The Kronikles of Tony and Ruth
Day 39 - Monday 7 August 2006
Bit seedy on waking up. On arriving at our new digs, Capital Executive Apts., we are requested to check in at 2PM, it's now 10AM. Intending to go to the Cook Artefacts exhibition I miss the turn off and finish up crossing Lake Burley Griffin to park outside the Old Parliament House. National Portrait Gallery, Scoops and Scandals and The Prime Ministers' Wives are the three exhibitions we visit. The Scoops and Scandals, a recreation of the press gallery and their facilities in this house, is especially engrossing – a virtual trip backwards in time. We decide to visit Parliament House.
The David Hicks protest tent, between the old and new houses, is manned by a sleeping individual. Not wanting to wake him up for just chitchat we plough on to bullshit castle. From the visitors' gallery in the upper house and I yell "Order in the House" in the best tradition of the Speaker to a group of visiting schoolkids who appear to be slightly startled.
We are informed that we cannot view the tapestry in the Great Hall as it is being used for a function. Wandering over anyway we see that the big door is open so we ask a doorperson if we can just look in. Allowed a short visit we see a large crowd of suits and power dressed women in a dull roar of discussion and on the stage is a childrens' choir chirping away. In fact politicians of all parties are co-hosting a forum to highlight Australia's Christian heritage. The former deputy prime minister John Anderson reportedly told the invitation only crown of 300 church and political figures that secularism had gone to far and Christianity needs to reassert itself as the dominant national belief system.
I don't know about you but, as a born raised and lapsed Catholic, this worries me. The very fact that we enjoy the freedom of worship in due to the liberal (small l) secular state not to abandoned the theocracies of years past. I baulk at these politicians, Christian or otherwise who do not accept our current model of the liberal secular democratic state. It's their moral authoritarianism I object to.
Lunching at the QE2 Terrace we watch diners being menaced by sleek, plump magpies in the hunt for scraps.
At 2PM we register at the Apartments then walk to the Reid precinct to shop for food. We eat and watch "Good Night and Good Luck". Although set in the 50's during the McCarthy hearings the film reflect a lot of what is happening today.
Lights out at 10.30
