Dad's Confession

Verdy Marsh stood on the road waving us to stop. ‘Not again’ I thought. It wasn’t all that long since we had  been caught and now it looked like we had been sprung again. Perhaps we had but that is one thing I will never know. Let me explain.

For the first two or three years of high school I caught the school bus at the intersection of what is now known as South Bank Road Palmers Channel and the Maclean to Yamba road. This meant a bike ride of of around eight kilometers. In the morning I would usually meet up  with friends along the way and of course we rode home together in the afternoon. The community had built a shelter shed at the intersection and in those days there was no risk of anyone stealing our bikes through the day.

One incident I remember well, sometimes wondering how lucky I was to escape unscathed. On this particular morning I was racing one of the other boys and we were neck and neck. We shot across the intersection and there, next to the bus shed in a bit of a depression in the ground, lay a discarded and quite sizeable piece of  lumbar. Both I and my school case somersaulted over the handlebars and landed on the ground. But that was not the scariest thing. As we raced toward the intersection we couldn’t see if there was any traffic on the Maclean road because of the sugar cane growing on both sides of South Bank Road, and while it is possible we may have heard the traffic noise we were so engrossed in our battle that we may well not have.

Rocky Marshall and myself went through the smoking stage as boys were wont to do back then - and not only back then I imagine. Now I can’t remember if we puffed as we rode along the road or if we pulled over on the side somewhere. I do remember though that we hid our fags under the local hall which stood at the intersection of South Bank Road and Amos’s Lane - which just happened to be diagonally across the road from Verdy’s place.

One day I made the mistake of taking the fags home. The next morning I stuck them in the pocket of my school shorts - not a very smart thing to do - and walked out of my room, ready for school, with my hand stuck in my pocket to hide the bulge. ‘What do you have in your pocket, Kenneth?’ ‘Nothing Mum.’ ‘Come on, tell me.’ ‘Nothing Mum.’ After two or three goes Mum gave up and I doubt that she believed me, so she must have felt kindly disposed that day. The consequences of upsetting Mum were at times quite painful - for Mum certainly believed the old saying about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, only in Mum’s case it was a switch off the peach tree.

While I was at Wagga Wagga I took up smoking and kept it up for a few years - fortunately giving up before I left for Butterworth. Every time I came home Mum would be on my case over this and I remember her stealing a few cigarettes from the packet in the hope that it would mean I smoked less. This time I got a confession out of her when I confronted her with the accusation.

However smoking had nothing to do with the incident involving Verdy. Next door to Lance and Verdy Marsh’s place - whose son Peter was a bit younger than me - stood the original Marsh family home, built by John and Mary Ann Marsh after they took up their selection of land in 1869. While I can’t remember who lived there - other than they were members of the extended family - they had quite a good orchard next to the house. The thought of all that delicious fruit was a temptation that two hungry school boys could not resist. I am sure that we must have raided it on more than one occasion, but this day Verdy caught  us. We must have faced some punishment, but if so I can’t remember what it was.

It obviously wasn’t sufficient to deter us, this being the reason for my guilty feelings when pulled over again. Sadly, as it turned out, this was not the reason we had been stopped. Mum had only heard that day that her father had died and they had arranged with Verdy that she would look after my brother, who was still in primary school, and me until Mum and Dad could pick us up.

As the years passed the incident of the orchard came up from time to time as the family reminisced. It came up again not long before Dad died. And this time the truth came out.

The local swimming pool was opposite the local hall, being a fenced off section of Palmers Channel as was common practice in those days. One day Dad and a couple of his mates, being boys at the time, made their way from the pool via the Channel to the orchard. They also were caught. I only wish I had thought to ask him what he had thought when his son was found out repeating the offense.

I know this though. Since the day that Dad told me he had also been caught doing the same thing there has been something special about the incident for me. While I struggle to find the words to explain it it has in a way created another bond between us, knowing that there is at least one misdeed that we share in common.

Bullshit Mountain

Vic Rollinson had a piece titled Living on Bullshit Mountain published on the Independent Australia site on 30 Dec 12. I posted this in response on 1 Jan 13 - to add some balance to the  argument. I have made some minor grammatical corrections below.

Bullshit Mountain. Now you’ve really got me going.

Here we are in Australia, one of the best developed, wealthiest, educated and governed nations in the world. We have concepts of democracy, human rights and freedoms that can be traced back through Judeo/Christian and Grecian thought that have developed over centuries and millennium. This is in stark contrast to our near neighbours (with the exception of our Kiwi brothers and sisters) where we find an amazing array of religious and cultural expressions. Here we find fatalism, reincarnation, ancestor worship and no doubt a lot more. Some of these differences are quite significant and give these people different world views and values that at times really clash with ours.

Most Australians are so far removed from food production our only role in the food cycle is as over-consumers. Our diseases are largely those of opulence, in many cases preventable through diet, exercise, little or no alcohol and other drugs. Rather than change our lifestyles we look to an overtaxed and expensive health care system to keep us alive – not to mention the amount we spend on reproductive health so that we can put off having children until we have the house, plasma screen TV, four-wheel drive and trip around the world – unlike our grandparents who may have started their lives together sleeping on a mattress on the floor. All this in a seriously overpopulated world where far too many people die of starvation, suffer malnutrition, and lack access to clean water, basic health care and education. Women and children are forced into prostitution simply as a survival measure. It is nothing to do with their morality – it may say something about ours.

Among significant numbers of our near neighbours we find overpopulation, poverty, illiteracy and low levels of education, cultures working on the basis of honour and shame rather than the rule of secular law, and a religious view of life that sees as us morally decadent. The reality is if you have loose change in your pocket you possibly stand with the top ten per cent in terms of wealth in the world and definitely in the top twenty.

A large number of our neighbours are not into those things that Maslow identified at the top of his hierarchy – meaning, purpose, self-actualisation. Theirs is the day-to-day struggle to stay alive, feed themselves and their kids and to provide some basic shelter.

Our neighbours have lived with the tensions of racial, religious and sectarian differences for centuries. In contrast, our forebears established this nation as a bastion of British civilization in the Pacific, determined to maintain our racial purity through the White Australia Policy. These same forebears – well, some at least because there were those with different views – hunted down our indigenous people as if they were vermin less than 200 years ago. And in the 1950s before we dropped the bomb at Maralinga we counted the cattle – but not the aborigines – which probably meant we considered the former to have greater value. And, as inheritors of this outpost of British civilisation in the South Pacific we should we remind ourselves it wasn’t all that long ago within the timespan of human history that our British culture sent the gunboats to China to make sure they would buy our opium despite the serious social problems that caused.

During WW2 we took some refugees from Asia but after the war our immigration minister Arthur Caldwell sought to have them returned whence they had come. Caldwell recognised the need to ‘populate or perish’, but that meant with good white folk – although the Chifley Government did allow the right non-Europeans to settle for business reasons. In 1949 Holt, as Immigration Minister in the Menzies Government allowed the remaining Asian refugees to stay. Over the next two to three decades the White Australian policy was dismantled. Non-Europeans with 15 years or more residency could obtain citizenship from 1957 on. The policy was effectively dismantled by the Holt Government, ended legally under Whitlam, and Fraser removed its last vestiges. (Wikipedia on the White Australia Policy).

Back in opposition Whitlam was initially reluctant to accept an influx of Vietnamese refugees but with Fraser’s leadership in this area Whitlam and then Hayden came on board. (http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=29418).

While all this was going on our neighbours were emerging from long periods of Western colonization which, as we all know, was not driven by any altruistic concern for the colonized. It left in some areas at least major social and political challenges. And just as the wealth of the British – and others – empire was built upon the exploitation of the colonies our lifestyles today are largely built upon the exploitation of the developing world and the land grabs of our pioneers.

Whitlam recognised the importance of Asia and as opposition leader announced his policy to recognise Communist China – and was attacked by Prime Minister McMahon for doing so. In Government Whitlam carried through on his policy and Fraser’s first overseas trip as Prime Minister was to China and Japan. (Wikipedia on McMahon and http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=29418).

Now our political leaders – Gillard and Abbott – tell us we need to engage with Asia. This is the Asian century so let’s get on the bandwagon. Well Keating didn’t help with his ‘recalcitrant’ remark – although he did introduce a new word to my vocabulary and it may have been a heat of the moment thing. Then along came Howard and some Asian leaders saw him as – well, we could say, unenlightened.

So how do our current lot do?

First, we have a debate on asylum seekers – a legitimate debate and one that we should have. But our leaders have a domestic audience to play to – one with legitimate fears of the unknown – especially religious extremism - who themselves are struggling to keep up with rapid change, to make ends meet and believe charity begins at home, and, yes, plain old-fashioned (then again has it ever been out of fashion in some quarters) racism. So in the middle of all the crocodile tears that are shed on this issue the Greens and the Coalition let the world know that Malaysia is not a fit and proper place to send these people we really care about because of their poor record (or is it atrocious) on human rights.

Malaysia is a country which, if you know anything of its history, has in the relatively short period since independence faced some significant domestic challenges and deserves credit for the progress it has made. It still has a long way – as do we all – to come but, hate to say it, this domestic debate can only be seen by them as a kick in the teeth.

And on this matter, Gillard should perhaps have had a talk to Fraser and some of his cabinet colleagues from the Vietnam era. They didn’t take too kindly to finding out on the morning’s news report what the latest US policy on Vietnam was – and we were their friend and ally. At least consult with our neighbours first before making pronouncements on regional solutions.

One point on the Greens – I do believe they are sincere in their concern for asylum seekers but I am not convinced that either of the major parties is.

Then there is the matter of live meat exports. Animal cruelty is abhorrent in more forms than the slaughter of cattle. How many of us think about factory farms and battery hens? I hate the sight of semi-trailer loads of chickens being taken to wherever and am not a fan of transportation of cattle over long distances in couped up conditions – which is one reason I feel good about buying what I hope are free-range eggs and rarely eating meat.

But what message does this well-developed, educated nation of over consumers living on easy street – yes, I would say even our pensioners, when compared to the majority world, have it easy – send to people struggling to survive with their well-entrenched cultural expectations about how meat is slaughtered.

But, you may say, didn’t we explain to them our slaughter protocols and didn’t they say they would do it?

Asian’s place high value on ‘face’. If an Asian entrenched in this culture is given an instruction they do not understand, they will not seek clarification. To do so is to lose face. Furthermore, this culture will tell you what they think you want to hear – not what they intend to do. I lived in Asia for five years and never got used to this. ‘When will my bike be fixed?’ ‘Tomorrow can.’ And as the ‘tomorrows’ rolled into weeks and months it became more and more frustrating – so maybe I shouldn’t be too hard on Keating for his ‘recalcitrant’ comment.

And yes – maybe our export companies could be more diligent in their audits and inspection, but perhaps they also are learning to engage with Asia (profit motive aside).

So, Ms Gillard, Mr Abbott, and others, do we really want to engage in Asia. Or are we simply, all of us, climbing Bullshit Mountain?

Ken Marsh (BSA)

Thoughts on Marriage Equality

Some comments on marriage equality. The following is cut and pasted from an on-line discussion between Tess Lawrence,contributing editor-at-large and and myself in response to an article by Tess regarding Malcolm Turnbull and the subject on 9th July 2012.

Ken Marsh        
       
If the origins of the marriage act are as I once heard related by a lawyer, then the marriage act is more about lust than love. Once upon a time there was no marriage act and young men and women, doing what came naturally, got married according to social custom.

However, there was a certain class of man, his Lordship, who had a habbit of visiting the village maidens in the evening and upon his death it was not uncommon for a young man from the village to knock upon the door of the manor to inform her ladyship that he was there to seek his share of the inheritance – a most distressing matter no doubt for her Ladyship and the rightful heirs of his Lordship. And so the good Lords and Ladies of the land thought it good that there be a legitimisation of marriage act to protect their property from the servant class.

And now there be moves in the land to amend the marriage act – an act that in its genesis was to do with property protection, not love – and there be heated debate. But the said debate simply seeks to legitimise a variant of the existing without recognising other forms of marriages that may exist in cultural groups within our land that members of those cultural groups may wish to have recognised.

For if we are to be a multicultural society should we not recognise these aspects of the society and provided culturally recognised marriages are entered into willingly and there are adequate protections for the rights of those within those marriages, then we still continue to discriminate. What currently do we say to a refugee family that may reflect a culturally acceptable form of marriage in their land of origin when they arrive – only one of your wives has legal protection/sanction?

As to the Hagar story – a socially acceptable form of surrogacy at the time, not condoned or commanded by the Almighty, a fact made clear by reading the story.

And as for ‘yuk’ terms, what about ‘illegitimate’ children? There may be illegitimate acts – rape, incest – but there is not such thing as an illegitimate child. And ‘love’ child? If a child is born from a loving relationship – two people that love and respect one another regardless of marriage status – yes. But from a one night stand, a relationship (married or not) where one is abused and used by the other,etc. no way. Sorry, but the idea of labelling kids because of the actions of the parents rubs me the wrong way – and no doubt has its origins in the ‘Legitimisation of Marriage’ Act.
       
               
           
TESS LAWRENCE    
    
Dear KEN MARSH, you should be on QANDA – what a fascinating comment.
I’ll go to the end first, because I so agree with you. There are NO illegitimate children!
I have always found the increasing number of annulments in the Catholic Church repugnant, because they bastardise any children of the marriage.

Re the Hagar story – and in some circles, perfectly acceptable today, as we well know.

For Catholics, the Virgin Mary is surely the ultimate Surrogate.

Re the aristocracy dipping their toffy wicks below stairs, etc, well one only has to look at the number of Fitzherberts, Fitzgibbons and Fitzroys ( children of the King ) to know that at least, some of those born ‘ out of wedlock ‘ were formerly acknowledged.

Ken Marsh


Tess, all those ‘Fitz’s’ – born of noble women or serving wenches? Perhaps there was a difference.

Courtesy of a show on the ABC (Australian Story?)some time back, it seems the position of Royal Mistress was (is) one highly desired by some. And if one holds that position when His Majesty comes visiting the Lord of the Manor will pursue the manly sport of hunting while the Lady of the Manor entertains His Majesty.

On the subject of cultural marriages I have a friend, a medical specialist, who comes from Africa and has a Muslim background. His father had four wifes and it was not until my friend was 6 or 7 that he knew which of the four was his biological mother. The way he tells it he had a happy childhood.

The Christian missionary came and convinced his father to become a Christian. There was a condition – divorce three of his wives. The father never became a Christian. He could not see how a God of love would require that, for in his country the divorced wives would, in all probability, be forced to prostitute themselves to feed themselves and their kids.
               

TESS LAWRENCE        
       
Dear KEN MARSH, thanks for your comment that raises so many wonderful discussion points.

Perhaps you could share some light on the subject of the notion of men having multiple wives.

How is it that there seem to be few societies where it is acceptable for women to formally acquire four husbands simultaneously?

               
TESS LAWRENCE        

Dear KEN MARSH, from today’s AGE online: –
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/concerns-over-mosque-leaders-polygamy-post-20120711-21uu8.html

Ken Marsh        
          
Dear Tess, the answer to your first question is simple. Same reason women in our culture still struggle for equality. I have no doubt that one reason is that of male status/dominant male. And in a society where there is no social security and women without a protector male have no support for them or their children the idea of being one of the four may be very attractive. The relationship with the dominant male may provide better security for the woman and her children than life with the poor man. And then there may simply in some cases be a shortage or men. All social factors.

Thanks for the link. I believe it supports my position. Women need to be able to enter the relationship freely and if there is a move away from polygamy in Islamic countries it may for some of the reasons given be seen unattractive here. Our social security system – not being one that I would want to be totally dependent on – at least gives some support that makes polygamy less of an economic necessity.

Violence? Happens in monogamous relationships and one has to question what impact on kids our socially accepted serial monogamy has. In some cases the whole relationship breakdown between parents, the intrusion of another etc sees kids treated as bargaining chips, unwanted encumbrances etc. It is not only polygamous relationships that have these problems.

If it were legalised it would help remove the stigma and might encourage more women from these cultures to come forward and for the matter, if need be, handled in the family court. If there was a will I am sure ways could be found to work with communities affected to work through the issues.

Then there is the legal reality. There is nothing in this country that prevents me living in what for all intents and purposes a polygamous relationship so long as I do not seek to formalise it. There is no law and no legal sanction against adultery – and that hurts people, including kids. So if allowing these relationships to be formalised and giving all parties the protections that exist in marriage, including the right to nominate beneficiaries to superannuation and make claims against an estate, we may actually end up with a fairer and more equal and decent society.

Do I live in this type of relationship myself or would I? No. I hold to what I see as the Christian ideal – one man, one woman, for life. But that is a personal belief I do not believe I have the right to impose on others through political sanction. Regarding Gay marriage, I have read stories of gay people that tell of their struggles to come to grips with their sexuality and to be treated as human beings that I have found quite moving. In a secular society we need to extend to them all the protections and rights of the law as other people.


TESS LAWRENCE        
       
Dear KEN MARSH, you are a man of reason and fascinating discourse.

And a great philosopher too and it saddens me that philosophy has been degraded in our education, daily life and work systems,let alone politics.

Reading your words about people already living in polygamous relationships, made me think of a case I am aware of, where the male has impregnated a number of women. At least five of those women and their children are on welfare benefits. This male is not married to any of these women. The community of course, is paying for those welfare benefits. Whilst this may be galling to some,the conduct of their parents is not the fault of the children, surely. In this sense,society has a duty of care for children. All children.

For the Children

In her first year as a member of the Australian Girls’ Choir my daughter learnt an environmental hymn, ‘For the Children’. Through the words of this song we are challenged to preserve the beauty and diversity of the creation for future generations. Salination, polluted and silted waterways, growing problems with waste disposal and a growing number of species on the endangered and threatened lists are current realities. Although scientists are divided over the issue, there is a real possibility that human activity is contributing to global warming.

In the book ‘Corporate Collapse’ Steven Cohen and Damien Grace argue that increased regulation is not the answer to unethical corporate behaviour. Fundamental to an organisation achieving high ethical standards is a desire and commitment from the top to do so. Regulation has a role. Sydney-siders have been warned for some time of dwindling water supplies. Water restrictions with their accompanying threat of fines will encourage some of us to become more frugal consumers. Real changes in the way we care for our environment will only take place when we have a genuine desire for and commitment to its care.

We all know things we can do to be more environmentally responsible. Unfortunately it is sometimes cheaper and more convenient to do otherwise. Green power and green bags cost more – and you have to remember to take the bags. The car is often quicker and more convenient than public transport. While all of us can and should make an effort to reduce our environmental impact our response will be determined to some extent by our economic and other circumstances. There is one thing we can all do that would have a significant impact.

Neil Nedley’s book “Proof Positive: How to Reliably Combat Disease and Achieve Optimal Health through Nutrition and Lifestyle” contains the following data – converted from Imperial to Metric. It takes 4.8 kg of feed to produce 1 kg of beef. Every kilogram of beef requires 3564 litres of water, compared to 574 litres for a kilogram of wheat. If the total world population consumed meat at a similar rate to that in America or Australia world grain production would need to increase by 150% over current production for all purposes. Livestock produce between 15-20% of the world’s total methane production – one of the three major green house gases. Livestock production is linked to deforestation and the loss of habitat, soil erosion, river siltation and pollution. A marked reduction in meat consumption would have significant environmental benefits and result in improved health outcomes simultaneously.

My daughter enjoys visiting the zoo. As I walk around the enclosures I am saddened to see the number of animals whose survival is threatened. What legacy are we leaving our children and our children’s children? Will they thank us if the only experience they have of pandas, tigers and koalas is in a virtual reality zoo? The choices we make today will determine the legacy we leave future generations.

(September 2003)