Postal Vote

Well, the election has been and gone, Mr Keenan kept his seat yet there is still no response to my letter - I will let you know.

For those unfamiliar with Australian voting - check out our papers:


Number 1-9 for your preference in the House of Reprehensibles

Tick on box above the line in the Senate for the party to choose your preferences or 1-59 below the line to choose your own.

Letter to Mr Keenan

The following letter I sent to my Federal MP.

I will let you know his response.


November, 2007

To: Michael Keenan
Honourable Member for Stirling

Dear Sir,

You have been my voice in the federal parliament for 3 years. Now it is time to renew your contract and I would like to check some of your Key Performance indicators. By this, I mean, have you represented my interests at a federal level.

Therefore, I would like to ask you a few questions on which I can base my decision:

1. What have you done to make life in the city of Stirling ecologically sustainable? For example: subsidising renewable energy.

2. What have you done to reduce Western Australia’s contribution to global warming (and thus ensuring that the houses along the Mitchell Freeway don’t become water-front properties)?

3. What have you done to ensure the release of refugees from the “detention centres” in Western Australia? They are always welcome to stay at our place, if accommodation is an issue.

4. What are you doing towards creating a stable Middle-East, which the current administration helped to (further) destabilize?

5. What are you doing towards reconciling the interests of the Aboriginal Community with the rest of Australian Society? For example: perhaps moving to amend the constitution to recognize the indigenous people are the rightful custodians of the land might be a good start.

I did take the time to review you website/s in search of answers to these questions, but they seemed more concerned with crime and safety. This is not a major issue for me, having lived in the City of Stirling for 20 years, and never once been the victim of a serious crime. However, if this is a problem for the majority of residents my question is this:

What are you doing to address the causes of crime? For example: the economic factors, social environment and family structures.

If you could let me know as soon as possible it would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

Sincerely,

A

Similar letters are being send to the Labour and Greens candidates.

We will see...

Election Coming!

Parting Thoughts...

It was good to be back in Oz for a while.

One thing that had changed which I found a little disturbing,
was a certain ugly brand of nationalism.

I would not have considered Australia to be a nationalistic nation,
not from what I remember anyway.

Australians seemed to be quite self deprecating,
more than willing to laugh at themselves and their foibles.

I can't remember there being so many Australian flags,
especially outside private residences, let along on shirts, hats and bikinis.

It used to be that, if you wanted to show national pride,
you were more likely to wear green and gold, or fly a boxing kangaroo flag.

Red, white and blue;
has unpleasant connotations.

It was not long ago that we voted to become a republic,
to ditch the queen and change the flag.

What happened to this spirit of Independence?
Since when did Australians become proud of another nations colours on ours?

I think we can look towards the current regime.
A regime that supports the unilateral invasion of sovereign nations.
A regime that incarcerates those seeking asylum.

Throughout history,
Nationalism has been used as a justification for immoral acts.
Is that what we are seeing today?

na-tion-al-ism: noun
1. the desire by a group of people who share the same race, culture, language, etc, to form an independent country
2. (sometimes disapproving) a feeling of love for and pride in your country; a felling that your country is better than any other

pat-ri-ot-ism: noun
love of your country and willingness to defend it

A S Hornby, Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English, Sixth Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.

Western Australian icon - the black swan, once covered the "Swan River", now after having their habitat turned into a major traffic artery - they are hard to find.

Devil Scratch

These guys should be the Australian National symbol - all they do is eat, sleep and root. Apparently they also get loaded on the eucalyptus leaves!

Where's my baby!!

The wondrous wombat

Hey joey

Home Time

It has been hard getting motivated to get some blogging in since I have been back.
When you are on the road everything is new and interesting,
and you have to tell the world.

Getting back to Perth it seems that hardly anything at all has changed.
The Convention centre is finished, the suburbs are expanding, the clubs have changed names,
apart from that, things are pretty much as I left them.

"This is not the town for fast drugs."
-Turtle

I am still getting used to the shopping hours and this new fangled "day light saving".
As if sixteen hours of sunlight a day is not enough.

Robyn and myself have found jobs in the city working for the private language colleges.
Big business here and we had no trouble walking into well-paid gigs.
Well... well-paid after Istanbul anyway;
but that is not hard.
The teachers here still like to have a moan about being under-paid.

This is understandable.
Being in Perth, you might as well be in Western Europe.
The prices are astronomical.
How can you charge four dollars for a bottle of water?
It's water!
I think I am just used to less than first world prices.

Anyway, that is my bitch of the moment.
"It was allot cheaper in my day!"

Regardless, it has been good to get back and catch up with crew.
There seems to be a new trend in having babies.
It's all the rage.
Seems to be an international phenomenon.
It keeps on happening with alarming regularity.

We have been doing the tourist thing,
showing off all the spots to Robyn.
We have been camping up at Lake Leschenaultia, to Nambung NP to see the rocks (yay, rocks!), to the PCH Veranda, Cottesloe, Trigg, Freo, etc etc.
Good to do some things that you never do when you live somewhere.

Last night we was the Beastie Boys and J5 at the Good Vibrations Festival.
But that is another story...