Twenty years ago my grandmother in her broken English, phoned me from her home near Stuttgart in Germany. She sounded tired and was fretting that I would not be home. She called to tell me of the horror of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and made me promise that I would never, ever buy any milk product for at least a decade- be it powdered, UHT, condensed, cheese, yogurt etc. that was not made in Australia.

Long before we, here, in Australia would hear of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, my Oma had not only heard, but assessed that the milk products would be shunned by Europeans and offloaded to unsuspecting, faraway countries.

The girlchild- her Uhrgrosskind- was 8 months old and my Oma wanted me to know what she feared. I remain eternally grateful for her advice. I am also very appreciative that the girlchild and I live in a ‘faraway’ place. Not least of all because twenty years on the situation in the Ukraine is still horrific.

Image from here

Today, in Innisfail, the schools reopened after the devastation of Cyclone Larry.

Welcoming the students back (and having no doubt recently been briefed by trauma counselors) Principal Julie Pozzoli’s was prepared to bend the rules, but only so far…

“Basically we’re expecting the first part of today you people will sit around with your friends, your classmates and just basically talk. We know that talking’s part of the healing process, talking is not while I’m speaking, thank you, gentlemen.”

I smiled, thinking that if I was one of her students I would know things weren’t all that scary, homework would be set and life was almost back to normal.

Mr. Packer is dead.

Money seems to be able to buy you anything you want, even death at the time of your choosing.

I was working in an allied health role in the Northern Territory for the nine months that Australians had a Rights Of the Terminally Ill Act (ROTI), commonly called “The Euthanasia Bill”. The ROTI Act was overturned by the federal government in March 1997. Effectively the right to test if you qualified for the strict criteria to access ROTI and potentially die at the time of your choosing (as opposed to suicide), was taken away from an individual and their medical carers- and returned to god and palliative care.

But not if you are rich. If you are rich, I am sure it is possible to have your carefully chosen doctors organise morphine and have your death with your family around you in your home.

“This is my time.” – said Mr. Packer.

In this country, money can buy you a way around god and Justice Minister Senator Ellison deciding your quality of life.

It can buy you a good death.

We all deserve that.

Morpheus and Iris, 1811. Guerin, Pierre Narcisse from here

Original image from here

Last night GetUp hosted a meetup in Sydney.

I went along. There were less people than I would have thought could be attracted to a movement such as GetUp in Sydney.  Admittedly, we were half an hour late and yesterday was an unseasonably grim, rainy night.

What surprised me was the age demographic. The GetUp team were the youngest people in the room by decades. The where-are-the-youth theme informed my entire evening. We listened to David, Jeremy, Toby and Lachlan.

Coming in late, I’m not sure what we missed, so by the time we were broken into groups of eight to brainstorm ideas for making GetUp bigger, better and faster, my contribution came down to ways of engaging youth in the alternative political debate. I have grand desires, but few ideas.

Inspired I take it upon myself to do some qualitative research.  I seek out the 20 year old girlchild.  For the 2.3 minutes that I had her attention she tells me that,

"Placards and protesting and feminism and left-wingedness is just so 80’s…Young people don’t care mama." 

"Why don’t you care? What has to happen for you to care? What would radicalise you?" I ask.

Girlchild’s answer, "Can I use your car?" 

It’s about getting their attention.  Now how do we keep it?

  

Images scanned from last nights meetup handout