Making sense of the Mighell malarkey

Why, exactly, did Kevin Rudd demand that Dean Mighell leave the ALP? What heinous crime did he commit? From what I can see, he won workers a pay increase, boasted about it in somewhat tacky terms and he used fairly intemperate language about John Howard. He also doesn't like the Government's tough new building regulator very much. So in other words, he was a union rep.

The main issue seems to be that he used something called "pattern bargaining", where you obtain a raise from one employer and then try to make other employers match it. Which sounds to me largely the same as what we used to do as kids, when we played one parent off against another, or all of our friends told our parents that all the other kids' parents let them do something, so we should be allowed to as well. Sure, it's a little devious, but in the current industrial relations landscape, who can blame a union rep for pushing a little too hard to get better pay for his members?
Okay, so one way to interpret the story is to say that the employers had to pay millions of dollars more than they would have had to otherwise. Another is that that particular negotiation happened to be a bit less employer-biased than is usually the case these days. I still think that playing hardball with employers so that they have to pay more than they wanted to otherwise is entirely appropriate for a union official, and shows why some employees are still happy to pay their membership dues in this day and age.
It might have been tacky to boast about it. It was unfortunate to call the building inspector as a pedophile, certainly. And while describing John Howard as a "skidmark on the bedsheet of democracy" was a fairly disgusting image, there are many who'd use even filthier language – probably within Rudd's own office.
And as the Prime Minister pointed out in Parliament the other day, Kevin Rudd isn't averse to a bit of invective himself when speaking to a restricted audience. Like giving a journo an earful, for instance.
No, the whole thing feels just a bit too perfectly tailored to Rudd's political needs, I reckon. Look at these choice quotes from Minghell in an ABC Radio interview, reported in today's SMH:

"And I think the ALP with Rudd doesn't quite understand unions.
"Howard would tell you that we've got an intimate relationship; we don't."
Mr Mighell said he still backed Mr Rudd for prime minister, but unions would have a struggle on their hands under a Labor government.
"The campaign to get rid of WorkChoices is so important for us, there's no doubt in my mind that we need to get rid of the Howard government, we need to get Rudd in there.
"But I think it will be a battle for unions, with a Labor Federal Government. I think we'll be battling over lots and lots of issues.
"But certainly the protection for a lot of workers who aren't in strong unions like ours is going to be a lot better with Rudd as prime minister."

Kevin Rudd's office couldn't have drafted any more perfect quotes to counter John Howard's charge that the ALP is beholden to unionists. And perhaps it did? We all know the unions will do anything to get a Labor Government this time around, their survival depends on it.
And you wouldn't put it past the increasingly brilliant Rudd electioneering team to tap Minghell on the shoulder once the story came out, and ask him to play along with a story that proved once and for all that Kevin Rudd was no union man.
It doesn't matter whether the unions are "furious" with Rudd. Even if they really are. After they meekly rolled over at the ALP conference, it became clear that they were more than willing to make the leader look like his own man.
Rudd doesn't need unionists' votes, he's got them already. What he needs is for business to trust him, and to counter the charge that he's a closet ACTU buddy who'll wreck the economy. That's the Coalition's best angle to use against him, and that's exactly where this story boosts him. As does all the talk about his wife being a tough businesswoman, incidentally. The publicity over Therese Rein would have done Kevin Rudd's image among business owners no harm at all. Surely he'll understand their perspective if he's married to one of them?
The stoush over industrial relations continues to be a fascinating electoral battleground. But I see no evidence in this story that IR is the Rudd Achilles heel the government's hoping it is. They're the ones that have struggled to rebrand their policies to quiet the fears of middle Australia, and they're the ones who are still miles behind in the polls.
We should all watch Minghell's future career with interest. Not only has he endeared himself to the union movement with his uncompromisingness, but he's just done Kevin Rudd a huge favour as well. I'd be surprised if he's still not very friendly indeed with the party that supposedly just expelled him.

Shane's other Advanced Hair Warneing

Who'd have thought it? Apparently Advanced Hair isn't all that a phalanx of former cricketers say it is. A British advertising standards tribunal has said Shane Warne should stop claiming that the "AHS-FP" product cures baldness. Yeah, he should, and so should Advanced Hair Studio, if its conclusions are correct. And that wouldn't come as a huge surprise. Along with easy-dieting solutions, hair loss treatments are the snake oil of the 21st century, and anyone preying on the vanity of insecure men should be dealt with harshly. Although really, I think anyone who takes lifestyle advice from S.K. Warne has received more than enough "Warneings".

As much as I resent shonky hair-loss treatments, though, you'd have to say that the puns Shane regularly serves up are just as dodgy. Check out the transcript quoted in this morning's article:

"I've been hearing it for years, but to me I've always taken it as 'warning'. And that warning is - if I didn't do something about my fine and thin hair they could well be chanting 'Baldy!' ... Heed the Warne-ing today!"

Shocking. Really, come on – People chanting "Baldy" instead of "Warney" would worry him? If they did, it'd be the mildest sledge ever heard on a cricket field. He should be thankful the chant doesn't involve sex with Warne's immediate family members.
The product that was described as not curing baldness by the UK tribunal is described on Advanced Hair's Australian website as follows:

Stop hair loss at its root. The world's first home hair treatment range with naturally occuring herb Serenoa and a unique combination of hand-held laser and treatments, which further thickens, strengthens and repairs your hair and scalp.

I looked at the photo of Warne receiving the laser treatment, and I had to say that the tribunal's adverse finding didn't exactly surprise me. I'm no doctor, but as a general rule, any medical procedure that makes you look like you're in a scene from the original Star Trek probably isn't going to do much for you.
Lasers seem so retro. It's what we used to call things when we wanted them to sound futuristic way back in the '80s. They belong to the era of K.I.T.T. and Tron &nash; the period way back when holograms seemed amazing. Surely a treatment that involves them couldn't possibly do anything.
I'm facing the scourge of baldness myself, what with being thirty now and all. And sure, I'm vain enough not to be averse to the idea of a bit of body-adding shampoo if it'll actually do something. And if they do actually find a decent cure, and it's not expensive, then fine. I'll take a tablet or something.
But Advanced Hair is taking the problem far too seriously. Really, the best solution to the problem is for men to be more relaxed about going bald. It doesn't really looks that bad, if managed well. And hair loss seems not to be that much of an issue for the ladies. (And there is only one way to manage of course, by the way – short hair. The combover should rightfully result in prolonged loneliness.) What, is Warney really so deluded as to think that the ladies were so willing to sleep with him because of his looks?

Let sleeping Dis lie

SCANDAL! OUTRAGE! Insensitive UK television channel to screen photos of Princess Diana dying in the Mercedes Benz. The princes said to be very upset about the decision. British red-tops slam highbrow arty-farty network for its heartlessness. Channel Four defends sensationalist images as an important contribution to the debate.
Come on, people. Ten years on, can't we all just forget about Princess Diana? Whose candle burnt out long before the whinging ever did.

I can't help but agree with the perspective that it's a little tacky to screen pics of Di moments away from expiring. Not because I particularly care about the princes' sensitivity – they're old enough and rich enough to look after themselves, and they're most welcome not to tune in. My main concern is that a decade after her death, it's time to stop endlessly raking over the coals. We've had far too many darn coronial enquiries, conspiracy theories and pointless documentary recreations of Di's life already. Like JFK, this is one of those supposed mysteries that will never be fully solved, and where the popularly-accepted explanation is in all probability the right one.
During her life, Diana enjoyed won more interest and popularity than she really had any right to expect. Her support for charity, while laudable in the sense that she did more than most, is fairly standard for royals. It's the least they can do, really, given the amount they're funded from the public purse.
In death, the intense interest in her snowballed into pure hysteria. The mass outpouring of grief was on a scale I can't remember seeing for the death of one person. In some respects, certainly in terms of getting people onto the streets, it dwarfed even the response to the tsunami and 9/11. It was a reaction I couldn't understand at the time, and a decade later, it seems all the more baffling.
But with the tenth anniversary arriving in a few months (31 August), we should brace ourselves for Dianamania yet again. William and Harry are holding a massive charity conference at Wembley on her birthday, 1 July, with the usual avalanche of celebrity names. Andrew Lloyd Webber will be performing, and it's even rumoured that Elton will sing the Diana version of Candle In the Wind for only the second time, if that floats your boat.
Personally, I'll be staying far, far away from any commemoration of Diana, even one that seems to be for a multitude of good causes. We really should stop gushing with praise for royalty. Australia's fawning over Princess Mary has been cringeworthy – the point that she was an ordinary Aussie having been the basis for more fuss being made, rather than less fuss as I'd have thought was warranted. If we really are going to become a republic, if we really are going to become a society where people achieve prominence on the basis of what they've achieved rather than who they've married, then stopping caring about Princess Di seems like a terrific place to start.

The new adventures of old Pauline

Brace yourselves, Australia. Pauline Hanson is venturing forth from behind the fabled fish-and-chip shop counter once more. Like the archetypal horror villain, she refuses to die, but just keeps coming back in lamer and lamer sequels that do ever-worse at the box office. It's another tilt at the Queensland Senate, and this time she's actually got her act together enough to realise that she needs a party, because no-one who's interested in voting for her will have the wherewithal to number every box.

I would have thought the poor sales of her autobiography might have sent her a message. I've excerpted the following from Crikey's newsletter of 22 May. I just love that they have the time to research delicious little factoids like the following:

(Sorry, I have to leave space before the quote because of the ad.

Hang in there. Or click on the ad, actually. Maybe they'll pay me more?

Some ads are bigger than others. If you've got a small ad, you won't see the point of this. Trust me, some of them are whoppers.)

OK, quote time.)

Pauline's political fortunes don't look too good if her book sales are anything to go by. Despite a healthy boost of pre-release publicity care of the magic combination of David Oldfield, a sexual liaison at a Canberra hotel, a lie detector and TT, according to booksellers, Untamed and Unashamed, has sold roughly 7000 copies Australia wide.

Not a bad run for a little outfit like self-help book publishers JoJo, whose titles include A Pig Called Pete -- the First Adventure of a Purple Flying Pig Called Pete and the inspirational Paws for Thought -- Animal Wisdom for Your Day.

And it's certainly not bombing as big as Cathy Freeman's ill-fated biography, Cathy Freeman -- her own story, published by Penguin back in 2003.

But let's put the sales in context. According to Nielsen Bookscan figures, Untamed & Unashamed, which was released in early March, has sold 556 copies (in bookstores around the nation) in the last week. It's currently ranked 190th in the bestsellers list.

Even funnier (and also mentioned in Crikey) is the report from a newsagent at Forest Hill in Melbourne, where they've sold a grand total of one copy.
So Queensland clearly isn't voting with its wallets, at any rate. I quite liked Crikey's suggestion that approximately nobody wants to read the story of her liason with David Oldfield. Personally, I'd have been delighted never to learn that that had happened. I have another theory, though. Pauline's audience is much bigger than the book sales would indicate. It's just that none of them read books.

Nevertheless, pauline's chances aren't good. She did very badly last time, and in fact, she's never been elected to Parliament other than that first time, when she ran in Oxley with "Liberal" next to her name, because the party that created this monster kicked her out too late before election day for the ballot papers to be changed.

Even the NSW Legislative Council, where the bar is set so low that someone once got elected purely because he called his party "A Better Future For Our Children", was too hard for Pauline.

But she's not the old Pauline that we used to hate. Oh, no. She's updated herself now. Her 1950s ideas come with a sleek new 2007 rebadging. It's not One Nation anymore for the most divisive politician since Santamaria. It's Pauline's United Australia Party. And she's not concerned about being "swamped by Asians" anymore. No, she's learned a lot, and I'd like to think grown a lot, over the past decade she's been in the public eye. This time, she's warned us against being swamped by Africans.

And not just any Africans. Not industrious Africans who come in and take our jobs by outrageously working harder than us, like those mythical Asians who have made our country so much worse with their delicious food. No, this time it's "hapless refugees" from Africa that she's worried about. That's right. We're not talking migration, we're talking no refugees at all. So, anyone who has been genuinely found to be risking their lives if they stay in their homelands can pretty much bugger off back home and die. And probably quite quickly.

She's advocating full withdrawal from the UN Convention on Refugees of 1951, to be more precise – since she was. So I take back my jibe about her 1950s ideas. The world was, for the most part, far more progressive in 1951 than she is now. Rather, her decade, it seems, is the 1930s. You know, the fascist one.

Although she's not fascist, not really. The extent of her political vision comes down to her most famous phrase, "I don't like it". She doesn't have any sensible ideas to offer, just a sneering-toned dismissal of things

I probably shouldn't have written about her, because it's the hatred of the inner-city elite like myself that fuels Pauline and her audience. I've just had a rare moment of self-awareness about this, and therefore feel I really should confess that I wrote this while drinking coffee at a trendy cafe in Surry Hills. Whoops. I will ensure, in the interests of grounding myself firmly in middle Australia, that I have a meal of proletarian fish'n'chips tonight.

Hmm, maybe at Mohr Fish?

People like me – and come on, this is the SMH website, people like us shouldn't be too dismissive about Pauline. We shouldn't laugh at her for not knowing the word "xenophobia". We should let her have her day in the sun, and bring out her ideas, such as they are, and engage with them, and try to convince her – or at least her potential supporters – that they're wrong. Putting her in jail, for instance, is probably not a great way of dealing with her.

She does have a legitimate place in public life, you know. And that place is as a figure of inadvertent fun on reality shows. But just because she got votes on Dancing With The Stars doesn't mean she's going to get them on election day. For one thing, teenagers aren't allowed to vote. Also, I haven't checked with the AEC recently, but I'm pretty sure that SMS votes are still considered informal.

And I have every confidence that when she's had her chance to present her ideas to the good people of Queensland, they will comprehensively reject them. Again.

I work for the ABC – where's my preselection?

Kevin Rudd has recruited Maxine McKew to run in John Howard's seat of Bennelong. And today, ABC News' Mike Bailey was announced as the ALP candidate for North Sydney. For an organisation that's understandably sensitive about allegations of political bias, having some of its most respected current affairs presenters parachuting straight into Labor pre-selections, where their formidable ABC reputations become a huge electoral asset, is not a fantastic look. It raises a great many questions. Chief among which is this: since I work (part-time, as a writer) at the ABC, which seat can I have?

I reckon I'd be a better candidate than Mike Bailey, to be honest. For one thing, I grew up in the electorate, so I'd be fully aware that my chances were Buckley's. Joe Hockey has a ten percent margin, and that was before he went on Sunrise, and proved, much to my surprise, that he's actually a pretty down-to-earth bloke. Especially next to Kevin Rudd.
The seat used to be an independent stronghold under architect-mayor-MP Ted Mack, but then a redistribution bunged more of Mosman into the electorate and that pleasant little arrangement was toast. (Most of the public architecture in North Sydney still dates form Mack's era, and is now looking sadly in need of a lick of peach-coloured paint.) And many inner-city seats that were once Liberal strongholds are becoming genuinely marginal. Malcolm Mackerras recently named Bennelong as the most marginal in the country in Crikey (actually, that would indicate it's probably safe as houses for John Howard, surely?) while Malcolm Turnbull will have even more of a fight on his hands in Wentworth because a redistribution has brought in more of leftie Bondi. But North Sydney? More specifically, Mosman? Surely not. If polls show that Bailey has a chance of toppling Hockey, I'll be astonished.
Which makes me wonder what he's thinking, exactly. If he doesn't get elected, what's he going to do? I suppose, like everyone else who's unwisely left the ABC, he could get a gig at Vega.
For the organisation, though, this has to be a bit of a pain. For the duration of the Howard Government, the ABC has been accused of left-wing bias. (Ironically, Keating had many a bone to pick with Aunty as well.) Former Communications Minister Richard Alston ran a McCarthy-like campaign to weed out secret Labor apparatchiks, and found precious little.
The ABC's News and Current Affairs division seems to be turning into a Labor training camp – and in some ways it always has been. We can add to the list NT Chief Minister Claire Martin, who once hosted the NT 7.30 Report, and even Bob Carr, a former AM journo. And that could undermine the integrity of those who haven't jumped ship – yet. (Speaking of which, seriously, who wouldn't vote for Kerry O'Brien?) But it's considerably worse for the ABC's integrity when its presenters shift immediately from an on-air role to running for office.
Now, I'm not saying that Bailey, McKew, or indeed anyone in the place behaves with anything less than total integrity. I have far more respect for the ABC than almost any other institution in the country – certainly the Parliament. And I would defend intelligent people's right to have political opinions, and capacity to insulate their private principles from their public statements. A recent profile of Maxine McKew in The Oz Magazine made the point that she has always been under the microscope because her partner, Bob Hogg, is a former ALP National Secretary, but that she's never been faulted for bias. And the ABC has stringent editorial procedures to ensure that lack of bias. Nevertheless, it won't help the leftie perception, and that makes it harder for everyone who isn't jumping ship to the ever-loving arms of Kevin Rudd.
The thing is, Rudd could easily have found another respected celebrity to serve as a candidate, and without making life more difficult for the ABC. If he was looking for a charismatic, popular weathermen to use as cannon-fodder against Joe Hockey, what about Tim Bailey?
Or me. The enormous readership of this blog could well launch a massive surge that would catapult me to high office. Probably straight into a ministry, I reckon. Not that I'm saying I'm a Labor supporter, of course. Heavens, no. I am unimpeachably unbiased. But I don't actually think that having left-wing principles is all that important these days, when there's political power up for grabs. It certainly doesn't seem to trouble the leader.

Bound, gagged and delivered, he's ours

It's fascinating to watch the Coalition's brilliant electioneering machine in action. One by one, it mops up the potential electoral troublespots. Kevin Rudd was ahead on education, so the Budget slings money at universities, allowing Peter Costello to call it the "real" education revolution. Industrial relations is the biggest electoral problem, so there's now a new, softer variant, conveniently allowing the Government to legally advertise it all over again. (Sorry, I should say, allowing us to advertise it, since it's being done with our money.) And now David Hicks, that favoured protest target of all on the left, whose treatment was beginning to appal even mainstream Australia, is now back in the homeland, safely tucked away in dinki-di Aussie jail where they serve dinki-di Aussie breakfasts, until after the election. Brilliant.

Thanks to the additional sentence, he's going to remain locked down so tightly that Reuters could only get the blurriest of images (see the breakfast story linked above). No travelling around the country addressing rallies or appearances on Enough Rope for this enemy combatant.
And cynics might suggest that the $500,000 spent on hiring a private plane to ferry him home was purely to avoid a media scrum at the airport. A relatively cheap media-management solution, though, by Coalition standards. And a pity, because the media badly needs some new images of Hicks. I've gone with my personal favourite today, that dashing rocket launcher one, but of course the ocker blue singlet one has also had a mammoth workout.
I'm not going to get into the conspiracy theories over whether Hicks' plea bargain and the timing of his Antipodean sentence was part of a sneaky deal with the American. Of course, this is unknowable, as it would be if it was a massive fix job. Let's just say that the circumstances couldn't have worked out better for the Government – a fairly lenient, but politically ideal, sentence.
The broader question, though, is whether the relatively neat resolution to this story will wash with voters on election day. If he'd still been in Guantanamo, you could imagine angry volunteers handing out flyers at every polling booth, urging people to vote for anyone but the Coalition to bring him home. That last-minute reminder of a situation that stuck in the craw of most Australians might have made a real difference with some swing voters. Now, that won't happen, and those who've criticised the process have been robbed of the most emotive element of their argument. Hicks' symbolic value as a catalyst of people's anger over America's handling of the War on Terror, and Australia's compliance, has been substantially reduced. Since most people seem to be fairly comfortable with his receiving some degree of punishment for buddying up to the Taliban, some degree of justice appears to have finally been done.
And yet this brilliant resolution of the Hicks problem from the Government's perspective, along with most the other long-term sources of dissatisfaction, may not be enough to win the election. And the Prime Minister admitted this today, no doubt as part of some clever strategy of painting himself as the underdog – and, as he's been careful to do all year, appearing to be listening to the voters, so he can't be painted as out of touch.
The election contest remains poised on a knife-edge, no matter what the polls say now, and will doubtless continue to prove unusually fascinating and unpredictable. If the Howard Government can keep chipping away at the issues that have rubbed voters up the wrong way, and meanwhile sow seeds of doubt about Kevin Rudd in the hope that the honeymoon ends just in time.
The whole Hicks escapade has been disgraceful, of course, with even the law under which he was charged highly dubious. But the whole Hicks family must be extremely happy today. David will doubtlessly be happy just to get out in nine months, and only too happy to comply with the control order. No-one, I imagine, would be more content to just stroll around in the fresh air, not bothering anyone, and resuming a very, very quiet life. He won't want to go anywhere near the Taliban, or even Islam, again, you'd imagine. Although you could probably forgive him for not wearing orange again in a hurry.

The view from the departure lounge

What a week it's been (well, week and a bit) for departures. The exit doors have been flapping particularly wildly this week. So It's time to say a few farewells, none of them fond, to those who've been boned, or forced to bone themselves. (That expression really doesn't get any less inappropriate with time, does it?) I know I won't miss any of the most recent departures.

Tony Blair
Most have slammed his record on account of Iraq. Blair was the salesman who gave the war what scant veneer of legitimacy it had, and for that he will ever be described as Bush's poodle – a lovely description given the man's inherent prissiness.
And Tonza should indeed be remembered harshly for the debacle in Iraq. But he has other crimes to take into account. It was he who, almost a decade ago, coined the phrase "People's Princess" – a contradiction in terms if ever I heard one. He was described at the time as the nation's Mourner-In-Chief. I'm sorry Diana died, but let's be honest, she had a better life than she deserved, and the charity work she did was the least anyone with half a conscience would do if they received massive amounts of money because they'd married someone wealthy.
Blair's other linguistic offence was to spearhead up with the notion of "Cool Britannia", one of the most irksome self-congratulatory marketing terms I've ever heard. The only thing that's really cool about Britain is the climate.
Paul Wolfowitz
Few things satisfy me more than prominent Bushies falling foul of the administration's own monstrous arrogance. And so it was with Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq War whose appointment to the World Bank was second in its appropriateness only to the appointment of the repugnant John Bolton as UN Ambassador. I haven't enjoyed a resignation this much since Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz won't be missed, and please, God, may his next posting be to Baghdad.
The rumour about Peter Costello being tapped to replace him in today's Crikey, while perhaps far-fetched, is a fascinating one. A much better option than becoming Opposition Leader in December, surely?
Stay tuned for Alberto Gonzales as the next hopeless Bush appointment out the door.
Eddie McGuire
In an irony whose deliciousness must surely be most appreciated by Jessica Rowe just now, the boner gets boned himself. OK, sure, so he's denying it. Whatever. The point is, it was a dumb idea for him to run Nine off-screen instead of on-screen. He must be incredibly relieved that another suit can take the heat for Seven's resurgence, and he can do what seems to come so naturally to him – host television shows.
Margaret Jackson
Private equity is high-stakes poker. She played the wrong hand by backing APA, and she's paying the price. So is James Packer and presumably the rest of the Qantas board will follow. I hope she doesn't get too much of a parachute payment, but as this is corporate Australia, undoubtedly she'll earn even more for her ignominious departure than she did at the helm.
Lote Tuqiri
It's just for a few games, so he can regain his speed, but what the hey, it made headlines, so I might as well include it anyway. And Lote, next time, check whether the speakerphone is on, buddy.
Allan Moss
What a surprise it was to see the Macquarie Bank CEO declare this week that he was earning far too much money, and that instead of banking even more millions next year he's going to give the game away and become a philanthropist, using his undoubted skills to improve the world as much as he has Mac Bank's bottom line.
Oh sorry, that was wishful thinking.

Howard and Rudd couldn't be much Dalai Lamer

As far as world leaders go, the Dalai Lama would surely have to rank as one of the most harmless. He's an almost universally respected advocate of peace. And while he is the head of the Tibetan Government-in-exile, he is dedicated to non-violent negotiation with China, and has accepted that the People's Republic is going to have to play some kind of part in Tibet's future. He is, in many respects, even more admirable than Nelson Mandela, and certainly puts Bono to shame. So, when he visits Australia, why on earth would any of our leaders decline to meet with him?

Well, because they don't want to upset China, of course. Which is easy to do on matters involving Tibet and Taiwan. Dealing with the emerging superpower is like treading on eggshells. But please. Meeting with the Dalai Lama does not constitute agreement that China should vacate Tibet. Anyone with half an understanding of the situation, and even the Dalai Lama himself, recognises that just isn't going to happen. But meeting the guy, and treating him with the respect due to a major world figure, should be uncontroversial. Just as we pay formal respect to so many of China's "rights", like the one country, two systems approach to Hong Kong and even, to a degree, to Taiwan, China should respect that Australian leaders have the right to canvass a plurality of views without threatening the relationship. They may not like it, and that's fine, but they do have to lump it.

I mean, this is not a deeply controversial guy. Or at least, he shouldn't be. The theme of His Holiness' tour is "Open your arms to kindness". He isn't exactly fomenting revolution.

Kevin Rudd's actions in refusing to meet his this time after slamming Alexander Downer last time are deeply unimpressive. I know that Rudd is obsessed with looking prime ministerial ahead of the poll, but sometimes principles are important. The Opposition Leader would earn more respect from voters for sticking to his guns on issues like whether it's appropriate to meet a heroic symbol of human rights figure than he does by flapping around, desperately trying to read the political landscape and then reacting to whatever the polls are telling him. He shouldn't need an opinion poll to tell him that his position in 2002 was right.

Not that John Howard's any better. He said he was "looking at his diary" (in other words, adopting a holding pattern) and then attacked Rudd for being hypocritical. Which was, of course, correct – but since the Prime Minister refused to meet him last time, he wasn't exactly in a position to criticise. The PM then announced he'd meet him, creating an embarrassing Rudd backflip. But Howard's stated willingness to meet His Holiness looks very much like an opportunity for political pointscoring. Especially as the Senate President Paul Calvert declined to have an official reception, citing "international sensitivities".

Bollocks to international sensitivities. I don't want to get mired b a detailed discussion of the rights and wrongs of the Tibetan situation, and it's worth noting that centuries-old theocratic rule by Buddhist monks isn't necessarily the ideal system of governance in the 21st century, either. But there is no doubt that Tibet's unique culture is threatened by the influx of Han Chinese, and politicial interference (as most clearly seen in the sad story of the Panchen Lama), and that Chinese annexation has made the Tibetan people suffer. The least our leaders can do is meet with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who represents them.

Which it seems they now will. So all's well that ends well – for the Dalai Lama's visit, if not for Tibet itself. And although the political dithering has been embarrassing, it's a lot less embarrassing an outcome than cancelling his visit entirely to appease China, as recently occurred in Belgium.

Many countries have human rights issues. As the Zimbabwean government aptly pointed out in response to the cancellation of the cricket tour, our own record with respect to the Aborigines is far from flawless. But even broadly friendly governments like China's don't get to enjoy carte blanche when it comes to human rights – and nor should we. I'm just glad that the election race is so close that public opinion has forced both leaders into doing the right thing.

Channel Nine - Still the bone

It's been a rough week over at Nine. The axe has wielded all over the place – even on the parent company itself, PBL, which has been split into two. This will enable James Packer to divest his media interests to focus on what seems to be his main love, gambling. Kerry, at least, liked owning the cricket and – even if it was largely ego-driven – seemed to have some level of interest in quality journalism. (And also in ACA.) Whereas James' ambitions, bless him, seem not to reach any higher than a whole lot of pokies. And also in the high-finance equivalent, which is getting into bed with private equity.

But in what has to rank as the least surprising piece of television news this year, Jessica Rowe was "boned" from Today, with the news breaking (embarrassingly enough) on the day of the Logies. The only thing about the news that left me confused is why it was reported so widely. It's about as newsworthy as the headline "Sun rises". Or the headline which we'll no doubt soon see – " Sunrise rises in ratings despite Lisa Wilkinson".
I couldn't quite understand why Nine were so eager to poach Rowe in the first place, really. Sure, she was a good newsreader, and had an air of class about her that Sandra Sully has never quite mustered. But reading an autocue with a degree of gravitas and chatting about lifestyle issues are very different skills. And Nine's inability to recognise this isn't limited to our Jessica. Check out Peter Harvie's "Last Word" segment at the end of Nine News - for the first time I actually appreciated Alan Jones' Today editorials. Harvie is a legendary reporter, but it's a terrible mistake to assume that means we want to hear what he thinks.
Really, he never should have left...
...
...
Canberra.
Sorry, that was a bit self-indulgent, but I enjoyed it. Where was I? Oh yes, Jessica. Look I'm glad she's on maternity leave, because that's a much better reason to get up at four in the morning than going on Today. It was a bad call, it's over, and she's got a big fat contract for the next 18 months, during which time she'll probably be drafted back into what was once known as the Who's Who of News. Where she will perform with aplomb and not have that unfortunate issue of having to think off the cuff. Or laugh. At all. In fact, they should pair her with a co-host who reads all the lighter stories, leaving Jess only to report on tragedies. It's the only way we'll be safe from that cackle.
The axe was also wielded on Bert's Family Feud this week. Which seems a little unfortunate – family feuds are a somewhat difficult subject in the Newton family just now. Bert himself wasn't sacked, of course. You simply can't axe Bert, not least because there's no way the blade would penetrate the toupee. But again, it was a terrible mismatch. Unfortunately, Bert is no Rob Brough. Fortunately, he's so, so much better than that. Unfortunately, instead of wasting Bert on Feud, Nine will just waste him on 20 to 1 instead.
Nine's penchant for boning is currently a source of embarrassment. But it should be a source of ratings. The network is the first to have (or, more precisely, waste) an accomplished TV presenter as its CEO. He should combine the two roles in a reality show featuring the network's now-dim galaxy of stars, where he progressively bones all the dead wood at Nine. I'd tune in to see Kerri-Ann, Richard Wilkins and, best of all, Ray Martin pushed out the door. Magda Szubanski, Sean Micallef and everyone else whose comedy shows didn't get a chance could come back and re-enact their disappointments over again as well. In fact, watching humiliating sackings is about the only thing that could get me to watch the network at the moment.
If there were any justice, though, the one being boned would be Eddie. Any minute that man spends not hosting television shows (and in his heyday, there weren't many of them) is wasted. Someone else should fill the CEO hotseat and struggle to restore lustre to the network that can no longer claim still to be the one. So Eddie, arguably the only likeable figure on the network besides Fatty and Sterlo, bone thyself.

Would a Bloom by any other name smell as sweet?

Imagine this. You meet a cool guy on FaceBook, which is a somewhat less undignified version of MySpace that used to be exclusively for university graduates but now accepts anyone. You poke him (it's a FaceBook thing, not a metaphor. Well, not just a metaphor.) He pokes back. And then you're chatting away. Sparks are flying. The flirtation goes up a notch, and you're start to wonder whether this guy could be The One. And then he drops a bombshell. The guy you thought was an awesome catch was actually only Orlando Bloom. Imagine, just imagine, your disappointment.

You probably didn't click on the link to "Orlando Bloom" in the last paragraph. I certainly wouldn't have. So let me explain. Orlando is looking for Ms Right. He's broken up with Kate Bosworth, and he wants to settle down and have good-looking-yet-totally-effete kids. And he's worried that the ladies don't want him for him, but they want the guy from Pirates Of The Caribbean. So he's set up an anonymous FaceBook profile under someone else's photo, and he's going to find a lady that way.
In the event that the chance of being Mrs Orlando Bloom appeals, why not have a look around on the site? It's got over two million users, so assuming gender parity, your chances are literally one in a million. Have fun.
Hopefully that will have made the Orlando fangirls immediately click onto the site to start looking for the pretty-boy of their dreams. Leaving the rest of us to shudder collectively at the idea of that cool guy you met online turning out to be, well, the guy from Pirates.
I can take his point, you know. Will from POTC is one of the most irritating characters in cinema history. His only function is to look windswept and swashbuckling on the deck of a ship. I don't seem to recall him having any useful function in the sequel at all, and he isn't by any stretch of the imagination the alpha pirate, that's Captain Jack. So it came as no surprise that even Keira Knightley, as insipid as she is, has more sparks flying with the character based on Krusty Keith Richards than she does with bland-boy Bloom.
But is the real-life Orlando any less insipid? Not really. For one thing, his name's Orlando. I reckon that's just about game over right there. But sure, I glanced through his Wikipedia entry for more evidence, and found it in spades. The guy's got a tattoo in Elvish on his wrist, for goodness' sakes. I don't care if the other members of the Fellowship got it done. It's still tantamount to having a tattoo in Klingon.
And that isn't the half of it when we're talking about his involvement in Lord Of The Rings. Does any girl past the age of puberty really yearn for a guy who can convincingly pass as an elf?
What other dirt is there on Orlando? Well, none. And that's a bit pathetic, isn't it? Where are the scandals? Where's the womanising? Look at how much other stars, like Rob Lowe, have done with much less in the way of looks. The guy's got no rock and roll about him at all.
Which figures, I guess, when you read that "In 2004, he became a full member of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren". Celebrity Buddhism is common in Hollywood (just ask Dalai Richard Gere), but interestingly, this particular group has been accused of being a cult. Then again, the criticism website is a bit loopy itself. But let's just say it seems very, shall we say, Orlando Bloom to be a member of a Buddhist sect that's dedicated to making the world a better place. In his case, by altruistically making lots of money for the Walt Disney Company and Jerry Bruckheimer.
I guess it just goes to show that you need to be careful when you use any kind of internet dating service. There really is no way of knowing who you're talking to. It might be a murderer, or a pedophile, or an FBI agent, or someone whose first name is also the title of a movie featuring Tilda Swinton as a gender-bending immortal. Which says it all, really. FaceBook users, beware.

It's the even simpler life for Paris

I don't usually delight in the downfall of others. Live and let live is generally my maxim. But I have to say that the news that Paris Hilton will spend 45 days in jail for a driving offence has filled me with a certain quiet satisfaction. It's more than cancelled out by my general irritation at being yet again reminded that whatever she does makes news around the world. But if we're going to have to read Paris headlines regardless, then they may as well be ones about her doing time.

Classical Greek tragedy is centred around the concepts of hubris and nemesis. An act of arrogance, usually defiance of the gods, is met by a comeuppance. And that's pretty much what's happened here. Last September, Paris drank and drove, and had her licence suspended and was sentenced to three years on probation as well as being required to attend an alcohol education programme. There is a Greek connection via the shipping magnate boyfriend. Only, because it's Paris, it's more comedic than tragic.
In January, she was busted for driving with a suspended license, and here's the bit I really like – the police made her sign a statement acknowledging she knew she wasn't supposed to drive. So then, in February, not only was she caught driving yet again, but she had her headlights off. So I think we can safely conclude that Ms Hilton is someone that really, really shouldn't be behind the wheel of a car.
So, she's off to the slammer. And strange jail too, by the sounds of it. One where everything is made from poultry. I'm generally not in favour of jail in most cases, I think it's a draconian punishment that only turns criminals worse. But in Paris' case, it seems wonderfully appropriate to deprive her of her liberty, because after all, that's what the problem is. She's spent her entire life with no limits, doing whatever she wants in a world where people saying "yes" ti her. She has been fawned over wherever she goes, and for no good reason. (Which is why community service isn't an option. Surely she has nothing to offer?) So being cut down to size (or undersize, in her case) and sent to a somewhat lower standard of accommodation than her family is famous for seems wonderfully appropriate. Perhaps they could reach some kind of branding-deal compromise and send her to the Bangkok Hilton?
I also feel that they should make an exception and film her time behind bars for a very special edition of The Simple Life. It'll protect her from some of the special attention she might experience, but most importantly, it'll provide wonderful entertainment. Seeing Paris on a farm was moderately amusing, but seeing her in a jumpsuit, without makeup, making numberplates would be an absolute entertainment spectacular.
Or perhaps we shouldn't pay her any attention at all? That's where this whole problem arose in the first place, actually. If we really want Paris not to reoffend – and really, the chances are even slimmer than her pal Nicole – the best thing we can do is just treat her like the highly ordinary human being she actually is. We're all to blame for Paris' indifference to the rules we all have to obey, because we all encourage her with attention whenever she disobeys them.
And yet, as much as I want to help by never writing about her again, I know that she's ultimately just too amusing a target. As depressing as it sounds, people like me will probably still be writing about her when we're both octogenarians. Just please, let's find a way of stopping her from driving. Paris being a dim bulb may in general be entertaining, but driving without headlights could actually hurt someone. And it's not like her family can't afford a chauffeur.
So all we're left to do is just hope she loses her appeal on the sentence (which seems to be inevitable) so that some manner of justice can be served. But more importantly, we need her to somehow lose her appeal to the media. Maybe we should make a pact only to pay attention to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan instead? They at least have a modicum of talent to go with their zany self-indulgent antics.

Time to put Senator Heffernan out to pasture

Senator Bill Heffernan is the Duke of Edinburgh of Australian politics. He's paid handsomely by the public purse, inexplicably adored by our ruler, and known primarily for his gaffes. His career illustrates everything that's wrong about how the Senate works in this country. At least Prince Philip, for all his numerous flaws, had the decency to start an awards scheme.

Bill Heffernan was appointed to the Senate in 1996 after the retirement of Michael Baume. In 2004, he was re-elected until 2011 at the top of the Liberal ticket in NSW. That's right. Even after the disgraceful Michael Kirby scandal, where he made completely unfounded homophobic allegations against one of Australia's most eminent judges and intellectuals, the Libs put him on top of their ticket. Thus assuring his re-election. And even though they rubber-stamped his return, it was the Liberal Party machine, not voters in NSW, who guaranteed he'd be haunting the halls in Parliament until the next decade.
That's because each of the major parties is pretty much guaranteed to win two seats in NSW every time, with an outside chance of one of the other seats going to a minor party. Kerry Nettle from the Greens won in 2001. But in practical terms, there is no way on earth that the person who's #1 on the Liberal ticket is not going to get elected. To elect those further down the list instead would require a million NSW voters both to understand the way half-Senate elections work and to take the time to vote below the line. In other words, there's about as much chance of it happening as Bill has of making a valuable contribution on behalf of the State he's represented for a decade.
In America, the electoral system reflects the idea that a party's choice of candidate can be as important as the voters' choice of party. That's why primary elections, for which campaigning is already underway in earnest, are so important. In next year's Presidential election, Bush's outstanding performance has pretty much guaranteed a Democrat victory, at least according to current polls. So the question of which Democrat that will be becomes enormously important. Hillary Clinton and the far-left candidate Dennis Kucinich offer very different presidencies. While if John McCain had won the Republican primary in 2000, it's unlikely we'd have troops in Iraq today.
There are primaries for the Senate in America as well. But we don't get that luxury in Australia. And while party members have their say to a varying degree, in America all you have to do is register for the party you support and you can vote in a primary. It's much less onerous than actually joining a party (you don't get endless taxpayer-funded junk mail in your letterbox, for one thing) and doesn't cost anything.
If Senator Heffernan had been required to defend his decade in Canberra to Liberal voters before he was re-elected, if he'd been challenged by other Liberals for that automatic spot, I wonder what he would have said about his record. His Wikipedia entry is almost entirely devoted to gaffes and scandals. I've seen him out on the campaign trail, and he is a genuinely loose cannon – I suspect the theory that he's a sophisticated political operative for John Howard are greatly exaggerated. I saw him outside Town Hall on NSW Election day, handing out Greens flyers and shouting "Decriminalise drugs! Vote Green!" (In fact, I got it on camera here.) And, as hilarious as I find some of his antics, I really don't see how NSW taxpayers are getting much value from them.
His wacky trick of disrupting ALP press conferences, like a kind of elected version of Norman Gunston, is well and good. But there wasn't a whole lot to laugh about in his comments on Julia Gillard. For someone who's pretty much only in Parliament because, let's face it, he's part of the very small boy's club called "mates of John Howard" to say that Gillard can't understand voters (because she's "deliberately barren") is just ridiculous. At a time when the US has its first female Presidential frontrunner, the incident shows us just how retrograde our own politics can be.
As ever, it's Heffernan, not his victim, whose values are at odds with the mainstream. And as ever, he'll make a meek apology, receive the gentlest of public rebukes from his buddy in the Lodge, and be left to rant and rave another day.
And that's why we could use primaries for the Senate. Look, if Liberal voters like the guy, and think that his comments about Julia Gillard, Michael Kirby, Catholic priests and his supposed role in John Brogden's downfall appropriately represent their interests, then fine. I just think the system ought to require that test to be fulfilled. (And I don't think he'd get Helen Coonan's vote.) Because NSW Liberal supporters (the voters, I mean, not the party hacks) are generally a fairly moderate bunch, and I imagine they're embarrassed every time Bill does his thing. And it ought to take more than being a loyal sidekick of John Howard's to earn you 15 years representing this state in the Senate.
I'm glad – if a little surprised – to learn that John Howard has friends. And if he chooses Bill Heffernan as one of his closest, then I guess either his standards aren't high, or he finds the man amusing. As I do, admittedly. I'm sure I'd enjoy having a beer with Bill, if we kept the conversation away from gays and women, and if he was a right-wing shock jock, I'd tune in for a laugh. Well, until he was kicked off air for saying the kind of thing he likes to say under Parliamentary privilege. But I don't see why he should be in the Senate, and I wish his old mate would tap him gently on the shoulder and tell him his time's up.

APEC? Hell yes!

John Howard is right. John Watkins, the Deputy Premier, is foolish to criticise the choice of Sydney for this year's APEC summit. And even more foolish to suggest we hold it in Canberra. Sure, APEC will be somewhat inconvenient. But it will bring nothing but goodness to NSW. We should be grateful for the opportunity it will bring our fair State. And the benefits will be a whole lot more than just the daggy shirts Ken Done will presumably provide for the world leaders.

Let's think for a moment. Do we want security to be high during the time when world leaders of most of the world's most important countries (sorry, Europe, but it's true) are visiting Australia? If there's a terrorist attack planned, do we want to maximise our chances of finding out about it before or after they blow up the Harbour Bridge and Opera House? I think we can afford to put up with a little inconvenience.
And we should, people of Sydney. We have to look at the big picture. And the big picture is this. It's the second-best chance we'll ever have to lord it over Melbourne. (The best, of course, being Sydney 2000.) Would they have complained about getting APEC? Of course not. For heaven's sake, they got excited about holding the Commonwealth Games down there. Imagine how they'd react if they were given an event that actually meant something?
Melbourne has such a fixation on major events (which I have to admit, having just had a wonderful trip to the Comedy Festival, they are very good at) that their "Major Events Corporation" has had the monstrous arrogance to label our southern neighbour "The World's Event City". Which I am sure will come as an enormous surprise to the rest of the world. You'd think London or New York might have had a thing or two to say about it. In the unlikely event that they gave a stuff what happens in Melbourne.
Seriously guys, get over the inferiority complex, and just be content with advertising your city as a great place to visit. It is. But the Leader of the Free World is, I'm afraid, more likely to be impressed by the Opera House than by laneway bars, so we'll handle him, thanks very much. But really, you're ever so cool.
I was particularly surprised that John Watkins suggested that APEC be held in our actual capital, Canberra. Why on earth would we want to do that to some of our closest allies? Sydney is Australia's capital in the eyes of the world, and the APEC decision only cements that. Do you think John Howard could have won his buddies' support to host APEC if it was to be held in Canberra? Is that a fitting place for his political swansong, and probably his last opportunity to grovel to President Bush on home turf? Of course not. Sydney is the biggest stage we've got, and it's the right place for the largest gathering of world leaders in the nation's history.
Although, thinking more about it, if we held APEC in Canberra, it would be extremely secure. Because surely the terrorists wouldn't bother to visit. There's a lot that Al Qaeda extremists will do to secure those 77 virgins, as we've seen far too many times already. But visiting Canberra might be, as Kevin Rudd might put it, a roundabout too far.
The de facto anointment of Sydney as the nation's rightful capital, though, is not the best thing about APEC. Come on, folks. Did you miss the most important part of the SMH article? The NSW Government has made the Friday a public holiday. I'm sorry, but just in case you missed it, let me reiterate. Thanks to APEC, we get an extra day off work. And it's just us in Sydney, folks. Check this out - the rest of the state is going to be toiling away while we in Sydney stay at home and drink a big fat toast to John Howard and his buddies. Best thing he's ever done for this city. And it even almost compensates for the Howards basing themselves here for the past decade.
The public holiday is extremely sensible, because it means most people won't have to put up with the massive security disruptions. So all the whinging about inconvenience will probably be irrelevant in the long run. People will head out of town in droves, and watch the highlights on the news.
But it will be annoying for the footy fans on Grand Final Weekend, that's certainly true. The winning team's fans might have trouble doing lappies at the northern end of George St, and we wouldn't want that. So I have an alternative proposal for those in charge of this great state. Let's forget the whole Friday-to-Sunday thing, and move APEC to run from the Monday to Friday instead. I for one am willing to selflessly take the week off work, just to make it easier to secure our great city for its illustrious visitors.
I might even head down to Melbourne for the week, just to rub it in.

Tell Da Man to let Tha Dogg in

Homies. I said, homies. The decision not to let Snoop Dogg into Australia is without doubt the most wack the Howard Government's ever made in its eleven years in control of this hood. So, Snoop has a history of issues with firearms and marijuana. Hello? Has Immigration Minister Kevin Andrew not listened to the guy's music or something? And listen up, Kevin. Dude, on the streets, packing sidearms and a little sticky-icky is how you pass a character test. Yo.

As Snoop puts it, he has Paid Tha Cost To Be Da Boss. Sorry, I mean, Bo$$. Yes, Snoop is a gangsta rapper. But here's the thing. Here's the distinction that is no doubt lost on those who don't roll with Tha Dogg. Being a gangsta is not the same as being a gangster. It's all posturing. Entertainment. And sure, DIMIA may not understand why the kids like to listen to black men talking rhythmically over a beat, but that makes DIMIA a bunch of squares.

Snoop is an artist, and in many ways, his life is his greatest artwork. Not many people decide to host their own porno, for instance. Called Doggystyle, of course. Snoop doesn't actually 'feature' in it, but he intros the whole thing, apparently. There are endless amusing Dogg stories, but I was a big fan of the one yesterday from the MTV Awards in Copenhagen. Every gangsta rapper confrontation must, for some reason, take place at a nightclub. After the show, Snoop's entourage were telling a bunch of men to leave the club so that more ladies could come in. The problem is, one of the men they tried to physically remove was Crown Prince Frederik. The royal bodyguards weren't in the least bit amused, and the Dogg Pound, or whatever they're called these days, backed down.

Later on, the police raided and found a big bag of marijuana. What a surprise. I mean, it's not like every single Snoop album features sound effects of the guy inhaling or anything.

Look, I don't want to be too flippant about this. I'm not a huge fan of guns at any point, and drugs are serious, and blah blah blah. But Snoop is essentially harmless. He's an entertainer – both musically, and in terms of his lifestyle. I'd love to see him out here, hitting the talk show circuit. He's the king of awesome cameos – check out his performances in Starsky & Hutch and Old School. And we don't have any hip-hop performers in this country with a fraction of his rhymin' skills or sheer charisma. Without Snoop, what do we have? The Hilltop Hoods? Please. They've just recorded an album with an orchestra, for goodness' sake. And not just any one. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Could you get any less street cred if you tried.

We need to change the decision and let Snoop in. Sure, some fairly minor s**t might "go down", as the rap aficionados like to put it, but nothing major. He might have to do some community service, but ultimately, Snoop is harmless. He wouldn't hurt a fly, unless it buzzed into his dime bag. He's always entertaining, and most importantly, our country won't look like a bunch of killjoy honkeys.

As anyone who's ever hung tough on the streets of Compton ("City Of Compton") knows, who you represent is important. Well, right now, we're represented by Kevin Andrew. And that ain't cool.

Howard's out-of-work choice?

The comments by John Howard reprinted in this newspaper today illustrate the problems that the Coalition will have trying to convince the electorate of the value of its industrial relations plan during the upcoming election campaign. WorkChoices is unpopular, and it's helped Labor enormously, so the Prime Minister knows he's going to have to combat his critics if he's going to keep his job. This speech shows how the PM plans to go on the offensive in trying to link Australia's economic prosperity to WorkChoices, as he needs to do if he's to have any chance of keeping his job. On the evidence of this speech, his chances of winning the argument, in this policy area at least, are not good.

It's typical of the Howard approach to politicking to portray a series of threats to our relaxed and comfortable existence. We were told that re-electing the Prime Minister was our only defence against the scourges of terrorism, refugees and higher interest rates, and a convincing majority of us believed it. As ever, John Howard has painted an idyllic picture of the "relaxed and comfortable" Australian way of life – in this instance a "prosperous, secure and fair Australia - a confident nation at ease with the world and with itself." But this time, the threat is much less immediate. It's "regulation" of the economy, and in particular, of working arrangements.

The problem is that this time the scare campaign lies with Howard's opponents. The unions' ability to play on ordinary Australians' fears of lower pay and more arduous conditions is far more emotive than abstract talk about international economic competitiveness. He says "Work Choices is not just about more jobs and higher wages", without, of course, having proven that it is – particularly the latter. But people associate the policy with losing their jobs to people who will work for lower wages.

"Crucially, the industrial relations system Kevin Rudd has promised to give us will bring back the worst excesses of centralised wage fixation," Howard says. And for business owners, this is probably a cause for concern. But most Australians don't own business, so they see centralised wage fixation not as an ideological evil, as Howard does, but as a welcome safety net. "Rudd has made his work choice. He has put union power ahead of workers' jobs," Howard says. But the question is this. Who is going going to change their vote on this basis? Which person who isn't already a dyed-in-the-wool Coalition supporter will trust John Howard this time? Because most people thinks WorkChoices is about preserving or creating jobs. They think it's about reducing wages, removing benefits and forcing people onto precarious AWAs.

It's also fascinating to see him try to link in the economy and the environment, where he says "Economic growth and technological change have given mankind not just greater material wealth, but also cleaner air and water." That's an extremely contentious statement, given the destruction wrought by the Industrial Revolution, and the environmental degradation evident around the world in rapildy developing countries. It might be more fair to say that technology has recently started to help us repair the air and water from the severe damage wrought by economic growth. And no thanks, of course, to the years of myopia on climate change by his government that see Tim Flannery pondering returning his Australian Of The Year award, if you believe today's Crikey.

But it makes sense strategically. As Gerard Henderson noted yesterday, the polls show that voters still view the Coalition as considerably better on economic management – even if not much else at present. We all know that John Howard is basically the last person to get on the green bandwagon – showing just how deeply climate change has penetrated into the national consciousness in the past few years. By arguing that environmental improvement depends on sound economic management, he's trying to link his policy strong suit with his weakest. It's a clever intellectual pirouhette, but not a convincing one.

To put his arguments together, then, he seems to be saying that protecting the environment depends on a strong economy, which depends on WorkChoices. A very tenuous argument.

Right now, people are nervous about WorkChoices and they're nervous about climate change. And on these issues, Kevin Rudd seems more credible than Kim Beazley ever did. That's why he's ahead of the polls. And his opponent is going to need a lot more than this kind of sophistry to claw the numbers back.

Which is not to say he won't. Anything could happen. A serious security issue could send the voters rushing back to the "MAn of Steel".But if this nebulous argument is the best John Howard can muster to defend a policy that has always seemed like a largely ideological crusade to crush the unions, rather than a bold vision for Australia's future, then the Prime Minister is the one facing imminent dismissal.

The 24-Hour Comedy Show - You Had To Be Here

Thanks to the magic of wireless internet technology, I am writing this in the middle of the strangest live event I've ever attended. I'm at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, in a circus tent right down besides the Yarra at Federation Square, where a comedian called Mark Watson is making an attempt to put on a 24 hour comedy show. And it has proven bizarrely addictive. I've clocked up six hours so far, and there are nine to go. So if you know anyone in Melbourne who is either a comedian, in possession of a borderline personality disorder or extremely easily entertained, you owe it to them to get them down to Federation Square some time before midnight.

It kicked off at midnight last night, obviously and ultimately proved so fascinatingly weird that I ended up staying until 5am. I had expected a progressive series of comedians coming up and doing a bit of their standup routine, punctuated by a bit of chatter from the MC. Not at all. What it has devolved into is an incredible series of pointless, yet wonderful, challenges, where the audience gets behind virtually any idea, no matter how illogical or poorly-conceived.

For example, at 3am last night, a fake salmonella scandal was created to get revenge on restaurant at which someone had apparently had a dodgy pizza. Acclaimed comedian Will Adamsdale was dispatched to this restaurant as an undercover health inspector by the name of Adam Willsdale. His task was to conduct a random pizza-topping health test using a thermometer borrowed from an espresso machine, and potentially to try to get the place shut down. His story was that his sister had been killed by a Salmonella Supreme a decade earlier – a story backed up by a hastily-constructed Wikipedia page, now sadly deleted due to the irritatingly killjoy character of the Wikipedia editors.

Unfortunately despite an extraordinary amount of individual bravado on Adamsdale's part, the wily proprietors of said pizzeria refused to let him conduct the inspection without suitable identification. And since the ID card someone had made him was printed on the back on a popcorn box, the ruse was pretty well up.

Another mission involved a huge poster advertising the show, which a strange pigtailed character from Adelaide by the name of Rug, who was dressed as a member of the trenchcoat mafia, was sent to post iton the front door of Parliament. Sadly, since he was from Adelaide, he had no idea where that was. This happened at about 2am last night. But at 2pm this afternoon, the valiant Rug finally triumphed, scaling a ferris wheel just outside in an incredibly dangerous operation.

But my favourite moment involved a woman by the name of Amanda, who has the most absurdly loud and long laugh of anyone I've ever heard. To the point that whenever she laughed, the entire show stopped. Ultimately she was pulled up onstage into a kind of Perfect Match arrangement, and was paired with a heroic university student 12 years her junior who volunteered to squire her on a wine tour that she had signed up for today. He had two problems – no money, and classes today. We passed a hat around to raise the $80 required, and sent a proxy to her classes to take notes.

Excitingly, news has just come through from the Yarra Valley that Amanda and John have apparently kissed at a winery. So we aren't just wasting time here in the tent. We're actually spreading love. And that's a truly beautiful thing.

Well, perhaps in theory. In actual fact, watching the romance unfold was scarily reminiscent of watching a train wreck through a super-slo mo camera. And, since both of them presumably now have shocking hangovers and are doing wine tasting, and have now spent 6 hours in each others' companies, we can rest assured it's quite a bit uglier than before. We'll find out tonight, when they report back from the hot date.

As you may have gathered, there's a fairly motley crew in here. There's one guy who's been to Watson's three previous all-night shows, and has flown in from the UK specifically for this. I really hate to think about how much he's paying per minutes. Still, I guess he's saving on accommodation.

So, reading this, you can imagine that the standards for what is accepted as a valid way to fill the time are fairly low. When I walked in, they were playing online Boggle, and currently Watson is reading jokes out of Christmas crackers.

Still, it's a mammoth effort to do a comedy show for 24 straight hours. And it still seems impressive even after the news that Mark's most recent Edinburgh version of this show went for a ridiculous 36 hours. Darn it, does everything comedic have to be better in the UK?

I realise that all this may not seem funny to read about. It's probably one of those things where you had to be here. And have had no sleep. And a few alcoholic refreshments. And even then, frankly, it's not for the easily bored. But from my perspective, there's only one question to ask. When's the world record attempt, and can we arrange for Amanda and John to give birth bang smack in the middle of it?

I'll update this blog if anything of earth-shattering significance occurs that might amuse those whose brains haven't been utterly addled by spending hours and hours in a darkened tent. So I probably won't update this blog.

Personal trainer or personal torturer?

I've been in agony all day today. Not because the pro-gun lobby got to me after yesterday's blog, thankfully. But because I signed up for a personal training "starter pack" at my gym, which gave me three one-on-one sessions at a low, low price. I figured I'd give it a go, and see if it made me get any closer from being desperately unfit to my long-term goal of being mildly unfit.

The first session was very light - it only involved a simple fitness test. Which I think it's fair to say I comprehensively failed. Apparently I have the physical condition of a retiree. And no, I'm not exaggerating.

So I approached the second test with considerable trepidation. I felt my my fragile physical self-esteem couldn't take another battering. Turns out it could. Because today, we learned just how easily I get exhausted. My trainer devised a simple circuit, with ten repetitions of each activity. Nothing particularly challenging –just a bit of stretching, sit ups and a bit of mucking around on a weight machine where you have to pull yourself and then push yourself up. A mere ten repetitions of each activity was all I had to do.

Well, to cut a short story even shorter, I got through the circuit twice. Yeah, that's not a very high number.

Shortly after I left the gym/medieval torture chamber, my muscles began aching. I'm not sure which muscles exactly, but I think I can approximately estimate that it was all of them. Muscles I didn't even know I had were announcing their presence extremely emphatically. I made it as far as the nearest cafe, where I ate a meal which probably more than undid what little good work I'd done at the gym. And then I took myself home (for the glamorous life of a Fairfax blogger is such that they don't actually let you into the building) and writhed in agony on my bed for quite some time.

Which is quite a lengthy excuse for why this blog was late. I could scarcely move. Now, I'm able to muster up a slow hobble.

But the experience made me wonder whether I'm an absolutely terrible case, or whether this is just normal for those who lead fairly sedentary lifestyles. I really hope it's the latter, but I suspect it's the former.

It's going to be a long road between here and physical respectability. And I fear this may not be the only occasion on which regular readers of this blog get to hear me whinge about it. Sorry about that – next time I'll get back to complaining about the world in general, instead of the small (but not small enough) portion of it that constitutes my body.

The rights and wrongs of bearing arms

Difficult week to write topical humour, you'd have to say. The news this week has been dominated by the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. And, apart from noting that a state whose definition of tough gun laws is restricting people to buying one a month is lucky they haven't had a problem like this before now, there isn't all that much I can say about it. As Americans might put it – sad story, period.

But this is a good opportunity to think about gun laws. And the Americans who are whinging about the gun control lobby politicising the tragedy are very wrong. What better response to the needless waste of human life than to ask ourselves whether we can stop it from happening again?

Gun laws aren't exactly a panacea, though. I've been wrestling with the issue since reading about Virginia Tech. I really want to believe that this massacre is linked to the state's lax laws, which I'm intuitively against. And I strongly believe that the post-Port Arthur buyback is one of the greatest achievements of the Howard Government, and that our point of difference with America in our attitude to firearms is something to be proud of. But it's been pointed out to me that there isn't a necessary correlation between gun ownership and murderous rampages. In Switzerland, which has one of the toughest regimes of compulsory military service in the world, every male is required to have a gun on the premises for most of their adult lives. And yet, the Swiss somehow manage to avoid expressing themselves through the medium of hails of bullets.

The same observation was well made by Michael Moore in the Canadian sequence in Bowling for Columbine, where he said that despite having similar rates of gun ownership and a nearly identical culture, the US' northern neighbours have a far lower gun homicide rate. Moore ultimately attributes America's gun problem to a kind of post-Puritan paranoia. And you'd think that for a problem of this dimension there must be some sort of psychological explanation because wen it comes to guns, Americans sure seem crazy. We're talking about a country that takes a movement headed by Charlton Heston seriously.

So, if there isn't necessarily a correlation between the rates of gun ownership and gun massacres, should America have stricter gun laws? I'd still say yes, not because every society needs restrictions on gun ownership, but because it's abundantly clear that America has a unique problem. America has similar crime rates to other developed countries, except for homicides, and most of their homicides are committed with guns. Gun ownership is incredibly casual in America – the scant Federal regulations that exist don't even cover second-hand sales or gun shows. Astonishingly, a shop in Virginia is planning to hold a gun giveaway this week even after the massacre. Just as special restrictions have been introduced in the Northern Territory to reduce the sky-high rate of alcohol consumption, it needs to be harder to buy a gun in America than it is in Switzerland.

The difficulty is, though, that most gun control regimes wouldn't have stopped Cho Seung-Hui. For one thing, he used pistols, as opposed to the semi-automatic shotguns that we banned after Port Arthur. For another, he was a clean cut college student, as the store owner who sold him a gun put it, who looked safe and didn't have a prior record of gun violence – and clearly the whole thing was so premeditated that he would have taken the time to obtain a license anyway.

What tighter gun laws would probably prevent is not so much carefully-planned massacres by the seriously disturbed, or gangland shootings of the sort we've just seen in Nagasaki despite the extremely strict gun laws in Japan, but casual gun violence – a domestic dispute boiling over into a shooting, for instance.

I don't know whether tighter gun laws really would compensate for whatever flaws in the American psyche are responsible for the massive homicide rate. There is some evidence to suggest that the introduction of tough anti-handgun laws in Washington DC in 1975 reduced the homicide rate, but it's so easy to obtain guns from other nearby states that the statistics aren't terribly instructive. Surely it would be worth experimenting with whether changing the law can reverse some of these appalling statistics.

But while the Second Amendment exists, and can be used to strike down laws such as Washington's (which were ruled unconstitutional by a DC court last month), it's unlikely we'll see any change in the gun control regime. It's an anachronistic law, dating from a time when well-armed militias were useful in warfare – whereas in an era of high-tech weaponry and nuclear missiles, the national self-defence argument seems to hold no water. Rednecks often argue that their guns are a means of warding off government tyranny – but again, it's hard to imagine what hicks with pop-shooters could do against tanks. The Second Amendment is badly out of date, but there's no telling most Americans – President Bush immediately moved to defend the right to bear arms.

Ultimately, Americans want to live in a country full of guns, and it makes them feel safe; even though they clearly aren't. They've made the society they want, and it is one in which people get shot dead at a higher rate than anywhere else in the developed world. I guess that's liberty for you.

So the rest of the world will continue to look on, appalled, as America continues to destroy itself with its precious, ubiquitous firearms. And the 32 victims at Virginia Tech will be commemorated not by efforts to prevent similar tragedies, as the victims at Port Arthur were, but by platitudes like the ones President Bush delivered at the memorial service. And that is a tragedy in itself.

A tale of two shock jocks

Last week in America, Don Imus, a popular radio host, whose show Imus In The Morning was also simulcast on TV, was sacked by both CBS Radio and MSNBC for racial insensitivity. His offence? To refer, in a moment of light-hearted banter, to the African-American athletes of the Rutgers University women's basketball team as "nappy-headed hos". Imus later apologised profusely.

Last week in Australia, Alan Jones, a pompous radio host, was criticised by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for broadcasts inciting racial violence. His offence? In the middle of an extremely explosive situation in Cronulla, to laugh when a caller suggested that "If you shoot one, the rest will run", and reading the comments of a listener who suggested that bikie gangs (who "do a lot of good", apparently) travel down to Cronulla and scare the Lebanese youth back off to the Western Suburbs.

ACMA also found, to quote the SMH article, "that comments made by Jones in his December 8 broadcast implied that people of Middle Eastern background were responsible for raping women in western Sydney."

Unlike Imus, Jones did not exactly apologise. Instead, he launched into a scathing attack on ACMA, saying that its personnel had "no talkback experience", as if somehow you have to have endured a certain requisite number of hours of listening to the likes of Jones rant in order to work out whether his words are distasteful. And he was defended not only by his radio station, but by the Prime Minister, no less.

These two stories about multi-millionaire white broadcasters exercising appalling judgement when talking about minorities, though, say a great deal about each society.

America is hypersensitive on the subject of race. I guess a legacy of slavery will do that to you – although a legacy of genocide doesn't seem to have achieved the same result in Australia. And racially insensitive comments, even ones delivered jokingly, as Imus' were, are instant career suicide. Imus' doom was sealed once the advertisers began dropping his programme in droves – even though I suspect the two weeks' suspension initially imposed by CBS combined with a sincere apology would have been a more appropriate punishment. You can guarantee he won't make the same mistake again anytime soon.

And if Imus had been employed by Channel Nine, as Tony Greig was when he made that appalling comment about an Asian wife at a wedding opposite a cricket ground, he probably wouldn't even have copped two weeks.

Men like Jones and Imus are labelled "shock jocks". But really, I've never been less shocked than when I read about Jones' treatment of the Cronulla riots. What he broadcasted was far worse than anything Imus said – and not in the least bit light-hearted. If a gang really had taken the comments Jones broadcasted seriously, blood might have been spilt. Well, more blood.

I'm not saying Jones' words actually exacerbated the Cronulla riots – his regular audience of octogenarians and cabbies probably kept well away from Cronulla throughout the incident. As, of course, Jones did, instead suggesting bikie gangs head to the area, because their opponents were cowards and would be scared away. As opposed, I suppose, to Jones' own bravery in hiding behind a microphone in a comfortable studio, sending out bikie gangs to do his bidding. But his broadcast was at best irresponsible, at worst dangerous.

I don't know that we need to go completely overboard, American-style, whenever a talk show host makes a poorly-thought out comment on race. We probably wouldn't have any broadcasters left. But I'd rather we went the full Imus than did nothing. And I'd certainly rather we had politicians like Barack Obama, who immediately criticised Imus, than a Prime Minister who thinks it's appropriate to rush to the side of a broadcaster who's tried to start a racist gang war at Cronulla Station. And worse yet, knows there's votes in doing so.

In a time of considerable social unrest, when many on both sides of an ugly feud were losing control and there was a genuine risk of loss of life, broadcasters should not be making things worse. Broadcasters have certain social responsibilities – it's part of the deal when you get a license – and Jones utterly failed to discharge his. A two week suspension would have been the least 2GB could have done to send the message that its broadcasters have to be kept to a certain standard of behaviour. Anyone foolish or malign enough to explicitly, or even implicitly, condone violence, should not be on the airwaves.

But 2GB did nothing, of course. Because Jones is the station's cash cow, with a seemingly unbreakable connection to the hearts and minds of – well, not Struggle St, but to people who are doing quite well for themselves, actually, but think they've come from Struggle St, and resent anyone who they think might take their hard-earned gains away from them. Like migrants. The Howard Battlers, in other words. And that's why the Prime Minister's only too happy to jump into the trench alongside Brigadier Jones, both blowing their dogwhistles furiously, from the same score.

And that's also why Australian advertisers, funnily enough, didn't dump Jones the way American companies dumped Imus.

Which makes this a job for ACMA. But unfortunately, what with being a faceless bureaucracy and all, they seem better at criticising than taking positive action. Rather like Jones himself, in fact. It's high time the media regulator sent round a bikie gang or two to see if they can scare him.

Jesus ruined my Easter

Friends, there was nothing whatsoever Good about last Friday. Not only was virtually everything closed, but those measly few pubs that were open were forced by a backwards law to close their doors at ten. That's right, ten. On a Friday night. Ridiculous. Now, Lord, I know You didn't have a particularly Good Friday yourself, what with that whole crucifixion and all, but that's no reason for the rest of us to suffer, is it? And, besides – for those who do believe in Jesus, what better way to say goodbye than a wake?

I thought we were supposed to be a secular society. I thought that, slowly but surely, we'd stripped back virtually all of those mawkish old-style laws that forced religious tokenism on everyone. But no. Every Easter, whether we like it or not, we New South Welsh have the best long weekend of the year, that lone double in our public holiday calendar, ruined by religion. Well, religion and shopowners wanting to go on holiday.
I've spent the last few Easters out of NSW, what with the Melbourne Comedy Festival and suchlike, so I hadn't realised the extent of the problem. Our supposedly global city becomes a ghost town between Thursday night and Monday night. A Holy Ghost town, even. Most of my favourite cafes and restaurants shut their doors for the duration. My family were pretty much all out of town, and most of my friends seemed to either be away or at the very least actively avoiding inviting me to anything interesting. In short, bugger all happened.
And yet did not Jesus die that the rest of us might live? Well? And you call the excruciating dullness that constitutes a Sydney Easter 'living'?
So I had to make do. I chose to spend much of Easter at home, playing soccer on my PlayStation and watching The West Wing, itself a quasi-religious experience. So it was not without its pleasures, I guess. But your young(ish) man-about-town likes having stuff to do as well. And the rest of the world was apparently either nesting, or at church. So I wandered in the wilderness for - well, not forty, but four days and nights. But the Devil didn't come to tempt me. In fact, temptation would have been most welcome. Particularly in the form of Easter Eggs.
Oh, there was one moment of temptation – in a moment of extreme boredom I fed thirty pieces of silver into a pokie, and got nothing in return. Yea, verily, it was a dull long weekend.
And then I came down with a cold. Which made me exceptionally grumpy. Can you tell?
No-one pierced my side, admittedly, but my nose is runny, and I'm sneezing a lot. We all have our crosses to bear.
Well, I've learned my lesson. As God hath forsaken Jesus on the Cross that day, so shall I forsake Sydney next Easter. I shall take myself off to somewhere pagan and tropical, to lie on a beach far from the maddening uncrowdedness of this city. And I shall return after some little time, visibly restored by my break. I think that's what Jesus would have done.