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Archive for the ‘Editorial’ Category

The Smell of Pell

Posted in Editorial, Society, tagged , , , , on May 20, 2015| 1 Comment »

We all have visceral instincts about others. Without literally smelling him, my senses and sensibilities signal that Cardinal George Pell, that erstwhile defender of the indefensible in the Catholic Church is a corrupt individual of the lowest (or highest?) order.

He seems thoroughly untrustworthy, and certainly willing to suborn, dare I say pell-mell, a recent witness to the Royal Commission into Child Abuse, who was allegedly abused as a child by a Catholic priest under Pell’s protection.

David Shoebridge, Greens MP in NSW Parliament, is trying again to introduce legislation to allow victims to sue the Church for damages. At present the so-called Ellis Defence protects the Church, which is deemed to be an unincorporated association with its assets held in unrelated trusts.

John Ellis failed in the High Court to overturn this outrageous rort, where the Church effectively does not exist as a legal entity with attendant responsibilities. Which is probably appropriate for an organisation dealing in the occult, but let’s them off the hook for all their gross wrongdoings.

The Church is also exempt from any form of taxation in Australia, which is handy for a wealthy fraternity (brotherhood indeed!) dedicated to serving, oh hallelujah, the poorest and disadvantaged of our abundant society, as did Jesus apparently.

Pell should be brought back from his Rome sinecure to face the Royal Commission, and finally be put under forensic legal scrutiny with serious consequences, and not just brush off any criticism as before. More power to Shoebridge, and may justice be done one day!

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Anzac Fatigue & Iraq Redux

Posted in Culture, Editorial, Society, tagged , , , , on April 25, 2015| 3 Comments »

It’s meant to describe a feeling of consumer overload of Anzac themed TV offerings crashing in the ratings. Commercialisation is an understatement in this era of hyper-marketing of our cultural markers. Appropriation of Anzac for supermarkets, burgers, you-name-it, has been extant for years and becoming more flagrant. It can offend devotees of this quasi-religious popular annual outpouring of sentimentality known as Anzac Day.

It’s all been said already and I don’t mind ‘learned nationalistic sentimentality’ as a description of what’s going on in this veritable orgy of commemoration and brainwashing around it. Apparently its themes too have been updated from heroism and mateship to sacrifice and service. It rolls off the tongue nicely.

If you want to discuss the lessons we’ve learnt about not repeating (military) history then you have to explain why we are again sending more troops to Iraq, That’s right: making a total 1,000 to help train the Iraqi army. We did such a good job there last time, and it worked brilliantly in Afghanistan during 14 years of military mission in that benighted country.

As always our troops head off at Uncle Sam’s bidding, without even a parliamentary debate of the merits, strategy and national interest for Australia in doing so. The ongoing vacuum of political discourse about our endless military adventures is shocking. And this latest escalation is even more scandalous under cover of an Anzac Day centenary extravaganza.

Australians really haven’t learnt a bloody thing in the last 100 years or more. Ignorance, conformity and militarism are a fatal (ahem!) trifecta in our national DNA, and it’s grown like a cancer since we first sent NSW troops to fight against the Maoris in Enzed in the 1860s.

Poor fellow my country indeed, to borrow Herbert’s famous book title. My anger has turned to resignation and sorrow at our unrepentant failings.

Another VB, mate?

You mean Villers-Bretonneux?

 

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School of Hard Knox

Posted in Editorial, Society, tagged , , , , on March 5, 2015| 1 Comment »

Oh dear, the motto of Knox Grammar School is ‘Virgile Agitur’, which translates as ‘Doing the Manly Thing’. As the school is under the spotlight of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse those words take on an ominous ambiguity. The school is one of the privileged bastions of male-only education with righteous Christian overtones and bullying, chauvinistic culture which decorate the firmament of Sydney’s upper classes.

The very English model of these schools flourished in our secular sandy soil. In recent years they attached themselves limpet-like to the public purse, as the aspiring nouveaux riches deserted the honourable public school system. To ensure that the fruits of their loins would prosper in those hothouses of networking and ‘values’ which the parents somehow fail to inculcate themselves.

The Royal Commission is investigating sexual abuse of students by teachers during 1970-2012 (oh yeah!) and a culture of denial and cover-up by headmasters and staff worthy of the Catholic Church (theirs is Uniting). The long-serving headmaster Dr Patterson has admitted his connivance in failing to notify police, nor take any disciplinary action and protecting the school’s reputation above all. The hypocritical righteousness of these superior institutions makes my blood simmer!

The nefarious influence of same-sex schools on society has been canvassed before, and the evidence is accumulating. The headmaster himself is charged with handling the genitals of a visiting 16 year old actress performing in a school play in full view of the male student audience. The headmaster of another elite boys school was previously a Knox housemaster and did not follow up on reported sexual abuse going on under his nose. So to speak.

The lukewarm expression of shock and surprise by Peter Fitzsimons, a Knox Old Boy newspaper columnist who knew nothing of the shenanigans going on there is implausible denial. It only goes to show the misplaced loyalties and tribal indoctrination practised at the school, like others of its GPS ilk. ‘School spirit’ can be translated as Mitläufer, in the language of Goethe! And for a classical allusion, the labours of Hercules would be needed to clean out these augean stables of bad school culture, which always close ranks against the critics and outsiders.

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Dark Side of Aussie Sport – No. 1

Posted in Editorial, Sport, tagged , on February 21, 2015| 3 Comments »

An Australian batsman is struck by a ball at the base of the skull and dies after a cricket test match. Followed by an amazing outpouring of grief, eulogies, hero worship and memorials of all sorts across the country. Way out of proportion. The incident is described as a ‘freak accident’. Why it was freakish is puzzling. It’s actually freakish that more such accidents don’t occur.

The huge elephant in the cricket change rooms and corridors of power is the modern version of ‘bodyline’, a term used during the 1932-33 test series against England. English fast bowler Harold Larwood targeted Australian batsmen instead of the wicket, which was considered shockingly ungentlemanly, dangerous and unfair play. Just not cricket! These days it’s normal bowling practice for all teams.

In the wake, so to speak, of the recent death, the cricket commentariat were resolutely silent about a glaring, fundamental problem at the heart of the game. Along with administrators and players themselves, an omertà rules: not a word about the danger of hurling a hard ball at speeds up to 160 kph directly at another human being, including his head. The only rule is to make it bounce first and try to ensure he’s in front of the wicket. It’s tantamount to aggravated assault, or worse. The wearing of helmets and other protection, including the ‘box’, for sensitive body parts only underscores the problem. The rules of the sacrosanct game should change, but mentioning it would be apostasy of the highest order.

Add so-called sledging, that is verbally insulting your opponents, preferably with racist taunts, and you have an unsavoury cocktail of super aggressive, negative role model behaviour. The big-money professional sports have refined their games for profit and entertainment so that only vague vestiges of sportsmanship remain. An obsolete, old-fashioned idea that can also be interred.

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Bad Oysters

Posted in Editorial, Environment on December 17, 2014| 3 Comments »

Nah, I don’t eat ‘em, never have, and don’t get the gourmandise associated with these slimy concoctions of marine life. Unfortunately they colonise the littoral zones of the Wide Brown Land and abroad (lovely word, redolent of a bygone era when the colonies indeed knew their place), waiting silently for clumsy fools to submit to open-foot surgery on their scalpel-like shells. Dastardly molluscs!

Such was the fate of your KC culture correspondent while clambering around in bare feet trying to go fishing. Such hubris! Hence several weeks of enforced immobilisation ensued and an intensive reading program, the fruits of which are shared in these book reviews, with more to follow. And KC resurges from a somnambulant hiatus. Oh yeah.

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Petering Out?

Posted in Editorial, Society, tagged , , , on April 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Reader interest in the dearth and death of Sir Peters calls for analysis of the obvious corollary of a dwindling supply of Peters generally. No, not coronary, although that could well be a primary cause of their disappearance.

In fact, given the advanced age of the Peter population, heart disease may have dealt with many of them. Think of any Peters you know personally: most are sixty plus, with a few in their fifties, and my forty year old son-in-law. Co-founder of Paypal Peter Thiel is aged 43. Seriously, there are no Peters in their 20s or 30s or younger. Except Europe’s Youngest Stunt Rider.

The name of Jesus’ favourite apostle doesn’t even appear in the Top 100 Boy Names List for 2013. What’s happening, people? Even Elliott gets a mention along with Carson (are you kidding: son of car?) and Eli. Aiden is in second spot, after eight years as number one! It’s not even spelt correctly: the place is called Aden. Exclamation marks galore.

It’s all over for the Peters, bar the shouting. Which means you all shouting drinks for us remaining Peters until we sail off into the sunset. A precious diminishing resource to be enjoyed while we last. Imagine a world without Peters. At least my grandson has it for his middle name. Maybe the music group ‘Peter, Bjorn & John’ may lead to a resurgence of Peter babies, but it’s not looking good at this stage.

The race is on to become the last one standing. My SIL is short odds. No need to run Blue Peter up the flagpole yet though, as there’s no sunset sailing here. By the way, Blue Peter is the world’s longest-running children’s TV show, in Britain since 1958. See how we last? But what will happen to the Peter principle? So many questions still unanswered.

 

Blue Peter fair wind

 

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Asylum Seeker Business

Posted in Diplomacy, Economy, Editorial, Society, World, tagged , , , , , on February 26, 2014| Leave a Comment »

The sorry saga of Australia’s offshore asylum seeker gulag is not just about bringing suffering and hopelessness to those in detention. In fact for the government contractors who run the island camps it’s a lucrative business.

The eponymous G4S, a provider of ‘security solutions’, claims to be one of the world’s largest employers with 625,000 staff in 125 countries. It earned $244 million for managing Manus Island camp for 5 months. Australian-owned Transfield earned $302 million for looking after the Nauru camp over the last year, but will now take over both islands, under a non-tendered 20 month contract for the bargain basement price of $1.22 billion.

My trusty solar-powered calculator was put in bright sunlight for this calculation. With 1,332 Manus and 867 Nauru detainees it works out to $554,798 income per inmate for Transfield: KACHING! By the way, they are people like us, not hardened criminals – the detainees I mean! A good little earner for Transfield though, paid straight out of our squeezed taxpayer purse. It would certainly buy a helluva lot of incarceration in our regular prison system.

Interestingly objections to the morality of Transfield’s detainee operations are coming from artists in the Sydney & Melbourne biennales protesting against their sponsorship of them. A dilemma indeed for arts organisations and those purporting to critique society.

On a tangent from gulag service providers, but equally repugnant, is Foreign Minister Julie Bishop trying to stitch up the Cambodian government to take our asylum seekers. With Australian aid of $329 million over the last four years, we are one of its largest donors, so her bargaining chips are huge. Human rights abuse is rife in Cambodia, social welfare is non-existent, 20% of the population lives in poverty and 40% of children under five are malnourished. Our Julie is plumbing new depths of cynicism and hypocrisy on our behalf. But who cares, right? Out of sight and out of mind, at any price.

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