THE HUNTING

Photograph Sydney ourtesy dreamtime.com

There was so much of the haunting that still ran through his brain; because he was here and not there; not where he felt he was meant to be. But the sense of dislocation was no worse than before; better perhaps. Things would go round in circles for a while, he knew that. He knew that things would sometimes be topsy turvy, that the haunting was over but his psyche was still readjusting; that the hurled abuse; or was it targetted abuse, of an election would wash over him, as it was washing over the nation, and sooner or later all would be well.
Or lost.
If there had been any fundamnetal psychological shifts, they hadn't come through his own doing. Geography changed everything, from crowded psychodramas and the constant haunting, the filfthy echoes which began and ended in over-heated lanes, which were swallowed almost as soon as they were emitted, which chirped just beyond the visual range and which he had studiously ignored.
Occasionally there had been a friendly echo, but they were rare.
Here the echoes didn't exist, or barely existed, and his brain searched for meaning when there was none. Sounds were just sounds. Traffic was just traffic. Friends were just friends, dampened in the cold.
He would always be scarred by what had happened, but stronger, wiser, too.
"Buffalo, buffalo," he heard it sometimes, but he knew it was no longer in the streets.
These walking machines, sterling examples of mob behaviour. Of the whipped up, deluded, manipulated masses. How far they could stoop he had never known. How low they could go had been beyond his comprehension.
And so he gathered his forces, and slept, strangely, in a way that was abnormal for him; as if he couldn't bear the long nights with his thoughts running in spirals; the encroaching dawn; the long walks.
As if Lumbini would always be with him; a place he would never have gone if he hadn't been through the scraifhying experience of Bangkok.
So there it was, a simple thing. One thing leads to another. One door closes and another opens.
All the old clices came true, at times of crisis and change. Do the best by the day. Corny things. When in crisis, deal with what's in front of your face.
All would be mounted and mounting; all would circle into scnees of loss and recovery.
The shadows would pass.
He would be whole again.
He did not have his enemies to thank, that pack of thieves from Soi Twilight, and their mafia cohorts throughout the Kingdom, but he did have the passing of time.
They were off hunting fresh meat. Easier, less consequence. Their stance was exposed, their actions there for anyone who wanted to see, and so they, in their simple classical way, ignored inconvenient truths, and moved on.
He sat next to the old mamasan or whatever he was, party promoter, from X-Size, at the bar outside a different bar in a different part of Patong, swapped pleasantries, never mentioned the go-go boy Aek who had robbed him so repeatedly, told so many lives, who had been the instrument the mafia used to stir up hatred against a foreigner, to discredit someone who dared to object to being robbed, and never even mentioned the things that had passed.
The times when he had shown up at X-Size demanding the money he had just been robbed of be returned.
They never mentioned the hundreds of other clients who had also, no doubt, been robbed. That foreigners, tourists only in town for a day or two, were easy targets. That the perpetrators would be dead if they targetted other Thais.
There was no explanation as to why the man had changed bars.
There would never be an explanation.
These things were not subjects that Thais shared with foreigners.
And that was that. The stream went unanswered. The swirl of victims aka customers continued on.
And no shape, no past, no future, tense or not, would ever be discussed.
They raised their glasses in a salute at nothing, and the night washed on.

THE BIGGER STORY

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/switch-of-leaders-creates-more-problems-than-labor-realises/story-e6frg74x-1226696603679

The moral is stark: despite the merits, switching prime ministers just before an election guarantees a pile of problems.

Rudd returned with a "fix it" plan on carbon pricing, boats and party reform. Now the truth is obvious: this doesn't constitute an election strategy. Rudd lacks a powerful narrative apart from jaw-boning about the future while running an anti-Abbott scare.

On the resources boom, Abbott said if it was finished then Labor had been pivotal in killing it. What else would he say? Rudd's line about the boom being over has dismayed the industry and provoked kickback from the opposition. Not smart.

It is true, of course, the reduction in resources investment demands the non-resource sectors seize the slack. It is equally true Australia would be mad to ignore escalating world energy demand over the coming 20 years including an expected doubling in global liquefied natural gas demand by 2030. If you want vision, why not talk about Australia as an expanding energy superpower? But such notions are not in Labor's political DNA, unlike same-sex marriage.

Labor must have a moral cause justified by voting demographics. Climate change once performed this role. Now it is unfashionable. Having just changed his mind on same-sex marriage, Rudd may be correct in judging this to be a voting plus, notably with the under-30s. But it is a risk. The risk is that Labor looks like a party that fails on the big issues but seeks to survive on progressive fashion. It will provoke much cynicism at a time when people feel Labor is failing on economic management, jobs and cost of living. Some will applaud Rudd; others will conclude this shows him as a phony.

The single most alarming aspect of Labor's campaign is the absence of any positive tactic to regain the lead from Abbott. Where are Rudd's policies to buttress his claim to best manage the economic transition? He rarely mentions them. Where does this leave his campaign?

The answer is heavily in negative territory. Rudd's resort lies in discrediting Abbott. It has been the default Labor position for years. The party remains in denial about its policy and intellectual failures. Such denials are rationalised by the delusion that Abbott is unelectable, and reinforced now by the sad reality that Labor probably has nothing else left.

THE PLACES FLED III

Port Kembla steel works courtesy www.beca.com

The haunting was over and yet his mind was still ill at ease. He knew the story was over and yet trails of it still ran through his mind, unhappily, for he did not want to be where he found himself; and the nation turned off the election in droves. Having flown too close to the sun; wings were in tatters. Kevin Rudd, who must be loved and admired at all times, was no longer the subject of infatuation, veneration, or anything much at all. The mob had rounded on a "loser"; and there would be no satisfying their lust for blood, their stinging contempt. Their "fed upness", their boredom, with  the techno-jargon about creating the jobs for the future. When the budget had blown out and there would be no resolve. When their own lives had not improved despite all the grand sweeping tours; statements; past beliefs.

Nobody mentioned reconciliation anymore. 

The "good folk of Australia", as Kevin Rudd was want to say, were no longer so easily fooled. Gone were the days when Rudd could paint himself as a progressive saviour of the planet; signing the Kyoto Protocol and leading a delegation of 114, or whatever it was, to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. A summit which, ultimately, made not one jot of difference to anything, except that it stoked the lingering or not so lingering contempt; a jot in the catalogue of past enthusiasms. Along with reconciliation; where the lives of not a single indigenous person had improved. Or now, gay marriage. As if anyone could really care. Why anyone would want to imitate a heterosexual institution, or why a piece of paper should mean anything, Michael had no idea.

But the past had gone, just as it had in the fetid heat of Bangkok's sois, and days followed days and there would be no others; and he was cheered by nothing.

The nights were cold; as were the beach walks. Assemblies of the lost, the frustrated. He could not fathom what had happened; but it had. There was no recourse; no way of saying sorry; of reaching back for forgiveness or reconciliation. There was nothing but a hard wall of laughter; the successful thieves. The bitter glint. He took time, as if for action, but this was a different action, a different intent. He had every intention of taking his time; of not running to some mad dream or someone else's time table. Of proving nothing. Of walking away quietly.

Because they weren't the audience; never were. And if he had briefly tried to prove something; it wasn't to them. "If I've been untrue, it wasn't to you." I hope you know. But there was no one there. No one waiting. No one watching. And all the silent dreams, the chirruping voices. "Perhaps he's telepathic." He can hear things he shouldn't be able to hear. Well say it, sandwich it, swallow it and die. There were brief moments when the story was more than the story should be; and then it was over, just like that. We made to discuss. We made to channel. We made to reach out. We were proved unworthy. And we died. That was all there was to it. Suicide by cop. The nights grew darker. The wind colder. The voices more distant. The drama less and less intriguing. 

And then he walked away, free at last.

"He insulted me, he hurt me, he defeated me, he robbed me." 
Those who think such things will not be free from hate.
~~~Buddha....

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/two-teens-charged-with-murdering-melbourne-baseball-player-chris-lane/story-fni0fiyv-1226700172461

Sarah Harper, 23, also told the Herald Sun that she didn't know what punishment would be appropriate of the three teenagers, aged 15, 16 and 17 years, accused of Lane's murder.

It comes as Duncan Police Chief Danny Ford said he had secured the confession of the 17-year-old who summoned investigators to his jail cell and claimed he and the younger boys were bored "so they decided to kill somebody".

"He said he was the driver of the car," Chief Ford said.

"They saw Christopher jog by the house they were at, they chose him to be the target, they got in the car, drove up behind him and shot him in the back.

"He said the 16-year-old fired the shot."

The three teenagers are being held in the Stephens County Jail in Duncan.

The trio were due to appear in a local court over the shooting at 1.30pm Monday (4.30am Tuesday AEST), but it has been pushed back a day.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Jason Hicks said the charges were still being reviewed.

The mother of the 16-year-old accused of firing the single bullet from a handgun into Lane's back said she didn't believe her son was involved.

The father of the 15-year-old admitted his son had been in trouble with the law, but described him as a good boy.

Lane, who grew up in Oak Park in Melbourne's north, had only been back in the US for three days after an eight-week break in Australia with Ms Harper.

"I don't want them to have any future that Chris wasn't able to have as well," Ms Harper said of the accused teenagers today.

"It's been pretty rough. It's been hard knowing he was taken so close to home, let alone taken in the way he was. To be pointed out like that …"

Ms Harper said she and Lane had joked about America's soft gun laws before he was shot.

"He wasn't a fan of guns," she said.

She fondly described Lane as a smart, kind and curious guy who would "do anything for anybody".

Ms Harper, also a talented sportswoman, said she and Lane just "meshed together" within weeks of meeting at college in Oklahoma in August 2009.

"It was more of a personality (we had in common), not so much interests. He was intellectual, into world news, and I found that quite boring," she said.

"He really wanted to travel more. He loved the idea of seeing the world."

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/a-desperate-kevin-rudd-hits-the-negative-button/story-fnh4jt62-1226700452898

KEVIN Rudd does not look himself.

The grand visions of hospital reform, talk of the moral challenges of our time about climate change and the positive campaigner are gone.

In their place is an increasingly negative and bitter campaign from Labor and Mr Rudd himself.

With no money for big policies and polls heading south, Kevin Rudd has hit the negative button.

His message: don't elect Tony Abbott, look what his LNP counterparts have done.

A government should be able to sell its own record.

Labor cannot.

Mr Rudd this week began warning of what Tory Prime Minister David Cameron has done in Britain.

Comparisons with Jeff Kennett and Campbell Newman may have bearing on voters but the UK Tories?

It sounded desperate.

This morning Mr Rudd suggested he would find his way back through people power.

QUIET, TOO QUIET

Flickr photo share South Coast NSW Looking Towards Werri Beach

There's an election on but you would nver know it; things have gone so quiet. There is no passion, it's quiet, too quiet. A phrase often used by an old party animal in Islington, London, in the days when Richard was still alive, in the days when the world was full of promise and our lives were only half lived. These times, now, were different in the dark, so cold, so lacking in life, that when sequences came by there could be no other; and the haunting he had received, gone now, as things wasted away into oblivion and there would be no hope. Crushed into a meadow. Fragments of films everywhere. And then nothng, nothing at all.

These will always be the times we wished for; the spaces in between. As if there could be no calm anywhere else. But the excitement was gone. There wasn't anything worth saying. The two party leaders had their say, back and forth, and the Weekend papers declared Kevin Rudd to be campaigning poorly; and falling behind. We were here or we were there, flickered past a hundred things. Taken time, taken a life. While they continued to thrive in their subterranean world, heart broken. Buffalo, buffalo. The spaces in between. If he could but muster, if he could but die. There were too many gaps. He rolled over, belly to the sun.

It was the quietness in between that was the most terrifying, the places when there weren't avalanches of thought, when seedy men in seedy bars made no advances, when the gaps in communication had eaten everything alive, and all that could be done, their wastage, was in another place. He was staunch. He was saddened by what had happened. He was angry at himself and others; flickering, because there was no point. An insane gesture. A triumph of love. A triumph of stupidity more like. Friutless, pointless; he still heard the murmurs, "perhaps he's not as well connected as we thought", and then he shrugged. He had spent too long playing to the tune of invisible taunters. If he couldn't see his way clear, it was a momentary thing. Others would take their place. Demons would play. Circuses would perform. 

And an ancient Christ, an invisible amalgam, would curl and dance. And more would be revealed. And lightning quake. And the fact that there were gaps in the fabric of things would come to seem unimportant, and in a thousand ways, in a thousand days, in all these brightly coloured places, there would come some kind of denouement, some passing of the guard, of one kind into another, of one fleeting pass on a football field into another life. No longer hunted, he no longer wanted to settle. He just wanted a base and a place, and that was it. No time like the present. No place he wanted to face. It was quiet, too quiet; and he remembered the sunny, mischievous face of the one who used to say it.

And they laughed. Quiet, too quiet.
   

THE PLACES FLED MACH II

NSW South Coast courtesy nswtrainlink.info

From here, there were so many things. He didn't think there would be peace behind a shadow, or comfort in a storm. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to be. Everything had been erased. "I get everything," a nasty little go-go boy jeers in a Bangkok soi. Yes, well they do that. He hadn't known, hadn't known anything. And now he knew. He knew things would run around and around in his head for a while, because he wouldn't be here if he hadn't been there. That was the way of it. There would always be compromise, there would always be consequence. And that was the way of it, like it or not.

And no, he didn't like it. The sky is high, you can fly. You can do many things, mostly steal from the passing parade, take what you will, care nothing for what you do. That was also the way of it, amidst a peasant class which would always steal. If the cap fits, wear it. They wouldn't be doing it again. He ran afoul of foul elements; and now was washed up on an ancient shore. There was little to do. Little to know. The peace he had felt wasn't here. Things would always be the way they were. And he would compromise; in his heart and soul and deep down where; while they made heroes of thieves; and assumed the customer was always wrong.

How they compromised on this; how they made hay. How everything worked. How he could walk from one place to another; fragile, febrile dreams, not bitter dreams, although that could be the title of another missive; he wasn't done yet. They buried what they had done and time coated everything. Except for him. They washed away the shallows of themselves; were clean in a circus meant for someone else, were cold in a space where there was no offering, jeered at by masses, a chorus of pain. That was all there was to it. Ancient lusts; gone shrivelling down into the core. There wasn't anyway to get to you. There was no redemption, salvation, a welcoming calm. He was hiding in an invsible space.

So it was that this period went down; and went away. It wasn't a revelation. It was a game that had been played out upon him. Everything went AWOL, and those he thought might care didn't care. They had their own chorus, their own fans. Their own families. They had profited and survived; and he had not. He wasn't even here any more. He watched some ground birds hopping off into the deep scrub of the littoral forest; and could hear their chicks chirping. No enemies here. He could see a marker stone in the centre of what had probably been a midden. It had a feel, as if it had been the centre of something. Just as there was no mistaking the marker stone at the centre of Buddha Park, where he was supposedly born. Rushing to be alive; just as he had not. 

There would be a chorus but they were distant things. Bad boy, he saw, inked on stone brick. And not long after, a callow, sad looking man with his domineering wife, sitting in a cheap car, staring mournfully out as the winter sky fell quickly into dark. And the same words, "Bad Boy", festooned across his t-shirt, spoke of greater optimism than what life had handed him. He hoped they weren't the one and the same, just for the sake of errant beauty. In which case all would be lost, if it hadn't already. Because nothing stirred here, there was nowhere to go. The cold shrank in around them; and they hid in the dark overhang of the forest, protected from the wind whipping off the frigid sea, protected from the other tribes, protected even from themselves, as they cuddled togeher for warmth. There wasn't going to be an easy solution, not in this lifetime.

THE SPACES IN BETWEEN

Tony Abbott ran in the Sydney to Surf, along with 80,000 others, and appeared relaxed and comfortable in the much vaunted first debate between the two leaders. It's probably not an experience Kevin Rudd will be eager to repeat, although he had been the one pushing for the debate. Because, behind in the polls, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
And what a disaster it was.
Everything shook, and when the leaves finally fell and the branches were bare, there was nothing there. The horror simply compounded.
"It's blasted a hole in the centre of his life," the last remaining fragment of a voice said; and he didn't know whether it was a chirp of his own subconscious, or still real.
They had pursued him for so long it took him a while to believe they weren't there anymore.
They survey your friends, they survey everything.
Well perhaps, but there was nothing to survey.
The hole in the centre of his life.
Yes, the job had gone. The kids had grown. His house had been blown. There were centres of activity and then there was nothing.
An aching heart that had simply been blasted to smithereens.
Documentary evidence of a taudry life.
He had a friend somewhere, but he didn't know who.
The cold beach, the nod of strangers, the quiet that had consumed everything.
There was no life here, nothing that he could find.
He hdan't wanted to come back to Australia, and he had been right in that perhaps, if nothing else.
He slept a lot, usually a sign of depression. But it wasn't that, if nothing else, he didn't know why he was here or where he was going or why.
What had happened had happened.
"I'd like a boyfriend but I guess I'm too old," he said in the Bangkok condo of his wild friend.
Only alcohol could fill the days; and yet he wasn't drinking.
Only time could cure what was the country's greatest angst, frustration.
He didn't want to be here, he didn't want to be anywhere. And so he gathered himself into some unfocussed ball. Glad to be here. Glad to be alive. A natural optimism.
They had corroded everything, and left him here.
"They're very dangerous people," Robbie said on the drive to Bangkok's Survanabhumi Airport. "I think it's good what you did, telling the story. But they are dangerous. You will always have to be careful."
For this the customer pays.
And he continued to pay. In a life that wasn't his anymore.
Come back to earth my friend, we will greet you like long lost lovers.
We will greet you as the darkest, lost love. And make as if to embrace. It was time for it to end. 

BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

David Hockey. Splash.

Michael had put a copy of David Hockney's famous painting Splash on his laptop as background while in Nepal. It was less confrontational, or disturbing, than the Francis Bacon picture which had preceded it, and created less consternation among the passing parade of hotel workers who viewed. In a strange way, he got up and went to work just as he had done in a previous life. He didn't really know what else to do. The strange transition from worker bee to self supporting mobile organism was only half complete; and the trees which filled Buddha Park, the flatness of the Terrai stretching towards the nearby Indian border, had all become a part of his life.
At this point in the election cycle the results seem pre-ordaned.
Everybody is expecting Kevin Rudd to be ousted.
They are sick of his carping, sick of his techno-babble, and sick of his "must be loved and admired at all times" personality.
The grand days of the reconciliation, when he was seen as the saviour of the nation's soul, reaching across the bitter historical divide to embrace the fallen, the indigenous population, were gone. The nation's conscience, cleansed of racism and hurt, could move forward into the blinding light of redemption.
But nothing happened.
Conditions on the ground remained as bad as ever, if not worse.
Redfern, where Michael lived at the time and which had its own unique Aboriginal problems, deteriorated still further. They now felt entirely entitled to abuse the European population. Reconciliation only ran one way.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on housing in the north of the country.
And not a single house was built.
Bureaucrats swallowed the lot.
The opposition claimed that Kevin Rudd had wasted more than 200 billion dollars of taxpayer's money.
It seemed entirely plausible, his ego was so huge.
They carried away a staunch reply: Get knotted.
Go waste your money somewhere else; your own money.
"It's the battle of the millionaires," a former devotee of Kevin declared.
For a long time Kevin could do no wrong. Now he could do no right.
Did he really care about "marriage equality" aka gay marriage?
Unlikely.
It was a popular issue amongt a young demographic; and that was it.
Why gay people would want to mimic heterosexual institutions Michael had no idea; and shrugged. The State should never have been in the nation's bedrooms in the first place.
And they should never have been in his.
He had behaved appallingly just to annoy them; and now wished he hadni't. But didn't much care. He'd made the point: fuck off. Fuck off out of my life.
Instead the jeers and the ridicule had simple escalated out of control. The Thais had tracked him even to Lumbini, Buddha's Birthplace, where, for a time, he had thought he was safe.
Nowhere was safe from the crawling reptiles who thought they ran Bangkok's underworld; who ran their businesses of thieving from tourists with impunity; besause unlike Michael most tourists only stayed in the metropolis for a few days and were left without redress over their stolen property.
The senior police who frequented the illegal casino at the bottom of the Twilight Soi knew perfectly well that the street tout Baw had stolen his laptop, his tool of trade, and flogged it at the casino for 7,000 baht. No one, police or not, had the decency to return it to him.
They circled around a wounded wilderbest, waiting for the final kill.
But the final kill never came.
Instead here he was in yet another time and place he had never expected to be, watching an election which was as distant to him as it was to most of the population.
The days when Kevin '07 had strutted the boards, had led a 100 plus officials to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, had signed the Kyoto Protocol to great applause, and had, again, been hailed as the saviour of the world from predatory industrialists spewing carbon into the atmosphere, were gone.
The days when he had been seen as finally bringing compassion to the refugees and boat people, aka illegal immigrants, coming to the country, were gone.
The sovereignty of the country was being eroded; as thousands landed on a vast shore line. Or died at sea.
And in Michael's own life other things too precedence, such as common sense.
He hadn't wanted to come back. He hadn't wanted to be anywhere.
But he took one foot in front of another; and began to solve the problems which had threatened to envelop him.
Pining, they said, of people who had cared. But pining for what? 
He was the one who pined the most, for a dream that never was, for people who never were, for a future that could not be. For happy days in a happy land.
Too old to learn, just want to live, had turned and bitten him just like a snake, as suredly as the people he had been generous towards had turned and robbed him, spread their nasty poison and survived, or thrived; at least for a time.
"You're out of control," a voice said, drobbing from just behind in the staggering heat of the Terrai.
And he knew the sharks of Soi Twilight had followed him even here; had no respect for people or for form. Wanted him dead.
Wanted him corralled into what they considered normality.
Wanted the foreigner to die.
Instead he returned to Australia, watched the election on television and marvelled at the massive size of the electricity bills.
If the public had been warned that their bills would soar, the price of everything escalate, their elderly relatives huddle over single bar heaters in freezing houses, that this would be their contribution to a dubious but fashionable effort to save the planet, they might have thought twice.
But they were not told.
And this time around, this election, Kevin Rudd and his "team" of backstabbers have barely mentioned climate change at all. They know the issue is out of fashion. That like so many passing fads, nobody believes anymore. 
Redemption is not so easy. Saving our own souls is not a matter of crossing a few palms, a few gestures; a few actions done for applause, not truth. And so we wander on; into another government. Indeed into another life.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579011880172936694.html

CAIRO—Egypt's efforts to end Muslim Brotherhood protests turned deadly Wednesday morning, with more than 278 people killed across the country in violence set off when police, later backed by Egyptian soldiers, moved in against two antigovernment sit-ins in Cairo.

The move to clear supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi, which had been anticipated since his ouster by the military on July 3, set off violent upheaval across Cairo. Protesters tried to storm police stations across Egypt's capital, while entire neighborhoods succumbed to fighting between neighbors on opposite sides of the political divide, an early taste of the bloodshed that has been feared for weeks by many Egyptians. Several observers worried that the violence has spiraled out of control and taken on sectarian shadings.

Egypt's interim president declared a monthlong national state of emergency to start Wednesday afternoon.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/arrogant-kevin-rudd-hides-nbn-truth/story-e6frgd0x-1226696601734

KEVIN Rudd claims there is a conspiracy surrounding the NBN. He may be right. But it is not a conspiracy in which Rupert Murdoch seeks to bring down the Labor government to sabotage the NBN. It is a conspiracy to hide from the voters, until after the election, just how bad are the finances of the NBN. And the dire straits that the NBN is in can be sheeted back to the deals done by one man: the Prime Minister.

Rudd sketched out his grand vision for a Fibre To The Home network on April 7, 2009. The project was launched with a 1000-word press statement. There was no policy paper or supporting financial analysis because Rudd, who now demands the Coalition take its policies to Treasury and Finance, asked neither department for costings. And despite the fact that the first tranche of funding promised by Rudd was held in the Building Australia Fund and by legislation could only be disbursed following a cost benefit analysis, none was done. Instead Rudd plucked figures out of the air.

The initial headline $43 billion cost was not sourced nor was there any support for the extravagant claims that the project would generate an average of 25,000 jobs a year. Rudd also claimed it would be 49 per cent private sector funded although there was no indication the private sector would come to such a hare-brained party. On average over its first four years the NBN has supported 10 per cent of the jobs Rudd claimed and the revised $37bn cost has fallen fully on the government plus a further $20bn in taxpayer-guaranteed payments to Telstra.

EVEN WHEN

Jigsaw, Madrid

"You are fleeing, even when there is no one chasing you," the elderly woman said. He could read sub-texts as easily as anyone. There were cruel passages, but none of it was for the better. These sorcerers would make their toxic traces, and then disappear. The preposterousness of all that had happened still sloshed around in his head, because he wouldn't be here if he hadn't been there. The suburbs were so quiet. "I like it like that," a man said. "Since they've blogged off the street, after about six there's no cars."

"Quiet," he repeated.
And again came the response: "I like it like that."
"Nothing much to do."
"It's nice. Peaceful."

Well, there was a peace, haunting moments, transcendent flashes of time where God rained down from a moon bright sky, where young men hung in cars on the coastal ledge, and everything came full circle. He remembered them from his youth, the alphas, the subordinates. Like men everywhere, elaborate pecking orders, or not so elaborate. Bashed into place. Because it had always been like that, had to be like that. Or else everything would run out of control, and no one would know who was boss.

Yes, the haunting still haunted him. Yes, there were days when he would have gratefully disappeared, as if this place wasn't silent, distant enough for true safety. As if being tracked was an enduring symbol of oddity. As if it had always been, and they were on the high moral ground. What a peculiar, ungrateful place.

"Falung have no power."

The voices had ringed where he once had lived. Had hoped. Had fallen apart in a circle of derision.

And to this day, some mornings, he remained disturbed by the viciousness exposed. As if they cared, or had ever cared.

"You are fleeing when there's nobody chasing you."

Everything seemed to be falling, caught in mid-air. Under mango trees, in too-quiet streets. In nasty customers at local shops celebrating the fact that he had been robbed. Laughing at him, to his face or behind his back. Casting forth, the expelled who had never belonged anywhere. The sky came closer over the point, the ocean moved as if alive, and he cranked up the music even louder, drowning out the voices from the other cars.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott never ceases to confound with his volunteering and community work. Is he the tough individualist you'd expect a conservative prime minister to be or a collectively minded softie? The answer will help determine the sort of country Australia becomes.

Will it be one that encourages empathy and the selfless volunteering/community spirit we have seen during this bushfire crisis? Or will Australia lurch towards a rationalist ''what's in it for me'' ethos the political zealots around Abbott prefer?

Abbott's volunteering work is a great example of what the nation needs leading into a summer of fires, floods and cyclones. Through his actions and policies such as the Green Army and Auscorps for university students, he seems to stand for self-sacrifice for the common good. Contrary to my colleague Mark Kenny's view, I believe Abbott should keep volunteering - we need him to be a role model for community cohesion.

Yet Abbott also leads a party that worships individualism. He sits alongside those who, like Margaret Thatcher, believe there is no society; that ''people must look to themselves first''. He sits among many who, like American philosopher Ayn Rand, think altruism is wrong because the highest moral purpose is self-interest. And Abbott often joins them in crying ''nanny state'' when governments try to nudge citizens into pro-social behaviour.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/if-abbott-gives-in-to-his-better-nature-he-may-turn-out-to-be-the-ideal-leader-for-a-land-of-fires-and-floods-20131022-2vz6d.html#ixzz2iTtWrnGu