Whether Brough will prove a leadership saviour for the Queensland Libs down the track is still very much a moot question. But it’s impossible to read his election other than as an expression of deep unease about the creation of the Pineapple Party. The interim president, defeated today, Gary Spence, was the leading Liberal figure in fast-tracking the formation of the Liberal National Party. Spence was promised the presidency of Lawrence Springborg’s baby, only one of the many undemocratic aspects of both the process of amalgamation and the draft constitution of the new entity. Graham Young has been providing detailed analysis of these issues at Ambit Gambit.
It may well be time for another thread on the Bill Henson controversy - once again the last continuation of the general thread is getting a bit long. So here we go - this thread is for general discussion of any aspects of the whole thing, while specific posts and discussions of the political and other aspects of the debate over Bill Henson’s photographs can be accessed via the archive category here.
A bit of an update on commentary on and developments in the affair is timely. At the Sydney Morning Herald, David Marr and Josephine Tovey look at how the “debate” originated, and then spiralled out of control, leading to outcomes which “satisfy no one”. In Crikey, Alex Mitchell also examines the motivations of key players in fueling the media fires, and provides something of a time line. Some interesting comments from the director of the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Gordon Morrison, which go to the specificity of the reaction to Henson’s photographic images as compared to the nude in painting are reported here. For John McDonald, the brouhaha is the “triumph of the Philistines” - though the article’s better than the sub-editor’s led us to believe.
The final report of the Australia 2020 summit has now been released, and can be downloaded here. It’ll be interesting to see if summit participants who were critical of the distortions in the initial report of their discussions think this is any better as a summation of what was discussed and decided. It’s also interesting to reflect on how the whole thing has completely disappeared from the media agenda in such a short period of time - no one’s been revisiting all the dire warnings of the supposed political pitfalls of ignoring summit recommendations, or for that matter, the claims that it would have a profound effect on policy thinking and debate. I’ll be very surprised if the final report prompts much sustained analysis in the MSM.
Very good article in the SMH today from one of my Sydney mates, James Arvanitakis:
There are two seemingly disconnected yet closely related political debates that highlight the quagmire of Australian politics and a lack of leadership in our country: the Bill Henson debate and the cost of petrol.
“Petrol prices and photos of children, how so?” I hear you ask. “It is elementary, my dear,” as they say in the classics. They highlight how our political leaders are caught in the trap of pandering to powerful interests and sound-bite politics, and are lacking the courage - or maybe the ability - to articulate substantive arguments.
To begin with, both examples show a lack of political vision in our country.
I’m glad to see that some questioning of the deeper meanings of the two issues which have dominated political debate over the last fortnight. You could make a good case that by voting against a government which was obsessed with winning the media cycle and short term soundbite policy, a majority of us cast a verdict on this style of politics in last year’s election. But it seems that we’re still being badly let down by both sides of politics - and the media.
Author Note: The original title of this post was “Do the right thing, Mainstream Media: disguise the faces of the minors in your reproductions of the Henson images NOW”, deliberately imperative because I wanted it to grab attention in people’s feed readers and hopefully provoke an immediate reaction. That has happened, the faces are now being pixellated in the mass media (not that I’m claiming that this is a direct result of this post), so I’m changing the title to something that sounds a bit more like “me” speaking.
* * * The Age has an article quoting the mother of the girl whose image is the most widely disseminated with respect to the investigation of complaints against artist Bill Henson’s nude studies of adolescents. The mother defends Henson against claims that he did anything unethical, and mentions in a statement given to The Age via an intermediary that he has been a friend of the family for over 10 years, that her daughter has “a keen interest in the arts” and that the whole family were well acquainted with Henson’s work before the photo-shoot.
The Age claims to have discovered that the pictures were taken last year, and that the girl is still 13 years of age. That contradicts earlier reports that the images were several years old, which would have made the girl perhaps now 16 or 18, i.e. possibly made her no longer a minor. If The Age is correct, then she is still very much under-age, and I’m pretty sure that that creates a problem for the media who have disseminated Henson’s images of her online and in the press, or at least it certainly should.
I only yesterday realised that the censored images of Henson’s work readily available online mostly lack one key ingredient that we usually see when images of minors are at the heart of a news cycle about alleged sexual exploitation/abuse - there has been no black bar or pixellation over the face to disguise the minor’s identity.
After sitting on it for an eternity, the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s report into abortion law reform has finally been tabled. The Age has an article here which provides a quick summary of the three proposed options. Very briefly, The first would be to, essentially, encapsulate the Menhennitt ruling into legislation, by requiring a doctor to decide that continuing a pregnancy poses harm to the mother. The second would legalize abortion on request up to 24 weeks, but require the doctor’s agreeance of harm of continuing the pregnancy beyond that. The third would remove all criminal sanctions entirely. The full report - which I haven’t yet had time to read - is here.
The Greens have come out in support of the third, most liberal option. Both major parties will be having a conscience vote; both premier John Brumby and Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu have supported decriminalization, but haven’t announced which option they will support yet. But, of course, it’s not the leaders that matter this time around. It’s all those backbenchers.
As noted the last time this came up, anti-abortion types will flood our MPs with mail. Let’s make sure they get some supporting change to stiffen their resolve a bit.
We pointed out here at LP around budget time that the punditariat love trying to make their dreams come true, and it could have been added that sections of the media would do their best to make the “honeymoon will end with the budget” narrative a self-fulfilling prophecy (and as with so many media motifs, the opposition have been saying the same thing for just as long).
A lot of the discussions about web 2.0 and the media tend to conflate citizen journalism with all sorts of other things that happen in the online media spaces. Bloggers, for instance, can be citizen journalists, but by no means all bloggers are, and perhaps a lot of bloggers occasionally are but are more often than not not… One of the traditional functions of public journalism, now rarely fulfilled in Australia, is to bring together a lot of relevant information that non-experts wouldn’t be able to find readily, contextualise that information, and relate it to issues and developments which materially affect citizens. Sometimes, still, you’ll find this done well on national issues, but at the local and even state level it seems to be almost a dying (if not dead) art. That’s why the sort of work blogger Derek Barry is doing here in Brisbane is so valuable.
LPers might remember my post a while back about the redevelopment of the old flour mill next to Albion station. At Woolly Days, Derek has done a top notch job of doing exactly what I’m characterising here as public journalism with respect to that very development, which is on his patch. I think we need to see a lot more of this. It’s a space that the MSM have left almost entirely empty, and because these sort of things are not just hugely important to citizens’ amenity but also to fostering real participation and civic capacities. Derek’s post also situates what’s happening in one inner city suburb of Brisbane within its global context - which again is something in my view that big media almost never does.
Here’s another opportunity to be very mise-en-abyme and question the Q&A questioners questioning the Q&A panel while the questioning takes place! How web 3.0!
In other words, will Tony Abbott carry on like a pork chop? Will Louise Adler talk about the Bill Henson controversy? Will Warren Mundine denounce a “new ATSIC”? What sense does it make to have a panel with Bob Brown, Tony Abbott, Tanya Plibersek, Louise Adler anyway? Are they going to talk about the politics of the week, or take questions on anything? Will the questions be sharper and more policy and life-focused than the ones professional interviewers often put? Have at it!
A few weeks ago, a woman I know who lives in Indiana had a phone call from Hillary Clinton’s camp in the run-up to the state Democratic primary.
“I realise folks say it would be great to have an African-American president, but wouldn’t it be neat to have the first woman president in our lifetime?” Continue reading ‘Hillary, gender decoy’
One thing that’s puzzled me for a long time is how Australia has been able to continue to deploy soldiers to all manner of risky spots without significant casualties. Did our diggers have some kind of movie-style good-guy bullet repulsion field?
Apparently not, according to a pair of army officers writing in the Army Journal. Two separate articles reveal that in Iraq, Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomons, that any actual “offensive manoeuvers” - that is, actual warfighting, has been virtually the exclusive province of the tiny number of SAS troops - that is, the super-elite “Special Forces”. This is in contrast to our American, British, and Canadian partners, where regular infantry troops have done much of the offensive fighting(there simply aren’t enough special forces to do everything). They’ve been effective, but have suffered far more casualties as a consequence.
The complaints of Australian troops about being left out and leaving the burdens to their allies are understandable. But, particularly when it comes to Iraq, I’d prefer them to feel cowardly and come home in one piece, rather than die or be maimed in glorious battle. But - assuming that these army officers (and my understanding of their articles) are basically accurate - it does raise some questions about our diplomatic posturing, particularly when it comes to Afghanistan. Our posturing about Europeans not putting their troops in harm’s way looks a bit hypocritical, given that only the SAS, who make up a very small fraction of our total deployment, appear to be really doing so. Force protection (as I understand it and very much in a nutshell, standing guard while people do stuff) is of course hardly risk-free, but much, much safer than offensive roles. And does the fact that we’re not prepared to actually risk our infantry in combat suggest that our generals think that they’re not up to the job?
The response of the Chief of the Army can be read in this ABC article; notice that he doesn’t disagree with the basic assertions of the officers.
At the outset on the Henson matter, I in common with many others had some difficulty with the notion that parents could give consent for 12 and 13 year olds to be photographed with no clothes on in order to make a work of art for public display. In Kim’s second thread tigtog raised an interesting question about consent:
A possible ethical compromise regarding consent for those under the age of legal self-sovereignty might be that if the adolescent and parents consent to being photographed, that the negatives/digital card containing the images be legally sequestered until the adolescent becomes a legal adult, and then and only then could they sign a release form for the image’s publication. How does that strike people with regard to the issue of consent?
I want to explore this question a little in the context of the development path we take from childhood to adulthood, the significant milestones along the way, and what skepticlawyer has called the “bright lines” the law has ruled across this process.
My tentative conclusion is that deferring authority for release is an unnecessary constraint for little if any gain. I’m interested in your views but a word of warning. If you don’t accept that what Henson is doing is creating art, then please go away. And if you think that there is no distinction between art and pr0n, then please go away also. I’m not interested in debating those topics on this thread.
I noticed on a recent Saturday Salon thread a number of people were discussing having theses due in soon (Mr Mark is in the same space, trying to turn himself into Dr Mark). If the Superbowl is Tony Soprano’s “busy season”, this surely is the busy season for tertiary students of all kinds. And for tertiary teachers - I can remember years ago at Troppo, Ken Parish’s blogging used to take an upward curve the more exam papers he had to mark. So… what’s your favourite procrastination technique? Aside from blogging, that is!
A number of us here at LP have been a bit critical of the tired style of “gotcha” question asking beloved of some of the warhorses of tv current affairs journalism, perhaps most particularly Red Kezza, who’s seen better days, and sometimes Tony Jones when he tries the “put a question in five hundred different ways” trick. In fact I reckon a lot of the questions on Q&A last week were better than the standard media fare. So credit where it’s due - Leigh Sales asked Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen a cracker tonight - did the leaks indicate a level of frustration developing even this early in the Rudd government’s term about Kevin 24/7’s control freakery?
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