The ongoing debacle of leadership of NSW Labor and Premier’s role is a soap opera, tragi-comedy or facsimile of TV series The Sopranos. Moir’s SMH cartoon (Aug 27) shows a limousine of Mafia-style gangsters driven by a familiar Labor figure and hapless Premier Rees surrounded by goons. A caption reading “He Who Must Be…” is to be completed by ‘Obeid’, the name of the driver, [...]
Archive for August, 2009
Powerbroken!
Posted in Politics, tagged Della Bosca, Eddie Obeid, Joe Tripodi, Moir cartoon, Nathan Rees, NSW Labor, NSW mafia, NSW Premier, powerbrokers, Sartor, The Sopranos on August 31, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Balancing ‘Balibo’
Posted in Culture, Diplomacy, tagged Balibo, Balibo House Trust, East Timor, Gough Whitlam, Indonesian invasion, Luke Davies, Paul Cleary, Ramos Horta, Richard Woolcott, Robert Connolly, Roger East, Tony Maniaty on August 27, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Robert Connolly’s film ‘Balibo’ relates events in 1975 in East Timor around the killing of Australian journalists reporting Indonesia’s invasion. Jill Jolliffe’s book ‘Cover-Up: the Inside Story of the Balibo Five’ was used, and David Williamson collaborated on the script. The film has certainly had a desired effect of stirring up debate about that shadowy period. So far Gough Whitlam has kept [...]
Getting Greched
Posted in Politics, Society, tagged Auditor General, Godwin Grech, Ken Henry, national security, organisational psychologists, Ozcar, Treasury, Utegate, Verona Burgess, vetting pack on August 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Re the Utegate farce: the Auditor-General reported on Treasury’s role and its senior policy wonk & leak Gollum Grechen, uncovering shortfalls in departmental security procedures. Apparently GG’s failing physical and mental health could have been detected by an expired national security clearance (Verona Burgess, AFR August 07). Designated second-top level as ‘secret’, it required the return of a ‘vetting pack’, which GG [...]
Gender Bender
Posted in Editorial, Society, tagged adolescent boys, co-ed schools, Gordon Parker, Miranda Devine, Shore school on August 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Adolescent boys don’t know how to relate to girls, reports Gordon Parker, a psychiatrist who talks to parents at boys schools. Miranda Devine (SMH 13 August) linked this to youth suicide, over-medicalisation of depression, growing social pressures on adolescents. A conference at private boys school Shore on the ‘particular vulnerabilities of boys’ appears to miss the point. The elephant in the room, [...]
War: Sydney v Kormoran
Posted in Society, tagged Carnarvon WA, German raider Kormoran, HMAS Sydney, Terence Coles enquiry on August 18, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Australians have an interest, not necessarily well-read, in episodes of their military history. In recent decades inchoate Aussie tribal urges have conjured up ’remembrance’ travel to foreign cemeteries, former battlefields, prisoner of war camps, mountainous jungle trails and more. HMAS Sydney ‘mystery’ endured 68 years, and is now finally resolved. On November 19, 1941 an Indian Ocean naval battle took place 112 nautical miles off Carnarvon. German raider HSK Kormoran caught Australia’s cruiser HMAS Sydney by surprise and attacked. Sydney sank [...]
Body Surfing Boogie
Posted in Sport, tagged Body-surfing, Great Australian Bight, Huey, Niagara Dam on August 15, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Body surfing at Kookynie goes back to those big rain days of yore when flood waters rushed down the creek into Niagara Dam. Older Kookyniers remember surfing through boulders using kangaroo-skin & wooden flippers. In 1897-98 the dam was built to assure water supply for the new mining metropolis, and named after its US counterpart, inaugurated by WA Premier Forrest. It was an instant ’white elephant’. Flood creek flows into the dam [...]
Timor Time: Letter to G. Whitlam
Posted in Diplomacy, Editorial, Politics, World, tagged Balibo, Don Willesee, East Timor, Geraldine Willesee, Gough Whitlam, Indonesian invasion on August 13, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Dear Gough, Events at Balibo in Timor in 1975, involving the killing of five Australian journalists by Indonesian military, and another in Dili, are resolutely not disappearing from our collective memory. Release of the film ‘Balibo’ will bring this tragedy and sorry chapter of Australia’s foreign policy to the attention of new generations, as only [...]
First Home Follies
Posted in Economy, Society, Sport, tagged First home buyers grant, Global Financial Chicken, housing prices, IMF World Economic Outlook, Steve Keen Assoc Prof UWS on August 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Last October the first-home buyers ’grant’ for purchase of established homes was doubled to $14,000, and tripled to $21,000 for new ones. Since then the average first home loan has blown out by $22,400 to $284,700. Of course, any nexus between those similar amounts is purely coincidental. National house prices increased 4.2% in the June quarter, and declined only 1.4% over the last 12 years. So the [...]
‘Public Enemies’
Posted in Culture, tagged Christian Bale, FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, John Dillinger, Johnny Depp, Marion Cotillard, Michael Mann, Public Enemies on August 10, 2009 | 2 Comments »
No, its not about fundamentalist terrorists, email-faking public servants or even lying, scabrous politicians. The film ‘Public Enemies’ starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard, directed by Michael Mann, is about the life and times of bank robber John Dillinger during the 1930s in the USA. Similar to Mann’s TV series ‘Miami Vice’, he serves up a very stylised story with little plot or character development and [...]
