Michael Duffy goes hunting for bias at the ABC.
Bastard Boys, the stowy of the 1998 waterfwont dispute, scweens on the ABC tomowwo and Monday. It’s well made and should get a good audience in an electwion year where industwial welations is again an impowtant issue.
Thewe has been extensive pubwicity about the sewies, and its makers have been keen to stwess its impawtiality. These cwaims are nonsense. The sewies is the most blatant union propaganda. It’s a vewy stwange use of pubwic money by the ABC and the other government agencies involved: the Film Finance Corpowation, the NSW Film and Telewision Office and Film Wictoria.
Obviously it’s not a good thing to remind folks of strike breakers, balaclavas, snarling dogs, and the offshoring of skills training to Dubai in order to break a strike, it might remind the workers of what they lost when that particular threshold was crossed.
Industrial relations? Sure. For paid for hire paramilitary bully boys only.
I suspect that Duffy’s real complaint is exactly as he says, it may get a good audience in an election year where industrial relations will be the number one issue. So it’s not really bias, just timing. But even here I think he’s just setting the show up for a fall, if the show doesn’t rate well in his books, he’ll probably just claim that Work Choices is a done deal and the Australian public has moved on. In this way, he can always claim he’s right.
Now Duffy himself feeds at the trough of public funds, so his perceptions of bias are a bit strange, clearly, like News Limited on the climate change issue, the ABC is a broad church, with room for all kinds of views. His included.
Accusing the ABC of bias is a bit rich coming from the presenter of what is probably the most evidently biased programme on the ABC, Counterpoint. Of course, Counterpoint is right-wing, so I guess that doesn’t count as ‘true bias’.
And amazingly enough there are undoubtedly many LP readers who went down to the docks in support of the MUA. Sadly, I recall no reports of Michael Duffy standing in solidarity outside the offices of Patrick Corp.
If you want a review of the show as yer actual drama, have a look at Blundell’s take in the Dengtralian.
I won’t be watching it as it’s still all a bit raw. Anyone who was at the Freo picket at the time welcome to comment.
You a berry berry twuel man, Phil, but you may have just dubbed our very own downunder derivative.
We’ve got a perched parrot Glorious already, so why not our very own Tweety too ?
As Denis Tek once said to Sammy Sparrow:
“Political twitchers can never have too many radio birdmen”.
It looks like being a very good mini-series. Rhys Muldoon is always a good actor.
Duffy has reason to be afraid.
From accounts I’ve heard on ABC radio it is great drama because of the human interest. Part II apparently deals with Corrigan in a sympathetic manner. The general verdict seemed to be that there was enough there to justify about every position you could take in this issue.
Being released as it is with Workchoices being such a hot issue it is going to have an impact. The consolation for Duffy and Howardistas is that the ABC might not be viewed by too many Howard Battlers who probably prefer Big Brother.
But it is a reminder to me (the memory, not the series) that if Labor missed out in the last 3 elections, cementing Howard’s reputation as a genius, Beazley seriously blew it in ‘98 by not making a negative campaign on Industrial Relations a primary issue. Hell, he still went close, but piddling around with small targets and anti-GST was never going to do it.
How about a video clip of Howard slapping Reith on the back in Parliament and shaking his hand after the supposed ‘triumph’ of putting all those wharfies out of work, with a slogan, “Is this how they’ll care about YOUR loss of job?” And that’s before the ‘bottom of the harbor’ type of corporate fiddle used to do them out of a job, plus the dogs and balaclavas.
Aussie sense of fairness would have come in, just as it is now with Workchoices.
A classic case, Phil, of ‘don’t mention the war’ . I suspect this is what the Duffer really wants to say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaCKoqw38ds&mode=related&search=
Of course the program is biassed.
It shows the strike breakers with dobermans on leashes, when it is well known that they used cute little corgis.
How is it that historical truth can be distorted in this way?
There should be a Royal Commission.
Duffy might have decided that Global warming skepticism is a lost cause and find better value in an election year jumping on the IR bandwagon. He can pick a lost cause to support from a considerable distance so the IR issue fits his profile.
Eventually he will see Howard’s stance on this issue has as less support than the Leaning Tower of Pizza and Duffy will move on to the next issue.
I guess it’s just a coincidence that ‘Bastard Boys’ has received zero publicity on the dear old ABC in the last few days.
Normally there would be non stop promotion for one of the rare examples of those virtually extinct species - Australian drama.
Is it drama, or real life? (or does it matter)
For a short period I worked on the wharves, and for a longer period I knew some wharfies; I can tell you it was a place for serious systemic crime.
Your point being ???
Wharfies lead to global warming.
Yes, I am with Michael Duffy.
There is too much bias in films generally.
Just look at Salt of the Earth, rightly blacklisted in 1953 so Joe McCarthy was right, Hollywood was and still is riddled witrh Pinkos; Silkwood, another biased Hollywood movie. Then there is WalMart, now how biased was that! Wall Street: unfair to the hard working stockbrokers and screenjockeys and moneymen everywhere, a very biased movie indeed; The Grapes of Wrath - an otherwise reliable John Ford should be ashamed (we know all about that Steinbeck fellow, as biased as buggary); Norma Rae, now there’s a biased movie, Sally Field should give back that Oscar; Jack Thompson: On the Waterfront, say no more! Hoffa - very very biased if you ask me. North Country, biased against blokes. Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter: Commie propaganda as bad as Strike by that Red Eisenstein - how biased was that! Bloody Ken Loach, anything he touched was/is biased.
Thank you Michael for bringing this to our attention.
For a short period I worked with bosses, and for a longer period I knew some; I can tell you, the office, was a place for serious systemic crime.
Phil
On IR being the number election issue you may well be right. Alas, the issue is not moving in the direction you would like.
If Michael Duffy is looking for bias on the ABC, pewhaps he should check out ‘insiders’ where the various members of the commentariat provide their opinions, including regular appearances from Andwew Bolt.
Mock may ye SHC and joe2. You have to realise that the Duffers are right and … well … they’re just right and that’s all that needs to be said about anything. So there.
If you’re implying that they were an unlovable lot, rog, that confirms my point. If the Government could not win public support in such a situation, there was something dreadfully wrong either with their strategy and the dodgy way they went about it, or the public just wasn’t buying this union-busting tack. There might have been more unpopular unions - Painters & Dockers, or the old BLF - but not many. In the public opinion battle, the government was trounced.
As I said, the evidence was there for Beazley and Labor: they’d have won a lot more public support in the ‘98 election if this had been the battleground.
And, of course, it should also have been a warning to Howard. Despite the hubris of a Senate majority, he was crazy to rush through Workchoices. That’s really what’s brought him unstuck, albeit having a credible opponent has also been a factor.
Trounced because they were dead wrong.
I have worked onsite at the Patricks wharf at Sydney for 3 years as a Customs Officer and just have to say that most of the wharfies I met were great blokes who hate Johnny Howard with a passion. But at this stage a majority of the wharfies are young and work on contracts and there are not that many MUA unionists around any more. Perhaps in the long run Chris Corrigan has won. But anyway he has just sold Patricks to I can’t remember who and is no doubt sitting in his Point Piper mansion in a very content state of mind. I don’t think ‘Bastard Boys’ will be concerning him at all, because when you look at it the idea that the unions won is really a bit of a myth although it probably helps the conservatives if left-wingers persist in maintaining that illusion that they do not need to change the way they operate.
Because unions are not doing themselves any favours by failing to deal with the growing contractisation of the workplace. Union membership is dwindling rapidly by all accounts as a direct result of the proliferation of workplace contracts which unions do not deal with. But if a house buyer hires a conveyancer to help them check out the deal with the vendor, then why can’t unions find a way to get in on the workplace contract deal-making as brokers? But no, they remain inflexibly determined to represent a steadily shrinking form of employment and as a consequence their power base is dwindling. They can’t seem to see that if government, managers and business people are shifting the goal posts the way they are then they really should be taking the game up to them. And if the Labor loses the next election it really will be the union movement’s moment of truth. They will have to change and adapt or face virtual extinction. Is that a good idea, or am I missing something here or what?
Yes, Corrigan won; and it has ever been thus, especially when the government conspires with strikebreakers. At least they don’t get Pinkerton agents and the army to shoot at them anymore. By the way, has anyone seen the real winner, Peter Reith?
Any chance of Victoria getting some balaclaved goons leading dobermans to break the police union?
Seriously though expecting solidarity for blokes ( and female MUA?) pulling down 80k a year and doing a job a six year old can do is a bit rich. The MUA was a scam…much like the old print unions of Fleet street. You can scam some of the people some of the time but you can’t scam all the people all the time. There is clear bias in the left and it is the idiotic bias in favour of the working class. The working class uber alles ( as opposed to the peasant class for example) error is the Marxist contribution to lunar left wing fascism but most democratic and libertarian socialists know all that.
Yeah prof, the working class, which we haven’t got because the gumment has exported manufacturing jobs to China, Taiwan and Korea, but that’s all right then because we can frig around trading real estate and carrying bags in hotels (it’s called, ah, competitive advantage). Then there are those jobs us working people wouldn’t do so we get wogs to do them; but there are some jobs even they won’t do, like gutting chickens and washing trains, but what are migrant women for? I mean someone has to put the kransky and potatoes on the table. Verrrrry democratic. Australia felix.
PS Prof, I suppose those lazy scam artists weren’t shifting the incoming manufactured goods like musical toilet seats off the wharves quick enough for ya?
I’ll be interested to see the show first before I decide. In particular if it purports to be documentary history, I suspect part of me will agree with Duffy, but if it is clearly a ‘factionalised’ narrative I’ll probably disagree (The promo, heavy with a female character, suggests it is ‘factionalised’ -the real dispute was bloke, bloke, bloke)
What Duffy forgets is that it was the very drama/heavy-handedness of the events that swung public opinion in favour of the MUA, who at the start of the dispute were just seen as carpet-baggers.
there are not that many MUA unionists around any more.
Correction. The waterfront remains virtually 100 per cent MUA.
cs - who wouldn’t join a union that’s palpably done so much for good wages and conditions in that line of employment?
Patrick was taken over last year in a hostile takeover by Toll:
The last bit is because Toll also gazumpted Branson and have a controlling interest in Virgin Blue in Australia.
Corrigan did enormously well out of Patrick. His initial personal investment, which was more than enough to retire on, grew by many multiples before he got eaten by a bigger fish.
But clearly he’d rather be doing something rather than nothing. That’s probably why he’s back on the docks competing with Patrick as part a venture with what used to be P & O, which you might remember was taken over by DP World, the Dubai-based mob who many in the US thought unsuitable people to be owning American ports.
I wonder whether the program will say much about Peter Scanlon, who as Chairman of Patrick, had a stake multipes larger than Corrigan’s, and was said to be the brains behind tha MUA operation. They both would have done very well indeed.
Isn’t capitalism wonderful!
Sixty Minutes tried to stitch up the MUA with a very poorly edited version of the program just before the dogs and balaclavas appeared. From that point on the MUA would only be interviewed live to air with no prerecorded editing available to the MSM, it was as though they were operating in a strait-jacket. It forced them to a level of honesty that is missing today.
Yep, and they had very smart advisors in the shape of Essential Media Communications http://www.essentialmedia.com.au/
Sir Henry said:
Comments along these lines often appear on threads and to be honest, Sir H, it’s giving me the squirts.
I know it’s difficult for manufacturing to flourish given Government policies and the high Australian dollar on the back of our mining industry. Labour shortages and high wages in the mining industry don’t help either. Nevertheless it keeps sputtering along and is far from dead.
I’d hope that someone in the sphere with the requisite knowledge and access to information could do a bit of research on this. I googled a bit and can report:
Much of this came from a 306 page Productivity Commission document which you can download from here.
We should take a realistic interest in these matters, especially with our masters hell-bent on ‘free’ (ie. preferential) trade agreements and unsympathetic government policies since 1996.
I’d just like to throw in the point that security men wearing balaclavas while working, like police without their ID numbers visible while working, are probably doing something that they should not be doing, e.g, obeying illegal orders, and are morally obliged to desist.
So what’s the beef Brian? We both agree, manufacturing has gone for a burton because of imports, largely but NOT necessarily all cheap. We still buy things from Germany, France, Italy, the US, Switzerland, Belgium (i.e. beer), the UK, Ireland. We have to import because we do not have the manufacturing capacity and because we have lost the skills - look at the brothel that defence industry is. That 11% you quote would in REALITY be about 3%, if you exclude packaging, ckd assembly (not fair dinkum manufacturing but assembling from kits), food freezing and stock food, pelletisation and fish processing, etc.
We can’t even build trams or buses properly any more.
We have lost essential manufacturing services like tool and pattern making, the design and making of dies, that sort of thing. We are a nation of clients. We are doomed. We are a post industrial society. We are a hole in the ground for others to take advantage of. We sit, overweight, on our bums, while we charge each other ridiculous prices for real estate and call it GDP.
Just that if you listen to the words you get the idea that there is not a single person working anymore in the manufacturing industry in Australia. The notion of an industry that has multiple inputs of components from all over is the story of globalisation.
What it all means and where we should go from here should warrant more discussion and consideration rather than ritual arms-waving and despair.
You may very well be right, the game’s over. I’m not prepared to concede that just yet.
Yes, it’s such a ridiculous bit of commentary that you could give it a proper “fisking” and make Duffy really look silly….
…or, maybe….
As someone who, with my brother, got beaten up in a carpark after voting (show of hands) against a strike (plus tyres slashed and windscreen smashed), I’ve a deal of sympathy with the notion that breaking an illegal power block (that routinely resorts to violence to enforce its will) may have some merit beyond the profit motive, and may require similar tactics in response. Balaclavas and dogs are ugly, yes, but I can tell you a boot in the balls while two bigs fuckers are holding you down isn’t my idea of industrial democracy either.
The game is not over till the fat lady sings and all that. But manufacturing currently in this country is pretty much cactus compared what the case was in the 1950s and 60s during the real boom we had. That is not to say it could not be up and running if there were some policies in place. But it will be harder because we have lost many many skills. We can’t just import them as migrants. Those days are gone. We have to patiently skill up from scratch. But we can’t because we do not know enough to teach the skills and we have shut down the insititutions and nationwide systemic apprenticeship systems (by and large). That’s why Kevvie is making such a big song and dance about it. I sincerely doubt whether he will succeeed in turning around the skills shortage, by the way.
Unfortunately, productivity papers and suchlike are not worth the paper they are written on, penned as they are by yespersons spat out of degree factories’ economics faculties that are being run by a religious sect called Friedmanites. But I imagine that their time will be over and some other ideology will be put in place and manufacturing may pick up again. Slowly.
Chanting “globalisation, globalisation”, now that IS ritual, Brian. There are plenty of countries with similar populations to us, similar wage structures to us, without the land or our natural resources, and yet are able to have serious manufacturing capacity, from Finland to Scandinavia, to Western Europe, Spain and Ireland, plus Korea, not to mention Japan.
To finish, Brian: We are brain dead. We are overweight. We sit our fat arses and moan. Jeez, we’re out of water, jeez we are out of oil, jeez we have to rely on coal or we’ll go broke, jeez we can’t make anything in this country, jeez we can’t defend ourselves unless we have a Big Power looking after us. What a disgrace.
That is why we have turned into a nation of arse kissing, resource exporting hotel bag carriers. Have a nice day.
Sir Henry, you’re in fine form and I can relate to what you say. It could be a case of the resource curse or more precisely the Dutch disease. But we’d better attend and get back on topic.
Germany with its close links to China seems to be the big winner in the manufacturing stakes.
Duffy seems most upset about this:
No! The horrors! We can’t have viewers thinking unionists are actual people with lives and emotions and families and lovers and kids! No!
I thought it was bloody good tonight.
Sure was, Mark.
I heard Greg Combet being interviewed about the program. He said he couldn’t remember exactly what he said to Peter Reith but verified that it was a vigorous exchange.
There is an excellent article in The Age about it. Two quotes:
It makes Duffy look as pathetic as he really is.
I just remembered the Radio National session I heard. It was Australia Talks with the writer Sue Smith, Josh Bornstein, Greg Combet and industrial relations consultant Paul Houlihan.
Worth a listen.
As someone who, with my brother, got beaten up in a carpark after voting (show of hands) against a strike (plus tyres slashed and windscreen smashed) …
Ever been to a wharfie union meeting Tony? This sort of thing could happen if someone attempted to stop a waterside worker expressing his view in a meeting.
The first episode was brilliant. Phil’s take on Duffy is right on the ball. What a goose.
I watched the first episode. I found the hairstyles to be rather unintentionally comedic. I could have done without a fair bit of the ‘background’ as well. I know they were trying to make the characters interesting and three-dimensional, but to be honest I was just waiting for the action, which never came.
Aidan, re: the hairstyles. In Bill Kelty’s case at least, comedic was the only option.
Quaint romance about hairy-backed and hairy-assed burping, farting, and ball-scratching men who spit more than people in provincial China. Their type will never be seen again. Vale Norm and YobboMan!
The lockout and the preceding conspiracy was action based Workchoices.
The whole workforce is now able to be ‘locked out’ (sacked) for whatever reason is deemed relevant by the employer at the time. What gets me in the end, is not the obvious wish to exercise power when you can , but the constant pretence that shutting up the people at the pointy end of the exercise of political and economic power, is something that should be beyond comment from people who pride themselves on their attachment to ‘liberal’ values. Duffy is a third rate dunce, but his sentiments and the underpinning assumptions are widely held and deeply felt in this polity.
It is the sudden epiphany that is Workchoices, that has made the government’s position so unsteady. Once you stop bashing the usual supsects (as the Economist so elegantly described global campaigns against organised working class power, aka unions) and go for the ‘respectable’ part of the essential but potentially unruly classes, you never know what people will make of it. I suspect that is the point that Duffy was making on behalf of those he imagines he represents.
Sunday night’s show was very well produced. I knew too much about the dispute to see it objectively. But my wife found the whole thing ‘compelling’, and not just because it was heavily leavened with family lives (of all three protagonists).
Duffy’s a fool. The images of a suited Combet mixing socialist rhetoric with foul language, if anything, is not going to do Combet favours with the mainstream and middle class, the latter being Aunty’s major demographic.
I just loved his whole “won’t someone please think of the scabs?!” line. Classic Duffy. Demands balance even when it is not justified both in terms of morality, artistic licence, or reality.
There’s a reason why Climate Change took so long to make traction. Because right wing pundits demanded equal time despite their looney tunes flights in face of reality.
Phillip Adams had a discussion last night with Bill Kelty, Michael Duffy and Helen Trinca, co-author of ‘Waterfront: The battle that changed Australia’.
Duffy had nothing to add, Kelty was upset that the script writer Sue Smith didn’t talk to him. He said it was inaccurate as history. His big beef seemed to be that there was only one hero and that was John Coombs. I think he mentioned “Greg” once along with a whole string of people, but “Combet” never.
Helen Trinca it seems didn’t talk to Kelty either when she was working on the book. Her dominant interest was in the Federal government involvement.
I enjoyed last night’s episode also. I thought they could have highlighted more how the alternative work force got comprehensively dudded and when they tried to mount a claim they lacked the cohesion and the nouse of the unions. They were a classic case of what it’s like without unions.
They skated over the 6/1 High Court decision. The dissenting judge was Ian Callinan, the big “C” conservative judge appointed by Howard, who viewed the workers as an economic resource at the disposal of the capitalists rather than rights-bearing human beings.
Brian, enjoyed episode 2 of Bastard Boys also. Geoff Morrell as Corrigan was terrific in the 9 pm Sunday, board-room scene with the David Jones mannequins and the boss banker. Colin Friels nailed it. The actor who played Reith wasn’t half bad either. Thought all sides got a pretty fair shake, from the big picture stuff to the scenes of poignant domesticity. Agree, there were skateovers in the top end legal action.
Combet collecting his daughter late from the creche was a nice touch. Greg was played as a total SNAG, with the instincts of a weasel and a mind like a steel trap. This sort of stuff is swoon city central for Busy Voting Mums and lots more. Reckon I know who the “Rock Star” was here. Greggie came across as a dead-set electoral chick magnet. Sure it’s just a Show, but out there in the real Sin City, Combet’s portrayal was priceless PR.
Didn’t like it as much as the Curtin twin-piece, but will happily view the re-run.
I was astounded to think that Duffy saw Combet collecting his daughters from daycare as some sort of special pleading to attract women’s votes. Obviously in Howard-world, men never should take any responsibility for co-parenting.
Mark your point is valid in a civilised world. That’s not the one that claquers like Duffy occupy. Realpolitikally, I see where he’s coming from.
Well, I don’t think it’s going to hold much weight with a lot of people actually engaged in parenting, EC, as opposed to living in some fantasy 50s world.
Fair enough, Mark. ” living in some fantasy 50s world” is more accurate than “realpolitikally”. Kindy pick-ups aside, several of the regulars here reckon the soon to retire ACTU boss is hot.
Some of my friends who have kids in daycare do too, EC!
Combet collecting his daughter late from the creche was a nice touch. Greg was played as a total SNAG, with the instincts of a weasel and a mind like a steel trap. This sort of stuff is swoon city central for Busy Voting Mums and lots more. Reckon I know who the “Rock Star� was here. Greggie came across as a dead-set electoral chick magnet. Sure it’s just a Show, but out there in the real Sin City, Combet’s portrayal was priceless PR.
Have I misread your tone, EC? are you saying that men shouldn’t actually be aspiring to this kind of shared responsibility, that they’re sensitive new agers, and while it might garner more votes to appeal to chicks out there, it’s all a bit of a laff and not something a real manly man would have been doing?
I’m one of the people who happen to think that is a manifestation of timely and beneficial social change.
If I have misread, I apologise for the following: F**k you and the horse you rode in on, you patronising ass.
I dunno, I think you are misreading EC, but he can speak for himself. I’d make two points.
One is that Sue Smith apparently started her research a long time ago, 2005 I think, and the whole thing was shot and in the can well before there was any widespread notion that Combet was heading for parliament.
Also he certainly does not need any electoral boosting in his chosen seat and I very much doubt whether his portrayal will have any significant effect in any marginal seats.
Secondly to me there was the sharp change and contrast in personal and work/public roles, the need to tread different paths in parallel worlds. In some cases, eg Shaun, they can coalesce and support each other, in other cases they are in conflict and destroy each other.
Yes Brian, I agree. Note to self: Look harder for sarcasm tags when reading others’ posts.
I hereby offer unreserved and grovelling apologies to Enemy combatant.
Apologies for the trackback delay. I forgot to do it when I wrote the post, and have gotten used to Troppo, which does it for you.
Helen: EC is a funny bugger. He still owes me a glass of red in spillage from laughing at his funnies at the blogbash.
Interesting comments on the portrayal of Greg Combet: “priceless PR”, eh?
Look, I may be in a minority here (on this website) but I am quite worried that ABC-TV should be broadcasting (in the guise of a docudrama) several hours of “priceless PR” for a chap who’s a parliamentary candidate, a few months before the election.
I agree:
* Dads should share the child-rearing load
* jobs shouldn’t be so all-consuming that family & recreation get squeezed out
and
* sacking an entire workforce is a low act,
let alone
* training replacement staff overseas, secretly
but nonetheless, I thought the docudrama failed the test of realism.
It was too slanted: Corrigan was a cartoon character, and for a few seconds was played as a comedic gem - [bring back “Grassroots” it was wonderful!]
Have I missed something? I thought the general tone of B****** Boys was:
# capitalists/company directors BAD
# Howard & Ministers BAD
# MUA, workers, unionists, picketers, Marxists, day-care workers, Macarena-dancing cops, etc GOOD
Now, if you like to spend your evenings BOOING then HISSING at your TV, that’s fine. I too enjoyed the Saturday arvo cinema serials as a kid in 1950s suburban Melbourne. But now, 50 years later, I have put aside (some of) those childish things, and prefer stronger stuff.
I tend to agree with Michael Duffy’s criticisms of the show. Some readers here take the attitude that because Duffy is a rightwinger, THEREFORE he is always wrong about everything.
That’s the way, lads: BOO, HISS !!!
I feel that one of the main deficiencies that many social critics in Australia display these days, is a tendency to feel that a bit of BOOING & HISSING is worth doing; and even to believe that their BOOING is akin to CRITICAL THINKING…. well, I don’t think it is.
A footy fan may BOO, a coach has to think.
Voters may boo; a political party has to plan, decide, reason, explain, judge, compromise, plan, reason, …. It’s more challenging than booing.
A public broadcaster should be stimulating its viewers & listeners, not using our taxes to flog “priceless PR” for one candidate, I think.
Cheerio,
Alistair
Duffy obviously missed that the pickups etc were all part of a shared custody arrangement following a divorce/separation, too. I know all too many couples with shared custody arrangements who organise handoffs around childcare because it minimises the number of times they have to interact face to face, and both the mother and the father in such custody situations would rather pick up their children themselves than ask the new partner to do it, unless absolutely necessary, because nobody ever feels they see enough of their kids in such situations, no matter how “fair” the custody arrangements have been.
Nothing especially SNAGgy about it, just one of those things that happens when relationships fall apart.
I guess the facts that
(a) the ABC has a mandate to show a certain amount of Australian-produced drama per annum, of which there is a shamefully short supply;
(b) this drama was commissioned long before anyone knew Greg Combet was going to be a candidate in the upcoming election;
mean nothing to the arching narrative of your conspiracy theory.
I liked the show. I thought it was great drama….
I didn’t - thought it turgid and stagey. But I’m no great judge. I can see why Kelty feels a bit shirty, though.
Doc, my little brush with “direct action” was after a CFMEU meeting on a (large, closed-shop) building site - I’ve never been to an MUA meeting, so you may we be right. The AWU meetings I’ve been too were too slackly organised & run to result in a beating for anyone, and with the AMWU, the members generally didn’t want to spend a lot of time sitting around talking anyway. But the FED’s never liked being crossed, and they scared the shit out of me - I thought they were going to kill me.
The noose that used to hang above the chair’s table in the AWU’s meeting room in the old Dunstan House on Queen St probably concentrated some minds, Tony.
I saw it with my own eyes, and it’s very clearly shown in photos of the meeting of the QCE where Vince Gair argued against his expulsion from the Labor Party in 1957.
Cheers, Helen, apologies not necessary. Yours was a great serve. Goodness knows I dish it out around here from time to time. Ta for the support Brian and SL.
Thank goodness clean living Duffy-folk like Alistair “B****** Boys” C appreciate where I was coming from. Wowsers really turn me on.
Yeah. That wig the Kelty character was wearing was surely libellous…
Cheers…
Actually, Mick, he was quite cool about that. He said the actor who played him was about 6 inches taller than he is and that made up for the hair!
What upset Bill didn’t come across to me in the discussion with Phillip Adams other than that he seemed to think that John Coombs should be given sole credit for the union success, meaning he doesn’t think much of Combet.
I suspect Kelty didn’t like being portrayed as someone who didn’t understand the legal position, or tactics, and just wanted to call massive strikes.
Corrigan has his say in The Australian:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21743662-7583,00.html
I saw the portrayal of CC differntly to Duffy. Although I only saw the second episode, CC came across as having a dry sense of humour and a nice although overprivileged family. I wouldn’t have picked him as having any wit, so to me it was an improvement on his public image IMO.
The fact that no-one is happy came up on the Catallaxy thread. It either means the show was truly even-handed, or so off the mark as to be laughable. I hope it was the former, but concede the latter is just as likely.
sl I followed the events closely at the time and found I remember them pretty well. I’d dismiss the notion that it was “so off the mark as to be laughable” out of hand.
There was a number of dimensions that could have been gone into in greater detail, and one of them is the practices and labour relations that prevailed on the wharves pre-Corrigan. But the chosen method of telling the story in the form of the “war” from four personal perspectives does get inside the story pretty well IMHO and allows us to appreciate the many dimensions of the affair. And it’s all-consuming nature plus it’s implications for institutional arrangements and how we do business as a civilised country, making the ‘war’ notion very apt.
Corrigan’s comments add to our understanding, but we have to see it as his perspective and just hold it there as such. In itself it has created a new imbalance in perceptions and interpretation which ideally should be complemented by similar accounts from the other main protagonists.
All my AWU experience was in WA in the 80’s, Mark - the sheep-shearers may have been a tougher lot elsewhere (and the evidence of Mick Young at least suggests they were), but in the West they were a laughing stock.
The Rodent doesn’t like it either
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,21749740-5005361,00.html
The lying rodent obviously did not watch episode 2 where corrigan’s character says exactly that to combet who likewise says to coombs that some of the concessions were inevitable.
I’m dismayed that we have strayed from the essential topic of Combet’s hotness though. I hope the posse of southern baptists currently styling his hair get the chop soon.
Am I accurate in my observation that the left-leaning contributors to this discussion attempt to make their point in far fewer words than those of the opposite inclination?
Could it be that:
(a) right-wingers are a verbose lot, or
(b) it takes rather more words to present a well-thought out case than a glib cliche or two?
A mix of both Ken - the poor buggers try to put together a well-thought out case but they just keep getting confused and end up writing a lot of nonsense.
I’ve just done a quick scan through, Ken. If you take out my long, extremely well-argued lefty pieces, superficially you might have a case. But then what Gummo said.