shall i count the ways i loathe him?

From John Howard’s election announcement speech today:

"Can I say, love me or loathe me, the Australian people know where I stand on all the major issues of importance to their future."

Que? I doubt even his own party knows where he stands on anything, anymore. What we all do know is that he is a gross opportunist, forever jumping on bandwagons because he suddenly "senses" something--or is told via the focus groups, anyway. Annabel Crabb made me laugh yesterday:

"Every week, it seems, there's a new idea, bearing no critical relevance to its predecessor. It's a bit like watching a three-year-old building a pizza - "ham AND cheese AND Smarties AND apple AND toothpaste AND olives AND ..."

Anyway, over the years I've had many reasons to loathe Howard. Here are just a few current ones. But loathe might be too strong a word. Let's just say 'dislike'.

1. I dislike the way he’s still not the slightest bit convinced about the seriousness of climate change, except insofar as he "senses" that Australians are taking it seriously so he'd better look like he is, too. He dismisses Al Gore’s Nobel Prize win with,

"Everyone makes mistakes, and there is a danger that we create an aura around individuals that is not deserved."

So, our PM is very conflicted on climate change. He doesn't really believe in the whole conspiracy theory, but he's eager to build nuclear reactors in response anyway.

2. I dislike the way he muddied the moral waters on capital punishment the other day:

AUSTRALIANS would feel "let down" if the Bali bombers on death row were not executed, Prime Minister John Howard said yesterday.

Well, some of us actually think that these terrorists would suffer more from lifelong deprivation of liberty than from a quick dispatching to their eagerly-anticipated sexual reward. To kill them, quite apart from reducing us to their level, turns them into martyrs. Life in prison is a far more tedious punishment, and separates them from their perceived pay-off for much longer. Of course, let our government lobby for greater restriction of prisoner freedoms so that Indonesia‘s ‘soft-counter terrorism’ measures do not equate to an easy ride for convicted terrorists. But don’t claim on our behalf that we are all relativists on capital punishment.

3. I dislike the way Howard’s sudden interest in indigenous Australia feels selfish. It feels as if it's all about him and his relationship with white Australia. I notice the way he has described it in terms of achieving some kind of "settlement" of the issue, as though you can write a few words of preamble, then draw a line under the whole thing and put it out of your mind (and maybe your history books). When I saw George Brandis on Lateline the other night I realised again what made me uncomfortable. It doesn't feel to be genuinely about indigenous Australians, more about white Australians and how we feel. Brandis says, in a petulant tone of voice:

"I've never done anything to hurt the Aboriginal people. John Howard has never done anything to hurt the Aboriginal people. I'm sure you, Virginia, and you, Lindsay, have never done anything to hurt the Aboriginal people..."

And it just all seems so self-centred--being about how it reflects back on white Australia, how we feel about ourselves and our past, and whether we must take responsibility for the actions of the settlers. The new Liberal symbolism is far less about actually making a difference to the lives of indigenous people as about making white Australians feel better about themselves. And that's not what "reconciliation" means to me.

Anyway, I’m sure there will be plenty more loathing/disliking over the next six weeks...but that’s all for tonight, I'm all ratted out.

bad heir day

the only game in town

So, the Liberals have settled the leadership question. And this time they mean it, okay? (Until the next bad poll.)
Kerry O’Brien interviewed John Howard last night. Howard pleaded to govern for up to three more years. Uh, this mightn’t have been the best thing to tell people who keep telling him to go away, they’re bored of him. Like Barnaby Joyce, my thoughts turn to a metaphor of lovers. Of the jilted lover who cannot accept it is over. Vows to change. Reminds you of the good times. Stalks you.
The biggest question went unanswered: Why exactly is Howard so much better than Costello to lead now, given he’s happy for Costello to be PM when, ‘well into’ his next term, he deigns to go. (We're left guessing what 'well into' means, but from his digs at Beattie and Bracks, we must assume it must be more than one year.)
Why not Costello now? If he’s good enough for us in the foreseeable future, surely he’s good enough now. What is he, chopped liver? Oh, that’s right, he is.
If Howard is saying Costello is still not good enough to lead, after all this time, he’s deliberately selling us a dud. He emphasised the team was running for reelection, not just him. In that case, why is it so important that he head it up. Why can’t another team member have a go?
Truth is, I doubt very much that Howard thinks Costello will ever lead. "Over my dead body," is the phrase that leaps to mind. Howard knows that by the time he retires, someone else will have had time to make their mark (or remake it) and oust an unelectable Costello.
Costello is the Liberal Party’s Simon Crean. A man whose sense of entitlement is palpable to the voters but still doesn’t manage to win the public over. And Costello has far more policy baggage on top of that.
Howard claims that if elected again,

...well into my term, I would come to the conclusion that it would be in the best interests of everybody if I retired...

But we are left wondering why it would suddenly then be in the party's best interests to leave. And what if it wasn't? According to the strange logic of his exit formula, wouldn't he have to stay whether he wanted to or not, so long as the party wanted him and it was in their best interests? (Hotel Howard: you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.)
OK, sample people: go forth and cane them again via the polls.
It’s making such great political reality TV.

what a blast

The other day Conservative columnist Piers Akerman complained,

"Howard has stuck to a mantra about the leadership ever since the question was first raised. He has steadfastly repeated that he will remain leader for as long as his party wishes him to remain. The commentariat, however, seems psychologically incapable of taking him at his word."

Well, Piers, that might be because it clearly is up to Howard: as we've all seen, he has simply refused to go despite his party wanting him out. As Akerman's colleague Paul Kelly writes today, "Howard will have to be dynamited out of the job".

rat's aspiration

After I posted this at Surfdom just now, I switched on Lateline in time to see a neatly-combed and scrubbed John Howard vowing he would stay on and win.
What option does he have--publicly wring his hands in anguish? Say, "But how could this be happening? I have the ear of the Australian people!" Of course he will act concerned, but confident. Alert, but not alarmed. He needs to try to harness the power of the self-fulfilling prophecy, after all--fake it til you make it. Naturally he's also trying to trade off the fact that Australians respect tenacity. That may be so, but I doubt the laundry list of complaints that voters have will just magically evaporate.
And the pressure's on, if Glenn Milne is to be believed (Sunday Telegraph, 9/9/07, not apparently available online). He invokes the spectre of the mysterious 'unaligned ministers' who have apparently given Howard a deadline of mere days to shape up or ship out....

more red cheeks for the Liberals

Well, that kind of backfired, didn't it? Go looking for evidence that reality TV is rotting people's morals and find out it's actually making them better citizens. D'oh! Maybe Helen Coonan hoped that, after sitting on the report into the evils of reality TV for nearly six months, people might've forgotten all about it. Sadly for her, The Australian has managed to use Freedom of Information laws to reveal:

A previously unreleased Australian Communications and Media Authority report reveals reality TV may make better citizens of the 15- to 24-year-olds who constitute the principal audience.
"Being exposed to people and situations they would not normally encounter in their day-to-day lives had a positive impact on many young viewers," says the report, based on focus group research by ACNielsen.
"It made them aware of, and more tolerant of social diversity and caused them to reflect on their own behaviours and the impact they have on others."
The focus groups - shown clips from Big Brother and its adults-only version, Border Security, Jamie's Kitchen Australia, Cheaters and the Biggest Loser - were inspired by the personal growth of many participants and "found examples of discipline, commitment and hope".

Talk about adding insult to injury. It's not doing kids any harm, and it could actually be doing them some good. Looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on the subject sometime.

happy birthday, mr prime minister

the search continues

Well, my child is back to rude good health but has offloaded his cold onto me. So (sniffle, cough) I'll just drop in to link to the latest episode The Search for a Scapegoat . Hilarious, Spud. Too true.

naughty, very naughty!

The protester:

We didn't get a chance to leave peacefully. The police just started pepper-spraying people, hitting them with batons and throwing them to the floor. It was absolutely shameful.

The Education Minister Julie Bishop:

So we did ring the police because they were actually inside the office chanting.

Imagine! They were actually chanting. Dangerous, chanting. Might lead to macrame or something.

monday rat blogging

Jizzle Hizzle's latest clip (by Spud).

when God's away, the Devil will play

John Howard in that speech last night:

"We should have been more humble. We have our Katrina here and now. That it has unfolded more slowly and absent the hand of God should make us humbler still."

Absent the hand of God? I thought God had His fingers in all pies. If He was absent, where was He? Busy elsewhere in the world causing freakish weather--hurricanes, tsunamis and the like--and the ensuing human misery, as part of His Grand Plan?

comic strip show

of rats and goats

Beautiful, Spud. Thanks to Sean for the link.

ValuesChoices

Is this a trick question? The new citizenship test apparently asks, among other things,

"...what Australian values are based on - with the options being: the Koran, the judeo Christian tradition, Catholicism, or secularism."

My instinctive answer was secularism, but I have a feeling that's not the one they're looking for, eh? I guess I'd be on the boat back to Hamburg.
It's a curly one because even if "Australian" values were originally based in the judeo-Christian paradigm, because of the origin of British settlers, much has changed in the intervening couple of hundred years. Modern Australia should be regarded as being based on secular values so there can be room for the whole spectrum of belief systems, including Christians, Muslims, Catholics and, last and always least, atheists.

damning with heavy praise

Shorter John and Alex on Tony:

"We like him because he made the same mistake in Iraq as we did."

Utterly self-serving and hollow.

joke of the day

I read this quote from the Foreign Minister in The Australian this morning:

"I'm not terribly focused on whether I ever could become leader of the Liberal Party or deputy leader," he says.
"If there was a mass assassination of a whole lot of people, well, I mean, I just don't know.

And for a good hour I completely misunderstood it. I thought he was joking that a mass political assassination might open up some career moves for him. Eventually I realised he meant he faints at the sight of blood, or something.
The story reports that Downer wants to be Treasurer. Gee, terrorists must be praying for a Liberal victory. With Fudgefingers at the helm of Australia's national accounts, there should be ample opportunity to inconspicuously funnell cash to rogue states and terrorists. After all the whole world knows Downer doesn't have time to read office memos. Well, he is writing a novel, so he's a bit distracted at times, as we writers are. But never mind.
Sadly this para didn't make it into the Oz's story:

Barely containing his glee, Downer rubbed his chubby paws together. "A wonderful job! Should be jolly good fun! Oh, goody!"

Elsewhere, it takes one rat to know another...

the slippery slope

Gee, only day three or four, and phony moral outrage at News Ltd already:

BIG BROTHER SWEARING DISGRACE
BIG Brother turned big blooper last night, with contestant Bodie dropping the "c" word during the daily show.

Looks like God has answered one of John Howard's prayers ("...And please God, we need more turkey slaps so we can get this immoral postmodern rubbish off the air and everything. Um..if you're all out of turkey slaps, some foul language would do. Oh, and thanks, God. Thanks a lot.").

where's Donald Trump when you need him?

Remember all that talk we heard in the 90s about things like the "triple bottom line"? I thought the point was to humanise capitalism, to force the market to behave more ethically and thoughtfully (maybe even rationally) about consequences in terms of families and the environment by conspicuously including them in the balance sheet. But now we're back to dehumanising capitalism by turning workers into commodities, and John Howard's great plan reeks of mean old 80s economic rationalism.
Over the years the PM has liked to trumpet about 'corporate philanthropy' but it has never really come to pass. On the contrary, we now have a situation where big business will only very grudgingly come to the party that John Howard is throwing for them and contribute some small change towards the election campaign. Talk about ungrateful cheapskates, after all he's done for them!
The intrinsic problem with "WorkChoices" is that people know from first-hand experience that there has always been a power differential between bosses and workers, and that Howard's reforms can only widen the gap.
Mr Howard...you're fired.

sure thing

We didn't gag Hicks: PM.

Altogether now: "Yeah, right."

desperate careerwomen?

In response to Carmel Tebbutt's resignation yesterday, News Limited's Anita Quigley argued,

"By her own actions Ms Tebbutt is demonstrating you cannot have a career and motherhood."

Meanwhile, Anne Patty of the Herald asked Tebbutt if her decision could not be construed that way, and Tebbutt rightly said,

"I hope it sends a message to women that you can combine a career and being a mother. But there is nothing wrong with then taking some time out or to shifting down a gear or two while you focus on your family."

This is not a conflict between motherhood and career. This is conflict between work and family. There is a difference.
It has everything to do with the fact that Tebbutt and her husband both have full-on jobs. And when both parents work--especially in such high pressure, time-consuming jobs--inevitably they’ll be concerned about whether it is better to spend more time on family than on work. In other marriages the husband might’ve taken the time off work. This is something to be individually negotiated between parents.
It’s just a shame in Howard’s Australia that there is so much pressure on both parents to work (aka "aspire") in families where children are youngsters, and there isn’t much political encouragement of fathers taking a greater role in the raising of their kids. I mean, look at the Government’s low level of interest in genuinely improving the childcare sector. (This seems to have fallen right off the radar again. Where are we at with that one again?)
Curiously, above this story about Tebbutt in the Herald was an odd photo of Pru Goward the hausfrau stooping over to put a load of washing on. What the...? Can you imagine a similar shot of John Howard hunched over shoving his smalls into the machine? I wonder if he's ever used one before.