The "Reconciliation Action Plan"

of our local council was flung at me by an irate councillor yesterday. I had written an email to all the councillors querying something which was reported. This councillor responded telling me to "get out from behind the keyboard" and come and face them at a council meeting.

I would actually be happy to do that but it isn't going to happen. For a start I was merely querying something. I was not stating it was a fact. His indignant response suggests I had actually hit on a very sensitive nerve.

He sent three attachments with his response. One of them was to do with the council's "Reconciliation Action Plan". I read it with interest and more than a little concern. We apparently have a huge problem here, a problem almost everyone appears to be unaware of. Apparently we need "skilled appropriate advisors for many more activities into the future", activities that is for "culturally sensitive issues".

What are these activities? I looked at the list. There were cultural practices for events on it:

"Welcome to country ceremony"

"Smoking ceremony"

"Dance" (Corroboree)

"Traditional Music" (Yidaki)

"Artwork". 

This was in addition to things like "cultural awareness inductions" and "language and naming of public places" along with "heritage" and "management" and walks and more.  Apparently we have been neglecting these things for years and now it is costing the council a significant sum each year to restore these things.

I sent all this off to my friend M.... in an email. I knew he would be interested. What did he think? 

As I have said elsewhere M... is an Aboriginal man, very definitely Aboriginal. He can trace his ancestry back to his great-grandparents. Seven of the eight of those great-grandparents have births recorded as being of aboriginal heritage. The eighth he has not been able to find but, as he puts it, "it is more likely than not" he is aboriginal. M...gets his surname from that man's occupation.  

There was an answer from M... this morning. He dismissed the "Welcome to country" outright. We both know that it was something invented for Downunder's equivalent of Woodstock - the Nimbin festival. (Brother Cat passed through Nimbin recently and says it is still a town of ageing "hippies".)

M... did the same for the "Smoking ceremony". "It means nothing Cat, you know that."

The words "dance" and "Corroboree"had the comment "ROFL". "Do they," he asked, "expect people to prance around half naked for the benefit of tourists?" It is not what corroborees are about. I know I am never going to be invited to one. They have nothing to do with reconciliation.

Traditional music (Yidaki) had him puzzled for a bit apparently. I need to explain here that the council is apparently talking about "didgeridoos" and the "yidaki" is the particular form of the Yolngu people who live a long way from here. M...'s response was, "That Mob" (meaning the tribe which was here at white settlement) "didn't use them". 

No, I know that not all Aboriginal people used didgeridoos or boomerangs. It is convenient to believe they did but it simply is not the case. 

All of this however is apparently being "sensitive" and "respectful" of "local culture and traditions". We apparently need to spend many thousands of council dollars on such things each year.

"It's really more than a bit insulting Cat," M... told me, "Now they are trying to teach us how things are done." 

That doesn't seem very "culturally sensitive" to me.   

Human interaction was

under discussion yesterday...on line at least.

On line was also the way I "talked" with other people. It was a dismal sort of day - about 11'C for the most part. It rained. I decided not to get my fur wet and stayed at home because I could. A day without face to face human interaction doesn't bother me too much. I have plenty to do and a couple of interesting things came up in other ways.

As I was giving the refrigerator a little clean I was also thinking about "self-service" in the supermarket and other places. I was also thinking about the lack of social interaction.

When I was a mere kitten and we lived in the country social interaction was a very different sort of thing. Even before I went to school I was able to pedal off on my "Dinky" trike with the carry tray on the back. Mum would actually send me down to the one shop or to the butcher or to the baker. (Yes, they were actually separate places.) I knew how to buy what was needed - hand the note over in the shop or the butcher or tell the baker's wife we needed a loaf of bread. I knew to wait for the change and more. 

I also knew that part of the process was about talking to people. I knew I was expected to thank whoever opened the heavy doors for me. I knew I had to answer polite questions about whether everyone was well or agree that we had enjoyed the Sunday School picnic. It was all part of normal life in the country. All the usual residents of the little place knew me and so did most of the outlying farmers and their families. It was the same for every other child. I suppose we were safe because of this. There was never any trouble - or not that my parents told me about later in life. 

On Sundays people went to church. Afterwards the adults stood around and talked. It was "catch up" time. I suppose it must have been gossip as well but it served a purpose. If "X" was not at church and known to be unwell then people knew about it, knew if help was needed. If "Y" was not there it was because a new baby had arrived in the night. There were all sorts of reasons. 

People looked out for one another. If you helped your neighbours they helped you. It might not have eradicated loneliness or mental illness but it went a long towards supporting those who were lonely or had issues with depression.

Here in the city it was different but people still went to church and shopping was a social experience. You expected to change a few words about the weather or a child or some incident when you bought the Sunday joint or stopped to get the bread. While the shop keepers did not know all the children they knew the very local children - and the troublemakers. 

Now you can do an entire week's shopping and not say a word to anyone. It might be much faster but is it really a good thing? What is it that everyone is doing that is so urgent they can't even say "thank you" to the steadily dwindling number of check out staff? 

Yesterday a team won a sports match. "Everyone" (but only one family) in our street seems to have been "cheering them on". It means so many people are on a short-lived adrenalin "high". The "buzz" might continue until the next match is over but it is not going to be the same sort of long term feeling of well being that comes from close and caring contact with each other.

 

Paying rural teachers more

may not be the answer. The suggestion, in this morning's paper, that those "volunteering" to go should be paid another $20,000 on top of their current salaries and allowances is interesting but will it work?

We have a good many rural schools in this state, some of them in very remote areas. There aren't too many "one teacher schools" left. They have been closed in favour of sending children long distances by bus to larger schools with "better facilities". Even some of those "larger schools" are not the answer.

The Senior Cat started his teaching career in a "one teacher school". It was a very remote school indeed and, as a city born and bred boy, he was completely out of place in a tiny community on the railway line which runs up to the other end of the continent. He stuck it out but the Education Department must have realised it was not the right thing. He had to live at the pub because there was no other accommodation available...and he didn't drink alcohol. He knew nothing about football or racing or mustering cattle...and they were the only topics of conversation among the men. The Senior Cat spent a year there before being moved to a not quite so remote but still remote location with another one teacher school. He spent two years there and, having met our mother at a New Year's Eve party in the city, was itching to get a transfer to somewhere closer so he could marry her. 

We went to look at that school twelve years later when we lived in another location further up the track. It had not changed. It was still a single class room on a rough plot of land with "long drop dunnies" on the far side of the plot. The children were still washing their hands in a bucket of water put there by the "water monitor" first thing in the morning. I think there were eleven children enrolled. That was three better than another school. We thought our school was "big". Our parents taught forty-six children between them. 

You cannot provide the same facilities even for forty-six children. We went on after two years to a much bigger school but it was still too small to provide the same facilities as a big city school. The "secondary" section was just one class, the first in the new "area" school. There was no subject choice. We were taught the basics, nothing more. The Senior Cat did his best but he had inexperienced teachers in their first year out. In many ways the three years we spent there were good for other reasons but the education we were getting was not good. 

We went on to yet another rural school, a big "area" school. There were more students but similar problems. In the "academic" stream there were no subject choices. You did English, two unit maths, physics, chemistry, geography, history and woodwork or needlework. Both the geography and the history syllabus varied little from what we had been taught in the primary section. It allowed the primary teachers to take classes in those subjects in the secondary section. There were no languages taught. The "area" stream added metalwork, cookery, agricultural studies and art instead of physics, chemistry, geography and history.  Yes, it was an education of sorts.

Surprisingly some of us actually managed to go on to higher education but there were too many left behind and would it change now? I doubt it. 

Young and inexperienced teachers might think the extra money would be good for the couple of years proposed but they would want to move on. If you really are keen on teaching then the facilities are not there even now. You won't have the same opportunities to mix and meet. You are isolated in many ways that only become obvious when you are there. Country people are often incredibly friendly and welcoming but there is always the sense of being an "outsider" and having to constantly watch what you do and say. 

Trying to get older and more experienced teachers to go and stay will be much harder, especially when the idea of permanent employment has given away to short term contracts. Teachers want to buy their own homes in the city now. They don't want their children to have a lesser education.

To lift rural education to the same standard as city education and with all the same choices would be impossibly expensive. I thought of all that. I also thought of the demands made by some to teach aboriginal children in their "first language" and how that is even more impossible to do. We are setting too many children up to fail. Education, a good education, is expensive. It is about much more than paying teachers more for a couple of years.

$300 a week to feed a family of five

is apparently "difficult" but not impossible. There are people who do it.

I have been wondering about this and how easy I would find it. Over the past week there have been a number of news items about this, about hospital food and about prison food.  

I once saw the "dining room" of the state's prison. It was many years ago and I have no idea what it is like now but, back then, it was nothing more than row upon row of individual school like desks all facing in the same direction. We were told the inmates didn't like to eat with each other.  The only other thing I remember was the fact that each "table" had a currant bun on it - made that morning in the prison bakery.  

I don't know what they get to eat now apart from the fact that it is high in carbohydrates because carbohydrates are cheaper than protein.

I know more about hospital food. I know it varies greatly. I have seen it, more than once. The food the Senior Cat was given on various stays varied so much it is hard to believe that they were all hospitals. In one the food was almost inedible, certainly not what should have been given to people who were unwell. There was also the problem of trying to fight your way into the packaging if you could actually reach your food in the first place. No, don't ask. The rooms are all individual so there is nobody to help.

Another hospital had a kitchen on site and the Senior Cat was given half size but high energy serves. He said, "Not too bad actually - not like yours but definitely edible." Staff in the same place made sure he could reach his food. When he had difficulty uncapping the orange juice (which was actually juice) on the first morning the man in the bed opposite came over and helped. At the request of the over worked staff he continued to help.

The Senior Cat and I spent a day in the emergency department of another hospital. He couldn't have breakfast "just in case" but when the first investigation was over and he could have something they gave him tea and a packet of biscuits and cheese. I opened those for him. Later in the day they gave him sandwiches which were actually fresh and attractive looking. They also quietly passed a spare packet to me. There were four different fillings - one triangle each. The bread was fresh and the fillings identifiable.  It wasn't food we would have eaten every day of the week (the bread was white) but it was still good food, especially in a setting like that.

Yes, it can be done - even on a budget. So, $300 to feed a family of five for a week? A woman was saying how "difficult" this was. Yes, it probably is. I wouldn't want to try and feed three teenagers who play a lot of sport on that sort of money but I think I could do it. What is more I think I could do it with more than a lot of carbohydrates. So why is it such a problem?

I know part of it is a "time" issue. If both parents go to work then "cooking from scratch" isn't always easy unless you do batch cooking on your days away from work. That however may only be part of the problem. Too many people know very little about how to shop cheaply and how to cook the cheaper options. There are the expectations of what will be eaten too. 

I have said elsewhere that, as children, we ate a lot of mutton. We ate it along with potatoes and pumpkin and whatever vegetables the Senior Cat grew or, in one place, Mum managed to buy. As children we didn't know any different. It was food. It appeared after we had set the table. We did the washing up afterwards.  We saw Mum preparing food. If Grandma was around we "helped" and then really did participate. 

I suspect much less of that goes on now. I know T... and H... across the street can make themselves snacks like "toast and Vegemite" and "beans on toast" using the microwave. They know more about making pizza than their father does. I was told about that recently! (Their mother worked in a "proper pizza place" while at university.) S... engages them in the process but it is time consuming and it is time many parents seem not to have.

But I think I could send three children to school after a breakfast of cereal and toast. They could take a "food police" approved lunch. They could have an after-school snack and an evening meal which included adequate protein, vegetables and fruit as well as the inevitable carbohydrate. They would get their daily ration of milk.

What lost me when the woman was talking about the difficulties was something else. She was complaining she had to buy "snack" food from the cheap variety stores. There it is likely to come from somewhere in Asia even while it is labelled with familiar labels. 

That sort of food is empty carbohydrates, high in sugar or fat or both. The salt content is far too high even if you are not particularly health conscious. It really isn't that cheap either. If you want that sort of thing it is better to put money aside and wait for the "specials" in the supermarket. 

It seems that many children expect that sort of thing however and parents will buy it. Mum didn't buy it because it didn't exist packaged in those little convenient "individual" packets. I doubt she would have done so anyway.

We still had our treats. Come school holiday time Mum would sometimes make "peanut brittle" or "almond brittle" - clear toffee with a great many nuts in it. It wasn't in the least bit good for our teeth but it tasted delicious.  

A holiday for a sports match?

The Prime Minister of Downunder has been saying we should have a holiday if the soccer team wins the final game. Really?

I remember a previous Prime Minister of the same shade of politics suggesting that we should have a holiday when Downunder won a sailing race. It didn't happen.

And why should it? We didn't actually win that sailing race at all. A team of people using their skills won the race. Perhaps they deserved a day off? It had nothing at all to do with anyone who was not involved. Cheering them on didn't count. It certainly didn't mean we needed a holiday. 

As I said, it didn't happen. It would have been a mistake if it had happened. I don't think anyone really took the PM of the day too seriously. 

This time around I am less certain. There are people who believe the present PM would do this for the populist vote. He seems to head off to the sport and expect to get his photo in the paper for being there. If he wants to go to a sporting event of some sort or another and he has the time fair enough but do we need to know about it? No, we don't.

I know people who think that having a holiday if the soccer team won the cup would be a "lovely" idea. Yes it might be - for them. What about the people who have to pay for them to have this holiday? What about the people who do the sort of jobs where you can't "just take a day off"? 

For years I worked some hours on Christmas Day. I always did the early shift because I knew other people wanted to be with excited children who were opening parcels. I was fortunate that it was just a few hours doing nothing more than monitoring a website and being prepared to spring into action if there was an emergency. It was actually quite restful, a sort of calm before the storm of the rest of the day. I know some of the team used other parts of the day to escape from the noise. We all knew it had to be done. 

But I wonder whether our PM really understands that sort of thing, whether most people understand it in fact. He obviously has no idea how much would be involved in declaring an unexpected public holiday. He should have more idea because I am sure he knows when the referendum will be held. The fact he has not announced it yet and that it can cause major disruptions to other people is something that doesn't seem to be of great concern. His major concern is that it isn't held on the day or weekend of a major sporting event like a big footy match. If you care about which way a vote goes then this sort of thing might be important. Sport is big business in more ways than one.

But - we don't need a holiday because someone else has done the hard work.   

"He has bright green hair"

someone tells me. She is looking at me for an answer. Who is that person?

He was also wearing knee high lace up boots below a plain black kilt like skirt, a flannelette shirt, a masculine shoulder bag over one shoulder and yes...the almost fluorescent green hair. Yes, he stands out in a crowd. Yes, he is definitely "odd". 

He is merely an acquaintance of mine, the friend of someone I don't even know well. To the best of my knowledge he has never held down a proper job. He is quite a skilled artist of sorts. He once gave the Senior Cat a rather clever print he had made of a cow. Middle Cat has it now because, as she said, "It is rather a fun sort of thing." 

When he did that he was having an "up" phase. When he has a "down" phase nobody sees him apart from his friend, the one I know. She has checked on him for years now. He isn't "normal". He would be described as "mentally ill" by many people. 

I like to think of him as "different", just "different". He has always been extremely polite to me. On this last occasion I was unlocking my trike ready to pedal off when he came up the ramp and spoke to me. We shared a joke and a laugh. I don't ask personal questions of him. He will sometimes tell me things he wants me to know.

He was heading to the chemist for his medication. He was in an upbeat mode but he was looking at me and I saw something there that I don't see in other people. For all he dresses to stand out in the crowd it is not really the way he sees himself. He knows he is "different", that he doesn't really fit in with the rest of society. It has been easier since someone found him some proper accommodation.

"I've got a place of my own now, a proper place. There's a lot of light there...not the bedroom but there's a sort of living space with a kitchen bit and a bathroom. I've set my things up."

I tell him how good that sounds. I hope S..., who looks out for him, will find it a bit easier to do the amazing job she does.  He is half way to the chemist when the other person asks about him. I just say, "He's the friend of someone I know. He is kind and funny and I like him."

I don't tell her he is mentally ill. She can see for herself he is not like most people. I don't want to talk about that because, when he is up, he really is kind and funny and I am happy to be seen chatting to him.  

The "protest" letter I wrote

about the council representatives spending rate payer money on a political campaign has resulted in two responses. I expected both of them. 

The first was an acknowledgment to say it had been received. The second was a one sentence response from a councillor which said nothing more than "thank you for letting us know how you feel". The response was nothing more than a pro-forma one sent by someone who does not even represent the ward I live in. It would be the same response they are giving possibly hundreds of other people - even those planning to vote "Yes" in the upcoming referendum. Most people simply do not believe council money should have been spent in this way.

Yesterday however I was accosted by a former neighbour who is a very strong supporter of the "Yes" side. She knows I am concerned by the proposal but she has never given me the opportunity to explain why. We have never sat down to talk it through. Like many people who are passionate about a cause she will hear nothing against it.  Yes, no doubt we are all guilty of that at times.

This time around however I have tried to listen, look and learn. I have talked to many people. I have read arguments for and against. I have heard debates for and against. I have sought out other material. At the start of my journey I felt uncertain, now I am concerned, very concerned.

My former neighbour is now treating me as if I am a poisonous snake which needs to be captured and cast out of the Eden she is so certain will be created when Yes prevails.

"You're not going to win Cat. You are on the wrong side of history. I didn't think you were a racist."

I have been told this more than once. It was all said again. She believes absolutely in teaching children in their "first language" and the idea "they have the right to live the lifestyle they choose". She will tell you there were "thousands of children stolen and we are still doing it". 

And yesterday she was applauding the council move to spend money on supporting Yes. "It should have been $100,000 at least, probably more. All these people who want the council to stick to roads and rubbish just don't understand how important it is."

I think many people do understand how important the issue has become. They understand how it is dividing the community rather than bringing it together. They are genuinely concerned for the future and the children of the future. 

Ideas have changed since 1967 - the year the policy of "removing" children from their families to get an education ceased. It was a policy I certainly feel was wrong. By 1997 the "Bringing them home" report had not only recognised that but made many recommendations and changes. 

Twenty-six years later ideas have changed again. Looking at the wish-list composed by those seeking to have control does not fill me with hope for the future. Council money would have been better spent on library books in English for the future.