Archive for October, 2007

Trickery or treat?

Published
by
suz
11 months, 1 week ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Imperialism, Parenting and Sociology
. 69 Comments

It’s Halloween. A decade ago I wouldn’t have known that, but in the past 10 years, not only have I been exposed to daily American culture through the Internet, but Halloween has become an Australian festival (if festival is the right word).

I first glimpsed some children trick or treating in my neighbourhood about six years ago. At the time, I had a toddler who was totally unimplicated in that sort of behaviour, so I could afford to think of it purely in a critical way, as the importation of an American custom — as cultural imperialism. Continue reading ‘Trickery or treat?’

Lucy’s man

Published
by
suz
11 months, 1 week ago
in Federal Elections
. 10 Comments

When I first picked up the personally addressed envelope, I thought ‘Oh no, not again, so soon‘. It was only a few days since the last campaign letter. Then I opened it and saw that this one was from Lucy Turnbull, who had written to tell me about “the man I have known for almost 30 years”. I had a strong feeling of deja vu — sure enough, Lucy said that “before the last election I wrote a similar letter to many people living in our area”. She’s done so again because “a lot of new people have since joined the electorate” (aka a redistribution).

The two-page letter is essentially a chronicle of Malcolm’s life story — in her eyes. The key points: Continue reading ‘Lucy’s man’

Blessed are the pure at heart

Published
by
Kim
11 months, 1 week ago
in Federal Elections, Health, Notices and Politics
. 141 Comments

Fresh from apologising for monstering a terminally ill campaigner for asbestos related illness sufferers, Tony Abbott is taking a break from criticising others for their “sanctimony” to actually talk about his portfolio responsibilities. He’ll be debating Nicola Roxon today at the National Press Club at 12.30pm, an event likely to attract even fewer viewers than yesterday’s economics wormfest. Which is a pity as health has hardly rated a mention during the campaign so far. I hope someone asks Abbott about why he was so brazen in refusing to even negotiate a new medicare agreement for blatantly political purposes this year, and about why Cardinal Pell is apparently in charge of women’s health.

Feel free to treat this as an open comments thread on health and the debate.

The first bad policy of the campaign

Published
by
Robert Merkel
11 months, 1 week ago
in Education, Federal Elections and Levity
. 19 Comments

So says Ben Eltham at Polliegraph:

It’s taken until week 3 of the campaign for a truly bad policy to emerge from either of the major Parties. I’m exempting the invasion of intervention in the Northern Territory here because it was before the campaign proper. Kevin Rudd’s announcement of freeing up defence land for housing was close, but no cigar - while it will have next to no impact on housing affordability, it won’t actively make things worse.

But yesterday’s announcement by the Prime Minister of his ‘100 new technical colleges‘ is a truly bad policy. When I say bad, I mean not only dubious in scope and unlikely to be well implemented. I also mean a policy that flies in the face of accepted wisdom, even common sense, and will actually make matters worse. It is, as they say in AFL, a clanger.”

Continue reading ‘The first bad policy of the campaign’

“Politics as though it actually mattered and made a difference”

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 1 week ago
in Culture, Economics, Elections, Federal Elections, Government, Industrial Relations, Media, Policy, Politics, Polls and Sociology
. 18 Comments

It’s interesting to observe that The Age is promising to publish today a liftout of longer essays by “prominent Australians” (for which, read the usual suspects you’d anticipate being in such a supplement) reflecting on issues which are lost in all the campaign noise. On one hand, that’s a very welcome development, but on the other, it’s worth wondering why their standard election coverage doesn’t already do this. Not that I’m singling out Fairfax.

No Australian paper has been brave enough to try an experiment in “public journalism”. Margaret Simons describes in her recent book The Content Makers: Understanding the role of the media in Australia what the Virginian-Pilot set out to do in covering the 1995 state legislative elections. The paper eschewed reporting personal attacks, and, as Simons writes:

The paper would report politics as though it actually mattered and made a difference. There would be no talk of the ‘voters’ or ‘the public’ as though they were bodies other than the readers. There would be no talk of how things might ‘play’ in the electorate, and very little commentary based on backroom chats or the office gossip of politics. There would be some discussion of politics as strategy, but it would not be allowed to dominate. The assumption was that the audience had a stake in the news. The resolutions transformed both the newspaper and the conduct of the campaign.

I dare say I don’t need to spell out how far this style of reporting is from the coverage of this year’s Australian federal election. There are some moves in this direction from online media such as New Matilda, Crikey, YouDecide2007, this blog and others, but there certainly aren’t any major media outlets prepared to take a punt and invest the significant sums of money that it would take to make such an exercise mainstream. In many ways, even though some online media makes or aspires to make a profit and pays contributors, we’re still very much in the realm of what Simons, picking up on an anthropological motif, calls “the gift economy”. It’s not called “citizen journalism” for nothing.

Continue reading ‘“Politics as though it actually mattered and made a difference”’

Sorry Ranga: Race, class and Summer Heights High

Published
by
Darlene
11 months, 1 week ago
in Culture and Film, TV, Video etc
. 22 Comments

jk.jpg 

Rich bitch Ja’mie King gets away with everything

Even if the success of Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show indicates that sketch comedies remain popular, mockumentaries have also attracted large audiences in recent years.

The funny faux documentary People Like Us, which starred Chris Langham as an interviewer who was incapable of doing a decent interview, never delved into its characters much more than programs that create humour from costumes.

However, the acclaim enjoyed by The Office (in its British and American incarnations) and Summer Heights High suggests people not only get pleasure from comedies that appear semi-real, they also derive satisfaction from shows that aspire to be more than just amusing.

Continue reading ‘Sorry Ranga: Race, class and Summer Heights High’

Eat less red meat, drink more red wine…

Published
by
suz
11 months, 1 week ago
in Food and Health
. 23 Comments

…or drink no wine at all, especially if you’re a woman with any breast cancer risk factors. That seems to be the gist of the latest health advice in relation to cancer and heart disease.

Meat: The World Cancer Research Fund report, to be released later this week, reviews all available science relating to cancer prevention. The results are no surprise and are pretty unequivocal - consumption of red meat is implicated in development of bowel cancer, which is the most common cancer to affect both men and woman in Australia (and the second most common, after prostate cancer).

Wine: The recommended red wine isn’t going to come cheap for Australians: “Many of the big-brand Aussies, while overly rich in alcohol, are generally poor for polyphenols - though some of their cabernet sauvignon-based wines are better.” Polyphenols are the compounds found in some red wines which might inhibit the development of cancers. So Australians with angina/heart disease or who are serious about reducing their possibility of developing same might be shelling out more for the good French (or Argentinian) stuff.

Tsunami Pete v. Swannie

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 1 week ago
in Economics, Federal Elections, Film, TV, Video etc, Media and Notices
. 30 Comments

According to the Courier-Mail, which runs with some (well-timed) leaked Labor polling on Costello’s image, the debate between the Treasurers will be telecast today at 12.30pm on the ABC and also on Nine where the worm will be back.

Peter Martin has a good preview.

Update: My take on the debate is posted over at PollieGraph.

Further update: In other news, Richard Farmer also gives the debate to Swan and floats the intriguing idea that party strategists should watch the worm to hone some messages and themes for the next phase of the campaign. And for anyone who missed the debate, it’s being repeated on the ABC at 12.35am.

AHA starting to lose the battle against small bars

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
11 months, 1 week ago
in Food and Sydney
. 36 Comments

While the nation wonders how it is going to survive another four weeks of election campaigning, Sydneysiders are focusing on more important issues such as Clover Moore’s Small Bar bill. As previously discussed on LP, the aim of the bill is to overturn NSW’s archaic licensing regulations.

There is some good news. Firstly the coalition, with some provisions, will support the bill. Secondly Alison Megarrity, the Labor member for Menai, has told caucus that they risk being seen as stooges of the AHA if they oppose or make concession in regards to the Small Bars bill. Thirdly the SMH ran an op-ed today by the AHA president John Thorpe that confirms he is an out of touch dinosaur who thinks Bob Askin is still premier.

Continue reading ‘AHA starting to lose the battle against small bars’

4 Corners on Australia’s air force procurement

Published
by
Robert Merkel
11 months, 1 week ago
in Uncategorized
. 147 Comments

Tonight’s 4 Corners was about the mess that is Australia’s fighter plane procurement plans, something that’s been noted previously on LP.

Most of the material has been covered elsewhere before, but there was a new tidbit in tonight’s report. According to Brendan Nelson, one of the major reasons for retiring the current F-111’s early was that testing showed that their wings might face structural failure. However, the program claims the failed test was actually the result of a flawed testing procedure. According to the program transcript: Continue reading ‘4 Corners on Australia’s air force procurement’

Hey, this barrow has a corpse in it!

Published
by
Mercurius
11 months, 1 week ago
in Culture, Levity, Religion and Sociology
. 7 Comments

One remarkable feature of this week’s eulogies for “crazy� John Mustafa Ilhan is that two columnists at opposite ideological poles have both loaded his body into their respective barrows and taken it for a victory lap around the graveyard.

Irfan Yusuf celebrates the life of Mustafa Ilhan as a ‘mozzie’ who represents the true, harmonious, forward-looking face of Islam.

Meanwhile, Janet Albrechtsen celebrates the life of Crazy John as the hero-capitalist who epitomised the best of entrepreneurial spirit and derring-do, and lest we forget, to whom we owe our society’s prosperity, which falls upon us like spring rain from the lofty twin peaks of self-interest and the pursuit of profit.

One death, two very different lives, apparently.

Continue reading ‘Hey, this barrow has a corpse in it!’

Garrett and Rudd show a bit of policy bravery - well for a day at least

Published
by
Brian
11 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change and Federal Elections
. 34 Comments

Lenore Taylor, National affairs writer for the AFR is one journalist who seems to be across the issue of climate change.

John Howard’s climate change policy is illogical. Now his Environment Minister has all but said so.

Kevin Rudd’s policy is incomplete. Now his environmental spokesman has filled in one of the many gaps.

Garrett has now said that Australia might sign on to a Kyoto phase 2 agreement even if the developing nations and indeed the US don’t commit to specific reductions or targets.

To me this seemed like a case of foot in mouth given that Howard was bound to leap upon it and say it was a formula for exporting jobs. Howard did not disappoint, ringing up AM as soon as he heard the story to make his point. But Rudd, showing some unaccustomed policy bravery backed Garrett up.

Continue reading ‘Garrett and Rudd show a bit of policy bravery - well for a day at least’

Newspoll: Yawn

Published
by
Mark
11 months, 1 week ago
in Federal Elections, Levity, Media and Polls
. 36 Comments

According to the latest Newspoll, the narrowing is on. Or something. Because with Labor still on a primary of 48%, it’s evident that some of any genuine movement that’s being picked up is coming from elsewhere - perhaps independents or Family First. Newspoll appear to believe this because as far as I can tell they’ve changed the allocation of preferences to 60/40 to Labor. It’s quite possible that there is some polarisation of the minor party right wing vote towards the Coalition, but claims that Labor’s 2PP lead has been cut in half should be coloured by that shift in the methodology.

As the always informative Possum remarks:

It has actually been the fluctuations in the minor party vote estimates that are behind most of the volatility in the TPP figures over the last 10 months.

Not that you’d pick that up from Dennis Shanahan’s latest column, which I think refers to this Newspoll, though oddly he talks about “the latest series of Newspolls”. Perhaps it’s some sort of aggregated News Ltd pseph wizardry. And I have no idea why he thinks the latest Galaxy four seat poll in NSW is in any sense bad news for Rudd, or that it indicates that NSW isn’t going to be fertile ground for Labor. I was pretty dubious about the week one Galaxy Queensland poll, and it’s worth pointing out to Mr Shanahan that it’s two weeks old and if you’re going to claim a shift back to Howard on the basis of a poll taken over this last weekend, then you can’t talk about one a few weeks ago as if it’s contemporary evidence. But I’m sure I’m whistling in the wind.

Continue reading ‘Newspoll: Yawn’

More wisdom from Shanahan

Published
by
Kim
11 months, 2 weeks ago
in Federal Elections, Media and State/Territory Elections
. 54 Comments

Today’s instalment:

There are criticisms within the Liberal camp about the extent Mr Howard seeks the advice of his former chief of staff, Grahame Morris, and that Mr Howard appears to be running his own marginal seat campaign against Labor’s Maxine McKew in his Sydney electorate of Bennelong.

I guess it would be better tactics if Howard just conceded defeat in Bennelong? Wtf?

There’s probably an element of suppressed wishful thinking “within the Liberal camp”. They just wish the old bugger had nicked off ages ago, and they’re unconsciously wishing personal retribution on him.

Check this long list of sprays out from *unnamed* Ministers, reported in The Bulletin:

Continue reading ‘More wisdom from Shanahan’

Family First candidate dumped for exposing his policy

Published
by
Shaun Cronin
11 months, 2 weeks ago
in Federal Elections
. 34 Comments

In the United States, a pleasing aspect of the so called family values politicians that pander to the religious right is that many seem to trip over their own self-righteous feet of clay. Witness the downfall of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard for example.

In Australia, before the last election there was the revelation that Ross Cameron, himself a family values type, had a cheating heart. This election, Family First has fallen foul of some filthy shenanigans with Andrew Quah being dumped as the Family First’s candidate for the seat of Reid.

Quah’s misdeeds involve circulation of pictures around the internet which would lead voters in Reid no doubt which way Quah’s politics swung. He has since been disendorsed as the FF candidate for Reid.

As usual in such incidents, personal responsibility is cast aside in favour of a barely believable statement of denial:

Mr Quah told the Herald yesterday he thought it was possible that he had posed for the compromising photographs. “I might have been drunk off my face or my political enemies might have drugged me.”