Senator Andrew Bartlett
Monday, October 25, 2004
 
I spent the weekend in Perth at a meeting of Animals Australia, which is an umbrella organisation for over 40 different groups with an animal rights or animal welfare related focus. It may not be everybody's idea of how to have a break and get away from it all, but I thought I would it help re-energise me and freshen up my outlook a bit to get back with grass roots activists and away from the narrow and fairly barren field of electoral Politics. (And I did also meet up with a few Democrats while I was in Perth to talk about other issues and hear their thoughts on where we go from here, as I'm doing gradually in other places and ways.)

The two weeks since the election have been somewhat akin to a grieving process for many people – not just Democrat people after our terrible result - but also the many people who feel distressed by the extra strength and apparent endorsement which John Howard's Government has been given by the Australian electorate. There is much thinking and reassessing to do for all of us who fit in that category some way, and for many it's too soon in the grieving process to have totally clear thinking.

People might think a weekend conference of animal rights activists isn't very real world, but to me it usually provides energy and inspiration to connect with people who give their time to issues and causes they believe in. Devoting your spare time to help others or help improve your society, whether it's picketing a live sheep transport ship or volunteering your time to umpire school footy games is in some ways as real as it gets.

In all but a tiny minority of cases, people aren't doing these things for ego and they certainly aren’t doing it for money or kudos or status. They aren't engaged in some pathetic competition as to who is the cleverest or the most cunning, and they aren't trying to spin ridiculously absurd versions of reality to try to give meaning to things that aren't there just to justify their actions or their existence. They are just trying to make the world a better place, to put energy into something they care about, and they are doing it directly and personally.

People can do this in Politics too, but some of them don't and the whole area of electoral politics operates in a way which can make it quite difficult to do so – you often have to navigate through or around (or be encompassed by) 20 different layers of crap to try to get to the real issues.

Anyway, I certainly enjoyed just listening grassroots activist talk about issues they care about. The Animals Australia meeting was an AGM, and I have always tried to get along to at least a small section of the meeting every year, to help me keep in touch with some of the people and the issues. I went to my first AGM over 10 years ago in Melbourne – some years before I got into the Senate - and I think I've been to each one since, even if only briefly. It's also sort of a touching base with a bit of my own roots and a chance to catch up with some people I only see once a year (if that) – many of whom I admire a lot.

I got to meet the exceedingly cute Lucy, the always smiling (but very determined and concerned) sheep that appeared so regularly at political events during the election campaign. I'd met her in Adelaide during the campaign – she was still smiling after the election, and still determined. I'd have to say she was also pretty angry and distressed outside the dock at Fremantle seeing the thousands of sheep, crammed like sardines into trucks being driven in so they could then be unloaded and crammed like sardines onto a ship setting sail for the Middle East.

It is a disgusting and extraordinarily cruel practice, which absurdly also costs thousands of Australian jobs in the meat processing trade too. As a vegetarian, I don't want to appear disingenuous in suggesting I'm keen to encourage slaughtering and consumption of sheep anywhere, but none the less, when an industry doesn't even make broader economic sense, has a clear, profitable alternative already in existence and is nauseatingly cruel as well, you do have to wonder what the hell is going on.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Monday, October 25, 2004
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