Three of our Senators are claiming

racism is rife in our federal parliament. They are apparently so concerned about this they have come together to pen a letter of complaint.

One of the three is an immigrant from Afghanistan. Another is an immigrant from Pakistan. The third identifies as Aboriginal.

In Afghanistan the first would not even be able to leave the house unescorted by a male. Here she is free to wear a hijab in the chamber and does so. There are also some doubts about her eligibility to be a Senator here as she may not have fully renounced her citizenship of Afghanistan. No, it may not be entirely her own fault given the situation there but the matter has not been resolved in the manner it should have been resolved. It has certainly not been given the same attention others with problems relating to dual nationality have found it to be given.

The second would also find her life in Pakistan very different from her life here. She would certainly not be as free there as she is here. In the chamber she has been permitted to make a highly political statement in her manner of dress by wearing a keffiyeh.  

The third appears to be the only Aboriginal person in her family. Her parents do not claim to be Aboriginal. They merely think a distant ancestor "might have been"from the tribes from which the Senator claims to be descended. It has not prevented her from claiming a very full indigenous heritage and being bullied at school because she was "blak".

These three women are apparently under constant racial attack, so much so they feel the need to make a public issue of it. I, and no doubt many others, had no idea that "racism" was so widespread or so bad in this country. 

Yes, of course racism exists here. It exists in all groups where people have varied heritage. There will always be people who think less of someone because of who their parents or their grandparents or someone in their direct line of ancestry was or is now. The idea that it exists in our national parliament to the degree described by these three women surprises me and I doubt it. If it does then I suspect much of it is of their own making.   

The departure of the national security

expert Dennis Richardson from the Royal Commission into anti-semitism is a matter for alarm. It should not have happened.

He was originally appointed to run a different inquiry within the government. When the Royal Commission was set up he was moved to that instead. That is where the problems really began. 

He could have been and should have been as one of the Commissioners.  Instead we have just one Commissioner, the former High Court judge Virginia Bell.  

Yes, she is considered to be an experienced and highly respected judge. Yes, she knows far more law than I and most people will ever know. The problem is that she does not know, cannot know, about  national security and intelligence gathering in the way that Dennis Richardson knows. Quite possibly he knows more than anyone else in the country but he has resigned. He says he felt as if he was a "researcher, leading a team of researchers" and a "fifth wheel".

The problem with all this is not simply that the Royal Commission is losing his knowledge but that it will hamper the entire functioning of the Royal Commission. There are questions which need to be asked of those responsible for security issues and for intelligence gathering if the Royal Commission is to uncover the failures, the weaknesses and the influences on it. 

There will also be people appearing in front of it who will not be sure of what they are actually permitted to answer on national security grounds. Richardson's presence there would have been reassuring. They and Justice Bell could have referred to him, indeed would have needed to refer to him. There is information which will not go to the Royal Commission because of the terms of reference but it is possible that Dennis Richardson's presence there might still have helped. 

This is of course what the government was hoping for. Their apparent reluctance to hold a Royal Commission in the first place was carefully managed politics. The terms of reference are intended to prevent an investigation of the real issues of concern, particularly those in seats the government now holds. These are the things which do need to be investigated. It will be interesting to see how much pressure is now exerted on Richardson to return. I suspect the government is happy to see him gone. 

Cultural literacy or There are limits to my tolerance

for "multiculturalism". That has quite possibly been very evident of late but the idea that a young child can be accused of some sort of cultural insensitivity because they draw a picture of their mother or their father is absurd.

As I said here some little while ago I was "asked" not to drink water in front of a young Muslim boy recently. I was at the railway station. It was a hot day. Children are not expected to "fast" for Ramadan but he apparently was.  I didn't actually need to make a decision about whether to "offend" or not because the train came in.

But this is not a Muslim country. I do not have to cover my head at all times. I could eat pork if I wanted to eat pork. I don't eat pork but I could if I wanted to do so. I could own a dog. I am friends with Jews and Sikhs and Hindus and Buddhists. I have a friend who plays cello in a symphony orchestra and have been to the concerts of that orchestra. I can write a letter to the editor and nine times out of ten it will be published. I recognise "free speech" has limits but it is there and will remain there if it is not abused. In the next two weeks I will vote in our state election because I have passed the age of twenty-one (now eighteen). 

There is a vast difference between my life and the life of women in not just Iran but other majority Muslim countries. At the same time I am being told I need to "accept", "be tolerant", "understand" and more when they wish to bring in restrictions on those things into this country. It may be that I do not need to abide by those things, although they would prefer me to do just that, but I do need to accept those things.

And now it seems that here, just as they trying elsewhere, I need to accept that children need to be "taught" that they cannot do what is deemed to be "offensive" to a belief system they have no part in. It seems we need to restrict their learning of our cultural literacy. Our cultural literacy is extraordinarily rich and diverse. It has taken in so much from everywhere and given back as well. All this apparently no longer matters. It matters more that others are not "offended".

Well, be offended. Be offended because failure to learn our cultural literacy and, with it, the capacity to understand the cultural literacies of others will lead to stagnation.  

No, it is not "safe"

and you will spend the rest of your lives looking over your shoulders. You will always be waiting for the tap on the shoulder and the "we know what you did" and "traitor" and more.

My days at teacher training college were mostly quiet. We did not go out and protest. We did not have much opportunity to do that. It is not that we were particularly hard working or that the course required long hours of us. (Looking back it was appallingly low level.) We were surrounded by people much the same as ourselves. Most of us had English, Scots, Irish, Greek, Italian, German, Dutch surnames (you get the picture I am sure). There were no hijabs or turbans in sight. 

University was different. I was in another country on the other side of the world. I mixed with students from Africa, from Asia, from the Middle East and the West Indies. It was suddenly and shockingly much more interesting.  It was still not that diverse in the sense we were all there studying aspects of education and psychology. There was still no "protesting" of any serious sort. I was the elected "student representative" who went to the staff meetings (and still wonder how I have not died of lung cancer from all the secondhand cigarette smoke). I went on to be more than that but was still largely unaware of something that was starting to come in.

It was at Law School where I lived in a hall of residence and tutored at the same time that I became aware of "issues" with the Asian and Middle Eastern students. At first I was naive enough to believe I was mistaken but it soon became obvious. Those students were being watched. They were being watched all the time. 

Yes, it was subtle I suppose. It was the apparently "casual" greetings and the apparently "casual" questions about results. Sometimes it would be outright questions about where someone had been or where they were going. Who had they been with? Why? What were they saying? What did you say?

I was confronted once by a male student demanding to know if a friend of mine removed her hijab inside the group house she lived in. There had been a male visitor, an elderly relative of another girl.  He would apparently have been "very distressed" to have this happen. Was I also supposed to cover my head? Yes apparently...and "dress modestly" in the presence of such elderly men. 

No, it is not a myth. There are students who are "spying" on other students. They are ensuring the "rules" are kept, that Ramadan is observed and students go to the prayer rooms. It does not happen to all of them but it happens to enough of them to add another layer of stress. Break the rules and, at best, you will find your career opportunities are limited on your return home. Your family, if they are not already the perpetrators, will suffer too.

So please do not think it will be easy for the Iranian girls who have decided to stay. They will know their families will suffer. They will be told they are "traitors" and that they are "selfish" and that they are disobeying what their religion demands of them. It is not going to be easy for them. They will be waiting for the rest of their lives.  

  

The Iranian women's football team

is currently stuck in a hotel in another state. They cannot go anywhere right now. 

If they could fly home then they would likely already be gone. They would be home but without any great fanfare. I do not know if they won any matches because I have no interest in such things but I do know they must have lost somewhere along the line as they are now out of whatever competition is taking place.

The reason I am taking an interest in them is something quite different. They made headlines because they refused to sing their national anthem at the first match. Their country was being bombed. 

Why weren't they singing? We don't actually know. There might be more than one reason for that. I do know I would not feel much like singing anything if I was abroad and my country (or one of them) was being attacked.

People who know me will also know that I have no time at all for the "national anthem" of this country. Of course it is no longer "God Save the Queen (now King)  It is instead perhaps the least musical anthem I know. It sounds like a dirge. I do not know anyone who knows all the words. The words were changed a while back so that they were "less offensive" and "more inclusive" but it makes no difference. Many people simply have no idea what the words are and some cannot even recognise it. Is it a source of "pride"? I wonder. 

I would not recognise the national anthem of Iran. It is not mine. There is no reason I should but I wonder how the team feels about it? How do they feel about what is happening to their country? They are more fortunate perhaps than the women of Afghanistan in that they are playing sport. Their faces can be seen but they still have to cover their heads and women from there have said they feel the restrictions on them would be even greater if their "Supreme Leader" had his way. They still feel pride in their country, or at least what their country has been and may yet be. It is a country with an extraordinary cultural history and to lose more of it would be a catastrophe for them and for the world.

So, do we give the team asylum if they ask for it? Do we offer them temporary protection? Certainly they can go nowhere at present and they cannot be left in a hotel forever. What other skills would they have to offer if given protection here or would they be a "drain" on the economy? 

Compare them with the "ISIS brides" seeking to return here? That is another question.

I am glad I am not working for the Department of Foreign Affairs right now. There are some serious issues to be sorted out.  

"It's illegal"

and "he shouldn't be doing it" and "they were already going to give him what he wanted..."

Yes, I suspect everyone reading this will have heard those sort of comments about the actions of the "leader of the free world". How dare he go ahead and bomb another country when they were surrendering????

Well, first of all it is probably not illegal. That does not make it right but it does not necessarily make it wrong in law either. It may not be morally right but is it illegal under "international law".

There is actually no such thing as "international law" in the sense that there is a group of principles everyone respects. It does not work that way. There are recognised international codes for things like shipping and aircraft. They are there for the protection not of the other party but for ourselves. We obey them because nobody wants a very expensive aircraft or shipping vessel to be harmed. It would cost us something. Doing harm to someone else's ships or planes is just something to be shrugged at. Too bad. They got in the way. 

So, no the President is not acting illegally but he still should not be doing it. Whether the other side was going to give him what he wanted is another story altogether. We simply do not know that. There is another major party involved and they would have wanted a lot. Who can blame them? They have been under attack for years - and under attack in more ways than most of us care to recognise. Whether you agree with it being there or not Israel exists. The vast majority of people who live there are willing to live in harmony with their surrounding neighbours. Lebanon exists in much the same way. They have no desire to be at war with Israel. 

It's the gangs in between. The small groups of bullies in the school yard, Hamas and Hezbollah. They want the playground to themselves - and then they will probably end up fighting one another. 

I suppose that is one way of looking at it. Right now I look at Iran and think that this is not the right way to go about it. There is no effective opposition in Iran. If you start bombing people then you might find that the people who were afraid of  and even loathed their headmaster or their Supreme Leader might just start to seek his support. They will not choose a new leader. They are in no position to do that. It is just possible they may end up being even worse off... and no, the bully who is happily throwing stones in the school yard right now has no right at all to dictate who the next headmaster of the school or the leader of the country will be. 

It is not, as some seem to think, a simple matter of "this is illegal so make them stop". The idea that "they" might have been willing to give up their weapons and never have them again is unlikely but were they prepared to give in for now? If they were then it might have been possible to start some negotiations which would have led to peace in the playground for some time to come. We have lost that opportunity.  

My mother relied on her elbow for weather

forecasts. A later farmer friend B... relied on licking his thumb and holding it up to the west of where he was standing. Yesterday a friend who worked in agricultural research looked up at the sky and said, "Cloudy tomorrow." (It was clear blue at the time.)

My mother claimed her elbow would ache when the weather changed. She had broken it many years before and "just knew". In reality she was one of those people who was aware of the environment around her. The farmer was of course doing more than licking his thumb. He had been observing the weather since early childhood. He was, perhaps unconsciously, aware of many things that told him what was likely to happen. The researcher was the same. He had spent thousands of hours out among the fields, the paddocks, the gardens and more. Experience told all of them more than a range of machines in a weather forecasting bureau can do. 

I write this because our Bureau of Meteorology is failing farmers. The old farmers still know but their sons and grandsons no longer know. They have been relying on the BOM to tell them...and the BOM is failing. The BOM is struggling to get even the forecast for the next week correct.

I remember the empty desks at school at harvest time. The boys were at home helping to bring in the wheat harvest. There would be a forecast change in the weather which made it urgent to get the wheat in. The farmers would work through the night helping one another where they could. Now it is apparently all mechanised and it is a lonely business sitting in an air conditioned cabin bringing in a crop which has been grown to standards demanded by an organisation somewhere in the far distant city. Is the crop "organic", is it "genetically modified" and "does it conform to all the regulations"? 

As a very young kitten I ate bread made from flour grown in the fields of wheat and barley and oats around me. I knew how it grew. I saw it harvested and I went more than once to the mill where it was processed. I knew the miller and the baker and where my porridge oats came from. 

I didn't know about the weather but I spent most of my waking hours out of doors. Every other small child did the same. It was where it was expected we would spend our time unless it was very wet or very cold. Did we learn from this? Perhaps we did. If I had remained in that part of the world and gone on through childhood like I might also have managed to learn something about forecasting the weather to the level of the farmer or the researcher. 

Does it matter? I think it does. It is an old skill but it is one which needs to be revived. We need people with that curious "instinct" for the weather, the people who have learned to observe and read the world around them. They can do it without the expensive equipment which keeps failing farmers. You cannot build crop yields on the science which worships the gods of climate change. The weather and the climate are much more complex than that.