Dikkii's Diatribe

Credit where credit's due

2011-08-31T14:06:00.002+10:00

Andrew Bolt (Hun/Tele/Advertiser) had a blog post pulled on Monday. Mainly due to the fact that his post could have been interpreted as muckraking by making a big song and dance about a fraudulent Glenn Milne article in The Oz. An interesting part is that some are suggesting that Bolt might have posted after Milne’s column was pulled. Not only that, but News left the post online for a considerable amount of time after Milne's article was removed.

Milne, of course, is best known for attempting to blue Stephen Mayne one year on stage at the Walkley Awards. I had absolutely no need to mention that, but I'm hedging my bets in case Bolt is correct about his post being 'fair, accurate and in the public interest'.

Today, in his column, he’s got me in stitches by squealing “censorship”. The problem with Bolt’s brand of satire, is that it’s often lost on his audience, who see his character’s flagrant racism and bullying as being the real deal. And this is where the problem starts.

I’m aware that Bolt’s blog is a bit of a testing ground for his wilder humour. What goes out there gets tested amongst the comments from the fruitcakes that dominate his readership and the eventually worked on a little harder. Eventually, Bolt creams off the stuff that’s silly enough to outrage and amuse, yet the stuff that’s too ‘out there’ gets forgotten about. What’s left gets written up as ‘proper’ copy in his columns in News’ south eastern newspapers.

Yes folks, newspapers still persist with the notion that if it goes online and doesn’t make it into the printed copy, it doesn’t need to have the same rigour applied to it.

News are a bit naughty posting Bolt's brand of satire as serious comment. Although I have no evidence to make any claims whatsoever and completely disagree with any sort of generalising, their audience is widely considered by some to be totally illiterate throwbacks who are gullible enough believe anything shovelled in the direction of their snouts. If this is true, News probably ought to move Bolt's column to the humour section.

Bolt had a bit of a holiday yesterday. Rather a lot of people pointed out that allowing Bolt’s post of yesterday to continue while Milne’s article was withdrawn was inconsistent and finally, News acted on Bolt’s article. Bolt himself tried this gag in the post about not believing one crucial issue – that Gillard had never lived in the house in question, but it was clear that it was never going to top the howler of tarring the PM in the first place.

Bolt put on a spectacular show of “principles” by refusing to write anything which I found hilarious. But eventually, he posted again. I am going to go out on a limb to point out that this is the funniest article that he has ever written. How much work went in to ensuring that the inconsistencies weren’t so obvious? Granted, the ludicrous appeals to free speech is ground that he’s worked before, but nowhere else has his work been as complete as it is here.

Check some of these out.

He comes out firing, livid he is, with the opening sentence:

The Prime Minister overstepped the line when she called the chairman and CEO of News Limited, John Hartigan.

‘Overstepped the line’. That’s gold, that is.

Almost immediately after, he’s peppering gag after gag, with:

...attempt at censorship...

...sinister overtones...

...threats of inquiries and forced sales...

All of these are from the second sentence.

You can almost hear the violins in the distance as he moans:

Yesterday morning I was considering resigning as a News Limited columnist.

Laugh? I nearly threw up!

Throughout this column, Bolt feigns annoyance with his employer, the supposed company he loves, and he actually pulls the, 'fair, accurate and in the public interest’ line out, showing that he’s neither prepared to tolerate his employer’s own freedom of speech, nor that of the commenters on his blog, with the odd complaint making it through the net.

The sentence that makes this the most complete column that Bolt’s aggrieved conservative has posted, though, is this:

As I made clear, the issue was not that Gillard had done anything improper.

As I clutched at my desk with one hand and my swollen abdominals with the other, I managed to pull myself back on to my chair after flipping backwards and falling to the floor, helpless in a kind of hysterical fug where I’m sure that I saw colours flying past me. I wiped away tears from my sopping face, amazed that one could laugh so hard.

A serious columnist/blogger, after all, wouldn’t have posted anything at all, if that was truly the issue. Bolt has surpassed himself and I don’t believe he’ll ever post anything quite so outrageous ever again.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 2

2011-07-28T17:36:00.000+10:00

In our first part, we heavily criticised News Corp for just being a bad news organisation. By that, I mean that as a news organisation, they are bad. Incredibly bad. (I didn’t mean that they just produce bad news, oh heavens to Betsy, no)

It should be pointed out, though, once again, that I was only singling out News as the worst of what appears to be a very bad bunch. I listed a whole bunch of crimes committed by the media in part 1, some of which were also committed by other media sources as well.

A really good example of disgraceful media practice that is committed across the board, is the tendency of the financial media to regurgitate media releases from companies, without any sort of objective research. Media Watch appears to have strangely left financial journalists alone to date, but will pursue other journalists who regurgitate press releases.

Another is celebrity stories – I once tuned to the Seven News one Sunday night to find that after the first news item, the rest was utter drivel about celebrities. Until the sport part of the news, that is. I actually think that there’s a market for a news agency to set up a news program with the slogan, “No celebrity stories!” It would just about have me in a heartbeat.

So I think that I can say that I’ve covered the non-News media, now. Can I move on? Can I get away with answering my own rhetorical questions? Can I even get away with asking them and not looking like a dickhead?

On to regulation. We’re seeing a strangely quick grab by the government for regulation as we speak at getting media privacy laws on to the agenda. This is suspicious, actually, because the government seems to have had something ready to go. And funnily enough, the rhetoric is being ramped up by the government on this as we speak, although the smell of other items on the agenda is starting to waft through – check out Stephen Conroy’s rant of a week ago against the bias of News Corp, in particular, News Corp's own shrill coverage.

But privacy is an issue. I maintain that with some decently drafted privacy rules, we’ll see less stupid ‘Celebrity buys carton of milk!’ stories, less Milly Dowler infringements and less barefaced disregard to the presumption of innocence.

Bias is a completely different topic.

I did discuss this only briefly in the first part. It should be noted that where News publications seem to be getting so far out to the right that they are probably around Fiji at the moment, there is bias in the stables of the ABC, SBS and Fairfax. The Fairfax double act of The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald as well as SBS would rightly be categorised as centre-left and the ABC is very much centre-right, these days. Some would say, well at least these are close to centrist, although I maintain that it would be better if they actually were centrist. I think that getting the politics balanced is another step in the right direction.

But these agencies seem to be batting a lone game. Yes, there are very minor publications that play way out in left field, such as the Green-Left Weekly, but no one pays any attention to these seriously. Yet where we know that the Green-Left Weekly is an amazingly unbalanced piece of claptrap, News has done a wonderful job of marketing papers like the Tele and the Oz as “mainstream”.

Folks, the Oz is much further to the right than the Green-Left Weekly is to the left. People need to wake up to themselves: These are not the mainstream even less than the GLW is not the mainstream.

Some of you are probably wondering why I categorise the ABC as “centre-right”. Way back in the late nineties or early noughties, John Howard, the then Prime Minister, bemoaned the left-leaning national broadcaster, with the immortal line about how it needed right-wing versions of Phillip Adams there to balance out the supposed left bias. I agreed with some of the sentiment of this, but where Howard was advocating voices on the right to balance the voices on the left, I disagreed with adding the rightist voices and questioned the need to have Phillip Adams at all.

Disregarding the utter boringness of Adams, would it not have been better to eliminate the leftist (and rightist) voices and replace them all, left or right, with centrist ones?

Howard’s idea won, and significant efforts were made to balance out the supposed left-lean of the national broadcaster. But where the majority of the left-leaning voices were only situated marginally left of centre, Adams notwithstanding, voices on the right now seem to come from the mostly lunar right.

I will never forget the morning I woke up and flicked on Insiders to find Barrie Cassidy sharing the studio with Andrew Bolt (who isn’t as funny outside of print), Gerard Henderson and Janet Albrechtsen. It was that point that I realised that as far as the ABC went, the rooster had been put in charge of the henhouse.

It seems to be hammered home whenever I tune into ABC News Breakfast and see people reading the news headlines like Tim Wilson of the Institute of Public Affairs, a seriously right-wing bunch of fruitcakes with an ultra-libertarian bent, or that guy who used to be the mayor of Stonnington Council. You know, the bloke who comes across as a caffeine and Asperger’s-driven boy scout who knows the Liberal Party’s policy book line by line.

Of course, I'm now just bagging the ABC. How about the Nine Network, known by some as the "propaganda arm of the Liberal Party"? Radio stations like 2GB and 3AW?

Recently, John Howard was dismissive of accusations of bias in News' papers. 'Suck it up,' he's reported to have said, having been greatly critical of the ABC during his time as Prime Minister, yet he was given an enormous free kick his whole career from channel Nine, as well as from people like Alan Jones on 2GB. Hypocrisy is huge.

It’s fair to say that bias is a major problem, just like privacy.

It’s clearly a lost cause expecting that market forces will take care of this, so it’s time to regulate, as the late Nate Dogg said to his homey Warren G.

So what kind of regulation should we be looking at? Just the word ‘regulation’ itself is going to get the media all frothy with disapproval, but it’s fair to say that the media have had more than enough time to show us that they can do their jobs properly. They have obviously failed to do this.

I propose that the best place to start is to look at the regulation which applies in the most similar profession to journalism: Accountancy.

No, you are reading this correctly. Just like in journalism, the accounting profession reports. Journalists report news. Accountants report financial news. I don’t think that it’s too difficult to argue that financial reporting is any less important than any other type of reporting, yet no one argues for ‘freedom of the accounting profession’.

Just like journalists, accountants report to a variety of end users. Management, directors, shareholders, regulators, auditors, financial journalists, etc. Financial journalists, eh? How much fun would it be to be a financial journalist if accounting was unregulated?

Accountants are regulated by a number of enforceable rules. There are rules on reporting contained in the Corporations Act. There are rules on reporting contained in ASX listing rules. But the best fit for journalists would be a layer of regulation that accountants are subject to in the form of accounting standards, issued by the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB). Standards issued by the AASB are fully enforceable. The AASB issues the standards, however enforcement is undertaken by the corporate regulator in Australia, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

It’s worth keeping the example of accountancy in the back of one’s mind. Worth it, because the more you compare journalists to accountants, the more that you see that what passes for regulation in the media is almost completely idiotic. The newspapers like to say that they’re regulated by the Australian Press Council. This would be like an accountant saying that they’re regulated by their professional association – which would, of course, be ludicrous.

At least with news that is broadcast, there is a broadcast regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), however ACMA does not have any say over what is news, and what isn’t.

Self-regulation works in some industries. Usually, these are industries that are closed shops, where the industry is regulated by an entity that also acts as a licensing authority. Yet the media is not a closed shop and it would be a joke to rely on self-regulation any longer.

I think I’m going to have to go to a part 3. Stay tuned.

On why the media should embrace more regulation. Part 1

2011-07-22T13:55:00.000+10:00

Over the last few weeks we’ve seen some rather interesting stuff in the media involving the media. We’ve seen all hell break loose in the UK with what appears to be becoming known as ‘Hackgate’. We’ve seen the Herald-Sun publish a call to assassinate the Prime Minister. We’ve also seen the media circuses around the cases of Dominique Strauss-Khan and Casey Anthony where the media essentially judged these folks guilty before their cases had even been heard. In Anthony’s case, they then screamed hysterically about the jury being wrong, even publishing questionable articles where jurors allegedly disclosed a preference for going home rather than finding someone guilty.

I think I'll avoid the issue about concentrated media ownership – it’s probably outside the realm of what I want to blog about here, but what I will add is the sheer, unmitigated bias that passes for journalism in anything that comes out of News Corporation. Although, it's fair to say that 2UE are probably much worse.

And we’ve seen the spectacle of a majority-owned media not publishing stuff in one area that is newsworthy that relates to the owner in another jurisdiction. Yes folks, I'm going to give News a flogging in this post.

I’m not intending to only bag News in this post, as I am aware that other media outlets have also sinned, and sinned in quite a big way as it happens, but the sheer drivel that News publishes is so incredibly worthy of bagging it isn’t funny. I will point out that I did find it funny, once, but as one of my old schoolmates once pointed out to me, there’s a point when dumping in the shoes of the maths teacher ceases to be funny and starts to be smelly. I’ll further qualify this by acknowledging that I continue to acclaim the Andrew Bolt character by his eponymous author to be one of the funniest satirical creations in any newspaper anywhere.

To put that another way, I will attempt to bag other media outlets in this post, but News is such a disgrace that I’m not even certain that I’ll get around to it. But the two of you who will object, I’ll point out that I’ve bagged the ABC, SBS and Fairfax plenty of times before. So there.

News is just so extremely bad an operator, that we as consumers really should be asking about our consumer rights. And by ‘bad’, I’m not even certain if I mean ‘incompetent’, either. I think I might possibly even mean bad as in ‘malevolent’. It's quite hard to get my thoughts on this down in type, but it looks like in some papers, News are filling up pages with stuff that is totally not newsworthy, like celebrity puff pieces and in others, its painfully one-sided commentary and opinion.

Don't get me started on the disgraceful exhibition that is Fox News.

But what actually is 'news'?

The term ‘news’ has a particular connotation in the minds of most people. We want to be informed and we want to be informed as objectively as possible. News (the company) has been repeatedly pinged for bias by Media Watch this year – particularly the Daily Telegraph, with editions of the Australian singled out for complaint repeatedly on the odious subject of editorialising in news items.

Mere mention of Media Watch is enough to start a News fanboi frothing away. 'It's biased!' they scream, as they segue into a rant about how Media Watch never pings ABC, SBS or Fairfax. The suggestion is clear that Media Watch has an anti-News slant. I will point out that based upon current history, it's more likely that News are just generally incompetent and deserving of the rich spoonfuls of creamy pwnage that Media Watch regularly metes out on News.

Ever notice that News fanbois ask you about why you're not criticising these three particular organisations, but they never ask you about the myriad of other news organisations which exist? News fanbois (and fanboiettes) are even more obnoxious and annoying than the type we normally associate with this tag. But where the other type at least seem to be aware of the obvious discolouration that only highly concentrated powdered drink flavourings laced with house or garden-variety poison leaves on their lips. Even when smugly regurgitating signature Kool-Aid flavours such as, 'new interface paradigm’, ‘retina display’ and ‘headphone jacks are totally consistent with an end-to-end wireless solution’ while vainly attempting to defend Apple’s mystifying tendency to demand that you pay extra, Ryanair-style, for stuff that should come as standard (or more worryingly, defending their willingness, nay, aggressive zeal to part with that much extra cash). News fanbois have absolutely no idea, nor would they seem to care that the sweet refreshment that they’re imbibing is a somewhat disconcerting poo-brown colour. With an odour to match. Yummy!

And it's not just Media Watch, either. Check out the comprehensive smackdown that Crikey puts on the Tele here over what is, and I don't think I'm exaggerating, a vicious and unobjective series of articles criticising the new tax package.

I used to bag the Herald-Sun repeatedly, but compared to other papers in the News stable like the Tele and the Oz, the Hun comes out miles in front. This really says nothing at all about the Hun’s reputation, although I will point out that it has been consistent. The Oz, on the other hand, has moved out so far to the right that even some of my conservative friends get a sick feeling reading it. Oddly, this mostly appears to affect those who self-identify as significantly to the right. Some, who identify as ‘centre-right’, amazingly still see the Oz as fair and balanced. It seems like a slightly unusual manifestation of an alternate form of Dunning-Krueger, perhaps, if you can substitute moderate/extreme in to replace the incompetent/expert continuity.

But I have digressed as I’m prone to do. I haven’t even raised the small issue of the Oz editorialising about the supposed need to destroy the Greens, as they did.

See, there is a pattern emerging which can only be described as a tradition of unspeakably bad journalism from News. Once again, it’s possible that I’m using ‘bad’ in its ‘wicked’ connotation compared to the other variety, but the issue is largely identical, anyway. And at the end of the day, if News are being bad as defined by the evil aspect, then this is bad objectively. Some may disagree, but with about two thirds to three quarters of Australian print media provided by News Corp, it is way wrong of News to be allowing this ultimately dodgy copy through. I am aware of certain voices questioning the public outpouring of ‘hysteria’ about News, but in this case, this time; I think that the criticism is completely justified.

This is almost a textbook example of market failure here, and the normal action in fixing market failure is to legislate or regulate.

In the cases I'm discussing here, it isn’t even years of bad behaviour. Most of this has only happened very, very recently. It might even be excusable, if I had needed to scramble for examples over a couple of decades. Sadly though, this is clearly routine misbehaviour. And although most of this may be legal misbehaviour, Blind Freddy would be questioning the average News editor’s ability to live with themselves.

What's that, there's still a News trouser-wearer who has read this far? I am impressed at your stamina and I thank you for sticking with me. But I do notice you wondering why I am bagging News when just about every news agency was crossing all matter of lines when the Strauss-Khan and Anthony stories came up.

On top of this is the small issue that the same firm of private investigators hired by the News of the World to engage in nefarious activity is the same firm that was hired by non-News newspapers such as the Mirror and the Daily Mail. I expect that we'll see some interesting revelations here before the end of the month.

Well, when I originally wrote that part, I was going to stick it to the media generally, but more importantly, would you think that News should be allowed to do the sensationalism that everyone else was doing just because everyone else was doing it? Unfortunately, a lot of people do, but this is a very difficult position to justify. The circus that enveloped the Strauss-Khan court case was a million miles removed from what might have happened in Strauss-Khan's native France.

In France, the media are subject to some pretty serious privacy legislation. These laws prevent the media from getting the kind of sensationalism out that the US media did and what we think is ordinarily fair game, but in France, this would be a serious breach of one's presumption of innocence.

In the American media (and ours too, I might add), we then saw all manner of commentary, some of which was horribly racist, being thrown around commenting on the unwillingness of the French media to get involved. Racial stereotypes of randy Frenchmen abounded. Again, it wasn't just News who were doing this, but does this make it OK that the rest of the media were doing it?

This story is pivotal to this post. The day before yesterday, we saw our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard discussing changes to the law that would enshrine a right to privacy. It was probably more suggested by malfeasance in Hackgate than anything else – particularly the disgusting tale of phone hacking present in the Milly Dowler case – but it would be nice if we were to consider things like our supposed presumptions of innocence in any new privacy rules. Already, the media is taking up arms against such a move, pointing out that there is no evidence that what went on in Britain has ever happened here.

Of course, the moment that you mention restricting the actions of the media, the hacks start bleating about 'freedom of the press'. If you think about any kind of pro-privacy legislation in this context, this argument really quite hard to argue against. Although, as I have repeatedly blogged about, whether it's free will, free speech, free media or free market economics, people are routinely dishonest about the word 'free' and woefully inconsistent in their usage of it.

Yet, I would really like to go one step further in all of this. Well, maybe not one step, but an entirely new regime, actually. Funnily enough, I think that this is a heck of a lot easier to argue for than arguing for the odd privacy provision. I'll get to that later.

Basically, I’m arguing that what news outlets are allowed to do or not, or how they are allowed to report or the practices they are allowed to use, or not, should be governed by a set of guidelines in a much clearer format than what they are currently. There should be a central, overriding duty of 'newsworthiness'. Would this take out the gratuitous celebrity articles littered throughout? Maybe, maybe not, but at the end of it all, we should have something a little better than what we have now.

I notice that this post is getting kinda long, so my apologies. I will conclude this sometime in the next few days.

A note to me, just so I don’t forget: If I find time to complete this, I may still need to write about the following things:

Gratuitous bagging of the non-News media so that our News fans who read this don’t feel so personally slighted at willingly reading such tripe;
Why an overarching set of regulated standards is easier to get on the agenda than a couple of piecemeal changes specifically addressing privacy;
The lameness of the Press Council of Australia and the utter fraud that is self-regulation;
What you as a consumer can do to improve things;
What can be done about market failure in the media;
Why journalism has less in common with other written communication and more than just a passing resemblance to accounting; and
It would be fun to examine concentrated media ownership in Australia, but would this be just too huge a steaming pile to take on?

Here we go again...

2011-01-11T14:10:00.005+11:00

Hope that you’re all having a great new year, folks.

Like a festering wound, this one has been annoying me for a bit, but I thought I’d put this out there and see who bites. With Wikileaks now relegated to the pages in the middle of the newspaper (at least where it doesn't relate to Julian Assange's extradition problems), I thought I’d come back to a subject that I really don’t understand at all: Freedom of Speech.

Yes folks, Freedom of Speech.

One of the things that I find interesting about this topic is the sheer unmitigated drivel that people utter whenever this topic comes up. Me included. But I live in the forlorn hope that someone will find something to correct me on this. So far, it has been a stretch.

Wikileaks has been quite interesting on this matter. It has been said by a number of people that those attacking Wikileaks are attacking free speech, but I want to look a little further into this. Granted, I do love the leaking of top secret communications – especially when it makes people look like idiots – and I especially love it that government and media in the US who attack Wikileaks are traditionally proponents of this particular concept to an insane degree and thus look grossly hypocritical at the moment. But I also love the hypocrisy of those who defend Wikileaks on freedom of speech grounds.

Ask any American which freedoms they prize above all others, and I think that you’ll probably find that they rather like the bit in their constitution that deals with freedom of speech. This is rather good, I agree.

Here in Australia, we have no constitutional right to freedom of speech. We do, apparently have some ‘implied rights’ buried within our constitution that allows us to comment on matters political, but by and large, there is no explicit right to free speech.

But what is ‘free speech’?

I take the view that free speech is, gulp, ‘free’. That is, it should come unencumbered and unrestricted, with no penalties, legal or otherwise, on one’s usage. That is all.

At this point, someone usually will point out to me that, ‘Well no, Dikkii. With freedom of speech comes responsibilities.’

Unfortunately, this now places tacit restrictions on ‘free speech’. In a world where words should frankly mean what they ought to mean, this statement is, unfortunately, 24 carat bullshit. If we wanted speech to come with one or more restrictions (which responsibilities are), then we would call it ‘restricted speech’, not ‘free speech’.

It also begs the questions, where is this list of ‘responsibilities’, and who in the name of Frigga is the person who came up with this list? If it even exists at all?

How do I get on the panel that gets to change or amend this list of 'responsibilities'?

Is the English language the poorer for people stuffing around with it like this?

There are other bits of special pleading that people will come out with which effectively says, ‘Dikkii, it isn’t really ‘free’. We just use the term to sell a particular package of speech guidelines that we like and use of the word ‘restricted’ is not clever marketing.’

Well, no one will use those exact words, but you get the idea.

My favourite item of special pleading also comes from the States and involves that old chestnut, ‘Free speech doesn’t mean that you can yell fire in a crowded theatre!’

Well, yes it does, actually. Placing yet another restriction on freedom of speech, we gradually move further and further away from the dictionary definition of what ‘free’ means. In its purest form, and I’m using the Oxford here, the adjective ‘free’ means:

“...able to act or be done as one wishes; not under the control of another.”

I’m sorry, but a restriction, whether it be crowded theatres or anything else, has been imposed by someone, and therefore not only can one not act (in this case, speak) as one wishes, someone has imposed a control. And the English language is indeed the poorer for this.

It gets worse, too.

Some of my old school buddies are fond of getting nice and condescending with the lovely old cliché, ‘I may not agree with what you’re saying, but I’ll fight for your right to say it.’

It’s nice in theory to say that you’ll fight for someone’s right to say anything they like, but frankly, I think they’re lying out of their arses, because here are some things that they will never fight for. Not only that, but these are just some reasons why freedom of speech is completely unachievable, either in my lifetime or anyone else’s:

Contracts. Where you go to get something enforced on a contract of sale, and the person who sold you something said, ‘Nah, I was just saying stuff’, is it possible that anyone would fight for this? Doubtful.
The news. The meedja are awfully fond of attempting the free speech line, although they would never in a million years try the line that, ‘No, the Prime Minister didn’t really have sex on a crowded bus in front of kiddies. We made that up because it was tremendously funny, and you believed us like the gullible twats you are!’
Peer group pressure and cultural taboos. When was the last time in any jurisdiction did anyone try to sue a group for imposing their groupthink on them? It’s unthinkable. There are certain things that you cannot say because you will be ostracised – freedom of speech means that nothing is off the table, even jokes about terrorists of particular ethnic persuasions rooting kiddies. This has a different flavour to it - although we don't think of social punishments the same way that we think of legal or illegal punishments (such as physical ones), social taboos (restrictions) and ostracism (punishment and deterrent) is still a major barrier to free speech.
Section 52 of the Trade Practices Act. This is my personal favourite. Anyone who would fight for this to be repealed (“A corporation shall not, in trade or commerce, engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.” At subsection (1)) is not fit to walk the earth.

Just once, I’d love to have a conversation that started with, ‘Dikkii, you know that I may not agree with what you’re saying, but I’ll fight for your right to say it,’ and finished with, ‘Well, at risk of calling you a liar, Dikkii, I was out in front of Parliament House the other day, protesting for, not just section 52, but the entire Trade Practices Act to be repealed.’

At least this prick would be being truthful.

And you know, having seen the damage that verbal bullying and harassment causes, I don’t think that there would be many takers for having these particular laws done away with, either.

If we go to jurisdictions where that highly marketable term ‘free speech’ is enshrined in law, we can see that the restrictions start to mount up. Which makes the term highly loaded at best, and downright dishonest at worst.

In the UK, for instance, the British Chiropractic Association's infamous libel lawsuit against Simon Singh was a disgraceful attempt to stifle free speech. However, in Britain - which is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights and thus has freedom of expression, apparently - the case went through two courts and not one judge (there were three on the bench for the appeal) saw fit to throw the case out on those grounds. We can add libel laws to the list.

I should be reasonably obvious by now that free speech is completely unachievable.

And don't get me wrong, I object wholeheartedly to someone resorting to the courts to silence someone. It doesn't seem to occur to anyone though, that the Singh libel case might have been a symptom of a far more further reaching problem, although it's outside the scope of this post to address it.

The fact is though, that whether the issue is alleged libel/slander, bullying, breaching contractual terms, publishing government secrets or a decision that dinner with friends is the perfect time to let them all know about that taste that you have built up for the kind of santorum that only their mothers can produce, you cannot call speech 'free' unless you allow the whole lot.

I have been watching the US news with interest at the moment. The assassination attempt on a US Congresswoman on the weekend brought this theme back. Sarah Palin has been roundly criticised for drawing rifle crosshairs on a map and using trigger happy metaphors when her lunatic Tea Party supporters are frankly incapable of differentiating between fact and fiction.

Palin has also called for Julian Assange's assassination, too. By rights she should have been charged with incitement to murder over this, but...

I never thought that I’d ever defend the lamentable Palin, but if the USA was totally serious about freedom of speech, she wouldn’t have a case to answer. And I wonder about how many in the media are now certifiable hypocrites on this matter?

Having said that, criticising critics of Palin runs into the same problem, but under free speech - such criticism is fine. So is criticising those who criticise critics of Palin.

Why can't people just be honest and say that what they'd really like is restricted speech?

My Christmas mix tape

2010-12-17T17:05:00.015+11:00

Hi folks. I hope that you're all enjoying the time of year that's upon us.

You know, originally, Christmas time was a bunch of different pagan festivals, most notably Yuletide, that got co-opted by Christians keen to embrace stuff that future audiences would love.

These days I acknowledge that Christmas has morphed into a secular display of undignified commercialism and gluttony. Naturally, of course, I love this.

But there is a more serious side to the season. I talk about the unmitigated drivel that pours from speakers all over shopping centres at this time of year. There's only so much "Jingle Bells" or We Wish You a Merry Christmas" that I can take. And if it's not those pepped up and insanely cheerful American odes to capitalism, it's those thoroughly unfathomable one hit wonders Slade and Wizzard. Or those horrid efforts from Cliff Richard or George Michael.

Yes folks, Christmas songs blow dog.

But I'm not naturally a pessimist, so I said to myself, "Dikkii," I said. That's what I call myself. Which is not that weird, although the talking to myself thing could be regarded as potentially dodgy.

"Dikkii," I said, forgetting completely that I'd already called myself that, "Surely it's possible to create a mix tape of songs which don't suck?"

So I did. And here it is, for your enjoyment.

1. "Troika" - Sky

Sky were an interesting project of legendary classical guitarist John Williams. Williams was intrigued by prog rock and wondered if you could do classical music in a rock style. Their biggest hit was a rather awesome cover of JS Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" but this one is a cover of the fourth movement from Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Suite. It sorta rocks.

2. "Fairytale of New York" - The Pogues

Oh the Pogues. Or "drunkenest band ever" as one of my mates describes them. This song is possibly my favourite Christmas song and tells the tale of a bickering couple whose hopes and dreams in New York are crushed by alcoholism and drug problems. Originally written by banjoist Jem Finer and vocalist Shane MacGowan to be sung by MacGowan and bassplayer Caitlin O'Riordan, O'Riordan had left the band when they recorded this, so the Pogues gave the female part to the late Kirsty MacColl instead. The addition of strings gives it some added oomph.

3. “The bells of St Mary’s” – Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans

A track of A Christmas Gift for You aka Phil Spector’s Christmas Album. Spector is best known for his over the top production work, and while he’s probably better known these days for bizarre wigs and homicide, his “wall of sound” production technique was monstrously groundbreaking stuff in the sixties. The Blue Jeans featured Darlene Love who also got a Guernsey on Christmas Gift, but ultimately, this is a tad better than the lameness that pervaded most of the Blue Jeans’ (and, let’s be honsest here, Spector’s) work. “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” anyone?

4. “In Dulci Jubilo” – Mike Oldfield

Oldfield played everything other than the recorder on this. Which is interesting, considering that the recorder part is the most distinctive. It’s worth noticing that, as a multi-instrumentalist who sees himself as primarily a guitarist, Oldfield goes completely nuts on the guitar parts on this. Strangely enough, though, it seems to work. If you can say anything about Oldfield, he does know quite a bit about proper contextualising of his arrangements.

5. “Little Drummer Boy (Up the Khyber)” – the Hoodoo Gurus

This is an old b-side of the Hoodoo Gurus and is possibly the greatest rendition of what is one of the most boring and turgid Christmas carols ever. The Hoodoo Gurus infuse what is basically a surf guitar instrumental with a sitar melody line – or, more likely, a guitar effected to sound like a sitar. And it rocks.

6. “Ukrainian Bell Carol” – M. Leontovych

A frankly scary piece of Christmas that frightens kiddies with the bell parts and the minor key, not to mention the ¾ timing that takes off like a bat out of hell and switches back and forth between ¾ and 6/8 later in the tune. Leontovych intended this to be sung a capella, but this arrangement (which features the Vienna Boys Choir) is quite good.

7. “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” – Darlene Love

Another of the high points of A Christmas Gift For You. This one has been covered to death but, I actually love the sadness in it as Love sings of how much Christmas blows now that her lover has gone. Love was pretty much a backbone of Spector’s empire, as part of the Blue Jeans, the Crystals and working on records featuring the Ronettes. The production is subdued by Spector’s standards, which is not saying much, but possibly one of the reasons that this is a little less lame than most Spector material.

8. “I believe in Father Christmas” – Greg Lake

“They sold me a dream of Christmas/they sold me a silent night/they sold me a fairy story/till I believed in the Israelite”. Although this gets a guernsey on a lot of Christmas compilations, there’s a cynicism from Lake in the lyrics that’s directed at a lot of targets: Religion, commercialism and the loss of childhood innocence. The main theme from Prokofiev’s Troika makes a reappearance throughout.

9. “For unto us a Child is Born” – G. F. Handel

“Hallelujah Chorus” was a little obvious so I went for this one, also from Handel’s Messiah. Actually, Messiah is not really just about the birth of Christ, it’s about His whole life, but it gets played a lot at Christmas. This one has a lovely build through the verses until they get to the chorus which, depending on the version that you have of it, is mixed altogether way too loud considering how soft the soft bits are mixed. And the chorus is actually bitching and kinda catchy. Charles Jennens was the uncredited lyricist. And this arrangement features the London Symphony Orchestra.

10. “Merry Xmas (War is Over)” – John Lennon

You all know this one, so I won’t bother explaining it, except that although it’s also pretty obvious so why did I include it? Maybe I was feeling nostalgic around it being 30 years since Lennon was assassinated. I don’t know.

11. “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” – P. I. Tchaikovsky

Look, it’s Christmassy, but it’s also just that little bit creepy. The Nutcracker is almost totally devoid of plot, and I really don’t understand ballet at all, but I love the music and I do wonder what drugs Tchaikovsky was smoking when he wrote this. But it’s a triumph, nonetheless. The fairy-like celesta used throughout is something quite extraordinary.

12. “What Child is This?” – Reverend Horton Heat

The Reverend Horton Heat is a rockabilly band from Texas, but this is a wicked surf guitar instrumental version of a famous tune, better known to fans of Mr Whippy everywhere as “Greensleeves”. It’s quite well done. Apologies for the sound quality - the studio version is much better, but you'll get the idea.

13. “Christmas with the Devil” – Spinal Tap

A fictitious band, I guess, Spinal Tap had already made a name for themselves on Saturday Night Live by the time their mockumentary flick This is Spinal Tap came along. This was originally aired on SNL and apparently resulted in lots of mail from irate Christians. And why not: “There’s a demon in my belly/and a gremlin in my brain/There’s someone up the chimney hole/and Satan is his name.” Hilarious and naturally, it goes all the way to 11.

14. “A Christmas Duel” – The Hives featuring Cyndi Lauper

“I bought no gift this year/and I slept with your sister/I should have thought twice/before I kissed her.” Rather a hilarious yet rollicking singalong uniting one of the noughties most important rock acts with the legendary Lauper. The lyrics are rather amusing, but appear to have some form of closure as the warring parties “Spend, spend spend this Chris, Christmas together.”

15. “Christmas” – The Who

This is from the Who’s somewhat polarising concept album, Tommy. And as you would expect, it’s about our deaf, dumb and blind hero, but set back when he was a young child. But it’s a savage attack on religion, as Tommy’s parents wonder “How can he be saved?/From the eternal grave?”. Keith Moon’s frenetic drumming shows exactly why Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend touring as “the Who” minus the late Moon and the late John Entwistle is utterly fraudulent.

16. “Christmas card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” – Tom Waits

From Waits’ Blue Valentine album, this song tells the tale of a hooker talking about her new life on the straight and narrow, before revealing the truth at the end. From Waits’ early period, before he decided to expand his instrumentation beyond the piano and strings stuff that he’d done beforehand. Sublime.

17. “Red Water (Christmas Mourning)” – Type O Negative

You can just imagine Type O Negative, goth metal exponents, giggling hysterically at the thought of doing a Christmas tune. This is a little ponderous, but it sorta works. Mind you, it wouldn’t if it didn’t have the snippets of “Ukrainian bell carol” and “God bless ye merry gentlemen” contained within.

18. “White wine in the sun” – Kate Miller-Heidke

It’s a cover of a Tim Minchin tune, a comedian/singer who has become a bit of a cause celebre and pin-up boy for atheist performers in recent years. He does write a good tune – this is about the Australian Christmas experience and is clearly dedicated to Minchin’s ”infant daughter” and it’s covered well by the almost slightly unhinged Miller-Heidke who manages not to lose the pathos throughout.

Well I hope that you enjoyed this. Have a great holiday season, wherever you are and remember to drive safely and under the limit.

Post election post

2010-08-25T17:48:00.013+10:00

You have to love parliamentary democracy. Even better, you have to love the comments on this article in the Herald-Sun that proves my point that I made several weeks ago about Australians: We all know bugger all about our own system.

The article itself begs some pretty powerful questions.

Firstly, how illiterate actually is the Herald-Sun's readership?

Secondly, is our system actually broken?

There is a subtext in a lot of this that suggests that the electorate is not happy unless one of the major parties has an absolute majority. It possibly should be borne in mind that of the parties in what we term the Coalition (now 4 parties and counting), none of them has had a majority in the lower house in their own right individually for many years.

Are there people actually freaking out now that we have a hung parliament? Clearly there are and it goes to the nub of what I indicated in my first post in this series: You don't vote for the government. You vote for your local member. It is then, really, up to them as to who governs.

The fact that there is going to have to be deals done as to whom ends up getting power is largely irrelevant to the Australian people, much as they might hate it. I'd really love to say, "If you don't like this, then move somewhere else," but I loathe that phrase as it suggests that people should not even attempt to make a difference. It basically says that trying to make a difference is "un-Australian".

Let's look at some of the events of the last couple of years:

1. Tony Abbott becomes Opposition Leader. Not a squeak from the media. No one writes outraged comments to the Herald-Sun saying, "I didn't vote for him." Compare this to:

2. Julia Gillard becomes Prime Minister. Media goes crazy. Cue deluge of irate writers to the tabloids about how she wasn't elected by the Australian people.

The fact is that we don't elect our leaders. End of discussion. Hence my disgust at Australians who seem to be happy with one and not the other.

But it's actually more than that: We actually have no say in which parties form our government ends up being. This is pretty important.

We now have a hung parliament. Both major parties could end up doing a deal with, at last count, four independents, one member of the Greens and just to throw a spanner in the works, a member of the Nationals who points out that the WA branch is not actually a part of the Coalition. In fact, they're another party altogether.

Personally, I love this. I think that this is how the Westminster parliamentary system is supposed to work.

So did you blindly vote for a party member on the basis of who you would have liked to govern?

Not I. I voted according to whom best to represent my electorate. This is how our system is structured, and this is how things are intended to happen. Mind you, I should point out that going into the election, I didn't really have a clear preference for which party should run the country.

So how do we resolve this? Does it need resolving? Should partisan party politics always be the basis for governments in Australia?

Let's look at some of the other issues.

3. Three independents clearly are going to be instrumental in getting a potential future government across the line. Cue more irate texting, commenting on blogs, letters etc.

These independents were elected by their constituents. If their constituents wanted a member of the major parties in office, they would have voted for them. They didn't, they voted for independents.

After election night, Tony Abbott carried on like a bit of a tool. In a moment of frustration, he pretty much told the independents to side with him. The message was clear: The Labor Party don't have a majority, therefore, we (the Coalition) are the rightful rulers.

The only problem with this was that the view of the electorate is far from convincing on this – Abbott's crew was also not granted a majority.

The fact is, that the independents can do whatever they like. They're independent. If they side with the ALP, then good on them. If they side with the Coalition, then good on them as well. It's probably now important to mention that Tony Crook, the new member for O'Connor has indicated that he will sit on the crossbenches, despite the fact that his party has 'National Party' in its name.

This may now mean that there are six crossbenchers. What happens if three of them side with the ALP and three of them side with the Coalition, assuming that the majors get 72 seats apiece – not counting Crook as part of the Coalition count?

The Herald-Sun readership appears to think that, "Oh we didn't elect the independents. Why should they have this much clout?"

The reality is that if we had never had a two party environment in our parliament, this would probably not be an issue. If more independents were elected, I personally think that Australians would have a much better idea about how Westminster works.

You see, this is essentially it. You vote for your member on the basis of who should represent your electorate. Should you consider the "bigger picture"? Absolutely, but consider this:

4. The voters of Bennelong didn't elect previous member Maxine McKew for a second term. McKew almost does a 'Kernot' by dumping on the party campaign on national TV. It turns out that the reason she was dumped by Bennelong was because she was never there.

That's right. McKew was only interested in the bigger picture. McKew completely forgot her primary responsibility, which was to represent Bennelong to the federal parliament. How could McKew be expected to do this if she never even bothered to turn up in her actual electorate? Talk about taking your electorate for granted.

Fortunately, McKew was punished for her arrogance when her electorate turned on her. Which, by the way, was the only seat that Labor lost in New South Wales.

5. Adam Bandt, the new Greens member for Melbourne, has indicated that he will support Labor. Yet more outrage.

I almost feel sorry for the voters in the electorate of Melbourne who voted for Brandt on the strength of his non-affiliation with the major parties. But Bandt can do whatever he likes now that he is in parliament. He probably won't be re-elected by the voters in Melbourne. And you know, if he keeps up this act and doesn't learn when to keep his mouth shut, he might find himself disaffiliated by his own party, although I expect that he might find preselection tougher next time round if the Greens don't disaffiliate him.

6. Fact: If voting informal was a vote for a political party, then the 'Informal Party' would have been the fifth highest polling party on primary votes.

This is a nationwide stat. It probably beats the Werriwa by-election after Mark Latham vacated parliament which was the previous record-holding election for informal votes cast, although I couldn't say for certain. And because it's a nationwide stat, the informal vote count in some electorates is probably enormously high – I know that in this election, Werriwa recorded a 10.59% informal vote as at 22 August.

Compulsory voter registration is the core reason for this. You can bang on and on about voter apathy, disengagement, jadedness or whathaveyou but really, compulsory voter registration needs to be seriously looked at. How many trees went into the paper voted on? How much petrol was burnt by voters coming and going from polling booths for this little wasted exercise? How many person hours could the Productivity Commission add on for this?

I do get grumpy about this topic. And when I do, I get a chorus of the same old lame excuses about why compulsory voter registration is a great idea.

"It's your civic duty," says one. Congratulations, Einstein – you've just justified conscription.

"You can't opt-out of paying taxes," says another. Apart from indirectly linking tax evaders with people who don't vote, this person has also managed to suggest that some people manage to magically avoid roads, schools and a defence force that's there for them. Which still has to be paid for.

"You have a moral obligation to vote," says yet another. That's great, I say. How does removing the legal requirement impact this? No answer was what I got, but the correct answer is, "It doesn't. You would still have a moral obligation to vote regardless." It's only the very lazy who would cough up this tired 'reason'.

"Our forefathers fought and died for the right to vote." This is one of the silliest ones I've heard yet. A legal imperative to vote is not a goddamn right, it's a legal requirement. A right is something you can opt-out of, it is not an obligation, despite what another correspondent thinks may or may not be in the Magna Carta. In any event, here's a few other things our and other forefathers fought and died for: The Inquisition, Jerusalem in the Crusades, ruling royal families, the right to keep slaves, a golden stool, someone's ear, the list goes on and on. It's probably fair to say that voting is one of the less idiotic reasons for a battle.

7. Rob Oakeshott, independent member for Lyne has the nerve to suggest that the ALP and the Coalition begin discussions about forming a coalition. Much mirth and ridicule ensues from the press gallery. Voters who know nothing about the Australian parliamentary system start muttering the words 'dictatorship', 'communism' and 'no one voted for that'.

This has got to be the a high water mark in press idiocy. For one thing, Oakeshott is right when he says that this is a good idea. What if a party got the magical 76 seat count in the House and then lost that majority in a by-election? This has worked in other democracies - I can think of Norway and Israel being two - and would merely require parliamentarians to work together to sort their problems out.

Which is precisely the job that we pay them to do! We don't elect governments, really, as I mentioned before. We elect local members to do that for us.

So how does our newly elected House of Representatives stack up?

Currently, it appears that the ALP and the Coalition have 71 almost certain seats each. I say 'almost certain' because I'm going by Antony Green's excellent coverage on the ABC's website, and he still has three seats in doubt.

The Coalition actually consists of four parties - the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Liberal National Party of Queensland and the Country Liberal Party.

Green has not subtracted Tony Crook of the WA Nationals and newly elected member for O'Connor, who believes that the Nationals of the rest of Australia doesn't include the WA Nationals. So really, that's 70 seats to the Coalition.

The members for Kennedy, Lyne, New England and Denison are independents, and the member for Melbourne is a member of the Australian Greens. The members for Kennedy, Lyne and New England are ex-National Party members who are completely unpredictable (especially the certifiable Bob Katter) and may end up not siding with either the ALP or the Coalition. Adam Bandt appears to think that he'll side with Labor, which just leaves Andrew Wilkie, newly elected independent for Denison.

Wilkie is an ex-Greens member and former spy who was shafted by the Coalition when they were in power, however he has no love for the Labor Party either.

There are three seats that still appear to be in doubt - Brisbane, Hasluck and Corangamite.

Where this goes is really anyone's guess. In any event, I expect any government that forms to not last very long before the Governor-General tells all involved to call fresh elections.

Ironically, in sorting this out, this could make our much loved Governor-General, Ms Quentin Bryce, a very disliked individual indeed.

Obligatory election summary post

2010-08-20T12:49:00.002+10:00

As I'm prone to do, here is my Jagajaga-centric summary of election posts. It may provide you with a guide to assisting you with voting in this election. Or it might not. Learn some stuff, like:

Or alternatively, you could just go to my Election 2010 tag page.

Happy voting!

How to vote below the line easily (Election post number 9)

2010-08-20T00:36:00.016+10:00

And now it is time to look at The Senate.

I've found this great webpage, by the way, which helps you put together your own how-to-vote card for the Senate. But more on this in a moment.

The Senate is the house of review in Australia. Each state elects 12 senators, and the NT and ACT get two each. Of these, 6 from each state and 1 from each territory come up for election each election.

As a result, voting for the Senate can confuse your average punter senseless.

At some stage in the past, some bright spark said, "Hey, let's make it easier for voters and allow them to vote for one bunch of candidates."

Naturally, this has led to possibly the silliest scenario in Australia where you only need to number one box when voting in the Senate, oblivious to what your vote will do if you don't get your first preference. And it discriminates against the ungrouped independents, because they don't get to be regarded as one of these groups.

It is up to the party that you vote for as to where your preferences go. This is where you can find out how they have directed their preferences.

But you can still vote below the line. Using this method, you can determine your preference for each of the candidates for the Senate. In my state of Victoria, there are 60 candidates, which means that I will have to number 60 boxes. This sounds a bit full on, but you sorta have to do this - I notice that looking at the one for Victoria, the major parties have made preferences that I am grossly uncomfortable with.

Belowtheline.org.au is a wonderful website that you can use to assist with this tedious and error-prone task. I'm going to generate my own how-to-vote card for the Senate now, just to show you how easy this site is to use.

You select your state to get started.

This takes you to a page where you can see each party's group ticket. I don't want to look at these, so I'm going straight to generating mine from scratch.

Now you now will find yourself looking at a list of the different groups. Don't be too dismayed that you can't see the candidates - you'll get a chance to play with these shortly.

Drag and drop the groups into the order that you'd like. I'm going to talk about the basic order that I would like to use, so while you're having a play, allow me to get started. To assist you at this point, there's a great list of links to information about each party on this page.

Post-majors

It helps me to start off by considering who I definitely DO NOT want in the Senate first and dragging them down to the bottom.

Into this group go the kooks, nutbars and theocrats. I certainly won't be considering these.

I'm dragging the following down to the bottom part of the ballot paper:

Very bottom (dangerous nutters)

Citizens Electoral Council - extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists
Shooters and Fishers - gun nuts
Socialist Alliance - extreme left-wing nutjobs

Nearly bottom (theocrats)

Family First - ECP fundies
Democratic Labor Party - catholic fundies
Christian Democrats - traditionalist protestant fundies

Almost nearly bottom (not quite so dangerous kooks, but kooks nonetheless)

Joseph Toscano ticket - large-A Anarchists
One Nation - considerably right of centre racists
The Climate Sceptics - anti-science global warming deniers
Liberal Democrats - extreme free-marketeers

Other independents

Grant Beale
Glenn Shea

Sorry, folks. You independents might be great, but it's very difficult to find any information out about you guys.

And after this, I put the majors. Wow - that's half the order already sorted out. Not bad, huh?

The majors

After all these, above the lunatics go the majors. This forms two functions: It pretty much prevents my ballot paper going any further, and, well, frankly, the majors don't have much separating them. I still can't decide in which order I'm going to place the ALP and the Lib/Nats, so I'll leave them as they are, but they always seem to go in the middle.

I will be doing something slightly different with a certain Labor senator, though. See if you can guess who he is - you'll see that there are pretty cool things to voting below the line.

Pre-majors

Above the majors go the ones that I do agree with, that I would like to see in the Senate. Let's talk about these now, because I rather like some of these.

They can be separated into two categories: Desired, interesting and a category that I haven't noticed before - industry representatives.

Desired (the ones who go up the top)

Australian Greens - campaigners on green and social justice issues
Secular Party of Australia - fighting for separation of church and state
Stephen Mayne ticket - seasoned shareholder activists and corporate transparency campaigners
Australian Sex Party - civil libertarians who have impressed lots throughout the campaign
Australian Democrats - still their to keep the bastards honest, although not so influential these days

I've provisionally put the Secular Party up the top, but I could change my mind on this. I blogged about the all-important first preference spot here.

Interesting (almost up the top - I found their platforms intriguing)

Senator on-line - undertake to put all votes for internet approval if elected. Interesting.
Socialist equality party - moderate left of centre bunch

I'm curious about these guys, so I'm putting them up there to see how they go.

Industry groups (I have a soft spot for those who believe in their industries, up to a point)

Carer's Alliance - represent those who care for the disabled and the disabled themselves
Building Australia - represent the building industry, curiously both employers and union groups.

Now once you've got all these in order, hit the "Next" button to continue.

You'll now see a list of all candidates, in order of how they appear on the ballot paper. You can continue if you like the order, but I'm going to do one more thing:

Move Stephen Conroy to after all the rest of the majors

This guy is an embarrassment and is not fit to hold office. On top of this, if Conroy is not elected and Labor get in, they will not be able to claim a mandate on internet filtering. This is another really cool thing you can do when voting below the line.

After this, I'm going to stuff around with the order of candidates some more - for example, I might order Labor from the bottom up, randomise the kooks a little. Why do I do this?

Because I'm a complete bastard, that's why. Someone has to count this paper.

Now, I just have to click on "Create ticket".

I can see the names in order, but if I want something a little easier to read, hit the "Download PDF" button and marvel at the results.

This is just brilliant.

Enjoy the election, folks.

How-to-vote cards (Keeping your member "local" part the last)

2010-08-17T00:32:00.020+10:00

I have been amazed by some things this election. I was rendered speechless when I heard that Family First, the not-yet-militant Christian extremists, had been attempting to do a preference deal in the Senate with the Australian Sex Party. Laugh? I nearly spontaneously combusted!

I still hear staunch Liberal voters who claim that economic management will be better off with them than the ALP. That would be worth voting for, if it wasn't for the fact that the current bunch of Libs have promised spending out of control and the leadership sees economics as a tedious footnote to political administration.

More hilarious still, is the fact that the ALP really don't get how they got it right on economic management during the global financial crisis, whether by fluke or design. Why not make this an election issue? It's a guaranteed vote winner, although it might be evidence that the ALP isn't really interested in economics either. I would think it amazing if the ALP felt that voters were turned off by stuff as mundane as economics.

One of my first year economics lecturers, by the way, said that politics is merely applied economics. He was, of course 100% right. He then went on to crack a joke about the professor of the Animal Husbandry Department who was caught doing exactly that, which had us lewd first years rolling in the aisles. Those were the days. He now pops up on ABC Breakfast News occasionally to read the newspaper headlines.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about voters in Australia is their inability to think for themselves. Voting has become a popularity contest in Australia, where if you like a political party, or even just a political leader, people just blindly follow how-to-vote cards. I've already blogged at length about this, but the number of people who's opinions and thought processes that I respect who seem so blasé about the whole thing is really annoying.

So this last part of my series looks at how much impact that these have. And why you should pay absolutely no interest to them whatsoever.

It has been said by some that we have an electoral process similar to the US electoral college. You elect your local candidate according to who you'd like to see in power. Someone suggested to me that the local member should really not give two shits about their local electorate, because they are there for "the greater good" of this nation. Now this is all well and good, except that in the US electoral college, they pack up and go home as soon as a president is chosen. They don't stick their neck into voting on legislation and can't put forward private member bills. Nor do they do this for a full electoral term.

So how important are these?

Obviously, they're pretty important. Unlike tobacco companies, political parties have no pretence about why the pretty pictures, slogans, branding and colours are displayed so prominently: If they didn't work, then the question should be asked, why bother spending the money?

So with that in mind, let's look a little closer at them. And a final look at Jagajaga in the process, going into the election.

How-to-vote cards are designed to captivate one's attention, focussing on the party putting them out and relegating the local candidate to "incidental". It's even worse in the Senate, where by voting above the line, one doesn't even need to see the names of the candidates being put forward.

Parties and candidates do deals to get up the preference ladder on each others' how-to-vote cards. It is here that I will focus today, because some of these deals simply should not be being done.

Let's look at Jagajaga.

Joe Sgarlata, Family First

Family First have not put their how-to-vote cards online. I'm tipping that theirs reads 1 Sgarlata, 2 Bauch, 3 Macklin, 4 Kearney, 5 Harris.

So I'll regale you with this rather informative video that Family First put out. It looks all rather good, until they poke in a gobsmackingly scurrilous lie about heroin injecting rooms:

Family First: 0 stars.

Jenny Macklin, Australian Labor Party

Big picture of Julia Gillard on Macklin's how-to-vote card and right up the top, too. Disappointingly, Macklin has gone for Family First over the Liberal Party.

This is something that I hate about preference deals. While it may be expeditious to do a preference deal with wingnuts like Family First, you're effectively saying that the policies of wackos are preferable to those of the relatively more balanced Liberal Party:

Disappointed.

Joh Bauch, Liberal Party

Bauch has preferenced Family First second. He is a DISGRACE!!!:

Disgusted.

Chris Kearney, Australian Greens

The Greens also haven't uploaded their how-to-vote cards. They might surprise Macklin with 1 Kearney, 2 Harris, 3 Macklin, 4 Bauch, 5 Sgarlata. Although I doubt it. The Greens and the ALP sew up preferences tighter than Bornwyn Bishop's hair.

So I'm putting a video in for them, too. The Greens advertising has been pretty boring, but on Gruen Nation, a contestant in The Pitch did this:

Much better than their advertising. A classic, in fact: 5 stars.

Peter Harris, Secular Party

Harris has almost gone for the reverse donkey vote. No real surprises:

Expected outcome.

Well that's it from me on Jagajaga. Enjoy your electioneering, think before you vote and tune into my next post which will be on the Senate.

Interesting things about preferential voting (Keeping your member "local" part seven)

2010-08-15T23:47:00.011+10:00

This is where I almost finish up with my investigation of preferential voting using my case study of the seat of Jagajaga. I will look at the Senate soon, I promise.

I learned a lot after my last post. For starters, I learned that votes in a safe seat aren't quite so much wasted as what I thought. As it happens, party coffers are guaranteed funding from the AEC on the basis of primary votes, so, although this is going to go mainly the way of incumbent parties, there is a chance for you, the voter, to ensure that even if your first preference is going to be discarded, you may get to have the taxpayer contribute part of the gravy train that is electoral funding towards a smaller party. This is a valuable piece of information.

I also was reminded, courtesy of commenter Peter that we don't really have compulsory voting in Australia. This observation I made, incidentally, prompted some rather wild comments on the Twittersphere, emails to me and other media suggesting in some small part that I might have lost my mind. I don't really shy away from it, although I admit to some hyperbole: The fact is that, unlike what one correspondent suggested, non-compulsory electoral enrolment (thanks Peter for your correction) would not and never would (and has no valid link to the suggestion that it might) nullify one's moral obligation to vote - this wasn't you Peter, by the way, this was another correspondent. I don't really understand why this connection might be made.

I learned that apparently, moral obligations get enshrined in law eventually. This will, of course, be fabulous news to an ethics panel that I have some involvement with, although I certainly will understand if they feel more lukewarm than I about this suggestion.

And from another correspondent, I learned that what most of us understand as rights aren't that at all, unless they're enshrined in law and have some set responsibilities attached to them. There's apparently a statement in the Magna Carta that supports this, although I was unable to find it. Curiously, I did find a statement in the Magna Carta that specifically limits discussion around rights (the translation I looked at also used the terms "liberties") to the ones contained in the document itself, leaving the question about whether others might exist elsewhere somewhat open.

I also learned that a right, using the now slightly questionable definition of "anything that one can freely do" doesn't exist at all if it is not in existence in Australia. I have a feeling that this might be news to the majority of western democracies where one can freely not vote or not enrol to vote if they choose, but I don't appear to have any say in this.

I learned that people don't really comment on blogs anymore. They like Twitter and Facebook too much. I learned that people comment about blog posts on Twitter without actually reading them. And I learned that Google's Chrome browser does weird things to my post truncation facility which normally works a treat in Firefox and IE.

So. On to this post itself.

I finally received some correspondence from Jenny Macklin MP, the incumbent Member of Parliament for Jagajaga in answer to my query of a few weeks ago. This came in two somewhat unusual pieces of correspondence.

The first one appears to answer my query. It was a four page glossy delivered to my letterbox confirming that, amongst other things, Macklin:

Consults regularly with groups such as playgroups and friends of Lennister Farm;
Speaks to locals about environmental sustainability;
Is a Queen's Guide with Eltham Guides group. As Macklin grew up in Wangaratta, I suspect that Eltham Guides' claim to her Queen's Guide award may be somewhat tenuous, but at least she's getting out there;
Has supported the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre at the Austin Hospital;
Supports Eltham Lacrosse Club; and
Supports Diamond Valley Prostate Cancer Support Group.

This was pretty good stuff I thought, and almost looked as though her office had cooked it up in response to my email.

But there was more. In the mail addressed to me the following Monday was a number of photocopied web pages confirming stuff that Macklin had had a hand in within the electorate. I won't go into these - most of these appeared to relate more to government initiatives and her role as the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

Apart from the fact that the generic response was more relevant to my original question than the photocopies, I wonder a little why Macklin's office felt the need to look me up on the electoral roll and post single-sided printouts of webpages rather than just emailing me back with a series of links, but this is pretty minor.

I also finally got a response to the query I sent to Joh Bauch, Liberal Candidate for Jagajaga:

Hi Dikkii,

Many thanks for contacting me and my apologies for the delay in replying. In regard to your questions about my contribution in Jagajaga over the last 3 years. I currently, do not live in Jagajaga, however, I do have friends in the electorate and am familiar with the area as I visit my friend regularly every few weeks.

However, in the current electorate that I live, I am involved with Neighbourhood Watch. I am also interested in local business traders and have set up a part time business assisting local traders with promotion and marketing.

I live at home with my elderly parents and my father has had some health issues over the past few years so this has impacted on my abilities to do more in the community.

I am attaching my official biography for your perusal. I hope this answers your questions satisfactorily.

regards
Joh Bauch

Which pretty much confirms my suspicions about Bauch. The bio, incidentally, wasn't attached, but I didn't really need it.

But anyway, preferential voting. We vote our candidates in order of preference. After each round of counting, the person with the least number of primary preferences gets eliminated and the votes they've received go off to the other candidates via the secondary preferences on the ballot papers. The process is then repeated until one of the candidates is able to claim a majority.

But after the first round, an interesting thing happens: Anyone whose second or subsequent preference was for a candidate that was eliminated in the first round or later then finds that this preference may be disregarded as the vote counters go down their preference list, disregarding subsequent preferences for previously eliminated candidates along the way.

Let's look at a fictitious electorate, which we'll call Smallville. Yes, I know it's unoriginal, but humour me.

Let's say that you have an electorate which has five candidates, and a ballot paper is submitted that has vote 1 for candidate A, vote 2 for candidate B and so on until you get to candidate E who gets vote 5. If candidate A makes it through round 1 (where candidate D gets eliminated), but gets eliminated in round three, and candidate B gets eliminated in round 2 what happens to the vote?

The ballot paper counts as a vote for candidate A in rounds 1 and 2. In round three, candidate A gets eliminated, so the vote counters look at the ballot paper. Candidate B has been eliminated in round two, so the vote counters go straight past the second preference to the third which is for candidate C. Suddenly, your paper in the electorate of Smallville has gone to its third preference, bypassing the second preference outright.

This is a pretty important thing. Those of you who, like me, like to put the little guys first before the big guns of the major parties might like to consider this, because it could mean that your ballot paper isn't worth quite what you think going in to be counted.

It does mean that your first preference becomes more important.

So have a bit of a think about this before casting your vote.

Why am I even bothering? (Keeping your member "local" part six)

2010-08-02T23:43:00.010+10:00

People probably wonder why I bother with this. Right about now I'm having thoughts of that nature myself.

"I know who I'm voting for," they might say.

"Why don't you just follow a how-to-vote card?" some might ask.

"Get a life!" order those without a shred of originality, finesse, style, sense of irony or, strangely, a life of their own.

The fact is that, even though I live in an safe Labor seat where any vote is essentially a wasted vote, I strangely want to do things properly. At the end of the day, I will know something about my candidates. How many of you can say the same thing?

How many of you even bothered? How many of you just blindly expect to rock up to your electorate and say, "I'm voting Labor," or, "I'm voting Liberal" or even "I don't really give a toss about either, so I'm voting informally."

The fact that I'm doing research makes me superior to each and every single one of you. If just one person walks away from reading this series and says, "Yes. I'm going to vote for the best person who will represent my electorate, based upon how much they care for the voters in my electorate and maybe their party-political platform as well," well then, I think that I may have made a difference.

The fact is that as we have seen throughout this whole thing, with only a few exceptions, your candidates could not give a flying fuck about you, the voter. You live in an electorate. Your electorate is merely a stepping stone to be trodden on by self-obsessed wankers who hunger for power. And if it's not power, it's some "greater good" that requires us great unwashed to be trampled underfoot in the fight to get that across the line.

And you, the Australian public, just bend over and take it time after time. You rejoice in your ignorance. You bathe in your self-righteous belief that you're doing something for Australia, even if you forget that this is the one opportunity to ensure that your district has representation. You blindly follow how-to-vote cards, spoon fed to you as you congregate like cattle in feeding lots about to be slaughtered.

You may even be one of those sheep who vote for the same political party year in, year out without a care in the world. Or a decent shred of objectivity.

Some of you possibly even think that by voting informally, your rebellious protest at wildly identical platforms will be heard and your dissatisfaction will register somewhere. News flash, pal: It won't. Your "protest" will end up in the same basket as those informal votes from the illiterate, the innumerate, the apathetic, the mentally incompetent...

And then there was this one ignorant prick of a man that I communicated with today, a total DISGRACE!!! who thought I knew about the algorithm that poll counters use to remove the inherent bias of donkey votes. An algorithm so top secret that no one knows about it, and yet, so accurate that even if he donkey voted (the genuine definition, folks, not just an informal vote), it would mysteriously spot this and weed it out. "No harm done," he said. NO HARM DONE!!?! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND???

I could go on and on, but I won't. I've never been so pissed off at candidates (generally) or the voting public (generally) as I am right now. Am I having a mood? I probably am. I don't care.

OK. You're not all like this. But most of you are. Probably even some of you reading this blog - I do recognise that I may be preaching to the converted a little bit and that some of the ones who should be reading this are either parachuting into a convenient electorate on the other side of town wondering how many people they can confuse or how best to promote their 'brand' while others are just wondering how long it is before Brangelina break up for real.

Well I for one am sick to death of it.

I remember one story - the name of the electorate escapes me.

A local independent candidate was campaigning for election somewhere up the Queensland coast - I don't know where. He was widely known and respected throughout his electorate. He'd done work for a few clubs and local charities and was considered an all-round good guy.

Then the parachute candidate comes in from either the ALP, the Libs or the Nats (might have even been the LNP - I don't know how old this story is) and with the well-funded political machine behind them, kick's all-round good guy's arse.

The electorate is just as much to blame for this debacle. And it is a debacle: They had, on a silver platter, the perfect guy to represent them, and they fucked it up.

Wouldn't you like to look at yourself in the mirror before you go to bed on Saturday, August 21 and say, "I made a properly informed decision when casting my vote. I'm proud of myself."

Yes. I acknowledge that compulsory voting is fascist. But if you have to do it, why on earth would you do a half-arsed job? What kind of idiot is going to rock up to have their name ticked of on polling day and then switch to autopilot?

If you sympathise with this, get the word out there yourself. By all means tweet this, or write your own post. Get Australians thinking. Think yourself. You have a brain - use it!

No the donkey voter was not the straw that broke the camel's back, folks. This communication back, in response to my previous email, from Peter Harris, Secular Party Candidate for Jagajaga did it:

Thanks Dikkii. The 'bigger picture' doesn't equal a singular platform in this context, and, like the greens, the Party's platform is rooted in a couple of singular ideals (secularism, humanism), but come out through many social/other policies (refer web site). My 'snide' comment is as it is. I'm not out there right now to collect a mountain of votes. I'm helping get the party some exposure in its early building phase. Even if I was interested in appearances, I personally do not equate volunteering for a local community org. with understanding local issues - but yes I know that many would. At this stage of my life personally, I work damn hard, but my leftover time is best spent with my family, and a percentage of my income donated directly to my chosen charities and local organisations. Regarding the engineering, I work in road safety helping review safety of designs, remodel work or existing conditions, and conduct risk assessments, on anything to do with the road (I'm X-VicRoads). I recently conducted reviews through Eltham and Yan Yean, and Greensborough (in response to a massive truck crash off the Highway into a property). Also, I am the lead external consultant assisting VicRoads rewrite its "Worksite Safety Code of Practice" which is the "Bible" for how people conduct roadworks on the road safely. Got to run. Seeya.

As a response it's informative, exploitative, exploited, revealing, guarded, tasteless, cynical, helpful, unhelpful, wasteful, frivolous. Possibly even un-local. Certainly not serious about even having a red-hot go at representing Jagajaga.

Utterly frustrating. At this point it has occurred to me that only one candidate (one that is above contempt, anyway) is serious about representing his electorate responsibly. It doesn't appear to be Harris.

Click here if you want to see my election posts so far.

Candidate responses - Jagajaga

2010-08-02T01:35:00.006+10:00

You might recall that I sent a communiqué off to some of the candidates who will be standing for election for the seat of Jagajaga.

I have in my hot little hands responses from candidates Kearney and Harris. Chris Kearney, as you may recall, is the Greens candidate for Jagajaga and Peter Harris is the Secular Party's candidate.

So what did they have to offer? Let's look at them one by one.

Chris Kearney responded first. This what Kearney had to say:

Dikkii,

Thanks for your interest at the local level. Over the years I have lived and raised with my wife our two children I have been on their local State School Council, Macleod Tennis Club Management Committee and President of the Banyule Hawks Basketball Club. Restricted my answer to just the last three years well over that time I have played a non-executive role at the Tennis Club on maintenance and upgrading of the tennis courts surface to ones requiring no watering in response to the changing climate. As an active member of the Eltham & District Amateur Winemakers Guild I have taken on the role managing the Logistics sub-committee for its upcoming Annual Amateur Wineshow being held on 28th November 2010 at the Eltham Community Centre from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00p.m.. You can read more detail of the Guild's activities on their website at www.amateurwine.org.au. If you or any of your friends are interested in wine and the making of it I would encourage you all to get in contact with the Guild and join to learn from the wealth of experience in its members.

Regards,

Chris Kearney

Kearney is clearly a local and cares about local issues so I sent a standard response thanking him for his time and effort in responding. I resisted berating him for addressing me in the opening without a salutation.

Peter Harris was next:

Hi Dikkii, thanks for the email. Answer: "Not too much, and I don't
care for token voluntary roles that are nice on the eye and satisfy
somebody's 'feel-good' faculty". I believe in the bigger picture.

If you want a more meaningful summary of myself, in recent times I
have been managing an engineering company and undertaking project
managing roles that benefit my electorate, as well as many others,
and, raising a bubbly 16-month-old, and setting a great example to
friends and family about how to live a healthy life through eating
well and exercising plenty. I have a degree in civil engineering and
business administration. In the past, I have worked in voluntary roles
in India, Israel, and Vanuatu. My follow-up volunteer work in
Australia went on for about 5 years and covered several federal
electorates. I got too old for that 'youth' organisation and have more
recently got tied up in family and work and using my brain to try to
understand the world.

I hope to use what I have learnt, living, working, and travelling
Australia, the Middle-East, Asia, North Africa and the South-Pacific,
to benefit Australians, and others.

I would be happy to liaise on more specific questions/topics at a
mutual time. I'm glad that you are considering your options and hence
Australia's and the world's future.

Regards.
Peter.

Whilst I appreciate his direct response, I can't help shaking the notion that Peter might be being parachuted in to Jagajaga. This is a shame, because I would dearly love to put a member of the Secular Party first. I sent this in response:

Hi Peter,

Thank you for your response. I very much appreciate your honesty, although I would like to point out that as you are potentially representing the community of Jagajaga to our federal parliament, one would expect that you at least care for local issues, your project and engineering work included. Whilst I too also care for the "bigger picture", I should point out that there is not a lot of voters out there who would appreciate what could be seen as somewhat snide references to one's "feel-good faculty". It could be seen as particularly grating if what you refer to as a "bigger picture" could be seen by some as representing a single platform, i.e. secularism. Whilst I very much support secularism in this country - it is a particular passion of mine, funnily enough - the bigger picture for me at this election, at least as far as the lower house is concerned, is "which candidate will best represent the interests of the community of Jagajaga?"

As it happens, what I was after didn't need to be limited to what you might describe as "feel-good" activities, which is why I would very much like to know more about the project and engineering work that you clearly take some pride in. I merely just need to know that you're not a carpetbagger, as two of your opponents appear to be.

I like your "liaise" idea and welcome your initiative and willingness to talk to your potential constituents. I will consider some appropriate times to chat.

Cheers,

Dikkii.

I wish that I hadn't used the term "carpetbagger". I'm not sure that it's widely used in Australia for parachute candidates.

What is a donkey vote? (Keeping your member "local" part four)

2010-07-31T22:19:00.010+10:00

Well the candidates are all in as far as both the House of Representatives and Senate are concerned. I will do a post in the future on voting for the Senate, but at the moment I'm looking closely at how to get a local candidate into the House of Reps.

And although this series looks at the electorate of Jagajaga specifically, I hope that those of you who live in the rest of Australia can get something out of it.

First of all, it's interesting, but I thought that there would be more candidates for Jagajaga. I thought maybe the CEC might field a candidate. And that maybe there might be an independent or two.

But it does appear that as far as Jagajaga goes, all the candidates are going to be representing political parties.

The draw for the spots is very important: Anecdotal evidence suggests that the all important donkey vote makes up a large portion of votes received. But what is a "donkey vote"? And how much impact does it actually have?

I would never in as million years suggest that you do this without good reason. A donkey vote is where you number down the ballot paper from top to bottom. It would stand to reason that this might be used by a number of voters: Disenfranchised or dissillusioned voters, ignorant voters, illiterate voters and possibly even a core of voters who wrongly see this as a protest vote.

But there is another core of voters who might use the donkey vote - these are those voters who actually do want to vote from top to bottom because that is the order of their preferences.

It should be noted that a lot of Australians erroneously refer to good old ordinary informal voting as "donkey voting". This is incorrect, but I'm happy for them to have that opinion as donkey voting arguably skews the vote. Informal votes, thankfully, do not.

I can tell you right now, a donkey vote won't be the order of mine in Jagajaga. Let's look at the candidates in order, starting from the all-important number one spot:

Joe Sgarlata, Family First

Truthfully? Family First, or "Fundies First" as most people I know call them, are extreme religious ECP* zealots for whom nothing short of total theocracy will be acceptable. The history of religious creeps getting together and ruining for office around the world is a long one as indicated in this document that a Facebook friend of mine sent to me today.

On the other hand, there are Christians around for whom religiousness isn't enough and these (normally religious moderates) will take the time to consider candidates in a balanced fashion. It's unlikely that religious moderates will consider extreme kooks such as Family First when casting their vote and this article from the Sydney Morning Herald, forwarded to me by the same Facebook friend appears to back me up on this.

Nevertheless, I'm quite surprised that Family First put up a candidate out here in Jagajaga. I would have expected them to focus their efforts on the bible belt of Victoria and not bother with a backwater like Jagajaga. The bible belt of Victoria, last I checked, seemed to be located in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne and the La Trobe Valley.

It is expected, although by no means assured, that this time around, FF will direct their preferences at the Liberal Party. This could be quite valuable for the local Libs candidates.

Being as disgusted as I am with Family First's platform will prevent me from bothering to ask Sgarlata about his community involvement in Jagajaga. In fact, I am grateful to the CEC for not fielding a candidate - it saves me from having to decide who will go last on my ballot paper.

Jenny Macklin, Australian Labor Party

I have discussed at length my efforts to date in finding out what Macklin has done for Jagajaga. While I await that, I should clarify my issues with the ALP's platform.

The leader of the ALP is the current PM, Julia Gillard. Gillard has seriously drawn some disrespect from me for pandering to the racial vote with her stand on boat-people, and the intent on getting the internet filter through will be the main breaker for me on an ALP vote.

Having said that, it's possible that Macklin has added to Jagajaga during the last term, so the jury is out on her at this point. Sadly, Labor voters will not care about this, and the fact that she is a federal minister might just increase her primary vote.

Joh Bauch, Liberal

Bauch has,I suspect, been parachuted in by the Libs to face what would be, for a Liberal candidate, a hostile electorate.

The Libs have really not presented well to date during this election campaign. The electorate is suspicious about WorkChoices coming back and to be honest, leader Tony Abbott hasn't done a great job of defusing this issue. They've also been silent on a few things.

And now a note to those thinking of voting Liberal on the basis of Labor's proposed internet filter. The Libs have been silent on this. One of the things that should be noted is that as a possible future government of Australia, it is in the interests of the Libs to see this measure get up. I very much doubt that the Libs would counteract a measure that gives them power over what Australian internet users see.

Anyway, if I find out that Bauch isn't local, I will be putting him very low down my preferences. Any political party that treats this constituency with that sort of contempt deserves to be paid back in kind.

Chris Kearney, Australian Greens

I have to be honest: I tend to sympathise with the Greens these days more than any of the other political parties.

In addition, as I outlined in my previous post, Kearney appears to have runs on the board as a local.

So far, the stand out candidate in this electorate.

Peter Harris, Secular Party of Australia

I am thrilled to bits that we will have a large-s Secularist running in Jagajaga. I don't think you need me to explain why I support their platform.

But I will be sending the same copy of my letter to Harris as I did to Bauch and Kearney. I will, as I'm sure you also understand, be considering any sort of non-localism unfavourably when it comes to considering my vote in this election.

Ideally, I'd like to put Harris at number one. But I won't be doing that if it turns out that he's also a skydiver.

So how would a donkey vote look in Jagajaga? It would look like this:

(1) Sgarlata
(2) Macklin
(3) Bauch
(4) Kearney
(5) Harris

And without having heard back from any of the candidates, I can assure you that right now, I do not recommend a donkey vote in Jagajaga.

I will start to look at the Senate soon.

*ECP = Evangelical/Charismatic/Pentecostal. Yes I know that the Anglican Church has their own internal definition of "evangelical" but could you use the one that the rest of the world uses for once, please?

Keeping your member "local" part three

2010-07-30T00:32:00.006+10:00

Folks, nominations have only just closed for all those who are running as candidates for the 2010 election. It's a little early to see exactly who are all the candidates are, but thanks to the ABC, we can already see who three of the candidates are in the electorate of Jagajaga.

Presently, it appears to be incumbent member Jenny Macklin, standing as a member of the ALP, Johannes Bauch (another Joh!) standing as a candidate for the Liberal Party and Chris Kearney who will represent the Greens.

I'll have to wait until the AEC fixes their webpage to catch all the candidates - no doubt that there'll be more - but until then, I thought it would be good to find out about Bauch and Kearney.

Incidentally, the letter I sent to Macklin nearly a week ago still hasn't been answered, yet. I'll give her staffers another week to answer it, then I'll follow it up.

I'll be honest: Bauch and Kearney don't stand a chance. Jagajaga is an ultra-safe Labor seat, and Jenny Macklin is a shoe-in. But still, even though in the grand scheme of things my vote is worth diddly-squat, if I'm going to rock up to the polling booth and cast my vote, I'd rather do it properly.

It's either that or vote informally, which I have to admit, I've done before.

Allow me to digress just for a moment: I have had a discussion with someone who thinks that the above sentence may be interpreted as advice to vote informally which is illegal in Australia. Obviously, only a complete idiot would interpret that sentence this way, but am I wrong? Do courts apply a "what would an unreasonable person with half his faculties missing think" test?

[/digression]

So, in keeping with that theme, I thought I'd take the opportunity to grill Bauch and Kearney about their community involvement. I strongly suspect that Bauch has been parachuted in, as his profile on the Liberal Party's website is devoid of detail, but Kearney on the other hand might be a little more interesting. Kearney appears to have runs on the board according to the Greens' website:

He's lived in Macleod for 32 years. OK, he's clearly local.
"Many local schools and sporting committees". I need specifics.
"Active" member of Macleod Tennis Club. "Active" could mean anything.
Member of Eltham & District Amateur Winemakers’ Guild. Very interesting.

Kearney is clearly a standout candidate at this point, assuming that I end up disregarding the candidates' policy platforms of their political parties (a lot of "P"s) which I won't.

I need to ask the candidates individually what they have done for Jagajaga. To keep this fair, I will only make it for the term elapsed since the last election in November 2007:

Dear Candidate,

I notice that you've declared as a candidate for Jagajaga. May I congratulate you on your preselection and wish you the best of luck for what will be, I'm sure, a rivetting contest in Jagajaga.

So that I can vote properly and not roll a dice or blindly follow a how-to-vote card like so many Australians do, I thought I’d ask the question: Is it possible for you to send me a summary of what your contributions to the community of Jagajaga have been during the period covering the last electoral term?

Please note – I am not looking for your achievements personally, nor am I looking for your qualifications of which I'm sure there are a few. I am simply looking for what it is that you’ve done to benefit the people of Jagajaga specifically during the current electoral term and nothing more.

Community stuff is what I'm after. For example I note that the current Member for Warringah is a member of a surf lifesaving club in his electorate and although he doesn’t get rostered on terribly often, he has a record of turning up to do his shifts. So stuff like that please.

Although the election is still a little while away, please be assured that I will consider every syllable of your response when I get to the polling booth in August.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Dikkii.

I bet they'll be faster than Macklin at responding.

Quick follow up keeping your member "local"

2010-07-27T00:50:00.004+10:00

Just thought I'd follow up the previous post I made about local members.

Whilst I'm yet to receive a response to my letter which I only sent on Friday, I received two junk mail items in my letterbox tonight from my local member, the Hon. Jenny Macklin, MP.

The first one is a four page glossy leaflet filled with "news" articles and photos (lots) of Macklin titled "New Financial Year Update". It's subtitled "Jagajaga News | Jenny Macklin MP" so it's clearly been made to suit the electorate, however, the articles can be summarised as follows:

Letter to "Resident" that may also be read as an executive summary of the rest of the leaflet;
Details of the paid parental leave scheme (18 weeks at National Minimum wage, or $570 per week);
Details of quarterly Pension Supplement payments paid in advance up to $1,005.70 (singles) or $758.10 (each member of a couple) per six month period;
Small bit about rise in government pension rates from September last year of $100 (singles) or $74 (each member of a couple);
Small bit about one-off Carer Supplement of $600;
Small bit about contacting Macklin's office for free information kits;
Full page trumpeting tax cuts;
Small bit about 50% Child Care Rebate being available as a fortnightly option; and
Half page on health reforms and other health initiatives.

The other one is one sheet with details of Labor's Renewable Energy Fund on one side ($652.5 million) and an invitation to come and meet Macklin at Eltham Town Square on Saturday 31 July between 11.15 AM and 12.00 PM on the other.

Neither of these, it should be noted, contain any information on what she's done for Jagajaga specifically in the last electoral term.

Now I am curious.

Keeping your member "local"

2010-07-23T15:50:00.007+10:00

One of the downsides of not having a proper civics syllabus in our secondary schools is the fact that Australians know bugger all about their own system. This is a DISGRACE!!!

Our kids learn about civics the same as we did – bits and pieces of it are carved off and farmed out to subjects as unrelated as legal studies, economics and history. And really, it’s not good enough.

So I thought that I’d get something out there that has been bugging me ever since Julia Gillard became PM: Folks, (and I may be preaching to the converted here) we do not elect our Prime Minister.

The first I heard about this, was a few disgruntled souls voicing their opinion that Kevin Rudd’s rolling by Gillard was undemocratic as apparently, Australians elected Rudd as PM for this entire term of government.

As a reminder, again, we do not elect our prime ministers. PMs get the job by virtue of being the leader of the government, normally formed by a group of members of the House of Representatives who hold the majority of seats. When a political party, defined as a group of like-minded people campaigning under a single platform, form a majority in the House, they get to be the Government. Currently, this is the ALP. Their leader, who is elected by the party room, is the one who gets to be the PM.

Likewise, the group of members who don’t consent to join this first group get to be the Opposition. The dominant political party in this group is the Liberal Party, so their leader gets to be Opposition Leader. Funnily enough, I don’t hear a squeak from Australians about supposed democratically elected Opposition Leaders when they get rolled by their party room. Anyone remember when Malcolm Turnbull got rolled in favour of Tony Abbott? Even further back, what about then Brendan Nelson was done away with? Bueller? Bueller?

In other words, elected politicians replacing their leader is entirely democratic within the context of Australia's parliamentary system.

Adding to the noise on this, consider the following.

Julia Gillard as PM is entitled to live in the Lodge in Canberra, as well as Kirribilli House whenever she’s in Sydney. She has since said that she will not move into the Lodge (or Kirribilli for that matter) until she’s democratically elected by the Australian people as PM.

Let’s call this an election promise, because assuming that Labor wins and Gillard sticks to her word, she obviously may not move into the Lodge.

The media also likes to call this a battle between Gillard and Abbott, or as they like to call them, “Julia and Tony”.

(As an aside, I don’t think that a single news outlet in the States would ever, in a million years, have referred to the last presidential battle as being between “Barack and John”)

The simple fact is that punters are ill-educated in this country and they think that this is between two prime ministerial candidates. The best thing that the media can do is be a little more responsible about the news that they put out there.

In reality, as far as the lower house goes, the only electing that you do, is for your local member.

I live in a safe Labor seat and my local member is Jenny Macklin. If I were to vote for Macklin in this next election, I would be voting for Macklin and no one else. Certainly not Gillard, even though her policies would affect my decision making in this regard. I’m not even voting for Macklin in her role as Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, just for her primary role as the Member for Jagajaga.

So again, you vote for your local member. Obviously, this means that it does pay to know a little about the candidates. Nominations don’t close until the 29th of July, so at this stage, I only know for certain that Macklin will be running but even then, it’s possible that there may be a pre-selection battle in the local branch of the ALP that I don’t know about.

Your local member. What does this mean?

Your local member should represent your community. Oh sure, there are many Australians who just see a vote for their local member as a vote for who you think should be prime minister, but those people need to frigging well wake up to themselves and consider who is going to best represent them, because that’s who they’re voting for.

With that in mind, I thought I’d compose a letter to my local MP and ask her what she’s done for Jagajaga during the past electoral term. I may have potentially missed something, but I simply don’t know and I suspect that I’m not too different to a lot of Australians in this regard:

The Hon. Jenny Macklin, MHR
Member for Jagajaga
149 Burgundy Street
PO Box 316
Heidelberg VIC 3084

Dear Jenny,

I do hope that you don’t mind me addressing you as “Jenny” in this letter and not the usual “Minister” as your position befits. I am writing to you as my local member of parliament and not to you in your capacity as a minister of the Crown.

As I’m sure you would be aware, there is an election coming up and I am of the understanding that you will be re-nominating as a candidate for Jagajaga, if you haven’t done so already.

So that I can vote properly and not roll a dice or blindly follow a how-to-vote card like so many Australians do, I thought I’d ask the question: Is it possible for you to send me a summary of what your achievements have been in the last electoral term?

Please note – I am not looking for your achievements in your role as the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, nor am I looking for achievements that the Rudd and Gillard governments have managed. I am simply looking for what it is that you’ve done to benefit the people of Jagajaga specifically during the current term and nothing more.

This list of achievements doesn’t need to be limited to stuff related to your parliamentary duties. For example I note that the Member for Warringah is a member of a surf lifesaving club in his electorate and although he doesn’t get rostered on terribly often, he has a record of turning up to do his shifts. So community stuff would be a pretty nice thing to have written in this list as well.

Although the election is still a little while away, please be assured that I will consider every syllable of your response when I get to the polling booth in August.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Dikkii.

It would be really good if we all did the same thing with all our local members.

Last chance to register to vote

2010-07-19T13:01:00.002+10:00

Yes people, an election has been called. I will be blogging during this campaign and hopefully get back to blogging regularly again.

But anyway, if you are not registered to vote, you have until 8PM tonight to do it. Remember folks, voting is compulsory in Australia.

More to come?

Happy Australia Day 2010

2010-01-26T23:59:00.004+11:00

Hi folks. Yeah I haven't been blogging for while, but it's the new year and I hope that this means that things will change.

It's Australia Day 2010, and I thought I'd jot down a few things of what Australia Day means to me. Really, I do love this place. And I'm sure that everyone thinks the same about the place that they live in. But there is things that we could do to improve the place.

Some of you might be aware that it is also Republic Day in India at the moment. Happy Republic Day to you, if you're Indian and reading this.

Relations between here and India are not what they could be. And this is a real shame, because Australia and India have a lot in common and I'm not just talking about a celebrated rivalry on the cricket pitch.

For starters, we were both colonies of the British Empire. And while we're still technically a constitutional monarchy, India is a republic and has been for some time. This is pretty irrelevant - for starters, our Governor-General pretty much enjoys all the trappings of our head of state, even though she's technically only a representative of the Queen of the United Kingdom in Australia. And funnily enough, since our constitution describes the GG as our head of state, I suppose that we're pretty much a republic, for all intents and purposes anyway.

But I've digressed. India and Australia have a lot in common. But our relationship has been strained in recent years with quite a few violent incidents involving Indian students in Australia.

We have a lot of Indian students studying in Australia.

One of the things that Australia has in common with India is an independent and free media. But where the (admittedly not 'out of proportion') attacks on Indian students might have been swept under the rug here as being 'normal' - and I've seen no stats to indicate that they're anything but - the Indian media has been going berzerk.

We were quick to write this off as media hysteria. I actually wondered myself for a little while why, if there was a racial problem, why is the evidence not being provided to the police?

I still wonder about this, but I can tell you right now - we have a problem, and we need to fix it.

I saw this first hand last week on the train. I had hopped on the train at Parliament station, where I normally get on for my ride home. Settling into my seat, I was a little curious at the trio of young kids with plastic bags chroming away in broad daylight up the far end of the train. One of the three, a girl who couldn't have been much older than 14, looked at me and yelled, in a fairly aggressive tone, "Stop looking ya cunt!"

Without meaning to sound too snobby, these three were pretty much gutter trash, and from the loud conversation they were having, it was clear that they were so wasted that they'd hopped on a train on the Hurstbridge line by mistake. I didn't catch where they were headed, but they hopped out at Clifton Hill and seemed a little bit disoriented, and I don't think that it was just the inhalants.

She then proceeded to list why she disliked or liked certain non-anglo racial groups: Asians and "Lebos" (general Australian vernacular for Arabs/Middle Easterners in this context, I think) were considered OK. She even described Asians as "excellent" at one point - for anyone reading this from the UK, the term "Asian" in Australia does not include subcontinentals. But Indians and Africans (we have a lot of people of Sudanese and Somalian backgrounds on Melbourne) were considered bastards, or "...cunts the lot of them".

I haven't seen this in the past at all. I should point out that I move in fairly ordinary middle class circles where I work with all sorts of ethnicities, including Indians, and have never seen anything quite like this.

So the spectre of racism has raised its ugly head in Australia, and we don't really know what to do about it. Some would say that it's always been here: I've never seen it. I've hired people in the past to jobs based on merit and those that I've hired have come from a range of different ethnicities.

And if you think that I've been living under a rock - you could be right. The problem is, just like this instance on the train, I need to see it for myself before I'll acknowledge it. How many Australians are like me I wonder?

On thinking about it, maybe I have seen it, although I might have seen the other side of racism. "Racism" as we know it these days requires an underprivileged ethnic group to be discriminated against. Yes I know that is not what the term means, but really, this is how it is these days.

The other side of racism isn't quite so ugly, however it's not really rosy. I've chatted with many taxi owners who have told me the reasons why they prefer Indian students as taxi drivers: They're reliable.

I've also chatted with the odd convenience store owner who admits to hiring Indian students because they're more honest and hard-working than their other applicants, who are usually of Eastern European or Middle Eastern backgrounds. Anglos? Well apart from not being as honest and hard-working, apparently, Anglos don't apply for these jobs.

Anglos are too stuck-up to apply for jobs in convenience stores or as taxi drivers, which says a great deal more about Anglos in this country. This is an interesting little thing in its own right. I've seen this and it's pretty poor. I have close friends (all Anglos) who preferred to be unemployed for long periods waiting for the right job to come along rather than take a job stacking boxes or serving in convenience stores.

(I do know one Anglo ex-Taxi Driver, but he was at the upper end of Generation X and appeared to know the value of having an income flow even if it was a small one, while he awaited his dream job. And he awaited that dream job for years.)

And I've heard friends tell racist jokes. They don't mean anything by it, but it shits me beyond all measure that these friends don't understand how disrespectful this can sound. My question would be, would you say that in front of an Indian? Or a Somalian?

We are a pretty great country, I think. But we could be excellent. We just have to get off our arses and start making an effort in this regard. Here's a few things that we could could do to make Australia truly great:

1. When someone tells a racist joke, or even makes a racist slur about different ethnicities, why not ask them if they'd say that in front of someone of that ethnicity?

2. When someone refers to themselves in an "empowering" way (fuck I hate you, post-modernists) on the basis of their own race or ethnicity, ask them if they'd mind if someone from a different ethnicity did the same thing about them? A good example is African-Australians who seem to have started referring to themselves as "niggaz" - would they like it if an Anglo did it?

3. It's quite OK to have a job as a convenience store clerk. Gen Y - go out there and get a job and stop bludging off your parents.

4. Indian students have been complaining of racist treatment for some time. Why can't the police ask Indian student groups or the Indian media for evidence? Wouldn't this confirm their claims?

5. If the police have evidence, why can't they do something about it, rather than sweeping it under the carpet?

6. I don't care who you are - anyone who believes in "celebrating diversity" is usually a racist buffoon. We have manners and etiquette for a reason - it helps us to understand each other's intentions. Special pleading on the grounds of race is usually an excuse to shoehorn some kind of racist generalisation in somewhere.

7. Whilst I publicly consider generalisations of young Anglos as lazy and dishonest to be offensive, privately I sorta agree. I don't mean to be ageist, but it would help if young Anglo-Australians made more of an effort.

8. There's a reason why I haven't mentioned Aboriginal Australia in this post. Try to figure out why that might be.

9. Indian students (and Chinese, for that matter) bring a lot of money into Australia. It might not be as much as our earnings from iron ore exports to China, but think of this when you're helping one out.

10. Next time you hear anyone who was born here describe themselves as "Asian" or "a wog", politely point out to them that they were born here.

Cheers, and have a great 2010.

Rock epic of the month: "Gods of War" (Def Leppard) 1987

2009-08-31T02:02:00.000+10:00

Rock epics of the month is a series of posts where I'll look back on classic examples of what I think is the greatest excess of rock and roll - the rock epic.

This month, I'm going cock rock again. Sorry.

Every now and then, music reaches a production high point that just makes you breathe out a sigh and go, "Damn!".

We saw it in the sixties with Sgt. Pepper's, in the seventies with The Dark Side of the Moon and in the nineties with Ministry's Psalm 69 and Massive Attack's Blue Lines.

In the eighties, these production high points happened in cock rock land with two acts and two producers - Bruce Fairbairn with Aerosmith on Permanent Vacation and Pump, and Robert John "Mutt" Lange with Def Leppard on Pyromania and Hysteria.

And it's with Def Leppard that we go to for this one.

They'd released their breakthrough release in the US with the well received Pyromania in 1983 and chose wisely when following this up to work with Lange again. Hysteria sold twice as many copies as Pyromania - being 20 million. That is positively enormous.

I was prompted to write about this one, when a friend of mine talked about the impact that Def Leppard had on her. I must admit to being somewhat ambivalent to the impact of cock rock, generally, but I thought I'd go online and have a listen to this album (and Pyromania) in full again to get an idea of what it was all about back then.

Hysteria is everything a cock rock lover loves. Big riffs. Big high screaming vocals. Guitar solos all over the shop. And enormous hair all round, usually mulleted.

Naturally, I'm still not convinced about the worth of this genre in the pantheon of rock and roll, but I can respect the place that Hysteria, and for that matter, Pyromania holds within the affront that cock rock presents to good taste and indeed, to rock and roll itself. After all, can we not also celebrate rock and roll's missteps as well as the high-points within those missteps?

Anyway, it's a wonder that Def Leppard were able to get this album out at all. Drummer Rick Allen was involved in a car crash prior to recording this and as a result, became rock's most celebrated one-armed drummer. Lange had to be talked into producing this after the band had flirted with the idea of Jim Steinman or producing it themselves.

It does speak some amazing volumes of the loyalty of the band members: Most bands would have parted ways with Allen, but they encouraged him to soldier on, developing a modified drumkit enabling him to play with a lot of foot pedals and one drumstick in hand.

On Pyromania, Phil Collen had been brought in on guitar to replace Pete Willis who had been fired for alcoholism. But things were not well with the other guitarist Steve Clark, who was slowly dying of the exact same thing. As a result of Clark's unreliability, Lange chose to get Collen to do quite a lot of the solo work. This supposedly caused a rift in the band, although I suspect that it was between Clark and the rest of the band.

So on to "Gods of War" which occupied six minutes and 37 seconds. This is actually surprisingly good, although the first and second refrains are somewhat iffy ("On a countdown to zero..." and "Here it comes...") because they require a key change which does, while I'll admit sets up the chorus quite nicely, appears slightly out of kilter with the rest of the song.

The song starts off with a fairly simple, yet iconic bassline from bassplayer, Rick Savage. Clark starts playing the intro riff for a couple of bars, then it's all on from there. The chorus is killer with some awesome cock rock screaming from vocalist Joe Elliott, but the tune really kicks into an open goal just before the end when the last minute kicks in, with some nice guitar riffing, subdued soloing and sound-bites of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that indicate that, whatever else, they loved a good military dust-up.

The proper video features bits from Top Gun. Quite ironic when you consider that this is quite an anti-war song, and that Top Gun was such over-the-top, flag-waving, pro-American propaganda.

Anyway enjoy this live video. It should take you back to the days when rock concerts only happened in stadiums and realises that this tune was a fully worked live proposition. Enjoy:

Feng shite. Oil of Snake.

2009-08-30T17:36:00.002+10:00

FSM bless the Chaser boys. Here's a little snippet of what we won't be seeing again on our screens for a little while:

Let's have a laugh!

2009-07-05T01:52:00.006+10:00

Oh homeopaths, you're just too easy. Why does anybody buy this stuff?

Thank you Sean the Blogonaut.

Rock epic of the month: "Let There Be Rock" (AC/DC) 1977

2009-06-30T13:41:00.007+10:00

Rock epics of the month is a series of posts where I'll look back on classic examples of what I think is the greatest excess of rock and roll - the rock epic.

I have tickets to see AC/DC next year. Yes folks, I will be one of those black-clad bogans seeing these guys live.

And I guarantee you this: I too will be perpetrating the following atrocities in the name of rock:

Punching my fist in the air;
Goat’s head salutes;
Air guitaring; and
Headbanging

And maybe some slamming as well, although AC/DC have never really been a band that you can slam to.

OK. So to celebrate, I’m doing ‘Let There Be Rock’ this month.

Acca Dacca were never really a band that did anything other than meat and potatoes rock and/or roll. I can find very few bona fide rock epics in their vast back catalogue so it’s either this or ‘Night Prowler’. So I thought I’d go for the screaming obvious and do this one.

‘Let There Be Rock’ clocks in at 6:06. And you know, the album that it’s off (Let There Be Rock, of course) correctly shows a band hitting some sort of creative stride. In the case of this tune, however, the tune just takes off like a racing car and keeps going like it’s completely out of control.

Phil Rudd’s drums sound like a gorilla is pounding on them and lead vocalist, the late Bon Scott just sounds like he’s totally mental as he tells the tale of how ROCK!! came into being. But while Angus Young might be the face of AC/DC, here the focus is on the rock solid riffing of Malcolm Young on rhythm guitar and bassist Mark Evans.

If there was any doubt (surely not) prior to this album that Malcolm Young is the engine room of this band, then this album, and this song in particular, put all speculation to rest.

The fact of the matter is this: AC/DC simply would not work without the riffs of Malcolm Young. You can remove Angus, because he’s essentially visual: The thing that everyone remembers about AC/DC songs if you're listening to them at home is the monolithic riffs of Malcolm. Even if some feel that they’re a bit samey.

Incidentally, have you ever seen people criticise AC/DC for this, and then it turns out that they’re fans of another “samey” act such as The Cure or The Church? I have. But this is their thing, their schtick. Their particular aural signature, if you like.

Malcolm Young’s riffs are iconic. End of story. They’re so iconic that The Cult had some sort of accident in the eighties and recorded an entire album where they thought they were AC/DC – Electric.

But don’t let me tell you. Check out this video of the song in question. Bon Scott as the preacher man looks absolutely certifiable. Angus is dressed as a choirboy or something with a cardboard halo:

Let there be rock!

Why The Chaser should not be called to account

2009-06-08T22:43:00.010+10:00

It's amazing what gets the creative juices flowing again. I haven't really blogged seriously for quite some time. I haven't even looked closely at the blogs I like.

But this isn't about me. Well, maybe it is a little bit.

But you know, anger is an energy. And last week, I had it in spades.

Last week, Wednesday night on ABC1, the TV sketch comedy show The Chaser's War on Everything broadcast this little sketch:

I admit not to seeing it at the time. I'm not usually home on Wednesday nights, so I usually wait until Thursday night to watch the repeat on ABC2.

On Thursday, I suddenly noticed a flurry of Twitter posts calling for the heads of the Chaser boys. Investigating this further, talkback radio and the media were all over this sketch, calling it a variety of names, usually preceded by "sick".

I must admit, my curiosity was well and truly tweaked by the time that I got around to watching the repeat.

Once the episode had finished screening, I had one of those "Is that it?" moments, where I felt that I had missed something. And sure enough, I had.

The ABC and The Chaser had cut the frigging scene!!

That's right, folks. They had, not only cut it, but they had issued a statement on video apologising for it, and regretting any hurt that was caused. Not only that, I think that it was Julian Morrow who had indicated that they had called the real Make A Wish Foundation to apologise.

The ABC have since taken The Chaser's War on Everything off the air for two weeks.

But let's have a more critical view of this than what the mainstream media have done.

I'll just get this one out of the way quickly: Anyone who listens to talkback radio, NOVA or the Austereo networks deserve contempt. How is this related to this post? It's only related in passing, but I thought that I'd get this one out there. Indeed, I have given Ms Dikkii instructions that, should she catch me listening to talkback radio, she's to immediately have me taken out the back and shot.

Secondly, who made it this far who believes that the sketch was making fun of sick kids? If you answered "yes", you also deserve contempt. This sketch was actually making fun of frivolous charities like Make A Wish. I'll discuss them more in a few moments. Which begs the question: If The Chaser did call Make A Wish to apologise, precisely how insincere was the apology?

Thirdly, The Chaser's modus operandi (as suggested by the title of the TV show) is to make fun of everything and anything. This means that charities (I use that word only in its strictest legal sense) such as Make A Wish were ripe for targetting.

Fourthly, I have no evidence that talkback radio shock jocks actually looked at the sketch prior to going nuts about it. Just think about that for a while.

Fifthly, why the talkback radio shock jocks left Andrew Hansen's marvellous Billy Connolly impersonation untouched (from the same episode) is a mystery to me.

Finally, The Chaser have done far more controversial stuff than this in the past, and will continue to do so in the future. Which begs the question: Now that cutting stuff is an option with these guys, exactly what is going to be cut next?

The Chaser boys are certainly not stupid. The fact that they've swallowed any pride that they might have and apologised is understandable, in light of the controversy that this sketch created.

But here's the thing: They should not have apologised. Nor should they have caved into ABC management over this. I have lost a great deal of respect for them over this and whilst I'm not greatly convinced that the apologies were sincere, the record will show that this is an apology that has been made. And it will be harder in the future for Morrow, Hansen, Craig Reucassel, Chris Taylor, Chas Licciardello and Dominic Knight (I'll leave Charles Firth out of this) to back down and claim that they were coerced into making this apology.

The sketch was squarely aimed at frivolous charities like Make A Wish. The Make A Wish Foundation are there to assist dying children by granting them a wish or two before they die. They make a big song and dance over flying terminal cancer patients to Disneyland or introducing them to Pink.

This might sound wonderful to you and some of you are probably asking, "Dikkii. Why not grant these dying kids a dying wish?"

I put it to you that the Make A Wish Foundation is diverting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars away from legitimate medical research. Indeed, their 2008 annual report makes the astounding claim that they:

...met all of its Wish granting obligations for 2008...

Obviously, what constitutes a "Wish granting obligation" is a grey area, as they also say on their application form that granting a particular wish is entirely up to the Make A Wish Foundation.

In 2008, they raised AUD 1.75 million. And while this is small compared to some charities, the question should be asked, couldn't this money have been better spent funding legitimate medical research?

In the pages of the annual report, wish recipients talk of meeting the Mythbusters or going to see Liverpool play.

Liverpool. Flying economy class from Melbourne to London's Heathrow airport currently costs about AUD $1,680 through Thai which I used Webjet to find for me. Add in spending, transportation, accomodation, tickets to the game and similar for a minder (presumably a parent) and you are looking at about AUD $10,000 all up. Probably more.

Wouldn't it be better if this amount of money was spent on legitimate medical research?

This blogger is more interested in stuff that the charity is rejecting. While we know that someone in 2008 according to their annual report got to go to Seattle to see the Boeing factory, what about the kid whose wish for a blowjob from Cameron Diaz was knocked back? This may sound extreme, but exactly what gets knocked back? What wishes don't they grant, and what is their internal wish granting criteria?

I would, therefore like to issue a wish of my own in the middle of all this: The Make A Wish Foundation should come clean about the quanta of denied wishes. That is, we should get details about exactly what is being declined, how many, and what is their internal wish granting criteria.

Taylor's closing words from the sketch were, "They're only going to die anyway." Charities like Make A Wish make us feel good about spending on the terminally ill, and not on research that might have prevented these kids being terminally ill in the first place. They must, therefore, be called to account and not The Chaser.

Rock epic of the month: "Dry The Rain" (The Beta Band) 1997

2009-04-30T23:38:00.004+10:00

Rock epics of the month is a series of posts where I'll look back on classic examples of what I think is the greatest excess of rock and roll - the rock epic.

I wasn't about to let another month go by without doing one of these, but I thought I'd open with some correspondence that I got from a regular reader a little while back. In it, he complained that that I've never made it clear what a 'rock epic' is.

Actually, I did, way back in the first one in this series, however I will re-state it:

There are no hard and fast rules for what a rock epic actually is, but the general agreement is that it needs to go for more than 6 minutes and has long bits where there are no vocals.

Another complaint is that when I lead into the song itself, I seem to end abruptly. I can only attribute this to the fact that I normally try to embed a YouTube video of the tune in question at the end of each post.

Naturally, the YouTube vid doesn't make it into the RSS feed or my emails, if you get my posts in your inbox. So you'll have to click on the post heading if you want to hear the tune.

With that out of the way, please allow me to roll on to this month's rock epic, which is "Dry The Rain" by The Beta Band. A Scottish band from St Andrews who formed in 1996, they were the pioneers and to my knowledge the sole proponents of a genre known as "folk-hop". Obviously, that's a blend of folk and hip-hop.

I never understood the Beta Band until after they had broken up, but this tune, man it pushes all the right buttons. Six minutes and five seconds of blissful mellowness.

This was on their Champion Versions EP, which was the first recording that they released. Later on, it would be bundled in with the The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos EPs to form their The Three EPs compilation in 1998.

The thing that made this song is that scene from High Fidelity. Barry, played by Jack Black has been having a great time blasting "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves in a record store owned by Rob Gordon. Gordon (John Cusack) goes mental and takes it off. Not long after this, he says to Dick (Todd Louiso), "I will now sell 5 copies of The Three EPs by The Beta Band,"and rips into this tune at about the 3:40 mark.

But this ignores the build up. The intro and verses of this tune are reasonably mellow and jangly. After the second chorus the thing just builds and builds and builds until the certifiable money shot of the tune at 4:06 or thereabouts. The vocals come back in for the outro ("If there's something inside that you wanna say...") while a trumpet and a flugel horn wail away over the top.

Man I love that bit.

Anyway, here it is from YouTube. Enjoy the bejesus out of it folks, because it is quite frankly immensely powerful for what essentially a jangly little tune.

Cracking the sads with the media, episode 426: The GFC and superannuation

2009-04-06T15:02:00.006+10:00

Those who read this blog will know all about my thoughts on the media. Some of you will also be probably saying, “There’s been a GFC. Why have you been so silent?”

I admit to being busy with other stuff in meatspace, and I haven’t blogged in a little while, so shame on me. But finally, I’m going nuts again, and you can all shut up and read for all I care because there’s stuff that simply has to be said.

The media has been all over superannuation funds for quite some time. True, this is the biggest exposure Australians will ever have to volatile investment markets outside their own home. And yes, for those of you who like to read between the lines (you know who you are) there was a subtle dig buried in that sentence.

Part of the negative press aimed at super funds is simply unwarranted, and here’s the reason why: Chances are big that you need to shoulder what could potentially be the lion’s share of responsibility for that diminishing nest egg.

That’s right folks. You, or at least most of you who are reading, are almost fully culpable. Not your super fund. Possibly your financial adviser, if you have one, but this ain’t aimed at you if you have. That will be the subject of a different post, so if you have a financial adviser, you can consider yourself in the clear. At the moment.

For those of you who don’t use a financial adviser, I suspect that you are having a grand old time criticising your super fund for what is, for most of you, a year and a half of negative returns. Let’s face it; we love to have a go at stuff that shits us. As a nation, we love to stick it up the poms when they’re complaining, but to be frank; we’re a nation of whingers. Possibly even worse than the English.

We’re also a nation that hates to accept personal responsibility.

Put these two traits together, and you’re left with the kind of sensationalist reporting that sees the media (News in particular, but Fairfax is a close second) putting out tripe like this or this and Australians lapping it up like the sheep that that they are.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Australians are shithouse investors and it’s time that you were all told. As an investor, the chances are that if you’re reading this, you suck.

Permit me to now explain why you potentially suck.

Superannuation is not a type of investment. It’s a tax environment.

John Smith (not his real name) is 58 and recently retired. Naturally, he’s rather upset at his super fund’s return of -20% over the past year. And he’s only in the fund’s ‘balanced’ option.

He spots an ad for an online account in the newspaper paying 4.50% and thinks to himself, “At least this is positive.”

John empties his super fund and sticks the entire amount, lock, stock and barrel into this online account. John is, quite frankly, a goose.

On John’s current marginal rate of tax (30%), the rate of interest becomes less attractive at 3.15%, not including Medicare.

On top of this, John simply doesn’t want to know that he could have invested in a cash option in his super fund which is only taxed at a concessional rate of 15%. He’s that pissed off. In fact, the bank that offers this account also offers an identical account to self-managed super funds, thus yielding a superior return after tax of 3.825%.

And because John is not 60 yet, he’s going to be in for a fright at tax time when he finds himself hit with a tax bill in the tens of thousands of dollars on his lump sum super withdrawal.

Can it get any worse?

You bet. John also couldn’t care less that, had he switched to the pension phase of super, his assets aren’t even subject to tax on their earnings. Holding this online account within a self-managed super fund in the online phase would have yielded the full 4.50%.

Not only that, because John has withdrawn the amount from super he is going to have serious problems if he ever wants to start up a super pension, because he won’t be able to get the whole thing back into super if he tries. Amounts able to be contributed to super in a financial year are subject to contribution caps, which limits his flexibility in this regard.

John might be a retiree, but I have no sympathy for him.

Notice that I haven’t talked about John’s potential exit fees, John’s lost insurance coverage or the likelihood that he’ll miss a market upswing. Well I wasn’t going to, anyway.

You choose your investments (part 1)

Jo Phelps (not her real name) is 40 and a manager with an HR recruitment firm.

About a year and a half ago, she received her annual super statement from her fund. Jo was in the balanced option of her fund which had been performing quite respectably for the past four years posting regular returns of 15%.

Her balanced option is about 70% shares and property and 30% cash and fixed interest.

But when she saw the returns on the fund’s ‘high-growth’ option, her eyes lit up as it showed average returns of 25-30% regularly over the past 4 years. The high-growth option is predominantly shares with a smattering of property. There is about 3 or 4 % cash in the portfolio.

Jo rings up her fund and demands to have a switch form sent out. The staffer on the end of the line helpfully suggests to Jo that she speak to a financial adviser before going ahead with the switch.

Jo helpfully suggests to the staffer that she takes her offer of financial advice and sticks it where the sun doesn’t shine, because after all, all financial advisers only recommend stuff with kickbacks for them. “I don’t need a financial adviser,” she casually mentions, “please just post the form.”

The switch was processed and now Jo feels shell-shocked by negative returns of -35%.

Jo would like to know this:

Aren’t fund managers meant to see this sort of stuff coming and take action to stop it?
I mean, I know that there’s no such things as psychics, but couldn’t they have short-sold or something? and
Given that employers have to contribute into superannuation, how come the government can’t guarantee it like bank accounts? I mean really, all Australians should be protected from the downside, shouldn’t they? They guarantee bank accounts; superannuation funds aren’t really that different…

Jo had no idea that a high-growth option could go down as well as up. Mind you, if you’d told her a year and a half ago, I don’t think she would have given a stuff.

You choose your investments (part 2)

Brad Dawes (not his real name) works in a blue-collar job. He’s twenty-something.

When he started with his current employer, he couldn’t be bothered filling out the super forms. He did ask at the time, “So let me get this straight: I don’t have to fill this in. You’ll sort it out for me with this ‘default’ thingy?”

To which the answer was, “Yes”. Natch.

About the only form that Brad filled in correctly was the bank account details for where he wanted to be paid.

The super from Brad’s current job now goes, by default, into the balanced option of the default super fund offered by his employer. Brad doesn’t know how these funds are invested, and really couldn’t care.

Brad’s super is all over the place. All default funds provided by previous employers and all different.

All the negative press about super has Brad looking at the one or two statements (out of the six or so funds he’s ever joined) that he regularly gets. Brad now has the following criticisms of super:

I could invest my funds better than my super fund could;
What’s with all these fees coming out? This is a scam;
What do you mean, ‘Share prices have gone down?’ Isn’t super meant to be invested in property which never goes backwards? (This is Brad’s opinion, not mine)
I didn’t choose to have my super here. I shouldn’t suffer as a result.

About the only good thing you can say about Brad is that he’s finally shown some interest (even if only passing) in his super as a result of this.

But he’s dead wrong about not choosing to have his super where it is: He chose alright. He’s also not worthy of sympathy.

Retirees are not always worthy of extra sympathy

Let’s go back to John Smith again. Sorry John, but you’re particularly worthy of some stick.

About three years, John decided he’d retire when he turned 58.

John’s super was in the balanced option, which his super fund recommends for periods of 4-5 years or longer. That’s right: 4 to 5 years minimum.

John consciously chose to leave his super in the balanced option, because, “It’s doing pretty well there.” Unlike Jo, he looked at the more aggressive options and thought that they seemed pretty aggressive for him. That’s OK.

He looked at the less aggressive investment options and was put off by the lesser returns. And I’m sure you can see why.

But, looking at the recommended minimum timeframe on his balanced option, he thought, “Well it’s only a recommendation.”

Fast forward to a year and a half ago. John looked at his super fund again, and he thought the exact same thing.

That’s right. With a year and a half to go until retirement, John completely disregarded the recommended minimum investment periods and consciously chose an investment option suited to 4-5 years or longer.

John is now shitted off with his super fund when really, John should be shitted off with himself.

It’s probably worth mentioning that you should plan your exit strategy from the outset. John didn’t even do this with three years to go.

So what can investors learn from this?

You choose your investments. Read the sodding disclosure statements – they may look like slickly produced marketing paraphernalia (and to be honest, most are) – but they have to contain stuff you need to make an informed decision.
The default option isn’t some kind of magical tool that posts excellent returns while protecting investors from market downturns.
Read the bits about how your funds are invested. Also read the bits about recommended minimum timeframes. If you don’t understand how an investment option works, ask an adviser, ask the fund and if they can’t tell you, steer the fuck clear of it.
No one is psychic. Especially not fund managers.
Have you switched to cash? You may learn the hard way that markets can rise violently as well as fall. Chances are you’ll miss out and by gee, won’t it be costly?
No one rings a bell to let you know that the market has bottomed out. Think of this if you’re attempting to time your way back in.
Super investments are taxed at 15 %. Non-super investments are taxed at your marginal rate. This should be a no-brainer but you would be surprised at the number of people who couldn’t give a shit about this.
When you next whinge about your super fund’s non-performance, compare it to something that vaguely resembles it. Comparing a balanced option with anything other than a balanced non-super managed fund is only going to make you look like a moron. Even that is pushing it. Do not compare a balanced super option with an online bank account – geez do I have to spell it out?
Good, fee-for-service financial advisers are there to help out people who know bugger all about investing. There is a very good chance that you form a subset of the latter half of the previous sentence.
I’ve heard people whinge about their super fund’s performance who are in defined benefit schemes. I’m not kidding. If you don’t know what investment option you’re in, or even the fund’s design, find out. Number 3 above should help you.

That’s it. I’ve had a gutful. You can all get stuffed.

Disclosure: This blogger works for a service company that services super funds. He also used to work as a financial planner. And he most likely posted bigger declines in his superannuation balance than the lot of you (if expressed in percentage terms).

Standard but necessary disclaimer: This is not advice. Only a complete idiot would think that any of this constituted advice. It's not even vaguely reasonable to consider this to be advice. If you are in any doubt as to the content of this, see a good, independent financial adviser immediately. They do exist.