Matter, manner, method
IT’S a cold, dark, windy winter’s night, but the suburban streets surrounding the school are buzzing with young people chatting excitedly, or disappointedly as the case may be, about the proceedings of the last hour.
The roads are clogged, patience tried, as parents struggle to find a parking spot, throwing u-turns in all the wrong places, in their desperate attempt to get to the place on time -— and then out of there as fast as possible.
What has brought the streets to life is the monthly round of the secondary schools debating competition in which students from the surrounding zone hone their intellectual and oratorical skills on topics as diverse as organ donation, bogan culture, the abolition of the minimum wage and Google’s growing tentacles. It’s a scene that’s replicated across the city, across the state, across the country.
With its particular rules and conventions, formal debating is not everybody’s thing. As a young person, I admit it aroused in me feelings of dread. As an adult, a teacher and a team coach, my feelings are very different, partly attributable to the inevitable ageing process in which what was once considered worthy and a waste of time switch, and partly due to experience.
In one of my various career incarnations, I worked as the executive officer of Liberty Victoria, an organisation promoting civil liberties and free speech. Eight years ago, in August 2001, we entered into what has become known as the Tampa affair, when a Norwegian cargo ship rescued 438 mostly Afghan asylum seekers from a boat sinking in international waters.
The Tampa sought to bring the refugees to safety at Christmas Island, which falls within Australia’s immigration zone. With an election looming and the objective of looking tough on “queue jumpers”, the Howard government denied the Tampa entry, leading to a stand-off of more than a week as the ship refused to leave with the refugees on board.
As many would remember, the situation became something of a flashpoint, with passions running high over whether or not the government should permit entry to the asylum seekers, a move perceived as either “going soft” or a fulfilment of obligations under international law, depending on one’s politics.
A few days into the stand-off, Liberty Victoria took the federal government to court over what it saw as a denial of the fundamental human rights of those stranded on deck.
Working in the Liberty office at the time, I had to field the hundreds of telephone calls, emails and letters that quickly flooded the office. Many members of the public, distressed by what they were seeing, expressed support of Liberty’s actions, signing up to become members and offering donations.
On the other hand, others, many more it seemed, were extremely angered by Liberty’s actions.
What shocked me were not so much the negative reactions, as the vitriolic way in which they were expressed. I would pick up the phone to hear abuse hurled at me personally and the organisation generally.
When a death threat was left on the answering machine, the police advised that we stay away from the office for several days. The experience fundamentally altered the way I look at Australian culture and has left a bitter taste until this day.
Until then I had quite naively believed that I was a member of a truly civil society in which people expressed their views on public issues in a rational and measured manner.
While it was distressing to see how quickly the veneer of civilisation could be stripped away, it did strengthen in me a sense of how important it is that young people be provided with the tools to express their opinions in an articulate and cogent manner.
That so many who opposed Liberty’s actions were expressing themselves through the coarsest of coarse language I saw as a failure of our society broadly, and our education system in particular, to equip its citizens with the vocabulary of disagreement.
Taken to extremes, inchoate rage expresses itself through the barrel of the gun. We do not yet know the identity of the gunman who opened fire in a gay community centre in Tel Aviv last week and whether his motivation was personal or political. Not that it really matters.
Either way, the shooting is the work of a person who has given up on discourse. The same could be said about those who are allegedly members of terrorist groups in Australia.
Which is why I work with and admire young people, with their cue cards, numbered arguments and rebuttal points, for they hold in their hands the best of a civil and pluralist society.
Sidra Kranz Moshinsky is a teacher and freelance writer.