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Political silence and affective ties: Liz Conor examines racist comments made by journalist and Howard supporter David Barnett, and the disturbing lack of response.

Article Excerpt
Last June David Barnett, journalist and former media adviser to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, wrote in his Canberra Times column about Aboriginal mothers, 'We must ask ourselves whether it is right to condemn Australian children to be brought up ... by mothers who don't know enough about rearing children to wipe their noses and where the baby bonus sends the town on a drunken binge.' He also said of Aboriginal women that they, 'wipe themselves with a rag in the lavatory, and hang it up to dry for next time'.

In the national washover and splash-back of politics, there are moments, not always obvious at the time, when something core is lost. It is the missing turbulence Barnett might once have churned up by his comments that makes his attack descriptive of such a moment. His wife, Pru Goward, was reportedly 'too cross to yell at him'. Evidently she was also too sanguine to have passed on some of her understanding about racial vilification as the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission--the body currently investigating Barnett's comments, following a complaint from Aboriginal lawyer George Vilaflor.

Barnett was not sacked or censured by his employer. No shock jock encouraged a dressing down in the public court of talk back. Aside from a writer at the National Indigenous Times there were no Howard-appointed ABC or Arts Council board members fulminating in their broadsheet columns either.

It was an eloquent silence, a moment in which crucial things were washed out to the deeper, stiller waters of political dissipation. Out there in the surface calm we can spot Horlicks Howard inflating...

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