Seekers and the way Australians view the issue:

"Look Kevin, enough is enough when it comes to asylum seekers. For the last six weeks it's been going around and around in circles. Why don't you take the opportunity to completely change the discourse, the way that Australians think about asylum seekers and stop this around in circles business and just stop this fear mongering?"

From there Elysha's week went Crazy. The PM said that she knew nothing about Asylum seekers, so Channel Nine flew her to Indonesia to try and get first hand experience. I spent a lot of time hanging with Brayden (Elysha's partner) and helping him deal with the magnitude of it all. But what it really did was allow me the opportunity to spend some time thinking about the issue.

Personally I think the entire problem with Asylum seekers comes back to the whole problem with our money system, but that isn't a practical way to think today in Australia. What it comes down to is that the overwhelming view in Australia seems to be that people fear that allowing people in need to come to our country will put a strain on our economy, infrastructure and resources and lower the standard of living in this country. For people living in a capitalist system that is a very fair point.

However, one of the points Elysha has argued is that Australia as a nation is far more compassionate than that. They are allowing fear mongering by the media and politicians to make them forget about their fellow man. They take the human away from the issue and say its about People Smugglers. They call the refugees 'illegals' or 'terrorists', suggesting that they are breaking the law and are thus sub-human. They don't acknowledge that these are people that were like us in every way at birth, and their only difference is where they live and who has persecuted them.

I agree that given the current system simply opening the doors and letting anybody who wants to come here would not work. But if were we to go with what appears to be the current attitude, "Fuck Off, We're Full", we become people filled with hate and not compassion.

I propose that our politicians need to acknowledge the plight of these people, recognise that they are more than likely refugees and completely change the discourse of the Australian people. If Kevin Rudd were to simply say something like "We acknowledge that these are people in need and that we, as citizens of Earth, need to do all that we can to help them. Sadly though, we cannot help all of them, only some. It is our responsibility to do something and it is time to work out exactly how much we can do." then I believe we would be taking the first steps in the right direction.

How we choose which refugees we take, or how many, I don't know. But to encourage this attitude of fear, to lock people up for simply fleeing persecution... we can do better as a people.

The Problem With Money (Part 3): The Future of the Media

There was a fascinating episode of Media Watch on the 19th of October that was completely focussed on the future of commercial media vs government subsidized media. It is a fascinating piece and all should check it out (Media Watch Ep 37 2009).

The basis of the debate is that due to free online content causing less people to buy and read newspapers and watch commercial television news the commercial providers of news are struggling to stay in profit. The government provided content obviously doesn't have to worry about profit because it is provided at the cost of the tax payer and is made commercial free.

The biggest problem I see is that the problem with money and profit is that it is based entirely on scarcity. Newspapers were scarce because only a limited number of papers could be produced and so the news read by a limited number of people. With the advent of the internet, news is now in abundance. Not only is there no limit to the number of computers that can read the one news story without having to spend extra resources producing it (i.e. paper), but there is also an abundance of news providers. For the first time in the history of the world I can read about a story from the BBC, the New York Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, and probably thousands of other news blogs, and all I have to do is load it up on a screen as a minuscule amount of data.

Since news is now in abundance, it is near impossible for a profit to be made. The commercial sites are saying they will have to start charging for online content, but people will just go elsewhere for their news, without having to pay for it. News has become a public good, and as such profiting from the providing of news, as put by Mark Scott, is a dying empire.

Money and profit not only cause great atrocities in the world but as we who don't control the money start to see how much abundance technology has brought us and will continue to bring us we will slowly wake up to the fact that the financial systems of the world are obsolete.

The Problem With Money - Part 2 (Universal Healthcare and the US)

I rewatched the brilliant Michael Moore documentary "Sicko" yesterday and it pissed me off just as much as it did first time around. Not because I didn't like the film, as I said, its fantastic. Not because I don't like Michael Moore, I think he makes awesome films that really confront the powers that be.

The reason that it pisses me off is because I cannot believe that in America, the land of the free, that people have become so downtrodden that they accept things the way they are!!! I am disgusted that Americans haven't stood up and said "we want universal health care so that each of us, the great and the least, can be looked after in our times of need!" The concept of universal health care isn't even particularly revolutionary, as Moore so clearly points out during the film. America are the only developed nation in the world to not have Universal Healthcare!

Being an Australian, I grew up hearing things about the US health system. One of my neighbours, who grew up in the US, injured himself during a trip to the land of the free. I remember overhearing him telling my father how much debt he racked up paying his medical bills. But I really didn't understand it, after all, I live in Australia. In Australia we have medicare. You go to the hospital, you give them your medicare number and hey presto they look after you. Our system isn't as good as many seem, however for anything life threatening you're basically covered.

So the US system was always completely foreign to me. The big question is... how the hell do they put up with it! How do those without not march like women did, like the African Americans did. How do those that have it not look at their fellow Americans suffering and say "NO!!!". How can they be so callous, so uncaring. As Moore says in the film, "Who are we?"

At the end of the day it is a problem of money. Profit is the goal of business... to make more money than you lose. But the law dictates that there are certain areas one cannot make a profit. One of these areas is that of illegal drugs. I cannot legally sell drugs for a profit because society has deemed the danger I cause to be of a greater negative than my freedom to make a profit. Another is as a hitman. Yet denying people lifesaving healthcare is considered a good way to make profit!

The rich of the world constantly put profit above people and somehow the rest of us allow it to happen. On this issue, the rest of the world aren't so malicious and uncaring though. We have other failings when it comes to profit before people, but we basically have healthcare right. The Americans sadly continue to allow it to happen.

Micheal Moore brilliantly highlights this disgusting problem in the USA and I reccomend everybody go and see the movie.

The Kyle Sandilands Saga

Kyle Sandilands is a polarising character. He has always had an attitude of "I do what I want and I really don't care what other people think. Over the past decade he has used this persona to rise through the ranks of the Australian media to host the number one breakfast show on FM radio. And I have to admit, he can be quite funny at times, to the point that for a while I was podcasting their show. Since he came to Australian Idol I have felt like he has moulded himself into a pretty damned good judge.

However one thing that has always bugged me about his character/persona/actual personality on the 2Day FM radio show is that he has always been used the as bad guy whenever they have stunts. Some of their stunts are quite disgusting in the way in which they play with people's emotions in order to create a storyline. The perfect example was the one shown on Media Watch where a girl was flown out from the US to meet her aunty for the first time and she was told if her aunty picked the wrong door they'd fly her straight back. Now she did pick the wrong door and they let them meet anyway, but not before they squeezed out a good portion of tears and begging from the two women involved.

The incident last week I think finally made Australia say "enough is enough". However, there is an incredible amount of hypocricy being laid down here. For starters, had the girl not made her revelation about being raped this would not even be newsworthy. Had she made the revelation, but Kyle had not made a comment it would have been off the front pages within hours.

Sticking with the rape for a minute, all parties concerned had the perfect opportunity to use this incident as a way of educating people on rape of all kinds. Run some informative interviews on the show with everyone from police to councillors to a victim of rape prepared to share her experience of pursuing her attacker. It could have led to a lot of discussion about rape as an issue in society. But to quote Kyle Sandilands, "I’ve certainly pissed off a lot of journos over the years but I’m sad that they’re using the rape of a 12-year-old girl to have a go at me". Many have criticised even this quote, but it does seem like the media are on a rampage, picking their scapegoat and not resting until he's been brought down.

And thats not to say Kyle isn't very in the wrong. His reaction to the girls initial revelation, which seems to be the centre of the focus, was less than ideal. In fact, it would be hard not to call it disgusting. But I have the tiniest amount of sympathy. I can imagine nothing harder than to have to somehow carry on a radio show when someone drops a bombshell like that. Many would struggle to know what to say, and he was foolish and misguided in his attempt to continue the segment as if nothing had happened. But I don't think this is where the fault lies.

The fault clearly lies with the segment itself, and this is where questions need to be asked. How have the predatory stunts that pray on peoples lowest moments been allowed to get this far. Who is it at Austereo that is authorising these stunts? If Kyle is the one behind it then he deserves to lose his job, but if he is not, then we should know who is. Because from where I sit, so much of Kyle is a character, a persona. Kyle is what the world wants Kyle to be. He is what his bosses want him to be. He is the dickhead that we are meant to hate on some level and yet for some reason still like. He is the baddie that allows the suffering to continue for all to hear. He is exactly what 2Day FM have wanted and allowed him to be, and yet there appears to be a very good chance that because he has caused the sponsors to worry, both at 2Day and at Ten, he may soon be unemployed.

To quote a tweet from Chas from The Chaser "I'll take option C - I don't like Kyle or censorship from the sponsors"!

Flame away!

"Did You Get Drunk?"

The question in this blog's title is one that I am sick of being asked. The answer is usually no, for the record. I just don't get what this obsession is with getting drunk. The few times in my life I have been drunk, the fact that I was drunk really wasn't all that exciting, and the next morning... well I didn't feel that great. Sure I had a lot of fun both nights, but I didn't have to be drunk to enjoy myself.

But I'm not really talking about me. So often I will hear someone talking about a night out and the person listening will immediately ask "Did you get drunk"? It seems like, from my view, that this question is almost being interchanged with the question "Did you have fun?". So why is it that my generation seems to have to write themselves off in order to have a good time?

Now I'm not saying that drinking is a bad thing, nor am I saying that even getting drunk is a bad thing. But I ask the question to all of you who read this... do you go out of your way to ensure you get drunk often? Do you drink only to get drunk? Do you ever feel like you have a good night out sober? I really do have to wonder some of the people I know would answer these questions.

Having to be drunk in order to enjoy yourself is essentially alcoholism. It isn't "a beer with breakfast" alcoholism, but it is alcoholism just the same. Maybe they just don't actually like the company they keep. Maybe they just want to not remember their night so they can make up fake memories. What it is I don't know, but we need to start asking ourselves why does an excess of alcohol have to be a compulsory component of a good night out? Can't we all just have a few drinks and have a great night to remember, and not forget!

Party Politics

I'm not at all a fan of party politics. I grew up with parents who both voted Labor in the elections and so I became something of a Labor supporter. I remember being really annoyed as a young kid when Paul Keating lost to John Howard. Of course at the time I knew nothing about what either party stood for, but I wasn't happy. Something I probably picked up from my father.

As I got older I started to learn the basic differences between the Labor Party and the Liberal Party and why it was that my family were Labor voters. Like any child I took it at face value and so I started to follow the party ideology... at least as it sat on paper.

But now, I no longer see the value of party politics. And the biggest problem I have with it is that it is actually quite undemocratic. Democracy as a form of government was idealistically a system where everybody has a say in the policy and direction of the government. Obviously as it was not practical for us all to be in the same place for a vote all of the time, democracy evolved into a representative democracy, where people elected someone to represent them in a parliament.

The representative democracy obviously is flawed in that everybody will not agree on a certain issue within any constituency and thus their opinion isn't being completely represented. It is far from a perfect system.

But what we have currently in Austrlia is not a good form of democracy. What we essentially have is two major political parties (Labor and the Coalition [who while technically are 2 seperate parties in the Nationals and Liberals, there are very few issues that they don't vote the same way]) that together form 99% of the lower house and 91% of the upper house.

The biggest problem with political parties is that they don't really allow politicians to actually represent their constituents. In the Labor party, if a politician votes against the party line they are at risk of expulsion from the party. In the Liberal party it is incredibly frowned upon. There have been very few cases in recent memory of politicians crossing the floor on an issue. One notable was Barnaby Joyce when the Nationals essentially held the balance of power in the senate.

Why this is a problem is that a politician cannot even vote on what they believe themselves. The voters are essentially electing a politician to be a vote for their party on whatever issues they vote on. And I don't see how this is acceptable. If a member of the Labor party were voting on, say, the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, and they personally believed it was a bad idea, plus they had received hundreds of letters against the policy but very few for it, they still would have to vote for the policy if that is what the party decided!!! The perfect example of this is Peter Garrett who has either had an incredible change in ideology or is voting against his own feelings and for the party line on many issues. It is truly a disgraceful system!

What I think would be a better system is if we did away with party politics completely and have anyone with political aspirations become an independent politician. They are duty bound to consider the opinions of their constituency in their decision making and they are free to vote however they feel best inclined on any issue. They as a parliament elect a Prime Minister and then elect a Ministry how they best see fit. The Ministry are then responsible for writing policy that the parliament vote on.

Many will say that nothing will get done, that party politics allows things to happen, things to evolve, but there is nothing to say that this would not happen with a system of independents, that the politicians will back the ministers they elect. I think they will find a way of making it work.

The other incredible change that has happened in the last 20 years that has never been a feature of representative democracy in the past is the internet. The internet has opened up an incredible resource for politicians to communicate their thoughts and beliefs with their constituents. It allows these constituents to communicate their own thoughts and beliefs instantly and regularly. There is nothing to say that a politician could not poll his constituents on every issue before going to a vote.

And the biggest problem with this issue is apathy. People vote for a certain political party because it is the easy thing to do. It is so much easier to vote between one of two, or even a few choices than having to actually do some research and discover who it is running! The effectiveness of the major parties could be diminshed at the next election if people were to reject the major political parties and just vote for an independant. But things will never change as long as those in control allow people to see politics as unimportant, boring and petty. When a disagreement over a Ute is the most pressing political discussion for as long as it was, what hope do we have!

Please comment away... I'm sure you all have some arguments against my points!!! I would love to hear them!

The Problem With Money - Part 1

This morning we woke up to the news that Michael Jackson had passed away. The reaction of many people seems to be that of "good riddance" or "who cares?", but Michael Jackson was a very high profile case of someone that has been chewed up by the record industry, completely screwed over and then spat out.

Many will say that he was very rich, and while this is clearly the case, no amount of money could undo the damage that was inflicted on him as a child. He was a complete basket case, far from normal in both a physical and emotional way. At the end of the day, in my mind Michael Jackson is just one of millions of people who have been exploited in order to make a profit.

We live in a world that allows people to die of starvation. We live in a world that allows people to work menial jobs and be paid 7 times less per day than people earn per hour in Australia on minimum wage. The money system is broken.

It simply sickens me that there aren't daily protests and that people aren't constantly on talk back radio complaining about how little big business cares for humanity. It should simply not be acceptable that people are allowed to be put behind profits. We should take a stand and say enough is enough.

This isn't going to be a long blog, but it will be a topic I will revisit in the future. In the mean time we need to ask the question "How can you allow people to suffer in the name of your own greed?"

Sex Education

This is probably a strange topic to start my blog with, but I had a discussion about it the other day, and want to share some of my thoughts.

We are living in a very sexualised world. From sexy images plastered all over advertising to the increasing ease of access of internet pornography. It is in our faces, and as adults we are equipt and prepared to deal with it. But I'm not sure we're dealing all that well when it comes to sex with younger teenagers and even Children.

Working at a boarding school I am constantly overhearing conversations where boys as young as twelve are objectifying women, speaking of the woman or girl as a collection of private parts and not an active young mind.

As they get older it gets worse. It sickens me every time I hear a boy talk about a girl that he has sex with as if it was an acheivement, another notch on the belt if you will. The question I ask is at what point did society say it was ok for them to have this attitude.

I think the problem is though that it is very clear. Sex has always been a very sexist patriachal adventure. Going back to biblical times, it was the woman cheating on her husband that was to be condemned and not the husband cheating on his wife. Prostitution has predominantly been males paying for females. In fact, from my little knowledge of history it really seems that in terms of females that always on some level they have been there to serve males sexually.

But in the second half of the 20th century, women have earned themselves a voice, standing up to their male oppressors. Women were suddenly allowed to enjoy sex, and take ownership of their sexuality and their sexual experience. Womens magazines flooded the shelves talking of g-spots and multiple orgasms. But somehow still I don't think the male attitude has changed.

So I come back to the topic of this blog: Sex Education. From what I can remember of my schooling, sex education in PDHPE was pretty much a lesson on how does my junk work, how does her junk work and how do I stop my junk from impregnating her junk. Personally I don't believe this is enough.

Sex Education has to be about more than the physical understanding of intercourse. I believe that sex education needs to be about understanding people and their sexuality. Children should be learning to communicate their feelings with the opposite sex (or someone of the same sex, as the case may be). They should be learning from experts on the subject of sex and all the emotions that go with it. They should be hearing from couples who maintain an intimate and active sex life. They should be hearing from homosexual couples about their way of life. First and foremost, they should be having these discussions with boys, girls and parents in the room!

As I continue to blog, you will quickly learn that I believe people need to sit and discuss with an open mind a lot more than they currently do for us to fix anything, and I especially think this for sex education. We need to realise that if the kids don't learn this stuff properly, they are definitely going to learn it from somewhere, and probably before they are 12. We need to remove sex from the taboo column before our children learn about sex from a porn star.

Introduction

After an extended discussion with my friend last night, I decided that I need to start a blog. I have too many detailed thoughts on too many issues to not share them with the world. I really do hope that people will read what I have to say and use the comments section to discuss and disect my thoughts.

I do admit openly that for many of the issues I will discuss, I have no special qualifications that make me an expert. I simply offer an opinion. An opinion that I have discussed ad nauseum with friends. An opinion that I am open to changing, if someone presents me with logic that convinces me of my error.

I accept all opinions openly and truly believe that open discussion is the only way we are going to develop as a society.

I hope you enjoy my musings, and I hope I don't get lazy and keep writing.

My first real post should be up in the next few days.