I can't hear any more about the rise of One Nation

 This piece of writing will be, undoubtedly, considered "rich" of me, considering I am at a point of my life where I have had to downsize my activism, and focus inward. I am battling (which is the only way to put what has been the past six months of my life) what should be a normal transition for women, but have been left debilitated and needing to focus entirely on what I can physically and mentally do at this point. So yes, I am not on the streets, I am not at the rallies, I am rarely at the panels, and I am not writing much. My energy is limited, and what I have has had to be saved for keeping a roof over my head and keeping on going.

But I am also pretty annoyed right now. A month ago, I left Facebook (whether for a time, or forever - I have not decided), and partly this was because I got sick of judgement and microaggressions from those who I kept that space open for. Partly though, it was because in amongst all the push-advertising was this constant stream of news regarding the rise of One Nation, and a performative moral panic attached to that. 

In my life, I have seen a lot of pointing at the "real racists". Possibly the most disgraceful version of this in the recent times had to do with the referendum. At a time when non-Indigenous people should have been sitting the hell back, listening to the very robust debate coming from Indigenous people (no, I do not include the Indigenous conservative "no" case who showed, incontrovertibly that they were more than happy to reinforce the white status quo for their own benefit), and making informed decisions, I saw a good portion of the Australian left pointing at Indigenous sovereignty activists and accusing them of "siding with the racists" because their point was that no - what was on the table was not good enough.

Indeed, I experienced this very thing personally at a union conference. A white elected official from a different union to me took it upon herself to bail me up, accuse me of siding with the "racists" because the union I work for (NTEU) advocated a conscience vote rather than straight out yes (she actually claimed we had advocated a vote No position, and would not listen otherwise), and then claim that we had not bothered surveying our membership (we had). She would not listen otherwise, and was so incredibly aggressive. That she could not see her behaviour towards me - an actual Aboriginal person with a clue - as deeply problematic was extraordinary. 

Then there was the fellow commentator, who I had busted when I stood as a political candidate contributing to the online bullying I received, also having the hide to make that "siding with the racists" claim because in the public sphere, I maintained an Indigenous undecided standpoint. It was extraordinary. This person got to perform their alleged anti-racism through donning a Yes t-shirt and handing out some flyers, but damned if they were going to peacefully allow an Indigenous woman to put her hand up in a democratic race. 

What was on the table for the referendum was nowhere near good enough. A small group of Indigenous people had devised the least threatening way forward in the hope that it may gain some mainstream support. It gave Indigenous people no rights, and no real voice. That it was voted down so easily says an awful lot about the ignorance the Australian voting public actually contains. But it also states quite clearly that the misinformation being peddled by massive sections of the Left did not help one iota.

Which, in a way, brings me to this point about One Nation and its rise. What if I told you that the rise of ONP is a symptom, but not a cause? Because truly, that's what I believe it to be. Yes, people can gather on the streets and oppose the "real racists", but exactly how has Australia remotely become a place that is not inherently racist? What has the Left been doing to dismantle the very real racism that allows the space for working class folks to think they have been hard done by, and seek these feckless alternatives?

Many years ago, around the time when a bunch of white politicians started becoming victims of s44 of the Australian constitution because they were dual citizens, I wrote what was one of Eureka Street's most read articles that year on how this was not a "win", but actually an indictment on this country. s44's split loyalties provision was, after all, written in a White Australian Policy attempt to stop Chinese and Indian immigrants from ever holding a federal seat. It actually stuns me that we could have gone through then entire referendum campaign, hearing how anti-racist this Yes vote was, without there being any real talk about the racism contained in the consitution more broadly. Certainly, if we were talking about the constitution becoming inclusive, I categorically believe we should also have been voting for the removal of this provision, s25 (which allows for races of people to be banned from voting) and also the race power itself (or at least the amendment of it, so it is not weilded against us). 

Instead though, many of these same unions I have seen performing their anti-racism during the referendum campaign have now brought back into promoting their historical support of the White Australia Policy. Certainly, this is the case when it comes to the handful of them I notice now sharing "Happy Australia Day" posts on their social media rather than promoting solidarity with the Invasion Day rallies. And definitely, it is the case when I see the AWU proudly posting about certain founding figures (eg: William Guthrie Spence and Chris Watson) and their legacies, yet deleting any comment I will make about both these blokes being rabid supporters of the White Aust Policy, with Watson being particularly opposed to racial intermixing despite he himself being of German-Chilean background. Don't believe me? Google either of these blokes' names and see them celebrated on neo-Nazi websites.

It's 34 years since the Mabo ruling, yet we're still in a society where people can be performatively outraged when a Welcome to Country is booed. How exactly has that society changed since "terra nullius" was determined to be a legal fiction in the highest court of this land? Do Aboriginal people have land rights? The ability to practice culture and language freely and supported without justification? Does mainstream Australia actually embrace this long proud pre-settlement history, or is it still very much stuck in a terra nullius mindset? Small gains may have been made, but not an awful lot has actually changed, in my opinion, and this shows itself in the devastating statistics. In 2026, a Koori man should not have to walk all the way from Melbourne to Canberra to attempt to highlight the need for truth-telling in this country. This should have been a given decades ago. 

And, related to this, how has the White Australia Policy mindset shifted? After all, it's now been roughly five decades since that was finally politically dismantled, and yet white people are still feeling very threatened by people of colour. So much so, that several Labor governments have passed legislation trying to limit protest as they really don't want the marginalised to freely gather and mark their dissent. Nobody in the Left should be OK with this, and yet the challenge to the right to protest has been mainly limp. I admit, I do not know what goes on in those Labor Party conferences and party rooms, but exactly how much are these attacks being challenged internally? How heavily are the various ALP-affiliated union leaderships going "nah, this is bullshit" considering we are a movement which, without protest, is effectively nothing? Never mind that such limits on protest have been greatly impacted by a want to stop pro-Palestine protesters gathering to oppose another nationalist movement with a strong lobby behind them.

Brown and black people are still spoken of as if they are a new thing to this country. As the descendant of a brown migrant who came to Melbourne in the 1860s, I find this puzzling. Muslims are still spoken as if they are a new presence, despite the fact that the first mosque was built in 1861 by cameleers. Howard's reinforcement of Australian Pride has really stuck, a generation on, and at what cost? Certainly, not many seem to have much of an idea of why they're fronting an ANZAC Day dawn service on the 25/4. If they did, would they then be OK with still booing the Welcome?

To be honest, I strongly believe that fascism rises, and the ONP rises, purely because a massive proportion of this country is content to give them space to rise. If a vast majority of so-called Australians felt secure in their jobs, their housing, and their futures, would there be enough people left over to blame the immigrants or mob and vote for these feckless turds? And the Labor Party, instead of increasing this feeling of security and cohesion, chases after the top end of town, or appeals to Australian racists, in a bid to hold these votes at the ballot box. Certainly, they are not dismantling the racist structures, and building a safer and more secure future for all. 

Yes, I think that when it comes to establishment politics, some smaller parties on the left need to do more to differentiate themselves, because truly, the ALP is providing them the space to do so with their incompetence. But I have to say, as a now 48 year old, that if I am honest about it, I don't feel much has changed in my lifetime. Some things went forward, some things went backward, some goalposts were shifted, but overall, the racist status quo has remained the same.

For me then, opposing One Nation has very little worth when I spend so much time still having to fight within the broad left. We need to be building the collective, taking the lead from communities who actually know, and counteracting some deeply-embedded structural issues instead. If we are actually successful in doing this, there will be no room for ONP to exist and gain traction. We will have built the society we truly want and need. Absolutely, fascists need to be punched, but perhaps if the bones of this country wasn't so fascist to begin with, they wouldn't have much to go on it the first place when it comes to their sooks?

Frank Moyes - the update to "The Marigold"

 Many months ago, I wrote up "The Marigold" - a blogpost where I solved the mystery of why my great-great-grandmother Eliza Louisa Hibbert had no birth certificate. I posed an unanswered question at the end of it: as well as my wondering if she ever knew her parents were actually her grandparents, I also wondered what became of her half-brother, Francis.

It seems I have now solved that mystery. Francis Louis Townsend Moyes was the sole beneficiary in his father's will when Robert Gibson Moyes passed away in 1911. Given his (and Eliza's) mother Sarah Avis had passed away in 1890, this technically made him an orphan at the age of 26. 

Frank, like Eliza, was born under rather "interesting" circumstances. For starters, though he was the son of Robert, he was born in 1885 when his mother Sarah was still technically married to her second husband, William Townsend, which is how he initially had Townsend in his name. Sarah married Robert when William died in 1890, yet sadly, only lived for another couple of months. Robert, who had the exceptionally cool occupation of being a "billiard maker", outlived her by two decades, never remarried, nor had any other children, and they are interred together in Melbourne General Cemetery. Sarah appears to have led a short, and rather rough, life, but it's clear that at the end, she found herself a devoted companion. 

Try as I might though, apart from finding Robert's will and therefore knowing that he outlived his father, my trail for Francis ran cold. No marriage or death certificates could be found on the system, regardless of whether I searched under Moyes or Townsend. It wasn't until Ancestry notified me that they had a new "hint" available for Francis that I solved it all.

My family has a tendency to use nicknames or familiar names, or even alias, rather than a person's actual name. Therefore obviously Francis became "Frank", and that was what he was known as. It was also what he officially seemed to use, because the hint ancestry sent me were his World War I service papers. 

Frank Moyes joined the allied forces in 1915, when he was a 30 year old man. From there, he served in the 9th, and then the 59th Battalion. Frank was critically injured in the Battle of Amiens in 1918 and sadly succumbed to his injuries a couple of days later. I therefore could not find a death certificate in Victoria because Frank is buried over in the Vignacourt cemetery, his service number and rank of Private listed on his headstone.

Frank never married, nor had any children. His military service papers, however, also answered another couple of questions for me.

Sadly, when Frank died, I do not believe that he knew he had a living older half-sister. He had no next-of-kin listed on his records, both parents were dead, and correspondence from a Mrs Annie Pearce to the Australian Army indicates that he was a friend of hers who had been lodging at her place when he enlisted. Annie was an older woman - I believe a widow - and it took her several letters to the military in order to gain his personal effects so he was remembered. To do this, Annie Pearce also had to state that Frank had no next-of-kin, and the military then had to establish this as fact. It appears they did establish it because the final piece of correspondence to Annie Pearce from the Army indicates that she received his effects, and that she had to ensure they had not been tampered with in their journey to her.

Annie Pearce herself died only a couple of years later, and sadly, this most likely means that Frank's treasures, memories, and medals are lost to time. It means something else too though: had it been known Frank had a living older half-sister, then these goods would have instead gone to Eliza Louisa Hibbert McVeigh, as Frank had no living parents, and his other two half-siblings had passed away in infancy. It is therefore my belief that he never knew the truth.

This doesn't cancel out the fact that maybe Eliza did know the truth. But she never herself entered into correspondence with the army for his effects. This story of a WW1 family member soldier dying on the field has also not been passed down the generations. The expert in my family on military service is my uncle - a Vietnam Veteran who has been active in the RSL for decades - and this story was news to him. I think, therefore, the most logical conclusion becomes that Eliza did believe she was his aunty rather than his sister - her upbringing ensured that. Had her busy-body great-great-granddaughter not started turning over some rocks over a hundred years later, all this probably would have remained unknown.

My uncle is looking into pursuing this with the RSL, so perhaps one day Frank's medals will return to his living next-of-kin. Perhaps they won't though, and therefore, if I ever go to France, I will make sure I take the time to sit by his graveside, and let him know that his great-great-grandniece has finally found him. Until then, rest peacefully, Private Moyes.

Retiring from rallies (for now)

 This year's Invasion Day rally in Naarm has made me have to stop, and take stock. And I am not talking on a broader scale, where the prospect of gathering is terrifying because some alleged terrorist bombed the Boorloo rally. This is more personal.

Following the Naarm rally, I went down with heat sickness for the first time in my entire life. For those who don't know me well, this was a real turn-up for the books because I, notoriously, have always coped well with hot weather. Indeed, I relish it, and when others are dropping around me, I am still going strong. What's more, it wasn't actually a "hot" day on the 26/1 - for the majority of the rally, the temperature stayed below 30 degrees. But one of my fellow organisers noticed me struggling at Flinders Street, and checked in with me later because they were worried. When I was incredibly ill the following day, I marvelled at their observation skills - they foresaw my situation well before I recognised it.

It was when, however, the symptoms of heat sickness dragged on for a week, and indeed, two, that I realised something else was going on. I dealing with continual waves of heat hitting my body, and knocking me around. I had never had a hot flush, so hence, didn't know that's what was hitting me. But there have been additional problems too. I've been struggling with anxiety and depression, getting tremors and pulpitations, and the neuropathy in my left foot/leg has simply exploded. No existing medications have been helping me.

To a degree, I could explain the anxiety and depression. After all, an old friend died prior to the rally, and I was trying to process this sad event while navigating racist Australia. But a certain amount of my symptoms were not remotely explainable.

There is footage of me reading out the statement from Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance that was taken from Pedestrian TV. If you watch it closely, focussing on my hands, you can see that though my voice is mainly strong and full of conviction, my hands are shaking uncontrollably. Indeed, at one point, my shaking was so bad that I was actually unable to turn the pages and had to keep trying. 

I am an accomplished public speaker. Yes, I get nervous before I address a crowd, but I have never before experienced tremors like this. Ever. It took me nearly 30 minutes to get rid of them, so it wasn't as simple as nervousness - something else had tripped my system and physically, I was not coping.

These same tremors have occurred twice since then. The first time was when I was calmly sitting outside, waiting to go into my friend's funeral. The second was when I rode my bike home from Aldi with some groceries in the basket. In the case of the latter, I couldn't unpack my basket for a number of minutes, so lucky there wasn't icecream or similar amongst my haul. In all these instances, I felt like a beta-blocker wouldn't have gone astray because I had no control. When the tremors were also coupled with palpitations (outside the funeral), I actually got very scared for my health. 

These three tremor events have utterly nothing in common. Sure, each of them happened at a time of stress, but the types of stress tripping this reaction are starkly different (eg: grief versus physical exertion). I have had to take stock. In my reckoning, this reaction means that I am dealing with some deeply embedded physiological or psychological condition that gets triggered by the addition of some form of stress, and I am therefore needing to be more careful.

Then I looked at a calendar. Judging by what my "normal" has been since I was 13, around the date of Invasion Day, I was due to menstruate. Over two weeks later, I still haven't. It's not the first time I have ever skipped, but it's certainly been a unique experience this time around. I have actually had an increase in symptoms consistent with the onset of menopause. Doctor google confirmed for me that tremors, anxiety and neuropathy can all form part of this journey, and given I am also getting multiple hot flushes per day, I am recently certain my body is adjusting to the "end game" of this process. Also, I am 48 in two months, and I have had perimenopause symptoms for a few years now, so I think this is a reasonable conclusion for me to make.

It's not as simple as me just "pushing on". No medication I currently have is alleviating my symptoms. At best, painkillers and nerve blockers have merely taken the edge off. And my quality of life is suffering. If it's not a physical ailment, I am finding it harder to leave the house right now mentally. I therefore need to give myself the space to find support and remedies, so I can get some vitality and normal function back.

I have a doctor's appointment this week. I am hoping that, from there, we are able to build a plan going forward to make things better. For now though, I need the time and space to do as stated.

As such, I ask that people give me that time. Please don't ask me to speak at rallies, or even to attend them, until I can give notification that I can again. My body is in no state right now for me to be putting it on the line. Know that I stand strongly, and/or in solidarity, with mob, with Palestine, with renters, with immigrants, with the working class, and etc. Also know that I am doing everything I can to get myself back on deck, activism-wise. I will always be working behind the scenes regardless. It's just who I am.

Cheers!