Doug PollardGay Activism in WA, with Rod Swift
Digging Deeper interview with WA spokesperson for ACE, Rod Swift
DOUG: As always, we go Digging Deeper with one very special guest. For a whole hour – and they get to choose their own music; unfortunately, his first choice of music was Rick Astley: Lights Out. Why did you pick that – Rod Swift?
ROD: Everyone knows I’m a bit of a joker so I thought if we can pick any track for the first one I’d want to Rick-roll people but in a way that’s nice, new music rather than the usual Rick-roll fare. So – look, I’ve been a bit of a Rick Astley fan from way back but I’m willing to admit it, you know - - -
DOUG: [laughs] Brave man.
ROD: - - - very brave man. I think when we get through the rest of my music collection people will be wanting to either scream or wonder exactly why I picked those five or six - - -
DOUG: Oh, I don’t think so – we had a few screams last week because my guest picked almost entirely, opera. People weren’t expecting that, this time of the morning.
ROD: Well, I think I can safely tell anyone who might be thinking about switching out because of last week - - -
DOUG: No classical. It’s all popular music - - -
ROD: - - - most definitely – a bit of dance in there, too.
DOUG: Dance in there too – as you would expect from a gay man, now – Rod, we’ll get into all your various bits of activism as we go along but I want to take you right back to the very beginning, as far back as you can remember; where were you born?
ROD: I was born in East Freemantle which probably explains the dyed-in-the-wool Dockers Fan that I am – m’mm, at a little hospital called: Woodside. It’s gone, now - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - Woodside Maternity Hospital. Back in the very balmy summer of November, 1972.
DOUG: Well, we didn’t need to know that bit. But [laughs]
ROD: I don’t mind admitting it. M’mm, it sets it up really – I was the second born of twins - - -
DOUG: Yes?
ROD: - - - a lot of people don’t know that. 13-minutes after; so, I am the one with the evil streak.
DOUG: You’re the mean twin.
ROD: Allegedly.
DOUG: Allegedly the mean twin. Freemantle. ’72. Did you have a happy home life?
ROD: Well – yeah, I did. M’mm - - -
DOUG: ‘Cause you’re a fairly sunny-sort-of personality, you’d have to say?
ROD: - - - well – look, I’ve had some challenges. Early on. At the time, my dad and my mum were together and we lived on a farming property. On the outskirts of the suburb, Armadale – now, that is now completely in-filled and – m’mm, the block of land we had there was literally, rural-based. Back in the ‘70s in Perth the metropolitan area didn’t stretch out nearly as far as it now does. We were there for ‘round-about 4-years before we moved in to suburbia and shortly after that when I was about six, my parents divorced. I stayed with my mum there, in the suburbs and my dad went to the country again so – m’mm, that was a bit of a challenge. I had an older brother who is 8-years older than me. He handled it a little bit better – but I think it’d be fair to describe it, without the fatherly influence he was a little bit of a – shit – towards me and my twin brother – and I think I copped a bit of that as well - - -
DOUG: Did he try to take over – I mean, like – the man of the family?
ROD: No – m’mm, he didn’t and in fact, later on life I can tell why he didn’t. He just was a little bit of a larrikin and without a male, parental influence – here we go, we can talk about heterosexual parenting and how failing it is, sometimes - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - without a male role model. God, I’m sounding like the Australian Christian lobby – almost. He did get to get away with a little bit of – m’mm, stuff – that I think back in those days, the early ‘80s - - -
DOUG: M’mm?
ROD: - - - most kids would have gotten away with and – m’mm, he was a bit of a rabble-rouser. He’s turned out okay, now. But – yeah, he used to make sure that – we had a few barneys(sic) and being 8-years old that could be sometimes - - -
DOUG: Well, that’s a difficult age isn’t it? Eight is an awkward, in-between sort of age.
ROD: Yeah, that’s right.
DOUG: You’re starting to clamber out of childhood towards adolescence but it’s not really happening, yet – you know, there’re little echoes. Starting to come along.
ROD: Well – that’s right and when you’re six, seven – 8-years of age and your brother’s 14, 15, 16 - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - he definitely has an ability to beat you up.
DOUG: He’s twice your size, probably?
ROD: That’s right. Exactly - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - but don’t worry, I made sure I fixed that up by the age of 18.
DOUG: So your home life was a bit disrupted by the fact that you had this divorce and you had this rather feisty brother to deal with – what about school days?
ROD: Well – see, that was actually where the – a little bit of a sanctuary was because although – and look, home life was not really divisive I mean, I was certainly split between two parents, shared custody there. But it wasn’t a miserable childhood, to any extent. It was more a case that it did allow me to distract myself by throwing myself into books – m’mm, my twin brother didn’t by the way. He distracted himself by throwing himself into anti-social behaviour so one went one way, one went the other and we went from there and – m’mm - - -
DOUG: Well, it didn’t sound like there was much room for you to rebel, with the other two busy doing - - -
ROD: I saved my rebellion for later - - -
DOUG: - - - [laughs] - - -
ROD: I most certainly did – and I tell you, when it came ‘round to that particular rebellion there were some very interesting reactions. But it was a case of I really did become a bookworm and surprisingly, I don’t like reading books, now. But I read the newspaper. I read, widely. For – you know, information – but - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: I used to be really, really switched-on and I was very mathematically minded. I was top of the school in mathematics. M’mm – at my school. Then, surprisingly – after I’d achieved what I thought was a pretty good result at my tertiary entrance – and went on, to university – I shocked everyone. Even at my school, when I completely dispensed computing and mathematics and went and did a language, at university - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - so I’ve always had this idea of challenging myself in one way or another. Thinking outside the box a bit and – m’mm, it shocked a lot of people said, they said – wait a sec., you should be doing computer – you’re – you know, top of computing. Top of maths. Why aren’t you doing that – and - - -
DOUG: Why did you change to languages?
ROD: - - - ‘cause I wanted a challenge. I sat down one day – I’d always liked Japanese language and - - -
DOUG: Well, that’s a challenge.
ROD: I did do Japanese and it is challenging.
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: (and)Another indication here as well – a Japanese speaker here, in the room – but – no? No - - -
DOUG: No.
ROD: - - - okay that’s fine, for everyone out there who can’t see what Ben’s doing.
DOUG: No.
ROD: M’mm, the – but I thought, I could be doing computer languages or I could be learning a real language – it was literally that decision.
DOUG: That’s interesting - - -
ROD: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - ‘cause you’ve got a whole different mindset when you’re talking about computer languages and I suppose in a way, Japanese is a very different mindset to a Western language. It’s a different way of writing, which I suppose – I’m a great believer in learning another language because you learn another way to actually think. Do you think learning Japanese taught you another way to think?
ROD: Most definitely, it did. It is a radically different way of thinking as well – because you also have to learn – in my actual degree, it was Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies so I did an Asian Studies major with Japanese – and culture - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: - - - as well as journalism and geography – I put a whole heap of, a mixed-bag of humanities subjects in there and not one that was anything from the quantitative sciences - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - but no, it was a challenge and the other thing was that I actually really hated English. Believe it or not, I hated English at high school. I scraped through, in English - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: I’m a journo by trade – as well, now. It’s not that I just hated the teacher, I think - - -
DOUG: That - - -
ROD: - - - did rebel - - -
DOUG: That always has a lot to do with it, I think?
ROD: - - - it does. I mean, I actually love the English language but I just hated English as a subject.
DOUG: Yeah.
ROD: (and)Thought well, I should go and do Japanese instead? Have a bit of enjoyment - - -
DOUG: When we say it’s a different way of thinking and – I mean, let’s look at the way they write. We use letters to form words, they use a – sort of - - -
ROD: They use - - -
DOUG: - - - almost a pictorial-way of writing - - -
ROD: - - - ideograms. Yeah. It is pictorial-based, yeah – I mean, there is a phonetic-based equivalent of an alphabet, for them. But they also have adopted – you know - - -
DOUG: Chinese - - -
ROD: - - - Chinese script.
DOUG: - - - m’mm.
ROD: Which – ideograph-based; so, m’mm – you do learn underneath the meaning of those ideograms. The way they construct the language as well, is quite interesting – and some of the things we consider idiom in English that have idiom in Japanese and it’s very, very interesting – m’mm. It’s culturally completely different and also the fact that in their language they have a different way of structuring, their language – m’mm, in regard to – whether they’re talking to people on their same level or a – higher level or a lower-level, English has that too – but in Japanese it’s very, very formalised. It’s - - -
DOUG: We used to have it – formerly, in English. ‘Cause we used to have – you know, “thee” and “thou” for talking familiarly - - -
ROD: - - - m’mm.
DOUG: “You”, was the aristocratic-form of address - - -
ROD: That’s right.
DOUG: - - - as it were – and you still have that in the Germanic-languages, of course. In Dutch and in German, so forth – you have two levels of address, the higher and the lower. As-according to whether you’re talking to someone who’s above you or below you; we dropped that, in English. But I’m fascinated about Japan, generally – because it seems to have a lot of these very formal structures built-into everything. In Japan, they’re built into social relations. They’re built-into the language – they’re built into absolutely everything, it’s a very – highly-formalised, structured society. Has it changed from that at all – because on top of that, you’ve got this big layer of American influence, nowadays - - -
ROD: [laughs]
DOUG: - - - baseball players and this – weird, kind of – collision between those two cultures which have very little in common.
ROD: Well, true and I think it’s more a collision of fun if I want to describe it like that; m’mm, there is in every level of Japanese society – you’re right, this structured – almost – like, put-into-a-box situation. Everything from say, corporate structure to home-life structure. To the way government works. Is all structured in a way that’s – like, fits together in a perfect piece. Almost – m’mm, when things don’t go perfectly, in Japanese culture that’s when you get the most interesting - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - whether it’s the economy, which they still really haven’t got their economic funk-together. On the economic front. Or whether it’s issues – like, more recently. Looking at GLBTI issues in Japan - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: People who don’t fit inside the square are now being more accepted but the way Japanese society handles those things and also, pop culture – pop culture and US-pop culture I think is the biggest influence - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - on Japanese culture.
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: It’s just an amazing collision between and this is why, you see in Japan when you go there, this massive collision between the traditional and what is new-new-new and in fact, I have to say that the new is dominated a lot by Western influences. The traditional of course, is magical – yeah.
DOUG: Now, we were talking about your study of Japanese; I wanted to backtrack, very slightly – there, when did you come out – or were you sort-of, out. From the beginning – or you know, how did that work?
ROD: Yeah. I actually came out well and truly into university. Not that I didn’t know, I just had this particular mind set through – you know, a bit of rough-and-tumble. M’mm, with school life being the – you know, the brainy. Smart type. You do cop the criticism at school. A bit of picking-on - - -
DOUG: Yeah, that’s what - - -
ROD: - - - wait ‘til the more refined stage of university - - -
DOUG: [laughs] That’s what people think before they go to university [laughs]
ROD: I don’t know how anyone could think I could hide it – but, I did – and m’mm, I do remember; I don’t know if you’ve talked to Wayne Roberts from the Australian Bisexual Network? He’s a nice guy – but he was at Curtin University as well, when I was there - - -
DOUG: Right.
ROD: - - - and I got elected in 1991. To the student guild, there. I started studying in 1990, in uni and m’mm, I was on the guild council – ironically, almost like a democrat – cross party section, there - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - I was there in the middle, holding the middle ground – balance of power situation, it was very powerful and I do remember at one stage there was a bit of a discussion about – m’mm, the queer collective. In Curtin, their space that we had on campus for them. For some strange reason, I don’t know why this happened – m’mm, they were worried about my vote on it. About whether I was going to support the continuation of the queer space at Curtin - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: Wayne bumped into me at the guild offices and chatted to me – you know, was trying to feel-out where my position was. On this particular matter. I said, I don’t have a problem with funding this. I don’t think there’s a problem. Anyway, he goes: thanks for that. (and)He tweaked my nipple and I go: “That was really un-called for” and he was taken a-back. Because he didn’t know – no-one knew and he goes: by the way it was nice but un-called for. I just smiled. He goes: Huh? I go: ‘Yeah, you’ve worked it out – now I’ll eventually say something’ and that was sort of – like, the first time I came out to – anyone. Then of course, the next guild council which was only a couple of days later. There’s all this whispering – my god, he’s like that. ‘Oh my god’ and it’s – like, yeah – and? It’s – like, let’s deal with it. It was really, really quite funny. But back then in the early ‘90s it was a bit of a blokey(sic) – sort of, attitude – amongst the student union, too.
DOUG: M’mm, what kind of a university was Curtin – I mean, I went to Manchester in the UK. It was fine if you came out – this was a long time, before – then – m’mm, it was reasonably okay if you came out if you were in the Arts college but if you were in the tech-side of things no techie(sic) would ever, ever admit to being gay. You know?
ROD: M’mm.
DOUG: Everybody who was in the university gaysoc(sic) – it was all Arts faculties.
ROD: Yeah - - -
DOUG: So was it a particularly techy(sic) – kind of, focussed university?
ROD: - - - well yeah, it is Curtin university-of-technology - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: I nearly said the other word I like to put-in, there. Curtin University of Technology. So it does have a background, it was from the WA Institute of Technology so - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm; that’s what I thought.
ROD: - - - m’mm, it did have a very big focus on things – like, engineering. Physics - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: Sciences. Chemistry - - -
DOUG: Yeah. Like the Manchester Institute of Technology, which is the same kind of - - -
ROD: - - - yeah. But when it expanded into Curtin University it also picked-up: business and nursing – and all sorts of other areas, as well as humanities. So, it was a broad-based university – but we’ve got to also remember back in 1991 – 1990, when I went to university – m’mm, I was still illegal then. As well. Because in Western Australia we’d only just passed an age of consent bill which legalised same-sex behaviour between men [indistinct] age of 21 and the police were still arresting people 18, 19 and 20 - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: In 1990 when I’d started university, I was 17. I didn’t turn 18 ‘til 20 November in 1990 and I didn’t graduate ‘til I was just 21. I took three-and-a-half years; so, I was just about to turn 21. I was completely illegal while I was at university so there was still a bit of a guarded culture on campus. Because I think there were a lot of people worried about the fact while gay sex was decriminalised in WA it was still illegal for anyone who was under the age of 21 and it was still punishable by 7-years hard labour. With whippings - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - that’s not designed to get anyone excited. But you get - - -
DOUG: [laughs] It sounds absurd when we talk about it now, doesn’t it?
ROD: - - - it does.
DOUG: We had the same, again. In the UK. We had – initially, age of consent of 21 and some very strange rules about what constituted being in private, as well – like, the hotel room was private. Because a hotel’s open to the public. I don’t know quite how they work that one, out; even if you’ve locked the door, m’mm – so, the scene as it was over there, then. Must have been very quiet and under wraps?
ROD: Yeah, clandestine in a way. But even still, it’s like that strange situation you get, in a situation of prohibition. That the police know what’s going on. The police don’t really want to criminalise somebody just because of who they are – I mean, most of the coppers are pretty sensible about it and they really would go after somebody if somebody was – like, you know – significant age difference. Something like that or there was somebody who might have been 16 with somebody who was 21 – there were cases where there were bad coppers, yeah. 18 and 19-year olds and a 19 and 20-year old, I can recall – and you get this situation where Connections nightclub, one of Australia’s longest running gay and lesbian nightclubs in – the southern hemisphere; m’mm, is in Perth. You have this – because of a clandestine culture, developed and still – almost, today – a one-bar, one-club culture - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - everyone goes to the [indistinct] everyone goes to Connections.
DOUG: M’mm, there’s one in every city. Yes.
ROD: In a way – yeah; in a way, this clandestine – backwards, sort of – ‘90s, m’mm - - -
DOUG: I hadn’t realised it was so recent in WA?
ROD: - - - yeah. 2001, was our law reform act which gave us, everything; also, changed the age of consent – and in fact, tightened-up the age of consent. A lot of the opponents to the age of consent reform were really worried because – and I can remember some of the terrible things I saw in the Western Australian newspaper including the – oh, the fundamentalist lobby. A cartoon of a boy and saying ‘the gay men are going to come for your boys’ but what was really heinous about the age of consent up until 2001, was that a 55-year old man could easily have sexual relations with a 13-year old girl and get away with it – merely by saying he had a “reasonable belief” that she was over the age of 16 - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: - - - and the age of consent was 16, for heterosexuals. In our law reforms we tightened that up to say you have to be within a certain age bracket so that if it’s somebody who’s 14 or 15 – or 14 and 16 – or 14 and 17, I think it’s within 3-years or 2-years of their age it’s lawful and it’s fair. But basically, if it’s anything outside that bracket; so, we tightened-up age of consent laws and made them work better.
DOUG: M’mm - - -
ROD: But all the fundamentalists could worry about was a 21-year old might have sex with a 20-year old or an 18-year old; but if it was a 16-year old or a 17-year old, you know – there could be an issue, there. But if it’s a 13-year old then it has to be someone who’s 14 or 15. Not 55. But they claimed a 55-year old could have sex with a 13-year old under WA [indistinct] it was absolutely heinous, it was a terrible – terrible situation - - -
DOUG: Age of consent laws have always been very, very contentious and a lot of them were very, very stupid. I just hadn’t realised it was so recent that things got cleaned-up, over there. ‘Cause we got legalisation in the UK in 1967, when I was in my final year at school. So, I’ve had a bit of a while to get used to it. Talking about school and university where did you make the switch from being a student politician to getting involved in gay and lesbian politics – was that while you were at college or was that later?
ROD: Yeah – at uni, m’mm – what resonated with me, starting the coming-out process was I happened to fall for the very first love of my life. As is the terrible case - - -
DOUG: Ah-ha, m’mm, m’mm.
ROD: - - - and that was an international relationship which made it very, very difficult. It lasted nine and a half years, ended quite terribly but – m’mm, there are good memories. But at the time – that was with someone in the US – and this is why that last song resonated with me, by: “Timbuk 3” and in fact I was introduced to that song by my former-other half. We were trapped between two countries and at that time, Australia didn’t have good immigration laws. The US had no chance of any immigration laws, to allow us to be together. So we struggled literally, month-to-month and year-to-year - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - getting a job in one country while the other person quits and travels on a tourist visa. We did that for the better part of those nine and a half years.
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: Did a terrible, terrible thing to my resume. At that time also, I was very, very interested and this to answer your question, is where I twisted-into politics of GLBT, of a variety – was at a time when the Baehr versus Lewin case came up in Hawaii, which was – we almost saw as our day in the sun; if Hawaii could pass marriage laws then, we’d have the ability to possibly – marry – immigrate, be together. So it was the first hope of a dream and I became very, very involved in that – I was probably the most ardent off shore and on-shore supporter in an outside the US. Of that law – m’mm, challenge to the law. I remember setting-up the Equal Rights Marriage page. The first, I think – Internet webpage to do with marriage lobbying. It was basically, a clearing house of all the articles about the – m’mm, campaign. I got to meet wonderful people who are still leading lights in the US marriage movement – people, like – Evan Wolfson from Lambda Legal – and a whole heap of other people, it had me at my first Pride March at Austin in Texas of all places - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - that’s where my other half lived.
DOUG: M’mm?
ROD: From there it started me moving towards a path of being politically active and the reason why the Timbuk 3 song really resonates with me is that, there is a chorus in there – sorry, a verse. In there.
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: Between the choruses, should I say; m’mm, where it talks about – you know, this is in the early ‘90s of course. The response from government to GLBTI people was: we want you to have safe sex and use condoms. That’s it. The line in the song is that – you know, and they were still pushing lines of – you know, decency and morality and you can’t go and do this-and-that – you had standards of decency, condoms for HIV but what would protect us from prejudice and bigotry – that particular line in the song, was what made me think: ‘what is protecting us’ – from prejudice and bigotry – and all those things, what do we do to change society to be a better place; a more accepting place, to make us feel included. Not just – like, equal. Not just about being – m’mm, fairly treated and having anti-discrimination protection. But how do we change peoples’ viewpoints and attitudes – and we still do it, today. We still battle it, today but that is the big, key question: how do we include ourselves? That’s when I thought, this is where I need to put all my passion and devotion. In my private life, in my volunteering-life – is to make the world a better place, I had that already. When I helped set-up an Internet news group for – a safe space, for gay and lesbian youth. On the Internet, on Usenet. Back then.
DOUG: God, Usenet. That term, from history - - -
ROD: You’d have people – post this [indistinct] news group and you’d have people come in there and reply – and be anti-gay, it was a moderated area - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: - - - and I don’t know what had more impact on me, than setting-up this space – but there were some stages there, we had kids and we still hear about kids even now – I think, there’s one case that occurred this week. Of another kid who’s 13, they’d been bullied and they committed suicide, in the US - - -
DOUG: M’mm. Yes.
ROD: We had people coming through on Usenet who were kids, they were 13, 14, 15. From diverse areas of the world and they were saying – because every post they’d made would come to a moderator - - -
[alarm sounds]
ROD: - - - what would happen is that, we’d read their posts before posting them. Sometimes, we’d get posts come in. They weren’t for public consumption - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - there to reach a moderator: ‘I’m in trouble, I don’t know what to do’.
DOUG: Yeah. M’mm - - -
ROD: I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, I don’t know what I can do – my parents have just found out; fear of getting kicked-out of home – what do I do – who do I turn to, ‘I need someone to talk to’. Then you’d hear three or four weeks later after you’d passed them on to some areas where they might be able to get some help, you’d get another email in from the same person. Saying: ‘thank goodness I found you because I was going to commit suicide’.
DOUG: - - - yeah. Yeah.
ROD: That’s when you realise that you can make a difference. Just one person can make the difference and that gave me the passion to say: I can make a difference – somebody else can make a difference, if I can just encourage them to make a difference. (and)If enough people make a difference we can change the world. It’s very powerful stuff.
DOUG: Oh, yeah. It’s a theme we constantly hammer on this programme, talking to Daniel Witthaus this morning; one person, it only takes one person – you know, you’ve got to do – something – you’re listening to Freshly Doug on Joy 94.9 and we have been digging not as deeply as we’d like with Rod Swift; we were talking about how you got involved in GLBTI politics and it was interesting how you talked about Hawaii and about having an American lover and trying to make a trans-continental relationship work – or an inter-continental relationship work; m’mm, as you may or may not know. My other half is American and strangely enough, he’s from Hawaii so we had our hopes, too when it came to Hawaii bringing in that first marriage bill but it never happened and it still hasn’t.
ROD: No, it hasn’t. Unfortunately. The US now – with hindsight and almost two decades on, it’s a real mess in the marriage stakes, there. They’ve got a couple of states that have; a whole heap of states that have banned it, constitutionally. A real mess – but look, the world’s getting there. Hopefully, Australia will get there one day. There’s always light on the hill, while people can believe and hope which is – sort of, like – where we are, today. That’s a quick fast-forward, isn’t it?
DOUG: That’s a very quick, fast-forward from where we were so – like, I said from there you got involved in this whole thing. You had this inter-continental relationship going – from there, you seem to have been into this in a very solid way from there-on. Because you were convenor I think, weren’t you? Of Gay-wah(sic) - - -
ROD: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - or however you pronounce it – and for how long?
ROD: Convenor for – ‘round about, six years. There, from about 2003 through to 2008, 9?
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: At various times also the media spokesperson and still doing that really, in a way – and m’mm, secretary. Treasurer. All sorts of roles, there – m’mm, that’s just in front of the organisation also through the 2001 to 2003 law reforms that we had in WA, I was doing a lot of media strategy as well. So, that was – it was – yeah - - -
DOUG: So how do you avoid getting burned-out, ‘cause so many people come in. They do these things for two or three years and then, they vanish back into the morass, as it were – how do you keep going?
ROD: Well, it’s difficult. Because in a way – m’mm, the last two weeks has been the closing of a chapter; for the last weekend I was in Perth was going to the annual general meeting of gay and lesbian equality WA and handing them over a thumb drive. With everything – all the minutes, all the meetings, all the documents that we have – all the research, to a new secretary and a new convenor.
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: (and)Being to be able to close a chapter is very, very interesting. It’s allowed me to look at – literally, all the books on the shelf and say, which chapter do I want to open, now? I’m in a state now where I can pick and choose what I want to do. I still think I’ll be out there, doing lobbying work. Or doing something – but maybe, I’ve given already two decades’ – and you get to the point, ‘do I want to give another decade’; you know? It seems like it’s not so long, do I really want to be 48 when I’m thinking about quitting this - - -
DOUG: Well, maybe you could still do something in the community but do something, different?
ROD: That’s what I’ve been thinking - - -
DOUG: Like, presenting something on Joy.
ROD: - - - see, now - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: Presenting would be fantastic – and you know, one of the wonderful things I did was the first thing I got when I was almost – sort of, bi-coastal – between Perth and Melbourne, constantly. Every second week. I had the joy of coming in to Joy and helping with the election-night coverage with the federal election and it was really good, because it was my first, real chance to be on-air talent again. In a way that wasn’t being interviewed by someone.
DOUG: Yep.
ROD: (and)Actually to be able to present - - -
DOUG: (and)You did a bloody good job. You’re listening to Freshly Doug on Joy, 94.9 and we’re going to stay with Rod Swift a little bit longer - - -
ROD: I was going to say, there is more to dig into my background than being caught by many who go: aren’t you the person dancing on the podium at the Court Hotel? That’s a big story - - -
DOUG: [laughs] So tell us about it?
[laughs]
ROD: It would require a good half an hour – m’mm, no – one of the things that I’m known for is that I’m a bit, out there – this is more my personality, I think; I’m a bit out there, I like doing things that aren’t inside that box. Go back to the original conversation about Japan – m’mm – and I was always a bit of a largey(sic) guy, a very big guy at one stage – and m’mm, a good mate of mine in Perth is a DJ – he’s now retired, he always used to play all my favourite music at The Court Hotel. Our only pub in Perth and I had a podium reserved for me to dance on and people used to come up and say: hey, don’t I know you from The Court Hotel podium – rather than: don’t I know you from television talking about gay and lesbian rights - - -
[laughs]
ROD: It was always embarrassing. In fact, when I arrived here in Melbourne – most recently, I went to a house-warming party. It was somebody else from Perth and he goes: hey, aren’t you the person from The Court Hotel, who danced on the podium all those years ago?
DOUG: Then of course, we get evacuated down to the street and someone says: hey, aren’t you the person I saw in IKEA the other day?
ROD: Which is exactly true. I am the [indistinct] of IKEA now.
DOUG: Why did you move to Melbourne, why have you come back to us?
ROD: Well, through the glass I see a person that is – m’mm, the most special person in my life right now and – m’mm - - -
DOUG: (and)He’s here?
ROD: He’s here – and no, no. He was originally, from Perth. But we made a decision to move on - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: - - - mostly because we needed a clean break. For us to really live our life as we wanted to and that did mean that I would be the one who would have to throw it all away. But I’ve done it before - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: To pick-up all the pieces, again – where they’d scatter and - - -
DOUG: Hey, how else do you think I ended-up in Australia?
ROD: - - - well, that’s right and you know what? I encourage people to actually do it, once in their life; to actually - - -
DOUG: At least.
ROD: - - - throw caution to the wind - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: Throw it all away and then, find exactly where you are. In life – it really, really is good. We decided to move here – m’mm, so my other half can go into teaching. In a state school. Rather than a catholic school - - -
DOUG: M’mm?
ROD: I think that gives away enough of the reason why we had to move from Perth?
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm. I see.
ROD: Yes.
DOUG: Yeah. I agree with you, about that – it’s a very therapeutic thing – it’s a very frightening thing to do, to just throw everything up in the air and see what happens; to take a chance, I’ve done it twice. I did it and went to America and then I did it and came out, here. The trip to America didn’t work and the one out here, did. I’ve been here for – what? About 15-years, now. I don’t think I’m going anywhere else – m’mm, it does take you outside your rails that you tend to run along, otherwise – in fact, people say to me at regular intervals: don’t you miss England, don’t you get homesick, don’t you want to go back – and I say, actually, the weird thing about moving to another country and living there for any length of time is that there is no “back” because, when you do go to the place you were in it’s not the place you left. It’s moved on. It’s changed. Society has changed, everything has changed and your relationships are not the same, anymore. You, yourself are changed; you’ve been changed by the experience so, there is no going back as it were. All that nostalgia for what used to be is absolutely false and I think changing countries is a very good way to find that out.
ROD: Well, absolutely and – m’mm, with my personal story; the reason why I left Melbourne in 2000 was – m’mm, I unfortunately was a victim of crime, here. It was quite a gruesome one and I decided to retreat back to Perth, at that time.
DOUG: Were you bashed or what?
ROD: No, no. I was stabbed.
DOUG: Oh - - -
ROD: It was on – I remember the night, quite clearly. It was Christmas night on – so, December 25. 2000 – I was stabbed. Outside my workplace and it was with two people wielding a syringe so I had to go through things – like, PEP. At the time. It was not a nice situation to be in and I retreated back to where safety would be, which was Perth and I stayed there for the better part of ten years. The funny thing is, the cathartic things in life do change people and we were thinking about moving here around-about three years ago. Starting to think about – you know, what do I do? Where do I want to be – I really do want to get back to Melbourne and then, my dad was unfortunately, diagnosed with a terminal illness and so, we waiting until a fair time after that - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - just to be around family and be there. So, sometimes family’s very important. Absolutely. Where you’re from is sometimes, extremely important – but it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of who you are and where you are – need to be, in life and – I’ve always thought I needed to be back, here. It’s so good that I am now, getting back here. Because it really is a case of you do grow past where you are born and where you live and if you want to become part of the world sometimes you need to go and experience that. It really does require cutting the ties and getting out of there - - -
DOUG: Yes – well, life can get too comfortable. You can get too stuck in doing the same things, all the time. For a long time before I left England I felt vaguely dissatisfied without really know why, if you know what I mean? Then having once started on my travels – I was in Holland for four years, then I was in America for a year and I was back in the UK for about three or four years and then, I came out here; I knew I needed to be somewhere else, took me a while to find out which where-else and I had some experiences along the way – but that feeling of yeah, my life’s pretty comfortable and it’s all going along pretty well – but. You know – like, you said about learning Japanese. You need to challenge yourself - - -
ROD: Well, absolutely. If you don’t challenge yourself you get caught in a rut – I describe it another way, it’s – like, having the most delicious piece of cake and it tastes like nothing. It tastes like cardboard - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - life suddenly becomes this regimented – routine, because you haven’t had something shaking it up - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: I mean, gosh – we just got to walk down the stairs, together - - -
[laughs]
ROD: - - - that certainly shook-up my morning. But it’s a change to the routine, it makes it different. It adds the spice of life and I think that ‘specially as you get on, in years and I mean, I’m not that old. But I start to think about – you know, what is the legacy of what I’ve done – and where I’ve been and whose lives I’ve impacted on and what difference I might have made on this planet – while I’m still here, you start to think of these things and think well, maybe – I do need to grab these opportunities that will only present themselves once - - -
DOUG: Yeah.
ROD: That have come up by fortune or circumstance and just, take them. Because if you stay in your comfort zone I think you miss a lot of those opportunities to expand and grow.
DOUG: Yes and the power of one as we said earlier on, is something quite amazing. You see one person making such a difference – I was talking to Daniel Witthaus about it, earlier. Various people he’s met, travelling around Australia – just takes one person in one school, in one place to make a big difference. Which brings me back to something you mentioned earlier on about how do we make a difference and how do we change society and I think, I’m at one with Ian McCallum on that one; who said, the answer is schools, schools, schools.
ROD: Oh, absolutely.
DOUG: You’ve got to have the next generation being brought up free, from all this bigotry and bias. You’ve got to get the point across before they get too brainwashed.
ROD: That’s right – I mean, back in the old days when I went through university, university was seen as that cultural-change place where some of what you’d learnt at school could be ignored quite easily. You could get people and educate them ‘til they got to a more mature location – like, university. Nowadays, we need to get into schools. We need to talk about discrimination, why it’s wrong – especially so, now. We’ve got a situation where Australia has moved on. That we are an open and tolerant, multi-cultural – multi-talented society, with people from all-different backgrounds and a diverse nature. We can’t live in this colonial backwater forever - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - that we used to have – I reckon, ‘til about the ‘90s and WA probably about the 2000s. We need to say – no, we are a modern democracy with advanced human rights and values. We need to tell people that we exist as gay and lesbian people. If we don’t we’re part of the problem not part of the solution. It’s all about being out there, identified and comfortable with ourselves in our own skin and making sure other people can feel comfortable around us.
DOUG: Which is as nice a way to sum-up our conversation, as I can think of - - -
ROD: I think so, too.
DOUG: - - - all right, Rod. Thank you for joining us today. One more track of yours before we go – I think it’s got to be Pet Shop Boys?
ROD: Well, appropriate for the end of the conversation – if you’re in denial, how can you be part of our wonderful world?
DOUG: Rod Swift, thanks for joining us today.
ROD: Thank you, Doug.
DOUG: As always, we go Digging Deeper with one very special guest. For a whole hour – and they get to choose their own music; unfortunately, his first choice of music was Rick Astley: Lights Out. Why did you pick that – Rod Swift?
ROD: Everyone knows I’m a bit of a joker so I thought if we can pick any track for the first one I’d want to Rick-roll people but in a way that’s nice, new music rather than the usual Rick-roll fare. So – look, I’ve been a bit of a Rick Astley fan from way back but I’m willing to admit it, you know - - -
DOUG: [laughs] Brave man.
ROD: - - - very brave man. I think when we get through the rest of my music collection people will be wanting to either scream or wonder exactly why I picked those five or six - - -
DOUG: Oh, I don’t think so – we had a few screams last week because my guest picked almost entirely, opera. People weren’t expecting that, this time of the morning.
ROD: Well, I think I can safely tell anyone who might be thinking about switching out because of last week - - -
DOUG: No classical. It’s all popular music - - -
ROD: - - - most definitely – a bit of dance in there, too.
DOUG: Dance in there too – as you would expect from a gay man, now – Rod, we’ll get into all your various bits of activism as we go along but I want to take you right back to the very beginning, as far back as you can remember; where were you born?
ROD: I was born in East Freemantle which probably explains the dyed-in-the-wool Dockers Fan that I am – m’mm, at a little hospital called: Woodside. It’s gone, now - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - Woodside Maternity Hospital. Back in the very balmy summer of November, 1972.
DOUG: Well, we didn’t need to know that bit. But [laughs]
ROD: I don’t mind admitting it. M’mm, it sets it up really – I was the second born of twins - - -
DOUG: Yes?
ROD: - - - a lot of people don’t know that. 13-minutes after; so, I am the one with the evil streak.
DOUG: You’re the mean twin.
ROD: Allegedly.
DOUG: Allegedly the mean twin. Freemantle. ’72. Did you have a happy home life?
ROD: Well – yeah, I did. M’mm - - -
DOUG: ‘Cause you’re a fairly sunny-sort-of personality, you’d have to say?
ROD: - - - well – look, I’ve had some challenges. Early on. At the time, my dad and my mum were together and we lived on a farming property. On the outskirts of the suburb, Armadale – now, that is now completely in-filled and – m’mm, the block of land we had there was literally, rural-based. Back in the ‘70s in Perth the metropolitan area didn’t stretch out nearly as far as it now does. We were there for ‘round-about 4-years before we moved in to suburbia and shortly after that when I was about six, my parents divorced. I stayed with my mum there, in the suburbs and my dad went to the country again so – m’mm, that was a bit of a challenge. I had an older brother who is 8-years older than me. He handled it a little bit better – but I think it’d be fair to describe it, without the fatherly influence he was a little bit of a – shit – towards me and my twin brother – and I think I copped a bit of that as well - - -
DOUG: Did he try to take over – I mean, like – the man of the family?
ROD: No – m’mm, he didn’t and in fact, later on life I can tell why he didn’t. He just was a little bit of a larrikin and without a male, parental influence – here we go, we can talk about heterosexual parenting and how failing it is, sometimes - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - without a male role model. God, I’m sounding like the Australian Christian lobby – almost. He did get to get away with a little bit of – m’mm, stuff – that I think back in those days, the early ‘80s - - -
DOUG: M’mm?
ROD: - - - most kids would have gotten away with and – m’mm, he was a bit of a rabble-rouser. He’s turned out okay, now. But – yeah, he used to make sure that – we had a few barneys(sic) and being 8-years old that could be sometimes - - -
DOUG: Well, that’s a difficult age isn’t it? Eight is an awkward, in-between sort of age.
ROD: Yeah, that’s right.
DOUG: You’re starting to clamber out of childhood towards adolescence but it’s not really happening, yet – you know, there’re little echoes. Starting to come along.
ROD: Well – that’s right and when you’re six, seven – 8-years of age and your brother’s 14, 15, 16 - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - he definitely has an ability to beat you up.
DOUG: He’s twice your size, probably?
ROD: That’s right. Exactly - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - but don’t worry, I made sure I fixed that up by the age of 18.
DOUG: So your home life was a bit disrupted by the fact that you had this divorce and you had this rather feisty brother to deal with – what about school days?
ROD: Well – see, that was actually where the – a little bit of a sanctuary was because although – and look, home life was not really divisive I mean, I was certainly split between two parents, shared custody there. But it wasn’t a miserable childhood, to any extent. It was more a case that it did allow me to distract myself by throwing myself into books – m’mm, my twin brother didn’t by the way. He distracted himself by throwing himself into anti-social behaviour so one went one way, one went the other and we went from there and – m’mm - - -
DOUG: Well, it didn’t sound like there was much room for you to rebel, with the other two busy doing - - -
ROD: I saved my rebellion for later - - -
DOUG: - - - [laughs] - - -
ROD: I most certainly did – and I tell you, when it came ‘round to that particular rebellion there were some very interesting reactions. But it was a case of I really did become a bookworm and surprisingly, I don’t like reading books, now. But I read the newspaper. I read, widely. For – you know, information – but - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: I used to be really, really switched-on and I was very mathematically minded. I was top of the school in mathematics. M’mm – at my school. Then, surprisingly – after I’d achieved what I thought was a pretty good result at my tertiary entrance – and went on, to university – I shocked everyone. Even at my school, when I completely dispensed computing and mathematics and went and did a language, at university - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - so I’ve always had this idea of challenging myself in one way or another. Thinking outside the box a bit and – m’mm, it shocked a lot of people said, they said – wait a sec., you should be doing computer – you’re – you know, top of computing. Top of maths. Why aren’t you doing that – and - - -
DOUG: Why did you change to languages?
ROD: - - - ‘cause I wanted a challenge. I sat down one day – I’d always liked Japanese language and - - -
DOUG: Well, that’s a challenge.
ROD: I did do Japanese and it is challenging.
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: (and)Another indication here as well – a Japanese speaker here, in the room – but – no? No - - -
DOUG: No.
ROD: - - - okay that’s fine, for everyone out there who can’t see what Ben’s doing.
DOUG: No.
ROD: M’mm, the – but I thought, I could be doing computer languages or I could be learning a real language – it was literally that decision.
DOUG: That’s interesting - - -
ROD: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - ‘cause you’ve got a whole different mindset when you’re talking about computer languages and I suppose in a way, Japanese is a very different mindset to a Western language. It’s a different way of writing, which I suppose – I’m a great believer in learning another language because you learn another way to actually think. Do you think learning Japanese taught you another way to think?
ROD: Most definitely, it did. It is a radically different way of thinking as well – because you also have to learn – in my actual degree, it was Bachelor of Arts in Asian Studies so I did an Asian Studies major with Japanese – and culture - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: - - - as well as journalism and geography – I put a whole heap of, a mixed-bag of humanities subjects in there and not one that was anything from the quantitative sciences - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - but no, it was a challenge and the other thing was that I actually really hated English. Believe it or not, I hated English at high school. I scraped through, in English - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: I’m a journo by trade – as well, now. It’s not that I just hated the teacher, I think - - -
DOUG: That - - -
ROD: - - - did rebel - - -
DOUG: That always has a lot to do with it, I think?
ROD: - - - it does. I mean, I actually love the English language but I just hated English as a subject.
DOUG: Yeah.
ROD: (and)Thought well, I should go and do Japanese instead? Have a bit of enjoyment - - -
DOUG: When we say it’s a different way of thinking and – I mean, let’s look at the way they write. We use letters to form words, they use a – sort of - - -
ROD: They use - - -
DOUG: - - - almost a pictorial-way of writing - - -
ROD: - - - ideograms. Yeah. It is pictorial-based, yeah – I mean, there is a phonetic-based equivalent of an alphabet, for them. But they also have adopted – you know - - -
DOUG: Chinese - - -
ROD: - - - Chinese script.
DOUG: - - - m’mm.
ROD: Which – ideograph-based; so, m’mm – you do learn underneath the meaning of those ideograms. The way they construct the language as well, is quite interesting – and some of the things we consider idiom in English that have idiom in Japanese and it’s very, very interesting – m’mm. It’s culturally completely different and also the fact that in their language they have a different way of structuring, their language – m’mm, in regard to – whether they’re talking to people on their same level or a – higher level or a lower-level, English has that too – but in Japanese it’s very, very formalised. It’s - - -
DOUG: We used to have it – formerly, in English. ‘Cause we used to have – you know, “thee” and “thou” for talking familiarly - - -
ROD: - - - m’mm.
DOUG: “You”, was the aristocratic-form of address - - -
ROD: That’s right.
DOUG: - - - as it were – and you still have that in the Germanic-languages, of course. In Dutch and in German, so forth – you have two levels of address, the higher and the lower. As-according to whether you’re talking to someone who’s above you or below you; we dropped that, in English. But I’m fascinated about Japan, generally – because it seems to have a lot of these very formal structures built-into everything. In Japan, they’re built into social relations. They’re built-into the language – they’re built into absolutely everything, it’s a very – highly-formalised, structured society. Has it changed from that at all – because on top of that, you’ve got this big layer of American influence, nowadays - - -
ROD: [laughs]
DOUG: - - - baseball players and this – weird, kind of – collision between those two cultures which have very little in common.
ROD: Well, true and I think it’s more a collision of fun if I want to describe it like that; m’mm, there is in every level of Japanese society – you’re right, this structured – almost – like, put-into-a-box situation. Everything from say, corporate structure to home-life structure. To the way government works. Is all structured in a way that’s – like, fits together in a perfect piece. Almost – m’mm, when things don’t go perfectly, in Japanese culture that’s when you get the most interesting - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - whether it’s the economy, which they still really haven’t got their economic funk-together. On the economic front. Or whether it’s issues – like, more recently. Looking at GLBTI issues in Japan - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: People who don’t fit inside the square are now being more accepted but the way Japanese society handles those things and also, pop culture – pop culture and US-pop culture I think is the biggest influence - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - on Japanese culture.
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: It’s just an amazing collision between and this is why, you see in Japan when you go there, this massive collision between the traditional and what is new-new-new and in fact, I have to say that the new is dominated a lot by Western influences. The traditional of course, is magical – yeah.
DOUG: Now, we were talking about your study of Japanese; I wanted to backtrack, very slightly – there, when did you come out – or were you sort-of, out. From the beginning – or you know, how did that work?
ROD: Yeah. I actually came out well and truly into university. Not that I didn’t know, I just had this particular mind set through – you know, a bit of rough-and-tumble. M’mm, with school life being the – you know, the brainy. Smart type. You do cop the criticism at school. A bit of picking-on - - -
DOUG: Yeah, that’s what - - -
ROD: - - - wait ‘til the more refined stage of university - - -
DOUG: [laughs] That’s what people think before they go to university [laughs]
ROD: I don’t know how anyone could think I could hide it – but, I did – and m’mm, I do remember; I don’t know if you’ve talked to Wayne Roberts from the Australian Bisexual Network? He’s a nice guy – but he was at Curtin University as well, when I was there - - -
DOUG: Right.
ROD: - - - and I got elected in 1991. To the student guild, there. I started studying in 1990, in uni and m’mm, I was on the guild council – ironically, almost like a democrat – cross party section, there - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - I was there in the middle, holding the middle ground – balance of power situation, it was very powerful and I do remember at one stage there was a bit of a discussion about – m’mm, the queer collective. In Curtin, their space that we had on campus for them. For some strange reason, I don’t know why this happened – m’mm, they were worried about my vote on it. About whether I was going to support the continuation of the queer space at Curtin - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: Wayne bumped into me at the guild offices and chatted to me – you know, was trying to feel-out where my position was. On this particular matter. I said, I don’t have a problem with funding this. I don’t think there’s a problem. Anyway, he goes: thanks for that. (and)He tweaked my nipple and I go: “That was really un-called for” and he was taken a-back. Because he didn’t know – no-one knew and he goes: by the way it was nice but un-called for. I just smiled. He goes: Huh? I go: ‘Yeah, you’ve worked it out – now I’ll eventually say something’ and that was sort of – like, the first time I came out to – anyone. Then of course, the next guild council which was only a couple of days later. There’s all this whispering – my god, he’s like that. ‘Oh my god’ and it’s – like, yeah – and? It’s – like, let’s deal with it. It was really, really quite funny. But back then in the early ‘90s it was a bit of a blokey(sic) – sort of, attitude – amongst the student union, too.
DOUG: M’mm, what kind of a university was Curtin – I mean, I went to Manchester in the UK. It was fine if you came out – this was a long time, before – then – m’mm, it was reasonably okay if you came out if you were in the Arts college but if you were in the tech-side of things no techie(sic) would ever, ever admit to being gay. You know?
ROD: M’mm.
DOUG: Everybody who was in the university gaysoc(sic) – it was all Arts faculties.
ROD: Yeah - - -
DOUG: So was it a particularly techy(sic) – kind of, focussed university?
ROD: - - - well yeah, it is Curtin university-of-technology - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: I nearly said the other word I like to put-in, there. Curtin University of Technology. So it does have a background, it was from the WA Institute of Technology so - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm; that’s what I thought.
ROD: - - - m’mm, it did have a very big focus on things – like, engineering. Physics - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: Sciences. Chemistry - - -
DOUG: Yeah. Like the Manchester Institute of Technology, which is the same kind of - - -
ROD: - - - yeah. But when it expanded into Curtin University it also picked-up: business and nursing – and all sorts of other areas, as well as humanities. So, it was a broad-based university – but we’ve got to also remember back in 1991 – 1990, when I went to university – m’mm, I was still illegal then. As well. Because in Western Australia we’d only just passed an age of consent bill which legalised same-sex behaviour between men [indistinct] age of 21 and the police were still arresting people 18, 19 and 20 - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: In 1990 when I’d started university, I was 17. I didn’t turn 18 ‘til 20 November in 1990 and I didn’t graduate ‘til I was just 21. I took three-and-a-half years; so, I was just about to turn 21. I was completely illegal while I was at university so there was still a bit of a guarded culture on campus. Because I think there were a lot of people worried about the fact while gay sex was decriminalised in WA it was still illegal for anyone who was under the age of 21 and it was still punishable by 7-years hard labour. With whippings - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - that’s not designed to get anyone excited. But you get - - -
DOUG: [laughs] It sounds absurd when we talk about it now, doesn’t it?
ROD: - - - it does.
DOUG: We had the same, again. In the UK. We had – initially, age of consent of 21 and some very strange rules about what constituted being in private, as well – like, the hotel room was private. Because a hotel’s open to the public. I don’t know quite how they work that one, out; even if you’ve locked the door, m’mm – so, the scene as it was over there, then. Must have been very quiet and under wraps?
ROD: Yeah, clandestine in a way. But even still, it’s like that strange situation you get, in a situation of prohibition. That the police know what’s going on. The police don’t really want to criminalise somebody just because of who they are – I mean, most of the coppers are pretty sensible about it and they really would go after somebody if somebody was – like, you know – significant age difference. Something like that or there was somebody who might have been 16 with somebody who was 21 – there were cases where there were bad coppers, yeah. 18 and 19-year olds and a 19 and 20-year old, I can recall – and you get this situation where Connections nightclub, one of Australia’s longest running gay and lesbian nightclubs in – the southern hemisphere; m’mm, is in Perth. You have this – because of a clandestine culture, developed and still – almost, today – a one-bar, one-club culture - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - everyone goes to the [indistinct] everyone goes to Connections.
DOUG: M’mm, there’s one in every city. Yes.
ROD: In a way – yeah; in a way, this clandestine – backwards, sort of – ‘90s, m’mm - - -
DOUG: I hadn’t realised it was so recent in WA?
ROD: - - - yeah. 2001, was our law reform act which gave us, everything; also, changed the age of consent – and in fact, tightened-up the age of consent. A lot of the opponents to the age of consent reform were really worried because – and I can remember some of the terrible things I saw in the Western Australian newspaper including the – oh, the fundamentalist lobby. A cartoon of a boy and saying ‘the gay men are going to come for your boys’ but what was really heinous about the age of consent up until 2001, was that a 55-year old man could easily have sexual relations with a 13-year old girl and get away with it – merely by saying he had a “reasonable belief” that she was over the age of 16 - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: - - - and the age of consent was 16, for heterosexuals. In our law reforms we tightened that up to say you have to be within a certain age bracket so that if it’s somebody who’s 14 or 15 – or 14 and 16 – or 14 and 17, I think it’s within 3-years or 2-years of their age it’s lawful and it’s fair. But basically, if it’s anything outside that bracket; so, we tightened-up age of consent laws and made them work better.
DOUG: M’mm - - -
ROD: But all the fundamentalists could worry about was a 21-year old might have sex with a 20-year old or an 18-year old; but if it was a 16-year old or a 17-year old, you know – there could be an issue, there. But if it’s a 13-year old then it has to be someone who’s 14 or 15. Not 55. But they claimed a 55-year old could have sex with a 13-year old under WA [indistinct] it was absolutely heinous, it was a terrible – terrible situation - - -
DOUG: Age of consent laws have always been very, very contentious and a lot of them were very, very stupid. I just hadn’t realised it was so recent that things got cleaned-up, over there. ‘Cause we got legalisation in the UK in 1967, when I was in my final year at school. So, I’ve had a bit of a while to get used to it. Talking about school and university where did you make the switch from being a student politician to getting involved in gay and lesbian politics – was that while you were at college or was that later?
ROD: Yeah – at uni, m’mm – what resonated with me, starting the coming-out process was I happened to fall for the very first love of my life. As is the terrible case - - -
DOUG: Ah-ha, m’mm, m’mm.
ROD: - - - and that was an international relationship which made it very, very difficult. It lasted nine and a half years, ended quite terribly but – m’mm, there are good memories. But at the time – that was with someone in the US – and this is why that last song resonated with me, by: “Timbuk 3” and in fact I was introduced to that song by my former-other half. We were trapped between two countries and at that time, Australia didn’t have good immigration laws. The US had no chance of any immigration laws, to allow us to be together. So we struggled literally, month-to-month and year-to-year - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - getting a job in one country while the other person quits and travels on a tourist visa. We did that for the better part of those nine and a half years.
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: Did a terrible, terrible thing to my resume. At that time also, I was very, very interested and this to answer your question, is where I twisted-into politics of GLBT, of a variety – was at a time when the Baehr versus Lewin case came up in Hawaii, which was – we almost saw as our day in the sun; if Hawaii could pass marriage laws then, we’d have the ability to possibly – marry – immigrate, be together. So it was the first hope of a dream and I became very, very involved in that – I was probably the most ardent off shore and on-shore supporter in an outside the US. Of that law – m’mm, challenge to the law. I remember setting-up the Equal Rights Marriage page. The first, I think – Internet webpage to do with marriage lobbying. It was basically, a clearing house of all the articles about the – m’mm, campaign. I got to meet wonderful people who are still leading lights in the US marriage movement – people, like – Evan Wolfson from Lambda Legal – and a whole heap of other people, it had me at my first Pride March at Austin in Texas of all places - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - that’s where my other half lived.
DOUG: M’mm?
ROD: From there it started me moving towards a path of being politically active and the reason why the Timbuk 3 song really resonates with me is that, there is a chorus in there – sorry, a verse. In there.
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: Between the choruses, should I say; m’mm, where it talks about – you know, this is in the early ‘90s of course. The response from government to GLBTI people was: we want you to have safe sex and use condoms. That’s it. The line in the song is that – you know, and they were still pushing lines of – you know, decency and morality and you can’t go and do this-and-that – you had standards of decency, condoms for HIV but what would protect us from prejudice and bigotry – that particular line in the song, was what made me think: ‘what is protecting us’ – from prejudice and bigotry – and all those things, what do we do to change society to be a better place; a more accepting place, to make us feel included. Not just – like, equal. Not just about being – m’mm, fairly treated and having anti-discrimination protection. But how do we change peoples’ viewpoints and attitudes – and we still do it, today. We still battle it, today but that is the big, key question: how do we include ourselves? That’s when I thought, this is where I need to put all my passion and devotion. In my private life, in my volunteering-life – is to make the world a better place, I had that already. When I helped set-up an Internet news group for – a safe space, for gay and lesbian youth. On the Internet, on Usenet. Back then.
DOUG: God, Usenet. That term, from history - - -
ROD: You’d have people – post this [indistinct] news group and you’d have people come in there and reply – and be anti-gay, it was a moderated area - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: - - - and I don’t know what had more impact on me, than setting-up this space – but there were some stages there, we had kids and we still hear about kids even now – I think, there’s one case that occurred this week. Of another kid who’s 13, they’d been bullied and they committed suicide, in the US - - -
DOUG: M’mm. Yes.
ROD: We had people coming through on Usenet who were kids, they were 13, 14, 15. From diverse areas of the world and they were saying – because every post they’d made would come to a moderator - - -
[alarm sounds]
ROD: - - - what would happen is that, we’d read their posts before posting them. Sometimes, we’d get posts come in. They weren’t for public consumption - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - there to reach a moderator: ‘I’m in trouble, I don’t know what to do’.
DOUG: Yeah. M’mm - - -
ROD: I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, I don’t know what I can do – my parents have just found out; fear of getting kicked-out of home – what do I do – who do I turn to, ‘I need someone to talk to’. Then you’d hear three or four weeks later after you’d passed them on to some areas where they might be able to get some help, you’d get another email in from the same person. Saying: ‘thank goodness I found you because I was going to commit suicide’.
DOUG: - - - yeah. Yeah.
ROD: That’s when you realise that you can make a difference. Just one person can make the difference and that gave me the passion to say: I can make a difference – somebody else can make a difference, if I can just encourage them to make a difference. (and)If enough people make a difference we can change the world. It’s very powerful stuff.
DOUG: Oh, yeah. It’s a theme we constantly hammer on this programme, talking to Daniel Witthaus this morning; one person, it only takes one person – you know, you’ve got to do – something – you’re listening to Freshly Doug on Joy 94.9 and we have been digging not as deeply as we’d like with Rod Swift; we were talking about how you got involved in GLBTI politics and it was interesting how you talked about Hawaii and about having an American lover and trying to make a trans-continental relationship work – or an inter-continental relationship work; m’mm, as you may or may not know. My other half is American and strangely enough, he’s from Hawaii so we had our hopes, too when it came to Hawaii bringing in that first marriage bill but it never happened and it still hasn’t.
ROD: No, it hasn’t. Unfortunately. The US now – with hindsight and almost two decades on, it’s a real mess in the marriage stakes, there. They’ve got a couple of states that have; a whole heap of states that have banned it, constitutionally. A real mess – but look, the world’s getting there. Hopefully, Australia will get there one day. There’s always light on the hill, while people can believe and hope which is – sort of, like – where we are, today. That’s a quick fast-forward, isn’t it?
DOUG: That’s a very quick, fast-forward from where we were so – like, I said from there you got involved in this whole thing. You had this inter-continental relationship going – from there, you seem to have been into this in a very solid way from there-on. Because you were convenor I think, weren’t you? Of Gay-wah(sic) - - -
ROD: Yeah.
DOUG: - - - or however you pronounce it – and for how long?
ROD: Convenor for – ‘round about, six years. There, from about 2003 through to 2008, 9?
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm.
ROD: At various times also the media spokesperson and still doing that really, in a way – and m’mm, secretary. Treasurer. All sorts of roles, there – m’mm, that’s just in front of the organisation also through the 2001 to 2003 law reforms that we had in WA, I was doing a lot of media strategy as well. So, that was – it was – yeah - - -
DOUG: So how do you avoid getting burned-out, ‘cause so many people come in. They do these things for two or three years and then, they vanish back into the morass, as it were – how do you keep going?
ROD: Well, it’s difficult. Because in a way – m’mm, the last two weeks has been the closing of a chapter; for the last weekend I was in Perth was going to the annual general meeting of gay and lesbian equality WA and handing them over a thumb drive. With everything – all the minutes, all the meetings, all the documents that we have – all the research, to a new secretary and a new convenor.
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: (and)Being to be able to close a chapter is very, very interesting. It’s allowed me to look at – literally, all the books on the shelf and say, which chapter do I want to open, now? I’m in a state now where I can pick and choose what I want to do. I still think I’ll be out there, doing lobbying work. Or doing something – but maybe, I’ve given already two decades’ – and you get to the point, ‘do I want to give another decade’; you know? It seems like it’s not so long, do I really want to be 48 when I’m thinking about quitting this - - -
DOUG: Well, maybe you could still do something in the community but do something, different?
ROD: That’s what I’ve been thinking - - -
DOUG: Like, presenting something on Joy.
ROD: - - - see, now - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: Presenting would be fantastic – and you know, one of the wonderful things I did was the first thing I got when I was almost – sort of, bi-coastal – between Perth and Melbourne, constantly. Every second week. I had the joy of coming in to Joy and helping with the election-night coverage with the federal election and it was really good, because it was my first, real chance to be on-air talent again. In a way that wasn’t being interviewed by someone.
DOUG: Yep.
ROD: (and)Actually to be able to present - - -
DOUG: (and)You did a bloody good job. You’re listening to Freshly Doug on Joy, 94.9 and we’re going to stay with Rod Swift a little bit longer - - -
ROD: I was going to say, there is more to dig into my background than being caught by many who go: aren’t you the person dancing on the podium at the Court Hotel? That’s a big story - - -
DOUG: [laughs] So tell us about it?
[laughs]
ROD: It would require a good half an hour – m’mm, no – one of the things that I’m known for is that I’m a bit, out there – this is more my personality, I think; I’m a bit out there, I like doing things that aren’t inside that box. Go back to the original conversation about Japan – m’mm – and I was always a bit of a largey(sic) guy, a very big guy at one stage – and m’mm, a good mate of mine in Perth is a DJ – he’s now retired, he always used to play all my favourite music at The Court Hotel. Our only pub in Perth and I had a podium reserved for me to dance on and people used to come up and say: hey, don’t I know you from The Court Hotel podium – rather than: don’t I know you from television talking about gay and lesbian rights - - -
[laughs]
ROD: It was always embarrassing. In fact, when I arrived here in Melbourne – most recently, I went to a house-warming party. It was somebody else from Perth and he goes: hey, aren’t you the person from The Court Hotel, who danced on the podium all those years ago?
DOUG: Then of course, we get evacuated down to the street and someone says: hey, aren’t you the person I saw in IKEA the other day?
ROD: Which is exactly true. I am the [indistinct] of IKEA now.
DOUG: Why did you move to Melbourne, why have you come back to us?
ROD: Well, through the glass I see a person that is – m’mm, the most special person in my life right now and – m’mm - - -
DOUG: (and)He’s here?
ROD: He’s here – and no, no. He was originally, from Perth. But we made a decision to move on - - -
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm?
ROD: - - - mostly because we needed a clean break. For us to really live our life as we wanted to and that did mean that I would be the one who would have to throw it all away. But I’ve done it before - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: To pick-up all the pieces, again – where they’d scatter and - - -
DOUG: Hey, how else do you think I ended-up in Australia?
ROD: - - - well, that’s right and you know what? I encourage people to actually do it, once in their life; to actually - - -
DOUG: At least.
ROD: - - - throw caution to the wind - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: Throw it all away and then, find exactly where you are. In life – it really, really is good. We decided to move here – m’mm, so my other half can go into teaching. In a state school. Rather than a catholic school - - -
DOUG: M’mm?
ROD: I think that gives away enough of the reason why we had to move from Perth?
DOUG: M’mm, m’mm. I see.
ROD: Yes.
DOUG: Yeah. I agree with you, about that – it’s a very therapeutic thing – it’s a very frightening thing to do, to just throw everything up in the air and see what happens; to take a chance, I’ve done it twice. I did it and went to America and then I did it and came out, here. The trip to America didn’t work and the one out here, did. I’ve been here for – what? About 15-years, now. I don’t think I’m going anywhere else – m’mm, it does take you outside your rails that you tend to run along, otherwise – in fact, people say to me at regular intervals: don’t you miss England, don’t you get homesick, don’t you want to go back – and I say, actually, the weird thing about moving to another country and living there for any length of time is that there is no “back” because, when you do go to the place you were in it’s not the place you left. It’s moved on. It’s changed. Society has changed, everything has changed and your relationships are not the same, anymore. You, yourself are changed; you’ve been changed by the experience so, there is no going back as it were. All that nostalgia for what used to be is absolutely false and I think changing countries is a very good way to find that out.
ROD: Well, absolutely and – m’mm, with my personal story; the reason why I left Melbourne in 2000 was – m’mm, I unfortunately was a victim of crime, here. It was quite a gruesome one and I decided to retreat back to Perth, at that time.
DOUG: Were you bashed or what?
ROD: No, no. I was stabbed.
DOUG: Oh - - -
ROD: It was on – I remember the night, quite clearly. It was Christmas night on – so, December 25. 2000 – I was stabbed. Outside my workplace and it was with two people wielding a syringe so I had to go through things – like, PEP. At the time. It was not a nice situation to be in and I retreated back to where safety would be, which was Perth and I stayed there for the better part of ten years. The funny thing is, the cathartic things in life do change people and we were thinking about moving here around-about three years ago. Starting to think about – you know, what do I do? Where do I want to be – I really do want to get back to Melbourne and then, my dad was unfortunately, diagnosed with a terminal illness and so, we waiting until a fair time after that - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - just to be around family and be there. So, sometimes family’s very important. Absolutely. Where you’re from is sometimes, extremely important – but it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of who you are and where you are – need to be, in life and – I’ve always thought I needed to be back, here. It’s so good that I am now, getting back here. Because it really is a case of you do grow past where you are born and where you live and if you want to become part of the world sometimes you need to go and experience that. It really does require cutting the ties and getting out of there - - -
DOUG: Yes – well, life can get too comfortable. You can get too stuck in doing the same things, all the time. For a long time before I left England I felt vaguely dissatisfied without really know why, if you know what I mean? Then having once started on my travels – I was in Holland for four years, then I was in America for a year and I was back in the UK for about three or four years and then, I came out here; I knew I needed to be somewhere else, took me a while to find out which where-else and I had some experiences along the way – but that feeling of yeah, my life’s pretty comfortable and it’s all going along pretty well – but. You know – like, you said about learning Japanese. You need to challenge yourself - - -
ROD: Well, absolutely. If you don’t challenge yourself you get caught in a rut – I describe it another way, it’s – like, having the most delicious piece of cake and it tastes like nothing. It tastes like cardboard - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: - - - life suddenly becomes this regimented – routine, because you haven’t had something shaking it up - - -
DOUG: M’mm.
ROD: I mean, gosh – we just got to walk down the stairs, together - - -
[laughs]
ROD: - - - that certainly shook-up my morning. But it’s a change to the routine, it makes it different. It adds the spice of life and I think that ‘specially as you get on, in years and I mean, I’m not that old. But I start to think about – you know, what is the legacy of what I’ve done – and where I’ve been and whose lives I’ve impacted on and what difference I might have made on this planet – while I’m still here, you start to think of these things and think well, maybe – I do need to grab these opportunities that will only present themselves once - - -
DOUG: Yeah.
ROD: That have come up by fortune or circumstance and just, take them. Because if you stay in your comfort zone I think you miss a lot of those opportunities to expand and grow.
DOUG: Yes and the power of one as we said earlier on, is something quite amazing. You see one person making such a difference – I was talking to Daniel Witthaus about it, earlier. Various people he’s met, travelling around Australia – just takes one person in one school, in one place to make a big difference. Which brings me back to something you mentioned earlier on about how do we make a difference and how do we change society and I think, I’m at one with Ian McCallum on that one; who said, the answer is schools, schools, schools.
ROD: Oh, absolutely.
DOUG: You’ve got to have the next generation being brought up free, from all this bigotry and bias. You’ve got to get the point across before they get too brainwashed.
ROD: That’s right – I mean, back in the old days when I went through university, university was seen as that cultural-change place where some of what you’d learnt at school could be ignored quite easily. You could get people and educate them ‘til they got to a more mature location – like, university. Nowadays, we need to get into schools. We need to talk about discrimination, why it’s wrong – especially so, now. We’ve got a situation where Australia has moved on. That we are an open and tolerant, multi-cultural – multi-talented society, with people from all-different backgrounds and a diverse nature. We can’t live in this colonial backwater forever - - -
DOUG: [laughs]
ROD: - - - that we used to have – I reckon, ‘til about the ‘90s and WA probably about the 2000s. We need to say – no, we are a modern democracy with advanced human rights and values. We need to tell people that we exist as gay and lesbian people. If we don’t we’re part of the problem not part of the solution. It’s all about being out there, identified and comfortable with ourselves in our own skin and making sure other people can feel comfortable around us.
DOUG: Which is as nice a way to sum-up our conversation, as I can think of - - -
ROD: I think so, too.
DOUG: - - - all right, Rod. Thank you for joining us today. One more track of yours before we go – I think it’s got to be Pet Shop Boys?
ROD: Well, appropriate for the end of the conversation – if you’re in denial, how can you be part of our wonderful world?
DOUG: Rod Swift, thanks for joining us today.
ROD: Thank you, Doug.
