Tag: Australian Politics

Knights and flags and anthems and Taylor Swift on the radio. Happy Australia Day!

On By longandshortofitallIn In the News, Longer rants, Questions of cultureLeave a comment

Australia Day Sketch - Edited

Seriously, Happy fuckin’ Australia Day. That weird holiday when people across the country are able to cover themselves in the Jack and Cross (a slang term for the Australian flag I just invented at this moment) without automatically being judged as racist bogans, parading how fair dinkum Aussie they are in a bizarre parody of national pride ripped heavily from July 4th episodes of American television.  Ozzie! Ozzie! Ozzie! and all that. I’d sooner deck myself in the green and gold, but that’s me.

The lead-up’s been a particularly strange one this year. It’s always a bit of a political wank, as both sides of whatever line you happen to be watching cloak their own ideas of “what it means to be Australian” (or some such crap) within the language of patriotism and nationalism. There were the usual articles about how for the Indigenous community Australia Day, the anniversary of the convicts being disembarked from the First Fleet (and, in the mature-rated history books, the crazy, drunken orgy that followed), is also the anniversary of the beginning of the bloody White European conquest of the continent. Some better (passionate arguments made quite reasonably, by members of the Indigenous community and supporters with proven records fighting for aboriginal rights, for a less culturally insensitive date), some worse (social media hipster liberals ’embarrassed’ by displays of national affection on a culturally insensitive date). But a lot of the air time seems to have been taken up by other controversies (loosely using the word here) this year.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten raised the old Republican debate in an Australia Day eve speech, reckoning that it’s about time we thought about cutting ties with the English Royal Family and figuring things out for ourselves. This is at odds with Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s reintroduction of rewarding people the government likes with knight and damehoods. One winner was (now) Sir Angus Houston, former Air Chief Marshall of the RAAF and Chief of the ADF, recently in charge of the search for MH370 (by all accounts a top bloke deserving of the right to put ‘Sir’ in front of his name). Another winner? Prince Philip. I shit you not, Prince Philip, the goddamn Duke of Edinburgh is now a Knight of the Order of Australia. ‘Cause he served in the Royal Navy and is the titular Duke of Edinburgh of the Duke of Edinburgh Award. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to be a Knight of the Order of Australia, it just seems like pretty small change compared to some of his other titles. Given His Lordship’s (or is it His Majesty’s? Royal Highness’?) sense of humour, I’d like to know what his reaction was when he was informed. Apparently it hasn’t gone down well with Mr Abbott’s own government who, aside from not all sharing his monarchist leanings, are upset that he’s disregarded his own word to use the honour to award prominent Australians (rather than foreign royals).

At the same time, the old argument about the need to change the flag to one that doesn’t give prime position to that of a foreign country did the rounds (as it always does this time of year). While I’m partial to switching to some version of the Eureka Flag, a pattern with some real history and meaning beyond ‘won a magazine competition about a century ago,’ but I don’t expect we’ll see a change any time soon. Unless the Kiwis change there’s first. Fun stuff.

Then of course there was the joy that came from a proposal by the National Australia Day Council encouraging all Aussies to get up at noon (Eastern Daylight Savings Time I’m assuming) and sing the two official verses of the national anthem. Personally, I wanted to kick the shins of whoever came up with that jingoistic tripe. Not only do Australians have a long, storied history of disrespect, flippancy and irreverence for such displays (the ANZACs of the First World War, for example, had a reputation for refusing to salute no matter how hard their British officers tried), but we had to endure the long-winded complaints by pseudo-intellectual lefties like myself telling people exactly why it was such an un-Australian suggestion. We needn’t have bothered worrying. Nobody gave a shit, and nobody sang the anthem.

But the real controversy, the real issue that rocked the nation, was Taylor Swift’s inclusion then exclusion from Triple J’s Hottest 100 list. The Hottest 100 is an annual cultural phenomenon in Australia, receiving millions of votes and listened to at any party, pub or gathering worth a damn. Run by the major public youth broadcaster, it tends to act as a cultural litmus test of what is relevant that extends across genres, leaping from punk and heavy metal to dance and hip hop. Given that the Js are listened to by the kind of folk who eschew commercial radio for being too commercial (and are unable to recognise a tautology when they say one) there was plenty of anguish over a campaign started on Buzzfeed to get Shake it Off by Swift onto the list. Seriously, people were not fuckin’ happy, which only fuelled the anti-hipster fires. Triple J remained relatively mum over the issue, finally announcing before the broadcast that she had been disqualified because of the Buzzfeed campaign (and a social media bandwagon jump by KFC). And again, people were not fuckin’ happy. It was probably the right decision by Triple J, who couldn’t let the lovers and haters get away with “troll[ing] the polls” lest it set a precedent. I don’t imagine Swift is shedding any tears over her disqualification, she certainly doesn’t need the press like so many of the other artists on the Hottest 100 list, and it really was an act of trolling. Still, while I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Tay Tay I don’t hate her, and it would have been a bit of a laugh if she managed to win. It certainly wouldn’t have been as bad as last year when Royals by Lorde was beaten for the top spot by Riptide by Vance Joy. Lorde was bloody robbed.

Christ, are other countries’ national days like this?

G20 Protests: The Good, the Bad and the Useless

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The G20 summit has begun in Brisbane this week, a gathering of the world leaders from the top 20 economies. Funnily enough most of them were already in the neighbourhood attending an APEC summit, where some pretty important shit was decided (though just how decided is arguable). Hopefully it’ll turn into an interesting meeting, despite Tony Abbot and Joe Hockey’s endless intoning about how this’ll be all about something as vaguely pedestrian as jobs and growth. There’s already a bit of spice about with the PM’s embarrassment about being the only leader who doesn’t want to mention climate change, and a bit of military showboating with RAN frigates and a surveillance plane keeping an eye on four Russian warships steaming south towards international waters just outside our EEC. Good stuff.

Security’s a bit ridiculous, with bans on bows (of all types) and easily throwable objects like tin cans and eggs in the secure zone that covers most of the Brisbane CBD. There’s been a bit of grumbling and satire about the inability to boil an egg in the city at the moment, though nothing close to the level of the Chaser’s visit to APEC way back when. But there can be no collection of powerful men (and a few powerful women) without some protests, and distaste for the current political status quo and a desire to make that distaste known will find a way!

Free-Tibet supporters floated large black balloons with a banner asking the G20 to unite in forcing China to free Tibet, raising a few questions: 1. Do they realise that China is a G20 nation; 2. Do they really think anyone in the G20 still gives a damn enough about Tibet to ruin their attempts at becoming ascendant China’s best mate; and 3. How long before the One China folk turn up to chase them off?

A few people from Oxfam dressed up in life guard outfits and the comically oversized heads of a few of the leaders (including Merkel, Abbot, Obama and Modi) in order to warn against ‘inequality rising.’ Not exactly as dramatic as black balloons carrying a banner, but it’s pleasant, light-hearted and attracted a lot of people to take photos, and I’ve got a lotta respect for people willing to wear giant heads for hours at a time in a Brisbane heatwave for a good cause.

Far more serious is the protest about indigenous deaths in custody, which I assume is attempting to embarrass the government in front of the rest of the world. It’s a cause I most definitely support, but can’t help but wonder if this is the best audience for the protests. I can’t help but imagine that there’s not going to be a whole lot of coverage of an Australian death in custody protest, and that the gathered leadership is pretty good at tuning out name-calling like “Genocidal 20.”

Perhaps my favourite so far, and the one that seems most… appropriate? let’s say appropriate. The one that seems the most appropriate so far was on Bondi Beach, where hundreds of protesters buried their heads in the sand, symbolic of the Abbot government’s continued wilful ignorance and refusal to acknowledge climate change. I like this one. It uses an internationally recognisable location, makes it’s point cleverly but not obliquely and doesn’t accuse the other leaders of genocide (seriously, what’s with that?) I’m not exactly a big fan of most protests, but this one’s alright.

Finally, let me mention the folks from PETA, who sent a trio of girls stripped down to their briefs, some strategically placed stickers and a mess of green body paint to encourage the approaching international dignitaries to embrace a vegan diet. Now, I’m torn between having a go at PETA for continuing their trend of blatant sexism objectifying women in order to garner attention and controversy (especially because you only need to Google ‘PETA’ and ‘sexist’ to find a bunch of articles doing it better than I ever could), and making a joke about how threatening to put your clothes back on is hardly the best way to get a bunch of men to do what you want. That long sentence does both, so I’ll close this paragraph simply with this: Really PETA? Really?

I’ve always found a lot of these kinds of protests strange. I mean, I get that it’s an international audience but aside from the possibility of a mention in the BBC’s G20 coverage what exactly are people trying to achieve? I mean, Xi Jinping certainly doesn’t care if a handful of Aussies think he needs to extend more democratic rights to Hong Kong, Narendra Modi wouldn’t care about Tibet beyond maybe – maybe! – sticking it to China, and I doubt Dilma Rousseff is all that worried about the rights of indigenous Australians. Yes it raises local awareness, but local awareness is likely fleeting. A big part of the reason I like the Bondi protests is that it reinforces something already filling the media, that our biggest strategic and trading partners are concerned about climate change but the Abbott government wants to ignore it (and is even bragging about ditching the Carbon Tax).

There’s also the problem that with all the different groups protesting about different things at once they simply become a wall of white noise that’s even easier to ignore. This is a problem that has tended to effect left-wing protests in Australia (as well as the lack of achievable goals) over the past few years, such as during the Occupy Sydney/Martin Place movement and the March in March … er … marches.

So I’m not gonna bet on a lot of these protests’ success. But hey, I’m a political cynic.

Anyway, let’s see what the rest of the summit brings. Here’s hoping for a few more laughs.

Cheering for the bloke in the budgie smugglers

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Live from the G20 summit!
Live from the G20 summit!

There’s a lot of reasons to not be happy with Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Hell beyond the insultingly unbalanced budget, classist education reforms, atrocious refugee policy and a cabinet made up, with a single exception, entirely of middle-aged to old white men, he’s given us plenty of reasons to not be happy with him in just the last fortnight. Something I can’t fault him for, however, is declaring that he’ll be picking a diplomatic fight at the upcoming G20 leaders summit with Vladimir Putin over MH17. Because someone bloody needs to.

The challenge was laid down earlier this week when Abbott declared that he would “shirtfront” Putin on the issue, personally confronting the Russian President about the murder of Australian (and a lot more Dutch) citizens by “Russian backed rebels using Russian supplied equipment.” My first thought when I heard this was, “what the hell is ‘shirtfront?'” Apparently it’s slang for a shoulder-to-body tackle in Australian Rules Football (I live in NSW, I follow Rugby League when the fancy takes me, I can count on one hand the number of people I know who I’d expect to recognise what ‘shirtfronting’ is). There’s some suspicion he meant to say “buttonhole” and got his terms confused. My second thought was, “good.” While I tend to agree with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten that Putin shouldn’t have even been invited (that would require support from the rest of the G20 nations though so isn’t really up to us), I’m glad to know that the government is at least planning on calling him on his shit. Because, as I said above, someone bloody needs to, and at the moment it just seems to be us and the Dutch.

The Russians responded to Mr Abbott’s tough talk with some tough talk of their own. They’d already voiced their negative opinions of Mr Abbott in state mouth-piece Pravda before the shirtfronting threat, and again afterwards. From what I understand it’s a bit of diplomatic foreshadowing, one side indicating an important part of the agenda and the other indicating their displeasure at its inclusion. The international relations equivalent of two boxers trash-talking each other to the press before a fight. The fact that everyone seems to have taken Mr Abbott literally and are expecting the him to strip down to the speedos and Putin to rip of his shirt so they can toe-to-toe down Brisbane’s main street certainly helps the image.

So the roo and the bear have been sizing each other up, and if the Pravda articles are anything to go by the bear found his opponent wanting… Or did he? Maybe. Friday morning Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had a sit down with Putin and managed to get a… promise? (that might be too strong a word)… that he’d influence the Russian-backed rebels to allow investigators in before the famous Ukrainian winter set in. There are also indications (such as his current attendance at the Asia-Europe Meeting) that Putin wants to re-establish some positive relations with the west even if his continued rhetoric (and the fact he occasionally shouts “WE HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS!” in his loudest diplomatic voice) has left many, including Australia’s leadership, taking everything with a grain of salt (or several dozen). The sanctions have certainly hurt the Russian economy, and their own counter-sanctions hurt them more than they hurt everyone else (for now). The Economist ran an article back in July that estimated Putin’s leadership cost the Russian investment market one trillion dollars in value. One trillion dollars. What’s more, Australia has been in a good position to press the Russians on this issue. While not a military threat, Australia has been able to impose economic sanctions (including on Uranium sales) without the same fear of reprisal that energy dependant Europe has faced. As a current member of the UN Security Council, Australia was also key to the rapid introduction and passing of the resolution allowing independent access to the MH17 crash site. We’ve also got a fair bit of international support, and the good relationships with China and India to keep them from weighing in on Russia’s side.

The kangaroo’s got a decent kick, and the bear hasn’t been eating properly. Still, nuclear power being run by a crazy narcissistic bastard seems like the most accurate description of Russia at the moment, so it’s still just a maybe.

What’s been jarring to me has been the number of people I know who seem to be on Putin’s side in all this. Ignoring all the people whose response to the upcoming firm discussion between the man in the budgie smugglers and the man who wants us to believe wrestles tigers was “like Russia actually gives a shit about what Australia thinks” (I’m frequently guilty of overrating Oz’s place in the world, but a lot of people are guilty of underrating), there were more than a few of my fellow lefties who saw this as yet another excuse to attack Abbott. Blogs and satirical websites posted articles that varied between light humour to outright attacks on the government’s international credibility, which were then shared on social media pages like Tony Abbott – Worst PM in Australian History, which then began appearing on my own feeds as my leftie and ‘progressive’ mates enthusiastically hit the ‘like’ buttons.

The theme of a real world leader like Putin putting a small fry like Abbott in his place seemed common and I just don’t get why beyond a bad case of seeing schadenfreude (SCHADENFREUDE!) where it shouldn’t be seen. Because Vladimir Putin is an Arsehole, with a capital A. He’s a misogynistic, racist, homophobic Arsehole with delusions of grandeur responsible for the murders of 298 innocent people including over three dozen Australians. And as I said, if Abbott’s planning on calling him on his shit than that’s something to be supporting.

Truthfully I don’t expect Abbott and Putin’s discussion to be anything history making, and I don’t expect to be seeing video of two shirtless heads of state beating the crap out of each other (though that would be the Best. G20. Ever.) But that doesn’t make the cause less righteous and I wish more people saw that. Cheer for the bloke in the budgie smugglers. Then we can all go back to relentlessly mocking him about his “Coal is good for humanity” remarks.

Banning the Burqa? Probably not a good time

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It’s been a bad couple of weeks in the news for Australian Muslims, with a long stream of reporting on the terrors of home grown extremism. We had Prime Minister Tony Abbot announcing to the public that the terror alert was being raised from medium to high (meaning attack was “likely” but “not imminent”). Then there were the massive counter-terrorist raids in Sydney and Brisbane, preventing a plan which (according to the police) would have involved kidnapping a random member of the public and broadcasting their beheading. Just a few days ago an 18 year old “person of interest” who’d recently had his passport cancelled was shot and killed after he stabbed two police officers in Melbourne. This comes on top of the occasional reminder that there are 60-odd Australians (or 120-150 depending on who’s doing the counting) fighting with Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) in Iraq and Syria, as well as the government’s attempts to sell and push through a raft of new anti-terror legislation and amendments that have varied from adorably bumbling (y’aaaaw, he doesn’t know how the internet works) to genuinely concerning for a lot of people (like how the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation – ASIO – would be liable if they kill or cripple someone, but hadn’t specifically been told they couldn’t torture people until recently) with the Islamic community feeling noticeably targeted.

Here in the capital of NSW (with a around half of Australia’s Muslim population) it’s been enough to get poor innocent white folk – the kind with only vague notions of a distant, mysterious and dangerous land known as ‘South Western Sydney,’ filled with mosques and kebab shops – quaking in their thongs (flip flops).

And then you had SA Senator Cory ‘If-you-think-I-sound-ignorant-now-just-ask-me-about-gays-and-climate-change’ Bernardi from the Coalition again calling for banning the Burqa, and Tas Senator Jacqui ‘Even-my-own-party-thinks-I’m-dumb’ Lambie both supporting him and possibly setting herself up as the heir-apparent of Pauline Hanson and One Nation‘s dubious crown. She certainly didn’t hurt her growing image as the new face of bigoted Australian politics when she struggled her way through an explanation of what she knew about Sharia Law and when she posted an anti-burqa meme (used first by far right group Britain First) to her Facebook page, which co-opts a photo of one of Afghanistan’s first female police officers, Malalai Kakar, who was murdered by the Taliban in 2008, in a way meant to look aggressive and threatening. The photographer calls it a desecration, though apparently Lambie reckons she’s honouring the fallen policewoman by using her image to try and scare people and dehumanise those who wear it (I don’t see the logic, and I don’t think anybody who thinks about it for more than five seconds does either).

In all honesty I hate the Burqa and the Niqab. They’re oppressive garments that rob the wearer of their face, their identity and their individuality, and that is wrong by my standards. But if they’re going to disappear from Australia it needs to be because the Islamic community agrees (which many of them do) and makes a determined effort to excise it from their faith and community (which many of them are), not because some dumbarse senator is worried that a Burqa-clad assassin is going to try and shoot up her office or some such shit. Certainly not because it conflicts with the western morals of a self-righteous inner-city white male like myself.

The rhetoric being flung at the Muslim community is not good. It doesn’t seem as bad as what was being thrown around right before (and after) the Cronulla Riots in 2005 but I think those very unpleasant days are what a lot of us in Sydney at least are remembering right now, and bizarre claims about the security risks created by a handful (relatively speaking) of Burqa wearers does not help matters. All it does is leave one side feeling even more targeted, victimised and isolated from the rest of the nation and gives the other side another caricature with which to separate ‘us’ from ‘them’.

I’m not saying these are discussions we shouldn’t be having at all. Far from it. I think inclusive debate allows us to hammer out social problems, reaffirms shared values and makes our communities stronger. But we need to pick times and contexts where one sides not pouring gasoline over the issue and daring the other side to strike a match, and ignorant fearmongering should never be used.

Besides it’s distracting us from our true enemies, those bastards in the English cricket and New Zealand rugby teams.

Bitcoins are not going to be considered foreign currency

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Bitcoin is an asset, not a foreign currency

Bitcoin had a bit of play in the Aussie news this week when the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) decided that it would be considered an ‘intangible asset’ instead of foreign currency for taxation purposes, so subject to capital gains and the Goods and Service Tax (GST), not surprising since it follows similar decisions by the USA and Singapore (but different to the UK which treats Bitcoin as currency). What does this mean? For individuals buying Bitcoins or products with Bitcoins for personal purposes (less than ten thousand dollars and not to make a profit), not a lot. But the 10% Goods and Services Tax would affect exchanges, mining Bitcoins for profit and business purposes, and make tax time a lot more complicated for businesses that accept Bitcoin payments (who might have to pay GST twice).

This has led to a whole lot of collective groaning by Bitcoin enthusiasts (Bitcointhusiasts?) who are concerned that an overcomplicated and expensive tax regime will push new Bitcoin businesses off-shore (though why they think the ATO would give a shit about that I cannot fathom), while others think that any ruling at all will give legitimacy to a product (tool/asset/I-don’t-like-calling-it-a-currency-myself) that suffers some serious image problems. Y’know, because it’s a largely unregulated and incredibly volatile speculative product synonymous with buying drugs on the internet. Those image problems.

Sorry. Bitcoin’s one of those areas where I find it harder to bite back the bias. Because I’m cynical (and not the only one).

Honestly though the decision to treat Bitcoin as an asset rather than a foreign currency isn’t much of a surprise, and the ATO are accepting public comment on the policies (that might not noticeably change anything, but they aren’t completely deaf). While a lot of people are obviously unhappy that government regulators (not just Australian) are starting to look at how to restrict, regulate and worst of all tax Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, it’s gonna keep happening and it’s got to keep happening before they can achieve any mainstream success.

After all given the volatility in the value of Bitcoin’s price, because of lack of accountability and regulation or because of heavy-handed and reactive government regulation (due to perfectly reasonable fears of a speculative bubble), why would major corporations like Google or Amazon start accepting it as a method of payment? Even imperfect regulations and taxation by enough nations, provided they’re relatively measured (so not what China did) and coherent, will go a long way towards stabilising the price and people will feel better about using Bitcoins if they don’t have to worry that the real world value of their funds will suddenly drop.

The News Last Week (18/8/14)

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It’s that time of the week again, when I look at the things that caught my eye in the seven days past. Where shall we begin?

Pleasantly, I think. Microsoft has sealed a deal with Square Enix in which upcoming game Rise of the Tomb Raider (the sequel to last years fantastic Tomb Raider reboot) will be a limited exclusive for the Xbox One (also popularly known as the Xbone). The game will eventually be released on Sony’s Playstation 4, but Microsoft is not unreasonably hoping that this will boost sales of the Xbone which have been trailing the PS4 at a rate of 3 or 4 to 1 (depending on who you listen to) since it adds another proven franchise to their stable of exclusives. As an Xbone owner and someone who loved Tomb Raider, I can’t say I mind the news.

It took two days and a public rebuke from PM Tony Abbot, but Joe Hockey finally got around to actually apologising for his ‘poor people don’t own cars’ remark. I don’t know about you, but the apology still came off as a bit of an attention-seeking woe-is-me whinge. No Joe we don’t think you’re evil or have evil intent towards disadvantaged folks, and you’re honestly just making yourself seem more out of touch with the concerns of average Australians. But I’ve already talked enough about this.

A medical clinic in West Point, Liberia, was attack yesterday by an apparent armed mob. The clinic was home to 29 people (9 of whom died some days ago), who were being given preliminary treatment for Ebola before they were due to be sent to a hospital. 17 of the patients mingled with the crowds and left while the remaining 3 were forcibly removed by relatives. There are also reports of bloody mattresses being taken- wait, seriously? I know they think their President’s full of shit and this whole ‘epidemic’ is made up but you’d think someone would go “Y’know what? Let’s not touch the things covered in body fluids that might be infected with an incurable disease that spreads through contact with bodily fluids. Just in case…” It really shows how serious an absence of trust in your government can be in times of legitimate crisis, and this isn’t even the only case of patients being busted out by their relatives, or the only country where such distrust is posing a significant health risk.

Then there’s Ferguson, USA. What a nightmare. The shooting of an unarmed black male named Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer when he had his hands up and was surrendering, triggered protests (and riots) that were responded to by officers in armoured vehicles, firing tear gas and rubber bullets. Things look like they’re getting a bit better since the Missouri state governor Jay Nixon put Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson in charge of the situation, an African American officer who marched with the protesters when he arrived in a well-meant and well-received symbolic gesture. Tensions are still high, something that all involved seem to understand, at least from the perspective of a white bloke on the other end of the world.
Edit: I’m not even gonna pretend I’ve got any perspective on this issue, just hope that it gets sorted more peacefully than it’s been so far.

ISIS (ISIL? The Islamic State?) has finally gone and convinced US President Barack Obama that they need to be broken, and American air power has begun supporting Kurdish soldiers and militia (why haven’t we given these guys a country yet? They’re tough as Israelis) as they push towards the stronghold of Mosul. In other good news (extremely relatively speaking), US personnel found fewer refugee Yazidi on Mount Sinjar, which was being besieged by Jihadist forces. While the situation is still atrocious, a great deal of aid had managed to get through and air strikes had successfully allowed many of the refugees to escape, so it wasn’t the humanitarian nightmare some were expecting.

PM Tony Abbot got in a bit of hot water over remarks about Scotland’s independence that did not go down well, saying “I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom, and that the countries that would cheer at the prospect of the break-up with the United Kingdom are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.” I understand why the Scots aren’t overjoyed, and it seems a lot of Australian opponents breathed a sigh of relief that he could stuff up internationally after his recent run of serious foreign policy success (*cough* MH17 *cough*). Personally, I don’t think it’s too bad. He’s not the only leader to tell Scotland to stay in the Union, he’s just the bluntest (and using language I’d normally associate with the Super Friends). And I mean, it’s Tony Abbot, a man about as subtle as a kick in the budgie smugglers. Should we have expected him to wink at Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and make a crack about not contributing to the rising divorce rate? I don’t think he should have weighed in at all, but since he’s an outspoken monarchist I’m not surprised that he did.

In an interview with SongFacts.com KISS bassist and frontman Gene Simmons told people suffering from depression “Fuck you, then kill yourself.” As you can imagine, and especially with the news soon after of Robin Williams suicide, this did not go over well. A number of people have responded with variations of the theme ‘Gene Simmons is a douchebag who needs to pull his head out his arse’ (Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx probably said it best with “I don’t like Gene’s words. There’s a 20-year-old kid out there who is a kiss fan and reads this and goes, ‘He’s right. I should just kill myself.'”) and Australian Radio station Triple M took the step of removing all KISS songs from their playlists. Simmons has since apologised on twitter for his remarks, but a lot of people are still unhappy.

And with that, let’s leave it and see what happens this week.

Callous and disconnected, the tenants of a bad salesman

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I like to think I’m a fair-minded person, socially and politically, that I at least try and show the respect that the offices of our elected leaders deserve if I can’t the people filling them. Everyone has an opinion and our society works best when we allow everyone to argue why there’s is best. Then Joe Hockey opens his mouth and I think “Fuck it. Whose idea was this anyway?”

Case in point, the Australian Treasurer reckons poor people don’t own cars, or if they do they don’t drive them much. So they shouldn’t care about his proposed increase to the fuel excise, right? Right? Cause they don’t need to buy as much fuel…

Joe Hockey and random talking: Poor people don't have cars (14:8:14)
Not pictured: Bloody massive cigar

He’s been called callous and disconnected, coming off like he’s telling the peasants to be grateful they’re so poor since they won’t have to pay as much tax as their betters. Then this morning Joe didn’t make life much easier for himself when he apologised for the outrage rather than the statement, saying he simply gave the facts. Problem with that is it’s not the facts that are at issue here, it’s their insulting delivery that ignores thousands of Australians (particularly in rural locations) who already see a higher proportion (key word there) of their incomes spent on petrol and transportation than higher earners. The fact that he can’t see that is just salt in the wound.

Let me put it this way. If a bank put up the interest rates on its loans would it say “it’s cool though, because poor people have smaller loans so they won’t be paying as much extra interest as rich people”? Of course they bloody wouldn’t. That would be stupid. They’d be talking about the higher costs of borrowing because of market conditions, how they’ve tried to keep things as equitable and painless as possible (since they want people to be able to continue paying off their loans), and pointing out how the rates of their savings accounts have gone up as well. You give people plausible reasons and treat everyone like they matter, or at the very least don’t dismiss them and their concerns.

Funny thing is I’ve heard some good arguments in favour of the plans for the fuel excise (not enough to completely convince me, but good nonetheless), but not from the Treasurer or any of his colleagues. But this is just another in a long list of examples of Joe Hockey and the Coalition government failing to sell their budget, either to the Australian people or to the crossbenchers needed to vote it through the Senate. Maybe it’s time the government let someone else have a crack at it.

Last week’s news (12/8/14)

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Yes, yes, I know I’m late. I was tired yesterday. Yes I know that’s not a good excuse but I’m using it anyway. Moving on.

So, yet another bruising week for Mr Abbot’s government. First we have the embarrassment of the dumping of plans to water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It’s unsurprising since it seemed everyone except for a few straight, white, vaguely-Christian males and a few cats (because cats are like that) were against the Coalition’s election promise. Everyone in this case included Muslims, Jews, a fair few Christians, various ethnic and racial minority groups and the state governments of Victoria and New South Wales.

This was a pragmatic decision by the Abbot government to bring Islamic groups back on side, given the rather unsettling developments regarding Australian nationals heading to Syria and Iraq (and the vacation pics they’ve been sending back) and the new counter-terrorism laws and budgets being brought about in response. Of course people are taking the piss out of Abbot for his ‘Team Australia’ remark, Islamic groups aren’t happy with the laws with valid concerns they specifically target Muslims, and neither Brandis nor Abbot seem to know how this new-fangled internet thing works, what the laws actually mean for our privacy or what the hell ‘Metadata’ is (it’s alright guys, I don’t have a bloody clue either).

Then of course we’ve got Senator Eric Abetz talking about medically discredited links between abortion and breast cancer, claiming he was cut off before he could appropriately distance himself from such beliefs (*cough*bullshit!*cough*), and Joe Hockey bitching like a whiny teenager that businesses and commoners just don’t get his budget, leaving the whole of Australia yet again placing bets on just how far is his head is up his arse.

In lighter news, Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to Western sanctions with some of his own, specifically banning food imports from the USA, EU, Canada, Australia and Norway for some reason (has Norway been laying on the sanctions as well? or is the just about who owns the North Pole again?), and directing the relevant government agency (that I can’t even pronounce and am not even going to try and spell) to target local Macdonalds fast food outlets. Apparently Australia exports about 700 million dollars worth of now embargoed product to Russia so we’re not talking small change here, but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s quaking in their boots at the thought that some bloke in St Petersburg might not be able to buy grain-fed Angus beef for his next barbecue (probably because by this point everyone just assumes that Putin will simply butcher a whole bunch of tigers from his – one imagines – vast collection to feed his people). Quite the contrary, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is saying that if Russian troops decide to cross into Ukrainian territory for purposes ‘humanitarian’ or otherwise the sanctions will get worse, with Australia’s Uranium exports to Russia definitely on the possible chopping block.

I’ll end with a quick RIP Robin Williams. You made us laugh, cry and laugh again, and will never be forgotten.

Last week’s news (28/7/14)

On By longandshortofitallIn In the NewsLeave a comment

Another week goes by, papers are printed, sites are updated (cough) and networks try to make horrible tragedy as engaging and entertaining as possible.

To start with are the aeronautical disasters of the TransAsia flight brought down by stormy weather and low visibility over Taiwan on Wednesday, resulting in 38 dead including the 4 crew (though thankfully 10 survivors managed to crawl from the wreckage), and the Air Algerie flight that crashed over Africa on Thursday, killing all 110 passengers and 6 crew. I don’t want to say any more than that it’s shocking that such disasters should occur so close together and so soon after what happened to MH17, and that it’s good that at least some survivors made it out of the TransAsia flight.

The announcement that Australian Federal Police (supported by members of the Australian Defence Force) would be heading to the Ukraine to join and assist the force of Dutch officers in securing the MH17 crash site was met with some criticism this week. Some of this criticism was that the Australian government was overplaying its hand. Others thought that the deal signed between Australia and Ukraine that included ‘contingencies’ allowing AFP and ADF personnel to be armed was ‘nuts,’ fearing that having armed Aussies around might provoke the pro-Russian separatists or something. Given that the AFP and ADF have more than a little experience in conflict zones (such as the Solomon Islands, Fiji, East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Somalia and the list goes on) you’d think that they might just know what they’re doing. Interestingly enough, while the current force active in Ukraine are unarmed (something Deputy Federal Police Commissioner Andrew Colvin has expressed concerns about), the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has said that the Dutch will be signing a similar agreement with the government in Kiev allowing for armed ‘contingencies’.

San Diego Comic Con happened this weekend, where people were disappointed by the lack of big announcements or reveals from Marvel, we got our first look at Wonder Woman from DC (my brain says the costume’s pretty badarse but my heart just isn’t feeling it), and a 64 year old woman was hit by a car trying to escape marauding zombies. I shit you not. Anyway, the first trailer for Mad Max Fury Road was shown and it was… good? I think it was good. A lot happened that looked pretty cool but… yeah. Check it out. I’m a little concerned that with a bigger budget it might have lost a bit of charm. But hey, let’s see where this angry street takes us.

In NSW an unfortunate drama started to come to a conclusion yesterday when Mr Vic Alhadeff, a Jewish community leader (chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies no less) resigned from his government appointed position as chairman of the NSW Community Relations Commission. Mr Alhadeff came under fire after he sent out an email (to members of the Jewish community) a couple of weeks ago titled ‘Israel under fire’ that condemned Hamas while glossing over Israel’s role in the violence, angering Muslim leaders across the state. His apology (for the outrage, not the commentary) didn’t help and quite a few prominent Islamic leaders boycotted an iftar dinner held as NSW state parliament house to mark Ramadan that Mr Alhadeff attended. Despite having the continued support of Premier Mike Baird, many claimed Mr Alhadeff’s position as CRC chair had become untenable and apparently he finally agreed (though it seems he still stands by the comments).

The news last week… that I cared about (6/7/14)

On By longandshortofitallIn In the NewsLeave a comment

So, let’s talk about the news this past week. This is something I’m thinking about doing weekly, a sort of quick run down of the goings on in news and politics that caught my attention. Not a summary of everything, just a bit of commentary.

In Iraq and Syria, ISIL (the terrorist organisation formerly known as ISIS) has declared an Islamic Caliphate and demanded that Sunni groups including Al-Qaeda submit to their authority. The Iraqi army is claiming that they’ve started to push ISIL back (or is it now called ISIS, formerly ISIL? Or something else completely? I’m honestly not sure), something which the newly-minted Caliph and his followers are firmly denying. The rest of the world seems to be wondering when these morons will realise that simply declaring yourself an independent nation does not cause the bureaucracies, institutions, laws, tax-codes and fiscal mechanisms required to govern and maintain a country to spontaneously spring from the earth or fall from the heavens. It’d be funny if not for all the people they’ve killed, are likely to kill, and are currently having to live within the Caliphate’s unrecognised borders.

Moving to lighter news in Australia. Prime Minister Tony Abbot put his foot squarely in his mouth (again) while talking about the value of foreign investment when he described pre-British-colonised-Australia as “unsettled, or, um, scarcely settled.” This was followed immediately by the collective groans of people like me asking “Did he really just say that?”, by the hordes of left-wing stereotypes who seem to take great glee in pointing at the PM and Coalition and yelling “RACIST!” (SCHADENFREUDE!), followed by a whole lot of groans from Mr Abbot’s people also asking “Did he really just say that?” It was a stupid thing to say, one that he’ll cop some flak for until the next time Scott Morrison strings together a sentence longer than “I don’t comment on operational matters.” What really disappoints me though is that you can use Australia as an example of positive foreign investment in nation-building, British Imperial investment, without essentially declaring that the pre-European Aboriginal population doesn’t count. Mind you a big part of that argument involves casually shrugging your shoulders and saying “at least it wasn’t Spain.” I think I might go into more detail later this week.

In video games this week the conversation over whether developers, publishers and PR teams understand that women play games, and maybe would like to sometimes play as a woman too. First upcoming game Far Cry 4‘s creative director Alex Hutchinson making a point that half the game’s main antagonists and one of the main allies (as well as a good chunk of the nameless NPCs) are female. Hell, the game’s “packed to the gills with women.” For now, we’ll just call this lame as hell. Second was a Finnish Hearthstone e-sports tournament that only allowed male players, because the International e-Sports Federation has been segregating men and women in their competitions. The Finns (God bless’em) petitioned for this to be changed, and the IeSF (who did actually have their hearts in the right place, believe it or not) have changed it. And there was much rejoicing. Yay.

 

Anyway, I quite like this. It’s giving me a few ideas about what to write about and how to start organising the blog. Let’s do this again next week.