Every fortnight, I am tempted to begin with the words, \u201cI had intended.\u201d\u00a0 I had intended to write about Women\u2019s History Month and to introduce the guests on my blog and to take a quiet moment and think about the past. I wrote a post for Women\u2019s History Month myself this year. It\u2019s about debating circles in the 1970s and 80s. There is a sudden wild interest in the nature of those circles because of what may have happened in them in 1988. Our Attorney General (AG) is suing the national broadcaster (ABC) over a report on something that may or may not have happened in that year. Porter (the AG) was not named in that article and was one of three possible guilty parties according to what was reported. I have my opinion on what happened in 1988, but if the AG is suing the ABC\u2026 then I might have to keep it to myself for a bit.<\/p>\n
This is one of the reasons Australia found itself at a pivotal point for the history of women this weekend. Another is that on Monday (yesterday!) tens of thousands (or more \u2013 no-one did a proper count that I could see) of women marched for justice. A rape was done in Parliament House and the guilty party got support where the victim was \u2026 victimised. She spoke at the rally.<\/p>\n
The Australian government was in trouble before then. It was trying to recover from the shock of the West Australian state elections on Saturday. The vote was pretty decisive. The ALP won at least 50 seats (52 predicted, at this point in time, 30 needed to govern), the Liberal Party won 2 (and might get one more, and their allies, the Nationals, won 3 (possibly one more, too). Upper House results are not yet finalised, either, but there was a swing towards the ALP there, too.<\/p>\n
The ALP is not in government nationally. It is not the party the current Attorney General belongs to. It is not beyond guilt, but it\u2019s been accused of harassment in workplaces in Parliament House: the alleged rape was in an LNP (governing party\u2019s) office.<\/p>\n
While the Federal government was reeling over so many events, Australian women were angry. We made jokes about the march of the ides, or the Ides of March. Australia will make jokes about most things. We did not, however, make jokes about safe workplaces and abuse of position by people in power. In fact, when our Prime Minister made what I think now may have been intended to be a joke in Question Time when there were protesters outside, it was the icing on the cake of abuse.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t even realise it was intended as a joke at first, because one does not joke about not shooting demonstrators in Australia. One MP tweeted about water cannons, but deleted that tweet.<\/p>\n
This week is impossibly big for Australia and this post is very difficult to write. There\u2019s so much stuff. And most of that stuff is scary-uncomfortable. Our weekend began with the vote in the west then moved to human rights and raging anger.<\/p>\n
Two days ago I would have given links to reports on this or that element, but now\u2026 Australia is changing. I don\u2019t know where we will end up, but I live in hopes that this is the rebellion against the fearful and wildly conservative government that has been hurting many people.<\/p>\n
Right now, though, I\u2019m tired. Every single Australian who watches politics (which is most of us) is exhausted.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not boring here, that\u2019s one thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every fortnight, I am tempted to begin with the words, \u201cI had intended.\u201d\u00a0 I had intended to write about Women\u2019s History Month and to introduce the guests on my blog and to take a quiet moment and think about the past. I wrote a post for Women\u2019s History Month myself this year. It\u2019s about debating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,17],"tags":[112,26],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-rants","tag-australia","tag-gillian-polack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1083,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082\/revisions\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}