Sorry I'm late, but I've got a note

I'd promised myself I'd never read another Miranda Devine newspaper column. She sings from the Quadrant songbook (which she helped compile as a Quadrant editorial committee member). You'll find her arguments more carefully presented if you go to her sources.

It's not that I've closed my mind to conservative points of view, but lately I've been overwhelmed by the material I try to get through and I've tried to cull time-wasting rubbish.

For reasons I'll give a little further down, I believe time-wasting rubbish includes Ms Devine's newspaper columns.

Like a management consultant cutting costs, I've slashed my reading – partly because Merry and I were having some terse words about the piles of old papers in our spare bedroom cum study, and partly because I was becoming a little down about my inability to keep up with it all and still have a life.

The other day I allocated several hours to go through the heap before carrying it to the recycling bin. All was going well, until I spotted Sydney Morning Herald artist John Shakespeare's caricature of museum director Dawn Casey (detail, left). It illustrated a Miranda Devine column in the SMH on March 27, Beware new front in culture wars.

Basically, Ms Devine rehashes just about all the accusations the hard right hurled against Ms Casey to get her sacked as director of the National Museum of Australia. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Ms Devine would like to see Ms Casey also sacked from her new role as director of Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.

I wouldn't have bothered with a response to Ms Devine's piece, especially since more than a month has gone by, but on December 24 last year I hailed Dawn Casey's appointment to the Powerhouse Museum with a post headed "Another honour for Howard's 'history wars' victim".

In that post, I said I tried not to be a Howard-hater, but I came closest when the then Prime Minister John Howard sacked (technically, failed to renew the contract of) Dawn Casey after her NMA exhibits enraged conservative commentators including Ms Devine.

In her March 27 diatribe, Ms Devine says Casey "will be forever hailed by legions of Howard-haters as the heroine who gave Howard 'one in the eye' ". Right on, Miranda!

Even only a little of what she's accused of is true, Dawn Casey is the most effective Aboriginal guerilla fighter since Pemulwy.

If Miranda and her mates are to be believed, she'd sneaked her subversive agenda under the noses of the museum's board, mocking the "three cheers for our British heritage" history close to the heart of all right-thinking Australians. Out there in the courtyard, crowds of people were running their fingers along dots on a wall, exclaiming to one another, "Good God! It says 'sorry'."

She almost got away with it, too.

It's true the museum's council was chaired by a Liberal Party elder, but Tony Staley is a moderate with a regrettable tendency to balanced views. It was early days for the Howard government, and the Great Leader still had a long way to go in stacking the nation's cultural institutions (such as the ABC, SBS, the National Museum, various education inquiries, the Public Service, etc.) with reliable men and women.

Still, he had rewarded Christopher Pearson, columnist for the Weekend Australian and speechwriter for both Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and David Barnett, author of an admiring biography of the Great Leader, with seats on the National Museum board.

Luckily for all right-thinking Australians, David Barnett was not to be duped. He compiled a list of thousands of examples of bias in the museum's exhibit labels. Staley and other moderates on the board couldn't see a problem, and an inquiry by Monash University history professor Graeme Davison found only a few minor errors.

Apart from its rehash of old accusations against Dawn Casey, Ms Devine's column is instructive about the Quadrant mindset.

--ooOOoo--

The Quadrant mob profess a commendable commitment to free speech. In the Balmain Town Hall last year, at a function to honour retiring Quadrant editor Paddy McGuinness (who died of melanoma cancer not long after), incoming editor Keith Windschuttle spoke of the need to defend free speech and quoted the examples of Geoffrey Blainey and Hans Eysenck. This year, in the first Quadrant under his editorship, he repeated his words.

Blainey we know about. After his 1984 breakfast speech to Warrnambool Rotarians, the prominent historian found himself attacked from the left and cheered from the right because of newspaper reports that he'd attacked Asian immigration.

The attack from the left was inexcusable, but I think that at first Professor Blainey looked at both sides with disdain. His speech had welcomed the diversity and tolerance of Australia's population, although he did go on to warn that Asian immigration was pushing ahead of public acceptance.

As he explained at a Melbourne University history symposium a month later, he did not necessarily find this view palatable, but as an historian he had to report it as he found it.

Eysenck was a pyschology professor in London, the author of two popular Pelican paperbacks, The Uses and Abuses of Pyschology and Sense and Nonsense In Pyschology. Among his many controversial views, those linking IQ to race provoked student protests.

Hasn't Windschuttle got a good memory? If I remember right, Eysenck faced those rowdy students back in the late 1950s or early 60s when I was a very junior journalist and Windschuttle was preaching the wonders of LSD to fellow uni students.

After Keith Windschuttle's noble words, let's see how he and his conservative allies put their defence of free speech into effect.

It seems that in early discussions about the role of the National Museum of Australia, the ultra-conservatives had failed to win their way. Moderate conservatives (these labels are so awkward, aren't they? – but I can't see another way to say it) prevailed.

As the museum opened, with Dawn Casey winning praise for her efforts, the ultras struck back.

Miranda Devine, Keith Windschuttle, David Barnett, Christopher Pearson and Piers Ackerman – all relentless warriors on the conservative side of the history wars – shaped the bullets and loaded the gun, before handing it to Prime Minister John Howard and pointing out his target.

One hopes the target was not more clearly defined by Ms Casey's being Aboriginal.

The Quadrant mob's support for free speech is as believable as was Mao Zedong's when he declared: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend." When your opponents step forward, gun them down.

--ooOOoo--

Ms Devine is remiss in another way, too. She fails to tell her readers that two inquiries failed to find much wrong with Ms Casey's work. As I wrote last December:

Staley turned to Geoffrey Blainey, the historian most admired by conservatives, who suggested Monash University history professor Graeme Davison review Barnett's allegations. Davison examined them in detail, checked them against historical sources, and said Barnett's criticisms were ill-founded.

Ms Devine doesn't mention this at all. Nor does she say that with the ultra-conservatives still frothing at the mouth, the NMA council decided on an external review. As I wrote in December:

The responsible Howard minister, Rod Kemp, chose as chairman John Carroll, a conservative with connections to the right-wing propaganda organisation (a.k.a. "think tank"), the Institute of Public Affairs. Other members included Philip Jones, a senior curator at the South Australian Museum who had won the conservatives' approval during the Hindmarsh Island affair.

Balancing them were Sydney businessman Richard Longes and a palaeobiologist, Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich. One might ask: Where was the historian? But despite the appearance of a stacked inquiry, the committee, against all expectations, reported no problem with political or cultural bias at the NMA.

Ms Devine doesn't tell her readers this. She does say:

The NMA under Casey was notable, according to the Carroll report of the collection, for its almost complete lack of science, technology and industrial content.

That's her only reference to the Carroll report. Really helpful to her readers, isn't she?

--ooOOoo--

If you'd like to check my assessment of the Carroll findings, go to the museum's report, scroll down and click on the attachment link to bring up the report as a PDF file. Its conclusions may be found in Section 6, particularly on P67 and 68.

To read a more detailed exposition of the conservatives' case against Dawn Casey (and against Professor Davison), Keith Windschuttle's website reprints his Quadrant attack of September 2001. No doubt a search of his website will find others.

Some of my post has taken material from Professor Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars (Melb University Press, 2003), particularly Chapter 10, Working through the museum's labels, but generally I've also checked it out with contemporary press reports. I'm aware Macintyre is on the hate list of some conservatives, but his current appointment as visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard shows he has the respect of his peers.

In the final pages of The museum's labels chapter, Macintyre attacks some of Windschuttle's claims about Professor Davison [made in his Quadrant attack mentioned above], and says: "Windschuttle's misreading of Davison's views is as dishonest as any of the charges of intellectual dishonesty he makes against the historical profession."

The wit of John Howard

Those who know me will not be surprised to know that I'd expect The Wit and Wisdom of John Howard to be a very slim book indeed, right up there with the Reforms and Vision of the Howard Government and The Italian Book of War Heroes.

But credit where it's due. Our former Leader does show some promising skills as a standup comedian.

In a self-deprecating address to the Liberal Party faithful in Brisbane the other night, his first speech in Australia since his defeat on November 24, and immediately following his lap of honour through cheering throngs of neo-cons in the US, he said that despite his many years in office, he'd realised his diplomatic skills need honing.

Part of being in Texas was to go down to College Station which is where the library of the 41st President of the United States, George Henry Walker Bush, is located.

We had a very pleasant occasion and a gathering of supporters and friends turned up and I was invited to make a few remarks and one of the questioners got up and said would you name three things that, you know, you are really proud of about what you did as Prime Minister?

And I said, well yes. Chronologically, the first thing I'll start with is gun control.

The Brisbane audience laughs. John Howard pauses, then with the timing of a professional comic, looks around and says:

That wasn't their reaction.

I have to thank the AM show on ABC Local Radio for this snippet, reported by the ABC's Donna Field. I would have posted this item yesterday, but like many others trying to use ABC Online's redesigned website, I found myself blundering through a maze of impenetrable navigations links and pages which refused to open.

ABC forums now carry many protests from users who say the new ABC Online Local Radio pages have been changed for the worse. And it may be true. I've never had so much trouble following up an item I've heard on the radio.

Still, if you want the AM report, here it is.

Kanyini – understanding Aboriginal culture

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.

Two worlds, two cultures. Perhaps there's no place in Australia where the gap is more brutally defined than Uluru. On one side, a luxury resort enjoyed by tourists from all around the world, and unseen on the other, a squalid township for traditional owners of the great rock.

If they do get a glimpse of Mutitjulu, the tourists may ask why the indigenous owners live like that. Surely they receive rents and fees from the tourists, as well as government welfare?

Perhaps some whitefellas begin to think indigenous equals inferior, that Aboriginal people lack the capacity to look after themselves or their children.

But listen to Bob Randall (pictured top), a respected elder, as he 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. But here goes.

The early part of the film is almost a monologue as Bob Randall explains kanyini and the life Aboriginal people led before the whites arrived. He's direct, but almost genial, as he describes his people's culture. At times, he gently mocks whitefellas for their belief they have a superior culture and spirituality.

Cut into his talk are spectacular central Australian desert scenes, rich in vibrant colours, along with old black-and-white footage of naked Aboriginal men hunting, naked children romping in rockpools, mothers with children. And of Aboriginal people being taken away by whitefellas and put into whitefella clothes.

We begin to understand what the original Australians lost when the whites arrived, bringing the "benefits" of European civilisation.

Then a dramatic switch. Suddenly, the camera is taking us around Mutitjulu, confronting us with images of young people staggering as they inhale deeply from cans. We see dispirited adults mooching about, kicking at the dust and mud.

They are images we've seen only in recent years. Most Aboriginal communities refused entry permits to journalists, photographers and film-makers unless they submitted to censorship which deleted such scenes.

But the producer, director and editor of Kanyini is a remarkable young woman. Melanie Hogan (pictured with Randall as they collected one of the awards the film has won) graduated from the University of NSW with a first-class honours degree in economics, and joined Macquarie Bank – the "millionaires factory" – to work in corporate finance.

Then she dropped out, yielding to her creative urge to study film-making in New York and back in Sydney. Then, as she says:

. . it was only in April 2004 I realised I didn't have one indigenous friend . . . So I set off to the desert pretty much straight away, to learn all about Indigenous Australia – in a blackfella kinda way – through communication and relationship and following the direction of the wind.

At Mutitjulu, she was invited to produce a short film, Petrol Wiya, to combat petrol sniffing. From that, she teamed up with Bob Randall for the partnership which produced Kanyina, for which Randall was presenter and co-producer.

Trust me. Viewing Kanyina is a worthwhile experience, and the film would be an excellent resource for any group wishing to discuss indigenous culture. More information can be found here, including ways to order the DVD. The link to the study notes yields useful information for teachers and discussion groups.

In Kanyini, Bob Randall, born in 1934 of a Scottish station manager and an Aboriginal housemaid, tells of an idyllic childhood living in the camp away from the homestead. He was taken away as a youngster and never saw his mother again. As he says:

I was institutionalised because I didn't wear clothes or live in a house. In that natural way of living, there was no need for me to have anything other than what I had. It was not that I lacked love. As well as my biological connection, I had five mothers and six fathers.

Short biographies of Randall and Hogan can be read on the Kanyini website by following the links to "subject" and "director" respectively. The study guide is also worth, well, studying.

I had planned another leg to this post, but I'll keep it brief for now. Schools on the Woy Woy peninsula, where I live, and elsewhere are using Kanyini as an important part of a project called Yarn Up.

Yarn Up sums up its aims: Talk the Story, through viewing Kanyini and then discussing it; then Walk the Story as local Aboriginal people guide students over their traditional country, explaining how their people lived and related to their world.

It's a great concept, and I think it's going to work. Yarn Up tells its story here.

You've been reading inappropriate material

From time to time, I print out my recent blog posts and send them to a friend who's serving a prison sentence in Western Australia. Until recently there's been no problem. He told me he appreciated them, and had passed them on to other prisoners who also enjoyed the reading.

You might say I had a captive readership.

But it's just come to an end. My last letter sending the blog printout (with posts running back from The Skills of Persuasion to On the Eve of the Apology) came back in its envelope, resealed with sticky tape and marked "return to sender". The note pictured above was stapled to the printout. The note is shown complete, excepting the little I've trimmed from the bottom to avoid naming the prison.

The breezy informality ("Dear Ian", from a person I've never met, and on top of that, a person who does not provide any identification) doesn't bother me, but the ruling does. I cannot see anything in the blog's posts which might threaten the good conduct of the prison. The note offers no reason other than "deemed inappropriate". It doesn't say who did the deeming, nor does it offer any guide to what would be appropriate.

I turned to the department site and studied the Director General's Rules, published online in a commendable move to explain them to the public as well as to prison staff. Nowhere could I find a rule which would exclude my blog or its content. Not satisfactory, eh?

But I won't do anything more. I worry that if I query the ruling, my friend might suffer.

The skills of persuasion

The following post won't make much sense unless you watch this YouTube video first:
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=n7WJeqxuOfQ

Roy Beck is an articulate, long-standing opponent of any move by the United States to increase immigration. His views would appeal to many Australians, and the video, you should agree, is persuasive.

But before we allow ourselves to be persuaded, it's worth looking at how Beck emphasises his points.

• Beck graphs population levels (the Y-axis) against years (the X-axis). He sets his baseline at a US population of 200 million, so the trendline rises steeply when population rises to 220 million. Start the Y-axis at zero population, and the rise would be almost imperceptible. It's not dishonest, but it can mislead an uneducated viewer.
  
• The extrapolation of trendlines into the future is a hairy business at the best of times. Not much more than a century ago, some forecasters said streets would be knee-deep in horse manure as we tried to move all the extra people and their wares around our burgeoning cities.
  
• Noddies. If, God forbid, you're a fan of TV current affairs shows, you've seen noddies. A producer goes back and films the interviewer nodding her head, then inserts the clips at appropriate points in the previously recorded interview. Beck focuses his camera on a succession of audience members as they nod thoughtfully.
  
• Yet nowhere in the YouTube clip do you see Beck and his nodding audience at the same time. As he delivers his spiel, nothing in the vision shows he's talking to a live audience. Perhaps he is. You'll have to take it on faith.
  
• You can't blame Beck for such professionalism, but his confident, articulate and forceful delivery may tend to distract people who should instead focus on the content of his address.

The gumballs demonstration at the end of the clip is clever, but is the US – or Australia, for that matter – really proposing to take millions upon millions more immigrants as an act of charity to relieve poverty and over-population in Third World countries. Really?

We can draw up many arguments about the appropriate levels of immigration, and where the migrants are to come from. I have my thoughts, and you have yours.

What we cannot deny is that immigration is vital for nations, such as Australia or the US, where the birthrate has fallen so far they are not replacing those who drop off the twig. Where will we find the nurses to staff our nursing homes?

In my next post, I expect to tell of Kanyini, a film about Aboriginal loss, and the way the film is being used in Yarn Up, a new schools project to help our children better understand Aboriginal life. Once again, I've paused to make sure any assessment goes further than my first emotional response. Please come back.

Young Libs roll out the tumbrels

“The Senate Committee on Un-Australian Activities is now in session.” A few people shuffle their chairs, then the hearing room falls silent. The Senator fixes her gimlet eyes on the fellow standing before her.

Typical of his type, she thinks. A bit weedy. Tweed jacket with worn leather patches. Longish hair, thinning on top. A glance at the dossier shows he's never achieved tenure. A quiet word with the vice-chancellor about funding and he'll be out on the street.

The Senator sighed. Why can't they all be this easy. Not like that so-called expert she had to shout down at the committee hearing she conducted last year.

Some fellow called Dr. Alex Wodak who had the impertinence to think he knew more about drugs than she did. Thought she'd be impressed because he was president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Association and was also a senior staffer in the drug and alcohol treatment unit at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney.

Well, she'd showed him. She'd written the committee report, and made sure it pushed her zero tolerance approach to drugs. These so-called experts need putting in their place.

The same place, she thought, as these dangerously biased academics. She focused again on the hapless fellow in front of her.

Her first question is blunt. “Are you or have you ever been a member of the Greens?” The man nods, and almost inaudibly says, “Yes.” “And are you prepared to name the other members of your cell?” This time the man speaks up. “No!”

The Senator nods to the attendants, who lead him out. There's no time to be wasted – the Young Liberals are hauling another tumbrel to the door.

Perhaps I'd better move on before I mix any more metaphors, or add to the hyperbole. But whatever can the Young Liberals be seeking with their current campaign urging members to record biased university lectures and report them to the federal office?

Young Libs federal president Noel McCoy told The Australian's Higher Education section: “Lecturers and tutors are brazenly forcing students to agree with their political or ideological views and we want to catch them doing it.

“I think the public would be very concerned if they knew what was going on, so we're trying to raise awareness and get our politicians to take action.”

And yes, Mr McCoy called for a Senate inquiry.

In case you think the Young Libs were able to dream this up for themselves, their campaign copies a similar movement in the US led by conservative commentator David Horowitz.

It's reassuring to know the future of the Liberal Party is in good hands. Right now there's a danger it may fall under the control of moderates who say lack of compassion explains the party's loss of government in every Australian parliament (the biggest legislative body in which it has power appears to be the Brisbane City Council).

Just this month Gerard Henderson's Sydney Institute provided a forum for two Liberal wets, MHR Christopher Pyne and Senator Marise Payne. Pyne called for a replenishment of the party membership, “bringing new ideas, destroying rotten boroughs, creating a phalanx of new campaign workers, fund-raisers and political candidates”.

Senator Payne noted that the Liberal Party sought to be a broad church, the custodian of both liberalism and conservatism, but she also said that as a member of that church, “I have on occasion felt that only one side of the congregation was welcome at the service”.

Senator Payne also brought up the “C” word. When she'd asked traditional Liberal voters why they had switched, “the answer was, often, that we lacked compassion.”

“For example, older women, who had been giving to the collection plate at their church for decades to support the dispossessed and disadvantaged, did not accept or understand our approach to refugees – in particular the detention of children.”


Even more confronting for the hard-line conservatives was a speech this month by Nick Greiner (left). Some 700 guests turned up at the function to mark the 20th anniversary of the election of the Greiner state government in New South Wales.

Greiner is something of an eminence grise for NSW Liberal Party supporters, although he has never been able to topple the party's dominant “Uglies” faction.

He may have been the state's best post-World War II premier. Already a highly qualified and respected corporate manager, he reformed the state's public administration and financial structures after winning office in 1988.

Pragmatic rather than ideological, he worked constructively with the economic reform program of Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating.

But Greiner's premiership lasted only four years because of the tawdry Metherell affair. Dr Terry Metherell was Greiner's Education Minister but became a liability with his arrogant ideology – such as refusing to allow a new university to be named Chifley, instead making it the University of Western Sydney (a pejorative term at the time) – as well as some claims about tax avoidance. After Greiner dumped him, Metherell resigned from the party to sit as an independent.

Greiner then offered Metherell a highly paid public service job, Metherell quit the parliament, and the Libs won back the blue ribbon seat of Davidson.

Greiner found his actions assessed by the Independent Commission Against Corruption – a Greiner creation – which ruled it was corrupt conduct. Greiner appealed to the courts and won a ruling that ICAC had erred. But it was too late. Greiner was out.

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.

That's all old history, of course. Greiner has moved on to other boardrooms and other challenges. What is interesting is that the other day 700 people listened attentively as he told them the Liberal Party needed compassion.

In an interview with Andrew Clark of the Australian Financial Review, he explained: “The truth is the electorate is changing. It's becoming slightly more feminine, left brain, whatever part of the brain it is.”

As the community changed, any political party needed to understand the changing nature of its markets.

"The truth is the environment and compassion are now part of the middle ground . . . There's nothing in Liberalism that suggests you have to allow these issues to be the exclusive preserve of your opponents."

Try telling that to the Young Libs.

--ooOOOoo--

Read The Australian's report on the Young Libs' campaign and why one Young Lib changed classes, plus comments here and here . To be even-handed, Grumpy Old Journo tried to offer a link to the Young Libs' website, but got this message instead:

"There is a problem with this website's security certificate. The security certificate presented by this website has expired or is not yet valid. The security certificate presented by this website was issued for a different website's address. Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server. We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website. "

You must be an Australian Financial Review subscriber (or take a 14-day free trial) to read Andrew Clark's article online, but you could read the SMH report highlighting invitations to developers to kick in $1000 a head to attend the dinner.

Summaries of Christopher Pyne's and Senator Marise Payne's speeches are here.

Taking the mickey out of the Young Libs is not one of life's more challenging tasks, but Lisa Pryor of the Sydney Morning Herald did it better than most. She wrote that she would not be at all surprised if the average teacher turned out to be more left-wing than the average citizen.

"This should be self-evident. Teachers are unlikely to be diehard capitalists or economic rationalists: by definition they have chosen a path which is economically irrational.

"Teachers waste perfectly good tertiary educations on doing a job with pathetic pay, with little opportunity to exercise entrepreneurial skill, bargain individually or get promoted to a fancy sounding position. It is almost as if they have a warped value system which regards community service as more important than personal advancement. "

She's not surprised the Young Libs have heard stories about teachers being biased against policies such as Work Choices – "a marginal and extreme view shared only by the Labor Party, the Greens, the churches, the majority of the voting public and most of the Liberal politicians still left in Federal Parliament."

Of moonflowers and breaking the rules

There's always a good way to waste time. And sitting here in the early hours, trying to get this Grumpy Old Journo blog back on track, I find myself drawn to the need to make another cup of tea, then take it out into the backyard where I can admire the moonflowers.

This is our original plant, growing from a tub beside the back gate. After we hacked it back, some of the prunings rooted in the compost heap and we planted them out on the other side of the house.

Those creepers have now laced themselves through a rampant bougainvillea pushing out over the roof, as well as climbing up a lemon tree which desperately needs someone with a chainsaw to prune it low enough for us to pick the lemons.

Sigh. The whole place is starting to look like one of those abandoned farmhouses you see during country drives. It's going to take days of chopping and pruning and chipping and mulching before it resembles a respectable suburban home again.

But on a moonlit night, there's little that could be more spectacular than the flowers of Ipomoea alba. They're a lustrous creamy white, about 14cm in diameter and saucer-shaped, with a small cluster of yellow-tipped stamens in the centre.

By mid-morning, each bloom has withered to resemble a crumpled sheet of tissue paper. By mid-afternoon, the ground underneath is littered with the spent blooms.

But look back up to the creeper, and it's covered with tulip-shaped buds, ready to burst open into the new evening's moonlight.

The moonflower is a relative of the common morning glory, Ipomoea indica, but took a different evolutionary path to achieve cross-pollination by attracting moths, not bees. Like morning glory, it could get out of control in bushland, so be responsible when you dispose of prunings. Check this warning by the Weed Society of Queensland (click through to "Weeds In Focus", then the January 2006 listing of moonflower).

Otherwise, it's a plant to enjoy on a bright night. And a plant which would fire up conversation if things get a bit boring at your next dinner party.

--- oooOOOooo ---

Most weeks, I put a little time into volunteer tutoring at a high school, usually in English but sometimes in geography or history.

And sometimes, if I think I've got the right sort of student, I'll lean forward to share a secret: “If you can do it better by breaking the rules, go ahead and break them. Really. You just may achieve a better result. But first, know the rules and why they exist, and why your way is better.”

In more than fifty years as a journalist, I've seen dramatic changes in the way English is used – and most, but not all, of those changes have enhanced our ability to convey information and ideas with precision and vigour.

When I was still a cadet, one might receive a letter which began: “In reply to your telephonic communication of the first inst.” Today, does anyone know their “inst.” from their “ult.”?

Teachers were still rapping the knuckles of pupils who began a sentence with “And”. As for a fragmentary sentence! Or a split infinitive! Egad! What's the world coming to?

--- oooOOOooo ---

So now, well after my formal retirement, I'm sitting at my keyboard knowing that I'm breaking rules. Some, such as my digression into topics (like moonflowers) unrelated to the main thrust of my blog, may just help me offer a more enjoyable experience for readers.

Others, like offering long essays to people too busy to read long essays, may be counter-productive. There, I can only defend myself by saying I'm frightened of being superficial, a fault I see in too many blogs.

Nor do I want to be a blogger who snatches items from The Australian and adds predictable and boring comments.

Is cowardice breaking the rules? That came to mind the other day when the Vatican presented a new list of sins relevant to the 21st century.

I looked in vain for any suggestion that celibate old men living in palaces on the other side of the world might just be in error when they tell hundreds of thousands of women in third-world countries that they would sin if they were to ask their HIV-infected husbands to use condoms.

Call me a coward, but I'm unlikely to go further down that road.

But there is one rule I regret having broken: Post frequently to a blog. If for some reason you can't, put up an explanation.

It must be about a month since I last posted to Grumpy Old Journo, and that's not much of a reward for anyone who returns to see my latest words.

My next post may be on compassion and the Liberal Party. No, honestly. The top Libs are now all talking compassion. But never fear – the torch will soon be in safe hands again. As I write this, the Young Liberals are organising dossiers on academics who show dangerous leftish or Green tendencies. You think I'm joking?