"Utopia' a documentary by John Pilger

I remember John Pilger as an investigative journalist for the Daily Mirror when it still had socialist balls and investigative journalist meant summat. Informed us like. Talk to Australians today about John Pilger (although mostly living overseas he is one of Australia's sons-the generation who went to London to work and who grew up on Sydney's eastern beaches); they mostly loath him, dislike him or are indifferent. Shades of Chomsky-he can be intractable, uncomfortable and too often right. Unlike Chomsky-you will never die not knowing John Pilger's line of argument. He speaks straight, honed on journalism, his words bite but are as clear as bells ringing. Something of 'shoot the messenger' seems to dog his footsteps here in Australia. Lots of people tell me how often Pilger has got it wrong but are short on saying exactly how other than in minor detail how that is -he is an investigative journalist by trade and is an assiduous fact checker. The wrong is only when he launches into opinion, many of which he has, uses and is happy to put out into the narrative of colonisation and global politics. His documentary on Indonesian sweatshops producing labels of the 90s we all wore with pride was something else I remember, it stopped me wearing my favourite deep blue shirt, once I knew the true cost of its making. Then there were the 1989 book "A Secret Country" and the peeling back of the facade of Australia as a lucky country-for some but not all. Reading this then was a profound shock and realisation how far ahead New Zealand was in addressing biculturalism and the tragedy of European colonisation. (Not too far but in comparison...) The book apparently rose from his 1985 documentary of the same name.

And thus Utopia. Released in 2013 and 110 minutes.
This if anything is the story of the destruction caused to Aboriginal communities through the intervention and invisibility of Aboriginal people through mainstream Australia. "The universal theme of the film" says John Pilger, "is that the world is dividing into two groups - those who prosper in material comfort zones, as most Australians do, and those who are dispossessed because they are "different" and refuse to comply. It's a dystopian project that says indigenous people cannot live in their homelands - they can't live differently, they must be assimilated, they must be like us." (My italics and notes from Anthony Hayward). Utopia is the most disadvantaged area of Australia. No utilities, grinding poverty and poor access to services most of Australia takes for granted. This is the core of what makes movements like Reclaim Australia evil. The soft porn of Tory politics. And if anything in the two years since this was released parts of the rest of Australia are playing catch up-finding themselves "different"-dispossessed, engaging with fragmenting services that no longer provide a lifeline in adversity. Yet Utopia is a documentary which also portrays the courage in the struggle of resistance by the first people at the cost of too many early graves. It can inspire as well as crush. What it shows is the lies told and then held as truisms, peddle about how dysfunctional Aboriginal communities are. Or as too many red necks like to claim-"so much money is thrown at them and still they don't change-must be because there is something flawed in their make up that they can't accept (assimilate) White ways."  And no matter the evidence to the contrary, injustice prevails*. Being set up to fail inevitably results in failure. And why do we do that? Because accepting differences means our comfortable myths about ourselves...if only they would...ring a little more hollow in the face of the starkness portrayed in these communities we allow to fester and break up. These the representatives of one of the oldest civilisations on our planet, of whom we should be proud and celebrate and should support as core to being Australian. It is a powerful indictment but also a testimony to the people portrayed and to Mr Pilger for having the guts to still put this story out into the public domain.
10/10.

From a secret country, secret agent Cockie spreads the seed

*And continues. See the excellent article by Helen Davidson-"Charlie's story: Life and death of the man forced to sleep rough while on dialysis." Saturday 25 July 2015, Guardian (Australia). Ask yourself when you read this man's life story-would prominent White Australians end their life in this way? Would we let it happen?