Why has no Australian writer since Williamson with “The Club” attempted to do the same? At the very least, what with Warney texting his libido around and strangled coaches, there must be a great and darkly funny cricket novel out there. Not to mention all the tennis and swimming feral fathers.

Nah. Speaking as a former tennis prodigy who survived a forced march through “Infinite Jest”, I can say DFW is just as clumsy and flatfooted about fluently rolling lawn tennis references crosscourt on the run as Smarty Anus.

Otherwise generally an excellent writer, ’specially when he puts tennis and ‘big’ novels to one side. ‘Lyndon’ is one of the most crystalline yet hallucinatory pieces of prose I have ever read.

The national anthem will be changed to either “Take the Skin-heads Bowling,” or else the theme from “Courageous Cat.” And the currency will be re-designed by George Herriman, Vaughn Bode and Ernie Bushmiller.

And I think everybody should be required to take a detailed, plainly-taught course in civics and basic law, so they have a clearer idea of the sorts of shenanigans governments get up to, and how they can better monitor and criticize them. And they should have to take it at an age when they’re genuinely equipped to understand what they’ve been taught.

w/r/t this whole “opera versus sport” thing, why not just athleticize opera (or the performing arts in general)? Brecht was on to something like this: it’s part of human nature for people to be interested in judging outcomes against standardized criteria; that’s what sport is all about. I mean, just set up an arts system where there are sometimes more head-to-head competitive environments, like maybe having “Australian Idol — Classical Version,” or regional state against state competitions amongst colleges and high schools, for the best production of Twelfth Night or the Henriad. Make the rules for judging consistent, more like sport.

And I like Doctor Cat’s idea of making artists play sports and making athletes do art. You forgot David Foster Wallace, who was a tennis prodigy. And Muhammad Ali, who was quite the poet and orator. Excelsior!

Both major parties should commit to more generous overall funding for education – from daycare to tertiary level. Funding can be sourced from a set percentage of GST ( through the negotiations conducted between state and federal governments)and maybe from long term bonds issued against HECS repayment funds or even by dipping into a tax on gambling.
Investment in improving our education at all levels will lead to us dealing with all manner of other problems more effectively.
Industry policy from both parties will unfortunately be a mish-mash trying to satisfy their backers. We would all benefit from a hands off approach with suitable tax incentives for those areas which need R and D.

from a social point of view, sport is extremely important for all children to participate in.

Why? So the uncoordinated, the short-sighted, the gentle, the bookish, the dreamy and the bored-to-sobs can be publicly humiliated, openly bullied and/or bored to sobs on a weekly basis?

Art is ultimately an elitist activity.

And sport, which is all about winning, isn’t?

Get real.

I’m more interested in the delivery of the message that art is (at least) as important as sport than I am in funding increases as such.

Hmmm…I wonder how you could make that assessment? I would argue that from a social point of view, sport is extremely important for all children to participate in. I am not convinced it is the case for Art. Art is ultimately an elitist activity. We should encourage the very best and allow hoi polloi to watch The Simpsons.

of course this would send Qantas broke, but you can’t make an omelette…

Under my hegemony

Helen, I like it!

Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae

(I am not as I was under the reign of the good Cynara – Horace)

LAST night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to you, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long;
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Ernest Dowson

Symbolist poets of decadence and the Yellow Book Fin du siecle aesthetic to be the sole content of the English curriculum!

Dr Donnelly to be forced to read same, and write students’ notes…

Under my hegemony, there will be a large national Project similar to the Snowy River project, with the same objectives of national benefit and employment creation, but without the same environmental destruction, and ongoing. The primary objective will be to make as far as possible every roof in Australia, commercial or private, a solar collection point.

My government will subsidise, heavily, the design, the manufacture and research into the design and manufacture of solar panels. the Research institutes – of which there will be more than one – will focus also on solving the problem of storage.

The subsidies will be designed to make the solar panels affordable. An export market will be created, both of the panels themselves and technology / consultancies. Inclusion of solar panels on new buildings will be compulsory, and the pricing will be designed to encourage people to put them on existing buildings.

The solar collection technology will be designed to plug into the national electricity grid. People who can’t imagine things being any way but what they are (I’m sure there were a lot of them in 1820) needn’t worry about losing all their white goods. But not only would they take electricity from the grid if they exceeded their solar panels’ capacity; their solar panels would feed back to the grid. Therefore, your energy bill would be very small, maybe even negative or zero.

We’d have a manufacturing industry again. We would spend the money to pay scientists, engineers, teachers and … apprentices. It would create jobs.

Picking winners? Sure. So sue me.

The reason people say that solar power cannot succeed is that there has never been the political will to spend the kind of money on it that people are willing to spend on R & D for mining, nuclear, the automotive industry etc.

I will..

Install steve at the pub as mine host at a Melb CBD pub with instructions to ban Nabs every second day only. Alternate days he will toss nabs double ofr nothing for the tab. The pub will have NO DOOF music policy. There will be a soundproofed rock / country bar and an equally sound proofed jazz bar. There wil be a bar with No music and wireless access for bloggers, with pole dancing and weekly Wrestlemania matches.

Bring the ABC into line by passing legislation in the first session to ensure the ABC keeps Virginia Trioli in Sydney (or if I have to water it down – simply keep her out of Melb). Force the ABC to set up two additional stereo FM music stations one programmed by Lucky Oceans the other by Andy Ford. (with large slabs programmed by Floppy and dogpossum)

Make share trading compulsary for all elected representatives but insist on them reading tips into Hansard prior to investment and then publishing quarterly results of each members share performance.

Insist AC/DC be domiciled in Oz and perform at least 10 concerts a year.

Insist Barnsey be domiciled outside Oz and not perform at all.

Strip Clive James, Germaine and Robert Hughes of Oz citizenship.

Force Objectivists to form a voluntary Objectivists Regulation Authority to oversee comments on blogs.

Ban any woman over 18 from wearing crop tops and hipsters.

Ban any man from wearing shorts to work.

Ban thongs. (and ban radio from playing Barnsey thinging any thongs)

I’d like to see comprehensive tax reform – the removal of the overwhelming majority of tax deductions along with a great simplification of the system. No more tax returns for most people. Cut the Tax Act from a reputed 10 000 pages back to about 1000. No taxes but a lot less welfare for those under $25k. No bands, but a graduating function up to 50% tax for those on more than $250k. Nasty roving audits for those seeking to hide their incomes.

Can all rebates for solar etc – introduce carbon taxes at $20 a tonne (exports (but not plane flights) exempt), offsetting some tax elimination such as payroll taxes.

Privatise the rest of Telstra but set up a national communications infrastructure provider that everyone has to buy from.

Fund grassroots arts and sports well but not elite stuff. If they’re good enough and we want them they will be there.

Agree on federalism – states get health, feds get education. Or vice versa.

Real support for aborigines – jobs, education, housing, health.

Total abolition of whitegoods would reduce their energy consumption to zero.

Those who wish for a refrigerator, freezer or stove would be allowed to have them, if the energy source was from heat generated by on-site use of that household’s sewerage.

For anything else, people would just have to use elbow grease. Go a long way toward reversing the national trend to obesity.

Users of tobacco, would naturally have to quit. Creating carbon purely for personal pleasure would be a thing of the past.

Electricity, petrol etc would be rationed (just like in wartime) & when a household reached their weekly/monthly/annual limit, *click* there is no more available to them.

Your ideas have merit, Tim, but don’t go far enough.

Free compulsory energy audits for all medium to large businesses, with the requirement that all energy savings with a payback of 8 years or less be undertaken. And optional for those small ones and residences who would like to take it up, on the condition that all energy savings with a payback of 4 years or less be undertaken.

Minimum Energy Performance Standards introduced to ensure that all white goods with an energy star rating of 3 or less are removed from the Australian market.

Introduction of a feed-in law requiring all renewable energy generated in Australia to be given priority access to the energy grid, at a pre-determined price which takes into account its environmental benefits and its technological stage of development and which falls gradually over time.

A Just Transitions Fund, funded by a levy of $0.50 a tonne of coal mined in Australia, going to help retrain workers in communities currently dependent on coal, to seed new, clean industries in those communities, and to rehabilitate mined land.

And finally, to take a step away from my usual energy talk, I’d also like to see a commitment to introducing multiple member proportional representation to the Lower House, and greater transparency for preference arrangements.

I want some kind of insurance that there will always be decent competition on the pricing or enforcement of maximum prices where there is going to be a Telstra (or any other) monopoly.

So I want an overhaul of universal service obligations that obligates specific minimum (broadband, ie no less than 200kbps) Internet speeds at specific maximum cost (helped by an improved and fairer set of rural/remote infrastructure subsidies).

the pleasures of seeing an old opera performed are just as ephemeral as a sporting match

Hm.

(1) I’ve been arguing all along for parity, funding-wise, so this would seem actually to support that.

(2) I’d argue that pleasure is not the only criterion for art, as indeed it isn’t for sport. We’d have to disentangle the participants from the observers, for a start.

The creation of new work, by contrast, leaves a legacy for future generations and thus is, in my view, much more worthy of subsidy.

Well, the performance of old work leaves a legacy for future generations, too — performance and revival ensure that the work stays in cultural memory. But I think you’ll find new work is far more generously supported in any case.

Which art form has had more to say about modern Australia – opera or pub rock?

Recent newish Australian operas include Voss, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Batavia and Lindy, though I admit that, of these, only Lindy is ‘modern’ in the way I think you mean. The Doll might just squeeze in.

But this is really just the same question again — and if you’re thinking literally then it’s a fair question, but literal representation just isn’t how art works. Art is about mobilising feeling and thought in whoever is looking at it. If that happens ‘in modern Australia’, then whatever feeling and thought is mobilised will find its way into contemporary Australian life.

I mean, if Peter Costello watched the ABC’s recent modernised Macbeth then Ratty needs to watch his back. (Judy Brett did a wonderful analysis in her book on Menzies of the annotations and underlinings in Ming’s copy of Macbeth.)

I agree that modern Australia is just as much about love, death, jealousy etc as it is about whatever the pub rock content is these days (love, death, jealousy etc, surely), there’s not a lot to choose between them by that criterion.

If it’s about the music, well, you were making an argument a minute ago about the value of newness, so what’s worth more in cash-for-newness terms: endless variations on the theme of ‘twelve bars of 4/4 G, C, D’, or Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme?

Nabs — ‘Sola, perduta, abbandonata’ is exactly what it is, yes. (I bet there’s one each of those in all the above-named Oz operas, too.) Did you ever see Carlos Saura’s Carmen?

Mick, hope this isn’t all too OT for you — I think it still qualifies under Policy, just.

it’s pointless to argue for spending money on something without nominating where the money’s coming from

Damn. I thought the whole spirit of the question was about liberating one’s mind from budgets and writing wishlists in an ideal world.