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Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
A canary in the proverbial coalmine of the Australian economy.
@1
Yep, I heard on ABC radio that the national construction industry has contracted for 20 consecutive months. Even in a mining boom town like Mackay, commercial construction( not direct mine infrastructure ) is all but non existent. Although domestic is strong, even at ridiculous prices.
Ooh, Kell & Rigby had 500 staff, their CEO said there was between 5 &10 sub contractors per staff member. Shit flows down hill.
Aw crap, Dirty Three’s only Adders gig is at Womad, and so the minimum that would cost is 90 bucks or so for the Saturday night and really, I’m not interested in the other stuff that’s on that night. Womad is not really my thing, though I’ve tried to like it.
The Necks have at least included a gig in Adelaide this time around though, it’s been a while for them – I think the last time they were here it was a short gig at the Spiegeltent for some other festival.
The condensing of good stuff into festivals and leaving a void the rest of the year seems to be getting worse in this old town.
Now, how does this work ? A guy has a $98,000 debt that he fails to honour, has a judgement entered against him in a Victorian court, his house – with a value of around $630,000 – is seized and sold by the Sheriff for $1000: so the debt is not satisfied , the guy loses his house and some lucky punter picks up a bargain. Hellooo!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/court-asked-to-reverse-sale-of-27bargain27-home/3820758
I hope nobody got hammered in the hailstorms around NSW this arvo/evening.
Six months ago I wrote to a couple of organizations in Europe that will attempt to trace the fate of relatives who were caught up in WWII. Some immediately wrote back to say that they had no information for me and so I expected that that would be the end of the matter. But then last week I received a letter from the Red Cross International Tracing Service with some information about my Uncle, including his prisoner number at Amersfoort.
The ITS sent me photocopies of the camp records of my Uncle and it seems that after being sent to Germany to work under the Arbeitseinsatz programme, he remained only a month before absconding. A little over a year later, in November 1944, he was captured in Amsterdam and sent to Amersfoort. I’m still not sure how he came to be released. There is a family legend of someone (him?) having to walk back to Holland from Russia having been sent on a train journey to nowhere. Apparently this was a common way of putting prisoners out of the reach of the allies in the last months of the war. Amongst his effects there is a news clipping from one of the Dutch newspapers describing one such group of prisoners, but I am still unsure of its significance.
I commend the work of the International Tracing Service, I’m amazed that they were able to find anything in my case, and they are doing even more important work tracing people caught up in current wars.
Wanton – saw that on the news. A house selling for $1000? I hope there’s an investigation into possible corruption….
Looks like the ALP will hang on to both Port Adelaide and Ramsay in the by-elections held today.
Probably the wrong place to mention that, at the ripe old age of 46, I finally got to make a snowman and get into a snowball fight — strangely enough right outside a little police station and in the plaza outside the Tottori city’s main railway station.
The police took no notice of our urbanly inappropriate eccentricity: sometimes being a foreigner has its advantages.
Terangaree, lucky you. I am almost 50 and still haven’t seen snow(for real).
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-11/gillard2c-abbott-condemn-soldier-boasting-video/3824700
Does this mean that if Abbott becomes PM he’ll:
1. Seek to censor inconvenient news?
2. Prolong Australia’s craven and futile adventure in Afghanistan just to prove that Australia’s “confidence” not undermined?
Abbott is both dangerous and stupid if he thinks that lies and revenge are appropriate foundations of foreign policy.
Or is Abbott’s outburst the empty posturing of the impotent?
Abbott’s outburst is because he is shocked at how totally, like really, really un-Australian this Afghani soldier is. Doesn’t this guy realise that we’re noice, we’re there to help, that we can teach them how to surf and run raffles and build a nation ‘n stuff? Just shocking un-Australian lack of faith being displayed in Afghanistan. On yer bike, Afghanistanis!
su @ 7, interesting. The stories of individual experiences during WW2 in Europe never cease to amaze.
Katz @ 12 and akn @ 13 …
I’m not seeing anything to be “disgusted” about. If one sees foreign troops in one’s homeland as an army of occupation, and feels a duty to resist, then one surely does all of the things a soldier would do, including the production of propaganda that one thinks apt to build the morale of one’s own side and dent the morale of opponents.
Australian/ISAF troops have no legitimate warrant to be in Afghanistan now and didn’t have it in late 2001 either. The people there are entitled to resist with any means necessary. What is disgusting is that the government is persisting with the occupation and the associated support of an evidently corrupt and illegitimate regime.
@12,13,15 — Look, it’s simple. If Afghans don’t like us being in their country, they should leave. Love it or leave it!
Hi all,
I saw an article this week that caught my eye. It’s a comment the Courier Mail picked form Anna Bligh about the candidates she is running on the Sunshine Coast. I wrote up a post on my website about it today, but I thought it might be of general interest to the crowd here as well.
Sorry about the fairly shameless self promotion, but I do like hearing the second opinions.
Apparently Ms Whitney Houston has died.
Yes, I just heard that as well Ambigulous.
It seems they have taken you seriously Mercurius, the boats are heading for a beach near you,Question: why would muslim refugees think that going to some place called Christmas Island would lead to their salvation?
su, have you read Primo Levi’s The Truce? It’s about his return from Auschwitz to Italy via Russia. It’s also a beautiful book. It may be that your relative had to return the way he did because in the post-war chaos he got shunted to Russia!
Terangeree, how are you enjoying Tottori? Been to the dunes yet? Checked out DNA nightclub? Been to Misasa for the onsens?
Living in a Dept of Housing flat gives you a unique perspective on the miserable ecosystem of social mores the Howard era has bequeathed us.
People are always dumping shopping trolleys outside the flats, and they complain with infantile rancour when you drag the things over to their side of the street.
“Oh that type of thing doesn’t belong here!” they moan, their fragile self-esteem challenged by such proximity.
su I just read a book, Krystyna’s Story http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2016806.Krystyna_s_Story about children taken by the Russians from Poland to Siberia, then being released and travelling through Iran, to New Zealand. Amazing stories of suffering and survival.
Anthony Pink said:
I didn’t get the reference so I tried google. Apparently, Anthony Pink is The Greens candidate for Nudgee — a state seat in QLD.
As a fellow Green (in NSW) I wish you well. I’m a little underwhelmed by (presumably your branch’s) policies. e.g.
Improving the access and quality in our public and private schools through supporting students and teachers with the right resources and best training.
That sounds like a nolo contendere on state funding of private schools to me, and thus an apologia for the current funding mix. The ALP could surely endorse that.
The rest of them sound at best pretty anodyne. I suppose I’d vote for you, if I lived in Nudgee, but it wouldn’t be with great enthusiasm.
Oh Fran, you’ll have to cut ‘em some slack here. They’re in the Deep North, you know, where home-schooling and religious schooling have their largest and most vocal followers. Without at least nod towards private funding, they’ll get exactly nowhere. And do remember that the alternative name for The Greens in that part of the world is — target practice.
I say mad props to Anthony for having a go! It takes some real gumption round those parts!
I don’t care how loud the banjos are. I’m worried about the young ‘uns and their schoolin’.
I know it’s sad and all that, but does the ABC really need to announce the death of Whitney Houston in MAN WALKS ON THE MOON-sized font?
Fran, I’m honoured.
I’m not leaving the field on private/public funding models, I would rather see more in public then private personally, but I’d like to see more info on it (suggestions on readings Fran?). That said I’m a little more worried about outcomes in general, and I’d be more interested in pushing policy (and funding) into programs that focus on teacher development and allow schools the resources to tailor their approaches to the learning styles and abilities of students.
to be honest, as a lurker around these parts, I’ve always been impressed by your comments here. You never know I might meet you around the greens table one day (hopefully on the same side)
Mercurius, thanks for the encouragement, your right, it’s difficult up here to get moving as a Green, but we are friendly people and it’s getting better every time.
Well yairs, but I’m less concerned about what Afghans are doing than I am about what Abbott appears he wants us Australians to do about what those “disgusting” Afghans are doing.
The Taliban are doing just fine at the minute and they don’t need my advice. But Australian voters are inclined to follow bad and dangerous from the likes of Abbott. It’s up to us adults to tell those voters that they just might hurt themselves if they let runagates like Abbott to lead them astray.
Anthony — for popular reading re: schools, start with ‘The Stupid Country’ by Jane Caro and Chris Bonnor. Polemical but worth the ride.
For something on the scholarly side, try ‘Education, Change and Society’ by Connell et. al. from Oxford University Press. It’s been written for an undergrad audience, so the headings and chapters are helpfully arranged in bite-sized pieces. You’ll be able to zero in pretty quickly on the parts concerning public/private funding, school “choice” and so on. It’ll be available in your nearest academic library.
Anthony Pink, yes, good luck.
I read the sex party is out, so securing fourth place is an achievable ambition.
Saw Abbott on meet the press with Paul Bongiorno this morning. It was embarassing, he could only chant mantras and seemed unable to annswer any basic questions. When quizzed about his parental leave scheme (to pay working mums there normal salary for up to six months, up to equivalent of $150,000 pa) he saw this as a workplace entitlement – funded by a tax on large employers initially and then coming out of consolidated revenue later – as compared with the government’s basic wage for 18 weeks which he saw as social security. No wonder his minders don’t let him out too often…….
Cheeky there Jumpy.
Fortunatley for me, Katter isn’t running a candidate in Nudgee to the best of our knowledge.
Mercurius – Thanks for the readings, I’ll add them to my list.
Good for you Anthony, ya never know, ya could do a ” Bradbury”
But I was talking state wide.
Anyway, you deserve respect for putting your hand up (clapping hands).
Geez I love democracy
Pink? Brown? Greens? Who’s the endorsed candidate for Reservoir Dogs?
Whitney Houston had many of the same problems as Elvis Presley and met the same fate. A sad decline from superb entertainer to drug-sodden corpse.
And what will Anthony Green say of Anthong Pink?
oops … Anthony Pink … mea culpa
Drug-sodden corpse Paul? Gosh that’s harsh. I haven’t even heard an official cause of death yet, still less the substances in her system.
I’m not one of those “one must speak no ill of the dead” types, but a little decorum is not out of place when we are not maintaining silence on matters of public ethics.
Some said she was a siren, but I thought she sounded like a car alarm. I just glad she lived long enough to witness the PM’s Australia Day tribute to The Bodyguard.
Kats and Fran,
Good one. But I have one better. I’m the original Watermellon. Pink on the inside, Green on the outside.
Katz @ 35
Mr Black. Mr Pink disagrees.
Use to like the Brissy Lions commentary “(Darrel) White combines beautifully with (Simon) Black to put (Jonathan ) Brown in a fantastic position to add to the scoreboard and lift the team.
Reminded me of my uncle and his family.
Faustus, all I’ve seen of Tottori is from the window of the train and the middle of Tottori City — the trips there have been day-trips to meet the beloved’s parents. And I am still banned from her home-town on the outskirts of Mochigase, where foreign devils haven’t been seen for 30 years and the locals are apparently still scared that another one might appear without warning (the world is full of foreigners…).
Now I’m in Kansai Airport with a box of Blueberry Cheesecake Kit-Kats, waiting for the flight to Coolangatta…
Saw a noticeboard outside a beauty salon in Fukuyama that offers those seeking to shed some weight an hour-long sliming session for only $115.
I hope they use good quality slime.
fb @ 9 – I’m much happier with the ALP being in government in SA with Rann and others gone. Surprisingly the Greens got outpolled by the informal vote in both by-elections though. That must be a big shock to them.
The downside of getting news via Twitter is that when you see “RIP Person X” trending, you immediately assume it is a brainless meme and not the truth. Social networking fail…
It’s a shoe in that Whitney was smothered by her bodyguard.
Brian62:
Brian62, with that sense of humour, you could be Joe Hildebrand!
The first one I let through to the keeper, as giving the benefit of the doubt. The second crack is more than coincidental. Gallows humour only works when it’s at one’s own expense –> but when you wanna crack jokes about other people suffering and dying it’s just…crass.
It’s sad about Whitney, but she was warned by her doctors about her drug taking. The last time she was in rehab, they said to her, “Houston, we have a problem” .
Mercurius,if I have offended your personal sensibilities you have my personal apology,of course at my age I have a personal dislike for PC policing types that rise early on the wrong side of the bed, still such is life,we each have our own views, in that respect we are not worlds apart.
Chris@45, yeah I don’t miss Rann and Foley either and greatly prefer Weatherill’s leadership style, but I really dislike Snelling and Rau, so I’m still a bit ambivalent about the ALP generally. Weatherill’s rhetoric isn’t just about the “worlds largest hole in the ground” so that, at least, is welcome. I’m glad Susan Close looks like winning, but the new member for Ramsay seems like another graduate of the Don Farrell school of accelerated political careerism. ugh.
I’m not surprised by the Greens vote, I’d say I’m fairly sympathetic to the Greens and I wouldn’t have voted for either of those candidates [that's probably a bit unfair on Ruth Beach, but the last EDO seminar on biodiversity & the law revealed such a disconnect with on-ground reality that I went away totally disillusioned]. I think the Greens were in a tricky spot in Port Adelaide, and I don’t have a lot of respect for the way they handled it – to this outside observer, it just seemed kinda cynical. If that candidate has a future – that was an interesting start to it.
If you have to make reference to “the PC police” when complaining about the lack of response to your edgy wit, maybe the wit wasn’t that edgy in the first place.
since when was making jokes about other people’s death an offense only to “the PC police”? I thought it was an offense against basic good manners…
I watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yesterday. It’s very good, I recommend it. Lisbet Salander for the win.
Also I got a smartphone. Maybe I too will soon have word-completion eros.
Brian62 said:
Deary me. Most of the time your sentiment seems to be entirely in the right place but on this occasion, your defensiveness does you little credit. Adducing a strawman {PC Police} makes you sound ignorant and Boltesque.
People are entitled to be offended by your remarks without you piegeonholing them as putative deniers of your right to be curmudgeonly, or whatever it is you are claiming. IMO, the joke was in bad taste and out of place here. That’s just my opinion of course.
I do wonder if you’d have made it though if you’d been a close friend of the family. I’m ready to stand corrected, but I rather suspect not.
@faustusnotes – American or Swedish version? I’ve only seen the Swedish so far, but enjoyed it very much.
oops: pigeonholing
Mindy: American version. I heard the Swedish one was good, but I haven’t the foggiest. The American version is good. Just how I imagined the book! And imo the gender issues are quite well handled. There was even a s*x scene that was almost, by American movie standards, revolutionary. It was all about the woman. Unheard of!
I will have to watch the American version and compare. Swedish version was very true to the book too and reading subtitles wasn’t as distracting as I expected.
I watched Che parts 1 & 2 the other night and didn’t even realise until watching an interview afterwards when Soderbergh said it was a risk to film the whole thing in spanish with english subtitles! Then again I have a lot of movies with subtitles like Red Cliff p 1&2, Haute Tension etc
Not sure if I’ll risk seeing the american remake of The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo though.
Anyone here seen The Rum Diary (Hunter S Thompson/Johnny Depp) yet? The Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas movie adaption was pure gold.
http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/newsbusiness/8418654/victorian-man-wins-10k-over-lost-centrelink-form
All criticisms noted and welcome, my bad, not so sure about the protective pack mentality though.
Rupert’s News of the World merited extermination but Rupert’s Sun must be preserved because… because… because…
@62
…. Because of the wonderful things he does”
Thumbs up for the ” Wizard of Aus ” reference.
Thumbs down for getting a tune stuck in my head.
I feel your pain, Brian. It’s tough when the world is out of step with you, innit?
The sheer economic stupidity of the austerity approach to solvency in Europe is mind boggling. These Are simply attempts to protect banks from defaults, not to protect national economies.
Left E, I think what’s happened is that the banksters have sidled up to the German government and said, “Nice economy you got ‘ere. Be a shame if sumfink ‘appened to it. Oh, sorry!”
The Four Corners tonight is a reminder that we can thank the careerists and opportunists of the ALP factions for Abbott PM.
For future reference, Hacks: we the public, officially *DO NOT GIVE A SHIT* if your popular, successful leader is unkind to poor ALP animals. Couldnt care less.
Just sit there, shut up, and cop it sweet next time. We’ll tell you when you need a new leader. cheers.
That said… The spectacular failure of these moves did accidentally lead to the upside of minority govt. the greens thank you for giving so generously. LULZ!
Indeed Lefty E. Few new revelations, but hardly a pretty picture of said hacks and Gillard herself.
You forget LE, that the ALP calculated it was facing certain electoral loss to Abbott under Rudd. At least Gillard restored Labor’s fortunes to the point where minority government was was achieved.
It turns out that the problem was neither Rudd (nor Gillard for that matter) – but at the time there was a certain logic to the usurpation.
As if! Did anyone among the key plotters actually believe this at the time (let alone now)? I very much doubt it.: I think its clear anyone who pushed that view even at the time was either dishonest, or deceived. Four Corners seemed to suggest any such internal polling (totally at odds with public polling, btw) was cooked for effect, to scare the marginals.
I bet they’d love to see figures like that now.
Either way, history has exposed that very clearly for what it was – total rubbish.
I didn’t watch the Four Corners doco but wasn’t the supposed ‘internal polling’ being bandied about at the time as supposedly relevant actually polling commissioned by the mining industry?
No one other than the Labor Right & devout party hacks genuinely believes if they hadn’t gone to Gillard then Rudd would’ve definitely lost to Abbott, on the contrary the real reason the ‘faceless men’ did what they did was because Rudd would’ve almost certainly won that election.
Clearly. Once you view the entire episode as Shorto shortening the distance between him and the Lodge (and that Abbott PM is a logical, perhaps regrettable, but necessary phase) it all makes perfect sense.
For all his faults, Rudd’s true crime was that he wasnt a faction man. The rest is just piss and wind.
Rudd speeches don’t make the news much these days, so I was rather amused to see he is still asking himself questions in his speeches (I’m easily amused). Ah, the good old days!
Appears that there is still a lot of personal enthusiasm (not just political) for him in the general public – something that I haven’t really seen for Gillard. Don’t know if that’s really relevant in a compulsory voting environment though.
The revelation that her staff were writing speeches for her becoming PM weeks before the leadership vote is very interesting. Doesn’t really fit the narrative of her being reluctantly pushed into being PM at the last minute.
@71 yairs, what the ‘it was poll-driven’ theorists have never satisfactorily explained is why Gillard is still ALP leader when her polling has never come within a bull’s roar of Rudd, up to and including when he was toppled, and indeed, since he was toppled. Are ‘ALP internal polls’ showing a radically result to the published ones??
Can’t we just agree that it was all about the factions taking back control of the parliamentary ALP, nothing more nothing less? They would’ve used chicken entrails and a shaman, or an elephant painting with its trunk, as their ‘argument’ and still followed the same course. They interred a first-term PM who enjoyed record-breaking popularity because…they could.
As for schadenfreude, it’s kind funny that the hapless Press Gallery reporters spent years breathlessly reporting the Costello-Howard challenge that never was, and then got blind-sided by the Rudd deposition. I’m sure that’s a factor in all the media nastiness since then, too. Now, more than 18 months after the event, 4 Corners proudly announces they can tell us what really happened.
4 Corners cutting-edge investigative reporting: Tune in next week for new evidence about Harold Holt’s disappearance!
Of course, Schadenfreude should have an initial cap, being a German noun and all …
dear Fran Barlow
my oxford dictionary lists schadenfreude in lower case throughout & italic font – looks like the word’s been “naturalized”.
yours sincerely
alfred vension
To be fair to Gillard, unlike Rudd she hasn’t been paralysed with indecision. She’s actually achieved stuff.
hmm … I’m a bit of a traditionalist on such matters. Mercurius italicised — a recognition of its provenance in German. That strengthens the case for the initial cap, IMO. I do accept that other borrowings of longer standing — words such as fiancee for example — need not be uttered with their original syntax.
She’s a bloody idiot for agreeing to be interviewed on this subject, because now she’s going to be accused of lying again. She really should come out swinging (at the media). Who in caucus does not support her? That’s the real story and I don’t think there is a ‘real’ story in this. Just wicked, lazy, bottom-feeding journalists.
dear Fran Barlow
traditionally, i defer to the oed. i never throw out dictionaries, so i have four oeds (1986, 1978, 1951 & 1933). all the most recent editions list it with lower case & italics. the word does not appear in the 1933 edition. my sense from this is that, according to the source i traditionally defer to, the word has never been capitalized in english.
i don’t know if fiancee was ever italicized & when it lost its accent – as you know, not all words borrowed from french have lost their accents even when they’ve lost their italics.
yours sincerely
alfred vension
It seems that as PM Rudd had alienated just about everyone in the federal caucus. The calculation of those without a particular axe to grind in the caucus was “Rudd may limp to victory in the forthcoming election but we insiders know that the Rudd government is in a death spiral that will destroy the party. Perhaps a Gillard administration may save the party.”
Doubtless, the faction leaders nurtured these perceptions. But it would be very condescending to accuse these backbenchers of being incapable of sniffing the decay in the air.
The caucus vote was never tested though Katz. The plotters did very wellI ensuring none dare call it treason. I expect a great many, and quite possibly most, had serious misgivings, but we won’t hear about that until they lose govt.
Interestingly, the John Howard theory in the second edition of “Lazurus Rising” is that Kevin Rudd would have won the 2010 Federal election quite easily – reduced majority perhaps, but still a majority – because the could simply have run on the economy.
Question of whether he was a control freak, micro manager etc. were unlikely to be decisive with voters. Madonna is rumoured to be all of these things, but does anyone not buy her records on that basis? Failure to deliver on promises and a sesne of being “all talk” is more serious, but it generally takes voters more than one term to work that out. And at any rate, what was Tony Abbott actually offering the electorate?
By wiping out Rudd, they conceded that their first term had been a failure, and there needed to be a fresh start. This would always have been a hard message to sell.
LE, it was up to Rudd to put caucus support to the test. Rudd cannot be called a coward or an idiot. His few remaining allies must have told him what he already knew in his bones to be the truth — Kevin Rudd has negligible caucus support; a vote would reveal the magnitude of his humiliation.
The larger issue was the appearance of unity though Katz. Once certain faction leaders mobilised their numbers against him, there was only one way the rest could maintain that appearance: vote against the leader who had brought them to govt.
Individual opinions on the matter were made irrelevant , and their action no gauge of them. It wa masterful machine politics
I think it’s naive to assume that the plotters/faceless men/faction leaders/Labor saviours didn’t meticulously prepare the ground before making their move with leaks, manipulated poll results and maybe just a few phone calls.
In the end caucus had little choice, not necessarily because they all hated Rudd with a passion, but because by the time they could make a decision it was all over, and Rudd knew it.
And as Terry and others have implied, the whole rationale was a charade from beginning to end, and seen as such by the electorate. Any wonder that Gillard continues to have a credibility problem.
If Hillary Clinton knew that a leadership challenge was on, to the point of summonsing Kim Beazley to find out more about it, then you would have to wonder about how disconnected Rudd had become.
That said, if the aim was to be better positioned for a second term in office, then it was a massive failure.
Mercurius @64 Dear Leader that cloistered world to which you refer, It’s Academic innit?
I don’t care about whatever shenanigans went on back there. Now we have a resource tax, a carbon price, and two gay marriage bills with a bit more than a snowball’s chance. Julia Gillard may be hated around here, but she achieved more in a year than Rudd could in three.
I’m with faustusnotes.
Given that they are both creatures of the same rotten system, it’s hard to work up any great passion over it, though it is a telling commentary on just how irrational they are. Here they are lecturing those of us who take public policy seriously that they understand ‘the art of the possible’ better than us. Clearly, they don’t, and they are also unprincipled.
As you say, through an ironic twist, the weakness of the regime’s position has led to more progress in some areas than a regime in complete command would have produced. The mining tax was a retreat of course but it is fair to say that more has been achieved under Gillard than Rudd in terms of actual positive results. It’s just that they seem really good at convincing people that they are in total disarray and a re so completely craven that this is easy to believe. They are certainly the most PR-inept regime we’ve had for some little while.
The point is that what happened ‘back there’ directly effects what is happening now – Gillard’s lack of credibility which is simply reinforced by many of her bizzare decisions, such as appearing on 2 and a half Corners and opposing gay marriage.
And I for one certainly don’t hate her (sounds like RWDB ‘Howard haters’ meme) – quite the opposite, I keep willing her to get better and really take it up to Abbott and his cronies.
Yes, she’s achieved quite a bit in a difficult situation, but if her (and the plotters) ultimate legacy is an Abbott government, it will count for little.
I think you’re being a little pessimistic about an Abbott government, adrian (assuming we get one at the next election) – Abbott will have an even more hostile and difficult Senate than Rudd did, so he won’t be able to do as much damage as he’d like to.
@90 – faustus, oh sure, I have given Gillard due credit on her legislative reforms (both those achieved and those mooted) — that is not a mutually exclusive category from taking a swipe at the factions for an obvious power-grab that nearly got them thrown out prematurely, and which still might.
I guess it depends on how much of a consequentialist position one wishes to take.
@89…wut. Sorry Brian, your cryptic musings are lost on me and I suspect most if not all of us. The people who get to decide whether a joke is a joke, are the audience, not the deliverer. Is that straightforward enough for you? And behold!…no academics were harmed in the making of this sentence!
Agree faustusnotes@90, the proof is in the pudding and all the rest is yesterday’s chip wrappings.
Gillard had to front 4C last night, or be labelled a coward with something to hide. The big expose was that her staff were writing a victory speech two weeks ahead of the coup – well shut my mouth, that’s what they are paid to do, stay ahead of the curve and be ready with the goods if push comes to shove, as it eventually did.
She faced down this ambush from the 4C interviewer and refused to play to his speculative narrative that she was already sharpening her knives well in advance. That she and her staff were alert to the possibility of change and making contingency plans does not mean that she was the prime mover behind the coup. That (dis)honour falls to the creepy little men who manufactured the entire mess that was Rudd’s removal.
I have no problem accepting that Gillard agreed to take the leadership when there was no other option, right at the end of the process, as she has always said.
And she has the cojones to live with the consequences of her actions, in the face of a relentlessly hostile press determined to destroy her, while managing a minority government that requires constant careful negotiation, and a bunch of frightened disloyal backbenchers ready to run for the hills, and being bashed over the head every week with negative polling, two years out from an election.
In the meantime she has accomplished more in one year in parliament than Rudd, for all his grandstanding, did in three.
What an amazing woman.
I don’t think Gillard’s achievements are just because she is in minority govt. I think there was another reason they rolled Rudd – he was getting nothing done, and what he was getting done was bad policy. The super-tax as he proposed it was a dangerous waste of time. His proposed ETS was a hand-out to the resource companies.
Given that everyone now admits it wasn’t about the polls, perhaps we can get around to considering the possibility that it was about policy?
Also, this “getting Shorten closer to the prime ministership” stuff is sexist nonsense. The coup got Gillard (remember her?) closer to the prime ministership. It didn’t get Shorten anywhere closer, and the idea that he and his mates were willing to sink the govt to get their way is both ludicrous (nobody, anywhere, does this, especially in the ALP) and sexist, assuming as it does (once again!) that Gillard is just the tool of these backroom boys.
Also, the idea that Rudd had taken the party away from the factional managers seems just a tad … idealistic. Rudd wasn’t a saint, he certainly didn’t wield the power necessary to achieve that, and he only removed himself from the factions by being aloof and undemocratic.
In any case, for good or ill, the factions are the mechanism by which the ALP runs, and they delivered Whitlam, Hawke and Keating – hardly the worst of outcomes, I would have thought. If the benefits of getting rid of them are someone like Rudd, with his do-nothing three years, perhaps the factions are better than the alternatives?
Conspiracy theories, disgruntled whining, etc. Gillard has led a good government subject to an enormously destabilizing opposition (such as the ALP never considered offering to Howard, even when Latham was in), a vicious media campaign, and a rump of sexism in the community. She probably wasn’t ready for the job, but there was an emergency in the leadership and she stepped up to fix it. And fix it she has.
I suggest that we all quit whinging and accept that Rudd was a loser.
“And fix it she has”
I guess that’s fixed in the same way that TEPCO has fixed the problems at the Fukashima nuclear power plant.
All depends on your definitions I suppose.
someone like Rudd, with his do-nothing three years
You sure you don’t remember anything?
accept that Rudd was a loser.
Well he didn’t lose an election…
Yep. This is much more important than the so-called Carbon tax backflip. Meant they could play up the Rudd govt economic achievements (GFC anyone) as much as they should have.
Agree, though the former is a bit of a dud now, and the latter two are in fact a product of minority govt, not Gillard being PM. In fact, there’d be no carbon price at all if they’d won a majority.
That said, I like the reforms. Add in mat leave (as much Rudd as Gillard govt), the NBN (Rudd govt), abolition of workchocies (Gillard as member of Rudd govt) the apology (Rudd govt), the coming disability reforms (Gillard govt), major homelessness reforms (Rudd govt), tax reforms associated with CO2 price (Gillard) – and you got 6 years of a reforming Rudd/ Gillard ALP administration.
Push comes to shove, I prefer the Gillard era – but thats because it was a minority govt with progressive backers, not because it was a “Gillard” govt per se.
Oh Im sorry, and I forgot some really big ones: abolition of the TPV (Rudd), aboliton of pacific solution (Rudd) – totally thrown into a shocking & reactionary reverse gear by the Gillard govt.
On foreign policy generally (Palestine, engaging with pacific, general level of toadying to the US) – gimme the Rudd govt any day.
Lefty E, Rudd’s proposed resource tax was retrospective, which is a nasty piece of work that doesn’t encourage companies to cooperate with governments, and involved risk sharing in the future, which is not something that governments should be doing. Imagine if the UK govt had adopted that as part of a windfall tax on the financial system in, ooh, 2007. Good idea? Gillard’s is safer and better.
I also don’t support the idea that Gillard’s reforms are only the result of being in a minority govt. She made clear she was planning a carbon price before the election, and she didn’t say it would be Rudd’s damp squib.
It puzzles me that people are so desperate to deny Gillard any role in the policies her own govt has set. I’ll do a Rudd here for a moment and answer my own questions … would people do this if Rudd were in minority govt? I don’t think so. I wonder why? Because Gillard’s a woman …
Sorry, but this is complete crap – see above.
Sorry, but this is complete crap – see above
Well I’d give him marks for consistency!
Sorry about tag confusion situation alert.
Lefty E and Adrian, Rudd made the ETS a central plank of his election campaign and described it as “the great moral challenge of our time.” He used it to try and wedge the opposition and managed as a result to get Abbot into the leadership. A win for Australia, that one! He then went on to drop “the great moral challenge of our time,” which was a crap design in the first place, because it was too hard and was no longer conferring political benefit.
Did he achieve things in his term? Yes. Did he get his central policy platform through? No.
But given all Australia is now going to get solar-powered hyper-pr0n download power, I guess I should rephrase “do-nothing” to “incompetent.”
(That was deliberate shit-stirring btw, I approve of the NBN and I’m glad Rudd pushed for it).
Well, you either have to assert that the NBN, the TPV, the pacific solution, Fair Work Act, major homelessness funding, the GFC stimulus, maternity leave, the apology are somehow not “reforms” – or admit the statement “do-nothing three years” is quite silly nonsense.
He certainly flubbed the environment, in the end. People can argue the toss on the mining tax (me, I think the Gillard govt version is pissweak, but I accept its an arguable case). Im very confident we can thanks the GRNs for the interim CO2 price (though the subsequent CO2 market has ALP stamped on it).
While Rudd faffed about, Gillard has achieved a record of legislative success that is quite remarkable given the problems of the House of Reps. To a large extent she can thank the Libs for taking a maximalist line by electing Abbott as leader. There is little doubt that if Turnbull had led the Libs, the independents would have supported the Coalition.
Thus, the interesting feature of politics since 2010 has been the Libs’ embrace of extremism. Perhaps enough of them believe that if the ALP is given sufficient rope, they will hang themselves. This approach, if true, must infuriate the special interests because it seems highly unlikely that the ETS or the resource tax will be repealed in a hurry.
All the above grumpiness isn’t to say, btw, that I didn’t like Rudd (I did) and didn’t think the way he was dispensed with wasn’t shameful (I did). I also admire his subsequent actions.
But the fact remains that this era demands the ALP move beyond its ideological dedication to its industrial heartland, and finally embrace the environmental messages that have been sent to it for years by the newly-flourishing Greens. This is the way of the future for the Social Democratic left, and they can either get with the program or be seen as failures when the seas rise. Rudd saw the ETS as just another political game, not as the fundamental realignment of labour politics that it needed to be, and when he flumphed that he failed in every conceivable way. He let us all down and he let Abbot back in. If he hadn’t done that, Gillard would never have needed to or been able to act the way she did, then or now. We’d be enjoying a hugely popular second-term ALP govt, with all the benefits of Gillard and Rudd working together functionally.
We’d still have got Gillard, Keating-style in a second or third term, and everyone would have accepted it. But Rudd signed his death warrant when he gave up on the ETS. We needed it, the future of the ALP demanded it, and he fluffed it.
Faustus, I agree with the critiqiue of ALP politics, and where it needs tp go, but you appear to forget this was flubbed by the Rudd govt on the specific advice and urging of Gillard and Swan – with only Tanner opposing among the big four.
I don’t agree that she had to front the 4Corners program lest she be seen as a coward.
She could have said she categorically, emphatically and resolutely refuses to fan the flames of leadership speculation because the only speculation on the matter was the one being invented by a bored and mischievous media. She could have pointed out that she has the full support of her cabinet and until such time as she no longer has their support, leadership issues were off the agenda, a complete waste of time and something the public where not essentially all that interested in, despite the claims of political editors. AND that this type of speculation has absolutely nothing to do with running the country. In short sod off arseholes.
She should also sack her media advisors who suggested she play the patsy.
Poor bloody woman she looks several million years older and very careworn, compared to the heady, carefree days before the shafting of Kevin.
Lefty E, do we know what that advice was or the basis for it? I’ve heard it said that she advised him but do we have evidence? And, would you have advised him to keep running the ETS as it was? Maybe she and her inner team always thought it was stupid and wanted to change it, and he finally listened to their advice after his political schemes floundered?
I think the advice Gillard gave him may have been the best advice when she gave it, and subsequent events just make it look like she was setting him up. If other things that are said about Rudd are true, maybe this was the first time they saw how impossible managing him was going to be, and then they decided to act after the resource tax debacle?
We will never know these things because the only thing we can be certain of is that the media are both incapable of and uninterested in finding out the truth or presenting a balanced discussion of the events that led to the ousting.
Also I agree with Link about how Gillard should have handled this show.
LE, are you implying that Gillard advised against the ETS with the intention of establishing a pretext for removing Rudd?
Yes, you can’t help but feel some sympathy for her, but she didn’t have to take the job at that time. Still I think that much of the OTT criticism is a result of her gender. Some journalists such as Michelle Grattan and Katherine Murphy seem to have an almost irrational dislike of her.
Link@111, the story-du-jour is that Gillard agreed to a 4C interview on achievements since 2010, and that she fronted in good faith. Not to have done so would have been spun by the media as cowardice. Prime Ministers do not generally squib 4C unless they are on the run.
During the 4C interview, she was ambushed and cornered on the details of the prior leadership coup, which is why she looked tense and cranky in the selective grab.
“Several million years older and very careworn”?
I don’t think so.
“Sod off arseholes?”
Now that really would be self-defeating.
Knowing the current ABC, I’m sure that she was ambushed. And guess what was lead story on all ABC News bulletins this morning?
But surely she and/or her media advises would be naive in the extreme to expect that the program would limit itself to the government’s achievements. This is the ABC we’re talking about!
The advisors should have made it clear under what conditions she would appear, and if these conditions were breached say so on air. You can be confident that that particular exchange wouldn’t make the final cut.
The wider question of course concerns the ABC’s rapidly diminishing credibility and integrity. Just when you think it can’t sink any lower it suprises you.
adrian@116, agree, her media advisers should not have allowed selective editing of the interview without prior notification, as Richard Farmer effectively says today on crikey.
It seems that “media advisers” are a big part of the problem the Gillard government is having in getting its message through.
Nope – I’m suggesting she was instrumental in the major failing of the Rudd govt that people – including myself – tend to point to. When people point to this, they need to realise they are pointing straight at Julia Gillard too.
Faustus: what happened with the dropping of the ETS is on public record, Gillard doesnt deny it, Swan doesnt deny it, Tanner has publicly confirmed it. Its notable how the oft- claimed “Rudd didnt listen to others” meme overlook this one – problem being here that he did.
Dont get me wrong, Im glad it went, and Rudd has to take responsbility for that flop. But the current package is a joint product of the minority govt – especially (though not exclusively) – the interim fixed price, which no one denies was a GRNs inititative, along with new limits on the offshore-sourced permits, and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which everyone openly pins/ blames/ applauds the GRNs for, depending on whether for or agin.
The Gillard govt did a greatjob crafting a progressive compo system around it though, and holding a difficult cross-bench alliance together.
But leftyE, what was the basis of her advice? (I really don’t know). Maybe he listened only after everything had fallen apart – maybe they were pressing from the start and he ignored them? The alternative explanation for the coup is that he wasn’t listening to his internal advisors, and she may have been advising him all along not to use this particular ETS but he wasn’t listening – they’re not inconsistent stories.
Geez, I reckon I could do a better job!
dear editor
my sister-in-law owns a bookshop in edmonton alberta & they have a monthly book club. an mla attends; a soft spoken guy, not given to bombast. he was pretty shaken up one night & confided to them that the real reason the premier, ed stelmach, resigned last year was because of the godawful reaction he got when he approached the oil corporations to raise the royalties a bit & collect royalties deferred during past economic slumps. stelmach backed down of course but the corporations did not rest until his party room toppled him. it took most of a year but this mla was quite clear that stelmach was toppled because the oil corporations wanted him gone & the fifth columnists in his party complied. so, ed stelmach’s history, the royalties remain unpaid & alberta (!) the most booming economy in canada that should be rich as norway is running a deficit.
at the same time stelmach’s in calgary trying to raise royalties on foreign oil corporations & at the behest of the same corporations getting rolled by his own party for his trouble, kevin rudd’s in canberra trying to raise royalties on foreign coal corporations and, after a high pressure campaign of lies run against him by the same corporations, aided & abetted by murdoch & his sexless lapdog the a-b-frickin-c, getting rolled by his own party for his trouble. if nobody else does, i see a goddamn pattern here! they even used the pathetic sagging polls excuse in alberta too while they sunk their corporate-branded knives into the back of a popular reformist premier. stelmach was elected by the grass roots of his party against the wishes of the big end of town & the thanes of corporations in order to get the royalties. i wonder how they feel now & they’re the conservatives!
corporations will stop at nothing to get their way, even arranging for their fifth columnists in established political parties to roll elected governments that have the temerity to use national sovereignty & popular mandates to get more money for their people from the stuff they own as a nation. i think class war is hotting up as the environment sucks worse & economies tank; stuff like this is grist to the mill. people like the amoral careerist gillard, the labor right wing, & cia feeding toadies like bill shorten are not on the side of the people.
i still like rudd – i thrill to hear him speak, and i want him back!
yours sincerely
alfred venison
Yes Mr Venison, and it appears the yanks knew about this before anyone in Australia bar the plotters.
Faustusnotes said:
That’s unclear but probably moot. I strongly suspect the factions who made him the factuionless leader saw it asa political game and insisted he play it that way. It’s with that context we should probably interpret Swan & Gillard’s conduct. Perhaps he was happy to play silly buggers with it or maybe he was miffed. Either way he didn’t put his job on the line to demand he have his way, so he owns the screw up. Had he done so, I’ve no doubt he could have had a much stronger and earlier ETS policy totally messed up the LNP, and then have brought in the RSPT without much if any opposition, possibly later in 2010 after a crushing election win. From there, he’d have been bulletproof.
He may be a smart guy but he lacks both acumen and spine. That’s almost certainly why the factions gave him the gig.
so much speculation, Fran! How about the alternative: Rudd didn’t consult properly and came up with a crap policy that was more about political gain than climate change, and when it failed he finally did what those around him wanted, and dropped it.
Just a brief comment on last night’s Four Corners. I agree with those who think it was a disaster for Gillard. She came across as evasive and untrustworthy. Since perception is what most politicians get elected on, that will surely hurt her personal vote. I don’t think Gillard is Macchiavelian, but she is ambitious, and was too easily manipulated by the faceless men. She also has been consistently not as good a media performer as Rudd was, and Four Corners is the latest proof of that.
As for Rudd, I am not a fan, but I see him as a Churchillian leader. He is the worst possible leader of the Labor Party, except for when you consider the alternatives. Backing away from the ETS was his greatest mistake, but as others have said, it was done at the pestering of Swan and Gillard, who more and more have been shown to be deeply conservative figures, their Labor background and rhetoric aside.
At this point, I think Gillard has little chance left of being re-elected PM. There is still the Craig Thompson affair to resolve, and if that had a happy answer I suspect we would have been given it by now.
Yep, this is when the grown ups in the party decided to jump off Rudd’s carrousel. Personal loyalty has strict limits when the larger interests of the party appear to be in play.
Faustusnotes’ description of the stages of this terminal crisis of Rudd’s administration fits well with the earlier administrative fiascos of the Rudd ascendency. This is not to say that he never made effective policy. It is significant, I think, that Rudd’s one-offs, like the apology or government backing of bank deposits, were quite masterful. The more oversight and follow through that was required, the worse were Rudd’s policy settings. It appears that Rudd liked micromanagement for its own sake.
And to be evenhanded, Gillard’s signature failing is her inability to strike an effective tone in selling her leadership. Rudd’s enduring popularity can be attributed to his capability to establish a credible narrative, despite galling stuff ups.
Here’s the bottom line: like it or not, if the polls dont improve under GIllard, somewhere in 2013 the ALP will face the choice of definitely losing govt, or picking Rudd of maybe getting home.
If anyone here think backbenchers wont jump the other way with a fire under their butts, out of some abstract committment to choices made, you aint watching the right channel.
On another matter, here’s what I like about minority govt: GRNs secure (modest, but something) $165 million package to provide dental services to low-income earners, in return for passing means test.
The best news is that people like me (relatively high earner, no private insurance) will pay a small extra medicare levy which directly funds the dental services.
I like that. It used to be called social democracy. Of course, Id prefer it if it was all high income earners.
Ha ha. If Karl Bitar, Abib, Fenney etc are the grown-ups give me the children any day.
What these ‘grown ups didn’t want was for Rudd to win another election, because we all know what would have happened to their power base then.
Gillard’s inability to handle the 4Corners interview is the instructive. If sh was invited by the Producers to talk on topic A and thy ask questions on Topic B, all she neds to do to avoid is insist that they stick to the agreed topic.
Combet, Shorten, or Crean will lead the ALP to the next election.
Well yes they should just roll the medicare levy into the income tax rates rather than pretend it is even vaguely sufficient in funding our medical system. The side benefit is that it would also catch non residents (eg those on working visas) who don’t have to pay any medicare levy as they don’t qualify for medicare.
And I see that Gillard is using the Qantas Joyce defence with respect to when she decided to challenge Rudd. I wonder if it will work any better for her than it did Joyce?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/gillard-staff-planned-for-coup-20120213-1t2c1.html
These coots may have had their own agenda. The backbenchers wanted to have career continuity. These backbenchers were convinced that Gillard offered security of tenure.
As it happens, the backbenchers were incorrect in the long run, but it was the backbenchers’ choice, not the faction leaders’. As I mentioned above, these backbenchers made their intentions so clear that Rudd declined to call for a count.
No amount of Ruddite special pleading can change these facts.
Mr Alfred Venison @121: Rudd’s sacking has the mining companies all over it. The very idea that his interpersonal skills caused soooo much distress with the delicate dears of the parliamentary party that they just had to dump him, had to, because he just kept hurting their feelings and well it was a type of battering they were getting etc. Bollocks. They were told that the mining companies would shaft them forever and a day and they shit themselves in panic. Hence Arbib checking in with the US embassy before he wipes himself. Hence Gillard. Because after The Sacking everyone in the ALP knows that you don’t piss the yanks off.
Well this is the speech.
And someone in her office wrote that 2 week prior to the coup eh?
Geez, listen to how she makes it sound like she wrote it, so heartfelt, so personal. Me thinks Julia hand some input.
Swan had a prepared speech too, hmmm….
Wonder how many ALP MPs have acceptances already written, close at hand, ya know, just in case ?
faustusnotes suggested:
Doubtful. The crap policy was undoubtedly the brainchild of Sussex St. As far as I can tell, Rudd would have been happy to go with Garnaut and leave it at that, but the Sussex St crowd wanted something meeting two other criteria:
a) The Greens should be denied credit, ideally by designing it so that we would oppose it
with the consequence that …
b) It would need the support of the LNP, and would wedge the party and perhaps leave the ALP as the sole supporter of the CPRS.
An added advantage would be that there would be cover for porkbarrelling all sorts of unsavoury interests to which the ALP is close and escape pricing carbon in liquid fuels.
It must have seemed a brilliant manoeuvre at the time to the fools from the ALP right.
Finally, the major downside risk would be absorbed by Rudd — who was there on sufferance. Making him a little less popular was no bad thing as that strengthened their hand. It’s the classic game within a game.
That Rudd failed to spot the danger and wreck the game by refusing to play speaks to his lack of political acumen. That’s the major reason he’s not PM material in our system.
dear Fran Barlow @79
i forgot this morning that the 1931 oed has a supplement, being new words & senses recorded since the single letter vols were published serially & before publication of the 1931 edition with all the single letter vols in one uniform set. i thought you might be interested in what i found. our word of interest schadenfreude appears in the supplement where its entry is printed:- “Schadenfreude”, upper case, no italics.
this is the first citation of the word in the oed & records a word not evidenced at the time the single letter volume “S-Si” was produced in 1919. as usual, there are historical examples given of the word in use in contemporaneous english publications. in this case three examples are given.
1st is “the glasgow herald” (1922 ) which used:- schadenfreude, printing “you may buy a hat for 500 maks today , and it may be worth 700 marks tomorrow. so you … perhaps feel a little schadenfreude at the expense of the vendor who sold it to you a day too early”.
2nd is “the spectator” (1926) which used:- Schadenfreude printing “there is no english word for Schadenfreude because there is no such feeling here”.
3rd is “the daily telegraph” (1927) which, curiously, used:- “Schadenfreude”, caps & quotation marks, printing “the “Schadenfreude” so openly exhibited by a large section of her press over our difficulties in china”.
in the four oeds i have (1931 to 1986) the definition & etymology remains the same while the orthography shifts from “Schadefreude” in 1931 to “schadenfreude” since at least 1951. all in all, an intriguing exception to the general rule about english words derived from german nouns & initial caps; an exception which awaits explanation another day. i find it fascinating that the word was not recorded in use in 1919 but was recorded in use in 1922 a mere three years later.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
With respect Katz, That just not how the ALP works: backbenchers rely on factional support, so once the faction leaders moved, it was game over. We have little to no idea what backbenchers thought , since their actions are no gauge of their opinions when supporting Rudd suddenly meant a divided party. Again , it was masterful. We do, however, know that as senior a figure as Albo (and his faction) was totally opposed to the coup – only moving in support at the 11th hour, for reasons above.
There’s absolutely no reason to suspect they wouldn’t shift back to Rudd if they think it will save their seats.
Here ya go, alfred
Sydney Morning Herald: Thursday 19 May 1864
Lower-case, italics…trust the oed/brits to be half a century behind the imported language curve.
Admittedly, it does appear with caps more often than not after that…until the late 30s, when it became about even either way.
See NSW. Is it really about polls, the best interests of the party? Winning the hearts and minds of backbenchers? Or simply asserting factional control?
And there is no evidence to suggest that the faction leaders can extort backbenchers to engage in a suicide mission. The faction leaders have great influence. It would be naive to suggest otherwise. However, they must couch their instructions to their faction members in terms of a win/win scenario.
Katz @ 137 – uncertainty of election outcome vs certainty of not getting preselected. Faction leaders have a huge amount of power.
Mercurius@95 care to critique this:One thing is certain, never in the long and august history of Four Corners has a more light weight, dog whistling, parody of journalism been perpetrated,what a completely supercilious travesty, what we witnessed was the prostitution of this ABC icon for political spins sake, no facts plenty of innuendo a farcical beat up of gigantic proportions,whoever commissioned the airing of this death rattle episode of Four Corners should be dragged over the coals and summarily dismissed for sullying the the good name of this ABC Icon that up till now had a flawless record in quality journalistic investigation,Has the ABC been hijacked?I rest my case.
By definition, factions are about contention and disagreement.
In the Rudd case the faction leaders were in accord.
Ergo, what factions?
dear Nick @135
neat! thanks for the link – very informative. and illustrative, too, of a point made by john willinsky, in his “empire of words: the reign of the oed”, about the change that occurred in the textual sources favored for the historical examples between the 1st edition (1931) & the 2nd (completed 1989) which edition you may recall famously included “fuck” (among other words) for the first time.
essentially the 1st edition favored literary over journalistic sources, humanities over sciences, and uk over usa. the 2nd edition evens out these dichotomies & extends the range of sources cited to include works by women, commonwealth sources, and working class sources. given this, i’m not at all surprised the editors of the 1st edition missed a word borrowing in use in a colony & welcome your example as proof positive of willinsky’s point.
your comments on upper case first letter & italics are apposite & welcome but don’t account for the rationale (if any) by which the editors of both editions came to favor a lower case first letter in a noun sourced from german & that they italicise. i note for start, though, that “blitzkrieg“, like “schadenfreude” a noun sourced from german, is italicised & also has a lower case first letter. i reckon between those two there’s the beginnings of a rule/rationale.
yours sincerely
alfred vension
Fran, your theories require so much more … imagination … than the alternative: Rudd had a crap policy.
faustusnotes said:
Of course he “had a crap policy”. He had the policy he was told to have. Perhaps he had no problem with it or simply did as he was told because he accepted the rules of the game.
Imagination doesn’t come into it. Your answer isn’t an alternative but a banality. What we need to know is why he had a crap policy. That may help us explain why he was replaced with someone with polcies that were every bit as crap and sometimes even worse and why they polled so badly and why the current regime also has crap policies and the conditions under which we may hope for non-crap policies from the ALP, or perhaps more likely, someone else at some indeterminate time in the future.
Fran I’d have thought implicit in my alternative, simpler theory is that as PM Rudd had control over the policies he set. The alternative – that all his policies are made in Sussex St and he’s just a figurehead – is the reason you have to construct the elaborate stories above.
@141 – Very good Brian62. That was a devastating (i.e. overly-adjectival, unfocused, cliche-strewn) critique of the ABC; although whether it’s from a right-wingnut or a doctrinaire hard-lefty, I can’t actually tell. In terms of over-the-top Manichean/apocalyptic rhetoric it matches the tone of an Alan Jones addict, but for correct spelling and syntactic obscurity it matches the ex-Trot revolutionary. The idiosyncratic punctuation however leans me back towards the foaming right-wing reactionary…
faustusnotes proposed that:
There’s a paucity of evidence for that proposition. The idea that the policies are set by others seems to match far better the thread of conduct of the regime.
It’s not ‘elaborate’, but fairly straightforward. Political parties that go beyond the size of fringe groups are compromises between large numbers of stakeholders. There’s simply no way they are going to hand one person all executive authority while they think there is a viable alternative in which they get some control over outcomes. “Sussex St” is an expression of that desire. That tells us nothing about whether their judgement on the matter is either coherent or ethical.
Rudd, as most know, had no clear faction, and his rise was the result of a deal cut between the factions rather than an expression of his popularity with or membership of any significant group in the caucus. He was the face that the ALP faction bosses thought best suited to ousting Howard in 2007 and whom they thought most likely to be able to control or at least deflect from doing things they didn’t like — precisely because he had no faction. Such as he had power, it was to arbitrate deals and sell them to the voters the ALP fancied it needed and could get. Once he could no longer perform this latter role (largely as a result of the constraints they imposed on his policies), his usefulness in their eyes ended and it did not even require a vote to end his rule.
That’s not a complex idea.
And lefties are trying to pretend that the ALP is good at economic management:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/as-seen-on-tv-the-700-set-top-box-from-labor/story-fn59niix-1226271235752
Eureka you do have a sense of humor,grasshopper is most impressed Master.
Most of all I appreciated the deep- north-like detailed programmatic specificity.
No it’s not a complex idea at all. Probably overly simple if anything, overlooking the probable role of the miners and the yanks as it does.
dear Adrian @121
you’re damn right the yanks were “kept informed” all along – australia/usa parliamentary friendship society, my ass! no wonder they want to close down wikileaks with extreme prejudice & make an awesome example of assange. when i reflect on the recent foreign corporation/murdoch driven rudd coup-d’etat-by-proxy, i recall chomsky: “the business of the american government is business”.
yours sincerely
alfred vension
And of course our fearless press, be it by incompentence or design, completely ignore the real story and concentrate on what Julia knew trivia.
hi alfred, not sure if the oed’s editing protocol is the same now as it ever was, but this may be of interest:
http://www.oed.com/public/editing/editing-of-entries
It seems it really is just a case of keeping up with and providing an accurate reflection of the times as best they can.
From that same page, you can link to their quarterly updates, where I noted Australia’s ‘flat white’ was just recently added…as well as what’s apparently our very own ‘tragic’…we can surely be proud of that inclusion…
OMG! is another newy, though their research found its first known usage was in fact in a letter dated 1917
Without opining conspiracy theory, it occurs to me that the political machinations that are pervading Australian politics at present are reminiscent of the pre- Whitlam removal atmosphere ( in the thick of it) negative press ,disruptive Machiavellian plot and counter plot,overblown borrowing accusations ($100 million a day rubbish) polarization of the citizens voting intentions, all political media generated and exaggerated for what purpose the enshrinement of a Banana Republic? my response was to flee the assassination of Democracy to the safe haven of NZ into the waiting arms of Piggy Muldoon’s parochial nightmare, silly me the more things change the more they remain the same.
The ACT is pokies ‘trial’ has textbook problems of validity as an experiment: viz, it will only test those who want to change their habits.
Those who dont will go to NSW.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-16/clubs-agree-to-pokies-reform-trial/3834704
It’s probably worth noting, Alfred, that dictionaries are mostly compendia of usage rather than linguistic rectitude. To the extent that they reflect the latter, they document conventions rather than interrogate their warrants.
Side note:
I was listening to some BBC reporter speaking on the condition of Greece. He spoke of some poor immigrant who died on the street and how long it took for the body to be collected.
Sad stuff, to be sure. His observation:
It didn’t use to be this way …
I groaned inwardly, because this idiom is not uncommon. It is however ugly, and if FDB’s baby Grammar heard it, she must have been moved to bawl. At some point though, it may well appear in a version of OED.
NB: I tweeted my disgust to the BBC.
LeftyE @ 157 – the government should at least include Queanbeyan. I think that would ensure that at least addicts would have to drive a decent distance to avoid the system. But then I don’t think the government actually wants a result saying the system is effective…..
Chris and Lefty E – Clubs ACT met yesterday and decided to give in principal support, but wanted to know what strategies would be in place to stop people popping over to Queanbeyan. Clubs in Queanbeyan are of course reluctant to put anything in place because they want to profit from the trial. Yass Clubs are also keen to see if there is an upswing in profits from people coming here.
Heads up Melbournites – just walked past Allans in Bourke st and they’ve got a slightly damaged (very slightly) Fender acoustic in the window for $319. I remained strong, as I don’t even have that much in the kitty which isn’t spoken for, but I’m sitting here twitching. So if someone wants to tram in and snap up this bargain it’d be doing me a favour!
I’m going to be evil and whisper in your ear that you should snap it up, Helen, as you obviously desire it so much. Remember what Oscar Wilda said: “Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves”.
Go get it Helen!