Sadness - From Lindt to The Daily Telegraph

This morning I woke up with the heaviest of heart. There was ping on my phone and when I picked it up the message read “What happened? Why 3 ppl dead?”

I immediately logged on to ABC News 24 and found out two hostages were killed over night in the Lindt café siege. The gunman was also killed but that did not compensate the loss of innocent lives because of someone’s extreme agenda.

I have been following the case since it started yesterday at 9.45am. I immediately called a friend who works opposite to the café to make sure she is alright. The whole city was thrown into panic. We all hope there would be a peaceful resolution.

With this ended in bloodshed, nobody in this beautiful city is unaffected. The #MartinPlace and #SydneySiege had been trending on social media in the last 24 hours. We all held our breath and watched helplessly. As more information comes dripping out from the official channels, more questions were asked. There are scrutinies on the operation and there are questions whether the judicial system failed the society because of the ocean deep criminal records the gunman had. For me apart from extreme sadness when my eye swelled up during breakfast, I couldn’t help but ask why did things come down to this? What went wrong?

During the course of events, I was extremely angry when The Daily Telegraph published an obviously cash in edition of the paper sensationalising the whole incident while it was still happening. I am never a fan of the practice of News Corps, or some called it the News Corpse, but taking advantage of the situation to sensationalise a story that you have no information of just to push your agenda and sales is beyond low. This morning when ABC interviewed the editor, he was non-repentant saying that they made good judgement of what they saw in the pictures and thus the headline and the story. They said they can justify their move and did not care what the public thinks. He even went further about capitalising the incident as they see there will be good stories to write about in the coming weeks.  For me I just couldn’t believe they could still call themselves journalists when there is no sense of social responsibility with them. The lack of compassion for human lives, especially lives lost, and simply saying these are good stories to cover for sales is just beyond my comprehension as a trained communication professional. When I was at university, I took a unit of journalism and that was utterly not what I was taught. Also because of their irresponsible stories they would continue to spread unnecessary fear and hatred across the society thus undermining the works of other people who wanted to build a harmonious society. Maybe that is their agenda and maybe that is what they wanted. But then if that is the case what is the difference between them and ISIS?

There is no doubt the Sydney society is shaken to the core by this incident. We are no longer a blank canvas anymore. But what I see is the opportunity to build something good out of this. Yes the canvas is soiled but it is how we restore and continue with the painting that counts. The brushes and the colours may never cover the stains but then we can still paint something beautiful out of it if we make an attempt to do so. Every one of us is an artist of our society and it requires all of us to apply our brushes to make this society beautiful again. One of the good initiatives that came out in the last 24 hours was the “I’ll ride with you” movement that came out from a simple story. The #i’llridewithyou has become one of the biggest trends across social media and that is the kind of beauty that I want to see our society exhibits. Some media outlets or personalities see Islam as cancer cells in the Christian societies and continue to paint them black.  But for me who is more lethal and poisonous? The people with a different religion who want to be part of the society or the people who continue to condemn and stereotype other people whom they are not well informed of and have little knowledge about? The #I’llridewithyou movement is significant because it is a strong message to the society that people do care about each other disregarding their differences. It is the will power of we want to be together and support each other disregarding our differences that will continue to improve our society.

There is nothing we can do about innocent lives being lost but we can contribute to make our society better, not in a personal agenda kind of way but thinking of the society as a whole and thinking of where we want mankind to go kind of way. There is no doubt there are Islamic extremists around the world but they do not represent Islam as a religion and Muslims as its followers. It is the same for KKK does not represent Christianity and Christians. If we care about how Christians being treated in Islamic states we should also care about how Muslims are being treated in Christian countries. I hope something good would come out from this tragic event and Sydney and Australia will become stronger as one and not weaker as many.

My condolences on the innocent lives lost in this tragic event.

Artists are from the Left?

Was having a catch up with some friends in the arts circle the other day. Usually we just talk about arts and nothing else. However with all the recent developments in Australian politics we inevitably touched on the subject and surprisingly we had pretty distinctive views about a number of issues. We pulled up experience and facts and debated. And then we suddenly noticed that this is the first time we had such distinct views about certain things and could not reach a common ground.

However, there was one thing that we all agreed on – the relentless attack on the arts sector by the government. From a broken promise of enormous $254 million cuts to ABC and SBS to the not too many people mentioned $30 million cuts to the Australia Council. One of my friends pointed out that the Coalition government hated ABC because “it was run by a bunch of lefties” that relentlessly criticises the government. But then I said there was a report sometime last year or early this year indicating that ABC’s criticism to the government is not biased as both the Labor and Coalition governments received similar shares of scrutinies by ABC’s programming. I further pointed out that it could be an impression the Coalition government was trying to build by repeatedly criticising ABC publicly as I did not recall the Labor government doing so during their terms. I said what the agenda behind this is something behind their party doors but certainly my impression was that the Coalition government was trying to create a false impression about ABC “left-wingness”.

Then our discussion went on to about the left wing sentiments of artists. For me I personally feel that artists are not necessarily left wing. I would never consider myself as left wing because I simply am not. However artists tend to be more independent thinking and tend to question status quo more. That is something that comes with the artistic quality – it is something important to continue to shape and evolve our culture and society. I can’t say for other people, but since I was little I questioned about things that I do not think make sense to me and sometimes I express this through my drawing, writing or other artistic channels. It is that kind of questioning and continued scrutiny of the world around them that artists are so important for a society to grow. Without that art is nothing but some token brushes on a canvas or some standard structure on a music score that offers not a lot of values to the society and culture they reside in.

So for me an attack on arts is not an attack on the lefties but an attack on the society. For me I am angry and upset about all these cuts because I see it as a way this government trying to suppress free speech and expression while at the same time trying to change the racial law about bigotry under the same pretence of free speech and expression – it is irresponsibly hypocritical. For me it looks like an act of curbing the society’s ability to think independently so they could create a “harmonious” society that will only say yes to the government without questioning whether it is for the better of the society or for the better of the politicians and their cohort of friends. It is a class war waged without much class.

I cannot say for all other art forms but as a theatre graduate and practitioner, looking at the theatrical literatures in Australia, you can distinctively identify the periods, history, school of thoughts and not to mention the creativity of these writers. They could be either writing in response to the society and world they were living in or they could be writing simply via the manifestation of their imagination and experience. But most of them provide point of views. Some of them challenged the tokenism in their societies. Extraordinary pieces like Radiance, The Doll Trilogy, Don’s Party, Keating, Seven Stages of Grieving and When the Rain Stops Falling will not exist if the writers were not encouraged to be independent thinking and to question about the norm. And for this I am not saying questioning for the sake of questioning but questioning with an inquisitive mind that try to make sense when things do not make sense.

If the Coalition government’s current cuts on ABC, SBS and Australia Council are simply because they considered them not being part of their team, they are just diminishing themselves into authoritative institutes that they think they have the rights to condemn relentlessly on the international platform. They have to understand that criticisms on them do not automatically mean these people are lefties. I  question the meagre percentage raise for the defence force because the politicians are getting higher raise than the rest of the government while claiming strong focus on defence to justify spending 400 million on planes in hangers and at the same time crying no money for education, Medicare and the public broadcasters. I question them because they don’t add up and they don’t make sense.

For me an attack on arts and artists is not an attack on the lefties but an attack on a society everyone except this Coalition government is attempting to build – progressive, independent, inclusive and articulated.