British author G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "White … is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black." Much the same thing could be said of absence itself, as it rarely adheres only to its literal meaning of 'to be away'. A person’s absence is hardly ever neutral, as the place where they are expected, the empty chair, the unsigned letter, can be filled with questions about the reasons for and possible implications of their non-attendance.
This is especially true when a nation’s leader is conspicuous by his or her absence. With every decision and every appearance under the microscope, any false step in terms of where a leader chooses to be can spell a public relations disaster. One need only think of Marie Antoinette pirouetting around Trianon while Paris burned; or, in an example burned into modern memory, the excruciating footage of George W. Bush continuing a visit to a primary school for several minutes after being informed of the 9/11 attacks.
We live in an age of spin, one in which blunders can be made into triumphs, non sequiturs become bold manifestos, and lies metamorphosise into truth and back again. It is hardly surprising, then, that a politics of absence seems to be emerging in this country, and elsewhere in the world. Rather than apologising for a notable absence, there is now a growing trend towards harnessing the power of absence. Not turning up to a public event has become a form of poltical comment.
A poignant example of this possibility emerges when comparing two military deaths that made front page news in Australia last year. Prime Minister John Howard attended the funeral of Jake Kovco, the first Australian casualty in Iraq. However, he did not attend that of Mark Bingley, a Blackhawk captain who died whilst on duty in Fiji.
This decision sparked anger in the community, particularly as the facts of the two cases are remarkably similar – both Kovco and Bingley were young men from small communities who left young families behind. So why presence at one funeral, and absence at another? Is there a suggestion in this choice that involvement in Iraq is a more serious business than military actions in our own region? Or was it simply, as the Prime Minister said, a case of being unable to attend due to a previous