An Undo button for all seasons

This week, Google introduced 'Undo Send' as a standard feature in Gmail. It’s more like an Undo Godsend for those times you accidentally email the wrong person, or notice a shocking typo just as you’ve sent the message, or suddenly realise your message was way too harsh and you should sleep on it and redraft it in the morning – or is that just me?

In such situations, 'Undo Send' gives you a few precious seconds to reconsider. Having used it in the development phase, it’s surprising how often it comes in handy – in fact, I sincerely hope that other companies will follow Google’s lead. 'Undo' should be part of every email application, especially at my work where every month or two someone accidentally sends a message to several thousands of users, before presumably being taken into an IT dungeon somewhere and flogged with a mouse cord.

But it’s not just in the realm of email where the ability to reverse things would be invaluable. Here are a few other social situations where Google, with their omnipotence, should be finding a way to allow us to take it back.

Drunk texts

It’s well and good to be able to rethink an email, but the messages which get us into the most trouble are the ones we transmit from our mobile phones late at night. And a few seconds to reconsider is nowhere near enough – we need to be able to expunge them from the record the following day, when we wake up to realise we’ve sent six increasingly desperate messages to that ex we swore we’d never contact again. Better still would be the ability to delete the photos your colleague posted on Facebook of you pouring goon into your mouth at 3am while zooming around the company car park in a shopping trolley.

Speeding tickets

Wouldn't it be great if instead of getting stung for a few hundred bucks and three points, we could just be like 'Whoops, my bad, lol' and hit 'Undo Dangerous Driving'? I guess this would only be viable if you could also undo the frequently terrible consequences of speeding, too – but Google is working on driverless cars, so who knows what they might have up their sleeve?

Tattoos

Not only are almost all tattoos based on life circumstances a likely future source of pain – Johnny Depp’s Winona Forever tattoo is instructive, even though he later wittily changed it to Wino Forever – but they look increasingly terrible as they fade. With a Tattoo Undo function, any tattoo can be temporary.

Overeating

Let’s face it – in the affluent West, we’ve no self-control when it comes to food. Thanks to the greatest medical revolution in history, some of the most significant causes of death now relate to our habit of gorging ourselves. Since we seem unable to eat until full and then stop, an ‘Undo Stuffing Face’ function would be helpful after that one dumpling too many, and then the six more we eat after that. It’s certainly far more elegant than the Romans’ solution.

Asking somebody out

Not when it works, obviously, but there are few things more awkward than when you put it out there, and your target’s expression, mixing discomfort and pity, immediately makes it clear that you’ve made a terrible miscalculation. This is probably why most Australian courting rituals now involve sufficient alcohol to allow total deniability the next day.

Leadership challenges

It’s 23 June 2010. You, Julia Gillard, have the numbers to depose Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister. You go ahead, but realise that the backlash will poison your time as leader, that instead of salvaging the next election you’ll struggle with a near-unworkable hung parliament, and that Rudd will hang around for years before gaining ultimate revenge. ‘Undo Spill’ would be a handy option at that point, wouldn’t it?

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

Sequels are hard, they really are. Prequels are even harder, apparently – just ask Peter Jackson. But Episode I had Jake Lloyd’s bowl cut, that pointless podracing subplot, that strangely garbled Natalie Portman accent, those bizarrely racist aliens and the icing on the crapola cake that was Jar-Jar Binks. Many hardcore fans suggest you don’t even bother watching it anymore. Undo, undo, undo.

That time I went blonde for summer

Not only was it a mistake, but it was a mistake compounded by my decision to apply Sun-In rather than getting a proper dye job. I would have gladly pressed ‘Undo Hairstyle’ not only on my decision to do it, but my theory that it’d be oh-so wryly indifferent to my physical appearance. Instead I looked like a double idiot, having done a terrible job of executing a terrible idea.

Dinosaur parks

There’s apparently some flaw deep within the psyche of certain humans that inexorably tempts them to stock a remote island with genetically-engineered dinosaurs, no matter how many times this has previously ended in disaster. Survival generally requires a terrifying battle against the odds… wouldn’t it be easier just to click 'Undo Playing God'?

Madge and Harold from Neighbours’ Christmas record, ‘Old-Fashioned Christmas’

Just undo, seriously.

The Simpsons did it, and now they're done

As the longest-running sitcom in the history of television lurches towards another season, one thing is increasingly clear: friends don't let friends make 27 seasons of The Simpsons. In recent years, the show's become like that favourite '90s band that insists on releasing inferior new albums years after its heyday. In short, The Simpsons are the Smashing Pumpkins.

In 2015, more episodes of The Simpsons is probably the second-last thing our civilisation needs, just behind that book of 352 Kim Kardashian selfies. There are already 574 episodes in the can, so many that you could watch non-stop for eight days and still not get through them all. Surely our appetite for even this most brilliant of series has been satiated?

Once I used to read those news stories about the latest ingenious developments brewed up in the writers' room with great delight. But the latest batch of announcements was dismal. "Homer and Marge are to separate!" said one batch of articles, with Lena Dunham appearing as the Other Woman. Goodness me, marital strife between Marge and Homer – is that for the 324th or 325th time?

And come on, it's a sitcom. Hence the subsequent, obvious clarification that it was only going to be for an episode or two.

What I'd like to hear producer Al Jean clarifying is why the series is continuing at all when his only other 'teaser' announcements about Series 27 were that Spider Pig is coming back (as though there's any more juice to be squeezed from that one brief joke) and that Bart will die.

Yes, the death gimmick again, which only serves to remind us how great it was the first time. The 'Who Shot Mr Burns?' concept had the whole planet talking back in 1995. And Bart will be killed by Sideshow Bob, but only in a Halloween episode. Who cares, honestly?

22 more episodes this year, and another two seasons on order thereafter, are enough to depress even Ned Flanders. And all the more so since the man who voices Flanders and other inhabitants of Springfield has left the show. Harry Shearer is irreplaceable, as is inadvertently proven by this video of voice artist Brock Baker auditioning to take over his characters. If even the actors are over it, why continue?

The Simpsons arrived when I was in Year Seven, just two years older than Bart. He was a skateboard-riding rebel, just like I would have liked to be, and definitely was not. But it's been with us so long that skateboarding went out of fashion when I hit my mid-teens, then came back in with double-ended boards, then went out again, and now I'm too old to know whether it's in or out anymore. Yet throughout, Bart kept riding that same board in the opening titles, as though nothing had changed.

Bart can remain a ten-year-old boy forever, because animated series can look the same forever. But it still changes, because the creatives involved change, and because society changes. When it began, The Simpsons joined Married With Children on Fox as a brilliant satire of the American sitcom. It was razor-sharp in so many respects – the glibness of Reverend Lovejoy, the corruption of Mayor Quimby, the evil of Mr Burns and his nuclear power plant, the lack of respect for the aged and Grampa in particular, the chain-smoking of Patty and Selma, the regular crushing of Lisa's idealism, and the increasing sense that Marge found being a housewife limiting and frustrating. The show somehow managed to take aim at middle America yet still deliver the genuine affection, despite all their flaws, that gives all good sitcoms heart.

There are so many unforgettable, brilliant episodes of the show – browse these 25 just for starters – that it's heartbreaking to see it get so stale. Because nowadays, without refreshing the regular characters, the social satire has become toothless. The series should probably have finished once Family Guy (which falls somewhere on the spectrum between a homage and a clone) got funnier, and it definitely should have finished before they did that crossover episode together.

The show has done absolutely everything, even putting out a genuinely good big screen adaptation in 2007. There is nothing more to achieve, and nothing more to say, and now it's time to let the Simpson family go, because despite living on Evergreen Terrace, they are not.

To make sure I wasn't being unfair, I watched a random episode from series 26, 'Waiting for Duffman'. There were a few half-decent gags, including a funny attack on cyclists, and it does an okay job of parodying event television – but overall, it just reminded me of another, better episode where Homer becomes a mascot, 'Dancin' Homer'. There's a passable Game Of Thrones title parody, but it wasn't as good as the one they already didthree years ago. And worst of all, most of the jokes were lame, and a few absolutely clanged.

It all smacked of repetition. They've already done multiple episodes about Duff Beer, of course – like the Duff Gardens one – and in fact there's at least another one where Homer has to remain sober like he does in 'Waiting for Duffman'. "I'm not sure how many times we can watch Dad get chased by an angry mob without it causing psychological damage," Lisa says at one point, neatly summing up the problem.

South Park once made an episode called 'Simpsons Already Did It' fuelled by their frustration at just how many ideas The Simpsons' brilliant writers had come up with. That South Park episode aired way back in 2002. 13 years later, The Simpsons is the one that's stuck doing things that The Simpsons already did.

Even Rupert Murdoch, who was so brilliantly parodied back in the day, is stepping down, and so should his network's most brilliant creation. There's no need for sorrow – the cast and crew are legends and millionaires, and with 574 episodes in the can, their work will be on our screens forever. (Although let's face it, programmers are probably going to stick to the first 300 episodes or so.) Television's greatest family will never leave us, but it's time the family behind the scenes of the best show in the history of television shuffled off to the Retirement Castle before they're remembered as the show that stuck around too long.

Okay, before they're primarily remembered as the show that stuck around too long. After all, why watch a new rehash of an old Simpsons episode when you can just watch the old Simpsons episode?

The Simpsons did it, and now they're done

As the longest-running sitcom in the history of television lurches towards another season, one thing is increasingly clear: friends don’t let friends make 27 seasons of The Simpsons. In recent years, the show’s become like that favourite 90s band that insists on releasing inferior new albums years after its heyday. In short, The Simpsons are the Smashing Pumpkins.

In 2015, still more episodes of The Simpsons is probably the second-last thing our civilisation needs, just behind that book of 352 Kim Kardashian selfies. There are already 574 episodes in the can, so many that you could watch non-stop for eight days and still not get through them all. Surely our appetite for even this most brilliant of series has been satiated?

Once I used to read those news stories about the latest ingenious developments brewed up in the writers’ room with great delight. But the latest batch of announcements was dismal. “Homer and Marge are to separate!” said one batch of articles, with Lena Dunham appearing as the Other Woman. Goodness me – marital strife between Marge and Homer – is that for the 324th or 325th time?

And come on – it’s a sitcom. Hence the subsequent obvious, clarification that it was only going to be for an episode or two.

What I’d like to hear producer Al Jean clarifying is why the series is continuing at all when his only other ‘teaser’ announcements about Series 27 were that Spider Pig is coming back, as though there’s any more juice to be squeezed from that one brief joke, and that Bart will die.

Yes, the death gimmick again, which only serves to remind us how great it was the first time. The ‘Who Shot Mr Burns?’ concept had the whole planet talking back in 1995. And Bart will be killed by Sideshow Bob, but only in a Halloween episode. Who cares, honestly?

22 more episodes this year, and another two seasons on order thereafter, are enough to depress even Ned Flanders. And all the more so since the man who voices Flanders and  other inhabitants of Springfield has left the show. Harry Shearer is irreplaceable, as is inadvertently proven by this video of voice artist Brock Baker auditioning to take over his characters. If even the actors are over it, why continue?

The Simpsons arrived when I was in Year Seven, just two years older than Bart. He was a skateboard-riding rebel, just like I would have liked to be, and definitely was not. But it’s been with us so long that skateboarding went out of fashion when I hit my mid-teens, then came back in with double-ended boards, then went out again, and now I’m too old to know whether it’s in or out anymore. Yet throughout, Bart kept riding that same board in the opening titles, as though nothing had changed.

Bart can remain a ten-year-old boy forever, because animated series can look the same forever. But it still changes, because the creatives involved change, and because society changes. When it began, The Simpsons joined Married With Children on Fox as a brilliant satire of the American sitcom. It was razor-sharp in so many respects – the glibness of Reverend Lovejoy, the corruption of Mayor Quimby, the evil of Mr Burns and his nuclear power plant, the lack of respect for the aged and Grandpa in particular, the chain-smoking of Patty and Selma, the regular crushing of Lisa’s idealism, and the increasing sense that Marge found being a housewife limiting and frustrating. The show somehow managed to take aim at middle America and yet still deliver the genuine affection despite all their flaws that gives all good sitcoms heart.

There are so many unforgettable, brilliant episodes of the show – browse these 25 just for starters – that it’s heartbreaking to see it get so stale. Because nowadays, without refreshing the regular characters, the social satire has become toothless. The series should probably have finished once Family Guy (which falls somewhere on the spectrum between a homage and a clone) got funnier, and it definitely should have finished before they did that crossover episode together.

The show has done absolutely everything, even putting out a genuinely good big screen adaptation in 2007. There is nothing more to achieve, and nothing more to say, and now it’s time to let the Simpson family go, because despite living on Evergreen Terrace, they are not.

To make sure I wasn’t being unfair, I watched a random episode from series 26, ‘Waiting for Duffman’. There were a few half-decent gags, including a funny attack on cyclists, and it does an okay job of parodying event television – but overall, it just reminded me of another, better episode where Homer becomes a mascot, ‘Dancin’ Homer’. There’s a passable Game of Thrones title parody, but it wasn’t as good as the one they already did three years ago. And worst of all, most of the jokes were lame, and a few absolutely clanged.

It all smacked of repetition. They’ve already done multiple episodes about Duff Beer, of course – like the Duff Gardens one – and in fact there’s at least another one where Homer has to remain sober like he does in ‘Waiting for Duffman’. “I’m not sure how many times we can watch dad get chased by an angry mob without is causing psychological damage,” Lisa says at one point, neatly summing up the problem.

South Park once made an episode called ‘Simpsons Already Did It’ fuelled by their frustration at just how many ideas The Simpsons’ brilliant writers had come up with. That South Park episode aired way back in 2002. 13 years later, The Simpsons is the one that’s stuck doing things that The Simpsons already did.

Even Rupert Murdoch, who was so brilliantly parodied back in the day, is stepping down, and so should his network’s most outstanding creation. There’s no need for sorrow – the cast and crew are legends and millionaires, and with 574 episodes in the can, their work will be on our screens forever. (Although let’s face it, programmers are probably going to stick to the first 300 episodes or so.) Television’s greatest family will never leave us, but it’s time the family behind the scenes of the best show in the history of television shuffled off to the Retirement Castle before they’re remembered as the show that stuck around too long.

Okay, before they’re primarily remembered as the show that stuck around too long. After all, why watch a new rehash of an old Simpsons episode when you can just watch the old Simpsons episode?

How to enjoy the Midwinter Ball

So you're heading to Parliament's Night of Nights, the Midwinter Ball! Or maybe you're just curious about what our politicians get up to when ordinary Australians are distracted by State of Origin? Here's an exclusive guide to enjoying the only social occasion within the Parliamentary Triangle that's more entertaining than Senate Estimates.

The dress code

Any of the following options is acceptable:

• Tuxedos (for men)
• Ballgowns (for women)
• Hi-vis (for Tony Abbott)
• Leather jacket (for Malcolm Turnbull)
• Kaftans (for Greens)
• White International Youth Year '85 t-shirt (for Hot Albo)

How to get there

Most attendees arrive via ComCar, while Clive Palmer generally likes to arrive on the back of an animatronic dinosaur. To really get people talking, make a dramatic water arrival, crossing Lake Burley Griffin in an unseaworthy fishing vessel for just $US5,000 cash.

Where to sit

Seating is strictly partisan - not so much for the various political parties, who don't mind socialising on a rare night off, but for Fairfax, News and the ABC. If unsure where to sit, you are likely to find a vacant spot at Clive Palmer's table, and more spaces may well open up as the night goes on. Be warned that guests sitting at Sarah Ferguson's table are liable to find themselves being artily questioned about their behaviour between 2010 and 2013.

Etiquette

• If anybody brings up an uncomfortable topic, all attendees are permitted to cite "operational matters" and refuse to answer.
• Leaders are generally required to attempt uncharacteristically humorous speeches like Julia Gillard's in 2013.
• However, in the interest of an enjoyable evening for all guests, Bill Shorten will not permitted to make any jokes into a microphone.
• Smoking is not permitted within the Parliament House precinct, except cigars for which Joe or Matthias can 100 per cent hook you up.
• Expect 90 per cent of conversation tonight to be restricted to The Killing Season. No, seriously, did you see that scene where...

Charity auctions

There are always multiple auction items that allow successful bidders to hobnob with our political leaders for a good cause. It's worth having a bid, even though every single one is always won by GetUp. Here are some of the options this year:

• An "on-water natter" with Minister Peter Dutton! Take a pleasant cruise into international waters with the Immigration Minister. Be advised, though, that the boat will turn around at a time of his choosing, and you won't necessarily have a passport upon return.
• A Labor dinner experience! After bidding on an affable night in the company of Anthony Albanese, you'll discover that Bill Shorten has done the numbers and you'll be dining with him instead.
• Brunch with Bill Shorten! Alternatively, you can join the Opposition Leader for his favourite meal, which can constitute breakfast or lunch or anything between the two depending on the latest polling.
• A coffee at Aussie's with any government MP! This is your chance to catch up and shoot the breeze with any Coalition MP you like, and also Peta Credlin whose attendance is non-negotiable.
• An exclusive afternoon tea with Senator Dio Wang! Who is the elusive PUP Senator, really? Win this prize, and you'll be the one person who knows.
• A North Queensland camping experience with Bob Katter! It'll be just you and Bob, camping overnight under the shelter of his enormous hat as he regales you with facts about the North Queensland banana industry.
• A powerbroker's lunch with Don Farrell and Senator David Feeney! You'll feel like a king when you dine with the Killing Season kingmakers. Enjoy a series of rolls as you toy with colleagues' leadership aspirations.
• A good meal at a good price with Joe Hockey! Enjoy fine dining with the Treasurer as you discuss just how affordable housing can be with a parliamentary living allowance.
• A dinner with Clive Palmer and Malcolm Turnbull! As well as a pleasant lakeside meal featuring Canberra's most renowned banana split, this is your chance to feature in yet another round of intense leadership speculation.
• An internet chat session with Senator Scott Ludlum! You'll have a no-holds-barred, guaranteed-hacking-free tête-à-tête with the Parliament's nerdiest senator after your Skype call to WA is routed through VPNs located in all 193 UN member states.

(Note: You can bid on the real charity items.)

A final cautionary note

Whatever happens at the Midwinter Ball stays at the Midwinter Ball, by prior agreement of politicians and press gallery members in the interests of all. However, be advised that whatever happens in late-night Kingston bars will definitely be in Crikey tomorrow.

Give us a home among the gum trees

A few summers ago, I was sitting in a beer garden with half a dozen friends who work as commercial lawyers in major firms. The conversation drifted to property, as it always does in Sydney, and each of them confessed that they were looking for a house so their young kids could have access to a backyard. Then they all sighed and said that there was absolutely nothing affordable even remotely near the city, and they couldn’t look too far afield because they didn’t want to spend an hour plus each way commuting.

They were keen to reiterate that they weren’t looking for anything big or fancy, just a little terrace or something with a modest rectangle of backyard so that their kids could burn off some energy within the safe walls of their yard. Maybe, they pondered wistfully, they’d host the occasional barbeque, as well?

Not being a commercial lawyer myself, the conversation made me wince. If these people, who had jumped through all of society’s hoops to guarantee themselves success and a healthy income, and put in long, dedicated hours doing finicky work for demanding commercial clients, were having trouble finding a house that wasn’t a brutally lengthy commute from the CBD, what hope did I have?

I grew up in a pleasant, middle-class environment in North Sydney where just about everyone I knew had some manner of backyard where we’d make cubby houses, bounce on trampolines and generally muck around. The houses in which I grew up were never big, but my parents put in partitions and fixed things so that my brother and I had our own rooms, and there was enough space to accommodate two boys who liked playing cricket or soccer outdoors. I had my 21st birthday party in our backyard, and although it was about the size of half a tennis court, we festooned it with lanterns, and it was a great night.

My generation, who is on either side of forty, is surely the first in the history of Australia to grow up feeling that the dream of owning a home like the one we grew up in is unattainable. In previous decades, houses have grown bigger and bigger as the nation grew wealthier, but the vast property wealth accumulated by our baby boomer parents and grandparents has put an abrupt stop to this.

As macabre as it seems, the best hope most people my age have of owning a house is inheriting one. What’s more, our parents are living ever longer (which is vastly preferable, of course!), so what will probably happen is that many of us will inherit significant property in their sixties, right when our kids are leaving home, and we no longer need it.

I know that many may think that the complaints about housing affordability are a whinge from a group that’s already extremely privileged, and I’ve not much defence against that suggestion except to point out how consistently Sydney prices have outperformed inflation over many years. Yes, growing up in the heart of one of the world’s most beautiful, safe and comfortable cities was a huge privilege, but it’s also one I’d like to be able to extend to my children some day.

When the Treasurer says “get a good job with good pay”, I wonder exactly how good a job you have to have to be able to afford a house in Sydney? The lawyers I know have extremely comfortable salaries, and they’re struggling to afford one. Even the Prime Minister, who presumably bought long ago when prices in Forestville were considerably lower, has admitted to suffering “mortgage stress”, even though the Abbott family, like so many, is a two-income household.

In these days of million-dollar mortgages, the concept of property ownership must seem absurdly unattainable to people in their twenties, many of whom struggle to afford their rent. Maybe their values are shifting, and home ownership isn’t as important as regular travel or employment satisfaction, so the thought of being a lifelong renter isn’t as off-putting as it feels to my generation. Then again, I’m pretty sure my cohort felt that way once, too, but now that so many of us are having kids, the lure of the backyard has become extremely strong for us.

Perhaps the reason why Joe Hockey’s comments have inspired such a strong reaction is because home ownership is such an emotive area for Australians. Owning a home makes us feel safe, both financially and physically, comfortable in the knowledge that when we own a place, a capricious landlord can never evict us.

The Coalition has campaigned successfully on being the party that keeps interest rates low, which shows that Joe Hockey’s party previously understood the place that home ownership had in Aussie hearts. Labor is talking a lot about the issue, too, but is unlikely to rock the boat with any major policy shift in areas like negative gearing – alienating existing homeowners is far too risky.

Prices rise when demand exceeds supply, of course. Unless Australians suddenly decide to reverse our centuries-long trend and abandon our cities for the joys of regional or rural living, or unless the economy wilts to the point where mortgages are once again 18% like they were in the mid-1980s, the only solution is surely to attempt to radically increase supply. This would place further demands on our already groaning infrastructure, and it might mean that we need to stop fantasising about backyards and be satisfied with balconies. But at least then future generation of Australians could feel more confident about their place in the world, because they owned a place in the world.

Ten Reality TV Ideas Even Better Than Married At First Sight

Many people wonder why television broadcasters keep producing terrible reality TV shows. The answer is simple – because they rate. And what’s more, the more terrible they are, the more they rate. This maxim has recently been proven by Married At First Sight, a show on Channel Nine with a premise so disturbing that it’s compelling. So much so that it was renewed after the first episode scored 1.5 million viewers.

So, how can the industry possibly top/sink beneath Married At First Sight? I’ve gazed into my television crystal ball and come up with a few suggestions.

(Note all concepts below © Dominic Knight 2015. Bigshot TV executives should speak to my agent* upon immediately realising that they want to buy them..)

Tattooed At First Sight

Marriages are relatively easy to undo nowadays - but agony is guaranteed when you try to get rid of tattoos! Twelve young people meet twelve veteran tattooists. They spend an hour getting to know one another and then the tattooists get to tattoo whatever they like, wherever they like. But look out – one of the tattooists will end up being tattooed with the same designs they ink on one of their client/victims!

Divorced For No Reason

A happily married couple agree to "divorce" - that is, spend three months  apart for no reason beyond viewers' entertainment. They're both encouraged to get back out there and go a little crazy with the ol’ dating to "get back on that horse". Then, at the end of the month, they have to decide whether to separate permanently. Maybe their happiness was just a mutual illusion? It's hard to come up with an idea that debases the institution of marriage more thoroughly than Married At First Sight, but this might just do it!

Dog Eat Dog Food

Could you survive on dog food and crawl around on hand and knee for 13 whole weeks, unable to speak because you’ll receive a severe electric shock when you do anything more than bark, growl or whimper? Of course you can, as long as there are regular walkies! At the end of the series, contestants will get to decide whether they want to return to their human lives or live out the rest of their days as a doggie. Except they won’t be able to speak while deciding, so the producers may deliberately misinterpret their intentions...

Very Important Parents

Kids from ordinary, happy families are adopted by über rich celebrity foster parents for 30 days, and taken out of school to go jetsetting around the world visiting theme parks, riding ponies and helicopters and, in the grand finale, getting to go backstage with Beyoncé who will ask them the ultimate question - do you want to keep living like Jay Z and me, or go back to your real mum and dad? Obviously they have to go back to their real parents because the show's budget isn't unlimited, but those families whose kids chose to leave will not only win four tickets to Bey's next Australian tour, but be left with a lingering mutual resentment until the end of their days.

Dancing With The Scars

We’ve all seen dancing competitions, but not one with stakes as high as these! Literal stakes spread all over a huge pit in which contestants are trapped while they’re forced to do ever more complicated and dangerous dance routines. Ropes will only be lowered down if they get consistent 9s from the capricious judges.

The Spotlight

Ten ordinary Australians are plucked from obscurity and placed in the national spotlight. They appear on every major TV and radio show in the country, are paid to drink in the VIP areas of exclusive nightclubs during "promotional appearances" and are constantly being begged for autographs and to appear in selfies. Then, after six weeks of this, it abruptly stops, and we watch as they try to continue their celebrity careers in the face of universal indifference. Hosted by Sara-Marie Fedele until midway through the season when she's abruptly replaced by Grant Denyer.

Ten To One

Could you run a television network? Channel Ten gives ten young hopefuls a week each to run the station, on the balance of probabilities that at least one of them will do a better job than the people responsible for Ten Breakfast and win the prize/punishment of staying on.

The Garbage Compactor

We all know the famous scene from Star Wars where our heroes are stuck in a room whose walls are slowly coming together. We construct a replica at Seaworld on the Gold Coast and see whether our plucky contestants can improvise a way out using only popular hardware items supplied by sponsor Bunnings Warehouse before the walls pulverise them and/or the strange tentacled creature drags them underwater.

The Real Big Brother

Contestants are trapped in the dystopic supercontinent of Oceania, eking out a miserable existence producing propaganda for the Ministry of Truth until a brief and delightful romance sees them confined in the Ministry of Love for brainwashing. We watch their every move recorded through the ubiquitous telescreens.

The Reality Show Reality Show

The contestants are locked in an underground dungeon and fed stale bread until they come up with an idea for a reality show that's good enough to go into production and achieve ratings as strong as Married At First Sight. After the show they created goes on air, they'll be released, but obliged to spend 18 hours a day editing the tedious raw footage from their show into something vaguely airable. At the end of the series they'll own a generous 0.1% of the rights to their show, potentially setting them up for life (depending on how well it does).

* Obviously I don’t actually have an agent. Hey, do you want to be my agent?!

Ten reality ideas worse than 'Married at First Sight'

Many people wonder why television broadcasters keep producing terrible reality TV shows. The answer is simple – because they rate. And what's more, the more terrible they are, the more they rate. This maxim has recently been proven by Married At First Sight, a show on Channel Nine with a premise so disturbing that it's compelling. So much so that it was renewed after the first episode scored 1.5 million viewers.

So, how can the industry possibly top/sink beneath Married At First Sight? I've gazed into my television crystal ball and come up with a few suggestions.

(Note: all concepts below © Dominic Knight 2015. Bigshot TV executives should speak to my agent* upon immediately realising that they want to buy them.)

Tattooed At First Sight

Marriages are relatively easy to undo nowadays - but agony is guaranteed when you try and get rid of tattoos! Twelve young people meet twelve veteran tattooists. They spend an hour getting to know one another and then the tattooists get to tattoo whatever they like, wherever they like. But look out - one of the tattooists will end up being tattooed with the same designs they ink on one of their clients/victims!

Divorced For No Reason

A happily married couple agree to "divorce" - that is, spend three months apart for no reason beyond viewers' entertainment. They're both encouraged to get back out there and go a little crazy with the ol' dating to "get back on that horse". Then, at the end of the month, they have to decide whether to separate permanently. Maybe their happiness was just a mutual illusion? It's hard to come up with an idea that debases the institution of marriage more thoroughly than Married At First Sight, but this might just do it!

Dog Eat Dog Food

Could you survive on dog food and crawl around on hand and knee for 13 whole weeks, unable to speak because you'll receive a severe electric shock when you do anything more than bark, growl or whimper? Of course you can, as long as there are regular walkies! At the end of the series, contestants will get to decide whether they want to return to their human lives or live out the rest of their days as a doggie. Except they won't be able to speak while deciding, so the producers may deliberately misinterpret their intentions...

Very Important Parents

Kids from ordinary, happy families are adopted by über rich celebrity foster parents for 30 days, and taken out of school to go jetsetting around the world visiting theme parks, riding ponies and helicopters and, in the grand finale, getting to go backstage with Beyoncé who will ask them the ultimate question: do you want to keep living like Jay Z and me, or go back to your real mum and dad? Obviously, they have to go back to their real parents because the show's budget isn't unlimited, but those families whose kids chose to leave will not only win four tickets to Bey's next Australian tour, but be left with a lingering mutual resentment until the end of their days.

Dancing With The Scars

We've all seen dancing competitions, but not one with stakes as high as these! Literal stakes, spread all over a huge pit in which contestants are trapped while they're forced to do ever more complicated and dangerous dance routines. Ropes will only be lowered down if they get consistent 9s from the capricious judges.

The Spotlight

Ten ordinary Australians are plucked from obscurity and placed in the national spotlight. They appear on every major TV and radio show in the country, are paid to drink in the VIP areas of exclusive nightclubs during "promotional appearances", and are constantly being begged for autographs and to appear in selfies. Then, after six weeks of this, it abruptly stops, and we watch as they try to continue their celebrity careers in the face of universal indifference. Hosted by Sara-Marie Fedele until midway through the season when she's abruptly replaced by Grant Denyer.

Ten To One

Could you run a television network? Channel Ten gives ten young hopefuls a week each to run the station, on the balance of probabilities that at least one of them will do a better job than the people responsible for Ten Breakfast and win the prize/punishment of staying on.

The Garbage Compactor

We all know the famous scene from Star Wars where our heroes are stuck in a room whose walls are slowly coming together. We construct a replica at Seaworld on the Gold Coast and see whether our plucky contestants can improvise a way out using only popular hardware items supplied by sponsor Bunnings Warehouse before the walls pulverise them and/or the strange tentacled creature drags them underwater.

The Real Big Brother

Contestants are trapped in the dystopic supercontinent of Oceania, eking out a miserable existence producing propaganda for the Ministry of Truth until a brief and delightful romance sees them confined in the Ministry of Love for brainwashing. We watch their every move recorded through the ubiquitous telescreens.

The Reality Show Reality Show

The contestants are locked in an underground dungeon and fed stale bread until they come up with an idea for a reality show that's good enough to go into production and achieve ratings as strong as Married At First Sight. After the show they created goes on air, they'll be released but obliged to spend 18 hours a day editing the tedious raw footage from their show into something vaguely airable. At the end of the series, they'll own a generous 0.1% of the rights to their show, potentially setting them up for life (depending on how well it does).

*Obviously, I don't actually have an agent. Hey, do you want to be my agent?!

Eurovision 2015 was disturbingly freak-free

This year's Eurovision Song Contest was pretty good.

As reactions go, that's roughly on par with saying you found the new Mumford & Sons album not in the least bit effete, or that you were moved by a recent episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

In fact, both observations have been made recently after recent instalments from the Mumfords and Kardashians pleasantly surprised critics. Which goes to show that just because a live, international television broadcast has been one way for an astonishing 59 years, that doesn't mean it can't achieve the unexpected.

This year, for its 60th anniversary, most countries somehow lifted their usual standards to produce a perfectly respectable, non-wacky effort. Which might just have made it the most disappointing Eurovision I've ever watched. In fact, it was so solid that one could almost have been forgiven for taking the whole thing seriously.

As I watched this year's Eurovision, I found myself not really minding most of the songs, until I got up to Guy Sebastian and looked back to realise that very few of the staples of Eurovision, those tried and tested elements that have kept fans coming back for decades, were in place this year.

Where were the wacky wardrobe reinventions transforming an already-absurd national dress into something stranger? Where were the woefully out-of-tune pretenders? Where was the troupe oftuneless grandmothers singing about parties with dour looks on their faces? Where were the performers dressed like aliens whose home planet can only manufacture alfoil? Above all, where was this year's monstrous Lordi?

If you take a wander through some of the Eurovision entries past, you will find that this year's entries are all vastly better in musical terms and vastly worse in peculiarness terms, and both of those developments are most unwelcome.

The only truly odd thing about the 60th Eurovision Song Contest was the random inclusion of Australia, but when our representative turned out to be Guy Sebastian, there was no way that even the inclusion of a nation located thousands of kilometres from Europe could produce genuine bizarreness. SBS chose the safest possible pair of hands, and you can't get any safer than Guy Sebastian without poaching staff from Play School.

I mean, the favourite from Sweden won. Could Eurovision 2015 have been any more predictable?

Admittedly, there were a few moments to remind us of the magnificent heights of eccentricity achieved in past years. France sent out an army of gold bodysuited drummers to accompany Lisa Angell for a touch of Les Gliterrables; Serbia's Bojana Stamenov and her dancers seemed to have raided an under-resourced primary school's drama cupboard for their outfits; and Montenegro's Knez sported a pencil moustache, goatee and pronounced leer that surely frightened children across Europe.

Italy's entrants mistakenly thought they could make opera cool by adopting wacky glasses, while defending champion Austria provided the night's only moment of true amusement with a piano that burst into flame, but that still wasn't enough to avoid last place. A valiant effort all round.

By Eurovision standards, though, these antics barely registered. It was as though the spirit of Guy Sebastian had infused the entire event, his unquestionable competence and professionalism seeping throughout the event to make it moderately, but not overwhelmingly, impressive.

I was genuinely proud of Guy's effort on behalf of Australia, too. Not only is he a great singer, but his song attempted to infuse some much needed funk into Eurovision. Since we'd only been invited as a one-off, I guess I can understand why SBS chose the safest possible pair of hands, and you can't get any safer than Guy Sebastian without poaching staff from Play School. Even Lee Lin Chin played her scorekeeping role dead straight, which must have taken considerable effort.

As expected, Guy's performance was the opposite of embarrassing. Sure, that may also have made it the opposite of what I love most about Eurovision, but since he was representing Australia, he clearly did us proud. Finishing fifth overall is perfectly commendable, and he managed to do well without interfering with the major positions, like the perfect guest.

But Eurovision 2016 needs to let its freak flag fly. In particular, any song which could slot seamlessly into my gym's playlist needs to be vetoed before it even hits the semi-finals.

The music industry is highly adept at producing radio-friendly chart fodder, and Eurovision should be the one time of the year where they don't get to. Because while I was very proud of Guy's efforts with 'Tonight Again', I've no desire to spend four hours watching a show like tonight again.

Graduation address: There's life in the media yet

The Dark Knight Returns

I was asked to speak at a graduation of Sydney University arts graduates, primarily media students, on the afternoon of 15 May 2015. 

I want to begin by adding my respects to the traditional owners of this land, and their elders past and present.

First of all, I want to thank the Arts Faculty for doing me the great honour of asking me to speak today. I only graduated late last year, and it occurred to me on that day that I’d probably never wear these amazing robes again – thanks so much for the chance to dress up once again as Academic Batman.

It’s wonderful to be here in the Great Hall on a perfect Sydney day. This is a truly special place in which to conclude an academic career – and I want to say to those who’ve never previously visited this magnificent venue before – welcome to Hogwarts.

Sorry I promised myself I'd do that! Although JK Rowling is an arts graduate. Accio relevance to my speech!

I want to start by congratulating you all on successfully completing your degrees. It’s not easy to focus on more than 140 characters at a time in this hyperstimulated era, as I found when writing this speech – did you know you can play Nintendo Game Boy games online for free, and the final series of Justified is really very good– sorry – so the sustained effort needed to complete your studies for years on end is a huge achievement.

I also want to congratulate you on your bravery. Doing arts and dabbling in media and pursuing things that interest and engage and excite you is brave in this society, sadly.

Well, I work alongside an awful lot of arts graduates at the ABC – one of the few corporations where this degree might be a distinct advantage, in fact – and there are a lot of us in the media more broadly.

And that's because the media is still a place for arts graduates who are passionate about ideas, passionate about principles and passionate about stories. You have imagination, empathy and originality – and, crucially, the ability to express it. You can think critically in an age where few people seem to have time to think much at all.

So you should be extremely proud of being people who think about things besides yourselves, and profit, and shareholder value, and how to fill your own bank accounts – at least I hope you are, or you might be in for a rude shock.

Congratulations also to the parents too, who encouraged your offspring to pursue their interests, as opposed to compound interest. I'm sure that now they've graduated, everyone in front of me is no more than 4 or 5 years away from moving out of your homes.

We also have a lot of media and communications students here… and as that's my field I want to address many of my comments to you.

Those of you who want to work in the media, face enormous uncertainty today, much like Johnny Depp. Working in a major media organisation can be like attending a wedding in Westeros. Many of those around you won’t be around at the end of the day, and some will end up getting flayed by House Bolton. At Fairfax nowadays, they play the Rains of Castamere in the lifts.

And this is because whenever you look at the long-term audiences for traditional newspapers or TV or radio station, one thing is clear: winter is coming.

But this is also a time of unprecedented energy and excitement in the media. As old titans downsize, dynamic new outfits take their place. Just yesterday, the Federal Treasurer was interviewed live on Twitter’s Periscope app by Buzzfeed. If I’d read that sentence to you a decade ago, you’d have thought I was either demented, or in marketing – two Venn diagrams which, you’ll find, intersect quite a lot.

But from the Guardian to the Daily Mail, Vice News to Huffpost, new outlets are popping up everywhere as rapidly as abusive comments crop under any article published online ever.

So what I’ve decided to do for the rest of this speech is demonstrate  the most important media skill you can have in 2015, and offer you a listicle. My friends at Buzzfeed tell me that the best listicles have prime numbers, and that 17 is the best. That’s not a joke, they researched it. We haven’t time for that many, so please allow me to offer you the 7 things I wish somebody had told me when graduating.

1) Have a go

I’m copying that line from Sydney arts graduate Joseph Benedict Hockey, but at least I’m attributing it, which according to the Daily Telegraph puts me one step ahead of the Daily Mail.

And it's the most crucial thing I want to tell you today.

I started a creative business with friends from this very uni, a stone's throw from where we are sitting today. In fact, after this is over, we should go and throw stones at the place where The Chaser began – it would seem fitting. And we did that because my friend Charles Firth finished university after a protracted, aka standard, arts degree, and didn't want to join the conventional workforce. I was studying law at the time, and the debt I owe Charles for saving me from that life can never truly be repaid.

We started a newspaper which at the time was not the incredibly stupid decision it might seem today. Back then it was merely a bad decision, so we committed to 8 pilot editions of the Chaser satirical paper to find out if it was financially viable. After the eight we had our answer – it wasn't. But we were arts graduates, not accounting graduates, and so we ploughed on for another 82 issues before yielding to the financially obvious.

Still, it began an incredibly wild ride that’s still continuing 16 years later. Some might think it’s slightly less wild now that I’m a middle age radio presenter at a public broadcaster – but it’s still pretty wild when someone challenges the answers in Norman the Quiz, let me tell you.

Thanks to having a go, I got to be in the room at the Logies the night that Steve Irwin's snake bit Channel Ten newsreader Tim Webster. I got to perform onstage around Australia singing a song about how disturbingly hairy I am which made my family proud – hey, they gave me the genes – and I ended up in court on a charge of aiding and abetting offensive behaviour, to which I of course pleaded guilty. All of which proves either that you should indeed have a go, or the Arts faculty should choose more reputable occasional speakers.

And it's easier to have a go than ever. When I was an undergrad, taking photos, making video, generating graphics, broadcasting radio and building websites required specialised equipment. Now you can do almost all of that on a smartphone. The only thing stopping you trying anything in the media landscape nowadays is your own willpower - oh, and you'll need regular meals and a bed. Sorry parents.

2) Dive in and learn on the job

When we started the paper, we weren’t the best comedy writers in the world. We weren’t even the best comedy writers at this uni. But doing it again and again made us less rubbish to the point where we had something resembling a career. It’s all about flying hours, and you should dive in and learn from your mistakes – unless you’re an actual pilot.

3) Be across the tech

Knowing how things work gives you creative control. You don't have to code – sorry, Bill Shorten – but you should be a person who knows how to update the website, or correct the layout, or edit the video, or mix the audio track. The geeks are inheriting the earth, so be enough of one to produce your own content.

4) Reinvent yourself

One of the extraordinary things about the media is how many chances you get to try something different. Take Red Symons, my colleague who presents breakfast on the ABC in Melbourne, used to be a professional television gong hitter on Hey Hey, and before that was a Skyhook. Take the Daddos, who collectively have held every single job in the Australian media including mine. Take Kyle Sandilands - preferably somewhere far away. Just this morning Kyle won unfamiliar praise from many on social media for confronting Barnaby Joyce over Johnny Depp's dogs. If Kyle can seem the good guy in a conversation, anything’s possible.

5) Pick the right targets and tell the truth

I think it was proved that keeping the bastards honest isn't possible when the Australian Democrats were deregistered earlier this year, but some of you might bring a few down, like Kate McClymont, who has done so much to remind us that investigative journalist is as valuable as the Obeid's property portfolio... used to be.

6) Partisanship is boring

I don't want to know what you're going to say before I read your article or hear your voice. Don't preach only to people who already agree with you. As we found with the Chaser, it's much more fun to have a war on everyone. By the way, please ignore that last bit if you end up working in foreign policy.

7) It's all about the audience…

Nowadays you can measure your audience exactly and attracting them is the key to survival. Also if people don't like what you do, they can now tell you directly.

But that isn’t everything – because often, as Steve Jobs said, people don’t know what they want. Most of us – and that includes many producers, marketers and media executives – can't think beyond a brief that’s similar to something else that's already worked. That's why so many people make almost indistinguishable cooking and talent shows.

I’m here to tell you that you won't make the next This American Life, but you might just make the next thing that is as good as This American Life.

Back your own taste and judgement. Give the audience something they haven't even seen before. I’ve found that this may occasionally make you a national pariah, but in the end of the day you should be satisfied with what you've done. Whether other people like it is up to them.

In my own case, that meant writing a novel about a Sydney Uni SRC election, which was deeply satisfying in every respect except sales.

Which brings me back to the words of your fellow graduate – and former SRC president – Joe Hockey. Have a go. Start a website. Write a novel. Make a podcast. Film an online video series. Maybe don’t start a newspaper unless you’re incredibly wealthy… but Morrie Schwarz’s is going well. Try what you really want to do before you settle. Many of you will do extraordinary things because that’s what people who sit in the Great Hall and receive degrees from this faculty tend to do.

I can't wait to find out what this latest crop of arts and media graduates from the University of Sydney are going to do. And as per media tradition. I'll be looking on with a combination of awe, intense pride and bitter, resentful jealousy. I may even use the phrases “young whippersnappers”, and “back before the internet”.

The world is yours for the taking, and as of today, it’s for people like me to stand back and watch you take it.

Unless you want to write a novel about an SRC election - sorry, that’s been done.

Budget 2015: the definitive best guaranteed accurate winners and losers

Budgets are complicated documents in which a multitude of complex changes to expenditure and taxation are delivered in one go. It’s for this reason that media organisations helpfully break the detail down into concise lists, usually with groovy little graphics like these ones.

I read every single one of the 93 winners and losers lists published by the Australian media on budget night to bring you this, the most definitive list of all.

Which I suspect makes you the winner and me the loser.

WINNER: Adelaide

Joe Hockey said that this was “a budget for a start‑up business in Adelaide”, which is fabulous news for whoever owns it. There will undoubtedly be more, as the City of Churches is inundated by froyo shops.

LOSERS: Backpackers

Travellers on working holidays visas will no longer have access to the tax-free threshold that’s available to Australian residents, so they’ll have to pay income tax on all of the non-cash-in-hand income they almost never earn.

WINNERS: Small business

Assets worth less than $20,000 will be able to be deducted immediately. There will also be lots of work for accountants, as the threshold of $2 million will see all major Australian businesses restructured into related entities with turnover of $1,999,999.99.

LOSER: Apple

The US device maker is being targeted, along with 29 other multinationals, in an attempt to bypass its complex tax minimisation and profit-shifting measures. Fortunately, any increased tax it pays will be more than offset by the deluge of small business owners buying tax write-off iPads.

WINNERS: Smash repairers

Not only will they be able to invest in new equipment, but there’s a bonanza on the way from all the small business owners who misunderstand Hockey’s invitation to go out and write off their assets immediately.

LOSERS: Expats

They’ll now have to pay back the HECS they’re using their degrees to earn money in London or New York instead of here. And if they don’t pay it, presumably we’ll seize the sweet little apartment they bought themselves with the first home owner’s grant. That’ll teach you to abandon Australia, brain-drainers. Or to leave to get educated even earlier.

WINNER: Netflix

Sure, customers will have to pay an extra 90c a month to use their service, but does anyone really think that’ll make any difference when figures published this week say that their market share’s already ahead of Foxtel’s? After all, they have Orange Is The New Black, while their local competitors may discover that their new black is red.

LOSER: Indonesia

Along with our ambassador, we just recalled 40% of our aid, presumably because if the country can afford to send air force jets to escort a handcuffed pastor and painter from one prison to another, they don’t need so much of our help any more. Although we might want to pay for Joko Widodo to get an answering machine, so he can do a better job of returning Tony Abbott’s calls. That said, phones have been a contentious subject in recent years.

WINNERS: Waterslide lovers

The Treasurer promised an “immediate tax deduction for new investment in water facilities”, which we can only hope inspires the construction of dozens of aquatic theme parks right across the country.

LOSER: Anti-vaxxers

Their childcare payments will be reduced unless their kids are inoculated, although if their approach to the science of mathematics is the same as their approach to the established science on vaccination, they might not actually notice.

WINNER: Hockey Real Estate

The Treasurer mentioned how his family’s family real estate agency “put a roof over our heads” and “gave all of the family a chance at a better life”. No doubt the whole country was listening, and thinking hey, why not ask the Hockeys to put a roof over our heads too? No word on whether you get a cigar for a successful transaction.

LOSER: Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey

Do you remember that guy, who said things like “[Wayne Swan] wants you to believe he can deliver a Budget surplus, but as each day goes by there’s increasing doubt that he ever will (2011)” and “Labor’s planned return to surplus is not credible and presents a potential black hole in future Budgets (2013)”? Being unable to resisting the direction of the global economy seems far more forgivable when you’re on the Treasury benches.

WINNER: Northern Australia

$5bn of loans will be made available for anybody who wants to build a port or other major infrastructure up there. Which is presumably the government saying it can't be bothered, because it’s just so incredibly hot and humid up there – but sure, knock yourself out, Gina et al.

LOSER: Bill Shorten

Last year’s budget was so unpopular that Bill Shorten went on a months-long spree in the polls. But now the government has remembered that it needs to make people like it to win re-election, so it’s been doling out money to the voters whose support it needs, the way John Howard used to. Which means Bill Shorten’s job just got a whole lot harder than it was when he was ahead in the polls as a proxy for “anyone else”.

LOSER: Bill Shorten again

This time because it was his birthday on budget night. Seriously, who wants to spend their birthday wading through financial documents? (Well, Albo would have been up for it, but that’s still an awkward subject.)

WINNER: Joe Hockey

After the criticism he’s weathered from the media, the pollsters and even some of his colleagues over the past year, it’s a huge triumph for him even to be delivering this budget – even though Scott Morrison got to sell the most attractive bits. Nobody can say that Joe didn’t follow his own advice and have a go, even if some of his colleagues ultimately conclude he has to go.

Sorry, Hillary - grandmas were always cool

Even if she never becomes President, Hillary Rodham Clinton has achieved many extraordinary things. She made history by winning a Senate seat after serving as First Lady. As Secretary of State, she became enormously popular with the American people. And she is now odds-on favourite to be the Democratic nominee, and the first woman from either major party to achieve that honour.

But there is one claim made of the woman who put "18 million cracks" in the glass ceiling the last time she ran for president which I simply cannot abide. And that is the claim that she's making it 'cool to be a grandmother'.

Heidi Stevens' article in the SMH last week claimed that Hillary would give grandmothers "street cred", while some commentators have used the term "Cool Grandma" to describe her. People magazine has been talking about her as a potential "grandmother-in-chief", and the candidate herself used the hashtag #GrandmothersKnowBest to weigh into the vaccination debate.

Yes, she's a grandmother, courtesy of Chelsea's daughter Charlotte. And it's worth taking a moment to acknowledge what a groundbreaking thing it is to have a woman of any age as the presidential frontrunner.

But the claim that Hillary's potential seat behind the famous Resolute Desk in the Oval Office will somehow endow grandmothers everywhere with a fashion status that they don't currently have is absurd - because grandmothers are already incredibly cool.

When I was a kid, there was no doubt that my two grandmothers were the two coolest adults I knew. My dad's mother Gwen had a house with a swimming pool, making visiting her quite literally the coolest thing we could do. My brother and I spent hour after hour in that pool, until even the wrinkles on our fingertips had wrinkles.

Indoors, she had a massive walk-in pantry with an entire wall of biscuits. In those screw-tight jars, the enticing feel of which I can still recall whenever I browse through the biscuit aisles of any supermarket, you would find pretty well every single biscuit available on the Australian market. Iced Vo-Vos, Ginger Nuts, Milk Arrowroots, Jatz, Kingstons, Honey Jumbles, Mint Slice – they all had their place. For all I knew, there was a conveyor belt up the back that led directly to the Arnott's factory. Given the constant access to biscuits, it's a good thing we burnt off all those calories in the pool.

Each morning, she and my grandfather used to fill out the crossword, and she'd let me help her. When I got it wrong, it didn't even matter because she had this cool biro with an eraser. It was the best.

Every school holiday, she'd take us shopping at renowned malls like Macquarie Centre and Chatswood Chase. She'd let us drag her around surfwear shops for hours (it was the '90s, so boardshorts were a thing), and never mind when, faced with the dizzying range of flavours on offer at the enormous food court, we always chose McDonald's.

One day, in Westfield Chatswood, she bought me Madonna's Like A Virgin for Christmas. This shocked her own offspring, who had presumed she wouldn't have been into the racy Material Girl. But of course she was cool with it, because she was a Cool Grandma.

My other grandmother Clare had an enormous collection of children's books, because she was a children's literature academic. She encouraged me to read from a very early age, and whenever I went over, there was always some new book to check out. I always wanted to read everything, because I loved nothing more than to win the approval of my ever-encouraging grandmother, and as a reward I wound up with a lifelong love of reading.

She and my grandfather had a series of excellent dogs, most significantly a golden retriever called Bart who was so good-natured that he didn't seem to mind when my brother and I subjected him to indignities that no animal should be asked to endure, especially when Bart was in no way a "horsie".

Later on, they moved to the country and we'd visit them for days on end during the school holidays. Crucially, they bought a ping pong table, which meant hour after hour of tournaments with my little brother, who would generally beat me, leading me to try and modify the rules of the sport in my favour.

Once she and my grandfather bought my brother a rocket kit for Christmas, but the first time we tried it, the rocket went incredibly high up in the air and landed so far away that we never found it again. But she just laughed, because she too was a Cool Grandma.

My grandmothers always came to our school plays, even the one where I had a walk-on role for 30 seconds, at the end of which I fell flat on my face while trying to climb a staircase. They were always there for my brother, my cousins and me, and their constant babysitting efforts must have helped my parents enormously.

So if you want to argue that a grandmother has what it takes to run the free world as Commander-In-Chief, then that makes all kinds of sense to me. Both my grandmothers were educators, and I'm sure they would have been more than comfortable staring down a four-star general in the Situation Room.

A number of commentators have pointed to Hillary Clinton's adoption of the grandmother label as a way of embracing a degree of relatability, even folksiness, that wasn't there last time she ran. Her life is nothing like ordinary Americans', and hasn't been since way back in 1979 when she became First Lady of Arkansas at the age of 31. And there's nothing wrong with that – surely her vast experience is part of her pitch to voters. But it's important to at least appear to be one of the people, as George W Bush did so successfully, even if objectively, a President's kid who went to Yale was about as 1% as you could get.

In other words, becoming a grandmother is making Hillary seem cooler. Perhaps this new, friendlier identity will make undecided voters warm to her. Maybe she'll convince middle America that grandmothers even know best when it comes to the State Department's email policies and Benghazi?

There's a good chance that Hillary Clinton will make history at the end of next year. But as she tries to woo the American people, we should ask not what Hillary can do for grandmothers. Rather, it seems that the collective awesomeness of the world's grandmothers might make all the difference for Hillary in 2016.

Charlotte Elizabeth Diana: what’s in a Royal Name?

Congratulations to his current Royal Highness and future Britannic Majesty William, Duke of Cambridge, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, Baron Carrickfergus, and future king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, the fifth of his name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, on the birth of his daughter!

And of course congratulations also to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, who seems to have handled matters ever so well for a commoner. She is now Mother of Heir and Spare, having admirably prolonged the House of Windsor into yet another generation, unlike newfangled dynasties like the House of Cards, which sank into mediocrity in only its third year.

Especial congratulations too to the family on the choice of the child’s name, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana of Cambridge. It’s a fine choice, full of heraldic significance. A name befitting a princess, really, which is lucky, because unlike your computer-animated Disney versions, this is an actual, proper princess, with access to castles and everything.

Those of you who are not long-term royal watchers, and, some have suggested, trusted confidants of the royal family – although of course I would never be so uncouth as to confirm that – may not understand the full significance of the three names, so let me enlighten you.

Charlotte

Principally, of course, Charlotte refers to a dessert, popular in the very finest of English stately homes such as Downton Abbey. It includes trifle, which symbolises the trifling matters which will regrettably distract any young royal throughout much of her life, and custard, because this is a British princess who will inexplicably love the stuff.

Charlotte is also a city in North Carolina famous for its basketball team, the Hornets. Could William have chosen such symbolism as a rebuke of those buzzing irritants in the press whose sting his family has felt many times before?

Famous Charlottes who may have inspired the name of the little princess include the professional wrestler Charlotte the Southern Belle, Charlotte the Spider and of course Charlotte McLeod from McLeod’s Daughters.

While my sources indicate these are the principal reasons, or rather the princessipal reasons, for the choice of name, Charlotte is also named after Prince Charles. The family will be hoping that she merely derives her name, and not her ears, from the heir to the throne.

Elizabeth

My exclusive sources tell me that Elizabeth is a feminine given name derived from the Greek Ελισάβετ, which is a form of the Hebrew name Elisheva (אֱלִישֶׁבַע), meaning "My God is an oath". The name remains popular with the royal family despite its sweariness.

While on one level the name is derived from Elizabeth II, the baby's great-grandmother, it's my understanding that the primary reason for the choice of name is the Royal couple's hope that their daughter will be a Betty, as opposed to a Veronica. In other words, one need not act like a total princess merely because one is born one.

Elizabeths are often known for being the most admirable members of their family, such as Elizabeth Olsen. This is in no way intended as a slight on Princess Margaret, but let’s just say that her face was never on the coins, was it?

Other well-known Elizabeths include Elizabeth I, who famously never married, and Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who famously did.

Diana

Finally, there is Diana, who is of course the Roman goddess of the hunt, reflecting the Royal family’s centuries-old devotion to exterminating grouse. She is also associated with the moon, reflecting the traditionally round faces of the royal family, currently well illustrated by her brother George.

It’s also likely that Diana refers to Diana Prince, the secret identity of Wonder Woman. This little princess will certainly need to be a Wonder Woman to put up with the endless scrutiny from the army of dronebots that are tipped to replace paparazzi by 2018!

Of course young Princess Charlotte’s grandmother was Diana, Princess of Wales, but this is probably a coincidence, as it would be a lot of pressure to put on the little girl, given her rampant popularity and ‘People’s Princess’ title. Prince Charles should be a great deal easier to live up to, as long as little Charlotte likes watercolours and writing letters.

Charlotte Elizabeth Diana

Some have asked why all three of the royal baby’s names have arguably been derived from William’s immediate relatives, and none of the Middletons. I hope I have amply demonstrated that there is more to the names than just William’s two parents and the Queen, but if not, then let’s not forget that the Middletons should consider themselves lucky just to be there.

Finally, because no detail is too trivial for a veteran royal-watcher to analyse, consider the poignant order of the names. Many sources have suggested that it was the Queen who ultimately asked Charles and Diana to divorce. And indeed, Elizabeth is there in the princess’ name, keeping Charles/otte and Diana apart all over again.

I’m sure you will agree that the Cambridges have chosen the best possible name for their new daughter. Let’s not forget, though, that the younger sibling of the monarch is only really required to muck about having a good time, like Margaret, Andrew and of course Harry. If George ascends the throne and reproduces, Charlotte will have fulfilled her Royal purpose as long as her inevitable scandals are relatively minor, and she doesn’t try to bring back It’s A Royal Knockout.

I was a high school debating geek

In my youth, I was not the flabby, docile creature you see in the little photo atop this page. I was a warrior. I trained at least once a week, often more, and went into battle each weekend to defend what was right. I would dispatch my enemies with scornful panache, and sometimes facts gleaned from The Economist. For I was a high school debater.

A flabby, docile debater, admittedly.

Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen, here's how it went down. On Fridays, I donned my foppish debating tie, which boasted purple and white stripes for reasons I'm still unable to comprehend, and hung around for hours after school, supposedly reading up on current affairs but in fact tackling the all-you-can-eat record at the local Pizza Hut.

Then, as night fell, we would either drive off to another fancy school or welcome them to our fancy school, so the Games, or at least the Talking, could Begin.

It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but in hindsight, debating seems a bizarre pastime. One team speaks in favour of a proposition, and the other against. For example (because debaters always need examples): "That terrorism should be a capital crime". Each team has three speakers who take turns trying to convince the audience that their side is right, and their opponent's is wrong. It's supposed to be how parliament would be if it were a place for genuine pro-and-con debate instead of the high farce that is Question Time.

Debaters like to think of their pastime as a forum for rhetorical skill and engagement with the marketplace of ideas, except that this kind of pure argumentation is generally miles removed from what happens in high school debating. Instead of arguing about the facts or morality, which tends to be beyond 14-year-old debaters, we argued about the definition.

The affirmative team usually twists the terms of a debate to stake out the indisputable high moral ground for themselves, so in this case they might define "terrorism" to refer only to instances where dozens of innocent victims have been killed, or they might be really irritating and argue that terrorism overwhelmingly affects capital cities.

Rather than arguing the opposite to what the affirmative argued like they're meant to, the negative team tends to make the exact same indisputable arguments that we heard from the affirmative, like "killing innocent civilians is bad", except they claim that the arguments belong to their side. So the teams will argue about what they're supposed to be debating, instead of debating it.

Then, after six tedious speeches with minimal interaction between them, some self-important ex-debater undergrad will get up to adjudicate. They'll make a few snarky criticisms to prove that they're way better at this debating lark than schoolkids far younger than them, and arbitrarily award the debate to whichever school their uni mates went to.

Only then does the real debate begin: the debate over which team should have won. The losing team's coach and parents will harass the adjudicator to try and convince them that they got it wrong, even though nobody has ever reversed a decision.

The adjudicator will often employ snooty phrases like "Back when I was in the state schools' debating team" and "Accepted practice in international debating", while yielding no ground, and the fight will continue over the little quarter-cut white-bread tuna sandwiches that are the standard debating meal, washed down by bitter, watery urn coffee. Occasionally, the losing team will stick up a Scotch Finger at the adjudicator.

The theory is that debating teaches kids to think logically, to see both sides of an argument, and to analyse the flaws in opposing cases. But it seems perverse for such a valuable intellectual exercise to be conducted as a competitive sport, because what it instead teaches you is to always think that you won.

I did debating every year at high school. It seemed very important at the time, and I desperately wanted to be better at it than I actually was. Like many things that seemed important during my protracted adolescence, I thought it was a proxy for intelligence, and to a thoroughly stupid degree, I wanted to be considered intelligent.

Especially by girls, of course. My schooldays were almost entirely free of any contact with the opposite sex, but sometimes we got to debate against those mysterious creatures in drab uniforms, which was a huge thrill. Why we thought bright, outspoken women would be attracted to arrogant little brats who were trying our utmost to ridicule them in front of an audience, I don't entirely know. I do know, though, that at least in my case, they weren't.

The teams with better arguing and speaking skills generally win, not the team on the inherently stronger side of the argument - which is troubling when you consider that we use a debating-like adversarial system in our courts to arrive at the truth. School debating tries hard not to conclude any kind of truth, but instead to reward whichever team argues best. How can we possibly be sure that in our courtrooms, the most high-paid, experienced advocates aren't the ones which prevail? How do we guarantee that a rhetorically nimble QC won't out-argue a less experienced lawyer who just so happens to be right? If you watch enough debating, you'll be convinced that being right is of very little importance when it comes to trying to convince an audience.

In hindsight, my biggest problem with debating is the kind of person I was trying to become when I was into it. I genuinely believed that my team won just about every single debate - and that we deserved to, because we were smarter and better. So adjudicators who gave a debate against us were stupid, or biased. Unlike sport, where it's hard to blame the umpire for 100% of the decision when your opponents have clean-bowled most of your batsmen (the usual situation during my brief cricket career), in debating you can always blame the adjudicator, and we did.

Given that, you won't be astonished to learn that the Venn diagrams of "debating geeks" and "arrogant gits" overlap significantly. It was common in my schooldays to begin a third speech (the final pair of speeches is mostly devoted to rebuttal rather than substantive argument) by saying something like "Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen, the negative's case today has sixteen fundamental flaws", and then list them. Impressive and effective as a debating technique, perhaps, but try it in any other social context and everybody will just hate you.

Although if you're good at producing scathing lists, you might get a job at Buzzfeed.

What I've come to appreciate in my post-debating life is the uncertainty and complexity of most real-world problems - which are the two things that debaters are trained to gloss over. And I certainly don't want to be the kind of person who believes that whatever opinion I happen to hold is the right one, and that the people who disagree with me are stupid or biased. Even though I probably still do far too much of the time.

Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen, I had to learn to grow out of high school debating. To doubt myself and listen to the quieter, less certain voices, instead of the boldest and brashest. And I'm still far from certain whether I should have been so desperate to be good at debating.

Thirsty for a 'Straya less obsessed with booze

Controversy has always come to Shane Warne as effortlessly as that cheeky grin and those huge leg breaks. Last night, the genius spinner who can get himself into trouble with nothing more than a mobile phone and his own legendary libido managed to cast an idiosyncratic shadow over the moment when his former teammates won their first-ever home World Cup.

Mark Taylor often does the on-field interviews on Nine's Wide World of Sports, and tends, boringly, to ask his fellow cricketers about the game. Not our Warnie. All he wants is to ascertain their level of thirst.

And we aren't talking about thirst as a metaphor for desire to win. We're talking about the consumption of liquid, and not the sort that gets brought onto the ground on a little cart shaped like a giant bottle. At Warnie's journalism academy, all that matters is the likelihood of a cricketer smashing a Boonyesque number of tinnies to celebrate.

Just as he once used to keep probing at batsmen, tempting them to sweep a flipper that instead crashed into their pad, Warnie kept coming back to his signature question. "You gonna get thirsty tonight, Smithy?" he asked Steve Smith, who had just become the first batsman to score a half-century in a World Cup quarter-final, semi and final. And he wouldn't even wait for an answer, continuing with "The boys are thirsty, they seem."

Of course, "Smithy" agreed, despite looking somewhat taken aback. Darn right he was thirsty! Somebody get the man a drink! And not a mineral water!

"What's the plan, besides lotsa drinkin'," Warne asked Watson, teasing his global audience with the suggestion that he was asking him about a topic besides his pending obliteration. But no. "How long's that gonna last, one night, two nights; we saw Darren Lehmann say it might last a week. Reckon it'll go longer than that?"

Watto's reply: "What do you reckon?"

Ha! I reckon you're thirsty, Watto!

Geoff Lemon wrote recently about how banal cricket commentary has become in Richie Benaud's absence, descending into locker-room talk that's "all about being the matiest mates who ever mated". And the sheer dullness of Warnie's boozy chats is the most obvious problem with them, alongside the rather depressing spectacle of a guy who's too old to play desperately wanting still to be one of the boys.

I doubt anyone would bet against the prospect that even as you read this, our Shane is still celebrating right alongside the team captained by his best mate, pushing them to go hard right when they just want to get to sleep.

But beer's relationship with the Australian cricket team goes much deeper than boofy, blokey banter after a famous victory. At the ground, fans churn through schooners themselves and turn their plastic cups into enormous "beer snakes" that writhe around the outer recesses of the ground, just as many of those same spectators will writhe around on the ground later in the night.

And the Australians who held the trophy aloft at the MCG last night had a beer logo on their sleeves. Theamber fluid has long been one of the major sponsors of Cricket Australia, whose curiously unhealthy approach to revenue generation has also led them to associate themselves with fried chicken, sugar water and gambling.

In this cosy relationship, Shane Warne symbolises more than just a larrikin with a mike in his hand. He's so closely associated with beer that the game's sponsor once gave away talking Warnie dolls, and sent a huge statue of him to tour around the Ashes grounds.

Boonie and Warnie are the perfect pitchmen to Aussie blokes who reckon they're still in their prime even though their bulging guts say otherwise.

That's because, like Boonie, Warne is that rare sportsman who seems to be able to both succeed and drink. David Boon's big belly only somehow made him more indomitable, and Warnie only ever needed to be fit enough to take a few skipping steps up to the stumps. They're the perfect pitchmen to Aussie blokes who reckon they're still in their prime even though their bulging guts say otherwise.

Like drinking itself, this sort of blokey bravado is all in good fun until it isn't. And while cricketers are involved in fewer alcohol-related dramas than footy players, there are still plenty of problems in the "gentleman's game". Have we really forgotten Andrew Symonds, who helped win previous World Cups but was ultimately axed from the game for binge-drinking? I wonder what he thought, watching his former teammate's antics last night. Even the great Ricky Ponting got into hot water early in his career while out boozing.

But I don't want to be too critical of Warnie, because then I'd violate the Aussie code of being a good bloke.

As Warne himself Tweeted:

Ah, Warnie. Legend. Top bloke. Etc.

The tendency of Aussie blokes to make everything about beer is becoming embarrassing. And it's not just cricketers - even a former Prime Minister happily smashed a schooey at the SCG a few summers ago. (Bob Hawke, obviously.) That video's already got 1.3 million views on YouTube, because of course it does.

By contrast, I find it hard to believe that our current generation of cricketers isn't too fit and professional to make boozing a regular part of their ritual. Michael Clarke looks like the kind of guy who does Pilates, and in a nation whose waistlines are becoming dangerously stretched, we should surely be admiring him for it.

Of course there's nothing wrong with a few beers to celebrate, especially after a World Cup that's dragged on for months. But it should be done privately and subtly, in a way that doesn't encourage people to emulate their sporting heroes. It certainly shouldn't be glorified in front of an audience of billions the way it was last night.

We've seen that when cricketers put their mind to it, they can be fabulous role models - look at how they've embraced the McGrath Foundation, to the extent that they wear pink for a day each year. Pink! Like girls!

So why can't the same maturity be extended to their approach to alcohol? Why can't our sporting triumphs just be about the triumph, instead of the drinking that follows?

Or does that make me a bad bloke, Warnie? A politically correct killjoy? Sorry, mate. I'll buy you a few beers sometime, eh? #Thirsty!

Why I'm a fan of Game of Thrones, and not fantasy

I always hated He-Man. An action figure that time has largely forgotten, he – sorry – ‘He’ was the lord of Castle Grayskull, and spent the 1980s battling Skeletor, whom he always defeated, and irrelevancy, which ultimately vanquished him.

The other boys in my primary school collected He-Man much as they collected head-lice, but I always despised his page-boy blonde haircut and bulging muscles. His appearance would have reminded me of Clive James’ famous description of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a ‘condom full of walnuts’ if I’d known what a condom was at the age of eight.

I mention He-Man not just to pat myself on the back for rejecting plasticised machismo early in life, but because that’s where my lifelong antipathy towards fantasy literature began. While many of my sweaty teenage boy classmates spent their lunch hours swapping Magic: The Gathering cards and rolling AD&D dice with an unfeasibly large number of sides, I was never interested.

I dutifully ploughed through Lord of the Rings, but couldn’t stand the parts where Tolkien goes on about obscure Elvish genealogy and Tom Bombadil – in other words, 85% of it. My anti-fantasy bias was so great that it even deprived me of Terry Pratchett for many years, which I acknowledge this was a mistake, not least because he spends a lot of his time mocking the genre.

I’ve always suspected that the thicker the book, the less point there is in reading it. I reckon The Great Gatsby says far more in 47,000 words than most fantasy authors’ lifetime output of books thicker than phone directories. Which is why I can’t understand my all-consuming love for Game of Thrones, and the series it’s based on, George RR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire.

I mean, come on – the very title reeks of black Doctor Who t-shirts drenched in adolescent boy-sweat, doesn’t it? And yet, it’s excellent.

It took me a while to get on board. A friend who shares my bias had to tell me over and over again that no, I really would enjoy it; yes, even though there’s magic, swordfighting and dragons. And it took an episode or two before I realised that there was more going on than yet another tedious battle between the goodies and the baddies that’s inevitably won by the Chosen One.

At first it seems to be the story of a good family, the Starks, that takes on a bad family, the Lannisters. But then we discover that some members of the supposedly bad family are both noble and witty, and that the other family has Issues, and then more families are added into the mix until it’s no longer clear which side you want to win, and the reader begins wondering whether power itself is worth the effort and risk.

By the second-last episode of the first season, I was hooked. That episode ends with one of the unexpected deaths that has become the series' trademark. I won't say who dies to avoid spoiling the surprise, and besides, anyone who's seen it will be unable to forget. But after the series was over, I was so desperate to find out what happened next in Westeros that – gasp – I started reading the books.

Which proved extremely entertaining, to my relief. Martin ends each chapter with a cliffhanger, which keeps you reading just one more chapter until it’s 3am and – come on, seriously, why is Dany dealing with yet another dull slave city instead of heading over to Westeros and fulfilling her destiny?

Yes, I said ‘destiny’, like a proper fantasy fan, and I’m fine with that, because Martin’s series is ultimately about reality. Even though the very first scene involves terrifying blue-eyed ice zombies, and one of the characters’ hobbies is raising dragons, Martin’s novels are all about examining human nature in a feudal, magic-infused society.

There are competing conceptions of duty – to one’s country, or one’s family, or the abstract idea of what’s right. There’s betrayal, duplicity and religious faith – and at least two of the religions really seem to work, curiously. Whereas in Tolkien the noble side inevitably triumphs, yawn, in the world of Game of Thrones, principles can be a fatal inconvenience. Despite being an unreal world, Westeros is full of realpolitik.

Our society contains very few pure-evil Sauron and Voldemort types, as much as Vladimir Putin seems to be trying. And Martin’s books feature a series of uncanny comparisons with contemporary politics, as advisors attempt to manipulate the situation to their own advantage and multiple leadership challengers emerge. The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros gets caught in a ‘debt and deficit disaster’, and Tyrion Lannister finds an innovative means of stopping the boats that might well give our own government ideas. It’s like an episode of Insiders where Piers Akerman and David Marr fight to the death.

Most fantasy stories focus on a few big players, following the ‘great man’ theory of international relations where you can just look at the Gandalfs and Aragorns. But Martin insists on showing us what he calls the ‘smallfolk’, the ordinary peasants who keep getting pressed into fighting wars with which they have no connection, or being randomly slaughtered by invading armies.

This sensitivity to the fate of ordinary people gives the reader a sense of the constant nightmare that protracted conflicts like the Hundred Years’ War and Iran-Iraq War, must have been for ordinary people who don’t care who’s in power, and just want the fighting to stop so they can tend their meagre crops.

Of course, Game of Thrones is also famous for its sex scenes – and while the constant nudefest is perhaps a factor in its record ratings, the plot elements, at least, are an essential part of the series' examination of power. In the powerful families, marriage is about diplomacy rather than romance. Desire is a powerful motivating factor, and the society's rigid moral rules are regularly broken by powerful warlords, exactly as they are in our own society by NRL players.

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are a world whose moral complexity and ambiguity approaches our own. The story George RR Martin has constructed is so intricate and nuanced that I’ve no idea how he’s going to tie all the threads together. (He may not either, which might explain the delays to the next volume, The Winds of Winter.) Martin says that the ending will ultimately be bittersweet, and in that sense, it will no doubt resemble real life yet again, like the bittersweetness of wanting to watch Game of Thrones legally, but it’s only available on Foxtel.

Martin has given us our world as it must have been lived in the feudal era, with the addition of dragons and ice zombies. Which is why while I’m still not a fan of fantasy, I’m definitely a fan of Game of Thrones.

We should care more about state politics

Wait, don’t stop reading! Let’s forget I said “state politics”, and instead said “delicious snacks”

We treat state politicians vendors of delicious snacks as though they were mediocre players in an amateur theatre production – the Woop Woop Players doing A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Legislative Assembly, or, given the penchant for bloodshed in politics today, perhaps Hackbeth.

And fair enough, too – in recent years, when they’ve made the news, it's usually because of some scandal that made state pollies seem dodgy, or hopeless, or in many cases, hopeless at being dodgy.

In many cases, the chaotic nature of state politics would be hilarious if we weren’t paying them quite so much, and if there weren’t quite so many important things they should be doing. Like baking more delicious snacks, am I right?

Because as off-Broadway as they can seem, state parliaments decide many of the policies that affect our everyday lives, and our families'. State parliaments are the ones who run our hospitals and schools. They’re in charge of the police forces that are supposed to keep us safe, and they run the transport systems and most of the roads that get us around. They’re supposed to protect our environment, and ensure that regional areas aren’t left behind in our highly urbanised country.

What's more, they're the ones charged with shaping our cities – with preserving its heritage and encouraging innovative development. State governments built the Harbour Bridge and the MCG. And they're the ones who sometimes flatten beautiful old buildings in the dead of night.

And in this asthmatic’s favourite piece of legislation set to take effect this year, they're the ones banning smoking in outdoor dining areas, which will take the cough right out of my morning coffee.

What’s more, as the operators of TAFEs, they’re the ones directly responsible for training the chefs who make us delicious snacks. See, there really is a link!

Besides, the politicians who inhabit state parliaments probably have more in common with you than their federal counterparts. For starters, like more than 22 million Australians, they haven’t much interest in living in Canberra.

There’s an election on in NSW in a few weeks, but living here, you’d barely know it. There’s minimal news coverage, and even the advertising blitz seems half-hearted. Over the past few weeks, we’ve spent paid far more attention to the contest between the white-gold and blue-brown dress tribes than thinking about which major party we’d like to govern.

The Premier, Mike Baird, is apparently to be coasting towards a comfortable victory, largely because there hasn’t been a major scandal in his term so far, an intriguingly novel approach to NSW politics.

He’s aided by the fact that his opponent, Luke Foley, has only been in the job since early January. Foley has spent most of that time pitching to an electorate who’s at the beach, or wants to be. It’s a task made harder not only by NSW Labor leaving office with a reputation roughly equivalent to Enron's, but by the fact that, as he is “acutely aware”, virtually nobody knows who he is.

That wouldn’t be possible in federal politics. Bill Shorten’s only been Opposition Leader for a year and a half, but almost everyone in Australia already knew his name when he won the position – his prominent role in the Rudd/Gillard spills certainly boosted his name recognition.

Ironically, while we don’t care about state politics, those constant spills have meant that federal politics is consuming us like never before, courtesy of our relentless news cycle, augmented by social media and cable news. A Canberra coup is Christmas for political junkies, although it’s not turkeys that are slaughtered so much as prime ministers.

Last month the media dropped everything and hotfooted it to the lawn outside parliament house for yet another potential spill. All the breakfast programmes duly set up their cameras to cover the big story, and the excitement was palpable. Even after the challenge burnt out, the leaks and speculation continued for days.

State politics has delivered just as much drama in the past few years, with spills of its own and dramatic election results like we saw in Queensland. The NT even had that bizarre moment where the Chief Minister refused to be sacked, and battled on. And yet we still pay minimal attention beyond election day.

State politics is never going to seem as important as the tier of government that conducts diplomacy and sends our military into battle. But we should check up on our second-tier pollies more frequently than the hour or two it takes us to vote every few years. Every commuter stuck in traffic or on an overcrowded train, everyone with a kid in school, and everyone who might wind up in a public hospital (that is to say, all of us) should realise that their state government is the one with the power to make those things better, and get engaged in the process instead of merely delivering a shock on election night.

I’m not suggesting we care as much about state politics as the things that really fascinate us, like intriguing two-tone dresses and those snacks. I just wonder whether we mightn’t get more from our state governments if we paid them a little bit of attention now and then.

The mere competence of Guy Sebastian

When the decision was announced this morning, it had the daggy inevitability of a zinger at a Bill Shorten press conference. Inexplicably ignoring my helpful list of suggestions for an interesting, unexpected option like Prince Philip, SBS has opted for Guy Sebastian as our Eurovision representative.

Well, of course they did. They had only a few weeks to decide, which didn’t allow them enough time to conduct the traditional selection process, so instead they chose somebody who had already been anointed by an excruciatingly drawn-out reality TV talent contest, as they did last year when Jessica Mauboy performed at the semi-final. Jess’n’Guy are both pleasant people who are household names, which means that everyone’s mum knows who they are, even if they couldn’t name a song.

Guy Sebastian ticks all the boxes, if you're the kind of person who likes making decisions by ticking boxes instead of coming up with an idea that gets everyone excited. I presume that the decision was made by a large committee piling into the SBS boardroom and throwing around ideas, until all the interesting suggestions got vetoed and they arrived on a consensus that the management team would sign off on.

I can’t imagine that anyone in the room had a burning desire to showcase the music of Guy Sebastian to the world, but nor can I imagine that anybody objected to him. Because you really can’t. Objecting to Guy Sebastian is like objecting to the offer of a nice cup of tea.

Not only is Sebastian so blandly pleasant that he makes Kylie seem a racy alternative, but his talent is absolutely unquestionable. I was looking around for some recent tracks, and found this incredible video of his song ‘Linger’, where he sings along with a few stripped-back loops. There is no question that he’ll nail the song. That’s what he does.

Or at least nail it musically. Because Eurovision is a television event, which means that there are supposed to be pretty images to go with the pretty sounds. Or, more often than not, bizarre, kitsch images to go along with the bizarre, kitsch music. That, surely, is why we watch in droves. (Please tell me it is, because otherwise, I may have completely misjudged my fellow Australians.)

If raw talent is a factor, Guy will do very well, but Eurovision voters tend to like spectacle and quirkiness. (Don’t they, Mr Lordi?) And I really can’t imagine Guy Sebastian coming up with an especially compelling visual presentation. He won’t be accompanied by an army of babushkas, or semi-clad himbos in outfits that reinterpret their centuries-old national dress through the timeless medium of Lycra. He’ll probably just have a few other highly talented musos alongside him, perhaps in black t-shirts, sitting on stools. At the end, Guy will blow the roof off with the spectacular vocal climax of a well-crafted song that practically nobody will be humming the following morning.

And in that sense, Guy Sebastian might just be the least appropriate person we could have chosen, especially given the humorous nature of Australia’s affection for Eurovision. He is zero percent kitsch, and about as ironic as a branch meeting of the Australian Greens. Put it this way – each year, most of the Eurovision songs are barnstorming dance tracks that are on high rotation at my gym the following week. Whereas the only time Guy Sebastian features in a gym is to pump weights himself.

The gulf between Guy and the spirit of Eurovision is especially apparent when you recall last year’s winner, Conchita Wurst, whose very appearance in a beard and a dress was inherently interesting. Even Britain's peculiar idea of nominating Engelbert Humperdinck in 2012 was a more interesting idea than choosing Guy Sebastian, even though the results are likely to be considerably more pleasant for the ears.

Perhaps the idea is not to overplay our hand? Perhaps we are aiming to be like a dinner guest who goes out of their way not to upstage the hosts, in the hope of being invited back? If being as inoffensively pleasant as possible is the goal, sending Guy will be a diplomatic triumph.

We might have chosen an exciting young talent (and sorry, because I’m 38, I’m far too old to suggest anyone – ask these guys). We might have chosen Sia, who would have come up with an exceptional pop song, staged in some fascinatingly original, faceless way. Or we might have chosen Gurrumul, who might have thrilled the world with little more than an acoustic guitar and his extraordinary voice.

Instead, we chose Guy, and he’ll do a fine job. Nobody can’t say he won’t, even if they’re admitting it through gritted teeth. I just wish that in keeping with the jamboree of quirky kitsch that is Eurovision, we’d chosen someone a little more likely to be spectacular. Nevertheless, like a courtesy invitation to your wacky Austrian neighbour's Oktoberfest party, it’ll be fun, and somewhat surreal, just to be there.

Of strangers and dogs

Nowadays, people often smile at me when I’m walking down the street. I make an effort to smile back, naturally, because I assume they’re readers, awestruck by the shock of seeing someone they admire so much on the street right in front of them. Or maybe they’re trying to play it cool, and subtly acknowledge that they definitely know who I am even though they don’t want to make a fuss. That’s fine. They know, and I know, and a smile is enough.

Occasionally they’ll say something like “So cute”, which is totally unnecessary, but, hey, that’s their opinion, and of course I’m flattered.

Recently, though, I’ve started to realise that these random expressions of admiration tend to happen only at certain times, and are immediately followed by an admiring look downwards. And while I have excellent taste in footwear, I have to acknowledge that it’s not me. It’s the dog.

The dog is an Australian terrier so ridiculously cute that it’s a wonder he hasn’t been signed for commercials in which he bats his adorable eyes at the camera while promoting mortgages or kibble or something – incidentally, his rates are reasonable, please contact me if interested.

Note: the actual dog in question is far cuter

Since I’ve come to accept that the dog is far more interesting to random pedestrians than I am, I’ve discovered that dog lovers have negotiated completely different social rules to those accepted in regular human society. They’re more than happy to bowl up to you, or burst out in conversation, simply because you happen to be walking a dog. It’s as though I automatically welcome the interactions because I operate a charity dedicated to brightening up people’s days by creating random moments of canine adorableness on the streets of Sydney.

There I am, walking along, minding my own business – and the dog’s in whichever park he sees fit to deposit it – and complete strangers will just begin cooing at me. What’s stranger still is when people simply assume they’re fine to touch him without asking. They’ll swoop down like an opportunistic seagull for a head pat, without wondering for a moment whether he is up for it.

Presumably most dogs are, but this dog is a rescue. Unfortunately, he’s learnt that he can’t always trust humans, because even his boundless adorableness was not sufficient to protect him from horrible mistreatment by a previous owner – which is why if you’re interested in a dog of your own, incidentally, I’d urge you to contact your local shelter because there are lots more like him out there.

When you’ve had the life experiences that the dog has had, you don’t take kindly to sudden movements from strange humans, and I think he shows a great deal of restraint not to nip their hands and teach them a little lesson about respecting his personal space.

Being caressed on the street by a complete stranger would be considered grounds to summon the police for a human,but among dog lovers, it’s perfectly acceptable. I find it odd, but presumably most people who walk dogs love nothing more than someone they haven’t met interrupting them to lavish praise and pats upon their hounds.

The other time when random strangers feel free to interrupt me, of course, is when I’m wandering around with a child. Strap on a Baby Bjorn, put an infant in it, and suddenly everybody wants to have a chat, or perhaps toustle its hair. If there are any politicians in the vicinity, there’s even a clear and present danger that they’ll kiss the poor defenceless child.

This is especially strange when the child is not your own, because everyone will immediately assume that they are, which forces me either to say nothing and falsely take credit for the parenthood I’ve so far failed to achieve, or issue a series of clumsy clarifications. These become all the more awkward when the person you’re talking to is female, because there’s a tendency for the disclaimer to seem like a horrible come-on – “Actually, madam, I’m the child’s uncle, which as it happens, means that I’m totally in the market for reproduction, should that be of interest.” In my experience, these moments are only slightly less awkward than when you’re out with a female friend and her child, and everyone from waiters to passers by assume you’re the father.

I especially notice these unsought interactions with strangers because when I’m walking along a street, it’s extremely rare for anyone to interact with me in any way at all. Practically the only time a stranger will ever say anything to me is when I’ve been too busy tweeting or something and nearly knocked them over, and fair enough, too.

But I’ve come to realise nowadays that this experience of wandering around without interruption is not universal. As a white, relatively hefty man, I’m permitted to float around in a bubble of self-absorption, but as that recent video revealed, the situation can be quite different for women, as many men feel at liberty to pass constant judgement on their appearance. The same experiment was repeated recently by an orthodox Jewish man in Paris, with similarly dispiriting results.

It seems to me that at the very least, we need to be consistent. Either we treat everybody with the same pronounced indifference that I enjoy when I walk through the streets, or we decide that everyone should be available for random conversation, all the time. But if you’re one of those people who finds cities unfriendly, and wish people would stop you in the street to say ‘G’day’ the way they apparently do in country towns (something I’m yet to experience, but perhaps that’s just me), then my advice is to get a dog.

Not only are they humans’ best friends, as advertised, but you’ll soon find that you have an endless supply of unwanted new friends, too.

Some real vision for Australia's Eurovision

As of today, Tony Abbott has a fresh global accomplishment to chalk up alongside his three free trade agreements and whatever is happening with those submarines.

This year, Australia will be allowed to compete in Eurovision in honour of the song contest's 60th anniversary - despite the country being thousands of kilometres away from Europe, and further away still in terms of musical taste.

We are the only ones being so honoured, presumably in reflection of the great loyalty we have displayed by watching in large numbers each year. I can only imagine the Eurovision organisers don't realise that 97 per cent of viewers watch for the purpose of sniggering at the many inadvertently hilarious entries. After all, Europe may be the cradle of Western civilisation, but it is also the cradle of pop music so heinous that it only gets played in gyms in order to encourage people on treadmills to run away as quickly as possible.

I have always imagined we watched so avidly because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Even our immense cultural cringe cannot help but be diminished whenever we observe bodysuited Bulgarian peasants twerking with a giant pink tractor.

So, Eurovision is precious to us here in Australia, and it's deeply flattering for our nation to be invited to compete. It's kind of like getting invited to Kim and Kanye's wedding - a massive honour, even though you'll be sniggering up the back all night.

Nevertheless, there is a flaw in the plan, a flaw as self-evident as the need for the Francophone countries to give up on delivering their Eurovision scores in French, because it's starting to look le petulant.

If Australia competes in Eurovision this year, we, as the nation that gave the world not only Kylie but also Jason, will obviously win. When we do, we will gain the right to host next year's song contest at Melbourne's Federation Square (I was going to suggest the Sydney Opera House, but SBS is based at Fed Square, and somehow its fractured puce architecture seems more appropriately Eurokitsch).

So it won't just be the one time that we'll be competing, will it? In fact, by chalking up win after win, our involvement could continue in perpetuity.

So, in anticipation of our inevitable victory, the only thing that remains for us to decide is who will represent Australia. While once this would of course have been determined by captain's pick, we are a more consultative and collegiate nation in this new era of good government. So unless the Australia Day council decides, I assume the singer will be determined by some kind of excruciating national pageant.

In the hope of influencing that, I offer the following suggestions.

John Farnham

In recent years, veteran artists have appeared at Eurovision in increasing numbers, so who better than our very own Engelbert Humperdinck? There's also a chance of a reverse transportation-type deal that would see him permanently returned to the UK.

Lorde

She is from New Zealand, but so were the Finn brothers, and that didn't stop us from claiming them since forever. (Note that if she is unavailable, Russell Crowe is not an appropriate Kiwi muso replacement.)

Chet Faker

The immensely talented Hottest 100 winner could sample all the other entries, and somehow fuse them into something listenable.

Angry Anderson

The Rose Tattoo frontman was unable to win a seat in the last federal election, so this would be another way for him to represent the Australian people. He could delight and baffle Europe with 'Suddenly'. What better anthem for Eurovision than the song that played as Scott and Charlene walked down the aisle on Neighbours?

Collette

The 'Ring My Bell' singer's suitability for Eurovision can be proven in just one word: Lycra.

Taylor Swift

Will be the contestant if the competition is administered by triple j.

Nick Cave

Eurovision voters are OK with a black sheep entrant offering a darker vibe, having flocked to the terrifying Finnish monster Mr Lordi in 2006. Furthermore, Nick Cave would surely never mean one of his murder ballads more sincerely than when looking out at a room full of Europop singers.

Prince Philip

Russia recently came second with an act featuring six grandmothers, and we can top that with our most prominent great-grandfather. He could sing a Prince cover, or perhaps a song in recognition of two of his many titles, Stevie Wonder's 'Sir Duke'.

Midnight Oil

As committed environmentalists, the Oils have long railed against waste of all kinds. Who better to deliver a passionate indictment against the enormous resources that go into broadcasting Eurovision? The smoke machine emissions alone are surely scandalous.

Jessica Mauboy

She's probably ruled out because she did the Aussie cameo at last year's Eurovision, but she would be really great. Which is another reason why she won't be chosen, because that's just not how Eurovision works.

Sia

This is who should probably do it if we want to guarantee a win. Plus, her tendency to cover up her face may prove influential, improving future Song Contests for years to come.

So, musicians of Australia, sally forth and make our country proud with your brilliance and artistry! Or, if you're not in the mood for that, why not apply to represent us in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest?

Spill averted, but for how long?

Tony Abbott is holding on, but only by his powerful fingers. 61-39 is hardly a hearty affirmation of a prime minister's leadership less than halfway through his first term. As an endorsement, it's about as enthusiastic as Kevin Rudd looked in that notorious 2010 photo shoot with Julia Gillard.

It's important to note that this morning's vote should be adjusted for cabinet solidarity - even Malcolm Turnbull promised that he would vote to oppose the spill. Consequently, the real margin of dissent is likely closer. The PM still has a sword in close proximity to his neck, and it's not about to tap each shoulder and award him a knighthood.

In the short statement he made after the spill motion was defeated, Abbott said: "We want to end the disunity and the uncertainty which destroyed two Labor governments." But as of today, "we" only means 61 per cent. The other 39 per cent were perfectly willing to tip him off his road bike without so much as a declared challenger.

There's a pattern to how these situations tend to play out from here. Unless the polling improves, the rot of dissent will fester and grow as insidiously as One Direction's fanbase, until close to election day, the undecideds figure things couldn't get any worse, and pull the trigger.

In the meantime, the leadership remains a constant distraction, making improvement for the incumbent that much harder. Senior ministers will talk about getting on with the business of governing, as they have been doing already, but everyone else will be talking about the leadership.

Despite the extraordinarily thorough job many senior Labor ministers did of attacking Kevin Rudd in the intervening years, the party room went back to him in the end because they figured shaking things up was a better option than an almost certain loss. One thing today's vote tells us is that Liberal MPs are unlikely to be more gun-shy than their opponents were.

The truly strange thing, of course, is that we are here at all. In September 2013, the one scenario for Abbott that any pundit would surely have ruled out is this one. He might have lost his first election as Prime Minister. He might have fallen victim to some freak cycling accident, or imprudently attempted to smuggle his notorious budgies at Portsea.

But this Prime Minister, of all people, was not supposed to face a backbencher revolt like the ones from which his standing benefited so spectacularly.

And yet, just 17 months after defeating Kevin Rudd, Abbott's numbers are challenging Blake Garvey's position as the least popular man in Australia, and the PM has only been breaking election promises, not bachelorette engagements.

The situation is laden with multiple ironies. Abbott has had trouble with ornery crossbenchers and post-election backflips, much like Julia Gillard. Some colleagues have lost faith because of the excessive centralisation of his office, much like Kevin Rudd. And perhaps most ironically of all, the precipitant of this attempted spill was a burst of the royalist fervour that sparked one of Abbott's greatest triumphs in the 1999 republic referendum.

Now, not only does the PM need to woo the voters, whose dissatisfaction was made abundantly clear in last night's Newspoll, and the crossbenchers, whose diverse whims control the passage of any legislation and at least one of whom has vowed to block every single bill until he gives the military a pay rise - but he needs to win over the dissenters in his party room. The first two challenges were Herculean enough, but the most pressing task for the captain now is to win back his team.

That's not to say he won't be able to do it, of course. Abbott is one of the few politicians in our history who's a fighter literally as well as metaphorically. The shock of today might be enough to prompt a far more comprehensive reversal, as opposed to the minimal tweaks we've seen so far. Surely if the PM doesn't become more consultative and collegiate now, he never will. As a former college boy, you'd imagine he knows how.

If there's one consistent theme at the heart of Abbott's difficulties, it's that despite his years of basking in the glow of John Howard's victories, he's yet to learn how his mentor did it. As prime minister, Howard was as reassuring as donning a Wallabies tracksuit for one's morning stroll, whereas Abbott has left many voters feeling exposed to the elements.

Howard kept his eyes fixed firmly on those voters in places like Western Sydney who weren't traditional Liberal voters, but had grown sufficiently fond of him to keep re-electing him. The former PM made the voters in the centre feel financially secure, and that they had a prosperous future, whereas last year's budget left voters fearful about health care for their families, education for their kids, and pensions for their retirement. Bill Shorten, having remorselessly stuck to the Abbott opposition playbook, has been reminding them of this daily ever since.

It's all very well to worry voters about "debt and deficit disasters" in opposition, but in government, you're supposed to make people feel, as John Howard famously put it, "comfortable and relaxed" about the future.

There is no point delivering for the people who always vote for you if in so doing, you lose the people who don't. That may well mean shelving issues that please the base but worry the centre, like reforming the Racial Discrimination Act. (If Abbott can't rely on the endorsement of the IPA and Andrew Bolt regardless, then there really is no hope for him.) But instead, when the Government seems to be losing one fight, it simply picks another, even to the extent of talking about raising the GST last month.

Abbott has acknowledged the need to "scrape off a few barnacles" and in recent weeks, even dumped his treasured paid parental leave policy, but he has not managed to refocus his platform to appeal to centrist voters' bedrock concerns. The Abbott Government has stopped the boats, and removed the carbon and mining taxes, as promised. But now the electorate has gravitated back to what swinging voters always care most about - their family's future.

His mentor Howard achieved this by doling out generous, non-means tested payments courtesy of the mining boom. The Abbott Government's only freebie thus far has been vouchers for marriage counselling - and they've just been dumped.

Abbott's task is made harder, of course, by the fact that Malcolm Turnbull is instinctively more of a centrist than Abbott. Nevertheless, today the PM bought a bit of time to try to turn things around. Given the vote this morning, surely no colleague could blame Abbott for reshuffling his Cabinet more extensively, and refocusing the Government's priorities on the voters who put him into the Lodge.

In recent weeks, he has proven willing to perform mea culpas and jettison unpopular policies. It may well be time to try that on a much grander scale. If the voters who trusted Abbott in 2013 feel that he once again understands what they want, they may yet save him.

In the meantime, those Liberals who have come to resent the PM's captain's picks will be pondering whether to pick a new captain.