The Voice—My Intervention

Yes, that’s a joke. Yet, the very least we can do is mention where we stand. Where I stand is, typically, not coherent. That all this is complicated has been seen as a drawback for the Yes case. Well, damn our simple declarative sentences.

Stop making sense.

Sense is progress in science, but it’s a drawback in public life. My sister is volunteering for the Yes campaign, handing out leaflets and so on. She was told by an old white bloke that she ought to admit she’s Indigenous. Pretty sure it was the same guy who later was having a go at those he saw as unfairly (!) claiming aboriginality. Our family is not, let me say, indigenous to this unceded land.

Here I try to think about the problem with the word “racism”. We are individually likeable people, many of us, not actively racist. Passively racist? Well, there it gets complicated.

Having said all that, there is of course a simple set of words which really do promote the Yes case: love is the answer.

Vote Yes for love.

Not a Racist

Breaking out of my sovereign mind today
Caste detritus my personal chicken run,

Bath of the bath of the bath is a bath
All dust is crime.

I have my reasons and they’re terrible
That’s the way I like it, unexamined,

Law of the law of the law is a law
All pure in time.

Shooting a koala sign isn’t gunning for them
Driving a car too fast at night, driving any car,

Line of the line of the line is a line
All side by side.

In your dead Indo-Dutch tongue petjo
Several words for “concubine” means,

Word of the word of the word is a word
All said out loud.

I can what I want and laugh and it’s whatever
No need to fix things I am happy,

I of the I of the I is an I
We’re all the same.

Imagined, all of this country, like it or leave.

So furious I could not say with the weather, who
Slight of clouds, sneer of rain, too well-observed
I thought promised,
We got ready to dance but we woke before the band
Glad in garish flappy things, gladder, and that’s serious
Irresistible rhythms of the chuff reused as sand:
It was a battle hymn we hopped to
Horn gone
In the finish
At the dawn
Barefoot in our heads
Alone.

Get up

All things drive to ends forgotten on the road
All things and a bentwood chair as well, creaking
La
I lost my love on a day of equal night,
Forgot memory of air is not campaign,
This cheap context idiot fake for a crown,

Get up and dance.