The View from Elsewhere

Ghosts and cowboys

Talking to some Aboriginal staff today, they said to me that alcohol wasn't the real reason for increased levels of family violence amongst local people: it was just a trigger; the cause was spiritual.  I circled back, expecting them to allude to the psychological dimension, but they were quite literal in their answer.

'Well, when some of our people drink too much, it affects their spirit.  Their spirit leaves their body.'

Literally, 'beside themselves.'

'Like going "rama rama"?' I said (i.e. 'going potty.')

'Yes, their spirit leaves their body, and it's difficult to get it back inside.'

Oh, more complex than I thought.  'So, can people actually see this happening?' I asked.

'Yes, some people can see the spirits and they can put them back in.'

They told a story about an old lady having to chase a spirit round the house before she able to catch it and put it back inside someone's body.  I liked this image; I found it kind of magic realist. 

The more I hear about goings on with DIMIA (aka the 'Deathstar' in my early posts) and wrongly deported & detained Australian citizens, the more I think I was absolutely right to be worried about those fuckers taking over Indigenous Affairs. When I heard someone calling the officials in the Department of 'Others' cowboys a few weeks back, I thought, yep, that's just what they are.  At least Fat Amanda has been brought to the point of admitting there's something wrong.

Vale ATSIC

This post is a little belated…I actually started writing it last Thursday but it got swallowed up in Word somehow (the irony being that I was writing this post in Word so I wouldn’t lose it in Typepad, as happens from time to time). Anyway, it refers to the obvious: the passing of the legislation to abolish ATSIC.

I’ve meditating on the subject of institutional loss, and the ambivalences that you feel, particularly when the institution was very flawed in some ways from the start. (Btw, I don’t think there’s going to be any argument in this piece; just a series of ruminations.) It’s a bit over seven years since I went schlepping off from Melbourne Uni Campus in my hipsters and long-sleeve Bonds T-shirt to grace the corridors of power (hmm) in the public service building in Casselden Place. You see, I decided very pragmatically that in the tertiary sector, there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance of a decent job (n’est-ce pas, Angus?), and if I did the APS exam, I might be employed as a graduate on a starting wage of $30 K pa (a small fortune to a struggling academic used to pulling in about $15 k pa).

Anyway, having down the APS exam and duly rigging the personality questionnaire so that I would get high scores in ‘resilience’, ‘resourcefulness’, ‘adaptiveness’ and so on (rigging being all part of the test, if you ask me), I was offered a position as a graduate by both DETYA and ATSIC. So I ‘listened with my heart’ and took the ATSIC position, believing that it would be the more interesting agency, and more in line with my principles and ethics. And I’m sure that it probably was, tho the DETYA recruiting woman looked ashen-faced when I announced my intention to work for ATSIC.

When I joined the Victoria Office, my manager ignored me for the first couple of weeks (on the pretext that she was busy, tho I think ‘threatened’ was part of it) and a helpful Kiwi with a passion for native title (tho not the ‘bodgy’ Australian kind) took me under her wing. She introduced me to the then Victorian Commissioner, a rather rough-looking man in his mid-forties in a flannie with a strawberry blond mullet and greying beard. ‘Geoff’s the best of them, if you ask me,’ Kiwigirl said. ‘He’s got some really good ideas.’ I was put on a project developing a kit on regional agreements for him to use with communities. Mr Clark was rather surly, a little difficult to communicate with on first meeting, tho he did like nothing more asking a girl to bring him a cup of tea. My hackles rose when Kiwigirl, a woman with two MAs, one in sociology and one in law, rushed off to make him and his visitors cups of tea.  'I'd only do it for Geoff,' she said apologetically. I thought, ‘This is not a good sign,’  (and it was in fact the first of a long series of requests for cups of tea.)

This particular meeting included the head of a large local Indig organisation. The CEO and Mr Clark were talking about the old days, how there was always something to push against. It was 1998, eighteen months after the Howard government’s victory. Already people were talking conspiracy theories about plans to dismantle ATSIC. The good thing about the Howard government, they both agreed, was that it would give people something to push against. It would stir them out of their apathy, and give them fire in the belly again.

Well, they were certainly weren’t wrong about being given something to push against. I’ve been trying to think what the highlights of loss have been on the path leading to the dissolution of ATSIC, (and why the loss of ATSIC is so significant, given that it was such an unwieldy leviathan of an organisation). Over the past decade, we’ve seen:

• Amendments to the native title act, winding back the racial discrimination act and Indigenous people’s rights;
• Refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generation -- and perhaps more significantly -- refusal to consider a reparations tribunal for the Stolen Gens;
• Almost total neglect of the recommendations of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation’s Final Report; and
• Replacement of a policy of self-determination with one of neo-assimilation.

It’s devastating when you think about the changes in the leadership landscape. We’re left with:

• A government handpicked and appointed advisory body, for which only the Chair can do media;
• A virtually voiceless and toothless Reconciliation Australia;
• One Fed Aboriginal senator due to finish his term in June 05; and
• Govt appointment of a stooge to the role of ATSI Social Justice Commissioner and potential dissolution of HREOC.

It’s true that the ATSIC contributed to its own demise, particularly the Board of Commissioners by being so passive and disorganised, and Clark by being so bloody-minded and egomaniacal. But the whole debate around ATSIC has been muddied so much in the media, it’s difficult to gain any clarity on it publicly (no doubt an intended effect of the whole process). And Indigenous policy is in any case a bit like Medicare; it’s something most of the general population can’t be really bothered to understand, with the result that the government goes to town on their own agendas.

I’ve got no doubt in my mind that the demise of ATSIC was entirely orchestrated, planned over a long period of time, and highly politically motivated. The government and the media worked hand in hand to execute the abolition of ATSIC (the election of Clark as Chair was actually a godsend to the government in speeding up the organisation’s demise). I could (and I probably have, earlier in this blog) ruminate along with the others on the theme of ‘ATSIC was flawed but…’ I’ll save you that one. So, end of an era.

In my opinion, there are two key factors that have been lost in the abolition of ATSIC:

• Potential for evolution of Indigenous representation at national and state levels;
• Mechanisms for facilitating Indigenous input in policy-making, especially at a national level.

International studies indicate a strong correlation between increased life expectancy and increased participation in Indigenous governance. In countries such as Canada, the USA and NZ where there is increased participation in governance, the gap between mortality rates in the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations is significantly smaller than in Australia, whose life expectancies for Indigenous men and women rivals that of some second and third world countries.

We’re told that government is now going to negotiate with Indigenous families and communities directly through a series of regional arrangements, including ‘shared responsibility agreements’ (they really are getting up close and personal when they expect you to wash your hands in exchange for essential services!)  It's hardly agenda-setting, trail-blazing stuff, and the potential for coercive or manipulative arrangements to emerge is very present. The government's final agenda, of removing the vehicle for national and regional Indigenous leadership, so that they could introduce a policy of neo-assimilation, is now being slotted into place.  The shame is not so much the loss of ATSIC, but the loss of what ATSIC could have become -- a set of more mature, more autonomous governance arrangements.  So now, it's sink or swim, folks!

Happy in the Service

I found this picture of a 'fit rat' on a tread mill, also on the ABC website, accompanying some story about rats and cardiovascular fitness, which is probably more appropriate for me, what with the earring and all...

I thought I'd take the opportunity here, after my last day of work in the Service (almost 7 years to the day that I started), as some like to refer to the APS, to celebrate what I wont be missing about working there, at either Commonwealth or State levels...

So, a few things, like:

• parsimonious drivel -- Whilst working in the APS, it is at all times important to keep a constant flow of parsimonious drivel issuing from your mouth and your pen. It is indeed essential for you to master the art of saying almost exactly what you don't mean, even if in just a minor, amateurish Art of War kind of way. Don Watson has it in for the bureaucratisation of language; well, this is part of the phenomenon, yes, though there is a whole other dimension that relates to obfuscating reality and clear, cool-headed prose in the name of diplomacy. A small passing example: my parting act of diplomacy in my farewell speech yesterday was to say that the office had been 'a peaceful and harmonious environment to work in', when what I really meant was 'deadly dull'. So, lay it on thick, with a few adjectives that go thunk in the middle of the night.  It is almost always a mistake to be 'clear' or 'honest' in the Service.
• scoping -- That being said, one bureaucratic word that Don Watson missed and the value of which in Public Service parlance should never be underestimated is 'scoping'.  There is almost nothing more a senior bureaucrat likes to hear, than news of 'scoping'. In response to news that you intend to embark on some 'scoping', a senior bureaucrat is apt to nod sagely then invite you into their office at a later date to discuss what you have been 'scoping'.  The fine thing about scoping is that it can be used to cover a multitude of evils.  Like, say you find your position description totally boring.  What you need to do is to re-scope it.  For example, when people have told me they're bored, what I've advised them to do some 'scoping' and make up what they're doing ...i.e. into something they'd rather do.  Then sell it to your manager as something you have been 'scoping'.  It works wonders.
• whole-of-government approach -- I've heard this mantra so many times, frequently accompanied by other epithets, such as a 'whole-of-community' approach, a duplication/coordination of programs, etc etc.  Let me tell you. There is always a duplication of programs and services which requires greater coordination and intersectoral collaboration. I've written these words so many times in so many different contexts.  But as far as I know, this fabled whole-of-government approach never works.  Someone told me people have been riding this one since the '80s.  It's time to come up with something new, folks.
• at level -- I'm really only going to focus on one instance of this here, but before I do, what the fuck does that piece of patronising crap mean anyway (along with 'acting at level', 'on higher duties' and all the rest)?  Ok, now this idea that one should be interchangeable 'at level' -- i.e. that if you're an APS 6, you should be able to work 'at level' in either the area of, say grants administration or policy research.  But, isn't this just barking mad or at least plain stupid?  Don't you need someone with an accountancy background to do grants administration and someone with a legal or research background to do policy work?
• calling people by numbers instead of names -- What is this about?  Like, when I moved to Alice, I was told that a '3' had been living in my house before me.  A what?  Doesn't this person have a name or at least a title (e.g. field officer)?  Also in common parlance are phrases like 'Oh, she's my 6/ the 6 in that section/ only a 6', etc etc.  At best it makes you feel as though you're in some demented children's story book about learning to count, with Mr 6, Ms 4, and so forth.
• nothing you do really matters anyway -- No, it doesn't, especially not if you're on contract.  Because you're just an APS number for us to move around. So if you announce you're leaving, or say that really you think that 'acting up' as an APS 5 for 3 years has been an excessively long period for you to do so, the question is not, are we going to lose/gain a valued employee who's done a shitload of work for us/others & who could work here for the greater good of the community? But -- how can we manipulate the APS employment guidelines to make this situation work best for us (subtext: so we can save the most money).
• especially the work that you do --  Don't think that you'll ever be able to attach much value to or take any credit for it.  One of the first things that anyone said to me when I joined the APS was, 'Oh, you're an academic? You're going to hate this!  You'll never get your name on anything and people will appropriate your work all the time.'  Actually, I have my name on two reports but they're pissy little things.  The work I valued the most (and would have loved to cite as references on my cv) was all done under another, more senior (and public) person's name.  Sometimes when I've mentioned that I was actually the writer of this stuff, people have looked at me with a sense of minor outrage: how could it not be from the mind/pen of Beloved X?  As far as I can recall, this person only ever wrote one thing in all the time I worked for him (a speech to some nuns at Wagga Wagga).  To be fair, he did feel bad about the lack of academic publications we bright young things got out of the whole deal.
• Those fuckin' emails...God, why do I have to be pasted into so many emails ('cc''d and 'bcc''d)?  And why do you have to be pasted into so many of mine?  Do you realise what inroads this makes on the amount of time I have to spend on far more important matters, such reading/writing personal emails?  Then there's all the stuff about secret emails -- who gets pasted in or out...

and

• that email -- On your last day at work, don't send an irate email to the Minister, the head of your department and assorted others, decrying their foul and dastardly deeds, with one last parting shot directed at your HOD: 'So it seems the age of the comb-over isn't dead.'  Even if some [less pissed] person's egging you on, saying, 'Oh, it's the kind of thing the Minister herself would probably say.'  In some future life, these people are bound to catch up with you...

Actually, I ran into one of the sundries from the Titanic whom I must have pasted into that email on Brunswick St while I was in Melbourne.  He said, 'We all felt the same as you did [i.e. that everything we'd been trying to do had been trashed totally], it's just that no one else had the guts to say it.'  Possibly none of them had drunk as much on their last day at work on the Titanic, either.  I said, 'Wouldn't you just read that email and think it was written by someone who was totally pissed?'  (Who then went home and vomitted in the kitchen sink before passing out on the sofa, then revived to blog about it later in the evening?)

So, that's all for now, folks.  Off to the NGO sector we go...I'm an idealist, I always think the grass will be greener.  But will it be?

'I don't know the anachronisms'

At a meeting this morning, a new member said: 'I've been listening to you all for over an hour, and I'm totally lost. I don't know the anachronisms you're talking about.'

Couldn't think of a better homonym mix-up myself, or is it a Freudian slip, to describe what we do in the Public Service!

Went round to D's last night for a spa. We sat in the cool water of her black coffin-like spa (she says it reminds her of something from a porn movie) looking out through the frame she's had cut in her trees to give a view of the ranges, before putting a couple of of roo steaks on the barbie.

'I've been asked to write a workplan!' D wailed. 'I feel so humiliated!'

She's a senior social worker and evidently not used to this kind of stuff.

'Oh, just whip something up in thirty minutes, then put it in the bottom of your drawer till the same time next year,' I told her. 'That's what I always do.'

I told her about the Queensland Marxist I used to work alongside who tacked her workplan in a plastic envelope to the wall beside her workstation.

'How did she reconcile that with her Marxist principles?' D asked.

As you may have noticed, it's been really hot here the past few days. When I came back, it was quite mild (30 C) but now it's getting up around 40 C. I still don't think it's as bad as last year, especially the week in February when the temperature didn't drop any lower than 30 C at night.  I'm beginning to wonder though if I'm getting slightly brown/freckly through my clothes...which is worrying.  The other night at about 6 pm I felt as though the tops of my feet were being burned.

There's also been some great cloud formations -- banks of puffy white cumulous clouds, of the sort a child would draw.  Some people complain that these clouds are keeping the humidity in, but I'm rather partial to them myself.

  <service of clouds at Mount Gillen>

Summer frivolity

Had lunch today with two former colleagues from the Titanic. They were hot on the subject of how to 'teach black people to think black again' (albeit in a '70s Black Panther/Fidel Castro kind of way) and how to overthrow shared participation agreements, mutual obligation and white civilisation in general.

One of them has a novel 'make love, not war' idea for outbreeding the white population by making mass deposits at IVF donor banks. I said: But isn't there an issue of selection involved? Him: I wont put down my race. Me: Hmmm, lots of people are closet racists and go for the old Aryan blue eyes, blond hair at those sperm banks, anyway. And what about cultural transmission? Wont you be creating a new stolen, or implanted, generation? Him: By the time they're adult, we'll have the technology to implant a silicon chip in them with all language and culture on it they need. (He tells me one of his pick-up lines for tourists is: 'You can't leave Australia without an intimate experience of the world's oldest living culture.')

They plan to set up a website ('what we need is a website and a bus') to rally the troops. The idea is that people from all over the world will stumble across the website and start offering donations, and so a new political movement will be born. I said, 'What if people only give you scabby amounts like $2.00?' Them: 'Well, if one million people give $2.00 each, that'll be $2 million.' None of this really accords with my experience of maintaining a blog. Actually, I've been invited by one of these guys to write a joint-blog on Indig affairs, but I've side-stepped this exciting, potentially libellous offer thus far.

In other news: packing up, cleaning up for my grande tour of Sydney (next 2 weeks) and Melbourne, where I'll be minding le chateau de whitebait from 29 Dec to 6 Jan. So if I haven't told you I'm coming, I am, and you know how to contact me. (And if anyone isn't working tomorrow afternoon and feels like catching up with me in Melbourne CBD, send me an email or an SMS, because I've got a long stopover in Melbourne, due to the strangeness of frequent flyer point tickets.)

Oh, and Radio National Breakfast: have to say something about that. What has happened to Radio National Breakfast? It has become frivolous -- 'summertime breakfast' with Gerald Tooth, whom I like, but it's not the same. I feel as though the strange intimacy I used to share with Peter Thompson  and Michelle Grattan has been disturbed: theirs are usually the first voices I wake to, apart from Leonard's. Also, Dear Jools revealed the other day that Dr Norman is into body sculpting -- erk! That's definitely put me off him.

So, my own summertime of frivolity is about to begin now. Who knows when I'll blog again? (Probably tomorrow at Tullamarine.)

Some oddments

Just been writing a wowser letter from Wowsers United, congratulating Ab organisation on holding successful grog-free event (see 9 October in this blog). This kind of activity makes me feel like a reformed alcoholic. Just as well I've spent enough time round PC govt agencies (yes, there are -- er, were -- some) to be able to churn out a page or so of parsimonious prose in 20 or 30 minutes. Actually I think that letter-writing (& media release writing) is great preparation for blog-posting, as you have to keep a short narrative moving through both (well, I aspire to this sometimes) and they're a similar length. More annals of public service life: friend from another organisation rang re: a data request today, to tell me she couldn't process it or do any other work, as their system was down for at least a week. Why don't you go home and work from there while the server's down? I asked.  Oh no, she couldn't do that; they're meant to be working in a team...Hmm, why is it that news of 'working in a team' or worse, 'team-building exercises', always tends to be bad news?

There are some new people working on the floor in a related area, so I've ended up instructing them on the various Machiavellian intricacies of the place, etc.  I kinda enjoy this (it appeals to my ego, natch), tho feel a bit odd about doing it they're really meant to be my seniors (e.g. their positions are real and permanent, unlike mine).  Which makes me think, perhaps I should have gone for one of their positions; sometimes I under-rate myself.  One of these people particularly appeals to me: she's a cute, mousy woman, about 50 odd, with fraying grey hair and an intense, fox-like face (a bit like my catminder).  She's worked for the Public Service for about 6 months before; apart from that, she seems to have spent most of her life just being a feminist in the desert, setting up women's centres for remote communities.  I'm rather intrigued by the thought that someone can have survived in the desert just by being a feminist (more of the Olive Pink factor).  The official title for this activity seems to be 'project work' and she keeps on telling me that she's a 'networker'. She's endearingly pained by the possible prospect of betraying some of her principles by working for the Public Service.  She also tried working as an anthropologist without a proper qualification (something I could see myself attempting) although she discovered that anthropology wasn't for her, as it was very 'secretive' and she's a 'networker'...

Update on the Woman with an Interesting Teapot: I noticed that her office had been in darkness for several days so I asked if she'd gone on leave.  But no; she'd disappeared permanently: she'd gone and taken early retirement.  In fact, the Woman with an Interesting Teapot turned out to be one of the lonely exiles of the Public Service. One she had been one of the mighty, occupying a relatively high-up position in local administration until it seems she'd done something to piss off a politician.  After that she was exiled to Siberia: i.e. sent to work on a project 'offline.'  While the idea of 'working offline' might sound inviting to people like me who don't want to hear about 'working in a team', this is in actuality a Public Service euphemism for being put out to pasture.  It's quite hard to fire permanent staff in the Public Service, so they just wear down people they don't want with passive aggression, silent wars off attrition and so forth, until people feel so demoralised they take their super or long-service leave and go. 

This all made me feel kinda mean about not being (even) more cordial to the Woman with an Interesting Teapot. But still, I guess that in a medieval court, she would have been beheaded long ago.

More on the Strange Stepping Man: on Monday, two teenage girls in tiny pale blue terry-towelling shorts and brief black lacy tops came to step.  One of them put her step on the far right end of the front row -- i.e. the Strange Stepping Man's spot.  'Land rights!' the aerobics instructor cried, swooping down on the girl's step. 'You can't go there, that's Trevor's spot.'  Much evil amusement on my behalf at the sight of terry-towelling teenagers trying to follow odd stiff strutting moves of Strange Stepping Man who is always slightly out-of-time.  (But they still looked superb, of course.)

Last night I watched Through My Eyes, a docu-drama from Lindy Chamberlain's perspective, as I did my income tax return. As well as wanting a suitable backdrop to overdue tax-return form filling-in, I was interested because it's about the Centre, and also because I wondered if there'd be anyone I knew in it.  There was -- one of the ATSIC Regional Councillors was playing the main tracker, so that was fairly entertaining for me.  Overall, this production seems rather laboured, as I suspect they tried to narrativise a lot of factual material from John Bryson's Evil Angels. Miranda Otto makes a reasonable Lindy Chamberlain, and is to be commended for managing to deliver the line 'A dingo's got my baby' convincingly. She also does youth and vulnerability well; from memory, Meryl didn't bring these to her performance in A Cry in the Night (a rather odd little film, which I saw in Manchester in 1990.) Miranda's wig is scary though: it stays still while she moves.  But the guy who plays her husband is crap, especially after Sam Neill's spookily real Michael Chamberlain. I can't be bothered to watch this show again tonight (too laboured); I've probably heard the in's and out's of it 1000x too many.  Have always felt that if I had been in Lindy Chamberlain's position that everyone would have thought that I was guilty too, because I am kind of reserved and forthright at the same time like her, and suspect I come across as odd to many 'normal' people.

Other oddments: baby bloggers.  Sorry to any parents out there, but this opening sentence from a recent article in the New Yorker is scary: 'When Jean-Marie Maier, of Sunrise, Florida, suspected that she was pregnant with her first child, she and her husband, Ken, did what many modern parents do: they bought a home pregnancy test, and, after celebrating the positive result, started a blog.'  (Caitlin Flanagan, 'Bringing Up Baby', NY, Nov 15, 2004.)

I enjoyed an extract from an essay, 'No time for the blues', by Robert Reynolds in Spectrum on the weekend (to be published fully in the next edition of Meanjin).  He expressed very well something that I've been trying to say in some of my psychobabel ravings about the contemporary pressure to 'process' rather than to savour sadness (and to have it processed by professionals).  He also makes (or re-mobilises) useful distinctions between depression and sadness, and mourning and melancholia.  For example, 'I tend to think of depression as a sadness that has gone unattended, and by this I mean a sadness that is no longer companionable.' 

I actually graduated at the same ceremony as Bob Reynolds at Melbourne Uni (I think he was the only other humanities PhD there) and tho I don't have any memory of ever speaking to Bob, I have very strong visual memories of him walking through the Union Building with Scott Barry.  Which oddly is a memory linked to sadness as the very cute and clever Scott Barry, one-time president of GaySoc, committed suicide when he was 25.  I was teaching on a course with Scott at the time, and when we came back from the Easter break we found out that he'd died on Easter Monday.  When Eileen, one of the harpies in the departmental office told me, I remember bursting into tears and blurting out (as you do in shock) something like: 'Why did one of the good people have to die?  Why couldn't it have been one of the awful ones?'  (and there were lots of them in the English dept).  So reading this article by Bob, I was inevitably reminded of Scott Barry, and I tried to work out how long it is since he died, and I reckon it must be at least 10 years now.  Somehow, it's rather galling to think that so much time can have passed and in some ways, so little seems to have happened since then.

I also felt a little sad to hear earlier this week that Janine Haines had died at a relatively young an age, but is it only me who's ever thought that she often looked like Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie in photographs?

With a satisfying crunch...

Last night, I was channel-surfing, looking for something relatively light to watch and flicked onto Imparja to find RPA and ... my operation.  I.e. the one I was meant to have but wormed my way out of.

Trying not to go into heaps of detail...I was supposed to have my first rib removed (the little rib up behind your clavicle) because the kind of blood clot I had was, according to the medical staff, caused by impingement between the first rib and clavicle.  I refused the operation until they could provide me with evidence to substantiate their diagnosis (because I thought I'd gotten the clot from having a cat sleep across the said area), and they were never able to provide me with anything conclusive.  But this promethean behaviour on my part as a mere patient (challenging the Edicts of the Profs, etc) caused maximum consternation amongst the poncy young doctors on the ward who were champing at the bit for a practice run on this op, I suspect...but I wont go into all that here.

Anyway, this charmingly morbid operation which I reckon you'd have to be pretty sure you needed (like the candidate they showed on the teev) is called 'first rib resection' or 'transaxillary rib resection.'  It involves 'creating a tunnel', as the specialist on the teev explained last night, of several centimetres in the patient's armpit down to the first rib at the top of the lung.  Sounds like a cinch, eh?

So on the teev they showed the 'tunnel' they'd made into a 16 yo construction site worker's armpit, then the specialist demonstrated how they insert what look like a bloody great pair of pliers down there to chop out the front and back portions of the rib -- 'with a satisfying crunch', he kept on saying.  Actually, this TV version was no where near as gory as the shot-by-shot versions of this op you can view on a couple of sites on the net.

The specialist shown doing this op was in fact the one who allowed me to leave the ward without going under the knife; he seemed like quite a nice guy (it was the young ones that got to me).  But you'd really want to know that you could trust the person wielding the pliers down the tunnel.  It looked like a very narrow operating field. 

I once found a profile of one of the current surgeons who does this operation in the States; he's done well over 2000 rib removals.  He's also a Baptist living in Texas whose hobby interests include teaching Sunday School.  No bets on whom he voted for in the election!  I don't think that's a coincidence; I think there's something quite ideological about the practice of rib removal (tho it does have its practical applications). There is in fact a whole industry of rib removal in the States, originating from a surgeon named Roos in the 50s, who, according to a medical friend, 'was a mad man who went round removing ribs for things as simple as arm pain.'  (You can also see that someone like me who wrote a thesis grounded in Marxist/ psychoanalytic/ feminist literary theory is the last person you want as your patient on a public hospital ward.)

So there it was, in all its gory glory -- my operation that never was!  Also, a few nights back, I saw the very doctor who appeared in the mediation of my complaint against the hospital, as their spokesperson for the Shaw J blood sample saga. This person was another nice guy (I reckon they send the nice ones out strategically, as part of damage control to mop up after the nasty ones).

I know I said I'd leave this subject alone, but this was all kind of weird, happening in one week.  I've also been enjoying the blood sample saga in a perverse (of course perverse) way, because it involves a convergence of so many suspect NSW structures -- the police, the health system, the judiciary, State Labour.  And because the judge's house is one of those I used to walk past sometimes on my evening constitutional when I lived in Balmain.  Now, thanks to the ABC's coverage of the sample saga, I know who lives behind all those bars and portcullises in that part of Birchgrove.  (My flat was much, much scungier, I assure you.)

To be honest, I was a little disappointed when the judge handed over the vial.  If it had been me, I would have been going (not publically, but inferentially, of course): Fuck it, you incompetent bastards, find the bloody vial.

But that's me, a strong-willed nobody.  (Not suggesting that the judge's a weak-willed somebody.)

It's the end of a beautiful day here, which I haven't enjoyed as much as I would have liked, due to suffering from the vestiges of rotorvirus, or rotary-hoe virus or combine-harvester virus or whatever it is I'm suffering from.  Still have strange griping pains and aches in my legs, not helped by eating lots of fruit and lollies at a staff party yesterday.  Keep on making resolutions to go on a detox but fail to follow through: I like coffee, red wine and chocolate too much (most of which have anticoagulant properties, I hasten to add).  Anyway, dove out to the Ilparpa nursery under beautiful clear blue sky and bought more plants (half of which were to replace those that cats had squashed, due to penchant for sitting in flower pots).  Sat under the pines at the Silver Bullet, reading the papers and drinking coffee -- what has happened to Spectrum?  (It's definitely shite now).  But I would rather have gone on a bike ride on what might be the last 25 C Saturday of the year.

Otherwise -- I've pretty well wrapped all the interviews I needed to do for my current research.  Wish I could 'share' in depth (it would tell a lot about the many sides of Alice, actually) but clearly I can't.  So, just a couple of moments I think I can get away with.  The failed Dear-Jools moment:

Me [at end of interview]:  Thanks for that, that was very interesting!

Interviewee smirks and says nothing.

Me: Oh, well, it was reasonably interesting...

Spoke yesterday to a bunch of medicos, one of whom was an older Scottish dr who wanted to reminisce about his drinking days as a med student, when they used to try and 'find the biggest bang for their buck!'  [The project's about booze, btw.]  Medicos were all very nice and respectful, in fact they hung around as tho they wanted to talk...'it's our bread and butter', they said ruefully, that is, of the NT's problems with grog. (That was my 'good dr' story...)

Typepad has finally changed their editing panel format -- hallelujah!  You can now enlarge things to write in about 12 font -- it used to be about 8 font. I've felt like I was going blind, writing long posts late at night sometimes. So there should be less typos in my posts from now on.  I wonder if it's going to lead to any changes in my style?

Inflatable crocs

I went up to Darwin on Monday afternoon for an 'orientation' (i.e. to meet my northern colleagues). My first thought once the trip had been approved was 'what food can I eat?' The few good local restaurants on offer in Alice pall fairly quickly. However, I ended up just making do with plane food and the bar fridge on my first night, as I left my wallet on the plane and spent too much time taxi-ing to and from the airport in order to retrieve it (great conversation about warfarin and its effects with taxi-driver on the way). Finally found some interesting food at lunch on my first day -- a great chicken larb at a Thai cafe for only $5.00. Ate out at an Italian place that I know to do great pasta and seafood. The chef adorned my marinara with a huge Moreton Bay bug -- 'he must have liked the look of you', the waitress said. But this is the kind of Territorian good will you come across quite often. Had French toast with maple syrup and bacon this morning (just as well, because I missed lunch altogether).

Stayed in a great posh motel on the Esplanade, complete with decent pool and spa (some special rates going for public servants). Bought a new swimming costume as my other one is rapidly perishing -- fortunately enough variety in Darwin to find some that actually fitted. Very annoying how the bottoms to two-pieces have become so flimsy over the past couple of seasons (the advent of the sporty two-piece having otherwise been something of a boon to the tall person -- no more having to wear a size 18 one-piece with annoying darts for non-existent huge breasts because it was the only size long enough). I saw girls wearing 'his pants for her' with bikini tops at Cable Beach and I don't blame them -- many undies look a lot better than some of the costume bottoms available. Finally bought a two-piece something like what the Olympic volleyballers wear. The legs looked pretty high-cut to me but the label marked them as 'medium cut' with a dotted line across a thigh wearing what must be 'high-cut' swimmers. A very flattering photo -- does that weird crack between the top of women's legs and their hips look good on anyone? (I don't like boy-cut legs myself -- they make me look like one of the Famous Five in their neck-to-knee outfits.)

One of life's great irritations must surely be that one's some stomach can look relatively flat and reasonably ok when one arises in the mornings, but puffy and humungous by the time when one dons one's swmmers later in the day. (Seem to remember various interviews with the 'stars' re: how they were advised not to eat or drink before filming nude scenes.) Go swimming before breakfast -- never! I'm not organised enough for that. Fortunately the pool at the motel was shrouded in darkness by the time I hit it.

Otherwise -- Darwin. Bought a couple of small inflatable crocs in honour of the NT's obsession with these reptiles. Asked croc-seller where all the dept stores were -- DJ's and so forth. She looked at me blankly: 'I'm sorry, I don't know.' Went into what looked like the main newsagent: did they get the New Yorker? They thought so, but then on examination, it turned out that they'd received their last copy on 9 July and that the order had stopped because the three copies they ordered had been returned too many times. I took a wild shot and asked if they carried Harper's Monthly: they had it on the computer, but no, they couldn't remember when they'd last seen a copy of that one.

I found the mall of my dreams driving out to visit some drug & alcohol services in the 'burbs. At lunch time I went for a wander there, marvelling at so many shops under the one roof. I began to wonder if I'd been suffering from cabin fever in Alice. There wasn't much I really wanted or needed in the mall, it was just the excitement of seeing the slightly forgotten familiar once again. Not to mention driving along highways through the suburbs -- most exciting to be re-acquainted with the dual carriage highway.

My colleagues in Darwin turned out to be gratifyingly amiable. Statistician whom I'd spoken to a number of times on the phone was greatly excited to see me, in fact, talked to me for about 4 hours with only one break for a coffee. It was like the nerd who discovers another kid to play dungeons & dragons with in the school library at lunch time. We got on to the inevitable Darwin vs Alice comparisons. I said I felt that Alice was more like Broome: a hokey, quirky service delivery centre and tourist destination on the edge of nowhere. He said that one of the main differences between Alice & Darwin people is that most people who end up in Alice seem to have gone there with some goal in mind -- e.g. to take up a job or to work with Indigenous people, or because of the 'spiritual' associations they might make with the place. Whereas Darwin people often just seem to have 'jumped ship': they were passing through and they ended up staying.

Darwin is certainly more noticeably 'multicultural' than Alice (tho probably not Broome?) Went to the Desert Exhibition on Sunday. It was packed. Alicia went early because she thought it was going to be like the post-Xmas sales at GB's, with people pressed to the glass then flooding in. There quite a few people in what looked like East Coast dealer mode. But what really surprised me was the number of Aboriginal people there. I hadn't seen so many black people mingling with whites at any public function. And they came strolling in like middle-class burghers with a sense of pride and ownership I hadn't seen before either. But the exhibition was all their work, after all.

Anyway, back to Darwin. I felt like I had my ear chewn off in every conceivable direction on substance misuse from the people I met in the D & A services. I met a most entertaining counsellor today who asked me what I 'planned' to drink when I went out for an evening. 'Usually about 3 drinks,' (a pretty modest estimate), 'I try and have one an hour and a water between each one.' 'Well, you shouldn't,' she said. '3 drinks is probably 4.5 standard drinks anyway. The water wont do much. What you should do is have 3 drinks one after the other when you arrive, so you can get that feeling of pissedness right away. Then when it's time to go, it will have worn off. Otherwise, it will take longer to get to that stage, and you'll be tempted to drink more to get there.'

Talked about various counselling models with the woman, who was using CBT with her clients ... I asked her what she thought of the high profile of the medical model and emphasis on brain chemistry at present and she rolled her eyes. 'Oh, it's all about money. There are huge drug companies involved.'

Went to see Touching the Void last night -- was suitably impressed and terrified at various points, though I'd heard and seen so many interviews with the guy who'd crawled out of the crevass with a broken leg, there wasn't much that was fresh for me about the film.

Met a former colleague from the Titanic at the airport who's since been mainstreamed to an agency that I'll call the Tugboat. I'd heard that one of my counterparts (i.e. in a similar position to me but elsewhere in the country) had ended up in the same agency but had left because of moral principles, saying she couldn't do the work they wanted her to do. 'Oh, no, that wasn't the reason why,' he said. 'She did your trick.' My trick? Which trick was that? 'You know, she sent a letter of complaint about her treatment to the Inquiry. The Tugboat officials started heavying her about it, so she left.' He starts walking away from the carousel with his bag. 'What?' I chase after him. 'I haven't heard anything at all about the letter I sent.' He smiles and shakes his head. Public servant, he's not going to tell me anything. I'd wondered what had happened to that lettter (all 6,000 words of it, pus 10 attachments). I'd been presuming it had sunk without a trace. But I'd noticed there were two blank slots for unnamed submissions on the Inquiry's websites -- now it seems those slots could be for our submissions. Should I be so surprised that it seems to have made ripples somewhere? (After all, my complaint about the hospital which a certain senior health official said would never get up -- 'people go home from Emergency depts with pulmonary embolisms and die all the time' -- made it.) Have visions of losing everything I own over adherence to some idealistic principle ... like one of those APS values we signed up to. And not everything goes to plan, people stuff up, life isn't always fair and bureaucracies are bureaucracies... But I don't like some of the things I've seen and heard of, in the Howard-style Fucked and Fearful APS. And as for Tugboat Officials heavying someone about a submission they sent to a government inquiry, so much so that they leave their job... Isn't that faintly sinister?

Plan your life away...

One of the shibboleths of Public Service life is strategic planning. Everyone is admonished to plan, to become part of various overarching strategic plans, and to devise their own working plans.

I don't have any problems with the idea of a group or people or an organisation getting together at some timely time and saying, 'what are our priorities for the next financial year, how are we going to achieve them, who's going to do what and when.' Like sketching out a rough and adaptable mudmap.

But what strategic planning public-service-style seems to mean, in actuality, is a lot of people writing dot points in grids. And that one's life is to be dominated by the writing and re-writing of more dotpoints within these grids.

These plans often seem to take on a life all of their own, and I'm tempted to wonder if some of the local policy problems 'out there' mightn't be solved a lot more quickly if we actually did something about them rather than updating the latest strategic priorities in the plan that's meant to relate to whatever's going on out there. (I guess that sounds like a community org perspective.)

I always thought that strategic planning, especially in the form of week-long strategic planning workshops, was just some Public Service thing to be aimably endured, like bank queues and the Coles carpark. Something which any sensible person knew had little relationship with reality. A bit like the homework card at my school, which I don't think anyone (except Belinda Archer) filled in honestly for more than a week.

I've dutifully written up workplans for the sake of the exercise (i.e. to ensure advancement to the next pay increment), then shoved them in the bottom of a filing cabinet where they belong. I once worked near someone who took their workplan seriously. She even had it pinned up in a plastic envelope beside her desk for easy reference. But she was a very serious Queensland Marxist in Birkenstocks. That's been pretty well my only sighting of the serious work plan user.

I guess there's some irony in this given that I've written at length about what kind of outcomes and benchmarks should be set and how they should be set in Indigenous affairs (this being, of course, something else for other people to do and for me to criticise the way they go about it.)

Anyway, there's a lot of time and ink that's been put into developing strategic plans for my current workplace. I've been staring at them for the past few weeks wondering if they really have any relevance to what I'm meant to be doing at the moment. I even highlighted a few things I thought perhaps I should do, but I've mostly I've just gone back to talking to people or reading stuff.

Another faskinating facet of Public Service life is the way in which it often becomes a home for all sorts of people whom might not have found a home anywhere else, (a particular feature of the state/territory level APS, I suspect). The sort of people about whom classic snide Public Service comments are made, such as: 'He's a 4, tho really he should only be a 3.' 'We only ended up with her because there wasn't anywhere else for her to go after X Area's restructure.' There was particular case back in Melbourne whom it was rumoured even cold restructurers thought would be too cruel to move on. Kindly older Aboriginal people in regional Victoria used to ask me: 'Is that Lesley still there?' Me: 'Yes.' Them [marvelling]: 'She used to be there in the days of the DAA! Did she ever become a project officer?' Me: 'No, she's still a 2.'

In fact, sometimes it feels as tho one might be working in a sheltered workshop. In the past, I've worked with quite a few people who were either barking mad, lazy or incompetent (esp on the Titanic, I'm afraid) but very few who were actually just NVB (Lesley wasn't; she read all sorts of interesting things. I think she had ADD and couldn't finish anything). Now I'm working in the same section as someone who seems to be mentally challenged, unfortunately. She's somehow both confused and confusing. I feel like I'm being drawn into an infinite vortex of explanation whenever I go near her. In fact, I find myself deliberately avoiding her (hope she doesn't realise this) for that very reason. My boss wants me to 'find some tasks that Melanie could do' [obvious sheltered workshop statement], which I've been avoiding for now by saying I'm still new and trying to work out what I'm meant to be doing. Perhaps I could give her a mailing list to update or something, but even then, I imagine there would be a lot of explaining to do. I can't imagine what job might suit her -- maybe childcare with the under-2s, where there might not be any need for communication of abstract information. I feel rather mean, writing this, as she's quite sweet (and also a descendant of the original Lutheran missionaries out here, which makes me feel as tho I'm dealing with an Amish person).

Speaking of strategic planning has reminded me of one of these infinite vortex-style conversation we had recently. Melanie came towards me, two drafts of a strategic plan for our area in hand, (while I was doing something naughty that she wouldn't do, like web-surfing, as I invariably am). Did I know why the strategic priorities were different in one box in the two different plans, and which was the right one?

'Well, looking at them,' I said, 'even tho this is the later version, it doesn't look like it's meant to be final as it has the names of organisations rather than strategies in the "strategies" box.'

'Oh, ' she said, 'but X has put them in that box.'

'Yes, but they're the names of organisations not strategies so I don't think they're ultimately meant to be there. Maybe she put them in there to remind her that she needed to put down the strategies covered by these organisations. I know for a fact that some of the strategies in the earlier plan have been superceded, so maybe she was going to get some information about what the organisations are meant to be doing now.'

'So they aren't strategies?'

'No, they're not strategies. They're organisations.'

'Oh ... so organisations can't be strategies?'

'I don't think so. Organisations are groups of people who develop and implement strategies but they're not strategies themselves.'

'Why are they in the plan then?'

'I'm not sure, but I think it might be just a form of mental shorthand, that she was going to come back to later.'

'So you can't have organisations in a plan?'

'Well, yes you can, in the right section, but you really shouldn't have them here without saying what strategies they're meant to be doing. The organisations are the actors who carry out actions from the plan.'

And so on. These kind of conversations emerge in response to much simpler things; I'm sometimes not really sure what we're talking anymore about by the end. Too much close contact with her with turn me into Basil Fawlty.

Websurfing -- that's another thing. I was listening to 'Australia Talks Back' a week or so ago and heard a forum re: workplace practices of bosses screening employees' web-surfing and emailing and whether this constitutes a breach of privacy (actually, I found you could put a tracking thing on your emails in Outlook which will show when someone [like the HR manager] has read them). I think there's a good mental health and sanity rationale for employees to be allowed to web-surf for a few minutes every hour, in the way that you're meant to do ergonomic exercises. It can't be healthy, being glued to a work terminal -- or a strategic plan -- all day long.

Today, the temp here climbed up to 29. Tomorrow it's meant to be 30. When I came in to work on Monday am, it was only 3 or 4 (but probably got up to about 24 in the afternoon). I find that kind of climactic disparity in the space of a few days amazing (and I used to live in Melbourne). The hot weather dropped in the space of a fortnight after Easter; perhaps we'll be back up in the mid-30s in another week. Tonight I had a gin and tonic; it was a real G&T evening...tho admittedly not quite my first of the season. I feel I can justify continuous red wine imbibement (flavinoids, anti-oxidants, arterial dilation, minor anti-thrombotic activity) but not so sure about gin, my summer drink of choice. Read an article the other day on the relative merits of gin and red wine ... gin comes off badly, which is hardly surprising. But they only recommend 0.8 standard glass of red wine per day for women for optimum health benefits ('the French effect'). White white, however, is meant to be better for your lungs (red wine for cardiovascular), which is interesting, given that I posted about using it for bronchitis in May.

Yeah, I know...no more health tips. And it does look like I've gone too small with the font size...it didn't show up immediately when I re-published the site the other night (perhaps due to an incoming phone call). I felt the body of the posts should be a bit more compressed. There isn't a big range of choice with font in Typepad, but one probably doesn't want to go that small with Trebuchet.

But if you think that font size is bad, you should see the editing panel for posts in Typepad; it's about 6 point and means that I end up with far more proofing errors than I'd like. That and the fact that it sometimes crashes (esp if I forget to take call waiting off) makes working in Word a much better plan...

Desert latte

<Silver Bullet>

Much of this weekend was spent in industry, as I had to get my submission together for the Titanic Inquiry. Which has a shame, really, as it was a blissfully balmy weekend, with temps of 25 C, kinda like a spring day in Sydney.

I did however venture out for lunch with D. She's one of the social workers from the women's council. I'm kind of envious of anyone who works with them, though I know it's often chaos there. But there's something about the thought of women ( or 'wimmin' rather) driving around in 4WDs in the middle of the desert with Aboriginal women that has some romantic, unreconstituted '70s feminist appeal for me. (Suspect some of the tambourines and craft stuff goes on tho.) D told me of talking her laptop along on a field trip, propping it up on her swag and showing some senior desert women a DVD of Malcolm X. Perhaps it's all the incongruities here that appeal to me. D also told me that some of the desert people still talk of the first time they 'saw the white man'. Freaky! I'd thought the Pintupi were the last people to come out of the desert, but D reckons the phenomenon is more widespread.

A couple of weeks ago, Alicia told me that D had said 'she intended to establish a friendship with Elsewhere independently of you.' This was after a particularly racuous evening at Matt and Alicia's. I kinda liked the Austen-ish inflection of Alicia's phrasing, as much as anything else.

But my mobile SIM card fried and with it, all my contacts, so it took me a while to track D down (i.e. I bumped into her at the pub). We arranged to meet up at the Silver Bullet, an appropriate choice as it has the closest to Melburnian coffee in Alice.

I haven't quite established my local for a constitutional coffee in Alice yet. Some of the cafes are seasonal, so it's a bit of a challenge. The Silver Bullet is my first choice. Located in the industrial area, it seems to be part of an artisans' area, with offices in old silver buses and scupltures made from industrial objects (like the brushes from drive-in carwashes). It's only open on the weekends, and then, it seems, only in the cooler months. I guess that makes sense, given that it's so exposed, being built in a typically rocks-and-scrub-desert-y area. The other reason I've heard is that the owners don't really run it as a business, more as an organic phenomenon for the locals. People say they're old hippies, and they don't really want the place to become part of the tourist circuit.

One of the best things about the Silver Bullet is the coffee. Definitely better than all the coffees I had on Darling St. The first time I went to the Silver Bullet, the waitress taking my order warned me that the coffee was strong. 'Don't worry,' I said, 'I lived in Melbourne for ten years.' The owner nodded and said to be girl, 'She'll be right.'

So, I try and get over there most weekends. The other options are Bar Doppio and La Pep's. Bar Doppio's in an arcade off the Mall, and it's otherwise known as 'Lesbian Cafe'. Believe you me, if you absentmindedly flick through a kd lang photo-biography while you wait for your order, you'll get some very attentive service. It has a kind of Fitzroy ambience, with lots of old laminated kitchen tables. The service aint so great tho (despite what I just said), and while the menu looks like a normal cafe fare, it's sometimes a bit hit and miss. The whole arcade with the cafe in it closes down for about a month in summer (as does one of the local rags). I guess it's just too hot for people or they've all gone east or south.

La Pep's is on the flight path into town for me. I would never have noticed it if I hadn't people hadn't pointed it out to me. La Pep's almost looks like a truckie's diner -- more of those kitchen tables, somehow without style, lots of photos of motorbikes, Italian cities and old coke signs (again, not particularly cool ones) on its walls. Tom said to me, 'Think of La Pep's as Alice's answer to Pellegrini's.' An electronic Lavazza sign hangs from the ceiling about a metre from the door -- that's a comfort, I guess. Some people reckon the coffee's the best in Alice. It's very strong, but it sometimes has that burnt taste to it. The spry, sun-bitten woman behind the counter has a reputation for surliness, but she always says 'darl' to me.

So, first date with D at the Silver Bullet -- as she's from Melbourne, we were able to talk about all the old Melbourne haunts and things. She's used to working in the disability support area, so I was able to regale her with tales about spats between some of the more high-profile disabled consumers, from my time as a penniless postgrad working as a casual personal care attendant. We talked about how Alice was in some ways like an enormous Australian suburb plonked down in the middle of the desert. She'd grown up in Eltham, and said she found Alive very similar, as it's suburban yet has that left-liberal artsy edge.

D said she'd gotten sick of Melbourne, the ease and comfort of the lifestyle. A bit like my reaction to Sydney, except mine's more based on an aversion to the status anxiety and rat-raciness of the place. D wants to go and work in development type stuff in Africa eventually; she sees Alice as a stepping stone along the way.

People come here for all sorts of interesting reasons. I had a meeting with a Communications Officer from another dept today. She was one of those groovy, dynamic Asian women. We got on to the subject of recruitment (major issue for Alice), and she told me the latest strategies were directed at recruiting people from other areas. I said I found that odd; was there evidence that people were recycled around regional areas and that no one from the coastal cities would be interested in moving here? She said: 'Well, usually people look at anyone from the city, and say "what are you running away from?"' I said I'd been asked if I was running away from a major relationship break-up. She was really surprised to hear that I was from Sydney; she was from Albury/Wodonga. I told her I'd met plenty of people from Sydney and Melbourne (more of the latter, really) ... I find all the presuppositions odd, really, as if Alice could have nothing to offer and if you were part of a coastal city lifestyle, you wouldn't ever get jack of it.

Afterwards, went to the nursery...and came away $80 poorer! Don't know how I manage to spend so much money on plants...I must be on to about my fifth herb & vegie garden too, now.

As for the Titanic submission...eeek! What am I doing? I collected a huge file of incriminating emails and other documents (actually, the blog came in handy in jogging my memory) for the express purpose of writing this submission. So I couldn't turn back from it, as far as I was concerned. It does say on the Committee website that they wont accept submissions if they think they're inappropriate, so if it's too out there, I guess they'll chuck it. Otherwise ... tee hee! It's rather acid. Some of the emails are a classic. Reckon I'm pretty good at making complaints -- perhaps I should be a professional complainer! Also reckon the powers that be wouldn't have thought we'd have the energy or the degree of organisation to make a submission. I rang one of my former colleagues today to check some of the details. She was really glad I was making the submission. She said she'd thought about doing it herself, but didn't know where to start. But in all probability, like everything associated with me, the submission will sink without a trace...