There have only been a few times in my life when I haven’t felt proud to be Australian. The most notable was during the Cronulla riots. They stood for everything I had always thought was unAustralian - racial hatred, intolerance -, and watching them for the first time I wasn’t sure I was in the majority. Are we a racist country? Nearly a year on now, I still don’t know for sure. I don’t believe so. There are people living here with those attitudes (as there are in every country), but I don’t think they represent the majority of Australians. Cronulla was as much about the age of fear we live in now as it was pure racism.
What the riots illustrated to me, though, was how poorly integrated our society really is - something which seems to have come up again recently. Mufti Sheikh Taj Din al-Halali’s comments comparing immodestly dressed women to “uncovered meat left outside” are disturbing and unacceptable not only because he is the leading Islamic cleric in Australia, but because at a time when we need to be bringing communities closer together, his words can only be divisive.
It’s why John Howard and other politicians have been more noticeable recently in urging the Muslim community to accept Australian values. They know that the tensions that caused the Cronulla riots on both sides are still there, under the surface, and there’s always the risk of those tensions escalating again. The answer (they say) is a process of evolving into one community, of introducing people to mateship and “growing” the Australian fabric of life. In theory they’re probably right, but I find something a bit strange about this government talking about mateship and giving people a “fair go” when they still have asylum children locked in detention centres.
Still, Australia prides itself on multiculturalism, so it makes sense that people who want to live here should consent to those values. But I think that should go for all of us. It’s not fair to point solely at the Muslim community, when really we’re the ones who have ostracized them since 9/11. And it was the white population that started the Cronulla riots. The only way to achieve acceptance and integration is to educate people further about different cultures, and we don’t see enough of that.
I guess all this is on my mind right now because of the G20 protests in Melbourne. The scenes remind me so much of the Cronulla riots, and even though it’s most likely an isolated group causing trouble here, it still illustrates a similar problem. There’s an undercurrent of violence in our society that nobody wants to admit exists, and we’ll never overcome it while we still have that attitude. It shows that almost a year on from Cronulla we still haven’t come that much further, and that’s unacceptable.
If you’ve ever been frustrated with your mouse and keyboard, check this out. It’s a presentation for a new user interface by Jeff Han, a leader in technology designs.
It’s basically an intuitive touch-screen, letting you expand and manipulate content on the screen with your hands. I know it looks strange at first (like Tom Cruise in Minority Report), but it actually makes sense. I mean, we’re currently using 21st century technology with 19th century interfaces - it’s about time we had something new!
And this could work; fairly simple to use, and we wouldn’t have to learn to type all over again. Almost like using a computer in three dimensions. Worth keeping an eye on, I think.
It’s a good article, well worth a look. I tend to think of SF as more of its own genre, with its own subgenres (space opera, cyberpunk, etc.), but I also think it’s important writers remember that science fiction should still be fiction as well. Many writers seem to think that a different set of rules apply because they’re writing SF; they take a slower approach to their work, and as long as they bring everything together at the end, the reader will follow them through it. I don’t believe that. I think every form of fiction should follow the same standards - have interesting characters, a sense of direction. I won’t waste my time with a book that doesn’t engage me all the way through and I find a lot of science fiction is like that these days, unfortunately.
You can find the article here. Let me know what you think.
A Writer's Life is the blog of CJ Levinson, an emerging writer from Sydney, Australia. The blog looks at the process of writing, as well as topics on philosophy, life and social commentary.
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