So we've just had Christmas and I hope people got something that they value this year instead of a plastic “cack-ulator” sprayed silver with the words “executive”stenciled in the corner by someone in China. All written in Chin-lish. Of course.
Well we had Crimbo in Melbourne. Its Summer here and its been strange seeing fake snow and reindeer and plastic icicles hanging off trees. Barmy and confusing to be honest. Also the run up to Christmas wasn't helped by our “who gives a crap anyway” attitude that the Aussie summer engenders.
But we struck lucky on a freak cold front coming straight from the Antarctic. Instead of 33 degrees we found ourselves under gray skies shivering in 16 degrees, which is a bit of a shock drop. We ended up with a log fire in our hosts home and the smell of burning Eucalyptus tree.
But Christmas made for a time of heated debate on Australia and our understandings and mis-understandings. Some reasonable some not. In all I think Australia is very similar to back home, but it is in fact a mirrored image which can trip you flat on your face when you least expect it.
One of the things that seems pretty strange to me is the Australian publics reaction to authority. They accept it and sigh – they wont question it – and certainly wont challenge it.
For example: ALL People who enter a shop, on leaving must turn out all their belongings for inspection. You cannot refuse. The first time this happened to me was over a year ago and was quite a shock. I felt under suspicion of shoplifting, when in fact, I had done nothing wrong. I remember saying to the shop staff – are you accusing me? I find this insulting. In fact, they had no suspicions of any sort. But it felt wrong – like, proving you're NOT guilty. So there is an overarching assumption of guilt rather than innocence running right through society here. Its like walking into a shop – paying for you goods and being called a “potential thieving bastard” every time. I know I'm from Liverpool but sheesh!!!
The is little foriegn news here. No independant media - the TV is dumbed down and owned by the Fox. Or Packer. It's all punctuated with lond drawn out Advertising which drives you insane.Banks – very inflexible here – no cash – no overdraft – tough shit. Oh – and it costs money to have an account and they whack you for withdrawals too and ATM use. What the f*ck!!! You HAVE to have a credit card and that costs too. Yuck. People just accept it – they don't complain but they do moan privately.
Every shop here is owned by 2 groups. WestFarmers owns K-mart, Target, Myer, Bunnings (B&Q) and Woolworths, Big W etc. These two groups have wiped out any diversity here and their presence is monolithic. In effect a duopoly. They influence prices. I know its similar back home – but even the big 4 players are fighting each other – so there IS at least a choice.
Traffic – Police can stop you at random – without ANY cause or suspicion and breath test and drug test you. You can also undertake and overtake and take left hand turns on pedestrian crossings as people walk across.
In themselves – they're not really issues – but here's the real crux: you see – as a foreigner, I have been told that I must accept and not question Australia.
This is the cultural difference. I've questioned everything everywhere all my life! What Why where and how - its has formed the back bone of every endeavour for years. But suddenly – it appears that its just not on.
Well – I'm shocked. And I don't feel comfortable being told to shut my mouth, in effect. I certainly never expected any Aussie in the UK to do so.
An Australian Bumper sticker read this morning: Australia: If you don't agree – leave.
Fuck me, what a healthy attitude!
1 comment:
Dear Jim,
Having invited you and your family into our family home over Christmas I am shocked and disappointed to read your basically libellous claims and comments, posted on a public forum. Like you with your shopping bags, I now feel like the innocent party obliged to justify my actions and prove my innocence. Even though your friends reading your comments do not know me, you have made sweeping generalisations about our country and its people which do not accurately reflect the discussions which were held and to the reader who does not know the context you have painted us in a very unfair light.
Jim: But Christmas made for a time of heated debate on Australia and our understandings and mis-understandings. Some reasonable some not.
So whatever happened to agree to disagree? We discussed many issues and there were some things we disagreed on. Both parties put forward reasonable contentions and backed them up with facts and personal experiences. The fact that you were unable to persuade us to agree with your viewpoint does not warrant the accusation that we were not reasonable. Surely you do not expect us to roll over and yield to your negative view of things if we have a different opinion.
Jim: One of the things that seems pretty strange to me is the Australian publics reaction to authority. They accept it and sigh – they wont question it – and certainly wont challenge it.
I find this claim highly offensive. You were in the country when the previous government introduced the Work Choices legislation, which many people objected to. The public reacted quite vociferously to this I think you will agree. OK, we didn't set fire to cars as might happen in some countries, but there was such a backlash out there in Aus that the govt was forced to water it down, make changes to it and was then voted out of power. On a more personal level, there are lots of things which our govt does (eg Kyoto, asylum seeker policies over recent years) which we disagree with, but the point was well made in our discussion that one's way of dealing with these matters - and more minor ones - basically comes down to personality. Is it really necessary to question every checkout employee on their bag-checking policy? Our feeling is that we would also prefer not to have to do this, but life is simply too short to get involved in lengthy discussions which you simply will not win every time the situation arises. We see the big picture; that they are doing what they can to combat shoplifting and thus keep prices down. Get over it! Or do your grocery shopping online where the situation won't arise. I also made the point that I found it just as uncomfortable when I lived in the UK and every single time I paid anyone anywhere with a note, especially a 20-quid one, that it would be checked for its authenticity. At first I felt that I was under suspicion, but sooner or later I just had to get used to the fact that that is the way things are done there. When humans came down from the trees and created societal structures, other humans very quickly came up with ways of abusing the structures, so obviously certain controls are required to enforce the structures and prevent decay into anarchy. People shoplift so the shops try to put these measures in place to minimise this problem. Soon after our discussion I was in the cinema. Having bought tickets we were then asked to present them on entry to the cinema. On the way home we were asked by a ticket inspector to show our valid tickets. These controls, in principle, are no different to your gripe about the shopping bags and random breath tests. Would you have complained about them? In essence they are forcing you to prove that you are innocent and are doing the right thing. You interpret this as an assumption of guilt and choose to get hot under the collar about it. I interpret it as law enforcement; in all of the above-mentioned cases if you are doing the right thing you have nothing to fear. In a world where billions are living in poverty and don’t have such basic rights as decent food, water, education, free speech, I find this whole complaint pretty pathetic.
Jim: The is little foriegn news here. No independant media - the TV is dumbed down and owned by the Fox. Or Packer. It's all punctuated with lond drawn out Advertising which drives you insane.
Absolute rubbish. ABC and SBS are both fiercely independent; ABC has 30 min of world news without commercial breaks and SBS World news has a 60 min high quality service daily, in addition to the multitude of news services in foreign languages, adding up to many hours of world news.
Jim: Banks – very inflexible here – no cash – no overdraft – tough shit. Oh – and it costs money to have an account and they whack you for withdrawals too and ATM use. What the f*ck!!! You HAVE to have a credit card and that costs too. Yuck. People just accept it – they don't complain but they do moan privately.
You obviously weren't taking in anything I was saying on this topic. You came into this conversation with your fixed opinion and left it with the same one, regardless of the following points which I made clearly. As a mortgage holder I do not pay any bank fees for account keeping, withdrawals or ATM use. I wrote to my credit card company the previous two years and demanded -successfully - that all the fees for that be waived or I would close down that card and look elsewhere. So I clearly didn’t accept the situation and just moan privately; I actually did something about it, without getting irate. May I point out that I am not blindly defending everything the Australian banking sector does; we were promised a level playing field with lots of competition when the industry was deregulated 15 - 20 years ago. As you and I both know the current situation is far from ideal, but as we discussed the consumer does have the ability to shop around and negotiate the best deal for him / herself.
Jim: Every shop here is owned by 2 groups. WestFarmers owns K-mart, Target, Myer, Bunnings (B&Q) and Woolworths, Big W etc. These two groups have wiped out any diversity here and their presence is monolithic. In effect a duopoly. They influence prices. I know its similar back home – but even the big 4 players are fighting each other – so there IS at least a choice.
Any intelligent reader has hopefully worked out that this is an enormous exaggeration. The phenomenon is a global one and of course the trend is also an issue here in Australia. I'd be interested to know what any governments of other countries are doing to counter this. There are, however, many independent and locally-owned stores which do not belong to the Big 2 conglomerates and sending your dollars there is a good way for you to protest against the potential duopoly which you fear is developing.
Jim: Traffic – Police can stop you at random – without ANY cause or suspicion and breath test and drug test you.
I thought that we did manage to reach some agreement that there is merit in this. Road deaths and injuries are a scourge on our society and I am willing to sacrifice 2 - 3 minutes of my time driving home if it will keep the roads safer. Many seasoned drinkers are well able to keep their cars driving in a straight line when well over the limit; thus avoid arousing any suspicion, but obviously their reaction times in any emergency will be seriously affected. I've been through no more than 10 random breath tests in 20 years of driving, so it's not like the police are abusing this power to make our lives miserable. The whole thing takes literally a couple of minutes to complete, which in my opinion is well worth it to deter drunks from getting behind the wheel and endangering my life and my family's. Do you really want the police to be forced to wait until someone is swerving dangerously across the road to be allowed to stop them? This means in many cases nothing will be done until it is too late and I am glad that the police here take a more pro-active approach in preventing road carnage. (as they now do in Ireland too)
Jim: You can also undertake and overtake and take left hand turns on pedestrian crossings as people walk across.
Misleading. Pedestrians in that situation have clear right of way by law and drivers may only proceed with caution when the way is clear. In many cases there are red turning lights for the cars.
In themselves – they're not really issues
I'm glad you said this. Good to see that you understand that some things are bound to be different from at home and whilst they may irritate you, it’s not worth getting upset about them.
Jim: – but here's the real crux: you see – as a foreigner, I have been told that I must accept and not question Australia.
This is an unbelievable comment. We spent hours discussing your observations and questioning comments on Australia and the way things work here so I take great offence for you to draw this conclusion. I explained my take on your issues and you usually countered in what I thought was a quite healthy debate. Your opinions are strongly held so I wasn't expecting to persuade you into changing your mind. I have lived in several countries and have also questioned things. Remember that Sharon is not Australian or a citizen and has gone through all the same things you have as a new arrival in this country many years ago. At the time I was returning from several years overseas too, so we were both finding some things strange and questioning the merit of some things. My comment to you was more about your manner of questioning. You relayed to us countless instances (not just in Oz) where you have dealt with conflict and you certainly give the impression of being very confrontational in such dealings. Your favourite line seemed to be, "Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" This is not conducive to a calm discussion of the matter at hand. My point to you was that as an immigrant, maybe you should ensure that your outward demeanour when reacting to your new experiences shows a bit more grace and not get riled with the person just doing their job so readily. As I said to you, whether you like it or not, you are up against the stereotype image of the "whingeing Pom", and you need to expect things to be different from at home and not react with anger when you first encounter such things. Yes, question things but be aware of 2 things; there are some things we just can't change, and that when the negatives in your comments and dealings dominate over the positives and are brought across in an aggressive manner, you lose any support you might have got from others.
Jim: This is the cultural difference. I've questioned everything everywhere all my life! What Why where and how - its has formed the back bone of every endeavour for years. But suddenly – it appears that its just not on.
Well – I'm shocked. And I don't feel comfortable being told to shut my mouth, in effect. I certainly never expected any Aussie in the UK to do so.
I do not believe that the overall vibe of Australian life is one of unquestioning compliance with authority. Far from telling you to shut up, we were open to your questions and comments at Christmas and discussed them with you frankly and at length until late at night. What I will say though is that you could try saying a few positive things as well, or you are just going to come across as a whinger. Some of your mass emails and blogs often come across as Bill Bryson without the wit. He is intensely critical of places he visits BUT he pulls it off because a) he is just as critical of his homeland(s) and b) he also finds and praises the good, the quirky, different things he encounters with humour. Here you managed to list many aspects of Australian life which you like when we pressed you; what a pity the readers of your site and emails so seldom get much indication of these.
Jim: An Australian Bumper sticker read this morning: Australia: If you don't agree – leave.
The irony here is that it was me who brought this bumper sticker to your attention; someone at our swimming school has it on their car. I agree 100% with your sentiments. It does not create a healthy national attitude and one does need to be open to questioning. The "lively debates" we had were quite productive I thought and you made many valid points, but you have now lost my respect by posting this one-sided misrepresentation of our arguments and life here in general in a public forum.
Jim: Fuck me, what a healthy attitude!
I think this comment sums you and your attitude up more than it says anything about the matter you were commenting on. (which I agreed with) Surely someone who places such a high value on a classical tertiary education should be able to find a more eloquent way in which to express his dissatisfaction.
This country has been built up by rebels and renegades; people escaping from oppressive regimes and conditions elsewhere and seeking to create something different here. The larrikin spirit is alive and well in my opinion and people will not suffer the abuse of power willingly. People will complain when it matters but they will not tolerate whingers either. It’s up to you to make a balanced judgment of the lifestyle this country offers you and your family. There will be some matters you will have to adapt to or if you decide the negatives outweigh the positives, the option is clearly there for you to return to the UK.
It’s your call, but in future please don’t lump me and my family into over-generalised sweeping statements which contain both factual inaccuracies and misleading statements taken out of context in your public spleen-venting.
Regards,
Warren
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