Role model
for children
of Illiberals

Kirsty Ruddock is a mensch
Harold Hark
27 September 2002

I'm a lousy father. My daughter, a tweenager of 11 and a half, knows far too many swear words. Not just the very worst words, gleaned from my repertoire of carefully chosen domestic and international profanities, but the ability to produce them epenthetically with a wrathful cascade of speak-spit. I dare not give examples.

My wife, the antithesis of yours truly, is a veritable little Buddha of compassion. Verily, it knows no bounds, reaching out to all beings in their suffering, with the exception of John Howard. In his case, her compassion clutches its cardigan and flees to the furthest corner.

She worries about my influence on our only begotten.

And well she might, for when, like her father, our daughter is not in your face, she is pulling them. I've inadvertently taught her to pull awful faces. Somehow that picture of loveliness becomes elastic to the point of doubling in size. Or worse. She does a great Luna Park.

And the sneers. Well, to be fair, I can still sneer better than she can.

The little boys in her grade seem to shrink even further when she is around. They are still chasing the lumpy girls who do not look at them with the burning eyes of She Who Must Be Obeyed. When the primary school disco was held recently, they shivered with fear as she entered, an Uma Thurman look-alike, except that by comparison, Uma looks like a hag.

At least she's not a bully or bossy. Her teachers have reassured us on this.

But the girl has no fear. Will this be of benefit to her in the savage, non-core future promised by John Howard? After all these years of dealing with my rages against the ethics-free flatland conservatives like him keep trying to impose on mankind's otherwise glorious destiny, perhaps she has internalised her fear, retreating to a small place within to cower as any other child would. There seems little evidence of this, however.

Maybe I've created a monster.

One thing I have not created is a child who will one day feel the need to leave her country because I have betrayed human values in the name of order and efficiency.

I may be a grade A arsehole, but injustice is something I will not tolerate. She will never feel ashamed because I incarcerated innocent people to help re-elect my master.

Justice is a simple thing really. Either you believe it to be the bedrock of civil society and above your temporal, short term interests, or, I guess, you don't. It's a big picture thing. As such, its grandness is lost on the mindless soldier ants in Canberra and Washington, as they scurry to make of the mountain of civilisation an insignificant hill of dull conformity.

I hope she has the courage of her convictions, like Kirsty Ruddock.

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