yes to Bill and yes to Patrick.
Abbott makes an odd minister for Aboriginal Affairs,
but who has managed from Canberra to help them much,
the country’s ‘first Australians’?
How do you help their leaders do something about infant mortality, education, health, housing, and so on?
Not that I expect you to write policy in verse, Bill, just flare up at that man’s sincere (?) gaffes.
best from Max in faraway Seattle
On Mar 17, 2015, at 15:56, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Good to see someone having a go at Abbot -not sure as a poem a bit spelt out
> as opposed to as poetry-(I wonder??????)excuse ramblings of an ancient mind
> :-)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: 17 March 2015 22:22
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Speaking of sincerity
>
> Remote 4
>
> (of Aborigines living in remote areas of Australia): The government cannot
> 'endlessly subsidise lifestyle choices (which) are not conducive to the kind
> of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have .'
>
> - Tony Abbot, PM. 11.3.15
>
>
> Thousands of kilometres from Canberra, well distant from Sydney, plenty far
> from any settled city, many First Australians congregate.
>
> Their choice? Live there or where
> else? You can't get any more local
> than where you live.
>
> This is where you connect to country.
> This is is where your ancestors lived.
> This is where you slot into kinship.
>
> It's only remote to others who are local to where they live. Remoteness
> connotes not so much a physical distance
>
> as an inability to step into the skin
> of someone who feels as localised
> as their own beating heart.
>
> bw
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