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Our one star has departed. We're wholly dark. The clouds are shedding pretension to friendliness, flake by flake. Which of us guides the other across this glassine surface that blanks every letter, deadening words. Who is that figure, globe-headed, dirndl-skirted, vacant hand-holder. The street-sign makes Mother, her little familiar. When you were born the ground had taken more than a dusting. We were locked in, but not forever. Now you are thirteen, age of reversible prime ...
After a plodding election race the stewards have called for a photo. But it looks more likely that Turnbull will be able to form a government. If so, he will need to address the interlocking challenges that we face in order to leave our children a world of possibility. The hope will be muted because both major parties promised little or nothing to address them. But we can take heart that there is certain to be an independently minded senate that can consequently strike down bad policies, and keep asking what kind of an Australia we want.
When the democratic exercise is no longer the aggregate of informed, reasoned choices, but a matter of mood, then the business of persuasion - politics - becomes far less about ideas and more about momentary catharsis. This shifts the function of politicians and government, from leading and dispensing equity to masturbatory aid. Even so, there are questions worth asking. But at whose expense are public moods assuaged? After catharsis, what happens next?
Honestly, I could talk all day about how growing up with Rudd/Gillard/Rudd followed by Abbott/Turnbull turned a generation away from politics. I could talk even longer about how seeing (mostly) white, (mostly) male politicians is its own form of alienation. But if I'm going to be the possible swing vote, the homogenous 'youth vote', I'm going to make it count. I know that I can't afford to disconnect; if for nothing else, I need to vote for the people who can't.
Facing his first election as leader of the Coalition, Turnbull announced that, if reelected, his party would spend $54 million on continuous glucose monitors for up to 4000 Type 1 diabetics under the age of 21. This impressive promise was a lightning rod to the children and small number of adults diagnosed each year with Type 1 diabetes. But it comes too late for Donna Meads-Barlow, who has campaigned tirelessly for government funding for CGMs, and upon whose efforts the government has finally taken action.
Today I walked past the bathroom and noticed a pale yellow puddle with an odour worse than an unflushed toilet. I cringed at the stench, with the realisation that I had to wash urine off the floor ... Dad's illness sometimes causes ambiguous loss. It is unclear, has no resolution or closure. He is like someone I don't know anymore; he is gone-but-still-there. This leads to complicated grief. I can't look at him without seeing a fading picture of who he used to be, and speak of him in the past tense.
The contest over Ali began even as news spread of his passing. His legend straddles the violence of his sport and the violence in which he refused to participate. Boxing is brutal but it has rules and finite duration. In war, there are no rules and no one wins. Ali recognised a larger violence, chose his enemies, and reimagined bravery. Attempts to sublimate this legacy - such as comments about him 'transcending' race - resemble the appropriation of Martin Luther King Jr by conservatives.
David Marr describes Shorten at work in the claustrophobic world of the Labor factions and the unions where great haters abound. Annabel Crabb has a lighter touch, describing the career of Turnbull, with all its energy, intellectual and tactical brilliance, and victories with obvious enjoyment and in sunlit prose. The accounts raise two questions: Do the qualities of leaders matter much? And what insight do the leaders' stories provide into the likely achievements of the government they would lead?
O, I had a sweetheart, sure I did, says a tiny stooped nun to me this morning. Long tall handsome man he was too. Did you think I signed up to be a nun before I could fall In love? No. I never met a nun yet wasn't in love before. It's good for you as a nun to have had your heart broken, seems to me, or to break someone else's heart. It's a way of the world. Better to know it so you can be tender when you see it later.
Here in this weather-beleaguered outpost there are so many rumours - thylacines, panthers, wagyls even that in the distant east are barbarians ... But separating deserts might as well be galaxies, and we are self-contained, and even like those theoretical others have our contentments - blue sky, blue sea, and even now the sun's great wintery eye. Hidden as we are however we hold our heads high, perhaps would not be ashamed one day to be discovered ...
'We have now got a world wide refugee problem. We don't have one here but we do have one world wide. It is now time to start having a rational debate about what we do with these people as opposed to playing the race card.' Interview with Anna Burke, who has represented the seat of Chisholm in the House of Representatives for the ALP since 1998. Burke is the former Speaker of the House (2012–2013), and has been a consistent advocate for asylum seekers. She will retire at the next election.
I talk to those on Manus at all times of the day and night and make sure they are okay. Of course, they are not okay, but so far all of my friends are still alive We keep their spirits up by sending them clothes, games and keeping their phones paid-for so they can talk to their families. We keep them informed about what is going on in Australia. We do not encourage them to hurt themselves in order to put pressure on the government. We do everything possible to stop them from hurting themselves.