What's new?

A NEW year isn't. New. Well, not particularly. It's a bit like a new moon, which isn't, either.

It's the same pale, pock-marked old moon it always was. Just starting another of its ancient, endless cycles. But humans like the idea of newness, of renewal, of starting over. If only we could. If only we could shed the baggage, wipe the slate.

Wipe the slate: an expression from the time when students scratched away on them, dusting them off for a new lesson. Just as the teacher wiped the blackboard. In life, we can't do it. We simply keep adding layers of chalk and scratchings. Roman Catholics claim to be able to clean the slate - to remove all pentimenti from one's personal life. By special arrangement with God, you squeeze into a little cupboard and 'fess up.

Then, abracadabra, your sins are forgiven. But forgotten? Not by those who suffered their consequences. But your slate is wiped clean by the church. All convictions are removed from your file.

Of course, if you confess in a police station, to a cop, you're pretty well stuffed. The holding cell, the dock and the prison await you. But if you confess to a priest you can bounce out of the confessional like Superman bursting from his phone booth - and fl y away, unburdened by the kryptonite of guilt.

Politicians claim the same superpowers, at least at times of leadership changes. All of a sudden we've a superwoman running NSW. She argues that she embodies renewal, starting over. A public confession about the sins of the past premiers and ministers and all is forgiven. Is all their political sludge deemed to have disappeared? Sadly, her rapid succession of predecessors made the same claim, only to sink into the sludge themselves. Will Tinkerbell do better? Or will we see her fairy wings besmirched?

Like the new NSW premier, the Libs' new federal leader is a Roman Catholic who believes in the forgiveness of sins. Not Labor's, of course. Not Rudd's. They are so serious that the entire ALP will rot in hell for all eternity. But for the sin-stained Opposition, all stains have been miraculously removed. Abbott seems convinced that his arrival - signalled by a very weak puff of far-from-white smoke - means all is forgiven and forgotten. Even the most bruised and battered policies, such as Work Choices or the bruising and battering of refugees, can be dusted off and used again.

Hark the herald angels sing! Not angels with fresh faces but the wizened-prune visages of Philip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop. Verily I say unto you, Tony Abbott is a man of amazing spirituality. He's as born-again as George W. Bush - and we all know where the former president's spirituality took him. And the rest of us. But forget politics and think about ourselves.

A new year? A new decade? In an almost-new millennium? Leaving aside scholarly arguments about when decades actually begin and end, our calendars are illusions - as, some scientists argue, is time itself. Everything exists at once - times past, present and future. Not so much a continuum, a sequence, as places on a map. Like so much of science, that's a counterintuitive notion - but we know it's true in our personal lives. Sorry Beatles, yesterday doesn't seem so far away. It's here to stay.

We carry all our old baggage with us into this new year. Our auld acquaintance with aches, pains and ailments cannot be forgot. Indeed, most of them are getting worse. Our New Year resolutions are like politician's promises - the essential difference is that they're the lies we tell to ourselves. Happy New Year!