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Writing - business services, verse, comment all text copyright pa cosgrave
blue mntns wonderland features
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a selection of articles with features, news & recipes for wonderland magazine Festival Central - summer 2011/12 Stocks & Sauces - summer 2011/12 Newswatch - summer 2011/12 Newswatch - spring 2011 Blackheath Community Market - spring 2011 Pickling At The Quarry - spring 2011 Blackheath Growers' Market - winter 2011 Dining With Chestnuts - winter 2011 professional business text - editorial client: tracy dods/soho galleries (contemporary art) Dods's Ongoing Pursuit Of Corporate Angst: A Warning To Us All After an interval spent creating several series of commissioned works, Tracy Dods returns to exhibiting this October. In The Expedition, at Sydney’s Soho Galleries, she further develops her theme of the journey through corporate anguish and clearly identifies it as a metaphor for wider social isolation. The exhibition of twenty-five major acrylics on large canvas elicits haunting suggestions of malfunction in the western business lifestyle. “But it’s more than just corporate anguish and implied suicide. It’s really a representation of the loneliness which surrounds us all today, which we seem scarcely even to notice anymore”, says Dods. “Society is making us all so completely separate that I believe we’re close to losing an understanding of how to be, and behave as, a community. Media messages constantly instruct us to be individuals. We obey, and so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re lost and anxious and we see social distress all around us and we project that this must be the way we’re supposed to live now. It isn’t”.
tracy dods is an australian artist exhibiting at eight major galleries including gallery blackheath and sydney's soho galleries.
By placing these agonized figures inside a panoramic beach format, Dods perceptively suggests either a dramatically large, or sometimes a smaller and understated, expression of impotence in this characteristically essential element of Australian life. Either way, it works powerfully and she paints them as if they are observed remotely, like a body you might unthinkingly step over on a pavement. And thus she invites the viewer to consider society’s general absence of empathy. “It started one Friday evening when I watched what seemed like a herd of businessmen at 5.00 pm, homeward bound for the weekend and looking unimaginably depressed”. Her theme became a complete symbol of a nine to five, cradle to grave male condition, leading to a life one hardly knows how to live. Dods is considering varying her theme for future exhibitions to include the drabness of urban building design and has started painting this subject matter. For now, though, it remains focused on the beach and the allure of water. The Expedition, which also contains a number of smaller works on paper, runs from October 16th (opening 17th) for one month at Soho Galleries in Cathedral St, Sydney (sohogalleries.net, tracydods.com).
professional business text - commercial client: pinnacle business (chartered accountancy) Pinnacle: a financial GP for your business A first-class general practitioner provides good advice, not just prescriptions. At Pinnacle Business, we see that today’s commercial environment needs a total financial service. Yes, prescriptions are important. We’ll do that for you, too. But we’re about much more than tax outcomes. Pinnacle’s thirty years of public accounting, structural and planning experience means we’re able to support business sustainability at every stage. From start-up guidance – based on profit as the path to success – to regular financial mapping, Pinnacle places its faith in client partnership. Pinnacle delivers support on business structure, internal accounting, software, training, payroll reporting and superannuation. Pinnacle provides comprehensive business management support, grounded in solid accounting practice. Then we take it much further. A Year Round Commitment Business doesn’t go away – and that’s the idea, of course. But neither do the pressures and sometimes it’s not hard to lose sight of financial priorities. Which means you may need to know more about the complete picture of your business than you do at present. Pinnacle Business eases the pressure with regular financial snapshots. We work with you to keep you in control of your business issues. The dividend for you from this investment, we believe, is more creative time to plan and develop your product, service and customer relations strategies. And for major initiatives – a vehicle purchase or investment property, housing loan, family trust, negative gearing, alternative investments – Pinnacle provides objective evaluation and advice through which to formulate your critical business development decisions.
professional business text - corporate client: trillium group (mediation, conflict resolution - aust, canada)
The corporate environment is changing faster than most of us can keep up with, and in ways we sometimes don’t even see. There must, therefore, be conflict. Conflict presents choices. We can use large blocks of time unproductively, sifting truth from spin in the search for "being right". We can worry about framing the consequences into current management constructs. Or we can anchor our business in certainty, embrace the notion that conflict is part of the new world, and seize the opportunities it provides. trillium's frank handy
Conflict is inevitable, healthy and productive – when it’s valued as a resource. Trillium calls this open mind thinking. It’s thinking that sets apart the real achievers. When conflict arises, some run from it or shelter in denial. But for those who see the wisdom in managing it effectively, and possess the skills to do so, conflict immediately broadens horizons. trillium's paul gibson Trillium's ‘end to end’ conflict management means recognizing the conditions of tension as it develops, welcoming its possibilities and using it creatively, through:
This reflects both our own internal group practice and the expertise we offer our partners.
Trillium contends: that difference and discord are a natural part of organizational life; that from disagreement, constructive dialogue can flow; that a spectrum of views can, and should, be safely integrated into business thinking; that disputes can be resloved promptly and close to source. trillium's steve lancken
These values, Trillium believes, will spontaneoulsy enrich a business and its people.
professional business text - industrial client: tetris group (recruitment, project management, maintenance) Many Challenges. One Response Tetris Group: Linking Certainty To Success Tetris Group is a multi-faceted consortium servicing existing and approaching industry sectors. Tetris will move the mountain, build a new platform to put it on, manage and maintain its ongoing operation, supply the personnel - and come in at the best cost. With offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, Tetris is structured to ensure fast, flexible responses to Australian industry needs. Responses underwritten by experience and an established commitment to integrity and profitability. Your profitability. In today’s business environment everything changes, faster and faster. More likely than not, your business will at some point need to address challenges still to be born. Fortunately, the dynamism that’s now an accepted part of the corporate environment means early indicators become apparent to those equipped to respond. Hence, Tetris Group. Committed to reliable service supply, Tetris remains watchful for approaching change. Its own expansion is linked to your continued success. It’s why Tetris invests so much energy in building business, together.
Maintenance: it’s not an optional extra When an unexpected problem shuts down your production line, you need immediate help. Tetris Group is fully equipped to step in, twenty-four hours a day. Experienced personnel will find and fix the obstruction, rapidly returning your line to productive, profitable operation. And you won’t improve on the Tetris price. But maintenance is not just reactive. It’s integral to your total operating schedule. No-one would run a car without its regular service and the same principle applies to your plant - your biggest business investment. Pumps need belts changed. Manifolds need regular greasing. There’s a lot to go wrong if the line is neglected. Every production process relies on hundreds of component parts, but no process is stronger than its weakest connection. If the line goes down, you’re looking at hourly losses in the thousands of dollars. Self evidently, maintenance is not a cost. It pays for itself. Tetris Group’s preventive maintenance capability is carried out by our own highly qualified supervisors and tradespersons, and undertaken against measurable KPIs. By protecting your business, we’re helping you build it. copyright pa cosgrave Lost Words 2011 All the words, you said, that are not said That cannot now be said Must not now be said Still, they’re there Still you see them Welcome them Value them Words imprisoned, silent In their solitary confinement Echoes of sighs or speech Words from another life From letters, love and littel bokes Words that would out, would shout If they were free To even whisper Thoughts unspoken, speak through other words Lie half hearted in their half life And, stillborn, you can hear them, still.
Boatmen 2011 An imagined conversation at a late hour in 1532 between Sir Thomas More, newly proclaimed Lord Chancellor of England homeward bound on a flood tide to Chelsea, and his ferryman, Piers. Good even Sir, what deeds are done this day for England’s use? And are we all now safer in our beds? Good evening, Piers, to Chelsea now, and yes, this day finds truth. ‘Tis this. Long live the king, the king is dead. What means that truth, Sir Tom, when you have served Utopia’s cause The king is all there is to man’s content. This river flows, and kings must flow, with trust in arms and sword And there our safety lies, till all is spent. Good man with oar, good Piers, you surely are, but think you not. These streams of kings do only false proclaim. King’s friend, then foe, it always is the way for honest folk; One key alone can serve to break this cage. Well then, Sir Tom, I ask you this. If all we see is sham And sovereigns all should be consigned to ground, Then, what is man to do without succumbing to the damned How can a way to live secure be found? When all we crave to know, good friend, is no more than we're told No wonder we know nought on how to live This thing called Man has never learned to trust, and act so bold That all his faith may lead him to forgive. Them’s dangerous words, Sir Tom. I say, and all I know accord, Firm hands, though cruel and haughty, must abide. Man may rebel, from time to time, for small gains made with sword But that is just a price that must be paid. They guide you wrong, these kings, they guide the earth to deep despair As French quatrains already prophesy. Mark well, oarsman, in future times the weakness that will n’ere Permit the heart and soul of man to fly. For there is one, and only one, true want for human sense The empty spirit must be wholly filled. The earth fights back when men ignore this need within themselves, While children watch the naked kings’ false frills. How say you that, Sir Tom? You know that man may not be changed That is, with great respect, more than he dare. Not so, good Piers, we’re n’ere condemned to live in fear and chains The choice to love, and live, is always there. Two men, in rivers made of men who flow across all time, From which those kingly streams are like to swell, May talk and heal the heart; or see humanity consigned In a brutish age to come, to certain hell. Row on, to Chelsea’s bank. The tide turns soon, and so the page. My time is nearly come. But think on this! Men may not know all seasons, and while kings dictate each age, Each man may chart the course by charting his. I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm, nor sway The vanity of men to suit my cause. We’re boatmen, all, the river runs, then turns the other way, And brings each time the chance to take new oars.
still city, always 2005 a reunion with Newcastle, NSW, after a 30 year separation the new hunter street fades to winter twilight as beautifully as the old one always did unable to change its way there’s no easthams girl anymore just around the corner in perkins st no bhp, no steel city now just internet outlets cafefuzion with a zed and strange, purposeless shapes of iron sailing alleyways where once we walked echoes of ealing in a haunted indian face peering from the half-light corner store while squeaky DJs scream dot com dot I owe but pigeons still roost in boarded facades fading defiantly in grand inelegance and all the more elegant for that the river lights twinkle past the great northern and still the sidewalk puddles of melting ice cream mixing now with pavement art and backpacker boots still the newsagent where once I met norman wisdom sad and fading, too, in a corner, reading the herald hoping someone might remember him still the waves are perfect still the ships and surfers queue still, there’s andy on the radio playing supertramp and status quo and still the shop girls look you in the eye and say thanks, take care and mean it still helen reddy, mozart, slim dusty and edith piaf all together in the same cheap bin and still the graffiti says luke loves sarah not foreigners are taking over no regrets it was la vie en rose gentle, fading city of dreams changing without changing as only you can always in another city’s shadow always your cross, carried alone doomed by place never to be what you might have been stay what you are nurse your memories hold your twilight ice cream puddles pass your time you will never be a steal city and know there will still, always, be those who remember
the ministry of brown 2001 dark brown echoes from light brown halls brown scratches on brown walls caramel charts on a tattered old cord reflecting tired scribbles on the brownboard brown biccies, brown drinkies quiet collusions, via brown winkies brown wax in brown's ears brown-owl faces shielding brown fears soup stain stripes on sepia shirts watery eyes mask deep brown hurts brown hangovers, brown coughs power games and cruel brown scoffs dandruff storms rage on shores of tweed against the half refusal of the half brown plea brown hows? brown nows! how now? brown’s cowed brown agenda on brown breath brown apprehension of a deep brown death brown smells brown socks brown teeth brown ties brown wives brown sex brown balls brown lies nicotine stains on trembling hands brown pretenders in a wide brown land published: Gallimaufry, WrightLight P/L, 2004
the charge of the loud brigade 2005 dedicated to Denis Kevans after Alfred Lord Tennyson half a league, half a league, onward, all in the valley of deaf rode the silk hum drum "Forward, the Loud Brigade!” players big hitters quietly achieving, noisily being excellent and relevant passionate, extreme edgy, radical counting sleeps timing deliverables engaging the challenge of best practice on the ground wired for sound beeping their presence keeping in the loop staying across it crashing life’s party pushing the envelope dealing with it, getting over it feedbacking iss-yooz facebooking sit-yooz changing the language it's only words moving on from it seamlessly blackberries blaring barking key learnings more for ME sharing their take on it doing their coffee posting what mood they were in two hours ago brainstorming options connecting dots collecting words with 'i' in them vertically integrating, searching for disconnects, constructs icons, x factors and fun apps transitioning processes going forward playing to their strengths thinking outside the square making it happen or not happen as the mood takes them it’s a good look it’s all good too easy, on approach online getting the smarts keeping their balls in the air mining data, unpacking, drilling down thinking big picture flicking, resonating downsizing, outsourcing leveraging, considering the flip side of the upside human resources, in control of their KPIz, TQMz and PDFz Not ! not on their screen, not going there and not replying theirs is not to make reply theirs is but to hue and cry cliches to the right of them cliches to the left of them boldly they ride, and well and when can their glory fade? short story in fifty words 1 1990 Everyone saw the comet People started to hear buzzing noises in their ears and soon realised they knew when others were talking about them. All politicians went mad immediately It took about two weeks for the rest. All except me. Now I'm going mad because I never heard a thing
short story in fifty words 2 1990 A bus stops. A schoolboy passenger asks his friend Got any brothers and sisters, then? A glazed nod. Laughter freezes, conversations falter. Where are they, then? A pause, a sigh, a quiet reply. South Australia. The bus drives on. An old lady weeps silently. A day begins in nineteen ninety.
number cruncher 2008 Like so much garbage in the bin the numbers herd the humans in The holding pens await the day when digits run the world, their way thx 1138 screams triple six, you’re running late The people parroting 24/7 The dreary rhyme of 9/11 So now the fateful day draws near The Number-in-Chief makes it very clear the pins and passwords cheer aloud Digits Extract! Now is the hour h5n1’s got a good idea Let’s encircle them from the rear he says to general applause the numbers nod, and this means war Telstra 101 agrees and RU486 with glee suggests that star ten hash leads on The numbers charge, the humans run The numbers charge, they know no fear the dot points bringing up the rear while flanks of gantt charts now repel the last remaining human cell The pens await, the great blades shine UB40 bides his time The tragic sobbing mass arrives And triple 0 sneers, I’m now offline
haiku - the homeless man milson's point station, 2007 on a train the homeless man snores his alan bennett book falling shut
old soldier 2008 inspired by kate miller-heidke's 'don't let go', soldiers in burma & politicians in nsw dear diary tuesday a better day the ringing in the ears is not so loud today the goldfish moved again and the paper says the premier says that mums and dads are hurting someone got my name right in the shop the kitchen light worked again so the electricity must still be on the kid next door didn’t scream last night his uncle must’ve been away maybe he’s busy everyone’s busy a song on the radio by someone called kate said who invented all these things we have to do? i wouldn’t mind some things to have to do the new tv show last night looked just like all the rest another panel of famous people i’ve never heard of laughing, joking, sneering in grunts, and words like like izzie, the dream ends tonight, love .......... the troop ship seems so long ago when we fought for Burmese freedom but it might be 1944 still, just new words new generals, new guns, old horrors old soldiers, old mates still gone what for? no more troop ships, no more hand to hand no more mates, no more fights for freedom now they kill for oil and interests with fingers on buttons, planes without pilots bombs in jackets and the mums & dads & uncles & kids are hurting, say politicians in hard hats and safety vests was it all for this? it costs a lot, just to hurt these days but pet food’s not so bad and the paper said the premier said it’s all for our best interests because that way, the kitchen lights will keep turning on .......... i missed the spring clean again this year but at least the dust is my bloody dust and the bathroom floor stains all mine, too i’ll go outside again today this could be mailbox week maybe it’s garbage day, i just forget i just try to forget
normal service 2004 a sort of utopia we regret this temporary loss of transmission when normal service is resumed, leaders will listen and all the dollars spent on independent inquiries will buy food in Africa and all the money spent on watching us from space will convert spy satellites into solar power stations and all the email key words will become, once again, just words 4 wheel drivers will stay in the slow lane, their bull bars melted down to make cages for duck shooters mandatory jury service will be replaced by compulsory WIRES membership when your service is resumed George Bush will make a pilgrimage to Mecca on a donkey and beg forgiveness in front of a million muslims, and have it granted and Blair and Howard will get their Netherlands visas in the mail stamped 'one way only' and from the cell next door, Mladic will make them welcome all strollers will be made so babies can see their parents and not have to face the new world alone tv channels that tell you what’s coming up next in the credits will be made to run The Ascent of Man continuously for a week and newsreaders who read news like an ice cream commercial will be caned just before the sport people who talk on mobile phones in cinemas will be force fed 50 choc ices David Beckham will embrace Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford, play once more for Man U and once again, free to air will show it when normal service is resumed, people who torture kittens will stand trial at the Supreme Feline Court and eat whiskas for the rest of their lives and then be given eight more lives advertising executives will have short lunches at sandwich shops and pay back the cost of every trip to Bangkok to take one still photograph, inside the plane, into a trust fund for diabetic 14 year olds, and forget forever the word fear Thabo Mbecki will finally admit that H-I-V causes A-I-D-S and Robert Gabriel Mugabe will beg the people of Matabeleland to make it quick and painless and parents will stop giving their children Ritalin and find the time to give them time when normal service is resumed when your service is resumed.
night crossing to mull 2011 inspired by matthew arnold's 'dover beach', and my own crossing to mull in 2000
pulls away into its short, secret dream; a lifetime voyage in a short score of minutes, concerto for commuter boat, this melody for forever, traced in fleeting velvet deeps. an elbow on the rail, an easy shrug, thrown away chuckling dry, single malt humour. conversations tangle together, merge with gulls, with crackling fish & chips, with tennents ring pulls and settling ship night noises, hardly heard but wholly present in this rare recital, conspiring comfort in a gathering gloom. an infant’s thrill, a young father’s pleasure, pointing to the far dock lost in shadow, still; a wife’s quiet bliss, when she takes his arm. they’re going home, across the sound, with caledonian macbrayne.
speaks of years, of crossings back and forth, of intimacies told in brief minutes to strangers, stories shared with fellow travelers, never seen again; instant friendships, born in a moment, parted forever, remembered still, years later, in the silent, fulfilled understanding of the isles. of faith, and hope, and the tranquil joy of island life; and the deep dark velvet ripples round the prow, rushes past the stern, off and away, into the night’s resonance of deeper dream, the one which unites everything. of cold walks home with bags of food and sleeping child in lambs wool, against a soft shoulder, hand in hand, dreaming of the peat fire waiting and the standing stones, on distant hill, watchers of ages. puddle stories, these, bitter, sweet; locked into this empty green painted seat as the soul of sometimes is locked into always.
a gentle engine rumble. have your tickets ready, in english and gaelic; a feast to last forever, this, a banquet of memories and my might have beens. the lighthouse at the near point, its saving beam defeated by accountants far away, protects only the old croft house, square and sturdy and scottish, and casts, perhaps, a ghostly glare, that mortals may not see, to warm the chill dark hills of yonder shore, those serried ranks, cascading to the sea like mull’s blessed, sublime, instinctive echo of eternity. audio night crossing to mull, blue mntns music festival 2011
Hits and Myths: Australians Abroad dec 28 2011 The efforts of an Australian citizen, Julian Assange, to avoid extradition to Sweden on the basis of a likely further extradition to the USA again highlights the sad history of Australians abandoned by Canberra in their time of need. Assange has secured a British High Court hearing and has one further avenue of appeal, the European Court of Human Rights, if that is unsuccessful. The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is on record as saying Assange’s Wikileaks activities were illegal though she was unable, as a lawyer herself, to explain how when pressed. The accusation has never been withdrawn despite public federal police advice that Assange has broken no Australian law. Moreover, Gillard’s statement was thought at the time to substantially prejudice Assange’s legal case. Meanwhile it has become clear that Assange is, to put it kindly, a complex personality with an ample ego. But the fact remains that he has been convicted of no crime in Sweden or the UK either and the Australian government’s silence continues a shameful tradition of indifference to its own citizens when political convenience takes precedence over policy principle. In his masterful summing up of the 1979 Tony Joyce tragedy the great Australian journalist Peter Bowers, writing in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, documented the horror endured by Joyce’s widow when it became clear that Australia would not press Zambia for a proper investigation. Joyce, a respected British journalist who had come to Australia after meeting his wife, Monica, and was on assignment for the ABC, was almost certainly murdered by a Zambian political militia officer. Zambian authorities said he was accidentally killed by a bullet fragment ricocheting in a taxi. The fragment would have had to ricochet twice to enter Joyce’s head as it did and the eminent British forensic scientist, Professor Cedric Simpson, said the wound was clearly caused by a single close range shot from a 9mm Browning automatic. This was the same make of gun identified by Joyce’s cameraman, Derek McKendry, who observed Joyce being placed in the taxi in the custody of a soldier apparently under the influence of drink or drugs, and who heard the subsequent gunshot. After pressing Zambia for eighteen months Malcolm Fraser’s government allowed the Zambian version of events, contained in a letter from President Kenneth Kaunda to Fraser which has never been made public, to stand. Kaunda called Fraser his “beloved friend” and the matter was closed. Monica Joyce, while on the record as saying she understood political realities, added that she was deeply disappointed that Australia had not, at the very least, publicly dissociated itself from the Zambian explanation instead of allowing it to pass onto the public record. And it’s now known that Fraser privately warned Kaunda not to discuss disputed details with Australian journalists during the CHOGM conference in Australia soon afterwards. “The cover-up shows with chilling clarity how heads of government, whatever their politics, will put the wider national interest above individual human rights and fundamental justice … [when they perceive it to be necessary]”, said Bowers. At the conclusion of his piece, he noted that Gough Whitlam’s government had done exactly the same four years earlier following the murder by Indonesian troops in East Timor of the so-called Balibo Five and Roger East in 1975. These events, with the plight of the five journalists seen through the eyes of East and culminating in East’s own dockside murder in Dili, are documented in the film Balibo. David Wilson was an Australian backpacker kidnapped in Cambodia in 1994 and left to his fate by the Keating government whose foreign minister was Gareth Evans. The inquest, adjourned twelve years ago, has yet to resume. The Wilson case was covered by Lindsay Murdoch. If that inquest ever resumes, Murdoch wrote in The Age on December 2 2009, the Australian public will learn how, despite Wilson’s desperate pleas for help, its government failed to stop Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen from deploying troops in the area where the hostages were being held, thereby provoking the Khmer Rouge troops holding Wilson, who shot him and his traveling companion. The government also failed to give Wilson’s family adequate or timely advice or information on raising a ransom and imposed blanket media bans on coverage of the kidnapping. “Australia should establish a non-military flying squad made up of people with expertise in managing hostage crises who can quickly assess situations and advise families on their best course of action”, wrote Murdoch. In recent times, the situation of the nine Australian drug smugglers in Bali, effectively handed over to Indonesian authorities by the Australian Federal Police in the knowledge that some would certainly face a death sentence, is more well known. In Somalia the Australian freelance journalist, Nigel Brennan, was held for fifteen months by kidnappers. Australians left to fend for themselves during the Haiti earthquake complained bitterly about the lack of consular assistance. Two recent cases in China involving Chinese Australian businessmen, both citizens and both convicted under legal circumstances which appeared to be made up on the run, have not been challenged by the Julia Gillard or her foreign minister, Kevin Rudd. One of them, Stern Hu, a Rio Tinto executive, was charged in an “open trial” which no-one was able to witness with bribery and industrial espionage after eight months incarceration in conditions which would hardly have ensured an even temperament when a plea bargain was eventually offered. The other, Matthew Ng, bought shares privately from a Chinese government owned corporation and then refused to amend the transaction retrospectively when their value changed. With his wife terminally ill, Ng is now doing thirteen years for “embezzlement” while the Australian government wonders whether Beijing is sending it some sort of message. Shappelle Corby remains in an Indonesian prison, reportedly suffering increasing psychological distress. Robert Jovicic – not a citizen but a resident since the age of two, with all his family here – was deported by the Howard government minister, Amanda Vanstone, to a life of destitution on the streets of Belgrade in 2004. Public pressure ensured his return and a new incoming minister, Chris Evans, re-assigned his permanent residence in 2008. Jock Palfreeman has not been so lucky and remains in a Bulgarian jail following a dubious trial which left key questions unanswered. Many Australians in foreign prisons have not even had the press coverage of Corby, Palfreeman and Jovicic. They include an Australian male in jail in Egypt about whom it is almost impossible to obtain information and who has apparently received no official assistance. Against this background, perhaps Julian Assange shouldn’t be too surprised at the absence of government support. He appears to be an unconventional, perhaps even an odd, human being. But he’s not the first odd man in the history of the world and odd men – Sir Isaac Newton springs to mind – have said and done great things to benefit us all. In an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald on December 19, the Melbourne Senior Counsel, Michael Pearce, made some uncomfortable points about the Assange case and the federal government’s abandonment of him. Just as Assange shines a light into the secret workings of governments – paid for with citizens’ tax dollars – so Pearce takes some common Australian myths and finds they don’t survive close scrutiny. Not least among them is the notion of one big happy family that rallies around its own when an Aussie gets into strife. “Imagine … that he was the citizen of a country … mature and self-confident enough to distinguish its own interests from those of its allies … a country not riven by culture wars and character assassination [and one] whose citizenry could take offence at obvious injustice to one of its own and do something about it”, Pearce wrote. The issues concerning Assange’s Wikileaks activities revolve around one word – truth. But Pearce may be closer to the mark in his implied explanation of why we tolerate governments of all persuasions which abandon Australian citizens in trouble. Another single word may be more opportune to address that troubling question, though it’s one that is seldom heard. “Why?”. Perhaps it’s because we’re quite comfortable in the acceptance that there are things which need to stay hidden. more Michael Pearce's opinion piece, smh, dec 19 2011 Peter Bowers, smh & age, nov 9 1981
....................................................... Pull Over, Speaker dec 21 2011 Evening officer – is anything, like, wrong? Good evening sir. I need to see your licence, please. Um … like, what’s the problem, officer? You were just observed using the word alternate when the one you were looking for was alternative – could I see your Language Licence please? (fumbles in wallet) The loose use of alternative, denoting the sense of possibility, is regrettable, sir, although it’s a long established usage. But alternate and its derivatives can only mean one thing – ‘one or the other, but not both’, sir. One? Or, like, one or the other? I don’t understand, officer. Here’s my licence. Hmmm – gold licence, I see, sir. You should know better. I’ll just run it through the computer. Won’t be a moment. Cool. (checks, returns from Language Squad Car) I see you have a previous record, sir. Earlier this year you were caught using incidence instead of incident. That’s usually an instant fine but according to your record, in that instance, you were let off with a warning. It was, like, a moment airy oversight, ok?. I’m roolly sorry. But roolly, it’s, like, hardly a major ishoo, is it? Now, what if everyone took that attitude, sir? The rules are there to be obeyed. If everyone went round using the wrong words, it wouldn’t be long before there was no language left, to speak of. I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a random word test, sir. Just speak into this, please, and say after me the word Union. Yin Yin Education Idjakyshun Premier Primm Yair Moderately Interesting Farkarn Awesome Hmmmm. You’ve recorded a reading that indicates you may be speaking while not in a fit state to use the language, sir. Look, officer, I’ve given you a answer and I know you have, like, a job to do and you’re trying to pertect it. I’m not adverse to a bit of advice but … Averse, sir Sorry? Not sorry, sir. You mean I beg your pardon. You said adverse, sir, when you meant averse. Well …. does it, like, roolly farkarn madder, goin' forward ??? !!! And it’s an answer, sir, while we’re on the subject. Well, it’s all a matter of degree, really, isn’t it. One minute it’s adverse instead of averse – suddenly, everyone’s just grunting vowel sounds, diction disappears and all our words start blending into each other. Before we know it, everyone’s running round using the wrong words and suddenly we can’t understand each other properly. Well! It’s a short step from there to the end of abstract thought as we know it, sir. Ergh, dergh! See what I mean, sir? I’m just having a look at your speech bank and I also notice you’re using far too many iconics. Too much time watching The X Factor, I shouldn’t wonder, sir. Try emblematic or exemplary occasionally. Symbolic can make a nice change, too, in some contexts. Try using alternatives. You never know, you might get to like the idea. This is, like, so gay. It’s nanny state stuff! You should be, like, out there chasing the rool language offenders. You mean the ABC, sir? Sorry you feel that way, but it starts with the individual. If it weren’t for we Language Police, very few people these days could even get the words out in the right order any more. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it, sir. We’re on the frontline day in day out, you know, dealing with the scum of the illiterates and protecting people like you. And we get very little thanks for it. Oh, and one more thing, by the way, sir. I see from your record that you’ve almost used up your allowance of quotatives. So far this month you’ve used over seven hundred and eighteen thousand. And you must keep your eye on those apostrophes, indefinite articles and prepositions. What’s a perposition? Is that, like, like perjuice? I think you mean produce, sir. Prepositions govern a noun or pronoun, sir, express a relationship to another word or idea and generally don’t go at the end of sentences. For the time being, there’s still a place for them in the English language but it’s quite important to use the right ones. Last week you were caught saying compared with… . We spend a lot of time reminding the public that it’s compared to… . Just to take one example, sir. Thank you officer – can I, like, go now? Yes, sir. But just remember – if you don’t care about your own use of the language, have some respect for others who may want to use it properly. Just slow down, Sir, and think about it a bit more. I’m putting a note on your record and next time, it’ll be a mandatory on the spot viewing of Kenneth Clarke’s Civilization. Speak carefully over the Christmas holidays, Sir, and remember, we’ll be listening. acknowledgements: Harry Fieldhouse, Denis Rice
.................................................................. Selling Uranium To India dec 15 2011 When the governing Australian Labour Party voted at its recent conference to abandon its opposition to the sale of uranium to India, there was a predictable flurry of huffing and puffing for a few days followed by an equally unsurprising chasm of silence. The government released some carefully scripted messages about India agreeing to terms approximating those of the formal Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a treaty India refuses to sign. The voracious twenty-four hour news cycle moved on to fresh pastures and the fuss duly died down. Once again, the bland voice of government dulled public sensibility. That’s alright, then, came the reassuring message. Well, no, it’s not, actually. India may walk on water so far as nuclear safeguards are concerned. The terms India has proposed may be as or more stringent than those of the treaty. But we rely primarily on the government's word on this and now a precedent has been set, and a binding treaty set aside. Let’s put the matter into context. To any thinking person, it has been clear for some years that there is no alternative to a collaborative international commitment to nuclear energy for the time being, whether we like it or not. For the energy needed over the next century, coal and oil are unsustainable pollutants and renewable sources cannot in the short term fill the gap or meet global base load. To put it more accurately, they just about could if we invested massively now, but we won't. Perhaps if Dr Helen Caldicott’s advice had been heeded in the early 1980s, there may have been a chance of avoiding the hard decisions now required. Back in the days of Duran Duran, she was advocating solar space stations in geo-synchronous orbit collecting unlimited power from the sun and beaming it to earth via microwave. “The only reason this isn’t likely to happen”, she said in a 2SM interview with this writer, “is that energy corporations haven’t figured out a way to sell holes in the atmosphere”. Characteristically abrasive words and, at the time, maybe a bit far fetched. Today it seems quite realistic, except for the small matter of cost. The planet is confronting a global economic downturn which may make the 1930s look like a minor irritant. Co-operative global infrastructure in space isn’t going to happen in the near future. The only thing that’s going up is energy demand as it must, anyway, if the world is to recover economically. Australia is therefore well placed as a uranium supplier, once this reality sinks in. For those of us who have opposed nuclear power for many years this is a tough re-evaluation, especially since Fukushima, but the argument is not about ‘solar versus nuclear’. It’s about survival. The Australian engineer, Paul Curtis, argues convincingly that conventional photovoltaics are already obsolete and that the future lies with solar thermal energy, where highly efficient collection technology is built into structural frameworks and excess energy is stored much more efficiently than was previously possible. This is the future, he says. But even if it could happen now, it won’t. The missing links are political spine and imaginative venture capital, both notably lacking in this country. So until renewable energy gets up to speed and unless political leaders learn to lead, there’s going to be an interim period – maybe a century or so, starting about now – when energy supply fails to meet demand. If you doubt this, look again at your last bill. Nuclear generation has thus become, for better or worse, the only remaining option and an increasingly urgent one. In such circumstances, in an ideal world, collective political leadership would quickly come to its senses, cease all funding of weapons and conflict, communicate honestly with its citizens, get some power stations into space and in the meantime use the left over money to feed a few people. Then, a one-off generation of nuclear facilities could supply interim global demand, with binding protocols for shutdowns within agreed timeframes. Naively unrealistic? Of course, but what's the alternative? Naturally, though, the new globalised lifestyle, where we all live in one giant happy TV commercial without an off-switch, and the feeble attempts to tackle the economic chaos inevitably produced by this marketing paradise, place the notion of collective action well beyond democracy's capability. Leaders are terrified of the riots to come but Earth’s energy needs must still be met or large numbers will die, perhaps soon. And so although altruism is not the motive, Australia (and the USA, which has already accommodated Indian requests) may be doing the world a back-handed favour in proposing uranium sales under amended terms. It may at least generate debate. But a larger issue has been sidestepped. At this moment in time the world needs greater, not lesser, respect for its international legal mechanisms. Australia has ratified a binding treaty which makes the sale of uranium to non-signatories illegal. India is a non-signatory. There is no point in having international legal frameworks if they are ignored. When politicians place expedience ahead of binding obligations, old territory is re-visited in the most dangerous way imaginable. In the history of humanity, confidence in government and its formal institutions has never been lower. This is hardly the way to restore it. more: paul curtis's T3Energy ...........................................................
sept 7 2011 As we approach the tenth anniversary of what has come to be called ‘9/11’, the world has changed again. Perhaps the twin towers tragedy was a catalyst; or perhaps ‘the west’ has just run out of moral, as well as economic, steam. But if the world looked different in a security sense following America’s worst terrorist event, today it looks different in almost every way.
sept 11, 2001: the second tower is hit
The public demonstrations in Paris, Greece, Spain, the UK and now Israel confirm the essential unsustainability of the way we continue to live beyond our means despite all the warnings of the last quarter century and the last three years. They offer a sinister glimpse of 1968, when European and American cities exploded. Those disorders were largely ideological. The new riots are about the perception, at least, of limits to survival in the unequal world that approaches.
1968 riots, Washington DC
The slow unraveling of established orders in Arabic-speaking countries alarms the west because it is impossible to track, let alone predict. It holds the potential for great good; but it also creates the possibility of a nuclear armed fundamentalist caliphate stretching from Morocco to Pakistan, intent on its own form of change. This is why the west cannot stay in Afghanistan – and also why it cannot leave. And now there is the arrival on the world stage of China as an economic power and busybody. The country that rejects as “cultural interference” all expressions of distaste over the detention of dissidents, shoddy building standards, unsafe mining practice and the unloading of industrial waste into food exports and milk for its own children is none the less very pleased to interfere with western sensitivities when it comes to who may or may not receive a peace prize or speak to the Dalai Lama. While the west has been arguing about Islam and generating false wealth based on Chinese credit, China has been busy developing its manufacturing and cornering the world container shipping market. It now makes much of what we consume, controls our ability to pay for it and most of our access to it, and is unlikely to want to stop until full control is secured. From Australia to Kenya to Iceland, China is putting its new wealth to good use seeking to buy control of the future through investment today. The world’s acquiescence in this, justified as pragmatism, is the main indicator of a more subservient west that has lost its liberal edge and is, itself, moving closer to totalitarianism. “Vladimir Putin is a man I can do business with”, said George W Bush.
1968 riots, Paris
And where will we look for protection then? At various times the US has caused a good deal of difficulty throughout the world. It has been at war, here or there, almost continuously since 1945 and has not shrunk from removing regimes it didn't like, covertly and violently if necessary. But the immense good it has also done is less often considered. Its intervention in two world wars, against its own instincts, twice turned the tide of history for the better. The leader in aid provision, America is always the first to arrive when natural disasters strike (as in Haiti) and usually the last to leave. The terrifying political illiteracy of so many Americans should not overshadow the nation’s innate compassion and generosity of spirit. I don’t like a lot of what their administrations have done. Many Americans don’t even know a lot of what their administrations have done or, apparently, care. But the prospect of a world without a strong America hardly appeals.
New York firefighter, Mike Kehoe, goes up tower 2 while its workers descend
As we watch the new documentary footage and re-live the horror minute by minute, the pain and revulsion for we outsiders seems only to intensify, if such a thing is possible. It’s as if a delayed reaction is finally bringing home to us mere observers just how much America has suffered, while still finding courage to continue. The courage of the doomed passengers on United flight 93; the courage of New York’s firemen who entered buildings knowing there was a good chance they may not come out; the courage of fighter pilots who had to consider the unthinkable possibility of shooting their own countrymen out of the sky; and the inspiring courage of ordinary Americans and their leaders who, despite everything, have been able to ask “why?”. And then make changes. Courage and indifference can exist side by side, of course, and in the wider world a trait that remains worryingly consistent is the limitless human capacity for denial and self-interest. As the big questions continue to press, the only real change lies in our re-invented priorities. The world economy remains in ICU because weak political leaders will not find the spine for painful remedies, knowing financial institutions will laugh at them and voters might take to the streets. Climate, as an issue in public awareness, has come and gone. It is almost twenty years since the Rio Conference, and can we really say the world is any closer to making peace with nature? The pandemic of obesity is sweeping the world, with the potential to overwhelm health systems. The seas are emptying. In Australia, the soil blows away, the salt tables rise, the stressed river systems slowly expire and politics rule the environment. Scientists receive death threats. People, asked to consider change, react with rage instead of dialogue. The public burning of the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s first report, and Canberra’s organized political discrediting of a good public servant, the MDBA’s chief executive, Mike Taylor, provoked deeply distressing echoes from an earlier time. “There’s no left or right”, asserted Tom Robbins in his novel Another Roadside Attraction. “Never has been. It’s just a matter of degree”.
2011 riots, London
The News International imbroglio says all that needs to be said on the new directions of journalism. As for the rest of the media, and especially the public broadcasters, the timid handing over to ad men and marketeers of the once glorious medium of television, with all its potential for human enrichment, also foreshadows questions for future historians. Sadly, the John Birts and Jonathan Shiers of the world won’t be required to answer them. Iceland exists as a nation today because, on a lesser scale, the Vikings did to southern Norway in the eighth century what we’ve done to the earth in the twentieth. They pillaged it and moved north, but now there are no more Icelands to run to. Europe has run out of money to lend to itself to pay off the debts it couldn’t afford in the first place. Wall St is fiercely resisting all calls for a return to financial regulation. The lyrics of songwriters like Peter Gabriel, John Denver and Harry Chapin have warned for decades that changing weather patterns must mean something. Even water wars are now spoken of. “Still don’t know what I was waiting for, and my time was running wild. A million dead end streets, and every time I thought I’d got it made. So I turned myself to face me, but I’ve never caught a glimpse … ch-ch-ch-changes”, wrote David Bowie. The looking glass is there, alright, but perhaps we’re already on the other side.
9/11 images from Life Magazine and Photoagencies Magnum & V11 The Sonic Memorial Project (sonicmemorial.org): an ongoing archive of sound and recollection - a collaboration between National Public Radio, the Public Radio Exchange, independent producers and citizens Tribute to New York Firefighters: npr.org ................................................
Boys And Girls Come Out To Play the moon is shining, bright as day sept 2, 2011 On February 11 this year, this column wondered whether Julia Gillard could survive much longer. Was the Labour Party facing the same dilemma it had had with Kevin Rudd, we asked? How could it possibly get rid of an elected Prime Minister – and yet how could it not? The same icy horror confronts the party once more and for all the assertions that the leadership is sound and it’s the selling of the message that’s the problem, these assurances are only a denial of reality. Labour’s self-interest, when tested hard enough, will again prevail. The Gillard leadership is the running issue in Canberra but there are others. What, then, is the state of play in modern Australian politics, and its incestuous first cousin twice removed, the media? In a word, it’s seldom been more enfeebled. Across the spectrum, the quicksand analogy springs to mind. The more the country wriggles the deeper we stick in the mire, and the price for not asking the hard constitutional questions over the last half century is now being paid by Australian voters, who scarcely know where to look any more for leadership or even hope. A Sleeping Pygmy At such times, the loonies hit the road. We saw it before with the Hanson period and many of the current anti carbon tax brigade are the same people. There is every reason for both a robust debate on the tax and a spirited conversation about a prime minister who changed her mind about it. But the people who took a convoy of trucks to Canberra last week do not represent a serious political alternative. As with Hanson and with all carbon tax protests to date, a relatively small number of genuinely concerned business people attract a lunatic fringe who believe everything is a United Nations conspiracy to create one world government. This element, under many names, has been a sleeping pygmy in Australian politics for many years. They may be angry, but it is for other reasons and they will never initiate (one fervently hopes) hard political debate or policy. Above all, these people want to shout, just like their self appointed leader for the day, the bully-boy Sydney radio announcer, Alan Jones. Never a journalist, Jones contents himself with showing up at these rallies, donning his mantle of contrived rage and pretending that those who listen to his program comprise a mainstream movement. He makes the job of real journalists harder by singling them out for public humiliation. It’s simple cowardice, no more, no less. Standing next to Jones with a welcome pat on the back was Tony Abbott. But on the conservative side of Australian politics, things aren’t too rosy, either, if you look beneath and the full extent of the damage inflicted on his party by John Howard will become evident over the next two years as the next general election approaches. Once a noble and genuinely conservative party of principle, it became under Howard a selfish Tory mob, reactionary in inclination, convinced of its natural right to govern and willing to change direction at a moment’s notice if power appeared to beckon. The Liberals’ arbitrary overnight abandonment of Malcolm Turnbull’s responsible approach to carbon pricing took its cue from the positional flexibility of the new leader, Tony Abbott. Tacking across the policy course, closely watching for each wind shift, Abbott so craves power (by his own recent admission) that he fails to see how close to it he sails. Seasoning his well rehearsed media stunts with clichés and Irish jokes, the man who two years ago was passionately advocating a carbon tax is now adamantly opposing it. Hard Hats, Safety Shirts, Familiar Echoes Abbott knows he doesn’t need to do much at all to look good to lots of voters at the moment. As a politician, he’s playing it just right – and that’s precisely the trouble with the national dialogue in this country. It’s never about anything beyond politics and is consequently almost always angry and unproductive. And that, frankly, is down to voters, not politicians. They reflect us, and we get what we vote for. In time, Abbott’s essential absence of policy direction will reveal itself but probably not until after he becomes prime minister, which looks increasingly certain. And if you disliked Howard’s brand of new Liberalism in government, wait till you see what Abbott will do to national policy debate, such as it is. His political judgment is flawed, though. Just when everything was going swimmingly for him a couple of months ago, with the government diving in the polls, Abbott made the opposition’s leadership tensions public by leaking against his own senior colleagues and one in particular, Malcolm Turnbull, who wants the job back. Opposing everything, mixing cement, separating paper on recycling lines, trying a spot of welding, he looks ridiculous as well as deceitful. When NSW Liberals of intellect and principle like Stephen O’Doherty say on radio (ABC, June 20 2011) that a Turnbull-led opposition would offer a more appealing level of debate, and that Abbott is treating climate change advocates like communists, you know that all is not well on the right. Two moribund leaders, then, compete with their hard hats, day-glo shirts and nodding minders to gain the attention of the one institution we should be able to rely on for measured analysis and truthful reporting (see ‘Meet The Press, july 21, below). Lindsay Tanner and John Faulkner have delivered scathing assessments recently on the deeply unhealthy relationship between the media and the political caste. The culture of spin and tight media management alienates journalists, magnifies all the problems of concentrated media ownership and ensures no level of public policy debate that actually involves the public. The once proud ALP, said Faulkner, has become so “anaemic” in its disregard of all but the most expedient of values that it has come to listen more to focus groups than to its own members. A familiar echo, perhaps, for British and Irish readers. Does The Team Think? This morning, the ABC’s AM was reporting “rumblings” about the Gillard leadership. Two of the nation’s less appealing former politicians have had her in their sights for some time. Throughout a day of denial, the rumblings have become a “growing chorus”. The media has the sniff now, and won’t let go. With her Tallee Band, Hyper Bowls and high dungeons; the tangled tackiness of her refugee policy; and her ill-considered attack last evening on the High Court and its Chief Justice (for a judgment against the government’s new appetite for offshore refugee processing, once so abhorrent to the ALP), she suddenly cuts a sad and unconvincing figure. John Howard says she lacks authority and never had it. Graham Richardson says her time is up but has thoughtfully given her until Christmas. What do the pundits think? AMC Media principal, Anthony McClellan, says Nauru may not be right (as an offshore refugee processing destination) but is now the only tenable political solution for Gillard and, for her, that’s all that now matters; and that she would be morally obliged to resign, if that option were chosen. Perhaps the ALP’s opportunity lies here. Whilst Howard says the independents will lose their seats at the next election the conservative journalist, Paul Sheehan, says Tony Windsor won’t even contest, accusing him of plotting the “weasel option”. Whatever one might think about Windsor, that’s unfair. He’s no coward and Sheehan’s valuable insights are often qualified by eloquent malice. It is far more likely that the Liberals’ Malcolm Turnbull, sooner or later, will get a second chance than will Labour’s Kevin Rudd, though according to Phil Coorey and other informed journalists, Rudd still wants it. The short list is Greg Combet, Bill Shorten and Stephen Smith. Combet is safe but boring; Shorten has policy credentials but appears disingenuous; Smith may just feel this is his time, and projects integrity and authority. Equally possible is former leader Simon Crean, whose integrity is questioned by none. It would be fascinating if he were wheeled out as a night watchman and then actually pulled the party back into shape. Don’t rule it out. One thing’s likely, above all, though. If there’s a wrong decision to be made, the ALP will make it. Tick, Tick, Tick Labour is paralysed. The Libs smell blood. Craig Thompson’s unfortunate credit card bills haven’t gone away, and don’t look encouraging for a prime minister who has virtually staked her office on his innocence, though not in so many words. She’d better be right. One thing offers some hope for the ALP. It could be argued that only this party could produce two intellects (Faulkner and Tanner) who could argue so convincingly for institutional change despite the risk of party antagonism. Reviewing the horizon of conservative politics in this country, which unlike its European counterparts has no tradition of intellectual vigour, it’s hard to see from where might come the call for political reform that the Australian people are so desperate for. Such is politics in Australia. “Tick, Tick, Tick” headlines this morning’s Melbourne Herald Sun, with more than a twist of cruelty. It looks as if time is almost up for Julia Gillard. At least she has had time to tread the well worn path of Australian leaders of all persuasions who have declined to meet the Dalai Lama. His Holiness, for his part, noted that he is never upset when politicians refuse to meet him because change occurs through people, not politicians. Over to us.
footnotes: on september 5 ted pickering, a former nsw liberal party cabinet minister, wrote in the sydney morning herald that kevin rudd should be returned as prime minister, subject to his agreement to again impose a mineral resources tax; in the same paper, phillip coorey wrote that from the alp’s point of view, there was no rush to replace Gillard; on september 6 a newspoll conducted by ‘the australian’ indicated the prime minister’s popularity had fallen further, to record levels, and that voters overwhelmingly wanted kevin rudd returned as prime minister; in the same paper, the columnist and broadcaster, phillip adams, wrote that rudd should be returned and dennis shanahan, under the headline “only a miracle can save her now”, wrote that there was no way Gillard would lead her party to the next election; on september 7, abc tv commenced what it called its new “political satire”, ‘at home with julia’; on sept 10 a group of rudd supporters released a statement to the effect that rudd was a changed man and was ready to resume the prime ministerial role in a new spirit of humility, should it be offered to him.
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Meet The Press july 21 2011 Now it can be told. “You know considerably more about News International than Rupert Murdoch and his son James, it has been confirmed”. The spoof headline on Britain’s satirical website, The Daily Mash, neatly captures the absurdity of the position advanced by the Murdochs and Rebekah Brooks during the hearing of the House of Commons parliamentary committee. The next question is: does the News International imbroglio offer glimpses into the wider media landscape? Much of the fourth estate, an essential and stabilizing democratic balance, has become a force, suggested Neil Kinnock on BBC Radio 4 this week, that has “intentionally exerted influence to contaminate democracy”. In this country Senator Doug Cameron echoed the sentiment in equally plain Celtic language. Truthful, accurate reporting has become a casualty of fear – the fear of the contrived public moral outrage that has reconfigured parts of the news media into an extension of the entertainment industry. The respected Washington Post reporter, Carl Bernstein, also bought in, calling NI tactics “sewer journalism” but noting that the British public had lapped it up for a long time. "We're Clean" - and that, hopefully, is that Does this lend any credibility to the claims of News Corp, NI’s Australian arm and publishers of The Australian and Daily Telegraph, that it could never happen here? The Australian operations, says CEO, John Hartigan, are whiter than white. He says his papers have no political agenda and News Corp is pressuring (some have said hounding) the independent MP, Rob Oakeshott (on whose support, coincidentally, the federal labour government relies to remain in office) only because he’s said to be out of step with his conservative electorate and NC has a duty to reflect their views. Nonsense. Regional media does that. And when such reporting is embellished by leading headlines that carry strong emotive impact without always bearing much resemblance to the story that follows, it’s fair enough to ask the question. Hartigan says “We’re clean”, and that’s hopefully that; but, ironically, here is the heart of the twenty-first century media conundrum. Can we be sure? The institution that rightly holds to account other pillars of society declines to subject itself to the same scrutiny. The question of whether the Murdochs and Brooks knew whether News of the World journalists were hacking into the voicemail of public figures, dead soldiers’ families and terrorism victims, ghastly as the answer may turn out to be, is not the main item here; but it can be easily dealt with. The evidence that has emerged on meetings between editors, politicians and senior police - and the 2007 emails reviewed by Lord MacDonald, with his finding that criminality was “blindingly obvious” - all indicate culpability. They suggest it is inconceivable that a man who has insisted all his life on hands-on management, down to the colour of the last paper clip, could not have known what was going on. This is the proprietor, after all, who in 1969 introduced the world to chequebook journalism by purchasing a story almost directly from Ronald Biggs. Biggs, an escaped criminal, was then on the run in Australia and the Australian police were understandably dismayed, accusing Murdoch’s The Sun of financing Biggs’ subsequent escape. Is it any more credible, then, to think that tools like voice mail interception and arm’s length media friending, once known to journalists, would not find general acceptance? That is why this story will run and run, but even this is not the whole picture. In Australia, the Greens want a wide ranging enquiry into the media. They’re probably driven by a fair amount of moral indignation and perhaps a bit of revenge, but is it so far fetched? Certainly the entertainment media itself needs a good poke. The predictable reality programs, with people humiliated under legal contract before being expelled like school children; the coarse, hateful barking of talk back radio presenters like Alan Jones, masquerading as friend of the people while adding nothing but bigotry to be then milked for their own ratings; the reduction of everything to marketing and cliché, with droning rock music under every vox pop; the specious invitations to “follow us”, "vote now" and “join the conversation”. The late David Foster Wallace would have assured us it’s all quite deliberate – part of the plan to shut up, obey, consume more. Still, this river of drivel dulls the national soul. Let’s by all means have an enquiry into the media. The assertion this week from the man who called The Guardian a cheap little left wing English rag, John Howard, that “there is nothing wrong with the Australian media – just let it do its job” is laughable, though entirely in character. Many reputable Australian reporters were fearing for the future by the early 1970s, when Howard was still wondering when his voice would break. As I write, I have before me photocopies of two articles, both from the same day (May 24 1990) in Murdoch-owned Australian papers. “Murray to Quit After Failed Coup” reported The Australian. “Murray to Stay After Botched Coup” countered the Daily Telegraph, referring to the then deputy premier of NSW, Wal Murray. Attacking the BBC in 2009, and conveniently revealing the limits of his intellect, James Murdoch asserted: “The only reliable, durable and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit”. No prizes for guessing where those values came from, wrote The Observer’s Henry Porter. At least Murdoch senior can do it without a script. Porter goes on to record that it was only the consistent journalistic scrutiny of Nick Davies and his Guardian team that brought the News of the World indignities to light. With none of the global resources of News International, he continued, this demonstrated the “true independence that plurality, not profit, guarantees”. Please consider, Mr Howard. Another item in my souvenirs file is a copy of a DT apology to the NSW government’s waste management and recycling agency, for which I worked in the 1990s. It concerned one of those terrific “fat cat bureaucrats in their ivory towers” stories so beloved of Murdoch hacks and Channel 7. The agency ran a controlled hazardous waste disposal site in western Sydney which a small group of local residents and a couple of others from elsewhere had persuaded themselves was leaking carcinogens. The agency had been contacted by an adjoining landholder expressing astonishment that the DT’s aerial photograph of his farm appeared to have had all his cows photoshopped out, presumably lending credence to the district’s alleged toxicity. It took the agency six months to get the apology, carefully positioned on page thirty-six. It took just two days for another critical front page story to appear. As an interesting footnote the left-leaning complainants, campaigning under the banner ‘Rage’, voiced no concerns about the ethical outrage. "... when private loss and grief become the public property of a global corporation ..." The problem has become endemic in the UK, where the circulation war between the red tops is fierce and merciless. But when, as Gordon Brown noted, people’s most private loss and grief become the public property of a global corporation, corrective action must occur. As another BBC commentator, crime writer PD James, said on Tuesday, it’s now a matter of trust. Trust is the heart of democracy, said Baroness James, and we must now ask if news media as a whole can reliably manage its own standards and practices, or if it must be further regulated? The only problem is that then the medicine becomes a greater evil than the disease. It’s all very well to get high minded about the proper role of the press. Private Eye has been skillfully kicking the ‘the dirty digger’ for years and now that he’s down everyone else wants to do it. But realistically, the news media is in the entertainment business. News entertains. The point is that this is quite compatible with market forces and democratic safeguards. There is nothing wrong with seeking out wrong doing and writing up the exposure in an appealing way. There is everything wrong with it when it employs convicted criminals, invades privacy and diverts police investigations. Notwithstanding the uncomfortable point made by Carl Bernstein, is it really enough to say “This is what the public likes, let’s feed ‘em”? We need a re-set moment. The great Alastair Cooke, the complete journalist, once recalled his visit to students at an American University, when he quizzed a young man on his future aspirations. “I want to be an investigative reporter”, enthused the student. “How about”, replied Cooke, “just a reporter?” the 1969 deal between murdoch, biggs & the met "I just engaged three ex News of the World journalists to retrieve my voice messages - it's so much quicker that way" - Steve Martin ............................................................
The Public House Was The Public Service for The Guardian's "Letter From ..." column july 14 2011 “We’ve evacuated to the pub” the woman laughed into her phone. She’s the publican’s daughter, so she’d know. A lot of us took our cue from her because, for a while, the public house became an essential public service. With power, cashpoints, communications, lighting and heating gone, and mountain top temperatures falling below freezing at night, home wasn’t always the best option. Blackheath’s New Ivanhoe had a generator, gas cooking, steaks, chips, plenty of liquid refreshment. And people. In an emergency, people need people.
Next morning there were enough cars and houses, even a train, crushed beneath falling trees to justify that description. Debris was scattered in the streets, brick walls shattered, cars flattened in streets and driveways. A house near mine, just sold with settlement due two days later, lay grotesquely distorted beneath an enormous pine. Longtime residents, used to the Great Dividing Range’s wild weather, said they couldn’t recall anything worse. It was merely scary the night before but now a sense of shock set in as the implications of a week without power (as the emergency workers were estimating) in freezing temperatures became clear.
Well before that, the real story here became the community. Some years ago, when I wrote a piece for this column following major bushfires, the same theme emerged. Despite its proximity to Sydney this village couldn’t be more different.
But if not unique, it does at least have its own flavour here. In the pub Kerrie, the publican, was inviting everyone to “… come and have a hot shower and charge your phone”. The emergency workers were well fed there, too. Lis offered to lend cash to someone caught without it. “I always keep a little stash for times like this”, she told a stranger. “I live round there, come and see me if you need a loan”. The greengrocer stayed open, giving credit, and the service station somehow found enough candles and batteries.
Just one sour note. Sydney’s Friday evening tourists arrived for dinner and when they’d gone, so had my phone. I’ll take the village life every time.
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In Defence of David Bernstein & The English FA A letter to JH Grondona, Snr Vice President, FIFA june 4 2011 Sir, When you ridiculed the English FA and its Chairman, David Bernstein, following his argument for the postponement of the FIFA Presidential election, you observed amongst other things:
This raises an intriguing question: do certain Argentinean gentlemen of your generation bear an irrational malice towards the United Kingdom and, equally interestingly, does this affect their professional capabilities? In your case, such intemperate statements would have been unwise even if you had achieved the pedigree of a respected playing career. But your disappointments in that regard perhaps explain why your only other means of gaining the attention you seem to need has been through the self-important conceit tolerated in a cocooned world of pseudo-celebrity off-cuts. I hope you will permit a response.
Julio Humberto Grondona - courtesy wikipedia DW Radio went on to actively request its listeners to write directly to the few remaining FIFA sponsors (and named Hyundai and Sony) who hadn’t so far registered public expressions of alarm about FIFA’s corporate culture. The fact that a respected international public broadcaster should make such unequivocal criticisms is a measure of the distress felt by lovers of football around the world at the sorry state the sport finds itself in under FIFA’s governance. Perhaps, then, it is unsurprising that your Wikipedia page is so short, confining itself as it does to just a few lines about your unusual opinions on Jewish people - a little out of date these days, Senor - and your failure to make the River Plate team. There is one respect, though, in which I do wish to congratulate you. Until your Zurich outburst it had been Mr Blatter, almost exclusively, who had made the running in publicising the unique management style of the FIFA machine (it has never been a “family” and those of you who use this contrived marketing term insult the word). Most observers would admit that he did a fine job of illuminating, almost single-handedly, the organisation’s self-serving nature. But now you have spoken out and the matter is confirmed, if there was ever a doubt about it. The only regret is that you, Messrs Blatter, Warner et al don’t seem able to comprehend just how you are perceived by the billions who finance you directly or indirectly. Or you don’t care. Either way, Sir, you stand condemned. So by all means keep the stream of malice flowing, Senor. I think you’ll find that the English FA and its Chairman (whose very distinguished personal contribution to Association Football, I venture to say, would exceed that of almost the entire FIFA executive) will be more than equal to it; and the more you speak out in this way the faster will be the demise of your shoddy, unrepresentative bully-boy organisation, which the real world of football awaits with fervent anticipation. Yours etc ... The Sony Corporation (International Director of Marketing), Minato, TOKYO, JAPAN The Hyundai Kia Auromotive Group (International Director of Marketing), Ulsan, SEOUL, S KOREA
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Writers' Festival Finds A New Level may 21 2011 As is often the case at a thoughtfully structured event – and especially at the Sydney Writers’ Festival (Blue Mountains program) – a theme emerges to create a whole that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The idea that forgiveness can stem from unimaginable adversity – indeed, that in the final analysis there is no option but to forgive – was evident throughout this year’s festival and most notably in the contributions of two outstanding visiting authors.
Izzeldin Abuelaish Abuelaish spoke compellingly through tears for most of his discussion and received a spontaneous standing ovation from an audience deeply moved by his predicament and his generosity of soul. Tom Keneally discussed his impressive body of work and AA Gill’s unashamed political incorrectness managed to offend everyone very charmingly. A session with Humphrey McQueen and Carole Ferrier, chaired by Elizabeth Evatt, paid tribute to the ground-breaking achievements of Eleanor Dark and her literary circle. For the Board and Varuna Chair Lynn Vernon, CEO Lis Bastian, event executive Tessa Hockly and the many volunteers, there could have been no more fitting a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Varuna The Writers’ House – varuna.com.au. ......................................................
Eurovision Is Once Again Peripheral march 16 2011 (with footnote, march 18) The history of western and European culture is striking, as anyone familiar with Lord Kenneth Clarke’s superb television series Civilization would know. In visual art, literature, drama and architecture Europe and ‘the west’ have set the standard since the Renaissance. Their modern history of political cowardice stands in stark contrast to this proud record. The continual abandonment of oppressed peoples taking up arms against tyrants is the particular characteristic of this weakness. Even after Nazi Germany had ravaged Czechoslovakia, Poland and Europe's northern littoral there were those (led by Britain’s Lord Halifax) who were urging rapprochement with Hitler as late as May 1940. As Christopher Hitchens has pointed out in his critique of The King’s Speech, members of the British royal family were among them (that's not a reason to miss this splendid film). Then there was the betrayal of Imre Nagy and the anti-Soviet Hungarian revolution in 1956. Russian Premier, Nikita Kruschev, was initially reluctant to become militarily engaged and may well have been contained by European and NATO resolve. But in early November the revolution was brutally crushed by the Soviets who re-installed the government of Matyas Rakosi and followed up with hundreds of executions. While the Hungarian revolution was coming to a head, in 1955 and 1956, Gamel Abdul Nasser had been redefining Egyptian and Arab nationalism and in July nationalized the Suez Canal. This seemed a much more comfortable proposition for the west, bamboozled by Britain which had in its turn been influenced by the Australian Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, who to put it at its kindest was out of his depth.
Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956
Twelve years later in Prague, Alexander Dubcek went through an almost identical experience to that of Nagy, seeing all his liberal reforms reversed before his train ride to Siberia. It is a fascinating footnote to both these events, incidentally, to ponder why it is that the American right, so vigorously opposed to Communism then and “liberals” now, still cannot grasp the irony of their position. In 1991, America strongly encouraged a series of Shi’ite uprisings in southern Iraq against Saddam Hussein’s government, promising significant aid that never materialized. The revolts demoralized Saddam’s army and triggered a Kurdish revolt in the north. Hussein’s time might have been up and all that followed, with an estimated loss of up to 200,000 civilian lives, avoided. Importantly, the Iraqis themselves would have had ownership of their own affairs. Perhaps that was the problem. As it was, Hussein recovered his position and his vengeance knew no limits. The Kurds were gassed and the established policy of draining the Shia’s southern marshlands, memorably documented by The Observer’s Gavin Young, was intensified. Tens of thousands died unspeakable deaths. In 1992 and 1993, until a late token involvement, the west and especially Europe said and did nothing to stop the systematic Serbian torture, murder and rape of Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which culminated in the revulsion of Srebrenica and a four year siege of Sarajevo, when ordinary citizens were shot by snipers if they went outside for food. Europe has yet to demand the handing over of Ratko Mladic, though Belgrade almost certainly knows where he is. Rwandan genocide, too, acquired tacit permission through western indifference. Now the G8 countries, which include the four major European states, today declined to provide a ‘no fly’ zone in Libya to ease pressure on rebels fighting the vicious regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Yet again, the soft exit was preferred. The issue wasn’t even mentioned in the G8’s closing communiqué. Among the G8, France and the UK are pushing strongly for this commitment, supported by Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd. British prime minister, David Cameron, warned yesterday that the west would not be quickly forgiven if it deserted the Libyans and the Arab League. All now hinges on efforts to accelerate the ponderous UN decision making process. That may come to something, but probably won’t – there are enough voting nations opposed in principle (Russia, China) or worried about practical consequences (USA) to make meaningful military intervention unlikely. However, an enforced ‘no fly’ zone is not an active military engagement like Iraq or Afghanistan. It requires complex deployment but it is a containment, not a strike exercise. Last week, Geoffrey Robertson, the garrulous but eminently qualified London QC, made the case that a legality already exists for NATO or a European nation to impose a no fly zone for humanitarian purposes, should the UN decline. A no fly zone is not cheap to mount but would be far less costly than the $5000 per second that the Iraq war was worth at its peak, and money well spent. The Libyans themselves would then do the hard yards.
Vedran Smailovic, the Cellist of Sarajevo, playing Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor at the city's destroyed National Library, the spot where twenty-two citizens died queuing for bread image Mikhail Evstafiev
In relation to their dealings with the darker side of the Arab world, the increasingly irrelevant Tony Blair and the ever more preposterous Silvio Berlusconi have special cases to answer. Both have been good friends to Gaddafi. Berlusconi personally agreed an exceptionally distasteful deal to ensure black African asylum seekers wound up in Libyan prisons rather than Italian cafés. Any nation is entitled to an honest debate over border policy and Italy is not well placed geographically in this regard; but the private deal carved out by Berlusconi and Gaddafi, protecting Italy's economic and Berlusconi's political interests, extended cynicism into cruelty and had nothing to do with effective management of refugee flows. For his part, in the interests of undisclosed “national security” issues, Blair arbitrarily closed the UK Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into alleged corrupt inducements by the arms company BAE to the Saudi royal family. Apart from the morality involved – and a head of state bombing his own people is no small matter – there is a pragmatic interest. When Gaddafi says he will mount a holy war against the west, he probably means it. Like Robert Mugabe, he has re-invented the horrors inflicted on his own people as some sort of “victim of the west” conspiracy and, like Mugabe, ignores all pretence of logic. Both men are barking and thoroughly malevolent to boot. The departing Libyan foreign minister recently said he had conclusive proof that Gaddafi personally ordered the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie. Last year a close friend of this column, traveling from Australia to Libya on an Irish passport with a pre-paid accommodation and travel package, was refused entry at the border despite carrying all necessary visas. The border guard explained that the supreme commander didn’t feel like letting any Europeans in that week. Someone in Switzerland had said something nasty about him. If the world became a better place for the removal of Saddam Hussein, how could Muammar Gaddafi not be worth the same result? And what will the west say to the legions of young Arabs when they rightly accuse it of intervening without fail in support of its own interests but never in the name of their democracy? As this piece is posted, all the rebels’ gains of the last two and a half weeks have been lost and what may be a final stand is being prepared in Benghazi. The UN is still talking and Lord Clarke, with his practiced eye for life's higher ideals, is surely turning in his grave. footnote 0935 aest, march 18 2011: in a late change of heart the US moved from caution to active support for the Anglo-French position, resulting in the adoption of a UN Resolution (10 for, 0 against, 5 abstentions) authorizing both a no-fly zone in Libya and additional military action against the Gaddafi regime. .......................................................... Taking The Bait march 6 2011 The Prime Minister was wrong to withdraw her comment in Parliament accusing the opposition of “race baiting”. She did so in the heat of the moment and under the implied threat of that feared mechanism of modern shame, political incorrectness. Tony Abbott’s mock distress in conveying how hurt he felt at Gillard’s “low act” of suggesting racial motivations in his party was skillfully done, you have to give him that; but it could not have been more disingenuous. It is, after all, Mr Abbott’s side of politics which is wholly responsible for returning racial rancour to Parliamentary discourse. There are a number of protocols on political no go areas which are well understood in Canberra and on which all parties agree. Capital punishment is one example. Emotional temperatures rise and fall on issues like this but Liberal and Labour agree in their opposition in principle and that’s as far as it needs to go. For a long time, race was another such no go area. Over a period of years, an unwritten understanding was developed on both sides of Australian politics which dictated this was a card neither side would play, for several reasons. It was mainly a recognition that, although in a minority, there are still those who cling to the old foreigner phobias and who, given a forum, will screech them from the rooftops. Pauline Hanson demonstrated this clearly from the start of her brief career in national politics and the cynical John Howard, recognizing that a time would come when this rhetoric would play into his own survival, gave her an implicit green light. When he remarked publicly that she represented a view held by many and declined to dissociate himself from her remarks, the required legitimacy was delivered. Enoch Powell might have said it more elegantly (and with less malice) but the effect was the same here in 1996 as it was in the UK in 1968. "... a bottomless pit of political cunning, and an equally unlimited ignorance of public propriety ..." Another reason for staying away from race was purely pragmatic. Until Howard perceived otherwise, neither side of politics felt it stood to gain much from a race debate which would inevitably sully the tone of public life. If that particular genie was again released so soon after administering the last rites to the White Australia policy, it would be impossible to contain. Howard, with his bottomless pit of political cunning and his equally unlimited ignorance of public propriety, decided otherwise. He was heading for likely defeat in the 2001 election when the MV Tampa sailed over the horizon, and all bets were off. Tampa is history now. The captain of the Norwegian container ship insisted he would be in breach of international maritime law if he didn’t bring the boat people he’d rescued at sea to the nearest port of call, which was in Australia. Howard sent the armed forces to stop him. Australia’s international reputation for fair play and compassion took a hit below the waterline but at home Howard won the election. More recently, Scott Morrison, Mr Abbott’s shadow immigration minister, has questioned the cost of flying asylum-seekers from Christmas Island to Sydney for the funerals of immediate family members. They had witnessed loved ones drowning before their eyes but this didn’t stop the once excellent commercial talk-back station 2GB from running a quiz asking listeners to guess the number of refugee funerals. Such is the nature of this genie. It transpires that Morrison has also urged shadow cabinet colleagues to "reconsider the entire issue of muslim immigration” – as distinct, presumably, from catholic, protestant and jewish immigration. The dour Adelaide senator, Cory Bernardi, further muddied the opposition waters by agreeing with Morrison and claiming “the problem is Islam, not Muslims”. Whatever that meant, the genie is off and running. Since the British National Party’s Nick Griffin publicly urged the sinking of refugee boats calls have been heard in this country for boats and their human cargo to be forcibly turned back to sea and even dispatched to the deep as a deterrent to those who would foul these pristine shores. Fifteen years on from Hanson's maiden speech, Howard has much to answer for. There is a substantial split among the Liberals on this issue and Abbott’s task is not an easy one. But the broad church argument won’t do. He can hardly condone his immigration spokesman and then accuse the PM of poor parliamentary form because she took him to task for it. He has to set a standard for his party – but he won’t. He'll go on sniffing the wind. For Ms Gillard to accuse the opposition of race baiting was not only perfectly reasonable but, in fact, a duty. She could and should have stuck to her guns and pressed the argument home. That she took Abbott’s bait and backed down is yet another measure of her uncertain tenure. ............................................................ Buoying Up The Blokes: I Think I'm Getting An Election march 4 2011 NSW goes to the polls on March 26 and the boys and girls are out and about pressing flesh, kissing babies and, in the process, owning up to one or two rather odd pastimes. The former Premier, Nathan Rees, is anyway. At a Blue Mountains campaign launch, Mr Rees revealed how he and various Parliamentary colleagues amuse themselves in the House when not engaged with Parliamentary business, which appears to be a fair percentage of the time. “We’d write these notes and pass them around and they’d just end up with the recipient anonymously”, he told his audience. “There has to be funny moments (sic) when you’ve got years of experience like us”. So now you know. Fortunately, The Gazette’s man was there to capture the moment and relay to the wider world this rare insight into the play habits of homo politicus nil sapiens. Mr Rees described how, on one occasion, his literary skills were put to a sterner test. A new opposition member, described at the rally as a boofhead from Penrith, received a note ostensibly from his own party leader instructing him never again to select the tie he was wearing in the House. Welcome to politics, see me afterwards. A female opposition member, attired that day in green, received the anonymous message “the magician wants his jacket back”. This is all jolly good fun. I know, because we used to do it in year six. And you have to have something to amuse yourself with on the back benches. But what astonishes most about these admissions is the candour – amounting, in fact, to an open boast – with which the revelation was made public and the justification that was then offered. Are you sitting down? There has to be a place for humour in the workplace, asserted Mr Rees. No place for ordinary old respect, though, it would seem. One wonders if treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, has been the recipient of any witty messages from the former premier. Mr Rees couldn’t resist a public swipe at his colleague, widely assumed to have played a key role in his removal in December 2009. Rees suggested Mr Roozendaal might best contribute to the ALP’s election chances by curling into a foetal position and sitting in a dark corner throughout the campaign. You wouldn’t want to be an enemy of Mr Rees. Many would concede he has good reason to hold a grudge in Mr Roozendaal’s case but fortunately Mr Rees assures us it doesn’t mean he’s not a solid team player. Good heavens, no. "... one waits, sometimes in despair, for this penny to drop ..." Is it any wonder politicians are held in such low regard in this country? I am one of those who believe we should pay our politicians a lot more and have far fewer of them. A country of twenty odd million just doesn’t need a national government, eight state and territory governments and seven hundred and seventeen local governments (about five thousand seven hundred councillors, if one averages eight per council). Most of the things done by Australian state governments are done by local and borough councils in Europe, in countries with up to five times our population. So it would be far better to provide improved remuneration to a national government and regional councils, get rid of the states entirely and attract public servants (which is what they are, don’t forget) of a much higher calibre. One waits, sometimes in despair, for this penny to drop. But paying fewer pollies more is a hard case to make when one reads of pranks like this (even though, when you think about it, it makes the case convincingly); and while Mr Rees might be buoying up his own blokey credentials he’s hardly furthering the cause of parliamentary democracy which frankly needs all the help it can get. Part of the problem, of course, is that as a nation it suits us temperamentally to maintain the stereotype of underperforming pollies on whom to blame everything. But there’s another factor, too. With bullying at epidemic proportions in schools, have Mr Rees and his chums considered the example their back bench sport sets for angry, alienated adolescents looking for some fun? Rees worked hard and honestly when he was Premier. He was shafted good and proper, before his time, by people you wouldn’t ask round for a beer. No doubt about it. Now, perhaps, he feels that with his salary reduced from $311,350 to a mere $130,540 he’s entitled to a bit of child’s play in the House. But even with a healthy margin of 14.5% he may not be entirely safe in his western Sydney seat of Toongabbie and it’s puzzling to see why he feels this new revelation might actually assist his chances. No wonder the crop of new independent candidates is being taken so seriously. ‘boys and girls come out to play’ nursery rhyme .........................................................
The Worm Turns: Can Gillard Survive? feb 27 2011 On June 2 last year this column wondered aloud if Kevin Rudd could survive much longer as Prime Minister and asked how could the ALP dump him, and yet how could they not? Three weeks and a day later, they did. Now, the same problem looms and once again the ALP is doing what it does well – letting its supporters down by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. At the start of Rudd’s government things looked good for at least two terms. Then they picked a super profits tax fight with the miners that was always going to be tough but which, once begun, should have been seen through – it was divisive but perfectly justified and it had enough public support. Next, Rudd’s control trippery got on everyone’s nerves; he abandoned the government’s core promises on climate change, the “great moral issue of our time”; and Julia Gillard knifed him after swearing loyal support. The second thing she did after putting her suitcase down in The Lodge was to water down the resource recovery tax. Whether or not there had been advance discussions between Andrew Forrester’s office and Gillard’s on a tax compromise, should she go for it, we may never know. But she announced the government had lost its way and held a cynically timed early election which included a proposal for a new citizens’ assembly to advise the existing citizens’ assembly (the one called Parliament). Rudd, or a close supporter, immediately leaked hard against her (perhaps with reason). She declared herself to have been a fake and promised to become real again, but no-one could pick the join. Some previous well intended but badly implemented spending initiatives like the home insulation scheme, which involved four industry fatalities, didn’t help. And suddenly it was looking like maybe the other lot was right. Maybe the ALP just wasn’t fit to govern, after all. No wonder that even with a huge majority they couldn’t get back in their own right. Now, an ALP internal inquiry into, in effect, an election defeat has avoided the inconvenience of publicly announcing its findings; government hangs by a thread; and we are fed the line that this is good for us because it means “consensus opportunities” are available. And that would be true if we had the calibre of MP capable of seeing and realizing them. Being Tony Windsor must be a lonely job. Instead, though, everything down to the last paper clip must be negotiated with four independents of vastly different stripe, a lower house Green concerned with legalizing same sex marriage, the Senate Greens (who are four months away from upper house control) and a curiously aligned Western Australian National. New announcements see them lined up behind Julia trying to sound in step, on message and independent. Abbott, meanwhile, opposes everything in varying degrees of poor taste and histrionics (at the nastier end of the scale, the personal attacks on Rob Oakeshott are repellent and un-Australian), and hinting that he expects to be in the Lodge by year’s end. Abbott is a curious phenomenon. Why would such an allegedly nice man – and many on both sides of politics will tell you he’s the definitive good bloke – work so hard at being a tosser? "... tax the banks - the worm will love you for it ..." Any way you slice it, it’s hardly shaping up as the PM’s year of delivery. Much more likely is a year of changed landscape. Gillard has had a personal lift in the polls and her flood levy is supported by about one in two voters. But the party is even more on the nose than at the last election. As Niki Savva observed on ABC TV’s Insiders today, everyone’s talking about Bill Shorten – especially Bill Shorten. He’s telling anyone who’ll listen, apparently, that he may well be leader by year’s end. Another unelected PM? Surely not even the ALP could be that naïve? Don’t put your house on it. Informed journalists assert that Rudd is still beavering away for a comeback and Abbott is pressuring the independents mercilessly, setting up for a confidence vote on the floor against a government he will continually assure us is failing the nation. And now Bob Hawke is on the record (today’s Sunday Age) as saying Gillard’s in trouble and Greg Combet is her natural successor. All the signs were there last June, and they are again. Something’s afoot. Malcolm Turnbull is also beavering. For the moment, government inertia will save Abbott’s bacon. His backbencers have been wondering about him and the coalition has serious problems centered round Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Christopher Pyne and the Liberals’ new motor mouth, Andrew Robb, all jockeying for position. So from Abbott’s viewpoint government sluggishness is just as well, and he would milk it wouldn’t he? But it will make for an interesting year. One might be tempted to say to Ms Gillard “you wanted the job, well here it is…”. But the reality of her position appears increasingly unrealistic and it’s frankly looking difficult for the PM, real or fake version. An awkward personal delivery style inspires some, alienates many; and by all accounts she’s starting to micro-manage à la Rudd. If the country isn’t already wondering whether it can do without the consensus opportunities and just settle for a bit of government by one lot or the other, it can only be a matter of time. In the perception of many, the ALP will go to the next general election having been elected on climate change, having abandoned climate change, having promised no more climate change and then returning to climate change. Here’s a small free kick, Prime Minister. Tax the banks. The worm will love you for it. Prof Mirko Bagaric, Deakin University, on why the banks should be taxed to pay for natural disaster reconstruction (SMH feb 7 2011): ...........................................................................
Bite Sized Politics: Technology Meets Democracy feb 20 2011 “Everything is getting better and better, and worse and worse, faster and faster”. Tom Atlee’s maxim was a fitting epitaph for the 20th century. Twelve years on, the “better and better” is getting harder and harder to find, though the other components of Atlee’s truism are picking up pace all the time. In the first of a series of essays on the digital world, I invite you to consider the effects of the “miracle of technology” on politics. The promise seemed real enough. I remember the day in Newcastle in 1975 when the general manager of the radio station I was working at walked into the production studio and announced that our sister station in Sydney had just acquired a computer. It was called Fred which, we learned, stood for “f***ing ridiculous electronic device”. It played the commercials automatically and this was thought to be a Good Thing, capital GT. “It means in just a few short years”, he promised us, “we’ll all be working from home – two, maybe three days a week at most – with unlimited leisure time and all the wealth we need to enjoy it”. Technology would be the great provider of good fortune for people all over the world. Democracy would be immeasurably strengthened, tyranny just a bad memory. We went on interviewing Angus and Bon. About twenty years later, a BBC survey of UK 18-25 year olds revealed what was coming. Voting, they said, was “something they might consider, if it could be done while checking their morning emails”. In Egypt at the moment, many would see technology as the saviour of freedom, though nothing is certain in the Middle East and that experiment has a long way to run. What seems now to be a pure people’s movement may yet be derailed by less benevolent forces in the Arab world. But Egypt is worth a look. Just over two weeks ago, it was a country where, if you stepped out of line, you hung by the thumbs while you waited for the electrodes. Twitter, Facebook and sms texting, though they were soon disabled, created enough information immediacy for people driven by idealism, not ideology, to act decisively in their own best interests. A truly evil regime was swept away more or less overnight. And it gave them more than the means; it gave them the courage when they needed it most. Technology thus inspired and facilitated a genuine political transformation in a nation subjected to thirty years of brutality. This was, indeed, a Good Thing. But let’s look at Australia, a (relatively) mature democracy where technology has had precisely the opposite effect on the political process. The so-called 24 hour news cycle (ie, the deadline is five minutes ago) means journalists and politicians are expected to ask and answer questions instantly, correctly, convincingly and on message. Since the penalty for failure is nationwide shame, it’s easy to understand why the answers are increasingly bland and evasive. The use of tightly controlled early morning text messaging in election campaigns, moreover, when delivering locations to journalists for that day’s comment and picture opportunities, creates real hostility towards politicians from those who write about them. During the last election a Sydney-based colleague discovered at 5.15 am that she was required to be in Darwin that day and would have to stay overnight. It was a little inconvenient for her family. Tough luck, the plane leaves at seven – three hundred words and a picture by midday. “Um, we’re not sure yet what’s going to be announced”. Your problem. "...bite sized chunks of comfortable, consumer-driven dross ..." What are the results of this re-shaping of our democratic conversation? Well, they’re all predictable enough: transfer of information control to the very people who should be most under scrutiny; a “give it to me, now” consumer mentality amongst voters; comfortable, black and white solutions to complex problems; the cancer of blame-based rhetoric; frustration, cynicism, resentment and sheer fatigue in the media; despair among scientists and health professionals; reduced attention spans all round; lack of follow-up; bad policy (as with Chris Bowen’s decision to send a nine year old orphan directly back to the Christmas Island location of his parents’ death by drowning); focus group- and poll-driven decisions made on the run (as with the Real Julia / Fake Julia embarrassment); and the almost complete by-passing of critical information needed by voters. The last Australian federal election, universally condemned as the most vapid ever, completely ignored looming foreign policy challenges and tough domestic questions. It was a hop on hop off cartoon tour of the suburbs, social sites and shopping malls. How long can democracy survive like this? And if it does take root in Egypt, will it go the same way? Will it resolve itself into the same bite-sized chunks of comfortable consumer-driven dross? Still, it seems, people want more from their politics, even if they’re not prepared to give much to it. As the Sydney Morning Herald’s Phillip Coorey has reported, recent focus groups by JWS Research on Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott (PM and alternative PM, for overseas readers) revealed that the only thing participants wanted to talk about was the Queensland leader, Anna Bligh, and her inspiring leadership in the Queensland floods. It’s difficult to consider technology in politics without placing it in a social context. Why has it enabled instant change in Egypt and reinforced established political tedium in Australia? What if emails, the internet and eBay had come along in the 1950s when people still remembered tough times and weren’t so obsessively inclined towards the new god of materialism? Perhaps it might have been used more responsibly, and less selfishly. Perhaps, in those days, people thought more about what democracy means and how easily it can be lost. What does it mean, just for the record? A big question, yes, but some thought starters might include ideas about which one hears almost no debate nowadays: the balance between rights and responsibilities; the obligations of citizenship; the measured evaluation of ideas and political options, over time, in non-political fora; respect for opposing views. "It’s an awful form of government”, said Churchill (and don’t say “who?”). “The only problem is that all the others are very much worse”. Where’s it all heading, then? As we are seeing in Australia, the private sector will fight hard for complete control of internet infrastructure; and government, in the eyes of many, has forgotten how to govern anyway. This much, incidentally, can be said about the current centre-left administration in Canberra – it may represent all that is awful about the Labour Party but at least it’s attempting to do a few new things, if not communicating them particularly well. No time, perhaps. Is the chilling landscape presented in the 1970s sci-fi film Rollerball really possible? The World CEO in that scenario put it succinctly. “Technology makes everything possible. The corporation gives you everything you could want. All it asks – all it has ever asked – is that you leave the decision making to us”. resilientcommunities.org taoofdemocracy.com tom atlee real julia / fake julia ............................................................. A Flood Of Media Coverage jan 15 2011 The late Brian White, whom many would describe as Australia’s best ever radio journalist, had a simple model for determining whether a story should run and if so for how long. There are three categories of stories, he used to say – important and interesting; important but boring; and unimportant and boring. The first and last were easy to deal with. Category one ran as long as it was interesting, with timed follow-ups later. You didn’t bother with category three at all. If you had a hole to fill, you went out and found something that mattered (category three always recalls fond memories of a story from a local paper I once had to adapt for radio – “Pig hits tree on Gulgong Rd: No-one hurt”). It’s the middle category that presents problems. Relying on levels of training and judgment which are perhaps lacking today, White dealt with it this way – you report what needs to be said, even if it stretches public patience a bit, because that’s a journalist's duty. But you keep the wider audience in mind and when it feels (my italics) that you’re repeating yourself, you give it a break until there’s something new to say. Contrast this with today’s ethic, which seems to be “milk it for as long as they’ll stand it and get the highlight promos on by day two”. So, when to stop – that is the question. Talking to friends and colleagues in recent days, I haven’t met one who wasn’t profoundly impressed by the media’s initial coverage of the Queensland floods. Channel 7’s Sunrise reporting was ahead of the rest. Breakfast coverage with Glen Bartholomew on ABC News Radio was crisp and authoritative. But I also didn’t encounter a single person who wasn’t, by day eight, thoroughly dispirited by the avalanche of website polls, talk back calls, extreme adjectives, Twitter coverage and tales of survival and heroism in the suburbs. SBS alone has got the balance right, leading its evening bulletin with comprehensive analysis of all main developments, anchored well by Kathy Novak in Brisbane. When that’s complete, the channel returns to its reporting of world news. Elsewhere, though, the coverage is now the main game, proving again the adage that the medium, if left to itself, will become the message. At one stage the ABC was running two discrete TV channels of wall to wall coverage, both broadcasting the same signal. This heartbreaking disaster has become a show, a means to create spectacle which, like the boy who cried 'wolf', risks alienating people when there really is something important to communicate. It uses widespread suffering for ratings gains, with one eye – dare this be whispered? – on the Walkley Awards. In short, it demeans television and journalism. "... a rock of leadership, courage and inspiration ..." The first doesn’t matter much because modern television is pretty demeaning anyway. The second, though, is as important today as it always was. No-one would doubt that for the most part reporters and editors have acted with good intentions and, at times, actively helped rescue efforts. And to be fair, today’s journalists are faced with quite unique and often irreconcilable challenges. The luxury of time to review important editorial considerations has vanished. If these views appear churlish, let this be said clearly. Thousands of homes entirely covered by water and filth in a tropical wet season, the destruction of infrastructure and a heartrending death toll amount, of course, to an important story. They arouse fears most of us cannot begin to comprehend. Apart from the horrors in rural Queensland, the heart of a developed first world city has been deluged. Yes, the over-reported "Aussie Spirit" of generosity and organization in tough times can be heroic (as it can everywhere else) and will make this catastrophe less damaging in the long. And it absolutely must be acknowledged that Premier Anna Bligh has provided a rock of leadership, courage and inspiration that will get people through this awful experience. That was evident from day one. You could go on forever, if you wished, with the tales of survival and heroism. But psychologists warn of the damaging effects of over-reporting traumatic news. The inundation itself has become a metaphor for an equally indiscriminate flood of news coverage. So it’s time to say well done and thanks to the media. You did it well. But how about some editorial perspective now? And how about applying all this undoubted expertise to some of the other things going on in the world?
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Remember Man That Thou Art Dust jan 7 2011, 10.30 am As this piece is begun, on the final morning of the fifth Test in Sydney, the Ashes are secure in England’s possession, the phone is beeping with midnight sms messages from England and an early rain break is encouraging a final Australian surge of defiance, helped by time off the field and a damp ball that has stopped swinging for the moment. The Barmy Army is singing (to the tune of Yellow Submarine) “Your Next Queen is Camilla Parker-Bowles etc”. By the time this piece is finished, England may have secured a well deserved third victory by an innings; but Australia, with three wickets in hand and the prospect of more rain, may be on their way to grinding out a draw.
Siddle and Smith run from the pitch during a 5th day Sydney rain break pic courtesy sydney morning herald
Despite the skill gap between the two sides this is test cricket at its finest, right down to the wire. It’s just what the game needs in this age of crass commercial intrusion into all professional sports, and especially this one. The fact remains, though, that Australian cricket is at a low point which may take some years to repair. To some extent it is an inevitable cycle but serious selection mistakes have also been made. In hindsight, these are all too clear but they were publicly articulated during the series by respected analysts like Kerry O’Keefe and Peter Roebuck. Geoffrey Boycott canvassed them, at characteristic length. The criticisms extend to the selectors; it’s easy to be critical of players but when belief and balance have gone it’s hard to perform at the top level and it’s been clear from early in the first Test in Brisbane that over five matches England would be the better side, and the better directed side. This proved to be the case in every department of the game and Roebuck goes further in his press and radio comments today. England’s performance has been strengthened by the determined objectives of Geoff Miller, Ashley Giles, the other English selectors and team director, Andy Flower. Their strategic clarity has been realized on the field by batsmen with depth and demeanour and bowlers who have worked hard to extract movement from an Australian Kookaburra ball that Johnson and Hilfenhaus couldn’t find. The Australian selectors, Roebuck insists, must not escape accountability. They were generous to maintain faith in Michael Clarke, whose poor batting has been obscured by speculation about his potential captaincy. That debate should now be put to bed; he’s not the man for the job and his failure with the bat over three series makes even his place in the side problematic. Ponting, on the other hand, remains in the mix. Just. His injury will heal and no one can doubt his mental strength, though his tactics are open to question and his temperament can still run away from him under pressure. Spare a thought for Ponting. His third Ashes Series loss, a bitter blow, and his effective standing aside as captain for this game should never obscure his unsurpassed contribution to Australian cricket. The real selection quandary in August, in fact, may come down to Hussey or Ponting at number seven for the Sri Lanka tour. O’Keefe has this morning named a hypothetical eleven for August which abandons Clarke, Mitchell Johnson and other established players in favour of a new and younger make-up that includes the South Australian off spinner, Nathan Lyon. O’Keefe’s rationale is that Lyon is the first spinner he’s seen for a long time who can really drop the ball. He and Roebuck agree that Australian selectors must make way too, and O’Keefe is suggesting the inclusion of Greg Shipperd and the vastly respected Stuart Clarke, now nearing the end of his playing career. Clarke must not be lost to the future of Australian cricket, argues O’Keefe. The new ball has been taken. Siddle and Hilfenhaus are out. Mid morning, and there’s a wicket to go.
11.56 am, England celebrates pic courtesy the guardian
Roebuck would immediately play the Australian team a video of the current series in South Africa, he says, citing the majestic contest between Dale Steyne and Sachin Tendulkar, and the incomparable batting prowess of Jacques Kallis. This is the level that test cricket is played at, he says, adding that the Australians have not reached it in this series. It’s tempting to suggest this is due to the intrusions of 20/20 cricket but similar accusations were made when Kerry Packer introduced professionalized 50 over cricket; and it must be remembered that India, which inaugurated 20/20, is also the number one test side. 20/20 certainly poses a greater risk to test cricket than the now respectable 50 over game; but it’s more likely that Australia, too used to winning for too long, were simply on the psychological defensive all summer. Their opponents were a side brimming with unexpected skill, purpose and a modest confidence that never approached the arrogance associated with many years of Australian supremacy. There have been moments in the series which confirm that Australia is not out for the count but some uncomfortable decisions must now be made. In the long run this can be a positive experience for Australian cricket and when it re-emerges, as it will, the old haughtiness is unlikely to survive. They have the capacity and talent to re-build and it may not take as long as some fear. But this is England’s day. The final wicket has now fallen at 11.56 am, Australia is defeated by an innings & 83 runs and England takes the series 3-1, inflicting three defeats by an innings. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The follow-up on radio talkback from Australian listeners is generous to a fault about the English victory. Sport needs this. england wraps it up in style - the guardian wake up call for australia - sydney morning herald
Previous Pictures At An Exhibition: new media 2 - dec 22 2010 Take a hypothetical scenario. Part one. You are the CEO of a flourishing company which last year defended itself against an allegation by a seventeen year old girl that one of your staff assaulted her .... more What Wikileaks Tells Us - new media 1 - dec 10 2010 Welcome to the new media. Everything has changed. Or, if you prefer, it’s the same old circus, it will all blow over. Relax, obey and consume. Everything’s ok ... more FIFA Fails The Fair Play Test - dec 4 2010 Sooner or later, FIFA will have to answer the charges of favouritism and financial corruption, said Marcus Rubinstein on this evening’s SBS news. Unfortunately, as things stand now, nothing could be less likely ... more It's Price Gouging, Plain and Simple - nov 4 2010 As retiring NSW MP Phil Koperberg recently observed, speaking to both the Blue Mountains Gazette and the ABC’s Stateline, electricity prices are rising three times faster than CPI. “We’re being had”, he said ... more Cartoon Capers - aug 20 2010 NASA administrators are reported to be considering sending trainee astronauts to Australia to see if they can survive a month and a half locked up in a federal election campaign ... more Transport For The Clever Country - aug 4 2010 Dear Candidates for Macquarie I write to ask each of you to make regional transport an immediate priority issue in the forthcoming federal election, as the first step towards achieving a genuine national transport infrastructure suitable for a developed nation in the 21st century ... more World Cup 2010 june 11 - july 14, full reports (original .mht pages with pix and links emailed on request) world cup 1 (fabio grosso) world cup 2 (the jabulani ball) world cup 3 (aust vs germany) world cup 4 (foster turns on verbeek) world cup 5 (foul play, it's the usual suspects) world cup 6 (fifa fouls it up) world cup 7 (group stage: rounds 1 & 2 retrospective) world cup 8 (au revoirs) world cup 9 (the round of 16) world cup 10 (the quarter finals) world cup 11 (the semi finals) world cup 12 (the 3rd / 4th playoff) world cup 13 (the final) world cup 14 (the wrap, the media, the cheats hall of fame, tournament quotes) Your Homework For The Next Four Years: there was a Kaka, a Gaka and a Cacau at this tournament. Find a Lithuanian and ask him what it means. Can Rudd Survive? - june 2 2010 As of this morning, the main game in Canberra must surely be “when will the ALP give Kevin Rudd the flick, and will he go quietly?” ... more Truth In Christmas Cards - may 22 2010 Not an especially convincing minister in a media scrummage (and therein probably lie the seeds of his downfall), Transport Minister David Campbell was generously described as diligent and dedicated by his Premier, Kristina Keneally, after he resigned on Thursday evening following Channel 7’s clandestine film showing him leaving a Sydney gay sauna club ... more Lessons From The British Election - may 13 2010 Why is the election of David Cameron of more than passing interest – even of qualified enthusiasm – for those whose politics have usually leaned the other way? Disregard the fact that his conservatism is not the traditional high Toryism we’ve come to know and dislike ... more Two Rare Talents - april 20 2010 I’ve long been an admirer of Kerry O’Brien, presenter of the nightly ‘7.30 Report’ on Australia’s ABC1. But it was not until his recent conversation with President Barack Obama that I realised the full extent of his enormous talent ... more Gillard & 'My School' - april 17 2010 There have been some remarkable adjustments in Australian political landscapes lately. The party of market based solutions changed leaders last December over its instant enthusiasm for regulating carbon emissions ... more Glittering Prizes and Brilliant Careers - april 7 2010 After six years, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull yesterday abandoned his ambitions for Australia’s top political position, announcing his intention to relinquish the Sydney seat of Wentworth. For a while, when his recent offer to return to the front bench was rebuffed, it seemed ... more Abbott's Three Strikes: But Is He Out? - mar 26 2010 Seldom do new political leaders drop the bundle quite so quickly as Tony Abbott, Australian opposition leader since December 8. But Mr Abbott seems to have accomplished a comprehensive reversal ... more The 'Henson Saga': Seconds Out, Round 2 - oct 9 2009 The Sydney Morning Herald, on its October 6 front page, reports the “Bill Henson Saga”. It came as a surprise that there was, in fact, any such a thing as a saga running over this matter. To all intents and purposes, it had seemed ... more Zimbabwe: Time For Thabo To Lead, Or Leave - june 17 2008 On a continent famous for many outstanding statesmen, there have been some truly unpleasant leaders in Africa. Malawi’s Hastings Banda and Uganda’s Idi Amin Dada are archetypes. Yet, the regime of Robert Mugabe remains a casebook study in tyranny ... more Art, Police and the Suburbs - may 30 2008 Dear Prime Minister I have advocated your leadership of the Labour Party for many years. Like you, I live by Christian values, or try to. I worked locally for your election victory and on election night I eagerly anticipated a new, principled and enlightened national direction ... more Liberating Burma - uk guardian weekly letters may 23 2008 The Burmese military had three days' warning of an extreme cyclone, certain to cause huge loss of life, and decided not to warn its people. It then did nothing ... more The Vision Splendid - oct 7 2007 Sometimes, it seems we were all away the day they did imagination. Recently on ABC Local Radio a call-in segment asked listeners to outline their sixty second grand vision for the nation. There’s an election due any week now, apparently ... more ................................................... "The euphemisms will wear themselves out in time. Stick to the words" David Marr "Stick to the point and the words will come" Cato
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She styles herself an "archetypal symbolist" – this is her fourth show on this theme. Her worn out corporate monoliths invariably clutch briefcases limply by their sides. Water laps against expensive designer shoes. Comb-overs fly wearily in the breeze.
Conflict - The Trillium Way
A resource for business enrichment
in northern twilight the day’s last ferry 
rain puddle on rusty seat
a short span of water, 
Changes
As policing manpower and services throughout the world are cut (except in China), these riots and the ones to come will inevitably generate calls for greater police and security powers. They herald a much more abrasive approach to public order, and the passive acceptance of this by rising generations, effectively conditioned to satisfy material consumption before cultural growth, suggests that these inroads into civil rights will continue.
The French assertion on Sept 12, 2001 that “We are all Americans today” didn’t last long but today America still deserves our gratitude, understanding and sympathy on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. 
And this is all before we even consider the media and technology. Once, the word used to mean how an engine was built or how a satellite was inserted into earth orbit. Now it signifies how much immediate gratification you can get with the click of a mouse. It is seen as a Good Thing and questioning it on any level has become not only futile but politically incorrect. And yet surely it must be questioned and, if possible, slowed and managed.
The winds hit suddenly, mid-afternoon on the Tuesday, and by nightfall had reached a frightening intensity. Compared to what people in America and the Australian state of Queensland have been through recently, this wasn’t a major catastrophe. But it was bad enough and might have been worse but for good fortune and good community. Wind speeds officially reached 140 kph, some thought a bit more. Hurricane strength starts at 118 kph. 
The isolation was compounded by the media’s failure to grasp what had happened. Just a hundred kilometres away, the ABC’s self-appointed emergency services station was reporting local traffic delays and the likely absence of TV football coverage (which hardly mattered, since it was showing in the pub). There were plenty of dramatic pictures of the tree on the train but it was Friday before metro media really grasped what people had been through. 
During the Queensland floods the media, as they always do, made much of the “defining Australian spirit of self-reliance and generosity under duress”. A number of courageous academics and one journalist, Jon Faine, said then that yes, it’s true up to a point, but hardly unique. Communities everywhere help each other in times of trouble. 
By Friday, inside the pub, we were enveloped by sms sounds from clusters of charging phones. Outside it was chainsaws, helicopters and sirens. Power was coming back and it could have been worse. A local paraglider had flown five hours to Mudgee, we learned. “I’ll miss this”, said Kerrie wistfully. “It’s been fun with all the people coming in”. 
Leaving the English media aside it was, in fact, Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle Radio, that summed up matters best on June 4 when it reported (and I quote) that “… over the last seven months, FIFA has had four executive committee members suspended with another seven under investigation; the 2018 and 2022 World Cup decisions ignored strong bids from USA, England and Australia in favour of countries long on petrodollars but short on human rights […and in so doing introduced the novel idea of playing a World Cup tournament in Qatar’s forty degree plus July heat …]; and in the presidential election allowed the Big Boss to bump off an upstart to prevent further damage to himself”. 
The Scottish-Sierra Leonean novelist, Aminatta Forna, discussed her Memory of Love, winner of the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, which graphically illuminates the cruelties inflicted on her African homeland; and the Palestinian obstetrician, Izzeldin Abuelaish, who witnessed his wife, three daughters and a niece killed by an Israeli tank shell, spoke of the belief he expounds in his book I Shall Not Hate that forgiveness contains all the answers ever needed. 
The decision to take on Nasser made it easy not to look too closely at unfolding events in Hungary. But it was hopelessly mismanaged. Britain and France were humiliated by overwhelming international pressure to withdraw. Moscow’s hold over eastern Europe, meanwhile, which could have been dealt a crippling blow at this time, would continue for another thirty-four years. 
In fact, the unrest in the Arab world could, with clear and resolute support from the west and a modicum of humble pie, be turned to real advantage. It would generate badly needed moral authority for the west; many brave lives would be saved in Libya and possibly elsewhere; and a lunatic and his sycophantic family would be removed from power. The alternative may not necessarily be a radicalized Islamic entity, armed with nuclear weapons and a grudge against the west, stretching from Morocco to Pakistan, including states like Libya and Iran that have fostered terrorism and committed atrocities on their own citizens, and controlling most of the world's oil. But it could be, and that hardly bears thinking about.
Siddle is batting with Smith, and the differences between the real game and the cartoon pop-up are patently clear. Siddle has worked hard to regain his position in the side and has not even considered his worth on the obscenely inflated Indian 20/20 market. Smith remains unproven but the two are digging in more effectively than the higher order batsmen.
The quality of O’Keefe’s insight and analysis has been a highlight of this Ashes series. Roebuck, too, seldom pulls the wrong rein and they both say the uncomfortable things that cricket’s establishment dislikes hearing. O’Keefe himself would make a splendid selector though he probably enjoys his radio commentaries far too much.