Liberals let down Australia badly over Utzon

I went on a tour of the Sydney Opera House in July and was struck by the way the host, a young woman, kept bringing our attention to the building's construction budget blowout, during the early stages of the tour. She kept coming back to it again and again. And later we saw a video that made reference to the Liberal Askin government that came to power in 1965 and that caused so much trouble for architect Joern Utzon that he quit the country and never returned. But in the film they just said "the new government" with no reference to its political colour.

And the same thing happened last night on the ABC newscast when notice was made of the 40th anniversary celebrations that are being held today. It was just "the new government" again. But it was in fact a CONSERVATIVE government - a penny-pinching philistine and thus typical conservative government that only has regard for money and nothing else - that dangerously let down the people of Australia in the matter of the Sydney Opera House.

It was the same kind of government we have had again and again in this country, except that the Howard government was a higher-taxing and higher-spending government than either of the Gillard or Rudd governments. I think it's disgraceful how we have allowed parts of the elite to rewrite history and remove the stain of shame from the Askin Liberal government, a government that did not deserve the kind of innovative contribution that Utzon made to Australia, and to the world. The Sydney Opera House has recall globally second only to Mickey Mouse. It is a building beyond the wildest dreams of aspiration of the majority of people, let alone a penny-pinching philistine Liberal government like Askin's.

It's time to start telling the truth so that we will know, in future, what we are really facing when the time comes to choosing between a conservative government and a progressive one. Without Labor the Sydney Opera House would never have been conceived. The Liberals almost killed it.

In future you will have to pay to read this blog

Some people will pay and others won't but it's really important to understand that, for me, this blog represents a journey and, more, the primary place I use for my writing. In January 2006 when it started I had just enrolled in a media degree at university. That took two years part-time to complete and the blog continued to exist afterward, through the years of the GFC and the economic recovery that has sputtered and lurched along since then. In early 2009 I quit technical writing and started working full-time as a freelance journalist, with my first story published in September of that year. And year after year I tried new things, such as adding titles for each post - in late 2011 - that have led to higher pageviews on the blog. I stopped freelancing in July 2012 and looked to the blog as the primary vehicle for my writing which led me to add, in May 2013, a 'donate' button where people could easily select to give me an amount of money - if they wanted to. But noone did. Not a cent has been received and as a result I am determined to take further steps to monetise the blog.

The result is that the blog will cease to be hosted on Blogger and will, instead, be part of my personal website (matthewdasilva.com). In addition, I am going to implement a paid-for model so that people who want to read posts on the blog will have to pay to do so. Of course, pageviews will drop significantly but I am fully prepared for this outcome. What I look forward to is receiving a quantity of income from the writing that has taken me so many years to develop to a level where it would be acceptable on any website in the world - or so I think.

To this end I will be working with my longstanding web developer, B-Side, who have done work on my website in the past to such a high standard. I hope that some of my readers will continue to read the posts that go on this blog. The name will not change, just the location, and the general tendency and subject matter of the blogposts will remain the same. The main thing that will change is my own understanding of the value that my writing represents in the broader scheme of things. And I also hope that my taking this step will encourage other writers to do something similar. For my part, I know that my writing has improved to a great degree since the first blogpost went up on 22 January 2006. The improvement will not stop but if there are certain things that you particularly enjoy about this blog let me know below. In the meantime I will be taking on new challenges - including the redesign of the blog - in my search for a decent livelihood from writing. It is what I love doing. See you down the track.

Money changes everything: Twitter and its IPO

If you're not paying for it you're the product ... As Twitter readies for its IPO and the potential for more "promoted tweets" looms like a sick headache for hundreds of millions of Twitter users globally the memory of what happened to HootSuite comes back to me. Many will not know how HootSuite, the Twitter application, changed its operation one day a few years ago. "Sticky" tweets in the way of ads stayed at the top of the user's feed and you had to pay a monthly fee now to get rid of them. At the time this happened I immediately changed my Twitter app to TweetDeck, which was subsequently bought by Twitter. So what's next?

Sitting at a point further along the marketing continuum is Facebook. Facebook users are by now accustomed to the ads that are perennially served up within the user interface. Some are accurate for the demographic - remember blithely telling Facebook your date of birth all those years ago when it was just supposed to be a fad? - and others are stupid beyond the comfort of click-through apologies. But recently ads are being served to me that show that Facebook is accessing my browser history logged at other places on the web, such as links received in emails and those served up in Google searches. Facebook is getting smarter as time goes on in its effort to maximise its monetisation of me.

Facebook is a bit of a closed shop for me, and it's mainly where I keep in touch with friends and people I know from real life. It's anyway a goofy interface, a crowded hogde-podge of features, functions and knick-knacks most of which are never used and sit there like happy automatons waiting to have their ears scratched. I tolerate Facebook like I tolerate a favourite pair of shoes that despite having run down at the heel and despite the immovable stains on the plastic uppers continue to serve as a reliable back-up in case the better pair are out of service due to damp, for example.

Twitter is the place where things really happen, and so the likelihood that the interface will become as goofy as Facebook's fills me with dismay. The old adage comes back now like a mocking call from somewhere near the back of the theatre: We told you so. I never wanted to believe that Twitter would turn into a cake stall, a shop window, an unwanted marketing brochure dropped in the mailbox, a full-body bus advert, a 30-second pre-play online video ad that makes you want to scream blue murder. A heavy feeling sits in the pit of my stomach when I think of what could happen. And the song returns to remind me: Money changes everything ...

All light and sound: the 2013 RAN Fleet Review

A large-scale popular display such as the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Review presented on Saturday night in Sydney has to please as many people as possible, for a start. As has become routine, the sails of the magnificent Sydney Opera House - a building with a global recall second only to Mickey Mouse - doubled as a cinema screen and on them were shown a sequence of images, often involving newspaper clippings, designed to provide a shorthand history of the RAN. The RAN's credentials thus extend from WWI through the better-known drama of WWII to mostly forgotten wars in Korea and Vietnam. Cyclone Tracey also featured: this was a big mission for the RAN in December 1974 when the force helped to evacuate Darwin after the storm flattened the town. The final phases of the display unfortunately resembled nothing more than a recruitment video designed to inspire the potential sailor with positive feelings like loyalty, pride, and gratitude.

The final image on the sails was the insignia of the RAN with the crown on top - you can see similar crowns on the insignia of the country's state police forces - signalling toward the overt symbolism of Prince Harry's presence at the review as the representative of his grandmother, the Australian monarch. Governor-General Quentin Bryce dutifully played second-fiddle to "the world's most eligible bachelor", a gentleman whose casual review-day attentions were much sought-after by young Sydney women.

The young women who did not get a chance to touch Harry's hurriedly-extended hand as he made his progress through the city's streets could comfort themselves by enjoying the palpable excitement generated by figurations of the most memorable naval event in Australia's history: the war against the Japanese in WWII. This section of the evening's hugely-exploded diorama served up to the audience on the ground in Sydney and - by way of the TV broadcast - to watchers elsewhere was set to the famous strains of part of Gustav Holst's The Planets orchestral suite, 'Mars'. The work was written between 1914 and 1916, we're told, and so dates from about the same time as the RAN was established in 1913. Holst's stirring and menacing music dedicated to the planet named after the Roman god of war - it's where we get the word 'martial' from after all, as in 'martial arts' - came at the same time as the fireworks being set off from boats at anchor at different planes along Sydney's amazing harbour made the night glow red. Spotlights mimicking searchlights added drama to the display.

A lone bugler playing a variety of tunes including the song Australians recognise from ANZAC Day parades - the Last Post - which are memorials for the dead, helped to turn the attention of the crowds and the TV watchers to the men and women who lost their lives in battle, and added a fitting long, solemn moment to the display.

Sailors interviewed by ABC TV after the display were all grins and yelps in their excitement at the show put on in their honour. Fathers and mothers lined up along the shoreline of possibly the best harbour in the world wiped away tears inspired by complex emotions. Children stood around quietly in exhaustion from all the activity - enough to equal their own inherent capacity for movement and sound. The TV anchors beamed with pleasure for the sheer size of the moment of shared community they had helped to create, and happily declared themselves speechless. The cooling air of the calm spring night, absent rain, slowly dispersed the clouds of smoke from the dead incendiary devices. A million people turned their attentions to the problem of getting home on crowded public transport. The black water of the harbour lapped quietly against the stone parapets at the Botanic Gardens and beneath the apartment blocks of Kirribilli. The long weekend continued.

Indonesian cattle land purchases in the Top End are quid pro quo

I thought it was a bit odd when not long after the election result was clear and Tony Abbott started to pursue the priorities he'd set out before the poll, that a story about plans for Indonesian companies to purchase Northern Territory cattle properties appeared in the media. Then less than three weeks after the election more stories emerged, with Abbott's Jakarta trip scheduled to go ahead the following week (this week). Now Barnaby Joyce, the agriculture minister who had eretofore been loudly protesting against such sales, has executed a neck-snapping backflip on the issue, and has moved in behind them.

It's been clever maneuvering by the Indonesians. After the Labor government shut down the live cattle trade to Indonesia in June 2011 Northern Territory cattle producers never really recovered as importers kept quotas well below levels that obtained before the crisis. As a result local property prices dropped sharply. In step the Indonesians, wallets in their hands. And with the new interest from Indonesia in purchasing cattle properties, property values will recover.

During his visit to Jakarta, Abbott slammed the previous government over its unilateral move to stop the live trade, in a concession to his hosts that cost him nothing. Now he has brought Joyce into line, allowing him to assign credit for the backflip to Northern Territory cattle producers themselves who, Joyce says, want the sales to go ahead. Of course they do. But it's fascinating to watch Joyce shift so rapidly from the agrarian socialism he has always believed in, to a spot in the limelight situated significantly closer to the main action taking place in the seats reserved for the supporters of big business.

Abbott has for his part moved closer to Julia Gillard's "Asian Century" template. The PM very loudly announced that a bevvy of business people would go with him to Jakarta in an effort to drum up trade between the two countries. Which is how it should be played. There are heaps of business opportunities available in Indonesia for smart Australian companies. Those who complain about the fact that an Indonesian company owning cattle land in the NT would pay no tax on live exports are missing the point. It's short-sighted and parochial to simply equate the national interest with tax receipts. Farmers and those living in rural communities know that foreign investment often brings with it higher levels of capital inflow as new owners work to improve properties in line with their wider business strategies.

Australia relies on foreign investment in so many parts of its economy that it simply could not function at the level its citizens have become accustomed to without it. Beyond this aspect of the case, however, is the simple quid pro quo. If Abbott wants Australian companies to prosper in Indonesia - where the population has now reached 250 million and where the same middle class that asks for Aussie beef commands significant, and growing, discretionary cash - then he has to be willing to allow Indonesian companies to pursue their own best interests on Australian soil. This is how the diplomacy of business works. And I would far rather see the quid pro quo working to the advantage of Australian businesses than merely underpinning Scott Morrison's silly and xenophobic asylum-seeker policies.

If the government shuts down, who needs a republic?

This blogpost started with a humorous tweet - "Let's shut the government down & immediately start it up again and hope that fixes the problem like with my wifi." - that appeared a couple of days ago in my feed where it had been retweeted by someone I follow, and it got me thinking about the events in Australia of November 1975 when exactly that happened, as the Washington Post reported. This story appeared in social media soon after I had remarked there that the differences between the two cases warranted examination in the media today. The events it recounts are writ large in the memories of many liberals because it was a progressive prime minister who was dismissed by the governor-general; Gough Whitlam - who is still alive - looks to most Australians like some sort of unfettered sage looming over the decades that have passed since those days long gone.

After I posted the link to that story on Facebook someone I know remarked that the US government shutdown was the reason he remained a monarchist, and I countered - because I personally would prefer to see Australia as a republic - that just because the US polity has the problems it does now would not necessarily mean that every republican model you constructed would be liable to the same phenomena. The guy said I had a healthy imagination, and: "Up till now I haven't seen anything that does the trick... but I remain open minded!"

Staying open-minded is part of the trick. As recently as December I came up against questions about Australia's political system from a skeptic. Although Australia is the world's fourth-oldest democracy we sometimes get reminded that the British Queen remains the head of state. Is Australia a real democracy? The question gets asked, it does. In the main, foreigners tend to be more censorious than locals. Yesterday someone used the word "neo-colonialism" in a tweet responding to one of mine: a Brit as it happened. But Australians are far more blase about the political settlement that has served the country so well for such a long time - elections began to be held in New South Wales in 1856. The country is the world's 15th-largest economy although its population is a mere 23 million. There has never been any major episode of civil conflict to mar the record. It is a liberal, pluralist, successful polity that continues to attract hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year who want to work, live and raise their families here; our bureaucrats and politicians - regardless whether they're conservative or progressive - encourage this inflow.

But still the question remains as to why the country does not choose to go it alone. Certainly, the drama in Washington DC currently must act as a disincentive. How much more civilised, many will say, to simply abolish the government, call for new parliamentary elections, and carry on. On top of the smug feeling our record in this space evokes there's also the matter that the British royal family is wildly popular in Australia, evidenced by the regular appearance of royals on the glossy covers of women's magazines. The flag has Britain's Union Jack set in the top lefthand corner. Australians are remarkably comfortable with the political settlement mainly because it has operated so well for so long. Students of Australian democracy might well point to episodes other than the one in November 1975 to show how the monarchy functions to adjust the progress of government in Canberra, but there has been no other major one to frighten children with.

In the final analysis the current Australian political settlement is a very reasonable one, and if there's any one characteristic that symbolises government in this country it is that it's reasonable. The can-do-anything imaginitiveness fostered by Americans' foundation myths is less overt in Australia, and for that reason probably more complex. The fact remains that when Australians asked for representative government the British monarchy complied. It has been complicit in the trick ever since. Nothing to see here, move along.

What does the Guardian need to do to survive?

New Yorker feature writer Ken Auletta's profile of the Guardian's Alan Rusbridger is, for liberals, a bit like a sweet treat with no health consequences: did spending 15 minutes reading the story on your screen impair your vision? The answer is emphatically no. Does the world desperately need the Guardian? The answer is: that depends. Auletta's approach is prima facie biased, for a start, admitting up-front that a media outlet led by a single person is the only way to go, but what can you expect from the New Yorker? For, given the likelihood that your business will be more than just scrutinised by those who have something to lose by your publishing stories - politicians and state functionaries occasionally drop by for a discrete chat, with all the menace that that mundane epithet implies - it seems that some sort of top spokesperson is advisable. Nevertheless, the Guardian's latest coup - the Edward Snowden stories - emerged from the keyboard of a freelancer based in Brazil, Glen Greenwald.

Assuming for a moment that the Guardian is indeed necessary for the survival of democratic polities - let's say the OECD or, more appropriately, the countries of the Anglosphere - there's still the issue of cost. Rusbridger has aggressively carried the UK brand globally - there are now websites operating out of the US and Australia, with possibly more to come (India, perhaps?) - and he's kept access completely free, which means he's relying on serving ads to readers. Auletta's story notes the Scott Trust, which bankrolls the newspaper, possesses 254,000,000 pounds Sterling in liquid capital. There's no mention of other assets the trust might own, but even on this basis you can count reliably on an annual income of just under 13,000,000 pounds (at a benchmark rate of five percent earnings on capital). Outgoings in the most recent financial year, however, were 31,000,000 pounds and Rusbridger wants to trim those losses:

[Andrew Miller, the director of the trust and the C.E.O. of the Guardian Media Group] admits that he does not foresee the newspaper earning a profit anytime soon. Rusbridger said, “The aim is to have sustainable losses.” Miller defines that as getting “our losses down to the low teens in three to five years.”

Given these figures, it's probably overly pessimistic to deduce that the Guardian will run out of money in three to five years, as Auletta's story says will happen, but clearly a new business model is needed.

If the paper's Australian website overtook Rupert Murdoch's Australian in pageviews within weeks of its launch, as Auletta's story reveals, there's still plenty to be optimistic about. The Guardian prides itself on being disruptive and this is why people read it so happily but the disruptive effect of the internet is equally harsh on those who fail the relevant test. It's not whether you deserve to survive that counts, it's whether you have the flexibility to survive. Rusbridger's maintaining the UK print edition seems to me to be a weak spot, acknowledging though that this vehicle is responsible for a significant quantity of the paper's income. But the approach of Rusbridger, while it appears to be very positive, may signal that it is time for him to go and to let someone who is more attuned to the online world, take over.

The US and Australian forays have been led by watching website traffic, but Auletta's story also tells us that Rusbridger spent time in the US as a reporter decades ago. Making the move to that market is therefore a step in line with his own personal biases. Going to Australia appears to me to be a toe in the water in advance of entries into other, bigger, markets such as India. But it's not just the places it operates that will determine whether the Guardian can stay afloat down the track. A new business model is going to become imperative.

The Guardian has reached out to its readers - many will remember the paper spruiking its open journalism idea in February last year; remember the three little pigs? - but it has held back from adopting a crowdfunding model, a model of income generation that has proved itself lucrative time and time again. Many Australians will be aware, very recently, of the success of the Climate Council in raising funds (it emerged from the Climate Commission, a government-funded body the new federal government abolished); five days ago it was reported they'd raised $1 million from the community alone. There's also the example of Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site that has helped to bankroll 49,000 creative projects since 2009. I'm not saying that the Guardian has to post each major investigation on Kickstarter, with a video, to get its book filled but these are the things that Rusbridger needs to think about if he wants to cut losses to below that key 13,000,000 pound threshold.

But I'm not sure that Rusbridger is up to it. His presence on Twitter, for example, is minimal and relies mainly - in fact, totally, as far as I have seen - on pushing story links to readers. There's no real engagement, nothing sticky that he's doing to make people follow him. Other editors with the paper are better at this. It's a generational thing, I believe. Rusbridger has done fantastic work for a long time and, yes, he's got spine. For the Guardian to survive though he must relinquish his post and hand over to a person who better "gets" the web and who also has that journalistic background. That person might think about ways to help develop more freelancers, too, in the mold of Greenwald. Brazil looks nice don't you think?

Book review: A Delicate Truth, John Le Carre (2013)

This lovely novel situates itself in two periods of time within recent history, starting with the aggressive post-9/11 hubris of New Labour. It opens with Paul Anderson, alias of Kit Probyn, an undistinguished functionary in the Foreign Office, acting as the ears and eyes on the ground in Gibraltar for Fergus Quinn, the foreign minister, in an official - but deniable - rendition/kill operation against a terror target. Operation Wildlife involves delisted members of the UK special forces and mercenaries from Ethical Outcomes, a Texas-based private intelligence and enforcement provider. The squadies go in but then Paul/Kit is whisked away.

The narrative then takes up with Toby Bell, a rising star in the Foreign Office, who works as private secretary to Quinn. Bell is suspicious of his boss and takes actions - including activating a listening device in Quinn's office during a planning meeting for Operation Wildlife - that serve to raise the levels of tension in the book. But then he, too, is whisked away and posted elsewhere. He never forgets Quinn though or indeed Jay Crispin, an employee of Ethical Outcomes he meets in Quinn's offices.

The story then takes up with Probyn on his Cornwall estate following his leaving the Foreign Office as Sir Christopher. Plum overseas postings after Operation Wildlife have set him up nicely with a state pension that he can enjoy in his retirement. But one day he comes face to face with Jeb Owen, one of the special forces soldiers from Operation Wildlife. Jeb has set himself up as an itinerant leatherworker with a well-equipped van, and he tells Kit in an oblique fashion that Operation Wildlife had deleterious outcomes that noone admitted to at the time. Were Kit's cushy postings awarded on the back of the murder of an innocent woman and her child? When Kit's wife Suzanna gets wind of the truth Le Carre sets in train a series of events that pull Probyn and Bell closer and closer together, and deeply involve also Kit's doctor daughter Emily.

Extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial murder, private defense contractors and the like have been elements of public debate for some years, notably in the follow-up to the 9/11 attacks when the US went frankly mental. Le Carre has woven such concepts into a story that implicates the UK government in very immoral - and also illegal - activities, in his new book. The final chapters contain some wonderful writing about how whistleblowers get routinely treated by government, and even at the end we do not know what's in store for Toby and Kit as the security forces arrive with their sirens wailing.

The book also plays around the margins of internal and public routes available to whistleblowers, bringing to mind the actions in the real world involving WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden. There is a wonderful scene when Kit approaches the Foreign Office with his concerns about Operation Wildlife and is treated very roughly by two grey bureaucrats intent on protecting their august institution and the politicians at its head. In fact the emotional and slightly unstable Kit is a wonderful character from Le Carre even if it's the more substantial and reliable Toby we are asked to barrack for in the end.

The unsettling Crispin and his various organisations that work closely with governments like the UK's is also a treat, although you do wonder if companies such as Ethical Outcomes can possibly be as sinister as Le Carre paints this one. But this is drama and so it doesn't matter. Also he does so often, Le Carre is able to render the larger, global action in terms of the relationships between private individuals. The stresses and anxieties that they feel come to the fore, and so this is both an unsettling and enjoyable book that served, at least in my case, to import for a limited period of time some of the anxieties of the War on Terror, into my living room. A great read.

Dami Im will win the X-Factor

If anyone thinks Australians are racist they should watch the X-Factor, Channel Seven's reality TV program, and see the overwhelming manner with which locals have embraced the amazing Dami Im, the 24-year-old who migrated to Brisbane from Korea as a child and grew up living with her mother who encouraged her interest in classical music. Im's stage presence has developed over the course of the program from hesitant and apologetic to the point where she confidently occupies the stage, delivering week-on-week stand-out performances to a large studio crowd as well as millions of Australians sitting in their lounge rooms. Those people at home have delivered Im telephone approval rates that have seen her emerge as the strongest contender in the competition.

Each week one contender is knocked out of the running in a sing-off judged by the panel of experts. One singer will go through at the end of the competition to secure a recording contract and sponsorship.

Im's strongly Asian features and slight build belie the legitimacy of her diction and the strength of her voice. From the early stages of the competition I was telling my daughter, who is half Japanese and who was staying with me at the time, that Im was the strongest contender and I think most people who have been exposed to the show had the same idea. Across a range of genres - from rock to soul - Im has delivered clarity, long notes, controlled vibrato, sheer volume, and complete mastery of the material that her mentor, Danii Minogue, has given her. I look forward to adding Im's recordings to those by Australia's current leading singer, Delta Goodrem, in my CD collection.

Im is just awesome.

Homophobic Barilla boss part of Italy's conservative culture

Guido Barilla, head of the eponymous Italian pasta company sparked a fierce row that spread globally along with calls to boycott his company's products after he voiced what were taken by many as highly offensive remarks about homosexuals, saying he would not consider using a gay family to advertise Barilla pasta.

"For us the concept of the sacred family remains one of the basic values of the company," he told Italian radio on Wednesday evening. "I would not do it but not out of a lack of respect for homosexuals who have the right to do what they want without bothering others … [but] I don't see things like they do and I think the family that we speak to is a classic family."

The interview where this dog-whistling occurred took such a turn because the interviewer asked Barilla about his views on how women were portrayed in the media in Italy, as the Guardian reported.

The interview started by asking Barilla what he thought of an appeal made on Tuesday by the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Laura Boldrini, to change the often stereotypical image of women in Italian advertisements.

Italy, where the Catholic Church insinuates its influence in cultural and political arenas, is also the country that is home to Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset, a broadcaster (see pic) that definitively exploits women in its programming as providers of sex. Barilla's insistence that women function primarily in the home as providers of food plays out in the imagination along precisely the same lines. A conservative bias like this is extremely unhealthy for both women and girls, serving to bolster a culture of stereotypisation and discrimination and exploitation. The man's comments fit into the opinion among many that Italy is a country mired in outdated ideas where given the continual development of cultural products women and girls are more and more expected to conform to limiting role models for the gratification of men. Part of that paradigm is a tendency to relegate to second-class status anyone who dies not fit the dominant lifestyle pattern, such as homosexual men. (Interestingly, there is no acknowledgement at all of homosexual women, or lesbians.) In Australia, we see politicians doing a similar kind of dog-whistling when they talk of "values".

A man like Barilla's comments furthermore foreground the importance of global companies employing spokespeople who are able to project a positive image of the company, rather than merely relying on tired and outdated tropes that gratify personal feelings.

Barilla is a global company and the remarks played out within a day to a global audience, including many people who regularly consume spaghetti and other pasta products. Among my friends the immediate reaction - for those who are gay as well as those who are not - was to make a decision never to buy Barilla products again in future. This was even without seeing the hashtag that emerged in Italian Twitter circles asking people to boycott the company's products. A local player like Berlusconi who only has to think of what people at home think about his views is at least tolerable in political circles - even if he routinely figures in satire overseas. But a company that relies on the goodwill of consumers throughout the world cannot afford to continue fielding narrow-minded executives prone to on-screen gaffes like Guido Barilla.

Indonesia won't cooperate with Abbott on asylum seekers

Translating the language of domestic politics into something that foreign governments can understand is turning out to be a problem for Tony Abbott and his foreign minister. Julie Bishop met with her Indonesian counterpart Marty Natalegawa in New York recently in a frosty one-on-one that Bishop tried to spin domestically as "psoitive". Clearly it was anything but, with Natalegawa now releasing publicly a transcript of the meeting's discussions. Given the high degree of secrecy sought by the Abbott government, in its attempt to subvert the 24-hour media cycle at home, the publication is a severe embarrassment and the Indonesians know it, having picked up on the "calm, measured" tone the Australian government is looking to generate in the domestic media. "Look," Natalegawa seems to be saying, "if you guys can't come up with an approach that suits Indonesia we won't cooperate and we'll even go out of our way to make you look bad at home." Indonesia wants to handle the asylum seeker issue through the existing Bali Process and resents the Abbott government's implementing radical measures that largely ignore Indonesia's feelings. A three-star general in charge of the operation? Really? Frankly I agree with Natalegawa. If I hear Julie Bishop use the word "operational" once more I think I'll scream. And "Operation Sovereign Borders"? I wonder how Indonesia feels about Australia's respect for sovereignty given East Timor. Of course Natalegawa could just be playing Bishop so that Yudhoyono can look like a champ when Abbott visits Jakarta - as he is soon due to do - and claim the credit domestically himself.

Boycott ban thought bubble another Tory ploy to silence dissent

In a surprising piece of media theatre a few days ago, senator Richard Colbeck of the Liberal Party and the parliamentary secretary for agriculture, voiced an idea to ban consumer boycotts by activists. As the Guardian reported:

Unlawful secondary boycotts occur if third parties deliberately hinder the supply of goods or services – but there is an explicit exemption for activists involved in campaigns intended to protect the environment or consumers. 

Farmers are often vocal about the power of activist groups - I watch them grumble on social media, as they do from time to time - so it's not too surprising to hear Colbeck (pictured) get behind what he might consider his constituency. But farmers are also very vocal about their own interests and I have often heard for bans of the retail duopoly - Coles and Woolworths - when things go against farmers' economic interests and they see an opportunity to use activism to promote them.

The Libs seems to be following a pattern of muting debate. First it was the non-announcement of the arrival of asylum-seeker boats out of concern such announcements serve the interests of "people smugglers" (a point of view that was roundly trashed in the Sydney Morning Herald a couple of days ago in a story which included an interview with a man in custody in Indonesia, where he had been charged with illegally helping people to go to Australia by boat). Then there was the information yesterday that Liberal and Nationals MPs must clear media appearances with the PM's office before going ahead. This is what Tony Abbott's "calm, methodical" approach to government really means: don't talk and stay away from the 24-hour media cycle.

(I even heard Abbott's sister, a Liberal Sydney City councillor, on TV voicing approval of "staying out of the 24-hour media cycle" yesterday. What do politicians hate about the media so much? Don't politicians understand they have a responsibility to account for their actions to the electorate?)

Then there's Colbeck upset that elements in the electorate are telling people to eat only free-range pork and make sure they check the credentials of retailers pushing "free-range" eggs. Again, it's "don't talk, just let us get on with exercising our mandate". Colbeck's hugely ideological ("values", Tony?) point of view comes under the same banner of silencing unwanted and adverse debate in the public sphere.

Of course it cannot work. Australians have a constitutional right to political speech. All it would take is a question in Parliament on a specific issue and then anyone would be free to use their social networks to call for whatever action they felt was suitable in the case. You cannot realistically muzzle speech by millions of concerned Australians. As we saw in the case of Alan Jones about a year ago, people will react when aroused by clear abuses and the new media environment facilitates their efforts. To ban consumer boycott's you'd need to overturn the 1992 High Court decision of the "implied freedom" of political speech, and there's just no way on God's earth that that's going to happen. So my advice to Colbeck is to suck it up and make sure that corporations and other businesses get in line with consumer expectations about good citizenship. You can't turn back the clock.

Snowden makes me think about dropbears

This is an image from a news story dated in the first week of August but it's all that we've got as to the location of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, now hiding in Russia. Is this guy standing next to a car really Snowden? What we do know is that Snowden has animated Americans, including such people as President Obama and Republican Senator John McCain, to talk publicly about the scale of the problem of massive state surveillance of private communications. All of your emails, your social media posts, your Skype calls - well, basically everything you say online - is being collected and screened for evil intent by faceless men and women sitting at computer screens in Utah.

Overseas, Simon Jenkins in the UK has compared his country's response to the Snowden revelations unfavourably compared to the US.

Britons are not only subject to massive unwarranted surveillance, surveillance that is insecure and unaccountable. They are also at the mercy of intrusive institutions which, for the time being, their politicians will not and cannot control. When push comes to shove, Americans do this better.

They have the Fourth Amendment in the US, while there is no similar legal instrument in the UK. The UK security apparatus - comprising MI5, MI6 and GCHQ - is deeply involved in the global surveillance program Snowden uncovered earlier this year. The UK is part of the "Five Eyes" group of nations - the others being Canada, New Zealand and Australia - and in response to Jenkins' spray their own security oversight committee head, Malcolm Rifkind, has admitted that "the whistleblower Edward Snowden has raised 'real issues' about safeguarding privacy in the 21st century". Jenkins says Rifkind is a "patsy".

Now dropbears are mythic creatures inhabiting the Australian bush that are routinely trotted out in the palaver around the nightly campfire to scare 12-year-olds. But given the reality of the cooperation between the Five Eyes nations in terms of security activities you have to wonder at the silence that has cloaked whatever participation there has been - and undoubtedly there is cooperation between ASIO and ASIS, Australia's security bodies, and the NSA - around the globe in countries other than the UK. Given its location, Australia is well-placed to provide unique access, for example, to undersea communications infrastructure such as cables used for internet traffic. Situated in Asia, furthermore, Australia has a long history of providing the US with assistance with its signals operations; Pine Gap for instance.

So far we have not seen any dropbears emerge here to betray Australia's intelligence services but the question lingers like the smell of smoke and char on your clothes after a night spent around the campfire. One would hope that it's only a matter of time, but then again given Australia's supine spy agencies and even more toadyish politicians, I don't think I'll be putting anything on hold in anticipation of revelations. ASIO and ASIS might reliably believe that they are too-small targets for Snowdenish uncoverings, and are likely unconcerned for the moment that their own forms of blanket surveillance of citizens' communications will be brought to light.

Is the rainbow pope on a collision course with doctrinal conservatives?

This picture just cracks me up: the "Rainbow Jesus". What in the flying fuck was the person who made this fabulous image thinking? In any case it predates the publication of a long interview with Pope Francis that came out in a number of Jesuit magazines globally in which the pontifex says that the Catholic Church is on the wrong track when it expends too much energy proscribing gays, abortion and contraception. The New York Times headlines its story 'Pope Bluntly Faults Church’s Focus on Gays and Abortion', so of course the obvious thing to do is to look for a picture that suggests the pope is embracing homosexuals. Right?

“It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” the pope told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a fellow Jesuit and editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal whose content is routinely approved by the Vatican. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. 

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.”

The elderly Argentinian may look like a greengrocer but he's a lot smarter than your average buttoned-down apostolic purist because he understands that a structure that is too rigid risks cracking and toppling over into ruin. For those who value the Catholic Church and give a fuck whether it topples into ruin or not, the story contains a bunch of heartstoppingly-radical ideas, such as this:

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality,” he told Father Spadaro. “I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”

Cathoholics with mental tools equipped to unleash the full flavour of papal utterances might also find guidance - if that is what popes are designed to provide - in Francis' hipster retro-60s bent, which privileges the kind of artefacial modernisation people in Australia might most readily identify with troops of young Christians sitting on the ground at night around a campfire singing Kumbaya:

“The church is the totality of God’s people,” he added, a notion popularized after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which Francis praised for making the Gospel relevant to modern life, an approach he called “absolutely irreversible.”

Given the rise and rise of megachurches the aesthetic repercussions of this tendency might seem quaint but, after all, the daggy Christian protester of the 70s today is probably sitting in a huge amphitheater on her Sunday afternoons listening to hot gospel sounds blasting from towers of brain-altering speakers and waving her hands above her head like a sea anemone. Given this scenario, Francis starts to look refreshingly like some kind of albino clownfish, the only one of its tribe able to survive the touch of the anemone's stinging tentacles.

Missed opportunity: Australian painting seen through British eyes

The Royal Academy show held now, titled Australia, presents an opportunity to see our country's art through foreign eyes. I've read three reviews of the show, including one in the Sydney Morning Herald that focuses most on the curatorial side of things. There are two others: one in the Telegraph and one in the Guardian. These two last reviews try to make some decisions about Australian art as permitted by the exhibition although unfortunately the latter is so relentlessly negative about the exhibition itself that opportunities are lost to say much of interest.

For such an exhibition - the last similar one was held 90 years ago - can only be a matter of intense interest to people in both countries; for Australians, hearing the reactions of British critics must be fascinating.

In the two British reviews there are some commonalities, notably the rejection by the reviewers of early, Romantic, attempts to convey in paint the reality of the Australian bush. Those early landscape artists are pretty thoroughly belittled and you can almost hear a sigh of relief when the likes of Streeton and McCubbin appear. The reviewers note how Australian Impressionist artists were derivative but also remark on the novelty of their accurate depictions of the bush. Australians, of course, have long been aware of these things and themselves wonder at the naivety of von Guerard's funny trees when compared to the dessicated landscapes captured more accurately by such later painters as Roberts.

Most Australians will feel a queer sense of pride in being familiar with a landscape that evaded the talents of so many for so long but nevertheless those early landscapes also tell the story of the Europeans' sense of alienation and anxiety in such a forbidding place. No wonder Modernism took so long to reach Australians' hearts, you might surmise, when the familiar forms of the Old Country and Europe gave the settlers the sense of identity that they did not find while walking down scrubby Aussie tracks scattered with eucalyptus bark where the chirring of a thousand cicadas throbbed in their heads like a headache. No wonder the Art Gallery of New South Wales, started in 1892, was so "colonial" with its stone columns and Old Masters friezes (incomplete through lack of funds ... !), and Hyde Park just down the way was planted with imports and bedecked with the classical-mythological horror of the Archibald Fountain. Taken out of this context, those early landscape painters seem totally out-of-it, but to really understand Australian art in the 19th and early-20th centuries you have to walk from the old Mark Foys building on Liverpool Street in Sydney through Hyde Park and down the tree-lined parade to the Gallery.

The dessicated, alienating landscape returns, of course, with Nolan, Smart and Drysdale in the 40s but captured with the new visual tools of Modernism. Brits are usually aware of Nolan at least and he offers something familiar to reviewers over there who otherwise struggle with the constraints and limitations of pre-WWII Australian art. Modernism was tentatively embraced in the 30s and 40s by local artists but it's a Modernism-lite, one that like Australian Impressionism makes an obedient nod to the underlying conservatism of the Australian art context, and where you are still largely relieved by realism from having to make too many judgments. As I've discussed before on this blog, the ability to share and participate as a community through art is one of the defining characteristics of the Australian aesthetic experience. You might go further and say that the etrangement that European artists sought through Modernism was otherwise supplied by the still-alienating landscape here. Artists who dealt with that landscape - and the thousands of kilometres separating Australia from home in Europe - in a meaningful way were rewarded by the community. Even Smart and Boyd ended up living out their dotage in Europe.

As for Aboriginal art, this current of local product began to emerge in the 70s, a time when Australian artists were still travelling to Europe to find their feet - like Conder or Bunny three generations before - and hone their craft. It's this odd relationship between Australia and Europe that has been missed by the reviewers of the current show. This is unfortunate as it's a fecund place from which to start discussing Australian art.

Tony Abbott forgets to put women in binders, leaves them in the hallway

In the first major act of his prime ministership, Tony Abbott yesterday announced his new cabinet which, with a few exceptions, recycles the Howard-era ministry and almost without exception excludes women. (I had trouble finding a picture for this post and settled on one that shows Abbott and the sole female cabinet member, Julie Bishop, engaged in what looks like a rugby manoeuvre; are they rucking? It might be some kind of weird one-a-side recreation of an international match with Abbott playing the Wallabies and Bishop as the All Blacks, but then of course it might not.) The list shows there are two women newly in the outer ministry with two women now leaving the outer ministry. Given this count it's hard to give credence to Abbott's assurance that "there are lots of good and talented women knocking on the door of the ministry" because clearly even if they wanted to knock they have effectively been sidelined by Abbott's choices as to who to favour and who to exclude.

In a cynical PR stunt, Abbott has also dropped a number of ministries and shortened the names of others, presumably to give the impression to punters that he will work at the head of a slimmed-down government. Many public servants in Canberra will now be spending more time on Seek.com. A lot of people were shocked to learn that Abbott's government would not include a minister for science, for example. Climate change has been subsumed within the environment portfolio and science has gone into the industry portfolio. "Look," Abbott is telling the good citizens of Australia, in a way redolent of the approach taken by Queensland premier Campbell Newman, who so deeply cut the public service in his state that the unemployment rate shot up by over a percentage point, "I'm a no-nonsense, practical guy and I want to take the government back to the way it was in the 1970s. Women? Innovation? Baloney!"

Rumour has it that Abbott has asked the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to issue a vintage 1936 Schwinn Excelsior Model B3 bicycle for Julie Bishop to use for those trips to the supermarket to buy jelly crystals and oven cleaner. A similar model of conveyance has been ordered for Bronwyn Bishop, the new speaker of the lower house, who reportedly refused appointment to the Ministry of Domestic Science at the last minute. The ministry was subsequently scrapped because Bishop is the only woman in the party who knows how to put her hair up properly. Abbott will however want to remember Cash and Nash when the time comes - presumably in about two years' time - to rearrange the furniture in his party room.

Overall you'd have to say that Abbott's "calm, methodical" approach really means "the way it was under Johnny" as part of his white-picket-fencing of government. Border protection is just another aspect of this push to please the mouth-breathing majority in the outer suburbs of the big cities. The fence will be constructed out of steel and supported on submerged floatation devices just the way it's done on an oil rig. It's not sure whether a similar fence will be constructed across the Tasman, but there is reason to believe that the good woman - Margie is a Kiwi - will use her feminine wiles to dissuade Tones from doing anything too drastic. One has to remember appearances, after all.

Muslim identity politics on show on ABC TV

After last night's 1-hour blackout I managed to fix dinner and while eating it kept vociferating at the TV where the ABC's Compass program Why I'm Still Muslim was airing arguments based in the identity politics of that faith. Over the coming weeks Geraldine Doogue will host people from other faiths, including the Jewish and Catholic faiths. However, for me the case of Islam feels different to the others because currently globally we are seeing major transformations within countries where Islam predominates in terms of wealth, governance and identity such as the West has not seen since the 1960s and 70s, when identity politics exploded in the aftermath of WWII to  to establish viable minority consciousnesses and so refashion national priorities in a more inclusive way for so many people. So many people "came out" - and not just gays, by any means - that our world is now vastly different from the world my mother was born into.

Doogue's shows stand on the premise that religion is a beleaguered institution in the West - and this is true for some religions, such as Christianity and Judaism - but the same cannot be said for Islam which is, as one participant last night admitted, a "guidebook for conduct". One reason for this is that most Muslims in Australia are recent migrants, or the generation born to them - the second generation - and so their sense of self is still solidly rooted in the faith of the country of origin. But as time goes by these things will change and Muslim youths will have to find ways to both respect their parents' codes of conduct as well as locate themselves within the broader social matrix in Australia.

Here, Muslim identity politics is only occasionally a problem, and may cause public nuisance and civil disorder along lines familiar to people who watch the evening news. We are genuinely surprised when the type of street violence we see happening in Cairo appears in Sydney's CBD, and the reaction from some is to strongly censure what they see as an unwarranted intrusion of foreign ways of being into the national body politic. But violence has always been part of identity politics because it is seen as one of the only viable ways to register protest at a level equal to the perceived insult to the subject minority. Street violence was a common feature of identity politics especially in the United States 40 years ago. But of course there is also violence of a more troubling kind, and that we see in the occasional revelation of plots uncovered by our secret services and by the police.

The ABC provides a public service when it offers a way of handling the differences of viewpoint that characterise the interstice between the secular liberal world view and the Muslim one. The program I watched last night gave the participants an opportunity to voice in a very public context opinions that they are very jealous of. It also gave me an opportunity to privately voice my own opinions of those viewpoints, and this blog goes even further, allowing me to work through the attendant issues in a public manner. What I saw as hypocrisy - for example in relation to the treatment of women in Islam, which one of the participants, a convert from Christianity, also expressed strong reservations about - those on the show found no cause to disparage. The show thus provided depth to events we normally only see within the narrow confines of the newscast as identity politics refashions large swathes of this globalised world in the post-colonial era.

'What's the point of the Labor Party?' Gillard asks

A few days after the election a week ago Craig Emerson, a staunch backer of Julia Gillard during her time in government, started talking to journalists about Kevin Rudd, telling them that Rudd had to go. Not just give up the Labor leadership as he had already said he would - during his election-night concession speech - but resign from Parliament and kick off a by-election. Quit the field. This was more of the poisonous stuff that had for so long - since June 2010 - destabilised the Gillard government and ensured that important messages about its track record - the Gonski reforms, the NDIS, the NBN - were drowned out in the national conversation by petty squabbles about who should lead. Gillard obviously saw this stuff and has now done something to rule a line under the discord because she submitted a long article to the Guardian "for the record" to talk about what she thinks Labor stands for and how it can ensure that such things dominate the public discussion in future.

Using her fine mind, Gillard tries to explain that a party without purpose, especially a progressive party, is doomed. It's an imaginative attempt to address important issues and it stems from comments made on the tally night by Labor pollies sitting in the TV studios. Labor should not "talk about itself" anymore. But of course then along came Emerson doing just that. So Gillard uses one word in her article above all others: purpose. What, she asks, is the point of the Labor Party? Surely, she answers, the point is not just to win elections.

And it's not, except in the minds of the Labor Right machine who propelled Gillard herself into power and then turned on her when the polls pointed to a crushing defeat. So Gillard, ever serious and as always thoughtful, goes back to basics.

Ultimately organisations tell you what they are all about and what they value, by what they reward. A great sales company rewards sales with performance bonuses. A great manufacturing business rewards those who generate fault-free products for it. A company with an overriding concern for safety constantly renews it protocols and issues rewards when no one gets hurt at work. This is all commonplace and common sense.

She also suggests some internal behaviour changes that could help the community to understand not only the benefit of policy decisions, but also which individuals in the party have most claim to lead. To reward the contributions of MPs what would you need?

Imagine candidates’ policy papers, not leaks. Candidates’ debates, not poisonous backgrounding. The identification of the top new ideas – not just who is top of the opinion polls.

As for the contest now between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese, it is not only one between two worthy candidates. It is an opportunity to start this demonstration of purpose.  

Caucus and party members should use this contest to show that Labor has moved on from its leadership being determined on the basis of opinion polls, or the number of positive media profiles, or the amount of time spent schmoozing media owners and editors, or the frippery of selfies and content-less social media. Rather, choosing a leader will now be done on the basis of the clearly articulated manifestos of the candidates, the quality of their engagement with caucus and party processes and their contributions to the collective efforts of the parliamentary party. 

Exciting stuff, and surely welcome by everyone who calls him- or herself a progressive. Gillard's sharp mind is in evidence here, in its ability to focus on a problem and translate it into substance that can be applied to the corpus of individuals and the existing organisational structure. It's why Gillard was such a great manager, why she could pass so much important legislation through Parliament despite holding the slimmest of margins. And above this her soul-searching - there really is no other adequate word - makes her look at what was not visible in the public sphere, but that should have been. She is thinking of all the people she worked with and their individual contributions.

In a world where the views of your colleagues about your merits matter so much to your chance of promotion, it is not at all surprising a great deal of effort goes into media work no one but political insiders ever see. 

At the same time, countless hours of work can go on behind closed doors on policy development. These efforts are generally never seen by the public and can even be close to invisible to colleagues. 

Real efforts need to be made to change this method of functioning, to show purpose to the public and to ensure the best contributors to the collective work of the opposition are clearly identified to their colleagues. 

Perhaps policy contests could be held in the open rather than behind closed doors. Rather than having the shadow ministry debate difficult policy questions, parliamentary party policy seminars should discuss them, open to the media and live on 24-hour television. Policy contests could then be taken out of the back rooms into the light. To the extent policy contests have leaked out from back rooms, they are inevitably reported through the prism of division. By being open from the start, the debate can be put in the prism of purpose. A norm would be set that ideas matter and those with the best ideas are the most valued. 

Currently, working hard in your office on a new policy, being a key contributor to shadow ministry discussions, coming up with an innovative way of attracting new people to join the ALP – none of these valuable contributions is as visible to your Labor colleagues as performances on Sky television.

I apologise for including so much of what has already been published, here, but I think that Gillard is entitled to one shot given the potential for even more destabilising conduct such as Emerson's. A lot of people will read Gillard's critique and themselves criticise her for participating in conduct that might be viewed as damaging to the party. But compared to what she could have done, this article is refreshing and positive, showing how serious Gillard is and how much she values the Labor Party.

In a real sense what Gillard is asking us, the public, to do is to look behind the screen of media activity and because we can't do so unaided she's proposed a few changes the party could implement to help us. The focus should be both on policy and on who has made the biggest contribution to developing it; teamwork stands alongside individual insight and individual ideas as something to value. While others can simply take a quick, 140-character stab at Gillard for talking at length about the Labor Party I choose, instead, to view her contribution as something special, something that could positively animate public discussion of politics - after all, we all have a constitutional right to talk publicly about our representatives and our leaders - and twist the balance in favour of the community, and not just for the benefit of media barons and their lieutenants.

An astonishing performance from one of the great political players in Australia's history.

Gillard's Asian foresight already bearing fruit

A little under a year ago it was reported that Julia Gillard's Asian Century white paper would come out, and it did. Australian businesses took a while to acknowledge the release but they have since responded to the challenge in multiple ways. In the real estate sector, for example, it is clear that local businesses are adapting to the new climate by offering the types of services - including those available through Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking employees - that Chinese people want. One of these businesspeople is Monika Tu (pictured, right), who offers a range of services to cashed-up Chinese property buyers so that they can start to integrate into Australian society.

Real estate is particularly potent as a lure for Chinese investors because in Chinese cities freehold property is not available: you only get a long lease on Beijing apartments, for example, which means that the likelihood of passing the investment on to your children is limited by law. And if anything is important to Chinese people it is their family. See how many Chinese parents are buying properties in Sydney so that their children have somewhere to live while they study at one of our excellent universities; one such parent recently shelled out $17 million for a penthouse located on Hyde Park in Sydney.

Marquee properties valued in the tens of millions are selling to Chinese buyers, but there's also plenty of action in other specific locations in Australia's cities - Eastwood, Campsie, Chatswood, Mascot - where Chinese people like to live. Companies in Australia who want to tap into the new capital flows have such options as employing Chinese graduates locally to help them acclimatise to the new ways of doing business. But the real-estate business has been changing for years in actual fact. Just visit the streets in Sydney's southern CBD and see how many Chinese real estate agents are doing business there; the reality is striking.

The amount of prescience inherent in Gillard's Asian push is undeniable, although business was loathe to publicly get behind the initiative due to differences of opinion elsewhere in the domain of policies and ideas. But whether or not they acknowledge Gillard's contribution to the new paradigm there are lots of good businesses, like McGrath Estate Agents, who are setting up a China desk to effectively manage the transition. If there are unique opportunities in real estate there must also be similar openings in other sectors of the economy such as manufacturing, banking, insurance, financial advice, food production ... Whichever business you work in you can expand your sales strategy to profit from Australia's special place in Asia.

Liberal Party needs Socialist shibboleths to justify itself

News that some minor Liberal pollie in the NSW Parliament praised Augusto Pinochet, the savage dictator of Chile's dark days, comes as no real surprise. Peter Phelps told Parliament that Pinochet's regime, during whose tenure tens of thousands of innocent people were tortured and killed, was "legitimate" because the man he overthrew in 1973, Salvador Allende, would have done "terrible things". Sometimes it's necessary to trot out the hard men in jackboots to restore the rightful order of things, right Peter?

There are about 33,000 Chilean Australians who now enjoy peaceful transitions of power in the absence of the hard men in jackboots. It would be interesting to know what these people think of Phelps' kooky ideas about the legitimacy of authority, respecting ballots, and the role of the US in the Cold War.

Founded in 1945, the Liberal Party emerged from the ashes of an upper- and middle-class business-friendly party, the United Australia Party, which had been born during the Depression. At the end of WWII the world had specific political contours that functioned to determine how politics played out in democracies globally, but the most important international determinant of local conduct was the relationship between the Western democracies and the Soviet Union. By 1950 this relationship had broken down and the Korean War had begun, launching the two sides into 40 years of proxy wars - including the Pinochet coup - until 1989 when the Soviet Union collapsed in exhaustion.

Within this context the name "Liberal Party" made some sense because it underscored an ideological claim that hinged on the gap between democratic freedom and authoritarian tyranny; we can have no doubt of the Soviet Union's criminal conduct with respect of its own citizens. But after 1989 conservative political parties like the Liberal Party of Australia were forced to work hard to justify their retrograde policies.

For the Liberals the job is even harder than in other Western democracies because of the logical burden embedded in the name "Liberal", an historical artefact that puzzles foreigners unused to Australian politics and its posturings, and one which can easily elicit humour. How can an obviously conservative political party call itself "liberal"? A word born in the crucible of the Napoleonic Wars among progressive Spaniards who dreamed of a better life for all, not just the few.

Hence the ridiculous speech by Phelps. Liberals occasionally "come out" publicly in this manner although usually such discussions are relegated to the invisibility of essays in the magazine Quadrant, which has been published on cheap paper for over 50 years. When Liberals actually reveal the kinds of twisted logic they internalise on a daily basis in their attempts to legitimise their actions, the result is the kind of looney-toons verbalising Peter Phelps performed yesterday in the NSW Parliament.

Fairfax Media claims underdog status

Back in March I blogged about the use of the sobriquet "independent" by Australia's media outlets but since then there's been a major shift in our understanding of this word since in the last couple of weeks one of the big names of Australian news, Fairfax Media, has seen fit to add the word to the mastheads of its two major dailies, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Only these two. The other vehicles the company runs, in Brisbane, Perth and Canberra, don't get it.

It's a rather startling move. I think it's fair to say that most people know that Fairfax, a publicly-traded company, is doing it tough. The share price is still way down below $1 per share. The company has introduced paywalls but so far no figures have yet been published to tell us how that move is panning out. Mining heiress Gina Reinhart is still a major shareholder though as far as I know she's not been able to secure any more board seats since her mate Jack Cowin was given one. Given these facts it's quite reasonable for Fairfax to claim that is in the process of reinventing itself with a view to remaining economically viable into the future - "Always", as the masthead boasts; the word also points back to 1831 when the company was established.

Signs Fairfax mastheads really are independent are not, of course, hard to find. In the run-up to Saturday's federal election, for example, The Age came out for the ALP and Rudd while the SMH came out for the Liberal-National coalition and Abbott. I wasn't watching any of the website-only vehicles closely enough to notice how they oriented themselves in relation to the political contest but it seems reasonable to assume that editors there also had a free hand. This independence is in stark contrast to the way all of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers lined up behind Abbott in the months and weeks before the poll. Clearly, in this case, there is a distinct lack of independence for individual editors and, by extension, the journalists themselves. (I have written about the lack of editorial independence at Murdoch vehicles on numerous occasions in the past, for example here and here and here.)

Given the journalistic landscape in Australia and the companies that feature in it I find it a tad surprising that Fairfax would add the word "independent" to those two mastheads, but not unduly so. Having written about this issue here myself it makes sense in a real and important way. It makes sense because of the dominance of Murdoch and it makes sense from an intellectual point of view. It also makes sense from an economic perspective: Fairfax is indeed struggling to remake itself in the new, post-internet media environment, as are newspapers all over the world. Their crisis of identity, spawned by poverty, is resulting in new ways of earning money and new ways of making news. If Fairfax wants to claim underdog status while it goes back to fundamentals as it works to resolve the crisis then I, for one, have no objection. Australians should pay attention to words such as "independent" because it is through them, and through what they represent, that their interests are best served especially, now, as public broadcaster the ABC is well underway on its slow shift to the Right.

Obama flatters Americans while sending messages

Barack Obama's public speech today on Syria was a PR exercise aimed at a multitude of international players including Syria, Iran, Russia, China, the UK and other countries. The fact that it contained little of substance tells us how much a part of the theatre of international diplomacy it was. In the end, Obama notified the world that a military solution of a limited type - a "targeted strike" - was an option should further diplomatic endeavours involving Russia fail. Syria has admitted that it possesses chemical weapons.

But Obama's theatrical piece was also full of contradictions, and these especially appeared toward the end of the speech when the president's logic convinced him to address the issue of America's sense of manifest destiny, which is core to its identity. "For nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements. It has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy but the world's a better place because we have borne them."

I find it staggering that an American president can be so wilfully blind as to the truth of history especially when he dares to call history to his aid while working to gain support for military action. The fact is that "nearly seven decades" takes you right back to the end of WWII. Does Obama sincerely think that people do not remember the unwarranted aggression that led to the disastrous Vietnam War? Incredible to think so, but it appears he's conscripting that crime against humanity to give himself support now. And what about the outrageous destabilisation of the Mossadegh government in Iran in the 1950s? Does America sincerely feel that the animus that continues, to this day, to motivate Iranians against it, has no valid basis in reality?

Under Obama America continues to see itself as the world's policeman, a sobriquet the president was eager to distance himself from (much like John Howard in Australia hated being called George W. Bush's "deputy" despite his fawning eagerness to get involved in the twin stupidity of Iraq and Afghanistan). But for Obama as well as for most Americans the truth of a belief in manifest destiny continues - despite all the military failures and the illegal wars the country has embroiled itself in - to buttress their sense of identity. If we go on to listen to Obama right to the end of his speech we find more evidence of this belief, and of this sense of identity.

"Our ideals and principles as well as our national security are at stake in Syria as well as our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used. America is not the world's policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe and it is beyond our means to right every wrong but when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gasses to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That's what makes America different. That's what makes us exceptional. With humility as well as resolve let us never lose sight of that essential truth."

As usual in official pronouncements, the sentiment gets thicker the closer you get to the end; it's sort of like a rhetorical money shot. In Obama's case the sentiment is so thick you can carve chunks off it and use them as fuel for a barbecue. America is "different" and "exceptional" and so it can never make mistakes. As in the case of Nixon, time dilutes the stain of ruthless self interest and washes away the lies and the deceptions. An experienced orator, and a good one, Obama has leveraged Americans' sense of self - their very identity - in order to sway international opinion and gather support from himself in the broadest possible public sphere.

Add childcare to parental leave on family wishlist

A mini baby boom in Australia added to a continued high level of migration is putting pressure on families in the big cities. Since 2001 the birth rate has been increasing steadily, from 246,000 in 2001 to 302,000 in 2011 and while the net migration rate has dropped from its high in 2008-09, we still welcomed 170,300 people in 2010-11. In that year Sydney alone added over 50,000 migrants to its suburbs.

Low interest rates and an increase in the use of self-managed super funds to buy investment property has furthermore led to a seven percent rise in Sydney property prices this year, and the boom looks set to continue through spring and into summer. Demand continues to strongly outstrip supply. "Urban Taskforce chief executive Chris Johnson said the projections showed Sydney would need 100,000 more homes than planned in the next two decades," writes Leesha McKenny for the Sydney Morning Herald.

The image accompanying this blogpost shows Sydney council areas and their expected population growth to 2031. Note that some inner-urban and inner-suburban areas are dark-coloured, showing areas where the biggest population increases are expected over the period. Places like Canterbury and Ashfield, as well as places like Blacktown and Liverpool, are expected to grow in terms of resident households. For a young couple to afford a home in the former - in a suburb close to the CBD in Sydney - usually two incomes are needed but childcare costs often mean mothers are returning to the workforce after giving birth only to see their salaries sucked up by this single budget item alone. "The number of children using approved childcare has increased 20 per cent since 2008, yet the sector has failed to keep pace with demand," writes Cosima Mariner for the SMH. "The cost of childcare has risen at three times the rate of inflation, according to the Work and Family Policy Round Table, despite ballooning government subsidies which will top $22 billion over the next three years."

Kevin Rudd promised to do something about the acute shortage of childcare places but failed to deliver on his 2007 promise. As for housing affordability, local councils appear to be delivering the goods by approving infill construction of apartments in Sydney's inner suburban areas, but the fact remains that two incomes are needed for the most part for young couples wanting to buy a property there. A commitment to childcare would help not only to support the housing sector, it would also allow more women to work, hence lifting national productivity by a significant margin.

Given these realities, it seems that better childcare is a no-brainer for Tony Abbott if he's looking to do something useful for Australia's struggling young families. Sure, maternity leave and paternity leave are important but even more important is the longer-term security that childcare can provide to working families. Quality childcare would also be nice but I suspect that for many mothers any childcare is probably considered enough to aspire to.

The audacity of the feminine

I've been thinking a lot about the Opposition leadership, as have a lot of people, and a conversation I struck up on Twitter with Sarah Joseph (@profsarahj) keeps coming to mind. Sarah is an engaged and intelligent participant in my social graph. We talked about what had made Abbott successful. "I think [Right] is more audacious and it pays off," she said. "Thatcher. Reagan. Roosevelt. Even many Whitlam values hung around til Howard."

"I also think people crying out fir audacity. Majors on the nose. I mean, why vote for Palmer?" Sarah went on. And it made me think about, for example, Campbell Newman running in the Queensland state campaign in 2011 and early 2012 without even holding a parliamentary seat. Newman went on the crush Anna Bligh's government so badly Labor were reduced to seven seats statewide. A devastating and surprising result.

Tony Abbott has been working away at the ALP since 2009 when he took the Coalition leadership, and reduced their lead in the 2010 election to nothing - literally. In fact the Coalition had more lower house seats then Labor. By sticking to his message and by not making any glaring mistakes Abbott converted that slight lead into a convincing lead in 2013, attaining a 3.5% swing nationally.

Now that the usual suspects from Labor have been canvassed - Albo, Shorten, Bowen, Swan - and have all passed on the offer of the poisoned chalice, it's time for the ALP to do something to really capture the imagination of the electorate. Give a big "fuck-you" to the Coalition as it starts to settle in and find its stride. To really upset the apple cart Labor needs to do something big and I suggest bringing Tanya Plibersek into the leadership role, reignite the "misogyny" debate and really get right up the nose of the now-complacent Coalition. Never mind going for the safe option - the stabbing of Rudd in 2010 and the execution of Gillard in 2013 belong in this category - and really go all-out to make a splash that the electorate won't expect.

Plibersek for ALP leadership will completely set the cat among the pigeons, unbalance the still-uncommissioned Coalition, and get the electorate talking. Let's make another Clover Moore. Sydney, you've come of age!

Democracy sausage trended for good reason

Parliament has often been called a sausage factory for legislation but the community groups who set up barbecues outside polling booths on Saturday probably never thought of such an analogy. For them, selling sausages wrapped in a slice of wholesome white bread was merely a way to raise funds: you have a steady stream of mid-morning voters, a beautiful spring day, an irresistibly low price. Bingo!

When I went to vote down the street at the community centre I saw a man intently occupied with the terribly important job of looking after the onions. I only had a $50-dollar note so I had to cadge a gold coin from my mother to buy a sausage. It turned out to be delicious, just the thing to dissipate the hunger pangs of 9.30am; a magpie eyed me crossly as I walked back to the car. But when I got home and got online I was startled to see the number of posts in socmed from people who had snapped photos of the offerings they had found at their own polling booths. Not just democracy sausage (like the example shown here from erstwhile blogger and Guardian journalist @grogsgamut) but biscuits shaped like the then-PM and the then-leader of the Opposition complete with budgie smugglers and nerdy glasses, tales of second-hand book stalls, and chocolate peanut clusters like the one @julieposettie snapped.

From @saraheburnside we learned: "North Perth Primary has a sausage sizzle, cake stall and mini-fete including second-hand books. Recommended voting location."

The culinary component of the Australian election booth was quickly an opportunity for humour, as @gavindfernando also found: "Not a huge sausage sandwich fan, but bought one figuring it's the most funding those public schools will receive if Abbott wins." For her part, @beth_blanchard came up with her own cheeky take on the phenomenon: "Well I *would* post a pic of the sausage sizzle I enjoyed too but it looks rude so I'm not. You can all just imagine." Crikey journalist @bernardkeane saw fit to remark: "and the bellwether sausage sizzle is?" Even from the far north, @theNTnews tweeted: "EXIT POLLS SHOW SAUSAGE ON BREAD LEADS MOST NT BOOTHS, STEAK SANGA HANGING IN THERE, SALAD ROLL SUPPORT TOTALLY COLLAPSED."

Good weather, a bunch of people always ready to add a touch of pleasure to whatever they are doing - that vaunted Australian hedonism - and a tokenistic monetary outlay - $2 is small change, after all - meant that the term 'sausage' was soon trending on Twitter for Australia and the trend even had its own hashtag in #sausagesizzle. Later #snagvotes would emerge to exemplify our desire for alternatives when it comes to democracy regardless of how similar they turn out to be. Socmed is all about sharing - and the number of posts showed how engaged we were that day - but the sausage sizzle is also a demotic nod to the role food plays in bringing people together in a spirit of fellowship; think of the loaves and the fishes or the last supper.

Brit @kathviner editor of Guardian Australia tweeted: "Love the celebratory vibe of an Australian election.. sizzles, cake stalls, face-painting, amazing." I think it's suitable to leave the final word to an outsider. Sometimes we are too close to the things that surround us to know they are special. It can take the fresh eyes of the foreigner to see what is bleedingly obvious: give Australians a sunny day and the outdoors and they'll soon be eating something.