Australian Doublespeak, OR, In Which Jack and Jodie are Expelled from Parliament House

No foreign travel stories today. Instead here is the tale of politics a little closer to home — the state of Australia’s poisonous security laws, and the day my girlfriend Jodie and I were evicted from Parliament House.

DETAINEES

Jodie and I went for an Aussie road-trip to Canberra a little while ago, and being political types we were of course going to stop at the shiny geometry of the Parliament building — which is light, airy, full of indigenous dot-paintings and Australian landscapes, and rather nice.

We joined a tour-group of the public areas, where we learned that Bob Hawke used to play basketball in the polished great hall, and that the trickling water-features were implemented to deter eavesdroppers. We strolled past the portraits of PMs past, where Rudd was a notable absence, although his successor-and-predecessor Julia Gillard was there. Perhaps there is a bipartisan consensus to not talk about Kevin.

Our guide gestured to the skylights, and the roof garden beyond. “Parliament House was designed to be welcoming. It’s not built on top of the hill, but within it, so that anybody can walk on the roof and look down at your representatives. It’s a reminder that you, the citizens, are in charge here. This is your building, and we work for you.”

Our group smiled and nodded, our guide smiled and nodded. Jodie and I smiled and nodded then slipped away to see some of the representatives working for us — as today was a parliamentary sitting day.

The Morrison Government did not expect to be re-elected and apparently have no policies and no plans except to run down the clock for another three years while the planet burns. But they still have to go through the motions of democratic oversight.

Watching our Senators debate matters of state was my most unpleasant experience since my ears were cleaned with steel spatulas. The apathy in the room was palpable, rising to make me feel limp in the viewing gallery. Government spokesman Mathias Cormann performed his smirking response as theatre for his own side. His opposite number Penny Wong slouched low in her chair and studied her outstretched ankle boots, her back disdainfully turned away from the Government benches. Pauline Hanson wandered in and out of the room like someone looking for their phone.

Only the Greens seemed to be even trying. Shortly after we arrived, Tasmanian Greens senator Nick McKim rose to ask a question of Senator Reynolds, the Minister for Home Affairs. Jodie whispered to me that McKim was recently back from a fact-finding visitation to the migrant prison camps at Lorengau, Manus Island. He was barred entry and his passport briefly confiscated, before he was picked up by armed police and deported.

I don’t have to remember his lines, because Hansard keeps a record:

Senator McKim: “Prime Minister Marape has requested your government provide a timetable for ending offshore detention on Manus Island. What commitments have your government given to PNG’s government about the future of offshore detention, and have you agreed to provide a timetable as requested by Mr Marape? Minister, after six long years, when will your political prisoners on Manus Island and Nauru finally be given the freedom and safety they need and deserve?”

Senator Linda Reynolds sighed disdainfully and pushed herself to her feet.

Senator Reynolds: “Senator McKim, you keep perpetuating a complete falsehood. There is nobody detained on Manus Island. There is no detention centre there.”

She spoke so matter-of-factly, that I felt suddenly unsure of the nature of reality. Politicians traditionally bend the truth, but I was under the impression that actually misleading parliament was a resigning offense. So had I misunderstood? Had offshore detention program been ended? Where was the author Behrouz Boochani now, if not Manus? Jodie rescued me from the gaslighting, reassuring me that yes, we still operate privatised ‘transit camps’ in the Pacific.

McKim repeated his question.

Senator Reynolds: “Just to be very clear: I completely reject the whole premise of your question because there is nobody in detention on Manus Island…in fact, the Prime Minister today, when talking about Manus, was noting how peaceful and beautiful Manus Island is and, in fact, would welcome tourists and others to come and visit Manus and to see for themselves.”

Senator McKim: “If there are no detention centres, as you and the Prime Minister claim, what was that place with guards on the gate, with razor wire on the fences, that people are locked up in each and every night that I was denied entry to last week and, ultimately deported from Papua New Guinea for asking permission to enter? What exactly was that place?”

His voice rose in anger, the few Liberals who were listening chuckled at his impotence.

Senator Reynolds: “Senator McKim, no matter how much you scream in this place, no matter how disgracefully you act as a senator of this place in another country as a guest of another country, you cannot change the fact that there are no people in detention there on Manus Island.”

Greens Senator Janet Rice shouted “that is Orwellian!”, while the Labor party didn’t even bother to raise their eyes from their phones. The Greens kept trying to hit upon whatever legal code-phrase would compel the Minister to admit that the Government have abandoned people indefinitely in tropical concentration camps. Nothing worked. They couldn’t find the word, probably because the word didn’t exist. The Government has decided to simply make the problem of detention centres disappear. We have always been at war with Eastasia, there is no war in Ba Sing Se, and there are no detention centres on Manus Island.

In the gallery alongside us were two classes of primary-school children, watching wide-eyed, learning about the world they would enter. I felt like throwing up. I wondered if I should stand up and shout that Linda Reynolds was an evil woman, but the apathy in the chamber weighed me down. And I felt like you cannot shame these people. They have passed through the seas of self-doubt, and now float serenely on untroubled waters.

The rest of the hour passed in a blur. Like a dark fairy-tale, the ministers of the Government were thrice asked to defend policies, and thrice responded with the incantation, “I reject the premise of the question”.

• A One Nation senator demanded to know why we were not allocating more water from the dying Murray-Darling to farmers.
• Labor asked if there was a reason our elderly were being mistreated in privatised health centres.
• The Greens asked about one of the Government’s few current pieces of legislation — the Agricultural Protection Bill 2019, which criminalises trespass on farms by animal rights activists. Of course, trespass is already a crime, but conservatives always enjoy ratcheting up pre-existing laws and the militant vegans make a convenient threat. Once it passes with Labor’s support, as it surely will, Australians will face five years in prison for merely ‘distributing material’ that could ‘incite’ illegal environmental dissent, much as since 2015 journalists can face prison for reporting on conditions within the detention centres that don’t exist.

I found it hard to believe that this farce of ritualised disdain could still be playing out in fifty years, but this absurd system has lasted centuries without falling, so why should I think our time is special? Perhaps because we no longer have economic progress to paper the cracks?

DETAINED

Jodie had a suggestion for cheering us up. She had spent the Spring working for a federal Greens senator, and is well-loved in their office, so when she messaged them that we were here, The Senator’s Policy and Parliamentary Advisor James came out to meet us. He had a vast brain and a vast smile, and said we should come by the office to say hello.

To enter the ‘backstage’ wing of our Parliament we had to sign in, receive our visitor passes, and be escorted by a member of staff. James led the way round corners and up and down stairs while I memorised the layout in case of emergency egress. Parliament had only recently resumed, and James explained that after each election, the rooms in Parliament House were re-allocated in order of the new seniority. We could see that MPs were still playing out this game of musical chairs, and shortly before the Greens section we passed the open door to a Queensland MPs office, where a huge boar’s head leant against the wall, waiting to be mounted.

Our Senator’s office was more about public fruit bowls and positive reinforcement, with a television tuned to show the burbling continuing in the chamber downstairs. The Senator welcomed Jodie with affection and me with the neutral warmth of someone who wasn’t quite sure who I was. It was a busy day, with a new drought bill springing up, and the Greens having unexpectedly got the ‘random question’ slot in the Senate. After a minute the Division Bell on the wall beeped like a car alarm and flashed red, and The Senator got a call telling them that they were supposed to be back in the chamber. Now.

There was a whirl of activity, quick apologies, and both James and his Senator hurried out again, leaving us with the final office member Thara, who was looking overwhelmed on what was only her first full day in the role. It was getting on for 4:00, and I had a drinks meeting to get to — I was due to deliver a much-loved antique lamp to an old friend. I suggested to Jodie it was a good time to slip out.

“But we can’t,” she said. “We’ve lost our escort.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I remember the way back, we’ll be out in five minutes.”

“That’s not the point, it’s forbidden.”

“I’m sure they’ll be back in a minute,” reassured Thara.

Forty minutes later, I was incandescent. The sun was starting to set through the big windows and our dinner date was asking me my whereabouts. Jodie told Thara to text James, who responded that he would be back any second. I paced for another ten minutes, growling like an animal, then declared I was making a break for it. “Come on, we’ll be out before anyone notices,” I told Jodie. “Just walk boldly like you know where you are going. Infiltration 101.”

We slipped into the corridor and walked boldly for five steps before a voice shouted “STOP!”

A security guard, Mr Raana, marched towards us. Where was our escort? he demanded. I explained that we had been abandoned. Then we would have to return to the office and wait, he said. I played the democratic trump card. It was my understanding that in Parliament House, we the citizens were in charge, and everyone here worked for us. I had just been told such.

Mr Raana had not received this memo. “Rules are rules, sir,” he said. “Get back in the office.”

I thought about the display of bland maliciousness we had witnessed in Question Time, realised that I was as angry as I had been for some time, and decided I was going to get theatrical.

Jodie stepped back into the office, expecting me to follow, but I deliberately lounged against the wall and felt the rare pleasure of summoning all the masculine arrogance my high school had instilled in me. Jodie looked despairing, and closed the door, leaving me and Mr Raana eyeballing each other in the hall.

“I wish to leave, Mr Raana. You wish me to leave. It seems that we are in agreement. Why don’t you show us to the exit?”

“It is not my job to escort people, I am a busy man.”

“I actually know where the door is. You don’t need to trouble yourself. And the thing is, I am an hour late for an important meeting. I have a lamp to deliver.”

“That is not my problem sir, your escort will have to help you.”

I looked past him, down the receding perspective of empty white corridor. “What if I made a break for it? Maybe rattled some door handles. Would that be bad enough behaviour that you would be forced to throw me out?”

“It would not go well for you.”

“I see. So I am being held against my will?”

I was grinning now. Mr Raana almost smiled back, then recomposed himself. “My frie…sir. I am sure you are a good man. But what if you were not?”

“Then you should probably throw me straight out.”

He met this logic with a haughty silence. In the distance I saw figures wandering freely. “I am being held Political Prisoner!” I shouted towards them.

“Nobody is held against their will in Parliament House,” said Mr Raana.

From behind the door, Thara’s muffled voice asked “Are they fighting?”, and Jodie opened it again.

Mr Raana realised that this was five minutes of his life he was never getting back, and that the situation could continue for some time. He sighed, pulled out a notebook, and demanded to know who had brought us here only to abandon us.

Jodie blanched, but I took the quisling route and Named Names. They had the records already, after all, and I had an antique lamp to deliver. The pencil scratched against paper, and then with a jerk of his head, Security Officer Raana led us back down the halls and stairs for a whole minute, then indicated an emergency exit door. He even managed a smile, although perhaps it was one of victory — because once the door swung shut behind us we realised he had deposited us as far away from the car-park as it was possible to be. As a final insult, the parking meter would not recognise our bank cards. We had become persona non grata. In the thirty seconds it took us to find some currency, it flicked our fee from $5 to $10.

Jodie messaged apologies to her friends, then patted down her pockets and realised that we had accidentally stolen our visitor lanyards. I felt awash in the warm glow of successfully and pointlessly punching against the world.

We drove out of Canberra the next day. From the passenger seat, Jodie showed me an online job ad. The Senator’s office was seeking a ‘passionate and engaged person’ to join the team as Policy and Parliamentary Advisor. Our escort James was no more. There were no Jameses in Parliament House.

“I mean, for this ad to have gone up so quickly, it must just be a coincidence, right?” Jodie asked.

“Almost certainly,” I agreed, and pushed down a little on the accelerator.