This is what I’ve been missing all these years not watching tabloid tv?
[via Crikey]
Archive for November, 2006
Another round of ACTU rallies went ahead this morning across Australia. The punditariat seems to assume that WorkChoices has faded as an issue because they’ve stopped writing about it. There’s a fair bit of evidence to the contrary. Labor came close to taking several regional National seats and the Independent held seat of Gladstone in Queensland by campaigning heavily on IR (Liz Cunningham, the Gladstone incumbent with a massive majority going into the election, only just got back in). Labor highlighted WorkChoices in the Victorian campaign - and despite Howard’s denialism, they wouldn’t have run ads unless their polling told them there was real community concern about wages and living standards. And today tens of thousands of Australians have turned out to protest.
There’ve been a couple of interesting stories about IR in the lead up to today’s rallies.
In an important decision, which could preserve rights of protest for the future, the Federal Court has ruled that employers don’t have the right to tell employees what to do on their leave days, after the Howard Government’s own Office of the Employment Advocate tried to prevent an employee from taking leave to attend the protests.
And the Commonwealth Bank has gone all the way with AWAs - which remove overtime, shift, higher duties and relocation allowances, and don’t contain guaranteed paid rises.
Update: Via Rooster, here’s a link to the Rights@Work pool on flickr.
The Prime Minister’s reaction?
We need flexibility. This will provide flexibility and freedom. They are good words and they are good concepts.
Please feel free to post in comments any reports, photos or personal stories about the protests today.
Elsewhere: Lots of WorkChoices fans in the comments thread at Blogocracy.
Australia’s best selling fish wrapper, The Hun, is in Crusader mode again this week. This time the hot issue is the piss-poor sentences that Victoria’s judges are handing out to “child killers�.
The fun started on Tuesday, with Katie Lapthorne’s report “Baby killer sentence outrage�:
A MINIMUM five-year jail sentence for a father who committed monstrous assaults that killed his baby daughter has been slammed by child welfare groups.
David Scott Arney, 25, repeatedly punched five-month-old Rachael Joy in what he described as “fits of passion”.
Continue reading ‘Just Another Week in the Office at Southbank’
So, the good ship Incumbency has continued on its merry way past Wilsons Promontory, with following winds and calm seas seas. Who knows how it will go on the grimy waters of Lake Burley Griffin in 2007, but in the last few years Incumbency has seemed like a dreadnought against the square-riggers of Opposition.
But why do Oppositions struggle so hard?
Continue reading ‘Departmental costings for Opposition policies’
Earlier today on Radio National’s The Deep End there was an interview with the co-producer of a production of Beckett’s Endgame by the Eleventh Hour Theatre Company in Melbourne. On the basis of that interview and this review by Alison Croggon I’d definitely go to see it if I lived in Melbourne. Beckett is one of those writers – spare, elliptical, almost platitudinous but full of meaning – which Croggon captures thusly:
Comedy is always cruel, and perhaps it is most pitiless when it springs from a compassion as profound as Beckett’s. Beckett’s compassion is not of the kind that can be easily construed in humanist terms; it is far beyond looking for transcendent meaning in the human condition. Rather, Beckett grants his strange characters a space in which the trivia of their existence in a godless, inhuman universe is given its proper dignity. Where nothing means anything, everything becomes significant.
Well said.
As Tim Dunlop rightly observes at Blogocracy, at least 90% of the Labor leadership story is directly traceable to the interest journos at The Australian have in running with it, and indeed, as Dennis Shanahan implied last night, to his own one-sided interpretations of Newspoll.
Where’s the “analysis” of Howard’s 3% drop in approval ratings from the same Newspoll?
And it’s not just leadership.
Julie Bishop and the Australian’s resident history warrior, Dr Kevin Donnelly, claim that Carmel Tebbut’s mistake over the significance of Australia Day shows that our schools have been corrupted by postmodernism, etc, blah, blah. Were similar conclusions about TEH EVILS OF POSTMODERNISM AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS drawn when the very same Ms Bishop couldn’t name prominent Australian explorers?
Is the government being held accountable because the civics programme which has failed to impart to students worthy details about the Governor-General’s duties is actually a federal government initiative which has had almost 10 years to get its message across? Has anyone pointed out, aside from Queensland education minister Rod Welford, that introducing a “stand alone history subject” would mean students in small regional high schools which don’t have the resources to teach the full gamut of subjects would miss out on it altogether?
Not only are obvious questions not asked and conclusions not drawn by much of the meejah, nothing much that doesn’t fit a ludicrously biased political spin gets more than minimal space in the Murdoch flagship. And if the news isn’t there, it’s invented to justify the spin. One lesson in civics should be that Australians deserve better than the right wing postmodernism of the Murdoch press.
From today’s Crikey email:
Queensland Nationals will have been carefully studying the results of the Victorian election last week. The Nats have picked up at least one seat and, even more importantly, vastly improved their primary vote. And they’ve done it with a level of “product differentiation” from the Libs which has been accurately characterised as “hatred”.
Veteran Senator and Nats Senate Leader, Ron Boswell, faces the preselectors on Saturday. He has the fulsome endorsement of John Howard, but the Prime Minister’s claim that “Ron is no lackey of the Liberals” may not cut the mustard with the Queensland party. State parliamentarians and office-holders have made no secret of the fact that they’d like Boswell to step down, and in fact the Senator himself promised last time he scraped through his last preselection that this would be his last term.
The Nats’ new state leader, Jeff Seeney, has previously commented that “new blood” is needed in the Senate.
Here’s an interesting little example of spin — or perhaps politics. The federal government has finally struck a deal on the price of the cervical cancer vaccine, so the school vaccination program will commence next year.
Now, some of us may recall that Tony Abbott is the Federal Minister for Health. Yet the articles in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and probably most other news media have John Howard making the announcement. (And his smiling mug shot accompanies the headline on the SMH’s front page online, which is a pretty gruesome sight.)
On the Government website, under Health, Tony Abbott modestly inserts himself into the press release in paragraph five.
I am left to wonder if this is a case of:
- John Howard wanting to take all the credit for what he knows will be a popular move
- Tony Abbott disassociating himself from the decision for religious reasons
- Apart from wanting to take all the credit, John Howard sending a signal that Abbott is not his choice to inherit the leadership.Â
What do you think?
Did anyone else see the debate stoush between Wilson Tuckey and Barnaby Joyce on Lateline? A bit like the definition of art, I don’t really know what happened, but I know that I liked it.
The entire AWB debate has been marked by confusion, obstruction and name-calling. Perhaps it’s too late to stop now.
Tony Jones should just sit back with a stiff drink and make Barnaby and Wilson a regular feature.
Continue reading ‘Clowns to the right of me, jokers to the further right’
Here’s a novel speed dating idea from the good folks at the State Library of Victoria:
Text Appeal: Literary Dating
Love is in the air at the State Library of Victoria this summer.
Text Appeal is a new take on the traditional dating formula. Each person brings a book they love, loathe or have recently read to act as a conversation starter. Jane Austen may find Patrick O’Brien, Salman Rushdie could be captivated by Zadie Smith, and JK Rowling - can take her pick. The books people bring may reveal who they are, who they aren’t and perhaps who they are looking for, all in a three-minute conversation.
Text Appeal will run once a month from December 2006 to February 2007, with the final event being held on Valentine’s Day.
From today’s Crikey email:
One aspect of the Victorian result that hasn’t attracted any comment is the implications for the Democrats federally. Except in the blogosphere. Graham Young at Ambit Gambit believes that the Greens failed to capture the protest vote to the greatest extent possible, and that their static vote might presage better things for the Democrats in the federal poll next year than pundits are crediting.
Analysis of the minor parties vote in the Victorian election has been muddied by spin. Family First and the Greens are both keen to claim that the results prove they’ve either consolidated their position or arrived on the scene as a force to be reckoned with.
While the Democrats ran candidates, unlike in the Queensland election, they effectively ran dead. They’re harnessing their remaining enthusiasm and resources for the fight to re-elect their Senators next year.
Long term governments, such as Bracks’s in Victoria and Beattie’s in Queensland, inevitably disappoint some of their own supporters. In the context of a lacklustre opposition, not only disillusioned Labor voters but also swinging voters who have no time for the alternative government look for a vehicle for protest.
Lizards rejoice! Naomi Robson is gone.
And in other news that should concern a different species of cold blooded reptile, the Cole inquiry exonerates the Govt while managing to make the PM, Alexander Downer and Mark Vaile look like incompetents in the oversight of a major trade relationship.
But in reading the early mail on this I have a few questions? Is there a sting in the tail here for the Govt. with the recommendation of prosecution against the named individuals? With the possibility of a stretch in the big house, will any of these wise guys under a different kind of inquiry and terms of reference produce a few unintended surprises? Post Cole, will this story grow new legs?
Should lizards everywhere feel safe now Robson and Cole are gone?
Introduction:
Last year I reviewed Ry Cooder’s album Chavez Ravine. Recently I was contacted by author Ken Aven, who has written a novel, Chavez Ravine Echoes, that uncovers the hidden history of Chavez Ravine; A once a vibrant, Mexican-American community that is now the site of Dodger Stadium.
Chavez Ravine Echoes is centered around baseball. Ken has combined his love and knowledge to the sport to use the developing romance between Los Angeles Dodgers’ star Joe Shapiro and Dodgers staffer as a vehicle to explore the what happened to Chavez Ravine and how the story still is a part of consciousness of LA. The redemptive nature of sport is used well to tie the story together with the future of Joe Shapiro and the legacy of Chavez Ravine dependant on the Dodgers’ fortunes during the 2006 season.
I asked Ken to write something for LP on Chavez Ravine and that is over the fold as are some responses to a few questions I asked Ken on the book, Chavez Ravine and The Los Angeles Dodgers.
Continue reading ‘Guest Post: Ken Aven on Chavez Ravine’
From today’s Crikey email:
The Greens’ lower house challenge in Victoria may have fizzled, at least compared to the campaign triumphalism, but its implications for future federal elections are intriguing.
Unlike the Democrats, the Greens do have a more geographically concentrated support base, which makes the chance of winning lower house seats a possibility.
And realistically, the Greens can only take lower house seats off Labor – because essentially they’re playing to a similar constituency which is also part of Labor’s electoral coalition – inner city progressives.
As the old working class nature of inner city seats has largely been wiped away by both social change and gentrification, that constituency is also more important to Labor majorities.
Yeah, sorry, it’s been a while…
Andrew Bartlett has written a post about a media release attacking him for being “…more concerned about the welfare of animals than about the welfare of Australian womenâ€?.
I agree with Senator Bartlett’s assessment of Women’s Forum Australia as “mainly polemical and prone to exaggeration and hyperbole”. However, I don’t agree with the stance he took during the stem cell debate and was very disappointed that it was necessary for supporters of the Bill to vote for his amendments.
But there’s a bigger question that I want to focus on.
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