A column about Morris Iemma and Nathan Rees

Morris Iemma won the 2007 NSW election, I believe, because he adopted a slogan whose humility was unique in Australian political history. Though it was widely mocked at the time by many sage commentators including myself, the phrase “More to do, but heading in the right direction” struck a chord in the electorate for one very good reason. Unusually for a political slogan, half of it rang absolutely true. Everyone who heard it intuitively agreed that Iemma had more to do, a hell of a lot more to do, and this made us think that the new Premier was a man who understood our concerns. Now, finally, Iemma has delivered on the second half of that slogan. Because the first Labor Premier to be dumped in the Parliament’s 117-year history is, without doubt, finally heading in the right direction.

Inspired by Iemma’s success, Rudd too adopted a slogan that was instinctively half true for his election victory: “New leadership. Fresh ideas”. Sure, the ideas are virtually identical to those of his predecessor, but no-one could deny that the guy delivering them was new. And so Rudd sold the electorate as well.

Those of you with long memories may faintly recall a fellow by the name of Peter Debnam. No? Well, he was the Opposition Leader Iemma defeated. Scarily conservative fellow who liked getting around in swimwear. Still no? That’s understandable, the same thing happened on polling day. His slogan was “Let’s fix NSW”, to which the reaction from voters was “Sure Peter, it desperately needs fixing – but I’m damned if I’m going to let you near the problem.”

In 2005, Labor gambled on an unknown in a bid to rid itself of the stench of the Carr Government. In 2008, it’s gambling on another unknown to rid itself of the stench of the Iemma Government. Nathan Rees, the new Premier, is even more of an unknown than Iemma was, and I have to say that everything I’ve learned thus far impresses me. He’s only been a Labor MP for 18 months, which is an excellent recommendation and he isn’t Morris Iemma, Joe Tripodi, Reba Meagher, Eric Roozendaal, John Watkins or, best of all, Michael Costa. In fact, I like him already.

A lot will be made of Rees being a former garbage collector. And for having worked with a different kind of refuseas chief of staff to the disgraced MP Milton Orkopoulos. But we cannot really hail as new someone who arrived in Macquarie St shortly after Labor’s election in 1995, working as an adviser to then Deputy Premier Andrew Refshauge. So really, unless Rees is unusually effective for a Labor politician, it’s hard to see him doing much better than his predecessors, who rose through the NSW Right, with great experience in headkicking and factional dealmaking but little, it seems in running a government effectively. Rees is from the Left, but I hear he switched to the Right to get the Premier’s job, which only goes to show that any idealism he may have had has been now leached out by such a long time in State politics.

It’s an interesting comparison to make with another obscure figure who has suddenly been catapulted to political centre stage, Sarah Palin, the Alaska Governor who’s become John McCain’s running-mate. She’s added considerable entertainment to the race, and while the idea of her being leader of the free world in the event of a recurrence of John McCain’s cancer terrifies me, I have to admire a political system that can actually bring genuine outsiders into the mix. Everyone we get in Australian politics, especially on the Labor side, has been through the party wringer and had their individuality dulled, with the result that their loyalties are to their colleagues rather than their electorate. The Liberals do draft in genuine outsiders from time to time, but generally from such noxious places as to make the effort hardly worthwhile, as we saw with Debnam.

The fact that the Labor caucus has again elected someone unknown by most voters without even referring to opinion polls to check whom the public might like to be made their Premier is, as we saw with Iemma and Unsworth, a recipe for appointing a poor leader, with little chance of engaging the public. I would be beyond delighted it if Nathan Rees proved a highly effective Premier who finally tackles our state’s appalling decline, but, like the President of the Committee To Make Michael Costa Premier (who surely must be Michael Costa, in lieu of any other members), I’m really not holding out much hope for the future.

A column about Christmas

Every year, I grow a little older, and Christmas becomes a little less important. I used to look forward to the festive season with considerable excitement, because it meant I got presents. As a child, my materialism was unrestrained by any pretence of decency, so I'd dive into the lake of presents that was the happy byproduct of a large extended family with some of the purest joy of my life. Now that I'm older, far more expensive toys do considerably less for me. And so perplexed relatives ring me a few days before Jesus' Big Day, racking their brain over what to buy me, and I'm never able to think of anything. Because if I could, I'd have bought it myself already. It's not that I'm fabulously wealthy, despite the largesse of The Glebe over the years. It's just that like so many Australians, I have a credit card with an absurdly high limit, and minimal self-control. Which is why I also have things like video games, an espresso maker I've used once in 18 months, and most absurdly, an electronic keyboard I can't play, which sits there besides my computer and accuses me of wasting money every single day. It's got a point.

So, Christmas has lost its traditional lustre. But there is one part I look forward to: the stockings my parents still make for us. As children, these used to constitute an exciting assortment of miniature delights, each to be individually unwrapped an enjoyed. Since we became adults, though, the items have transformed into knick-knacks of increasing uselessness and shoddy construction, to the crescendoing amusement of my mum and dad. They scour the local two-dollar shops for macabre-looking windup toys, plastic kazoos, wacky snowdomes, chocolates with that strange, cheap compound-chocolate taste, authentic-looking rubber spiders and appallingly kitsch DVDs. One Christmas they gave us an extensive series of clamps, and much to their disappointment, my brother found them genuinely useful for them in making artworks, and so I gave mine to him as well. They will never make that mistake again.

I've got all of them packed away in a box somewhere, where they'll doubtless remain for the term of my natural life, after which someone (presumably from the National Trust, or perhaps the United Nations) will sort through them before disposing of most of them, puzzling over exactly why I had in my possession a wind-up, fire-breathing zombie nun by the name of 'Nunzilla'.

The important thing, though, is that for one day each year, it's fun to get together as a family and open these pointless presents. The stocking's entire contents, many of which come from that cornucopia of crap that's misleadingly named Hot Dollar, probably only sets my parents back $30. But funnily enough, they're the gifts that stick in the memory, not the more expensive 'proper' items, which soon meld indistinguishably with the things I've bought myself.

So I've come to the hackneyed, and yet still somehow profound conclusion that what really matters at Christmastime is family. Sure, I know this is the moral of every sappy Disney Yuletide film, and I'm sounding like a pamphlet for The Santa Clause. But in an increasingly unreligious society, when you strip away the ancient traditions and the more modern tacky retail marketing, what are you left with? Coming together for a meal, and remembering, at least in my case, that even though I don't see them very often, the people I'm related to are pretty great. Stands to reason, really, since they share so many of my genes.

Being mainly Anglos, we do this over the unseasonal consumption of roast turkey and ham. Sure, fish is far a more sensible option in our climate, but we take a certain perverse satisfaction in persisting with the ritual despite the strangeness of gorging yourself on dead animals in the sweltering heat. And we do this for one simple reason: we're all addicted to that delightful combination of fat and alcohol that is brandy butter, and you're only allowed to eat it with Christmas pudding without feeling like an alcoholic. Plus, it tastes awful when you spread it on bread - I've tried.

Looking back at this column, I am somewhat disturbed to note that despite being something of a professional cynic, I have pretty much written a piece about the True Meaning of Christmas. Perhaps it's a special time after all? Or more likely, as I've long suspected, I am some kind of prophet. In any event, season's greetings to you all, and make sure you enjoy some brandy butter during the brief window when it's socially acceptable to do so.

A column about bucks nights

As an Arts graduates of the University of Sydney I consider myself sensitive to feminism, and will gladly pontificate about the patriarchy. And yet there’s one age-old male ritual that transforms me from a committed warrior against gender inequity into a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal: the bucks night. Whenever a friend gets married, I’ll gladly set aside all my painstaking political correctness and celebrate their descent into matrimony the old-fashioned way: by regressing into adolescence.

When my friends first started getting hitched, we debated what the modern, progressive gentleman should do to mark the occasion. Should the events be classy and mature, we wondered, rather than revolving largely around drinking and silliness? One friend of mine flatly refused to have one, in response to which elaborate kidnapping plans were developed, but ultimately abandoned because of that other time-honoured male tradition: laziness.

But as time has passed, and the number of grooms has advanced into double figures, we seem to have hit upon a consensus. When a bucks night is held, all familiarity with the concept of women’s liberation is temporarily suspended.

In typical male fashion, none of us ever actually sat down and formally made these decisions, so none of us will ever take responsibility for them. You know, it much the same way as none of us blokes ever actually decided to systematically oppress women, but it just kind of happened. And so we have come to agree, non-verbally, on the definitive rules for bucks nights.

Firstly, a highly structured programme of fun group events must be followed. This may include activities like paintball, bowls both lawn and tenpin, attending horse and greyhound races, ping pong tournaments and even pub trivia. One particularly adventurous bucks’ night involved a trip to the old Korean bathhouse in Kings Cross where we all bathed nude together, in a scene we tried to convince ourselves was reminiscent of Ancient Rome rather than Modern San Francisco. (Strangely, the result was genuinely bonding.) No doubt some day, my friends and I will go the whole hog and spend three days camping in a forest, playing tribal drums and chasing wild boars.

Secondly, there’s the drinking. You’d think it might be nice to have a few quiet beverages, and chat about the major life change that a member of the group is about to embark on. Those who are already married might dispense helpful advice, and those who are single might take the opportunity to learn something about the nature of love and commitment. This is what our female counterparts seem to do at their hens nights – or at least the sort that don’t go for harbour cruises and jockstraps. Well, that never happens. Instead, we drink a lot, to the point where even some of my most mild-mannered, gentlemanly friends have been unable to stand up straight.

Practical jokes on the groom are also an essential part of the formula, and often seem to involve eating, probably because that inevitably subsequently means vomiting. After going on about the place for years, one friend was made to eat his way through the entire menu of Baker’s Delight, falling short only at the full loaves, while another diet-obsessed friend was forced to engorge himself on Pizza Hut all-you-can eat. Recently another friend was forced to eat a pie every time a team scored – at a one-sided Rugby League World Cup match. It’s not quite as exciting as chaining someone naked to the upper deck of the Manly Ferry, but it’s a lot less illegal.

The final, and most important, rule is that women are never invited. I’m not entirely sure why this is so sacrosanct, but it is, with the notable exception that – and I regret to admit this, but in the interest of full disclosure, I must – many bucks’ nights end up at one of those venues where women disrobe for money. I’ve never entirely understood the appeal of paying large amounts of money for titillation, and generally pretty tacky titillation at that, but it seems to be an essential part of the bucks night experience – even in groups of guys who wouldn’t ever dream of going to a strip club otherwise.

Above all, a bucks night gives men carte blanche to enjoy everything that we usually see ourselves as too mature to do. I’m not entirely sure I approve of the system, especially as if I ever get married, I fully expect the earlier bucks’ revenge on me to be terrible indeed. But I wouldn’t dream of challenging these unwritten rules. Because in the end, that’s all just another part of what it is to be male.

A column about Barack Obama

Where were you when Australia II won the America's Cup? When the World Trade Centre collapsed? And the day Barack Obama was elected President? The answers to these questions are sometimes fairly dull – in my case, sofas feature prominently, and a fortnight ago, Doritos as well. But I'll never forget those experiences of watching history unfold live before me, and I've no doubt that the 2008 US Election will live on in our memories for as long as the moon landing. Because Barack Obama's victory was so moving that even Karl Rove said one or two nice things about it.

As I sat and watched a skinny, youthful-looking, biracial man address the world whose free bits he'd just been asked to lead, I'm not ashamed to admit I had a tear in my eye. Of course, that may have been because my mind was addled by seven straight hours of CNN and Fox News. But I'd like to think that at least one of the droplets that ran down my cheek was because a country that fought a civil war over slavery only 150 years ago had come so far as to elect an African man President. And even more movingly, as far as I was concerned, to not elect Sarah Palin Vice-President. The beacon of democracy was shining so brightly the other night that even John McCain stopped implying that Obama was a terrorist long enough to make a genuinely honourable concession speech.

But as I sat and watched the faux hologram of will.i.am on CNN, I got to wondering how long it will be before our own electoral barriers were overthrown. We have our first female Deputy PM, and Julia Gillard has shown she's more than competent enough to be entrusted with the big job if Kevin falls under one of John Howard's hypothetical buses. But I doubt we'll see a black Prime Minister in this country anytime soon, and Obama's election provides an opportunity to take a good look at our own country, and ask ourselves why not.

Only two Aborigines have ever been elected to our Federal Parliament – Neville Bonner, who became a Senator in 1977, and Aden Ridgeway, who had as minimal an impact as only a Democrat could. In the NT, the Deputy Chief Minister is Marion Scrymgour, who has served as Acting Chief Minister and thus became the first Aborigine to lead any state or territory. But perhaps the most likely indigenous Australian to hold a high Parliamentary office is Warren Mundine, who served as Labor's National President until last year – and since Labor has never elected an Aboriginal candidate to the Federal Parliament, one can only hope they seriously consider it.

While the structure of the Parliament means that parties can effectively appoint Aboriginal candidates to safe Senate seats anytime they like, an Aboriginal Prime Minister would need to commit to party politics for long enough to earn preselection to a safe seat – and it would be understandable if most potential candidates were deeply cynical about getting involved with either party. There are many Aboriginal leaders who are widely respected, from the Yunupingu brothers, Galurrwuy and Manduwuy, and Lois O'Donohue, all Australians of the Year, to Mick and Patrick Dodson. And Cathy Freeman certainly has the popularity to win votes. But it's understandable if they value the freedom to speak their mind openly and honestly in representing Aboriginal people and stay well clear of the parties that have generally served Aboriginal people poorly.

Just electing one or two members of a disadvantaged group is not sufficient to reverse centuries of discrimination, of course. Obama's election has enormous symbolic importance, but it's worth noting that his resignation from the Senate left that body without a single African-American among its 100 members. Still, his victory shows millions of black kids that with talent, determination, luck and Oprah behind them, they can win the White House as well. And I've no doubt that means a lot.

But indigenous Aussie kids have no reason to believe that similar doors are open to them. Unlike the US, we've never had a black High Court judge, or Foreign Affairs Minister (or Federal Minister of anything, in fact), or head of the Armed Forces. So perhaps we should redirect a little of the enthusiasm we feel about Barack Obama back to Australia. And then perhaps one day we will see delighted members of the Aboriginal community chanting “Yes We Can” in unison with the white community, like tens of thousands of Americans of every colour did the other night in a field in Chicago.

A column about babies

At first there were none, and everything was peaceful. Then, the first one showed up, and then another, and I began to worry. Then, as the years passed, more and more reports of their impending arrival flooded in, and I began to panic. Now, it’s clear that they will win, and it’s only a matter of time. Nearly everyone will succumb, and although I’ll hold out for as long as I can, I realise that one day too, I will give in.

I’m not talking about an alien invasion – well, not quite. I’m talking about babies. A few months short of my thirty-second birthday, many of my friends are new parents, and the signs are clear that within a year or two, they’ll constitute a majority. Already, there is a worrying shortage of people to stay out late and do foolish things with, and it’s clearly just a matter of time until the invasion of the body snatchers (well, they invade their mothers’ bodies for nine months, anyway) is complete.

Last weekend, I went to a beachside barbeque and met, for the first time, the freshly-minted offspring of some of my oldest friends. All the kids were cute, and all the parents were tired but delighted by the additions to their families. The conversation centred, naturally, on parenthood. Funny stories and helpful parenting tips were exchanged, and everyone just seemed so – what’s the word – happy.

So I sat there awkwardly, not having much to contribute to the conversation. I didn’t dare to actually handle any of the babies, of course, because of the clear and present danger of being covered in drool or worse, and also because I couldn’t remember how not to drop them. Ultimately, I retreated to the one place that was guaranteed to be a baby-free zone – the barbeque itself, where I talked to a few other babyless refugees about a range of non-baby subjects. It came as sweet relief.

As I watched the grilling sausages, I thought about how ironic this situation was. At uni, I’d been one of the younger, dorkier members of this particular social group, and felt my relative lack of wildness keenly. (This was before I started writing for The Glebe, of course, and my membership of the A-List became indisputable.) But nowadays, I’m one of the few who’s regularly awake in the early hours of the morning for reasons other than a crying baby. So, I felt a little out of place again, just as I had in those early days of getting to know them, but for the opposite reason. I wasn’t the square guy, sitting in the corner at a party in the backyard of some terrace house, looking at people who were cooler than me. Now I was the sociable guy whose friends had inexplicably swapped mixing cocktails for baby formula. I was feeling tired and had bags under my eyes because I’d been up half the night with some friends, but the bags under their eyes were substantially bigger because they’d been up with a screaming baby.

But as the afternoon progressed, I realised something. The parents were looking at me, partnerless and with no prospect of scoring a baby of my own except through misadventure or outright theft, and they still felt a little sorry for me. Once again, I was missing out on the richness they had in their own lives, and once again, I couldn’t be a full member of the club. It wasn’t that they thought it was cool to have babies and that I was lame because I didn’t. It was more that they’d stopped caring about what was cool, because they had more important things – and people – to worry about now.

As I drove home, I tried to calculate exactly how far away I was from reproducing. Even if I’d met someone suitable at that very barbeque, it’d surely take me at least four years to get through all the stages of committing, moving in together, perhaps marrying, and then actually managing to produce a kid. And then, at another barbeque with these friends in five years’ time, my kid would be the odd one out, sitting in a pram helplessly while all the older kids ran around and played games. And I realised that if I want to give my child every chance, including the opportunity to be the cool older one in the group that their old dad never had, there are only two solutions: adoption, and finding some younger, daggier friends.

A column about the global financial crisis

You know, John Howard warned us that if we elected Kevin Rudd, the economy would go to hell in a handbasket. (I’m not sure why that seems to be the preferred transportation method for those sentenced to eternal damnation, but apparently handbaskets are the appropriate way to get there.) But he could might clarified that he meant the entire world economy. If we’d only known tossing Howard out of Kirribilli House would cause the whole of Wall St to collapse more rapidly than Sarah Palin’s popularity, surely we’d have thought again.

The other day, for instance, Iceland was on the verge of going bankrupt. Let’s stop to think about that for a moment. An entire country – and not a basket case African nation like Zimbabwe, a mature Scandinavian liberal democracy – faced being simply unable to meet its debts. Which seems about as implausible a scenario as the yowling in Björk’s latest single shattering the entire polar ice cap, and causing sea levels globally to rise by a metre. (Although anyone who’s heard Volta will realise that this was, in fact, a distinct possibility.) It was only averted after the Swedish Government lent them billions of dollars, and the Icelandic Government nationalised all three of the major banks.

Now, I’ve no idea how Kevin Rudd was responsible for the collapse of Iceland’s economy, but I know that somehow, when all the facts are known, his perfidious involvement will become clear. If only Peter Costello’s steady hands were still on the tiller of our economy, instead of busily stabbing the backs of everyone else in the Liberal Party. Or, if only Malcolm Turnbull were in charge, instead of merely taking credit for things like the recent drop in interest rates without actually having had anything whatsoever to do with it. Don’t forget that Turnbull used to run Goldman Sachs, the local division of one of the big Wall St banks. So he presumably understands how to cause an economic crisis, if not stop one.

Though most dramatically illustrated in Iceland, banks everywhere are getting taken over by national governments to stop them from falling over. Even in America, with its abiding love of small government, the Fed is preparing to buy strategic stakes in the major banks. And most astonishingly of all, everyone, even the Republican Presidential candidate for goodness’ sake, is complaining about the greed of Wall Street, and threatening tighter regulation.

While it’s too early to assess the long-term impact of this crisis, one thing is clear. For decades, we’ve been told that the market always gets it right, and that the job of governments is to get out of their way. That the road to utopia involves to allow millions of people to act in their own self-interest, and somehow, magically, everything will come up roses. Well, guess what? It turns out that most central tenet of capitalism, the invisible hand, doesn’t work. So, like a spoiled child who’s devoured too many chocolate biscuits, the bankers of Wall St came crying to the White House, asking Uncle Sam to somehow make everything better.

It seems that in 2008, public ownership is the new black – or perhaps more accurately, the new red. (And if – God forbid – Mac Bank goes under, can we have our darn airport back, please?) While though I know it’s unfashionable to even mention him, Marx did predict that untrammeled capitalism would lead to exactly this kind of chaos. Oh how he’d laugh, if he’d ever exhibited any evidence whatsoever of a sense of humour.

But the truly strange thing, at least for Australians, is that despite the disaster that we seem to have been plunged into, nothing much has changed. Sure, the dollar’s fallen badly, and that’s rough for many people – but it was really high, so all this means is that things are now essentially back to normal. Against that, interest rates have been slashed, which is a pretty darn sterling silver lining if ever I saw one. There even was an article in the paper today predicting zero interest rates in the next little while. In the event of which, I can tell you right now, I’m going to be running me up one sweet credit card debt.

And sure, Kevin Rudd seems to be doing a great job of buttressing us against the worst of it, guaranteeing all of our savings and releasing money into the economy so that things don’t slow down too much. He’s even chucking in a grand to buy nearly every Aussie kid a Christmas present. But never should we forget that if we hadn’t elected him last November, none of this whole economic crisis thing would have happened.

A column about Sarah Palin

Politics is often about managing expectations. If you’re Sarah Palin right now, you want expectations to be lower than the effectiveness of abstinence-based sex education. And, as her daughter Bristol could probably tell you, that's very low indeed.

And that’s why Sarah Palin nailed the American Vice-Presidential debate on Friday. Simply by turning up and not being completely outclassed, she confounded the record television audience who tuned in to watch her fail. I sure did, hoping that she’d go to pieces even more comprehensively than she did against Katie Couric, to whom she gave that now-classic answer about Putin raising his head and going over Alaska. I still don’t understand quite what she was trying to say, and I’m absolutely certain that she didn’t. But an abject lack of foreign policy credentials has rarely been more amusing.

Commentators agree, though, that she didn’t stuff up this time. Sure, she really never strayed from the soundbites she’d memorised, meaning that her replies often bore only the most minimal connection to the question she’d been asked. And she grinned and winked throughout, even after Joe Biden talked about losing his wife in a car crash. But since the White House’s current incumbent can’t even deliver a convincing soundbite when his country’s attacked by terrorists, Palin definitely crossed the bar, ankle-high though it was.

Most importantly, she didn’t fall to pieces, and consequently staunched the damaging flow of stories about her inadequacy, throwing the focus back John McCain. And that’s surely the only way the Republicans can win this. Because the novelty of a VP candidate who’s a former beauty queen and knows how to unload a hunting rifle into a moose – which was admittedly considerable – has well and truly worn off. The hope that Palin would bring over Hillary’s voters now seems a forlorn one, since roughly the only thing they have in common are their pair of X chromosomes and their hatred of Barack Obama.

Still, for now the Alaskan Governor has managed to stop the story being about her, and that wasn’t easy. She’s the least qualified person on a Presidential ticket in living memory, and her argument that she has foreign policy experience because you can see empty bits of Russia from empty bits of Alaska making George Bush look like a diplomatic grandmaster. This becomes especially relevant when the chance of her needing to step up to the top job are quite high. John McCain is not only asking to be elected the oldest President in American history, but survived multiple skin cancers and apparently has an excellent chance of contracting another. In short, he’s more likely to die on the job than a BASE jumper with slow reflexes.

But if Sarah Palin can survive as a potential President, for now it least, where else can the managing expectations trick work? Perhaps not in Australian politics, if you consider Brendan Nelson. Despite the low expectations of an Opposition Leader in the first year of a new Government, he still managed to fall well short of them. And voters’ low expectations of our own spunky lady maverick, Pauline Hanson, haven’t helped her win anything much either – not even Dancing With The Stars.

Managing expectations could work, however, when it comes to dating. Next time I take someone out to dinner, I will start the meal by explaining that I will talk largely about myself, appear bored when they’re speaking, and steal food from their plate when they go to the bathroom. If my date appears concerned, I’ll reassure them, Palin-style, that I have considerable dating experience because people go on dates near where I live, and I can see them, often through binoculars. How can it fail? And if it does, they’ll have been forewarned. Making it their fault.

The other people in this election who have been cultivating low expectations, of course, are American voters themselves. If I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to elect George W. Bush once may be regarded as a misfortune, but electing him twice looks like carelessness. If the voters do choose to place Sarah Palin a tumour away from the nuclear launch codes, the rest of the world will have been forewarned as well. And if the result should go to the US Supreme Court, we would all definitely expect them to make the wrong decision. Next month, let’s hope that American voters, like Sarah Palin when she took on Joe Biden, pleasantly surprise us. Even if that’s just by not making as big a hash of it as we expect.

A column about the Marrickville by-election

So, whatsisname the new Premier (Morris Iemma, Google reminds me) has survived his second major test, narrowly winning the ‘Triple M’ by-elections – Maroubra, Macquarie Fields and Marrickville. If only he’d had as much success with his first major test – getting people to work out who he is. Still, at least we know how to pronounce his name, thanks to the ALP’s incredibly awkward radio ads: “Is it ‘I-yee-emma’? No David, it’s ‘Yemma’.” No Morris, it’s humiliating.

Of course we wouldn’t have needed that help if anyone had actually heard of him before. Iemma became Premier like Steve Bradbury won gold at the Winter Olympics – all the more experienced contenders fell over. It’s fair to say that most people in NSW, myself included, still have virtually no idea what he’s ever done, what he stands for, and where he wants to take the state. Other than to a better understanding of Italian surname pronunciation.

Which is why it was ironic to see the Marrickville by-election ads talking up the candidate, Carmel Tebbutt, as part of Morris Iemma’s team. The leader is usually featured in advertising to boost the local candidate’s profile. This time it looked more like the high-profile Education Minister boosting Iemma’s. Tebbutt’s been widely tipped as a future Premier, and why not? It doesn’t take much to get the gig in the NSW ALP these days.

The timing of the by-elections was particularly awkward for Iemma because of the furore over Mark Latham’s diaries the week before. Among the dozens of incendiary accusations, perhaps Latham’s most consistent theme has been “machine politics” – the control of the Party by backroom types who put winning ahead of policy – and, as Latham points out, aren’t necessarily all that good at it anyway. (Take Labor’s failed attempt to retake Sydney City Council by including left-wing Glebe and South Sydney, ultimately alienating the electorate.) Faceless backroomers would have to be a fairly awkward topic for the new Premier.

He received a substantial reprimand from Marrickville, a seat so left-wing that the two-party-preferred contest is between the Greens and the Labor Left candidates. The Greens won a whopping 38% of the primary vote, and Iemma’s Macquarie St machine men got a strong message that voters weren’t satisfied with Labor’s performance in areas like health and public transport.

The tragic thing about our Westminster political system, though, is that this message couldn’t have yielded any meaningful result no matter who won the election. Unlike in, for instance, the American Congress, Labor MPs always vote in the interests of their Caucus, not their local community. It would be hard to govern if they did otherwise, of course, but party discipline makes the promise of strong local representation trotted out every election-time a joke. Because you can guarantee that the views of Marrickville voters – and even Tebbutt herself, given her faction – are considerably more left-wing than anything we’ll ever see from the Iemma Government.

So if Labor won’t represent your views, why not vote Green to get your voice heard? That’s a terrible idea, particularly in a Lower House poll. If the Greens had won, it would have been a novel anomaly, like the Greens’ Michael Organ who represented the Wollongong seat of Cunningham after a 2002 by-election win but lost it last year. Unless they’re part of the majority or hold a balance of power – incredibly rare in the Lower House – the Greens’ concerns are pretty much ignored.

Look at the lack of influence the Greens have had over the Federal political agenda, even though they now hold four Senate seats. Their opposition on issues like the war in Iraq and gay marriage has accomplished nothing in policy terms. Bob Brown’s major accomplishment during the previous term was being evicted during George Bush’s speech.

The overwhelming majority of Marrickville voters wanted a strong left-wing agenda advocated in State Parliament, by a left-wing Green or Labor MP. Tebbutt is a senior minister – almost a best-case scenario for representation in our current system – but while she will be able to help local voters on local issues, her vote on state-wide matters like health and education will be determined not by Marrickville voters, but by the ALP machine. It’s not surprising so many local voters are apathetic, as The Glebe recently found, when local representation isn’t worth much more than lip service on election day. Who’d have thought that amidst the bile, Mark Latham might actually have a good point?

A column about Lehman Brothers

This may shock regular readers, given the extraordinary breadth of my wisdom in almost all areas of life, but I really don’t get the world financial system. Generally, it seems to make a lot of fairly unpleasant, money-obsessed people even richer than they already are, and far richer than they could ever need to be. But then, occasionally, it goes utterly pear-shaped in a matter of days, and the very same people start tearing their hair out and donning sackcloth and ashes. Zegna sackcloth, of course, but sackcloth nevertheless.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers this week made me remember a slightly less high-profile fraternal financial failure, that of the Leyland Brothers. And more specifically, their World, a theme park up north of Newcastle. As with Lehman, it failed partly because of dodgy loans, or at least one dodgy loan – theirs. The one-time TV stars couldn’t make their repayments in that early 90s “recession we had to have”, so had to turn the place over to the Commonwealth Bank. Lehman Brothers lasted for 150 years, but Leyland Brothers World only lasted 18 months.

And yet its memory lives on to this day because of its major attraction, a one-fortieth scale model of Uluru made out of red-painted cement. All those who pass turn their heads to laugh briefly at it before continuing on towards Coffs Harbour, and those few of us who recall the Brothers and their World reflect with a little wry amusement, tinged with not inconsiderable pathos, on the enormous folly of sinking your life savings into a massive concrete model of Ayers Rock.

As the largest bankruptcy in US history, Lehman Brothers’ failure in similarly difficult times is more newsworthy than the collapse of Leyland Brothers World. But while their renenue may have been $59 billion in 2007, what do they have to show for their century and a half? Not so much as a giant concrete Ayers’ Rock. All they’ve done is shuffle money around. Generally they did this fairly well, and were compensated obscenely for it. This year, they did so very badly, and the firm went under.

Really, it’s hard to have much sympathy for anyone who works there, except for perhaps the cleaners. The bankers who were responsible will have fat savings to see them through, and perhaps use their enforced break for a round-the-world trip or something. But the maintenance staff, who are never responsible, are always the ones who suffer most when things go belly-up.

I don’t really know that many of us ever sat down and explicitly agreed to these terms of this deal, but capitalist economies are essentially casinos. Egomaniac businessmen such as the new Leader of the Opposition convince themselves that they’re brilliant, and their famous firms are unsinkable, but there is no profit without risk, and sometimes your number comes up. Look at the ancient Barings Bank, banker to the British monarchy, which was sunk by one young idiot in the Singapore office. And really, if you meet a few young bankers, you will know that in that profession, idiots are not exactly in short supply.

I’m glad that Lehman Brothers was allowed to founder, because those are the rules of the game. And if any of our local equivalents do the same, I won’t have much sympathy. Especially if Macquarie Bank fails, as predicted by one analyst last week. Because really, what did Macquarie ever do for any of us other than toll the living daylights out of us?

I don’t own a single share in a publicly listed company because I’m scared of days like last Thursday, when the market slumps unexpectedly as all the supposedly ice-cold, ultra-rational traders run around like headless chooks selling everything. Then in a day or two, everyone calms down, and it bounces back. What kind of way is that to run a world economy.

At least when you invest in property, you get a place that can keep the rain off your head. And a space in which you can actually have a modest chance at happiness. I don’t see anyone getting much joy out of their share certificates. Which are essentially scratchies, only without even a cheesy illustration of a cartoon cat on them.

So when I’m a poor ancient writer, and I’m joined in the soup kitchen queue by poor ancient bankers who’ve been reduced to my level by the unpredictability of the world economy, I’ll take pleasure in pointing out that at least I’ll be survived by a bunch of columns in The Glebe, my legacy to future generations. But I doubt that 150 years of shuffling funds at Lehman Brothers have left much behind them at all.

A column about quokkas

Wikipedia tells me that the quokka (Setonix brachyurus), the only member of the genus Setonix, is a small macropod about the size of a large domestic cat. And the only reason I know this is because the poor animal became this week the latest twist in the strange saga of Troy Buswell.

No situation better illustrates the terrible plight in which the Liberal Party finds itself in 2008 than the hapless WA Opposition Leade,. On taking office earlier this year, he was forced to admit to snapping the bra strap of a Labor staffer during a drunken party in Parliament House. Last month, he confessed to having sniffed the chair of a Liberal staffer. This led to a leadership spill, and, in what can only be seen as an indictment on every other MP in his Party, he survived.

How does this lead to the quokka? Well, he was accused of drunkenly playing ‘quokkaball’ along with a bunch of his fellow MPs. It turned out to be a hoax started by a blogger, which was good news for the poor animals, which were endangered enough as it was. And I’d argue that it speaks poorly of Buswell’s reputation, rather than of the journalistic standards of Australian newspapers, that the allegations were printed.

And yet despite all this, Buswell’s approval rating remains higher than Brendan Nelson’s. Really, Nelson must be tearing his hair out in frustration. And that’s probably a good thing – it would only improve it.

There is effectively no political competition anywhere in Australia at the moment. So politics junkies must turn their interest to America, which has conveniently turned on a compelling contest. Sure, it’s about time the campaign shifted gears to being a competition between the two parties that will actually contest the election, instead of between the two leading Democrats. But reflecting on the Obama-Clinton epic has made me reflect on something Troy Buswell would do well to learn. In politics, there is one important principle that virtually no-one gets right. And that is that it’s crucial to know when to leave.

John Howard, the most successful politician of his generation, made a hash of it. He won four elections, and dominated the country for eleven years. But he failed to realise that the tide of public opinion was finally turning irrevocably against him. Much as Troy Buswell has failed to realise that there is no way the voters of Western Australia want to be led by a person for whom a recently-vacated chair represents an irresistible sexual opportunity. There was no way back for Howard, and there’s no way back for Buswell. When you’re gone, you’re gone. And if I may be so bold as to offer a tip to those readers who may be considering a political career, the day you issue a press release denying improperly interfering with a quokka is the day you should be issuing a press release announcing your retirement, effective immediately.

So too, Hillary Clinton is rapidly eroding what little goodwill remains towards her in American politics by refusing to abandon her campaign to tarnish Obama’s reputation. There is now practically no way she can defeat him for the nomination, yet still she refuses to depart gracefully. There was a time when she had a genuine chance of sealing the Vice-Presidency to form the much-vaunted “dream team”, although of course her dreams had the ticket in a somewhat different order. But now even if she gets it, she is guaranteed an icy relationship with her boss. As another strong woman, Gretel Killeen, once said, it’s time to go, Hillary. It’s been great. Actually, it hasn’t. But in any event, vacate the house immediately or we’ll send in the security guards.

There is only one situation in politics when the writing is on the wall, and yet retirement is not the right option. And that is Brendan Nelson’s. Clearly, he will never be Prime Minister. But he can serve as Kevin Rudd’s punching bag for a few years yet, perhaps even through an election, until the next Liberal with any credibility as an alternative Prime Minister emerges. Kevin Rudd needed a Kim Beazley to soak up the blows, and while Nelson won’t win an election on popular vote the way Beazley did in 1998, it’s not yet time for him to leave. Brendan Nelson’s party needs him in the job, and the rest of us do as well. Because while he is Opposition Leader, there is no technical way that Tony Abbott can become Prime Minister. And for that reason alone, he must stay.

A column about this land Australia

I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains and all that. And I’m often heard banging on about how much I miss the Aussie bush when I’m trying to impress foreign women in an overseas bar. But the truth is that like most of the readers of this newspaper, I’d wager, it’s not often I’m willing to leave the comforts of inner-city Sydney.

Sure, I regularly travel to Melbourne – which, like most Sydneysiders, I view a kind of younger brother who’s a bit trendier than me, but ultimately not as important. But that hardly counts. The truth is that there’s a whole country out there that people like us never go to.

Well, this year, all that has changed for me. Because my colleagues from The Chaser and I have travelling to most of Australia’s biggest towns to perform a stage show. Already, we’ve been to North Queensland, Canberra, WA, Ballarat and the Top End, and I’m writing this from Tassie. So, what is the real, outback Australia, the part we city-slicker types never go to, actually like?

I’ve got no idea.

Oh, I thought I’d be donning an Akubra and sifting red earth through my hands as I stared out across the vast expanse that is the Aussie outback. But what I’ve actually been doing is staying in identical hotels in identical towns. Unfortunately, Australia’s smaller cities and bigger towns tend to blur into one, right down to the slightly sad-looking paved, red-brick malls they all built in the centre of town in around 1987.

But I have learned a thing or two out there on the road. Not about how to wrestle crocodiles or anything. But I’ve spoken to some real Australians in the past couple of months, and the first thing I learned is that they are generally bloody friendly. Walk into a café in Newtown or Glebe, and you’ll generally feel that the waiters wish you’d hurry up and vacate your table for someone who’s a bit more trendily dressed. Whereas out of Sydney, I’ve found people incredibly chatty and helpful. One guy in Townsville even ran me and a few friends down to the ferry wharf in his 4WD so we wouldn’t miss the boat to Magnetic Island. He probably would have been doing us a favour if we had missed it, but still, it was a lovely gesture.

I’ve been expected to be treated like the snooty yuppie I am, but instead I’ve been met only with genuine friendliness. Which I’ve reciprocated in kind. For instance, in most of the cafes I’ve visited, I’ve quietly drunk their coffee without explaining the proper way to make a flat white.

Perhaps the most welcome discovery, though, has been that the food really is good everywhere. We like to pride ourselves on the amazing diversity and quality of our inner-city food options, and we should. But we’ve found it’s almost impossible to get a bad meal anywhere. We’ve had plenty of great Indian and Thai meals, and although you’d struggle to get, say, quality yum cha in the Top End, I had one of the best fusion Asian meals I’ve ever had in Darwin. So while some parts of the country still need to work on their racial tolerance, judging from the friendly cabbie in Townsville who told me to beware of “the local indigenous population, especially the ones who come asking for money”, there’s lots of good ethnic eating options out there.

The last lesson I’ve learned is that all Aussies love drinking. This isn’t a huge surprise, of course – like being unimpressed Brendan Nelson, it truly unites all Australians. But I didn’t know just how much some Aussies loved drinking until I’d been to country towns where, after the sun goes down, it’s literally all there is to do. When we spent a Sunday night in Darwin, the entire town shut down by about 9.30. Except for the bars, which raged until 4.30am. I went wandering the streets at night for some food, or a bottle of water from a convenience store, or in fact anything that was open. But the people I asked just laughed. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised in a town that serves its beers in two litre ‘Darwin stubbies’.

This week, we’re back home, at the Enmore Theatre. And I’m really looking forward to it. Because the main thing I’ve learned on our travels is while regional Australia is a lot of fun to visit, I’m bloody glad I live in Sydney.

A column about drugs in sport

Drugs and elite sporting heroes, it seems, go together like nitro and glycerine. First there was the revelation that the great Andrew ‘Joey’ Johns, dubbed by many the greatest rugby league player of all time, had regularly taken drugs throughout his career. It was astonishing to read that he had so successfully juggled recreational drug abuse with performing at the top level. How good would he have been, one wonders, if he’d lived an abstemptious life like Guy Sebastian’s?

This week his AFL equivalent, Wayne ‘The King’ Carey, has been in the harsh glow of media scrutiny again for the revelation that he regularly used cocaine throughout his playing days. So humiliating has been this latest downfall that the period when he was merely involved in a salacious sex scandal probably count for him as the “good old days.” It’s a sad tale, but just as we’ve seen with the likes of Britney Spears in the entertainment world, an increasingly common one.

Above The King, of course, there is only God – or, at least in AFL nickname terms, Gary Ablett, whose struggle with substance abuse has been well documented. And countless other footballers have been busted as well, Wendell Sailor being one particularly prominent example. It almost beggars belief that athletes who are paid so much to be in peak physical condition could risk everything in a quest for a short-term high. (Or, in Carey’s case, a series of short-term highs for the extremely long term.)The tendency of top footballers to get busted with recreational drugs is so pronounced that there must be more to it than mere coincidence. It’s almost as if team doctors are racking up lines of coke along with the vitamin supplements.

When they bare all in exclusive interviews on Enough Rope in an attempt to patch up their tarnished reputations, our sporting heroes most commonly blame the adulation and the pressure. So much is expected of these amazing athletes who can single-handedly transform a game that they simply can’t hack it, apparently, and have to artificially augment their moods.

I’m not so sure that it just comes down to pressure. The players in soccer’s English Premier League enjoy some of the highest wages in the world, fans that are far more rabid than even the most one-eyed AFL tragic, and the pressure of a game where winning and losing can cost teams hundreds of millions of dollars, and very few of them go off the rails these days. The Perhaps it’s the higher frequency of games, perhaps their schedules are far more demanding – or perhaps there’s simply more professionalism. Perhaps, being cultured Europeans, they indulge in refined moderation?

Well, there’s an easy solution to the problem of footballers’ extremely broad shoulders being unable to cope with carrying the hopes and dreams of a nation. It’s called indifference. I can honestly say, with my hand firmly on my heart, that I have always been entirely oblivious to the footballing achievements of Wayne Carey. Until that unfortunate incident with his vice-captain’s wife, I’d barely heard of the guy. So, when he complains about the pressure he experienced during his playing days, my conscience is magnificently clear. To me, Wayne Carey is not a disgraced footy legend, he’s a disgraced guy who used to do something I don’t really understand. And though it’s true that I have always looked up to him, it’s only because I’m shorter.

I will confess that during past Origin matches I often found myself screaming at the Blues to throw the ball to Joey, since it seemed to be the only tactic that ever actually produced anything resembling tries. And yet, outside those three crucial games, his actions held minimal interest for me. I vaguely remember him once winning a premiership with the Knights, but really, that’s about it. Still, if the poor overpaid poppets are really feeling the heat of our expectations, then really, there’s no harm in lowering them.

The real problem, I suspect, is that the football codes are turning a blind eye to their elite players as long as they keep producing the results when the big games roll around. Teams build these players up into stars to sell tickets and replica jerseys, so it’s their responsibility to look after their psychological conditions.

The problems with Johns and Carey will hopefully have ended this forever. And that can only be a good thing. Let’s hope that for the next generation of hero footballers, the only devastation they wreak will be on-field, not in other people’s lives – and, so often, their own.

A column about Easter

I am not one to look a gift public holiday in the mouth, especially one where you get two bonus days off. But Easter has always had several black marks against it in my book. Perhaps the biggest of these is that it is the time when one of the greatest scams ever perpetrated against families takes place – the Easter Show. It may once have been a charming slice of country life in the city, but now it’s an overpriced bulk marketing exercise located atop a former toxic waste dump in Homebush. The whole event is entirely light on actual fun, but without a doubt the worst aspect is showbags. How ASIC’s fraud division even cleared their sale is beyond me.

I remember realizing that the entire event was a cynical exercise in exploitation even as a small boy – but I went ahead and bullied my parents into buying the stupid showbags anyway. They are invariably full of rubbish no-name junk food of the sort that’s only generally available at a $2 shop, like non-Coca cola, or Cheeto Balls that aren’t manufactured by the genuine, internationally renowned Cheeto corporation. Which means that as a result the luminous orange slime on your fingers never actually washes off.

Then there are the ‘proper’ bags, which always cost extra. I used to buy the Triple M showbag every year – a radio station I later had the pleasure of working for, incidentally. All us kids got it, and we treasured our backpacks with that old guitar hero dude logo on them, and imagined ourselves rocking out across the airwaves like Doug Mulray or Club Veg. But now I realize that the genius of those showbags was that we actually paid Triple M to market their brand for them! Kids everywhere were promoting their station all over the streets and schoolyard, and their long-suffering parents were paying through the nose for the privilege.

Then again, I’d like to work for them again someday, so parents – carry on.

Most outrageous of all, though, are the sheets they pin up explaining what great “value” it is for parents. All the prices cited would make a 7-Eleven owner blush, and it invariably prices the crappy plastic toys that aren’t the reason you bought the bag and clearly cost 5c from a Chinese sweatshop at about $20. Then they always factors in $50 for vouchers that you would never use, like an offer for adults at children’s prices at Cables Waterski Park at Panthers. Whereas I’d have thought that in the unlikely event that any parents were actually convinced to waste a day of their lives taking their children cable waterskiing, the least the operators could do would be to let them have a go for free.

But Easter’s no better once you’re an adult. On Good Friday, one of the best nights to go out in the year since you have three whole days to sleep off any lapses in judgement, pubs have to close at 10pm. That’s right, hours before bedtime. What can possibly be the logic of that? It’s not like they’re closed all day – there’d be a mass uprising. So what difference can a few extra hours make?

Of course, we live in a secular society, so one religion’s social values should not be imposed on all of us. Hindus and Muslims manage to put up with the rest of us drinking all year round, so the Christians should stop interfering, frankly. And I can’t imagine even the Archbishops arguing that pubs staying open two extra house until midnight in any way impinges on their religious activities. Probably even a few ministers were prevented last Friday from having a quiet cleansing ale to relax at the end of one of the biggest days of their schedule. Most ridiculously of all, you can’t get takeaways – so drinking quietly at home isn’t even an option.

But even if you are a Christian, the pub closures prevents anyone commemorating Jesus’ life and Death with a good old-fashioned wake. It’s very short-sighted – for those believers who also enjoy the seamier side of our city’s nightlife, what more fitting way to commemorate that fateful day in Jerusalem than by getting slaughtered up the Cross?

Easter was a pagan festival for thousands of years before Jesus’ death, and if you visit the Easter Show or the chocolate aisle at any supermarket, you’ll see that it still is. So the least they could let us do on this ancient festival of excess is enjoy a few moments of Bacchanalia.

A column about live gigs

It’s expensive to be a music fan these days. I’ve splurged on a whole bunch of concert tickets this summer, and was lucky enough to see Björk at the Opera House and The Police at Sydney’s favorite toxic waste dump-turned-event space out at Homebush the following night. And I write this not to boast – okay, not exclusively to boast, but because I am becoming increasingly disheartened by the expense. It seems that this summer, we’ve had more music options than ever before, but they all seem to want to charge us more than ever before.

Tickets to both gigs cost about $150 – less than the entire day of the Big Day Out, which costs only $120 for 70 acts. Since Björk only deigned to play for just under an hour and a half, and the support band consisted of an annoying American guy brandishing a keytar (I still don’t know what their name was, since neither the advertising nor the organisers bothered to even tell us) it wasn’t exactly value plus. Sure, they couldn’t fit a lot of people into the Opera House forecourt – I think it ended up at 6000 – and they had a whole brass section to feed, and ridiculous outfits to purchase. But still, she could have at least hit the two hour mark.

What really irritated me, though, was that the security people confiscated any liquids as zealously as if we were entering an airport terminal rather than an outdoor venue in the middle of summer. They must have chucked out enough bottles of water to top up Warragamba Dam. It might have been forgivable if the queue to buy drinks wasn’t literally hundreds of people long, leaving us all sitting there parched.

Water is extremely important, a point those tireless moralisers The Police picked up on the following evening, informing us via looping advertisements that they were donating a portion of their tour proceeds to WaterAid. Well, not exactly. The people who were being generous to this important cause weren’t the band, it was us hapless punters who’d paid a fortune to go and hear them in a space with all the intimacy of an Aussie Rules semi-final, and poorer sound quality. So it wasn’t exactly encouraging to learn that they’d gouged a little bit more on top for some trendy cause.

I really am tired of being lectured by billionaire rock stars. Sting owns seven houses, and is a tax exile from the UK, officially residing in Ireland. If he cares so much about water, why not donate the whole of his wage from the Police reunion tour to the cause? It’s not like he needs the enormous amount of dough they raked in. Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers probably do, since they haven’t exactly been able to play any stadia themselves in the twenty-one years since the singer shafted them so he could do his own thing. But honestly, why not chuck some cash in yourself instead of making us do it?

Björk was guilty of political posturing too, dedicating her song “Declare Independence” to indigenous Australians. Which, of course, is just what the Aboriginal community needs – being told what to do by yet another rich white person.

Still, at least The Police had organised a decent support act. Sorry, I mean a famous support act. Personally, I timed my arrival so as not to see Fergie, who I dispute is in any way “Licious”.

Both concerts were absolutely amazing – an experience you can’t possibly replicate with a mere recording. So it isn’t surprising that due to piracy and the general stinginess of recording contracts, artists nowadays make far more out of touring than they do out of selling CDs. And this must be why ticket prices are skyrocketing ever upwards even while the Aussie dollar’s far stronger than usual. In future, they should include downloads of the gig you saw in the ticket price. And what’s more, when you’ve had to shell out the equivalent of five CDs to watch a band play live, it would be understandable (albeit illegal) if you went ahead and downloaded a few of their albums. Because at these prices, you’ve already paid for them.

A column about the apology

Pinch yourselves, folks, because it’s finally going to happen. A mere eleven years after the Bringing Them Home report chronicled the devastation wreaked by the policy of removing Aboriginal children from their families, the Commonwealth Government is going to apologise. Yes, really. On Wednesday, Kevin Rudd will move a motion of apology that will spark off a day of celebrations, with a free concert featuring indigenous artists that promises to be the biggest party in Canberra since Andrew Bartlett’s post-election wake.

It’s astonishing that it was so controversial, really. Despite what were acknowledged to be good intentions, the report found that the practice constituted genocide because it had the effect of wiping out Aboriginal culture. And you’d think that genocide, which is just about the most heinous action a government can take, might at least warrant a little apology. But no, John Howard refused to do it for a decade, citing the most spurious of arguments. And now that this sorry chapter in our history is being closed, it’s worth remembering what they were, because they’ve been restated by many prominent Liberals and talkback commentators as they wheeled out the same old lame excuses for not backing an act which is, quite literally, the least we can do.

Firstly, there was the legal mumbo jumbo about becoming liable for damages. Personally, I think damages are wholly appropriate, given the indisputable psychological damage that a government policy wreaked on children. If it were me in The Lodge, I’d be whipping out the chequebook, frankly. Or at least sending out a whole lot of bunches of flowers. But even Rudd seems to blanch at the prospect of compensation, the wuss.

Still, an apology has been enacted by every State and Territory Parliament without a single cent being paid out, so I’m not sure what was supposed to be so different this time. But more to the point, let’s remember how the legal system works, shall we. If the victims of a harmful act want to sue the perpetrator, it doesn’t matter whether or not there’s been an apology. Sure, it makes it easier to establish that the event occurred, but that’s hardly in doubt here. Civil cases don’t only become possible where the individuals, or state, have admitted their guilt. If anything, apologies show contrition, which tends to reduce damages. The argument’s mean-spirited and ridiculous.

Then there’s the intergenerational point that it’s inappropriate because it wasn’t us, it was our forefathers. This is a point of almost moronic obviousness. No-one thinks Kevin Rudd took Aboriginal children from their parents, but the institution he now heads did, and as the direct successor, he’s the one who needs to make the gesture. This whole issue will apparently be addressed in the wording in any case, but those like Nelson who make this caveat fail to understand the symbolism of governments apologising for their own past actions. The “comfort women” forced into prostitution in WWII sought an apology not because they thought the Japanese Government were involved, but because they wanted the record to be corrected. Both our country and theirs has often wilfully obscured the darker corners of its history, and a formal apology ensures that for the rest of time, the mistakes and misjudgements have been acknowledged by the body responsible.

The most rhetorically tricky argument is the one that it might be a distraction from actually solving the problems faced by Aborigines. This is the same approach Howard referred to as “practical reconciliation”. But if you want to help a sector of the population, you should start by listening to what they say they need. And Aboriginal leaders have sought an apology for a long time. If we are to encourage positively with their community, and develop a partnership that can actually address their standard of living, there can be no better way than an incoming government making a symbolic gesture that says we’re on board.

Besides, a stubborn government that refuses to make gestures of goodwill that cost it nothing is unlikely to get the substance right either, and so we saw with the Howard Government. There was plenty of symbolism on offer from the Coalition when there was mateship to be celebrated, or cricket to be played, but when it came to righting historical wrongs, John Howard was nowhere to be seen. The guy wouldn’t even take a stroll across the bridge for reconciliation, and we know how much he liked walking around Kirribilli.

On February 13, one of the darker chapters in our history will be formally closed. It won’t increase Aboriginal life expectancy, but for those who suffered so many years of inhumane treatment at its hands, it’ll be a welcome change for the Australian government to finally give them one measly day that might make them feel good.

Stubborn to the last as the nation consigns one of his most infamous policies to dust, John Howard has refused to honour Malcolm Fraser’s call for all previous PMs to attend the ceremony. On Wednesday, I’ll be donning a black armband just to spite him.

A column about binge drinking

I’m delighted to see that Kevin Rudd is clamping down on alcohol abuse. The demon drink has always played an uncomfortably large role in Australian social life, and its abuse should be actively discouraged, because the effects are unquestionably appalling. Binge drinking by youths is heavily linked to violence. And it’s also heavily linked to annoying teenagers in yellow plastic sunglasses becoming international celebrities.

Our Prime Minister knows all too well the folly of binge drinking. A few cheeky sherries when ‘on tour’ in New York, and next thing you know you’re in some kind of ne’er-do-well establishment where – surely your eyes deceive you – ladies to whom you do not recall saying vows of sacred marriage seem to be taking their clothes off. What can be possibly happening? Best to make sure you don’t remember any of it, and confess to Therese that you’ve been a bit of a dill.

Even more embarrassingly for an aspiring Labor leader, your night on the turps at NYC’s finest strip club was spent in the company of Col Allan, who is one of Rupert Murdoch’s trusted lieutenants. When people find out about it, as surely they must, it will make your ambition appear even more naked than those up on stage. Or dinner plans with Brian Burke.

I must confess that like our Prime Minister, I once visited Scores NYC when curiosity got the best of me at the end of a boozy dinner – it was suggested by a woman, although I don’t think that’ll exactly leave my feminist credibility intact – and all I can say is that it definitely isn’t a mistake one would make sober. Admittedly, I wasn’t officially representing Australia the UN, and this was in the days before I represented The Glebe as well, a responsibility that I’m sure you know I take just as seriously as Rudd takes himself. But still, I regret it.

All I can recall is a distinct impression that breast implants really aren’t worth the money, and that at those prices, I wasn’t entirely sure who was exploiting who. In hindsight, I would gladly have been prevented from getting into a condition where Scores seemed like a good idea by some manner of Rudd binge drinking ban. I have every confidence that if the human race stopped drinking to excess, strip clubs would no longer exist.

So if even those as morally incorruptible as Kevin Rudd and myself can fall victim to the demon drink, what hope do ordinary mortals have? One report last week said that 80% of police work is now alcohol-related, which is an appalling figure. So something must be done. But the problem is – what?

Stephen Fielding, the Family First Senator, introduced a Private Member’s Bill last year proposing a initiatives to reduce drinking. First, he wanted warning labels. I understand they’ve worked on tobacco, but I’m really not sure that they’d help on alcohol, because unlike cigarettes, a few drinks would make you laugh uproariously at the warning labels.

Then he’d restrict advertising except between 9pm and 5am, which seems sensible unless you actually have 14- and 15-year-old children, who don’t go to sleep until considerably later. Still, it can’t hurt.

Finally, he’d limit ads that link alcohol consumption to success. Which would spell the death knell for the Bundy bear, I suspect. Because if the bear isn’t helping the lads score some chicks or something, then all you’ve got is a polar bear turning up in a completely inappropriate climate – which is more a case for the RSPCA than a source of entertainment, really.

I don’t know whether advertising is linked to binge drinking, or whether more subtle lifestyle factors are at play. I suspect having VB as a sponsor of the cricket isn’t exactly helping, and nor is fiendishly brilliant promotions like the Talking Boonie/Warnie, which every teenager would want.

If research shows that ads are to blame, then by all means limit them. But even restricting alcohol to 21 in many states of America hasn’t stopped teenage binging. So the real solution is responsible parenting and education. Parents need to introduce their kids to alcohol with an emphasis on moderation, and make sure they know the dangers. Perhaps if instead of claiming not to remember, Kevin Rudd could tell a cautionary tale of the horrors to be seen at Scores. I know I’ll think twice next time I have a few drinks on a trip to New York.

A column about Singh and Symonds

As we’ve seen from the unprecedented media interest in the piddly first few Presidential primaries, the significance of anything that happens in January is always amplified massively for one simple reason – there just isn’t anything else in the news. And so it is that we’ve all spent an entire week closely following the story of one intemperate cricketer who allegedly said that another intemperate cricketer was a big monkey.

At a time when anyone with any sense is devoting most of their time to relaxing, and even our workaholic new Prime Minister has been chilling out in Kirribilli House (“reading briefing papers” – apparently his idea of a good time), the reaction has been nothing short of extraordinary. Tempers were already frayed by the ridiculous umpiring in the Test, and the Australian cricket team’s tiresomely aggressive approach to the game didn’t exactly salve the wounds Steve Bucknor’s decisions had left. There’s nothing quite like ugly Australian triumphalism to make your average Indian feel like flambéing a photo of Ricky Ponting.

The problem faced by umpires is not that they make mistakes – that’s inevitable, especially as they get older. It’s unfortunate than an umpire who was as good for as long as Bucknor has had his career tarnished like this. But sadly for the other men in white coats, advances in the coverage of cricket mean that it is now possible to tell with absolute certainly when they’re wrong. Whereas in the past, lbw decisions and snicks remained a matter of opinion even after replays, Hawkeye and Snicko have made them appear like a question of fact. Since the technology’s there, and pretty much impartial, it should be used whenever there’s a doubtful decision. That way umpires like Bucknor won’t be faced with the impossible task of getting every decision ‘right’ when they roll the replay. It’s completely unreasonable of commentators to expect umpires to never make mistakes when, for instance, Bill Lawry hasn’t been right in at least twenty years.

But the stench of racism is rather more enduring than the furore over a few bad decisions. The scandal has engulfed both nations, and made headlines around the world. Flags and effigies have been burnt, and the threat of cancelling the tour still looms in the air. I don’t know whether Harbhajan Singh called Symonds a monkey, and whether it offended him, or how serious it really was. But I do know is that it’s a truly ugly term, which has been the basis of shocking racial abuse in European football, with fans regularly throwing bananas at black players. It must be stamped out, and making an example of Harbhajan – if indeed he is guilty – is appropriate. Of course, it’s the people who throw around hurtful labels like that who are the ones who are actually unevolved.

But unsporting behaviour must be policed no less strenuously. Ricky Ponting’s post-match interview in Sydney was appallingly smug, with not a word of congratulations for an Indian team which had performed heroically and been desperately unlucky. Even the Fanatics must have felt uncomfortable, if they put down their annoying plastic trumpets for long enough to listen. Competitiveness on the field is one thing, but why Ponting has to behave like a petulant toddler off it is baffling. It isn’t exactly appropriate to gloat when you’ve just won your record-equalling 16th Test in a row. For all his love of onfield ‘mental disintegration’, Steve Waugh was always completely professional off the field. It’s a pity Ponting didn’t pay more attention. The current captain would also do well to spend some time helping orphanages in the subcontinent as well – he might make himself slightly less unpopular.

With luck, the whole thing will blow over, and seem in a few months like a storm in a tea-break Gatorade bottle. But someone in Cricket Australia needs to give the current leadership a good talking to. And if it has to be in the only language they apparently understand – sledging – then so be it. Because right now, nobody’s saying come on, Aussie, come on. And I know this because last night, Ricky Ponting’s mum told me so.

A column about 2007

Well, it’s that time of year where we put our feet up and look back at the year that was. We don’t get a lot of time for quiet contemplation during the Australian summer, since there are barbeques to fire up and beers to be drunk. And besides, there’s only a brief window available before we all head to the beach and we become incapable of any meaningful reflection because the cricket’s on.

Only a few days into January of this year, though, cricket set the tone for what has turned out to be a year of transition. Many old campaigners have shuffled off the stage this year, and the simultaneous retirement of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer was just the first in a series of grand departures – although we can be relieved that Warne has not yet retired from his primary career as a sex scandal participant. John Laws has packed away the golden microphone, Channel Nine is no longer Still The One, and even more remarkably, is no longer owned by the Packers. And I can scarcely believe that Gretel Killeen isn’t hosting Idol, nor that it hasn’t yet been axed. These are strange times indeed.

The biggest change, of course, we made a few weeks ago when we put an end to the Howard Government. I’ve written a lot about Kevin Rudd in these pages recently, and don’t wish to sound like a broken record. Or like Prime Minister Kevin himself, who views the ability to repeat exactly the same phrase over and over again as the most worthy of political virtues. But even though it’s still only days old, the new government is hitting the ‘undo’ button with gusto. We’re no longer global warming pariahs, and before too long we won’t have AWAs, full-fee paying students, nearly as many troops in Iraq or even – in the unlikely event you believe the Rudd hype – surgery queues.

And history was made only the other day, when we had a female Acting Prime Minister briefly, and the sky didn’t fall in. Then again, in recent years that role has regularly been filled by Nationals leaders, so it’s clear that not much can go wrong on a Deputy PM’s watch. We’ll have to wait a while yet before we can genuinely pat ourselves on the back for our progressiveness in having a woman in charge.

But change is in the air, and since the new PM no longer needs to avoid frightening the horses by minimising his differences to John Howard, we might see even genuine reform. Our Federal arrangements leave a lot to be desired, and with Labor in control everywhere, this is a once-in-a-century opportunity to do away with the ridiculousness of seven different health and education departments for a population of twenty-one million. There is a rare chance to remake the foundations of this country, and make it better.

And yet many commentators have suddenly started predicting gloomy days ahead for our economy. Before the election, it seemed we were in fabulous shape, with John Howard campaigning on his supposedly brilliant economic legacy. But suddenly, the doomsayers are warning that necessary tough decisions were ducked by the Howard-Costello dream team, so now inflation has to be urgently curbed, interest rates will continue to rise sharply, and we could be heading for another recession. Some have even suggested that this “was not a good election to win” for Labor. How strange to think that we may one day fondly look back on the Howard era as “the good old days”.

Our former Prime Minister was last seen on the golf course, which I’m sure is very nice for him. But I hope he spares the occasional thought for his “fellow Australians” who don’t have the luxury of a massive Government pension and an unlimited supply of golfing-buddy toadies to tell us what wonderful leaders we were. The rest of us had better strap ourselves in. Because even if the economy doesn’t completely go down the toilet, there is turbulence ahead. The new Government has much to do, and just as importantly, much to undo. It will be fascinating to watch whether Kevin Rudd is up to the job in 2008. But for the time being, let’s do what John Howard would do, and watch the cricket.

A column about Rudd's victory

The jury is very much out on whether Kevin Rudd has the wherewithal to deliver his so-called education revolution, but what we witnessed in Australia on November 24 can deservedly be described as a political one. As revolutions go, it was a particularly bloodless coup, of course, as any coup involving someone as lilywhite as Rudd must surely be.

But it was a coup nevertheless, and it leaves the Liberals with no higher elected official in the country than Campbell Newman, the gormless Lord Mayor of Brisbane, and even he's been tipped to be removed when he goes to the polls next year. Given the extent of the Labor landslide and the baffling choice of Brendan Nelson as leader, Robert Menzies' party seems almost as dead as he is.

It's hard to see them emerging from the wilderness anytime soon, especially since Nelson has come out in his first days as leader saying that he doesn't support an apology for the stolen generation or necessarily rolling back WorkChoices. Which indicates his political antennae are even more defective than we might have imagined – the message from the electorate didn't exactly strike me as ambiguous. I checked the Centrebet odds on any party other than Labor winning the next election, and they're paying $4.60. Given what we've seen so far, I reckon that's even more conservative than the party would be if Tony Abbott had won the leadership. Centrebet didn't offer odds on John Howard coming out of retirement to lead the Libs back to victory after winning the by-election for Peter Costello's old seat of Higgins, but I reckon they'd be about the same.

The enormity of Howard's defeat can’t be exaggerated. He ought to be absolutely devastated, because his party sure is. There is only one way the election could have been worse for the Coalition, and that’s if it had been completely obliterated in the Senate as well. But the balance of power seems likely to be with the Greens, Family First and the SA "No Pokies" maverick Nick Xenophon, which will make every bill’s passage somewhat perilous even after the Senate changes. Pokies are generally regulated by states, so who knows what on earth Xenophon will do in the Senate? We can safely guess, though, that whoever leads the Opposition team in the Upper House will still have at least some work to do – certainly more than Nelson, who may as well put his feet up and clock up the superannuation until the party dumps him for Malcolm Turnbull.

After a result like this, all commentators jostle to say "I told you so". But I feel I must take a bow for having backed the correct result. The polls predicted a Ruddslide all year, but given John Howard's past electoral snake-charming efforts, few in the commentary game were willing to believe things wouldn't change towards the end. Well, I was willing to stick my neck on the line. I backed Labor, and what's more, I said so in print. I make the tough calls, and I make them first.

Now, some may note that I did actually hedge my bets somewhat by predicting a few other results. Well, I view that as entirely sensible. Lesser commentators make one call and stick to it no matter what, an approach whose flaws are probably only just now being realised by Janet Albrechtsen, but admittedly meant that in this last election Alan Ramsey had the satisfaction of getting it right for the first time ever. But really – Albrechtsen and Ramsey, who are they? I mean, other than, respectively, a member of the ABC Board and a press gallery legend?

They could learn a trick or two about the columnist game from me. Being the professional that I am, in various other columns I also predicted a narrow Labor win, a narrow Coalition win, and a narrow Greens win – unlikely I know, but very likely to endear me to the Inner West. (As President Bartlet said, people – see the whole board.) Heck, to cover all theoretically possible bases, I even tipped the Democrats' survival. Admittedly it was in a satirical article, but I knew that if some freak Stephen Bradbury-type event happened and all the other Senate candidates were declared ineligible, I could pull the article out and claim that I knew their support would come flooding back.

So, those of us in the leftie gulag we like to call the Inner West now have a fresh challenge. After years of raging against the Howard Government with our regular marches, angry letters to the editor and literally billions of scathing comments during our dinner parties, it’s finally gone. Friends, we can now look forward now to a bold new era – an era of being disappointed by Labor.

A column about the Ruddslide

Fresh ideas. New Leadership. Working families. Economic conservative. Education revolution. When it comes to this election, to use Kevin Rudd’s favourite start to any sentence, these are the buzzwords that will finally get boost Labor back into office after eleven years in the wilderness. Rudd knows that his pitch is electoral dynamite, and that’s why he mentions his buzzwords constantly, and that’s why he’s going to become Prime Minister on Saturday.

It may not be quite that easy, of course. Labor still has to win 16 seats, which mightn’t be quite as easy as it seems when you read the polls. Perhaps by the time you read this, John Howard will have found the magical Rudd-killing bullet that has eluded him for so long. Perhaps there’s another sex scandal like the Scores one out there, but less laughably innocent. Perhaps the highly sophisticated computer programme inside Kevin Rudd’s head will crash under the pressure. Or perhaps, just perhaps, people will start to like Peter Costello.

Okay, so that won’t happen. But I never would have assumed that the result would seem so assured just days before the election. Everyone assumed that the previously infallible homing-beacon instincts of John Howard would have focussed in on the precise argument he needed to make to – well, if not defeat Kevin Rudd’s challenge, then at least make it a real contest. But if you believe the polls, it’s absolutely game over. As ugly as both the idea and the word used to express it may be, we are on the verge of a ‘Ruddslide’.

Unfortunately, dear readers of The Glebe, none of your lower-house votes will make a jot of difference, since this newspaper’s catchment area votes for left-wing parties so staunchly that even Mark Latham got your support. But you can rejoice in the knowledge that for the first time in quite a while, the rest of Australia agrees with you as well. Note that I can’t say ‘agrees with us’, you understand, because due to my work with the ABC, I am of course entirely neutral in this election. I just want the winner on the day to be democracy.

So what kind of Australia can we expect under Kevin Rudd? Well, one very much like John Howard’s. Or so we’ve been led to believe by Labor’s extraordinarily disciplined campaign, which has doggedly removed every point of difference between the parties that has any chance of proving electorally damaging for Kevin Rudd. Principle has taken second place – Rudd is all about politics, and cleverly so. His focus groups have found that calling “Mr Howard” a “clever politician” goes down well – but that he’s delivered the message makes him the one who’s been the really clever politician in this campaign.

Where previously John Howard has successfully portrayed himself as more in touch with the public’s values, this time the electorate cares about issues that are traditionally Labor ones – things like education, industrial relations, the environment and, perhaps most importantly, a less economically tough approach to government as interest rates rise. In this context, the public simply isn’t interested in scare campaigns about the unions or even cash handouts. It wants to feel reassured, and that’s exactly what Kevin Rudd’s soothingly nerdy persona provides.

One of the many failed scare campaigns that the Coalition has tried involves Peter Garrett saying that Labor would just change everything after the election – the infamous “short and jocular” conversation with Steve Price. Well, let’s hope Labor does change everything after the election, because otherwise, based on the policies they’ve put forward so far, it will scarcely have been worth voting them in. As John Howard himself knows from 1996, you rarely win office by promoting radical change. You win it by portraying the government as out of touch – his slogan against Keating was “for all of us”, which amazingly allowed the ALP to be portrayed as the party of the elites. So Rudd has been stressing continuity while showing that he has a better understanding of where “working families” are at.

But Labor will overturn many things that lefties love to hate – WorkChoices, of course, but also long-term bugbears like abolishing full-fee degrees and ratifying Kyoto. Having run to the centre to win the election, we can expect to see Rudd moving a little further to the left, just as Howard eventually returned to his ideological roots. But he’ll learn from his predecessor, and not go far enough to scare anyone. Labor had to create its own conservative, battler-courting version of John Howard to defeat the Coalition’s one, and once he’s in, he’ll probably prove even harder to dislodge.