21 years

This time 21 years ago, I was hauled off to the Mercy hospital in the early stages of labour. Not yet twenty-one myself, suddenly it hit me, I was about to become a mother.

I remember telling the midwife that I wanted to go home. I've changed my mind, I said, I don't think I can go through with this.

Having seen this kind of thing before, she gently touched my hand and said, it will all be second nature once your baby is here.

Just before my father had passed away some four months earlier, he told me that having this baby would be the most perfect thing I'd ever do.

Fast forward 21 years and I certainly can't say it has been perfect... I've made a ton of mistakes along the way, but in so many ways I was still a child figuring things out myself.

And yet, despite my fears, and lack of life experience, from the second my baby boy was born, I knew that all I wanted to do was love him.

It's a funny thing how one moment you only have yourself to contend with and then the next minute you are catapulted into motherhood.

I had barely been able to take care of myself up until that point and then suddenly I was taking responsibility for this tiny, helpless being.

But the midwife was right. From the moment Jaiden was born I became overwhelmed with a primal need to protect him and I knew that I would move heaven and earth to keep him safe.

It's almost impossible to believe that 21 years have passed since that night in the hospital. That next morning and the hours and days that followed remain permanently etched in my mind. I can still recall the way it felt to be so fundamentally needed.

He depended on me for everything and though I'd been entirely self-absorbed up until that point, I was humbled by the experience and I absolutely loved being his mum. I still do...

After being a mum for so long it is an adjustment when your kids grow up and forge their independence. I am not needed like I was when my boy was little and that's the way it's supposed to go.

If you do your job right and I have done mine to the best of my ability, then they eventually saddle off into the world as capable adults.

But watching your kids grow up is a very bitter sweet experience. When they are born we cannot wait to tick off all the important steps and milestones and yet when they grow up we cannot help but feel nostalgic for the past.

Every birthday takes us that bit further away from the beginning and there is a strange sense of loss that sits side by side the pride we feel in our hearts.

I couldn't be more proud of my son and I wouldn't choose a different experience. He is everything I hoped he would be, and more incredible than I could have even imagined.

But on this eve of his 21st birthday, the biggest milestone of them all, I find myself feeling nostalgic and perhaps a little melancholy about how quickly those 21 years went by.

Happy 21st birthday Jaiden James. I love you.

The Forced Closure of Remote Indigenous Communities: Another Racist Policy

The forced closure of remote Aboriginal communities is being touted as a necessary decision by the West Australian Government.

Last year, WA Premier, Colin Barnett announced his plans to close 150 of the 274 remote Aboriginal communities after the Federal Government decided it would no longer foot the bill for municipal and essential services to remote communities.

These services, which include the provision of remote housing in WA, Tasmania and Victoria, are said to cost the Federal Government $1 billion annually. Yet despite being offered an additional $90 million over two years, the WA Government has argued that it will not continue to service these communities as they are no longer economically viable.

Since the time of colonisation, Indigenous Australians have had to deal with the consequences of racism and racist policies. The forced removal of Aboriginal children and the practice of white assimilation may be policies of the past, yet they have caused intergenerational damage to Aboriginal families. The incarceration of an entire generation of Aboriginal men and the continuing tragedy of Aboriginal deaths in custody; higher than average rates of suicide, and the cycle of drug and alcohol dependence all occur as a direct result of continued dispossession and disillusionment.

This forced closure of Indigenous communities is another racist policy that would never be applied to white Australians. This decision harks back to a time of colonial dispossession when many Aboriginal people were uprooted and displaced. Those that survived the massacres were forced to work for white farmers or move to town camps. It wasn't until the 1970's that Aboriginal people were able to return to their 'country' and communities were established.

To force Aboriginal people out of their communities is not only a racist policy, but one that breaches the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a declaration endorsed by Australia in 2009.

In accordance with the declaration, governments and corporations are expected to negotiate with, and obtain consent of Indigenous peoples before taking actions that affect them.

The decision to close these communities breaches a number of rights in this declaration, including the people's right to their land, and the rights of people to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

According to article 8: States shall provide effective mechanisms for the prevention of, and readdress for:
B). Any action which has the aim or effect of dispossessing them from their lands, territories or resources;
C). Any form of forced population transfer;
D). Any form of forced assimilation or integration.

Article 10 states: "Indigenous peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent of the peoples concerned, and after agreement on fair and just compensation, and where possible, with the option of return".  

Living on community is integral to the identity, health and mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of Aboriginal people who have continued to defend their right to live on their land. Irrespective of the small size and remote location of these communities, it remains unconscionable to force people to leave their homes and be once again uprooted from 'country'. And while these are the decisions of the WA Government, they arise from decisions of the Federal Government in their attempt to shift the financial responsibility.

If this is truly an issue of sustainability and viability, then the potential psychosocial costs to Aboriginal people must also be taken into account. Governments have a duty of care to ensure that their actions do not adversely affect the outcomes of all Australian people. More importantly, the Federal Government has a responsibility to uphold the conditions of the United Nations Declaration and to ensure that Indigenous Australians are never again subjected to the sort of racist policies that have underpinned our country's history and ruined so many lives.

Goddess Syndrome. Real disorder or just a cry for help?

Living in the Rainbow Region for the last eight years has opened my eyes to a new epidemic  ... That's right, I'm talking about 'Goddess Syndrome'!  

Although you will not find this syndrome in the current DSM-IV, Goddess Syndrome (GS) is nevertheless a very real disorder in which self-centred, narcissistic women attempt to hide their misery behind the facade of a fictional loving, self-empowered goddess. 

Women afflicted with GS will often try to lure other naive women into an empowerment circle by offering free or inexpensive seminar's entitled ' Awakening your Kundalini Energy' or 'Discover the Goddess Within'.  Sometimes they will also refer to these gatherings as conferences. 

GS women will frequently use terms such as, blessings, chakras, abundance, healing, gratitude, energy and manifest  - even when these words clearly do not belong in a sentence. 

Although GS sufferers rarely work, they appear to have an endless source of income which they use to finance regular trips to India and Bali. 

Women afflicted with GS are forever leaving their children with people they just met so they can go off and attend the latest dance workshop or healing seminar on tantra, shamanism or reiki. 

Due to the nature of this syndrome, GS sufferers do not realise they are being manipulated by high class charlatans, fraudsters and gurus, and nor do they realise that they like to manipulate others.  

Sufferers will do anything and everything to manifest goddess reality, including taking what they can from others repeatedly, without ever giving back. 

Recent research has found that frequent trips to Bali are often a cry for help for GS sufferers who can become easily bored and agitated in their day-to-day surroundings, particularly if their rental does not include a pool.  

Although the dreaded Goddess Syndrome does not discriminate against age, it does seem to affect white middle-class women more frequently and particularly those who have come from affluent backgrounds. 

A strong sense of self-entitlement and self-interest does seem to be a key determinant in the onset of this disorder. 

The typical goddesses home environment is laden with crystals, astrology charts and Native American artefacts sourced from China or Indonesia. On the coffee table there are often open decks of angel and / or unicorn cards, and a well thumbed copy of 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne.  

The strong scent of Nag Champa will often permeate the GS home alongside the stale smell of body odour. GS people are strongly opposed to deodorants and any other harsh chemicals that may harm the environment.

Although GS sufferers do not follow a prescribed religion, they do follow the Hindu tradition of vegetarianism and / or veganism. During times of fasting (also known as a full-body juice cleanse) many GS women also swear off alcohol consumption. (Although I have seen some of these ladies down a keg of chardonnay on a lonely Friday night). 

One key feature of GS is delusional or magical thinking. The belief that everything happens for a reason is crucial to GS sufferers who constantly look for ways to confirm this belief to themselves and anyone else who will listen. Please see example 1. below. 

Example 1: 

Goddess A: My rich father had two spare tickets to Bali next month and he just gave them to me! 

Goddess B: That's so amazing! My guru is going to be in Bali next month and I have been trying to manifest a free ticket! 

Goddess A: No way! You should totally come with me... I am so over my current guru and I've been putting out for another one to come my way! 

Goddess A & B in unison: Everything happens for a reason!!!! 

Due to their strong belief systems, GS sufferers are commonly allergic to any negativity or anything that doesn't correspond with their magical positive world view. As such, world news and current affairs can be damaging. 

If you start talking about Gaza, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan or any world event where good people are suffering for no good reason, GS women may actually start to twitch and in some rare cases their eyes may roll back in their heads. This is not recommended. Logic and reason have no place in the GS mindset so keep the negative world speak to an absolute minimum so as not to burst the magical white, western, middle-class bubble.  

Research shows that many GS women lack the ability to discipline their children due to their heightened fear of the word 'NO'. Years of magical thinking has led to the false belief that discipline equals negativity and any negativity will damage the child's soul, spirit, psyche. 

The children of GS sufferers are generally raised vegan or vegetarian and as such, they are easily recognisable due to their pasty, white complexions and constant snotty noses. 

These children are also commonly deprived of regular kid things such as chicken nuggets, chocolate and television and instead, they are given substitutes such as soy hot dogs, carob and German handmade wooden toys.

While there is no evidence of harm to these GS children, studies do show a decrease in vitamin B and an increase in self-entitlement and obnoxious behaviour. 

GS children are also easily identifiable by their constant whining and complaining. They are often found climbing on other people's furniture; punching or kicking other people's children and animals; biting, screaming, spitting, running or throwing themselves aggressively on the ground for no good reason. 

If you see a GS child doing any of these things - please do not try to intervene. It is likely you will be accused of trying to stop them from expressing their emotions / individuality. 

Instead of trying to scold the child in an attempt to stop him from throwing lit matches at your face, simply step aside and wait until the GS mother steps in. She will commonly try to resolve his bad behaviour by kissing him, praising him or patting him lovingly on the head - techniques she acquired from her tantric sacred mothers conference in Ubud last year. 

Unfortunately there is no cure for GS at present. However, through fundraising events, such as vegan sausage sizzles and carob chocolate drives, we hope to one day bring an end to the pointless suffering imposed on those poor souls who know someone with this illness.   

If you or anyone you know is suffering from GS please see your GP immediately... 

Yes you could also see your Herbalist / Naturopath/Reiki Master/ Acupuncturist/ Kinesiologist/Bowen Practitioner/ Energy Worker etc.

Alternatively, turn on your bloody television and get a regular dose of world news. 

Blessings.... And Om-shanti-Om. 

If you identify with this post then that is purely coincidental! This is a satirical 'tongue in cheek' fictional observation and not intended to upset anyone.
____________

I Stand For Mercy

Like so many of you who stand for mercy, I vehemently oppose the legal execution of my fellow Australians, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

While I do not excuse the seriousness of their crimes, or diminish the potential impact their actions had on the wider community, I cannot in any good conscience disregard the value of human life in order to justify state sanctioned murder. 


The primary objective of modern day capital punishment is to act as a deterrent, however in places like Indonesia where drug smuggling has long been punishable by death, the rate of trafficking has not ceased or diminished.   


Capital punishment is an archaic and barbaric practice, deeply rooted in the ethos of retribution and revenge and in any modern, civil society, there is simply no good argument that can hold up in its favour. 

We know now from DNA testing that an incomprehensible number of innocent people, (predominately African Americans) have been wrongly executed in places like Texas. If capital punishment was still practiced in Australia then an infinite number of Indigenous people would have been executed and Lindy Chamberlain would not be alive today. 

In 2005, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death in Indonesia for attempting to smuggle heroin from Bali into Australia, as part of a group dubbed The Bali Nine. Both Chan and Sukumaran were infamously singled out as the ringleaders of the group by the mainstream Australian media; a title which ultimately helped secure the death penalty sentence. 

Although the real king pins behind the Bali Nine smuggling operation have never actually been caught, both Chan and Sukumaran have spent ten torturous years languishing in a Balinese prison. And yet even in these impossibly dark and hopeless circumstances, the men have managed to find hope and enough light to turn their lives around and show clear signs of remorse and rehabilitation. 




Chan has turned to prayer and counselling, showing remarkable acts of compassion for fellow prisoners, while Sukumaran has found solace and confidence in portraiture and art. Both men are not the same people they were a decade ago and yet all efforts to learn and grow from their mistakes have been entirely disregarded. 

Despite the legal appeals for clemency and the growing pleas for mercy, it appears unlikely that the two Australians will be granted a final reprieve. And while talks are continuing between Canberra and Jakarta, the new Indonesian President, Joko Widodo has made it virtually impossible for the Australian Government to negotiate a pardon. 

Ironically, clemency was actually granted for Chan and Sukumaran under the previous Indonesian Government when the two men were informally granted the right to serve out their sentences on death row. However, in a cruel twist of fate, the new Indonesian President has cracked down on all prisoners convicted of drug offences, stating that there will be no pardon given to those currently serving sentences on death row. 

If anything, the new Indonesian Government should be marketing its ability to rehabilitate death row prisoners such as Chan and Sukumaran; an achievement rarely seen in other prisons around the world. 

Both men are now in a prime position to educate Juvenile offenders caught up in the Indonesian drug scene, and potentially prevent them from making similar mistakes. Rehabilitated prisoners like Chan and Sukumaran form a very real and proactive model with which to fight the war on drugs, and yet instead of harnessing their potential, the government is finalising plans to fire bullets into their hearts. 

In an attempt to sway President Joko Widodo, foreign Minister, Julie Bishop has warned that Australians may be forced to boycott Indonesia if the executions of Chan and Sukumaran go ahead.



 "I think the Australian people will demonstrate their deep disapproval of this action, including by making decisions about where they wish to holiday," she said.




While I can understand Julie Bishop's desire to enlist Australians against the Indonesian Government, I don't think it is wise to discourage Australians from travelling to Indonesia, particularly when the vast majority of Australians tend to migrate to Bali. 



Statements such as these will not alter the decisions made by officials in Jakarta, but they do have the potential to threaten Bali's tourism industry and in turn disrupt the livelihood of many Balinese. 

The 2002 Bali bombing had many ramifications for the tourism industry in Indonesia but for Bali, the attack ripped the heart out of the island’s tourism industry. In 2002, over 40% of the Balinese working population was employed directly or indirectly by the tourism industry.  

In the aftermath of the Bali bombing, international tourism arrival to Bali plummeted and it took well over a year for tourism to show signs of recovery. To boycott travel to Bali in an attempt to punish the Indonesian Government will only backfire in the faces of the gentle Balinese people who are incidentally opposed to capital punishment. 

Although the general population of Indonesia is predominately Muslim, over 90% of Balinese people identify as Hindu. And while there is no official Hindu line on capital punishment, Hinduism opposes killing, violence and revenge, and most Hindu people oppose capital punishment. 




In an interview that aired on Four Corners last week on the case of Chan and Sukumaran, Balinese people were asked what they thought about the case. Every single person was opposed to the executions and some said they were afraid that if this went ahead, the number of Australians coming to Bali would decrease. 

I spent time in Bali just days before the Bali Bombings and again a few years later, and the main thing that had changed was a newfound sense of fear that their lives could be upended by another event that stopped people from visiting the island. 




If the Australian Government is serious about putting pressure on Indonesia to stop the executions then they should not be doing so at a cost to the Balinese people. There are other ways to affect change and they might start by examining why the Australian Federal Police appeared on Four Corners last week stating that they would not do anything differently if the same situation presented itself again. 




The AFP acted following a tip off by the father of Scott Rush, one of the younger Bali Nine members. Mr. Rush phoned the AFP to warn them that his son was about to do something stupid, but he made that call in a desperate attempt to protect his son from being caught trafficking drugs through Indonesia. 




However, instead of intervening to protect the boy from being arrested in a country that executes drug traffickers, the AFP alerted the Indonesian authorities about their suspicions. Instead of waiting to arrest the group once they had landed in Australia, the AFP effectively handed the group over to the Indonesian authorities. 




Since then, the Australian Government has had ten years to put pressure on the Indonesian Government to pardon Chan and Sukumaran. Why they waited until the final hour is beyond me. 

I can only assume that they were acting on the good faith of the previous Indonesian President, on an assurance that the men would live out their sentences in prison. If the new president does indeed ignore the Australian Government pleas for clemency then it is up to the Australian Government to respond in a manner that hurts the Indonesian Government, and not the people. 




Nothing good can come from this nightmare, not for the families of Chan and Sukumaran or for Indonesia.  Killing these two men will not dent the war on drugs, and the drug deaths and overdoses will continue to plague the country until they begin to rethink their entire approach to drug reform. 




Addiction is treated as a criminal issue and so we have prisons overflowing with addicts who were arrested in the throws of their disease. In actual fact, addiction is a health issue and one that warrants a radically new approach, not just in Indonesia but also in Australia and the US and the UK and in all countries where the war on drugs is failing. 




Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are not bad people. They are not cruel, evil, violent men who cannot feel remorse or be rehabilitated. They made a mistake, a costly mistake at a time when they were young, stupid, bulletproof, but they have been paying for that mistake for the last 10 years. They could so easily be my son; your son, friend, nephew or brother and they do not deserve to pay for their mistake with their lives. 

How a mentally ill man was able to bring Sydney to a grinding halt.

Like so many Australians, I watched in horror and disbelief as the siege in Sydney's Martin Place unfolded on Monday morning. At around 10am, we were told that a gunman had stormed the Lindt Cafe in Sydney's CBD taking between 15 and 50 hostages. Within an hour, Sydney was in a state of emergency lockdown. People on the floors above the cafe were escorted down ladders to safety, and the channel 7 offices, directly across the road from the Lindt cafe, were emptied of staff. Elsewhere in the CBD, people were forced to remain indoors and the Opera House was immediately closed and evacuated. Emergency services, special forces units and the bomb squad were mobilised around the perimeter of the cafe, and hostage negotiators were put in place. 

The highly sophisticated security measures were praised for providing safety and reassurance to a frightened and bewildered public, but they also fed into the false and misleading narrative that Sydney was under attack. 

Little was known about the gunman or his motive until much later that day, however to some news sources, the mere presence of a black flag with white Islamic writing was ample confirmation of an ISIS terrorist attack. Rupert Murdoch's 'Daily Telegraph' reported the siege as an attack by the IS Death Cult in its 2pm edition, despite failing to validate this information. Throughout the 16 hour siege, interviews with terrorism experts were screened on the ABC, SBS and all commercial stations. Analysts likened the siege to the London, Madrid and Boston terrorist attacks, even long after the police had ruled out links between the gunman and terrorist networks.  

By mid afternoon, the gunman was publicly identified as Man Harin Monis, a lone wolf previously known to police for his incredibly checkered criminal past, including the suspected brutal murder of his ex- wife, and 40 charges of sexual assault. The media were also quick to inform us that Monis was also an Iranian Refugee in receipt of Centrelink benefits; a self- appointed Islamic Cleric; a self-styled Islamic Sheikh and an Islamic extremist. 

The fact that Monis had a long history of violence against women was nowhere near as compelling as his history with religious extremism, especially when the latter could be positioned to justify a terrorist agenda.  The letters Monis sent to the families of slain Australian soldiers were undoubtedly reprehensible but so too was the brutal murder of his ex-wife and the string of sexual assaults against women. However, these crimes failed to rate a mention in the Prime Minister's press briefing, presumably because they didn't fit the convenient terrorist profile. 

"What we do know is that the perpetrator was well known to State and Commonwealth authorities. He had a long history of violent crime, infatuation with extremism and mental instability. We know that he sent offensive letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan and was found guilty of offences related to this. We also know that he posted graphic extremist material online. As the siege unfolded yesterday, he sought to cloak his actions with the symbolism of the ISIL death cult." Tony Abbott. 

Tony Abbott's decision to use words such as, 'ISIL', 'death cult', 'terror' and 'extremism'  in his subsequent press briefings was certainly not accidental. Abbott later described the siege as a 'brush with terrorism' despite knowing that Monis was a mentally deranged individual acting alone. And in the aftermath of the siege on Tuesday when the facts were well established, the Prime Minister repeatedly lamented the fact that Monis was not on any of the terror watch lists. This statement seemed dubious to me until I realised that the terrorist narrative was playing right into the government's hands in terms of its asylum seeker policy, anti terror laws and its views on meta data retention. Any future decisions or changes to legislation could be justified under the pretence that Man Haron Monis the terrorist / refugee had slipped through the cracks of a broken system. 

And it didn't end there. In the wake of the Martin Place siege, the NSW police commissioner reactivated Operation Hammerhead, which saw an increased police presence on Sydney's streets despite the fact that Man Haron Monis was dead and city was no more or less dangerous than it was on the day prior to the tragedy. One officer described the fear on people's faces as he walked around the CBD, saying 'the public are visibly scared and you can see it in their eyes'. Conceivably, the increased police presence would be the very thing driving up public fear, however real or imagined the threat may be.  

There is no denying that this despicable event had a sobering effect on the people of Sydney and the wider Australian community. This has been observed in the outpouring of grief and support for the hostages and their families and in the impressive array of floral tributes that continue to grow in Martin Place. However, perhaps the most positive thing to emerge from the tragedy is the #illridewithyou campaign. The campaign sprung to life after a female Sydney commuter offered to ride with a Muslim woman on the train after she was seen removing her Hijab in fear of a racist retaliation. The gesture resulted with the hashtag trending worldwide and it was still trending three days later. 

That the tragedy appears to have galvanised the wider community to unite against acts of racism, at least on public transport, is a good thing.  However, #illridewithyou is speaking to a very specific kind of racism; the same kind of Islamophobia that is drummed up and pushed along by people like Tony Abbott and Rupert Murdoch, along with other factions of the media in any given news cycle. Seeking to paint Monis as a terrorist may have backfired in the faces of those who were invested in its success, but we must ask ourselves why the Mulsim / Terrorist narrative was eager to gain so much traction in the first place. 

The fact is, Monis' is dead and we will never know why he did what he did. But from everything we do know, it seems unlikely that his actions were driven by political or religious motivation, but rather by his own personal grievances with the system. We know that he had grievances with the courts over his conviction for writing letters and he had very recently taken those grievances all the way to the high court where his case was subsequently thrown out. Following his High Court appearance, there was no further legal recourse for Monis to have those grievances heard. Monis also had grievances over the way he was treated (he says tortured) in prison and he had taken to the streets in the past to air those grievances to the media. Given that one of his requests was to speak to Tony Abbott, it's highly possible that he used the siege as an attempt to air those grievances to the Prime Minister. 

No matter which way you look at it, this was clearly a deeply disturbed individual, who orchestrated a particularly evil act and he should not have been allowed on the streets, let alone permitted to hold a gun license. However, that more weight has been given to his religious affiliation than his mental instability or his crimes against women, speaks volumes. 

The fact that Monis asked for an ISIS flag should have held no more weight than if he had asked for a Christmas tree or a purple people eater. He was a sick man who used the fiercely threatening symbolism of ISIS to make his deranged demands seem more threatening. He knew that he would be taken more seriously with the flag than without it, and the sad thing is he was right. An entire city took this madman very seriously and we need to ask ourselves why.

If the flag in the cafe window did not contain Islamic text then it's safe to say that the siege would have been reported as a hostage situation and not a terrorist attack. Only a few days earlier a man took two people hostage in a house in Brunswick, Melbourne and the only words used to describe him were ' a man'. When Anders Brevick blew up government buildings in Norway, killing 8 people before shooting dead 69 more, he was labelled a paranoid schizophrenic. Though he was later convicted of mass murder and terrorism, the Christian people in Norway did not fear a racist / cultural backlash because of his right-wing militant ideology. The fact that Brevick was a Christian extremist meant that his religious affiliation did not receive anywhere near the same media traction that Monis' has achieved. 

Yet how many editorials have we read in the past few days about Man Harin Monis with the word 'terrorism' in the title? Too many to count. The truth is we were so quick to paint Monis as a terrorist that the facts became incidental, beside the point. The terrorist narrative took off at a speed that made it unstoppable even once it had been established that this was not a home grown terrorist, but rather a mentally unstable, middle-aged man.  I would never defend any act of violence, political or otherwise, and what Monis did was heinous and despicable. But we need to ask ourselves why the extremist / fundamentalist narrative was so quick to bolt from the gate and we ought to be bloody skeptical the next time we sense it being tailored to fit down our throats.  

Seven Years On...

5.30am: 7/7/14

Today is the seventh day of December and the seventh anniversary of your death. It's 5.30am and exactly one and a half hours before the phone rang that morning and I heard your mother tell me you were gone. Every anniversary since then, I have woken up before 7am, as if my subconscious clock is trying to beat time at its own game and stop that moment from occurring.

For me, 7am marks the beginning of the horror but I could not have known then that you had left this world hours before, at some point during the night, and your mother was just waiting until a reasonable hour to call. I did not find that out until much later.

In this moment seven years ago, I was still fast asleep and dreaming of you, still totally oblivious to what was waiting for me when I opened my eyes. I was dreaming vividly about our wedding day, no doubt because of the plans we had been making the day before, and I physically felt you slide the wedding ring onto my hand.  When the phone rang and vibrated across my bedside table at such an early hour, I just assumed it was you and I answered it with a wry high smile on my face, still floating down from the blissful dream but eager to give you a hard time for pulling me out of it. "Hey baby".... I heard myself say, "I was just having the most amazing dream and I felt you place"... but then a woman's voice cut me off.

A few days later I wondered if maybe, just maybe, in those strange hours between darkness and dawn, not long after your soul had left your body, you did actually slip that ring on my finger.  I wish I could remember that feeling and hold onto that dream but all I have is the end of the dream and the beginning of the nightmare, the moment of intersection, the collision between two completely opposing worlds: before and after.

For a long time it all felt like a bad dream and I struggled to find my place in the brave new world. I had to learn how to be human again, to feign normality again, to do everything people expected of me; to smile and laugh, to talk and relate, to be present with friends and family. But I barely recognised myself in the mirror and it took a long time to get used to this new person parading as me. My only real comfort came from the darkness as it gave me a sense of respite from the exhausting daily ritual of trying to appear "normal", to pretend that I was "improving", and to assure others that I was going to be "ok".

In truth, I did not know if I would ever be ok. I was not coping and I broke down and wept every time I was alone; in the privacy of my car, in public toilets, behind sunglasses, in car parks and in alleys. It felt like there was literally no escape from the relentless reminder that you were never coming back. This was real and I couldn't find anywhere big enough to hide or anywhere far away enough to outrun it. Trying to make people feel better about my grief became an additional struggle, a thankless task that soon became exhausting.  I started to hide away from the world and decline invitations to dinners, parties and coffee to the point where people just stopped asking. I was grateful for that because it meant I no longer had to lie or make up excuses.

I started to sleep for long periods and as often as I could, whenever I had the chance. Sleep was the only place I could go for relief. But I could never truly forget...My dreams were always haunted by the the image of his face, his eyes, his hands, in various distortions. I started having a recurring dream that lasted for five years where I would catch a glimpse of him on a train or around a corner and I would chase him for miles but never catch up to him as he was always one step ahead. I started to tell myself that he was still alive, that he just didn't want to be with me anymore and somehow that scenario seemed more palpable. Then the dream changed its shape and it was always the same phone call in which he would casually tell me that he was alive and he had just forgotten to call me for the last few years. The unconscious mind trying to carry out wish fulfilment I suppose.

Some people say that seven years is a long time to mourn somebody and I suppose that may be true, except Chance Hall was not just somebody to me. He was the love of my life, the soul for my soul, and the only person with whom I have ever felt truly myself. Being with him felt like going home, like finding the missing pieces of yourself so that you finally feel whole, at peace and utterly complete. I was so deeply in love with him in a way that I have never loved anyone else and he was equally and as deeply in love with me. To suddenly wake up and learn that I would never see him, never smell him or touch him again - nothing can prepare a person for that. I am not the same person that I was before he died and when I look back at old photographs of me I can barely recognise that girl with the smug little smirk and the stars in her eyes. A person cannot live through this kind of loss and come through intact. The shock alone changes a persons DNA.

My maternal grandmother was widowed at age 36 (just three years older than me) and she wore black for the next 20 years. As a kid I never understood why she didn't remarry but now I understand completely and  I can respect that. The man she loved was gone and there was no other soul for her soul.  Just like my grandmother, my other half was taken from me and it's taken me seven years to fully accept that. But even though I accept it now, that doesn't mean I want to be with somebody, anybody just for the sake of being with somebody, anybody. I just wish people would accept that about me. I am perfectly content with my decision.

People say time heals all wounds and I used to think those people were assholes but I don't really think that anymore. What I do think is that time just takes you further and further away from the raw and brutal moment of truth so that you gradually become more immune to the pain. Human beings can get used to anything and so I guess that is what has happened with me. That is what I think they mean by acceptance - in time you learn to accept the pain as another part of your narrative, it becomes part of your DNA.

Losing Chance has clearly become part of my narrative, but it does not define who I am. Loving him and being loved by him is equally a part of my story and I am comforted by the time we spent together.  For a long time I was willing to trade off the relationship if it meant I could erase the marks that his death had left upon me. Now I wouldn't dream of giving up a single moment of time with that precious man. Our love story may have been fleeting and I was cheated out of my happy ending, but I was lucky enough to know love in all of its glory; in its unbridled joy and its equally magnanimous heartache. At the end of the day, when all the dust has settled, I found my one true love and I am no longer searching for anyone. Nothing is ever truly lost, especially not love and that is what I choose to remember most on this day. RIP Chance Hall. I will love you forever.

Nobody Ever Thinks They Will Become A Refugee

Nobody ever thinks they will become a refugee.

For many of us, war only happens in far away regions, in wastelands already battered and torn, in places like Iraq or Afghanistan where buildings fall as casually as snow and the stench of death permeates the air.

Many of us were lucky enough to be born into good geography.  We rest easy knowing our borders are protected and our leaders equipped to protect us from any real threat of danger. And yet even though so few of us have any lived experience of war, almost every one of us has an opinion on the plight of those who have.  

At what point I ask myself did “Australians” start believing that it was our right to dictate how people should respond to war? At what point did we decide that we knew better than those who have survived the loss of their country, their homes, their families, their culture and their identities? 

From the safety of our civilised cities and the comfort of our homes, we judge the plight of refugees who have entered our country by sea, and we do it without batting an eyelid at the countless number of white immigrants who have arrived here by plane, and overstayed their visas. 

We rarely even contemplate the fact that there are more New Zealanders living and working in Australia than the combined number of refugees who have ever sought asylum by boat and if it were a boatload of Kiwis or Poms or Yanks fleeing the same dangers, it’s unlikely that the response would be anywhere near as loud or as ugly. White people arriving in Australia rarely make the news, though perhaps that is because they don’t make us quite as nervous.  

In newspapers and on television, on social media and talkback radio, we talk about boatloads and masses and hoards and waves and swarms of refugees as though we are describing a plague of wildebeests rather than human beings.

So rarely are we given any access or insight to the individuals displaced by war that we are unable to make any connection with those who love and hurt and fear and dream and hope just as we do. Instead we see all refugees as a nameless, faceless annoyance; a threat to our common values and a stain on our society.

We listen as our leaders apply concepts of right and wrong, of legal versus illegal, front door versus back door and boat versus plane. They boil the debate down to a matter of ‘choice’ as though there is any choice afforded to those caught up in conflicts fought by powerful men who view them as collateral damage.

Many of you have sided with our government and backed their cruel and inhumane approach to people seeking asylum.  You agree that it is right and just to lock innocent people away in barbaric concentration camps, to immerse those already traumatised into new climates of hopelessness where cruelty and corruption thrive unnoticed.

And despite the unimaginable cruelty of war, the time already spent languishing in camps, and the terrifying journey across the open seas, you still feel they deserve to be locked away and punished, indefinitely, because it sends a clearer message.  

“We will decide who gets into this country and the manner in which they arrive”.

Over the years, we have been fooled into believing that there is a right way to flee the horror of war, without ever bothering to investigate what happens to people left scrambling for some semblance of hope and identity. 

Many of you have swallowed the rhetoric employed by this government and factions of the media who work to enforce the false illusion of choice. Terms such as cue jumpers, boat people, illegal immigrants and illegal aliens are tossed about cavalierly to describe families fleeing the kind of horror that you and I could never imagine.

In countries already ravaged by war there is often no embassy for people to lodge their claims. And in many cases, more often than not, people don’t have time to gather their belongings, and it isn’t uncommon for identity papers, family photos and so forth to have been bombed or destroyed.  

When our government speaks about refugees forming an orderly queue, it’s as if they are describing the scene outside a rock concert or a football match, rather than a scene of disorganised terror and chaos. In a war zone the only line you will find yourself in is the line of fire. 

But our government has never told you the truth. Why? Because dangling a solution in our faces is an easy way to secure votes. For instance, when we believe that our way of life is being threatened we look to our government for a solution. Nobody wants this country to lose control of our borders, and nobody wants to be invaded. So by whipping up a border protection crisis, people are more likely to vote for the party who will attend to that crisis. The more fear the government can generate, the more we look to them for a solution, and the more power they yield over us in an election. In truth, there is no border protection crisis and no pending invasion. That is just a bullshit story you have been sold. 

Believe it or not, Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, which means that people fleeing persecution are legally entitled to seek refuge in Australia with or without valid documentation. They also legally allowed to arrive here by boat or by plane, or by parachute if they have no other option.

And although it is true that there are hundreds of thousands of equally valid refugees languishing in camps, the process of granting visas is impossibly slow and with millions of displaced persons in the world and Australia only granting a disproportionately low number of humanitarian visas each year, (that number has just been decreased) visas can often take decades to materialise if they materialise at all.  However, it is not true that one person arriving by boat will take the place of another person waiting in a camp and neither way is wrong or illegal, regardless of the lies we have been sold.

Another false myth is that asylum seekers are taking Australian jobs and living off government benefits. Despite the common misconception that all brown skinned people arrived here as refugees, Australia actually accepts a small number of refugees compared to skilled migrants each year. 

Most of the people you see driving your cabs and working in your convenience stores have come here invited on skilled migrant visas and not as refugees. Also, once people arrive in Australia seeking asylum they are immediately taken to a remote location, either Manus, Naru or Christmas Island and detained in an immigration centre for offshore processing. In the past asylum seekers were not permitted to work until their refugee status had been approved and they were not entitled to receive benefits or use Medicare until they were granted Australian Citizenship, which could take between two to five years. Now of course those rules no longer apply because we are not settling anymore asylum seekers in Australia. 

In the past, some refugees were granted temporary protection visas (TPV) or bridging visas upon their release detention. These visas entitled them to stay in the country for three years in the hope that their previous living situation would improve. However, many were forced to return to dangerous living conditions in their country of origin because these visas did not permit them to work or receive any government benefits. The only way they could survive and provide for their children was by relying on donations from non- government organisations, like the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. 

And for those refugees lucky enough to be granted permanent residency in Australia, their rights as Australian citizens should not be viewed any differently to yours or mine.  In other words, unless you are a descendent of the first nations people, then you are here because your ancestors came here as migrants or refugees and that makes you no more or less of an Australian than those refugees who have been granted permanent residency.

Many of you argue that you would never seek asylum by boat. You claim there is a right way to enter this country through the ‘front door’ designed for genuine refugees. And like this government and the one before it, you have effectively used the deaths at sea as a defence for your argument, basically suggesting that no responsible white skinned parent would place their child in the kind of danger we have witnessed at sea. 

And yet for the government’s attempt to ‘stop the boats and stop the deaths at sea’ countless lives are being put at risk through the sanctioned mental, emotional and physical torture taking place in these offshore camps.  It is an absurd idea that offshore processing is designed to stop deaths at sea, particularly in light of recent events where a boatload of Tamil asylum seekers were sent back to Sri Lanka, despite the current travel warnings for westerners to avoid the destination. 

Evidently the government is indifferent to the real threat of rape, torture, mutilation and death; real dangers from which these families were desperately trying to escape. On those dangers, this government is silent. 

The vast majority of asylum seekers have never seen the ocean and would not contemplate putting their precious children in small, filthy, overcrowded boats, manned entirely by criminals, on a dangerous voyage to a foreign place with foreign people all speaking a foreign language, unless they were absolutely desperate.  Nobody would put their children in that situation unless their lives depended on it. 

The human survival instinct is strong, and it is hard wired into every one of us regardless of race, culture, or religion. If your only option for survival came down to fleeing on a boat where you might possibly drown or do nothing knowing that you will be tortured and killed, then we would all fight to survive and to lead our children to safety. 

Nobody ever thinks they will become a refugee, but try to imagine for a moment how you would respond if you were forced into that situation. 

Why Did Malaysian Airlines Play Russian Roulette With MH17?

Waking up last Friday to news that a Malaysian Airlines flight had been shot down over East Ukraine, my initial response was that the news reporters were referring to flight MH370. 

Finally, I thought, they have found out what really happened to the plane and perhaps now the families can start to find some closure. 

Realising of course that the broadcasters were actually describing a new incident, another Malaysian Airlines disaster, this time flight MH17 carrying 298 people, I struggled to make sense of what I was hearing. 

In fact, it was only a few weeks ago when I'd commented to my family that there was probably no safer airline at the moment than Malaysian - the logic being that they would have tightened up their security and ticked all the necessary boxes after being involved in one of the worst airline disasters in civil aviation’s history. 

Plus, I told myself, lightening doesn’t strike the same person twice, at least not according to the law of averages, and that is the logic so many of us use to reassure ourselves in times of unexplainable tragedy. 

2014 has been an horrific year for civil aviation and the worst year for Malaysian Airlines compared with any other Airline in history. Over 520 people have lost their lives flying with the airline in less than six months, and the grief, anger and betrayal felt by the families over the handling of MH370 have undoubtedly hit the airline hard.  

And while it seems unlikely that those families will ever truly know what happened to their loved ones, the fate of the passengers onboard flight MH17 has tragically been confirmed. We have been told unequivocally that Pro Russian separatists shot the plane down with a ground to air missile system as it flew over East Ukraine. 

And according to recent reports, it seems likely that this was less an act of global terrorism, and more like some kind of bungled attempt by inexperienced rebel fighters who mistook the Boeing 777 for a Ukrainian fighter jet, arguably because they were not expecting commercial jets to be flying over a war zone.  

In an alleged voice recording intercepted by the Ukrainian Intelligence Agency, a conversation plays out between a Russian intelligence officer and a separatist commander claiming responsibility for the attack. 

"Regrading the plane shot down.... it's a civilian one". 

Then in an eerie recording between Cossack commander Nikolay Kozitsin and an unidentified militant, commander Kozitsin is heard to say,

"They shouldn't be fu**ing flying. There is a war going on."

Regardless of whether this was a tragic case of mistaken identity or a deliberate act of terrorism, there is no doubt that Russia must be held to account. This was a high tech Russian made missile launcher, fired by Russian trained separatists in an area where at least three other Ukrainian military aircrafts have recently been shot down. And now voice recognition software allegedly shows the separatists claiming responsibility. 

It also appears likely that the Russian government or the Russian military were responsible for arming the rebel fighters with the Buk missile system; the only system capable of such long-range warfare. However, just how this high tech weaponry fell into the hands of a rebel army is yet to be confirmed. 

And while we must continue to put pressure on Russia to allow a thorough, impartial investigation, we must also be careful not to lose sight of the fact that both the Civil Aviation Industry and Malaysian Airlines knew that there was a war going on in East Ukraine, and that an alternative flight path was available. 

The question as to why a commercial aircraft was permitted to fly anywhere near a contested air space is one that must be answered by the Civil Aviation Industry. 

As a result of this disaster, all flights have since been diverted, but those restrictions should have been implemented as soon as the first air strike began. Instead civil aviation merely issued a warning for airlines choosing to continue along this flight path to fly above 31,000 feet. 

And yet the doomed flight MH17 was cruising at a 'safe' altitude of 33,000 feet, just 2000 feet above the safe upper limit. I am not expert on matters of civil aviation or warfare, and I don't think anyone could have anticipated this event or predicted that long range missiles would be deployed, but it seems almost unlawful to allow air traffic anywhere over the vicinity of a war zone especially when planes have already knowingly been blown out of the sky. 

Every time I have flown anywhere with my children, I have put my complete and unequivocal trust in the airline. I assume that every check and cross-check has been thoroughly implemented and I expect that in the event of any potential danger or risk, I would be informed and the flight delayed, cancelled or diverted. 

Not all international airlines chose to continue flying over Eastern Ukraine, in fact Malaysian Airlines was one of only a handful of carriers to continue along the shorter flight path from Europe into Asia.  But why then, when they had just experienced the worst international disaster of their history, was Malaysian Airlines willing to take any risks at all? 

The answer is that the airline was taking the shorter route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur to save on the cost of fuel. It is no secret that Malaysian Airlines are in serious financial trouble, however any savings they may have accrued will be quickly swallowed up by more bad publicity which will presumably equate to less people choosing to fly with the carrier. 

And then there is the matter of financial compensation for the families of those who perished. It's plausible that they will be looking to Malaysian Airlines for someone to blame and there is certainly plenty of blame to go around. 

So who should carry the burden of financial compensation in this devastating tragedy? Russia? The Civil Aviation Industry? Malaysian Airlines? 

If there was a fault in the mechanics or an issue with the engine or anywhere else on the aircraft and the airline chose to fly anyway, then the fault would rest not with the manufacturer, but with the airline that knowingly put its passengers and crew at risk. 

Someone had a duty of care to inform those 289 people of the risks they were facing, and the truth is both civil aviation and Malaysian Airlines knew beforehand, what we are only learning now, that they were flying their passengers directly over a war zone.

I don't doubt that neither the airline or the aviation industry could ever have anticipated this level of risk, but in my opinion, Malaysian Airlines should never have been given the choice to keep flying over that contested airspace. Yet the fact remains that they were given a choice, and they choose to fly anyway. Sadly that choice was not extended to their passengers. 

Every one of those 289 passengers believed that they were in safe hands when they boarded MH17 at the Amsterdam airport on that fateful day. Not one of those men, women or children were informed that they were going to fly over a war zone and I believe Malaysian Airlines had a duty of care to do so.  

I do not proclaim to speak for the deceased, but I do know that if I had been made aware of the situation, and if I knew that other airlines were taking precautions by means of an extended detour, I would never have boarded that flight.  

The truth is, those passengers were not forewarned and they were never given a choice, and instead somebody decided to save a few bucks by playing Russian roulette with their lives.