The Road

Pitch Black
Glacial tar

Flows viscous
Through the city

Kneaded by rolling tumbrels
Toward Pinkenba

Political Pairing

James Powell’s argument essentially relies on his proposition that, “The idea of pairing the speaker implies that he or she has a vote to neutralize” ( FinReview.“Kafkaesque constitutional opinion” September 24). This sounds good but is illogical. Just because in the customary pairing both parties have votes to neutralize, it doesn’t follow that all pairings imply that there is a vote to neutralize. Pairing might, on first sight, imply that the Speaker has a vote to neutralize, but when you delve further you discover that the implication in incorrect.
The fact is the Speaker does not have a vote, but would have had a vote if he or she had not become the Speaker. That is, the person who eventually becomes the Speaker had a vote to neutralize, before they became Speaker. It is the permanent negation of this vote that the pairing agreement seeks to neutralize, not a current right to vote that the Speaker has.
The reason why Powell and others talk of implications is because there used to be a vote that related to the person of the Speaker before they became the Speaker. But at no time is Section 40 of the constitution breached by the giving to the Speaker of a right to vote. The pairing agreement relates to the loss of a member’s vote, not the right of the Speaker to vote.
The pairing agreement was made before both leaders knew who would win. The one who lost now wants to break the agreement to try and change the result, to win, to make himself leader.
The fact is that faced with impending hung parliament the parties came to a political agreement in the interests of equity and stability, that the party which did not supply the Speaker would offer the other half of a pair.
This pairing arrangement is not unconstitutional. Firstly, on a black-letter-law reading the agreement between the parties does not alter the Speaker’s constitutional position: “The Speaker shall not vote unless the numbers are equal, and then he shall have a casting vote.” (Section 40).
Secondly, neither does an “in spirit” reading change the constitutional operation of the Speaker’s role by the proposed pairing agreement.
Powell confirms our general understanding that the fundamental reason for Section 40 is to afford the Speaker a higher degree of independence, thereby allowing him the freedom to prosecute his duties equitably. However, by giving him the casting vote it does not seek to deny his essential nature as a political partisan. He is neutralized for the specific purpose of his role as speaker, but is not neutered as a politician. So the idea that he should not have a pair if both parties agree to it is wrong. He belongs to the Labor Party, he is a political person, the party is going to offer him as Speaker thereby losing a valuable vote. In the case of a hung parliament, and a minority government, it is fair and reasonable that a pairing arrangement such as this is put in place.
Having said that, there is nothing in the pairing agreement that would reduce the degree of independence that he would otherwise have under Section 40.
The constitution obviously does not prohibit political operations, including agreements, in the parliament. On the contrary, the rules of the constitution are there to encourage those very operations. The constitution is not an end in itself; the effective settlement of the nation’s political issues is the end that it seeks to foster.
There simply are no limitations to the making of political agreements, and nor should there be, as that is the political process envisaged. You could just as well argue that political parties and coalitions are unconstitutional, as they are not mentioned in the constitution, and they limit the voting freedom of the members involved, a freedom that could easily be implied.
The political agreement in this case had a compelling and legitimate reason, and was struck, like many other bipartisan agreements, in the interests of equity, political stability and functionality of the parliament.
In conclusion, the pairing agreement does not detract from the independence of the Speaker, is not unconstitutional, and would require more than the usual dose of judicial activism to make it so.
That being obvious, Tony Abbott is breaking the pairing agreement because he did not win government, not because of some spurious argument that it had constitutional implications. Let’s not forget that he did make the agreement in full knowledge of these issues, and he pledged his word. I think that it is an allowable assumption that if he had won he would be insisting on the execution of the agreement. Abbott either wants to frustrate the government and in so doing break the will of the independents, or he wants another election, because he didn’t win this one.
It is worth noting here that Abbott’s defeat couldn’t have been more complete, having been orchestrated by conservative men, formally of his own coalition, and because the coalition actually won the vote. There must have been a very strong reason for slamming the gate shut in his face. I think they sensed the feeling in the electorate that not many wanted this man as Prime Minister. He does not impress as any sort of great man or statesman for that matter. He comes across like one of those supercilious varsity thugs who are sent onto the field to injure the opposing team’s champion. Not prime ministerial material and in the light of this dishonourable breach of trust, we can clearly see why.

Somewhere on a Patio

Out on the patio (we’d sit)
And the humidity (we’d breathe)
We’d watch the lightning (crack over canefield )
Laugh and think: this is Australia

Sounds of Then
Callaghan 1985.

It is a fine thing that in every era we have our unofficial anthems to strike the right mood in each scene of the national action. Well may we sing “God save the Queen” and “Advance Australia Fair”, as we can also sit and watch, and laugh and think our own mythological Australia into the foreground.

Of all the unofficial Australian anthems, the “Sounds of Then” says the most about the lackadaisical utopia that was Australia in the post war period. This ambrosian lament, with its scenes of hazy heat and humidity, has become an enduring and endearing refrain on the popular airwaves.

But why does it resonate with Australians so well? Why is it so affecting?
Anthems are nationalistic bravado, victory songs and declamations of entitlement and belonging. But unless they strike a chord at the heart of the national psyche, and express themselves in a sublimely poetic fashion, they can become jingoistic, or merely descriptive. So whereas “The Land Down Under” was perfect as a victory song, with its national icons and celebration of the ocker conquistador, the “Sounds of Then” has a more reflective and atmospheric pitch. But what was happening on that patio?

“Out on the patio (we’d sit)”. Indeed we do sit. Quintessential Australia, forever reclining on location. The inertia in that laconic pose, that determined stance, on an essential icon of Australian architecture, the patio (deck, verandah): open spaces, rolling out or jutting out the side of weatherboard houses, cantilevered or supported; viewing platforms to look at what, if not the terrain and sky of an expansive and intriguing natural Australia.

But why did we sit? We sat because “we come from a land of plenty”: obligatory weekends upgraded to long weekends, institutionalized and held up as major gathering points, nodes of sandy munificence in weeks of secure work environments with perks and fringe benefits. We sat because we could, and in sitting we reflect, long sweltering reveries broken only by showers of torrential rain and the light shows of electric storms.

But what happened on that patio? We sat in a perfect slouch, not like a monkey in a tree or a cat on a fence or a lizard in the sun, but like a human ever sat, in a stillness and in wakeful silence, in a place at the centre of a vital universe, eternal, at home, secure, in Australia.

But what happened on that patio? The humidity would gather over the course of a hot afternoon, a precursor to a flood of water falling from the sky, thrown by howling winds at a sleeting angle, and trees would reach out, appealing to the heavens in a cosmic drama. And piecing through this maelstrom, We’d watch the lightning (crack over canefield).

And the humidity (We’d breath). Naturally placed in this habitat, we suck in that humid air, and thereby belong organically; we become a biotype, a species of here, overcoming our alienation, our European strangeness. We wake up and forget our past and with it our fractured displacement.

But why did we laugh? We simply laughed. We laughed an existential joy, free of extraneous cares. We laughed for the adventure of the new world and this Australian arcadia, on that patio where we sit.

Rhapsody in Red - The Alhambra

In 711 Moslem armies invaded and occupied the Iberian Peninsular. Over the following centuries their rulers would battle not only the Christian Spaniards but each other. Eventually, there remained one group, the Nasrids, who would dominate the Andalusian region from their famed citadel built on a rocky spur overlooking Granada. This system of palaces and fortifications, contained within a walled city and known as the Alhambra, was built by the Nasrid Caliphs and their Vizers, state administrators who were also known to practice other arts and crafts such as poetry and geometry.

The Alhambra contains some of the most beautiful buildings in the world. With its unusually located palaces, courtyards and gardens forming a magical unity within its walled compound, this is a place to be dazzled.

The architecture of the Alhambra is unique in that there is an interconnectedness that is difficult to understand. Different palaces, although contiguous, are situated on different axes, alleyways and passages surprise as they appear and wind their way in unexpected directions, now taking a right turn, now going up a stair, always to arrive in another of the astonishing rooms, halls or courtyards of this magnificent palatine complex.

The Alhambra consists of a great number of architectural forms: there are the palaces where domes crown ceilings and cupolas indent walls; halls flow into internal courtyards that contain intricate tile work and stucco patterns on their internal fascia; and stairs lead to upper belvederes that have rustic vista’s to the marvelous gardens. There is an amazing intimate internality in this place, as antechambers lead to halls which open onto loggia containing refreshing pools, mini aqueducts running along the paved floor with water features and fountains taking centre place.

One seems to be entering a room because it has the intimacy of a room, and yet strangely, the proportions of a place of larger significance; it is in fact the Hall of the Kings, a magnificent chamber, and yet still a room.

To enter this mysterious room and behold the effect of ten’s of thousands of pieces of tile, stucco, wood and stone fashioned into a multitude of patterns and shapes of great variation, of arabesques and filigree, of vegetal motifs, of domes and three dimensional plaster shapes built into architraves and ceilings giving the impression of honeycomb and stalactites, a mesmerizing fantasy of medieval craft; and all this capturing light from the window and reflecting and refracting it into a floating whole so that there is a beautiful diffuse softness playing on the patterns and architectural features.

This room then flows seamlessly out into a courtyard where there is no recognizable distinction between the inside and the outside as the court is enclosed, itself with the same universal and seemingly endless geometric tile patterns and calligraphy depicting poetry and verses from the Koran, all above a rectilinear pool, itself enlarging and aestheticising the buildings, incorporated as all elements into the magical unity of this startlingly complex work of art.

The microscopic and multitudinous are as equally powerful as the singular and monumental in the quest for the infinite. And so the sublime pattern repetition and the endless, intricate and subtle variation of forms that constitute the Alhambra brings one to mind of the Mandelbrot set, a firmament encompassing life itself; quite simply, the myriad decorations and ornamentation of the Alhambra provoke astonishment.

The phenomenal effect of this artistry on the human spirit raises the question as to the intention of the architects in producing such an extravagant and breathtaking universe of geometrical design. The history of the Alhambra is nothing if not mysterious and there are scant direct records of the Nasrid Caliphs who built it, or any documents regarding the buildings themselves. So the books written on these fairytale palaces consist mostly of rational speculation and deductions from other sources.

One such speculation has it that the buildings are, amongst other things, a testimony to the influence of Sufism, a mystical form of Islam that proffers that the evidence of God and the sense of the infinite can be found in things of beauty. If the feeling of rapture that the Alhambra can inspire is anything to go by then it could well be accepted that the quest for the infinite may well be on a polychromatic tiled path through its labyrinthine interior.

The desire of human societies to build phenomenal edifices has been long thought to be a search for the absolute. To build a thing of such beauty and magnificence that it leaves the populace awestruck and confident of the authority of its rulers, both secular and religious. Whilst also being a tribute to the vision of the Muslim Sultans and the cultural achievements of their time, a building like this provided an opportunity for architects and artisans to build what can only be described as magnificent works of art. The architectural decoration of the Alhambra in Granada is a testimony to this.

When confronted with the Alhambra, one is awestruck. The emotional impact of the experience causes one to be transfixed, to be rendered immobile, to gaze blankly, to obliterate all other thoughts, to feel that one is, indeed, staring into infinity. Down through the centuries, people gazing upon the works here, have been given to rhapsodic outbursts, inspired to compose euphoric poetry, to write romantic prose and left in philosophic rumination.

Not having any forewarning of the magnificence I was about to encounter I walking through the gate unaware and innocent. I fell into a mysterious universe, “The Red Fortress”, the Alhambra, and was lost for several hours before I came to my senses and only committed to leave in the knowledge that I would be back the next day to let that place again draw away my thoughts, my psychic energy, and leave me affected to the core of my being.

To say I was innocent when I happened upon the Alhambra is bourn out by the state I was in seven hours later when I fell stunned through the Gate of Justice and sank into a swarthy twilit Granada. Oh Alhambra! What I have seen with these eyes!

I crawled into a cavernous Arabic eating house off the side of a crooked allay on the opposite hill. After eating shaslick, bread and homus I drew deeply on a Hooker, laid back on a silk-woven cushion, and reflected on the patterned cosmos plateaued in the distance.

Still Life

Things fall into place, and hold on,
With magnetic uncertainty

Chair grabbing floor
Basket clutching at the door

Cupboard up against the wall
Restraining cloaks in broken fall

Bed dead weights beneath white sheet
Bookends press with hidden feet

What frantic gravitational pull
Conducts this living still?

The Predisposition of humans to believe in God

Paul Bloom, writing in The Atlantic (Dec 2005) surveys recent developments in evolutionary biology and concludes that our predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomenon is a by-product of the way our cognitive functioning has evolved.

His discourse, in a nutshell, goes something like this. First, there is duality in our thinking: we intuit that our person and physical body are separate. Although we think with our brain, we see it as just an apparatus that assists us: the "I" or "me" is separate from my body and brain. This dualism makes it possible for us to think of a soul or person existing outside of its body, and from there to think of supernatural entities.

Second, we “suffer” from a “hypertrophy of social cognition”: we attribute human characteristics to a wide range of real world entities; and we are hypersensitive to signs of agency. In short, our quickness to over-read purpose into things extends to the perception of intentional design.

Now, if we add an existential factor and an anthropological one, it is hardly surprising that nine tenths of the world’s population believe in God. The existential factor is that life is tough: there is evil all around and we and everyone we know will die.

The anthropological factor is the one concerning survival, protection, belonging, and social cohesion. This comes under the name of religion. So there is a propensity and two motivating factors that make believing in God compelling and hard to resist.

However, on the issue of the spirit world, I would like to make a comment. Bloom points out that humans have a sense, that although someone dies, “they” are somehow still alive. It is the mind/body dualism in our thinking that allows us to feel this. I say “feel” because we don’t “think” it in the sense that we know that their body is dead, that they are no longer here. But it is this feeling, this continuing sense of them that gives rise to the thought that somehow they are still here. And so we have come to represent this by talking about their spirit or their soul.

I would say that both the memory of them and the loss of them are very powerful emotions: they are still “alive” in us, in our thoughts and feelings and memories. This sense is so strong and so palpable that we almost think that they have not altogether died. And so we have conjured up the idea of spirit or soul as a balm, a way to sooth the pain of loss and a way to explain their continuing presence. We imagine the recent dead so intensely, see them in our minds eye, dream about them as they were when they were alive, turn our heads and expect to see them, with a vertiginous gulp see them approaching as a silhouette in the form of somebody else with a similar build.

And so the ability to think this way is the product of evolution but the belief in the post-mortem life of souls is born out of grief. We might imagine “intuitively” a person, represented by a supernatural soul, continuing on after the death of his body, but that is just imagination, a creative novelty, albeit one that serves an important and necessary emotional purpose. It “feels” right that the soul and the body are separate. It feels right that “I” am more than my brain, that my brain is just an apparatus that helps “me”, but the reality is that there is no such supernatural phenomenon. Me, my brain and my body are one organism.

It is true that because we can cognate and dream and imagine ourselves in other places, we therefore have a sense of ourselves being separate from even our brains, the very organism that allows us to do those things. But this is a delusion. Just because we can imagine it doesn’t allow us to escape the reality that we need our brains to imagine it in the first place. The person needs a body to live in and a brain with which to think, to be. I hate to be a killjoy but when the body dies the person dies too; it is only in the memory, emotions and lives of the living that they continue to live.

A person (call them a soul if you must) cannot jump out of their body and certainly not into another body. Your “person” is also the result of attributes of your brain and body; IQ for example. Leaving aside the quantum physical impossibility of this transaction, if you jumped into a body with a lower IQ you would not be the same person.

No, there is no such thing as souls floating around purposelessly in the ether. There are however, as Paul Bloom has explained, several good evolutionary reasons why people believe that they do. There are also very good sociological, psychological and political reasons why religions form to promote this phenomenon of belief.

The Jury

A man was charged with perpetrating an illegal act. There was enough evidence for the public prosecutor to consider that it should be tested in a court. He is alleged to have committed a crime. His actions are alleged to have caused injury to another person. There are alternative explanations for his actions. Is he guilty?

We, the jury, are empanelled after passing through three rounds of random selection. First a large number from the electoral roll, then 40 of us are selected by lottery to proceed to a particular court where there is a case that requires a jury. In the court room consecutive names are drawn from a box, with both the defense and the prosecution being able to reject six each without reason. Twelve are finally empanelled in the jury box.

The prosecution and defense lay out their respective cases and call witnesses. They all address themselves to us. We, the jury, a completely random cross section of society, find ourselves scribbling notes, listening carefully, assessing demeanor and credibility. Ours is a solemn responsibility. From our various comfort zones we come, together, to weigh and to judge. We are to make inferences and to draw conclusions from the balances of probabilities. We are to undertake an exacting intellectual analysis.

And then it gets interesting. We find ourselves both liking and disliking the barristers and solicitors, we are in turns impressed and disappointed. We are surprised at opportunities lost. We begin to ask our own questions. We write them down on pieces of paper and are delighted at the respect accorded to us. The judge calls witnesses back and puts our questions to them. We glean essential new facts. Facts that will prove to be critical.

Day after day we grind our way through complex testimony, medical, legal and circumstantial. We begin a long process of each bringing to bear our respective experiences of life, and of challenging each other. We approach issues from many angles, we feel our way to what appears to be the natural fit. Sometimes it is the seemingly inconsequential and tiny details that raise our suspicion. Why would she say that? Why would he do that?

Then comes the two great difficulties: reasonable doubt and unanimity. There is doubt, but is it reasonable? We begin to put the pieces together but various members get stuck at different stages along the way. Then begins a process of friendly and respectful cross examination. In some cases many attempts at explanation from various members are followed by a return to the bigger picture, a rehashing of facts and pieces of evidence that may bear on the degree of doubt.

We come to a verdict exhausted and chastised, sure that we played our role and decided as best we could, but philosophical and affected by the human tragedy that lay at the heart of the matter. We were reassured however, of the efficacy of a great institution, and the overriding need to TELL IT TO THE JURY.