Progressive culture since 1954
In a piece for Griffith Review’s recent edition on ‘Fixing the System’, Gabrielle Carey muses that Australia does not have a strong essayist tradition, and suggests that our ‘zealous commitment to egalitarianism’ might play a role, noting that ‘[i]f all people and opinions are equal, then there is no room for giving authority to a person or allowing them to lead the conversation’. This is an interesting theory, but I’m not sure about it.
It’s the largest document leak in history: 11.5 million files and 2.6 terabytes of information detailing how our global elite avoid their responsibility to the rest of us. The Panama Papers have allowed us to peek behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain and glimpse the very mortal old men pulling the levers of state. But we already know they play by different rules. We have long known, for instance, that the global elite use tax havens. Yet, what’s truly damaging about these leaks is that they demystify the process.
On my first visit some twenty years ago I was astounded to discover that people in Queensland are active outside their homes before work starts. Imagine that! Free of the tyranny of daylight savings time, their lives are not unnaturally skewed towards the evening; they are not artificially coerced into late-night shopping at Pacific Fair or double-dipping during happy hour at the Keg and Prawn.
Darling Street, one last time. Over the crow-black tarmac, under the linden branches where cicadas abandon their clinging husks, beyond the footpath and the unfenced lawn – leveled now, you notice, humps, divots, desert patches all effaced – is the house you came all this way, all these ways, round the world, back through time, on a bus, down Darling Street to see.
