politics – Page 4

I’m pretty sure I promised Stephanie that I would review The Deep ASAP, so that she can borrow the graphic novels off me. But I’m tired, I’m arthritic, I have a cold. So here’s a whole bunch of things.

Further to previous posts

1. In my second Dance Academy post, I said some nice things about Ben Tickle, to wit, that I was unfair to dismiss him as a creepy and annoying Nice Guy.

As of last week’s episode, I hereby take that back, and every other nice thing I said about him as well. SO THERE.

2. After I posted about the general whiteness of Adam Bandt’s campaign posters, I started to think that maybe I hadn’t given the Greens enough credit for what diversity they did have. For example, Stephanie posted this to Instagram.

(I also learnt that Stephanie herself could have featured in the advertising, but people thought she was too busy and didn’t need the extra stress. When will we learn: Stephanie always needs the extra stress.)

(Not really.)

Anyway, I still maintain that there’s an uncomfortable white saviour narrative at work in the Greens’ visual presentation, but the Greens were doing better than I had realised. And I am really happy that Bandt kept his seat (and sorry that my local Greens candidate, Tim Read, didn’t beat the Libs into second place behind Labor.)

(Living in the second safest Labor seat in the country, you take what you can get.)

Yes, there was an election

And the capitalistic, socially conservative Liberal Party won. They claim they have a mandate, even though the swing away from the ALP generally went to new parties such as Palmer United, and even though it looks like three Senate seats will go to extreme fringe parties: the libertarian Australian Liberals, the Sports Party and the Motoring Enthusiasts Party.

There has been a lot of classism about the Twitters with regards to the Motoring Party’s new senator. I’m kind of hoping he turns out to be a brilliant leader, just to shut that up. But as his Facebook revealed that he’s a 9/11 truther and a misogynist, I’m not holding my breath.

As usual after a conservative win, there has been a lot of gnashing of teeth and threats to move to Canada (where Quebec is banning “prominent” religious symbols that coincidentally are mostly used by minorities) and New Zealand (which already has a conservative government and shite economy). I like Stephanie’s response best:

This country will have to be pried from my dead, cold, queer asian hands. It’s mine and I’m staying right here and kicking everything over until I’ve got my fingerprints all over the furniture and everything is just the way I like it.

Now that it’s almost over, we’re down to dissecting the campaign.

I, for one, was quite troubled by the Liberals’ strategy of silencing their candidates of colour so as to avoid gaffes and difficult questions. This was the case in my own electorate, where candidate Shilpa Hegde did not participate in any public forums or interviews with citizen journalists. Nor was she seen out campaigning.

As a Commie leftie pinko, I should be glad to see the Liberals mis-step, even if they still win the election, but I think this is a pretty shitty approach. It’s not enough to have people of colour as your candidates, you have to let them be candidates. Allegedly, or so I read in the mainstream press (probably a Fairfax paper, but I couldn’t tell you when or which one because I’ve been site-hopping to avoid their paywall), the strategy was conceived after Jaymes Diaz famously stuffed up an interview. If they’re so worried about candidates looking stupid, though, they would have put a lid on Fiona Scott before she could tell the world that refugees cause traffic jams. Funny how it’s only the non-white candidates who were told to shut up.

And as a person who quite likes democracy, thanks, I’m pretty horrified that the Liberal Democrats got into the Senate by setting up front parties to funnel preferences their way. (They also got votes because people apparently mistook them for the actual Liberal Party. Sadly, we cannot legislate for reading comprehension.) I’ve also been less than impressed with the backroom deals done for preferences, although that had the advantage of destroying the Wikileaks Party, and wow, what a tragedy that was. Really.

The ABC’s Antony Green has an interesting article here, looking at the history of such developments, and ways we can better regulate Senate nominations without undermining democracy and shutting out smaller parties all together.

Then there was WorldCon

And the annual recriminations that follow.

Things for which there should be no recriminations whatsoever: the excellent Tansy Rayner Roberts won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, making her the first Australian woman to win a Hugo. And I can’t think of anyone more deserving.

Chicks Unravel Time, to which I contributed, did not win the Hugo for Best Related Work, but I’m told that Writing Excuses, the podcast which won, is excellent. I’m mostly glad that CUT didn’t, say, lose by one vote, because I couldn’t spare the money for a supporting membership with voting rights.

(Every month, it was like, “Hmm, well, it’s only $50 … but my mobile bill is coming up, and that’s going to be $70. Next month!” Self, mobile bills are a monthly curse.)

This brings up the first round of recriminations and “what’s wrong with WorldCon” debates, “It’s too expensive.” Which, sorry, Lolmericans, I know $250 for a five-day con seems like a lot to you guys, but here in Australia, we pay that much for a three-day con. Aussiecon 4, back in 2010, was close to $400. (Luckily — or not — my mother was getting married that weekend, so I could only attend for a couple of days. Oh yeah, her divorce is being finalised next Monday, so congratulations Mum!)

I realise that going from “The supporting membership was too much” to “LOL, only $250 for attending!” isn’t exactly logical, but priorities. (And also, international travel has really done a number on my credit card.)

There was talk a couple of months ago of introducing a cheaper voting membership, but apparently that’s not practical with the (amazing and brilliant) electronic pack of nominated works. May I humbly and cheaply suggest that I would buy a voting membership without the voting pack? I mean, I’d rather have the pack, especially since I don’t usually get access to the short stories and novellas otherwise, but it’s a sacrifice I’d be willing to make in those times when I have to choose between voting in the Hugo Awards and paying my bills.

And if your con is significantly more expensive than others, and you’re widely perceived as being less friendly and less fun, these are things you should maybe be looking at. I enjoyed AussieCon 4, but I wouldn’t say it was a fun experience (except for the times L M Myles and I spent in the bar, or making fun of terrible Doctor Who panels), and it wasn’t as friendly and open as other Australian cons I’ve seen attended. Which is, okay, Continuum.

HAVING SAID ALL THIS, I am really hoping I can get to LonCon next year, and Nine Worlds the weekend before. Lots of people I know and love are going, and it’s London, and … stuff.

Some links to WorldCon discussions:

Three Gray Fandoms – Ursula Vernon on her three fandoms, and how only one is unwelcoming to young people.

WorldCon has some Happy Things Plus Some Problems – an overview of LoneStarCon’s successes and failures. Includes an account of a wheelchair-using panellist who was unable to access the daises on which the others sat. A quote: “That’s not cool. It was an oversight in a huge, fan-run convention, so it’s not worth a rage-fueled rage.”

I have to say, I did have a rage-fueled rage about it, because this should be basic Conrunning 101. Which brings me to…

Disability, Diversity, Dignity – a further discussion of the issue. The panellist herself pops up in the comments, along with a committee member who, I have to say, does not cover herself in glory.

There are more posts over at RadishReviews — I’m cheating because I haven’t had time to read them all yet, and I’m trying to rest my mouse hand so I can play Mass Effect 2 later. Hashtag arthritislyfe.

Finally, opera

Hey, I was surprised too.

See, I don’t know much about opera, but Barbara Hambly’s Die Upon A Kiss (part of her Benjamin January series, about a free man of colour in 1830s New Orleans who teaches music and FIGHTS CRIME) is set in the opera season, and is very much concerned with the cultural differences between French and American opera fans, and also a controversial performance of Otello. (Controversial ‘cos … well, it’s the South. And Othello is quite famously black. Except when — anyway, even a white actor in blackface was too much for some historical racists.)

Every time I read that book, I think, “Opera is really interesting. I should learn more about it and maybe, like, see some and find out if I like it.”

And then the opera community goes and does something stupid, like the Melbourne run of Nixon in China where all the Chinese characters are white people in yellowface. Or, as I discovered yesterday, Queensland Opera’s Otello, with an all-white cast.

Apparently, or so QOpera said on Twitter when people began asking very pointed questions, modern thinking is that the power of Otello comes from the psychology, and race is a secondary concern. And also, they did it in South Africa with a white Othello and black cast, so what’s the problem with an all-white version?

Yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeah. You want to make the traditional SF fandom and community look good? Go look at opera.

It’s election season in Australia. It feels like certain parties have been campaigning since the last election, but no, that happy time is actually upon us for real. And what a campaign it’s been. The highlight for me has been watching the Wikileaks Party collapse into a completely predictable morass of hypocrisy, but really, if it’s a minor party — or a major one, come to that — acting like amateurs you’re after, this is the election campaign for you.

Because it’s impossible to waste your vote in Australia, I’ve always given my first preference to the Greens, on the grounds that a big enough far-left presence will facilitate (or, you know, force) compromise in the major parties. But I’ve otherwise considered myself an ALP supporter.

Exciting fact: nothing will have me throwing my wholehearted support behind the Greens like instituting a horrible refugee policy that involves shipping asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea and ensuring there is no possibility of their ever stepping foot in Australia.

This is shitty both to asylum seekers, and to the people of Papua New Guinea, who already deal with corrupt government, corporations trying to exploit their mineral wealth, high levels of violence, a complex system of land ownership that restricts it to members of kinship groups, and more.

(Let’s be real, though, a lot of PNG’s problems stem from that time it was Australia’s colony. Like, our actual colony. We gave it up in, what, ’74, ’75? Very shortly before my birth. So it’s really cute that now Australia is both exploiting it and using its dysfunction as scare tactic.)

I was quite angry about that, so I read the policies of every single party that had posted them, and decided I liked the Greens best. (Digression: The Palmer United Party’s policies were weirdly preoccupied with stopping Japan from buying up Australia’s mineral wealth. But Japan is not Australia’s biggest export market for minerals. That would be … seriously, you mixed up China and Japan in your policies?)

In fact, ABC’s Vote Compass tells me I’m just a degree to the right of the Greens, so why I have I been an ALP supporter all these years? (Well, because I’m a big fan of supporting workers’ rights, and that’s not really a huge priority for the Greens. On the other hand, in fact — as opposed to rhetoric — it’s not a massive priority for Labor anymore either.)

In the spirit of actually doing something, I spent Saturday morning putting fliers in letterboxes, and there’s a sign in our front yard, and I’m handing out how to vote cards on election day. (Problems of the newly gluten-intolerant: I planned my whole election day around accessibility to sausage sizzles — but now I can’t eat bread or cheap sausage!)

The candidate poster for the electorate of Wills.

So that’s all very nice, and I take heart from the media’s obsession with the Greens being a spent force and the major parties’ simultaneous obsession with dissuading people from voting for them. At any cost, ie, they’re even preferencing each other.

Accordingly, the Greens member for the electorate of Melbourne (as opposed to the city of Melbourne), Adam Bandt, the party’s only member of the House of Representatives, is spending a whole lot of money on advertising. More, in fact, than the ALP candidate, so that’s nice?

Only, I keep looking at the ads. They’re your standard sort of happy, aspirational advertising. A slogan and attractive, slim white people–

Oh, hang on a minute.

I’ve seen a fair amount of Greens billboards around the inner suburbs. With one exception — a poster criticising university funding cuts, featuring two women, one white, one South Asian — all feature white people.

(I should say, I haven’t seen every single Greens poster. I had hoped to find the material for the Melbourne campaign online, but it doesn’t seem to be around.)

This billboard stands at the corner of Lygon and Elgin Streets.

And Melbourne is a very diverse electorate! Crikey, in 2012, noted that just over 40% of residents are non-English speakers (I wonder if that is no English at all, or English as a second language?), and that the area has “substantial Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean populations”. The inner city contains several universities and a lot of student housing, so some of those people are going to be international students rather than voting citizens. But I have no idea how big or small that proportion is going to be.

(And given the amount of people on student visas who go on to become permanent residents and later citizens, it makes sense to represent that demographic as well. I don’t actually have numbers here, mind, I’m just going from experience, ie, I transcribe a lot of immigration cases involving students who wish to stay.)

Basically, it is really dodgy that the Greens campaign is so white. It would be dodgy even in an electorate that wasn’t incredibly diverse, but as it is, it just seems like a really terrible oversight.

Curious, I went along to the Greens website. The rotating advertising on the front page features two white children; a turtle; a group of eight white people and one Indigenous man; white protesters against refugee policy, photographed from the back; and one woman of colour, wearing a hijab, presumably representing asylum seekers.

A young Asian woman, wearing heavy eye make-up, a blank expression and a blue hijab. Captaion: OUR PLAN SAVES LIVES - A new, humane approach to asylum seekers. — The most prominent person of colour on the Greens website.

This picture is quite interesting. The face of asylum seekers, in the eyes of the Greens, is a young, attractive woman, wearing make-up, presenting a passive face to the viewer. She’s both object and fantasy figure.

There is another face of asylum seekers in the media.

A slim, fair-skinned Iranian woman cries into her hands. Her face is blurred out. — This picture was released by the Department of Immigration as a symbol of its successful policies. Yeah.

This is a picture of an Iranian asylum seeker learning that she will not be resettled in Australia. It was posted by the Immigration Department as propaganda for the new “PNG solution”. Because this is a country where we’re expected to see a picture of a distraught person in need and feel satisfaction.

Unlike the Greens’ picture, she’s not passive. She’s dressed functionally, in western clothes. She’s not posing. She is an object and a fantasy figure, but an unwitting one, conscripted into the role and used for propaganda.

In the interests of fairness, I should point out that the cover of the Greens’ policy platform features two people of colour in amongst the white faces. And I’m sure it’s just coincidence that the black woman’s face is cut off. I mean, lots of faces are cut off, but hers more than anyone else. Pure accident, I’m sure. No subtext here.

Now, here’s the thing. If the Greens are going to thrive as Australia’s third major political party, they need to have a wider appeal than their current “educated, middle-class inner-urban” type of demographic. Outside of that group, there’s a perception that the Greens will throw working class and blue collar workers under the bus if it means they can save a koala. That’s a problem they need to start addressing, both through policy and through presentation.

What they should also be addressing, perhaps, is the way they have positioned themselves as white saviours in the refugee debate. As Stephanie linked the other day, “immigrants against immigration” is a peculiar aspect of the current debate, but it’s not the whole of the story. Not all Greens supporters are white, and not all refugee advocates are white. And the overlap between those two groups, I would say, is not inconsiderable. The use of mostly white models in their advertising creates an ugly subtext, one that cheapens their message. I like the Greens, but they’ve dropped the ball here. They can do better.

Category: politics

Follow ups, election day, WorldCon, links

White is the new Green