Month: March 2021

Modest Expectations – Ohotata Kore

I once had a Welsh friend, the navigator who sat beside the driver in those car rallies where the object seems to be to charge along tracks in the bush, often at night, at terrifying speeds. The navigator’s job was to keep his eyes on the map under torchlight and bark at the driver the instructions in regard to what the road in front was about to do. In other words, he did not look at the road; his only instrument was the map. Therefore, his accurate reading of the map was crucial to survival. Year after year he did this. Then one day, in mid rally, he told the driver to stop. He folded the map, got out of the car and never rallied again. In his case, he had lost his nerve.

In my case, I am writing my 105th blog – 105 being the non-emergency contact number for the police in New Zealand, and “non-emergency” at the head of this piece in Maori. In my case, have I lost the inclination to keep writing? Mine is not writer’s block. I know what “writer’s block” is. I have stopped writing for months while I have wrestled with not being able to see the logical or credible path forward. It is not that I have run out of ideas; it is just that there is a spaghetti junction in my mind, and which strand is the best to follow is not immediately clear.

I always admired Alistair Cooke. I listened to his “Letter from America” for years until his death. Yet when I re-read them, many are covered in the crustiness of age. Not all; some remain very relevant. Nevertheless, I always wished to emulate Cooke. There is always in him the adventurous, curious, cultivated mind. There is always something or somebody you wish to emulate at any point of time. That is the nature of civilisation, and dare I say, democracy.

This is a soliloquy in working out whether by writing this blog, I have said all I have to say to myself. After all, a blog to me is an aide-memoire before old age murders my facility not only to remember but also to make some sense of the trail that has twisted and turned in front of me for so many years. Generally, it depends on whether your map has coincided with that in front of you – and whether, if ever, you lose your nerve. However, unlike my friend, the navigator, you need a clear rear vision mirror and not one clouded in bulldust.

Our St Patrick’s Day

I have Irish ancestry; in fact, since my grandfather was born in Ireland, I am eligible for Irish citizenship. I looked at what is involved some years ago and said why would I do that at my age? I am Australian; I do not need a dual nationality, irrespective of what ephemeral advantages that might bring, such as the national anthem. The Irish national anthem is one forged by fire in 1911; Australia’s doggerel was composed for a concert of the Highland Society of New South Wales in 1878.

I have been registered to practise medicine in the Republic for years and like all good unionists joined the Irish Medical Organisation and even attended some of their conferences. I am shedding membership in Irish organisations of which I am a member. I have done courses in Irish, both contemporary and Old – and nothing has stuck. Except I can pronounce Niamh and Saiose.

Thus, what is left to us is acknowledgement of St Patrick’s Day. Gone are the days of faux leprechauns decked out in four-leaf clover (I was reminded this week that the world record for a stalk of clover is 56 leaves). However, blarney is what those blessed with Irish genes are contained in each Bushmill drop.

Why is it that on one day of the year Irish whiskey becomes palatable, but that is a trifle harsh, especially when it is 10 years’ old malt. The Irish drink Guinness; the elderly elsewhere call it stout. To me they are equally to be avoided. I dislike the creaminess, which spills over to many of the other Irish beers. Yet after the first two pints, it does become more tolerable.

Now Irish cuisine is another matter. It has the breadth of experience of a mashed potato abetted by cuts of meat, including mince, a step up from offal – some of which incidentally I like, as long as it is not brains, heart, lungs or sweetbreads.

In any event, we sat down to a meal of shepherd’s pie with red cabbage and apples. We did have enough potato not to add colcannon and enough cabbage not to need corned beef – other staples of Irish cuisine! Potato bread was piled up on a separate plate.

As it coincided with my Portuguese language class, I offered a toast to the class with green coloured water. You see, the Portuguese have a variety of wine which they called vinho verde. Actually, it is not green, it is straw-coloured. In fact, it is a white wine from that eponymous region of Portugal along the River Douro. I don’t think my teacher got the joke.

My celebration of my Irish heritage thus is reduced to an annual meal of modest proportions and a certain latter-day sparseness in my quaffing.

I am not one for Bloomsday, although at one of those pub celebrations, I once saw across the bar somebody who in profile uncannily resembled Katherine Mansfield. She is one of several women in history who have always fascinated me and whom I wished that I could have met.

I have shivered in the Celtic Twilight and stood in homage of William Butler Yeats and his wife, George, at their grave in Drumcliff Co Sligo. As the Irish Times reported at his final interment in 1948, he having died in France in early 1939 and his remains transferred after WWII to Ireland.

THERE WAS a veil of mist over the bare head of Ben Bulben yesterday afternoon when the remains of William Butler Yeats were buried in Irish soil. Soft grey rain swept in from the sea, soaking the Irish tricolour that lay upon the plain wooden coffin, as the body of the poet was laid at last in the churchyard of Drumcliffe.

Ben Bulben

But strangest of all my experiences in the Emerald Isle was the day I was striding across the Burren in Co Clare and I began to run because it had started to rain. I then had the strongest feeling I have ever had of déjà vu. A small boy also running, a boy in shreds and patches. No, I’m not completely mad; just Irish.

Let me fish off Cape St Mary’s

It is just a matter of my association of St Patrick’s day and the Western Australian election. It is tortuous but let me explain.

Western Australia has just witnessed the biggest rejection of being an Australian that one could ever imagine. I immediately thought of the landslide elections which have taken place in Queensland in 1974 and then in 2012. It was a matter of personalities, and if Queenslanders take a set against you then it’s “good night nurse”, as multiple “Mexicans” have found out.

However, the genesis of the Western Australian terramoto is different. The population has embraced secession with an unbridled intensity.

What WA thought of us in 1933

While the victory may partially be attributed to the current strength of the Western Australian economy, with the iron ore prices being high and Brazil being a “basket case”, the root cause lies in secessionist sentiments. Premier McGowan has been able to pull off what his State tried to do by legislative changes in the 1930s. He has seceded from the rest of Australia by just closing the borders when the Virus appeared, continuing it well after it was justified on public health reasons, thus thumbing his nose at the Prime Minister. His course of action was endorsed by the Liberal Party wipeout at the recent election.

Yet if there was one incident that set McGowan off, it was the Ruby Princess affair. He was incensed by the NSW Government’s cavalier handling of that incident, and he has used Premier Berejiklian as a punching bag ever since when it has suited him. Berejiklian seems to evoke this visceral response from other Premiers. They see through her “goodie-two-shoes teacher’s pet” persona.

The border issue made some sense when Australia was working out the adversary Virus and NSW was allowing the Virus to rip through Australia via the Ruby Princess debacle. Then progressively as Australia worked out a uniform public health response, it made less and less sense in any public health interpretation and more to political animosities to keep the borders closed.  The pain in developing this uniform strategy should not be underestimated nevertheless.

Border closure became an overt political device by the less populous States, none better manipulated than by McGowan.

It is interesting to note that during the 1890s the group that pushed Western Australia towards Federation were Eastern Goldfield miners around Kalgoorlie. Given that gold had not been discovered until a few years before, it showed how quickly a mining group could gain an influential position. Western Australia then had a small population located in a huge land mass, where cattle occupied grass castles; grain was been grown in fertile south-west; whaling was concentrated around Albany; a pearling industry had been started around Broome; and for a time, sandalwood was the major export.

Some voices suggested that New Zealand would be more relevant within the nascent Federation, but in the end by 1901, Western Australia had joined but New Zealand had declined.

Nevertheless, secessionism always close to the surface. If the Federal Government had paid heed to the history of the Western Australian secessionist movements, it would have recognised the dangerous course McGowan has pursued. It is extremely difficult now to achieve actual secession constitutionally, as the path to this was effectively closed during the 1930s. The border closure issue remains and will persist as long as the Federal Government fails to confront the situation.

Now why would I connect this secessionist movement with St Patrick’s Day?

Iceberg alley, St John’s

Whenever I think of the Irish, apart from my Australo-Irish heritage, I think of Newfoundland. When one goes to Newfoundland, one realises that Mother Nature is Irish. In the St John’s harbour on the first day of summer, there are icebergs still. Well, actually summer begins on 16 June when the trees have burst into foliage, and then there is a two-week moratorium before the mosquitos emerge, and the battle is joined.

The other factor in my memory was how Irish Newfoundland felt for me. The “Newfie” accent has more than a hint of the brogue, but it was the music which confirmed that Newfoundland was part of Irish diaspora. To hear the group, the Irish Descendants, singing Let me Fish Off Cape St Mary’s is to hear the heart of the diaspora. The cliffs from which this fishing port overlooks the Atlantic Ocean could be part of the West Coast of Ireland. It was ironic when I was there that fishing for cod, once the mainstay of the fishing industry, was prohibited so far had the fish stocks fallen. The ban came in 1992, and it was 20 years before the cod returned in numbers. One could still get cod’s tongue, a local delicacy but then it came from “aways”. I think somebody might have said Iceland.

And what the hell has this to do with Western Australia? Well, Newfoundland had been created a separate dominion apart from Canada in 1907. In effect it was a separate country. At the same time in 1934, while certain elements in Western Australia were agitating for secession, the Newfoundlanders were doing the opposite. The Great Depression had sent them perilously close to the financial wall, and so they joined the Canadian Federation giving up their self-governing status and adding Mainland Labrador to form the present province. The fact that Newfoundland is much the same distance to Dublin as to Ottawa did not influence the “Newfie” intent, but then it is not in their makeup to calibrate distance as a sign of loyalty.

Both in Australia and Canada shift in status has depended on constitutional recognition. In the past when there are concerns of disease spread, the methods of quarantine including border closure are constitutionally the responsibility of the Federal Government. Setting up a public relations manoeuvre and calling it a “national cabinet” in the end showed that the Federal Government was just shifting its constitutional responsibility to the States so they could cop the blame if matters went wrong as they did in Victoria.

McGowan is in the favourable position of being able to have the same advantageous GST position, as heading a State of the Commonwealth of Australia.

However, he is perceived as having had a landslide electoral victory when he shook the secessionist tambourine for all its worth, Western Australia the de facto nation holding as hostages many of the electoral Federal foes including the controversial duo of Porter and Reynolds. Moreover, Western Australia in all likelihood will lose one of the seats in coming redistribution, and therefore the already nervous Liberal Party will be forced to play “musical seats”. Thus, an already factionalised Liberal Party has all the ingredients to tear itself apart

McGowan now knows that if the Federal Government holds back GST money from Western Australia or take any other perceived discriminatory action, it will be beaten up electorally there.

McGowan knows that the Federal Government is not willing to stop him meddling with the borders. He does not need any constitutional change to effect secession without metaphorically “leaving the building”. He has effectively done so, and any arcane legal processes were brushed aside when he effectively usurped the quarantine power of the Commonwealth, which unequivocally is a constitutional power of the Federal Government.

Therefore, the Prime Minister is faced with this situation, first enunciated by Bishop Morton, of Morton’s fork.

Ironically, one of the Prime Minister’s strongest acolytes is named Morton, a Pentecostal blow-in from NSW who was in charge of the WA Liberal Party, who inherited Tangney, a very safe Liberal seat along the Swan River. No longer if the recent State election is any guide.

What happened in the 1930s was because the Federal Government of both Australia and Canada held the cards. The constitutional barriers were too great in Australia once the deed had been done in 1901; and Newfoundland simply could not afford being a separate nation.

But as they say in the native argot, McGowan is “giving it a red hot go” to create his own nation.

Oh, not another transparent bureaucrat

“At ASIO, we’re conscious that the names and labels we use are important,” he said. “Words matter. They can be very powerful in how they frame an issue and how they make people think about issue.”

Thus, spake Mr Burgess, the head of the Australian academy of spooks. He is “friendly” Mike to us punters. In a recent media interview, we get the full story of the poor boy from a migrant family who was the first in his family to go the University and moreover to undertake electrical engineering. Before the image of the “log cabin” childhood is further invoked, he outs himself as being a cyber nut, and thus he lives in a world where his simulacra in other jurisdictions try to out-hack one another.

Nevertheless, there is a cloaked anecdote about the “nest of spies” that his outfit has been able to quash or whatever – there is no detail; just an enticing tit-bit for the writer. Spooks must invoke mystery and plot right back to Walsingham.

One of the most concerning situations is when somebody in the spook business embarks on this sort of exercise, because those who run the organisation can try and present themselves as an ordinary person, you know the football team follower, has a dog et cetera and that – at the same time at budget time invokes all sorts of horror befalling the nation if the “Spook Budget” is not increased.

The security services exist to keep their rival services at bay, foiling disablers of major computer networks, and preventing such anti-community activities such as the recent Neo-Nazi gathering at Hall’s Gap.

The essential ingredient is to have a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of such activities. Burgess in the comments quoted above also maintains that no longer will they reveal whether the dangers are from the extremist right or left wing groups or delineating whether the terrorist groups are linked to ISIS or whatever. He said that his service will restrict itself to saying that such activities will be characterised as being “belief or ideologically based”. It is subtle, but in fact he is saying he will be further constricting information, but generalising the threat.

I wonder, as I pass through the airport screening how useful testing for explosives has been, because some mad guy tried to detonate explosives in the heels of his shoes on a Miami bound flight in 2001. How many copycats have been detected at Australian airports, at what cost, given also that there is a large group that is not tested anyway?

The January episode in Washington showed how useful security is when a crowd is determined to riot to the point of insurrection.  Mostly not at all.

I want to be assured that our security services don’t spend their money on profiling their operatives. I would like to believe that given the Australian security service has a history of conservative political association, this has dissipated and been replaced by a politically neutral service. Parliamentary surveillance needs to include people able to contain the secretive authoritarian technocrat that Burgess embodies.

Brigadier Sir Charles Chambers Fowell Spry CBE, DSO

Attempts were made to recruit me when ASIO, under Brigadier Spry, was a political action committee for the Menzies Government concerned with “reds under the bed”; and riddled with proto-fascist operatives such as elements of Moral Re-Armament, the leader of which Frank Buchman openly praised Hitler.

Charles Spry himself was an affable chap, with a penchant for Scotch whisky which he shared with the Prime Minister. However, behind that persona was a very determined anti-communist and where scruples could be left on the dressing table as if they were cuff links.

Whitlam set up the Hope Royal Commission in 1974, the report from which has formed the basis for the modern-day intelligence services. A raid on ASIO as ordered by Lionel Murphy, then the Commonwealth Attorney-General in 1973, would today be unimaginable.

In a very perceptive thesis on the organisation published in 2018, Coventry concluded:

Intelligence and security have become second nature to Australians and anyone else in the US ‘hub and spokes’ system. To argue for the abolition of ASIO in the present time is unpalatable; for good reason. The neoliberal phenomenon of globalisation means that targets of terrorism are, as Nixon feared, ubiquitous. Any citizen or corporation or NGO located overseas can be seen as an extension of a targeted government; all it takes is a careless comment by a public official. It is often overlooked that governments have a clear role in provoking terrorism, including within in society, though many may wish to believe this threat comes purely from the mental illness, barbarity and jealousy of others.

In 2010, the former director general of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, told the Chilcot Inquiry that she had warned the Blair Government (1997-2007) that involvement in the Iraq War would result in higher levels of home-grown terrorism. She was of course vindicated. It must be said that ASIO has done well so far to keep the Australian Government and citizenry from the kind of harm exhibited overseas.

That last comment is reassuring, but that was written before Burgess became the ASIO Director-General in 2019, and he is running the line of foreign interference and espionage being the paramount dangers (rather than terrorism) which suits his technologically-driven agenda. He reminds me of the old “cold war warriors”, himself ideologically driven as far as his background has given meaning to that word (or words).

Australia needs an Attorney-General to withstand Burgess’ undoubtedly very powerful personality coupled with his wide access to information. To believe that Australia’s security organisation does not actively participate in cyber warfare would be incredibly naïve.

I am now an avid watcher of the activities of Mike Burgess. I look forward to his first interview with Crikey.

Mouse Whisper

I never did like that skunk Pepe Le Pew. His characterisation gave rodents a bad name, but he is the latest casualty in the war against the predatory male. Looney Tunes have shown him the door.  The comedian, David Chappelle, who once said that the famous can always become infamous but not unfamous, says of the skunk: Pepe, whom he laughed at as a kid, later through an adult lens makes him realise: “What kind of … rapist is this guy?” 

Wait a minute! I stand corrected. Skunks are not rodents; they are of the same ilk as Tim Wilson’s cabal of wolverines.

Pepe Le Pew, about to be cancelled

Modest Expectations – The Armstead

I suppose when you follow the Woody Allen trail of filmic apologia for his fascination with young women, the lens settles on the troubled mind. The pursuit of the younger woman by the older man is not only the preserve of Mr Allen.  Try Mr Polanski. The seventies seemed to be a time when the world was cluttered with these creeps “outing themselves” – a pride of predators – so to speak.

However, it was 20 years before in the early 1950s that I first encountered this syndrome in the film Baby Doll. I was a teenager and older men chasing young teenage women confused me, but then I had the naivety of no sexual experience.

There was this societal response of averting one’s eyes from such behaviour. At school, there was never an open forum to discuss what was happening in contemporary society. Looking back at the trailer of the film, the voice over has a dark, oleaginous, lascivious tone. While there was widespread “tut-tutting” about the film, what was the long-lasting effect? The creation of short revealing nightwear for young women. Yes, a life lived constantly with Women Objectification.

A new book entitled “Consentement” has been published as reported by the Guardian Weekly. The author is Vanessa Springora, who was abused by one Gabriel Matzneff, another writer who preyed on the underaged. When he was interviewed on a talk show in 1990 in Paris, Matzinoff is reported to have responded to a question about his penchant for women under 20 by saying the older woman has known “disillusionment” whereas the “not yet hardened” are nice to sleep with. This statement enraged a Canadian author, Denise Bombardier, who called out his actions. For her action the Paris male-dominated intelligentsia mocked her; called her bitch.

Twenty years later, same location, Paris, Ms Springora releases the book, described as a memoir of being abused by Matzinoff when she was 15 and he three times her age. This time, his casual insouciance has been replaced by his flight from Paris and a trial set down for September this year.

As the Washington Post reminded us this week, France prohibits sexual relations between an adult and a minor under the age of 15 but has no minimum age of consent. The French government has said it will “act quickly” to amend statutes so that an adult who engages in sex with someone younger than 15 would be charged with rape.

I have placed an order for the book.

Machias Seal Island and the Improbability of Puffins

I was reminded of a trip to Machias Seal Island when I read about the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine to the remote islands off the Maine Coast. But the ownership of one of these islands has been disputed between Canada and the United States.

I have previously written about the Canada and Denmark dispute over the Hans Island between Greenland and Canada.

This is another of those anomalous situations that is the subject of an ongoing dispute between Canada and USA.

In 1783, the Treaty of Paris settled the Revolutionary War, but it left unanswered questions about the Maine–New Brunswick border. In 1820, when Maine became a state, its government defined its boundary as far north as it could. The so-called Aroostook War ensued, with militia mobilisation on each side and cross-border arrests eventually leading to a solution brokered by diplomacy rather than force. The resulting treaty, signed 175 years ago, determined the current crooked shape of northern Maine and should have solved the cross-border tensions, except that it failed to account for Machias Seal Island and the smaller adjacent North Rock.

Our American friend who owned a house in Maine knew that the only way to get to this island was to take a boat from the Maine port of Cutler.

The reason was that Anonymouse wanted to see the puffins, which nest every year on Machias Seal Island in late spring. During the nesting season these crazy looking little birds have flaming orange beaks.

The North Atlantic Ocean can be a very rough journey for a small, converted fishing boat. However, this day, the swell was tolerable. This was essential because alighting from the boat on the slipway can be too dangerous to land safely and you can go there for nought, not being able to land.

This day we landed and were led by a grumpy Canadian marine scientist up to the lighthouse. This lighthouse was built by the New Brunswickers in 1832 and has been manned by the Canadian coast guard or its former equivalent ever since. We sheltered against the lighthouse and in pairs we were led to a hide. There were several small hides in the middle of the puffin colony. The puffins clustered around and all over the slightly undulating and rocky surrounding area. The puffins used the roof of the hide as a landing strip, and repeatedly there was a crash as they landed hard. They then hopped away off the “runway” to allow the next bird to land.

Queuing for takeoff

Normally a hide is a place which allows you to wait and wait until the bird turns up for a brief sighting. Not in this case – the puffins were in their hundreds nearby, they waddled, they posed, they are an unforgettable little auk, each with an individuality known only to each other’s partner. These birds are completely unknown in southern waters just as penguins are unknown north of the Equator.

After about half an hour, the experience is ended, one is escorted back down the boardwalk and as we were about the last pair to visit the birds, it was not long before we were boarding the boat and heading back to the American mainland. No, we did not need a passport, nor on the other hand were we allowed to roam the Island.

The puffin had been an emblem on a series of books in my childhood, and this was the first time I had been up close – if not personal – with an improbability of puffins. A remarkable experience capped off by the extraordinary return when the Ocean was a millpond, a gentle end to a long day.

Mathias Made it – Freed from Morrison 

“Cecilia Malmström consistently received broad support from the Member countries, and the outcome was close. We are grateful for all of the support throughout the process. Sweden will now join the consensus behind the Australian candidate” says Minister for Foreign Trade and Nordic Affairs Anna Hallberg.

In commenting about his bid to run for this position, I was biased because of his political antics in Australia, but then he became more recognisable as a chameleon – a very clever one, who has used Australia as his stepping stone back to Europe. He is the ultimate mercenary, and there is no doubt in my mind that it was the United States as the deciding factor. Biden’s staff recognised that he was not bound to any ideology but is very smart and any indiscretions like being “outed” as one of the puerile “big, swinging dicks” was only his attempt to acclimatise to the maturity of Australian culture.

While being supported by Australia was essential, I suspect that the Americans may have been lukewarm towards Malmström and in the end I suspect the US needed Australia more than Sweden at this time. It would not have escaped Biden’s attention that Australia has had an excellent record in containing the COVID-19 virus and Sweden not so much.

Let’s face it, Cormann is a German, being born in the German-speaking sliver of Belgium. As I have stated, he has a good working relationship with the German Government, and as it became increasingly clear, he was only using Australia as a temporary watering stop. His charm, his fluency in the influential languages enabled him to gradually gain traction from a perceived “no hoper” position. This only reinforced the fact that he had maintained his own counsel and had sounded out his potential allies among the German-Benelux mob. Possibly the attempted intervention of certain local political figures to try and stop his appointment may have brought a transitory shadow, but political feather dusters tend to be blown away rather than have any lasting effect.

Remember the OECD is the successor to the Marshall Plan. For the past 16 years, the Secretary General has been a Mexican; for the previous 12 years a Canadian – one just South; the other just North. Very close for comfort. Also note the time these guys held office. Cormann may still be there when Morrison is just a Johannes Leak painting in some distant alcove of Parliament House.

I have been scanning both the New York Times and Washington Post for news of the Cormann appointment. Nothing. I am nevertheless reminded of the late Jim Wolfensohn, who grew up in Australia to become an international banker. He set his sights on becoming the President of the World Bank. To further this ambition, he became an American citizen. Some 15 years later his long game was rewarded, and he headed the World Bank from 1995 for 10 years. There was no chauvinistic roar as I remember it when he got the job. In 2010 he quietly reclaimed his Australian citizenship.

Cormann has  been underrated; but he was the European who wanted to return there and get Morrison to back him. Very smart, but if not for this personal armoury, it is doubtful whether he would have won. Despite the so-called public relations propensity of the Prime Minister (and those “puff pieces” from DFAT through their Shield mouthpiece) to try and get the credit, it was Cormann himself who convinced the panel.

Congratulations; and thus I know where you will be in six years’ time unless there is a skeleton whose rattling has yet to be heard or that your youth doesn’t assure against your mortality. I am not so sure about Mr Morrison or  Cormann, your successor in the role of Minister of Finance in six years’ time.

Stroll along the Seine anyone?

And talking about political timing, there would have been a problem if he had remained a Liberal strategist after the annihilation of the Liberal party last Saturday. But he had long since gone. Now he can stride to work from June along the Seine in the 16th Arrondissement with an independent air.

And for your successor as Minister for Finance, two questions: How much this circus cost Australia? And for what purpose?

But in the words of those McCain ads, ah Mathias, you’ve done it again.

A Violent Society ready to be Tamed?

Ever since Cain killed Abel, human beings have killed one another, and those closest to the person with the weapon are often the least immune.

I watched the gun culture of the United States grow and remembered that decades ago I penned a piece on the Hoddle Street massacre. It took another massacre at Port Arthur for most of this country to wake up to itself. Therefore, the anonymous random murders of those who are a victim of one person’s accumulated hatred were laid to rest by the incoming Prime Minister, John Howard, an unremarkable man achieved a remarkable outcome.

The country has been ravaged by criminal gangs killing one another in order to control the dark side of our economy. A multicultural society admits those who have been brutalised as young children, whether Lebanese, Iraqis, Sudanese to name a few – who have come to accept death on the street as part of everyday life. In contrast, our children can stroll through a shopping mall where there are no gun-toting security people at every corner, but on returning home are able to retreat into a virtual world of cyber violence. Cyberspace is full of it. Aggression and violence underlie the promotion of sport.  Then have we addressed the acceptable level of violence. Can it be zero ever?

When my then teenage sons were working through the pentathlon sports, they then had to learn how to shoot with a centre fire pistol at a stationery target 10 metres away. Owning these pistols required me to be fingerprinted and to have a secure pistol safe. What struck me about the pistol club crowd was how normal, almost introspective they were. They never paraded around in combat uniforms. They treasured their pistols; they would come to the range and fire repeatedly at the one set of targets. Walk down the range, check how they had done, replace the target, walk back up the range, confer with their fellow members and start again. They were quiet, and frowned upon any activity that could be interpreted as aggressive. It was important to be calm as firing the pistol was synchronous with your heartbeat, and the slower that was, the more time to get your aim correct. My sons never pursued pistol shooting, but they learnt the etiquette. Technology for pentathlon now allows the pistols to be simulated with laser weapons and live ammunition is no longer required.

John Howard’s response to the gun culture was immediate. After he made his stand, for a time he wore a bullet proof vest when addressing crowds. As you watch Morrison, you just get the feeling that he would not emulate John Howard. He would just be over-run by the Shooters and Fishers sympathisers for a start. They were not as organised in the 1990s and probably the mood following Port Arthur would not have given them much oxygen.  The West Australian family massacre in 2018 is the only mass shooting in Australia since Port Arthur. In fact, both suicide and homicide by guns have fallen since the 1980s and this fall was not interrupted by the COVID-19 virus outbreak. Therefore, the gun mob now have gained some more oxygen, especially as the need to get rid of feral animals is looming as another battleground to justify the wider use of firearms.

The Christchurch massacre two years ago in New Zealand was particularly vile. Perpetrated by an Australian, the mosque massacre showed that the New Zealand gun restrictions needed to be tightened. However, the terrorism in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, plus 9/11 maybe have had a desensitising effect on all of us.

While there is a great deal of talk of Muslims being part of the community, especially after the Christchurch massacre, much of that empathy is as superficial as green drought. How can a Society increasingly brought up in an egalitarian world not be affronted to see the blokes in casual wear being trailed by women in complete shapeless black clothing from top to toe? Publicly we are affronted by the antics of One Nation, but much of the racism just as publicly identifies deeply held biases. Yet why am I not affronted by the Christian sects that insist on the women wearing bows in their hair so Christ can recognise when he, enraptured, comes again. I just dismiss it as “quaint”. Yet why do we tolerate Scientologists to exist despite their repressive tactics? They are not a quaint group. As we single out groups our biases just hop around.

Most of us keep our biases to ourselves and the ballot box is where we can unleash them – at least somewhat. It leads to the appearance of civilisation. Nevertheless, ongoing violence is often rooted in differences in belief, which is ever present in a so-called multicultural society.

This country is a long way from resolving its problem with systemic violence. I thought that once the use of weaponry has been put in its rack, Australia could now concentrate on violence abatement.  For in the USA this question has not been resolved because the right to bear arms is an excuse for violence as recently shown in Washington. The Constitutional mantra begins: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state…” – however, those January 6 images just evoke a hollow laugh. The one thing Trump exposed was the fact that America is at heart a violent society, obsessed with firearms and which treats women like dirt.

Women’s movements seem to flame up and then the gender mismatch resumes, with a few male sacrifices, but nothing really changes.

Here in Australia, the knife has replaced the gun as the instrument of choice when the fist and the rape are not enough. There are now young women who do not need fancy plumage to attract attention. They have existed but they have been pushed aside to be a voluble fringe, living your life on talk shows being very clever but totally irrelevant.

Grace Tame

Ms Tame, beware the elements of sleeplessness, isolation, burnout and boredom. Fortunately, Grace Tame has been given a year to continue her quest, but her challenge is to destroy the novelty of being just a young articulate woman and lead a well-resourced crusade to displace the male and female misfits and rent-seekers who dominate the parliaments – especially those who have formed cute gangs called “wolverines” (I suggest Ms Kitching ditch the group) and the like.

The ballot box is Ms Tame’s ongoing relevance. I am sure she does not need any help in identifying the targets, but make sure that those who stand and may be pre-selected be assessed by someone like Cathy McGowan, who engineered a remarkable outcome in her seat of Indi – orderly non-dynastic succession planning by an Independent.

My epilogue to Meekness

Remember, children, particularly those of you dressed in pink.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child;
Pity my simplicity,
Suffer me to come to Thee.

Lamb of God, I look to Thee;
Thou shalt my Example be;
Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;
Thou wast once a little child.

Lord, I would be as Thou art;
Give me Thine obedient heart;
Thou art pitiful and kind,
Let me have Thy loving mind.

As a child I recited the first verse before bed.  But I always had difficulty with the word “simplicity”. Still have.

Needless to say, these verses by that great feminist irony, Charles Wesley are sung often by all girl choirs.

Mouse Whisper

An alternate view of Big Swinging Dicks as said to me in Fred Brophy’s pub in Cracow is that they were in fact metroGnomes.  It depends on your way of assessing these things.

Fred Brophy’s Hotel Cracow

Modest Expectations – The Size of the Universe

Is Australia an ochlocracy?

The Ancient Greek historian, Polybius drew on the traditional theory of the three constitutions: monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, which may decay into their perverted versions becoming respectively, despotism, oligarchy and “rule of violence”.

Okhlos

Okhlos is Greek for “mob”. Its potential was seen briefly in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6. It goes to show how rattled the Prime Minister continues to be when he invoked the spectre of mob rule such as that; and substitutes an irritating mantra of “the rule of law” (or does he mean lore and he has not bothered to read the evidence – but then he admits he never reads anything any time).

Morrison’s retreat behind a line of feeble excuses, backed invariably by people of privilege in the end is unsustainable. One transformation occurring in Australian culture which has probably been an important undercurrent in this societal change has been the appearance of the articulate young women who have had enough of the brutal misogyny, which hides behind the veil of Australian “mateship”.

This rise in the women voicing their experience of the underbelly of Australian social life is far from mob rule; it shows the best aspects of democracy, thriving on freedom of speech and the actions of a new leadership led by at least three young women – and presumably more of them to come.

Yet another Liberal Woman?

I watched Kate Jenkins’ underwhelming performance last Sunday morning on television. She is the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner, having jumped ship in 2016 from her role as the Victorian counterpart which she held for less than three years. Her successor in Victoria, Kristen Hilton, is about to finish a five years’ stint and is a female lawyer who came to the position from Legal Aid and community advocacy. Jenkins was from a different legal background and was a controversial appointment by the then Victorian Attorney-General, who happened then to be Liberal. She was appointed despite the selection committee unanimously recommending someone else, and indeed a number of the selection panel resigned in protest. After all, Jenkins had form, having worked for 20 years for Freehills, which was a law firm aligned to the employers in work disputes.

There was a change of Government in Victoria late in 2014, and despite her saying that the manner of appointment had been smoothed over, nevertheless when the opportunity arose to move back to a similar position under a Liberal government it is not surprising that she did.

It is somewhat of a dejà vu situation when, as Kate Jenkins was reported saying in 2018 after some Liberal Party MPs raised concerns about bullying inside the party, she suggested the community response would prompt conservative politicians to push for change. Her comments came at the same time one West Australian Liberal Senator, Linda Reynolds said it was time for Liberal MPs to stop talking about themselves and allow the party to deal with the bullying issue internally – the rule of lore methinks.

Now Kate Jenkins has been entrusted to look at the dysfunctionality of the Parliament House workplace, encouraging people to tell all but with no authority to name names. Initially, the Prime Minister had assigned one of his female colleagues, but after all what do you have a sex discrimination commissioner for? It seemed somewhat of an afterthought, but in the blokey culture in which the Prime Minister finds himself comfortable, it is unsurprising. After all, in this culture Kate Jenkins has to examine, the Office of Women has barely been heard. She has to report by November.

However, one suggestion that the office appointment be made by some independent body is ludicrous. Most ministerial offices have departmental liaison officers in any event. In many workplaces, one needs a police check. The problem lies in the fact that there are just too many parliamentary staff, the employing Minister needs to be confident of their loyalty and their moral compass. Cut back on staff numbers and get rid of the condottiere culture – 95 per cent of the time hanging out and five per cent ultimate brutality in the case of the Mafia. Applying that to the parliamentary office is boredom, gossiping and bullying – in varying degrees. Occasionally, they may contribute a snippet of relevance to portfolio deliberations.

As for the percentage of sexual harassment and assault admixed, that is surely the major task for Kate Jenkins. In her favour is that she seems to have been involved in sport, in particular the Carlton Football club. That probably has given her an insight into the blokey culture which, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, can become a very unpleasant scene.

However, the most obvious recommendations are that all cases of sexual harassment and assault they be immediately referred to the police and that Parliament House have a 24-hour counselling service on hand for the victim. The first harasser charged should be refused bail and have the case held over for a few months. This would be somewhat of a deterrent, as well as the name being on the public record instead of appearing nowhere but everywhere on social media – a case of “porterisation”.

Insurrection

When I was a medical student, there was only one medical school in Victoria. It was a traditional medical course, which had its roots in the Great Britain “honorary” system and Nightingale wards.

There was a vision of medical students in the mould of the 1950s series of “Doctor in the House” books, which were popular and vaguely true of a vanishing world.

We “fresher” students had a term of botany to start us in the world of human biochemistry, physiology and anatomy and then moving on to years in clinical medicine where we were introduced to our human pathology. However, that pathology included an introduction to the world of the medical hierarchy, enmeshed in a different pathology. It was a world of innate privilege. For instance, from my boys only private school about ten per cent of the students in my first year were old boys from my school; and most of those had been with me at school the previous year.  Therefore, there was an easy familiarity when we all gathered for our first term. None of the guys then from my school were more than acquaintances, as the friends that I had at school tended to be on the “arty fringe”, not on the treadmill of a year 12 two maths, physics and chemistry.

Despite having a headmaster enlightened for his time, having a factory to ensure a stream of first class honours and the academic superiority of the school, in the end, the school encouraged privilege and misogyny. After all, it was still a school where the boarders were banned from playing hockey, because it was a sport played by girls. Then there was the cruelty, both physical and mental. Until just before I entered the senior school, the prefects were allowed to cane, which some have reported did it with relish.

The masters – note male – were allowed to cane. I remember one time when I was framed as the instigator of a class riot and was caned in front of the class with a large wooden compass. This old boy had played tennis at championship level and his backhand was still a powerful weapon. Oh, such a wondrous time. And there we all were on the threshold of a career of caring and compassion.

There were few women then doing medicine, about 25 per cent at that time. One of them was a feisty blonde who as child had migrated with her parents and elder sister to Australia from Central Europe after the war. She attracted attention because she was always impeccably dressed, even down to her use of Mitsouko as a trademark, very good looking with a strong sense of morality, and willingness to engage men as equals.  This frank engagement was often misinterpreted. Because she was a fraction over 160cm, there was tendency by some to see her as a doll, unable to resist the fragrance of the male pheromones. Nothing was further from the truth. One professor, who had the reputation as a Lothario tried it on, got nowhere very quickly and punished her with a supplementary examination in his subject, which she ultimately passed. The professor wisely absented himself from this further examination.

There was the instance in one of those crowded raucous medical student parties, when a drunken male lifted her up and tried to sling her over his shoulder. Others intervened and he dropped her. In a flash she had flattened him with a fist which travelled from below knee level and he, helped by an inebriated lurch forward, copped the full intensity of the blow. She never gave any quarter; a remarkable woman (in the 1960s she was a pioneer in and passionate advocate also of early childhood education) who followed up with a successful career until she suddenly decided that she had had enough of a male-dominated world and retired. It was a pity.

The white shoe brigade

In our fifth year we had to undertake 10 weeks in the Women’s Hospital where during that period were to do twenty deliveries on our own, including two instrumental deliveries. That was one roster; the other was the episiotomy roster, where we had to go and sew up the incision made in the perineum when extracting the baby to avoid a tear. In those days it was a regular occurrence and we medical students had to do the suturing repair. It was an introduction to being on-call at night.

We were not to leave the premises without permission over the ten weeks and to compound this imprisonment, we had to wear all white – all white short coats, white shirt, white tie, white pullover, white trousers or skirt, white socks, white shoes. The one luxury we afforded ourselves when we were far enough down each list not to be immediately bothered being called was to go over the road to the Martini Bar at about eleven o’clock, have a veal parmigiana and watch a TV Western called The Rebel-Johnny Yuma.

The Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology was an owlish misogynist who had crawled up the pole of success by judicious naval service, membership of the Masons, a fortuitous lack of interest in the professorial post when he applied, allowing him to slide into academia without much, if any academic qualification. Then there he was, a graduate who had needed supplementary examinations to pass and was forced to undertake his first post graduate year at Tennant Creek, on the brink of a stellar career. He had a ruthless streak which, coupled with a few shrewd appointments, provided him with an aura of success. However, his most memorable utterances related to a distressed pregnant woman who came to him threatening suicide. His response – as recounted by him to us fifth year medical students – was that he showed her the window of his office and invited her to jump. The fact that she did not just proved triumphantly his insight into women. To our shame we just absorbed what he said and did nothing.

However the atmosphere, because of the activities of his lieutenants called “First assistants”, became so repressive with them singling out a Malayan Chinese student for special punishment. That was the trigger point. We students declared that enough was enough and petitioned the Professor in a written document signed by all but one of the cohort. We thought it an impressive display of solidarity, and the First Assistants were clearly rattled. Nothing happened immediately and then we felt the full force of the Professor; he isolated those he thought were the leaders and suddenly the rebellion melted away. After all, this guy could have a serious effect on careers. He enforced the punishment, “gating” the whole student cohort. This was eased as it gave the First assistants a “humane role” in releasing us from our imprisonment.

In the end a few of us, but particularly myself as I was by then Chair of The Medical Students Society, had a rough time, even though it was almost 18 months later before we faced the examiners. That is another story, but I evaded the trap – and passed, admittedly near the bottom of the year.

As to the fate of the petition, it was never seen again, except there was a second copy – signed similarly by the same set of students. I have it in my possession as an example of what he probably thought was an attempt at mob rule, but a useful document that can be added to his “in memoriam”.

After all, he was not the only disgraceful example of this disrespect for women. It was rife among obstetricians back then, but now change has occurred, especially with more female role models in the field with exemplary professional behaviour.

Then, as students, we accepted the mores, such as lining up to do an internal examination on a woman who had supposedly consented to the invasion. Some of those in my cohort, who signed the petition, became well-respected obstetricians and gynaecologists.

As for the Professor, he was knighted and acquired a trail of honorary academic degrees from all over the world, had a building named after him at one of the teaching hospitals in Melbourne and died as a revered misogynist in 1983.

IVF – Great Expectations?

The role of IVF as a ‘cure’ for infertility was crucial to the discursive construct of law as a barrier. ‘If medical advancements can help these people, it is not the role of Parliament to prevent it. Science was posited as a progressive force, aligned with nature, or perhaps with natural progress, which parliament should not impede. Paradoxically, then, law becomes both the problem and the solution as it ushers in a new era of reform.

In April 1988, my team reported to the then Commonwealth Department of Community Services and Health on the status of in vitro fertilisation (IVF). The Department prepared a summary report because some of the data we collected was confidential. The Departmental summary made the comment that the good data collected by my team “cannot be matched with good output data collected by the National Perinatal Statistics Unit (NPSU). (I use the term IVF, although ART, assisted reproductive technology, of which IVF is one, may now be more commonly used.)

To put our consultancy into perspective, the first in Australia and when 2503 pregnancies had occurred with 1851 live born infants. That was the raw statistic, and we looked at data from 1986 onwards from 15 units across Australia.

It was a time when the tabloids would pounce on any multiple pregnancy as though non-viable octuplets were in some way a blessing from God, a scenario which some members of the Roman Catholic Church applauded. It was just an instance of appalling practices, loading the woman up with fertilised eggs, on the grounds it was more likely one would be implanted.

I entered this review in a very positive frame of mind, because I knew Professor Carl Wood, who was part of the vanguard in the introduction of IVF.

The one invariable feature when we arrived at any of the units was the pictures of beaming bonny babies, so even from the early days the public relation teams were in the picture, so to speak.

Then our team confronted reality. The processes involved in IVF mean that the woman goes through a harrowing experience to conceive. Then there was the waiting period to know that the process was successful. There was some difficulty initially in finding the actual success rate. The success rate was a live baby in the basket – and multiple pregnancies counted as one. Full stop.

It was a problem in the early days and in one State where there was an “IVF cowboy” at the helm, because of his propensity to place multiple eggs into the uterus for implantation.  Of the 55 live births following IVF, 27 per cent were multiple births compared to 0.01 per cent of the total. There were 15 multiple births due to IVF of a total of 264 multiple pregnancies. Five sets were triplets born from IVF pregnancies during the time when there were only a total of 15 sets of triplets born across Australia.

The problem in assessing the “live baby in basket” against the number of IVF cycles was not made easy, because those who ran the IVF clinics were not the same team as those who delivered the women. There was thus no uniform data collection. This presented a difficulty since there were a number who might have been assessed as pregnant but who actually had a chemical pregnancy that did not progress.  This was another practice uncovered at the time – to count a rise in the hormone bHCG as a “successful IVF treatment” – a fancy bit of data manipulation since many never got beyond this stage.  In the absence of any reliable data collection, it was left to us to make the best estimate.

We noted that even at that time of our review four women had already undergone 13 treatment cycles without becoming pregnant. Considering the stress that one IVF cycle entailed, failure was a nightmarish experience – and 13 times! Added to this was a cohort of infertile men whose failure to acknowledge their own infertility created other problems. With the intracytoplasmic injection of one spermocyte into one oocyte, it always seemed to me the height of arrogance that a scientist could pick the right sperm for the right oocyte – a form of cellular eugenics. Yet in one way what could one expect. IVF was the product of veterinary medicine.

I came out of the experience of our consultancy rather differently from the person who was commissioned to undertake this review. Our reports received a mixed reception. For the most part of the succeeding 33 years, I have written nothing. Nevertheless, I have been disturbed by commercialisation of the expectations of women increasingly delaying their families – for many reasons. There is an increasing number of women in their forties seeking IVF treatment when they have certainly reached the fertility savannah if not the desert.

I was prompted to write by the following comment:

Going through IVF is the worst thing that has ever happened to me physically and emotionally. The financial costs made the whole thing far more stressful and limited how many attempts we could have. I know of people who have sold their houses and given up everything to pay for cycle after cycle to have the child they always dreamed of. What’s so infuriating, though, is that it absolutely does not have to be this expensive. This is what happens when medical care is run for private profit instead of public good.

At the time we undertook the review it was well before IVF became a hedge fund commodity like so much of health care now. One of the major reasons for the 1988 review was to understand the costs, and the report was inter alia a masterpiece in cost accounting (because of the involvement of Dr Robert Wilson).

IVF is now big business. It would be a brave politician or Department to establish an independent review as ours was. It is very difficult to work out the real success rate; it is in the interest of the industry to conflate the success rate. But the more important issue is that this is an industry that is in a position to prey on those who are so willing to give up so much for “a baby in the basket”.

The problem I have is “what is truth?” I could not believe this nonsense written by one of IVF specialists. His thesis that increasing IVF could replace falling migration levels is backed by this following burble:

Arguments based on a sense that IVF is futile for women in their 40s also hold little water these days. Twenty years ago, when I first began training in IVF, pregnancies in older women were a rarity. Yet 2017 data from Australia show that, for women aged between 40 and 44 using their own eggs, the cumulative live birth rate is well over 10% for the first cycle of IVF treatment and runs to as high as 40% by their eighth cycle of treatment.

The eighth cycle of treatment, I ask you! The cumulative live birth rate is simply, “if I keep going, what are my chances of pregnancy if I have another cycle, or another two cycles, or another three …”. Dangling a 40% success rate in front of a desperate person who is prepared to sell the house …. those who are running IVF clinics are in a position of  power -the sort of power men use to manipulate women.

Has the misogyny which once burned bright among obstetricians and gynaecology not been extinguished? Anybody making statements as airily as that suggests that it has not. Statements as that above should be tested urgently by another independent review.

I remember one piece of data that stuck in my mind. It was an early study that compared women who had undergone at least one IVF cycle and then gone back to conventional ways of procreation as those who had persisted and delivered an IVF baby. It was about the same – nine per cent.

This is another statistic that would be worth reviewing now.

Any advances on that?

Mouse Whisper

Witnesses under cross examination, however mighty their stature outside the courtroom, very soon became meek and mild and well-behaved in his hands. If they did not—if they paltered with him, or evaded his questions, or did not do justice to their testimonial responsibilities— the smell and sight of cordite smoke soon drifted into the courtroom.

I have never read a more flower-encrusted definition of bullying – in this case a description of the late Tom Hughes’ court antics.

These words are by Dyson Heydon, in a book review of Tom Hughes’ biography, in turn authored by one of those guys my mousemeister knew at school.

Attorney General Porter or his successor should not palter over the Dyson Heydon sexual harassment report in the wake of the Chief Justice’s condemnation last year of him.  Porter received a separate Departmental report on 25 February; and to all intents and purposes it is unsurprising he has done nothing since.

Modest Expectations – Tunisia

Carnarvon WA

Some years ago I wrote a short story about a serial killer who is killed by a woman who has cause for vengeance, but lulls the killer into a false state of security. Set against a background of Carnarvon and Gascoyne Junction, the killer is a very good looking man, who carefully grooms himself – and the woman, his killer, the impossibly beautiful woman. Prey becomes the stalker. It was part of a series of short stories that I wrote after a trip to the Kimberley, before it became a tourist destination. Whether allegorical or not, it has given me the thought that the woman was a journalist who acted as bait to trap the predator into revealing himself. But maybe that is another story – the journalist who endures contumely as the girlfriend so that her probings cause the sociopath to betray himself in front of his peers.

Rape is an act of violence and control. The violence is given a context -sexual assault. However, if the police were informed that a serial killer was loose, there would not be any hesitation. But violent rape, a close relative of murder, seems to invoke legal hesitation. The Federal Parliament situation needs a change in behaviour to complement attitudinal change to stop the disgusting spectacle.

The refuge for this situation about “Pick the Minister”; the betting firms would have been running a book, except there were too many in the know for any realistic odds on who it was. The accused cabinet minister was known to a large number of people, but the name was withheld until Wednesday. “After all, why should I acknowledge something which did not allegedly occur in 1988, and anyway I was different person then. I am now a Cabinet minister!” Not quite the actual words finally uttered but consistent with the eventual lachrymose performance.

Twitter has been alive about the non-allegations in relation to this Cabinet Minister. Disgusting is a mild way to put some of them, but if they are true, the highest level of disgust should be accorded to the now Cabinet Minister.

However, truth in this case is an elusive beast, especially when waiting in the wings of your staged performance is one of the best defamation lawyers in the country.

Given the seriousness of the case, before I knew his name, I would have thought it timely for the Prime Minister to consult with the Attorney-General. He is, after all, the senior judicial officer in Australia, and the Prime Minister was faced with a systemic problem of law enforcement penetrating even his Cabinet. I reflected in an earlier draft that the Attorney-General hopefully will have a solution to the problem. How ironic!

The problem is that the government is in denial, the more the cover up, the more people exposed with inside knowledge; it is just the sort of scenario that any sociopath would delight in. Sociopaths lie. Along the primrose pathway that such men have trodden to get to where they are now, there may well be a number of dark areas from which somebody could emerge, or not. At present, many of such dark areas seem to be coming to light.

It was inevitable as the uproar increased, that this person would be named under Parliamentary privilege. As I wrote early in the week, my hope was that it would be a male who outed him, preferably being the accused himself. Christian Porter has done that. He recognised to his credit that the problem is that if this non-naming had gone on much longer, with increasingly everybody knowing he was the accused, then the Parliament itself becomes a protector of this man and hence compromised. Therefore, someone would have named him in Parliament.

My view has always been to tackle the negative quickly; fallout is inevitable. So what better action than to excise the poison by now setting up an independent inquiry. In particular, for the Prime Minister, if unresolved, the situation becomes a form of political hemlock.

The one matter that troubles me is that a female senator who should know better has resurfaced a claim against a senior Labor member. Unless she knows something others don’t know, why has she surfaced with an old allegation which actually was reviewed by the police and refuted. Just now! Why?  Surely this woman would not indulge in an infantile diversionary tactic?  Porter in his appearance before the Press then sympathised with Shorten’s plight. So much for Senator Henderson.

There is something in the culture among the Liberal Party women which seems to be toxic to the furtherance of gender equality. I have known many, and some, like former Senator Judith Troeth, were exemplary, but they were closed down; the pressure of being cooped up in Parliament House is not that much different from boarding school bullying.

Christian Porter – no matter how the imbroglio is sliced and however innocent ,while in public life he will be a target, especially in the year of Grace Tame.

Blue Book

Just in case you have not seen the blue book Growing a Strong and Resilient Regional Australia which was published with the Budget papers, it starts optimistically.  “Australia’s regions – despite all that’s been thrown at them, are not only still standing but are on the cusp of a great future.”

I am not going to parse the whole report, but even this first sentence, with its recourse to a metaphorical flourish, begs a number of questions.

Even one sentence. It seems “regions” mean any place outside the capital cities, as though the capital cities are apparently a separate entity; in fact they are a diversity held together by being the seat of a government.

The next sentence provides a crude definition of what Australia is beyond the capital cities, and I have always disputed the integrity of a “Capital” as if it is a walled city with a peasantry milling around outside.

 

I recognised when reporting to Government on rural health that there was “inner rural” and “outer rural”. I had never thought of subdividing coastal settlements in that way. On reflection, coastal settlement has been shown after the bush fires last year as having specific characteristics, particularly in relation to accessibility. When I made this classification, I did it on the basis of an urban development which sprawls and engulfs what were autonomous mostly rural settlements.

I once identified a ring of what broadly could be identified as similar settlements about 100 kilometres from Melbourne in which there was a substantial number of procedural general practitioners who lived in or near the township. As urbanisation approached, the general practitioners became progressively deskilled; the practices became “lock-up” since the doctors no longer lived in the community; after hours care was the locum wasteland and the community ill, a referred burden to the nearest big hospital with an emergency department.

The other comment I would make was that during the time of my investigation, I set myself an exercise to drive from Colac to Warragul. All of the towns along the way were about the same distance from Melbourne, along highways which radiated from Melbourne. If you followed these radial roads, accessibility to the cities was manageable. When I drove the circumferential routes between the towns to assess the accessibility of each to the other, it was more tortuous, but the roads were asphalted until I drove into the Great Dividing Range. Here the road became gravel and the accessibility factor showed how isolated this area was, even to Melbourne, remembering my approximate route at all times was equidistant from the Centre of Melbourne. This inaccessibility was later so clearly shown up in the 2009 bushfires which spread across outer Melbourne, and where the problem of accessibility proved to be catastrophic.

Tackling infrastructure challenges is being able to differentiate communities of interest and then attend to them appropriately. I have always believed that in Australia local governments are the best surrogate, unless otherwise demonstrated, for consultation. I once instructed the bureaucrats under my aegis to visit every municipality in Victoria to get their views on an initiative with which I had been entrusted. There then were 210 municipalities and only one refused to meet with us to discuss the initiative. My bureaucrats were put in a position where they could explain to people who did not know much about the proposed investment, who were then mostly male and who had no idea about the importance of early childhood education.

I have been involved in working closely with communities for most of my career. I enjoy it because I enjoy the diversity of Australia. It has meant that there are very few areas of settlement in Australia that I have not been to in my long public service.

However, it is an attitude which has set me against Bureaucracy.

This limitation of Bureaucracy is shown clearly in this Blue book of Government largesse apportioned essentially by Ministerial portfolio. There are thus multiple pots of government money without any reference to one another or any indication what the expected end product will be.

This addendum to the budget papers requires close reading, because the document is drafted as if the Federal Government is the Cornucopia and Minister McCormack the Goddess, Abundantia.

To me, this is the McCormack pork barrel. Reading the Ministerial statement, you can almost smell the crackling.  However, it can be argued that aroma is less pronounced than that of the Sports Rorts.  Special interest groups want something; one of the specialties of any portfolio that the National Party holds is the titration of funding against the electoral advantage.

Moreover, Berejiklian has given the practice her benediction last November. “All governments and all oppositions make commitments to the community in order to curry favour. The term pork barrelling is common parlance. It is not something that I know the community is comfortable with. If that’s the accusation made on this occasion …. then I’m happy to accept that commentary. It’s not an illegal practice. Unfortunately, it does happen from time to time by every government.”

God knows, why she contaminated her defiance with “unfortunately”? Joke!

I looked at the proposed Blue Book largesse in regard to “post- bushfires.” A couple of line items attracted my interest. The first among all the grants was $31million allocated specifically to apple growers to “help re-establish” apple orchards, with an individual maximum of $120,000 per hectare to be allocated over one financial year. This is very generous, even if the tree planting is concentrated. It should be recognised that apples and pears are grown together, so there is a definitional problem as only apple growers are mentioned as eligible. There were three apple growing areas affected – Adelaide Hills, Bilpin and Batlow – the last of which lies within the Wagga Wagga State electorate.

From reports there was some damage to the orchards, but that damage seemed to be minor; one producer with 200,000 trees at Batlow lost less than 5,000.

Then about six months after the bushfire in 2020, an industry source reported” … some are choosing to let crops rot on their trees rather than accept farmgate prices set by the big supermarkets at as little as 90 cents per kilogram for a fruit that costs at least $2 a kilogram to produce.

At the same time, Australians are eating 12 per cent fewer apples since 2015; apple exports have fallen 19 per cent since 2016, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Then there’s the drought and its impact on the size and number of apples produced. Australian farmers grew 14 per cent fewer tonnes last year compared to 2017”.

There was no mention of bushfires. So, I’m only on P17 of this 189 page Blue Book, but I wonder what the hell is going on. Turn the page and there is the second line item of interest – Pratt received $10m for his Tumut paper mill.

The problem is that nobody tries to develop a picture where government financing will produce any lasting benefit for Australia. There are pots of money to tap into if one knows one’s way around Canberra.

This is a form of central planning perverted to become a gigantic slush fund; Australia has been blessed indeed as the Land of the Cornucopia – but then I have never watched the Hunger Games. 

Over there; Just not yet.

This country has been spectacularly successful at suppressing the Virus, but the problem with success is complacency, when all about have succumbed to the Virus through political pigheadedness in the main plus a basic lack of discipline when confronted with a universal enemy. Given the number of disaster and alien films, excluding “Contagion”, it is ironic in this case that the invader is unseen. The whole axiom-out of sight; out of mind – should be remembered.

Australia has dealt with this change of circumstances after an uncertain start, by locking the country away from the rest of the world. To get into Castle Australis is difficult, but there are still normative judgements about who can enter the country or cannot, although it seems to be common practice to insist on 14 days quarantine. The fact, like so many other things in this public-relations’ obsessed country, we were faced with border closures ostensibly due to health concerns but clearly political considerations. At the outset, it was understandable that restriction in movement should be uniformly applied, but it was not. This stemmed from a basic mistrust in the Commonwealth Government. Here there was pressure from the Prime Minister’s business circle not to impose restrictions, which would have led to a US-style situation. If sources are to be believed, it was a very close thing. After all, Morrison found an unsanitary affinity with Trump.

However, once they were imposed and the longer they went, border closures became a political weapon more than a health reason. When border closures clearly became a complete nonsense, at least Berekjlian, who, from many of her actions has often showed herself to be a rolled-gold guaranteed “dropkick”, was so right. Once it was clear from the NSW public health response that the COVID-19 cases could be gathered into clusters, then as she reasoned rightly, why indulge in group punishment by closing borders indiscriminately.

However, it has bred in the populace more than a risk adverse sentiment –fear – especially as the spectre of lockdown is constantly held over it.

For many years Australians have been used to being able to holiday both at home and overseas. As someone old enough to have grown up when overseas travel was a luxury and generally linked to overseas employment, it is a return to the old days of my youth.

I was one of those who went overseas in 1971, admittedly for the second time, 14 years after my first. Then, apart from a couple of years, I went overseas at least once each year until last year. In 2020, the Virus intervened. Now there is an uncertain future for overseas travel; the success Australia has had in ridding itself from the Virus has made most Australians value a COVID-19-free environment at the expense of overseas tourism.

Vaccination has introduced a new variable, but the vaccines development has been accelerated in a way that the mid-term to long term effect is yet unknown. The community knows that hygiene, masks and isolation (social distancing), works. However, community compliance is a factor which has been one of the reasons for the Australian success.

Within the borders the sense in confidence of moving about is growing, but the country has endured a harrowing time to see what works. Therefore, tourism will only return on the back of a confident people – confident that it can occur within a world where the virus is controlled.

The only way that this border issue can be addressed in the short term is for Australia and New Zealand to open up their orders to strictly Trans-Tasman Travel, and work from there. After all, there is confidence building so that the States do not instinctively close their borders. The Governments are increasingly confident that they can control clusters into hot spots.

Look at the situation in New Zealand – one case in Auckland and the city goes into lockdown. Therefore the “outbreak fear” level approximates that here in Australia, unlike the USA where any fall in the prevalence of the Virus is almost invariably followed by a premature relaxation of restrictions.  As was reported this week in the Washington Post “the downward trend in new coronavirus infections had plateaued, perhaps because officials relaxed public health restrictions too soon and more contagious virus variants were becoming more widespread. Experts say a vigorous vaccination effort is key to stamping them out.”

Australia and New Zealand should bite the bullet and enter into an arrangement whereby people can travel between the two countries, leaving details of their destination on arrival. Thus, mutual trust needs to exist, otherwise both countries will be caught in a Western Australian bind of unreasoned defiance, which fortunately is abating as the Premier sees electoral victory this month.

Then we can move into the Pacific to help our neighbours who need our tourism but need to attain the same public health level as Australia and New Zealand. It is a wondrous thing to think that a Virus can assure a common effective response beginning in the Pacific. But then I am always the romantic, believing that advances come the quality of the response to adversity. Australia needs a different government I’m afraid.

In the Pink

Anonymouse

What does it take to get Sydneysiders to flock to the Blue Mountains? Well, me at least. I was thinking as I drove around the rim of the Blue Mountains what an impossible terrain it is, but without its escarpments and jagged pinnacles there would not be the unparalled views. I could be excused for thinking that when William Wentworth, one of three adventurers who first crossed the Blue Mountains to stand on one of pinnacles, the landscape below revealing what Thomas Mitchell later called Australia Felix, confessed that “his love of Australia was the ‘master passion’ of his life.” I could only agree. Yet here was plain the devastating effect of the bushfires which spread though the area early last year and left in their wake a bare blackened landscape.

Yet Australia Felix is never far away. I had gone looking for nature’s compensation for the terrible destruction, a special tapestry of tiny pink and white flowers. For a few short weeks, a year after devastating bushfires in the Blue Mountains and other areas of eastern Australia, the bush has regenerated and a profusion of pink flannel flowers has appeared.

These tiny flowers appear only rarely. Known as bushfire ephemerals, they are regenerated by fire, followed by good rain. It requires specific climatic conditions for seed stored in the soil to germinate. It is thought the plants germinate in response to bushfire smoke, rather than heat. The smoke-derived chemical karrikinolide is the active ingredient that triggers the plants’ emergence. Other plants with a similar activation after bushfires include grasstrees, or Xanthorrhoea, that send up flowering spears, and Gymea lilies. I saw the rebirthed grass trees, but alas no Gymea lilies.

The current bloom is spectacular, with pink flowers woven among the blackened banksias over these large tracts of shallow, skeletal mountain soils.

With their complicated rosy centre of tiny florets and hairy white bracts, rather than petals, they resemble a daisy, but are actually in the same family as carrots, parsley and celery. They are similar to the common flannel flower but are considerably smaller and have a distinct pink hue.

Pink flannel flowers are a mixed blessing – without fire, they remain dormant. See them while you can, hopefully it is many years before they can appear again. I wonder whether Wentworth ever saw them. I doubt it.

Mouse Whisper

Neera Tanden, a professional Democrat and President Biden’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget, fought her way to the threshold of the White House, only to be swatted at by senators who claimed that her appetite for partisan conflict — on Twitter, specifically — disqualifies her from holding that much power. The same fighting that got her here, in other words, now threatens to sink her. 

“Just to mention a few of the thousands of negative public statements,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), speaking with the steady monotone of a not-mad-but-disappointed dad, “you wrote that Susan Collins is ‘the worst,’ that Tom Cotton is a ‘fraud,’ that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz.”

It is an interesting commentary on a feisty intelligent woman, who has raised a swag of money for her Center for American Progress (CAP). She has been a Hilary Clinton sidekick, but it is not only the above Republicans who have been the target of her venom. That honour resides with Bernie Sanders, and at one stage it is alleged that Tanen assaulted the person who later became Sanders’ Campaign Manager. The reason was that Ms Tanen did not like his question directed at Hilary at a CAP forum.

By the way, among her considerable set of donors for the CAP is Mark Zuckerberg who is recorded as giving about US$700,000 in 2018. She certainly is thus a lady not for turning, but her fate will be interesting because she will almost certainly fail to get the nomination for the Cabinet job.

Needless to say the President has withdrawn her nomination later this week.

Neera Tanden