(no subject)

I'm not getting dressed until lunchtime.

This is because today I have to wear clothes suitable for Parliament House. The one time I went there wearing unsuitable clothes, I met Carmen Lawrence - she sat on a coffee table and I sat on a comfie chair and I was wearing my most comfortable top and was aware of every single hole in it - I was supposed to be there for the launch of an anti-racism resource, but Helen Leonard (who I miss so much) grabbed Veronica Wensing and me after the launch and dragged us all sorts of places ("You're both signed in and have your visitors' IDs, I have my consultant's ID and will be with you the whole time - stop worrying about us being outside the public zone, Gillian - it's all perfectly fine") and we did some amazing things* and I was wearing a top that had holes and I was wearing leggings. Since then I have worn more respectable clothes and nothing nearly as exciting has happened to me. This is much safer.

What's fascinating about today is that it's an entirely different anti-racism effort. What we were launching that day way-back-then was an NGO manual. I think I might still have an e-copy of it. I didn't do anything much on it - that was Amrita DasVarma. But I was there for bits of it and I was working with Amrita on related things and I was invited and so I decided I should break with my usual custom of avoiding launches** and should turn up for moral support. Helen said that it would be a good idea, and Helen was the sort of person who knew so very much that when she said jump, you'd be stupid not to ask "How high?" Except I have a streak of foolishness and I honestly thought I could get away with sitting in the back and sneaking out the moment I could. So I wore whatever I was wearing that day at home (I didn't want to disrupt my day more than I had to - in and out, that was my plan, with no-one even noticing me). I was wearing my then-favourite big cotton top and a pair of leggings. My leggings didn't have holes, at least. The wrists of the top were, however, decaying interestingly. And I met Lawrence and Albanese and a bunch of others, in the private cafe and in the corridors and outside the Labor Women's Caucus and the only one who seemed to notice just how underdressed I was (or who seemed to care) was Albanese. Albanese was very relieved when we moved on.

This afternoon is going to be far more ordinary. It's one of the consultations for the new anti-racism strategy. Someone junior will be meeting with community and we will be in and out and nothing exciting will happen.

It's been a while since I've done this kind of thing, so I'm glad this is one of those basic consultations and nothing spectacular. It'd take a lot of persuasion to get me back into the hamster wheel. It takes the exact energies I use for writing and there's a lot of hard work without many results. My end of it was always unpaid and mostly unseen, too, which means I get to be entertained at cons when young turks tell me how to think on racism, on gender issues, on equity. Drabbit, I just realised. Now that I'm talking about it openly, I won't get overtalked as often. I may lose a source of entertainment!

At the moment (still in my PJs, as I said) I'm trying to remember if the 1R1 is one of the committee rooms that I need to be signed in for or not. It's on the Reps side (which really doesn't matter, because the bus drops me where the bus drops me).

I shall do what I always do (for I've never been able to remember signing in at Parliament House and go to the main entrance and ask a nice person at a desk. And I shall be dressed respectably, sadly.






* I've put a bit of this into Secret Jewish Women's Business, but had to tone it down because it just didn't read as real
** I go to booklaunches where I can, but that's different.

At Parliament House

Let me start with the important thing: Parliament House still has very strong coffee and totally delicious biscuits for its meetings. I only had one biscuit, but they were very tempting.

I got the bus to just over a mile away and I walked to Parliament House through the Parliamentary Triangle. Parliamentary Triangle is an odd combination of Australian green and European autumn. There was a row of oaks in full bronze leaf and then there was an avenue of gum trees with the bark dripping down. I swished oak leaves and smiled at Magna Carta Place and discovered (again) just how very beautiful that bit of Canberra is and how few people walk it. Three blocks on is tourist central, but the walk from Commonwealth Avenue up between Old and New Parliament Houses is solitary and rather wonderful.

Nothing has changed in the set-up for meetings at Parliament House. I went straight to the desk I knew a zillion years ago and found someone waiting.

"You're the anti-racism person," I said, confidently. "You have to walk us into the committee room."

"How did you know?"

"Systems haven't changed here in fifteen years," I said, "I was on automatic the moment I walked through security." I signed my name and collected my 'escorted visitor' pass and a few more people came through security. The staff member and I talked about our work histories until enough of us had accumulated to be walked in.

I admired the fossils in the floor and we walked up the marble staircase and I waved to the Magna Carta. At the top of the staircase the staff member asked me, "How about here - has this changed?" and we went to the nearest room of all. 1R1 is its official name. A standard committee room that seats about 40 comfortably. I sat in a different place to usual.

That was the thing. It was 'usual' despite all the years. I've decided that one is the same age at a Parliament House meeting as one was when one first attended one, which means I was in my late twenties for two hours this afternoon.

The crowd has changed. I only knew one person. And there were only about thirty of us. It was staff-intensive and almost everyone else was a representative of an organisation. I wasn't, of course, and that was both good (I said different things) and bad (people kept clustering with the folks they knew).

I managed to talk to a few people both before the meeting and during the break. During the meeting I took a lot of notes. After a while my notes morphed from what people were saying and into an analysis of things. I am partway to working out a whole range of issues related to implementing the problems that were expressed today. I don't know if those things will be used - I have no responsibility of follow-up on this. How odd.

Today was supposed to be about working on strategies. The whole consultative structure that was so important under the Labor governments before Howard have been dismantled, however, and I suspect that they were not 'mantled' quickly enough under new Labor. What I heard today were a lot of people airing their (perfectly legitimate) grievances. Representative after representative gave anecdotes and incidents. There's so much hurt, and it needed space and time to be heard.

There was no airing of Jewish hurt, even though there was at least one representative of the Jewish community present* and things are tough right now. I think this is due to us having done the grievances thing before. We know that telling people about specific hurts is not going to change things and we just want to move on to substantive change. At least, that's why I think the Jewish community representative was quiet. It's why I was, way back when that representative was me. But not everyone has hurt starting back quite so far, and they are still moving through the stage of needing to explain. In fact, you could see migration patterns to Australia in what people voiced and how they described things.

I do wish that the organisers had turned the consultations into two batches: one for this essential process of having the hurt acknowledged and noted and documented and analysed ready to act on, and another for the strategy we were supposed to be working on.

This is why my notes morphed. I could see the storylines in what everyone was saying and I could put it together in terms of culture and in terms of where we are as a country and I could see what could be done to change things. I still have that part of my brain, then, even if I don't use it very often. I chatted with a couple of staffers over tea break and was sent to talk to a third. So I earned my coffee and biscuits.

We were given a quick response by the note-taking senior person and we were hustled out, as one is when Parliament House shuts at 5 pm and the officers have to clean up after us and walk us out the door. The moment we were outside the committee room, the chatting groups separated into people who knew each other outside. Someone couldn't wait to get into a conversation with the person I was talking to and so I walked out of Parliament House alone and got the dusk return walk (downhill!) through the gum trees and the oaks. I detoured via Magna Carta Place, just because I could. Also because an extra ten minutes meant I had a seat on the bus.

I so want to say something like, "And this, children, is Australian democracy at work." It wasn't a confidential meeting, though, so what I will say is I'm happy to talk more about it, if you have questions.




*Not me. I was still representing myself. That was such a strange feeling, not having constituents.