Asbestos at Coolbellup Bush Site

By John

The Western Australian government, the police and their private enterprise cronies and agents have deleted the Coolbellup bush and left us a legacy of dispersed asbestos fibres. A class action is needed and I hope this will happen. (The private enterprise cronies should be boycotted.)

This poem below was written a short while ago when there was still bush left in this section of the Roe 8 highway extension 'area'.

All will suffer the consequences of asbestos, and this from a government that was responsible for the (literal) installation of asbestos products in the ceiling spaces of the new children's hospital, and asbestos dispersal in roadside mulch (and who knows where else) in one recent case.

The contempt for life in all its forms shown by these people is obvious, but that they actually see themselves as champions of Western Australia and its 'way of life' (what on earth is this in actuality?) speaks volumes for their ignorance, arrogance and cruelty.

The trauma so many people are experiencing in seeing rare bushland habitat deleted from the Perth city region will not be 'got over'. It is long-term and is akin to trauma felt during disaster and war.

We are writers writing in times of catastrophe faced with a 'hebephrenic' power elite (hebephrenic in Hodge & Mishra's sense) who will force what they see as necessary on us all.

I read an appalling article the other day on a site dedicated to commentary on GM science, and while discussing the genetic manipulation of mice to 'turn on their hunting instinct', the journalist sought to normalise the process as being something akin to 'natural'. And all this with the advocacy of 'science not ideology'.

Sorry, but such acts are pure ideology, as is the Roe 8 debacle — it is an act of ideology, not of community wellbeing or sound public planning. It is about greed, profit and power. The ability to make in one's own image.

The result: toxic fallout, further damage to the biosphere, and the massive loss of all sorts of creatures' lives.

Blue Hazmat Suits in the Coolbellup Bush Prior to its Destruction

A premonition or a delayed reaction?

A parody of deaths from blue asbestos,

fibres invading Tracy’s father’s lungs,

and lungs of so many others we’ve known.

And as the wound is widened, stretched

by sadists, blue hazmat suits are seen

bobbing in and out of the undergrowth,

a consummate piece of pastoral diplomacy

played out on crown land, a colonial

power-trip for the born-again remittance men,

their shock troops without masks

breathing deep the dust from the dozer,

from the mulcher; O lèse-majesté flexes

as the arrests mount and fibres fall out

and about, confetti for this wedding

of development and annihilation,

such comfortable bedfellows. And

so the evidence mounts, the bushland

is riddled with dumped asbestos products,

the tests verify, and then evidence

is suppressed, misplaced, dispersed,

deleted. O fibres dispersed throughout

the suburbs into lungs of all ages, all conditions,

do you expect us to be grateful?

And still the juggernaut, transparency

of fences revealing the antiworld,

where ghosts prevaricate, disorientated.

Children breathe here, you bastards.

And remember that smug capitalist

eating asbestos on his breakfast cereal?

Publicity stunt, but some bought it.

Softly softly among the rowdy machines.

Fibres beneath fingers.

Fibres in noses, mouths, lungs.

Fibres on clothes, on uniforms taken home,

dispersed among loved ones.

            John Kinsella