Alice asked me to explain the voting paperwork to her, which I did. How the Senate voting paper works. How the House of Reps works too.
“Oh, it is so confusing,” she said.
Not so much, I thought.
Alice, I think, is actually the smart one amongst them all. But, she is quite fragile, brittle even, like she has been beaten down in her life. She is the least liked person in the office, and I reckon I might get to like her the most, if I got to know her better. She seems to be the odd one out. I think she is the odd one out in a good sense. She is different good, but she keeps to herself.
“How can I vote for Kevin Rudd when his own party didn’t even want him?” asked Cathy.
Oh really, people are really hanging onto that, and here we have one.
“I’m voting for the party that gives me the best broadband network,” I replied. “Easy.”
Cathy said she was worried about the boats. I was taken aback. She said she’d vote for the party that solved the boat people problem. I tried to say that the boat people were really a small number of people and not really a problem. But, to tell you the truth, the whole idea that people were really falling for the boat people rhetoric, started by the Liberal Party, was quite astounding. I think my explanation was faltering because my mind was spinning at the thought. I was trying to remember Julian Burnside’s name, to tell Cathy to read up on what he has said on the topic.
She believes the asylum seekers bullshit… appealing to her latent racist fears. Who am I working with?
Cathy said she’d voted for The Greens for a few years… when Pauline Hanson was around…
“She spoke her mind, she wasn’t intimidated by anyone, she was good.”
Gulp! What??? ... Oh, er, um, I thought. (I guess I can auto correct the mistake of the name of Pauline Hanson’s party. Or did she just run two voting strategies together? She voted for one and then she voted for the other? Um?) Really? But what Pauline Hanson spoke was hatred and bigotry. Is that really who I am amongst?
I am considering taking this job on a permanent basis? Really? Maybe I do want to walk into the CBD after all?
Cathy talked about the chronically unemployed, quoting information from lectures she had been to. The implication was that she would vote for the party who got rid of welfare. My mind shuddered about what lectures she may have been to. I didn’t ask, I wish I had, but the moment passed by.
Christine said if you come to this country you should learn the language and you should assimilate.
Oh, that old chestnut? People really believe this stuff? They seem to have little understanding of the history of immigration in Australia over the last 50 years, or so.
Christine was worried about immigrants forming ghettos and not assimilating.
I said to Christine, “Has that happened in Melbourne, no go zones with immigrants, has it?”
“Where my sister lives, the Somalians in Hoppers Crossing form groups and are rude to people and abuse people…”
“Somalians don’t come here by boat,” I said. “They come by aeroplane.”
She laughed and agreed. (Shows how much she knows)
I googled it when I got home and apparently Somalians do come here by boat from Indonesia. But I am not sure if that is the majority of the Somalians, or the stragglers. I need to do more research on it.
Do I really want to work with these people? Or should I just learn not to discuss politics.
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