Chapter 13 Happy New Millennium

Dawn was just breaking when Billie and Tan came home from work. Intense sunlight shone through between the city skyline and a heavy black cloud mass suspended above it. They were still doing three cleaning shifts a week in an office building to bring in some extra money to supplement their income from the handmade shoe business they worked in with Billie's Uncle Jim. When they arrived, Jim was already in the workshop reading the newspaper and had laid out some diamond-shaped pieces of sweet sticky rice on the kitchen table. They sat together and drank their small Greek coffees.

Jim's friend from the take-away across the road dropped by to complain about the Goods & Services Tax booklet he had received the previous day.

"Well," said Jim, "it's becoming obvious what these fellows are up to. That Howard and his mates! Just listen for a moment. They create a budget surplus by selling all the lucrative public utilities. They introduce the GST to rip more billions off the population. Then the media and the Catholic Establishment suddenly discover that things are bad in East Timor. Only a couple of decades late. Howard, peacemaker, man of vision, comes out promoting the limitation of small arms. And then we start sending "our boys" into Timor on a mission from God. We see Howard farewelling the troops, Howard standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier. It's disgusting! Lucky we had all that extra cash. It's only going to cost a billion or two a year. The arms dealers must be raking it in. So do you think they might also be shelling out? I reckon if they can buy both sides of politics in the US, they can easily afford our Australian politicians."

Jim's friend started tugging on the lapel of Jim's shirt.

"Come off it, mate," he said, "John Howard couldn't risk taking bribes. And wasn't it you who's been screaming about the situation in East Timor all these years? A conservative Federal Government has been forced to support the East Timorese liberation movement against our Indonesian allies. That should be an irony you enjoy."

"Look, my friend, both sides of politics are now talking about increasing the defence budget. Isn't that wonderful. Strip education and welfare, sell all the public assets and put the money into defence. You want your kids to be conscripted? That'll be their next ploy."

"You're out of touch, Jimmy. They don't conscript these days, they just drop bombs from the air."

•••••••••••••

Felix asked Alex to come to his warehouse to check out some Byzantine artefacts that he had recently purchased because he was worried that some of them might be fakes. Alex stood at Felix's front door feeling the heat and steam rising from the wet pavement. After the morning shower, the sun had come out and was blazing on his back.

"You look dog tired," Alex said to Felix when he opened the door.

"I didn't get much sleep last night. It was so humid. I dreamt that I was woken by a flash of intense white light. When I opened my eyes, I saw a figure in dazzling white robes hovering near the end of my bed. And I'm not religious. For me, religion isn't an opiate, it's a nightmare. The Catholicism of my childhood still haunts me today."

"Maybe it's the Ku Klux Klan who've penetrated your thoughts," said Alex.

"That's possible," said Felix. "That makes me feel more up-to-date. The white sheet brigade are a lot more nightmarish than angels."

Felix led Alex to a large table at the window in the front office and asked him to look at several objects he had placed on the table with their certificates of authenticity from the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies in Oxford.

"I know this piece," Alex said, picking up a heavy plate which had a relief on it depicting David meeting Saul.

"It last belonged to an American collector, he continued. He bought it in Russia when Gorbachov was in power. It's solid silver and was lost for 1300 years until it was unearthed in Cyprus in 1902. It had been buried when Arab soldiers invaded in the seventh century. It was originally made in Constantinople."

"Okay," said Felix. "That tallies with what I know. The other thing I need to talk to you about is that antique rug you asked me to sell for you. The buyer I found did his own background check. He thinks it was stolen from a Jewish collector during World War II in Germany, so he's nervous about buying it. Things are more thoroughly scrutinized now. You can't hope to get big money without proper documentation."

"This is my problem," said Alex, "my grandmother gave it to me and she's dead now. I've always thought of it as a family heirloom. We kept it as something to fall back on. We thought that we could use it to set ourselves up here."

"Don't worry, we can still sell it but we may not get as much for it. On the other hand, appropriate documentation could be created."

"You mean forged documents?" asked Alex.

Felix said nothing as he turned his back and dialled a number on his mobile phone.

•••••••••••••••

Billie and Rini arrived at the community centre with the food box before the meeting of their women's anti-racist group to set up the furniture and the refreshments. By the scheduled time, everything was ready and most of the group members were sitting around the big varnished wood table. Danielle arrived slightly late from dropping her five-year old at a friend's house and sat down to chair the meeting.

"Well, we now have something tangible to celebrate. It seems that the One Nation Party is finished as a political force. The organisation has imploded. They've never polled well, they're facing charges of fraud and their members are deserting. I think that we have made a worthwhile contribution in that area. Our organisation and participation at so many meetings and demonstrations have had an impact, regardless of who is now taking the credit.

"For quite a while now, we've all been asking ourselves, what next? Is our work in that area done? Would it be useful to keep this group going? If so, which issues should we be addressing? Are we a single issue group? We also need to make a decision about the matter we were debating last meeting - whether or not to admit men to this group. And if there are any other agenda items you would like us to consider at this meeting or future meetings, please add them to the list on the sheet of paper which is circulating."

Bibi spoke first with an overview of the current situation.

"One Nation may be finished but its supporters haven't disappeared. There's a degree of racist organising going on, at both community and government levels. In the wider arena, the trade union movement has been under attack from the Federal Government for some time. Aboriginal organisations have also been under fire. Because Harradine held the balance of power in the Senate, he was able to make various deals to promote his own agenda - the anti-abortion crusade and other Catholic platforms. Media campaigns have been conducted to whip up hysteria about illegal immigrants and boat people so that the Federal Government could introduce legislation which further disadvantages migrants and refugees. And one thing that the recent Kalejs case has shown us, is that there are all those fascists and war-criminals out there who're being protected, nurtured even. Fascists have lived here happily for decades while people on the Left have had a less than comfortable political existence. Then there's the intervention in East Timor. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that each of these things is introduced and then normalised. It becomes part of the landscape."

"And while we're all busy chewing on the GST, I'll bet they'll slip a few more things past us," said Ruby, gearing up for her turn to speak.

Danielle and Karla started whispering and laughing together. As everyone in the meeting turned in their direction, Danielle said,

"Sorry, it's just that business about Howard and the tampon tax."

"The abjection of Howard with the taint of the tampon tax," said Karla.

"I enjoyed the way the journalists managed to get Howard to use the word "tampon" so many times on national TV and radio," said Ruby, reclaiming the floor. Then she continued:

"Our sub-committee was set up to see if we could find any links between the harassment incidents suffered by different members of this group and by other people we know. And we've been able to make contact with a few people who've supplied us with some more information. We haven't been able to explain everything that has happened but we do have some answers. As you know, most of us have been or still are members of other political or community groups apart from this one. This fact led us to our first conclusion. When we started analysing the information to hand, we realised that the only people who'd been harassed, had some previous involvement with anti-war activism. So it might've been connected to those of you who went to the Jabiluka protests."

"But what about you, Ruby?" asked Bibi. "You haven't been part of those groupings, have you?"

"Excuse me. I was at Pine Gap in 1984," replied Ruby. "That's where I first met Billie and Rini."

Billie and Rini both nodded.

Ruby went on to describe the files on group members which had come into their hands. They had been able to re-activate some of the old contacts to get more files and more information. There were still some contacts left in the public service even after all the restructuring and redundancies. She described the black list and maintained that these kinds of lists, which even tracked people from generation to generation, were current and in use.

"Oh really! You don't expect us to swallow this conspiracy-theory bullshit, do you?" said Kath. She walked to the urn for another cup of tea and remained standing away from the people at the table.

"There could be plausible explanations for a lot of these incidents you're trying to tie together," she continued. "I know people who've set their own cars on fire just to collect the insurance. So Ruby lost her job, so have thousands of other public servants. Karla - I know you're going through the right channels now to get permanent residency but strictly speaking, you're an illegal immigrant. You came here and overstayed your visa. We know that Billie's a propagandist and a thief and god knows what else she's mixed up in. And that rich art dealer she sucks up to is a common criminal."

"Yes Kath," said Danielle, "it's true that a lot of this is speculation and we have to consider the perspective you're offering. Ruby, you mentioned Tan, Billie's partner. Can you tell us about his situation?"

"Yes. We originally thought that there was someone after him too because he said he thought he was being threatened by some right wing Vietnamese thugs. But we now think it was Billie, not Tan, who was being threatened, warned off because of her role as our publicist. Tan has had problems in the past. He had to change his identity as a teenager after his parents and elder brother were murdered in Saigon in what was called the Phoenix program. In the 60's the Americans and their South Vietnamese supporters assassinated about 100,000 South Vietnamese Communists."

"No, no, no!" shouted Kath. "Not that old Vietnam War crap again! I don't want to listen to any more of this drivel! Bibi, are you just going to sit here and take this from these paranoid loonies! Let's go, we have to get out of this dump before they contaminate us with their sick logic."

Bibi went and stood next to Kath and they both started arguing individually with the women who were still seated.

"I agree. We've got our priorities all wrong," Bibi said. "There are war criminals out there. People who've killed thousands. That's the most important part of our platform. Organisations like One Nation, like the Citizens' Electoral Council are harbouring them and we need to work to expose them, to help gather evidence. We're wasting our time going over all these imaginary attacks."

"And what about the racist attacks on Aboriginals, the violence Aboriginal women are suffering every day. You people are off with the pixies!" said Kath.

Soon everyone was standing and shouting. Danielle tried to restore order and failed. Billie signalled to Rini that she wanted to leave. They packed the cake and coffee things into the box and walked to the door. Kath saw them leaving and wheeled around.

"That's right! You'll even steal the coffee and cakes!" she shouted. "And what have you done with the money in the group's bank account, Billie? Is that how you bought your new van? Is that how you set up your new business - with the money that we got from all our fund raising?"

At that moment, Billie's dog, Tui leapt up barking and growling.

"Get that fucking dog off me, you fucking bitch! Don't think you can shut me up by threatening me," Kath screamed as she backed away towards the table.

Billie called Tui to heel, dumped the box of coffee things and ran out with Rini close behind her. Rini caught up with Billie at her van. Tui was already in the back seat and Billie was standing on the pavement, looking bewildered.

"What's this stuff about the bank account?" asked Rini.

"Believe me, Rini, I don't know. I've never taken any money from the account for myself. I don't know what they're talking about. And I'm not the only signatory, Kath can operate the account as well. There's never been more than a few hundred dollars in it. You know that Tan and I are still doing our cleaning shifts, and we've got a bank loan. Why would I steal money from the group. I'm one of the people who did the fundraising."

••••••••••••••••••

On New Year's Eve 2000 there was a big party at an old warehouse on the harbour. The pathway from the street to the warehouse was wide but there were trees and plants overhanging, glowing deep green and dripping from the evening shower. Billie and Tan entered the building by a small door and went down a long stairway attached to the side wall. The interior space was huge and tall and there were hundreds of people on the floor below, dancing, shouting over the loud music, and looking at the giant screen mounted on the back wall. Through an enormous opening at the other end there was a panoramic view of the harbour and the city.

When the fireworks started, Billie and Tan stood in the crush of bodies, looking out over the water. Two people pushed forward from the back of the crowd and continued past Billie. The man turned back to look at the scene in the room behind him. It was James, the council arts officer. Billie watched him unseen, as the lights from the mirror ball flashed across his face. Then she saw him pull a young woman forward through the crowd. She looked like an exotic model with her mass of curly black hair, strapless dress and high stiletto sandals. It was Bibi.

Bibi saw Billie but turned away without a greeting. She whispered something in James' ear and he turned to face Billie with a twinkle in his eye.

"Been caught with our hand in the till, have we Bill?" he said. "How politically correct is that?"

Then he laughed and went off into the crowd pushing Bibi teetering in front of him.

Billie sits alone in her studio on an old brown velvet couch. On the coffee table in front of her are mounds of small lead figures and pots of gloss paint, each with a soft hair brush standing handle up. Without mixing the colours, she picks up a lead figure and paints on a small blue jacket.

 

 

 

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