Hey Imre, have you ever hired a Kombi?
written by Kevin Summers, September 2001
Good on you, Imre Salusinszky. You gave those S11 protesters at Melbourne's World Economic Forum and at the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Brisbane a right bollocking ("Spring, the season of red-green nuttiness", on this page last Monday). At the same time you displayed your breadth of learning by quoting William Blake to denigrate them.
Blake added a bit of flavor to your essay. As a teacher of literature in Newcastle, you doubtless know a lot about the English mystic poet and artist. You know a lot about constructing a witty and even acerbic sentence. You also appear to know a lot about these dissenters in our ranks.
You are familiar with their appearance. According to you, they festoon (lovely word, that, Imre) themselves with long, greasy dreadlocks beneath multi-colored hats. You understand fully their personal habits. These mostly middle-class kids travel in Kombis and fail to shower or bathe. Moreover, Imre, you are convinced that all these ratbags will be converging on Brisbane next month to chant their tired phrases opposing globalisation, environmental destruction and the loss of human rights.
We know you know about these agitators because you have read about their plans on a website. This provides clear evidence of their anti-social tendencies. These folk actually dare to voice their concerns about the world's disadvantaged. Yes, Imre, it is a shocking state of affairs and they deserve your vitriol.
Well, I was among the many thousands at the S11 protest and I was accompanied by a retired school principal, a teacher, a grazier (a Melbourne Club member), and a journalist and editor who was fighting the illness that would claim her life within months. Not a dreadlock or funny hat among us, I'm afraid. Having performed our morning ablutions, we didn't smell too badly.
We were a middle-aged and middle-class group, none of whom has ever owned a Kombi. And, Imre, we were not oddities but rather part of a diverse and good-natured crowd. There were people of all ages and types and opinions and beliefs. They were different from you and your ilk, Imre, in that, despite their personal friendliness, they were neither satisfied nor tolerant. These folk were deeply unhappy with the state of the planet and intolerant of the levels of inequality among its inhabitants.
You could have discovered the catholic nature of this congregation by walking among its members. It is easier, however, to examine a few websites and jump to a conclusion. Or to watch some television footage featuring funny hats and long hair and presume to know all about the protest movement.
Doubtless many S11 protesters will make their way to Brisbane. Good luck to them. ABC broadcaster Terry Lane, wondering aloud whether a CHOGM demonstration was relevant, recently described the Commonwealth as mainly a collection of stony-broke, Third World tyrannies. He's not far off the mark, but the tin-pot dictators of Africa need reminding that spending the little money they possess on US and Chinese armaments and their opulent lifestyles is grossly immoral while the life span of a central African hovers at 37 years. Moreover, the Indian delegates might be informed that it's better to outlay capital on their struggling masses rather than nuclear weapons.
Those who assemble outside the Brisbane Exhibition Centre next month will doubtless hope Commonwealth leaders are mindful that the resources of the poorer members - as much their people as their minerals and forests - are given due consideration and are not to be exploited. Unlike you, Imre, these troublemakers do not hold to the cosy belief that the rich nations are redistributing wealth to the benefit of the poor nations. They maintain that the prosperity gap is expanding.
I haven't the literary knowledge to quote Blake to enhance my case. I am forced to cite a more sober and conservative gentleman: "... the fortunate and the favored do not contemplate and respond to their own longer-run wellbeing. Rather, they respond, and powerfully, to immediate comfort and contentment. This is the controlling mood." Thus wrote John Kenneth Galbraith.
Fortunately, there is an increasingly large and dedicated number of the world's population who are prepared to challenge this myopic contentment. Some of them will be in Brisbane. I suggest, Imre, that you desert the delights of the Hunter Valley, head north in a hired Kombi, and join them.
And don't forget to take a copy of the works of William Blake.
Home