Underground by Andrew McGahan
Oct. 10th, 2006 09:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melwil"Open the Hansards from the First World War, for instance. You'll find Billy Hughes in there, blustering about the need to introduce conscription, about the profundity of our alliance with Great Britain, about the desperation on the battlefields, about how to vote against the draft would be akin to an act of treason, a vote to lose the very war. Even so, come the referendum itself, the Australian people voted no. Indeed, they did it twice. And both times they were saying, 'We'll fight your damn war, but we'll do it with volunteers. We're not going to force anyone into the trenches.' And with volunteers alone, they did it indeed.
"Or skip ahead, to Robert Menzies, in the 1950s, when the cold war was at its height and, over in the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee was in full hysterical swing. Hear Menzies in stentorian voice, decrying the Communist Party and demanding that the nation pass a referendum to ban it forever or be swallowed up by the red tide. 'Put a sock in it, Bob,' the Australian people replied. 'The Commies can stand for election like anybody else, and good luck to them, because they'll need it. But we don't ban political parties in this country.'
"The strength of those decisions. The courage of them. I mean, World War I was no joke. The cold war and the Communists were no joke. People were scared. And yet the nation refused to be stampeded by its leaders.
"Yes . . . but that was the old Australia.
"If I flip to the Hansards of the last fifteen years, tehn what do I see? I see the rise of the new nationalism. I see the declaration of the war on terror. I see the outlawing of refugees. I see security laws passed time and time again, each regime more oppressive than the last. I see dozens of organisations banned. Protesters locked away. Freedoms disappear. Coersion legalised. I see new standards being set almost every day for how a western democracy should operate. And every single one of those standards is lower. And then lower again."
Underground by Andrew McGahan. p274-5
McGahan's book is, primarily, a black satire set in Australia about 5 years in the future. We now live in a world where a John Howard wannabe is Prime Minister; checkpoints, identity cards and random citizenship tests (heavy on the cricket) are the norm; 'undesirable' (Muslim) people are locked in ghettos; and (worst of all) almost no one wants to play cricket against us any more.
Why? Well it all starts when Canberra is nuked . . .
McGahan pushes the situation to extremes - the farcical one day cricket match between Australia and the United States; the Australian loyalty pledge that pledges loyalty to our allies, especially the United States; the overwhleming force of the Australian Federal Police, whose ranks were expanded when the state forces were collapsed into one; the continual State of Emergency which means the Prime Minister is answerable to no one - as he has also suspended elections. But most of the time it doesn't seem that far out of reach.
The day after I read the book, it came through on the news that the terrorists behind the London bombings may or may not have been told to target the Australian and English cricket teams. All the news outlets were saying things like 'thank goodness one of them was a cricket fan' which is ludicrous when you put it into context with the number of people who actually died/were injured. But then they start talking about extra security when the English team are here for the Ashes - and suddenly it doesn't seem like a fair stretch to see full body searches, or a 'no access' area around the Gabba that you can only get through if you have appropriate certification.
And that's just one example of what we've heard in just the last few months. Phillip Ruddock thinks that sleep deprivation isn't torture. We don't teach enough/the right Australian history in schools. Teachers are all pinko-commies indoctrinating students, so the Government needs to take control so we can 'get back to basics'. We're going to allow our media to be almost entirely taken over by Packer and Murdoch. The rules on what you can report from Parliament House get worse and worse. We're allowing a cult access to the Prime Minister, even though they illegally don't vote, just because they run massive campaigns against the Green Party.
What's next!
McGahan tells the story from the point of view of the Prime Minister's twin brother - a man whose been close enough to the action to see it all, but has enough distance to see when things are going wrong. the most poignant point was the description of when George W. Bush came to Canberra, and we turned our capital city and our parliament over to the security forces of the United States. Anyone whose read Margo Kingston's Not Happy John would know the story. Very little is fictionalised in this account - it actually happened.
The book was absolutely captivating - I read it straight through - but it has me angry, still, two days after reading it. Go and read it, it's really worth it.
"But nowhere, anywhere, do I see the Australian people saying no. The monster is silent. We arrived at this position - this George Orwell nightmare in which we now all live - willingly, it seems.
"That's what I mean about miserable reading."
"Or skip ahead, to Robert Menzies, in the 1950s, when the cold war was at its height and, over in the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee was in full hysterical swing. Hear Menzies in stentorian voice, decrying the Communist Party and demanding that the nation pass a referendum to ban it forever or be swallowed up by the red tide. 'Put a sock in it, Bob,' the Australian people replied. 'The Commies can stand for election like anybody else, and good luck to them, because they'll need it. But we don't ban political parties in this country.'
"The strength of those decisions. The courage of them. I mean, World War I was no joke. The cold war and the Communists were no joke. People were scared. And yet the nation refused to be stampeded by its leaders.
"Yes . . . but that was the old Australia.
"If I flip to the Hansards of the last fifteen years, tehn what do I see? I see the rise of the new nationalism. I see the declaration of the war on terror. I see the outlawing of refugees. I see security laws passed time and time again, each regime more oppressive than the last. I see dozens of organisations banned. Protesters locked away. Freedoms disappear. Coersion legalised. I see new standards being set almost every day for how a western democracy should operate. And every single one of those standards is lower. And then lower again."
Underground by Andrew McGahan. p274-5
McGahan's book is, primarily, a black satire set in Australia about 5 years in the future. We now live in a world where a John Howard wannabe is Prime Minister; checkpoints, identity cards and random citizenship tests (heavy on the cricket) are the norm; 'undesirable' (Muslim) people are locked in ghettos; and (worst of all) almost no one wants to play cricket against us any more.
Why? Well it all starts when Canberra is nuked . . .
McGahan pushes the situation to extremes - the farcical one day cricket match between Australia and the United States; the Australian loyalty pledge that pledges loyalty to our allies, especially the United States; the overwhleming force of the Australian Federal Police, whose ranks were expanded when the state forces were collapsed into one; the continual State of Emergency which means the Prime Minister is answerable to no one - as he has also suspended elections. But most of the time it doesn't seem that far out of reach.
The day after I read the book, it came through on the news that the terrorists behind the London bombings may or may not have been told to target the Australian and English cricket teams. All the news outlets were saying things like 'thank goodness one of them was a cricket fan' which is ludicrous when you put it into context with the number of people who actually died/were injured. But then they start talking about extra security when the English team are here for the Ashes - and suddenly it doesn't seem like a fair stretch to see full body searches, or a 'no access' area around the Gabba that you can only get through if you have appropriate certification.
And that's just one example of what we've heard in just the last few months. Phillip Ruddock thinks that sleep deprivation isn't torture. We don't teach enough/the right Australian history in schools. Teachers are all pinko-commies indoctrinating students, so the Government needs to take control so we can 'get back to basics'. We're going to allow our media to be almost entirely taken over by Packer and Murdoch. The rules on what you can report from Parliament House get worse and worse. We're allowing a cult access to the Prime Minister, even though they illegally don't vote, just because they run massive campaigns against the Green Party.
What's next!
McGahan tells the story from the point of view of the Prime Minister's twin brother - a man whose been close enough to the action to see it all, but has enough distance to see when things are going wrong. the most poignant point was the description of when George W. Bush came to Canberra, and we turned our capital city and our parliament over to the security forces of the United States. Anyone whose read Margo Kingston's Not Happy John would know the story. Very little is fictionalised in this account - it actually happened.
The book was absolutely captivating - I read it straight through - but it has me angry, still, two days after reading it. Go and read it, it's really worth it.
"But nowhere, anywhere, do I see the Australian people saying no. The monster is silent. We arrived at this position - this George Orwell nightmare in which we now all live - willingly, it seems.
"That's what I mean about miserable reading."
