politics

World Refugee Day 2004

World Refugee Day 2004 was held last Sunday, June 20th. In Canberra the day was celebrated with the installation of a Field of Hearts on the lawns outside Parliament House. The hearts had been sent in from all over Australia, and with messages of support for refugees written on them, were symbolic of a wish for Australia to be a more open-hearted country for refugees.

I dusted off my my two John Howard effigies for the occasion. I managed to find a way of anchoring the John Howard scarecrow in one of the dreadful white plastic bollards which, at the cost of $80,000, were installed as a security barricade around Parliament House at the time of the anti-war demonstrations in March 2003, and have remained ever since. (The government has recently approved spending $11.2 million on building a “low wall” right round Parliament House to replace them). My other John Howard puppet was one made for the coincidence of World Puppetry Day and the anti-Iraq war demonstrations. This time I sewed his lips together.

The poster I would have liked to take to World Refugee Day is the one on the left, made recently by my daughter. Its made entirely out of plastic and tapes of various kinds. This picture of the poster was taken at Reconcilliation Walk, with Old Parliament House in the background, and the ‘garden sprinkler’ flag pole of new Parliament House behind that.

John Howard Statue: ‘If the Boots Don’t Fit’

On Saturday Feb 7th the Melbourne sculptor Greg Taylor erected this fine life-size bronze sculpture of the Prime Minister, John Howard, in Reconcilliaton Walk in front of Old Parliament House in Canberra.

Called ‘If the Boots Don’t Fit’, it is reminiscent of all those noble-looking statues at ANZAC memorials across the country, but a wonderfully stunted one: the boots are like Goofy’s, the uniform baggy and oversized, the rifle held back to front and the hat worn with the wrong side up. Add in the droopy-shouldered stance and the self-satisfied expression and you have fine satire. Taylor says his artwork is intended to draw attention to Mr Howard’s “smallness” in a metaphysical, spiritual and political sense.

Unfortunately, the National Capital Authority removed it promptly the next day. And ever since, events surrounding the statue have just kept bubbling along in a very entertaining manner.

On the following Thursday, the Canberra Times reported that the statue had been found ‘behind barbed wire’, in an NCA ‘detention camp’: a storage compound in Commonwealth Park. That day Taylor was allowed to hire a crane to lift the one-tonne statue out, and by then our electricity and water company, ActewAGL, had offered to pay $2000 to charity if they could exhibit it outside their shopfront in Garema Place in the city for a few days. Click on the thumbnails below to view images.

Since then:

Jon Stanhope, the Chief Minister of the ACT, has said he would like the ACT to buy the statue so that even if Howard won’t live here himself, at least the statue will have a permanent home here. That is causing consternation in some quarters! Some people have suggested the people of Canberra would be willing to subscribe to a fund to buy it if that plan falls through. Meanwhile, the head of ActewAGL apologized if they had offended anyone, saying exhibiting the statue was only intended to be a bit of fun.

The letters to the editor have been vitriolic and amusing on both sides.

The Sunday Canberra Times editorialized about the value of satire, and surmised that Howard himself might have preferred the statue to be allowed to stand in the first place.

Geoff Pryor, our cartoonist, had some fun with it all.

The art critic Sacha Grishan reviewed the work and concluded that the only reason it did not fit the bill as artwork that the ACT might purchase was that it had not been commissioned.

The NCA is considering charging Taylor $850 for the removal and ‘storage’.

There were rowdy scenes in a Senate Estimates Committee when the Territories Minister expressed outrage at having his Sunday afternoon interupted by the NCA advising him of the statues removal. Also, “Senator Heffernan asked what would happen if ‘every second yobo’ wanted to erect effigies on Commonwealth land in future. ACT Senator Kate Lundy suggested the NCA could erect big fences around any open space.” ;-P.

The statue has spent last week outside the Hawker Butchery, and a sausage sizzle was held in its honour, with donations going to the charity Koomari. Tomorrow it apparently moves on to be on show outside the Kingston Hotel.

Stay tuned, folks… And thanks, Greg!

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