Published 11 October 200911 October 2009 · Main Posts the deputy prime minister is a racist pig Maxine Beneba Clarke the deputy prime minister is a racist pig oh / i know her media people will be all over this / talkin about defamation & maybe even sedition / if they cn make it stick / will call in some corporate communications team it might just have been a small thing julia said / simply a matter of calling in votes / & hell it wz probably exactly what she wz advised to do & by far the easiest outcome bt the deputy prime minister is a racist pig & believe me i have thought a lot about this particular thing / this woman watched while somebody sold us down the river then came out & said the water looked so inviting & anyway nobody even got wet the deputy prime minister saw burning crosses in our front yards / & said appreciate the lights her people are wearing white hoods / & the deputy prime minister is saying it is almost halloween what the fuck is wrong with you hysterical people the deputy prime minister is a racist pig next time she meets obama believe me that man will be thinking get the fuck away from me oh rest assured he’ll smile for the cameras & everything / bt when he goes back home / michelle will make him scrub before he thinks about hugging their children it might just have been a small thing julia said / simply a matter of calling in votes / & hell it wz probably exactly what she wz advised to do & by far the easiest thing bt somebody spat on our history & the deputy told us to drink it Maxine Beneba Clarke Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian author and slam poet of Afro- Caribbean descent. Her short fiction collection Foreign Soil won the 2015 ABIA Award for Best Literary Fiction and the 2015 Indie Award for Best Debut Fiction, and was shortlisted for the Stella Prize. Her memoir, The Hate Race, her poetry collection Carrying the World, and her first children’s book, The Patchwork Bike, will be published by Hachette in late 2016. More by Maxine Beneba Clarke › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays First published in Overland Issue 228 28 March 202428 March 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. First published in Overland Issue 228 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.