The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 25 September 2000
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HERE
We all live in such a wonderful police State, don't we? And when you think about it in those terms, it almost sounds like the chorus to a happy song. And so it should. Because this isn't one of those drab old police States we are so used to seeing in 20th-century documentaries and 21st-century news. Ours is a jolly, colourful police State, where our oppressors greet you with a G'day instead of a baton. ``G'day mate, keep it moving along,'' they will order you with a smile. ``G'day mate, empty the contents of your pockets into this box and have your bag ready for inspection.'' ``G'day mate, you can't stand there.'' ``G'day mate, you can't come in through this gate -- you'll have to walk to the other side of the venue. But, unfortunately, the session is about to start and you'll never make it in time to get in. Perhaps you should have left home a little earlier.'' Our new world order is the sort of society your parents and grandparents had always promised could be ours. As long as we learned to be polite and a bit nicer to each other. And now that this new social structure is physically here, many of our parents and grandparents have come out to police it, taken a ``have-you-brushed-your-teeth?'' attitude towards national service. These volunteers -- conscripts, if you like -- have again heeded the call of their country and State, dropped everything they are doing -- the gardening, lunch down at the club -- and put their bodies on the line. For us. Of course, thousands of young people have heeded the call too. This whole thing would have been a shambles if they weren't there. I'm fine with being treated like a sheep for a couple of hours, a couple of weeks, as long as it gets me on a train and home in the quickest possible time. It must be the Italian in me -- you know, Mussolini and all that. But if you were at Olympic Park over the weekend, if you witnessed the mass of humanity that was collected in that one space, you would truly appreciate the scale of what is going on in Sydney at the moment. So if someone in a ridiculous shirt tells me to move, I'm moving. And I'll be thanking them for telling me to do so. Because, like the song says, this really is such a wonderful police State. But what scares me is that some people might be taking all this goodwill and national pride the wrong way. For instance, there could be a man in Sydney now, laughing like he has never laughed before. ``If you tell them it's in the name of their country, they will do anything,'' he might be thinking behind all that laughter. ``Let's milk this national fervour for all it's worth, boys, blow out the defence budget while we're at it. ``And all these old people -- so, they can still work when there's a free shirt in it, hey? Let's have another look at the aged pension thing when we are back in Canberra next week. Ha-ha-ha!'' Oh, but next week is still so far away. Let us live this dream just a little longer, get back to real life only when we have to. For now, my head is still spinning from taking part in a slow-motion Mexican wave at the beach volleyball the other morning. How can you start thinking about reality when you have just gone through something as totally surreal as that?
