Blog 15

Politicians either have a dramatic sense of irony or they are mind-numbingly condescending towards their constituents.

After Labor’s much-publicised blood-letting, and the promise of more to come from some Union bosses, Julia Gillard’s relentless use of the term “friends” at her campaign launch was about as genuine as those Gucci handbags sold by Africans in on the streets of Europe. Like the bags, no-one was buying. It was so bad, we were waiting for the “Romans and Countrymen” to turn up.

Mind you, Tony Abbott’s self-confessed ignorance of computer technology hasn’t helped him. Perhaps he would have been better off faking it. Surely there’s a geek in the Coalition who could feed him some terminology to confuse the teenagers. Cutaways of nerds smirking at his responses to questions about the National Broadband Network make you squirm in your seat.

Increasingly, election campaigns in Australia are reflecting a more knowledgeable electorate which cannot suffer bull dust. So why do then pollies continue to bluff and bluster their way through some issues?

For the answer, consider some of the comments voters have made in vox pops and other qualitative surveys. People are still shivering in their boots over Work Choices, for example, or scoffing at the science behind climate change. They are still frighteningly reflective of the dark ages when you really could fool all of the people all of the time.

So, after a campaign so unlike 2007, where there was a visible ideological tide, we are about to go into democracy’s version of damage control. We’ll get the politicians we deserve, that is, those who’ve managed to scare us least.
That’s likely to be Labor… for the following reasons:

Julia Gillard has managed to distance herself from the pink batts, BER waste and the knifing of Kevin Rudd by staying remarkably composed and rhythmically pumping out “visionary” initiatives which are really thinly disguised vote-grabbers…see below.

Julia Gillard has outplayed the Coalition at pork-barrelling marginal seats…see above.

Julia Gillard owns the young vote. Even those who’ll vote Green will give their preference to Labor. Young people think Tony Abbott is a medieval monk.

Don’t underestimate the excitement generated by the possibility of electing a woman Prime Minister for the first time. People are saying they don’t see too much difference between the major parties, so “go girl!”

Tony Abbott owns the old vote. But old people put survival before ideology. Has he dropped enough drachmas into their wallets and purses?

Tony Abbott’s only positive policies seem hastily put together, as if his minders were worried that voters had become bored with a largely negative campaign.

Tony Abbott was great at Rooty Hill, and again in Q and A (no thanks to a very hostile Tony Jones) where he explained lucidly why he would be a better housekeeper but too few people saw his honest and eloquent explanations of why we “can’t afford” the NBN or the Epping-Parramatta rail link etc. Elsewhere, he tended to fall back on baseball-bat epithets.

All things considered, they’ve both fought an admirable battle without demeaning the democratic process too badly.

Let’s hope, when the dust clears, the winner doesn’t stuff it up.

Blog 14

It was some time in the late 1970s. We were a tangle of teenagers rolling around in the back of a beaten-up old station wagon on a two-hour trek up the coast to play a football (soccer) match. They didn’t have seat-belt laws or 100 km/hour speed limits in those days. You just piled in and held on for dear life. I have to think hard (because such details never mattered) but the driver and at least three of us in the back were aborigines. Somewhere in the archives I have a team photo. At least a third of our players were of indigenous descent. Maybe I have a selective memory. I don’t remember any of us being uncomfortable with each other or being insensitive about racial issues but I could be wrong. As a white guy, the odds are I wouldn’t have been the one on the wrong end of any racism. It doesn’t have to be a comment either. It could be a refusal to share a drink bottle, a t-shirt, or the sweaty confines of an old car.

We were never close mates but we seemed to have a great time together, working together, and treating each other as equals. On the rare occasions I get to visit my home town and see those guys I’m proud to say we greet each other as warmly as ever and, most importantly, with respect.

This is not to suggest that every idyllic country town in Australia is a role model for race relations. There were other white people in town who politely kept their distance from the aborigines, for various reasons. To be fair, they might have just moved in different circles. The town wasn’t that small. It’s just that my old man, as a tradesman, knew everyone in town. It was good for business. He had a close relationship with the aboriginal community. He worked for and with them, treating them as equals. He brought me up to do the same thing.

In cities it’s quite normal for whites to miss frequent contact with indigenous Aussies in everyday life. We don’t force people to integrate. Sport, however, is one place where integration is imposed on us and can speed up the process of eliminating racism. In suburbs all over Australia people of all races are chosen in teams which are expected to function efficiently, loyally and harmoniously in a close environment. Anyone who might somehow be imbued with prejudice can learn from such relationships and take a more balanced view into broader society.     

Hazem El Masri told me of a very hurtful incident at Bulldogs training not long after he’d made the first grade squad in the late 90s. I wrote about it in his biography. A famous player at the club made a racist remark about Hazem’s swimming ability during a recovery session. Hazem had choices. He could have spoken privately to the player, made a public stand and formally complained or left it alone to see if it were an isolated case. Despite his anger and resentment he chose the last option. Thankfully, 13 years later, there is no greater champion of Lebanese-Australian relations than the player who made that remark. This player didn’t know any Lebanese Muslims at the time. His opinion quickly changed because of his close association with Hazem. People do change. They learn. They grow up.    

Timana Tahu deserves the benefit of the doubt. He has now clarified his position: there is, in his opinion, deep seated racism involved in his dispute with Andrew Johns. That’s why he chose to make a stand rather than have a quiet word in Johns’ ear or, as Hazem El Masri chose to do, ignore the offensive comment. People forget where Tahu played before he did the circle from Parramatta to rugby union then back to Parramatta. He played for the Newcastle Knights for six years. Andrew Johns would have been Tahu’s team-mate and role model. Those who think Tahu’s just a lilly-livered pansy who threw a tantrum over a single comment should stop to consider how much gravity is attached to this incident.

Andrew Johns appears to be remorseful and, like his brother after the Cronulla Sharks sex scandal, is paying a heavy price for his misdemeanour. However, it defies belief that any player whose career has taken him into long-term close involvement with a variety of indigenous team-mates would be so ignorant as to make such a statement in any circumstances. Anyone who’s played aggressive sport has been involved in discussions on getting that “#$%” on the other team (though in my experience the c-word was rarely used- it was usually something a little less offensive) but there is never any need to identify the target in any other way. A “#$%” is a “#$%” no matter what his background.

Why, in 2010, in a high-profile professional league of which at least half the participants are from a non-white background, are we still hearing this crap?

Blog 13

The headlines screamed “CONDEMNATION OF ISRAEL”.

Okay. That figures. Israeli commandos boarding a ship taking foreign aid to Gaza, resulting in at least 9 deaths? That has to be worth world-wide protest marches and a UN Security Council meeting, or something. But no. Hang on. There are no commandos and no ships in this story, just a bunch of guys in suits standing around a big athletic kid who looks a bit embarrassed and confused about it all.

So this kid’s name is Folau and he’s switching from rugby league to Aussie rules and they’re paying him more than a million bucks a year to do it? Oh. His first name is ISRAEL. Oh, and it doesn’t help that his manager’s name is ISAAC MOSES. I can understand the confusion here. Are you sure this is not about the Middle East? I mean, 6 million bucks? That’s got to be oil money. Who else but a mega-rich Sheik would be silly enough to spend 6 million bucks on someone who knows as much about AFL as Benjamin Netanyahu knows about diplomacy?

You listen to all the arguments: he’s an athlete, he’s young, he’s Polynesian (there are very few in the AFL so according to Kevin Sheedy it’s relevant), he can catch and run, he won’t take long to learn to kick a Sherrin and he might inspire people who prefer to watch rugby league to take at least a curious look at AFL in Sydney’s west.

Fine. All that makes sense. I think. But 6 million bucks?

How many starving Palestinians on the Gaza strip could you feed with 6 million bucks? No wonder established AFL players find it hard to swallow.

This announcement slaps a few people in the kisser. It mocks the loyal, hard working AFL players with similar athletic prowess to Israel Folau but far less money in the bank. It mocks AFL clubs thoroughly sick of new franchises getting a leg-up for recruiting. It mocks the NRL, clearly the poor man of Australian footy codes and looking with each passing day a paler remnant of its once-proud Tina Turner simply-the-best days.

NRL players are leaving the game in droves to take up begging in Bangladesh, where their agents have struck better deals, while the AFL is making Kevin Rudd’s Education Revolution look like a sensible use of taxpayers’ money.

6 million bucks! You could buy a 5 square metre Covered Outdoor Learning Area for that.

Like Julia Gillard or Peter Garrett or any number of hapless ministers trying to rationalise foolishness, various executives are telling us that Israel Folau is going to somehow inspire and recruit a new generation of AFL players and fans. Is that the real investment here? Fine, but after Kevin Sheedy planted this sound philosophical foundation at Tuesday’s news conference, a reporter asked Folau what he thought about the whole thing. Folau grinned sheepishly and replied “what Sheedy said.”

The eloquence! The profundity! Just watch this bubbling personality parading through the streets of western Sydney with children trailing after him like rats in pursuit of the piper, heading for the promised land of AFL and 6 million dollar contracts, his words of inspiration flowing like sweet syrup into their ears: “Come on kids! What Sheedy said!”

So, after he plays some rugby union in Europe, risking serious injury, he’ll return to the GWS AFL franchise to start earning some of that 6 million. His first job? Kicking practice. That’s like saying to those Isaraeli commandos “just get on board the ship and then we’ll teach you how to use your weapons.”

Little wonder sport haters laugh at us sport fans and today, we have nothing to say to them.

Blog 12

Within a single fateful week Australian politics has been confronted with a Federal Opposition leader publicly grappling with the ethics of telling lies and a state transport Minister publicly humiliated for living a lie. One is regarded by the media as a fool and the other a victim although, privately, many Australians might switch those tags.

The morality of politics is play-doh in the hands of social commentators who would have us believe that such things should be clearly defined. The real argument is whether they can be.

A lot of voters are intuitive. Most try to sift through policy but to deny the influence of personal feelings about candidates is almost inhuman. It's in our nature to make judgements on those who we appoint to govern our lives by assessing not only their performance of duties but their character.

We may express little more than a wicked chuckle when we learn that our favourite local mechanic who has been servicing the car reliably for years is a closet swinger who takes his wife to secretly-planned orgies every weekend. If the woman who teaches our 5-year old is found to be attending the same parties the attitude might be different, though many would argue it shouldn't be. The point is: you'll make the call, regardless of what any ethicists tell you.

You can't legislate or even educate to stop people from making emotional assessments in decision-making and politicians, of all people, invite such judgments.

As much as we like to believe it's a clinical business, part of the politician's sales pitch is to make you trust them. Trust evolves from honesty, not just in their relationship with you, but in their relationship with others.      

We live in an era that demands sporting stars be morally accountable and yet we are persuaded by the same social commentators to ignore such judgments when it comes to trusting someone to represent an electorate, manage a portfolio or indeed, run the country. So Tiger Woods is a cad and David Campbell a victim? Again, that's your call.

If politicians are not role models, what are they selling to us in every election campaign? Policy? Sure. But do we trust them to enact that policy? Part of the fabric of politics is relying on elected representatives to fulfil promises. That points to their integrity.

So, how can their private dishonesty so clearly distinguish itself from public dishonesty? If a bloke lies incorrigibly to his wife, with whom he has made a vow of trust, what makes you think he'll be so honest with you…a perfect stranger? Those who insist there is no connection between the two relationships tend to trot out three letters in their defence: JFK. But if JFK were the President today you'd have to wonder if his affairs would be so easily concealed. Given this greater vulnerability to exposure, who knows? His enemies might have hounded him out of office before even considering his assassination.

But let's skip down from the moral high ground for a moment. Get into the murky depths of measuring politicians by their portrayal of morality. How much do you really know? Is it more acceptable to visit a strip joint in New York than a gay meeting place in Sydney? Is it more acceptable to conduct a flagrant affair, with your wife's knowledge, or a secret one? Which is worse…an affair with another married person or a one night stand with an infatuated staffer? On and on it goes.  

The answer to all these questions is deeply personal, and that's precisely the point. Voting ultimately comes down to a private judgement in a supposedly private polling booth; a judgment you have a legal right to conceal from the rest of the world. Good luck in your efforts to leave prejudice at the door. 

Blog 11

It had to happen. In a bid to put a frank face on the game of political reporting, a politician has been caught in his own web. Make no mistake, politics, to the press gallery, is a game. They treat it like a sports reporter treats a footy grand final. Why bother referring to it as politics at all? Change it to "pedantics".

Tony Abbott, caught pledging "no taxes" in an earlier interview then saying he'll use a tax to help fund new policy has admitted that sometimes "…in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark."  

Abbott found himself buried under an avalanche that might well suffocate his bid for the Prime Ministership. Basically, he admitted telling lies.

There are all kinds of lies, from exaggeration to manipulation but what is a lie in politics? Invariably, it fits exactly into the category of Tony Abbott's recent contradictory rhetoric. He didn't intend raising taxes. He didn't like raising taxes. No politician does. He said as much. He later found himself in a position where he needed to substantiate policy because one of the worst questions a politician can be asked is "okay, how do you intend paying for that?" Abbott had to admit that in a climate of deficit an increased tax would pay for his new policy.

His clumsy attempt to explain that a lie is not always a lie ended up sounding rather silly and propels Tony Abbott perilously close to being the Liberal Latham. He has invited every person who ever asks him a question to add, "now is this answer the off-the-cuff lie or the carefully considered written policy?"  It's such a shame because, had he chosen his words more carefully, he may have been hailed rather than stoned.

It's encouraging that some useful debate has emerged on how we scrutinise politicians but the talk has focussed specifically on the ethics of telling porkies. For example, an ethicist was asked on ABC radio if there was any time we could tolerate a politician telling a lie. The ethicist firmly said no and raved on about how the basis of democracy is honest statement of policy on which the voters can make a judgement. Quite so, but that's not really what this debate should be about. It's about creating a framework of reporting in which they can express their emotion without being strangled by their own words later on.

Journalists sweat on catching a politician out. They break out in hives at the mere mention of the word "gaffe", which is vastly overused and misused. An interview is not deemed useful if it simply reveals information. It is useful if it produces a quote that can be used to make headlines or win ratings. As a result, it's no wonder politicians are like a herd of brumbies, nervously sniffing the wind and ready to stampede whenever reporters approach. 

The politician who refuses to commit to a firm policy or promise is harassed for having no policy at all. The politician who expresses a policy but later changes it is harassed for being indecisive, fickle or pragmatic. The politician who expresses a policy and sticks to it, regardless of changing circumstances, is harassed for being too stoic, an ideological ratbag. Little wonder they never say anything or answer questions. But we slag them for that too.

Under which circumstances can a politician, particularly those in opposition, present a consistent, trustworthy image to the public? We, that is, the media and the sensation-hungry consumers, must allow them the freedom to express honest responses without recrimination.

Rewind to Tony Abbott's first comment, the one in which he said there'd be no new taxes. If he said "I'd like to aim for a change of government without having to impose new taxes. That's my intention."

The reporter would say: "But you won't guarantee it…"   

Abbott: "Well no. That would be foolish…"

Reporter: "It's a simple question…will you bring in any new taxes?"

Abbott: "Ah, well, you see…circumstances could change…"

Reporter: "So there will be new taxes under an Abbott government?"

Abbott: "I didn't say that...er…" 

On it goes, with some producer grinning widely as the politician squirms. So, at the risk of that happening, Tony Abbott said what people wanted to hear: "no taxes" and closed any door to embarrassment, except that he ran the risk of contradicting himself later, which he did.

Of course, there are occasions when politicians deserve a grilling. Some deserve worse. They play games too. However, we must provide a common sense approach that accepts the language of compromise. 

Tony Abbott chose a bad time and place to present a humble face. His attempt at being "fair dinkum" came out looking anything but. He's been cast as a contradiction and only the election will judge how damaging that has been.

At least he's not the only one who wishes he'd put his case differently.

Blog 10

There they were: the sage-like middle-aged scientist, the tanned athletic poster boy and a bikini-clad poster girl poised on the bow of a runabout, somewhere in the shallow waters of a sun-baked paradise. Next thing you know, they're crashing onto the back of a desperately fatigued one metre gummy shark, wrestling it like a pack of toddlers fighting over a stuffed toy, jabbing it with a tracking device, then releasing it to float, seemingly half dead, in the turquoise water.

"It's highly dangerous," says the narrator, "this shark could turn on them at any moment…"

The poor thing, roped and distressed, looked like it needed CPR.  

"They could have lost a limb," someone said.

At this point, the room erupts in guffaws. Children roll helplessly from the lounge. Adults choke on their cheese and crackers.

The really bizarre aspect of this scene was that it was slotted into the middle of a documentary on Oklahoma Catfish noodlers (people who catch catfish by using their hands as bait) chasing the ultimate quarry: the giant Wels catfish that resides in a Spanish river. They found a modestly-sized fish, eventually.

Somehow (I suspect because the main story couldn't be supported by enough vision) we took a detour to the "scientists" capturing "huge" sharks by hand to tag them. They also threw in some Pacific Islanders spearing a poor old Sperm whale as part of their tribal culture. It was all cobbled together to somehow show risk-taking human contact with dangerous sea creatures. What the?

Once upon a time, it was a noble thing to say that your family watched cable television for the documentaries. Now, I'm not so sure. The need for Discovery, National Geographic and Animal Planet to fill exhausting schedules has created a new breed of low-rent fillers that would make David Attenborough faint.

The above-mentioned channels are still credible, world-renowned brands producing dozens of outstanding programs. However, in Australia alone they have seven science-related channels to fill. That’s 168 hours a day. Many documentaries are only half an hour long but some run for two hours so, conservatively, let's say they need to provide 18 shows per channel per day: 126 of them.

There are repeats, which is standard practice and perfectly understandable but there is also a need for fresh material, especially around peak viewing times. 

So, sprinkled among the award-winning classics like Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters, Man v Wild, Naked Science, Megastructures, Air Crash Investigation, Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Dirty Jobs  etc you get some truly weird injections from people who look suspiciously amateurish interviewing "experts" who look suspiciously like they have no idea.

The demand for docos has created a market for anyone with a digital movie camera and a boat/four-wheel drive. They tear into the wilderness to annoy the life out of anything that moves. Sharks and other trendy animals are at greatest risk. The idea is to provoke some astonishing footage: someone being attacked, some rare creature sticking its head up or some giant species appearing. It's all about biggest, wildest or most dangerous and that usually ends up being the preface for the title.

One of the best "species" is the amateur naturalist searching for the largest great white shark/anaconda/crocodile you've ever seen. He takes us with him across the world, through an hour of laborious trekking mixed with interviews of people who claim to have seen the local "monster" and so-called experts who warily verify that such an animal might exist. Of course, we never get to see it. At the end of the hour we're dished up something half the size which the intrepid host, with over-the-top enthusiasm, declares to be well worth the wait.

"Gaaawww…just look at this monster," he exclaims. "Imagine that grabbing your leg, eh? No-one will admit this publicly but Crocs/Anacondas/Great Whites in this area, according to the locals (the village idiot or drunk) account for 423 fatalities every year (that's including pet dogs, cattle, rats and mice). Look at those teeth. Wow! Experts (the local tourist bus driver) have told me this guy could rip the flesh from a fully-grown elephant in just under 23 seconds. He looks like he wants to do it to me right now…whoops…whoa there! Almost had me. There are reports (the cab driver who took me to the airport) of these creatures growing to 10 metres or more. Of course, we can only wonder how much damage one of those beauties could do if it got hold of us…" 

We're left wondering.

The other fast-growing breed is the shark-tagger. Heavily-funded expeditions are now packing into well know Great-White haunts, constantly reminding us how little we know about the endangered shark, while polluting its rapidly decreasing habitat with dozens of power boats, cages, platforms, fishing lines, divers and cameras. They trawl all over the ocean with sickening zeal, interfering with every aspect of the shark's life while boasting candid shots of tormented animals teased with baits. They prod, poke, hook, drag and haul the distressed animal all over the place, exclaiming with outrageous hyperbole the extreme danger of what they're doing. 

Much of the drama seems to be created among the crew itself with mild-mannered, well meaning researchers trying to reign in the enthusiasm of the hired cowboys who do all the wrangling. It's like Big Brother meets Jaws.

Then there are the Steve Irwin wannabes. Hordes of them are producing their own series of antagonistic, over-the-top adventures with observations, assumptions and proclamations so moronic they insult the intelligence of any teenager who's ever read anything about animals, not to mention their brazen disrespect for the environments of places they trample on with their supposedly invisible film crews.

Not all of these fit into the "filler" category either. Some have become successful, high profile, big-budget franchises thoroughly undeserving of any of the above. Their programs rely on hyped-up narration of outrageous scripts and nauseating slow motion repetition of the few good shots the cameras are able to capture. Some of the so-called experts they interview are dredged up from the oddest institutions and are forced or coerced into making statements that simply cannot be believed. Perhaps they knew what they were talking about and would shudder if they saw how their responses were edited. Perhaps they act like those specialist witnesses used by US defence attorneys: paid to say anything you want the way you want it said. Either way, they look and sound ridiculous, like the guy who claimed someone could lose a limb handling a tired one metre shark with teeth no more threatening than coarse sandpaper.

It's really a back-handed compliment to the documentary channels that they've educated our children so well via their credible programs that stinkers are spotted from miles away. So a warning to Discovery, Nat Geo and Animal Planet: you are now victims of the high standards you've set!

Blog 9

It's hard not to feel that, regardless of the political or international landscape of the day, support for ANZAC Day might just be subject to the same whims as fashion, film and football teams.

"My God!" you exclaim. "Sacrilege!"

Not really. It feels wrong to talk about a national tradition, the value of history, in this way but it is not sacrilegious to do so. The ANZAC tradition is as vulnerable to propaganda as it is dependent on it. We can never take the embrace for granted.

Charities are the same. You cannot question their value and yet they survive only by how successful they prick the public conscience. That means they have to market themselves, like a product. Remember when everyone wanted to support the AIDS awareness campaigns? At the time it was the hottest charity in Australia. Celebrities caught AIDS, so celebrities raised awareness of it. I recall wondering why breast cancer awareness hardly drew a dollar when that disease killed so many women. Now, you never hear about AIDS and everything's turned pink. Breast cancer is trendy and again, celebrities have done most of the pushing.

While you're considering how ugly it is to talk about icons and issues as if they were sneakers or cars, think about how ANZAC Day has also gone through a series of highs and lows in popularity. When I was about 12, a lot of people under 40 didn't care for ANZAC Day. It was the 70s, post-Vietnam. Gough Whitlam was running a free-thinking, free loving, anti-establishment nation. 

My Dad had been a serviceman in World War 2 and even he didn't participate in ANZAC Day parades. He had his reasons, none of them relating to trend or anti-establishment views. Maybe it was his attitude or my own apathy but it just didn't get me either, until I was asked to beat time on my snare drum for the local march.

I was recruited only because I played drums in a garage band and no-one else in town had a drum. I marched at the front, beside the First World War veterans, one of whom kept putting his hand out in front of me as we went. It took me a while to figure out what he was up to but eventually, after a couple of stony stares, I realised that the more excited I was getting, the faster I was playing and if he hadn't done something we might have lost half the parade to cardiac arrest.  

The following year I won an ANZAC Day essay competition by writing about the experience. I was also starting to become a student of modern history. I was hooked, and have been ever since.
 
It's difficult to pin-point when the rest of Australia fell in love with ANZAC Day again but a lot of the revival had to do with the emergence of the pilgrimage to Gallipoli, which became trendy for young Australians searching for new places to visit. The ever-present wanderlust that characterises our remote island combined with a discovery that when you touch a nerve of history, you too, can feel the pain.  

As the veterans die out and descendants fill the void by marching or participating there is more scope for direct contact with the occasion. The wearing of a medal. The hearing of the Last Post. The laying of a wreath. It's tangible. It tightens the chest. As generations of Australians whose families migrated here come to terms with the meaning of Australia, we see more and more races filling the streets with the same bemusement as the young drummer boy marching along the main street 35 years ago. Parrump. Parrump. Parrump-pump-pump. This is not a show. It actually means something tangible. It is not about establishment or convention, conservatism or fascism.

However, the letters pages of the Fairfax newspapers still abound with lively condemnation of the "glorification of war", as if any reference or memory of it is offensive. Sooner or later, the times may swing us in that direction. It may take one ill-conceived conflict too many. It may take a change of government. It may simply be the passing of the last generation of Australians who fought a "noble" war, free of imperialistic overtones. One day, ANZAC Day will need to re-invent itself again and find ways of connecting its true meaning to the public.

For the record, that true meaning has nothing to do with glory. It is a day for the individual, not the establishment. It has nothing to do with why we fight wars but how we fight them. It is about victims. It is about duty not to any government or policy but to our comrades. It is a day when we celebrate the ability of ordinary, innocent men and women to withstand the single most evil thing our leaders are capable of: wilful destruction of humanity.

Blog 8

If you struggle now to contend with bureaucratic regulation preserving the most bizarre and utterly useless of human edifices for heritage, posterity or otherwise then imagine life if the Yarts ever took over Australia.
 
We are a young, egalitarian nation with little respect for convention or authority. This is not a boast, merely an observation. In countries with class and heritage the Yarts are highly respected. Average Australians tend to view the Yarts as little more than amusing sideshows, rather like the village idiot: tolerated but not to be trusted with the care of your children, loved ones or in rare cases, children you happen to love. You could never miss a Yart as he or she passed by. They would dress in bright, clashing colours, often with a beret or broad-brimmed hat; hold their hands in a strange way as if in the middle of a gesture they forgot to complete; and invariably speak with extreme accents on words that, like their very presence, seem out of step with ordinary language.
 
Devotion to the Yarts means being somehow different from everyone else but sadly, this only makes them all appear the same.
 
There are those who, for various motives, try to blend in. These can be found wearing a suit or dress that appears to be of the same fashion as everyone else but irresistibly they tend to throw in an audacious hat (often with a feather in it), scarf, bow tie or cravat as if compelled to create a point of difference. It is this branch of the Yarts where one can usually find a good argument about what, exactly, the Yarts are. It’s as if these people are sent as missionaries to educate us, the lay people, on the ultimate value of their kind to civilisation. They use powerful words like “culture”, “aesthetics” and “symbolism”.
 
They tend to tilt their heads, puzzled, as if struggling to come to terms with our ignorance as they try to explain how a photograph of a naked 12 year old girl is not pornography because it is not “meant to be” viewed that way.
 
"So, if the guy who took the centrefold picture for the latest Playboy issue chooses not to give it to Hugh Hefner but to frame it and hang it in a gallery...what is it then?"
 
"It's not as simple as that," they might say. "It's about context."
 
The question remains: who's context? Who has the right to define context, therefore the difference between art and offensive material? 
 
Let's return to firmer ground, perhaps. Some Yarts will roll their eyes and mutter under their breath after explaining that a prize-winning landscape painting that looks almost identical to another landscape painting produced a few of hundred years earlier is not a copy, but a carefully planned juxtaposition between past and present.
 
“I've taken all of those references out [of] the painting and replaced them with a technological reference with a grid of stars and a grid of LEDs down in the bottom part, so what I wanted to do is flip the original meaning of the pattern from a reference to a sort of an idealised past, into a projection of some sort of idealised future," said the painter.
 
“Ah, is that why you left out the stuff in the foreground? I thought it was because you didn’t know how to paint people or cows.”
 
They will raise their hands above their heads and tear at their hair (having removed the beret) as you describe an award-winning sculpture as nothing more than a “big rock”.
 
“It’s granite, you know.”
 
“I see. As opposed to a rock.”
 
“But it’s weathered, shaped...”
 
“Ah, so all the weathering and shaping is to make this large lump of granite look more like, a rock?”
 
One of the most common justifications from the Yarts is how much money they turn over. Jackson Pollock’s “Blue Poles”, bought for $1.3 million, is now claimed to be a cultural coup because its estimated value 36 years later is $180 million. It’s one of the few things any Australian government has actually made a profit from. However, Yarts arguing in favour of investment return rings a little hollow when they claim not be shackled by the grimy conventions of western capitalism. The truth is: only fringe dwellers of the Yarts tend to view “creations” as currency rather than culture. Those who aspire to deal are to be regarded as one regards serious stamp or coin collectors, not true citizens of the Yart world.
   
So, shelving the disconcerting discussion of dollars, what do we have left with which to justify the Yarts? Well, they remain true to their elitism, their gift for seeing things we sub-humans fail to see. This mutual view of the world binds them like nothing else and recent controversies prove that to threaten the Yarts view of the world is to mobilise a very powerful clique. It is sad to see any social group treated by others with a sneering contempt, which is why we hope that one day the Yarts will stop viewing the rest of us that way. Until then, we’ll keep our respectful distance.  

Blog 7

A few years back I was standing on a low, rugged bluff somewhere on the Costa Brava. My wife was relaxing in the sun. I dived into a gently surging wash of azure sea and floated around, taking in the tranquillity and beauty of this craggy Spanish bay. A few motor homes were perched on a nearby headland. Their occupants had arranged foldable tables on the crumbling cliff edge and were enjoying breakfast. Their dogs scampered around them. There were no safety railings and no prohibitive signs. On a nearby beach there were a few families baking and swimming. There was no surf patrol. I climbed out of the water, sat down on a towel and rang my old man.

"Hey dad," I said, "you know how you've been whinging all these years about being over-regulated? It's time you moved to Europe. Europeans are civilised. There are no red lines through anything but somehow, it all works."

My old man laments the loss of Australian freedom. His favourite saying is "Every bloody time ya go anywhere all you see is bloody signs up tellin' ya what ya CAN'T bloody do."

Today, Australians think camping is taking a tent full of technology and setting it up in the midst of a restricted area alongside dozens of other tents full of technology. It's a capital city CBD on wheels.

In our day, camping meant heading down the coast fishing, sleeping on the beach beside an open fire and roasting your catch for food. All you needed was a knife, some matches and a container of water. We looked after the places we stayed at and we never took more than we needed.

I miss the old days. There are too many people now wanting the same freedom with only so much space left and our natural environments are shrinking. Not only that, but we can't be trusted to look after what little we have. It's a great shame that my children won't enjoy the experiences I had at their age.

Formula One driver Mark Webber also laments the loss of these freedoms which is why he made comments last weekend about Australia becoming a "Nanny State". Webber's comment was linked to Lewis Hamilton's much criticised burnouts on a public street outside Albert Park, which was in no way forgivable. It's a shame, because while Webber might have chosen a poor example, he had a point. Remember, Mark lives in Europe and visits places like that little bay on the Costa Brava.

It's the abuse of privilege that provokes "Nanny State" mentality. It's stupid behaviour that forces narrow-minded, short-sighted politicians to rely on lowest-common denominator government.

People drive badly in Australia. Barry Sheene made headlines about 10 years ago when he lamented the standard of our driving compared to driving in Europe but it's too laborious and expensive to make us better drivers. Instead, we keep reducing the speed limit so that when we inevitably run into each other there'll be less damage. In Europe, where Mark Webber's been living, they drive faster, but they drive defensively and courteously. Trust me, it's possible.

Curiously, on the same day that Emergency Service workers banded together to demand stricter policing of alcohol consumption, the Federal Government launched a national assistance program for parents to improve the standard of home-grown driver education. The former is a dramatic example of "Nanny State" mentality, the latter a step towards education rather than regulation as a means of minimising the road toll. Both are to be commended.

There are appropriate circumstances for strict regulation. In fact, it can work quite well as a shock to alert people of how seriously society views a particular issue. However, while we attempt to shut down the rampant abuse of alcohol that makes ordinary citizens fear our capital city streets, there must also be a long-term policy in place to educate young people on the harmful effects of drug abuse.

Without a sensible balance of regulation and education, we lurch towards total anarchy on one side, or an Orwellian society of drones unable to exercise choice based on moral values.

Of course, Europe's not perfect. There is still need for regulation there, especially when it comes to manipulating centuries-old smoking habits. However, the essence of a successful culture is creating a public mindset that is largely self-regulating, whether it's sensible driving, sensible camping or sensible bathing. Respect for other people and communal expectation dictates behaviour, not coercion. Call it cultural discipline.

If we don't teach respect and responsibility to future generations, creating a sense of communal care, then yes, we'll need to keep dragging out draconian laws as the last line of resistance.      

Blog 6

I nearly drove off the road when I heard it. Surely there are enough morbid goings-on in Gotham for people not to wish this but there he was, a caller on talkback radio, saying that Sydney should have more psychopaths. I had just driven warily past a couple of psychopaths. One was in a Volvo. The other was in a hotted-up ute. The city's full of them already. So I had to wonder, why does this bloke think we need more?

The beauty of globalisation and migration is the diversity of cultural influences on the world's major cities. The downside is that even those who've learnt the language of their chosen home can still be very difficult to understand.

Such is the thickness of some accents they might as well not have learnt English at all, which makes them ideal employees for companies which refuse to take complaint calls and service enquiries seriously. By the time you're finished saying "I beg your pardon?" for the fifth time, your "assistant" has hung up, thinking you're a hoax caller, and you're left with another 45 to 90 minutes of elevator music and nauseous recorded options before having another go. 

One of the best I recall was when hopping a taxi from Sydney airport to the Channel Ten studios. The guy pulled up in the middle of Chinatown. I looked at him. "This isn't Channel Ten," I said.

"Yuh."

"Yuh what?"

"This Channa-ton. Thah forry-dorra an fitty cen." 

I was starting to get the picture. "No. I said Cha-NEL Ten…as in the number TEN…" I wrote the number 10 with my finger in the air. I held up all my fingers. "TV station. Television."

He seemed angry with me. "Bah!" he said, reefing at the wheel and accelerating off.

"I don't suppose you'd reset your meter or anything would you?"

He ignored me.

Before somebody pushes the "racist" button, rest assured, the accent problem is universal and not aligned to race, culture or even nationality. Let's not forget that when George Miller released "Mad Max" in the United States, they not only re-named it "The Road Warrior" but they dubbed American accents over Mel Gibson and co because the yanks couldn't understand the Aussie lingo.

Most ex-pat Aussies working in Hollywood have to learn American accents not just to fill certain roles, but to be understood by the majority of their audience. The Australian accent is one of the worst in the world to decipher, whatever lingo it's attached to.
In Paris once I was stringing together some well-learned French phrases to impress to a table of colleagues while a young waiter was patiently poised to take our orders. I thought I was being a cultured, globalised raconteur, oblivious to his eye-rolling incredulity. Finally, I stopped and, as if making some dramatic revelation that he never would have guessed, pointed to myself and said "Pardon.Australie…"

He gave me the look of disdain that I thoroughly deserved, pointed to himself and said "Pardon. French. Now what do you want?"    

The Brits go well. They've made a fine art of divesting English of its universality, grabbing it by the throat until near-death.

Some of them make Brad Pitt in Snatch sound like David Attenborough.

English Premier League post-match interviews are among the funniest. British managers may just be toying with journalists when they say things like "Oooh, 'twas pooh-er. Yatta contro fewt-bah es y'cunna c'peet fa nowt."

My brother-in-law recently spent some time in Scotland, visiting long lost relatives. I asked him if they'd revealed much about the family history. He just shrugged. "I couldn't understand a word they said. I just smiled and told my own stories. The good thing was they didn't understand me either. When we left, it was like Chevy Chase saying goodbye to the Germans in European Vacation." 

It reminded me of that time I was in London with a camera man, hopping a cab to the Reuters building to file a story. It was late. We were totally buggered, so we hardly spoke at first but as the cab approached its destination we started discussing the story we had just shot.

Still driving, the cabbie spun around and faced us. "You're fookin' Aussies…aint yuh?"

"Yes," I said, "as you've probably just heard, we're here to file a story on…"

"Ne'r mind thart. Ne'er cun blewdy oonderstund yis anyways. If I had known you wuz fookin' Aussies I wouldn't er picked yup 'n firs plairce. Bastards. I hate you bastards. The fookin' lot of yuh. Aussie bastards…"

I handed a note to the driver with a hefty tip and said "Thanks very much anyway, mate. I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Jis gert out, ya bastard."

Which brings us back to Sydney's shortage of psychopaths. It was only after a few more minutes of listening to talkback radio callers that I realised Sydney also needs more cycle paths. I think that's a better idea.      

Monday, March 22

Back in 1981, during my second year at university, the water heater in my room at the student residences started making funny noises. I was fairly handy but had little knowledge of water heaters. I had grown up beside log fires and, until I was ten, lived in a house where you drank water from a tank and buried your own waste. If I knew how to play the banjo, I could have been that weird kid in Deliverance.

Someone who claimed to know about water heaters suggested I loosen a screw at the side, to relieve the air pressure. I did that, and heard air rushing out. So far, so good. Then the screw fired across the room like a bullet, followed by scalding hot water. Within seconds, I had a flood. When I tried to plug the hole, my hand was burnt. It took a while to find a thick pencil, wrapped in cloth, to wedge in the hole but by then the carpet on the floor was saturated.

Everyone thought it was pretty funny, until I reported it to the maintenance guy, who fixed the heater. “You’ll have to see Administration about the carpet,” he said drily, as maintenance people do.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I’m a carpet layer by trade. It’ll have to be pulled up, dried, and re-laid. I’ll do it myself.”

“Don’t touch the carpet,” he said, still without expression. “You have to see Administration.”

I went up to Administration and told them the same thing.

They told me the same thing. “Don’t touch the carpet.”

“But I’m a carpet layer...you won’t have to worry about it...”

“We have contractors who do this work. They’re professionals. If you touch that carpet, you’ll be expelled from the residences.”

“I’m a professional too. I’ve been working for my Dad for years. Now I work for myself. I laid carpet and vinyl in a house only last week. I can do this.”
 
“We’re getting contractors in. That’s the rule. We’ll organise it and let you know how much it costs.”

“This is crazy...I can do this without it costing anyone anything...”

“This is a government department. This is how we operate. We go through the proper channels.”

Two weeks later the Administrators handed me a bill for more than $1000 to re-lay a piece of carpet about 3 metres by 4 metres. I wouldn’t have charged a customer more than $40 to do it. I was 18 years old. I went back to Administration and complained. I was given a blank stare, followed by “we have to pass this on to our building consultant who passes it on to our maintenance contractor who then assesses the case before passing it to a supervisor who sub-contracts to a company which hires a carpet contractor...”     
  
Nearly 30 years later, that nightmare returned when reports flowed from schools whingeing about the Rudd Government’s Stimulus program. Tony Abbott reckons the $16 billion dollars spent will deliver “only $7 billion in value.” He might be exaggerating, but knowing what I know, it’s possible.

Julia Gillard’s official response is an even bigger worry: “The costs are not just for the actual building but for all the pre-construction work as well – site investigation, concept design, detailed planning, approvals, services, site works and much more.”  Concept design? We’re not talking the Opera House here. Detailed planning? Wouldn’t that be a natural pre-requisite for any building? Approvals? What the heck are “services”? What does “much more” mean? Bribing the natives?

Nothing’s changed since 1981. For the record, it doesn’t matter which party is in power.  Anything paid for by you and me, the taxpayers, will be milked without mercy at every turn of those labyrinthine corridors of Public Service. Everyone knows this but if you’re one of the parasites making money from it, why would you care? As for the rest of us, well most people probably think we’re talking about a few grand here and there. It’s BILLIONS, you schmucks! BILLIONS! Only those who’ve been stung by the devastating proportion of government waste can appreciate how damaging an obese bureaucracy really is.

Tuesday, February 22

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright in the forest of the night. Even the poet William Blake saw it coming. Well, I’ll give Blake the benefit of the doubt, seeing that he’s long dead. I guess he could have been writing about a fearsome, strikingly-coloured animal rather than the effigy of a famous golfer.

Tuesday, February 16

Shhhh...hear that? For the first time in months, no-one’s talking about Avatar. Phew! Let’s keep it that way. On second thought, let’s not.

By the time you read this there’s a very good chance that you have seen the film. So why write about it now? Well, this is not a regular review. It’s a review of the reviews.

As fascinating as Avatar was, the interpretations of the film have been even more interesting. Everyone seems to agree that it is a brilliant visual experience, especially in 3D. A lot of otherwise intelligent people have elevated it to near religious significance. The rest seem conflicted between the movie’s look, and its themes. Very few have nailed it down for what it really is: a split personality of genius and childish propaganda.

Quite simply, Avatar is the prettiest piece of derivative pulp ever made. Sitting in the theatre with all the other awestruck fans, I found a searing temptation to go find an Ipod and play music from the band Yes (if you’ve ever seen a Yes album cover, you’ll know where James Cameron gained his inspiration for the blue people’s beautiful planet) to drown out the clichéd soundtrack.

How some reputable reporters, including a hugely respected senior political correspondent for a broadsheet newspaper, could suggest that Cameron was making a statement about the war in Iraq staggered me. Where was the dictatorial Saddam Hussein character? Why were the blue people portrayed as native tribes? Where was the invasion of a neighbouring country? Where were the false pretences for invasion?  Other scribes claim it channels everything from the Bible to Bugs Bunny.

The truth is, Cameron came up with a wonderful visual imagination; used unprecedented technical mastery to bring it to life; then wove it around a plot and script that the 10 year old son of left-wing activists could have written.

Most of the scenes were shamelessly re-hashed from anti-imperialist Native American classics like Dances With Wolves. I cringed when the displaced outsider, trying to prove himself by mastering the riding of an animal (oh, it wasn’t derivative, really, because the horse-thing had 6 legs instead of 4...come to think of it...what was the evolutionary purpose of the two extra legs? Okay, okay...) but fell off as the arrogant No.1 warrior leads his hunting party past, sneering. But of course Kevin Costner, I mean Sam Worthington, passes all the necessary tests to beat said warrior for the affection of the gallant princess and lead the tribe into battle while the rival dies bravely, of course. On and on it goes...from the well meaning white missionaries to the peace-loving, environmentally sensitive blue people and their neighbouring tribes (who suddenly appeared right at the end?) to the savage, ruthless, exploitative military-backed imperialists. It had all been flogged to death in a hundred movies about the plight of indigenous people across the world. They even got Wes Studi, who you wouldn’t recognise but has played a thousand Indian chiefs in his time, to play the blue people’s chief.  I rest my case, your honour. We don’t even need the forensics...

Had Cameron seen none of these Indian classics or was he banking on none of us having seen them? Having created one of the most gorgeous visual experiences in cinematic history, did he really care?

Did we really care? At least with a derivative, predictable plot, you don’t have to think too much about what’s going on, which is how one friend described it to me just before he called me a cynical scrooge.  

That’s okay. Remember, we’re reviewing the reviewers here. What remains questionable is the willingness of so many people to embrace a famous piece of ground-breaking pop culture as something more than it is. Maybe it’s Cameron’s magnetism. They did the same thing with his crappy old Titanic, in which spectacularly filmed disaster scenes were surrounded by Mills and Boon porridge and characters you couldn’t wait to see drown. “For God’s sake, save the bloody band and kill off that smart-mouthed Di Caprio and the feisty Winslett chick!” Well, one out of two aint bad.

The vitriolic symbols of American imperialism obviously weren’t enough for Cameron. Just in case the other three hours of shameless propaganda hadn’t sunk in, he couldn’t help himself by allowing two jarring, out-of-place lines that resonated with modern America. I nearly fell out of my cinema chair when I heard a character refer to the “war on terror” and another character talk about “winning the hearts and minds of the natives”.  So that was where they got the Iraq theory from! But the mud-slinging goes far deeper and wider than just one American invasion. This movie is about American history. Unfortunately, when Cameron was growing up, he fell asleep in class while the English teacher was discussing the meaning of “subtlety”. This was Hollywood contamination at its worst. It madeMichael Moore look like Alfred Hitchcock. And they had the hide to say The Green Berets was reprehensible!

We haven’t even touched on the bits that are downright silly. I mean, “Unobtanium”? Is someone pulling our chain or what? Next time you see it, and like me you’ll probably see it again, try the Yes thing. Avatar is that impossibly beautiful girl/boy you lusted after at school, until she/he started talking to you.

Wednesday, October 14

A lot of tall, skinny people who might be stared at as they walk down the street are, in fact, successful basketball players. A short, fat guy who might cop a stare or two could be a highly-paid rugby union prop. A busty blonde who might draw derisive comments from other women for her hair colour and alluring dress might well be a very highly-paid, perfectly happy swimwear model.

These are people who choose to make the most of their particular body type, no matter how unusual those bodies might seem to other people. I don't hear anyone suggesting they not be allowed to do their jobs for fear of exploitation.

So if a so-called "person of short-stature" chooses to make a few bucks out of being small, why should we be small-minded about it? A friend of mine who works as an event manager sometimes employs performers who are "people of short-stature". They come from an agency. She pays them $500 a day to act in roles that require small people. She doesn't kidnap them and force them to do it at gunpoint. Unlike many sex-workers who are slaves to drugs, or sweat shop workers who are slaves to poverty, these people have the freedom and education to make a choice.

Did a piggyback race at the Cranbourne Cup meeting really ridicule the short-statured people (is "statured" a word?) or did it ridicule the people who were carrying them? Would it have made a difference if those men had piggybacked their wives or partners? If the short-statured people rode ponies…?

The people who rode horses at that meeting are not much taller than the people who rode people. They're called jockeys, and if they weigh much more than 60 kilos they can't get work. I don't hear anyone feeling sorry for them.

It's about whether someone has a right to exploit whatever it is that makes them different to the rest of us without the accusation that they are being exploited. 

Whether you found the event funny has nothing to do with it. What one person finds funny, another might find incredibly boring. Some people like certain cars that others find ugly. One person's work of art is another's trash. None of this is relevant. The world simmers with interesting variations in taste. At least, it did, before the intelligentsia started telling us that the boundaries of taste are shrinking so fast, they threaten to suffocate us all.

That brings us to last week's hoo-hah.

Racial mimicry is difficult to defend, whether people find it funny or not. Harry Connick had every right to be offended by that Hey Hey It's Saturday skit, in which white guys blackened their faces to sing Jackson 5 songs. The skit didn't say anything. There was no satire. Please Daryl, don't tell me it was a tribute either. If it was, they'd just be up there, being themselves, singing Jackson's songs. It was mimicry for the sake of mimicry, but it wasn't even clever mimicry. Impressionists who change their expression and language to mimic someone famous exhibit a skill in doing so. The Hey Hey skit had no such skill, therefore it couldn't be justified on any level.

However, when Robert Downey Junior blackened his face in the film Tropic Thunder, there was rich context. He was sending up the absurd lengths to which so-called method actors go to immerse themselves in their part. Some people even said it was a direct send-up of Russell Crowe, who is well known for going deep into character for some roles. Downey not only played a white guy playing an African-American. He was an American playing an Australian white guy playing an African-American. Brandon Jackson, a real African American playing a real African American, sends him up all the way. It was such a clever concept they nominated Downey Jr. for an Academy Award.   

Now, it's okay if you don't think that's funny. You might not even agree that it was clever. What's not okay is if you think it was offensive, because the context of the humour, like it or not, was in no way attacking anyone because of their race.

It seems that, in the eyes of the socially sensitive whingers who've climbed the ladder of influence in our democracies, to associate any minority group with humour is prejudicial, regardless of context.

Soon the only people allowed to participate in comedy will be white conservatively-dressed heterosexual city-dwelling Anglo-Saxon males aged 20-40, of medium build and on middle-incomes; providing they're only sending up other white conservatively-dressed heterosexual city-dwelling Anglo-Saxon males aged 20-40, of medium build and on middle-incomes. Gee, that sounds like fun.

Tuesday 29 September

We can do it to brush away a fly. We can do it to apply make-up, adjust our sunnies or adjust our caps. It's not too difficult. Try it, right now. Take your left arm from wherever it is resting (apologies if you don't have a left arm but if you read on, this blog probably doesn't apply to you anyway) and simply raise it in the air so that your hand is about level with your head or slightly above it. Leave it there for just a few seconds. You can even move it slightly from side to side, once or twice, if you like. There. That wasn't too difficult was it?

You might try to remember this little drill the next time a fellow driver does something courteous for you on the road. 

It's one of the most infuriating things a good driver will encounter and there are two reasons for this. First, good driving is very rare and should be encouraged. If you refuse to acknowledge a basic act of courtesy you run the risk of that driver never doing it again. Second, our cities are becoming increasingly hostile. Don't be fooled by the "mask" of community events that civic leaders parade as evidence of good will and harmony. They are singular occurrences. In regular, day-to-day activities people quickly revert to their default behaviour: ignorant selfishness.

The "wave" is one of the last remaining symbols of sensible human interaction. 

In the losing battle against stupid, aggressive drivers it takes rare humility to brake and let someone merge in front of you these days. On many occasions, you, as an alert, competent driver, can even see the idiot beside you running out of lane because of a parked car ahead or a dotted line for merging and you just know that eventually they will wake up, panic, and either hastily swing in front of you or give you less than a second to react with a limp flash of their indicator light as they cut you off. So you slow down, in anticipation, leaving a nice gap for them. Have you seen it yet, boofhead? Ah, they have. They pull in, oblivious, and? And they drive on, without the slightest acknowledgement of what you've done for them, thinking …thinking…well who knows what a moron thinks?

Good driving requires a broad field of vision. The vast majority of "incidents" can be avoided on the road if you simply keep a look out ahead of you and in your mirrors. Watch for the maddened young ute driver or frenzied courier looming up suddenly behind you. Watch him roar past, tailgating and traversing like a pinball. Look ahead. See those children playing too close the road? Get ready to brake when one of them chases a ball in front of you. See that driver's brake lights going on and off, signalling erratic behaviour? See them switching lanes feverishly? Keep clear of them. Give them room or they'll kill you.

That reminds me, profiling dangerous drivers is almost as important to the good driver as skill and observation.

There are certain people that are best avoided. Even if the person you've stereotyped turns out to be exceptional, you've lost nothing by being wary of them. It's not only ute drivers and couriers. There are many others and each has their own particular trait. It might not be aggression. It's sometimes incompetence, ignorance or sheer lack of caution.

Here are a few: The haughty business executive in his immaculate BMW or Audi or Mercedes, phone glued to his head (why…when they drive a car worth hundreds of thousands of dollars do these idiots not have a hands-free device?) needs to be given lots of space as he pushes arrogantly into your lane. He'll rarely use an indicator because he doesn't have a hand free to do it. He'll drive like he does business. "I got ahead in this world by bullying people and treating them like dirt. Never give a sucker an even break!"

There's the taxi driver, many of whom have no idea where they're going or care how they can't get there. Expect the unexpected. Why there are not more of them stacked up like pancakes in city traffic I just do not understand. Perhaps they simply cause all the accidents then move on.

The P-platers? It's hard to be critical when we're going to their funerals every other day. Enough said.

Move up a notch though, to your early-20s males plying their macho crap in a variety of steroid-abused cars, trying to assert their masculinity over perceived weaker "opponents". They hunt in packs so they can "rev" each other's egos. These are the supreme tailgating bullies. They even have the temerity to race each other in three lanes of busy traffic. They are a pestilence.

The claim that women are bad drivers, or spend dangerous moments looking at themselves in the mirrors applying make-up is a long-extinguished myth. Women are invariably good drivers. Well, at least as good as men. That doesn't absolve them of the same dumb mistakes that men make. They still tend to be very big mobile phone abusers, along with those business snobs and tradespeople. However, women have become the new aggressors on the road, spurred by the need to express their equality in one of the few areas where they truly have it: my piece of metal is just as potentially destructive as yours. These women refuse to wave because they, rather like the young macho males, see it as some kind of weakness. 

And on it goes. There are other categories, other risks. It even varies from city to city. They're all dangerous for a variety of reasons. Some can be forgiven, some should be condemned. They range from pathetically ignorant to downright murderous. They probably outnumber us.

So please pause to think that when one of the few decent drivers out there does something exceptional by showing you some good manners and chivalry, acknowledge it with that one, simple gesture. It just might give them the inspiration to keep going, to keep trying to preserve civility on our roads in the face of a horde of barbarians.  

Tuesday, 22 September

We were celebrating a family wedding anniversary at Sydney's Palm Beach last weekend. My brother-in-law and I walked over to check out the surf. It was then that I heard this menacing whooshing sound and BANG my split lips were spraying blood everywhere.

Now, if you invited the world kite-flying champion to steer a kite into my mouth from 50 metres away he probably couldn't do it. But a four year old did.

I immediately thought of George Costanza…the perennial loser after whom I was nicknamed…because my life often imitates the absurd art of Seinfeld. Jerry would probably have penned something like this: THE KITE

Kramer is campaigning against a ban on kite flying in a local park. The council says it's dangerous, although no-one has yet been injured. Kramer thinks it's destroying one of the great childhood pastimes and asks Jerry and George and Elaine to join his protest movement "for the sake of the kids".

At the protest meeting, George meets Elaine's new boyfriend, a dentist, who persuades George that his life would improve dramatically if he had his teeth whitened. George politely declines only because he can't afford it (he's out of work again) but goes into a panic, privately obsessing about his "dirty teeth" which he now blames on every misfortune that he's ever had.

He becomes so paranoid, he comes up with a plan: if he buys up all the kites that the kids can no longer use in the park because they have nowhere to fly them, he can sell them at another park across town and make some money.

So as the others become more interested in the protest, George's enthusiasm wanes. He goes to the park and starts telling parents they may as well get rid of the kids' kites because there's no way kite-flying will ever be allowed in the park again. Kramer catches him doing this, and George sheepishly lies about his motives, claiming he was merely preparing them for the worst.

Jerry, meanwhile, has started dating an ex-girlfriend. They'd split up years earlier because (according to Jerry) she hated being told she was wrong about anything. He thinks she might have changed because she's now working as PA for a politician and he thinks that's a subservient job. It so happens she's working for the Mayor…the one who initiated the kite-ban. Kramer thinks Jerry could persuade her to try and overturn the ban, but when Jerry discusses it with her she says she agrees with the ban. He's afraid to tell her she's wrong, so he drops the subject.

George has begun trying to buy up kites, secretly approaching families but they're telling him they've already had a better offer. Of course, it's Newman. He had the same idea, and is cornering the second-hand kite business.

A furious George confronts Kramer in front of Elaine and her dentist boyfriend, giving Kramer a passionate speech about his friend Newman despicably profiting from the misfortune of the poor neighbourhood kids. The dentist thinks George is such a nice guy he offers to whiten his teeth for free.

Jerry, under pressure from Kramer, destroys a romantic moment with his ex-girlfriend by finally summing up the courage to suggest she ask the Mayor to rescind the council decision to prevent kite-flying in the park. She gathers her clothes and storms out of his apartment, accusing him of being a "double agent".

As she's leaving the building, she bumps into Newman, who spills a box full of kites. Not realising who she is, he tries to sell her one, explaining with an evil laugh that the local kids have no need for them any more. She is so repulsed by this profiteering, and touched by the sight of all those kites without kids to fly them, that she goes straight to the Mayor and persuades him to drop the ban.

The final scene is in the park, where George is excitedly telling Jerry, Elaine and Kramer how his life has turned around sine he had his teeth whitened. He says no-one notices any more that he's a short, bald fat guy with glasses because his teeth shine so much. He's got a job, a girlfriend and people like him now. As he's chattering, the others suddenly look to the sky, and their eyes follow something that appears to be descending towards them. They all duck and George collapses, struck in the teeth by a kite.   

Friday, 11 September

There seems to be a lot of confusion lately about what women want. Hey, now there's a new problem! Without even suggesting liability on either side, let's just stick to the fact that men don't understand women. All right, I'll even go so far as to suggest that men are at fault over this, but I think we agreed to put liability aside, didn't we? Okay, right, it was my idea. Can we move on? Anyway, thousands of books and films and plays and theses have been written on the subject. Every word derives from the same basic problem. It's a centuries-old conundrum (usually expressed by a woman) that goes something like "If you don't know why I'm angry with you right now, then you're in bigger trouble than you think!"

The relevance of this comes to mind after a few high profile news stories refused to die of natural causes in the last couple of weeks. First, the International Olympic Committee approved women's boxing at the games. There was quite an uproar. Next, the Australian Defence Forces announced it would look into revising the role of women in the military with the possibility they would be used in front line combat. There was quite an uproar. Then, from even further in the outfield (well, closer to outer space really) former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett claimed his AFL club, Hawthorn, should be the first to hire a woman to play among the men. There was…well…quite an uproar.

Where did most of the uproar come from? I refer you to paragraph A. Men. Yep, they jumped right into the deep end and paddled about like two-legged dogs as they tried to defend their holier-than-thou position: women don't belong there because…because…because…

Any bloke with the intelligence to know what he doesn't know will have figured this out: there are plenty of jobs women would happily leave for a man to do, until you tell her that she can't do them. There are also plenty of things a woman will let a man do for her, provided he doesn't tell her he's doing it for her because she's a woman. Holding open doors and paying for dinner are two examples. Even if a woman is old fashioned enough to insist on these things being done on the basis of gender, never assume that is the reason. Are you still with me? Good.

There are some seriously valid arguments that have been put up against the aforementioned proposals and those arguments come from honest, intelligent, well meaning experts but it's pointless even canvassing them because none are relevant when it comes to the issue of gender equality. You see, it's all about opportunity, not performance. We too readily forget the downside of gender equality is having the freedom to do all the stupid things the opposite sex does, as well as all the enjoyable and important things.

So don't try to guess what women want. A) you'll never know and B) it doesn't matter. If only 1% of women feel the need to pick up a gun and shoot somebody on a battlefield, punch the daylights out of somebody in an Olympic boxing ring or collide at 20 kilometres an hour with somebody else on a footy field…just sit back and say "Oh? OK." Let them do it. Whatever happens, it can't be worse than the alternative.  

Friday, 4th September

So the Victorian Minister for Water gets lost in the alpine bush, sparking a couple of days of serious searching and hand-wringing concern before emerging to be called “super dill” by his Upper House opponent Bernie Finn. New South Wales voters who saw Tim Holding’s emotion-packed statement  “I thought I was going to die” had already, with wicked contrivance, begun sending brochures on the rugged, beautiful Blue Mountains bush to their respective MPs.

In case you have just emerged from a week in the bush it is important to note here that, as Mr. Holding was declared missing, the good people of New South Wales had only just been informed that their Health Minister John Della Bosca was resigning after a 26 year old woman revealed their recent affair to a tabloid newspaper.  

Meanwhile, Queensland’s winter-tanned constituents were coming to terms with their Premier, Anna Bligh, appearing as a contestant on Celebrity Master Chef. “Still finalising recipes to showcase Qld produce - what are your ideas about Queensland's best products? Any recipe hints?” she reportedly wrote on Twitter, every trendy MPs new favourite means of communication with voters.   

It is curious that “water” has become a very important issue for Victoria in recent years. The state has been ravaged by drought and at the centre of a bitter national dispute over management of the precious Murray-Darling river system.

Hmmm, curiouser that New South Wales’ health system is so critically ill it would probably be taken off life support if it were a patient in one of its hospitals.

Ahhhh, curiouser still that this time last month Premier Bligh was desperately trying to shore up her credibility in an unpopular government by declaring the release of a green paper called “Integrity and Accountability in Queensland” amid claims political donations, lobbying and  campaign expenditure should be policed. It followed revelations that some key ALP figures had become exceptionally successful lobbyists.

If the floundering Malcolm Turnbull really wants to stake a place in Australian history, set himself apart from his exasperatingly moderate rivals and revive a passion for which he first caught the public eye, he should start declaring that a Coalition government would install a republic and in doing so, abolish state governments. The new Federation would see national control of vitally important issues such as health, education and water supply, leaving state administrators to look after local issues like policing and transport. The alternative is we rock up to any military installation in an old ute, cruise past Security guards, overpower the 15 or so troops whose weapons are locked away in a storeroom, and stage a coup. 

In the short term? Well, New South Wales has thousands of hectares of densely forested National Parks, several of them within an hour of Macquarie Street. Queensland is one of the world’s last bastions of thick virgin rainforest, much of it within an easy drive of George or Alice streets. One can only hope Tim Holding has inspired his interstate peers to get out and breathe some of that fresh, country air.

Friday, August 28

Tony Abbott wrote about it fondly in his recently released book. He attributed the sensible use of it to John Howard, even if Howard lost the handle late in his term as Prime Minister. Brendon Nelson was driven mad and ultimately out of politics in pursuit of it. Malcolm Turnbull has since been cursed by it. That’s because Kevin Rudd pretty much owns it, having won an election with it. Yet for politicians, at least publicly, it’s still a dirty word. Its definition according to the Macquarie dictionary is “character or conduct which emphasises practical values or attention to facts; practicality”. It goes on to explain that “It has been interpreted by some as the doctrine that both truth and conduct are to be judged by practical consequences.” It is, of course, pragmatism.

Politicians use it occasionally but they’re afraid of the word. Someone has told them it’s neither powerful nor persuasive, that it smells of fickleness, even disloyalty to a cause. They’ve been schooled to use more grandiose and profound terms like “ideology”, “platform” and “mantra”. They seem to think it important that a political party needs to secure and hold a piece of doctrinal real estate that stamps their identity, like a property in a desirable suburb. “What do we stand for?” is a commonly asked question of the Liberal Party these days, as if it needs to anchor itself to something to survive the storm of media scrutiny. The Liberals appear to have nowhere to go.

The reason for this predicament is basically the fault of the Labor Party. It has been working to seize the middle ground in Australian politics for some time because someone with half a brain realised that after more than a hundred years the same pattern kept emerging in Federal elections: Labor would arrive in office trumpeting social change and feel-good morality only to see their term dissolve into economic mismanagement and frivolous socialism. The Liberals would arrive to get the financial house in order but stir up the community conscience with hardened attitudes to “soft” politics like the environment, gay rights and aboriginal welfare.

Steered by Kevin Rudd’s carefully constructed populist persona, the ALP has captured a position of compromise, addressing it’s weaknesses by simply adopting the Coalition’s strengths. Behind the scenes, as usual, there is restless conflict, tectonic plates shifting like the San Andreas fault but while the party stays in power and the various chooks are fed enough scraps of parochial policy, there’ll be a reluctance to rock the boat. The recent ALP conference was evidence of that. There were a few bleak, lonely protests but no-one was listening. Even Peter Garrett has been transformed from topless, gyrating left-wing agitator to white-shirted, sanguine appeaser. It’s like watching Jack Nicholson in the last scene of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. However, the fact is, Kevin’s done an Obama...or perhaps it’s the other way round. He’s brought both ends together very neatly, with rhetoric, if nothing else.

He’s had to keep the natives in check by reminding them that power without compromise equals a lost election. The problem is that in the search for balance in policy there is a danger of doing nothing. The failure of Fuelwatch and Grocerywatch attest to that, but neither was damaging enough to open a crack for the opposition. In the meantime, where does the Coalition go with any confidence?

There are some who want to see the opposition shift further to the right, to create a distinction. More than a few Nationals would love that but it would be about as sensible as the ALP merging with the communist party. If John Howard had not been too stubborn to take a few clever, painless steps to the left on a couple of harmless moral issues he would have kept the Coalition in power for another decade, inflaming perhaps, the odd fundamentalist in Camden. It’s one thing standing for something but it helps to stand for something that most people will vote for.

In politics it’s not just about building your field of dreams and hoping "they will come" to your “how to vote” distributors. This is another of the delicate ironies of government: give the people what they want, but show them what they need and convince them it’s the same thing. The media rides this relationship by demanding leadership from Government while asking MPs why they don’t listen to the voters who put them there. 

Australian voters don't desire any biblical declarations any more. They don't need to wear a badge that says “left” or “right” wing. They just want liberty, equality and fraternity. They want solutions to problems. They don’t particularly care which package the answers come from or whether it has a designer label. They just want to know how much it costs and whether it works. So have we made any progress here…where do the Liberals go?

They go to answers, not questions. They go to pertinent suggestions, not grand, bland declarations. They abandon the doctrinal game plan and help find the desired solutions, regardless of whether they appear to come from a different side of politics. If it works, it works, doesn’t it? It may not win them government, yet, but it might build credibility until the inevitable moment when Labor slips up. All governments do.

Tony Abbott is right about pragmatism. Whether he has the fortitude to embrace that concept, to fight through layers of religious, institutional and political ideology, will be an important test for his ambition, the Liberal party, and Australia’s future. At least he stamped something on paper. Everyone else is simply floundering in the restless sea, unsure of what to cling to.

Friday 14th August

Everything Old is New Again

Have you noticed? Whether its recruiting for the military, advertising a product or promoting a sport you can bet the agencies signed up to plan the campaign will be using the same strategy: hottest, coolest, youngest. The messages change. The scenes change. The characters change. The products can be diverse but you can rely on the same plan over and over again: it’ll be fresh, bright and bouncing into the faces of teenagers from every direction. They like to call it “tapping into” youth culture. More accurately, it “feeds off” youth culture. Hallelujah brothers and sisters! This is the religion, and its high priests are advertising and marketing execs. Heck, these gurus even have Malcolm Turnbull spruiking climate change policy on YouTube. Hear that whirring sound? It’s Sir Robert Menzies, spinning in his grave. Kevin Rudd is on Twitter. Does anyone care? Will either stunt generate so much as one extra vote at the next election?

The high priests sit like cockatoos around meeting rooms, sipping on take-away tubs of flat white, beaming and wisecracking about whatever they’ve read on pop culture in any one of a hundred celebrity-trash news sources which they trawl through to keep abreast of the times, while they orchestrate the next victim of the same gossip.

“Hey! Great idea dude! Yeah. Let’s use him,” says one, playing with his spiked hair, “He’s hot right now...”

“The next big thing...” says another. “See him on the red carpet at the ARIAs?” 

“The kids love him! He’s a bit wild...how about that nightclub toilet incident...”

“But he’s a hunk...” purrs another. “Besides...nothing wrong with a bit of toilet action...how about you at the staff party last week?” They all laugh raucously and take another sip of coffee. 

Barely pausing to admire each other’s designer labels and $50,000 plus European cars, they spend their careers looking over the horizon for the next big thing and barely after it comes into view it’ll be discarded-for the next big thing. It’s all about tomorrow and yesterday. You’re either one or the other.

Somewhere along the line, a member of the youth culture clergy convinced the NRL it would be useful to tell all the kids out there that they should aspire to be Brett Stewart and Greg Inglis. Did anyone stop to think of the pressure this placed on two blokes who are barely in their 20s? The NRL can count itself desperately unlucky that the marquee players it chose to symbolise the 2009 season have now been in court facing serious charges. It’s neither legal nor appropriate to pass comment on those cases but really, the outcome is not relevant to this argument. Perhaps those young men might not have been in the predicaments in which they found themselves had they not been deified. We’ll never know. The relevance here is in the risk of promoting youth to a youth culture as some kind of moral platform on which to sell a product. Being hot, cool and young has value but that value is not stability, security or credibility.

It seems to be a golden rule of advertising and promotion that a young audience can only connect with young idols. Who says? It might well be that a generation of run-it-up-the-flagpole-and-see-who-salutes-it trendoids deemed it so over a few gallons of latte but that doesn’t make it right or meaningful. What happened to the selling of “today”, the selling of something that has taken some time to establish and has the solidity of experience? Why can’t rugby league and all the other institutions out there start showing our young people some examples of maturity and long-term success...something to aspire to, rather than jive to? What’s wrong with the host of players in their late-20s or early 30s who are already good husbands, fathers and citizens? Believe it or not, there are many of them in the NRL. Sure, they make mistakes too, but it is less likely and if it happens then they are old enough to deserve the consequences. By doing this we also give young talent the chance to be young, to grow into role model status before burdening them with the responsibility of carrying an entire industry on their shoulders.

On the other hand, why the hell do we insist on directing all our marketing at teenagers anyway? Who makes the bloody decisions in Australian households? If its teenagers, then we’re all heading down the plug hole faster than you can say “global warming”. You might well respond (as any good marketer would) by saying that teenagers these days have a huge disposable income that anyone with anything to sell is just itching to get a share of. I ask again, why? Who’s putting so much disposable income in the hands of teenagers, when their material needs are so few and their ability to spend money responsibly so limited?

It’s time we stopped, had a good look at this manic world of commercialism, and decided that it might not be a bad idea to make “old” new again. Sell reliability, credibility, wisdom. Let the kids have their dreams, and let the parents make some decisions.        

Friday, 31st July

Of course! We should have known it all along. The real target of the alleged terrorists this week was Kyle Sandilands, whom they decided had grossly offended fundamentalists by questioning a teenager about her sex life on radio, instead of simply having her publicly flogged. When they saw that tank of a car Kyle was driving around in, coupled with all those menacing security guards, they decided there were easier targets. 

This week has been another kick in the guts for Islamic fundamentalists in Australia. No wonder some of them are going crazy. They’re so concerned they’ve called an unprecedented meeting with Federal Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull and the NSW Labor Government. They’re not discussing ideologies. They’re discussing legal action after discovering they’ve all been using the same PR company.

 The only “fundamentals” that belong in Australia are the basics of batting technique. Ricky Ponting talks about “fundamentals”, not religious people.

 Anna Bligh may have added a new twist to the Aussie vernacular: “jobs for the girls” but the NSW Government? Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen and Ryan O’Neal make better decisions. Prohibition and conscription have more popular support. NSW Labor would have more chance of re-election if Malcolm Turnbull slipped out of Federal Politics and challenged Nathan Rees for leadership.   

 Shame about Malcolm. Ambition plays tricks on people. Bumping Brendan Nelson for the Liberal leadership so soon after the Federal Election was like replacing Leonidas to lead the 300 Spartans to Thermopylae. Since then, a prominent public servant has unwittingly become Turnbull’s Ephialtes. In this case, it’s hard to imagine the Liberal Party erecting a memorial if it all ends in glorious defeat. Just be thankful our Coalition pollies don’t strip naked and wrestle each other before going into parliament.

The Shooters Party needs a better PR company too. It seems to be on a hiding every time it pops its head from the trenches. My advice to the party faithful is that they should never have become a political organisation at all. They should have become a gang of criminals. After all, Ned Kelly, Chopper Read and  members of the razor gangs are all heroes but an ordinary citizen who shoots an antelope is an abhorrent weirdo. Only a sicko would want to kill cute, furry animals.  We all know that guns belong in only one place: in the hands of exciting, interesting people like gangs.

 Crime only pays if it’s organised.  It takes our various police forces relatively little time to solve most offences committed by otherwise unknown citizens but it takes months, even years, to prosecute people who are widely known as “colourful identities”, “gang leaders” or “drug lords”. I wonder what fundamentalists think when they hear people openly referred to in this way as they strut through the lanes of public life, wearing dark glasses and smirking. Is it any wonder they deplore western culture? In Australia, the more obvious your criminality, the less likely you are to be caught. If you want to be a successful criminal form a gang, wear some kind of clearly identified uniform like a denim jacket with a big logo on it and parade around the city in fearsome groups intimidating innocent bystanders. Take little care in concealing deadly weapons; bash people; produce and sell drugs; kill your opponents and provided you keep a high enough profile you’ll get away with it for a long time.

 Yep, Democracy can be frustrating... but we’ll keep defending it until we find something better.

Friday, 10th July

ANATOMY OF A LOSS

I'm fascinated by losers. No, really. My favourite fictional characters are Daffy Duck and George Costanza, arguably two of the greatest losers ever written into comedic folklore. They tap into the human weaknesses that sit not far beneath the surface in all of us, ready to reach out and drag us into failure at every opportunity. How you suppress those instincts pretty much defines what we are.

In sport, because participation itself is a justifiable end, there are no real losers. Unfortunately, our education system is so strong in this belief that it’s tried to de-value winning and given children who lack confidence no incentive to compete, but that’s a topic for another day. 

My morbid fascination with the epilogue of great sporting events began many years ago, perhaps aroused by my own fatal inadequacies. In trying to understand why I had so often failed to achieve results worthy of my ability and commitment (one of the most painful things in life is losing a sporting contest to someone you know you can beat) I started paying special attention to the losers of epic contests. So it was again, just before 4AM last Monday morning.

I had been cheering for Roger Federer most of the way through the Wimbledon final, mainly because I wanted to see him break Pete Sampras’ record for grand slam tournament wins but was growing increasingly sympathetic to Andy Roddick. Roddick had obviously worked hard to improve his game and his temperament in the past year or so. He missed a big chance to take a two sets-to-love lead and for a while it upset him but he overcame that. He deserved to get something from this effort.  Late in the match, as I fought to stay awake, I didn't care who won.

It's a tribute to Federer that he doesn't quite pull off the "gracious winner" stuff after he's ruined another courageous opponent's life. If he were all platitudes and carefully spun humility you might find him a little suspicious. He isn't. Instead, he stumbles through his post-match speeches with a series of shy, awkward attempts to balance sportsmanship with meaningful appreciation of where he sits in history. It doesn't always come off, but that only adds to the raw appeal of the moment. To give a polished speech would indicate he practises victory speeches, and who likes people who do that?

When Federer was first interviewed by former player Sue Barker, still sweating after his Wimbledon win over Andy Roddick, he had to follow one of the great impromptu loser's speeches. Roddick, still in disbelief and hurting in every possible way, nailed it with a teary tribute to his long-time nemesis. He made the noble claim that just having the opportunity to play in a Wimbledon final in front of past heroes like Laver, Borg and Sampras was an honour. He threw in a perfectly-timed tension-breaking apology to Sampras for not holding Federer off his grand slam record for a little longer. Many of us in Roddick's position would have calmly walked up to Federer and started to strangle him, such was the devastation of this defeat.

Maybe it's because Americans are brought up with the ability to talk under wet cement, but Roddick left us feeling sorry for him and wishing him well, which is exactly what a great loser should do. Roger followed that speech with a stream of self-consciousness that a bemused Roddick seemed content with, until Roger's attempt to placate his regular whipping boy with a foolishly concocted comparison. He said he knew how Roddick felt, because he had lost that five-setter to Rafael Nadal in last year's Wimbledon final.

This was the only moment when Roddick’s composure looked fragile. A few people told me they thought he was rude when caught on camera mouthing off during Federer's speech. He was simply reminding Roger, with a little dry humour, that while losing to Nadal last year may have been tough, at least he had won 5 Wimbledon finals and 10 other grand slam events. He was no doubt thinking “Roger, I'm the guy you've beaten in 3 Wimbledon finals and one US Open final; a guy who's only grand slam win was in the 2003 US Open; a guy who's just won a record 39 games in a Wimbledon final, breaking your serve twice while holding all my serves until the final, deciding game. Please don't tell me that you know how I feel. You are Roger Federer. You know as much about how mere mortals feel as they know how you feel.”

Even if Federer had started to bemoan his French Open final defeats and a sprinkling of other Rafa-humiliations, Roddick would still have rolled his eyes and visualised ramming the wrong end of his racquet where it just might fit given enough propulsion.   

Still, that's the lot of the loser. You just have to stand there and accept whatever the winner says. You rarely get the chance to put the thing into context, for the crowd, or yourself.

“Wait a minute,” you say. “What was all that guff about participation? Surely Roddick is really a winner. He's still rich, healthy, happily married and blah, blah blah…”

Okay. Enough already. We’re talking PRO sport now. Roddick’s profession is tennis and a great part of what makes him good is his determination to win. Until we start buying tickets to watch people hitting up, there is a thing called a “scoreboard” and that invariably leads to what they politely call the “result”. That’s not only sport. That’s life. Somewhere, sometime, you’re going to be forced to try and beat the next guy at something: a contract, a job, winning a girl’s favour. That means you are dealing with the possibility he will beat you. 

Had Roddick been blown off the court, played with injury or illness or suffered some other circumstance beyond his control, he might have dealt with it a little better. But he played well. He played well in a cruel sport that has a very unusual scoring system. You can win more points, but lose the match. It brings enormous focus on mental as well as physical preparation. Tennis exposes weakness like an ex-girlfriend.

Given anything less than a victory, Andy Roddick would be feeling unhappy and there's nothing wrong with that. Handling dumb questions? Well it’s never quite the same when you’re holding the tray, not the trophy. When asked in a post-match news conference how losing 16-14 in the 5th set compared with his other Wimbledon final defeats, he replied with a blank look "worse." There you go again. It’s the lot of the loser. It was like one of those American cop shows where someone asks the mortally wounded bloke "Are you OK buddy?"

Andy, I'm with ya mate. I’ve been there many, many times, albeit on a smaller scale. The last thing a loser wants is someone else trying to impose meaning on something only a loser understands, or paying insincere and misguided credit on a performance that doesn’t deserve it. The loser does not need to confirm that playing his guts out for four hours and 16 minutes and going closer than ever before to beating a bloke he’s only ever beaten twice was painful to take. “Painful? No...are you kidding? It was great. I loved every minute of it. Now please excuse me. I have to get home to jump in a scalding bath and shove toothpicks under my fingernails while listening to Lamb Of God on full volume.”

Nor does the loser need to hear some clearly inferior flog telling him that he played well when he so obviously didn't. Here’s a tip for all of you weekend hackers: if your opponent is clearly of equal or better ability than you but is having a mistake-riddled day, he would rather you acknowledge that truth by saying “Gee mate, you had a bad day. I can tell you’re a better player than that.”

If you say “Thanks mate. You played great!” that is a gross insult. You are suggesting that this is the best he can do; that if he played “great” you must have been greater. You are officially a wanker.  

Of course, it's how Andy Roddick deals with this defeat and moves on that will evaluate his status as a player but until then, by all means toast Federer’s greatness but spare a thought for the losers. Without us, there'd be no winners.  

Friday, 3rd July

Lawyers, used-car salesmen and journalists can laugh about it. Bankers probably laugh about it too…but they can afford to, in more ways than one. For them, it's often little more than a harmless joke or two.

We're talking about image, reputation, dealing with a negative public perception: stereotypes.

Hazem El Masri, in an exclusive interview with Network Ten to announce his retirement, made a stunning comment. The Sydney Morning Herald obviously thought so because they transcribed it later in the week. 

"Through patience and tolerance," he said, "I was able to stamp myself and show what sort of person I am and finally I guess everyone recognises it and sees the true Hazem and I guess the true Muslim that people don't get to see on TV. They see the barbaric and ignorant Muslim person who is always angry and vicious and I'm hoping that I have played a role in transforming that in society and showing people the true colours of a Muslim; that he can be tolerant and patient and lead a successful life and he can be good and doesn't differentiate between people. I guess that would be my greatest achievement, whether it be on or off the field."

As he prepares to leave the locker room at the end of the season and embark on an ambassadorial role for the NRL, Hazem stares at the base of another mountain.

The boy who came to Australia from Lebanon when he was 12 has had to fight prejudice all the way: Arab. Lebanese. Muslim. Those tags conjure unpleasant images among the ignorant. I wonder if any lawyers, used-car salesmen, journalists and bankers who held those negative thoughts ever stopped to think how they felt when people slapped labels on them? You know? That's right. Lawyers are crooks, used-car salesmen are liars, journalists distort the facts and bankers are greedy mongrels…just like Muslims are aggressive, violent trouble-makers. Oh, and let's not forget the Irish are stupid, the Jews and Scots are tight with money and the aborigines are lazy…etc.

Hazem has been exceptional because not only has he been burdened with prejudice against his race and religion, he is an NRL player. He is probably the only high-profile athlete who has been fighting a propaganda war on two fronts. You'd only have to digest some of the weekly news in Australia to get the impression the NRL is populated with drunken, drug-taking, violent sex-fiends.

The odd thing about the debate over rugby league players' behaviour is that it has polarised the community. You see, it depends on which stereotype you prefer.

"Yeah…hello? Is that you Fred?" says the indignant talkback radio caller.

"Yes Leroy. Go ahead. You're on the air."

"Well I just wanted to say I'm sick of the bloody meedya bashing poor old Mickey Finn mate. It's a bloody disgrace mate. He's just an ordinary bloke who likes a few beers, the girls, you know. He's a true bloody Aussie mate. What's wrong with that? I blame the bloody meedya mate. It's the bloody journos in the meedya who won't leave him alone. Get the meedya off his back I say."

In defence of the journalistic stereotype, you can't conveniently blame the "meedya" for the image of the NRL any more than you can blame all rugby league players for the behaviour of a few boofheads. The publicity and profile that boosts the earnings of top-level athletes is driven by the media. News stories indirectly provide players with millions of dollars worth of free marketing that their managers, in turn, use to generate income. That invariably comes with the responsibility of maintaining a healthy image. It's not too much to ask. If you violate the image publicly and threaten the functioning of your club, you are fair game.

Hazem, however, has never been fair game. On the contrary, "fair" was not even on the radar as he stoically survived a blizzard of hateful publicity during the 2004 Coffs Harbour scandal, which was arguably the most serious test of the NRL's image. He and most of his team-mates were wrongly vilified by a hostile media, sport administrators and various other public institutions from women's rights groups to political parties. All this was brought upon them by the foolish acts of a few stupid young men. Likewise, Hazem and his family were treated like lepers in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attack on New York and the subsequent Bali bombings, which were so far removed from ordinary Muslim life it is stunning to even contemplate the association.

Go back to his quote from the TEN interview and replace the word "Muslim" with "NRL player". In retirement, Hazem El Masri will be as busy as ever, showing the way, building bridges and hopefully educating the few who threaten the image of the many.

In the meantime, we'll have to keep living with stereotypes. It's human nature. We put things in boxes so we can understand them, but in doing so, jeopardise that understanding.

Friday, 26th June

Sometime in the 90s there was a Federal election held around the same time as a footy grand final. I was reporting on sport in those days and I recall chatting to a colleague who worked in the Canberra press gallery. She seemed very excited about the election, saying to me, “Your grand final’s over. This is our grand final.”
I replied “I’d like to think you take your gig more seriously than that. After all, a bunch of blokes kicking a footy around a field is a little less important than voting for people who have the responsibility of sending our citizens to war.”

Yes, I was being a little harsh, but the comment was borne of a general view that our specialist political reporters and commentators often become entangled in the “game” of politics and because those reporters are the conduit between our politicians and most of the population, our analysis of political performance relies on meaningless point scoring on the floor of the house and the semantics of day-to-day doorstop interviews.

The Press Gallery’s favourite word is “gaffe”. It means “social blunder”, so most of the time reporters don’t even use it correctly. In their lingo, it’s come to mean any verbal mistake or slip-up that a politician makes, like getting a number wrong or using incorrect terminology.  The Opposition seized on the Treasurer’s gaffe, reminding him the budget deficit was 70 billion, not 70 million.

If you’re not lucky enough to draw a politician into “gaffe” territory, you can always hit them with the old "death by fire or death by poisoned arrows" approach.
"So Treasurer you're telling us that you won't increase taxes?"

Now, if the Treasurer says he can't guarantee that, the headline will read Treasurer refuses to rule out tax increase! If the Treasurer promises no tax increase, he stands forever tied to the promise, thus risking severe embarrassment sometime in the future. Treasurer breaks promise to keep lid on taxes! 
So far has this word game progressed in recent years that we have bred a generation of pollies who will try their best to commit to nothing other than sledging their opposite numbers in the house. It's a lot safer to react to, rather than drive, policy.

Further, they are now surrounded by swarms of spin doctors hired to carefully word even the most casual of statements so that everything that comes from a politician's mouth sounds like a rehearsed vaudeville one-liner. "This wool excise is a blatant attempt by the Prime Minister to fleece the Australian public."
When politicians cling to a policy they are derided in the media as "inflexible", but if they change their minds they've "broken a promise". 

So they choose to say…nothing. The most outstanding example of this absurdity in recent weeks was the PM and the Treasurer avoiding, at all cost, pronouncing the most widely known number in the nation at the time: the budget deficit. They were so frightened of seeing it appear in a Coalition ad campaign, or in radio and TV sound bites, that they simply pretended it didn't exist. Watching Mr. Swan and Mr. Rudd doing this bizarre circular jig was like stumbling unexpectedly on two of your closest friends engaged in a pagan ritual: bizarre, fascinating and frustrating all at once.

It's easy to blame the pollies and their spinners but until we break the shackles of semantics, the pedantry of the "game" and learn to live with the humanity of politics, we'll keep getting what we deserve: glib, non-committal waffle from uninspiring leaders.

Friday, 12th June

Public servants are like kangaroos. We know that in some parts of the country they are looked on as pests which should be culled, but we never feel comfortable about it. Nurses, fire fighters, ambulance officers, police officers and the like are not included in this group. They generally gain a lot of sympathy for being over-worked and under-paid. It’s the unseen clerical types who sit behind rows of desks in vast, monolithic office buildings who have always been considered dispensable, if they’re considered at all.

My experience of public servants began at university. I attended a campus in Canberra that boasted (if that’s the right word) a huge percentage of public servants who were re-training by taking various courses. They were affectionately known as “pubes” and, like plagues of kangaroos in pastoral areas, they took up vast tracts of otherwise usable space doing little else but grazing on the generosity of the system. It seemed every public servant needed to obtain a degree of some sort to further their qualifications, which of course lead to a pay rise.

They would explain, during tutorials, that they were there on a “flexi-day”, which basically meant they didn’t have to show up for work when nothing needed to be done, rather than fill strict 9 to 5 hours. Of course, this meant most of them didn't have to show up for work at all because in the clerical public service in those days very little was ever done beyond shifting stacks of papers between in and out trays until you submitted a form asking for medical leave for RSI.

 Public Servants that I knew were not exactly proud of this image, but they joked about it a lot and because I wasn’t a taxpayer in those days I joked about it with them. I thought it was such a good lurk that I even sat for an exam to qualify for a public service job, because there was virtually no work for journalists when I graduated. I was rejected. At the time, I thought it was a failure. Now I regard it in the same way as Brett Kimmorley regards being rejected by the Cronulla Sharks.

Making it all frightfully worse is that Australia, with a population of just over 21 million people, has three cumbersome tiers of government, each with its own horde of keypad-pushing desk dwellers. There are cities on this planet with more people, and only a handful of local councils administering them.

If you want to understand more about how the clerical public service works, grab a few episodes of “Yes Minister”, the brilliant BBC documentary series. Some people mistakenly thought “Yes Minister” was a comedy, but it’s no more a comedy than “Front Line” is a comedy about the Australian news media.   

To be fair, Public Servants are just like the rest of us: citizens who need jobs. It’s not their fault. Like my mates at university, they’re simply performing a role that is demanded of them. Someone has to do it, and if you take away these jobs the “pubes” suddenly lose their anonymity. They become a very obvious part of the most high profile statistic of all: the unemployment rate. That’s why, when politicians talk about cutting government expenditure, they talk about cutting projects and departments and paper work, avoiding like swine flu the most politically dangerous word of all. A “job” lost is a vote lost. For a Labor government it’s even worse: it’s a vote lost and an angry trade union. That’s why there is re-evaluating, re-structuring, re-scheduling, re-invigorating, re-investing but there is never, ever, in a politician’s vocabulary the word “re-dundant”.

The Public Service bosses, whose primary motivation is preservation of power, know this. “But Minister,” says Sir Humphrey with that shrewd grin, “if you axe the Commonwealth inquiry into the thickness of recycled paper, that’s a thousand people out of work! Not to mention the office is in a marginal electorate...the honourable Member for Wallabunga isn’t going to be too pleased about that...”

“But Sir Humphrey, the taxpayers are clamouring for responsible, accountable government. Trim the sails I say...tighten the budget...let’s show Australian householders we’re doing it tough too, fighting off this recession...”

“Of course Minister. Of course. But rather than make rash, provocative hatchet blows, let’s take a scalpel to this problem. Not to make too fine a point of it, we can show the good citizens we are a responsible government by announcing that we will indeed trim the sails, as it were, but with no mention of the dreaded “j” word. There is a painless solution for those loyal ALP-voting union-members in the department...”

“Such as?”

“Well, I understand from my colleagues in the Conservation Department that they are terribly under-staffed as they grapple with that horrendous feasibility study into the impact on the black-spotted tree frog of that new public housing development in Melbourne...”

“But that’s a state matter...”

“Well, not quite. There is, I agree, an advisory team of some 250 people enlisted by the Victorian Government, as required by state policy, hard working I’m sure but frightfully under-staffed now that this is an issue that has aroused the attention of the Federal Minister for Conservation. She’s demanding a separate and more far-reaching, broad-based inquiry utilising the full resources of the various Federal ministries. It appears she was quite upset by those protests last week...you saw the news bulletins didn’t you Minister? Those reality TV celebrities dressed as frogs, hopping about Federation Square until one of them was trampled by a mounted policeman? Most unpleasant. Anyway, now that it’s been thrown into the lap of the Federal Government an investigation of this magnitude would require some hundreds, perhaps even a thousand dedicated staff...”

The Minister squeezes his wrinkled chin between sweaty fingers. “I suppose we could arrange for any staff that we might consider redun...er...no longer required...to be transferred...providing they wish to do so, of course. After all, we can’t force people to change jobs. But then, it’s better than having no job at all...and in a recession it’s all about jobs, jobs, jobs...the PM himself said that...”
“Yes Minister.”
   

Friday, 22nd May

There have been many dogs in my life and almost as much tragedy as a result. If you're a cat person, or can't identify with pets, you might not feel like reading on but be patient…this story might be more relevant than you think.

When I was about 10 my dad came back from working on a property on which a Boxer had given birth to a very large litter. The farmer said the father was a German Shepherd, so he couldn't predict how the pups would look when they grew, but he was offering them to just about anyone he saw in the hope he wouldn't have to kill them, as people did in those days.

That's why my soft-hearted old man had been persuaded to stow a little brindle and black bundle into his shirt, hoping my mum would see the heroism of the situation, rather than the impracticality. We lived in a caravan park at the time or, as dad liked to put it "we were in between houses".

Few people can turn down a puppy, except of course, a mean-spirited caravan park owner and we were not game to find out the mood of ours. So we smuggled the bundle into our tiny van and pondered his future. I named him "Tails", after a very popular racehorse at the time.

So Tails, all big paws and wrinkled head, started to grow, and grow. Fortunately, by the time he outgrew the caravan and the park owner's patience we had moved into a house in town.

Tails grew so large and muscular that he looked like he had been forcibly jammed into a smaller dog's skin. When we went fishing he'd tear up and down the sand, diligently collecting our catch, I mean, his catch, and burying them next to our gear. It was a trick he picked up all by himself and such was his vigour and demeanour we were afraid of the consequences should we try to discourage him.     

I was searching for some of the buried fish one day when dad shook his head and said "Son, we have to give him a different name…I mean, look at him…"

I turned to face the panting monster behind me. His sleek coat was so confused he looked like he'd been sleeping under a leaking sump, but his head…well imagine it. Half-boxer, half-German Shepherd. His black muzzle looked like he'd been chasing parked cars but it wasn't entirely squashed. His ears were neither pricked nor folded, so they stuck out at a weird angle and were kinked at the ends. His body, while powerful, looked as though it would never catch up with that enormous cranium. He slurped lovingly at my face. As I wiped away the drool I could see that in naming him I had focussed on the wrong end.

"I've seen better looking heads on racing pigs," said dad, using one of his cryptic metaphors, "so I think we'll call him Skull."    

Skull's exploits became the stuff of legend, at a time when dog laws were not as strict as they are today. He rode the back of Dad's truck like a colossus, driving away with a throaty bark anyone who even glanced in his direction. At times, for greater effect, he would leap onto the roof of the cabin, until the day he slid off while going around a corner. He bounced down the road like a football before leaping up and growling this way and that at the unseen, unfathomable force had just pushed him from his throne. It was a menacing sight.

We decided to keep him at home, for his own sake, but he always seemed to know which watering hole Dad had arrived at each day after work and in a town with four pubs and two clubs that was no easy task. When Dad staggered outside, that grinning expanse of noggin would be there on the steps, ready to escort the old man back to where he should have been hours ago.

They became so close over the years that on Saturdays when Dad walked down the road for a beer and a bet, Skull would go with him. He became a popular figure, reclining like a savannah lion in the corner of the bar. There would have been some regulation against that but no-one seemed to care.

One morning before work, dad and Skull were heading up the main street footpath. A bloke pedalling furiously on a pushbike came spearing off the road and down the path, directly at them. Dad had a bit of age and arthritis on board, so he wavered unsteadily as the bike approached. According to witnesses, the middle-aged rider seemed oblivious and uncaring as he accelerated.   

Dad teetered to his left, almost falling; a fact that hadn't escaped Skull's attention, so he lunged and gave the rider a nip on the thigh for his arrogance. The dog didn't know that even in small country towns in the 70s it was illegal to ride your bike on the footpath but he sensed something was not right.

The rider stopped, apologised, asked Dad if he was okay and, after copping an angry lecture, moved on.

On Monday morning, the rider returned to his job at the local council and, for some reason, issued a formal complaint. Who would question the credibility of a council worker, especially when dog control was the council's jurisdiction? Some time during the following day, while Dad was away at work, Skull was shot dead by the pound-keeper, who was told the matter was simple: put down the vicious dog. There the case rested. Our entire family was crushed.

This is just one of many episodes in life that leave no winners and the circumstances don't allow anyone who is distanced from the detail of events to make an informed judgement. Every day we are confronted by similar stories in the media and despite the best efforts of reporters to give you a complete and balanced story, it is not always wise to eagerly take sides.