Confession Time

There, I'm finally admitting it! I have nothing in common with the rest of my so-called countryfolk.

The despair that I feel in this country is corrosive on my soul, and now I confess that I am proud to be an unAustralian.

Once upon a time, the most unAustralian thing you could do was drown. Not any more. Now the most un Australian thing you can do is think. Thinking has never been very popular pass time Down Under, (I'm talking about critical thinking here, not the 'what shall I have for dinner?' kind of synapse snapping) as witnessed by complete lack of mainstream critical discourse in this country.

I left the country in the mid 1990's when the current right wing government was first elected. Within 6 months of the election, they were attempting to turn Australians against Australians - targetting Aboriginals, single parents and the unemployed. Thankfully I had somewhere else to run to, so I left. I didn't want to watch Australia slide back into the ignorant uncivillised oikdom that it had only just begun to climb away from, and so I left without a backward glance. Like all good Australians, I never considered staying to fight.

I used to consider myself a political refugee. Emotive and inappropriate perhaps, but I did begrudge being forced out of my country. I swore I wouldn't return until a change of government, but of course life is never that simple and I find myself living here once more.

So, here I am in blogworld. This is pure indulgence of course, but I reason there has to be a point to keeping a diary, so you lot are going to be the recipients of my opinions on virtually everything. My motto here is I do because I can.