Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence.
In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
~ George Orwell
I’ve written about doping in sport several times on this blog (here and here), mostly about procycling, but also what I consider the sporting crime of our times: State Plan 14:25 – the East German ‘diplomats in tracksuits’, approximately 10,000 athletes (including children) doped by the State with performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). The scale, the cruel consequences, the ‘win at all costs’ regime makes Lance Armstrong look like a kindergarten bully.
The release yesterday of the Australian Crime Commission’s Organised Crime and Drugs in Sportreport – the result of a 12 month investigation, aptly code named Project Aperio (a Latin verb meaning ‘uncover’ or ‘open’), hasn’t surprised or shocked me. Not the scale of its findings, not the scope of the investigation, or that the coercive witness powers of the ACC were used – and I love sport. I love it because I can’t run out of sight on a dark night. I can swim a bit, and play tennis. That’s it. Oh, I can leg press 180 kilograms (hardly surprising; I have long, strong muscles attached to metre-long legs). I love people who are good – brilliant – at their jobs. If those jobs involve a football, a tennis racquet or swimming caps, all the better.
Orwell captures the essence of my take on the last few days in those few sentences above.
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play: don’t give me piffle about Don Bradman, or golden ages forever tarnished by a 40-odd page report and a press conference. Sporting organisations and their products have traded on the notion of ‘fair play’ since the first Olympics. You don’t need to use elite athletes to test ‘undetectable’ drugs to make a mockery of an ideal. You can throw tacks on the road in front of cyclists racing aerodynamically down a mountain. You can use your elbows to cause your opponents to fall over in a distance race. You can punch someone below the belt. You can bowl a ball with the intention of hitting a batsmen, instead of the stumps, or roll a ball down the pitch against a valiant, disgusted foe. You can field a below par team to pick the cream of the next crop. You can employ wrestling techniques to slow play.
Serious sport is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness: You can grunt, dive for a penalty, taunt an opponent so tastelessly that they head butt you. You can threaten to rip a man’s heart out, rip his children’s hearts out, bite, gouge, brawl, engage in ultimately deadly rivalries, label yourself the greatest and another man an ‘Uncle Tom’, king hit a player for doing nothing more than marking your patch. You can smash racquets and abuse officials. You can, without proof, label someone who swims faster than and sets world records an ‘obvious’ drug cheat. You can call yourselves leaders in drug testing, and be revealed as a sham. You can lie to yourself and courts, fool millions of people and foully degrade and discredit anyone who dares stand up to you. You can choose to become part of a code of silence instead of speaking what you know to be the truth, or pursue a lead on a story. You can choose to be a cheerleader, ingratiate yourself with athletes, managers, clubs, administrators because you are so close to glory you can taste it.
Serious sport is bound up with a disregard of all rules: you can set a pathetic policy where your players, your product, aren’t subject to the laws that apply to every other citizen, where recreational drug users you catch out are rarely named or reported to police. You can surrender your place in an Olympic team to someone who hasn’t qualified, and watch them win a gold medal. You can handle a ball to score a goal instead of your feet, and win a place or a game in the ultimate exhibition of the joga bonito and blithely admit it in a post-match interview, or claim divine intervention. You can break salary caps and make dodgy deals. You can tweet garbagebecause you are witless. You can bet on or against your own team or race, consort with criminals, paint a horse so it resembles another, poor performer. You can insist drivers race on unsafe tracks, and take action only when one life too many is lost.
Serious sport is bound up with sadistic pleasure in violence: We, the stadium fillers, bay for ever-harder, brain-rattling tackles, celebrate the spilling of claret or a knockout in the boxing ring. Our games may not be violent, but they become sadistic. Rule changes push athletes to, and beyond, the limits of pain and endurance. We find intermediate stages of three-week races boring, and thrill when tour organisers announce brutal stages. Players who miss penalties never live down the ignominy. We take pleasure in hating rival teams, rival codes, rival sports, other countries. We bait rival fans and rely on other fixtures so we ‘win’ at the expense of another’s loss. We resort to racial abuse and defend those who practice it. We, the fans, have voices. We choose to silence ourselves and demand ever-greater performances. We buy pulp peddled by pundits who self-censor and allow the brave to be damned.
Sometimes, we bear witness to horror, and react with every ounce of human kindness and concern, sorrow at the loss of athletes dying young or stretchered off a ground with broken limbs or hearts which have ceased beating. We remember serious sports bear serious risks and consequences. We remember, and try to right wrongs. We can think, call, write, refuse to pay for memberships, support the outspoken against the omertà. We can accept losses with good grace, instead of crying with indignation that ‘we wuz robbed”. We can be better, act with integrity and ask the same in return.
The last two weeks I’ve been struck by the depths of absurdity the Australian Labor Party has been hell-bent on plumbing. Blame Nicola Roxon. Her statement this week that Kevin Rudd was not the Messiah (and, ipso facto, a very naughty boy) sparked this idea – that the omnishambles the Federal ALP has created deserves to be viewed through the prism of the brilliant, flawed and greatest proponents of absurdist comedy since Spike Milligan.
Scene One: Mr Creosote, Monty Python and The Meaning of Life
[Rudd, the morbidly obese Mr Creosote, gorges on everything in a restaurant, vomiting until he literally explodes]
If Kevin Rudd’s government was so paralysed, dysfunctional and unbearable for Ministers and caucus – now given as the reason why Australia went to bed with one Prime Minister on 23 June 2010 and had a new one the next day – why was that not explained, clearly, compassionately by then-Deputy Prime Minister Gillard in a press conference that night? Indulge me with a draft form of words:
“Kevin Rudd led the ALP team to an historic victory in 2007. As a team, led by Kevin, we made bold calls that kept Australia largely immune to the ravages of the Global Financial Crisis. Sadly, it has become increasingly clear to our parliamentary colleagues that under Kevin’s leadership, the government is no longer advancing the policy agenda we set out in the 2007 campaign. As Deputy Prime Minister, I have worked hard to bridge the gap between the decisiveness Kevin showed during the GFC and the way Kevin has led the government during the past few months. Our Cabinet colleagues have sought to implement the reforms they were appointed by Kevin to carry out. They have not flinched in the face of external challenges; rather, internal processes are frustrating their efforts, and inevitably, letting you down. As Deputy Prime Minister, I have not resiled from my duty to act as Kevin’s closest adviser. That includes sharing some hard truths about his leadership style. Time and again, senior colleagues have exhorted Kevin to allow them to do the jobs he personally entrusted them with and which we were, as a team, elected to do. Tonight, I made the most difficult decision of my political life. I spoke with Kevin and told him that I intended to challenge him for the leadership of the Federal Parliamentary Australian Labor Party because I could no longer bridge that gap as his Deputy. A ballot for the leadership has been called for tomorrow morning. I am confident that I have the support of my caucus colleagues and if elected tomorrow, I will ensure that this good government performs as we have demonstrated we can; and that your local MPs, Ministers and Prime Minister not only speak of a shared vision for Australia, but use our complementary talents to their fullest extent. This is a good team. We have Australia’s interests as our overriding motivation. As leader, I will once again harness our talents, our motivation, with trust and goodwill. That is the marked difference between the Government I intend to lead and the Opposition so soundly rejected by you in 2007.”
Instead, we were told, ‘a good government had lost its way’ in a press conference after the ballot. I found it difficult to reconcile the long list of achievements Rudd set out in his emotional appearance at The Lodge with the actions taken the night before. I am not ashamed to say that I sat in a Ministerial office in Macquarie Street and cried when the leadership spill was called. I didn’t cry for Kevin Rudd; I had been too close to the repercussions of the Federal Government’s failures; enraged at times by the way it operated (or didn’t) and the way our already deeply unpopular State Government was handed shit sandwich after shit sandwich to swallow in public. I cried because in that moment, I knew who the principle architects were; I knew how they worked, and I knew the lazy epithet: the dreaded ‘NSW disease’. Yes, go on; tear down someone who had led the party to victory – because that was working out so well for us. Labor had been in power for 15 years in NSW that June night, and under its fourth Premier. We had lost almost all of our best Ministers – and yet this nightmare was being inflicted upon itself by a first-term Government. I cried because I knew we faced an impossible task; we were serving up Government to another rabble and pouring the wine for them to enjoy with our carcass. Why, why was Federal Labor so determined to follow our path?
Scene Two: The Black Knight, Monty Python and theHoly Grail
[Rudd, the limbless Black Knight goading Gillard’s King Arthur, ‘It’s just a flesh wound!’ As an exasperated King Arthur exits, the Black Knight screeches, ‘Running away, eh? You yellow bastards!’]
If you are going to take the axe to a leader, you make damned sure they are dead. You have to be prepared to wreck what you have helped build if you want to take the top job; and the wreckage must include the deposed leader. Instead of letting KRuddMP stay KRuddMP until he was so debilitated he resigned from Parliament, Prime Minister Gillard gifted him a purpose: ‘go forth, Kevin, as Australia’s chief diplomat’. It sent out a dual signal: here was a new Prime Minister so frightened by the prospect of a by-election loss that she came to the conclusion that it was better to have him piss inside her Cabinet than in the Siberia of the backbench; worse still, she said on her first overseas trip as Prime Minister, that she had no passion for international affairs, that she felt more comfortable in a classroom. Yes, she went on to say that she would be a, ‘feisty advocate’ for Australia’s interests, and recognised that sitting in meetings in Brussels was part of the package, but it didn’t ring true. Different things drive people to enter politics – the Prime Minister made it clear that education is her passion; Rudd got out of bed each day determined to make Australia a respected middle power – an effort rewarded with a place at the G20 table. While it’s not rare for Prime Ministers to make former party leaders Foreign Minister – Howard did it with Downer; Hawke with Hayden – why allow a former Prime Minister who loved nothing more than to strut on the world stage to do it full-time? It gave Rudd a perfect platform to play statesman; ‘hey folks, I might have had my arms and legs lopped off, but I’ve still got the head to mix it with foreign leaders while Gillard has photo ops in kindergartens’. The negative perception of the amount of time he spent travelling (‘Kevin 747’, anyone?), is, in my view, counter-balanced by the odd way the Prime Minister chopped up her former portfolio of Education and Training in her post-election Ministry and subsequent reshuffle into ‘Tertiary Education, Skills (Chris Evans)’; ‘School Education and Early Childhood (Peter Garrett)’; ‘Early Childhood and Childcare (Kate Ellis) and Jacinta Collins as Parliamentary Secretary. I found it ironic that Gillard released the Gonski Review (which she commissioned as Education Minister), but is nowhere to be found when it comes to the Murray-Darling Basin. Am I reading too much into this – a clear distinction between the ability of the two Ministers must play a part – or is she as much a micro-manager as Rudd, but only when it comes to her passion? Is the Prime Minister on the phone to foreign leaders searching for ways to stop the carnage in Syria? The only engagement in foreign policy I remember – and I am an international relations obsessive – are from her visit to the White House, punting a Sherrin in the Oval Office and President Obama’s whistle-stop last year (both involving photo-ops in … yes, schools). I was reminded yesterday of her visit to Afghanistan and that it may have been a relief for everyone involved that she didn’t feel the need to prove she was ‘the smartest guy in the room’; but I want the smartest guy in the room to lead this country. That may not be Rudd or Gillard.
Scene Three: The French Taunter, Monty Python and The Holy Grail
I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
I could just cut and paste transcripts of any number of interviews given in the last two weeks, from Simon Crean’s first radio blast at Rudd, to the retiring (and hence, nothing to lose) Member for Bendigo, Steve Gibbons’ charm school cry that the Foreign Minister was a ‘psychopath’, through to the abject disgrace to his office that was Wayne Swan’s spray. It must be noted that other Gillard supporters have acted with class; Tanya Plibersek’s remarks spring to mind. Initially, Rudd sought, smartly, to claim the moral high ground and urged his supporters to do the same. By and large, they have: even Doug Cameron, (who I am sure would prefer to have played out a pub fight, Motherwell rules) sounded like the voice of reason compared to the bile being poured on Rudd. Bob Brown was right to say that Rudd should not have resigned from Washington; but Rudd was running out of time to mount any sort of defence, let alone challenge for the leadership. It’s been reported that the Prime Minister quickly voiced her displeasure at the Unhappy Member for Corangamite, Darren ‘Blessed is the’ Cheeseman for going on record and firing a shot against her leadership in a Sunday paper. Similarly, she should have put a muzzle on Crean. Asked, repeatedly, whether she had done, she responded, ‘I’m focused on doing my job’. It was the phoniest call of all. Whatever was going on, Crean deserved a clip around the earlobes just as Cheeseman did. Rudd seized on her failure to do so and pulled the trigger from DC.
Scene Four: Brian on the Cross Monty Python’s The Life of Brian
[Rudd, martyred. The chorus of the crucified breaks out in song ]
Life’s a piece of shit,
When you look at it.
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true.
You’ll see it’s all a show,
Keep ‘em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
Rudd says he has changed, that he recognises his mistakes; that he wants to reform the party – statements almost universally scorned. I have few doubts he has concertedly campaigned to challenge for the leadership, leaked information and briefed against the Prime Minister – all sackable offenses; yet the Prime Minister chose not to sack him. That said, the Wikileaks cables allege that Senator Mark Arbib had briefed the US Embassy and speculated about Kevin Rudd’s job in 2009. People have selective memories. If anyone has changed, it is Julia Gillard, who has gone from one of the Government’s most effective communicators and skilled debaters to negotiator-in-chief. People make mistakes. Then there is just the stupid shit. Who didn’t cringe at the Prime Minister’s interview on 4Corners a mere two weeks ago? Where was the nous, the political intelligence, the intuition which says, ‘I don’t need to do this’? Without interviewing her, the programme literally had no legs. Rudd didn’t need to give an interview, would never have agreed to it with things as they stood. Yes, it would have featured vision from National Conference, where a stony-faced Rudd sat through a speech which praised each of his predecessors and wiped him from the collective memory as clumsily as Stalin erased Trotsky from photographs, but without Gillard, it was a laughing stock – who would line-up to watch the combined wit and wisdom of Con Sciacca, Alan Griffin and his noodles and Janelle Saffin? The Prime Minister’s rejigged office, by all reports, works well – yet the appointment of a new and well-respected Chief-of-Staff and a Director of Communications from the UK hasn’t stemmed the stupid. The frequent cry is ‘she’s over-managed’. As an adviser, you have to possess the internal fortitude to take it to a boss who sometimes doesn’t want to hear what you have to say. You also have a duty to be on top of your brief and offer sound advice and back your boss even if they are a bastard to you sometimes. As a Minister, it’s incumbent on you to hire good people who will die in a ditch for you even if you are a bastard to them sometimes and challenge them, constantly, to set out solid arguments which you must then make a decision on. Sometimes people find themselves managing upward. That happens in all kinds of workplaces. The difference in politics is that you can blame a staffer, sack them, even; but if there is a perception that your staff are running the show, then you will be judged weak as piss. I don’t believe the Prime Minister is over-managed by her staff. She wouldn’t command the level of respect she does from people of the calibre of Greg Combet and Penny Wong, Tony Windsor and Bob Brown if she was. At the same time, respect must be earned. Trust follows. Rightly or wrongly, many Australians neither respect nor trust the Prime Minister, just as the majority of his caucus colleagues don’t trust or respect Kevin Rudd.
Scene Five: The Parrot Sketch, Monty Python’s Flying Circus
[The ALP is no more. It has ceased to be. It is bereft of life. It rests in peace]
The party (indeed the public) deserved the full release of the Bracks / Carr / Faulkner review of the 2010 election campaign – not the strategic leaks made in the aftermath of the 2011 National Conference (which infuriated the trio). Real reform needs to happen. The ‘faceless men’ is a tiresome term but it is not ‘offensive to members of caucus’, as the Prime Minister has said. I know who Mark Arbib is; I recognise Bill Shorten and his undoubted talent; but I couldn’t pick David Feeney or Don Farrell out of a line up. What is offensive is the power of bottom feeders like Bill Ludwig and Joe de Bruyn, and yes, Paul Howse, although he’s more chinless than faceless. They are the elected heads of unions. They are not elected members of caucus. Even the good Senators are elected by virtue of a place on the party’s Senate ticket (bloody unrepresentative swill). Union bosses and ‘machine men’ can make a tremendous contribution to public life. Shorten and Combet are excellent examples; but it is well past time to make wholesale change to the voting system which gives union delegates many advantages over branch delegates at conferences, and the way preselections are conducted.
Yesterday, Anthony Albanese, choking back tears, set out his reasons for supporting Rudd, while paying the Prime Minister the respect her office is due. His emotion stems from the great damage he knows this spectacle has done to the party’s survival and the very real danger that the ALP will be consigned to the Opposition benches for a very long time, perhaps annihilated, electorally in a fashion similar to NSW in 2011. He reminded me that if this happens, a generation, maybe more, of Labor talent will be discarded. The party needs the Shortens, the Combets, the Clares, the Wongs, the Bowens, the Husics, yes, it needs Albo, to survive this internecine war not only for what they can contribute, now and in the decades to come, but to inspire others to actively engage. It saddens me to think of the reprisals and recriminations which will inevitably flow from this sorry mess. I thought I had seen it all in NSW, but this is the most publicly vitriolic political fight I’ve known. The things that have been said cannot be taken back. This is now the ‘Canberra disease’. The policy-free zone led by Tony Abbott can remain just that if the seething and spite continues within the ALP, for they will serve up Government to an undeserving bunch of no marks, and pour the wine for them to enjoy as they pick over the carcass.
Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.
Hubert Humphrey
This is a cropped image taken (stolen) from the Herald-Sun’s #occupymelbourne gallery. I was flicking through, & this poster caught my attention. I flicked back & forth & still ended up at the same image.
Why? Because it speaks to me so loudly of everything that I find disturbing about the occupy movement as it exists in Australia. No economics or factoids in this post. Purely visceral.
Firstly, an apology to #occupysydney participants for not fully understanding why the camp was established outside the Reserve Bank of Australia. I was hammering away, railing inside my head & on Twitter as to why camp hadn’t been set up in Bridge Street (drunken aside: #occupybs would be a cool hashtag) given it’s home to the ASX? I asked a question on Twitter tonight (depending on how quickly I write this, maybe last night) and, thanks to @hailants, I learned something. Securency. I thought polymer notes were just a cool invention. I asked politely, genuinely, & I got a polite, genuine, informative answer about something I knew nothing about. That’s pure gold to me.
OK, so back to the poster. This is so fucking far from pure gold to me it’s not funny. Starving African child juxtaposed with obese Western kids eating junk food. Seems like everything capitalism, everything wrong, everything #occupy represents. Not to me.
I am in no way accepting of how totally fucked it is that gross poverty, is delivered in white 4WDs to the Global South by, yes capitalism, but also inept, corrupt governments & non-state actors. The answer (according to me) to a fraction of that starving African child’s problems is not the carte-blanche, lazy finger-pointing at evil capitalism. It is pathetic infrastructure. It is more expensive to transport food to famine-declared areas from a food bowl IN Africa than it is to ship food aid from Europe. As this Massachusetts Institute of Technology project contends, it is only through global actors such as the World Bank that intra- and inter-country roads in Africa can be built and maintained (the example it uses is the Mombassa - Nairobi road project in Kenya). People in sub-Saharan Africa starve not because there is no food, but because transportation costs are so high, making them aid dependent, and if the greedy Global North cannot be arsed, they die. Dambisa Moyo’s seminal work, Dead Aid may not be popular, but her central thesis, that cutting aid will force these capitalist solutions to take hold, is worth study. I do not agree with cutting foreign aid; but I would play with the idea and put forward the following solution – that the member states which signed up to lift aid to 0.77 per cent of GDP under the UN Millennium Goals – make that abysmal fraction higher, and invest in an infrastructure fund that will assist in building transportation routes and enable, empower the most impoverished to trade with their neighbours. It’s a capitalist solution to a problem that exists, that is so obvious, that for the life of me, I cannot understand.
Next: is this problem assisted by a poster in Melbourne? No. Bring forth the person in, Melbourne, or my Sin City of Sydney, this city of 4.5 million, who is not aware, that somewhere in the world, people are starving. Seriously, I will travel to them, I will jam my foot in their front door & show them this poster if I am wrong. People know famine exists; they may not understand why, beyond natural causes such as drought; but we know it happens. Forgive me, Occupiers, but where are your solutions, where are your ideas, to fixing this unnecessary, base evil, ill? Capitalism Isn’t Working? It’s not an idea; it’s a statement of questionable fact. There is no attempt to make a constructive argument; it’s not even a talking point memo. Where, in the general assemblies or working groups, are the solutions? I know what the problem is. I’m disgusted by it. I’ve been to Dharavi, one of the world’s largest slums. I’ve seen poverty in South London, where I worked in social housing; in Gaza; in Russia; in Redfern – none of which this poster represents – barring one teeny, tiny thing. The fat kids. The ultimate representation, the tool to demonstrate, about the greedy Global North. Shyeh, right on.
Yep, the fat kids eating junk food. What greater depiction of corporate greed could you imagine? Oh, I can. Teeny, tiny mind of mine suggests that the kiddies sat at the Golden Arches of the capitalist piggery of the Global North, are the the poorest percentile, those totally dependent on welfare; the kids who grow up in households where generational unemployment is a fact of life … these kiddies, the fat capitalist pigs gorging on the fries – they are the 99 per cent. Not you, not even me, with my multitude of fucktardness visited, uninvited, on my childhood. Fact: poor families sacrifice, or cannot afford, fresh fruit and vegetables. They eat fried food. They have less playing space. They are the children whose life expectancy is slashed; who will develop NCDs (non-communicable diseases) such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. They will die earlier, their lives straining public health systems in between. They will, on average, not go to university. They won’t make these posters & camp in Martin Place or City Square, because they have never fucking been to Martin Place. They are in our rural and regional centres. They are on the fringes of our cities & at there epicentres. They do not regularly attend school. They are supplied with breakfast & taught how to read by the best of the 99 per cent – our under-valued teachers. These are the children Occupiers need to speak to; not Twitter twats like me. These children are growing up poorer than any of us – not in terms of disposable income, the measurable, cold, economic indicators I have written about before but under-educated, not even disengaged. They are the scorn of our ‘current affairs’ programming. Fringe-dwellers, regardless of race. The underclass. The illiterate and innumerate. The kids who set London on fire while we, the lucky 99 per cent of the Land of Oz sat here and watched. Rail against quantitative easing, #occupysydney … give me a small break while I imagine an austerity package, two or three, visited upon us. The truly frightening thing is that these children are not the stereotypical fat, unruly progeny of Macquarie Fields, or Fitzroy Crossing, or Frankston: they are the middle classes of the BRICs, especially China and India. There are 78 million Indians with Type 2 diabetes. To work these most basic health issues through, we – who are not the 99 per cent – must get off Martin Place and reach Mumbai. Indians don’t see themselves as victims of capitalism. Indians thrive on trade; not just now, but through the ages. They live in a post-colonialist, still caste-ridden and religiously-divided country. They are more powerful than this lazy portrait, the Indians, South Americans, South Africans, Russians than our piss-poor democracy can imagine.
OK, I am drunk, and tired and I have ranted and railed more than enough for the early hours. Please leave a comment or tweet me about what this poster says to you. I am a cranky old woman, sure; but I genuinely want to know, in more than a cut and paste about how we are controlled by the banks, the media, the corporations and politicians, just what this poster represents. I want more of you,from you, as the individuals who claim to make up the 99 per cent. Agree, disagree; just don’t ignore. Oh, and don’t bash the people you have so long admired for kicking against the pricks of the right, and laughed at the idiocy of the Convoy of No Confidence. If you believe that Wayne Swan is going to chuck a Tony Abbott and stand in front of an ‘occupy buildings, abolish gaols’ banner, you are sorely mistaken. Barack Obama is endorsing #ows in his cool, pragmatic style. He wants to save his presidency by appealing to his base. End of Politics 101. Time for bed. Like this, loathe me, just think about it. Please.
To steal from Network, Americans are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.
The #Occupy movement, which began as #OccupyWallStreet, a protest against bankers, bailouts and corporate greed.
In my tiny mind, Americans have every right to be angry. They might be angry enough to consign Barack Obama to a one-term presidency – unthinkable a few years ago. The left is angry, the right is angry and the Tea Party is the small government, small tax version of the pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Christian base for this decade
A few fast facts on why I think Americans are mad:
The economy: No wonder President Obama is playing golf with President Clinton. The baseline in American politics is the economy, stupid. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ latest release (7 October), seasonally adjusted unemployment in September 2011 was 9.1 per cent. That’s a 0.5 per cent improvement on September 2010. Breaking that down:
14 million Americans are registered unemployed
Of that number, the long-term unemployed (people out of work for more than 27 weeks) make up more than 44 per cent, or 6.2 million)
24 per cent of teenagers (16-19 year olds) are unemployed
16 per cent of blacks are unemployed (c.f. with 8 per cent unemployment among whites; 11.3 per cent for Hispanics and 7.8 per cent for Asians)
The annual 2010 unemployment rate of ‘Gulf War II’ veterans (i.e. military personnel who have served post September 2001) is 11.5 per cent
Delving slightly deeper, while the labor force and employment figures lifted, the civilian labor force participation rate (64.2 per cent) and employment:population ratio (58.3 per cent) remain fairly static. Disturbingly, 9.3 million Americans are classed as involuntary part-time workers (i.e. their hours have been cut or they’re unable to find full-time work). In August 2011, the number was 8.8 million – an additional 444,000 people in one month. Those ‘marginally attached to the workforce’ – some 2.5 million Americans who have sought work in the last year, but not in the last four weeks, are not counted as unemployed. There are 1 million ‘discouraged’ American workers. These are the defeated and demoralised. They believe they cannot get a job, so they’ve given up. Average hourly earnings? $23.12. Average weekly earnings? $793.02.
‘Failed’ stimulus: President Obama signed The Recovery Act on 7 February 2009. The total package of $787 billion was increased to $840 billion in 2011. I bracketed ‘failed’ because it’s open to interpretation. There is certainly a perception that while some of the leading indicators have resulted in an improvement in certain sectors of the economy and regions, in my view, this is counterbalanced by one of the saddest statistics I think I’ve ever come across: $8 billion additional spend on food stamps to feed 38 million hungry Americans. (Reuters)
Dysfunctional government: the White House is caught in a pincer movement. President Obama has come out swinging at Congress recently, most notably on his jobs bill. He’s moving to Candidate Obama, criss-crossing the country selling a Bill which has no chance of passing. These people who were willing to play brinkmanship with the country’s credit card. It is pathetic.
The cost of foreign policy: President Obama got Osama bin Laden. Terrific. It doesn’t change the economic and human costs of the country’s operations in Pakistan and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the key findings of a recent report from the Eisenhower Research Project based at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies:
The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.
More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other military forces allied with the United States.
By a very conservative estimate, 137,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by all parties to these conflicts.
The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.
Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.
Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.
Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will likely total between $600-$950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.
That’s just war. Don’t start me on the President’s broken promise to close Guantánamo Bay; conduct of extra-judicial killings and the disconnect between endorsement of the Arab Spring where it’s easy (Libya, for example) and wilful disregard for others (such as the Shi`a of Bahrain).
The 99 per cent: Campaign finance reform; the disparity between tax breaks for the super-wealthy and the middle-class; corporate bailouts; out-of-control student debt it’s the beginning of a national conversation Americans haven’t engaged in for a long time.
So … it was with a general sense of irritation that I heard about the #OccupyPickAnAustralianCity protests that took place yesterday, for one reason: the great Australian propensity for whingeing. If whingeing was an Olympic sport, it would be, ‘GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!’ for Australia. I whinge, I hear others whinge and I read about people whingeing on a daily basis. It’s healthy to vent, to verbalise frustrations, irritations and feelings that systems, services and other people are failing us; but when you conflate whingeing into the #Occupy movement, you cheapen it. Yes, I am fully aware that Australia was only one of 78 countries to hold protests yesterday. I would also contend that people in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece have legitimate fears and grievances against prevailing economic conditions and systemic corruption. Australia? Not so much. While many on the ‘left’ view Tony Abbott as the Nabob of No, the Occupiers of Australia are playing his game of fear and loathing:
The economy: 5.2 per cent unemployment in September 2011. As the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Measures of Australia’s Progress 2011 report shows, pretty much everything (barring productivity) has improved since 2000. Including unemployment. The bad news? That increase applies to threatened animal species due to climate change. The average weekly income per full-time employed adult is $1,305. The average hourly income is between $29.70 and$33.10 (the disparity? Female wages c.f. men) (Source: ABS)
Dysfunctional government: I am not a cheerleader for the current Government, but I am thankful that there are some quality people in our Parliament. Not naming names, but as close to the bone it has come on major issues – especially in the last few weeks – it is functional. I may not like the politics, the policies, the poor communication and quality of political discourse, but it continues to roll on.
The cost of foreign policy:Defence estimates an approximate $6 billion spend in Afghanistan to 2014. Iraq Mk II, approximately $2.3 billion. To me, the irreparable damage is in civilian deaths, leaving Australian citizens in Gitmo, irregular migration flows (UN-speak for refugees), international reputation and pathetic policy reactions to the problems we helped cause. That said, I don’t think we’ve been breaking arms embargoes, killing people willy-nilly or uneven in our condemnation for despots the world over.
The 99 per cent: according to a new release into household wealth from the ABS, the top 20 per cent of Australian households have seen their average net wealth increase by 15 per cent to $2.2 million since 2005/06, accounting for approximately 60 per cent of total household wealth. The bottom 20 per cent’s average net wealth grew by only 4 per cent. They account for approximately 1 per cent of total household wealth. That leaves almost 30 per cent of Australian households with an average net wealth of $720,000, up 14 per cent since 2005/06 – almost on par with the richest in the land and 10 per cent ahead of the poor. I contend that there is no ’99 per cent’ in Australia. Of course there is disparity in wealth; but the two major assets of Australian households (property – $520-540,000; superannuation – $60-154,000) put ‘average’ Australia within striking distance of the top 20 per cent. This is not the case in the US. It never has been and never will be.
I hope this stirs some pots & kettles. It stirred mine.
You’re a fine man & a champion athlete. You have shown that time & again. Last night was no different. You rode your own race … and a few others’ as well.
Tonight: the Alpe d’Huez. Tomorrow: the race of truth.
Marcus Burghardt said it best in a tweet after stage 4:
Today we saw what BMC Racing Team can do with 9 riders and 19 staff pulling for one goal
Now, there is a million-plus army clad in the black & red of BMC.
A whole country willing you on.
Your bella Chiara – her humour & grace beloved by all.
All pulling in the same direction.
One goal – to see you in the maillot jaune on the only road that matters … the Champs Élysée.
Two more efforts. Chapeau. Forza
Close to Flying
One man against the clock
Chiara Passerini and her World Champion, Mendrisio, 2009
BMC Pro Racing, on their way to 2nd in the Team Time Trial, 2011 TdF
Introduction: Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Erika Feller
The Global Needs Assessment (GNA) process has highlighted protection gaps and provided the opportunity to strengthen responses. Program design and monitoring will benefit. The Results Framework will provide the opportunity for comparative analysis & global consistency.
UNHCR is not the principle protection provider and can never be effective substitute for the exercise by States of their proper responsibilities. UNHCR’s continued focus however is the building of effective national asylum systems through improved registration arrangements, expertise in refugee status determination or working to sensitise national legislative frameworks to age, gender and diversity considerations.
UNHCR’s protection mandate is delivered through protection staff with expertise and knowledge in a range of areas from refugee status determination, age/gender and diversity programming, Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) cluster co-ordination or protection capacity building. Recent review of programs highlighted too few protection staff with low levels of knowledge and high turnover (due to temporary placements) which negatively impacts protection measures.
The GNA process illustrated the realisation by all offices of the implications flowing from UNHCR’s growing responsibility for Stateless populations. The needs of Stateless persons feature more prominently in the plans than ever before. Some offices have found it difficult to move beyond advocacy and technical advice on statelessness issues to actual protection responses – this will be addressed through GNA planning and prioritization processes for mainstreaming of this population.
IDP’s are solidly integrated into planning, in the way of greater analysis of IDP needs, protection via documentation, land issues and other solutions. Not all offices had sufficient budget to accommodate the needs of IDPs. Further resources are needed to address the expanded IDP responsibilities of the offices, the GNA this has highlighted this as a key priority.
The offices have on-going dilemma of allocating the finite (and insufficient) resources between the competing protection objectives of all peoples of concern. The GNA will highlight more protection measure gaps and act as an advocacy tool to secure more funds – if not, things will not get done.
Introduction: Director of the Department of International Protection Services, George Okoth-Obbo
South and South West Asia, Middle East and Horn of Africa need special attention.
Humanitarian Space shrinking due to the changing nature of armed conflict, restrictions on access, attacks on staff, use of the sovereignty argument by States and side effects of failed peacekeeping efforts. 260 humanitarian aid workers killed, kidnapped or seriously injured in 2008
Staff security becoming greater priority for UNHCR
Access to asylum for asylum seekers has become more difficult because of interception, detention and restrictive procedures which is a growing concern for UNHCR
Need to transfer policies to practice.
UNHCR leads 15 of the 22 IASC protection cluster operations
Goal of UNHCR to strengthen 1951 Convention, despite progress there is insufficient engagement by states, there remains a restrictive Refugee Status Determination system and national security is given priority over refugee protection.
Stressed the importance of the Conclusion on Protracted Situations and the hope that the wording could be agreed by ExComm, as durable solutions, international solidarity and burden sharing were critical for the issue.
Acknowledgement of the growing complexities of root causes of displacement – such as environmental, population growth, declining resources, inequality of access to resources, ecological damage, climate change, urbanisation, armed conflict, extreme deprivation
The legal implications of implications of displacement driven by forces other than persecution, human rights violation and war have yet to be seriously assessed
Whatever the cause of displacement the international protection process and response to provide asylum needs to be flexible to accommodate the varying needs and strengthen in areas where it is weak.
Protecting Persons of Concern in Emergencies a particular focus of UNHCR – an overview
Afghanistan and Pakistan have over 4.7m people of concern, intensified conflict and restricted access has created further disastrous situations
Iraq witnessed greater security & co-ordination with the Government to create conditions for voluntary return and sustainable re-integration of refugees and IDPs. However, is still a fragile situation with over 4.3m displaced internally and in Jordan and Syria
Darfur continues to host over 3m refugees & IDPs, the forced departure of 16 NGO’s threatening the international community’s ability to respond
The Somalian situation continues to remain volatile with 1.3m IDPs and over 500,000 refugees hosted by neighbouring countries
The Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo remain extremely volatile and are witness to SGBV and recruitment of children by armed groups
Sri Lanka’s cease fire allowed humanitarian forces in and seen 280,000 IDPs registered
Columbia has 3m IDPs and 300,000 in refugee like situations in neighbouring countries
Response from Australian Government Delegation:
Recognition of the complexity and frequency of global population flows, exacerbated by the global economic downturn, climate change and conflict induced IDP and protracted refugee situations.
Reference to the new situations of displacement (Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia) and improved security situation in Iraq
Requested that UNHCR clearly articulates its priorities for action for the various persons of concern
Increased focus on protracted refugee situations announced by Australian Government and an on-going commitment to provide durable solutions through a new 4yr re-settlement planning framework
Australia welcoming 13,750 people under its Humanitarian Program for 2009-2010, an increase of 250 places on 2008/9 (7,750 under the special humanitarian program and 6,000 under refugee component)
Increased the target for the resettlement of women at risk and their dependents under the re-settlement program from 10.5% to 12%.
Urge Nepal and Bhutan to work together to facilitate a return to Bhutan for those refugees who wish to take up this option
Congratulates Japan on the launch of a pilot resettlement program
Commends Indonesia for working co-operatively with UNHCR to build a strong framework to ensure protection and minimise irregular movements
Australia will continue to provide resettlement palces for those referred by UNHCR and will continue to fund projects to stablilise displaced populations, support sustainable return and build protection capacity in the region.
Pleased by the agreement reached at the 3rd Ministerial conference of the Bali Process to use an ad hoc group process to mitigate increased irregular population flows and the impact on victims
Australian Government announced its complementary protection model to give effect to Australia’s non-refoulment obligations within its protection visa framework.
Anyone who has ever read anything on here or follows me on Twitter knows I was an ALP apparatchik. I worked as a media adviser to five Ministers and a Premier of NSW. For the better part of the last decade, I had a peanut gallery view of what is now known as, ‘the NSW disease’.
Following the #NSWisconsin disgrace, I was considering becoming a financial member of the ALP again, despite the fact that I can’t abide what I see as policy missteps and the inability to articulate a message – any message – consistently, thoughtfully and while keeping our hands still.
I was very close to giving Sussex Street my money again because at last, here was an enemy without. Premier Barry O’Farrell had given me a reason to say, ‘this is wrong, and I am willing to swallow every bit of bile and help pay, through my membership dues, for a sustained campaign against this law.’ I was so close until I read this. It’s easy to demonise Joe Tripodi. I can’t stand him for two reasons: he’s really smart, but didn’t use his brains to make good public policy. Instead, he dragged behind former Minister and MLC, Eddie Obeid, preferring to cultivate patronage and influence, all for the title of ‘kingmaker’. Secondly, I’ve seen him smile and stab people in the back. Most of them, his close ‘mates’, some, ‘enemies’ he helped ascend to the dizzying heights of Governor Macquarie Tower. So when I read that he would stay on the rules committee, my heart sank and I left my money in the bank, because it reminded me how much I hate the generally unelected, largely unaccountable ‘factional’ players who make it their mission in life to build up and then tear down elected leaders; fill Caucus with people you would not ask to make a bed, let alone Cabinet; a recipe which reads, ‘hey voters, we’re the ALP and we are not fit to govern the state / country’. The list is long. It is filled with names that, unless they are from NSW, I’m largely familiar with. What I am familiar with, is their modus operandi. I’m sure I could swap Joe de Bruyn and Don Farrell for Russ Collison and Mark Arbib and come out with the same answer.
I read the entirety of Senator John Faulkner’s Wran Lecture last night with great interest. The patrician Faulkner looks like the anti-Tripodi. Furiously intelligent (never go to a Faulkner trivia night and challenge an answer); ‘prime ministerial confidante’; ‘respected elder’; statesman. Last night, I read the speech and called him ‘a giant’. I highly recommend his 2005 Henry Parkes Oration, which takes a much broader swipe at the malaise affecting Australian politics. The faintest whiff that the ALP is about to set its hair on fire is enough to make the news. When John Faulkner launches a stinging rebuke / critique / attack, it sets the news agenda for the day. Pretty much everyone loves it because it fits the narrative that the Prime Minister is the Socialist Left’s Lucrezia Borgia and the shoguns (tired of warlords) all look like Paul Howes. Actually, Paul Howes doesn’t look much like Paul Howes these days. I digress: I agree with a great deal of what Senator Faulkner says: the party desperately needs reform; there should be debate at state and national conferences; branch membership requires revitalisation and those who are joining – especially through Young Labor – are doing so because they want to duel with ideas, not numbers; to serve the Party, not some jumped up bag of wind parading as a false liege.
That said I am going to call Senator Faulkner on a few points. By your own admission, you, Senator, are a bloody hypocrite. You have been a NSW Senator for 23 years. What did you do before the Party – not the people – sent you down the Hume Highway for so long? You were Assistant General Secretary of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party and worked for NSW Minister for Sport and Recreation, Ken Booth MP, following two years spent as a special education teacher. Your official bio is a little light on the detail provided in your Wikipedia entry, Senator, you define factional warlord and apparatchik as much as Joe Tripodi does. Tripodi worked as an economist at the Reserve Bank of Australia for as long as you taught. He then went to the Labor Council and into the Bear Pit. You both entered the party as teenagers; you both went through the party machine before entering Parliament. One difference: Joe was elected by the people of Fairfield. Your name was put on a ticket and sent to the printers. As I said, I can’t stand Joe, but don’t hover somewhere above the fray like a bespectacled Moses when you have supped from the same cup and exerted more influence over a longer time.
Lead, don’t follow, public opinion, you say? Yet the longevity of Australian political leaders such as Bob Hawke and John Howard is in large part due to their uncanny ability to read the mood of the electorate. It is a rare talent that radiates, ‘the leader knows what they are doing and it is what I want’, both within the party and outside it. It is not something they dialled-a-mate for. In my opinion, the perception that Howard had outstayed his welcome – that he had lost ‘touch’ – played a big role in his defeat. Hawke? Well, Keating simply had what Costello did not: the internal fortitude to want the leadership so badly he risked wrecking it to obtain it. Listen to members, supporters and MPs, you say? Yet when Kevin Rudd ran government through a kitchen cabinet of four; when he established innumerate committees, endlessly consulted and produced white papers and nothing happened; that was when the polls went to the wall and the faceless men got on the phones. There was plenty of listening, plenty of dithering and nothing happening. You were in that Caucus meeting, where the elected leader of the nation was replaced without a vote of MPs, you miserable, gormless bunch. @KRuddPM knew he didn’t have the numbers, addressed the Caucus one final time as leader, and emerged @KRuddMP.
Let MPs speak their minds in the name of diversity. Fine. I don’t think there are many people in the party who would be terribly pleased with the clusterfuck that is the Government’s … what … it’s not even a policy … the clusterfuck that is the Government’s latest idea about how asylum seekers should be processed, and yet, with the exception of Fremantle MP Melissa Parke, none has stated their dissent. But here’s the thing: brave, dissenting Melissa had not even spoken to the Minister for Immigration when she went public. It beggars belief. Let MPs say what they want? Amen. Get them five minutes with the Minister at the same time so they can have a chat first. On second thought, if you can’t be bothered having the discussion internally, if you have not grabbed Chris Bowen after a division and said, ‘look, I’m not happy about this, I need to speak to you’; if you have not had the gumption to even attempt to piss inside the tent, why should I listen to you piss on it from outside?
Senator Faulkner wants vigorous debate at party conferences and in the branches. He also advocates a say for ‘progressive-minded’ people, who are falling into the arms of third party organisations. Who are they? The ALP is not Get Up. It’s a political party. You can’t just put your name to one online petition, or even draft one, and ignore the other 30 issues of the day because you don’t care about them as much. Well, you can – you’re a citizen and you can do that if you like. But have to give a damn about stuff you’re not interested in when you’re a member of a party. Did I care when I door-knocked suburbs during the 2007 NSW election that the issues raised by voters were almost always council-related? No. Because the candidate needed to know about the cracked pavement, so that when they were elected they could pressure council to get it fixed, and if they didn’t, you could talk to concerned residents, go to the local paper – do something! I am sure people would flock to ALP branches, line-up to get the best seats at conference and participate in full-throated, exciting debates. About the things they’re interested in. Then when it’s time to talk about the not so interesting to them stuff – see you later? Supporters of the ALP? We exist. We’re called voters. Here’s what I want. I want a Caucus where backbenchers get as much time with Ministers and the PM as independents do. If they can’t get a hearing, or are fobbed off by the apparatchiks, then have an almighty spray. After all, the government is only one heart attack away from an election – now is the best time to speak your mind. Senator Faulkner just has – again,
Senator, you are there. You are a powerful figure – so powerful your speech has dominated the news agenda today. You’ve been talking about reforming the party for years. We have review, after review, after review. You co-authored the last one, so act! Stop telling us something we don’t already know.
Writing this with a fair amount of trepidation, but in the firm belief that real stupidity arises from not asking questions.
On Saturday morning, I thought about the Say Yes Australia rallies in support of the so-called ‘carbon tax’. (Aside: why is it beyond the ALP to give anything a simple name? Half the battle of political will is lost when the Opposition’s label sticks).
I thought about the pros & cons of the policy formerly known as the Emissions Trading Scheme. I don’t there are many cons; NSW has had a carbon credit scheme in place for years, but few people probably realise it, and while it was a Labor policy, the Gillard Government is not pointing to it as a handy example that its idea is hardly a first. I think polluters should ‘pay’ for carbon emissions, but recognise that it will come at an economic cost, firstly to industry & secondly to consumers. Fears of unaffordable power bills are something I recuse myself from commenting on as I don’t struggle. Then again, I believe that compensating people for existing behaviours is a self-defeating proposition. There are many ways people can save on their power bills; simple old rules that my Mum drilled into us: switching off appliances at the plug so you don’t pay for stand-by power; washing in cold water & knowing peak & off-peak periods. Maybe it’s time for a savings-based approach, which would recognise cuts in household consumption on an account basis, so that larger families are not disadvantaged or treated in the same way as single people like me.
What troubled me on Saturday is not the economic argument for pricing carbon emissions. I get that. This is where the trepidation comes in. I cannot, for the life of me, explain climate change. I cannot articulate to a skeptic why action is required. I resort to a string of words; polar ice caps melting, rising sea levels, Tuvalu sinking, longer and more frequent droughts … and even then, I don’t know why.
My whole being is wired toward being able to answer questions. I am a curious person by nature – and if I don’t understand something, I ask questions, read from a variety of sources and listen to various points of view until I am able to draw my own conclusion. I like to know things. I like to be ready to be able to discuss things, not as an expert, but at least as an interested party. Here, sadly, is where climate change and I part ways. Climate science bores me rigid. I skip articles, ignore interviews – I define apathetic. I’m supposedly bright and engaged with the world – and I am ignorant. I didn’t even watch “An Inconvenient Truth”.
I accept that while some of it is me, not you, as someone who has spent a working life trying to communicate the why, I have to give climate science communication a fail. As a political adviser, I worked in many land use portfolios – I have seen, understand and can clearly articulate the problems caused by deforestation, salinity, beach erosion, even weeds. Maybe the climate change window passed me by, but now I feel like the dope at the back of the class, almost afraid of asking the question for fear of being laughed at by the other kids. Increasingly, I am disquieted when someone expresses anything less than full-throated support in public. I feel a sharp intake of collective breath and slogans, not reason, spewed forth. I don’t want a 140 character answer – but I want to be enticed by the subject. I don’t disbelieve the science, I just don’t understand it – and I’m not prepared to rely on, ‘well, 1,400 scientists and Tim Flannery can’t be wrong’ as an answer if I’m asked about it.
So … I’m not a climate scientist. Would one of you put your hand up and point me to some readable information from a range of credible sources that will help me. Otherwise I will continue to take Abraham Lincoln’s advice:
It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
So DJ JG’s Aussie song collection for POTUS was a fizzer among the Twitterati. She also gave him the second most expensive Sherrin, which is the equivalent of not ordering lobster on your first date. I think I can do better, mostly because I am style, fashion & politics at once.
In alphabetti-spaghetti order:
AC/DC:
It’s A Long Way To The Top
Thunderstruck
Shook Me All Night Long
Highway To Hell
The Allniters:
Montego Bay (every list has to feature a cover)
Australian Crawl:
Errol
Reckless (Don’t Be So)
Boys Light Up
Downhearted
Beautiful People
Who wouldn’t want a tribute to Tasmania’s greatest pantsman? OK, Maybe more Bill Clinton’s style. Have to include Reckless if only for the accompanying subtitles.
Boom Crash Opera:
Dancing In The Storm
The Best Thing
The Cat Empire:
Hello
Days Like These
The Church: (meh, under ‘C’)
Under The Milky Way
Almost With You
Love song dedication for FLOTUS on those long return flights on Air Force One
Cold Chisel:
Flame Trees
Bow River
Khe Sanh
Saturday Night
Forever Now
Essential prep for 2012 campaign when visiting factories in the flyover states.
Crowded House:
Into Temptation (hmm, maybe one for Bill …)
Private Universe (because no one knows what it’s like to sit behind that desk, except the other people who have)
The Cruel Sea:
The Honeymoon Is Over
Black Stick
Better Get A Lawyer Son
Because let’s face it, it is.
Deborah Conway (incl. Do Ré Mi)
Man Overboard
Consider This
It’s Only The Beginning
Decoder Ring:
Out of Range
Whispy vocal has to come in at some stage, right?
Divinyls
Science Fiction
Boys In Town
Dragon: (if Crowded House count, the fucking Hunter brothers do)
April Sun in Cuba (derr …)
Get That Jive (for trips to Chicago)
Are You Old Enough?
Still In Love With You
Rain
The Dynamic Hepnotics:
Soul Kind Of Feeling
The Easybeats
Friday On My Mind
She’s So Fine
Ed Kuepper:
The Way I Made You Feel
The sexiest chord progression. Maybe not of all time, but it is right up there.
Eric Bogle:
And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
GANGgajang:
Sounds of Then
The Go-Betweens
Cattle and Cane
Bachelor Kisses
Streets Of Your Town
Hoodoo Gurus:
My Girl
Bittersweet
Like Wow-Wipeout!
Good Times
Hunters & Collectors:
Throw Your Arms Around Me
Holy Grail
Say Goodbye
Do You See What I See?
One of the seminal bands of my (misspent) youth
Icehouse:
Hey Little Girl
INXS:
Need You Tonight
Original Sin
Never Tear Us Apart
New Sensation
Don’t Change
What You Need
I Send A Message
Burn for You
Mystify
Devil Inside
OK … THE seminal band of my (misspent) youth. Limiting it to 10 tracks was difficult.
Jet:
Are You Gonna Be My Girl?
Jo Camilleri (Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons & The Black Sorrows):
because you are witless. You can bet on or against your own team or race, consort with criminals, paint a horse so it resembles another, poor performer. You can insist drivers race on unsafe tracks, and take action only when one life too many is lost.
