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A lot of people refused to leave. Sydneysiders with waterfront properties could not fathom that the mansions that had cost them millions of dollars were going to be under water. There were stories of eastern suburbs socialites loading their antiques into boats. And drownings. Lots of drownings.
Sociologist Eva Cox heard all the vitriol about boat people when, as a five-year-old Jewish girl, she fled Nazi Germany and headed to Australia. My nine-year-old mother was a different kind of boat arrival: one of 135,000 'child migrants' imported under the 'Populate or Perish' policy.
In her field some ethnic markers can be overlooked, but skin colour has an undeniable influence on earnings. These are suspicious times. Even the new finance minister, whose grandmother was Aboriginal, caved in to pressure and became noticeably lighter prior to his new appointment.
In 2012, the settler people of Australia finally made their peace with their Indigenous brothers and sisters. With this came the discovery of what had been lost, what was missing, what needed to be restored. There was much work to be done and together they made a plan.
The Eureka Street/Reader's Feast Award was announced today in conjunction with Eureka Street's other annual ethical essay-writing award, the Margaret Dooley Award.
X people work hard. Y people are natural athletes. Z people treat the world like they own it. Q people are violent. R people are drunkards. S people mistreat women. V people are queue jumpers. Racial generalising becomes racist only if we accept its false premise.
The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.
My granddad was a fourth generation white Australian who worked with sheep. I used to tell the story that he was a small town racist who disliked Blacks, Catholics and Jews. The punch line was that his daughter married a Fijian, his son married a Jew and my dad married a Catholic.
There are those who argue that the fight to stave off the negative impacts of climate change is a fight to save the world from humans themselves. Dialogue from population-control advocates fails to recognise the dignity of each person.
Observing this unique means of fishing, I realised an alternative intelligence was at work, born of the islanders' relationship to the environment. Ironically, this island is one of a growing number facing inundation by rising waters due to climate change.
We are terrible at caring for the planet because we are terrible at caring for each other. And we are lousy at caring for each other because we don't seem to have any idea of where the roots of human emotional sustenance lie. We might begin to look at our obsessive love of money and power.