CHAPTER TWELVE

DAY SEVENTEEN – SATURDAY

The rickety corrugated iron door crashed behind Anita. She had cautiously stepped through the opening and into the warehouse in a west Melbourne street full of derelict, abandoned factories. Looking for Jaya Rukhmani for their prearranged meeting, she thought she may have the wrong address so checked her smartphone to confirm she was in the right place.

The warehouse was dark with little light coming from the sparse, grimy windows high above. The concrete floor looked as if nothing had been on it for years other than dust, dirt and scattered rubbish. As she walked further into the depth of darkness, somewhere high above her birds fluttered and a small feather drifted to the floor.

‘Hello?’ shouted Anita. There was no response, although a faint scurrying sound from a dark corner startled her a little.

‘Hi.’

Anita yelped, and quickly turned toward the voice coming from a metal balcony high above the entrance. A young man was looking down with a beaming smile.

‘Are you the journalist?’

‘Yes, Anita Devlin. Hi.’

‘Come on up, the stairs are over there,’ said the man, pointing to steep metal stairs running up along a brick wall. ‘We were expecting you a little later. Jaya and Robert have gone for coffee.’

‘I can come back,’ said Anita, looking up to the man.

‘No, they won’t be long. Please, come up.’

Anita walked to the stairs and clomped up, her sneakers on the metal steps giving out an echo. When she got to the top, the young man introduced himself.

‘Hi, I’m Steve Calwell. I suppose you could call me the election day coordinator for the professor’s campaign.’

‘Hi Steve, pleased to meet you,’ puffed Anita, the unexpected effort had her breathing hard. ‘That’s a nice workout.’

‘We figure it will keep us fit. How do you like the place?’

Anita scanned the floor below and then looked through the glass into a large single office. ‘Well, you certainly have enough room.’

‘We thought we only needed an office, so we were going to work from Rob’s spare bedroom, but the campaign manual recommended we would need space for the election day material. Given the list of gear we have to accumulate we thought we would hunt around for a warehouse. We got this beauty for a month for almost nothing.’

‘It looks great. Are you going to put signs up out front?’

‘Hadn’t thought of that, maybe we should,’ Calwell said. ‘There are a lot of things we haven’t considered. We naïvely thought we could easily run an election campaign, but it seems democracy takes a little more effort than we thought.’

‘Who would have thought?’ laughed Anita, as she followed Calwell into the cluttered office. ‘You look busy.’

‘Yes, we’re trying to match the data we’ve been given with the mailing program so we can get the data and community groups linked. Power isn’t connected so we’re running off our batteries. It only becomes a problem at night. We thought we might get a couple of gas lanterns if we need to work through.’

‘So, this computer program, who wrote it?’ Anita asked.

‘It was given to us by campaign headquarters a few days ago. They sent us a community organiser the other day, who is out and about talking to community groups right now, basically getting us organised.’

‘So, everything is done for you?’

‘Yeah, how sweet is that? We just fill in the blanks. The only task we have to do is mobilise people and attract money,’ said Calwell, moving papers for Anita to sit. ‘We’ve started online recruitment for campaign workers, which is going gangbusters. The professor’s alumni of former students seem keen to help, and money is slowly coming in from a crowdfunding site.’

‘Sounds impressive.’

‘It’s easy, so far. We’re concentrating on election day and making sure we get that right because the manual says fifteen per cent of voters make up their minds at the polling booth.’

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Yeah, me too. But unless we do what headquarters say, they could cut us off,’ Calwell sat opposite. ‘Apparently, Jaya signed a statement agreeing to follow the manual otherwise she could be sacked.’

‘The electoral commission closed nominations last week and declares them, I think, next Wednesday, so it would be too late to sack anyone if they didn’t comply,’ Anita explained. ‘Once you’re declared, that’s it. You’ll be on the ballot paper as the endorsed candidate no matter what happens.’

‘The professor is of the view we should do everything we can to validate the material. She hopes to use it for a documentary and the material she is developing for her academic course.’

‘Good plan.’ Anita looked around at the chaos and noted maps on various pinboards marked with coloured pins and shaded in various colours. ‘When’s the professor due back?’

‘Any time,’ said Calwell, who abruptly jumped up hearing a noise from below and stepped out on to the balcony. ‘In fact, here they are now.’

Anita waited, listening to the excited voices and echoing steps on the stairs. Professor Jaya Rukhmani hurriedly swept into the room, commanding the mood. ‘Hi Anita, sorry to have kept you waiting,’ Jaya graciously extended her hand and smiled. ‘We didn’t know if you wanted a coffee, so we bought one for you. Do you take sugar?’

‘If you have any, Professor, I take one.’

‘Ah, you see how smart my campaign manager is, he buys lattes with one and two sugars in them to cover all bases.’ Jaya took a cup from one of the two cardboard trays Wong was carrying.

‘What would you have done if I wanted three?’ quizzed Anita.

‘No-one takes three sugars in coffee, way too sweet,’ Wong chuckled, placing the coffees down and extending his hand. ‘Hi Miss Devlin, I’m Robert Wong, the professor’s campaign manager.’

‘Drill sergeant, more like it,’ smiled Jaya. ‘He has me working way too hard, especially since we have no realistic prospect of winning. But we’re giving it our best shot, aren’t we, Robert?’

Anita sipped her coffee as the others settled in around her. Calwell stepped off to a desk at the far end of the long office to work on a project with two takeaway coffee cups. ‘Hey, nice coffee,’ she called.

‘It’s Melbourne, what do you expect?’ smiled Wong.

Jaya caught her eye. ‘So, you want to do a story on me?’

‘Yes, I thought we could do a profile piece for tomorrow. You have an interesting story.’

‘Well, I’m not so sure I’m that interesting, but the reason we are doing this election campaign is,’ Jaya said.

‘Before we get started,’ interrupted Wong. ‘Would you mind if we record the interview for our podcast?’

‘Not at all, we can do some cutaways as well, which you can edit later if you like.’ Anita responded.

‘That’d be great.’

‘Thank you so much for agreeing to do that,’ Jaya leaned across and tapped a thankyou on Anita’s knee. ‘We are learning every day and we are recording most of it, so we don’t forget.’

‘Good plan,’ smiled Anita, bemused by the mixture of enthusiasm and chaos within the office. The difference between the pragmatic strategy at campaign headquarters and how that planning was reflected in the field provided an interesting contrast. ‘I was just having a chat to Steve about your campaigning requirements. Are you obliged to meet campaign standards, and what happens if you don’t?’

‘We haven’t met the campaign strategist, what’s his name, Robert?’ Jaya looked to Wong who was setting up a camera. ‘It’s a hyphenated name.’

‘Jack Sinclair-Browne.’ He responded as he continued his set-up.

Jaya clicked her fingers. ‘That’s him. He told us in no uncertain terms we must meet standards set out in the campaign manual, so we are.’

‘Apparently, he’s had all local campaigns subscribe to his program, which we find incredibly interesting,’ offered Wong. ‘I mean, how can all campaigns be the same? Some are in the city, others in rural regions. There are marginal campaigns and safe seats. And others, like us, have no chance in winning.’

‘So why do it?’ asked Anita, pulling a notepad and pen from her bag at her feet.

‘We’re doing it so we can add material to an applied campaigning unit I will design and then teach. We are using the campaign as a case study,’ responded Jaya. ‘I just didn’t realise how complex it would be.’

‘But you teach politics,’ Anita queried, taking a sip of coffee.

‘Theory and policy, but we don’t touch hard-core campaigning. The coalface campaigning a politician subjects themselves to get elected is unbelievable,’ Jaya responded. ‘I’m sure none of us at uni actually know what real politics is about.’

‘Numbers, I suspect,’ said Anita. ‘Who has them and who wants them.’

‘So, you reckon it’s just about arithmetic?’ asked Wong as he placed a camera on a tripod. ‘Whoever has the numbers wins.’

‘That’s it,’ said Anita as the corner of her mouth lifted.

‘That is no way to run a modern parliament,’ sighed Jaya. ‘I mean, of course votes count. But if it was just about numbers then they could be manipulated to support any just cause,’ Jaya said. ‘Though history tells us that not all causes are just.’

‘I reckon politicians work too hard,’ suggested Wong. ‘At least some of them do – if this campaign is any indication of what needs to be done in order to renew their contract every five years with the community.’

‘The question then becomes, how do they pay for it, and who’s paying their bills?’ Jaya said. ‘When they need money and people to win, surely it becomes easy to corrupt them.’

‘There is no evidence of that in Australia,’ Anita said.

‘Really?’ Jaya was genuinely surprised. ‘Let me remind you of Brian Burke and Alan Bond. The State Bank fiasco in Victoria, the debacle in South Australia and Premier Barry O’Farrell’s demise in New South Wales. Eddie Obeid’s influence, and the chap who ripped off a hundred thousand from claiming false allowances in Victoria, wasn’t he the speaker?’

‘What do those cases have to say about politics?’ Anita asked.

‘Sadly, political corruption exists. We just have to look harder to find it – and call it out rather than covering it up and protecting the party brand.’

‘We’re all set to go,’ interrupted Wong.

Anita reflected on the professor’s comments. She thought about her unpublished story on Gerrard’s attempt at manipulating the parliament by doing the deal with Indonesia. Perhaps Jaya could be right. Maybe corruption does exist, and we just don’t investigate to find it or eradicate it.

‘Rolling.’

Anita switched on her recorder and asked, ‘Professor Rukhmani, I wonder if we can start by sharing with me a little about your background. When did you immigrate to Australia?’

‘I’m not sure I’d call it migration.’

‘What would you call it?’ queried Anita, a little confused.

‘My parents sold me off to be married to an Indian family from Melbourne who paid them a considerable amount of rupees,’ sighed Jaya. ‘I was twelve at the time.’

‘Sorry, what?’ Anita was even more confused. ‘You were a child bride and sold to your husband?’

‘Yes,’ sniffed Jaya, waving her hand dismissively. ‘My culture encourages it, and my parents were given a significant reward for their sacrifice. My husband’s family was very pleased to have such a young bride.’

‘How old was your husband?’

‘Thirty-three. He was an architect in Melbourne and couldn’t find a wife here, so his family organised it. He visited India to marry me and then brought me to Melbourne on a family reunion visa. The first time I met him was at the wedding.’

‘You’re kidding me?’

‘No, this is very true and still happens, even now.’

Anita began scribbling shorthand notes. ‘So you landed in Australia as a married girl. Could you speak English?’

‘No, only Hindi.’

‘Which school did you go to?’

‘Anita,’ Jaya scoffed. ‘I never went to school,’ she laughed. ‘Within a month of my marriage I was pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful boy, Gurudo. Now a handsome, strapping thirty-year-old man with two children of his own.’

‘How many other children do you have?’

‘Gurudo is my only precious child. Once I’d given birth to a son I was excluded from my husband’s family. I became their bonded housekeeper until I was eighteen, and then told to move out. They haven’t done much for me, in fact, I haven’t seen them for years.’

‘Seriously?’ Anita was astounded, shaking her head while quickly scribbling notes in her pad. ‘How is it that you are now a university professor if you were not able to go to school?’

‘I worked two, sometimes three, jobs until I was around twenty-two. I then sat an adult assessment test for university under the government’s new citizens scheme and voila,’ Jaya clapped quickly. ‘I haven’t left.’ She beamed a broad smile.

‘That must have been difficult being a single mother, working and studying?’

‘I only saw my son once or twice a year when he was growing up. Once he left his father’s house, we’ve been able to get to know each other again.’

Anita vigorously scratched the back of her head with her pen, trying to understand what happened to her. ‘How did you learn English? You speak it so well.’

‘Thank you, you’re so nice,’ Jaya crossed her legs and cupped a knee with her clasped fingers as she leaned back. ‘A lot of television, I can tell you. I really enjoyed Play School, it helped a lot.’

‘This is unbelievable; how did you survive when you were moved out?’

‘I worked and the government helped. Migrant services were very supportive. The best thing I did was work and mix with other people.’

‘Have you been back to India?’

‘No,’ Jaya snapped, then self-consciously looked at the camera as if caught in a secret, before adding. ‘I haven’t seen my parents or any family since my wedding. In fact, I don’t want to, quite frankly.’

‘This is really sad, I didn’t know,’ Anita hesitated. ‘I feel terrible, this must have been awful for you.’

‘Oh, don’t be like that, it wasn’t that bad,’ reassured Jaya, smiling. She gently touched Anita’s hand. ‘Sure, looking from your perspective it’s awful, but that is from your place of privilege. If I didn’t have the opportunity to come to Australia, I would not be living the remarkable life I now am. I wouldn’t be campaigning against a prime minister. I would not have my academic books read. I would probably be breaking rocks for a living in some lost village alongside my mother.’

‘But your story is dreadful.’

‘To you, maybe it is,’ Jaya said. ‘To me, it has been bountiful. I have a son, grandchildren, and I live in a safe place. If I had stayed in India, my life would have been completely different.’

‘Have you suffered discrimination?’

‘Have I been called a wog or a black bastard? Of course I have,’ Jaya dismissed the query. ‘And in Australia, the words used are the same as they are in India. There, people threw stones and big rocks at me, they would beat me … in Australia they throw words, not rocks.’

‘Still as painful?’

‘Of course they are, but they are only words of ignorance. One must forgive the ignorant and help them to learn.’

‘I find your attitude utterly remarkable,’ smiled Anita, shaking her head.

‘You do because you’re pale skinned, living a life of privilege, with free health and education. It’s not remarkable to me, it’s my life.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Anita was perplexed and quickly brushed an unexpected tear from her cheek.

‘Then say nothing and move to the next question. Perhaps ask me about the campaign.’

‘One last question before moving on,’ Anita smiled. ‘How important is culture within a political system and how does political culture relate to the community?’

‘This is an important question because the entire economic system was developed on the patriarchy. I blame the French,’ Jaya smiled at her clichéd joke. ‘They were the first I think to separate women from men in the workplace, observing women were a distraction. Can you believe it – women a distraction, who would have thought?’ Jaya laughed at the irony.

‘Men developed the systems of power and trade. They planned for the participation of only men and built institutions and their rules around the culture of men.’ Jaya moved into familiar territory. ‘Over the last century we see greater female participation, but the principles of patriarchy remain when it comes to culture.’

‘How so?’ Anita scribbled notes.

‘Not many brown faces or Asian names in the federal parliament. Not many in boardrooms or even universities for that matter. We seem to exclude certain cultures to our great disadvantage. If Australia is to truly engage with our region, we should have greater representation from the Asian diaspora. Diversity is not just about gender as my sisters would have us believe. It’s about all things, including culture, age and access.’

‘Interesting.’ Anita chewed on the end of her pen as she considered the professor’s comments. ‘It’s refreshing to hear a politician talk like that.’

‘It’s a shame I won’t be elected because it could be an opening for others to follow. That is why we’re doing the documentary.’

Anita couldn’t help but feel a buzz of admiration toward the professor. She continued to question the professor about her campaign; how the development of the documentary was progressing; and if there had been troubles campaigning. She scratched lines around key words like ethics, equity and political power as she asked questions of Jaya until Wong called for a final question.

‘Okay, last question,’ smiled Anita. ‘If you were prime minister for the day, what would you do?’

Jaya didn’t answer immediately, she leaned back in her chair, eyes closed, working her way through a response. She then dropped her head and connected eyes with Anita in a searing look. ‘I would toughen the immigration laws to exclude those who cannot contribute to Australia. It seems to me that for too long we accept people who contribute nothing. They don’t bother to learn the language and often disrespect our laws. We should ask them to do more if they want to stay. If I can do it, why can’t they?’

Anita wasn’t expecting her answer. ‘But this is contrary to what you said earlier about gaining from other cultures.’

‘We can, absolutely, but not if we constantly live in a community focused on the lowest common denominator. We have selection processes for almost everything in Australia, but not our social welfare programs. So, let’s go to the source and select better people to come settle here. Sure, we have a role in resettling refugees and those who need us, I’m all for that, but our immigration program should stop bringing in the deadbeats.’

Anita didn’t respond, shocked at what she had just heard, challenging her own thoughts about the issue. Perhaps she never thought about it as it didn’t impact her, and she rarely spoke with that segment of the community – she just never thought about it and preferred that Australia was a home for anyone who wanted to come. This was an interesting perspective from someone who had lived in the system.

‘That last answer is totally off the record,’ Wong jumped in and sternly said.