Campaign sketch: grounded jets and gladhanding
In the first in a series of campaign sketches, Liam Mannix joins Labor’s suburban campaign trail in Cowandilla.
At no time on Friday did Hindmarsh MP Steve Georganas, nor federal Minister for Multicultural Affairs Kate Lundy, remark upon the enormous aircraft fuselage parked in a empty yard next to their campaign event at the Cowandilla Coptic Orthodox Church.
It is hard to believe that either of them missed it.
It is painted silver, and appears to be held together by a thick coating of gaffer tape. Nevertheless, the grounded giant is ignored.
The church is a squat cream complex that sits in the middle of working-families suburbia. A couple of palm trees sway out the front. The gate is a metal plate with a biblical scene cut into it; the tiny figures have little holes cut where their mouths should be, making the thing look like a long Edvard Munch mural.
Steve and Kate don’t remark on that, either. They shake hands with two Ministers, say hello to the assembled congregation, receive bunches of plastic-wrapped flowers from two children. Steve is congratulated on recently becoming a grandfather. The kid will have his Greek name, he announces with a wide smile.
Before we head to the church for the announcement, there’s a tour of the Coptic museum next door. The MPs are given a history of the religion. The congregation and I follow them through; the space smells of sweet incense.
The MPs are told about the Scetes Desert, in which ancient Egyptians – the Coptic Orthodox Church came out of Saint Mark’s preaching in Egypt – believed the dead wandered, waiting to move on to the next world. Overhead, paper cloudfronts roll in. In the Scetes, the heart of the deceased – which shows all of a person’s good and bad deeds – is weighed against the feather of truth. A reckoning. If it is lighter, the deceased can move into the next world.
Is this our campaign? Are we the wanderers, waiting for the end? Only four more weeks now.
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We end the history lesson, and retire to the church proper – a large building filled with smaller rooms and, upstairs, a large unfinished space.
We enter one of the side rooms, which is filled with rows of empty chairs and a crowd of standing people. The MPs take their seats up front, facing a lectern.
After a moment, the rest of the empty seats are filled by the congregation. A short speech is made – thanking the MPs, outlining the history of the Copts in South Australia. There are about 170 Coptic families in the state, half of whom have emigrated in the last two years, we’re told.
Georganas takes the lectern in front of the assembled congregation. Normally he would introduce Kate here to make the actual announcement, he says, but Kate’s asked him to present the cheque. Its $110,000 from the Building Multicultural Communities program, which will help the church finish its upstairs space. The congregation applauds.
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