This is a bit off the topic of this blog but I really feel it would be remiss of me not to make some kind of comment on the state of my country at the moment. On Friday we had a change of our prime minister. The guy, Peter, who challenged the PM for leadership is actually a MP in my city and he is a big advocate for putting refugees who try to get to Australia by boat into off-shore detention. It's an unfathomably cruel practice which sadly everyone turns a blind eye to. Coincidentally, these last few weeks children in those same detention centres have been self harming and hunger striking. Fortunately, in the end Peter didn't win the challenge. Some other guy, called Scott did get voted to lead by his party... Scott... who, by the way, no one in the general public until this point even knew of or cared about. But he's now our Prime minister. Oh and just another note, there was a woman in the group of 4, Julie, who was a potential for leadership. She was actually, in my opinion, the best candidate of the 4. But of course her party, which only has a representation of 22% women, immediately eliminated her as a possibility. Look, I have to say, I usually do not care one bit about politics, and I suppose that the rest of Australia are similarly apathetic. But I'm starting to wonder if our general public need to become a bit more angry, accountable and start doing something, I don't know what, to get our supposed leaders doing a bit more than throwing tantrums about who's the boss.
I met up with a group of friends on the weekend, an old group I haven’t seen for ages, who do not know about my fertility struggles. They’ve all reproduced, in fact, the air was thick with fecundity, and children were running about everywhere mostly at knee height. It was a situation that made it obvious... we’re missing something… fertility, a child. Someone, in a harmless enough way, said something about babies and sleep deprivation, then a throwaway remark to us “… and that’s why these guys don’t have kids”… Oh y es, that's funny. True, sleeping is quite wonderful and yes we get plenty of it. I chose to smile and laugh. I didn’t show the grief, because the grief is invisible anyway... just like my child... and the grief may be unnecessary because I don’t even know if I am supposed to be grieving, because maybe our missing child will miraculously show up one day.
Watching from across the Tasman. We've had our moments, here, of course too. It was a bizarre situation, that Peter started it all, Malcolm got dumped, and Scott came through. Politics is pretty weird everywhere right now. I think it is easy for us all to be too apathetic. Good for you to be calling for a bit more involvement. Make those politicians accountable!
ReplyDeleteYes I bet you guys are watching it all from a rather smug position over there in NZ, what with your legend of a PM... it's a pretty special wee place you are from!
DeleteI also heard about another New Zealand MP who rode her bicycle to hospital to have her baby?? I'm not actually sure exactly how I feel about that!! There is definitely a part of me that admires that dedication to eco-friendly transportation though another part that's thinking - -- maybe taking it a bit too far? haha.