Mum [pointing at ears]: Darling, it’s like the Trans-Siberian Railway in here.

Me: … What does that even mean? That it takes three weeks for a thought to pass through?

Dad: It’s like a wind tunnel.

Mum: Passes like a bullet.

Sister: Because sometimes conversations with you make us want to shoot ourselves?

Dad: It’s a vacuum in there, sucking thoughts through before they even touch the sides.

Me: It’s a tundra–

Dad: –where the landscape is so desolate no blighted thought can grow.

Mum: I have to have thick skin.

Alex Miller. Image: The Australian

Novelist Alex Miller is one of Australia’s most successful, with two Miles Franklin awards under his belt for Journey to the Stone Country and The Ancestor Game. His latest book, Autumn Laing, began as a work loosely modelled on the life of artist Sidney Nolan, but quickly morphed into something different.

The heroine, Autumn, is a cranky, fiery woman of 85, flatulent and impatient, furious at the indignities of old age. She’s looking back on her life with no small measure of guilt. Autumn recognised the talent of artist Pat Donlon as soon as she met him, and they embarked on an affair that would mark the rest of her life.

In the novel, she continually casts back into the past, to Melbourne in 1938 and her circle of artists, poets and writers trying to tackle the establishment of the time.

I met with Alex to talk about biography, guilt, the masks of the confessional, and how Sidney Nolan came to change his life.

Listen to the audio as broadcast on 2SER’s Final Draft, or read the longer transcript after the jump, which is up on Meanjin’s blog.

I read that you’d said that she inhabited you.

It’s not to be taken literally.

You weren’t possessed!

No. I mean, people say “oh, you heard her voice when sitting on a bench in Holland Park?” Well, yes. But it was a realisation on how the book ought to be written.

And how did that differ from your original conception?

Radically. I thought for years it was going to be a book about Sidney Nolan. And it’s not. It’s a book about something else. Which involves Pat Donlon, who is loosely modelled on Sid Nolan, with whom I’ve had a long association going back to my childhood.

What form did that association take?

I was working as a farm labourer when I was a kid, 15, 16. And an Australian, my first Australian, moved in next door, and he gave me a book on the outback, which I’d never heard of. Australia was as remote to me as Serbia.

Sidney Nolan's First Class Marksman. Image: The Sydney Morning Herald

And he gave me this book and said, “if you want to go to somewhere really wild and remote” – and I thought Exmoor was pretty remote – “why don’t you go to Australia?” And I read the book. I have no memory at all what it was about. Presumably the travels. But it was illustrated with wonderful black and white photos of this country, which was a straight line dividing the top of the page from the bottom of the page, and that was the horizon line. Or there would be one feature and it would be a dead tree. Or it would be a figure of a man, taken from behind in silhouette, standing at the edge of a veranda, looking out at that straight line. And it just possessed me, this idea of going there.

What was it? Was it this idea, the vastness of it?

When we’re young, and also I think when we’re old, and I’ve experienced both, we still dream of a kind of freedom; we’re not sure what we mean by it. How do we see that? What is it?

There was this very powerful sense in me that I needed to go and find out. The images of emptiness weren’t so much emptiness to me, as promise. A kind of lure. Particularly a picture of stockmen on a veranda, looking out toward this undeviating horizon line. And they seemed to me to be in this vast, wonderful, mysterious silence that I’d never before imagined, having come from South London. And of course those photos were taken by Sid Nolan – I didn’t know that at the time.

Nolan refused the training of the Europeans. And this was something that always intrigued and delighted me. He’d done that, and was the only Australian artist to come up with something the Europeans were interested in. Not only was he unconnected from the art world, but he was working class. And somehow he leapt the fence and beat them all at their own game, which most of them didn’t forgive. Plus he was a hard bugger. Whereas Pat Donlon, who’s the figure in my book based loosely on Nolan, is not.

Well he’s hard enough.

Hard enough, yes. But he’s not vicious, the way Sid was.

Where would you draw the line, then, in question of how much of a Sid cloak you put on Pat?

It’s not a matter of putting a cloak on characters. Characters either find you or they don’t. this story’s been a long time maturing for me. It’s had a long history, beginning with me being fascinated by those photos by Sid Nolan. So much so that I came to Australia alone when I was 16 to find that place.

It’s the first book where my interest in art and the Australian landscape have come together. But the inspiration in Holland Park in September last year that the story should be told through the voice of this old woman.

How much had you developed the story up until then?

Sidney Nolan and Sunday Reed. Image: The Daily Telegraph

Yeah, I’d written a chapter. I mean, I didn’t know yet how to write the book, but I began by writing. I don’t begin by researching, but by writing. And if I write myself into an area of ignorance that is still attracting me, then I’ll go find out something about it,. But unless that happens I’ll just keep writing. Because often with me it’s an aspect of myself I’m dealing with. Based on the masks that I’ve assumed, and these are the masks of fiction. And in this case Autumn Laing came to me as a surprise. I didn’t intend to write a book about Sunday Reed. I didn’t know her. I’d never met her. Sunday ended in despair, partly because of the way Sid Nolan persisted in treating her so meanly and horribly til the end. Which was something I don’t think Pat Donlon would do.

Well, no, but Pat removed himself from the scene entirely.

It was too difficiult for him and it wasn’t going anywhere. What was he going to do, be her toyboy?

He was too proud for that.

He didn’t have a lot of choice. Was he going to hang on and grow older there? He was 21, 22 in my story, and there wasn’t a lot of choice. “You either hang around with me and Arthur, or you move on.” And he did move on, as anybody would, unless you want to be caught in a place where there was no room for them to be themselves or develop.

But Autumn came to me as a surprise. She was 10 years older than Sunday Reed was when Sunday died, and Autumn is not bitter. She’s not defeated.

But she is angry.

She’s aware of her own guilt. And sets out initially – she’s triggered by seeing Edith Black, to feel that guilt. When she sees Edith, she realises, “that woman could have been my oldest friend, instead of my oldest enemy.” But as you know, she vastly overestimates the damage she’s done.

Vastly.

But we don’t know what we do to other people. I feel guilty about when my son was young, I used to work assiduously on Sunday morning, until lunchtime, and he’d slip a little note under the door, and I wouldn’t read the note until I was done, and it would say, “can we go to the park or kick a ball or something, Dad”. When I look back on that, I feel almost tearful with guilt over it. Ross, who’s 33 now, and a banker, with kids of his own, says, “oh, for Christ’s sake, Dad, we used to have a great time with Mum. We used to say, ‘geeze, I hope Dad doesn’t come out!’”

So it’s quite different, and it was the same for Autumn and Edith. Autumn remembers what she sees as this destruction of this woman by taking her man and taking away from her and the child and destroying a potential family. There are a number of reasons why a person like her would feel so guilty, because her own relationship to children is a very complex one, right to the end of the book. Finally she says, “I had one child.” And I think theres a catch in her throat when she says that. You had one – what did you do with it?

I think it’s towards the end of the book when Autumn says of Edith, “she’d been a character in my story and no longer a real person, and they no longer inhabit my reality but my private fiction, which represents the truth of things to myself only and only for today.” I thought it was interesting, the way she circles round this memory and casts it in different lights.

How can you not?

You can’t.

Your memory is yours, not somebody else’s. In a sense one of the problems with memoir, is we assume that the memoirist will tell the truth, will say, “this is how it is”. [But] it’s almost impossible for a memoirist to portray themselves as odious.

Whereas Autumn doesn’t seem to have a problem with that – she seems to revel in portraying her faults.

She is prepared to tell the truth truth, warts and all, as they say.

Well, her truth truth.

Yeah, her sense of herself and her sense of her guilt, requires her to deal in the coin of her own guilt. Which she does, and exaggerates, as we find out.

When you’re writing a character like that, how much are you seeing her through the eyes of which she’s looking at herself, and how much do you step back and say, ‘well this is how she really was and this is how I’ll allow her to depict herself’.

Sunday Reed in front of Heide, her home outside Melbourne in 1965. Image: Heide Museum of Modern Art.

I don’t see it that way at all. When I realised this story could be told by Autumn Laing, this woman who was originally a side issue and was based on a period of Nolan’s life, I realised, “it’s her, she’s going to do it”. And it came to me, this realisation, along with the sense of her feistiness and her determination – “there’s nothing left to lose, I can do it now, I can tell the truth, stark as it may be. For me, I can tell  my truth. Who else’s truth can I tell? Nobody’s, we don’t know another person’s truth.” So it makes the last year of her life, and there can’t be another, surely, she says, she’s done with it, her body’s had it, she doesn’t have any friends any more—

Her friends are gone, her family’s gone, her lover’s gone.

Her last friend is gone, left her quite upset by all that. The only person who’s come along is the bloody bollard, the scavenger, who’s going to have the last word, as biographers do—

And she did.

And she did. Only fair. So they do. And they correct the mythologies of the person who has lived the truths they’ve inquired into, and theirs becomes another truth, the biography becomes the biographer’s view. Not many biographers view kindly a fictional treatment of their subject.

Well you say it wasn’t Sunday, and there’ll be some degree of defense that you’ll have to put forward when people continue to link these things—

No, I don’t have to defend it.

I don’t mean in a negative sense, but people will always be curious about where that line is drawn—

Of course.

You said you started out with this idea of writing about Sidney Nolan, and then Autumn kind of hijacked that, and there are enough parallels though that people will persist in seeing this as an officialised account.

I see her as emblematic as the Australian, well-educated woman of means. Very independent about her views of life or anything else. There’s something to me very Australian about the woman, an her belief in Australia and Australian art. Australia was always going to be where she was going to do it, whatever it was. Like Patrick White did. He had a choice, absolutely, and said, “we’ve gotta make it Australian, if we’re going to do this”.

You have such a dominant character in Autumn, and so much of the book revolves around her relationships with the other women in her life, and yet so much of that is in the orbit of the men in their lives. And Autumn talks about this gift of recognition that her uncle recognises, and she talks about how her true talent is to see talent in others.

It was. There’s a class of such women. Numerous people, young, scruffy, working class, gifted artists, or poets, artists, writers, whatever, over the years, over the centuries, have encountered an upper class woman of means who’s recognised them as authentic. Other people might have recognised them as authentic and not been able to do anything about it. The woman that scrubs the floors once a week, she night have recognised them as authentic but so bloody what? You’re not going to be able to do anything about it. So there’s always  a sense of a selecting-out process, where the woman who acts as a muse often to a younger man, and I’ve brought Pat as nearly 10 years younger than Autumn, she’s 32 and he’s 21, it’s a huge difference at that age. And also the attraction of an older woman at that age is something mesmerising too, someone who’s confident and approaches with that confidence. And also the power, her ability to seriously help him and see him on his way. And also the acknowledgment is very seductive.

Image: Allen & Unwin

But who recognises the recognisers?

Yes, good question. For Autumn, there was no one to take over. Autumn’s been there at the coalface, when it happened. She’s helped, she’s had her hands on the paint herself—

She’s in the pictures.

And more and more in that series she appears at the window, a solitary woman, which she is. And remains. It’s very sad.

Without her what would Pat have achieved? Can we even speculate?

I don’t think so. I can’t. It’s not the novelist’s place to judge. It’s the reader. The novelist makes observations, the novelist observes. And hopefully they observe accurately. Because accurate observation is at the base of it. Accurate observation of human behaviour, intimacy of one person with another, whatever level, or animals, your relationship with whatever it is, needs to be accurately observed. And when it is, it’s a delight to read. When it’s not, you can’t quite go along with it, you don’t believe it, it doesn’t feel authentic, you’re not dragged into that world, you don’t become part of it yourself. And the reader makes those judgements, the writer doesn’t, and hopefully you open it up for people to read rather than close it down with your own judgements.

As you’re writing, how much space do you leave for people to read for themselves? Is that something you think about when you’re writing or something that happens unconsciously?

Both. The only thing I can tell you is, tell them nothing.

Bare bones.

Tell the reader nothing. Let the story unfold. Tell them nothing, otherwise the reader doesn’t have to read the fucking book. If you tell them anything at all, its like saying, “don’t worry about this, stop being interested, I’ll just tell you what’s going on”.

And in Autumn Laing, there is that back and forth between her very present first person narration and her own biography, the memoir she creates herself—

Her fiction.

Yeah. Her fiction. Which is interesting in a character that’s so determined to tell the truth, that doesn’t seem to extend any further.

The mask of fiction. She’s following Oscar Wilde’s perception that you have to give someone a mask before they’ll show you the truth of themselves. Also the mask goes back to Balinese theatre. You can’t behave like that normally. People will be disgusted, unnerved, or uneasy.

You’ve got to put them in the confessional box.

Yeah. But you put the mask on and you can behave within the landscape behind the mask. And its vast. In a sense it enables you to call upon the unconscious. And that’s what she’s accepting. She says, “you’re not going to hear it all from me.”

This interview was first broadcast by 2SER 107.3′s Final Draft.

Daniel Connors plays Daniel in Toomelah. Image: Curious Films.

Aussie filmmaker Ivan Sen has built a name for himself as a maker of thoughtful, moving films about indigenous Australia.

His newest film, Toomelah, screened at Cannes Film Festival in May to an extended standing ovation that had the non-actor cast in tears.

The film was shot on the mission Ivan’s mother grew up on. The story follows a young boy, Daniel, who drops out of school and gets caught in the crossfire between two gangs.

Ivan dropped in to the studio and had a chat with Kate Aubusson and me about making films as a one-man band, the blurring of fiction and reality, and Aboriginal rom-coms.

NV: Why Toomelah, of all places? What was it about that area that drew you back?

IS: Toomelah, it’s an indigenous community in north-western NSW, and it’s pretty isolated, but I always had a connection there because my mother grew up there and all my family are there. I always wanted to go out and make a film there but it took me a long time to work out how to go about it. I knew I wanted to go and do something that capturesd a slice of life, and not use a conventional approach.

NV: So how did you come up with this story of Daniel and his adventures and misadventures?

Initially I didn’t know what the story would be about. But one day when I was out there during the writing process, doing the research, a little boy walked into this yard and started arguing with these teenage boys. He had a bowknife in his hand and threatened to slice all their throats with it, one by one, individually. He was a tiny skinny little boy with a huge mouth and he had an amazing face, and I thought, wow, this kid’s got something. My only challenge was to try to harness it, and get him to work for me.

NV: And how did you convince him to do that?

Well, he was keen from the very beginning. But we just had to sort out who was the boss, and we did that very early on! After I found him, I followed him around all over the place, and went to school with him.

KA: So he was pretty up for it, for this film experience, but the rest of your cast, they’re all non-actors, how did you approach them? Were they similarly keen?

I just did the same thing, I kept looking around to see who had a strong voice and a strong face and went from there. Some people were too shy. But it was a pretty difficult process, the whole casting thing, because there’s only 200-300 people living there at any one time, so it was kind of limiting, the amount of people I could choose from.

But on the whole I think they did an amazing job, and their performance in front of the camera was pretty cvlose to how they would normally act. They’re very specific in their behaviour there and their accents, all of that. By using totally all of the people from there they were able to become comfortable with each other, and they knew me. The only difference during the filming was that I had a camera there, because I literally went in there by myself—

NV: One man band?

Yeah.

KA: So that was it for crew?

Yeah, just me.

KA: Wow.

And so that was a huge undertaking.

NV: To say the least!

KA: Well I guess that would have worked really well in catching the candid moments, if you don’t have a crew of fifteen people, or a trailer…

And you can move very quickly, by yourself. The problem is that it’s a drama and you have to put words in people’s mouths and get them to say them, so it was difficult, I had to feed lines to them the whole time, so I would have one eye on the sript and one eye on the camera. I’d call out peoples’ names and then calling out the lines, and that’s how the whole acting process happened.

NV: Did you ever find there was a blurring in the minds of your cast over what was real and what was part of the story?

Yeah, yeah. That happened a lot. They would get their own ideas as well, and start going off on tangents. There was a scene, down by the river, where the little boy Daniel starts throwing stones while this other guy is fishing. But the guy who was fishing really wanted to catch a fish. But it wasn’t part of the script, he just had it in his mind that he wanted to catch one for the camera. So when I tell Daniel to throw those stones near him, this guy who’s fishing, he’s just totally abusing Daniel. His face is so real because it is real. He picked up a stick and runs after him. And if he caught him he probably would have hit him with the stick.

NV: It’s interesting that you say while shooting you were feeding them lines, because I was wondering how the process works when you’re developing a story that’s so naturalistic. How much of that did you have a preconceived idea of, and how much of that was following Daniel around and taking snippets from his life that fit the story?

I didn’t want to come in with my own ideas, I just wanted to observe the environment and put it into a structure. I wrote down every bit of dialogue I heard out there, and I had  notes and notes of lines and lines that I heard out there. So instead of putting my own dialogue into the film I put those lines into the script. So everything in the film is pretty much from my observation out there, not from my own experience or my own ideas.

NV: I did find it interesting that you said Daniel was such a mouthy kid,  because there’s a real stillness in the film, and almost a lack of dialogue that works really nicely. He’s soft-spoken and it is just in what you see. Was that always your intention, to strip it back?

I don’t know. Before I made this film I made a film called Dreamland, an experimental film in Nevada where the main character said nothing. So for me, this is a lot of dialogue!

NV: This is a wordy film!

I am a fan of non-verbal dialogue, and I think it’s very powerful and there’s maybe more purity to it as well.

KA: That definitely comes through in your films, and I found when there was dialogue, from Daniel especially, it was a lot of bravado, it wasn’t what he was thinking or feeling but what he was trying to project. He was a tough guy. There’s these funny scenes where he’s trying to bluff that he’s had all these sexual experiences, and it’s all fabrication and its in the quieter moments that you see what’s actually going on in his head and what he’s actually feeling.

Yeah, a lot of those moments it’s more with the older people. With the younger people it’s creating this illusion that he’s a big man. And that’s totally just so he can protect himself.

NV: A lot of the issues in this film are very political but it doesn’t come off as a political story.

I didn’t go out consciously chasing issues or trying to show those issues to the audience. But there is one issue I did consciously put into it and that was the continued effects of the stolen generations, and that’s something that affected my own grandmother pretty much in the way that you see it in the film.

NV: That she was taken from Toomelah?

Yeah, my grandmother’s sister was taken when she was 10, 11 years old. And the bus came out o take them to the dentist like in the film and didn’t come back. And 50 years later she was spotted on Mike Willacy’s show, back in the 80s or something. So they had a big happy reunion and that lasted for  couple of months and then they realised they didn’t actually know who each other were. And then they had a few months before auntie passed away. My grandmother really didn’t recover emotionally from it at all.

When I went to the Toomelah screening I just felt like everyone there from the community just felt like they were validated in some way. That they were held up, their lifestyle and culture had been captured forever, kind of thing. It’s hard to describe. It was this sense that, we are someone and we are somewhere.

NV: And that someone’s telling the story.

Yeah because everything’s just— the stuff about the stolen generation in the film is something in Toomelah that’s not talked about. And all the younger generation don’t know about it.

NV: Why is that?

People just don’t think to talk about it. Just too busy living day to day lives. And the people that used to talk about it, the older people, are all dying away. Something like Toomelah can bring things together and present them as a whole and be a reminder for younger generations where they come from and about the place they call home.

NV: Kate and I were trying to work out how many happy indigenous films we’d seen, and we couldn’t think of too many—

KA: Success stories, those rousing stories, and we were wondering if that was a concern for you, that there aren’t too many…

NV: Positive…

KA: Feel-good, that seems like a silly way to put it—

Rom-coms?

KA: Samson and Delilah would have been a little different if it was a rom-com!

Yeah, but I think the key word is there’s not a lot of films, full stop. And if you don’t have a lot of films, you won’t have a lot of variety. I guess Bran Nue Dae and The Sapphires, they’re kind of lighter films and people do respond to those as well. But as time goes on— my next film’s not a rom-com, it’s a murder mystery, a detective film about an Aboriginal detective that has to solve these murders in a small town like Moree. And it’s a bit of a Western as well.

This interview was first broadcast on 2SER 107.3′s weekly film program, Celluloid Dreams.

Image courtesy of Hopscotch Films

In 2004, Aboriginal man Cameron Doomadgee swore at a police officer in the street. 45 minutes later, he was dead in a police cell, having sustained injuries more typical seen in high-speed car crashes.

The man accused of killing him, Chris Hurley, was a police officer in Cameron’s hometown of Palm Island, a seemingly idyllic island off the coast of Queensland with one of the highest rates of crime and violence in Australia.

The investigation into Cameron’s death was politically charged as two very different elements of Australian society clashed over the tragedy of what had happened.

Journalist Chloe Hooper’s award-winning book on the case, The Tall Man, has been adapted into a documentary.

I spoke with the film’s producer about making a film when one of the main characters is dead and the other won’t talk.

Listen to our chat or read the transcript after the jump.

DARREN DALE: I think Palm is such an interesting and contradictory place. It’s a place of great natural beauty, it’s set on the Great Barrier Reef, its 60km from Townsville, it’s very beautiful and the images would bear that out. And then in stark contrast, there’s violence on the island, you’ve got suicide levels that are unacceptable, and you see when you visit people’s homes, there’s 350 houses for a population of 3500 people, so there’s overcrowding in houses. But at the same time there’s a sense of freedom that young kids have, and I remember back to my childhood, kids were out in the street, you could ride bikes around and roam the streets. On Palm, kids get to live that life. It’s a place of real contradictions, I think.

I’d read the book, and I was curious to know how it was that you first come to be involved in the making of the Tall Man.

I’ve read the book as well and was overcome by this very insightful and lucid account of these events and the death of Cameron Doomadgee in that police cell in 2004. And I think Chloe had written a really fascinating book. And for the first time I felt there was a level of objectivity and a level of insight that was brought to these events that wasn’t just the normal retelling of saying, you know, “this was a good black man and this was a bad white guy”. I thought the complexity in her book made for a compelling read.

And it was really one of those chance meetings where, when we met, Chloe said, “oh, I’ve really wanted to meet you guys, and would you be interested in doing something with the book?” and we said, “well, it’s really great to meet you, because we thought the book was amazing,” so that was kind of the genesis of us being involved.

At the time we thought it would be great as a dramatic retelling, but when those rights weren’t available, and in hindsight I’m glad they weren’t, all that was available was to make a documentary. And ultimately that was the best choice, because hearing direct testimony from people involved is such a strong and engaging manner to tell this story, that I think any other telling would have been second fiddle, in a way.

What do you think you would have lost by doing a dramatic retelling?

I think drama by its nature, you would have had to have had one character, or tell it through Chloe’s eyes, and have all the twists and turns drama imposes on a story, following one character’s journey, and I think the film would have been potentially limited in scope. And I think the great strength of doing a documentary, you get to hear the story from many different people and you get to hear it in their own words, and that sort of raw emotion and power of people telling their truth is I think incredibly compelling and engaging for an audience. This material is complex, and that’s what good films need. They need complexity of humans, and flaws and strengths, and certainly this story has that in abundance.

How did you go about approaching the community in Palm Island about filming? I imagine they might have been media weary at that point.

I think you’re right, there would have been some fatigue around this story because it had been in the media for such a long time. Being indigenous filmmakers, it’s really important we have the permission and consent of the people whose story we’re telling. So we did two or three trips where we didn’t take cameras to the island, and spent time sitting down with people in their homes, talking to the council, that process, we’re lucky enough we were funded we were able to spend that time, make those trips, and that makes much better storytwelling, so when you do bring cameras out, expecting people to talk about events that are still raw for a lot of people.

Were you able to build more trust coming as Blackfella Films rather than another production company?

I don’t know whether you can say that with any certainty, but I think people had an awareness that we tell indigenous sotries, and I think that connection of being blackfellas is one that’s important for people, and helped us win their trust a little quicker. But at the end of the day it comes down to how people interact with each other. Some people were less trusting of us and it took a longer period of time. But I guess you’d have to say yes, it was easier for us coming into those situations, especially a story so loaded with anger and grief and tragedy. People were very happy to talk to us in the end.

And respect is respect, regardless of where you’re coming from, and if you’re respecting their story I’m sure they’d be able to see that authenticity coming through.

Yeah, I agree.

How did you find the Palm Islanders different in the retelling of this story when it came to the official experience of it?  How do you go about piecing together a  story when one key party in the case when they won’t speak to you?

That was one of the great challenges of making this film. Two of our central characters, one had passed away and the film was based on his death, the events emanate from his death, but on the other hand we had real opposition from the Queensland police service. At one point they had clearly said to us, and we engaged with them in a similar process to the community on Palm Island, going to meet with the police, telling them what we wanted to make, and they had agreed to give interviews, but  a week into filming on Palm Island we had a letter from the Queensland police saying they couldn’t give an interview, and wouldn’t and no further correspondence would be entered into. And I think that’s really a great shame.

Why do you think they intiailly agreed and renenged?

I have no idea. We were told we’d definitely get interviews with officers that were stationed on the island during the riots, they said we could speak to the senior sergeant on the island, Paul James, and those interviews were confirmed, and then they decided they wouldn’t go ahead with those interviews. The official reason was they said investigations were pending.

In the absence of their voice, you did manage to get your hands on a lot of footage. You had access to footage the police had taken themselves during the riots when they were locked inside the police compound. 

A lot of that material was tendered at the coronial inquest, and we met with the State Coroner, Michael Barnes, and it was through a process of approval getting that through, and that was key for us, even hearing Chris Hurley’s voice in the film. We managed to secure getting  that evidence from the Sttate Coroner’s Office, and they decided that that stuff was in the public domain, one of their functions was to give answers to the community and on that basis the State Coroner thought it was important and that access should be given to that material, and certainly we were grateful to be able to include that, because you get Chris Hurley’s voice and his take on events, and it’s much better to have that included.

Particularly in the way the film goes to great lengths to stress stress that the death of Cameron Doomadgee was not an overtly racist act in itself. And this stresson objectivity, to give both sides of the story.

Yeah that was important for us. We didn’t see the film as being an investigative piece, it wasn’t the 7.30 report where we were out to find new information. What we wanted to do was present these events and have the people talking about the event, almot like a re-examining of the events rather than a reinvestigation.

How do you think this story fits into the wider landscape of stories about the collision of black and white Australia? 

The nation is probably ready as a whole to engage with indigenous stories, and we’ve seen that in the past with films like Samson and Delilah and Bran Nu Dae, and there’s a real preparedness and an appetite now to engage with indigenous stories and this is an important story because it speaks about justice and it speaks about racial tension and politics in our country. So I think in terms of stories we choose to tell, it’s an important one. Documentary shines a spotlight onto worlds and things we don’t normally get to view and this is an important story.

This interview was first broadcast by 2ser FM’s film show, Celluloid Dreams.

Image courtesy of Harper Collins

A child survivor of the Holocaust, Diane Armstrong migrated to Australia from Poland in 1948 during the postwar boom. With a long career as a journalist and novelist, in her new book she’s returned to that time.

Empire Day follows the lives of the residents of Wattle Street in Sydney, as the locals try to adapt to the unfamiliar ways of the immigrants escaping Europe.

I met with Diane to talk about how she transported herself back to the 40s, the things she remembered and the ways her characters took on lives of their own.

Listen to the audio or read the longer transcript after the jump.

DIANE ARMSTRONG: I would say I started with a memory of cracker night. It was the culmination of an annual celebration called Empire Day. It was meant to celebrate our being part of the British Empire, and that was actually my starting point for Empire Day, because when I thought about our first year or so in Australia that was the image that came very vividly to my mind. Standing in front of our little semi, watching in amazement at this incredible scene, this bonfire, the children laughing and letting off fireworks, the adults who took part in all of it, who were so carefree, or appeared to be. I’d never seen anything like it, there was such a community spirit, there was such a feeling of fun. And of course where I’d come from, there wasn’t a lot of fun, there wasn’t a lot of laughter, there was a lot of tension and danger. And that was a very strong impression that I carried away with me from those early days in Australia, because that happened soon after we arrived. So that was really my starting point. There weren’t any characters, there wasn’t any plot, there was cracker night.

You’ve had such a varied journalistic career, and you’ve done investigative reporting and travel writing. But it seems in your novels, in your books, that you keep coming back to the second world war. 

I’m a child holocaust survivor. And the holocaust is the defining event of my life. I grew up hearing about it, I have been surrounded by people who went through it, I’ve read a lot about it, so I’m just fascinated. Not even so much about the event itself, which was horrific, but the way people coped. Being a writer, I’m always fascinated by how people react when thrust into certain situations. Just ordinary people like you and me, what happens to them. And I’m fascinated by the way that some people rise to heights they never expected of themselves while others sink much lower than they would have hoped.

By 1947 my parents had decided that they would leave Poland. And at that point my mother’s only surviving relative was her sister, her entire family had been murdered. But she had one sister left who’d gone to Australia so my mother wanted to come to Australia and that’s why we arrived here in 1948.

Group at Bondi in the 1940s. Image: maxdupain.com.au

Australia must have seemed like the end of the earth at that time.

My father wanted to get as far away from Europe as possible, and Australia fitted the bill very well. And while in many ways it was the end of the earth, and it was totally different from anything they’d ever experienced, it was different in a wonderful way.

And I think in a way, when I came to write Empire Day, I drew on those very warm, nostalgic memories of Australia and Australians in 1948. I guess in a way Empire Day was my tribute to the Australia that really welcomed us the way it did.

And how much of that was coloured by your memories and how much of that was research you actually did into the time?

I would say it’s both. When I started thinking about Empire Day, I started remembering all kinds of things. I remembered walking to school with all the kids from the street, I remembered the way we played out in the street after school – in those days children played outside, they didn’t sit in front of computers and televisions. In the evenings the adults sat around the wireless listening to serials like When A Girl Marries and Portia Faces Life and all those soapy serials. People were very stoic in those days. They didn’t talk about their innermost feelings. So those things I remembered.

I remembered the corner grocer who used to twist lollies into a little paper cornet and hand them over. They sold very limited small goods like white bread. Youd’ go down to the shop for the neighbours, the neighbours would ask the children to run messages, they’d say, “get me a shillings-worth of devon” – that’s how things were bought. And I just remembered a lot of details like that. Catching the tram everywhere – nobody had cars, or at least not in the street or area where we lived, you never saw a car.

And so how do you go about peeling back the present and looking at this area again with the eyes of 1948, how does process that work?

Harold Cazneaux Argyle Cut (also called 'Children of The Rocks'). Image: nga.gov.au

It’s a very interesting process and I’m not sure I entirely know the answer. I think what happened was that firstly I started remembering that period, and that helped me get into it. Then I did quite a lot of research; I went to the State Library, I read all the newspapers about what was going on in 1948 and 1949 and discovered all kinds of interesting things, including the fact that there was a polio epidemic that was raging at the time. And the research of course always helps me find new plot twists that I hadn’t thought of. So that’s one of the functions of the research. I talked to people who were older than me and remembered the time and they told me things that happened to them and things they’d remembered. By the time I’d finished all that I’d channelled all this information and these experiences and I was there. And I remembered the songs that were being played – the number one song was I think was Buttons and Bows. Number two was Nat King Cole singing Nature Boy. Perry Como, the Andrews Sisters sang Rum and Coca Cola, and once I started thinking these things came back. And so bit by bit I got immersed in that period.

And then one day as I was thinking about these characters in the street, I saw this elusive little man who became Mr Emil, and I heard him hammering away in his cottage, and I wondered, what’s he hammering? What’s he doing? And he captivated me. I started thinking about him.

I find that quite interesting, that this character appeared on his own, fully-formed, and took you along with him, had you asking these questions and following along after him to see what he was going to do next.

You’ve put your finger on it exactly, that’s exactly how it happened. I heard the hammering, then I saw the man, I felt he was haunted but I didn’t know why he was haunted, but I knew there was something in his past that haunted him, and I ran with it.

How does that process work when you’ve got these characters that appear to you in this way, at what point do you wrestle back control and decide what their fate is going to be, and how much of that is you spectating?

You know, I don’t think I ever wrestle back any control. I think the characters once they appeared, they took over. Characters in fiction tend to be as uncontrollable as children. You can’t really pull the strings, and if you did, I think it would be rather contrived. It’s channelling in some way. They acquire a life of their own and the story develops its own momentum with the characters. I didn’t know all the things Mr Emil as going to do as the book progressed, and I didn’t know all the things he had done. And the same was true of the other characters.

Did you find yourself sitting back with your first draft and being surprised at yourself?

I would be surprised as I wrote, because I would say, ‘oh! I didn’t know he was going to do this,’ or ‘I didn’t know she was going to say that,’ or ‘I didn’t know that was going to happen.’

Circular Quay in the 1940s. Image: State Records NSW

So how does the process work when you’re writing as a journalist compared to writing as a novelist? How do you switch off that part of your brain, how do you do away with the facts and let yourself get stuck into the fiction of it all?

In some ways non-fiction is easier because you know where you’re going, whereas sometimes there are points when you’re writing a novel when you think, ‘where do I go from here? How do I get the characters to connect? How do I get the plot to intersect in some way?’ Of course with non-fiction that doesn’t happen.

Because the plot is already there, they’ve already intersected.

–because the plot is already there, the characters are already there, the events are already there and all you have to do is put them together in an interesting way.

Can it be a bit frightening having the future of your characters unspool in your hands and having the power of puppeteering them?

Absolutely, and I think that’s where the process is so fascinating, because there actually isn’t much puppeteering. Because once you get going it flows along its own lines and the characters develop ways that you don’t necessarily predict.

She was swiftly swept up in the maelstrom that is the life of a foreign correspondent, doing the Taliban Shuffle between Afghanistan and Pakistan for eight years for the Chicago Tribune.

Her book chronicles the existence of journalists in war zones – always on the edge and about to crack, careening along on an adrenaline high. Along the way she gives readers background on the region and lets us peer in on a life that saw her close friends kidnapped, her relationships broken down and all the while, relentlessly hit on by senior Pakistani government officials.

She spoke to me from New York about the importance of telling the story you see, being a woman in a war zone, and bluffing her way through some very bizarre situations.

You can listen to the interview on Podomatic (or the whole Final Draft episode on travelling women which I hosted on Monday night), or you can read the transcript after the jump.

So, do any sane, well-adjusted people go into working as foreign correspondents, or is everyone running away from something?

It depends on how you define sane and well-adjusted, you know what I mean? And I don’t think I was insane, and I was relatively well-adjusted when I went over there, I just loved doing the work. And I did meet a lot – well, not a lot, I met some people who are very well adjusted and sane and enjoy being foreign correspondents and love living overseas. I don’t know how many of them end up staying that long in war zones, though.

What’s the attraction of the work?

The first time I went to A ift felt like such a foreign place, so amazingly different from what I was used to. And at the same time the people were so friendly asnd so opena and so hospitable and really just invited you into their lives. I very much just got caught up in the narrative. People say there’s nothing like your first war, and I’m kind of joking there, but it’s true. But it just consumed you, it consumed me, most definitely.

This is not a nine-to-five job.

No, there’s no such thing as 9-5. You live it. You become your work.

You describe the world of foreigners in Afghanistan as an aquarium, and yourself as “a frog in boiling water”. What did you mean?

Frogs when they get into boiling water don’t know that they’re boiling. And we were in some respects very much that way, especially in Afghanistan. You just don’t know that going to this particular suicide bomb after it happened, being out in this particular area could be dangerous, walking home at this time of night could be dangerous, you just got used to the fact of living in this environment.

You say in the book that you felt you were constantly failing your Afghan friends and acquaintances, not reciprocating in friendships the way they might have wanted. Was this just a cultural gap?

As far as me not being able to reciprocate, I mean, you’re talking about a lot of reciprocation! When you’re going to be a good Afghan friend, you’re going to go to dinner, stay after dinner, it’s a very poor excuse to say, I’m sorry I’ve got a deadline story, I’m sorry, there was a suicide bomb, I can’t come to dinner. And you would feel like, well, that’s not an excuse. You work too much, that’s what i would always get. You work too much. You don’t spend time enough. And it was true.

Did you ever find your equilibrium between that push and pull of one culture and another and your job and your friends?

You’re always juggling. I think that… I mean, my job always won out over everything. So you’re never really going to find that equilibrium. I did learn the longer I was there that hey, you’re not doing a sprint here, you’re doing a marathon. Unless you start taking breaks like that or trying to balance things then you just burn out. And I tried to show in the book how much I burned out because I was seriously burned out by the time I left. I mean,  anybody who decides that it’s a better idea to quit their perfectly good journalism job in the worst recession in journalism in history and instead spend their time unemployed in Afghanistan is seriously burned out.

How would you categorise the relationship between a reporter and their fixer? Could you do what you do without one?

No. You’re absolutely dependent. They are your paid best friend and you’re stupid without them. Without him I was pretty much nothing. What could I have done in the country? Well, I could have talked to people who spoke Engish, yeah, I could have done that.  I could have managed to make friends with someone who spoke both languages, or I could have learned both languages, which would have taken years and years. Withouth him I couldn’t have done nearly the stories I did there and I wouldn’t have had someone who was looking after my back so much.

How much of going over there did you just feel thrown completely in the deep end with no idea of what you were doing?

Pretty much all of it. I had no idea what I was doing. But  I guess you can look back to the first time you do any sort of story, you have no idea what you’re doing and a lot of it is like, all right, sink or swim.

I’m going to bluff my way through.

I’m going to bluff my way through. I can do this. By the end of it I’ll figure it out. The one thing I kept holding on to was, you know how to tell a story, you know how to tell a story, and you’ll eventually figure this out.

You did several embeds with the military, and you talk about “wanting to get your war on”. How did your expectations live up to what you got?

It’s so ridiculous because you’re going into a situation like that and I had no idea what to expect. Watching Band of Brothers and expecting all this macho stuff, also expecting as somebody who grew up with relatively liberal parents who were hippies, I expected I couldn’t relate to soldiers, I figured that’s what it would be like. But instead I found that a lot of this particular war was sitting around and waiting and being quite bored a lot of the time. And I ended up connecting with a lot of these soldIers and feeling quite bad for them. Especially being in such a foreign environment, totally isolated from the local people, seeing everybody as your enemy.

When you’re on an embed with troops, you talk about how they’re so starved for female company that they revealed things to you that they probably shouldn’t have. How aware were they of your status as a journalist? Did you feel you were taking advantage of that at all?

No, they were very aware that I was a journalist, like maybe an older sister or something like that, somebody who’s willing to listen to their stories. You’ve always got your notebook out; you’re always taking notes. But perhaps they didn’t understand I would be so interested in the things I was interested in. I do think to a large extent male and female journalists are going to see embeds in different ways. In some embeds you go on all you’re looking for is the bang bang and you just want to write about conflict and things like that. At least for me, I was never that interested in that, maybe because I’m more of a chicken. But I did really enjoy writing about what it was like in the military, what it was like feeling so forgotten by the rest of the world, the toll all these constant deployments takes on your personal life, your personal relationships, your marriages. And I did make decisaions that I knew at certain points, this person is going to hate this story, this person is going to wish they never talked to me.

And what happened with the fallout of that when it did happen, when you did publish those stories and they got into a lot of trouble?

Oh yeah, the first particular story I did, this guy, he was the nicest guy, I really liked him. Ben Crowley. And he talked to me very frankly about how this war was so boring that every time he went out of the wire he would not be locked and loaded, which is totally against policy. And everytime we went out I would ask him, are you locked and loaded now, are you locked and loaded now? Even asked him in front of a superior officer, are you locked and loaded? And he said, nah, nah, nah. Nobody ever said, don’t use that. My feeling at a certain point is, you have to tell the story right in front of you, even if you know it’s going to upset people.

Did you ever feel that personal pull between really liking a guy like Crowley and writing a story that wasn’t going to necessarily reflect that well on him?

I mean, I did the story. I did the story right in front of me, every single time, while knowing that, okay, they might not like it but eventually they might understand it. I’d been in that position a number of times before. And you felt to a certain extent you’d write things, like, they’re not going to like that particular paragraph, they’re not going to like that particular characterisation, they won’t like that I used that particular quote. But that’s not my job, to do a story that the protagonist is necessarily happy with, my job is to do a story that reflects the reality that I’m seeing out there.

What about fear? Did you ever feel that it was a crazy thing, to be running towards explosions rather than away from them? People you knew were being kidnapped and killed. Were you ever truly afraid by the horror of the work you were doing?

I mean, it’s ridiculous. My job is ridiculous.

You were at the scene of the bombing that killed Benazir Bhutto. How immune did you become to the horrors of what was around you so much of the time?

No, I was never immune. You know, I’ve covered the cops beat, I’ve seen some relatively bad stuff before. I also covered the tsunami and earthquakes. You see bad things. And my philosophy has been that if I’m not conveying the things I’m seeing, the grief of people who are involved, if I’m not able to convey that in a story to the average public then I’ve got to stop doing this job. So I had to really feel everything that was going on, and it took a lot of effort as the years went on to be true. At some point very much towards the end of the book I kind of felt like, I’m done with this, I’ve seen my last suicide bombing, I don’t think it’s healthy for me to see this any more.

Some people can handle it. I mean, you know, I don’t think ultimately I’m one of them.

Your home leave was one week every two years. What kind of support did you receive from your newspaper, beyond the financial? You write that you were “so far gone, walking into the Chicago Tribune building seemed like entering another time zone.” How do they support you through something like that?

They do just throw you out there. And part of the job is being able to parachute into a totally foreign place and do it. And just do it, do you know what I mean? And not necessarily ask for handholding or ask how it’s done or call back or say, I need a hug, or anything like that. Nobody ever told me, you’ve got to handle your own business, but I felt like I did, especially if I wanted to be a permanent correspondent. And I just learned what i was doing, and you learn a lot from other correspondents ansd you learn a lot from locals on the ground, and I had very supportive editors who were always there if I needed to talk about anything, but I just didn’t talk to them about anything.

It was interesting because I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in February about why we need female correspondents after the Lara Logan incident, and I referred to one of the groping incidents I had in Pakistan. And I had one of my former editors write me and say that he was just horrified that that happened, how come I wouldn’t talk to him about it, how come I hadn’t talked to him about it, and that he hoped that I knew they would support me,  no matter what happened, and yeah, I’m sure they would have—

Did you feel like it was something they couldn’t really understand from behind a desk?

Right. They couldn’t understand it and what are they going to do? Where’s the solution to that? Do you want to come home? Do you need counselling? Do you want a hug? No. I want to stay. I want to stay. I want to stay with the story. So I’m not going to say anything.

Well you were out there swinging punches at the guys who were pinching you so it seemed like you were doing okay defending yourself.

Yeah. I was handling it. I’m not going to say I was handling it gracefully.

But you were handling it.

Yeah.

Would you ever be a foreign correspondent again?

Yeah, maybe? I don’t know, I’m so torn on it. It’s something I’ll always miss. I’ll always feel that pull.

This interview was first broadcast by 2SER FM’s Final Draft weekly book show.

The Federal Attorney-General stopped the motion, citing President Rajapaksa’s “diplomatic immunity” as he visits Australia for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week.

Listen to the audio on Podomatic, or read the transcript after the jump.

DR SAM PARI: Many Sri Lankan officials who have blood on their hands are currently in Australia or are Australian citizens. If Australia had the political will they could investigate these individuals.

NEDA VANOVAC: That’s Dr Sam Pari, spokesperson for the Australian Tamil Congress.

Jegan Waran, a Tamil Australian citizen, this week in Melbourne filed charges of war crimes against the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. The President is here for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth.

However, the Federal Attorney-General has stopped the motion, citing President Rajapaksa’s “diplomatic immunity”.

BRUCE HAIGH: The charges aren’t affected by diplomatic immunity, because they relate to war crimes, and diplomatic immunity can’t cover anyone in relation to war crimes. So McLelland has been too cute by half and the whole government has been too cute by half.

NEDA VANOVAC: That’s Bruce Haigh, a former diplomat who was posted to Sri Lanka.

The Australian government has been accused of lacking political will to hold Sri Lanka accountable for abuses perpetrated against the Tamil minority since the civil war ended in 2009.

Says Dr Sam Pari:

DR SAM PARI: The UN expert panel found that the Sri Lankan government could be responsible for alleged war crimes. Some of these include bombing of hospitals; refugee camps; areas where civilians were told to take refuge and were bombed, known as safe zones; there was also bombing and shelling of Red Cross ships  trying to evacuate injured civilians;, executions of surrendering Tamils; and of course rape and disappearances of Tamil civilians after they had surrendered to government forces.

When you follow the route of command it eventually falls on the President as someone who is responsible for such gross violations of human rights.

BRUCE HAIGH: Tamils after the war have been treated in a far worse manner than ever before. The situation for the Tamils is horrific. And there’s been no negotiation with the Tamil leadership, no negotiations with Tamils whatsoever. Their lands have been occupied by the Sri Lankan army and it looks like they’ll be taken over, so they have every need to leave to Sri Lanka and come to Australia.

But one of the things happening at the moment is the Tamil population has been terrorized, corralled, fact that this lawlessness is going unchecked against the Tamil population is something that Australian and the Commonwealth should step in to stop.

NEDA VANOVAC: So Australia’s lack of action on this, is this diplomatic expedience taking precedence over human rights?

BRUCE HAIGH: Yes it is, you’re quite right. And one of the actions we’ve got ourselves into is to push human rights considerations onto the back burner.

NEDA VANOVAC: Jegan Waran took the opportunity to file the charges against President Rajapaksa on behalf of the Australian Tamil community as an eyewitness of war crimes.

DR SAM PARI: the Australian Tamil community is very disappointed, and we do feel let down. Because the Australian judicial system clearly has allowances for this investigation to go ahead. We have a victim of war crime who has stepped up and shown the courage to file these charges, we have lawyers willing to file and we have a magistrate who set a date for a hearing, and yet this has been stonewalled by the Attorney-General, which suggests that there isn’t political will to investigate an alleged war criminal who is currently on our soil.

NEDA VANOVAC: There has been mounting pressure on the Commonwealth Heads of State to prevent their next meeting being held in Sri Lanka in 2013, as they are set to do. However, Prime Minister Gillard and Foreign Minister Rudd have said this will still go ahead as planned.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has threatened to boycott the next meeting if Sri Lanka does not show that it is progressing towards accountability on human rights violations.

The Sri Lankan government denies all allegations of abuses of Tamils.

I asked Dr Sam Pari of the Tamil Congress in Australia:

Do you see a body like the Commonwealth having any power to take action against wayward states? If the next CHOGM meeting is held in Sri Lanka, what kind of message is that sending?

DR SAM PARI: Human rights is one of the principles of the Commonwealth, and if countries such as Sri Lanka which is a pariah state, in essence, is allowed to host the next CHOGM, that’s actually quite disgusting.

It’s been two and a half years since the Sri Lankan government claimed it won the war and we’re yet to see any genuine attempts at accountability. So anyone who says soft diplomacy is the way to go is just buying time.

NEDA VANOVAC: Former diplomat Bruce Haigh does not think the Australian government has gone far enough in its protection of human rights.

BRUCE HAIGH: Our human rights record, both internally in regards to the Northern Territory intervention, as well as offshore, is now absolutely appalling. This country really has lost the plot as far as its ethical and moral compass is concerned.

Shopping centre cleaners have lodged an application with Fair Work Australia to take industrial action against employers refusing to negotiate better pay and conditions.

With an hourly rate of just $16 many of these workers find themselves employed on a full-time basis yet barely scraping through above the poverty line.

I was at Fair Work Australia to hear their side of the story.

Full transcript after the jump.

LOUISE TARRANT: It’s a sad day in Australia when during Anti-Poverty Week cleaners in Australia who clean our shopping centers are forced to release a report titled “On A Knife’s Edge” because that’s the way they’re living at the moment.

On just $600 a week full time, people are working full time in jobs that are hard manual labour and are not able to provide for their families.

NEDA VANOVAC: That’s Louise Tarrant, national secretary for the United Voice workers union. To coincide with Anti-Poverty Week NSW, cleaners represented by the union lodged an application with Fair Work Australia to take industrial action against employers that have refused to negotiate better pay and conditions.

United Voice has released a report that found that 20% of Australians are classified as low-paid and are struggling to make ends meet. Nearly 30% are working more hours than they’re paid for and 86% don’t think that their financial future is secure.

Referred to as “the working poor”, shopping centre cleaners have borne the brunt of cost-cutting competition between contracting companies. Their Clean Start campaign asks for higher cleaning standards and a reasonable wage.

DAVID WESTRIP: The hourly rate’s only $16.57, the award rate. The last ten years our hourly rate’s only gone up $4.50, which equates less than 50 cents per hour.

The conditions are quite hard. We’re expected to do a lot of work and very minimal time to do it.

Typical shift is, I start at 9. The rotation’s twenty minutes and we’re expected to do quite a lot of work. It’s continuous all day, and you’re walking roughly 15 to 21 km a day. It’s hard on your body, your feet and your knees, and lower back.

NEDA VANOVAC: That’s David Westrip. He’s been cleaning for 38 years and says the wage paid by cleaning contractors Spotless is the lowest he’s ever been paid.

Marie O’Halloran, co-chair of NSW Anti-Poverty Week, says of shopping centre cleaners:

MARIE O’HALLORAN: They are people who are working day in and day out and don’t have enough money to have a reasonable standard of living. It’s just not sufficient.

NEDA VANOVAC: But is it legal?

MARIE O’HALLORAN: Look, I think there’s a big difference between legal and fairness. In Australia there was a deal, really, between people and government that the industrial relations system would deliver a fair and decent and reasonable wage for people working hard, and the social security system would be the backup system. But both of those areas are breaking down.

It’s not about what you get paid per hour but it’s about the contracting system, where big contractors come in and do cleaning in the big retail shopping centres and the retailers and big conglomerates are driving down the cost of the contract. Sounds good for them, but who’s really paying the price? The people doing the work, it’s the actual cleaners.

I think people in Australia would be astonished to know that you can work 38 hours a week and still be in poverty.

NEDA VANOVAC: Shyam Malla is a cleaner with Spotless and has found paying bills difficult on his wage.

SHYAM MALLA: I got big, big problem from them. They didn’t pay me for up to seven weeks and then I had to use my credit card and everything and heaps of bills coming from credit card and I had to borrow money from my parents to pay the bills which is very humiliating for me. I can work for myself and still I have to borrow money from my parents.

NEDA VANOVAC: He hopes that putting pressure on the reputation of cleaning companies like Spotless will result in better working conditions for cleaners.

I asked Marie O’Halloran:

What kind of incentive is there for the contracting companies to listen to what the workers are saying today?

MARIE O’HALLORAN: If the contractors all agree about bargaining for proper wages for their workers then the big conglomerates can’t drive the contracts down. So there has to be some kind of solidarity and collectivity not just among the workers but the next level up, the contractors, to say, we’re not going to drive that labour cost down, and if everyone sticks to it, the conglomerates can’t undercut it.

NEDA VANOVAC: The Clean Start campaign also stresses the cleaners’ desire to be respected for the work that they do.

Says David Westrip:

DAVID WESTRIP: The work is fulfilling. People might say to us, it’s low income, why don’t you get another job? I don’t want another job. I love what I’m doing.

We’re the face of the shopping centre. We look after lost children, we go looking for them, we help elderly people, we help any customer that might be looking fro a certain shop, customers that may be lost… So we are the face of that shopping centre, and it’s about time we were recognized for who we are. We’re not just cleaners. We are people who do a specific job and are proud of what we do.