speaking of errors of judgment...

PRIME Minister John Howard attended an intimate fundraising lunch with a violent Brisbane pornographer, who was facing charges of torture and grievous bodily harm at the time, in the lead-up to the 2004 federal election.

flog spot

I was a bit taken aback last night to come across the following paragraph while reading my son a Thomas the Tank Engine library book (Bertie's Chase by the Rev. W. Awdry, 1995 reprint of 1954 edition):

The two naughty boys were soon caught by the Police, and their Fathers walloped them soundly.

I'm not into corporal punishment, so I didn't bother to read that bit out. If you're wondering what the boys' crime was, they'd been playing "on the footplate; they tumbled off when James [the train] started. I shouted at them and they ran like rabbits." Gee, what delinquents. Nothing like inflicting a bit of pain to sort them out though, eh?

standing corrected

How embarrassing watching John Howard on the news scratching his head as to why the punters are deserting him. He seems so pathetically clueless.
I reckon Howard made two fatal unforced errors in recent years that will be his undoing. First, for the sake of the party and to avoid inevitable Howard-fatigue, the PM should have quit while he was ahead. His vanity led him to refuse to gracefully hand over the leadership to Peter Costello, which was basically a vote of no-confidence in his sidekick. After all, despite the strength of the economy and Liberal claims that this success is directly attributable to the Treasurer‘s brilliant management over a decade, the PM was indicating he believed Costello still couldn‘t be trusted to run the country. And once Rudd replaced Beazley, the case for Costello is even more obvious. The advantage for Howard personally, of course, is that his "legacy" would’ve been to some extent protected, with Costello having to bear the brunt of any election defeat.
Secondly, despite running on a platform of having so wonderfully managed the economy and prevailing over such good times, Howard introduced risk into the mix with his radical IR reforms. This is the dealbreaker, in my opinion; the thing that results in the public saying to Howard, "Thanks very much for apparently not screwing up the economy too much while you were in charge. But actually, we’d like to try and keep things how they are, so let’s not tinker with something as unpredictable as crazy-brave IR reform at this stage. Sorry, mate, but so long and thanks for all the fish."
And now, post-Burke, the public is surely--understandably--asking itself: why the hell does the PM seem to care more about Brian Burke than global warming or the failed foreign policy experiment in Iraq?

Elsewhere, in the mainstream press: Christopher Pearson reading tea leaves trembling legs (hey, Christopher, maybe he just needed to pee?); George Megalogenis confirming my suspicions that the strength of the economy could prove to be a headache for the Government; and Dennis Shanahan suggesting ‘morality politics’ is a dangerous game for politicians because the truth will out; and that it ultimately leads to voter dissatisfaction with politics. (I think I disagree. Seeing allegations of corruption brought to the surface and defended (or not) will surely give the public more confidence in the remaining body of politicians, even if a few bad apples are rolled away. Even if people get mightily sick of the sledging when it is used as a method of drowning out genuine policy debate, as seen lately, the net result is still greater transparency on both sides, and voters have got to be happy about that.)

Burkewatch:
Oh my god! My son has met Brian Burke! My son must resign! Oh, hang on, sorry...that's just Opa Luis (left, with Harley’s other grandpa Lionel, who sadly passed away last year).

signs you may have been sellingtoo much on eBay lately

While patting the cat:
“I love Fuzzle, Mum.
“That’s nice, dear.”
“I don’t want to sell him.”

pretty fruity

Also, gleefully shouted out yesterday in public:
“Mama Gianna, the big banana!”
Made me blush but laugh.
Ah, first puns. That’s my boy.

surfing the road

As I mentioned the other week, I’ve recently started contributing posts to Tim Dunlop's Road to Surfdom. Tim and Jozef were the first bloggers I ever read, thanks to their links at Margo Kingston’s original Webdiary, and I was immediately inspired to start my own. Tim has been something of a blog mentor over the years and I appreciate him now giving me the opportunity to write for Surfdom.
Since I’m not crossposting, I’ll just put a link up whenever I post there (and comments are working fine at Surfdom...). So far I've posted the following:
* The duffer's ABC
* Pretender to throne caught pretending
* Saving us...money
* Pulpit fiction

friday catblogging:one mean cat on the telly

"So, who looks meanest, me or Mark Vaile?"

muse this

My contribution to blogging for International Women’s Day is related to Helen’s great post at Surfdom.


In today's Essential lifestyle supplement to the Sydney Morning Herald, the cover story was a reverential discussion of fashion designers and their muses ("Creature of couture", Kellie Hush; not available online). Uncritically, the paper notes:

[Calvin Klein's] head was the first to turn for this relatively unknown 18-year-old model [Kate Moss].
"She had this childlike woman-like thing...It’s a kind of sexiness that I think is very exciting."

Yeah, you and Humbert Humbert.
Why the fashion industry--including the fashion media industry--continues to give Klein so much positive mainstream oxygen is the question. Coincidentally, just the other day I stumbled across some particularly creepy advertising of Klein's, featuring in a roll-call of worst ever marketing campaigns. Corporate paedophilia, anyone?

two for one

Ah, hell. I just spent the better part of the evening entering links into a new!improved!blogroll in my new!improved!Blogger template, and now it's generously providing two of each link. What is this, Noah's blogroll? So I now have to go back and manually delete fifty links? Stuff it. I'm going to bed.
Updating my blogroll reminded me of how many fantastic writers and thinkers are out there but unfortunately it also gave me a bit of politics fatigue. In fact I think I'll go berserk if I have to hear or read the name Brian Burke ever again. (Argh! I'm going berserk!*).
By the way, I am also struggling to figure out how to put Haloscan comments back into the new template. If you have any advice, could you please email me?

(*Incidentally this is a favorite line of my son's. He runs around shouting either "I'm going serk!" (berserk) or "I'm out of troll!" (control). Ah god, he warms my cockles.)

update Blogroll fixed. Still working on incorporating comments facility again.

bishop's pawns

Just now over Adele Horin, I choked on my toast.

The big problem is not whether we have too little narrative in history and too much critical analysis, or study too many movies in English and too little Shakespeare. It is not even that students moving states have to adapt to different curriculum demands, although that is tough. The big problem is the educational divide between the haves and have-nots. The Federal Government will not talk about it because its funding policy for private schools has exacerbated the divide. Labor won't talk about it - not after Mark Latham's "hit list" of elite schools went down so badly last time.

Course she's right, I realised. A national curriculum is essentially irrelevant when the achievement gap exists for socioeconomic reasons. So I've fallen right into the trap of engaging with the Liberal Party's strawman on education! Horin puts her finger on the real areas of crisis:

What is needed is a serious commitment to early intervention programs and to free preschool in disadvantaged areas, extra school funding and specialised teachers for low-achieviing students to help them meet state - or national - curriculum standards.

And I'd really like to see Bishop's truthful answer to this statistic from Horin:

Despite the impression the Federal Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, gives of poor national academic attainment, our students on average are high performers. Comparing results in 27 OECD countries, our 15-year-olds on average ranked second in literacy, sixth in mathematics, and fourth in problem-solving in international tests taken in 2000 and 2003.

Horin's right, it needs to be reframed. It's about the need to compensate for disadvantage.

The Coalition cannot get away with claiming curriculum is a national issue but funding schools to meet the challenge is a state matter. Labor must acknowledge many private schools are overfunded and many public schools are underfunded. It does not mean you need a "hit list". It does mean policies and resources should favour the long tail of underperformers, and start in poor communities from a child's birth.

Still, it's hard not to engage with the Government's ideological attacks on teaching. I feel they are based on absurd arguments that need to be challenged.
So back to my toast...

friday chicken blogging

Two kids wandered by this morning carrying a chicken. They were looking for a home for it, as their mother had refused to let them keep it and, they said, had threatened to take it down to the Mission and throw it to the dogs. So I called my parents. They already have about twenty fowl, but they said they were on their way. I fed Lucky the chicken some grapes, bread crusts and brown rice, but she turned up her beak at fresh coriander leaves. She complained a little between bites. I didn‘t blame her; she‘d had a tough time of it so far.
I hoped the fragrant herbs in her box would help mask the stench of the cat which watched with slitted eyes from a patch of shade beyond the screen door, far too lazy to investigate further.
I can’t help thinking how Lucky has no idea what kind of a wonderful life is in store for her, at the other end of her terrifying, but mercifully brief, journey in the back of Opa's silver van...

hey, minister, leave our kids alone!

Having watched the education debate on the 7:30 Report on Wednesday night, I agree with Anne Patty writing in today's Sydney Morning Herald that what is still very murky is the issue of content.
As you’d expect, both Bishop and Smith quoted supporting statistics and denied each other’s. Viewers were left confused about whether or not Federal funding of unis has in fact decreased, and whether unis are now more reliant on private funding than before. It seems that Labor’s stance on education is 'you have to spend money to make money if you want graduates who are globally competitive'. Whereas the Liberal Party’s credo seems more like, 'use money as a weapon to extract certain ideological outcomes in Oz'.
Most reasonable people can appreciate the arguments for a national curriculum and luckily it has bipartisan support. Who would really deny that to try to improve literacy and numeracy is a good thing? Who would disagree that lifting standards and improving quality are positives? Such vague appeals to common sense can't disguise the fact that the real game is about maintaining oppressive and punitive relations with the States for political and ideological reasons.
Bishop reiterates her threat,

"What I’m going to do is take a proposal to the Education Ministers’ meeting in April and if I cannot get cooperation on a national curriculum, I will tie it to funding."

So do State education ministers just have to give in-principle go ahead to the basic idea of a consistent national curriculum or do they have to sign on the dotted line endorsing the Howard Government’s favored model there and then? Imposing sanctions may well punish recalcitrant State governments but perhaps it's the students who pay the price in the end.
The big meeting takes place next month, well before the comparative data is released next year. Pre-empting the research, Bishop promises the data will show significant qualitative differences between the States. Well, let's wait and see before rushing out and reforming ourselves stupid. Surely it makes more sense to await the results of the national comparative data next year and for everyone to get to take a really good look at it to determine which models and which content works best? Why the rush job?
Inexplicably, the Liberals seem to frown on competition between States, and differences are seen as something that must be artificially ironed out. This is in contrast to Labor's support for consistency for what appear to be more practical reasons (eg. labour force mobility).
The critical question for me is about curriculum content and this Bishop neatly skates over without providing any detail. Kerry O'Brien raised as an example the teaching of Australian history. Here Bishop replied, "It [her curriculum] is much broader than just the narrative". Are we really supposed to believe they are going to allow the teaching of critical thinking to continue? For me, anyway, that's the little red flag right there, the philosophical crux of the question of content. In talking about the narrative, Bishop betrays her Government's denial of postmodern pluralism, and its desire to see the simplistic teaching of a single approved narrative.
As 'proof' of a crisis in education, Bishop claims high schools are failing kids but later she seeks credit for the fact that more kids are attending uni than ever. How can that be, if there is such a decline in literacy and numeracy standards?
Anyway, it will be interesting to get a detailed look at the Government's proposed curriculum models, that's for sure. And until then, it's just politics.

mood for change

I’m about to mess with my site for a bit as I attempt to import the new Blogger template and do a bit of maintenance/rejigging while I‘m at it. Meantime, sorry for any outages or odd moments.

border lines

I'm so jealous of those of you who could go see Anna Broinowski's doco on Norma Khouri, Forbidden Lie$, which premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival the other night. Anyone see it? Still, maybe the film will just happen to be showing in Sydney in May, as I'm heading there for a girlfriend's wedding, and to go along to the Sydney Writers Festival to hear my sister's good mate Suzanne Leal talk about her book "Border Street".
(I won't hold my breath for Broinowski's film to make its way up to Porpoise Spit...)
Might try to hook up with some Sydney bloggers then, too; if anyone's interested, let me know.

Mountain comes to Mohammed update: Ah, but I see in my local paper that the Beatels are gonna be playing Porpoise Spit on March 30. See you there, Ringo baby! Talk about the long and winding road...

good things come in threes

Happy birthday, handsome.
Love, mum.

lie, and think of england

It doesn't make sense to me. If the south of Iraq is stable enough that the British troops are considered to be surplus there, but Baghdad and other parts of Iraq are a hellhole in desperate need of a surge, then why aren't the suddenly spare British troops being redeployed to assist the Coalition's surge? Why endorse a reduction in the Coalition force by 5,000 soldiers at the same time as you are 'augmenting' it by 20,000? And are we really expected to believe that the Allies can now go ahead and unfurl a "Mission Accomplished" banner in Basra while other parts of Iraq remain out of control? What's to stop all the terrorists and insurgents relocating to the South once Baghdad gets too hot to handle?
Kerry O'Brien tried to get an answer from the Foreign Minister as to whether or not the British 'reduction' is known to the Australian Government to be part of a phased withdrawal and Alexander Downer deflected the question by saying 'Well, everyone in the Coalition has an exit strategy'. But O'Brien wasn't asking if the British had a vague open-ended exit strategy, he was asking specifically if it was a 'phased' withdrawal. Because the implications of it being 'phased' are obviously that it is time-based, rather than conditions-based, as Downer would have us believe.
So, are Downer and the Australian Government aware of the mooted timeline of the British exit strategy? Or are their office staff helpfully keeping sensitive information like that from them, in the time-honoured Howard Government fashion?

the daisy thief

I used to baulk at getting flowers. Now I am touched to be given fresh daisies several times a week. He likes me to put them in a small green espresso cup on the kitchen table. There are not many daisies left on the sidewalks of our neighborhood.



He's nearly picked off the entire garden at his preschool too, and it seems they've finally asked him to stop helping himself. "Jenna said no more flowers," he observed nonchalantly the other day as we walked home from school. After he'd just ripped off another giant white daisy on the way out the school gate.

watercolourgate

A fence to write home about with. This must be where the Derwents live. Unless it's the Fabers' castle? Somewhere on the writers' block anyway.

(Stumbled across here.)

the sound of silence: kerrching!!

Last night I saw an ad on telly from one of those mobile ringtone companies. This time it was advertising a silent ringtone. Yeah, silent. They said, it rings at a frequency most people can't hear! They said, get the ringtone now and see if you and your friends and family can hear it! Damn clever marketing, doncha think? It's so clever I think I might just have to adapt it for my own money-making purposes. So, available for purchase right now, my very first novel...printed in invisible words! Buy now and see if you can read it!
I guess the kind of people who would buy a silent mobile ringtone are the kind of people who would buy an air guitar.

suspicious minds

I agree with Cardinal Pell that on climate change, "the science is more complicated than the propaganda!" It's certainly more complicated than Pell's own propaganda.

"The evidence on warming is mixed, often exaggerated, but often reassuring. Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one fifth of a degree centigrade per decade."

That reassures him? That the globe will have warmed by a whole degree in just fifty years? When it only took a few degrees difference to bring on an ice age?

"We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible."

I'm trying to follow his logic: When humans weren't around, they obviously couldn't have caused climate change. Therefore, even though now they are around and have clearly changed the planet somewhat from the time of Noah, they still can't have caused climate change. Hmmmm...okay!
It's bizarre to me that Pell preaches having faith in a mythical deity despite there being absolutely no scientific evidence for the existence of such a creature, and yet he preaches denial of climate change in the face of abundant scientific evidence.

"I am deeply skeptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence."

Funny, whenever atheists ask for evidence, we are told all we need is faith.

"What we were seeing from the [climate change] doomsdayers [is] an induced dose of mild hysteria, semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition."

That's a bit rich. One of the country's leading purveyors of one particular brand of superstition, lecturing everyone else about superstition?
I guess if you believe that a God created the world in seven days, you probably think He can fix it in seven days too. And that way, you don't have to take any responsibility or do anything to attempt to fix it yourself--except maybe just pray a bit harder.

ps. Pell might find this story enlightening.

arguments that don't hold water

"Merde," Morris Iemma might've thought to himself on reading Ken's post at Surfdom after the televised debate on Friday night (which I didn't get to watch). It's curious that Iemma might lose Labor votes because of his water policy, but on the other hand the conservative Miranda Devine comes out swinging at Debnam.
While I can see Ken's point, I'll still vote for Iemma. A win for Debnam would be ecstatically claimed by Howard as a defacto win for WorkChoices, in the same way that conservative journalist Imre Salusinszky interpreted a potential Iemma win as a defacto loss for WorkChoices. So I hope the water issue doesn't lose too many 'lefties'.
The only comforting thing about the possibility of a 'Premier Debnam' is that if the checks and balances/counterbalance theory works, then if NSW voters switched to Debnam, you'd expect them to be more likely to dump Howard.(Maybe this is why Howard has seemed so lukewarm about Debnam lately, despite early indications that he would be invading state politics to help liberate voters from Labor.) I guess if a vote for Debnam ultimately translates to a vote for Rudd, that's okay with me...
Contrary to the counterbalance theory though, voters might actually find it a relief to see the states able to work co-operatively with federal government, rather than be competitive adversaries as the Liberals have characterised the relationship between the states and Canberra. So it's not inconceivable that Rudd could get in despite the supposed liability of there being so many Labor-run states. Or rather, because of it.
The Liberal Party probably doesn't even care if it wins state elections anymore--far easier for Canberra to just appropriate state powers instead. Peter Costello was interviewed in The Weekend Australian ("Public wants us in charge: Costello"; story is not available online). He claimed that "The public sees the commonwealth as a more competent administrator than the states...People take the view that because the commonwealth is more competent, it should involve itself in more areas, and you can understand that." He offers not a skerrick of evidence in support of there being such a 'public view'. Cynical voters might even suspect the federal Liberals would not be quite so desperate to wrest power from the states if the state premiers happened to be Liberal. Truth is, the Liberal Party does care about the states, but it can't show it, and so it has no choice but to press on with Plan B (the power pushes).
Costello's argument is that the states should be demoted to having only a role of "service delivery" rather than any executive role. The Australian describes this as the Liberals' "twin federalism push" (water and health) but we all know of at least one more push that's looming large: education. The paper's editorial even laments that Howard is not more aggressive on that one. But Howard's just biding his time, lining up all his ducks.
Ultimately, it's one thing to want to make federalism work more efficiently (Rudd's pitch), but the fact remains that if voters really wanted Liberals holding state powers then they wouldn't have repeatedly elected Labor premiers.

Updated:- After hearing about John Howard today announcing more funds for schools maintenance, I have to think that he is likely to shelve any attempt at big ideological reforms in education until after the election. If he wins, he will argue he is mandated to implement the grander (and more disturbing) reforms at any time of his choosing, because he has already staked out his position during the campaign the Liberals and the conservative media have been running these past few years. But this year, well, he has more than enough Grand Ideas to defend already.
Obviously Howard has been listening to his focus groups and has belatedly realised that parents do care about education, but that they have more pressing, practical concerns than obsessing about whether or not teachers are Communists.

rat refuses to abandon sinking ship

When will John Howard acknowledge that Iraq was a massive error in judgment? It's obvious that we are now obligated to try to fix the mistake that's he made. But how dare he lecture us about the need to fix his mistake when he doesn't even have the decency to admit he's made one?
Last night on the 7:30 Report the PM tried to share around the blame for his choice to join in the Iraq war, by referring to "the widely-held view that Saddam had WMD". He shamelessly ignores the fact that there was also widely-held opposition to his decision to involve Australia in the conflict. At the time he dismissed us all as 'the mob' and told us he knew best. He told us he was sure Saddam Hussein was an 'imminent threat' to Australia and suggested that Hussein had links to Al-Qaeda.
Well, he didn't know best and he ballsed it up.
Now he claims Australia must remain in Iraq lest the US be humiliated, but he doesn't seem to get that the US has already humiliated itself, that George Bush has single-handedly run America's reputation into the ground. Yes, salvage work is now necessary for both countries. But surely he doesn't expect us to thank him for that.
And maybe it's self-serving for Howard to hypothesise about doom in the Middle East but it displays muddled priorities when he still can't bring himself to take seriously the imminent threat to the entire planet due to climate change.

kingdom come

Imre Salusinszky’s fluff piece on Peter Debnam pretends to find the Opposition leader’s unpopularity a ‘puzzle’. Maybe Salusinszky would’ve felt less clueless if he hadn’t shielded himself and his readers from the more negative details of the Debnam story. Such as, for example, Debnam’s unfounded slur on Bob Debus under parliamentary privilege and subsequent lack of apology to him. Or maybe Debnam’s newly-hatched plans for East Darling Harbour that business groups and Labor agree are ‘bizarre‘. And let’s not forget this little pearler (via Suki):
“I'm happy to have [people] demonstrate around the state, but you leave my wife alone, you leave the female members of my team alone,” Mr Debnam told reporters. He Tarzan. We Jane.
Salusinszky makes a desperate attempt to sell Debnam to us on the basis that he’s a “devoted family man” but this is neutralised by the fact that Morris Iemma is evidently a devoted family man himself. And I mean, even Saddam Hussein was apparently a “devoted family man”.
Dorkier than Howard, riskier and more impulsive than Latham, the only thing Debnam appears to have going for him is his underdog status. Unfortunately, in the absence of any other selling points, that won’t be enough.
In another column in the same paper, Salusinszky mocks Iemma with, "By 2016, it will be hard to tell the difference between NSW and the Kingdom of Heaven’. That’s funny. I thought according to the Federal Liberals, we’re already living in the Kingdom of Heaven. We’re constantly being told we’re rolling in rude economic health at a Federal level thanks to Howard. Dennis Shanahan (in the same paper) writes that "economic management remains as the only unsullied pillar of strength for the Coalition." But around the Labor-led states, we’re told we're living in misery. In Salusinszky’s story, Debnam contends that NSW is "confronted by four crises: a housing crisis, an economic crisis, a budget crisis and a water crisis". I guess that’s only when you’re wearing your State goggles. With your Federal ones on, all you can see is roses as far as the eye can see. Well, as far as the election booth, anyway.

the power v. the passion

The Passion won it hands down. Turnbull was good, but Garrett was better. Here is a man who can simultaneously warn and reassure. All Turnbull could offer was denial of his party's denial on climate change, and talk about money and doomsayers. Garrett could talk money, too, but more importantly he inspired, and Turnbull didn't. Garrett also has far more credibility on the environment than Turnbull can dream of. (Transcript here tomorrow.)
Just apropos China, and on being its quarry: if the world's giant economies want our product so much, don't we have any leverage to get them to engage in climate-friendly practices as they pursue economic growth over the next decades? If the argument is that the business will be taken elsewhere, can we form international unions ("Coalitions of the Willing", haha) to turn it into a seller's market? (Sorry if this seems terribly naive, I'm no economist.)

say what?

(updated)
Just some things the boy has said over the months that have made me laugh.
*
Holding a crayon to his lips:
"I just make lipstick on my mouth."
(He must get this from the girls at school, cos mum doesn't wear lippy!)
*
Scrunching up the doona around his waist:
"Look, mum! I'm a fairy princess!"
*
While out walking:
"Oh, pretty pink flower! Oh, pretty white flower! Oh, pretty dog poo!"
*
Picking up his drumsticks, says hopefully:
"Maybe we can wake the neighbours again?"
*
After biting me on the leg once:
"Ow, you bit my leg! What'd you do that for?"
Looks guilty. Brightens up and points to my other leg.
"But I didn’t bite that one."
*
"I’m the adult and you are the child."
"I’m not a child! I’m Harley!"
*
Countless times a day:
"But I’m a big boy, Mum."
*
Is treated to some junkish chicken snacks that are shaped like little drumsticks. Next morning:
"What do you want for breakfast?"
"Bones."
(Took a while to figure out what he meant with that one.)
*
"Let’s read one of Mummy’s books!"
"OK. Which one do you want me to read?"
Of all books, picks out my copy of My Secret Garden.
"Uh….maybe not that one…"
*
"Argh! It’s a bit late for making that noise out loud. Just make it in your head."
Sombre: "You need to do thinking in your head too, Mum."
*
"How old are you, Harley?"
Confidently: "Six years old." (He turns three in a couple of weeks.)
*
"You know, Opa made that table. With his bare hands."
Regards the pale wood.
"He could’ve made it pink."
*
"So, are you looking forward to seeing your dad tomorrow?"
"Of course, Mum."
*
And while waiting for his dad to pick him up:
"I love you soooo much, Mum."
Ahhhhhhhhh.
*
One morning, after buying him something on ebay and explaining that it would come through the post, he hops back into his bed.
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting for the postman."
*
"It’s bedtime."
"No...thanks anyway."
*
"It’s bedtime."
"But you’re my best friend..."

always on

Excuse me while I kiss this new broadband connection...God, it's exciting to leave dial-up behind and finally get the internet on tap. I'll be back with more soon, if intermittently as I get my new computer up and running. So far, so incredibly good. Touching wood.
A lot changed in three months I was totally offline last year. The Labor leadership, control of the American congress...and Surfdom turning into a group blog now that Tim Dunlop's mainly writing at blogocracy. Well, from now on I'll be riding my bike along the Road to Surfdom from time to time too, so I hope to see you there. (I don't think I'll be cross-posting material, but that may change.)
So, back into it then. Blissful.

catching up with Julie

Allow me to give you the shorter Julie Bishop:

The ALP is playing catch-up with Tony Blair who is playing catch-up with the Liberals who are playing catch-up with Tony Blair who is playing catch-up with the ALP.
Look how Tony Blair copied the ALP in bringing in a form of HECS, then he copied the Liberals by trying to make unis more commercial. If Rudd thinks he can come out and try to make unis more commercial somehow, well, we got there first and so did Tony Blair.
Tony Blair owns education reform. The Liberals own education reform, too. The ALP wants it badly but can’t have it. Can’t touch it.
Can’t even look at it.

Convincing stuff.

slow pokes

Is that the best Julie Bishop can do in response to Kevin Rudd's release of the first tranche of Labor's "education revolution" plans?

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said Labor was playing "catch-up". "The Australian Government has already focused on early childhood as a priority," Ms Bishop said. "We have put the issue of early childhood on the Council of Australian Government's agenda, so Labor is playing catch-up on the early childhood issue."

How nice that after ten years the Australian Government has now put the issue of early childhood on an agenda, coincidentally as there's an election approaching.
Who's really "playing catch-up" around here? Apparently Ms Bishop has forgotten how Kevin Rudd started talking about water last week and, a couple of days later, John Howard started talking about water. Or how about how the Liberals are playing catch-up with David Hicks. Let's face it, after ten years standing around admiring the view, it's the Liberals who have got a lot of catching-up to do.

man of irony

Imagine you have a friend who tells you they're about to embark on some impulsive and risky course of action with potentially catastrophic consequences. Do you: (a) try to talk your mate out of it, or (b) encourage them to go ahead and agree to be involved too?
John Howard chose (b). So it's ironic that he continues to justify participating in the Iraq war on the basis of the American alliance, when he would've done the alliance (and the ally) more favours if he had dared to talk back to his powerful chum and try to steer him away from a foolish course of action.

"Howard has used the week to emphasise that Australia's commitment [in Iraq] is vital to the US alliance...
(Source: SMH, 26 January, 2007: "Howard's Watershed")

We were not a good friend to America. America's real friend would have taken Bush aside and said "Listen, George, this is a really harebrained idea. And mate, I'm afraid I just can't get Australia involved in it." I think it's called "tough love".

green is the new true blue

Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year:

"There's been a decade of delay, and that's put us in quite a difficult position. Hard steps are now required [whereas] a decade ago we may have been able to take smaller and easier ones."
(Source: SMH, 26 January 2007: "Flannery berates Howard on climate")

John Howard, blithely:

"Does it embarrass me? No it doesn't," Mr Howard said. "We do live in a democracy and I'm not so thin-skinned and so desiring (of) uniformity that I want every Australian of the Year to engage in fulsome praise of the Government or of me."
(Source: The Weekend Australian, 27 January 2007: "Flannery choice not bid to embarrass PM")

I don't know if Howard gets the distinction between being embarrassed just because someone has criticised you, and being embarrassed about the substance of the criticism and the credibility of the critic. Flippantly brushing it off as 'just someone's different opinion' means Howard evidently doesn't take Flannery's opinions very seriously at all.
It should embarrass Howard that he has done nothing for the environment at all during his decade in power. It should embarrass him that he's been shown to have woeful judgment on yet another critical issue. It should embarrass him that he is only now waking up and smelling the coffee, at around five to midnight on the Doomsday clock.
Doubtless this year we'll see more of Howard hastily attempting to paint himself a lovely pale shade of green, but I think voters will be quite cynical about such born-again environmentalism-lite.

making it big

I can't resist the opportunity to drop a name. So to add to my tally of 'I knew them when's, I now have to add Peter Templeman, who has just been nominated for an Oscar for his short film. Onya, Tempsie!
Temps was a good mate of my boyfriend Jimbo's a decade ago when I lived in Perth for a year. We'd go see his band Rude Emily almost every weekend (he's a fantastic singer) and I remember the odd post-surf session sitting around Tempsie's house, chatting to him about writing. Great to see he's been doing so well with it.
I'll have to see if I can dig up any incriminating photos for New Weekly but I have a feeling Jimbo ended up with custody of all our photo negatives. Lucky for you Tempsie!

meta than ever

Oz blogger Antony Loewenstein had an interesting essay on blogging in Spectrum in the weekend Herald, which he reproduces here.

flag elation

I'm as Australian as the next person. That is to say, I'm an immigrant. Yet I've never felt the slightest bit inspired to brandish the flag in order to prove my Australianness to anyone. It makes me shudder to have the flag rammed down my throat purely for political purposes as has been happening lately by both parties.
It's interesting to read in news stories that sales of flags and related imagery have gone through the roof since the Cronulla riots.

Sydney tattoo shops have expeienced a surge in requests for patriotic designs since the Cronulla riots in December 2005...[Quotes a tattooist:] "Ever since the Cronulla riots, we are just doing heaps."...

The pollies are certain there is no dark jingoistic element to all this newfound flag-loving?
Another interesting thing to note is the importance of symbolism here. Voters might remember how the Liberals managed to weasel their way out of dealing with Aboriginal reconciliation over the past decade with Howard claiming he is not interested in symbolism. But then, when it comes to the Australian flag, the Liberals are utterly obsessed with it. I mean, what is a flag but pure unadulterated symbolism?
Today, Peter Debnam has issued me with the following warning:

"I want to send a strong message to those few individuals that have not embraced the flag that the rest of Australia does."

Ok, ok, I'll embrace the flag already! Pass it here and let me make love to it, lest I be considered unAustralian.

sheik, stirring

There has been some sniggering in the papers about the Mufti's threat to take on Premier Iemma in seats like Lakemba, but maybe Iemma shouldn't be too blase about it? What if Australia's Muslims are feeling increasingly disenfranchised from "mainstream Australia" and are propelled to cling the more determinedly to their imported culture? Muslims may well jump at the chance to embrace Muslim candidates in government, outrageous Mufti or no outrageous Mufti. Even Muslim moderates frequently appear to humour Sheik al-Hilaly. And why wouldn't they? Being outrageous is nothing but a great way to get attention. And the more extreme the Sheik appears, the more moderate the moderates will appear. It'll be interesting to see what unfolds on this front.

the perfect woman is...made-up

This morning as I glanced at a perfectly groomed anchorwoman on telly, I was suddenly come over by a feeling of cold dread. What if, I suddenly thought to myself, the man I love turns out to be attracted to high-maintenance women? Maybe the majority of men are? What if the man I end up with turns out to be secretly (or openly) more attracted to the well-varnished woman than to a low-maintenance chick like me?
I think back to a moment a few weeks ago, as I sat with my sixty-year-old neighbor K. at a local playground and we watched my son scamper around. Having lunch at a nearby picnic table was a woman in a black business suit with the physique of an athlete. I nodded towards her.
"She looks like a triathlete or something," I said, looking at her well-defined calf muscles. K. whistled.
"You know, it’s the sexiest thing in the world, high heels," he remarked. Mildly irked, gaving down at my stumpish feet in their Havvies, I complained about how men find stilettos attractive when they cause women such pain, confinement and even disfigurement. He shrugged, and I was left to contemplate the fact that there is nothing one can do: Men are just attracted to women in high heels and that's final.
I have sometimes wondered if my lack of interest in heels stems from my dislike of the shape of my own legs. Perhaps if I had legs up to here with ballerina ankles, I’d be more keen to show them off. I don’t know if my stance on stilettos is mere jealousy. If sisters just wanna wear heels, who am I to judge, really? Still, I can never relate to women who are enraptured by their shoe collections. I own two pairs of thongs. I know that fact in itself makes me something of a freak.
I know I only make a half-hearted effort to conform to what is considered ‘feminine’ in our culture. Basically, I’m too lazy or too preoccupied with what I consider to be more important things to care all that much. Sure, I grow my hair long, but I reckon that’s probably more about having something to hide behind than trying to be ‘girlish’. I do shave my legs: I have been well-conditioned to hate my mohair stockings. I think underarm hair is ugly too, mainly because it looks like caterpillars escaping your armpit. I recognise this prejudice is social conditioning at work, but I’m happy to play along because there’s only minimal effort involved. As for make-up, I pretty much abandoned that entirely after I quit my office job and made my seachange. When we lived at the beach, I used to walk eight kilometres to drop Harley off at daycare, and on the way home I’d take a dip at two beaches. If I was wearing eye makeup I’d get home with panda eyes. Of course, there’s waterproof mascara but you practically need industrial solvent to get that off and I’ve got sensitive eyes. I still walk everywhere and makeup still sweats right off, so I don’t bother.
It once occurred to me that drag queens do women a favour because they lampoon the grotesque extremes of feminity and highlight the enormous degree of maintenance involved for serious players. Femininity really is a drag.
But I am not militantly against makeup the way my mother was and no doubt still is. I appreciate the theatre aspect of it and think there’s nothing wrong with humans enjoying playing dressups and being visually transformed. It’s fun. I’m sure if I ever have occasion again to doll myself up, I will probably enjoy it. I think my objection is more to the rigid strictures that dictate that women must wear makeup on a daily basis to "hide their flaws", to deny their age, to somehow compete with younger women in a culture that is obsessed with youth and beauty. Or that they must want to totter down the street in ridiculous shoes. Or must cut themselves open and insert foreign matter under their skin in order to appeal to men. Or have cosmetic labiaplasty. I also know that I think the costs involved in looking "feminine" amount to a kind of economic oppression. But I acknowledge that women have only themselves to blame for participating in the beauty economy. Personally, I don’t think I could’ve survived 2006 on the sole parent pension if I’d had to shell out for makeup or spent money on other "essentials" of womanhood. (The funniest product I ever saw advertised was a lotion designed specifically and exclusively to make the backs of your knees shine. Yes, really.)
I sometimes question whether maybe I am just too lazy, whether maybe there is some kind of implicit duty involved, a duty to maximise one’s femininity or something. Maybe dressing like a tomboy because it’s comfortable is just being slack. Maybe I just don’t put in enough effort. Without wanting to sound as if I have tickets on myself, the truth is I’ve never really suffered a lack of male attention, so clearly there are guys out there who aren’t looking for a high maintenance girl.
Then it occurred to me. The man I’m going to love--who I have to admit I haven’t actually met yet--isn’t going to care that I don’t wear makeup. He’ll like me for me, naturally.
But the small heavy dread remains even as I type this, particularly as I now recall an incident some weeks ago when I blow-dried my hair straight for a laugh (something I haven't done in years). On seeing me, Harley gazed at me with astonishment and said, "Wow, mum, you look really lovely today," and I thought, damn, how is it that even a three-year-old boy thinks women look better with straight hair than curly?

births and rebirths

A big congratulations to both Zoe and the Armaniac on the birth of their new babies! Fantastic news for them and I wish them all the best.
Me, I've got a new baby of sorts too. Out of the blue recently, I received some money owing to me that I'd written off. So I've bought myself a new computer. And I can't explain to you the exhilarating feeling of being in sheer technological heaven. I'm still getting it all up and running (and having to use my old computer while waiting for Telstra to provision my phone for broadband, which seems to take about a century or so). But it means that I'm back in the game, or will be very soon. Meanwhile, thanks for checking in now and then.

house of cards

I enjoy reading Christopher Pearson's column in the Weekend Australian because it shows the floundering desperation of the Right when it comes to trying to justify a Howard re-election. This time round, Pearson is clutching at straws under the headline "Defeat will do Labor good". He's trying to reassure middle-of-the-road Conservatives that it's the Liberals who most qualify for underdog status and therefore deserve re-election. He argues that if you cut and run from the Federal Liberals, they will implode, so if you're a swinger because you believe in healthy opposition, you must vote Liberal. He says voters don't have to worry about Labor imploding, describing it as "far from finished and well-placed for an overdue reconfiguration of its relationship with the union movement". Demonstrating the extent to which John Howard has shaped the Liberal Party into the John Howard Party, even a Conservative like Pearson cannot imagine the post-Howard Liberal Party being similarly able to remould itself in Opposition. Weak as!
On the subject of industrial relations, Pearson declares that unions merely persuade workers they "can't negotitate in their own best interests" but then admits that "there are still plenty of employment categories...where the possible exploitation of young, low-skilled or casual staff means they'll always be highly unionised". So it seems Pearson is dimly aware of the utility of union representation after all. Maybe unions aren't that evil after all, eh? (Or perhaps they are just evil-lite?)
But Pearson's piece de resistance is a quote from Beazley: "Both Kevin [Rudd] and Howard, in personal demeanour and presentation, stick to the centre. Neither of them [is] histrionic when it comes to making a political argument".
Pearson manages to shoehorn this quote into the argument that Beazley has thereby painted Howard as "a man of the centre"". I had to laugh at Pearson's long bow here. Which part of "personal demeanour and presentation" doesn't he understand? Saying someone is nerdish in presentation has nothing to do with their policy style, which might still be extreme in content. Anyway, I'm looking forward to what Pearson will come up with next week.

Ps. The news bulletins keep telling us that Howard's finally reshuffling today, but unfortunately for the Liberal Party, it doesn't matter how you shuffle a pack of jokers, you're still going to end up with a pack of jokers.

some fathers do 'ave 'em

The problem with having Papa Howard go in to bat for little Pete is that it infantilises Debnam, making him look pitifully weak: the implication is that Debnam can't do it on his own. Conversely, it makes Howard look strong because it denies that Howard has Federal troubles, which he does. (I've noticed that one thing Howard often does well is appear to have the strength of his convictions. It's just that his convictions frequently turn out to be hopelessly wrong.)
Still, the people who are marketing Peter Debnam have been doing well to turn his image around lately, with most of his press showing him as a smiling Mr Nice Guy. Labor can counter this by giving us plenty of reminder footage of "attack dog Debnam"'s ridiculous behavior in Parliament last year.
Anyway, no matter how bad State Labor's position might look, there's just something about Iemma that Debnam can't fake and Howard can't implant for him. Credibility or leadership quality or something.

women scorned

Is Howard losing his grip? Have even the Liberals had enough of Howard’s style of governing? He’s often told us that he’ll stay leader of the Liberals as long as the party wants him. Is it possible they no longer want him, even though they’re stuck with him now, just like they’re stuck with Debnam in NSW?
Latest evidence of Liberal discontent with Howard comes from Sunday's The Daily Telegraph which ran a story headlined "Bishop blasts PM" and reporting that Bishop, angry at rejection of her nanny scheme, "has accused John Howard of treating women like ‘fools’". Well, we don't need Bronwyn Bishop to tell us the PM's out of touch, but it's nice. I’m just stunned she dares to speak outside the Liberal cone of silence.

conservative heavy

Christopher Pearson had a story in The Weekend Australian headlined: "Rudd needs to learn real Christians are cultural conservatives". This will no doubt be news to all the Christian liberals out there.

"Rudd has long understood the electoral benefit Howard has accumulated by virtue of his attachment to Christian values, low-key and reticent although he is about his beliefs".

Wait a minute--Howard is "low-key and reticent"? We’re talking about the same prime minister who just announced he’s writing cheques for religious salesmen to come spruik in schools? Pearson takes issue with Rudd’s claim that "the starting point with Christianity is a theology of social justice":

"He will have lost himself a lot of votes with that claim. The orthodox position is that Christianity begins with the incarnation, God in human flesh, culminates historically in the redemption and anticipates the general resurrection and the end of time. In the meantime there is the transfigured life believers find inside the church, Christ’s mystical body and bride."

I guess by "starting point" they both mean something like it’s original or fundamental basis, but it’s hard to see how Pearson’s interpretation of the religion’s "starting point" is useful. He says Rudd "wildly overstates the importance" of social justice in Christianity and invokes both the Old and New Testaments as providing proof that homosexuality is justifiably "deplored". After all, if a prejudice is thousands of years old, it must be okay. So, "real Christians" hate gays.
If Rudd is "conservative-lite", does that mean Howard is "conservative-full strength"? If he is, does he stand for the values that Pearson argues "real Christians" do? Or is Howard, too, merely "conservative-lite"?

"Rudd is trying to impose his party’s agenda on the churches and re-badge God as a social democrat, precisely the strategy that he and Wallis accuse the Right of adopting."

It’s also precisely the strategy Pearson is adopting in his attempt to rebrand God as a cultural conservative again.

art ache

There was quite a haunting interview on The 7:30 Report last week with Howard Arkley’s mother Gwen, and with Arkley's widow Alison Burton and her brother-in-law, John Gregory. There is a tense moment in the interview with Burton and Gregory when the reporter gently probes about the contestability of Arkley’s will (it had been signed and witnessed only by Burton, her sister and her brother-in-law):
GREG HOY: Can you, perhaps if you could just explain the situation, though, because you must have been there, were you, when the will was made?
The brother-in-law and Burton appear uncomfortable. There is a strained pause, then Gregory says, kind of nervously,
JOHN GREGORY: Well, look, actually, I really do have to go. Sorry, I'm not able to keep..."
When the going gets tough, the tough shut down interviews. We’re just left with a sense of deep sorrow for Arkley’s mum.

sticking to their guns

It's frustrating to see that Bush and Howard still refuse to acknowledge that invading Iraq was a mistake. Today in the Herald, Howard again stubbornly insists "We were right to go into Iraq." And he's recently led us to believe that even if he did have private regrets about a war, he’d "have the grace to keep such thoughts to himself". In the face of even the Conservative media referring to it as his "Iraq blunder" and calling on the Australian people to hold him to account, what credibility does our Prime Minister possibly have left on the issue? What I'd love to see squeezed out of him is answers to questions like--does he still endorse the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike? The idea of exporting democracy by force? Giving him the benefit of hindsight, if he knew then what he does now, would he still go into Iraq? At any cost, for any length of time?
To date Howard has been mostly mute on the subject of Iraq, choked by Bush’s bear hug. Everyone knows Howard never had a plan for Iraq beyond "whatever George wants, George gets", so he's hamstrung in any decision-making on the issue. Every time he is cornered on the question, he drags out his stock phrases, which always include something like, "if we leave now, America will look bad". Nowhere do you hear him admit that if America looks bad over Iraq, it only has itself to blame. Nowhere do you find humility and wisdom, any sense he has learned from this colossal mistake. So, we continue to wait for him to concede that the whole idea of invading Iraq was extremely foolish, that if he had his time again, he’d certainly think twice about blindly supporting America’s foreign policy decisions. Instead, all we get is two blokes digging in their heels, unable to find a way to save face, and trapped into continuing their tough guy charade.
Looking at the continuing fallout of their foolish war, Howard and Bush now appear in danger of splitting their own parties on the issue. The Herald carries a story arguing that "once-united Republicans now face an unpleasant choice: stand behind a deeply unpopular troop build-up or take on the head of their party."
Boy, I bet Howard's regretting not quitting while he was ahead.

i was made for loving youtube, baby

I haven’t been able to indulge in the pleasures of YouTube just yet, as my current computer can’t hack it. However, once I get my new system up and running, I reckon I’ll be fully into it. That’s the thing with all these emergent technologies. Reality TV may have democratised celebrity, but YouTube has democratised reality TV.

related:
Interesting story in The Australian the other day, headed "Model film down Tube". It discussed how courts in Brazil are trying to get Google Inc. to permanently remove footage from YouTube for reasons of privacy. I would’ve thought digital video files were all that different to digital music files, so if courts could block music filesharing, surely they can block video sharing too?

all talk, no action

Well, that was quite a triumphant return to blogging, wasn't it? They say a bad workman blames his tools (George Bush being the perfect example) and it's true that my technology has been causing me more grief than usual these past weeks. But the good news is I'm only a few days away from a massive computer upgrade, which should get me nicely back into the swing of things. Meantime here's a few rough posts while I have the opportunity. See ya!

PM has fertile imagination: feminist

Feminism dead: PM announces the giant banner headline in the news section of the Sunday tabloid. It is accompanied by a large photo of a smiling young mother and a subhead that reads Praise for younger mothers. The story, by Howard-friendly journalist Piers Akerman, reveals that John Howard believes younger women are abandoning careers they were once peer-pressured into pursuing, in favour of having children. But here's the funny part. While the PM is keen to attribute the rise in the birth rate to younger, ‘post-feminist’ women, Akerman goes on to contradict him completely by quoting statistics that demonstrate "the continuing trend of delaying motherhood" and the fact that "women aged 30 to 34 continue to have the highest fertility rate of all women". Um...
What irks me though, more than his distortion of the facts, is Howard’s contention that women have only pursued careers out of a sense of keeping up with the Ms. Joneses. He claims, "They thought: 'I’ll be letting the sisterhood down if I don’t stay in the workforce until I’m a certain age'". Not only is he a mind-reader, but he also conceives of women as pretty pathetic, gormless creatures. It does not occur to him that women might be motivated to work for much the same reasons men are--for intellectual stimulation, to use their skills, education and talents to be productive members of society, for obtaining financial benefit, for reasons of self-esteem, power or status, or whatever.
In rhetorical desperation, Howard brandishes the biological clock in our faces. He says young women have "a greater awareness now of the disadvantage of postponing having children too long." Well, this is probably true of all women these days. We are very much aware of the difficulty in reconciling a desire to work with a desire to parent, particularly in a patriarchal society where men are never criticised for wanting to 'have it all'. This does not mean women are ready to throw in the towel, though. Sorry, John. In the end, Howard’s arguments amount to nothing more than wishful thinking from an old-fashioned social conservative with a penchant for nostalgia about the male-as-sole-breadwinner model.

elsewhere @ larvatus prodeo

onwards and blogwards

Happy New Year, bloggers! I've missed you guys. Three months was a long time to be offline and there's loads of things I want to comment on, but I'm getting bogged down trying to catch up. So I think I'll just start again from now, and hopefully come back to some of the important debates of 2006 that aren’t going away in any case. Thanks again for the kind thoughts some of you have sent (yeah, it wasn't the best year I've ever had) and thanks for still reading my blog. So...let's warm up with my favorite subject: the Rodent...

AWOL

Oh, ye readers of little faith. I would never quit without saying goodbye. Just a small enforced hiatus. I'll be back (with more copious apologies and explanations, and heaps more blogging) very, very soon. A thousand apologies, especially to all my favorite bloggers, none of whose blogs I've been able to read lately. Miss you guys. Back soon.

forty-two years later

I rang my father just now and he said he was just about to crack open a bottle of champagne with my mum. I wondered why.
"Elfter neunter," he explained in German.
"9/11?" I said, completely confused as to why they would be celebrating September 11.
"Our wedding anniversary," he reminded me. Geez, what a day to have it on.
Wow. 42 years. Congratulations, Oma and Opa.

i rant

Via Jozef I hear that the Iranian President now has his own blog. (I followed the link to check it out fully expecting to see a lovely Blogger site in English. D'oh...it's in Persian.) According to the news story Jozef links to:

On his first posting, called ‘Autobiography’, the Iranian President describes his background as the son of a poor blacksmith. He says that he was a ‘distinguished student’, coming 132nd out of 400,000 students in an exam, despite suffering a nosebleed. And he says he kept up his studies in civil engineering despite the revolution.

I like this bit:

At the end of his first posting, he promises to make his entries shorter and simpler in the future.

Didn't take him long to get blogger angst, did it? Pretty soon, I expect he'll be announcing a blogging hiatus while he goes off and nukes Israel.

pleasure and pain

Maybe John Howard could get a tattoo across his belly like the one Angelina Jolie has? It reads, quod me nutrit me destruit, supposedly Latin for 'what nurtures me also destroys me'. Cos it appears the very factors that work for the Liberals at federal level are the ones that are working against the Liberal parties at state level. Mike Steketee had an analysis of the state Liberal parties’ woes in The Weekend Australian in which reasons for Labor’s state successes were debated. Factors for success appear to be largely impersonal rather than due to individual leader qualities such as charisma or competence. In the article, Judith Brett describes influential factors as 'incumbency...a strong economy…voters sticking with what they know in an era with threats to national security'. The newspaper’s editorial, also about the state Liberals, adds some more external factors: the lack of credible opposition leaders, and the state/federal counterbalance theory. (Naturally, Howard-lovers would argue that the 'strong economy' factor is an internal one, creditable personally to Howard's leadership. But many of us dispute this reinterpretation of political and economic history.)
I find it fascinating, this question of why people vote differently at state and federal level. I wonder who the swingers are. It's a conundrum. Is it that Howard-lovers are cuckolding him at state level? Or is it that state Labor voters betray Labor federally by switching allegiances to Howard? It is hard to believe that people who vote Labor federally would vote Liberal at state level, but I guess it's possible.
If the Liberals are failing in NSW, Imre Salusinsky (also in The Australian) argues it is because of Howard’s IR project. Headlined "Work Choices working well for Iemma", Saluszinsky says "if IR continues to frighten voters...on WorkChoices he just can’t lose". But if IR is scaring Howard voters over to Labor in the states, why wouldn’t they be scared enough to ditch Howard himself, the man personally responsible for the unwanted changes? Will voters really sheet the blame to Debham while keeping Howard in power federally because they want him there for other reasons (those external factors—he’s the devil we know in dangerous times, fortuitously presiding over boomtime, etc etc)? Maybe Iemma is just selling it better than Beazley is nationally?
The problem with Howard’s failed states is that as Steketee argues, "a continuing downward spiral in the State parties eventually must make the Federal Liberals’ job harder." Steketee also quotes Graham Young saying that if the Liberals lose a federal election, the party will probably "implode". Happily for non-Liberals, Howard might have already ensured such implosion when he refused to pass the baton to Costello while the party was on a winning streak. In effect, Howard told Australians that he regards Costello as unelectable and unfit to handle the job. That’s great for the Libs, so long as Howard wins the next election and then someone more electable than Costello gets to front them. But how likely is that? I mean, who on earth is there? (This subject is way passe, I know, but my theory on Howard’s motivation, apart from insane hubris, is that he is actually against a Costello succession, but has no way to weasel out of their age-old, highly-publicised 'gentlemen's agreement'. Behind the scenes, I'm sure it's all about giving another contender the time to get the numbers to challenge Costello.)
Howard’s vanity might well cause the implosion of the Liberal Party itself. And wouldn’t that be ironic for the man currently celebrated as Liberal Party hero and savior?

zip it real good
Just about the Kennett/Kroger/Costello hijinks last week, it was pretty funny to see Howard come out and tell his boys to shut their mouths and keep Liberal Party conflict behind doors. Why didn’t he practice what he preached and tell them in private, eh? In any case, we all know Howard is happy to let some people talk, when it’s strategic. He frequently lets out his loose cannon, Jackie Kelly, supposedly a ‘close friend’, to test waters and be his fall guy. She does not seem to have much invested in the longevity of her political career, so she hasn’t much to lose. He lets her criticise policy, for example when he let her be aggressive on childcare. I’m convinced this was to assess public reaction in case he ever wants to declare that he plans to listen to his minister and implement popular but not necessarily socially-conservative policies. He also allowed her to publicly deride Costello. I don’t remember hearing him come out and tell her to keep her trap shut for the good of the party. He let her talk because it helps destabilise Costello.

conservative paranoia

Miranda Devine has made some preposterous arguments in her time, but her column last Sunday stands out as particularly stupid. She manages to turn public reaction in the JonBenet Ramsey case into a massive liberal conspiracy:

"There is a readiness, which has emerged in recent decades, to believe the worst of a seemingly model nuclear family and a desire to ferret out dark secrets. It is part of a move to undermine the concept of the nuclear family as the basis of social stability, and to strip it of its relative superiority as a vehicle for bringing up children and keeping them safe."

This is despite her earlier acknowledgment that,

"It was the fact that her parents had displayed her so obscenely like a mini-adult that first made them suspects."

But even if Devine is right and ordinary people's natural unease at the exploitation of a child is actually a secret left-wing push to kill off the nuclear family, it's interesting to note that this is despite ten years of conservative government in this country. So Devine reckons the public is dangerously liberal? Does that tell her something about how out-of-touch conservatives are from mainstream values?
But let's think about Devine's statement some more. So the "public", brainwashed by evil leftwing media of course, is against the concept of the nuclear family. In a country with rising marriage and fertility rates, does that ring true?
I wonder what Devine even means by "nuclear family". The patriarchal family structure with father as breadwinner and mother as housewife? (Then it must be feminists encouraging the public to kill off the nuclear family!) Or is she against blended or sole parent families? Or is she fearful of homosexual family units? That's the funny thing: even gays want to be nuclear.
Given that the majority of people are heterosexual and have a biological imperative to form unions and bear children, whether such unions are formalised by law in marriage or not, I don't see the nuclear family disappearing anytime soon. All I see is a conservative writer panicking because she senses that ordinary people have far more tolerant attitudes (in relation to the concept of 'family') than she would hope. And sorry, Miranda, but intelligent people don't regard the Ramseys as a model of great parenting. The public's issue with the Ramseys was their culpability in allowing the sexualisation of their child. Whether they were a nuclear unit or not is completely irrelevant.

meanie

If Kim's insults aren't good enough for Tony, maybe Alexander's are:

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer lost his temper when quizzed about the email in parliament today, blasting Labor foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd as a "halfwit" and Labor leader Kim Beazley as "lazy and idle".

Demonstrating once and for all the Liberal Party's superior intrinsic nastiness. Thanks for that, dude.

i know you are but what am i?

It is frustrating that Health Minister Tony Abbott wastes taxpayer dollars strutting around his office dictating pointless articles like the one the Herald printed yesterday ("From nice to nasty but still wishy-washy"). Do you think Fairfax had to pay for it as well?
According to Abbott, John Howard would never personally offend an opponent:

"Imagine the reaction if John Howard ever told someone to 'take your tablets', let alone abused an opponents as 'weak' and 'worthless'."

Strangely, he then proceeds to refer to Howard's classic insult to Beazley, "He hasn't got the ticker", which many interpreted as a criticism not only of weak character but of Beazley's physical condition. And that's not personally nasty?
Look at Abbott's semantics. Beazley's words are "aggressive" "abuse" and "uncivilised discourse", but when Howard insults someone, it is framed as a "damning verdict", essentially a truth handed down with judge and jury-style authority.
Ultimately, Abbott seems to be arguing that he and Howard are intrinsically nasty but that Beazley can only fake it. How else to interpret this comment?

"In the back of [Beazley's] mind, no doubt, is the Prime Minister's damning verdict about lack of ticker. Presumably the press gallery has concluded that contrived nastiness [in Beazley] is less of a problem than the intrinsic kind [in who? Howard and Abbott?].

Sorry, Tony, but my damning verdict of your article is that you've gone from nasty to nasty and you're still wishy-washy. Why don't you stop worrying about who's the nastier boy and get on with your real job. You know, that boring old Health stuff.

unpopular culture

This afternoon a neighbor happened to mention an acquaintance called Elijah. I remarked that my nephew's middle name is Elijah too. "His dad's Jewish," I added.
"Oh," she said. She paused to give me a kind smile. "Well, that's okay."
"No," I said, aghast. "I meant, Elijah is a Jewish name."
Reminded me of what John Safran wrote last weekend,

"HEY Jew! Sure, it was fun being part of the Tribe when it was associated with blintzes and bagels and Woody and wit. But now when your workmates spot the Star of David necklace they're thinking rubble and bombs and babies from the night before."

another quickie

A couple of weeks ago journalist Julia Baird discussed (no link) basically what I call fertility chic and then announced she was nine months pregnant and taking maternity leave. (And unless Fairfax did a lot of retouching to the photo accompanying her column, gee, she has already lost all her baby weight.) Anyway, she wrote,
"Then there is the negativity of some other parents, whom I like to call the "Just-You-Waits". They pounce on the pregnant, knowingly, and declare, "Oh, you had a sleep-in! Ha. Just you wait, you won't sleep again!"
Well, I only have one thing to say to Julia: Just you wait. I mean, it took me more than two weeks even to get around to posting this response to her column, due to the demands of full-time parenting. Recent posts have been of the dash-off-a-quickie-to-keep-the-blog-alive variety, but I've got a dozen 'serious' posts waiting in the wings, on the off-chance I might get time this week (month, year) to finish and post them. Mind you, I did find it easier to find time for writing during those first few infant years, and then again she does have a husband. So, best of luck to Julia, but oh yeah, just you wait....

And also belated but hearty congratulations to my favorite beastie girl Zoe who, as most already know, is with-lovebeast again.

getting on a Wiggle getting a Wiggle on

My son thinks it's very funny to call me the 'Wiggle Mama' and he likes to be referred to as 'my little Green Wiggle'. When I put him to bed he requests Wiggles songs then cuts me off after a few lines of each song with an impatient "Nex wun" as if I’m another digital jukebox.
I sometimes wonder if he is unhealthily obsessed with the Wiggles. We own at least six Wiggles DVDs, numerous Wiggle books, several items of Wiggles apparel, two Wiggles guitars. We purchase Wiggles Band-Aids, Wiggles yoghurt, Wiggles biscuits, Wiggles shampoo and we have a Wiggles bathmat that my son loved so much he used to drag it around the whole house with him. Sadly, we have no Wiggles shares.
What are we all going to do when they retire to enjoy their squillions, which must surely be soon? Maybe we'll be stuck with the animated Wiggles and a bunch of stuffed animals. Has it ever struck anyone how few female characters there are on the show though? Sure, there’s some Wiggly dancing girls and Captain Feathersword has a couple of female pirates in his crew, and of course there’s Dorothy. But she’s a dinosaur. Where are the Wiggle Mamas? Now there's a possible spin-off...

loaf affair

On our fridge is a postcard from my friend in Paris. Laid out on a white background are about thirty tiny photos of different kinds of bread. Loaf really is a many splendoured thing. There’s everything from the ‘baguette’ to the ‘pain de seigle noir’ (black rye). Some styles seem to be named after places or people and are probably regional specialties. Such as the ‘Tabatiere’ which is dusty and resembles a satchel and the golden ‘Courome’, eight balls fused into a ring. There’s the ‘Mauricette’ which looks like a zebra’s penis and the Cornetti which is shaped like a couple of sausages wrapped in a serviette, or maybe lovers under a doona.
Printed in small black type at the top of the postcard are the words "Le Pain".
"Le Pain in le cul, more like," I grumble as I start to mix up a new loaf. I am learning to make sourdough. There is no photo of sourdough on the postcard; maybe the French don’t make it? I mix the fifth loaf, my mind elsewhere. I forget salt and have to throw it in at stage two. The house is arctic and it has been raining, hard, for days. In the middle of an evening storm the icecream van jangles up our street, stopping for customers. What kind of person goes out in that kind of weather to buy icecream? I don’t expect the loaf to rise at all, but by the time I get up the next day, it has risen right to the edge of the tin and is starting to bubble its way over the sides. I preheat the oven but in the time it takes to get hot the cat has clawed open the kitchen door and let in a draft, and I watch as the loaf sinks down before my eyes. Damn, another demi-loaf. Still, I am quite happy with the taste and texture. It’s soft and springy and has a good, hard crust. Ah, le pleasure...

2.5

I mean, do they come any cuter?

(Some more new photos here.)

census working overtime

Question twenty-one: Does the person ever need someone to help with, or be with them for, body movement activities?
Oh, god yeah. Show me the box for "Like, totally" and I'll tick it.
Ahem. For example, getting out of bed, moving around the home or at places away from home.
Oh. Well, yeah, my two-year-old does jump on me in the mornings, around four-thirty some godforsaken days, thus helping me to get out of bed when I otherwise wouldn't. Does that count?
Question twenty-two. Does the person ever need someone to help with, or be with them for, communication?
...Um, is there a box for "Obviously"?
*
updated
Joking aside, is anyone seriously going to put their real name on the census forms? I'm putting Jo Bloggs on mine. What statistical purpose does identifying information serve? None at all. I understand it's optional to participate in the 'time capsule' aspect of it, and assist your great-grandchildren with geneaological research and so on, but the operative word is that it's optional.
Do you really trust governments to keep your details private and prevent data matching? There's always gonna end up being some hacker some day who manages to sell your information to a telemarketing company so you can be niche-marketed to within an inch of your life, or maybe it'll all end up on a secret Australia Card database, being compiled "for our own good" of course.

nice white space, shame about the blog

Apologies if you are getting a huge white header before posts appear on this site. Not sure what's wrong, but will try and work on it.

update: Ah, great...seems to be all fixed again now.

mmmmmmm.............................

Listening to Sarah Blasko taped illegally off triplejay. Covers of Flame Trees and Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. I could never tire of her voice.
Thanks also to Julie Shiels for this image:

taking in the trash

The free weekend magazines that come with the quality broadsheets are giving New Idea some stiff competition lately. In the latest Good Weekend, there’s a story on how Shane Warne has bedded up to a thousand women. In the Australian magazine, a friend of Paris Hilton endorses her vapid claim that she’s an icon. In the Good Weekend, a ‘pal’ of Anna Wintour protests Wintour's not the Prada-attired devil satirised in a new film. Though she sure does sound like a creepy friend, doesn't she?

"Anna happens to be a friend of mine, a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet...make[s] one feel inadequate...one gets into a cold sweat—-and I am not alone in this reaction among her friends and acquaintances."

Sheesh, with friends like that...Oh, I know Wintour can hardly be lumped in the category of 'trash', being editor of American Vogue, and that fashion is about big biz and money, and that Wintour has the whole aphrodisiac of power thing going, etcetera. But these people come across as so awfully shallow.
Who to believe on Paris Hilton, though? The Murdoch story states that "Hilton did, however, sue Salomon successfully for $535,000 and to this day receives a percentage of the [sex] tape’s profits." This entirely contradicts a quote from Hilton in a recent Herald story (via the spin starts here):

"According to media reports, Hilton took control of the situation and exploited it as a money-making venture. Rather than suing Salomon, it was suggested that she had done a deal to take a 50 per cent cut of the profits. Hilton says this is untrue. ‘I didn't receive one dollar. I've never received any money from it, ever. I was going to sue, but that meant I'd be in court for a whole year, spending millions of dollars. So I said, 'I've just got to take this as a lesson in life. Don't ever trust anyone again like that, move on and just forget about it.’"

Finally, the Warne story. It’s an extract from a new unauthorised bio by journalist Paul Barry. I dunno, but maybe when you have to rely on New Idea as a primary source, you can’t help ending up sounding a lot like a New Idea story. Barry ponders possible causes for Warne’s infidelity, referring to an expert view that men like him (Warne) "have sex with women to get respect from their mates, who are far more important to them than any girl could ever be." Barry adds, "If this is what motivates Warne...there would be no point at all in keeping his affairs private. They would need to be advertised, so his mates could be impressed, which at some level they undoubtedly are." If that's the case, then Barry advertising Warne’s score like this is doing Warne's ego a big favor.

with a little help from their friend

As if Howard would've cut and run from the Liberal Party. He's their savior, their reinventor, their rat in shining armour. And they need to milk him some more first (as much as rats can be milked, anyway). As Liberal Jackie Kelly pointed out recently when she declared she'd quit if Howard did, "Why put [federal government] at risk until we’ve got some state governments in power?" Clearly, the strategy is to clone Howard at state level and work is already underway. Two weeks ago the Sunday Telegraph reported that "Howard will help Libs to oust Iemma", quoting Howard saying to Debnam, "We will do everything we can to get rid of the Labor government in NSW and install a coalition government under your leadership." In other words, move over Debbo, this job’s too big for you, the feds are coming in. But hey, don’t worry, they're perfectly happy to "install" you as a successful Howard clone.
It's embarrassing for the federal Liberals that their state colleagues have been caught up in all the recent factional dramas, when the Liberals prefer to be able to criticise federal Labor for the same thing. But that's where the Howard management style is evident, silencing dissent and displaying a veneer of unity at all costs. Much like that veneer of unity that Costello and Howard have maintained all these years.
Elsewhere, Howard has already been campaigning for the federal election. Saturday's Australian reported that, "Flanked by sitting MPs Stuart Henry in Hasluck and Michael Keenan in Stirling, John Howard showered praise on the pair at electorate functions, loudly congratulating locals for their good sense in having elected them. The two men beamed modestly...Howard’s prolonged attention was like a starter’s gun going off." They’re all desperately hoping they’ll be able to bask in the reflected glow from Howard's halo.
As if Costello had a chance.

weak at the knees

Saturday’s The Weekend Australian ran an extract of Greg Sheridan’s new book, promising he would "reveal how Canberra has stood up to Washington", yet what the story actually reveals is the Howard Government’s trademark meekness towards Washington. The Sheridan piece is typical of the conservative media’s obvious desire to reinvent Australia’s role in Iraq, to help insulate the Howard Government from potential punishment at the polls.
As Sheridan sees it, if you want to blame anyone for Iraq, blame Clinton, but whatever you do don’t blame us: see, our Foreign Minister made valiant "repeated attempts to get the Americans to focus on post-conflict planning but [was] unsuccessful...Downer wanted to talk about phase four—the post-bellum period, the peacekeeping and nation building phase". And on it goes: "Downer urged...Downer understood...Downer told...Downer knew..." Even in the opening anecdote involving the Clinton administration, there’s our Foreign Minister sagely contemplating the long-term picture: "Downer said Australia would support the US but he wanted to know what the US planned for post-Saddam." Sheridan reports that the US said it was "planning for the future...but did not offer any details." Well, this was good enough for Downer. "’You can count on us,’ he said, or words to that effect," Sheridan confides. He refers to Downer’s own proposal for an exit strategy for Iraq, which America evidently politely ignored. (A man, a plan, a pair of fishnets: Iraq.) Anyone know, what was Downer’s brilliant plan? Does he have one for Lebanon? And will he genuinely "stand up to Washington" by insisting on some kind of plan before committing Australian troops this time?

all i knead is loaf

I know why it's called sourdough. It's not so much the taste or the method, but the feeling it invokes in you when you wake in the morning and check the tin and find your loaf is still only about an inch high.
I've been taking lessons from my mother, the master. She's been baking sourdough for forty years. I'm onto my fourth loaf.
"Any idiot can make sourdough," my mother always says, though it must be noted that she guards her secret recipe with her life lest any said idiots get their hands on it. And it was a big moment some years ago when she finally allowed me to put her recipe down in writing. (Don't tell her I keep it on the side of the fridge.)
I thought I had nailed it with the very first one. It emerged from the oven late at night, and I promptly polished off half the loaf while it was still warm, smothered in butter and honey. I marvelled at my incredible natural talent. I nearly wrote home about it, but then when I tasted a slice cold the next morning, I realised with irritation that it had a faint, raw, doughy flavor. I consulted my teacher and she advised me to bake it hotter and longer.
The second loaf did not rise at all. I baked it anyway, hotter and longer, and despite the fact that it was only about three millimetres high, the taste was almost perfect. I mixed up the third loaf with renewed hope. It deigned to rise to halfway up the pan.
"My mother made bread every day of my life," I complained (sourly) to friends. "Shouldn't I have picked this up by osmosis or something?"
The fourth loaf was mixed with extreme care, taking instructions down the phone line from the parental advisory centre. That evening, as I walked past the tin and glanced over, I thought how oddly familiar the dough looked today. How it reminded me of...my mother's dough!
Ah.
This is the one, I thought. This. Is. The. One.
Well, I hate to spoil the tension, but it's still in the oven even as we speak, so we'll have to wait and see. But it sure looks promising.

oh-oh, the naps are getting smaller

When your baby stops having any day sleeps at all, that's the killer. It means working a shift that starts at around five-thirty in the morning and continues without a break until about eight at night. I look back very, very wistfully to the time when I was able to blog (or read a paper, or shave my legs) while my son had his siestas. My god, the first two years of parenthood were such a breeze. 'Course, it's all worth it when your child is so utterly adorable. But still...I'm sure this life of endless servitude was not in the brochure. Well, more soon, if the boss allows it.

on other hogs (apart from the Prime Minister)

While searching for a link for the previous post just now, I noticed Amanda Vanstone is now embroiled in some new scandal, involving her shares in a piggery allegedly mistreating its animals:

Senator Vanstone said she owned shares in the piggery but had nothing to do with the running of the operation, thought to be one of the largest in South Australia...."I am simply one shareholder in this business," Senator Vanstone told AAP through a spokesman. "I have nothing to do with the running of it"....Animal Liberation executive director Mark Pearson claimed Senator Vanstone had shares in the piggery worth more than $1 million. He said her husband, Tony, was a director of the operation. Further details were being sought from Senator Vanstone's office on the size and nature of her stake in the piggery, and her husband's involvement. Mr Pearson alleged the piggery was breaching industry codes of practice by keeping pigs in severe confinement.

I don't know if it's symptomatic of the Liberal worldview or anyting, but it's funny how shareholders can claim to be an innocent party, when dividends and share value depend on corporate practice. How can you own part of a company but having no idea what it does? "Nothing to do with the running of it", other than funding it?

devil in a pink shirt

Ah, lovely to see a bit of colour injected into what is otherwise just black and white and read all over. From the "News" section of today's Australian, in a story about the continuing Liberal leadership crisis:

Amanda Vanstone, wearing a hot pink top, said she looked forward to a constructive Cabinet meeting.

Not sure what the boys were wearing given the lack of further fashion commentary in the story. Fishnets, maybe? No; one has to assume that none of the other emperors were wearing any clothes at all.

dealing from the rich

In an anti-union editorial in the Weekend Australian, the following sentence struck me as weird:

"...to target companies such as Woodside, BHP and Qantas essentially for having the temerity to offer employees better deals than they could get under union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements..."

If it is possible for employees to get better deals, why aren't they being offered them even when unions are at the negotiating table? Could it be because the deals aren't genuinely better? To qualify as "better deals", you'd think employees would be receiving more income. So if big companies are paying less when unions are negotiating, you'd think they'd be thanking unions. Sorry, but I smell a rat.

ratcalls

So if the Prime Minister feels a television gameshow should shut up shop because of the inappropriate actions of a few of its contestants, I assume he will just as stridently advocate closing down the whole Liberal Party next time one of his staff behaves disgracefully?

on a roll

Well, I have finally updated my blogroll, so hopefully I've caught all the moves and shakes that have happened in the blogosphere in recent months. Now, for some blogging...

woe is imre

Interesting. Imre Salusinszky, a rightie in a rightwing newspaper, going ahead and calling the Liberal Party's leadership woes "woes" for once*. Pretty funny actually, the seat of Bennelong getting more a view of Struggle Street at a time when, after ten years, lil Aussie Battlers like myself can justifiably ask, what has Howard done for us lately, or at least for the past decade? In some ways its good that he's been in charge for so long because for once there's a reasonable prospect for holding a leader and a party accountable, for immediate and medium term negative change, I mean.
Salusinsky quotes former deputy PM John Anderson as being “profoundly upset” by the Australian Electoral Commissions’s proposals: “With all the sincerity I can muster, I urge the Electoral Commission to look again at this.”
The Salusinsky story makes me wonder. Geez, with something so serious (or just seriously humiliating)—the page 2 story’s called “PM at risk of losing seat” after all—you wonder how the Rodent’s going to handle this one. Get heavy challenging the AEC’s decision? NSW Liberal state director Graham Jaeschke forshadows the defence to Salusinsky: “We’re concerned that the margin has been cut for no apparent reason.”
No apparent reason? I dunno. That doesn’t really sound like the AEC to me.

*Sorry, but for some reason, my computer crashes if I try to view News Limited sites, so I won't attempt to link to the story in today's Australian.