Enough reacting to the desperate and vicious attitudes of media commentators!

.. here’s some good news. Unfortunately i missed the SBS documentary, but Martin Flanagan (Richard’s brother), demonstrates his delightful flair for interviewing Aussie sporting greats, in this piece on Mecca Laalaa.

Mecca has hit the headlines because she represents a change in attitude at Cronulla Beach, Sydney. Following the riots of 2005, the local council decided to encourage non-anglo people (especially Muslim people) to become lifesavers. But they only invited the men. Ms Laalaa however has always wanted to be a lifesaver. So she fought the discrimination, and joined the lifesaving forces.

Now she’s pioneering a new Australian fashion .. the “burqini”, which is a wetsuit with a hood. Yeah! Go Mecca!

Let’s all keep an eye out for the positive and healthy changes in our cultural environment. It’s not all bad, is it!

Jon Faine asked me if Cairns was competing to be the most ignorant, rednecked place in Australia. i said it was in the running, but that this was just one pub. Let’s not go overboard with the generalisation, i tried to imply.
(But respectfully. Faine is one superhero.
(Link to interview below 🙂

Before i state that abusing people (and their cities) because of their behaviour isn’t always helpful, i’d like to add that Sydney is still in the lead for that competition, after the Cronulla riots of 2005.

A couple of people getting kicked out of a pub really doesn’t compete with that.

When you add in all the dog whistling coming out of another NSW town .. Canberra, then Cairns isn’t in the running at all. Did i say Canberra? Maybe the messages of fear and suspicion, of hatred and social division, have been emerging from Kiribilli all along.

So lets leave Cairns out of it. Cairns is a beautiful city full of wonderful people. So is Sydney. Wonderful people that deserve all the safety and first-rate public education we can muster.

Still, by crikey, i know what Jon meant: don’t you wish we’d all just get over it.
Calm right down. Get mentally healthier, and see things in perspective.

Don’t shoot Brasilians because we think they look Middle Eastern and carry a backpack on the Tube. Stop blaming minorities for our global imbalances.

Elect governments that are far less committed to spreading social division and fear like honey on toast (just to conceal their out-of-balance economics).

Fund public education properly, so that people have a clue about how to live in this world.

(Link to radio: chalk on faine, abc melbourne, mornings (thursday – nope you’ve missed it now)

.. but i might have a copy if you missed out. Okay, here’s a listening device:

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Thanks for reading.

(thanks kalandrakas at flickr for “how to pray the japanese way“; abc images used without permission)