In the weeks after leaving the hospital, I sometimes thought about that nurse. This particular fantasy saw him somehow getting my number and coming over to stroke my hair, rearrange the pillows and bring food. I vaguely contemplated whether love could be based on one person being extremely attractive and caring, even if you had little in common. But I also couldn’t help imagining the cracks that would appear once the crisis was over.

At the hospital, the X-ray showed no spinal injury or elbow fracture (I couldn’t bend my arm), and they weren’t too worried about my head either. I was sent home with a fact sheet on head injury, a print-out from the Victorian Government Better Health Channel, and instructions not to stay alone that night. That was the only information they gave me about what to expect. I was to run into my nurse friend again in a few weeks, under slightly embarrassing circumstances.

Everyone was out on the street because it was such a beautiful night, and because Rae Street is so pleasant. Kind people gathered around, shielding me from oncoming traffic, untangling my hair from my bike. The neighbours Phil and Jean invited me into their house but I couldn’t move, so sat there on the curb. ‘Did you hit your head?’ a man asked. ‘Yeah, my bike hit my head but not very hard.’ His gorgeous little kid was right in front of my face, staring at me. Then the kid’s face started going blurry and I felt myself losing consciousness.

Could this be dying? I wondered. Seeing as there were no obvious wounds I had no idea why I’d be dying. Maybe internal bleeding? So this is how it can happen, I thought, shocked. A dumb, mundane mistake and your whole life, that felt so big and important to you at the time, is easily obliterated. And you can’t reverse it. For some reason the death scene from the movie Margaret came into my head. The dying actor is CJ Cregg from the West Wing so you feel like you know her, making her death especially unbelievable and tragic.

I got up on my haunches in an attempt to regain a grip on the world, and it helped. My vision gradually came back but I still felt like I was swimming in the world; my head was soupy and everything excessively bright. I wasn’t sure how this was all going to turn out. There was this sour, metallic taste in my mouth. I thought maybe it was blood from internal bleeding but the neighbour, Phil said it was probably just concussion – he played rugby so he knew. Phil and Jean helped me into their house and offered to drive me to emergency. At first I refused but then agreed, figuring that the human race is definitely screwed if you can’t accept favours at times like this (I was to need – and actively seek – many such favours over the following few months).

‘The injured person needs to sit in the front seat,’ said Jean. ‘That’s the one thing I remember from school.’ We drove a kilometre to St Vinnies emergency. My friend was with me by that stage. In the waiting room, he tried to cheer me up by explaining the plot of the movie playing overhead. I pretended to be entertained but actually couldn’t follow what he was saying. Neither of us had eaten dinner so my friend bought me some hot chocolate and chips from the vending machine, and we shared them. I googled concussion on my phone.

The triage nurse, when we finally got to see her, was reading a magazine, chewing gum and looking bored.

‘Were you wearing a helmet?’ she asked.

‘No.’

She looked annoyed. ‘You should always wear your helmet,’ she said. ‘If you were wearing a helmet, you wouldn’t be here.’

‘That doesn’t help me much now,’ I said mildly.

‘Well part of our job is education,’ she said with a sense of importance.

‘Is it really the right time for education?’ I asked, bewildered.

After about ten minutes they took me into the emergency room, where the nurses, young girls, asked lots of questions, like what year it was, and how old I was, and of course, whether I had been wearing a helmet. They looked at each other, worried. ‘I don’t know, she seems a bit confused. I think we might need to collar her.’ I remember thinking they seemed really sweet in their worry. Then I was collared and forced to lie down while I waited for them to X-ray my spine.

A male nurse, about my age, asked me about the accident, did some tests and felt my head for damage. ‘Hmm…there doesn’t seem to be any blood, but can’t really see much with all that hair.’ His arms were lean, muscly and tattooed. He said he was a cyclist too. ‘Please don’t lecture me about not wearing a helmet!’ I pleaded. ‘I don’t really think that’s my job!’ he said. Then he left me for a moment, giving my feet this little pat before he left the room.

While we waited, my friend, sitting at the side of the bed, looked at Linus bikes on his smartphone. He showed me an image. ‘I know this is kind of a weird time,’ he said, ‘but what do you think about this one?’

‘It’s ya NEIGHBA.’ A grunty male voice with an accent.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know you, I’m new. How can I help?’

‘It’s ya NEIGHBA.’

‘What would you like?’

‘I got somefing for ya!’

‘What is it?’

(slightly louder) ‘Open up! I got somefing FOR ya!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m home alone and I haven’t met you before.’

I feel extremely rude but have this story running in my head about a guy who’d pretend to be there to check your smoke alarms but then would come in and … I can’t even remember.  I shouldn’t really let him in.

‘But I got somefing FOR ya!’

‘What is it? Can you come back in an hour or so when the other tenants are home?’

‘GOD. FUCK!’

At this stage for some reason I realise it’s OK and open the door, only to see him storming back into the house next door.

I ring the doorbell, hearing him cursing to another woman at the back of his house. I’m hoping like anything they’ll not ignore  me, because otherwise I’ll feel awful for the rest of the night.

Then a lovely older woman comes and opens the door, presenting me with an alfoil-covered plate. ‘We make you something for Easter.’

‘Please say sorry to your son. I just didn’t want to answer the door because I was home alone and I didn’t really know who you guys were.’

‘It’s OK, ‘ she says, smiling kindly. ‘We meet now.’ I give her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. ’Thankyou so much.’

I unwrap it when I get home.

He was emanating an intense energy force. A red-faced middle-aged man with a thick neck. I stopped where I was standing in the middle of the road.

‘It was empty!’ I protested. ‘What’s the problem? We’re moving house at the moment so we’ve got a lot of stuff; we’re just trying to get rid of it.’

I had made the mistake of putting my rubbish in his bin. It was bin night and the bins were already out on the verge, so I didn’t think it’d be a problem.

‘LOOK it’s not even closed properly. GOD! The rubbish man will just spill the stuff out onto the verge!’ It’s true that the bin lid was ajar a little, but everything fit in.

‘TAKE IT OUT!’ he screamed again. ‘Fine’, I said, and walked over to take it out.

This didn’t placate him, ‘IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE IN THERE?’ he screamed again. I didn’t answer, so he ran over to look. ‘ORR!’ he said. ‘There’s ANOTHER one in here. TAKE IT OUT!’

‘No’, I said. Sometimes when I’m pushed to a certain point I get like that. Survival-wise it’s probably maladaptive.

He moved towards me. I honestly did not know what was going to happen. But after taking a few steps he stopped and screamed, ‘I’m going to report you to the council!’ This was not what I can expected.

‘Go ahead, see how much they care’, I said. He continued yelling at me while I retreated to my house. ‘Don’t you have any bigger problems?’ I said.

I went inside and locked the doors. From inside I hear him screaming at my Italian neighbour George, who had probably come out to see what was going on, ‘She put her rubbish in MY bin!’ George was making sympathetic noises but it was hard to assess his attitude to my bin invasion. By the time I opened the door to peek through the flyscreen at what was going on, George was walking decisively back to his door.

In bed that night, home alone, the guy was on my mind. Maybe he was just so angry he wanted to hurt somebody. Maybe he was in his house, brooding, thinking of ways to get back at me. Hatching a plan to break into my house. Maybe he didn’t like it when people defied his wishes.

I couldn’t sleep. The possums and wind were creating suspicious noises. I was imagining my neighbour with crazy eyes and intent. I rang Dad.

I told him the story and said I just needed someone to reassure me that the guy wasn’t going to break into my house and get violent. Dad said it was OK, that some people are just highly protective of their property; he’d had met a lot of people like that in his life. He said the guy seemed unhinged, but the chances he’d get violent were low.

I said that all the murder stories recently had affected my psyche. The realisation that you never know what people are capable of.

‘I know it’s easy to get freaked out if you read the paper in Melbourne these days, but you have to remember that it’s a big world, and the chances of something happening to you are actually quite low’, he said.

But he cautioned me not to add fuel to the fire. ‘I’ve learnt to let it wash over me, just apologise profusely and back away.’ And I was really wishing I’d done that.

Sitting opposite from her is a homeless guy wearing beanie, tracksuit and joggers. Well I’ve assumed he’s homeless, but there’s no real evidence.

The two are in conversation. At first I’m too tired to listen, but then their words start hitting my ears…

‘So what do you do?’ she asks warmly, leaning in.

‘I’m unemployed’, he says matter of factly.

She smiles and tries again. ‘So what would you like to do?’

‘Just, you know, get a job, that’s be nice’, he says politely.

‘OK, what did you do before?’

‘I was a gardener.’

‘Well that’s great!’ she says brightly. ‘Everyone likes gardeners.’

‘No, not really, that’s landscape gardeners. I wanted to be a landscape gardener when I was growing up.’

She leans forward. ‘You should do it. You can create your own reality.’

‘What, you mean like The Secret?’

‘No, not like The Secret, it’s more like…’ At this stage I fade out for some reason.

When I return she’s declaring, ‘I’m on a journey. I’m trying to look after myself. Otherwise I can’t be there for other people.’

‘Or with them, you mean’, he says sympathetically.

What’s the difference, I wonder.

‘Where do you live?’ he asks.

‘In an apartment. It’s really nice. I don’t get to spend much time there though cos I’m always working.’

‘Oh, is it one of those ones surrounded by trees?’

‘There’s a courtyard. It’s actually really nice.’

I imagine a small leafy courtyard with bricks walls and vines. Then I imagine him imagining it.

‘We work too much in this culture,’ she says. ‘I went to Fiji last year. People work only a little, go fishing, but mainly it’s just fun. You know in my life, I work to live. Work and life are separate. But they’re like…life…life…work.’

Interesting theme to choose considering she’s talking to someone who’s looking for a job.

‘Yeah.’

‘I mean, that’d be pretty nice.’

‘Yeah.’

He seems unimpressed, but maybe he’s just validating her, as you do in polite conversation.

There’s a pause, then she asks, ‘Can I come and sit with you?

‘Yeah.’

She comes over to him but first has to wait for him to move his KFC wrapper.

Then she sits down and continues. ‘My friend went diving off New Zealand. She showed me some pictures. It was beautiful – tortoises, sharks, etc.’

‘That’d be orright.’ He sounds enthusiastic. ‘I’ve got my scuba licence, I’ve been diving with sharks.’

This surprises me.

‘I saw her photos on Facebook. They were amazing’, she says. ‘Do you know what Facebook is?’

‘No.’

What? Everyone know’s what Facebook is. Maybe he didn’t hear properly, or he’s bluffing.

‘It’s this place where you can put up photos, see your friend’s photos, put up your status and stuff.’

Pretty good attempt at an explanation.

‘Orright.’

She reaches her stop. ‘This is me!’

‘See you later, nice to meet you!’ he says.

She squeezes him on the shoulder as she leaves, which makes me cringe.

Does she congratulate herself for speaking to people normally and as equals, even though they’re homeless or otherwise complex? Does she walk away feeling a bit shiny?

But I’m projecting onto this poor girl because she reminds me of me. Maybe she just likes talking to people on the tram. And he seemed to enjoy it.

The train pulls into at Flinders Street Station. As it waits, a friend of the homeless guy boards and they briefly confer. ‘I don’t want to go to Epping!’ announces the homeless guy rather loudly, and they disembark.

I watch them through my window as the train rolls away. They sit together on the concrete platform, backs against the wall. The friend is slouched down, face deep in his hoodie. The homeless guy is smoking a cigarette, quick sharp puffs, and jiggling something in his pocket.

I’ll never give up my right to get home independently late at night. But I have to admit that a lot of the time I don’t enjoy it. I see shadows moving in the corner of my eyes and visualise people jumping out at me. My heart starts thumping and I ride fast, reluctant to slow down even at intersections.* If I’ve got headphones in, I started getting worried about not being able to hear the sounds around me, and whatever music is playing seems foreboding. But if I take them out, I start to get freaked out by ordinary night-time noises.

It seems unhealthy when you break it down, but for me this state of mind’s become quite normalised, just something that often happens when I try to get home alone. This not to say that the factors underlying it, whether the risk or my own perhaps excessive paranoia, are acceptable, but at the same time I don’t expect either of those things to disappear any time soon. There’s only a tiny risk** (and anyway, there are risks associated with every activity), but for me there’s a lot of horror attached to that risk. I also suspect the fear is also reinforced by some kind of cultural paranoia, but I need to think about that a bit more.

Although I do think the risk of being assaulted by strangers is probably greater than statistics suggest. I’ve been harassed but, at least not in Australia, never been in a position where I felt my safety was actually at risk. The worst that has happened is probably groups of guys physically stopping my bike, and that’s happened a few times, but they’ve always disappeared when I told them to fuck off, and in the end what disturbs me about it the most is that they think it’s acceptable. But often when I’ve had this conversation with friends, they’ve told me a story involving more menacing behaviour or even assault, and usually they didn’t report it.

Jill Meagher’s death was very close. She was my age and it was bizarre how much she looked like me or my friends. Just demographic similarities, I guess, but that didn’t have anything to do with the way I experienced it. The spot where she was taken is about five minutes walk from my house, and I go to Bar Etiquette all the time, in fact had been there on both the Thursday and the Saturday night.*** I kept thinking about how those last few moments, the subject of so much media attention, actually bore no relationship to her rest of her life, and how it was just awful that they would be seen as part of her narrative at all.

I devoured every media story while at the same time feeling increasingly sick in the stomach, disgusted at the media and at myself for being addicted to it. Some of the media coverage – particularly in the Herald Sun – had the feel of a feeding frenzy: feeding off the community (my!) fear and morbid curiosity, and feeding it too. I do believe that genuine concern for a fellow human being, including among journalists, some of whom must have known her, was there, but it seemed to me that these things were all mixed up. One piece, Herald Sun I think, ended something like ‘who knows what twist in the tale tomorrow will bring?’ as if the Jill’s disappearance were a murder mystery.

There was also the victim blaming, including the Herald Sun’s snide ‘review’ of the now apparently mean streets of Brunswick (‘It’s [sic] looks more like a 20-something’s living room than a stylish nightspot but is perfectly suited to the young inner-city types sipping on their boutique beers’). This was an incredibly disrespectful and cruel piece: what, was Jill meant to get a taxi 100 metres to her home and then get her husband to meet her at the door? She wasn’t doing anything that me and many of my friends haven’t done 100 times.

I did change my ways in few weeks following what happened, catching taxis instead of the tram and going home earlier than usual so I wouldn’t have to travel on deserted streets. I was annoyed at myself because I knew the risk hadn’t changed, but my mind was just in the grip of horror, so I decided not to push it.

There’s this backstreet route I take home between Carlton and Coburg, the ‘Brunswick Shimmy’, which involves cutting through a park. When I first moved to the area, I found it hard to go through that park, but after a while it felt like a familiar, safe space (irrational assumptions operating there). After Jill was killed, I couldn’t take that route for a while, then I would go most of the way but detour onto the Nicholson Street footpath instead of the park, which actually didn’t feel that much safer; I just kept thinking about how all the people in cars were looking at me.

I was even getting a bit scared at home – it didn’t help that my friend had recently had her house broken into and her door broken down. One night I was home alone and my imagination just got carried away – possums are very noisy – so I rang a friend overseas who was really extremely worried and sorry that she hadn’t called – she’d heard about what happened but didn’t realise it was in my neighbourhood. The conversation ended with her telling me not to take unnecessary risks, which was upsetting because I was scared enough already and needed reassurance to go back to my old ways.

After it happened I tried to think about where I’d been that night, and then realised I’d chosen to ride to my friend’s house along Merri Creek. This was clearly an unnecessary risk by my friend’s, as the bike routes along to my friend’s house are quite good. I was just feeling a bit delicate and thought it’d be great not to share space with cars at all, while at the same time avoiding catching public transport. But as soon as I descended onto the dark, narrow path, completely deserted and surrounded by bushes, I realised I had overextended myself and the heart started thudding. At the same time I had this irrational notion that turning back would attract bad luck, like it would in a horror movie. So I just ripped along that path until I got to the end, and pity any poor person who’d got in my way.

I was trying to work out why I’d chosen to ride along the Merri, and then I realised a few little stories that had been bearing on my mind and perhaps putting pressure on me to go beyond my comfort zone. Firstly, at a party a few weeks ago, I’d quite admired an older sister of my friends when she’d insisted on riding home along the Merri to her house. It was almost embarrassing to see my male friend persist in his offer to drive her home: it was clear she wasn’t going to change her mind. She pointed out that if you’ve got your lights on bright enough, how would anyone know if you were a man or woman (assuming that they’re targeting women).

The Merri is one of the only safe (from cars) bike routes I knew in that area, so I decided to follow her example on the way home. But when I got to the narrow bridge that leads down onto the river, there was a man coming the other way. I would have had to get off my bike to pass him, and I couldn’t do it. I rode halfway towards him and then lost my nerve and turned back. It was just light enough for me to see the confused expression on his face. Obviously it’s not all about him, and self-preservation is most important, but I felt that it was a sad thing that I wouldn’t ride past him, and perhaps unnecessary.

Secondly, a while ago I was bitching about how the man assaulting women along Merri Creek (who seems like a bit of a doofus given that the last women actually took a picture of him with his phone, but could still be dangerous), had made me feel unsafe riding alone there. And someone I knew, admittedly they were being pretty insensitive but still, told me that I should just toughen up, stop playing the victim, get my D-lock at the ready, learn self-defence etc and etc. I was pretty annoyed at them, but also genuinely reflected on whether I was in fact being a pathetic, and I should just turn into hardcore woman. But I just don’t want to even get in the situation where I need to use those skills.

I think there needs to be some kind of balance between the pressure to be some kind of tough woman, and then staying within your own psychological comfort zone and not feeling guilty about that. I hope that women can support each other, and that men can support women too, in striking the right balance between being independent and doing what they feel comfortable with, as trying to recognise and confront the factors that make you feel unsafe at all. I’m think our society’s still experiencing the hangover from when women were the property of men, we’ve come a long way very quickly but it’s absolutely unrealistic to expect that misogynistic attitudes have been eradicated. I believe that what happened to Jill was a particularly egregious example of a way of thinking that is embedded within our society. For me, hatred of women, and desire to dominate and humiliate them, are very difficult to understand. That doesn’t mean they can’t be understood of course; I believe the ‘unknowability of evil’ is probably a myth – it’s just that we can’t stand to turn our minds to those dark places.

Talking about Jill Meagher’s death, Susie O’Brien in The Herald Sun wrote about how she’d caught a tram home late at night, and walked 700 metres home, as if that was the most risky thing ever:

‘I thought I was being smart when I jumped on a tram just after midnight. Then I got off near my house and realised this meant I had to walk about 700 metres from the tram stop home. It was late, it was dark and I’d had a few drinks. No one was around. If anything had happened, I wouldn’t have had a chance. At 50kg and 155cm tall, I would easily be overpowered by a strange man. My husband would have picked me up, but he was at home with the kids and I didn’t want to wake him. Looking back now, I realise I should have called him to come and get me. He was furious the next day that I had taken such a foolish risk.’

The article, well you can read it, is basically saying that what’s so disturbing about Jill Meagher’s death is that ‘she wasn’t doing anything wrong’:

‘There is an assumption women who get into trouble late at night are putting themselves in harm’s way because they make bad decisions. To be honest, it’s what I have often thought. They cut across a poorly lit field in a rough area to shave 10 minutes off their walk home. They flirt with men in dark, dangerous sleazy bars in the wee small hours. And they drink too much and make bad choices, like going home with dodgy blokes in the wee hours.’

O’Brien’s victim blaming of these women is sickening. And where does it leave our choices? You can get a taxi, but then there are dodgy taxi drivers too, and then you’re stuck in the car with them. You could get a car, but you still have to walk from the car park. The only solution seems to be to always have a husband/bodyguard with you, or if you’re single perhaps, stay home all the time. But even then, someone could break into your house and come into your bedroom. So nowhere’s safe then. So you may as well just to go on doing what you did before.

I’m feeling a lot more normal now, riding home on my normal route with only the faintest of queasiness, no longer pulling down the curtains in the living room at night, etc. We were at a bar in East Brunswick last week and a friend decided to head home. ‘Do you want me to walk you to the car?’ I offered, still not feeling 100% about people wandering around by themselves in dark places. But then I realised that that’s what I’d be doing straight afterwards, and I thought about how these kind of offers, while they are often welcomed, can actually make you feel more unsafe, and perhaps unjustifiably so, given that all what exists is a small risk that is pretty much present in all activities, and not just walking home at night. What are the implications for women’s independence if we all encourage each other not to go home alone? I changed my mind. ‘Actually, I can if you want, but I think you’ll be fine. Just text me when you get to your car.’

*I’ve often thought what an absolute indignity it would be to be hit by a car while you’re riding fast from fear of a much more unlikely possibility, and I try to make myself slow down.

**I also know that in about 3/4 of cases, violence against women is by someone they know, but I feel like nobody I know is going to do that, so it doesn’t make me fear for my safety.

***On Saturday, my friend and I walked past a whole bunch of police and we didn’t think anything of it. I was just thinking how much I hated the cops (which was admittedly a bit dumb and simplistic), when my friend said how they make her feel safe – someone had broken into her house, kicked down her door and come into her room while she was asleep. Luckily nothing happened, but it was traumatic, and she said the police were great in the aftermath.

Fiona Patten: ‘We wanted to call ourselves the liberal party but that was taken.’

Patten looked tough and fit, and seemed in fine spirits, starting by praising all the other candidates: ‘I kept thinking Transformer Man: take a little bit of them and form this amazing man.’ I agree; for me, many of the minor candidates had something good to offer, but unfortunately this potential was offset by too many other loopy or weak ideas.

The Sex Party, Patten explained, was formed to campaign against the web filter proposed by the federal Labor Government in 2008. ‘We wanted to call ourselves the Liberal party but that was taken’, she said. Bet it’s not the first time she’s wheeled out that quip. ‘Then we thought about calling ourselves the common sense party.’

Patten mentioned the need for drug reform and solutions to congestion: ‘More roads won’t solve congestion’, she said. It seems she’s against the East-West tunnel; there’s nothing on her website about it, but I tweeted a question to the Australian Sex Party account and it replied: ‘no I think there are better solutions than the east west I want to c more trains in tunnels rather than cars.’ So it seems Fiona is operating their Twitter account herself?

One thing to note about the Sex Party is that they had the best ad during the 2010 Victorian state election.

Cathy Oke, Australian Greens

There are no juicy bit in my notes on Oke probably because the sugar low was really taking me over by the time she took the floor at 9pm.

Notes as follows:

‘Emphasised role of local councillor: things that done as councillor.

Policies:

1) Transport. Fixing congestion: Doncaster, 402, Cycling – not about a zero: ask the Premier to provide at minimum $5 million dedicated funding.

2) Public housing: security of tenure, rents don’t rise

3) Planning: giving power back

4) Education: too many teachers on short-term contracts.’

When she got to bikes, I slapped my head. Turned out she’d seen me do it, I found out from later. I felt pretty bad and apologised; it’s a rude and graceless way to show discontent.

I have been a bit disappointed with the state Greens on bikes – for example, why would they only come up with a bike policy for the City of Melbourne, when their other policies span the whole state? Or why not come up with some specific proposals that bike riders can actually get excited about? Maybe making cycling too big an issue would have had risks for the Greens. After all, there’s still a perception, possibly including in the seat of Melbourne, that cycling is a hobby or a Green thing, rather than a serious mode of transport, so maybe it wouldn’t have been great for their perceptions of being a ‘serious party’ to go to town on it? Not to mention that there are other important policy priorities. I guess a $5m commitment is modest, costed, and contained – which is what the Greens seem to be going for in this election.

One thing I noticed about Oke on council, mainly from bike advocacy stuff, is her ability to get on with people from different political backgrounds, not least Doyle, and to talk them around. I wonder how she will go in state politics, which in my experience, is a far more adversarial ‘throw rocks at the fortress’ type environment. I guess, as the Federal Greens/Labor alliance shows, things are a bit different if you get the balance of power.

The Greens have released 10 policies so far, and they’ve promised to release costings this week. I hope they do it towards the beginning of the week, so there’s time to examine them.

Maria Bengtsson, Australian Christian Party

There must be a lack of quality candidates in the Australian Christian Party because I have to say, Bengtsson didn’t seem overly sharp. The last of the candidates to speak, Bengtsson said she was standing because she supported Freedom. ‘This is Freedom of Speech (repeat the Religious and Racial Tolerance Act). Amend the Charter of Human Rights to protect the freedom of conscience for faith-based organisations [no detail given here; I'll find out for you later]. And abortion legislation: freedom to not be in abortion.’ Bengtsson said that she knows people want better infrastructure and safe bike tracks, but ‘we are more concerned about protection of human life: the unborn and the elderly.’

Apparently some churches are unhappy that the Australian Christian Party were able to register a political party name purporting to cover the entire banner of their religion.

The others

The Family First candidate, Ashley Fenn, wasn’t at the forum, and neither was Michael Murphy of the Democratic Labor Party. But you can read about Michael here and Ashley here. Family First’s policies are here, and the DLP’s here. Let me know if you see anything interesting there.

Kate Borland said she’s standing to highlight the public housing issue. She told us that her Dad designed a number of housing commission homes and the Olympic pool, so she knows about structure and architecture. Labor and Liberals are trying to privatise public housing, Kate explained, and through KPMG, the Liberals are trying to overhaul it.

Context: a Victorian Auditor General report found that the operating model for public housing was unsustainable, as costs ballooned while revenues declined. The AG explained as that rent is set at 25% and the department understandably prioritises housing to those in greatest need, who are generally on welfare benefits, the pool of revenue that comes from rent is shrinking. It’s a vexing problem: how does the state ensure that it can afford public housing in the long-term, without imposing unreasonable conditions, or limiting access to, the most needy?

The AG said that faced with knowledge of public housing’s increasingly parlous financial situation, government departments failed to take action. You surprised? Over half of properties are over 30 years old and 14% were approaching the point of no return, yet government didn’t have an adequate asset management strategy, with departments often lacking accurate information about the conditions properties were in.

Earlier this year, the Baillieu Government increased rents for pensioners early this year by almost $10 a week for some people, so that rent didn’t fall below 25 percent of their income in rent after a Federal pension increase. The Government has also developed a discussion and options paper on ‘Pathways to a Fair and Sustainable* Social Housing System’ , which was written by KPMG, hence Borland’s reference to them.

In Labor candidate Jennifer Kanis’s campaign materials, she says the Baillieu Liberal Government is considering increasing rent above the current 25% of income, limiting the time residents can live there, and selling public housing. The Greens are also campaigning on similar concerns. The fact is that nothing has been done yet; these are just options raised (in more anaesthetised but unequivocal language) in the discussion and options paper, which admittedly seems to be ideologically skewed towards that kind of ‘self help’ mentality that underpins Tony Abbott’s comments about dole bludgers.

Borland didn’t go into detail about any of this though, instead she spoke about her background (she’s a nutritionist, works in drug and alcohol, and finished her degree while bringing up a child and breastfeeding) and the value she places on community. Safety is community, for her, Borland says. At one point it feels like she’s almost yelling, ‘I have African neighbours, Indian neighbours, Vietnamese neighbours!’ It’s a bit overwrought, but I respect her passion.

Borland says her father designed renovations for Bob Hawke’s house man-years ago, and she grew up a staunch Labor voter. I found it quite strange how Borland mentioned her Dad so often. Actually, her whole speech felt like someone following the form of a candidate’s speech (the rousing appeal to conscience and shared humanity, the story of how your family inspired you, and your struggle against adversity) but strking slightly the wrong note.

During question time, this little kid from up the front asked: ‘My question is for Kate. What are your views on public housing?’ Me and the guy next to me simultaneously groaned, and he muttered ‘Oh no, the cute kid. Well too bad, you can’t vote!’ Kate then explained why public housing was so important to her and at the end of her spiel, said, ‘Thanks for the question my dearest darling daughter.’

Adrian Whitehead, climate activist

Adrian was wearing a sparkling white No New Coal T-shirt. It had an apple with a bite taken out of it. I don’t understand the significance of that: is it a reference to Apple computers being environmentally devastating?

‘I want to start out by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land’, Adrian said, ‘but also acknowledge that the part of our culture that crushed and killed at wiped out a culture – for the sake of greed and money – still persists today in the large corporate entities that control political life, and manifests itself most concerningly in the area of climate change.’ Fair enough, but I find this level of generalisation in theme-finding almost meaningless, in a similar way to Socialist Equality Party candidate Patrick O’Connor’s attempt to draw parallels between the Arab Spring and the movement against social inequality in Australia.

Overhead gas heaters lit up above the pews as Whitehead started talking about the devastating environmental impacts of climate change. ‘Who will save us?’ he asked. ‘Not the policies of the Liberals, not the policies of the Labor, not the policies of the Greens. The Greens know what we need to do, but won’t say it. We have to go for zero emissions by 2020.’ At this point, Whitehead made an analogy between climate change and quite a sad personal story about a friend with serious skin cancer, at which point he lost me.  I did put him first on my ballot paper though.