Zero Fucks Given

So I have been reading a lot of Paul Keating quotes in the last few days. Recollections of Bleeding Heart is being reissued in a 10 year anniversary edition on the the 31st of August - which is great, because I've been trying to get a copy of it over the last few months, and it's now going to be much more readily available again. Don Watson is actually speaking at a conference I'm going to for work mid-next month, which I'm very much looking forward to.

As to Keating quotes - there are some absolute corkers; he's someone who not only could shoot from the hip with a wit that could kill, but also knew how to pick his speechwriters - see great selections here and here. This article around the launch of the anniversary edition from Fairfax is well worth a read - one gets the feeling that it's a hard job staying on the good side of the man, he works almost entirely for what he considers an objective good, and sees his job as to destroy anyone that gets in the way, and drag the public along with him for their own wellbeing. Oddly admirable, really, compared to what we see from both sides of politics now.

There are so many key quotes of bald-faced, love of the game, "I will play to win and I will drink from your skull after I remove it from your shoulders" (that's me, not him... he never actually said that... as such - see below) moments over his leadership, and since, that you can't really boil it down to one quote. The Robertson letter is an eloquent example of recent years. And there are some other brilliant ones on Howard both before Howard became PM, and throughout his leadership (particularly as it became clear in 2007 that the guillotine was slowly rising).

But, I think, this has got to be a highpoint of parliamentary honesty from history:

Hewson: I ask the Prime Minister: if you are so confident about your view of Fightback, why will you not call an early election?
Keating: The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm out of this load of rubbish over a number of months. There will be no easy execution for you. You have perpetrated one of the great mischiefs on the Australian public with this thing, trying to rip away our social wage, trying to rip away the Australian values which we built in our society for over a century.

How do you respond to that if you're Hewson?

Anyway, this is all a round about way of saying it inspired me to throw this together. T-shirts, posters anyone?

Update: Perhaps you would like a zero fucks given t-shirt, in either the original, or negative?

Paul Keating Tee by DickheadFrenzy

Paul Keating Tee Negative by DickheadFrenzy

Democracy ahoy on the roundabout stead!

Yes, if you haven't heard it yet, Dr Peter Phelps, a member in the NSW Upper House (and Liberal party whip) argued today in the NSW Parliament that, "Traffic lights are a Bolshevist menace" and "roundabouts represent democracy at their finest", something that Roads Minister Duncan Gay sought to distance himself from, understandably.

Over the weekend, Tony Abbott also got caught in a bit of an Alan Jones trap, agreeing that farmers should have the ultimate right to say no about mining exploration of their land before flying to Perth to address a convention of miners.

Apologies about the lack of colour - I have acquired a magnificent new A3 scanner but in upgrading to Lion a few weeks ago I apparently lost most Wacom functionality. Something which Wacom doesn't seem interested in remedying anytime soon.

Time's up, pencils down...

I can't taste the coffee anymore

Re: Windsor successfully lobbies to have domestic petrol purchases exempted from Carbon price.

Not to be a prat - but exempt forever from a tax, but from the ETS?

Of Royals, Republicans and Relatives, a guest post by Kim Armstrong

My good friend (and old Meating People co-blogger) Kim Armstrong (@kimridesabike) writes:

I’m kind of a hypocrite I suppose. I’m that upsetting, and probably very Gen Y, combination of a staunch republican who loves the royal family.

I like looking at pictures of them in trashy gossip magazines. I’ve devoured movies like The Queen, The King’s Speech, Elizabeth, The Young Victoria – should I go on? Needless to say I watched the Royal Wedding, surrounded as it happens by my English born extended family. I don’t remember how it came up, but as I have a tendency to do at family gatherings, I set a fox among the hens by mentioning that I think Australia should become a republic.

What with all the celebrity spotting, chip and dip eating, and baby admiring going on, I don’t think I presented my best case for Australia that evening, and was significantly undermined by stopping to say “ooh, Posh and Becks do look lovely”, “is it a rule to wear hats?” and most damningly “Prince Harry is definitely my favourite”.

I’d like a do-over. Here are my arguments in favour of an Australian republic, counter-arguments directed at the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ school of thought, along with appropriate disclaimers about how much I respect my family, their views, and our shared English heritage.

Arguments against a republic:

1. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.
   
   Well, I think it IS broken. I don’t mean to say that the royal family are actively damaging the country, but I do think the idea of a family having the power to dismantle the government not only in their own country, but in mine, disturbing. Would they ever do it? Maybe not. But we update archaic laws all the time for our own peace of mind and to improve our system of government. Our currency wasn’t broken, but we changed it because it needed an update for a variety of reasons. This isn’t so different.
   
   
2. It will be expensive.
   
   There are many things worth doing that are expensive, that’s the rub with taxes you see. Hospitals are expensive, sporting events are expensive, the environment is expensive…royal nuptials are expensive. We do it anyway.
   
   
3. We had a referendum and it failed, the people have spoken.
   
   Firstly, this doesn’t change my view. Secondly, in the words of someone is who not one of my heroes, Sir Robert Menzies “to get an affirmative vote from the Australian people on a referendum proposal is one of the labours of Hercules”. Out of 44 referendums held as of 2010, only 8 have been carried. Changing our constitution is a big deal. The model must be right. And, sadly, the marketing must be better. Not as a sales pitch, but as an
   explanation. The previous model was not clear.
   
   
4. This country will go downhill if we lose the monarchy.
   
   Why? Do we really have so little faith in our own governing that we think the loss of a symbolic, inherited monarch will change the nature of Australia? I certainly hope not.
   
   
5. It’s part of our history.
   
   Yes, it is. It will still be part of our history. A truly independent Australia will still have close ties with Britain, we will never forget the important role the Commonwealth has had in our history. Changing the future does not affect the past, you know, 'cos it’s in the past.

These are all arguments put forward during our wedding watching, they are arguments from smart and lovely people and I am not belittling them in any way. They are also arguments from people who have a very strong tie to our history and have every justification for that attachment. I just think they’re wrong. And I think we have to remember the fantastically broad variety of backgrounds that Australians now come from, not everyone still thinks of London as home.

Arguments in favour of a republic:

1. The monarchy is not relevant to modern Australia.
   
   Sorry, but they’re not. See note above about our backgrounds. My 15 year old cousin who DOES have an English parent pointed out an older lady in startling yellow and asked who she was during the wedding coverage. You see where this is going? It was the queen. After I told her this, she asked what her name was. And you know what? Why should she know? I don’t know the names of any other country’s monarchy. The limited role the monarchy play here should be over. It many ways it already is.
   
   
2. My children.
   
   No, I don’t have any, but when I do I want them to be able to aspire to be the head of state in their own country. Not just the political leader. But the figurehead, the person we believe exemplifies our values and can be a leader apart from other politicians.
   
   
3. Secularity.
   
   Australia has a secular government. We are a nation of many faiths. Including the wishy washy agnostics which I call my people. So why do we have a family supposedly bestowed with the right to special treatment by one particular god held up above all others? I respect Christianity in its many forms but the church, any church, does not get to tell me who is my head of state.
   
   
4. Respect.
   
   This one is pretty well up for debate but I feel that we will not be truly respected until we are independent, not just by default, but by design. The Australian people need to see themselves as an independent, grown up country that does not, and will not, except even the possibility of a family from another country interfering in our sovereign affairs. Yes, this is a symbolic difference for the most part. Humanity should know by know that symbols are important. Just ask the royal family.

I like the royal family for the same reasons I like books and movies, both fiction and non-fiction. I like stories, and they have some great stories filled with humour and tragedy and bravery. I’m also fascinated by celebrity, like a lot of people I like to see people with lives, clothes and friends I could never afford. None of those things is enough to tie the royal family to a country they no longer need play a role in.

I know why we like to believe that the royal family are a good thing, believing in these things is nice. But can’t we believe in something Australian? Justifying something as ‘traditional’ is just another way of saying ‘we’ve done this for so long that we don’t really remember why’.

I'm interested in apathy

This tweet turned up on Thursday morning from Possum (@Pollytics), sparking a small rumble in the twittersphere. Not a huge one, considering it was a day where people were still commenting on the Chaser being refused access to the BBC Royal Wedding broadcast, (or were banned, or acquiesced, depending on you interpretation), and Obama releasing his birth certificate after several years of nonsensical whining from birthers and, lately, Donald Trump; one wonders how Glenn Beck feels about the fact that Trump appears to have been the one who finally pushed Obama to feed the trolls and release the full birth certificate).

But big splash or not, it got me thinking. This is the report (published today by the ANU here), and the key statistics that informed Possum's comments are below:

52.6% of people frequently or regularly feel that politics seems so complicated that they "can't really understand what it going on". If we include people who occasionally feel that way, that's 79.9%. But let's just concentrate on that 52.6%. That's just 0.1% less than the proportion of votes that won Rudd the 2007 Federal Election. In a country like America, where voter turnout is often around 60%, this would be worrying enough, but in a country where voting is compulsory, this is dire.

So, what's the problem? Well, as Possum implied with his #mediaFAIL hashtag - the media has a lot to answer for in this. When the extent of coverage for politics most days these past weeks consisted of coverage of what a celebrity horse owner thinks of the PM's common attire, an interpretation of Bowen's new temporary visa policy by both Fairfax and News Ltd that can only really be described as binary (Howard or non-Howard), the release of the HIP data from the CSIRO getting a cursory enough glance just to pull out the "oh shit, the government's burning down houses" line to continue the narrative (the data itself actually doesn't, but anyway - covered well here by Possum himself), ongoing Behrendt horse-tweet coverage (critiqued best by Tony Martin at Scrivener's Fancy), etc. etc. And so on, and so it goes, to quote my good friend Bob Ellis.

This "dumbing down" of political coverage and politics itself, or more to the point, only covering the simple politics, rather than the policy, would appear to be what Lindsay Tanner addresses in his book "Sideshow". Now, I haven't read it yet, so I'm not going to pull a Samantha Maiden (or 7:30) and verbal Tanner based on excerpts, or the words of others who have already read it (for the record, Grog's Gamut covers both of these very well), but it appears it's already ruffling feathers. Despite the fact that it would appear Tanner admits the complicity of politicians, and that he himself was guilty of following the headlines, Insiders (probably on iview about now) spent a lot of this morning suggesting Tanner would be best to point the finger back at himself, with the barest of acknowledgements of any flaws in press gallery coverage (oh, I'm pretty sure Gerard Henderson blamed a reasonable amount of it on left bias, but.. you know...).

I do look forward to reading Tanner's book in the next week or so.

But, I suppose, in the spirit of pointing the finger back on oneself, I have to ask, "are we the problem?" I don't mean the general public, I mean those of us who are actually incredibly interested in politics, policy and all. I love Annabel Crabb's pieces, for example, but there's no denying that she writes for us, the people who are knee deep in the political issues of the day like pigs in the proverbial shit - with a wry wink, a touch of humour and a polite distance; there's little attempt to clarify the policy (and we wouldn't expect there to be). On the polar opposite we have people like Steve Price, Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt et al who cover the superficial aspects of the politics of the day for the the emotions - and they capture the readers who most likely would fit into that 52.6% of people who frequently or regularly do not understand politics.

But for those of us who would slot into the "seldom" or even "never" column (I myself would never claim to be in the "never" spectrum - I'll research those things that aren't clear to me, but I'd never claim to completely understand every aspect of policy... if you do, I think either of the major parties would probably like to hear from you), does simply lamenting the lack of policy coverage while we enjoy the political argy-bargy (even enjoy whining about it) actually have any effect? I don't know. I don't want to go down the route of blaming twitter as a whole, it's a medium, and I have a deep-seated hatred of the juvenile attempts by organisations like News Ltd trying to tar and feather it (while simultaneously using it)... but it's hard not to wonder what the real contribution is as we makes jokes every monday night on #qanda, and lament the lack of debate as we simultaneously hyperbolise the responses of panelists.

I also won't agree with the "echo chamber" characterisation of twitter completely, as I've had some fantastic debates on it, and I think most of us often wait for an impassioned response to things we hay have tweeted, but there is an element of tweeting just to the political tragics. And, to borrow a tired cliche, if you're not part of the solution... well, you get my point. Where's the solution for that middle ground of people who don't understand policy, or aren't immediately interested in it?

From a media perspective, where's the middle ground between your Annabel Crabb, George Megalogenesis and Laurie Oakeses, and your Alan Jones, Steve Price and Andrew Bolts?

It's clear we need education, not just opinion, in political coverage if these figures are correct. This has to come from both the government (who manipulates the media) and the media (who should not cry manipulation whilst not doing their job).

52.6%.

It's sad that in a week when we were again debating asylum seeker detention and visas, and Bolt was suggesting that African migrants could not integrate, a piece covering figures from a largely unprecedented Department of Immigration report showing African refugees were the most likely to obtain a job, and that most refugees reduce their level of dependance on welfare over a period of five years, are settled in approximately two and can speak reasonable English in four, was published in the "Victoria" subsection of the Age's website, with no feature focus. Comparatively, the Melbourne Sudanese beauty pageant violence appeared in the top section headlines multiple times throughout the week - bouncing back to the top each time a small amount of additional information came forward.

Coverage like this is why long term newspaper subscribers (and tragics) like Malcolm Farnsworth (@mfarnsworth) are fleeing.

Sigh.

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I was going to wax lyrical on the fact people are actually, believe it or not, crying foul at the anticipated cuts to middle class welfare in the upcoming budget, but then I realised I'd actually said everything I needed to say in my last post.

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Anyway, this is something light hearted to take you through the rest of the weekend - Grand Spectacular's "Being a Dickhead's Cool":

It is pretty cool, I have to admit.

A Dickhead Frenzy lift-out: Wards of the Welfare State