Grumpy Old Journo

It's time to say goodbye.

2009-12-03T09:43:00.011+11:00

It is my sad task to inform you that Ian Skinner is deceased
(the term passed away was always abhorrent to him)

He died peacefully in his sleep after an enjoyable family outing in the evening.

On behalf of the larger Skinner family - we wish his blog followers, and people in general, well for the future - life is short - stop to smell the roses - be kind to each other.

"What profit a man to gain the world & lose his soul" - while it is true that Ian never gained the world (materially), it is also true that at no point in his life was he ever in danger of losing his soul.

Those of you who are familiar with Ian's Blog, will know he was a family man to his very essence. He always said his family was his greatest achievement and lasting testament to his core values. As his son-in-law, I am proud to be part of that large and wonderful family. Ian will be missed in a way that I just don't have the words to describe, and his memory will be cherished by us all.

posted by Nick (Ian's son-in-law), on behalf of the Skinner family.

My word is my bond. What a quaint idea.

2009-11-29T18:32:00.021+11:00

Once upon a time, children, conservative men regarded their honour as paramount. Proud men would face one another with pistols at dawn if somebody questioned their integrity.

Even today, the words dictum meum pactum (“My word is my bond”) feature as the motto on the heraldic coat of arms awarded to the London Stock Exchange in 1923.

Sadly, I have to tell you the world where a conservative's word was his bond has long vanished, if it ever did exist. Today lies and treachery are de rigueur, especially for senior right-wing members of Australia's Liberal Party.

You'll all know what I'm talking about – it's been in all the papers. Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull and his lieutenants have spend weeks in intensive negotiations with the Labor Government's Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, to achieve an agreement under which they would pass the Emissions Trading Scheme through the Senate before it rose for the year.

They obtained many concessions (too many, in this grumpy old journo's opinion) and the Liberal Party leaders had a deal they believed they could take to their party room to be quickly endorsed and passed by the Senate.

That's when the “Treacherous Ten” revealed their duplicity. Ten leading Liberal politicians who had previously indicated they would support the ETS legislation if the Libs could negotiate significant concessions – which was achieved – quit the front bench and made it clear they would never vote for an ETS.

In essence, the hard-liners had duped Turnbull into believing he could negotiate in good faith with the Labor Government.

Why would they do that? The answer is simple. It's part of the filibuster you have when you're not having a filibuster. The foremost of the Liberal rebels, Tony Abbott and Senator Nick Minchin, made this clear when they demanded Turnbull agree to have the ETS legislation referred to a Senate committee for consideration.

If Turnbull agreed to that, he would be welching on his deal with Labor.

But the strategy appeals to the hard-line climate change sceptics because it may allow them to defer the legislation for months while avoiding the risk of a double dissolution. It all comes down to interpreting one of the “triggers” the Australian Constitution provides for the simultaneous dissolution of the full Senate and the House of Representatives when they're deadlocked.

Section 57 allows the Prime Minister to ask the Governor-General to dissolve both houses if the Senate rejects “or fails to pass” legislation passed by the Reps, or passes it with amendments unacceptable to the Reps, and does so a second time if the Reps again passes the legislation after at least three months.

If the Senate's climate change sceptics used a plain filibuster to stall the legislation until the Senate rose for the year, it probably would give a double dissolution trigger. But referral to a Senate committee for examination could be seen as a normal part of the legislative process, and most likely would not be held to be a trigger.

This opinion was provided by Robert Ellicott QC, a former Federal Court judge and Coalition Attorney-General, in a Weekend Australian article last October. And it appears retiring Senate Clerk Harold Evans supports his view.

[I've just come across this opinion by ABC election analyst Antony Green, posted to his blog yesterday. It covers the “failure to pass” issues in detail. And in this earlier post, Green points out that whenever he received a trigger, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could delay requesting the double dissolution until August 10, 2020, with the election taking place in September.]

Not that Rudd necessarily wants or would use a trigger to call a double dissolution, but it's handy to have one – or preferably, a handful of them – at the ready if required. That time might come mid-way through next year.

It sticks in the craw to admit the vacuous right-wing columnist Miranda Devine might have called something right. But even I thought she might be correct back in August when she wrote a column jeeringly headed, “Bring it on, Labor, pull that trigger.” which claimed the Government would be defeated if it called a double dissolution on the Senate's rejection of ETS legislation.

A few weeks later, The Australian's Newspoll contradicted Ms Devine when it reported strong support for climate change legislation, even among Coalition voters. Yesterday, The Weekend Australian relied on the September figures in its lead story, “Libs facing electoral rout.”

But that was September. Today, the Sydney Sunday Telegraph and other Murdoch Sunday tabloids around the nation reported a Galaxy poll taken last Friday night. The Sunday tabloids' report said:

MALCOLM Turnbull's hopes of fighting off a Liberal rebellion over climate change to hold on to the Opposition leadership have been shattered by a poll showing a whopping 60 per cent of Australians are against Kevin Rudd rushing the Emissions Trading Scheme through parliament.

Despite Mr Turnbull insisting the ETS must be passed now - ahead of the UN's Copenhagen summit - the poll overwhelmingly backs his opponents - with 81 per cent of Coalition supporters wanting the vote delayed.

Incredibly, nine out of 10 Coalition supporters - and three out of four Labor voters - say they don't understand the ETS and want the Government to explain it better.

The Galaxy poll, conducted exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph on Friday night, shows a huge 80 per cent of voters do not believe the Government has provided sufficient details about an ETS with only 26 per cent now supporting the Turnbull-Rudd push for the Senate to pass it into law immediately.

Fewer than one in five Australians believe the Government has provided sufficient information about the ETS.

Even 73 per cent of Labor voters are in the dark over the ETS.

I love praise, but is this a bit stiff?

2009-11-10T18:16:00.004+11:00

Like any other blogger, I love praise. So when this notification of a new comment turned up in my Inbox today, I was chuffed:

I don’t know if I said it already but … I’m so glad I found this site…Keep up the good work I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say great blog. Thanks!

Naturally I hit the button to publish the comment. Then I opened Grumpy Old Journo to admire the comment at the end of a post I put up last July. I want to know more about the comment's author, so I click the highlighted link which should have taken me to the author's blog or website.

Guess what it opened up? A website offering generic Viagra.

Kill the comment? Perhaps I should have. Instead, I posted my own comment right underneath.

I was chuffed to receive this comment months after the post went up. But all is not as it seems. Readers should not click on the Lipitor link above unless they want to be directed to a website which offers generic Viagra from an unknown supplier with the ethical values revealed in this duplicitous comment.

Remembering the republicans' defeat

2009-11-09T16:52:00.004+11:00

Where is the passion we felt ten years ago when we argued about becoming a republic? The 10th anniversary of the republican movement's defeat in the November 1999 referendum passed with scarcely a ripple the other day.

That's to be regretted, because it means Australia continues to be headed by monarchs who inherit the throne according to laws which should have no place in a modern nation (even if we do manage to accommodate the idea of an inherited monarchy).

Succession to the English throne is still governed largely by the Act of Settlement of 1701, which specifically excludes not only Roman Catholics, but anyone who marries a Catholic. The monarch must be Protestant, and become part of the Church of England communion.

In addition, the monarch carries the title Defender of the Faith, and is automatically Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This may be appropriate for England, if you accept the idea of an establishment church.

In Australia, our founding fathers were determined not to import sectarian nastiness from the old world, and wrote this into the Constitution:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

No religious test required – except, that is, to inherit the position of King or Queen of Australia.

In another provision which should be anathema in a modern nation, the Act of 1701 bases succession on the rules of male primogeniture. A woman cannot inherit the throne if she has a younger male sibling. (In Britain, this is unlikely to be a practical issue for many years, if ever – but it's still a relic of times when women had inferior status.)

Over recent years in Britain, there have been moves to change these rules but nothing much has happened.

Contrary to monarchists' claims today, a decade ago most Australians did support a republic – but a majority of them wanted nothing short of a republic in which the public elected the president. They declined to vote for the “minimal change” model put to them in the referendum, under which the president would have been elected by a two-thirds majority in a joint sitting of the Federal parliament.

For the then Prime Minister, John Howard – a committed monarchist – it must remain a proud achievement. As Grumpy Old Journo wrote in this post in February last year, Howard used a brilliant “wedge” strategy to halt what appeared to be Australia's inexorable loosening of ties with the “mother country”.

First, he set up a Constitutional Convention which argued for a couple of weeks before agreeing on the “minimal change” model which was put to the electorate. With a small majority, it supported a parliamentary vote to select the President, rather than a national election, because it would not disrupt constitutional arrangements which were working well. And that's where we lost.

Tony Abbott and other Liberal leaders said the position of President would be far too important to be decided by politicians. We should vote no to a republic so we didn't have the President elected by politicians.

It worked. It seemed Australians didn't know that under the existing, continuing arrangement, one person – the Prime Minister, possibly but not necessarily in consultation with a few cronies – chooses the Governor-General. The British monarch must accept the Australian Prime Minister's nomination.

Howard was also able to exploit two weaknesses in the republican cause. As historian Stuart Macintyre wrote in the second edition of his Concise History of Australia:

The first was the very celebrity of the republicans. [Malcolm] Turnbull's movement used prominent writers and artists, recruited television personalities, business and sportspeople. Their enthusiastic advocacy could be dismissed as an example of the estrangement of the elites from the practical concerns of the battlers.

The second weakness was to campaign for the minimal republic.

Their chief argument turned out to be no more than an appeal to national prejudice: Australia should not have a foreigner as its head of state. Since an Australian governor-general already exercised the functions of the head of state, this allowed monarchists to divert the republican debate into an arcane argument over constitutional law.

It also did not help the republicans that Howard also drafted a new preamble to the Constitution, and put it to the electors in the same referendum. The electors duly rejected both questions. As Macintyre wrote:

. . . he produced a preamble of startling banality that invoked mateship, refused to recognise Aborigines' prior occupancy of the land, and took a gratuitous swipe at political correctness.

Merry makes a tidy Cup profit

2009-11-05T12:11:00.002+11:00

A nice triumph for my wife. She backed the third placegetter, Mourilyan, giving me the pleasure of going down to the pub to collect $36.50 for a $5 place bet on the NSW TAB (yeah, we're the last of the big-time punters).

So does that make her a particularly gifted judge of horses? Decide for yourself > > >

Taking the moral low ground – the prerogative of the harlot through the ages

2009-10-26T13:31:00.024+11:00

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – Rudd's inspiration?

image from Wikipedia

What a tawdry fortnight in Federal Parliament as our political leaders scrambled to occupy the moral low ground over asylum seekers heading for Australia in leaky boats.

And how easily those leaders fit Stanley Baldwin's jibe against London tabloid newspaper barons – “power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”

It's a grand phrase, although (as pointed out later) it doesn't stand up to too much analysis. It is, however, apposite when we look at the attacks by Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition's immigration shadow minister, Sharman Stone, on Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's removal of the more brutal elements of the previous Liberal government's treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat from Asia.

Turnbull and Stone both went for the throat in their attacks on Rudd's policy. Turnbull, as is his practice, took up a glib phrase – Rudd had “rolled out the welcome mat” for “illegal immigrants” – and repeated it ad nauseam. On ABC radio, Dr Stone attacked Kevin Rudd but refused to answer when asked if she would go back to the old rules.

And that, essentially, is the prerogative of the opposition politician through the ages – to attack government policies, to sneer and jeer but refuse to say how they would do better. Power to attack, no responsibility to offer a solution.

More disgraceful was Kevin Rudd's apparent repudiation of the Christian values he espoused so publicly a year ahead of the 2007 Federal election in which he ousted Liberal Prime Minister John Howard.

As Rudd joined the auction for the moral low ground – dog-whistling the message, I'm treating the boat people just as brutally as they would – this angry old journo wanted to shout: “You're a Christian, for Chrissakes.”

Grumpy Old Journo acknowledges Christianity is a broad church, or collection of churches (as demonstrated in the past week when the Catholic church welcomed misogynists and homophobes who want to quit the Anglican communion – a move which should help both churches achieve their goals). Without any insincerity, Christians may adopt very different views across the political spectrum.

But Rudd, in his landmark essay in The Monthly in October 2006, was emphatic in his admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Rudd left us believing he sought to emulate the German theologian. In the second paragraph of his long Monthly essay, Rudd wrote:

And above all, he was a man of action who wrote prophetically in 1937 that "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." For Bonhoeffer, whatever the personal cost, there was no moral alternative other than to fight the Nazi state with whatever weapons were at his disposal.

Three weeks before the end of World War II, Bonhoeffer was hanged by the SS because of his complicity in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

Rudd also said this in his essay:

I argue that a core, continuing principle shaping this engagement [of church and state] should be that Christianity, consistent with Bonhoeffer's critique in the '30s, must always take the side of the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed.

Provided, one assumes, they're not in leaky boats headed for Christmas Island.

One notes, too, from Wikipedia that when the SS raided Abwehr military intelligence and uncovered the Resistance cell plotting to assassinate Hitler, they also found documents proving Bonhoeffer was involved in an Abwehr scheme smuggling German Jews into Switzerland.

A people-smuggler! “Vile”, if we use Rudd's word for people-smugglers.

Is it unworldly, appealing for moral leadership in our top politicians? What use is a politician of moral integrity when voted out of office?

Kevin Rudd is a cautious man. He remembers how John Howard won the 2001 “Tampa election” with his brutal treatment of the 438 asylum seekers rescued from a sinking boat – treatment which attracted votes from some blue-collar Labor and One Nation supporters.

But I believe times have changed, and Rudd could afford to risk a little of his remarkable political domination of Turnbull and accept the new mood.

Although most Australians still want strong border protection, few yearn for a return to the John Howard days. Most Australians now understand that almost all boat people held on Christmas Island are genuine refugees seeking asylum – and as such, it's incorrect to label them illegal immigrants.

Not only that, anyone who reads newspapers knows most illegal immigation problems are with people arriving on commercial airlines, not boat people, as yesterday's Sydney Sunday Telegraph explained.

Should we abuse the boat people as queue-jumpers, then?

Last April, Grumpy Old Journo argued that we should prefer refugees who “jump the queue” over those who wait passively in refugee camps waiting to go to whatever country they're allotted:

I believe most of those asylum seekers who turn up at Ashmore Reef or Christmas Island on leaky boats, especially those who've brought their families, have shown fitness to live in Australia and eventually become citizens.

As an amusing diversion, you might like to read what the British Journalism Review said about “prerogative of the harlot” a few years ago.

So the famous phrase, grand as it sounds, has no foundation in sense. Its actual author, Rudyard Kipling, clearly had not appreciated the economic and social situation of the average harlot, presumably being unacquainted with them. But when he was needed he was happy enough, as a journalist whose career had started on an Indian newspaper which supported the local government and was supported by government printing contracts, to lend his eloquence to the Prime Minister. Baldwin, after all, was not only his friend but his cousin.

And you may think of Malcolm Turnbull's repetitive phases – “cash splash” comes to mind – if you press on to read this:

There may be no kinship quite as close as that among the politicians of the present day and the people, paid or voluntary, who help to promote their policies. Nevertheless, the party in government and the parties in opposition can call on large numbers of such people, even if none of them has the facility of Kipling with persuasive words. Their purpose, as we are constantly reminded, is not to explain honestly and completely the problems the politicians face and the logical methods by which they are earnestly striving to solve them. It is to repeat and repeat whichever slogan the politicians want the electors to believe represents the most important issue of the day.

When it's deadly, it's outstanding

2009-10-22T14:00:00.002+11:00

"That's a blackfella word. It's the ultimate praise anyone can give you" – performer Leah Purcell defines "deadly".

With this month's awards for top Aboriginal achievers, most Australians now know the word. But no-one seems sure where it came from.

. . . > more

Read all about it . . . but not in our leading newspapers

2009-10-15T16:25:00.008+11:00

It's an old tradition in newspapers, and I guess none of us would expect anything different. I'm speaking of articles on the news pages which boast of the paper's success in winning awards.

But now I'm on the other side of the fence – someone who pays for his newspapers, rather than being paid to help produce them – I'm beginning to wonder whether editors owe their readers something better.

"Eleven journalists writing for The Australian are finalists in this year's Walkley awards, including two vying for the Scoop of the Year." That was the Oz's intro to its Page 2 lead story (above) on the success of its people in Australia's major journalism awards.

The Oz ran colour headshots of all 11 finalists over eight long pars. And it added one final sentence naming two journalists from the rival Melbourne Age and The Sydney Morning Herald who were also finalists for the Scoop of the Year.

At least the Oz was more gracious than the SMH, which reported that "A large number of Herald journalists have been recognised . . . " and named them, but failed to mention any finalist from its rival.

To see the full list of finalists, go to this Walkley Foundation web page (which did not seem right up to date today) and scroll down till you see a link to a PDF file and click on it.

Interesting, isn't it? At a time when media moguls such as Rupert Murdoch are claiming the moral high ground against internet companies like Google, anyone wanting an unbiased report on the Walkley finalists found they'd wasted their money buying his flagship Australian newspaper. Or, for that matter, its rivals.

To get the facts, it was necessary to turn to the internet. And to find the information there, most would have used Google.

.

While we're arguing about blackface . . .

2009-10-10T19:41:00.020+11:00

Most Australians couldn't see what the fuss was about when a nostalgic revival of the Hey Hey, It's Saturday television variety show ended in a bitter debate.

So what's wrong with five performers wearing fuzzy-wuzzy wigs and vaudeville blackface in a skit where the sixth performer wore whiteface to sing and shuffle a Michael Jackson number? And those bloody Yanks – what right have they got to be so angry at a bit of good old fashioned humour on television?

Political correctness gone mad? Well, not really.

Imagine an Australian shirtmaker advertising its products by putting them on an Aboriginal man who's saying, “Mine tinkit they fit.” Even the letters page of The Australian would be full of angry protests (I'd hope).

The long-running “Mine tinkit they fit” campaign began with a depiction of two indigenous Australians wearing what may be mission hand-me-downs, but later ads depicted the black Australian as a more satorially elegant.

I've taken the images of the Pelaco shirt ads from this history web page. The page is worth a look – historian Richard Broome describes how he tracked down these images, which were familiar to my generation of Australians in our younger days, and also how he discovered the identity of the indigenous Australian, "Mulga Fred", who was the model for the ads.

As a young man, Fred was a successful buckjumper – a rodeo competitor who tries to stay on an angry, bucking horse – and he must have been a dashing and athletic figure. This photo, and the information on the history web page, suggest he became a fringe dweller in white-dominated country towns.

Today, any journalist would be wary of jokes based on racial or ethnic stereotypes – Abo jokes, Ikey jokes or Paddy jokes, or, if you're Indian, Sardarji jokes. I do, however, regret the disappearance of this hard-drinking layabout from our newspaper comic strips:

Today, it seems few would run Reg Smythe's Andy Capp cartoon strip, drawn for the London Daily Mirror since 1957 and syndicated in newspapers around the world. (Although political correctness did get to Andy – the cigarette stub perpetually on his lower lip disappeared in 1983 and he became a non-smoker.)

The image is from here and you'll find a brief history of the cartoon strip here.

Perhaps I read a better class of newspaper, so I felt most journalists had a good understanding of why blackface skits are offensive to Americans and should be to Australians too.

But if the letters and blogs I read were a fair sample, the journalists didn't carry their readers with them. Most Australians appear to have a limited contact with world opinion and still cling to some resentment of Americans from World War II – “two things wrong with them, over-paid and over here”.

Use an American expression, such as Kokoda “trail” instead of “track”, or “railroad” instead of “railway”, and someone will disapprove.

So we tend to overreact to criticism from Americans. But surely we can understand why blackface skits are offensive to Americans. The best explanation I saw was posted by intern Melanie Mahony on Crikey.com yesterday. Mahony also ran a Q and A interview with Kamahl in which the well-liked black Australian entertainer explained why the skit was offensive. The Australian's media diarist Amanda Meade posted this, and in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald David Dale posted this in which he called Hey Hey host Daryl Somers an idiot.

Also on Crikey, Red Symons – the "nasty" judge on Hey Hey's Red Faces segment – had this to say: "As one who is guilty by association . . . I’m now in the odd position of seeing the segment defended by people that I don’t want in my corner."

Back to the future for Grumpy Old Journo

2009-10-06T18:36:00.014+11:00

Two years ago, your Grumpy Old Journo abandoned his associated blog, What, Me Grumpy. Now I plan to resurrect it.

Three things changed my mind (although I'm still wary of making my blogging life more complex). They are:

Last week in Sydney, Google and the Walkley Foundation hosted an exclusive presentation for journalist members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance on new Google search tools and tricks – some still in development – to gather, sort and analyse news and data. I learned it's still an exciting world out there, and I want to remain part of it.
Before I walked over to the Google offices, I had several coffees with a friend and mentor who has long urged me to make Grumpy Old Journo better focused. I've finally accepted her advice. I still want to write the occasional self-indulgent post about my family, my motor-cycle trips, or my mulberry tree – but now they'll go into What, Me Grumpy?

While checking the settings and presentation of my blogs, I tried Google Blogger's new editor. It makes the insertion and editing of images much simpler, and in general allows more tweaking without having to switch to HTML editing. That should make life easier.

Check out What, Me Grumpy as it was (along with what was then meant to be its final post). When I post again to it, I'll put a write-off and link on Grumpy Old Journo. PS: I'll still try to find excuses to run Tony Rafty's caricature of me (right), just now and again.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

Now to flick through some topics from the past week:

Fairfax's conservative Catholic columnist Miranda Devine seems to dislike the moderates of Australia's Liberal Party almost as much as she loathes pedophiles or people who believe in man-made global warming.

Last week she turned on Liberal MP Alex Hawke, once a member of the party's hard right but now associated with the moderates.

Hawke, 32, was once a protege of the upper house Liberal MP David Clarke, the putative leader of the traditional right faction. Clarke is unfairly maligned as a sinister religious extremist because he is socially conservative, a fan of John Howard, goes to Mass on Sundays and is married to a member of the Catholic organisation, Opus Dei. He and Hawke had surfed the wave of Howard conservatism, sweeping away two decades of control by the soft left wing of the party, and in 2007 he helped Hawke win the safe north-west Sydney seat of Mitchell.

But with Clarke and his supporters unpalatable to the federal and state Liberal leadership, Hawke must have seen his political future as brighter without the baggage of his former boss. So he has embarked since October on a systematic power grab to oust Clarke at his next pre-selection, say Clarke's allies.

Thanks, Miranda. You've just reinforced my views on David Clarke.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

One can understand newspapers urging readers to go to their online sites – the more clicks the better. That's why print stories often end with the lines, “Have your say on . . .” (Does anyone really care what the readers of, say, Sydney's Daily Telegraph think?)

But it's a bit rough when the Sydney Sun-Herald sets out a quiz for readers, then tells them they'll have to go online to get the answers.

What about the readers who've paid for the newspaper, and who are not connected to the internet?

Check out David Dale's article on his Sun-Herald blog – just read down to his October 5 post about the questions in the new citizenship test. I must admit I didn't waste too much time on it, but at first I couldn't find the answers there anyway. However, if you click on “more” at the end of the post, it comes up all over again – but this time with answers.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □

What was the biggest story of the past week – the death and devastation of flooding, earthquakes and tsunamis in the Philippines, Samoa and Sumatra, Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's ultimatum to his party members, or the quirky naming of a blend of cream cheese and Vegemite?

At times it was hard to tell. The blogosphere exploded into fully fledged inanity as its denizens vented their anger at the name iSnack 2.0.

Was it a stunt by the Kraft marketing people – after all, is there now anyone in Australia who doesn't know about the new product? By that measure it was a successful stunt.

Or was it a humiliating miscalculation by the Kraft marketing people. That seems more likely, but we'll never know for sure unless someone confesses.

But as the marketing writers debated this question, few reporters told us what the product was.

It's a matter of interest to your Grumpy Old Journo. After trying to extend a misspent youth well into his sixties, GOJ is now required to read food labels very carefully indeed.

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Helen Greenwood had a go at describing iSnack, but she still didn't tell GOJ what he needed to know. You see, I'd already discovered Vegemite and Philadelphia cream cheese go well together. A favourite snack is a low-fat crispbread biscuit spread with cream cheese with some Vegemite smeared across the top.

But it wasn't until consumer affairs writer Kelly Burke, also in the SMH, rounded up a posse of outraged nutritionists that I learned iSnack had more than 17 per cent fat. That included 11 per cent saturated fat. For me, that's a no-no.

The Philly cream cheese variety I use has under 5 per cent fat (it's actually a blend of cream cheese and cottage cheese to achieve that low fat level). And that's what I'll be sticking to, rather than iSnack or whatever it's to be called.

The point of this item is that if newspapers are to survive, they must provide usable information to people who need it. Journalists should ask, have I included all the information readers need to know?

Screening for prostate cancer – an old argument revisited

2009-09-27T14:30:00.010+10:00

Links to material quoted are given fully at the end of this post.

Gee! It's almost two years since your Grumpy Old Journo – also known as a Happy Prostate Cancer Survivor – put up some posts disagreeing with Simon Chapman, a strong opponent of screening for prostate cancer. On November 6, 2007, I said:

Gee! Me against the Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney. This should be a one-sided debate. But here goes.
If you've dipped into this blog over the past year or so, you'll know I'm passionate in urging mature men to ask their doctor for a prostate cancer check.
And although I've read Professor Chapman's article in Monday's Sydney Morning Herald [November 5, 2007, headed “Prostate screening not worth it”] – and was already familiar with the arguments he has put – I will not change my advocacy.

I went on to explain:

The reason is simple. Early detection of prostate cancer, before any symptoms became apparent, may have saved my life. At the very least, it saved me from having to make decisions about more risky treatment of an aggressive cancer after it had spread further. I hope you'll bear with me.
I'm trying to explain that screening is worthwhile for most mature men, provided the guy (and his wife and friends) understand its limitations.
All treatment options – including non-treatment, ranging from "watchful waiting" to "no point
worrying about it at your age" – have risks and shortcomings. What's the right treatment for one guy might be ill-advised for the next.

So now, almost two years later, Professor Chapman, in an article jointly authored by a colleague, Associate Professor Alexandra Barratt, has returned to the SMH's pages to reiterate opposition to screening.

Under the heading, “Irresponsible prostate proposal ignores risk of harm to men”, the professors attacked last Wednesday's call by the Urological Society of Australia and New Zealand for men to have prostate cancer tests at age 40 instead of the previously recommended age of 50.

The professors' argument, basically, is that studies show screening fails to save many more lives despite higher costs to the public health budget. They ask:

What are the costs of close monitoring of half the nation's men aged in their 40s? What health-care services are going to be cut to cover the additional costs? Or must the health care budget be increased?

Cost-effectiveness? The Urological Society's recommendation means that men should ask their family doctor to order a blood test for PSA – prostate specific antigen – and to do a digital rectal examination at age 40.

Most guys should have a general medical check-up around that age, involving heart, blood pressure and blood testing of cholesterol, so why shouldn't they also ask for a prostate cancer check?

Apart from the pathologist's charge for the PSA test, where's the significant extra cost? And close monitoring? That will only happen if your doctor believes your PSA or DRE results are a cause for concern – and brother, if your doctor thinks that, won't you be glad you asked for the test?

“Risk of harm to men” are the words in the heading. This refers both to the risks involved in a biopsy, and to possible over-aggressive surgery or radiation treatment when cancer is found.

But my experience is that despite the risk of infection from a biopsy, it's worth that risk because it will allow your urologist to avoid aggressive treatment if it's not needed. For some men the biopsy may show there's no need to begin treatment, but to accept "watchful waiting" with PSA tests from time to time.

It would be unproductive to run a longer post arguing my position. The following links should help anyone seeking more understanding of the debate.

My November 2007 post outlined my arguments at length – indeed, it was so long I followed with an “executive summary”.

Last Wednesday, the Urological Society published its new policy here and also issued this media release.

The next day, professors Chapman and Barratt had their article published in the SMH. And here's Professor Chapman's SMH article published in November '07.

Last week, the SMH published letters contesting the professors' views on Friday (including a letter from Urological Society president Dr David Malouf denying the society advocated a screening program, instead saying it recommended 40-year-old men "should be offered a prostate cancer test to assess their risk") and another letter yesterday (on each of these letters pages you'll need to read down a way to find the relevant letters).

You'll also find a good explanation of prostate cancer and its treatment options in Wikipedia.

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The National Times – reborn as a sickly child, stranded out of its time

2009-09-16T17:26:00.006+10:00

You have to have lived the times to understand what The National Times meant to many of us. And to understand why we're so disappointed with the National Times reborn this week as an online member of the Fairfax Digital Media stable.

Each Thursday, we'd stop in to a newsagent to pick up the new edition of this remarkably bold – radical even – newspaper produced within the staid halls of the Sydney Morning Herald establishment. Usually, we also bought the weekly Nation Review, grubstaked by the left-supporting millionaire Gordon Barton.

The NT launched its first issue on February 8, 1971. That, my generation will remember, was a time of profound social change in Australia and most of the western world. A growing women's rights movement. The Pill. Flower power and the Age of Aquarius. Hippies. Vietnam war and anti-conscription moratoriums. Some men even dared to let their hair grow long.

In hotel bars, long the domain of blokey men, young women in rainbow garb would tell you they'd studied iridology, stare deeply into your eyes, and pronounce: “No, you're not an alcoholic.” Then you'd have another half a dozen beers with them.

Some 22 months after the NT's launch, came “It's Time” – the slogan which helped Labor's Gough Whitlam become Australia's Prime Minister, winning government after years of conservative rule. Three years later, he was gone, dismissed by Governor-General John Kerr – the former Labor lawyer Whitlam had thought would be his man.

Today, many of us remember Whitlam for fiscal irresponsibility and his failure to rein in the wild antics of his Cabinet ministers.

But we should also remember he legislated to give women equal pay for equal work, to recognise indigenous land rights, to provide for no-fault divorce in place of the shameful and often fraudulent proving of adultery or habitual drunkenness against a “guilty party”. He provided allowances for single mothers, and appointed a special adviser on women's affairs.

He saw Australia's future lay in its relationships with Asian nations, and gave recognition to communist China – a move which will underwrite Australia's prosperity for decades to come.

He also helped Australia see itself as a proudly independent nation, and not an outpost of the declining British Empire (or Commonwealth of Nations, whatever that name was meant to signify).

Before Whitlam, Australians had to carry a British passport when they ventured overseas. His government provided Australian passports.

They were exciting times to be alive. And The National Times was part of that excitement. As Fairfax journalist David Marr (editor from 1980 to 1982) said the other day:

The paper's beat was spies, politics, prisons, rape, defence, politics, the US alliance, motoring, business, sex, politics, tax scams, education, health, the women's movement, the arts, crime and politics. The National Times pioneered a strange alliance between lifestyle and the gutter, between wine and crime. This was mocked and imitated . . .
We weren't planning the overthrow of capitalism. We weren't hell-bent on radical change. The National Times was giving voice to a brand of scepticism growing in Australia for decades. The
revolutionary thing was doing so from behind the conservative walls of fortress Fairfax.

The old National Times lasted until August 1, 1986. It never made a profit, and its circulation rarely reached 100,000. Fairfax changed its publishing day, and it battled on for five months as The National Times on Sunday, and until March 13, 1988, as The Times on Sunday.

When Fairfax began signalling the relaunch of The National Times as a website devoted to intelligent reviews and commentary, your Grumpy Old Journo was sceptical. The times have changed – the youthful irreverence of the 1970s and early 1980s, the optimism and the excitement, are little more than a memory in our materialistic society.

But also, I hadn't realised just how cheapskate Fairfax Digital Media could be.

The Sydney Morning Herald bounces on to my front porch about 3.30 each morning. I usually read it back in bed. For the last three mornings, I've gone on to check the National Times website – and what's this? I've already read most of the featured stories when I perused the morning newspaper. What's the point of that?

Not only that, for all the promotion of The National Times reborn, the website displays with a design and typography which positions it as just another page on the SMH website. So far, the verdict of other commentators agrees with mine, as shown here and here.

Washing away the cobwebs

2009-09-04T17:12:00.007+10:00

Nothing blows away the cobwebs like a run on the motor-cycle. Yesterday, however, it was more like washing away the cobwebs.

I rolled out the motor-cycle and pointed it over the hills through Kulnura and later north along the old alignment of the Great North Road – you can still see the convict-built masonry walls and culverts along the way – before I pulled up in Wollombi.

Wollombi shops

It's a charming heritage township, and well worth a visit. As usual, my bike came to rest in front of the tavern best known for a fortified wine labelled Dr Jurd's Jungle Juice.

Me? I kept under the limit with two beers and a hamburger while I chatted with some of the other bikers along the veranda. Rode off at 1.45pm – just as the rain started. And it rained all the way home, through Cessnock and down the F3 freeway.

It wasn't heavy rain, but steady. Soon my wet-weather gear was sodden. – and I was experiencing dread as I mixed it with the freeway traffic.

That gives me a subject for this post. But after building up the revs. I'll then speed through a few other topics I'd been looking at.

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Hey guys, give me more room in the wet

We didn't have much rain, less than 6mm in the gauge back home. But that was more than had fallen in all of the month of August.

Steady light rain after a long dry spell means one thing to a biker –a treacherously slippery mix of dust, oil and water may be coating the tarmac. Often, you can feel it as you turn, accelerate or brake.

It's OK for you guys strapped in your metal boxes. If you slam into the car in front because you're travelling too fast or too close, and then someone slams into the rear of your car, you're still likely to walk away from the pile-up.

I know many of you dislike bikers for the way we zip past on sunny days, but surely not so much you'd not care if I slid under someone's tyres.

If I ride a prudent distance from the car in front, don't drop into it. I have to throttle back to restore the safe distance, and then the driver behind gets upset and tailgates me.

And please turn your lights on. I'm peering through a rain-spattered visor, using my mirrors to see what's coming up behind, and in the poor light and through the misty spray I can make out only the grey, blurry outlines of the semis and B-doubles about to pass me.

Let's be nice to one another in wet weather, and I'll promise to give you a cheery wave next time I zip past you on a sunny day.

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And another thing about anti-smoking campaigns

Tougher measures against smoking moved closer this week with the Federal Government likely to accept the recommendation of its Preventative Health Task Force to push the price of a packet of 30 cigarettes up from around $13.50 to $20 – or from 45c to 67c per cigarette.

Grumpy Old Journo still has reservations about this. As this blog pointed out on July 13 (“Clearing away the smoke” [1] ), it may cause many to quit, but there will be some families from lower socio-economic groups who will just buy less food for their children.

And in newspaper reports, I see no support for two measures I suggested in the July post. First, that the government try to push down the price of nicotine lozenges, patches and chewing gum – for many heavily addicted smokers, the most effective way to quit.

Second, that we encourage people to treat directors, executives and PR staff of tobacco companies as scum. After all, they promote an industry which, in the ordinary course of its business, kills many Australians. And as Australian parliaments make it harder for them here, they just turn to killing many of our Asian neighbours to keep the profits rolling in.

Another point has occurred to me. As I walk near the local high school before classes begin, I see students in school uniform in groups around nearby corners – and many of them are smoking.

Most anti-tobacco advertising is aimed at persuading smokers to quit. Surely we can commission the best minds in the advertising industry to produce convincing campaigns which persuade teenagers not to start.

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Appalling gun-lovers blackmail NSW

So it's happening, as forecast in mid-August (in “Appalling politicians”, posted on Aug 17 [2] ). The two members of the Shooters Party in the NSW State Legislative Council are refusing to vote for any government legislation unless the government agrees to let their gun-happy members hunt feral animals in the state's national parks [3] .

They hold the balance of power in the Upper House. Because of the preferential voting system by which members are elected, they got in with minuscule public support [4] .

It's a dreadful choice for the NSW Government – cave in to appalling people who kill animals for pleasure, or see vital legislation stalled.

And if it does cave in, what will these appalling people demand next? The Shooters Party policy includes a US-style right for all citizens to own and use firearms [5] .

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John Della Bosca? What's left to say?

My sympathy is with the former NSW Labor Health Minister, who resigned from his ministerial post after a tawdry tabloid, Rupert Murdoch's top-selling Sydney Daily Telegraph, broke the story of his sexual affair with a woman aged 26 – half his age.

But I'm not putting my hand up to say so. It could lead to speculation, unwarranted of course, about some of my past.

However, you might find two feature articles in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald both informative and enjoyable.

In the first, legal affairs commentator Richard Ackland gives some interesting information about the affair and the Murdoch press's actions. He says the Daily Telegraph has damaged the media's case against tighter privacy laws [6].

In the second, Professor Rodney Tiffen offers a seven-point guide to ministers on how to survive sex scandals [7] .

We're a more civilised society

2009-08-28T14:47:00.006+10:00

Take a look at this graph – it shows that Australians now oppose the death penalty by an overwhelming margin.

In a recent Roy Morgan poll, only 23 per cent supported the death penalty for those found guilty of murder, while 64 per cent supported imprisonment. When the question was asked in 1947, some 67 per cent supported the death penalty and 24 per cent imprisonment.

The poll also showed that those who believed in a mandatory life sentence for murder are now outnumbered by those who believe judges should have some discretion in sentencing.

It's cheering data for those of us who believe no society can execute criminals and still call itself civilised.

Back on November 9, 2008, worried by my lack of emotion about Indonesia's executing three of the Bali bombers, I put up a long Grumpy Old Journo post examining my opposition to the death penalty. I've just re-read it, and my views are as firm as ever.

First, the post enumerated rational arguments – for example, that now and again innocent people are judicially murdered in countries which carry out executions – but also the more difficult examination of how we form our moral attitudes.

So it's good to learn that two-thirds of Australians would now agree with me. Last November, I wasn't so sure. I wrote:

I'd assumed the fight against the death penalty had long been won in civilised societies like Australia.
But a bit over a year ago, I was at the monthly meeting of a club for retired business and professional men. Our speaker was a retired police inspector, and when he said he still believed in the death penalty, a murmur of assent went around the room. Out there, support for the death penalty remains, although it's hard to assess how strong it is.

So I thank Scott Steel (Possum Comitatus) for cheering me up by outlining the Roy Morgan data in this Crikey blog post (from which I've lifted the graph). You can read Roy Morgan's own report here.

Those interested in the development of anti-death penalty policies in a civilised nation – Australia – will find this NSW Council of Civil Liberties timeline useful.

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Neighbourly concerns

2009-08-24T14:37:00.003+10:00

The market for villas and townhouses must be looking up in my neighbourhood. People are moving into units which had been empty for a year or two since construction. At the same time, redevelopment notices are starting to appear in front of shabby little fibro cottages on big blocks – of which there's no shortage around Woy Woy.

The other day, we received notice of a plan to demolish the little place next door to build two big villas.

Not long after, a near-neighbour popped a letter into our box. Would we support her objection to the redevelopment because it would take out a magnificent jacaranda tree? We replied by email:

We read your note with mixed feelings. We have lived here for 35 years, and it's where we brought up our four children.
We will be sad to see the removal of the big jacaranda next door. It was well grown when we moved in here.
We know you were fascinated as you watched a pair of currawongs raise three offspring in it last year. We'd been wondering whether we'd see the same this year, but it seems that won't happen now.

However, we went on to say:

So you can see we have an attachment to the old trees. But it would not be in our best interests to support heritage orders preventing their removal.
Ian is almost 71 and Merry turns 68 this month. We have no plans to move, but ill health or an inability to maintain the garden could force us to do so. Perhaps it will be in a few years, perhaps it would be another decade. When we have to move, we too will expect to receive a price which reflects the redevelopment potential of our block – and a tree preservation order would diminish that value.
The quality of the final years of our lives may depend on the price we receive.
Please do not take offence at our refusal to support you.

In reply, our near-neighbour emailed:

Thanks very much for your reply. I totally understand your situation.
I will be lodging a complaint on my own behalf as I love looking out at the jacaranda tree when I am at the kitchen sink, in my dining room, or just passing through my villa. It's actually my only view
because of the high colorbond fence. I love the way the sun reflects on the leaves, and of course I love watching the currawongs in spring. It's one of the reasons I purchased my villa.
Unfortunately too many trees have been removed in Woy Woy in recent years, and I would prefer that this one stays.

After such a polite exchange of views, Merry and I didn't have the heart to tell her about the tree which once grew where her villa now stands.

Appalling politicians

2009-08-17T17:19:00.004+10:00

It's been bad enough having to pander to the Rev. Fred Nile for the past quarter-century. I believe his hard-line fundamentalist views are supported by only a minority of Christians – and a minuscule percentage of Australians at large – but since 1981 he has been a member of the Upper House of the New South Wales parliament, thanks to a preferential voting system.

For much of that time he has held the balance of power with his vote deciding the fate of legislation put forward by NSW State governments. To win that vote, governments have had to withhold many socially progressive measures supported by the general public.

The Rev. Fred is a bit of a worry. But worse is upon us – to get its legislation through parliament, the NSW Government now has to suck up to people who shoot animals for fun.

Here's the story from this morning's Sydney Morning Herald.

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Congratulations, Justine Ferrari

2009-08-10T16:16:00.009+10:00

It's a pleasure to report that The Australian's education reporter, Justine Ferrari, has won the Australian College of Educators' annual award for excellence in journalism.

John DeCourcy, NSW president of the organisation, said:

"While Justine is critical of many aspects of what may be considered 'accepted wisdom' in some educational hierarchies, she both intelligently argues a case and gives a fair representation to alternative positions.
“Above all, her principal focus, which she shares with the college, is on quality and equity for all children, in all schools and in all systems."

Ms Ferrari was an outstanding young reporter when your Grumpy Old Journo was nearing the end of his working life on the Sydney Daily Telegraph, and a few months ago I presumed on that acquaintanceship to send her an email.

In a blog post on May 8 headed, “At last, The Australian shows how education should be reported,” I had praised her long, detailed front-page report about the introduction of a grammar curriculum as balanced, fair and comprehensive – particularly in its description of other grammars, such as those labelled “transformational” or “systemic functional”.

But in a comment which could have been seen as critical of Ms Ferrari (but wasn't meant to be), I contrasted the article to The Australian's treatment of the debate on the use of phonics in teaching reading. In a post on April 30, I had said:

. . . when the Oz reports only one side of an argument, it's not because the editors are biased. The editors know children should learn to read by phonics alone – they know every other approach is discredited. Me? I'd like to make up my own mind by evaluating the differing arguments. I'd like the news reports to lay out those arguments, even briefly.

Ms Ferrari replied with a courteous email. I hope she won't mind my quoting part of it:

On your point about balance of reading and phonics, in my defence I would argue that the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of explicit and systematic phonics as the first necessary step in learning to read. The debate is over the place at which phonics is taught, not that it isn't taught altogether or that it's the only skill required to be taught, as is often presented.

As a grumpy old fellow, I sometimes put my two bob's worth of opinion into the blathersphere. But perhaps two bob is all it's worth. I'm an outsider peering through the fence as traditionalists and progressives clash on the battlefield, wielding impressive armaments of research data.

That's why I welcome Justine Ferrari's skills to help me make sense of these complex issues. And why it's pleasing to note John DeCourcy's praise, “she both intelligently argues a case and gives a fair representation to alternative positions”.

Justine Ferrari's grammar report drew an interesting range of comment.

As evidence of her views on “quality and equity for all children, in all schools and in all systems", may I point to a paper Ms Ferrari prepared for an Australian Council of State School Organisations forum last March. What's the ACSSO?

"Literacy educators are becoming increasingly demoralised and frustrated at the relentless, simplistic, headline-grabbing attacks on their professionalism" – Dr Beverly Derewianka, Director, Centre for Research in Language and Literacy, Faculty of Education, University of Wollongong. (to read more). And to see the views of other academics and teachers on what they see as attacks by conservatives, try this.

A Wry Side columnist to The Australian, Emma Tom, recounts her university experience of an intellectually demanding non-traditional grammar. She also mocks people who nit-pick their way through misplaced apostrophes.

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“Manners, none; customs, beastly” – a depiction of Aboriginal people

2009-08-05T17:12:00.008+10:00

“ In mental qualities they stand very low, having no fore-thought, prudence, self-restraint, or sense of decency.”

How widely held was this view of indigenous Australians in the latter part of the 19th century? Too widely, must be the answer. The quotes above come from an impressive, encyclopedic reference work which would have been used by many settlers to understand their new country.

Published in 1884, the Australian edition of the Universal Self-Instructor and Manual of General Reference (pictured against a mobile phone to show its size) carried the article reproduced below in full. Today we are appalled by its claims, but at the time of publication many settlers would have accepted them as justification for forcing this “primitive race” off their land to be “superseded by higher tribes.”

Publication came at a time when the dispossession of Aboriginal people and their removal to missions and reserves was at its peak.

(This article was run without paragraphing, which I've added for easier reading.)

THE ABORIGINES.
The native blacks of Australia are as distinct and peculiar as are its vegetable and animal life. They belong to the group of tribes known as the negritos or Austral negroes, being entirely distinct from
the Malays, Papuans, and Polynesians.
In physical appearance they are of height little inferior to the European, but of small muscular development, and inclined to corpulence. The cranial formation is, on the whole, long and narrow; the color varies from coffee color to black.
In mental qualities they stand very low, having no fore-thought, prudence, self-restraint, or sense of decency. Marriage is merely a form of slavery, and chastity is unknown.
These aborigines dwell in caves, rock shelters, and rude huts, in winter wear skins, and in summer go altogether naked, and live upon every form of animal life, including snakes, insects, lizards, ants, frogs, and occasionally human flesh.
In the construction of their weapons they show some ingenuity, and they wield the spear, boomerang, and throwing-stick with great dexterity.
The only form of government is that of the family ; the only law, the club. Summing up their manners and customs, we may say, "manners, none; customs, beastly" Dread of ghosts and demons forms the only religious belief.
The languages of the tribes are numerous, but closely connected. In sound they are harmonious and polysyllabic, but are incapable of expressing abstract ideas, and evince no sense of number. Most
tribes can count only to three, a few to five.
It is believed that the Australians represent a primitive race, superseded in other lands by higher tribes. The number of natives at the time of settlement by Europeans was about 150,000 ; it is now
supposed to be from 70,000 to 80,000.

Grumpy Old Journo is indebted to a fellow book club member who bought the Universal Self-Instructor in a carton of old books, and brought it in to show us. It's almost 700 pages, and it would have been a fine example of the bookbinder's trade.

It is bound in leather over hard boards, and the front and spine are embossed with gilt lettering.

The book appears to be an Australian adaptation of a similar book published in New York in 1882, and no doubt it retained many of the features of the US book. Within its covers, the user could refer to articles on writing, bookkeeping, business practice, household management, physical exercise and rules of games, etiquette, geography and history, quotations, selected poetry and lots more.

Let's hope those topics were better researched than the article on Aborigines.

Title page of the book

With the right philosophy, motor cycling can be inspirational

2009-07-31T17:10:00.012+10:00

The worries began when I dropped the motor cycle in Terrigal. I'd pulled up on a steep grade, brakes holding the bike as I gave way to a car on the right. But when I put out a leg to prop us up, I couldn't reach the sloping pavement, and over we went.

For the following weeks I took my time as I cannibalised an old bike to replace the broken bits. The replacements look a bit tatty, but they do the job. I also put a spanner over the rest of the bike.

Great! Everything working well with days to go before the bike needed its re-registration inspection.

Alas – not so great! The rear brakes wouldn't release, and the front brakes didn't come on when I pulled the lever. Unused for a couple of months, the systems had gummed up with brake fluid which must have passed its replacement date a decade or two earlier.

With the rego deadline looming, the master cylinders and perhaps the slave cylinders too would have to be stripped, cleaned and rebuilt before I replaced the fluid and bled the air out of the lines.

Once again, everything went sweetly. I must have good karma.

Not enough good karma, however. Took the bike for a test up Ocean Beach Road, no problems. Exhilarated at being on two wheels again, I turned to take the twisty road over to Patonga. Then I realised:

(a) It was a very cold day
(b) I was wearing a T-shirt
(c) I already had the beginnings of a mild cold.

Now I know how to turn a mild cold into something longer lasting and not so mild. I'm still a bit thick with it, but I did re-register the bike in time. Unfortunately, I didn't feel up to blogging. My apologies.

All those thoughts of karma reminded me of a book I read more than thirty years ago – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I dug it out, and took it back to my sickbed.

It's about this philosophy professor who went nuts trying to define quality. We don't learn until near the end of the book that he'd had shock treatment in an attempt to cure his obsession, nor that the book was written by that man.

Although he never confirms it, we end up knowing author Robert M. Pirsig is the philosopher and that his book is a first-person account of a motor cycle trip across America with his son on the pillion.

Pirsig has an old bike, and realises he has to maintain it himself if it's to be done right. His thoughts contrast with those of another couple who ride along with him on a new BMW and are uninterested in the technical bits – a contrast Pirsig uses in a series of mini-essays about the philosophical treatment of quality. Here's a sample from early in the book:

And it occurred to me there is no manual that deals with the real business of motorcycle maintenance, the most important aspect of all. Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
On this trip I think we should notice it, explore it a little, to see if in that strange separation of what man is from what man does we may have some clues as to what the hell has gone wrong in this
twentieth century. I don't want to hurry it. That itself is a poisonous twentieth-century attitude. When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care about it.

That's an easy passage. As the book continues, Pirsig becomes more rigorous in his philosophical discussion and the reader has to work harder to follow it.

Pirsig sent his manuscript to 122 publishers. Only one thought it worth publishing – and even that publisher didn't think it would make a profit. But Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance went on to sell four million copies.

For many of its readers, it was inspirational. Perhaps the times were right – in 1974 the world was caught up in the excitement of a new order, with millions of people questioning the doctrines and moral certitudes of the 1950s and 1960s. The book's sub-title is An Inquiry Into Values.

A good account of the book and its themes appears here. Wikipedia also has an entry.

This is a book I hope to re-read, more carefully and thoughtfully, when I find the time (it joins a growing list which includes works like Patrick White's The Tree of Man, all of them read too quickly the first time).

We should caution that Zen etc. may disappoint many bikers. In an Author's Note, Pirsig warns:

What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either.

Clearing away the smoke

2009-07-13T11:42:00.010+10:00

For most of the past week, newspapers have been running comment by experts praising a proposal that the Australian Government increase its tobacco excise to push the price of a packet of 30 cigarettes up to $20. I believe the current price is about $13.50.

With an excise increase from 25 cents to 43c, that would lift the price per single cigarette from about 45c to 67c. Here's how the Sydney Sun-Herald highlighted the news a week ago:

The government's Preventative Health Task Force claimed the price jump, along with other anti-smoking measures including generic packaging and gruesome warnings covering 95 per cent of the packet, would help one million more Australians kick the habit.

I'd love to see tobacco smoking disappear from the face of the earth. But we should be wary. Too often, when we nobly go forth to do good, we harm the people we try to help.

When activists boycott coffee or cocoa picked by child labour, they get a warm inner glow and some families in the third world slip from bare subsistence to slow starvation.

Many call it the Law of Unintended Consequences, although it's no more scientific than Murphy's Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”). However, perverse results are always possible if we don't think things through.

Let's face it. Heavy smoking today is largely an addiction of the poor and the badly educated – the underclass of our society. If we make cigarettes much more expensive, many will still need to feed their addiction. To pay the higher price, they will spend less on food, housing and clothing for themselves and their families.

This newspaper article, by two prominent anti-smoking campaigners, disagrees with my view, but I remain doubtful. The article begins:

Tobacco tax is suddenly big news, with speculation about the Government's response to a recommended increase in excise giving rise to several myths and misconceptions. So it is timely to look at how the myths stack up against the evidence.
First, there is the view that increased tobacco excise punishes those on low incomes. The reality is that tobacco tax increases are particularly effective in prompting people in lower socio-economic
groups to quit smoking.
This is very important, because disadvantaged groups bear a disproportionately heavy tobacco death and disease burden. And a modest tobacco tax increase would generate more than enough funding to provide tailored assistance programs for people on lower incomes struggling to quit.

The article – by Professor Ian Olver, chief executive of the Cancer Council of Australia, and Maurice Swanson, the National Heart Foundation's tobacco control spokesman – concedes that poor people suffer the most tobacco-related death and illness.

It also claims recent Quit Victoria research shows 60 per cent of smokers support a tobacco tax increase. To that, I can only say I'm a journalist and it's part of my trade to be sceptical. I'd like to see details of that research.

I'd also like to see the research supporting the claim in the article's second paragraph.

And I'm sceptical of the claim that higher excise would generate more than enough funding to provide tailored assistance for people on lower incomes struggling to quit. With the massive revenue already generated by tobacco excise, why don't we have effective “tailored assistance” today?

(That's not to say we should not be improving ways to provide help – obviously, we should keep seeking them with well-funded research at the highest level.)

But in the past week's debate, nobody seems to have touched on two important issues. The first is simple – couldn't the Australian Government make nicotine lozenges, chewing gum and patches less expensive?

For smokers heavily addicted to nicotine, they may be the only way to give up cigarettes and their cancer-causing chemicals. Making them cheaper must help more people quit.

Looking at the nicotine products in a local pharmacy, one has the impression of an oligopoly – a market supplied by only a few competitors, making price competition less likely.

Perhaps the government could ask the Productivity Commission to examine the production, marketing and pricing of nicotine replacement products. If the commission finds they could be cheaper – with generic products, perhaps – it could lean on the present makers to cut prices.

If it finds the prices are in line with production costs, the government itself could pay a subsidy to lower retail cost.

The second important argument needs careful phrasing (I am well aware of the defamation laws), but perhaps we could strive to change public attitudes so that it becomes socially unacceptable to be a director, executive, marketing or public relations worker in the tobacco industry.

Cigarette production and marketing may be legal, but surely tobacco executives know their commercial efforts result in the deaths of many of their fellow citizens.

It might be a bit extreme to spit on their BMWs as they drive past, but perhaps we could raise our concerns when we sit beside them at the yacht club or on the school council – just quietly letting them know we feel their moral position could stand re-examination.

Some of these issues came under the spotlight in 2003, when the University of Sydney's Senate refused to endorse the appointment of former New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner – then chairman of British American Tobacco (Australia) – to head the advisory council of the university's Graduate School of Government.

In a post on March 22 last year, this blog praised Greiner as a Liberal Party moderate, a good Premier and an astute businessman. But that post did go on to say of his being forced out of the premiership:

At that time one could feel sympathy, but with many of us it went up in smoke when he became chairman of a major Australian company which kills people as part of the ordinary course of its business – British American Tobacco.

This is not to reflect on Nick Greiner's position at the time. Indeed, the issues are not clear-cut, as shown in this analysis by St James Ethics Centre executive director Dr Simon Longstaff at the time of the Sydney University setback.

However, I do believe that over time it will become socially unacceptable to run a tobacco company. Let's make that time come sooner.

Want a film distributed in regional Australia? Do it yourself!

2009-07-04T14:51:00.007+10:00

Film-maker Warren Ryan has just emailed me, pointing to a feature in the online industry magazine Inside Film about his aims and methods in making Shadows of the Past, in which rodeo bull-riding is the backdrop for a simple but powerful story

Shadows, you may recall, won my praise in a post on May 28 (“An excellent film stuck in the bush”).

It seems Grumpy Old Journo may be a bushie at heart, because my response to the film has been matched by enthusiastic audiences in those Australian regional centres where it's been seen.

Interviewed by Simon de Bruyn, Warren says:

I strongly believe the regional Australia is largely ignored when it comes to entertainment they can relate to. Distributors cater solely for the city market and yet a huge slice of the box office comes
from regional cinemas. When I got into film making it, I spoke to a lot of people from all over regional Australia about what they would like to see in an Aussie film. I took a lot of their feedback on board when I was writing this script.

We made sure the film was authentic, grounded and believable.

The reaction so far has been phenomenal . . .

On distribution, Warren told Inside Film:

We’ve been very happy with the cinema release we’ve put together ourselves and we have an extensive plan for the DVD release in October. Counting this week's release in Tamworth, Orange and Wagga, we’ll have been through around 20 cinemas and we are approached each week by more . . .

We have also received several US distribution offers which is great. I hope to finalize the North American deal this week. The distributor we are leaning towards has a proven background in westerns and I believe will be a great fit for Shadows of the Past.

We have another US company that wants the remaining world wide rights, so we’re currently negotiating that as well.

We don’t look like we’ll get an official Australian distributor which is surprising, but it doesn’t overly concern me.

Much of the rest of the Inside Film interview covers technical information mainly of value to other film-makers, but the feature also raises matters which should be of general concern.
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Vale Frank Devine, a conservative with wit

2009-07-03T18:05:00.007+10:00

When Grumpy Old Journo was a schoolboy in Perth, his newspaper reading was brightened by the work of a young journalist with a flair for colour stories from the busy Perth Police Court.

Frank Devine (pictured), whose death at 77 after a long illness was reported on The Australian's website today, wasn't the first journalist to trawl the magistrates' courts for Runyonesque yarns, but he may have been one of the best.

Some 55 years later, I can remember his stories were marked by their humanity – by the reporter's empathy with the losers and the spivs and the sad alcoholics in that daily parade before the beak.

Frank Devine went on to a stellar career as a foreign correspondent, a senior editor of Reader's Digest in Australia and the US, of US newspapers, and on returning to Australia, as editor of The Australian.

He was a staunch Catholic and clung to hard-line conservative views. He was a stalwart of Quadrant magazine.

Yet Frank Devine was one the few conservative columnists I could read without becoming angry (well, most of the time, anyway). I could seldom agree with him, but his weekly contribution to The Australian's Wry Side comment space was marked by intellectual verve and a devastating wit.

He mocked the pretentious, the groupthink lefties and the woolly minded greenies with all the intellectual force he could muster.

Unfortunately, I cannot recall his turning that force against his groupthink Quadrant colleagues, or those conservatives who made up their minds fifty years ago and they're not going to change now.

Still, Frank Devine was a great journalist. His contribution to Australian intellectual life will be missed.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

Grumpy Old Journo had planned a post rejoicing at Annabel Crabb's replacing Miranda Devine as a columnist in the Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. Miranda is one of Frank Devine's three daughters, so I guess we can understand why she took leave, leaving Annabel to stand in.

I would have remarked that Annabel Crabb's piece, about the proliferation of saucy innuendo in food and beer advertising, was a delightful contrast with Miranda Devine's somewhat prudish, conservative views.

Annabel crammed just about every double entendre possible into her piece. The only one she seems to have missed is the Bondi Blonde beer slogan.

But we'd better not go down that path.

Were we prescient, or what?

2009-07-01T16:02:00.005+10:00

See, I did write about Malcolm Turnbull:

"Alas, it doesn't take long for a respected journalist, lawyer and merchant banker to sink into political life when he's elected to the Federal Parliament."

Okay, I'll come clean. That was posted to Grumpy Old Journo on December 23, 2006. Is that prescient, or what?

In the post, GOJ said:

Alas, it doesn't take long for a respected journalist, lawyer and merchant banker to sink into political life when he's elected to the Federal Parliament. Take Malcolm Turnbull, our new Environment Minister, quoted in this morning's Weekend Australian: “The whole climate change phenomenon has informed and underpinned the policies of the Australian Government for more than a decade.”

The truth, as Malcolm must well know, is that Prime Minister John Howard has denied evidence of climate change for a decade. A stubborn man who overestimates his own intellectual abilities, he
listened only to those scientists who had the Quadrant Seal of Approval.

The result: We lost 10 years in which we could have been looking for ways to deal with the crisis.
It's a pity to see Malcolm Turnbull getting down to their [political spin doctors'] level with such misinformation . . .

But then, he's the Republican who once wrote of Howard: "Whatever else he achieves, history will remember him for only one thing. He was the prime minister who broke a nation's heart. He was the man who made Australia keep a foreign queen."

A politician, unlike a leopard, must change spots to survive in the jungle. But surely, one can stop short of telling porkies.

Sorry Malcolm, you've lost me. Once I thought you'd be a great prime minister.

Australians expect political confrontation to be full-on, with no punches pulled. But they also expect their politicians to tell the truth, and to be sure of their facts when they make serious allegations against opponents, and to have the decency to apologise if they're proven wrong.

Our Federal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, did none of those things when he accused Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of lying to the House of Representatives, and in essence, also accused him of corruption.

That's why the public turned against him so dramatically in the three newspaper opinion polls published this week. The Herald/Nielsen poll revealed the proportion of Australians who disapprove of him had jumped from 47 per cent to 60 per cent, and those who approved dived from 43 per cent to 32 per cent.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

My apologies to readers who looked to Grumpy Old Journo last week for enlightenment on "UteGate", aka the OzCar affair. Two factors kept GOJ silent. First, anything I could say would do little more than repeat the news and commentary splashed across all the newspapers.

Second, I was frantically trying to file the past three years' overdue income tax returns by June 30, hoping to qualify for the Federal Government's $900 tax bonus. That money could pay off the credit card after I spend $645 on compulsory third-party personal injury insurance before re-registering my old motor cycle -- almost twice the cost of our car's "green slip".

In rushing to file those overdue returns, I wasn't alone, as this report shows.

Sorry, Tim, but I still can't buy that argument

2009-06-20T10:18:00.006+10:00

Here's a link which will take you to the pre-recorded video in which author Tim Winton uses his Miles Franklin acceptance speech to argue that Australia should retain "territorial copyright" protection for our authors and publishers.

Sorry Tim, but as I said in my previous post, I can't buy the proposition that Australians should be required to pay more for Australian books than they otherwise would, all in the name of protecting our culture.

If there are inequities in a free international book trade, they should be addressed by competition policy and anti-dumping rules.

If our authors don't receive full royalties on their books when they're imported from international publishers, it's up to our authors and literary agents to seek better contract arrangements. If they need government support to do so, it would be a valid role for government to play -- especially in international negotiations.

Some may think Grumpy Old Journo's comments mark him as a right-wing fundamentalist. On the contrary, a left-of-centre, socially progressive commentator should have no problem in also being an economic rationalist.

Here's the ABC report about Tim Winton's winning the Miles Franklin for the fourth time with his novel Breath, and the report from the Trust which administers the awards.

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How much should we tax bookbuyers to support Australian culture?

2009-06-16T18:54:00.008+10:00

Your blogger has had too many distractions lately, so he's only just read the full text of the closing address by novelist Richard Flanagan (pictured) to the Sydney Writers Festival on May 24. Click here if you'd like to read it before I tell you that it's a superb, elegant speech – and that it's full of claptrap.

I was a finance journalist for much of my career, and when it comes to arguments for tariffs and protection from international competition, I heard them all back in the 1970s.

Let's see. There's the infant industry argument – protect us from overseas competition until we grow enough to take on the big boys around the world. Worked well for BHP, didn't it?

Or the defence capability argument – we need strong industries so we can ramp up production of war materiel if we're under threat of invasion. Except that in the 21st Century, we'll all be blown to smithereens before we convert those railway workshops to producing Liberators and Lancasters.

Or to protect our pristine primary production, don't introduce disease with imported apples/pork/fish/poultry/etc. – sometimes a valid argument, but often too self-serving.

All have something in common. Corporations, unions and primary producers plead that the public should pay more for goods and services than they otherwise would, whether it's in the shops or paid by their taxes.

But culture is different, isn't it? Australians should pay more for their books to allow our stories to be told with Australian voices.

We must continue “territorial copyright” so that our authors, publishers and independent booksellers thrive under protection from those unscrupulous overseas publishers and our greedy retail giants like Woolworths and Coles and bookstore chains like Dymocks.

That's the proposition Richard Flanagan tries to sell us in that beautifully constructed speech (it really is worth reading, so here's the link again). His exposition is so good, even I almost succumbed.

But I can't go along with it. Stripped of all its high-falutin' good intentions, it's an argument that higher authority – the Australian government – should decide that a cultural issue is so worthwhile ordinary Australians should pay more for their books than they would otherwise.

And that's a decision the Australian people should make, not their governments. The only place Australians can register their vote is in a free marketplace. All the government should do is make sure the marketplace works properly, and is regulated by well-administered competition policy.

[Richard Flanagan alleges our market would be flooded by dumped books which would otherwise have been remaindered or pulped by US publishers. If he's quick, he's just got time to lodge a submission to the current Productivity Commission inquiry into Australia's anti-dumping legislation.]

Flanagan also troubles me with his suggestion that the Australian government should stuff our dollars into a bloody great milch cow with plenty of teats, so that an entire Australian cultural industry – authors, publishers and independent booksellers – can take sustenance and thrive.

He's envious of the government money which subsidises some film-makers. I don't blame him. But when did you last see a government-subsidised Australian film and say,"Wow!” ?

The last Australian film Grumpy Old Journo enjoyed was Shadows of the Past (GOJ post, May 28, “An excellent film stuck in the bush”, a movie for which film-maker Warren Ryan received no government assistance). Should we go that way in boosting the publishing industry?

I have another worry. Should – God forbid! – Australians ever elect another John Howard as Prime Minister, he will have a ready-made structure to implement a Quadrant-inspired purge of Australia's “culture industry”.

But the biggest flaw in Richard Flanagan's argument is its total failure to look to a future in which many readers will use the internet to obtain books by digital downloads to home computers, laptops or specialist e-book readers such as Amazon's Kindle.

The internet is international, and trying to rope off Australian writing into "territorial copyright" will become difficult to enforce and probably counter-productive.

The Australian government would serve our writers and our cultural interests better by developing policies which earn authors exposure and proper royalties in the emerging world of digital publishing, and it should make sure its voice is heard in forums which develop the protocols for internet publishing.

Perhaps we could allow "territorial copyright" to continue – but only while the Productivity Commission, or a specially set up inquiry, develops those policies.

If you type "territorial copyright" into Google or another search engine, and restrict it to Australian pages, you will come up with hundreds of results. All of which disagree with me. Still, they might be worth your time.
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Supporters save Senator Bob Brown

2009-06-12T09:19:00.005+10:00

Any need to comment?

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Loathe him or love him, Senator Bob Brown gets responses

2009-06-11T10:14:00.008+10:00

Surely this takes the prize for the nastiest letter to the editor this week. Published in today's Sydney Morning Herald, it drips with a sneering loathing for greenies generally, and Senator Brown in particular.

Perhaps letters editors should commission anti-tripe software, to screen out any submissions which say, “How silly of me,” along with those which start, “Is it only me, but . . ?” – terms which usually say the writers are pompous old gits.

This letter's writer appears not to have troubled himself to learn the facts behind Senator Brown's huge legal bill. Nor does he feel it matters that Brown undertook the legal actions not for his own benefit, but for what he perceived to the need to protect natural environment. And that his bankruptcy would rob the nation of a unique political leader.

But the letter writer needn't listen to a Grumpy Old Journo – if he flicks to the Opinion page right opposite his letter, he'll find the background fully explained. (He might have problems with the big words, however – Elizabeth Farrelly is erudite, and isn't shy in showing it. Even your GOJ had to look up guddling and manky.*)

And Elizabeth Farrelly says she loves Bob Brown. “Nothing personal. Never met the guy. But I love his articulate, undaunted, un-self-aggrandising and untiring defence of the planet.”

*Guddling: To try to catch fish by hand, esp. by groping under rocks or in murky water.

Manky: Inferior or unpleasantly dirty.
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Rudd's countdown to November – if he decides to go that way

2009-06-10T16:54:00.006+10:00

After a lot of shilly-shallying, Federal politics is entering a new period of tension – double dissolution or not? This video clip reports on the possibilities.

It's probably true that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would prefer to serve out his full first term to the end of next year, as he's said a number of times.

But it's also true that he has put his newly envigorated ministry and the Labor machine on notice to be ready from about November in case he calls an early election, as Phillip Coorey reports in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

Despite his conservative preference for a full term, a double dissolution must be enormously tempting to Rudd for a reason seldom analysed by commentators – he would sweep away many of those troublesome senators.

At a normal three-yearly Federal election, all members of the lower house must step down. If they want to stay on, they must be re-elected. But senators are elected for six-year terms, and only half must seek re-election at each Federal election.

That why the Senate still contains so many Coalition members – two short of a majority – despite Rudd's convincing win over John Howard at the last elections.

However, after a double dissolution all members of both the Reps and the Senate must face the electors in fresh polls.

Of course, the numbers in a new Senate following a double dissolution cannot be certain, but it would be surprising if the Coalition did not fall sharply. In the current national mood, the Greens could lift numbers.

And Rudd would probably still face a number of loopy independents, such as Family First's Steve Fielding.

As Paul Kelly reported in The Australian last month, a double dissolution must be attractive to Rudd for many other reasons.

. . . his gains from a double dissolution are potentially immense and this is the key to future politics. A double dissolution gets Rudd to the polls before the worst of the downturn, possibly before the jobless rate reaches 8 per cent, maximises his House of Representatives vote, destroys the Coalition's gross over-representation in the Senate and constitutes the new upper house at once rather than on July1, 2011.
Taken together, such advantages pose a mortal threat to the Coalition parties. The paradox, of course, is that only the Coalition creates the conditions for a double dissolution. The test, therefore, for Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull is to persuade his party to avoid a double dissolution election and ensure a full term parliament.

Section 57 of the Australian Constitution says the Prime Minister may ask the Governor-General to dissolve both houses of parliament, the Representatives and the Senate, if:

The Senate rejects or fails to pass, or passes with amendments which the Reps will not accept, any legislation sent to it by the Reps – which means the Australian Government, with its majority in the Reps.
At least three months pass, and the Reps again passes the legislation and sends it to the Senate, which again rejects it.

That's when Rudd may make an appointment to see the Governor-General. From the time the G-G dissolves both houses, the Australian Electoral Commission timetable allows between 33 and 68 days till the nation goes to the polls.

See why Rudd wants the troops ready before November?

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Quentin Dempster turns the spotlight on prison death cover-up

2009-06-06T08:37:00.008+10:00

When will the NSW Labor government wake up? Prison deaths, and the failure to provide reasonable medical care to ill or geriatric prisoners, could cost it votes and destroy any faint hope it may have of re-election.

The scandal had registered only in scattered newspaper articles and the occasional blog. But last night, Quentin Dempster's NSW Stateline program on ABC television gave a disturbing report on the NSW Coroner's Court findings on the 2007 prison suicide of Adam Shipley (the subject of my previous post, on Thursday).

Stateline reporter Philippa McDonald interviewed Bill Beale, the department's former principal investigator, who had told the Coroner's Court that systemic failures in the management of inmates at risk contributed to the death of Shipley, who had a history of mental illness and self-harm.

Beale had resigned in disgust after his boss binned his report and substituted something much more bland – not the first time it had happened.

However, Stateline did not examine the broader questions of deaths in custory.

Grumpy Old Journo is the only commentator to have directly connected Shipley's death with other reports – the death of Mary Anne Roberts, who should have been in a nursing home, and the NSW Government's “couldn't give a stuff” response to the possibility Charlotte Lindstrom may die of acute anorexia – to conclude that in NSW, a prison sentence may well be a death sentence.

---oooOOOooo---

Historically, there's never been much public support for prison reform – it's been left to Quakers and the like. In Australia, our politicians are too frightened of “shock jock” radio thugs to speak up for reform.

But there is some support, and usually it's to be found in people who vote Labor because they believe it's the party with socially progressive policies.

However, the times they are a'changing. If Labor loses those voters, its re-election chances will move from “almost none” to “absolutely zilch”.

And Labor is losing those voters, as shown by Greens candidate Adele Carles's convincing win in the West Australian by-election for Fremantle on May 16. Admittedly, the old working-class port suburbs of Fremantle have gentrified over the past few decades – but that's no different from many electorates in Sydney, Melbourne, Newcastle and other old industrial or port cities.

As this Crikey report said:

. . . Carles’s win underscores the point that the Greens’ encroachment into inner-city and bohemian enclaves is continuing to gather pace, posing a serious long-term threat to what had traditionally been Labor’s strongholds.

A number of seats in Sydney and Melbourne are likely to fall when the tide goes out on the ageing state Labor governments, which seems particularly imminent in the case of New South Wales.

As I said, prison reform is not a hot issue. But with more media exposure, and possibly a campaign through GetUp!, it could become so, and the NSW Labor could lose even more support from those of us who want to vote for a socially progressive party.

---oooOOOooo---

Perhaps the Stateline report will force the NSW Government to act. Philippa McDonald reported:

. . .the Corrective Services Minister is now under intense pressure to overhaul the treatment of vulnerable prisoners and the way his department conducts its investigations.

And Quentin Dempster concluded:

And last night, the NSW Government promised to ensure all government agencies respond to coronial recommendations in the future. Under new guidelines, government departments like Corrective Services will have to act within six months. Victoria recently introduced legislation to
make that happen. Despite numerous requests from Stateline over the past week, the Corrective Services Minister, the Attorney-General and the Corrective Services commissioner all declined to be interviewed about the Shipley case

The Corrective Services Minister, may I remind you again, is former NSW unions boss John Robertson, who brought the NSW Government to its knees when he helped organise a hooting, howling, jeering mob to shout down the then NSW Treasurer over plans to privatise electricity generation.

The images of Labor policy-making were even more damaging than the "36 faceless men" photo which harmed Labor so badly in the 1963 Federal elections.

After his having brought NSW Labor to its knees, it will be ironic if Robertson now administers the coup de grace with his handling of the prisons portfolio.

The Stateline transcript may be read here. This newspaper report tells of Beale's evidence to the Coroner's Court.

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Does the NSW Government give a stuff about the people who die in its prisons?

2009-06-04T11:08:00.004+10:00

Another report which should make you angry, taken from an ABC Online bulletin yesterday.

A coronial inquest has found that the New South Wales Department of Corrective Services ignored a damning report into a death in custody.
Adam Shipley hanged himself in his cell at the Kirkconnell minimum-security correctional centre, near Bathurst, two years ago.

The 36-year-old, who was serving time for a breach of parole, had schizophrenia and a long history of self harm.

At the Glebe Coroners Court today, an inquest found that Corrective Services had no plan for Shipley's psychological wellbeing.

The State Coroner, Mary Jerram, said the department failed to properly investigate the death and ignored a detailed report into it, because it was not written in the right format.

Readers of this blog will know I'm passionate about this issue. Over the past month, my posts have included:

May 9: “Australia doesn't impose the death penalty, does it?”
May 23: “Should imprisonment be a death sentence”
June 1: “Morally, it will be murder if this prisoner dies”
June 2: “John Robertson decides: We'll risk her life”

The heading on this post today may seem over the top. It reflects my anger, certainly, but with the scandals continuing to unfold, it's justified. The ABC report concluded:

The Coroner recommended that the New South Wales Government order a review into the treatment of at-risk inmates.

She also questioned the usefulness of the department's investigation branch and called for a review of its operations.

Don't hold your breath.
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Two events – one fun, the other sombre

2009-06-04T09:44:00.007+10:00

Two events in this Queen's birthday long weekend may be of interest.

First, anyone in the Central Coast or Hunter regions who'd like to see the film Shadows of the Past, which Grumpy Old Journo praised last month, could catch it at the Nelson Bay Cinema Complex, Stockton St, Nelson Bay, from today till June 11. It's on at 12.15pm daily.

Port Stephens is hosting the 4th Blue Water Country Music Festival from tomorrow until Monday – you could see the movie and catch some good country music.

Second, and more sombre, the annual memorial service to mark the Myall Creek massacre takes place at the murder site west of Inverell on Saturday. You'll find details below.

Because you're reading Grumpy Old Journo, it's likely you're an intelligent person who won't be told what to believe – you make up your mind after considering the evidence. You may find value in two GOJ posts last year about the massacre.

I introduced them with this statement:

This is, hopefully, the final version of a post which has been revised and re-revised to ensure it is accurate with the ascertainable facts and fair in its treatment of those matters which must remain
subject to conjecture.

Reading back over them, I think they provide a useful guide to the evidence, with plenty of links to online sources. You'll find the main post here and the other here.

Here's a guide to Saturday's function at Myall Creek, taken from an email sent to reconciliation groups:

The annual memorial commemoration ceremony for those who died in the Myall Creek massacre will be held at Myall Creek, on Saturday, 6 June.This public commemoration is held at Myall Creek west of Inverell on the Bingara-Delungra Road, commencing at 10.00 a.m.
http://www.myallcreek.org/
The guest speaker this year is Mr. Kev Carmody. Mr Carmody is a well-known and respected Aboriginal singer songwriter. http://www.kevcarmody.com.au/
The NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Paul Lynch, will also attend.
The Myall Creek Memorial was erected in June 2000 by a group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people working together in an act of reconciliation. It was awarded the Judith Wright Prize for innovative reconciliation work in 2005. In June 2008 Peter Garrett announced Myall Creek Memorial as part of the national heritage register.
The memorial commemorates the unprovoked massacre of twenty-eight Wirrayaraay women, children and old men by a group of stockmen in 1838. The story of the massacre, of those who fought to bring it to justice, and of the remarkable ongoing and growing grassroots reconciliation are told through the annual memorial ceremony.
Following the ceremony, two highlights this year will be the schools competition with 29 local schools invited to participate, and open discussion on a concept for an education/cultural centre
at Myall Creek.
10.00 Arrival and morning tea.10.30 Start of ceremony12.00 Lunch will be available after the ceremony for a small charge.12.45 Schools competition prize-giving, followed by cultural items and
hearing briefly from special invited guests.1.30 Open annual meeting, with a focus on new architectural concept plans for the educational/cultural centre.
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John Robertson decides: We'll risk her life

2009-06-02T06:20:00.004+10:00

This post should be read in conjunction with the previous post.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports that the NSW Minister for Corrective Services, John Robertson, has ruled that the seriously ill Charlotte Lindstrom must remain in a NSW prison until she gives evidence against her former fiance in two drug trials. Read the report here.

Robertson said she could not be considered for repatriation to Sweden until she had fulfilled her obligations to give evidence in the trials.

In the Herald report, he made no reference to expert medical evidence that her anorexia is so severe she is at risk of death, or to opinions that the stress of testifying could kill her.

The Minister's decision might, just, be justified if he were to make sure she receives adequate medical treatment, something our prison system has failed to provide during her two years in solitary.

The report makes no reference to medical treatment, so we must assume she will not get it.

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Morally, it will be murder if this prisoner dies

2009-06-01T17:21:00.010+10:00

The NSW State Labor Government continues to risk this prisoner's life.

I've commented on this before ("Should imprisonment be a death sentence", on May 23). I'm even more angry after reading this report in today's Sydney Morning Herald.

As the report says, the Swedish government is seeking her urgent repatriation to Sweden because she is dangerously ill with acute anorexia. The Australian Federal Government agrees she should go home.

Ms Lindstrom's body mass index has fallen to 13.6, which, as the Herald reports, is well below the level at which she should be in hospital and undergoing refeeding.

The NSW prison system has never given her the treatment she needs.

Sweden's Ambassador to Australia said: "This is not according to what we would have expected from a modern and well-equipped government in NSW."

Nor has the NSW government replied to Sweden's request. A spokeswoman for the responsible minister said no decision had been made.

And who is the Minister for Corrective Services? None other than John Robertson, the trade union boss who slipped into the Legislative Council seat vacated by the minister he got rid of, Michael Costa. Robertson did not have to face the public in an election.

Robertson has done more than any other politician to ensure Labor suffers a humiliating defeat at the next State elections, as I wrote on February 26 in "How to destroy Labor's electoral chances".

If Ms Lindstrom dies as a result of Robertson's failure to provide adequate medical treatment, and his refusal to let her go home to Sweden for treatment, he and his colleagues will be guilty of murder. Not in any legal sense, but in a moral sense the electors should understand.

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Shadows bursts out of the gloom in Armidale

2009-05-31T18:42:00.008+10:00

Warren Ryan (pictured, the writer and director of the film Shadows of the Past), sent me this email today:

ARMIDALE SCREENING UPDATE

Actors Cassandra Ryan and Justin Colquhoun were kept busy signing
autographs for an hour after last night's sold-out
screening of Shadows of the Past.

Crowd reaction was again fantastic, with patrons vowing to return to
the Belgrave Cinema Armidale before Shadows finishes it's 2-week run.

The Armidale independent gave the film a four-star rating. See
attached pdf [note from Grumpy Old Journo, I'm not confident about loading PDF files to my blog. I'll read up on the manual, and may try again].

I am excited to get the film into our core audience locations. Some
families drove for an hour and a half to make the screening. One
family quoted that "it's the first time they'd been to the cinemas as
a family for 12 years, and that there was no way they were going to
miss this Australian rodeo film".

I'm chuffed, as you'll understand if you go back a couple of posts to "An excellent film stuck in the bush" on May 25. In that post I predicted word-of-mouth audience reactions would lead to acclaim for Shadows, despite luke-warm ratings from film critics.

Armidale is not only a major inland regional town in NSW, it's a university town. Where better to get that word of mouth going?

Newspaper editors with beams in their eye

2009-05-30T11:43:00.009+10:00

A cold morning. Your Grumpy Old Journalist remained in bed, reading the morning papers, when he cames across this – the second editorial in today's Sydney Morning Herald:

An hour later, at 6am, I heard the wonderfully warm voice of Angela Catterns on ABC radio 702, reading out the headlines from the Herald, and then those from the Telegraph and the Weekend Australian. Naming them all.

The Herald calls this “filching”?

You cannot buy advertising on ABC radio. Why would you want to, when the ABC gives it away free? And yet the Herald is indignant?

It's true that many newsbreaking Herald stories – and other newspapers' exclusives, too – saturate the airwaves and the blogosphere for days. As the story develops, journalists and commentators tend not to acknowledge the original source of the story.

Before the Herald editors become too wound up, they could reach down the office Bible and turn to Matthew 7:3:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

[That's the King James version. Modern Bible translations use “speck” or “piece of sawdust” instead of “mote”, as this details.]

The editors could then turn back to a story they published on May 7 about Mick Keelty's resignation, and then read my post of the same day, “Keelty – getting the facts right”. In that post, I noted phrases in the newspaper report were the same as those in an earlier post of mine ( “This time, Mick Keelty must do the honourable thing and resign” on August 30, 2008). The Herald even repeated an error I'd failed to correct.

Most bloggers give idealistic support to the free exchange of ideas, and let others pick up, discuss, and disseminate their views. Under my profile over on the side, I assert copyright over material in this blog, but also say anyone is welcome to use the material, although I'd appreciate acknowledgement and a link.

The big non-profits on the internet do need a formal legal arrangement, and provide their content to other users under a GNU or a Creative Commons licence. (Wikipedia switched last week, and this article explains the different licences.)

Commercial publishers, like Fairfax, the owner of the Herald, do need copyright to protect what is, after all, their property. They owe it to their shareholders. But when an ethical blogger – such as, ahem, this old journo – picks up their material, acknowledges its source, and provides a link back to the Herald's online story, everyone's a winner.

The Herald seems to be becoming tougher, and more selfish on the internet.

On April 13, the well-regarded media blog Mumbrella accused Fairfax Digital Media of being a bad internet citizen by “ failing to contribute to the ecosystem of the blogosphere.”

That sounds a bit precious, but the blogger says Fairfax online stories provide clickable links only to its own sites – if a story does mention an external site, it won't provide the link. You have to key it in yourself. The Mumbrella blogger wrote:

Fairfax seems to prefer to treat its [online] readers a bit like a jealous man who tries to stop his girlfriend from meeting other men in the hope that this will protect the relationship. One Fairfax journo told me that the management “aren’t keen on linking outside”.

You'll find the Mumbrella blog here. It's worth reading, especially for Fairfax editors (although first, they may have to remove the beams from their eyes).

An excellent film stuck in the bush

2009-05-28T10:45:00.007+10:00

New to filmgoers, Marcus Pointon plays a nuanced role as Steve Kelly

Days of steady rain. Merry has already polished all the silverware, and we're both going stir crazy. Time to go to the movies. We click on our local cinema's program guide.

What a depressing line-up. An animation film – I thought the school holidays were over! A Dan Brown story like The Da Vinci Code – don't insult our intelligence! Teenage Vampires – really!

We crossed them off until we had only one left. Shadows of the Past. Never heard of it. Unexciting title. And after Baz Luhrmann's Australia, we'd decided to take a break from Australian movies.

But we didn't feel like driving to another suburb, and in any case the Avoca Theatre seemed to be running yet another of its highbrow, intellectually improving programs. The Ettalong Paradiso it has to be.

We buy tickets for Cinema 5, and set off to find it. The Paradiso is part of the Ettalong Resort, and shares its Mediterranean architectural styles. Looking for Cinema 5, we work our way through a succession of lobbies with increasingly overblown baroque interiors, until we find ourselves in what seems an empty room. Somebody points to the corner. We pull a red curtain aside, and step into what must be Australia's smallest commercial cinema.

But as we walked out, I said to Merry: “That was one of the best movies I've seen for years.

“The critics are going to damn it with supercilious praise, but normal Aussies are going to love it. It's going to be a sleeper – if it can stay on screens out there long enough, word of mouth is going to make it a hit. Something like Lantana.”

So far, I've been right about the critics – of the two who have bothered to review it so far, SBS's Simon Foster was just luke-warm in his assessment (I'll provide links at the end of this post to let you read the words for yourself). Strangely, when he adds an online comment to correct an error, he also says:

And, rest assured, I feel very warmly about the film - it's a lovely piece of Aussie filmmaking.

Why didn't he say that in his review?

In online magazine FilmInk, Annette Basile said:

There are likeable characters in Shadows Of The Past, and a reasonable dose of drama and relationship inter-dynamics, but the largely stiff performances give it a low budget telemovie aura – it's like something you may catch on Saturday afternoon TV during the non-ratings period. Like a lot of Saturday arvo fare, it's watchable.

The review concludes:

Visually unspectacular and suffocating in a low quality country music soundtrack, Shadows Of The Past is loaded with poor performances and cliches. Yet there's still something pleasantly warm and fuzzy about these people - you'll care just enough about them to sit through to the predictable end.

Do you see what I mean about damning with supercilious praise?

Why do I believe the critics are wrong, and that if Shadows can hold on long enough out in the boondocks, it will become an acclaimed film?

Sad movies make me cry, all the way through a packet of tissues. Comedies see me chuckling in the stalls. Dramas see me on the edge of my seat, biting my nails.

When I go to the movies, I sit back and open my mind to an emotional experience. Yes, I've wasted my time with many bad films, but now and then a movie makes it all worthwhile. Shadows of the Past is such a movie.

How miserable it must be to be a film critic, compelled to sustain a detached objectivity while noting down every little flaw in the film. To be unable to give yourself over to the emotional experience, and let the film work its magic on you.

And because you know it's a low-budget movie, you note all the shortcomings to be expected in a low-budget movie.

Director Baz Luhrmann spent $150 million making Australia. It was worth seeing – some of the wide-country landscapes were breathtaking – but most people left the cinema disappointed.

In reply to my email, Shadows of the Past writer and director Warren Ryan told me he brought his film in for just under a million dollars. It was entirely self-funded – nobody else would help, apart from a few companies which supplied equipment – and Warren says he now has a mortgage which would choke a mule.

For me, Shadows provided a more satisfying cinema experience than Australia.

In the tiny Cinema No 5, we settled in our seats just as the opening credits exploded. Exploded is a good word – the background to the credits shows bulls expoding from rodeo gates, with riders trying to stay on for eight seconds, then scrambling clear of hooves and horns.

This is a story about bull-riding, and specifically about Steve Kelly, a former champion bull-rider who spent time in a wheelchair after the fearsome Black Friday tossed and trampled him. Spinal surgery and his devoted partner, Krystal, have restored his health.

But he still has his demons, and three years after Black Friday almost killed him, he has to face them again when a ruthless rodeo promoter pressures him to return for one last ride on Black Friday before the bull goes to stud.

So far Steve is living in a happy domestic scene with Krystal and his daughter Katie, although money is tight. But that happy scene changes, too, at Katie's 15th birthday party when Dannii comes back into the lives of the husband and daughter she left 12 years ago.

Why has she come back? What does she want?

I haven't given the actors' names, because you won't know any (you can look them up on the website, link below). Warren confirmed to me that all but one are up-and-coming unknowns. The exception is Mark Lee of Gallipoli fame, and I thought his depiction of Steve's father was less than convincing.

The romantic themes have a touch of the TV soap opera, but the film is lifted by good acting in all the major roles. And Shadows may have benefited from Warren's inability to afford name actors. Stars are good for the box office, but as with Geoffrey Rush in Lantana, they tend to overshadow the roles they play.

The film's settings are authentic, set in and around Warwick in Queensland – in real life, a town with a strong rodeo tradition.

SBS's Simon Foster said Shadows Of The Past bears an uncanny resemblance to Steve Miner’s 1991 dusty family drama Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken, or the several incarnations of My Friend Flicka.

That may be so, but for me, the growing tension as Steve struggles to decide whether he will ride Black Friday took me back to the mood I felt when I watched High Noon. Worse, I couldn't get High Noon's “Do not forsake me, oh my darling” to stop running through my mind like an endless tape.

These days, should we talk of films? Soon film will be as obsolete in film-making as linotype machines in newspaper production. The industry is swinging to digital technology.

But unless the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission acts, independent producers like Warren Ryan may find themselves with bigger problems than just having to persuade exhibitors to give them a run – the studios and the big exhibitors may use encryption technology to lock them out of the powerful digital projectors now being installed.

David Tiley, who runs the Barista blog and also edits a subscription website and email service, Screen Hub, for the film and TV industry, has sent me a generously long email outlining the issues. I'll give them some more thought, and return with a new post (perhaps not the next post or two).

---oooOOOooo ---

Warren Ryan sent me this Shadows from the Past screening schedule for the next month:
NAROOMA: Currently playing
ARMIDALE: May 28 onwards
RICHMOND (returned by popular demand): May 28 onwards
NELSON BAY: June 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in conjunction with the Blue Water Country Music Festival
TOOWOOMBA ( Rick's ICON Theatre): June 19 (evening) and Sunday 21 (2pm matinee) Tickets available to these special screenings from the ICON ticket box only. Two screenings only.
TAMWORTH: July 2 onwards
WAGGA: July 2 onwards
ORANGE: July 2 onwards

You may check out the details of Shadows and view a trailer at
http://shadowsofthepast.com.au/

The SBS review can be read at
http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/3347/Shadows-of-the-Past

FilmInk's review is at
http://www.filmink.com.au/review/shadows-of-the-past-film/

And for some interesting reading on High Noon
http://encyclopedia.tfd.com/high+noon

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Who needs sub-editors, anyway?

2009-05-24T09:45:00.006+10:00

Squeezed by the recession and the internet, newspaper managements are desperate to slash costs. For many of them, the first fat to be trimmed came from editorial production departments.

What do all those sub-editors* do, anyway? The paper will still come out, and still look good, with half the subbing staff.

Well yes, but you may have to put up with this now and again:

– from the first paragraph of the Sydney Sun-Herald's
front-page lead this morning (in my edition, at least).

* Copy editors in America.

Should imprisonment be a death sentence?

2009-05-23T11:57:00.006+10:00

When does a jail sentence become a death sentence? The answer, it seems, is when you become geriatric or seriously ill in the New South Wales prison system.

Take these cases:

Mary Anne Roberts, a 73-year-old woman suffering cancer, dementia and other problems. Despite a report from the director of geriatric services at the highly regarded St Vincent's Hosptial that she was not fit to serve a jail term, a District Court judge sentenced her to a minimum three years' jail for serious welfare fraud. She died less than five months later after a horrifying ordeal in a cruel system.
Charlotte Lindstrom, sentenced to three years for having tried to hire a hitman to kill witnesses against her drug-dealer boyfriend, is now so seriously wasted by anorexia her organs may be breaking down and she risks death. The prison system's medical treatment clearly is indadequate, but the NSW State Labor government has refused an offer from Sweden to let her serve her term back home in humane conditions.
Albert James Paddock – one wonders what the future holds for an 80-year-old man with paranoid delusions and early dementia, sentenced this week to at least six years after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his wife.

Our prison policies should worry humane Australians. We should worry about overcrowding, the handling of prisoners with mental illness, high rates of recidivism, plans to build new prisons in distant towns where families cannot visit . . . the list goes on. But on all these issues, it may be possible to argue some justification.

But who could justify our prison system's failure to provide adequate care to the seriously ill, including those with mental illness, or those in serious geriatric decline who need nursing home care? People such as Mary Roberts and Charlotte Lindstrom.

Grumpy Old Journo has already noted the appalling treatment of Mary Anne Roberts. You may read the post (May 9, “Australia doesn't impose the death sentence, does it?”) here, athough it might be better to read the report in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Herald ran the story on P8, suggesting its editors thought the public wouldn't be all that interested. As far as I can ascertain, the only media references have been my blog post, and a post by a contributing blogger on Larvatus Prodeo.

But the story – reporting the assisting counsel's outline of evidence to be given at a Glebe [Sydney] Coroner's Court inquest – may have caused consternation in some parties to be examined.

The hearing, set for May 11 to 15, did not go ahead. The court told me it had been adjourned to November 16.

It's my conjecture that the SMH story, describing the evidence to be given, alerted various parties that they faced public exposure in a scandal similar to that of the OOO operators who sneered at a schoolboy dying of thirst in the Blue Mountains. It's likely these parties sought the adjournment to obtain legal representation.

One can imagine the Justice Health employees' union, and that of the prison officers, urgently briefing silk – counsel assisting said the old woman had been left unwashed for days because of a demarcation dispute, and no-one would push her wheelchair.

I wonder whether a coroner can invite a District Court judge to explain his sentencing?

Charlotte Lindstrom, then a classic Swedish beauty besotted with her drug-dealer fiance, agreed to his request to hire a hitman to kill two witnesses who were to testify against him. The hitman turned out to be an undercover cop. After her arrest, and after overcoming her infatuation, she showed complete remorse and co-operated fully with police and prosecutors.

Because of her contrition and co-operation, she received a lenient sentence of two years – which would have seen her walk free on Monday – but the Crown appealed and it was increased to three years.

This SMH story (which I find credible), suggests she now suffers acute anorexia. She is at risk of having her organs melt down, of heart failure, of brain impairment, and possibly of death.

She needs specialist care, hospitalisation and careful feeding. Her parents say she has been seen by only the prison doctor and the prison pyschologist, and a cooking teacher comes once a week. She has never been admitted to a prison hospital. She is in solitary confinement because other prisoners have threatened her with death for having co-operated with police.

Displaying a humane approach not to be found in NSW, the Swedish Government has offered to pay for her transfer to finish her sentence in her own country, where she can receive proper treatment. The NSW Labor Government rejected the offer because it needs her to give evidence in a criminal trial in July.

Sweden offered to pay for a video link. The NSW Attorney-General said video-link evidence might be inadequate. She could apply for transfer after the July trial.

Perhaps the NSW Labor Government does have good cause to keep Ms Lindstrom in Australia until the trial is over. But if so, it also has a duty to ensure she receives adequate medical care – by a specialist in anorexia, and in hospital if necessary.

What lies ahead for Albert Paddock? Will the 80-year-old, suffering from paranoid delusions and early dementia, survive his six years in jail? Will poor medical treatment accelerate his geriatric decline? Time will tell.
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I hope I'm right, but . . .

2009-05-17T21:55:00.008+10:00

Sometimes I read back a post and worry that I've got it wrong. Re-reading my previous post, “Damned whores and football wives”, I do feel I should modify and clarify some of my thoughts.

At the same time, perhaps, I can add a few insights which have come into my mind since that post.

First,I may have been too optimistic when I wrote that despite the sordidness of the footballers' gang-bang scandal, one could see positive outcomes. I wrote:

The public response to the scandal suggests most Australians have at last moved away from the misogyny underlying a “saints and sluts” view of women (although emerging doubts about "Clare's” veracity may be a problem).
Hopefully, in her next edition of Damned Whores and God's Police, Anne Summers will be able to pronounce that apart from a few troglodyte remnants, her dichotomy is no longer part of Australian
culture.

Perhaps I'm right. I'd like to think I am. But really, I haven't got the ability to say with any certainty. I certainly can be wrong.

Just over a decade ago, I was confident our country was tolerant, rich in its cultural diversity, secular and free of the hatreds of the old world. The land of the fair go.

If you had told me an inarticulate woman preaching xenophobia, racism and dingbat economics was winning the hearts and minds of middle Australia, I would have jeered at you. But not long after, her political party won almost a quarter of the votes in a Queensland state election.

---oooOOOooo---

After I put up the last post, I realised I had failed to say just what the footballers' group sex scandal was. So if you'd just arrived from another planet and wondered what I was talking about, I apologise.

Seriously, though, a number of overseas sites now offer a link to Grumpy Old Journo, and their readers may be puzzled by references well-understood by Australians. I promise to keep them in mind.

Also, I wonder whether I should explain why putting women into boxes labelled “saint” or “slut” is misogyny. But really, if you don't get it now, you never will.

---oooOOOooo---

Understandably, discussion has widened to arguments about permissiveness. Others are discussing the place of "recreational sex", in which love and friendship play little part. It's no bad thing to debate our differing views, but that debate may cloud our analysis of some of the issues exposed by the footballers' gang-bang.

The libertarian position must be that any sexual activity is acceptable if nobody gets hurt, all parties understand what they're getting into, there's no coercion, and consent is clearly given to every separate person and every activity involved. That's informed consent. It should be clear a drunken person cannot give informed consent, and nor can a child.

Informed consent is one clear issue in the footballers' gang-bang debate.

But this blog post and the next are also concerned about whether these gang-bangs reveal misogynistic attitudes to women.

Would footballers who have group sex with women then decide they are sluts who could never be considered as wives or mothers of their children?

---oooOOOooo---

For its last point, Grumpy Old Journo is indebted to a group of guys eating their lunch beside the railway tracks in the Hunter Valley. One of my sons, now working on a civil engineering contract, tells me the Matthew Johns affair dominated discussion for days.

The guys agreed the footballers' group activity had homosexual overtones.

That's perceptive, although it's not new to claim that Australia's mateship tradition embodies homo-erotic bonding resulting from the lack of women in early colonial days.

When the footballers lined up to have sex with the woman, the only emotional bonding taking place was between the men. The woman wasn't included.

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Damned whores and football wives

2009-05-15T17:39:00.008+10:00

It's hard to believe it's been 34 years since Anne Summers published her Damned Whores and God's Police. The years have rushed by, but how far have we progressed ?

The social and economic conditions of the first fifty years of white settlement in Australia fostered whores rather than wives. The traditional Judeo-Christian notion that all women could be categorised as being exclusively either good or evil – with the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene being the prototypes of each kind – was brought to Australia with the First Fleet.

That's where Anne Summers began her argument. In the book – a feminist classic which has been published continuously since its debut, in a number of revised editions – she went on to say the two stereotypes of women remain deep in Australian culture.

Today, she might argue little has changed – but now the sainted women might be footballers' wives and the damned whores are football groupies.

Many bloggers and Twitter tweeters are saying as much. To them, the 19-year-old kitchen hand got what she asked for when she accompanied Matthew Johns and a Cronulla Sharks mate to a bedroom in a Christchurch hotel.

The Australian Online reported today that 25,000 people have joined a Matthew Johns support group on Facebook.

All along, Matthew Johns has said the group sex was consensual. The New Zealand police support his claim.

Yesterday, AAP reported that Detective Inspector David Long, from Christchurch police, said the original investigation involved up to 80 interviews, and was thorough and conclusive.
“I'm completely satisfied that we got full and truthful accounts at the time and that no crime was committed,” he was quoted as saying.

For many of us, it's hard to believe a teenaged woman would consent to everything that happened that night. Everyone is calling it group sex, but group sex is a pleasant soiree compared with what transpired – a sordid gang-bang, as brutal as that term implies.

Football groupies exist, and footballers accept their invitations. Four Corners interviewed one, a woman who publicises her activities in the media. And some groupies collect entire football teams in a single session.

The Four Corners interview with a heavily disguised “Clare” left us believing she was a woman without much worldly experience, caught up in something she didn't understand.

That may be true, but some of “Clare's” story is unravelling.

Last night, Australia's Nine Network interviewed a former workmate, Tania Boyd, who said “Clare” had boasted to her workmates about bedding several players and did not contact police until five days after the incident.

"She was absolutely excited about the fact. She was bragging about it to the staff and quite willingly, openly, saying how she had sex with several players," Ms Boyd said. "We were quite disgusted about it. There was no trauma whatsoever.

"I'm disgusted that a woman can all of a sudden change her story from having a great time to then turning it into a terrible crime. We all just thought it was hilarious until five days later the police came to work, and we were horrified she had changed her story to say she was now a victim of crime." [We should note that Nine is not disinterested – it's the long-time employer of Matthew Johns, and the future of its Footy Show is at stake.]

---oooOOOooo---

A few years ago, blokey sports commentators would have brushed aside Matthew Johns's misadventure as just that – unfortunate but understandable.

Indeed, didn't we see that on The Boofhead Show last week? The ABC's Four Corners had told Johns about the program coming up on Monday night.

John Fordham, one of Australia's most experienced celebrity agents and PR experts, manages Johns's career. They drew up a response straight out of Crisis Management 101. A pre-emptive statement.

As The Boofhead Show began, Johns – open-faced and honest, Mr Nice Guy himself – read out an admission of sorts, and an apology to his wife and family. Fellow boofhead “Fatty” leaned over, patted him on the back, and said something like, “Well said, mate, let's get on with the show.”

Crisis Management error No 1 – they failed to express remorse to the woman who had become mentally disordered after the gang-bang. Viewers picked it up immediately.

Crisis Management error No 2 – Fordham and Johns hadn't viewed the coming Four Corners program, and they underestimated its devastating impact. The images of “Clare”, weeping, traumatised and vengeful, disturbed us all, and most of us bought her story.

Johns would regain public esteem – and revive his career – if he made a full and generous apology, and possibly reparations, to “Clare”. But he would be unwise to do so.

“Clare” probably is suffering pyschological trauma, and it probably is a result of the gang-bang. She may also be dreaming of the lifestyle she could enjoy if she won damages from Johns, his team mates and their club. And of how much pain she would inflict on them if she succeeded. With that in mind, Johns and the others are right to be wary.

---oooOOOooo---

Such a sordid affair, but it's possible to see positive outcomes. The public response to the scandal suggests most Australians have at last moved away from the misogyny underlying a “saints and sluts” view of women (although emerging doubts about “Clare's”veracity may be a problem).

Hopefully, in her next edition of Damned Whores and God's Police, Anne Summers will be able to pronounce that apart from a few troglodyte remnants, her dichotomy is no longer part of Australian culture.

She should also be proud that the crop she and other feminist writers and intellectuals planted and nurtured all those years ago has now proved so fruitful. A notable feature of the Johns affair was the power and perceptiveness of the commentary from women in public life – journalists, academics, TV presenters, even politicians – especially when they debated the issues of informed consent.

Of course, there was also the Catholic conservative commentator Miranda Devine. She used her column in yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald to explain that young women who dress and behave immodestly were like cat's meat – cats cannot be blamed if they eat uncovered meat.

Hang on. I seem to have mixed up my notes. That wasn't Miranda, that was the Mufti of Lakemba. Still, there's not much difference in their views.

Kanyini – a culture lost in dispossession

2009-05-11T04:36:00.009+10:00

You threw me a line called Welfare, but
it’s not as good as what I had … the
chaos and sadness we are feeling now
is a result of our history … Open truth
will set us free, not hidden truth.

Just over a year ago Grumpy Old Journo introduced a post (April 8: "Kanyini – understanding Aboriginal culture") with the image and the lines above. The post went on to say:

Bob Randall (pictured top), a respected elder . . . explains how dispossession has brought so much misery to his people:

Now we’re stuck between two cultures, two worlds; we can’t go back to the old ways because the natural environment has been destroyed. Nothing is there in its natural state anymore. We can’t get into your system because many of us don’t understand it. Hardly anyone has the skills to operate in your culture; they don’t have the education and reading skills to understand your ways and culture … so much money has been spent on an education system that isn’t working … it’s a failure. We need to consider new ways of teaching to incorporate old and new … so my mob can feel pride.

The best way to listen to Uncle Bob is to view the film Kanyini, and to hear him explain the meaning of the word. In the Pitjantjatjara language of central Australia, it means connectedness – to a belief system, to spirituality, to land and to family.

It's a remarkable documentary. For its 53 minutes, it hit my emotional buttons so strongly I worried whether I could write a proper assessment.

I've re-read that post a number of times, and I believe my comments were sound. Perhaps you'd care to read my critique, then make up your own mind by viewing the film.

Lane Cove Residents for Reconciliation has arranged a Sydney screening of Kanyini on Tuesday, June 2, in the Cove Room, Lane Cove Civic Centre, 48 Longueville Rd (cnr Epping Rd), Lane Cove.

The film's director, Melanie Hogan, will speak, along with Masada High School (St Ives) student participants in the Kanyini Schools Program.

The invite says 7.00 for 7.30pm-9.30pm. All Welcome - Refreshments - No Bookings Necessary - Admission Free.

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Australia doesn't impose the death penalty, does it?

2009-05-09T19:04:00.004+10:00

The most horrifying story I've read this week wasn't the rugby league players' gang-banging a gullible 19-year-old in New Zealand seven years ago. It wasn't even the details of OOO call centre operators' sarcastic and unfeeling responses to a calls from a boy who was perishing in the Blue Mountains.

It was this story, the P8 lead in today's Sydney Morning Herald -- "Woman in jail should have been in a care home".

To give you a taste of it, here are the first two pars:

A 73-YEAR-OLD woman convicted of Social Security fraud, who was suffering cancer, dementia and other problems and should have been sent to a nursing home, died less than five months into a three-year prison sentence imposed by the District Court, Glebe Coroner's Court has heard.
Judge David Freeman sentenced Mary Anne Roberts in September 2004 despite a report by Nicholas Brennan, director of geriatric services at St Vincent's Hospital, that she was not fit to serve a jail sentence.

Read the report. It made me so angry I risk making a comment which would see me hauled up before the majesty of the law, asked to grovel -- and for my refusal, sent to the NSW prison system for contempt. A prison system which just sneers at any concept that it owes a duty of care to treat the health problems of inmates.

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At last, The Australian shows how education should be reported

2009-05-08T17:38:00.014+10:00

Have my prayers been answered? The front page of today's Australian runs a long, detailed report by education writer Justine Ferrari about the national introduction of a grammar curriculum.

It's balanced, fair and comprehensive. It explains the different types of grammar.

Did you know that in addition to Traditional, there are other grammars: Transformational or Generative; and Systemic Functional. Like most people, I'm all for traditional grammar, but the others have their place in academic theory and understanding the way we use English.

If you go back a couple of posts to April 30 ("Time to say adieu to The Australian"), you will see criticism of the Oz's reporting of education issues. Some might call it bias, but as I said:

. . . when the Oz reports only one side of an argument, it's not because the editors are biased. The editors know children should learn to read by phonics alone – they know every other approach is
discredited. Me? I'd like to make up my own mind by evaluating the differing arguments. I'd like the news reports to lay out those arguments, even briefly.

Ms Ferrari's report today suggests my comment is out of date.

Note added Saturday, May 9:

Several letters in The Weekend Australian support the introduction of tradional grammar, but correct some points. Read them here.

This summary from yesterday's Australian wasn't published online, but is invaluable in explaining the various grammars. I hope the Oz will forgive my scanning it to assist understanding.

WHICH IS BEST? -- The different types of grammar
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR: Classifies words based on the eight parts of speech: verb, noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection. This grammar also describes the function of words in a sentence, with the typical construction of subject verb object, as in: "The boy hit the ball".
TRANSFORMATIONAL OR GENERATIVE GRAMMAR: An analytical grammar used to look at the possibilities of a language within the constraints of its deep structure. No matter how complex the sentence, it can be reduced to subject verb object -"the boy hit the ball". It's not possible to say: "hit the ball the boy".
SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR: An analytical grammar that examines language on three levels: what is being represented (ideational); who is being affected by what is being said (interpersonal); and what is the intent of the sentence (textual)
An example of systemic functional grammar analysis:"Who's seen my screwdriver?"
Textual meaning: Who (theme or what it's about) 's seen my screwdriver (theme or the outcome)
Interpersonal meaning: Who (subject)'s (finite) seen (predicator) my screwdriver(complement)
Ideational meaning: Who (sensers)'s seen (mental process) my screwdriver(phenomenon).

Keelty – getting the facts right

2009-05-07T14:56:00.008+10:00

I'm flattered the P8 lead [1] in today's Sydney Morning Herald drew on material from my Grumpy Old Journo blog. Alas, it also repeated an error. A later GOJ post did make the correction , but I had failed to go back and fix the mistake in the earlier post. My apologies to the Herald and its readers.

On August 30 last year, in a post titled, “This time Mick Keelty must do the honorable thing and resign,” [2] GOJ described the Jana Wendt interview in which Keelty said the words which angered Prime Minister John Howard, and went on to say:

Prime Minister John Howard saw the interview and went ballistic. He immediately rang his loyal chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinos. Less than eight minutes after the interview ended, Sinodinos phoned Keelty in Nine's green room – the VIP lounge for interview guests – to communicate Howard's extreme displeasure.

The comment was based on the most reliable information at the time. But on October 27, Sinodinos was interviewed by Sally Neighbour on an ABC Four Corners program, Good cop, bad cop. [3]

After reading the transcript, I put up another post on October 28, “Is the Federal Police Comissioner a servant of the government in power?” [4]

In it, I described as “chilling” Sinodinos's comments which showed John Howard believed the AFP was required to do whatever he demanded, provided it did not involve breaking laws. I went on to comment:

Is it taking it too far to say John Howard and his chief of staff believed it was acceptable to sool the Federal Police on to targets which suited their political agenda? Providing, of course, it did not demand something which would be illegal. Did Mick Keelty fail to dispute that view, especially after having submitted to the brutal public humiliation imposed by Howard and Sinodinos?

And that post concluded :

A correction: In my earlier post I said John Howard saw Keelty's TV interview and went ballistic. In last night's Four Corners program, Mr Sinodinos said he saw the program and phoned Howard to say there could be a problem. Howard's response was: "Ring Mick and let him know that I'm very concerned about this because of the way it could be interpreted."

Grumpy Old Journo deserves a pat on the back. Its Keelty analysis and comments have held up well as more of the story unfolded. (This post was offered to the Herald as a letter, but we haven't heard back.)

Time to say adieu to The Australian

2009-04-30T09:31:00.013+10:00

Perhaps it's a pity The Australian chose last Monday to run a column by Giles Auty, its former art critic. It was the last day of my cut-price subscription to the Oz, and I was still tossing up whether to renew for another six months.

I never really enjoyed Auty's art criticism – it sometimes seemed a touch supercilious – but I hadn't realised he also claimed economic expertise.

Well, actually, he doesn't. In the column titled, “Neo-liberal greed did not cause recession” [1] he jeered at Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and praised former conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

From there, he merely downloaded the groupthink conservative line that blames the recession on the US Democrats for having forced banks to lend to home-buyers who would not repay the loans [read, feckless blacks].

Nothing new in that claim – the Oz's hard-right columnist Janet Albrechtsen plucked the same claim from the internet and ran it in her column last October 8 [2] (and she was a bit slow – other right-wing commentators had run it a few weeks earlier).

Still, The Australian's editors decided to run all this stale old stuff again last Monday. Why – because they wanted to ram home, once again, the conservative point of view?

---oooOOOooo---

On March 4, in a piece titled, “Hold the presses . . . Janet Albrechtsen comes to my rescue” [3] , I noted the Oz's bias.

. . . I only wanted to suggest that the Oz – which is, I believe, already Australia's best newspaper – would be a better newspaper if it reported differing points of view in its news stories.

The Oz editors do not see themselves as biased. The first sentence of [their earlier anti-blogger editorial], “The measure of good journalism is objectivity and a fearless regard for truth”, would, I believe, describe the way those editors see their performance.
So when the Oz reports only one side of an argument, it's not because the editors are biased. The editors know children should learn to read by phonics alone – they know every other approach is discredited. Me? I'd like to make up my own mind by evaluating the differing arguments. I'd like the news reports to lay out those arguments, even briefly.
Similarly, the Oz's editors know Keynesian-style counter-cyclical government investment is wrong. They know fiscal stimulus will not help ease a recession. They know the Federal Government's stimulus package will not save jobs, so why waste money?
They know man-made climate change is bullshit . . .

Why read The Australian, then? Because its reporting remains strong. You won't find “churnalism” – the soft, unquestioning repetition of material, often supplied by self-interested sources, misrepresented as news. The Oz deserved the praise it won for its coverage of the Haneef affair, for example, and of the Northern Territory Intervention.

And as a conservative newspaper, it's entitled to present conservative points of view in its opinion pages. As a moderate but left-of-centre writer, I do check out conservative ideas – but not when they become tiresomely repetitious, or merely regurgitate groupthink. Such as Giles Auty's piece.

---oooOOOooo---

As it happened, I'd already signed up to Fairfax's subscription offer – a dollar a day for the Sydney Morning Herald six days a week and the Sun-Herald on Sundays. That's $28 debited against my credit card every 28 days.

The first SMH lobbed on my front lawn on Tuesday, the day after the Oz subscription ended. But right to the end, I still considered also continuing the Oz subscription. It's great value at $128.70 for the Oz and the Weekend Oz, home delivered six days a week for 26 weeks, although you do have to pay the $128.70 in one hit.

This week there's been a more harmonious mood at the breakfast table – Merry does prefer the SMH.

---oooOOOooo---

Giles Auty's column, along with the newspaper's general conservative bias, weren't the only reasons I turned against The Australian.

On March 30, in a post titled “New face delivers the Strewth!” [4], I noted the Oz's weekly Media section had failed to mention the brutal retrenchment of long-time Oz columnist D.D. McNicoll.

In my previous post [I wrote], I said that if Media did not publish something about McNicoll's sacking, it would damage the reputation of the newspaper and of the section.

I have no doubt that if McNicoll had worked for the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, and his employer “disappeared” him as The Australian did, the Oz would have reported it with relish.

With relish? Yes indeed. The Australian keeps up a regular sneering and jeering at its rivals, to a level which seems just plain childish. It does more to diminish its own standing than it does damage to the SMH and The Age.

Think about it. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Media's staff complied with an explicit, or an implied but clearly understood, direction from management or a senior editor not to publish anything about McNicoll.

News Limited, publisher of The Australian, also controls most of the nation's capital city newspapers, as well as many suburban and provincial titles. Does the McNicoll censorship mean News Limited management also censors Media's coverage of what's happening in more than half of Australia's press?

So I've let my Oz subscription lapse. But I must confess – I won't stop reading the Oz. The Australian has a well-laid-out online edition, while the SMH's website is a bit messy, and often it's dumbed down. So we're better off getting the printed SMH thrown into the flowerbed each morning.

---oooOOOooo---

This has become a long post, longer than I like. I'd assembled much more material, but it might be better to skip across the other points.

Giles Auty's column went on to praise an article, “George Bush and History's Croakers” [5] , by Claudio Veliz [6] in the April Quadrant. The article peddles an anti-Democrat line which has become biblical truth to US conservatives. However, it's disputed by moderate commentators and has been the subject of serious debate in the US press and among bloggers. Here's an Australian reply from Crikey.com [7] . And in the US, a commentator spreads the blame to Wall St [8] .

Auty said Veliz's article “should be made available to every household in Australia so that a gross distortion of history is prevented from forming.”

Giles, old chap, stick to art criticism. As a journalist, I can assure you it's not worth wasting trees to reprint Veliz's Quadrant article for distribution to the hoi polloi. Fewer than one in a thousand would read past the first few pars, where they'd still be bogged down in analysis of British attitudes to the future Lord Wellington in the Peninsular War, wondering where it's all leading to.

(Veliz is trying to say that all great leaders, such as George W. Bush, are howled down by “croakers” – the word Wellington used to describe "the despondent, defeatist grumbling, moaning, rumour-mongering enmity of too many of the island's intelligentsia.” Veliz likens Dubya to the Iron Duke!)

Still, if you really want to read his piece, click on link [5] above.
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Asylum seekers prove their worth

2009-04-21T09:01:00.005+10:00

Those of you who believe Old Grumpy is a bleeding-heart leftie – too soft to take a sensible line on matters of national importance – well, here's where you may find evidence to reinforce your view.

I believe most of those asylum seekers who turn up at Ashmore Reef or Christmas Island on leaky boats, especially those who've brought their families, have shown fitness to live in Australia and eventually become citizens.

Think of it this way. You own a business, and you need to fill a staff vacancy. You place a small ad – and in these difficult times, more than 300 people send you their CV. You and your secretary spend a couple of days working through them.

Nearly all would be worth a trial, but you narrow the list to several dozen applicants. Your secretary sends out emails inviting the short-listed hopefuls in for interviews.

A day later, before the interviews have begun, it's a nice day, so you take sandwiches down to the park.

A fellow comes up to you, introduces himself, apologises for intruding on your time, and – to your irritation – sits down and starts talking about your business. It's clear he's done some research, and he says he'd like to be part of your operation. He describes his education and skills and how he could use them to advance your business. He impresses you.

You do feel a bit guilty. He is, after all, a queue jumper. And you feel a bit sorry for all those people who've done it by the book when they lodged their applications.

But when you think about it, in your business you've got more than enough people who do their jobs by the book – conscientious plodders who perform well but have no zest and contribute no new ideas.

---oooOOOooo---

Old Grumpy spent more than thirty years commuting from Woy Woy to Central. Often our train would leave Woy Woy overcrowded, and it was such a relief to reach Hornsby and see so many passengers get out.

The Central Coast commuters would spread themselves out, and the women would go back to their intense study of New Idea and Woman's Day.

But then we'd pull into Epping or Eastwood, and a crush of new passengers would push into the carriages. The Central Coast people would mutter a bit, move closer together and resume their reading or snoozing.

Today, Old Grumpy is ashamed to admit a touch of racism. All those Asian faces crowding on to our Intercity train. Dammit, we provide a perfectly good suburban train system for people from the suburbs.

But I had to note that many of the young people who'd just joined us would pull out university notes, while some of the adults opened briefcases and worked on business papers. In later years, laptops came out and people worked on spreadsheets.

I thought then – and I still think – that these people with non-Anglo faces represent much of the future of Australia, a future in which a complacent “Lucky Country” will need their ambition and skills, their desire to make a better life for their families, to compete against emerging Asian economies.

[My contrast of “old Australians” snoozing or reading New Idea against “new Australians” full of drive and ambition may have a touch of caricature, but not enough to make my argument invalid.]

---oooOOOooo---

I wrote the sections above last night, but decided to think about them overnight before posting them to the blog. This morning [Tuesday] I checked the Sydney Morning Herald online, and come across Gerard Henderson's comment containing these thoughts:

There has been a world-wide increase in asylum seekers. Even so, in view of the acute risks involved in attempting to enter Australia in small boats, it seems that such trips are likely to be undertaken if the chances of success are seen to have increased.
The intensity of the debate is such that there is not much room for rationality at either extreme.
Contrary to what many refugee advocates proclaim, not all asylum seekers are refugees, not all tell the truth and not all are secular saints.
Contrary to what many of those who are hostile to them believe, asylum seekers are not security threats and most who gain refugee status become hard working and entrepreneurial citizens. Anyone who has the ingenuity to make it here - by sea or air - has a skills set which adapts well to a multicultural migrant community such as Australia. [Bold type is my emphasis – GOJ]

Exactly. Just what I'm trying to say. Perhaps I'm not such a bleeding heart after all.

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Heritage Afloat celebrates classic and traditional wooden boats

2009-04-13T15:27:00.006+10:00

Another great weekend chatting to fellow enthusiasts about traditional boats and wooden-boat building, this time at the annual Heritage Afloat festival at Toronto. It was also a great chance for Merry and I to picnic with our offspring, including six of our grandchildren.

Got in plenty of sailing too, in weather which remained unthreatening for the two days of the festival. Nice timing. As I key this in back at home, it's pouring down outside.

The top picture shows Peter Pan of Woy Woy, named after its not-so-grumpy builder and owner. We took the photo before the display area became really crowded.

Peter Pan attracted plenty of interest, but nothing like Britannia, pictured below.

Brittania is an authentic replica of the classic 18ft skiff of the same name, which is now on exhibition in the National Maritime Museum at Sydney's Darling Harbour. It's sailing out from the ramp with its most basic rig. Under way and racing, the old 18-footers would pile on an astonishing spread of sail, from spars which seemed to reach out forever.

This replica is the work of Ian Smith, a Sydney boatbuilder who helped fire up the enthusiasm for traditional craft when he established Woodcraft Boats and the Sydney Wooden Boat School back in the early 1990s..

Alas, with the demise of Sydney Harbour as a working port, and the gentrification which has taken over its waterfrontages for multi-million-dollar mansions, there's no room for a traditional boatbuilder. Ian Smith now works from premises in an industrial suburb.

Ian Smith describes his construction of the Britannia replica at this page.

The Sydney Flying Squadron gives the history of the 18-footers here and also here.

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See you at the heritage boat festival

2009-04-10T09:29:00.006+10:00

Grumpy Old Journo is taking a break this weekend to show his little boat at the Lake Macquarie Heritage Afloat festival. If you're near the Toronto waterfront on Saturday or Sunday, stroll over and have a chat.

"Peter Pan of Woy Woy" has been allotted a berth in Area D, No D17. If it's not there, you may see it out on the lake. It's quite distinctive, a 15ft dinghy with tan sails. The mains'l is a standing lug and the little mizzen a triangular sail out over the stern.

The festival itself is great fun, with plenty of entertainment and activities for all the family.

Check it out at http://www.heritageafloat.com.au/

A trillion just isn't what it used to be

2009-04-05T10:55:00.006+10:00

All those trillions spinning around the G-20, with an extra $US1 trillion for the International Monetary Fund to help kickstart the world economy . The mind boggles at the magnitude of these sums.

But praise be they weren't the billions and trillions of yesteryear.

For at least the first half of the 20th Century, Australia followed what was then called the British system, in which a billion was a million millions and a trillion was a million billions.

America and France used a different numerical system in which a billion was a thousand millions and a trillion was a thousand [American] billions.

The dictionary entry – from a 1940 edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage – shows the old usages. However, I'm not sure an ordinary reader checking Fowler's definitions would be any the wiser.

When did Australia switch to the US usage? There doesn't seem to be much much specific evidence. My recollection – which may be imperfect – is there was no official ruling. Newspapers began to change in the mid to late 1960s, and by the start of the 1970s nearly all would have gone over to the US system.

The change was cemented in 1974 when Britain itself switched to the US numerical system for all practical purposes.

Wikipedia has a good description of how the different numerical systems evolved.

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News loses its heart, says journalists' union

2009-04-03T14:48:00.006+11:00

Apropos of my recent posts about The Australian's summary retrenchment of its veteran columnist D.D. McNicoll, my union has led today's media e-bulletin to members with this item:

News loses its heart - The Alliance held national meetings with News Limited staff this week after the company made several long-serving journalists redundant. Staff called on the company to consult over any future redundancies, to first offer voluntary redundancies and to address the discriminatory nature of the redundancy formula for staff over 63 or working part-time. Staff also called for an end to individual contracts and for the company to consider flexible work options instead of redundancies. The Alliance will be taking these issues to management at first opportunity.

But times are tough, and newspapers have to cut costs. Here's what's happening on The West Australian, where I began my cadetship in 1957. It's the second item in the e-bulletin.

9-day fortnight at WAN - Staff at West Australian Newspapers are being asked to adopt a nine-day fortnight “to avoid more draconian methods of reducing labour costs”. Several other media organisations have adopted similar measures. If you feel you are being coerced into a pay cut or taking unwanted leave, please contact the Alliance.

As I note under my blog profile, I remain an honorary member of the Australian Journalists Association, now merged into the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance.

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Let's hope the Oz practises what it preaches

2009-04-03T08:44:00.008+11:00

Wishful thinking, perhaps. But The Australian's second editorial today appears to signal a shift from a hard-right ideological stance to a more balanced, middle-of-the-road assessment of economic policy, the causes of the global financial crisis, and the best measures to try for recovery.

When I saw the heading and subheading (above), my first thought was: “Good God! The Oz is dumping on its own commentators.”

Not quite. But if the Oz follows its own advice, it will start giving a more balanced, unbiased coverage of economic issues than we've seen in the past. The full editorial [1] is worth reading, but here are selected passages:

AMONG all the pontificating about the G20 meeting, Barack Obama called for calm coverage of the event. Everybody at the G20 understood the need to kick-start the world economy and better regulate financial systems, he said, adding "there's a great desire to inject some conflict and some drama into the occasion". He was referring to press and politicians, economists and instant experts, including Australians, who seize on statistics to create a sense of disaster about the global financial crisis every chance they get. And he's right.

It is far too early for anybody to understand whether tax cuts or cash payments are the best way to kick-start consumer spending or what amount of money governments around the world need to borrow, or print, to recapitalise banks and expand employment programs. There are cases for all these options, but in the absence of evidence it is puerile for commentators and politicians to denounce whatever governments do, just because they can. There is certainly more sound than sense in the Opposition's strident warnings that the Rudd Government is racking up a dangerously large deficit, when much of the money is being spent to stimulate the economy in the worst economic crisis in 80 years.

It's time for politicians seeking to score political points to calm down and for commentators to stop seizing on reports from international agencies as infallible evidence in support of their ideas about each economic indicator. This unprecedented crisis makes predictions pointless . . .

The electorate's economic literacy is one of Australia's strengths, ensuring people are not seduced by snake-oil solutions. But the fact the voters understand the crisis is the very reason why they neither need nor want instant analysis, every hour on the hour.

The Australian's new stance flows from the overnight G20 agreement. If the G20 achieve nothing else, they may have steered the Oz into more balanced coverage. The world's leaders meeting in London will have done something worthwhile.

---oooOOOooo---

You might call it bias. I call it intellectual rigidity. Economics editor Ross Gittins is far kinder. He calls it “priors”.

Gittins, in a piece in The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age on March 16 [2] , “The GFC and secret economists' business – Your guide to the ideology behind the global financial crisis”, explained:

LET ME let you into a little secret that will help you make more sense of the never-ending debate over the global financial crisis, what caused it and what should be done about it.
As all the professional participants in these debates understand but rarely acknowledge, whatever theory or empirical evidence they quote, the position they take gets back to their "priors" — their previously formed beliefs and values.

A few weeks earlier, he had offered this "tutorial" [3] to incoming Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey, explaining the economic debate.

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Save yourself time and money . . . here's the Time number Telstra doesn't tell you

2009-04-01T17:08:00.010+11:00

My twice-a-year ritual. Wake on Sunday morning. Pick up wristwatch, reset time with second hand poised at 12 o'clock position. Ring Telstra's Time number. Listen until the voice says, “At the third stroke it will be precisely four-fortythree [or whatever].” Right on the third beep, push the watch's knob back in.

Then go around and reset all the other clocks. For me it's about a dozen – wall clocks, bedside radios, microwave oven, conventional oven, workshop, car, office, and a few others I'll remember later. Perhaps I have a time fetish.

Just make sure of the number you should ring – 1194.

We old timers usually remember 1194. When we can't, we worry about old-timer's disease. But perhaps some of you youngfellas don't know of it, because it's been years since I've been able to find it in a Telstra phone book.

The old Time number disappeared from Telstra directories about when they began to list many “Premium” services – almost all of them directing you to independent service providers which charged like wounded bulls.

Perhaps even Telstra became ashamed as it tried to increase revenue by steering its customers to rip-off merchants, because it now lists fewer “premium” services and some of the prices seem less outrageous.

The only Time number I can find in my phone book is under 190 premium services. It's 1900 911 481, charged at a flat 77c. Call it, and you hear an introduction explaining the charge before inviting you to press a number to proceed. Then it asks you to press a button for your region. For research purposes, I did so.

What's this! Surely this is the voice you hear when dial 1194?

So, it seems that if you call the premium number, you pay 77c to press a few buttons which switch you to a number you could have dialled yourself for the cost of a local call. *

Maybe this advice will be useful to some of our readers. In south-east Australia, daylight saving ends next Sunday, April 5, at 3am summer time. Clocks should be put back one hour. [1] , [2]

* NOTES: I seem to remember 1194 was charged as a local call, but since it's now not in the phone book, I haven't been able to check today. The only time the premium service would be useful would be to get exact time in another Australian state, and how often would that be? Also, don't forget you should have accurate time displayed at the bottom of your computer screen.

---oooOOOooo---

The idea for this post first came when this popped up in my inbox:

For anyone contemplating using the Sensis directory service number, 1234, DON'T!
Sensis, as you may or may not know, is a subsidiary of Telstra. The 1234 number is replacing the Telstra 12456 directory assistance number, but this time with outrageous costs attached:
40c to call the number, then
4c A SECOND!
By law, Telstra have to provide a FREE directory assistance number, because they are still majority owned by the government. They choose however not to pass this number on to
the public.
What's the free number? 1223
USE IT!

There's one problem. These claims are not all true. Perhaps they were once (the email may have been circulating since before the Australian Government sold its majority stake in 2007).

On the inside front cover of my phone book, Telstra clearly lists the three types of directory assistance service, the different phone numbers, and explains what they deliver and what they cost.

As it says, “It's your call.”

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A new face delivers the Strewth!

2009-03-30T07:02:00.006+11:00

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't think so. I collected my Australian from the flower bed well before dawn this morning and pulled out the Media section. Scanned it quickly for any reference to the summary retrenchment of The Australian's veteran columnist, D.D. McNicoll. Nothing.

Turned back to the Strewth! column [1] . There's a new face in the logo (above). Instead of McNicoll, it's James Jeffrey, who normally writes the longer – to my mind, too long – Strewth! in The Weekend Australian. In this morning's column, there's still no mention of what happened to McNicoll.

In my previous post, I said that if Media did not publish something about McNicoll's sacking, it would damage the reputation of the newspaper and of the section.

I have no doubt that if McNicoll had worked for The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age, and his employer “disappeared” him as The Australian did, the Oz would have reported it with relish.

With relish? Yes indeed. The Australian keeps up a regular sneering and jeering at its rivals, to a level which seems just plain childish. It does more to diminish its own standing than it does damage to the SMH and the Age.

Today's Media section did run a prominent inside page lead on the sacking of Lachlan Colquhoun as editor of The Adelaide Review [2] , a story which may have been of less interest to most of the Oz's national readership.

And Amanda Meade's Media Diary [3] did run a short piece about the exit of Age columnist Sharon Gray, but without answering the obvious question – did she go because she wanted to, or was she another victim of the cost-cutting now decimating Australian newsrooms?

Amanda Meade also ran an amusing par about the comic strip character Brenda Starr's being retrenched, because, as her cigar-chomping boss B. Babbitt Bottomline said, “I can't afford to pay you any more.”

But of the departure of The Australian's iconic D.D. McNicoll, not a word [forgive my misuse of “iconic”, but you'll all know what I mean].

Strewth! Has the Australian sacked its veteran columnist?

2009-03-28T08:37:00.007+11:00

No hint in yesterday's [Friday, March 27]Australian – yet it appears that as this Strewth! column was being printed, editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell had sacked its author and told him to leave the building immediately without clearing out his desk.

The sacking ends a remarkable father-and-son involvement in column writing which began in 1946. More of that later.

First public hint of D.D. McNicoll's sacking appeared in the backpage Diary of yesterday's Sydney Morning Herald, in the paragraph below. Somebody at the Oz, probably outraged by the treatment of McNicoll, had wasted no time in calling the Fairfax rival.

This morning I did a Google search and found that Crikey.com's editor, veteran journalist Jonathan Green, had posted this at 4.46 pm yesterday.

D.D. McNicoll sacked at The Australian?
An anonymous tip just sent to Crikey:
From an informed source: D.D. McNicoll sacked yesterday from The Australian. Told to leave the building immediately not even given time to clear out his desk. Today is his 60th birthday. Redundancy at News Ltd capped at 1 year. McNicoll has been there 35 years. They did not even spell his name correctly on the form he was told to sign.
Nice people
Morale not good

I'm posting this before I look closely at this morning's newspapers. If I find more information when I do, I'll come back and revise the post.

I'll also look closely at the Media section in Monday's Australian – will it carry a full and honest account of McNicoll's sacking, and will the section's editor and columnists have had to resist management pressure if they do so? If Media does not publish such an account, it will damage the reputation of the newspaper and of the section.

Now back to the father-and-son connection. D.D's father, David McNicoll, wrote this in his autobiography, Luck's A Fortune (Wildcat Press, 1979):

THE TOWN TALK COLUMN in the Sydney Daily Telegraph was the first regular front page column to appear in an Australian paper. It's a sobering thought, but I probably made as much public impact, and caused more controversy with that column than with any of my other labors in journalism over the years.
The column was the brain child of Frank Packer and editor Brian
Penton. They had seen many columns of various sorts over the years — political, comment, humorous. But Packer wanted a column of news — part gossip, part political, part exposures, part insertion of the scimitar. My style of writing appealed to them as right for the new project.
On returning to New York from South America I found a cable from Packer telling me of the proposal, and suggesting I study a few American techniques.

And a little further into the autobiography:

Back in Sydney, Brian Penton put me through a few dummy runs inside the paper, and subbed specimen columns for a few weeks. He was a brilliant writer of the concise, short sentence, and he drilled it into me. He was also the father of the Active Voice in the Daily Telegraph. Anyone who ever worked on the Telegraph knew all about the active voice; the passive was never allowed . . .
On February 8, 1946, the first Town Talk column appeared. The previous day, a young, virtually unknown artist had been sent to do a caricature of me.
His name was Les Tanner. He is today, without dispute, peerless as a caricaturist, and in the top ranks as a cartoonist. His depiction of my features gave me all the attraction of a gigolo turned pawnbroker who has just received some devastating news. The worst part was that the drawing was apparently incredibly like me, and people recognised me with a shudder as they passed me in the street.

Tanner later drew this caricature of himself holding the McNicoll caricature:

Pot calls kettle black. The Sunday Telegraph still doesn't get it

2009-03-26T11:47:00.007+11:00

What an extraordinary grovel by Rupert Murdoch's Sydney Sunday Telegraph the other morning. And in the paragraphs I've highlighted, what extraordinary hypocrisy!

Last Saturday night, Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen still hadn't grasped the key issue.

Some of us interested in the ethical standards of newspapers could maintain that Breen himself “lost any integrity he may have had” when he decided to publish photographs he believed were taken during a long-ago tryst between Pauline Hanson and some sleazy nobody. The rest of the Murdoch Sunday newspapers should be equally ashamed.

It's also a bit rich to accuse a pathetic nobody of losing "any integrity he may have had" when the same article says he is suffering from mental deterioration and of "having a tenuous hold on reality".

So the pictures were fakes. It's now accepted the photographs showed someone other than Ms Hanson, and Breen admits it unreservedly [1] and [2] . The Murdoch Sundays are exposed to big-ticket defamation writs, and we now know Ms Hanson lawyers had already written to the Sunday Telegraph.

Sunday's grovel could lessen the defamation damages awarded to Ms Hanson. However, I expect the newspapers to agree to settle, with the damages to be kept confidential.

Settling the case would also save Sunday Telegraph staff from cross-examination about the rigour with which they examined the photographs.

At this point last Sunday, your Grumpy Old Commentator came close to hitting the “publish” button, possibly after adding a few thoughts about privacy protection. But there was still something wrong with the Sunday Tele's story, which began:

JACK Johnson, the person at the centre of the controversial Pauline Hanson photographs affair, has emerged as a conman.
The Sunday Telegraph has learned Johnson not only offered purported photographs of Ms Hanson to paparazzi agent Jamie Fawcett eight days ago, but at the same time offered similar photographs of another prominent Australian woman in exchange for cash.
This new information makes it clear that Johnson is a conman.
The Sunday Telegraph learned the new information yesterday from Johnson himself.
Fawcett did not tell The Sunday Telegraph that Johnson claimed to have pictures of the other woman in lingerie with the Sultan of Brunei.
That claim is plainly ridiculous and exposes Johnson as a fraud.
Fawcett has refused to explain to The Sunday Telegraph why he failed to reveal this, or to defend himself from the allegation he was complicit in the hoax with Johnson.
Yesterday, he hung up the phone when asked why he had not disclosed this information.

Now let's see if I've got this right. By Saturday night, the ST knew Johnson was a conman. It also believed paparazzi photographer Jamie Fawcett (who acted as Johnson's agent in selling the pix to the ST) would have known he was a conman because Johnson had told him he also had pictures of the prime minister's wife in lingerie.

The ST phrased the allegation carefully in its story. But under the accompanying photo of Fawcett, it was unequivocal. The caption said:

Questionable motives: Photographer Jamie Fawcett knew that Jack Johnson also claimed to have compromising photos of another high-profile Australian woman.

The only source of that allegation was Johnson, of whom the ST article later said:

It is clear Johnson has a tenuous hold on reality, particularly when it comes to his past.
All along he has claimed cancer treatment and painkillers have played havoc with his memory.

The Sunday Telegraph appears to have apppropriated a power the police would envy – to judge a person guilty if that person fails to reply to an interrogation by its reporters, as it appears to have done with Fawcett and also with Hanson. And what's it matter if the accuser is a nutter?

Monday morning shed more light on the whole affair. We learned from The Australian's Media section [3] that Fawcett issued a statement on Sunday denying he was "complicit in any hoax with Mr Jack Johnson" and saying he had sought legal advice. He may have trouble financing any legal action, however, because he's an undischarged bankrupt after losing a defamation case.

The Media report also said it was understood the ST had stopped payment of a cheque to give Johnson $10,000 and Fawcett $5000 commission.

However, it wasn't until a bit later we learned the real story behind The Sunday Telegraph's grovel, and its remarkably aggressive treatment of Johnson and Fawcett.

Monday's Sydney Morning Herald [4] and Crikey.com [5] each carried long accounts which revealed The Sunday Telegraph had gone into Saturday night with a more measured report and apology.

But late Saturday, one of its writers confirmed that the rival Sun-Herald tabloid had worked up a story which would show Johnson to be a nutter, and would report his claim that Fawcett knew it was a con.

In what must have been frantic hour or two, the ST revamped its coverage and posted a new editorial to defuse the Sun-Herald's attack (which did not come, anyway – the Sun-Herald decided not to publish its story) .

The fake Hanson photos may fuel current debate about the the newspaper industry's current Right to Know campaign and about privacy laws. If the Hanson photos had been genuine, it would all have been all right, would it? Perhaps we'll return to that topic.

The big gamble – go for double, or back off?

2009-03-17T05:05:00.005+11:00

As they make their plays across the Canberra chessboard, our federal politicians seem to be locking themselves into the ultimate high stakes end game – a double dissolution of Federal Parliament.

A month ago, we did hear talk of double dissolution. Now it seems to have been forgotten as the nation entertains itself with the side play between Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull and “will he or won't he” former Treasurer Peter Costello.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could be forgiven for thinking: “Bring it on!” Only last week The Australian's Newspoll showed public support for Rudd as preferred prime minister stood at 61 per cent with Turnbull on 21 per cent.

If a general election took place today, Rudd would romp home with a substantially increased majority in the House of Representatives – but once again, he might fail to obtain clear control of the Senate. The electorate's will might still be thwarted by the Coalition joined by a petulant and flaky independent senator or two.

This week, Rudd must be hoping the Senate will reject, or agree to pass only with unacceptable amendments, those of his bills which have strong public support. Industrial relations or the economic stimulus package would be ideal. (As Lenore Taylor reports in The Australian today, the government appears to have given up on emissions trading – a wise tactic, politically, because the public is confused and fearful about emissions control in hard economic times).

Senate rejection of a Labor bill could be the first step in handing Rudd a “trigger” for a double dissolution.

And a double dissolution could hand Senate control to the government. In a normal general election, all House of Reps members but only half the senators have to face the electors. A double dissolution is the only time every member of the Senate as well as all the Reps must stand down.

Most of our federal politicians are about to head home for their long autumn holiday, leaving ministers and staff beavering away on the May Budget. What a gift for Rudd if the Senate rejected his industrial relations or stimulus package before they left!

And wouldn't it be icing on the cake if the Liberals dumped Turnbull and had Peter Costello sitting on the Opposition Leader's bench when parliament resumed!

The Newspoll last week showed that 49 per cent of Coalition supporters prefer Costello, with only 28 per cent backing Turnbull. In the parliamentary Liberal Party, it's believed Costello would win in a leadership spill.

The right wing of today's Liberals are so out of touch with mainstream Australia they believe Costello could win the next election. Weird, but they are getting desperate.

Under Section 57 of the Constitution, Rudd would have the right to ask the Governor-General for a double dissolution if:

The Reps passes a bill and sends it to the Senate, which rejects it, fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments unacceptable to the Reps.
After three months, the Reps again passes the bill and sends it to the Senate, which again rejects it or makes unacceptable amendments.

That's the “trigger” for a double dissolution. This Australian Electoral Commission site also explains the timetable from dissolution to polling date.

For Rudd, it would be good politics to pile up the “triggers” – to go to the electors with a list of popular bills rejected by the Senate, so that he could run a campaign about conservatives thwarting the people's will.

It is a high risk game. Either side could blink when it comes to that second attempt to pass the bill. Turnbull is aware of the perils of rejecting legislation for which Labor has a popular mandate, such as IR, but Costello and his supporters seem so ideologically committed they'd commit political suicide.

On the other hand, if Rudd felt the ground moving against him, he could decide against that drive to see the Governor-General.

Tacticians in the federal parties are watching the Queensland elections closely, as you'd expect. If an unimpressive politician like Lawrence Springborg can win, it will give an enormous boost to the hard-right federal Libs.

It's going to be fascinating year in federal politics.

Hard times and easy marks

2009-03-14T15:11:00.006+11:00

If you have elderly relatives living in Woy Woy – is there anyone who hasn't? – it might be time to give the old dears a ring. While you're chatting about petunias and bowls, casually ask if anyone they know is considering a “business plan” which promises to turn $180 into $70,000 in a couple of months.

Chain letters are back. Perhaps they thrive in bleak economic times, with more people eager to suspend normal scepticism and accept any proposition which offers to deliver them from the squeeze of diminishing nest eggs and rising household bills.

This one (partly reproduced above, with the five-cent coin sticky-taped to the top) turned up in my letterbox the other day. With no markings on the envelope, it probably was hand-delivered. This suggests hundreds of other households in Woy Woy, and perhaps more widely around the Central Coast, are now receiving the same scam letter.

It is a scam. Throw it out. If your oldies in Woy Woy have received it and not done so, you may need to explain why it's a scam.

And even if you concede the authors appear reasonable and honest – philanthropic, even – you should be able to explain why the scheme just cannot work.

I spent a bit of time browsing the internet to find something which explains clearly, in plain language, why such chain letters will end in disappointment.

I came across many pages explaining they're illegal, they're scams, they probably come from conmen, and you should throw them out.

Of the many pages from government consumer protection agencies, this one from the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission seems as good as any.

But the government warnings still have a Big Brotherish feel ("I'm from the government, trust me and do what I say"). They fail to explain why the chain letter cannot work beyond a few early rounds (although this US page may help).

The letter which turned up in my box is a basic, unadorned chain letter. In the middle of a superbly drafted spiel, you see a grid with five handwritten names and addresses, ranked one to five.

The letter urges the recipient to send a $10 banknote to the person named on the top line. Then strike out that name, move the others up a notch, and put your name on the fifth line.

Make at least 200 photocopies – not forgetting to affix a five-cent coin to the top of each front page – then mail or distribute them to names taken from a phone book. Here's what should happen, according to the chain letter:

HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS IN 60 DAYS
You have sent your $10 note and mailed at least 200 letters. Your details are printed at number 5 position on each of them. Your work is done - sit back and relax, you deserve it!
If only 3% of 200 people respond to your letter, then 6 people will mail 200 letters =1200 letters with your name and address at position number 4.
If only 3% of 1200 people respond to your letter, then 36 people will mail 200 letters =7200 letters with your name and address at position number 3.
If only 3% of 7200 people respond to your letter, then 216 people will mail 200 letters =43,200 letters with your name and address at position number 2.
If only 3% of 43,200 people respond to your letter, then 1296 people will mail 200 letters =259,200 letters with your name and address at position number 1.
If only 3% of 259,200 people respond to your letter then 7,776 people will send you $10, your
name and address in the receiver position at number 1 [sic]. You will therefore receive $77,760 in $10 notes!
If the response rate is more than 3% of people send more than 200 letters, you will receive even more!

You could ask your oldies whether they understand geometric progression, or exponential growth. (If they do, you shouldn't have to explain why a chain letter cannot work for long!)

If they don't, you could point to the final pars of “How the system works . . .”

If 7776 people each send you $10, each of those 7776 people will expect to reach No 1 themselves after four more rounds, when each of those 7776 people will expect about 7776 people to send them $10.

At that point, more than 60 million people [7776 x 7776 = 60,466,176] should each be stuffing a $10 note into an envelope and sending it on. And that's not accounting for the thousands of $10 notes harvested by other names as they rise to the top, and those raked in by any other chain letter doing the rounds.

What was the population of Australia, again?

Hold the presses . . . Janet Albrechtsen comes to my rescue!

2009-03-04T18:11:00.006+11:00

Whatever can I have been thinking when I put up the previous post? Suggesting The Australian is not even-handed in some of its reporting – am I trying to live dangerously? Will I find myself flamed by the Oz in these terms?

The self appointed experts online come instead from the extreme Left, populated as many sites are by sheltered academics and failed journalists who would not get a job on a real newspaper.

On almost every issue it is difficult not to conclude that most of the electronic offerings that feed off the work of The Australian to create their own content are a waste of time. They contribute only
defamatory comments and politically coloured analysis.

Smug, self assured, delusional swagger is no substitute for getting it right.

These three passages occurred in “History a better guide than bias”, the long tirade against bloggers published as the Oz's lead editorial on July 12, 2007. Bloggers had angered the Oz's editors by mocking political editor Dennis Shanahan's claim that a twitch in John Howard's support, revealed by The Australian's Newspoll, suggested he could bounce back to win the November 2007 Federal Election. [Howard, of course, went on to lose both government and his own seat of Benelong.]

Failed journalist? Delusional swagger? Waste of time? Oh dear! Dare I incur the Oz's ire?
And yet I only wanted to suggest that the Oz – which is, I believe, already Australia's best newspaper – would be a better newspaper if it reported differing points of view in its news stories.

The Oz editors do not see themselves as biased. The first sentence of that tirade, “The measure of good journalism is objectivity and a fearless regard for truth”, would, I believe, describe the way those editors see their performance.

So when the Oz reports only one side of an argument, it's not because the editors are biased.
The editors know children should learn to read by phonics alone – they know every other approach is discredited. Me? I'd like to make up my own mind by evaluating the differing arguments. I'd like the news reports to lay out those arguments, even briefly.

Similarly, the Oz's editors know Keynesian-style counter-cyclical government investment is wrong. They know fiscal stimulus will not help ease a recession. They know the Federal Government's stimulus package will not save jobs, so why try?
They know tax cuts are the only way to go to fix the Global Financial Crisis.

They know man-made climate change is bullshit, and if it's not, they know emissions trading cannot do anything to help.

Perhaps we should change the tense, as time goes by – they knew climate change was nonsense . They knew the guarantee Rudd gave to the banks was deeply flawed. They knew government deficits are evil, and they knew stimulus spending would not save jobs.
And they knew Howard was clawing his way back in the last months of 2007.

So what's that bit about Janet? It doesn't happen often, but this morning I found myself agreeing with most of her piece. Perhaps The Australian will treat me leniently if I'm willing to entertain opinions by its hard-right commentator. Read them for yourself here.

She's largely right about corporate governance. If shareholders are distressed about excessive executive salaries, they should vote off the directors who failed to represent their interests. An interesting suggestion, if you believe Sol was grossly overpaid.

And I refuse to join the mob baying for blood over Pacific Brands' decision to move manufacturing overseas. PacBrands deserves some credit for sticking it out in Australia as long as it did.

Literature, literacy . . . The Weekend Australian knows it all

2009-03-01T17:25:00.012+11:00

As the editorial writer suggested, I read it again, and yes, the passage (above, highlighted) did get muddier every time I did so.

But the sentence might have been a little less confusing if The Weekend Australian's editorial writer had quoted it correctly.

Flick back to education writer Justine Ferrari's Page One report (below), on which the editorial comment is based. If you look hard, you may spot the difference.

It might seem trivial, but one would expect an editorialist who pontificates to the nation about literacy would understand that omission of the hyphen changes the meaning of the sentence. “Meaning-making” does not say the same thing as “meaning making”.

And surely a professional journalist – and I presume the editorial writer to be one – knows he or she should not modify any part of a passage placed within quotation marks. The editorial writer has omitted two commas from the material he purports to quote. Trivial, perhaps, but careless too.

But then, the editorial writer may have taken his quote from copy sent to the artists (probably from a sub-editor) for the graphic reproduced below. The copy sent to the artists also omitted the hyphen and the commas.

I may look like just another blogger attacking The Australian. That would not be right. I believe the Oz to be Australia's best newspaper.

It's thrown over my front fence six days a week. Well, yes, on a discount deal. A call centre person rang me and offered me The Daily Telegraph for $4.95 a week. You'd be joking, I said. How about the Oz? Done!

It's not the perfect arrangement. The Australian has an excellent website, and I was happy to read it there. I'd rather read The Sydney Morning Herald in print. Although it has dumbed down its news website, the print newspaper remains readable and, on controversial issues, even-handed.

The Australian is good but should try to do better if it is to dominate as Australia's national newspaper. Too often, its editors' ideological positions show in its news coverage.

I'll return to this topic soon. In the meantime, you may choose to read Justine Ferrari's report, the editorial which fired me up, and the Oz readers' letters on Monday, March 3.

How to destroy Labor's electoral chances

2009-02-26T11:18:00.006+11:00

1. If you're a Labor Prime Minister, run up the flag for socialism and announce you'll nationalise the banks. That's how the popular Ben Chifley handed the reins to Menzies in 1949.
2. In case that's not enough, get the Communist Party to call a crippling coal strike. In 1949, the commos made sure of victory for Menzies.
3. If you're the ALP's Federal Executive, meet inside a Canberra hotel to decide Labor's policy, and allow a journalist to photograph the parliamentary party leader and his deputy on the steps outside, waiting to be told the decisions. That's how the "36 faceless men" wiped out Labor's chances in 1963.
4. If a Soviet spy is about to defect, pray that it's just before an election, and for good measure, publicise any allegations against Labor staffers. It worked with Petrov.

But let's fast-forward to the past year in good ol' Sydney.
Tyro Labor Premier Morris Iemma is beginning to realise he inherited a mess when he took over from Bob Carr. Hospitals, schools, public transport, water and other infrastructure desperately need more money.
Treasury is warning that tax revenues are turning down sharply in the slowing economy, and the state's AAA credit rating is at risk. How is the state to finance looming investment in electricity generation?
Iemma and his Treasurer Michael Costa decide there is no alternative to privatising electriticy generation. Costa, himself a former unions chief turned economic rationalist, tries to sell it to the Labor Party's state conference.

So, how to destroy a NSW Labor government:
1. Make sure important policy is determined in a shouting match between Costa and the current Unions NSW chief John Robertson.
2. Make sure the night's TV news contains images of trade union and party branch delegates jeering and screaming abuse, so the public sees the measured and intelligent formation of Labor policy.
3. White-ant Premier Iemma with a serious of damaging leaks to the press.
4. Make Costa's position untenable, and when Iemma sacks him, step up the white-anting of Iemma.
5. When Iemma quits, see his place is filled by an amiable but pliable dill. So our newest Premier is Nathan Rees. Most people ask: Nathan Who?
6. When Costa resigns as a member of the Legislative Council, make sure the rump of the Labor Party votes for you, John Robertson, to fill the vacancy.
7. Let the word get around that you'd make a great premier of NSW. Don't worry that you've never faced the public in an election.
8. In the meantime, a senior ministry is needed. How about two of them, Prisons and Public Sector Reform? Public Sector may be justified as appointing the poacher to be gamekeeper, but by what twist of moral reasoning can a bitter opponent of privatising electricity generation accept the task of privatising two of the state's prisons?
9. And then the affair of the $500,000 office refit!

Robertson and his stooges appear to have no idea of how seriously they have destroyed the NSW Labor Government.
The former unions boss will never be Premier. Even if he does grab a rusted-on Labor electorate so that he can shift to the lower House, and then wins the leadership, the Labor Party cannot win the next election. Nor the next, and probably not the one after that.
Robertson will have to settle for Opposition Leader. That's if the Labor Party doesn't come to its senses.

For the record: Your Grumpy Old Blogger normally votes Labor, but is unlikely to do so in the next NSW state election unless he sees some big changes.

The bruvvers, united, will never be defeated

2009-02-19T20:03:00.004+11:00

The working class can kiss my arse
I've got the foreman's job at last

Why did this ditty come to mind when I read this story in The Sydney Morning Herald today that former New South Wales trade unions boss John Robertson would move into his new Cabinet minister's office after a $500,000 refurbishment?

A short history of irrational exuberance

2009-02-15T16:49:00.006+11:00

“We need policies that can be effective on the assumption that private financial systems are periodically prone to irrational exuberance" – Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens (pictured), speaking at a conference of central bankers in Kuala Lumpur last week.

Irrational exuberance is nothing new. No doubt one could peer back into ancient civilisations to find examples.

“Mania”, “bubble” or “boom” are well known. In 1996, top US central banker Alan Greenspan added to the lexicon when he said:

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?

Of one thing we may be sure. Despite the lessons of the current Global Financial Crisis, there will be more manias, bubbles and periods of irrational exuberance in financial markets. Over-optimistic speculation is part of human nature, along with a belief that if you don't jump on the waggon you'll miss out. Investors get hurt, but sooner or later – usually well within a decade, in our fast-moving world – there'll be another wave throwing their money at over-valued assets.

It's been like that since tulip mania swept Holland. When tulips arrived from the Ottoman Empire late in the 15th Century, the Dutch took to the exotic blooms with passion. And when natural variations produced flowers with magnificent colouring, speculators bid insane prices for the bulbs.

One grower rejected a bid of 3000 guilders, roughly the annual income of a wealthy merchant, for a single bulb; in 1633 a farmhouse changed hands for three rare bulbs.

The bubble burst in 1637, amid widespread panic, when bulb prices dropped to one-hundredth of their peak.

Almost a century later, British investors – led by royalty and the aristocracy – showed they could be even more gullible with one of the wildest speculations in history when the South Sea Company set out to raise millions of pounds to exploit largely illusory trading rights with Spanish colonies in South America. That bubble burst in 1720.

British investors were again to lose heavily in the railway mania of the 1840s.

Boom and bust moved in cycles through the decades, and Australia had its share – including some grandiose land settlement and railway development proposals.

In the 1930s, of course, Australia could not avoid the Great Depression which swept the world.

After World War II, Australia experienced its own moments of irrational exuberance with uranium projects, a flurry in oil stocks after Ampol's Rough Range find followed by the development of the Bass Strait oil and gas fields, and the mapping of mountains of iron ore in the Pilbara.

But for sheer irrationality, there was little to beat the Poseidon nickel boom of the late 1960s. Even the language of the reports, with terms like “massive sulphides”, excited investors. The hint of drilling at a “good address” would send shares through the roof.

That boom had to collapse, and then the 1970s oil shock overtook the world, bringing the new phenomenon of “stagflation” for which Keynesian theory had no answer. In Australia, the Whitlam government's problems added to the impact.

Ah! But the 1980s! That's when the world discovered the financial skills of the “entrepreneurs”. No one seemed to worry how they did it, but they sure got results. Everyone rushed to put their money on the new corporate engineers like Alan Bond, John Spalvins, Robert Holmes a Court, Christopher Skase, Laurie Connell, and a whole brigade of lesser entities and white shoe brigade property developers.

It's now clear many of them took high risks in “leveraging” – ie, borrowing heavily – to amass their corporate conglomerates. Prudent directors unwilling to take similar risks could not withstand raids by entrepreneurs with buckets of borrowed money. But it all began to unravel from 1987.

On top of that, few analysts could penetrate the thickets of interlocking company accounts.

One of the shrewdest investors of the time, Sir Ron Brierley (pictured), published “the definitive analysis” of John Spalvins's Adelaide Steamship group in September 1990, but his report was anything but definitive. He was unable to unravel the accounts.

The Adsteam group consisted of five publicly listed companies, all regarded as blue chip – Adsteam, David Jones, Tooth & Co, National Consolidated and Petersville Sleigh (the group also held Woolworths, Penfolds Wines, and stakes in many other quality companies). It's worth noting, too, that Spalvins was not in the same mould as the flamboyant “entrepreneurs”.

In 1990, Brierley said: “The major outstanding issue is the rationalisation of the convoluted and incestuous group structure.” His advice went unheeded. In 1991 the Adsteam group collapsed into receivership.

The moral may well be: If you can't understand an investment, no matter how well it appears to be going, walk away. Advice which might have benefited Babcock & Brown investors in 2008.

The next great thing to lure unwary investors was the “Japan Inc” miracle and the wider Asian economic boom – followed by a retreat which has been re-started by the Global Economic Crisis.
If a share spruiker or a finance journalist starts to rabbit on about a “new paradigm”, zip up your wallet. Such was the stuff of the dotcom boom from about 1999, when people began to throw money at digital technology and internet companies – many of them possessing no assets other than the promoters' dreams. Every bright idea was going to create another Microsoft.

Advisers would assure investors the digital age was a new paradigm, just as the railway boom had transformed economies 130 years ago. No one reminded them that most 19th Century railway projects failed, often leaving rich promotors and bankrupt shareholders.

Perhaps a little more awareness of history would have avoided the worst of the current Global Financial Crisis which – more than the booms and busts described above – resembles the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Your Grumpy Old Journo spent much of his career as a finance journalist, generally managing to avoid irrational exuberance and hopefully damping it in his readers.

Glenn Stevens's "remarks" are here, and are worth reading as he explains the problems confronting central bankers in the 21st Century.

Wikipedia has good entries on tulip mania, the South Sea bubble, the dotcom boom, Sir Ron Brierley and Greenspan's irrational exuberance remark. Investopedia also describes booms and busts, with this page offering further links at the bottom.

The tulip mania is well described in a book by Mike Dash, reviewed here.

The Poseidon nickel affair and the rest of the crazy Australian mining boom of the late 1960s and early 70s are well described by legendary finance journalist Trevor Sykes in The Money Miners – the Great Australian Mining Boom (1978).

Build trust and move ahead

2009-02-09T15:28:00.006+11:00

Only 44% of the overall population believe that Indigenous people are open to sharing their culture with other Australians.
But 89% of Indigenous people say they are open to sharing their culture.

Reconciliation has a long way to go. The goodwill is there – but there's still an important problem. There's still too much misunderstanding and distrust between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

Only about 1 in 10 people feel there is a high level of trust in the relationship, with Indigenous people feeling this way about other Australians and other Australians about Indigenous people.

However, a survey released today shows many Australians would like more contact with Indigenous people. While just over half (58%) of Australians currently report contact with Indigenous people, more than three quarters (76%) say they would like contact in the future.

There is also a level of interest in helping disadvantaged Indigenous people, with more than a third of people (37%) expressing a wish to do so.

A critical finding is that only 20% of Australians say they know what they can do to help disadvantaged Indigenous people.

Overall, however, those of us who seek greater progress in reconcilation will be encouraged by the initial Australian Reconciliation Barometer, released today in time for Friday's first anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations. Reconciliation Australia plans to repeat the survey every two years to measure progress.

Despite the misunderstandings and distrust indicated by the excerpts above (taken from the survey's Executive Summary), Indigenous and other Australians have much in common when they see themselves as family oriented, proud, good at sport, easy going, friendly, good humoured and welcoming.

Attitudes to one another differ more on values like co-operative, disciplined, hard working and respectful.

The Sydney Morning Herald's report this morning can be found here. As well as the executive summary, other sections of the Barometer report can be accessed through the Reconciliation Australia link above.

Of interest: The Australian's media section today says the National Indigenous Television Network has commissioned well-known human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC to run a new Hypothetical show. Closing the Gap. His panel will include Tony Abbott, Germaine Greer, Marcia Langton and "indigenous rapper Wire M.C." (perhaps one of you young fellas could tell me who he or she is).

It should be a lively show, to be broadcast on NITV this Friday, Feb 13 (anniversary of the Apology, remember!), at 8pm AESDT. as well as on some subscription and specialist channels. This report on the NITV website calls its broadcast an "exclusive premiere", so we city types without pay TV may get to see it later.

Let's have many "conversations" about our national day

2009-02-01T11:33:00.007+11:00

Back on Australia Day two years ago, Grumpy Old Journo posted this suggestion that we celebrate our national day a week later:

Sometimes, when I'm feeling mischievous, I suggest European settlement of Australia really began with a drunken orgy on February 6. Perhaps we should observe that date as Australia Day.

After all, it's the day white women joined the settlement.

On that day in 1788, after the male convicts had laboured for more than a week setting up rudimentary buildings at Sydney Cove, it was time to land the women convicts. The disembarkation took all day.

Then the sailors asked for rum “to make merry with upon the women quitting the ships.” From contemporary accounts, all that night there were scenes of debauchery and riot which beggared description. Even a sudden Sydney thunderstorm could not drown the revelry.

Nobody putting their hands up for February 6? What a lot of wowsers we've become!

More seriously, how about January 1? In 1901, that was the day on which Australia became a nation, rather than an assortment of British colonies. It would be a day for all Australians – it's not for nothing that many Aboriginal activists refer to January 26 as Invasion Day.

On Australia Day this year, when Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson – co-author of the Bringing Them Home report which told Australians about the Stolen Generations – received the honour of Australian of the Year, he pushed the issue back into public debate.

After first saying he had considered rejecting the honour because January 26 represented a “day of mourning” for his people, Professor Dodson moderated his words and asked for a “conversation” about the date on which we celebrate Australia Day.

Your grumpy old blogger trembled. Surely the appeal would see every ratbag crawl out from under a rock to sneer at the idea of accommodating the feelings of Aboriginal Australians. It's true that a few did – the same old predictable names. Grumpy Old Journo didn't post a comment at the time, preferring to sit back and think it over.

But overall, we had a mature debate. A worthwhile conversation. Most of those who blogged or wrote to newspapers understood the view of many Aboriginal Australians. But at the same time, most agreed with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd – “respectfully, no” – to any change.

With some misgivings, and with a plea to indigenous friends to understand my views, I agree with the Prime Minister. But my reasons may differ.

Today, it's not easy to select an alternative date. Some have been suggested, but few really commend themselves.

The landing of the First Fleet convicts, guards and officers in 1788 (and the claiming of Aboriginal land as British territory) did represent a milestone in the development of the Australian nation – although it also introduced the disease, dispossession and exploitation that did untold damage to the original Australians. Most reasonable people today accept that interpretation.

But the arrival of the Brits would, over time, also bring some of the benefits of the European Enlightenment, along with a robust legal system and the foundations of political structures essential to the development of a nation in the modern world.

Today, we are well along the path of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. We will have many more “conversations” before we get to our destination. Perhaps some date symbolic of that arrival would serve as Australia day.

But I would like to see Australia reach another milestone which could mark our national day of celebration. It would be the day on which Australian became a republic. A republic which acknowledged its debt to Britain, along with that to its indigenous people, and indeed, to all those, Australian-born or immigrant, who have come together to make up our nation.

That would be the day it became possible for an Australian to be our head of state – not a British hereditary monarch who must, by 18th century English law, be a member of the Church of England.

But that's another conversation, isn't it?

Moral analysis, dubious conclusions

2009-01-22T15:28:00.007+11:00

Perhaps it's the silly season, when newspaper editors get a bit desperate for stuff to fill their pages (although surely not this year, with the inauguration of Barack Obama!), or perhaps it's all that spare time academics have during the university vacation.

Whatever, January seems to be a month which sees Deakin University law professor Mirko Bagaric (pictured) at his most prolific with confronting commentaries, and opinion page editors at their keenest to publish them.

On Monday this week, The Australian published his attack on compulsory superannuation – “a train wreck in the making”. Two days later, The Sydney Morning Herald ran his piece attacking recent appeals for wage restraint to help preserve jobs – “Rudd's war on the middle class” (links to these and other articles will be found at the end of this blog post).

Professor Bagaric is confronting because he argues a relentlessly logical moral philosophy. One of his books is How to Live: Being Happy and Dealing with Moral Dilemmas.

But too often, it seems to me, his views reject those feelings of empathy, of “connectedness,” of pity, or the sharing of joy, which seem to mark us as members of the human race.

By his logic, the moral dilemmas of civilian casualties in Gaza seem to resolve into a heartless calculus of which action results in the fewest women and children slain over time.

It allows him to begin this week's SMH article:

The biggest enemy of "working families" is not the financial crisis. It is the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and his offensive and simplistic suggestion that middle Australia should show restraint in wage negotiations so as not to compromise their jobs.

People are not morally obliged to remedy problems not of their doing. Families struggling to afford the necessities of modern life made no contribution to the financial problems. They owe nothing to the rest of community when it comes to wage negotiations.

Yet even here, we seem to have a dilemma. Fight to get all you can for your family, and stuff the community? But where does your family end and “community” begin? Are your cousins in the family, or out in the community to look after themselves as best they can?

Bagaric isn't dead-set against the odd kindly gesture, however:

In some cases individuals need to help others or make sacrifices for the good of the community. However, circumstances requiring such benevolence are rare. They are defined by the maxim of positive duty, which prescribes that we must help others in serious trouble, when assistance would immensely help them at no or little inconvenience to ourselves.

That is why it is repugnant to refuse to throw a rope to a person drowning near a pier, but why we are entitled to decline to allow a homeless person to live in our spare bedroom.

In his argument against superannuation, Bagaric's assertions are far too sweeping – and at times, incorrect. One wonders whether he knows what he's railing against. For a start, he seems to confuse the drop in the value of ordinary superannuation accounts with the deficit in funds required to pay generous defined retirement benefits to politicians, judges, and the like.

Confronted with a sentence like this,

If the Government wants to maintain its fanatical obsession with compulsory superannuation . . .

the reader is entitled to wonder whether the author is undertaking a balanced assessment – or venting some obsessive spleen of his own.

A lawyer may enjoy the privilege of destroying unsound legal reasoning, and then walk away and ignore the consequences. But if Bagaric had more of the economist in him, he'd look to this question – if we abolish compulsory super, what would take its place? The answer must be, An even greater “train wreck”.

Despite all this, perhaps we should welcome Bagaric's contributions (and there are dozens more, if you'd like to look them up on the links below), if only because they should set us thinking. Even if it's only to show where the law professor errs, it's a debate worth having.

Bagaric's article in The Australian opposing compulsory super as a train wreck may be read here. Letters published in the Oz the next day, and today (Thurs), the Oz ran this article in reply from Fiona Reynolds. As chief executive of the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, she would surprise us if she said anything else, but her arguments are convincing.

Bagaric's article in The Sydney Morning Herald mocking wage restraint, and some letters in reply (scroll down to "Rudd's right: let's work our way out of crisis together").

Bagaric has a full archive of posts to the On Line Opinion blog.

Reaching out to the world

2009-01-14T10:38:00.009+11:00

Back when ol' grumpy thought he could run three related blogs at once, he used this clip art as a theme logo when adding new links to his now-disused What? Me Grumpy? blog.

I wanted to go beyond the usual exchange of links between friendly bloggers – although that remains a factor – and try to provide something of real value to my readers. I'm reviving the idea for my surviving, core blog, and this "shaking hands" logo will appear when I add new links and explain why.

A few of my links are quirky. Desert Candy is there not just because I enjoy Middle Eastern food, but also because I like the blogger and her philosophy. Four Candles, because it's just the tonic if you're feeling down.

The AJA Code of Ethics to show what to expect of me.

Woy Woy Steve gets a guernsey not just because he's helped me with encouragement and advice (and provided a link to Grumpy Old Journo), but because my friends who live on the Woy Woy peninsula will find his site informative.

I had a link to Barista well before blogger David Tiley offered a long, supportive comment. I believe his "heartstarter for the hungry mind" blog is worth a few minutes of your time.

Blogs come and go. The long-running Road to Surfdom switched off late last year. To replace it in my links, I'm adding Larvatus Prodeo, a moderate Left blog which now offers a platform for contributors who share its philosophy. [This link should take you a Larvatus post about Surfdom's demise and about the continuing need for independent blogging.]

While checking for Larvatus's web address, I came across homepageDAILY. It's been around since May 2007, but it's still under development in a beta version. It describes its aims:

HomepageDAILY presents the best of the net, updated each day to take you behind the headlines. We offer original content and views beyond the news, including videos and breaking stories from media mavericks, bedroom bloggers and global icons. HPD serves up the soul of the web, so you don't have to gag on the scraps.

HPD is complex, fully featured and professionally designed – a little too much for the average web surfer, perhaps –but it looks like a valuable tool for the savvy internet user. The link above will take you to HPD's "About Us" page. When I set up a link over on the side, it should take you to the home page instead.

I'm sure there are similar sites, and I'll list them if they come up to scratch. The general idea of a site which indexes and provides links to articles from all over is not new – Arts & Letters Daily has been doing it for years. If one wanted to fault ALD, it's that there's too much of it.

Perhaps we small independent bloggers could get together and do something similar. Nothing as ambitious as HPD or ALD. But perhaps we could agree on a way to assemble a brief, simple daily email and send it to our supporters.

Note added Wed, January 15: I've just gone back to check HPD, and found a link to this useful advice for independent bloggers.

Which way now? The questions Grumpy Old Journo must ask himself

2009-01-12T10:41:00.012+11:00

This is an incomplete draft, an outline of my thoughts as I consider the future of this blog. As they develop, I'll return to flesh them out. I'd welcome any suggestions as we go along.

If you read my New Year's Eve thoughts (two posts back, "Even in the down times, we can make this a bright new year") you'll know I've been down about the failure of Grumpy Old Journo to attract readers. If you read the comments to that post, you'll see that two experienced internet posters responded with generous and helpful advice.

I've also talked it over with a friend who is an experienced webmaster and blogger. She also was generous with sound advice – not all of which I'll take. I'm reading up on relevant topics. At present, my thinking is running on these lines:

1. The times they are a'changing

Move on. As my previous post (about the Quadrant hoax) acknowledged, Australians are now bored with tired old arguments from tired old men. But as we shift away from the conservative Right (as well as the One Nation crowd), we must guard against going over to the rent-a-crowd Left.

We're not talking just politics. We're talking about the nature of Australian society. About the Australia we hand on to our offspring. Is our future with a social democratic Left or with a resurgent, centrist wing of a Liberal Party which has rediscovered compassion? Or some hybrid yet to emerge?

Will a move to the centre make us more civil, tolerant and rational? Can we see a better future for most Australians?

Another question. Today, should a man say, "Respect me – I'm seventy years old" ? Or does he have to earn that respect in his dialogue and his dealings with people of all ages and backgrounds – people who may not share his ideas and values? Do we listen when younger writers have their say?

Some reading: In the Weekend Oz, writer Larry Buttrose expores the paths the Left could take. On Monday, letter writer Chris Curtis spells out his hopes for a Left ascendancy in Australia. Liberal Party "wet" Christopher Pyne says his party must move to the centre or die (or read his full article by downloading The Sydney Institute Quarterly).

In this post about Katherine Wilson's hoax, Crikey media commentator Margaret Simons makes it clear she believes Wilson's activism is bad journalism – yet Simons had been Wilson's supervisor for an honours thesis on – wait for it – Advocacy and Journalism.

To show how we ignore young writers, Simons posted this link to a Melbourne Age article of May 27, 2007, which included :

Behind the scenes of Australian cultural life there's a revolution going on, but editors of mainstream publications just don't seem to know it. As the first edition of Gangland argued, the issue at the heart of this revolution isn't simply to do with age.

It's to do with the way Australian culture remains stuck in the 1970s, reliant on backwards-looking aesthetics and modes of understanding, unwilling to add new voices and ideas to mainstream discussion. It's to do with the enormous amount of pent-up energy and will for change and renewal, for new solutions to old problems, that have remained unheard for too long.

2. Is there still a place for a conversational blog?

Both Woy Woy Steve and my friend urge me to specialise on a topic. My friend says Grumpy Old Journo spends too much time on what she calls chat over the back fence. Yet I still like the idea of blogging as a conversation between intelligent people with varied interests. Many of the blogs I enjoy lighten up at times with domestic trivia. I'll think some more about this.

3. Keep up with technology

The old style blogs, such as this one, are easy to post – which allows the blogger to concentrate on content. But with high-powered and heavily promoted newspaper blogs muscling in, amateur bloggers may need to keep up with new technology to promote their offerings. That may mean RSS feeds, posts to Twitter and perhaps Facebook, videos on YouTube, and a better understanding of how search engines work.

Twitter describes itself on this page. People post messages of 140 characters or less, beginning with one simple question: What are you doing? It sounds childish, but look at this dramatic coverage of Bangkok riots. Learn about Stilgherrion, then explore his blog.

And check this out in the American Journalism Review: "Can Facebook and Twitter save the beleaguered mainstream media? Maybe not by themselves. But news organisations increasingly are turning to social networking tools in their efforts to compete in a challenging and fast-changing media landscape."

4. Develop networks with like-minded bloggers

Co-operation between bloggers is already common with the exchange of links, but it's possible like-minded bloggers could do much more for mutual benefit. I hope to expand on this idea after chatting to other bloggers.

5. How much time, and how much ability?

Blogging can become obsessive. Is that the way you want to go? Keep time to have a life. You'll be a more interesting blogger if you do. Have fun. If it's not fun, why are you doing it?

6. Write for your readers

Keep your readers in mind. Don't talk down to them, try to understand their interests and how your writing should engage them. That's basic journalism, but let's face it – blogging does make it too easy to preach.

7. Keep to a posting schedule

Woy Woy Steve emphasised this. Even if I can post only once a month, make it a regular, scheduled day. If I fail, post a note to explain what's happening.

As I said, these are preliminary thoughts. Please come back and see how they develop.