Vox Pops

A while ago, I heard culture was defined as “what we do here”. It’s a simple and easily recognisable concept; you can think about it from a scale as broad as global geo-political trends all the way down to what each of us call a potato scallop. Every country in the world is developing their own response to the Covid pandemic, built on the backbone of their culture. Each society is developing responses that will create our expectations from our government and how we will hold each other to account. In Australia, Victoria has led the way in developing our culture – people in other states may not have lived it yet but they know what’s in store when there’s another outbreak, because now they will also know what it takes to succeed. Another part of our culture: Australians like winning. Australian culture helped us to set a national focus for how we would manage this pandemic. We decided that we wanted to prioritise protecting our citizens from an increased chance of death from this ins

To my friend who posted All Lives Matter-type memes.  I spent this morning making you something that I hope helps you. I didn’t feel like engaging in a Facebook tit for tat – I didn’t feel like the tension it brings, I didn’t want to drag this out into the open for everyone to scrutinise and generate an arena for nasty judgmental commentary. I want to encourage you to think differently. Here goes. 1.   There were massive and devastating injustices to people of colour throughout history. I think you know about some of this – so I’m not going to spend a lot of time here. I think you know that hundreds of thousands of people were taken from their homes, separated from their families, bought and sold like livestock to live as slaves to the benefit of others much richer and more privileged. I want you to re-read that last sentence though, and think about all of the suffering contained in it, because this is where today’s suffering started.  The suffering started whe

A fireman and a koala regard the destruction of both of their environments When you make the decision to move away from your home country, you know that you can come back. You know that if this decision to uproot your life goes tits up, the worst is that you just simply move home. It’s your safety net. You move away and you’re a novelty – your accent is different. Australians are loved overseas – we’re known for our animals (both cute and dangerous), the reef and the outback. People know it’s a long way away, and they often want to come and visit… one day. It’s easy to be proud of Australia’s uniqueness. We’re a safe Western society on the other side of the world. We have such an interesting mixture of environments, animals, cultures and beauty. We have more of an Asian influence than most other English speaking countries, we are a total curiosity. People are often shocked when they understand that the land mass of Australia is roughly equivalent to that of the contin

Scott Marsh's brilliant Merry Crisis was sadly painted over but happily raised >$90k for firefighters. Scott Morrison is the most recent of 6 Australian prime ministers in the last 12 years. Originally a marketer, over the past couple of years he underwent a re-branding evolution. From his ‘stop the boats’ rhetoric and his utterly cruel and soulless reputation as Immigration minister, to the more business-minded, coal loving treasurer, to the “oh whoops how did I get here” daggy dad Prime Minister. In May 2019, he won an election based on a marketing message – he wasn’t the opposition leader, Bill Shorten. He had no other real policies other than something about franking credits and some bullshit about an Opposition death tax. Based on the fact he had no policies, and that he had been so behind in the polls that he had fuck all chance of winning, he put his election win down to a miracle. So what’s wrong with winning an election with broad brushstrokes and a se