Chris Squire 1948-2015

Tempus Fugit

Founding member and bass guitarist for Yes passed away of Leukemia. The news of his illness was on Facebook some weeks ago, revealed during the same week we found out John Wetton had surgery to remove a large tumour. That was a bad news week for Prog Rock Bass Players. Since then there was one report he was responding well to treatment. It's hard to imagine what that meant. I guess we were briefly given the false hope that things were going to be okay, although in retrospection it is clear such hopes were wildly unlikely.

Chris Squire inspired a generation of bass players through his work with Yes. The distinctive cut in his tone from his trusty Rickenbacker 4001 was the hallmark of their sound for much of the 1970s, and even in the 1980s he was steering the band towards success. His approach to bass playing was heavily influenced by John Entwistle of The Who, using the bass as a lead instrument, playing it like a guitar. He had a sophisticated sense of harmony whereby he would shift and redefine the chord by avoiding the root note for whole passages and then come back to the root note with vengeance.

His playing was also inflected by his experience as a choir boy in his early years. There was a lot of contrapuntal movement in Chris Squire's lines that unlikely as not originated with J.S. Bach. But that was prog Rock for you. You could always tell his playing - he built and perfected a distinctive style and approach that at once combined phenomenal dexterity with tremendous feel. He was the master at pulling and pushing on the beat as well as simply delivering powerful runs and phrases that defined the entire music of Yes. His early work with Yes are now etudes for young bass players.

As the only member to have recorded on every Yes album, Yes music is stamped with his signature playing. It is difficult to imagine Yes recording more albums without him. They may, but it is unlikely they would sound like Yes records. Live, in the absence of Jon Anderson, he became the front man for talking to the audience. Again, it is difficult to see how Yes continues without Chris Squire in a way you can recognise as Yes. As a long time fan, I'm devastated. Ever since I heard 'Drama' with that bounding bass sound, I have been chasing his bass playing all of my life. Many other great players and stylists have come and gone, but all I ever wanted to do on bass guitar growing up and in my own playing was to just rock out like Chris Squire. He will be sorely missed.

There is a Rolling Stone article on his passing here.

Vale Chris Squire.

A New Shade Of Stupidity

Et Tu Malcolm Turnbull? 

Good God. I do begroan with all. Malcolm Turnbull no less is singly madly like the rest of the conservative numbskulls. It's really hard to believe this is the man who once defended at the Spycatcher trial.

In a fiery interview on the ABC's Insiders program on Sunday morning, Mr Turnbull told host Barrie Cassidy he had "lost the plot" after a series of questions about the government's attack on the national broadcaster. 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said last week that heads should roll after the ABC allowed Zaky Mallah into the audience to ask junior minister Steven Ciobo a question on the government's proposed citizenship laws. 

Mr Turnbull said on Sunday that allowing Mallah into the audience was a security issue because Q&A was a "very high profile target".

If you watch the video, Barrie Cassidy responds with incredulity that the ABC studio is a very high profile target and that the audience in the studio is a high profile target. Malcolm Turnbull presses on by saying allowing Zaky Mallah to even step in the studio represents a major failing in the ABC's thinking.

Barrie Cassidy to his credit asks, then how is it different to Zaky Mallah stepping into a shopping centre. Malcolm Turnbull then says that Cassidy has "lost the plot". Which, is a pertinent point. If Mallah is so dangerous and can't allowed near a TV studio and its live audience, then surely he's too dangerous to be out in public and able to wader into places with lots of unsuspecting people. Implicit in that is that Mallah is a free man - is he the kind of threat Malcolm Turnbull is making him out to be?

"Are you pulling my leg? After the Martin Place siege, you are saying to me there is no security issue with putting Zaky Mallah in a live audience?" Mr Turnbull said.
"If you can't see that, I'm sorry.

"Seriously, you've lost the plot there with all due respect. This is a high-profile audience, very high-profile target. This is a fellow that has threatened violence in the past, threatened to kill people, gone to jail for it." 

Mr Turnbull said the ABC had undermined a legitimate debate about national security and proposed citizenship laws that would see dual nationals involved in terrorism automatically lose their citizenship. 

"In any discussion of national security laws, citizenship laws, counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, there is a big debate – is the measure counterproductive, will it create more problems than it solves? That's a legitimate point," he said. 

"Why would the producers choose the least reputable, most discredited, arguably one of the most dangerous individuals to put that view? 

"The answer, I suspect, is because in a sort of undergraduate, playing at tabloid journalism style, they wanted to create the biggest shock and awe and sensation instead of running the program like a responsible current affairs program on the national broadcaster that, frankly, should do better." 

Mr Turnbull denied sending in investigators was interfering with the ABC's independence and editorial judgment. 

He said the government was entitled to ask questions about how the decision to feature Mallah was made and "who knew what, where and when".
"We are not questioning the editorial judgment in terms of free speech issues," he said.

This is what is bothering the Coalition so much? It is not what Zaky Mallah said, but the fact that he was there to ask a question in the first place because he's a security threat? Isn't the problem with the Anti-terror law that it couldn't make its charges stick with Mr. Mallah? Malcolm Turnbull is essentially arguing that where the state failed to get a conviction, the ABC should still be screening out Mr. Mallah because he was charged with threatening violence against a public official. Then he is imputing a motivation to the ABC for their failure to police this, by saying it happened because it had an undergraduate, tabloid journalist style? It doesn't even make sense.

How can he be questioning the editorial judgement in terms of free speech at the same time saying that is not what he is doing? That's doublespeak. Or rank stupidity. When you can't quite tell one from another, I think we've hit some kind of terminus of stupidity.

Maybe these Liberal Party MPs are living in some kind of weird bubble that keeps them apart from the real world and thus makes them rather incapable of understanding it. Christopher Pyne was saying only days ago that it was the ABC and its supporters that are trying to make it an issue of freedom of speech when it wasn't, but failed to explain how that was the case. Now we have Malcolm Turnbull saying the producers choosing a disreputable, discredited and potentially dangerous individual to appear in the studio is the problem because the individual might be a security risk and has nothing good to say.

Let's overlook the point I covered a couple of days ago that Mr. Mallah does not appear to be a terrorist nor a candidate for ISIL at this point in time or in the future. If the Coalition is saying he is still potentially dangerous, the onus is on them to produce the evidence, warn the ABC and all the other media outlets not to let him near a broadcast studio (because he'll do what exactly, I have no fucking idea). I mean, really, Malcolm? Is that what you've got for us? Is that all you've got for us?

It looks more like they're upset because the ABC found exactly the right person to ask exactly the right question and the MP who answered it - Steve Ciabo - looked like a total and utter dickhead caught in an ambush. And now it looks worse for the Coalition because they're now publicly shown they are upset and flustered, saying all kinds of stupid things that don't make any sense.  Thus, when Mr. Turnbull accuses Barrie Cassidy of "losing the plot", it's most probably projection on Malcolm Turnbull's part.

'The Gambler'

Money For Nothing Always Beats Working

Once upon a time I was down in Adelaide and got hooked on Two-Up at the Adelaide Casino. Back then it was fresh and new. I was captivated by the Gamblers' Paradox and spent a goodly number of days chasing odd and even throws of the coin. I won some, lost some, I won some back and even went up high but lost it all at the end of the stay. The life lesson there was "you don't bet against the streak'. I'd spent the week betting for people's streaks to end. I saw 17 events in a row. There's no protection against that.

Anyway, this is partially a movie about the fevered state of staying at the table until you lose everything; but it's also a movie about a profound existential angst about winning and losing.

What's Good About It

It's the kind of anti-hero topic that was prevalent in the 1970s, but has gone away lately. When you consider the polished Marvel studio line of product, it seems highly unlikely that a film this languid and misshapen gets made, but that's part of its charm. A hand can be played in seconds, but the thought that goes into a hand might be eternal. The film goes a good way towards capturing that contrast.

Being a movie about gambling, it does make you think a lot about the many aspects to the phenomenon. I'm one of those people who at once love and hate the gambling experience so it's a film that presents with very mixed emotions for me, and that is probably good.

What's Bad About It

There's a general sense of un-believability about the main character. I guess they were trying to make the point that once somebody is addicted to gambling, they lose sight of things completely; but this main character Jimmy is just a bad gambler. He gets the money that should bail him out, but he blows it playing blackjack in the most self-destructive way.

It's hard watching somebody gamble away their war chest in 3 hands. Repeatedly, Jimmy just doubles down and eventually loses. It's like he's waiting for the miraculous streak of 17 and loses on the 16th hand.

Worse still, the film sets a tall task for the main character, but it also gifts him with a good background that enables him to pay off debts. But he squibs that as well. At some point in the middle, you stop believing in the world the character inhabits.

What's Interesting About It

There's a lot of moralising about gamblers being scumbags, but ultimately the film doesn't work if gambling wasn't so interesting. You can't make a film like this about being a baker or a carpenter. It also gives a slice of just what illegal gambling looks like, as opposed state sanctioned gambling we see in Casinos.

Gambling is an interesting social institution. We demonise it and glamorise it and expect nothing to go wrong. The Packer Casino going up in Barangaroo in Sydney is a case in point - it's allegedly going to target high rollers and won't have many pokies because pokies target the lower socio-economic demographic. In other words it's an establishment that's going to target people with money to lose and that was its selling point to the NSW Government which, acquiesced and handed out the licence without much review or discussion. This was despite the fact that NSW is the most gambling-heavy state in Australia and does substantially more through pokie licences than Nevada does with Las Vegas. But what Sydney really needed on its beautiful foreshore was a dirty big casino aimed at ripping off rich and corrupt Chinese people.
And that's just one place.

Society in general tends to ban gambling in the hopes that it stops people from losing their houses and livelihoods, but it also benefits from the proceeds of gaming enough to keep allowing it to happen. In this film, it is abundantly clear that gambling is a social evil that draws the worst, most violent people into its ecosystem, and then smashes the players who gather like moths to a flame. But if you make it illegal, society would have a river of money flowing through illegal gambling that governments cannot access.

The House Always Wins

Gambling in this film is a lot more deterministic than how it plays out in real life. The House wins in real life, but not so convincingly every two minutes. This is because there is a lot of plot to get through, so the wins and losses have to be played out quickly. By motoring through the actual gambling scenes, the film gives you a strong impression of just how much the odds stack up in favour of the House and how probability theory and odds are two totally different sets of mathematics.

If you play long enough in a casino, you lose. The trick - as they say - is knowing when to quit and this usually means, when you're ahead, or before you've spent it all on mounting losses. The only way you get ahead is by good luck, so you should walk away the moment you've doubled your money. Personally, I'd walk away if I were up 20% because frankly a 20% return in an hour of flipping cards or rolling dice is better than any bank would give you. So watching Jimmy play on and on and on until he lost everything time and time again, just looks insane. However that sense of hopelessness, I guess, is the point of the film. Obsessive gamblers are really sick and have no objectivity about their playing.

This film isn't s good as 'Casino' in terms of dissecting the nature of gambling, but it does show how the afflicted are compelled to gamble. Especially how they are aware of the resplendent sublime experience and are going for the promise of the resplendent, sublime win. Jimmy says what he wants is a complete and utter victory or nothing else.

What could that complete victory look like? What we see on the screen is a bit like playing poker eternally to see a Royal Straight Flush come up in your hand, or to keep playing Black Jack for the validation being right when your hand adds up to 21. These unicorns of the game are out there and the afflicted gambling addict is out there hunting for the decisive victory that comes from having such a hand.

The Geometric Progression

Jimmy comes from a wealthy family, is talented enough to have published an acclaimed novel, has a nice job in the tertiary education sector and a flash car. What more could he possibly want? What is the allure of gambling to throw all of that away and chase wins and losses on the green velvet?

Most people in life with regular jobs or vocations earn money in n arithmetic progression. We keep turning up to work, there's a set amount money that is paid towards that work, and we plan and budget around the constant flow of essentially linear arithmetic money. There are very few options for getting your money on a geometric progression. You could earn interest in a bank (I know, laughable in this day and age of ZIRP and TwIRP), and you get a tiny taste of the geometric progression. You could purchase shares into an ETF, and keep reinvesting dividends.

Or you could gamble. Buying lottery tickets and hope for the big win, but if that's too long an odds for you, you can head down to the casino and gamble.

Because the promise of gambling - for gamblers at least - is that you could geometrically multiply the money in your hand. And so, Jimmy in this movie tries on many occasions to double or nothing repeatedly, trying to multiply his money. The logic is unsound even from the point of probability, let alone the odds given to you by the House. It's hard to figure out why then Jimmy goes all in, double or nothing, hand after hand except there is a clue.

The Gambler's Paradox is that if you lose a bet for 'x', then you should come back with '2x+y' where 'y' is little extra the next hand and go again. If you lose again, go '4x +2y' and try again. Eventually on 50-50/Even-Odds games you will win a hand and therefore win back all the money with a little extra interest. (In fact I believe this is how Kerry Packer gambled) To run this strategy there are two obstacles: most casinos put a limit on the table to stop the number of times you can run this trick. The other, of course is your budget (this is why Kerry Packer gambled this way).

Having tried the Gambler's Paradox stratagem quite a bit across several games, I can report that it is a gruelling, boring, tedious, mind-numbingly anal exercise and it requires as much discipline as work itself (if not more), thus taking all the fun out of the actual gambling. I guess to your professional gambler, gambling ain't 'fun'. However, the reductio ad absurdum of the Gambler's Paradox play is that you only need one hand to win it back. So why not play that one hand by putting all your money on black, double it and walk out? And what do you do when you win that one hand?
Go again.

The Unreal Money

The point of the gambling establishment is actually to take you out of the normal life experience as much as possible. This is why the lights flash and move, the music cues pump out of slot machines and if you'e a regular, they serve up free drinks. What they want you to do is lose your rational judgment, and end up in a mathematical abstraction.

What happens when you lose rational decision making and go with the abstraction is that hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of dollars stop meaning what they mean to you outside of the casino.   To keep a grip on the numbers under my thumb, I used to count up the hundreds in guitars. That way I could recall what it felt like to plonk that sum of money down to buy that electric guitar as a teen, and it prodded me towards a greater restraint in how deeply I went. It's subjective, and I'm sure professional gamblers are much better at this, but the point is, if you don't anchor yourself back in the real world, the money gets unreal pretty quickly. The professionals never lose their heads to the flow of numbers and money, and they know exactly when they're going to pull up stumps and walk out of the casino. If there's a lesson in gambling I can relay, that would be it.

The worst thing you can do is think you're going to win back losses with one big hand in a card game. You can run the Gambler's Paradox on a dice or roulette game and get lucky in a day, but a great hand in cards is never going to dig you out of your hole. It's telling then that Jimmy gets out of his hole with one of his creditors through a rigged game of basketball. You don't win things playing by the rules, which tells you the rules are crooked as the leg of a dog.

Fifty Shades Of Stupidity

Sedition? Is That A Moron I See Before Me?

Ever since the recent episode of 'Q&A' aired, this government has been up on its hustings denouncing the ABC as well as the show itself. At the heart of it of course is one Zaky Mallah who was on the show and made particularly pointed comment at a Federal minister. Since then it's been a bit of a free-for-all with the commentary and it's been hard to keep track of just what it all means. At the core of it is this notion that Zaky Mallah saying what he said:

"The Liberals have just justified to many Australian Muslims in the community tonight to leave and go to Syria and join ISIL because of ministers like him,"

... was a form of sedition.

Sedition is actually relatively old term, dating back to Shakespeare's time. It's the kind of crime Kings accuse of subjects who talk defiantly of the power of the throne. In a post-modern world where we recognise Freedom of Speech as normal (and normative), it is an outdated and quaint term - just as bringing it back was sort of historically retrograde. Worse still, Kim Beazley waved it through as Opposition Leader so we're stuck with these head-scratchingly stupid laws, but hey, this too is the Australia we have wrought.

If you look at Mr. Mallah's statement, he doesn't actually incite people to go join ISIL, he says should people do so, they would have justification because of ministers like Steve Ciobo. That's a description, not an incitement. Especially in light of what Mr. Ciobo was saying about revoking people's citizenship:

Queensland Liberal and panel member Steve Ciobo was unapologetic, saying he believed the only reason Mr Mallah was acquitted of terrorism was that the terrorist offences "weren't retrospective in application", and that he would be glad to see Mr Mallah sent out of the country. 

"I'd be pleased to be part of a government that would say you're out of the country," he said.

*Ugh*. That made my head hurt.
So, not only is Mr. Ciobo's understanding of human rights somewhat faulty, he can't quite hide he's a fascist who believes in a kind of unilateral vindictive justice. It's easily argued that Mr. Mallah was provoked into saying extreme things.

Be that as it may, the Stupid expanded greatly when Alex Hawke said:

"It's almost as if the ABC is engaged in some form of sedition," he said. 

"They have utterly no regard for what they are doing on this show and the people who will suffer the most is the moderate Islamic community in Australia," he said. 

"If you're going to get someone to say the citizenship laws are questionable and invalid but why would you pick someone who has threatened to kill Commonwealth officials?"

So there we have it. The whole ABC is now seditious. Really? Or is it more sensible to understand it as these conservatives just wanting to not have to face the fringe opinions of their own society? Or as Guy Rundle put it succinctly:

As soon as right-wingers are exposed to real debate they flail, ham-fists flying all over the place. Steven Ciobo should have welcomed the opportunity to enunciate his principles in the face of real challenge to them — because a challenge is an opportunity to make your ideas clearer, better, win people over. But he would have had to be competent to do that. In reality he’s just another faceless mook who’s come up through the entrenched machine of the party, which, like Labor, is a quasi-state apparatus, embedded by compulsory preferential voting and public funding.

Of course, it would not end there; They decided to play the man as well.

Playing The Man And Not The Ball

It must be one of those moments for the Coalition to feel they're be able to say, "ha! Gotcha' when they can see that a guy wearing a gold cannabis leaf on his flat-brimmed baseball cap says things that cut against the grain of government propaganda. Not only are the racial prejudices of judging the man for being "of middle-eastern appearance" (as the cops like to say), they thought they could pigeonhole him with their own cultural prejudices about what such a man might hold as an opinion.

Thus the Liberal and National Party have basically banged the drum loudly that Zaky Mallah was a convicted terrorist. Surely anybody charged of terrorism under the Anti-Terror laws must be a jihadi right?

It turns out the man's background is much more complicated than that.

Turnbull's portrayal of Zaky Mallah and his views is profoundly misleading. "He had served a term of imprisonment for threatening to kill ASIO officers," he said. 

Well actually, he served two years in solitary in the Goulburn super-max a decade ago, awaiting trial on terrorism charges for which he was acquitted. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of threatening Commonwealth officers and was sentenced to time already served. Which is not, of course, to say that he was not at the time a seriously deluded and dangerous young man. He was 19. 

More recently, Turnbull continued, as though Mallah had not changed his spots in the least, "he had travelled to Syria in the pursuit of what he described as 'jihad' ". 

Mallah did travel to Syria in 2012. The "jihad" he was interested in joining was the fight against the tyrannical government of Bashar al-Assad, and the outfit he joined for a few days – without engaging in any combat, he insists – was the Free Syrian Army. This is the force which the United States is now training and which Australia supports.
As The Australian's Adam Shand reported at the time, the former would-be suicide bomber realised "how misguided his anger towards Australian society had been...'Go to Syria where your brothers are dying for freedom, democracy and the true Islamic way, rights guaranteed in this lucky country,' he says…. 'We Muslims have so much freedom here (in Australia) yet we are causing so much trouble'." 

Since then, Mallah has been outspoken in his condemnation of Islamic State. On Channel Ten's The Project last October he said: "I'm on this program this evening to distance myself from the actions of these individuals, these idiots, these wankers, who are giving Islam and the Muslim world and the Islamic community in Australia a bad name and for those who are considering to join ISIS I hope ASIO is onto you, I hope your passport is refused and I hope you are arrested and locked up." 

In one of numerous video blogs on YouTube, Mallah calls on Australia's Salafist imams to join the fight against extremism: "You need to condemn terrorism. You need to condemn fundamentalism. You need to condemn those who are brainwashing our youth into believing that a group like ISIS is fighting for jihad. They are not fighting for jihad. They are fighting for bulls---."

This claim that the ABC put a jihadist on TV to exhort muslims to go fight for ISIL is therefore inaccurate as it is utterly lacking in substance, let alone having any nuance. Which all goes to show how deeply stupid and unreceptive this bunch of old school closet-racist, proto-fascist dickheads are, in this Abbott Government. The most damning bit from the article is the bit here:

His final, notorious comment was not a call to arms – although it's easy to see how many viewers took it that way. It was, if you watch it again, the comment of an angry young man, a born and bred Australian with no other nationality, who has been trying for some years to counter the lure of Islamic State in his own community, and who had just been told by a member of the government that ideally he should be expelled from the country by ministerial decree.

What they didn't see was a guy who was their ally in the fight against ISIL. They saw a guy who was an enemy to them precisely because of their racial and cultural prejudices - and they then ran around screaming the man shouldn't have received the forum to say what he said. Frankly, it's really rather pathetic, and unbecoming of a government.

But did it end there? No.

Because Somebody Has To Lose A Job For The PM To Be Happy

Tony Abbott decided this was the moment to go all outing attack the ABC and its Leftist sympathies. of course, anything and everything except Hitler and Mussolini would look to the left side Tony Abbott and his anachronistic view the universe, so it's not saying much of anything to be characterised as 'The Left' by Tony Abbott.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has launched a blistering attack on the ABC's Q&A program, asking "whose side are you on?" after an Australian man convicted of threatening Commonwealth officials appeared on the program. 

In comments that reignited the debate within the Coalition government about the role and responsibilities of the national broadcaster, Mr Abbott accused the ABC of effectively giving "a platform to a convicted criminal and terrorist sympathiser - they have given this individual, this disgraceful individual, a platform and in so doing, I believe the national broadcaster has badly let us down".

"I think many, many millions of Australians would feel betrayed by our national broadcaster right now, and I think that the ABC does have to have a long, hard look at itself, and to answer a question which I have posed before - whose side are you on? Whose side are you on here?" Mr Abbott said on Tuesday. 

"We all believe in free speech, but in the end we have to make judgments and I think that the ABC made a very, very serious misjudgment last night."

Well, it might look like Tony Abbott was arguing something of substance about the 'Q&A' programme if he had his facts straight about Zaky Mallah. The fact that he doesn't makes it even worse, but here it goes any way.

Even if Zaky Mallah were convicted of terrorism, he would still have the right to free speech. As it is, he was charged and the charges didn't stick - And all this is immaterial to the fact that he still has the freedom to express his opinion.  It is an opinion that stands in sharp contrast to that of Tony Abbott, but there's no law against expressing such an opinion anywhere, on air or off, on the streets, or on radio iron internet, or for that matter a discussion show like 'Q&A'. His freedom to express his opinion in this nation is Mr. Mallah's inalienable right, especially as a citizen who was born here.

That being the case, this notion that "many Australians would feel betrayed by the national broadcaster" because Mr. Mallah was there to express his opinion as is his right, does not speak for me at all. On the contrary, many Australians should and would feel betrayed that the Prime Minister of this land would seek to close down freedom of expression - while espousing it as value (perhaps as applying only to him and his wealthy, White, Anglo, peers) - and try to punish the ABC for this perceived injustice, all on the back of his own unmitigated, undiluted racial and cultural prejudice. I feel betrayed he's our Prime Minister and nobody is calling him on this shit.

All the same, totally unreflective of how misguided his position is, Tony Abbott says "heads should roll." The only metaphorical head that should be rolling is Tony Abbott's own head. And clearly Peter Dutton's seeing that he endorses this idiocy (and nice to know these guys want to add to the unemployment queue). This is a ridiculous turn of events based on one remark on one programme. how stupid does this country look right now?

It reminds me a bit of the time Charlie Sheen was totally out of control doing stupid things every day, landing himself on the news page. When asked what he thought he was doing, he replied "Winning!"
I think this government is winning in exactly the same way - deep in delusion, mired in misunderstanding, unable escape its own racial and cultural prejudices.  "Winning!"

Oh, and then there's Christopher Pyne.

Education Minister Christopher Pyne accused Mr Scott of trying to "change the debate to something it isn't", rather than "fessing up" to the ABC's mistake.
"This is typical of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation," he told Channel Nine's Today program. 

"The ABC is trying to pretend this is something to do with free speech. It isn't. It's about what's appropriate and not appropriate at the public broadcaster. 

"They did the wrong thing, they should simply fess up to it and do the right thing next time."

How about this, Mr. Pyne, the ABC did not do the wrong thing, they did the right thing; Zaky Mallah is not who your prejudices say he is; and yes, it is a freedom of speech issue. Freedom of Speech is not an issue only when it suits you. But be my guest, keep dancing in that conga-line of Stupidity.

'The Killing Season' - Episode 3

To The End, The Chaos

Aye Carumba, as Bart Simpson would say. Episode 3 puts us into the tumultuous 3 years of Julia Gillard's turn at the Prime Minister's chair and finishes with the election defeat. As with the previous episodes, it feels like too close to be called history as the heat from it being news is all too familiar.

Perhaps this is part of the Big Now where everything is in some way significant, but it leaves you feeling numb to realise that the ALP coughed up a big lead over personality issues. It is on the whole, unreal and unbelievable. Our disbelief marks us out as neophytes, the unwashed, and outsiders in the arena of parliamentary politics. Clearly we knew so little and have little to do or to say or give.

What's Interesting About This Episode

This was simply devastating to watch right down to the end. People have said some rather extreme things about Kevin Rudd but I don't find him that hard to understand. He's logical and principled and what you see is what you get. He's not perfect, he's not the saviour, but he's there for the greater good. When he was Prime Minister he was there for all Australians. Over the years I have been told how warm and friendly Julia Gillard is, but I actually find her mentation a lot harder to understand. I have to commit to political expediency as the guiding ruler understand why she would do or say the things she would. And yet it's not like she didn't have principles and she had much discipline.

Still, watching this episode was even more traumatic than the previous 2 episodes. Kevin Rudd is essentially self-conscious to a fault while Julia Gillard seems to be unaware of the extent she kids herself when she prevaricates. When she chooses to characterise things, she is far less convincing than Kevin Rudd, and Rudd to his demerit, does not characterise things enough. They may be two of the least insightful leaders from the ALP in a long time. It's funny because they're both clearly intelligent and educated, but insight into themselves seem somehow faulty. Mark Latham seems to possess more insight into his own character than these two, and we thought he was nuts and unworthy.

As long time readers know, I never warmed to the Julia Gillard Prime Ministership. What happened with the 2010 Rudd removal was too drastic and shocking for me to ever get over and then embrace the new Prime Minister. What it did was highlight how little control we had over the political process, and just how much the parties run on the cult personality and take our votes hostage. When Julia Gillard tells us her time in office started with a shadow over it and it only got darker, it highlights the fact that she's trying to ignore the deed that got her into office having any currency as a problem. You really shouldn't try to talk about accidents you caused in the third person.

Lessons In Power

In watching it, one thing becomes very clear. Julia Gillard should have been ruthless and forced Rudd right out of Parliament. As long as he remained, everything that happened was inevitable. The problem of courses was that she couldn't buy out his career, and there was not enough political capital anywhere to buy out Kevin Rudd's career. And so he stayed. Which is like one of those Bond movie bits where the villain's got James Bond strapped to a death machine, spills his beans on the dastardly plot to take over the world and walks away without killing James Bond. She really didn't finish the job she started. And as long as Kevin Rudd was politically alive, he was always going to come back.

The fact that Julia Gillard didn't have this simple insight alone tells you a few things. She didn't really think through what would happen in the event she knifed a Prime Minister in his first term, and a very popular one at that, and she didn't seem to have the insight that if the shoes were reversed, she would be the one doing the come back. In fact if there's one thing that could be said about Julia Gillard's time as Prime Minister, it would be that she didn't seem to have a hell of a lot of insight into the minds people who voted for the ALP in the Kevin '07 campaign. Maybe it was deliberate, maybe it was a blind spot, it's really hard to tell and we may never know. But it translated as being tone-deaf to the electorate.

Then again, former Senator Mark Bishop observes that she was miscast as the leader.

Albo Made Me Cry

There was a moment in March 2011 when there was the first spill to try and bring back Kevin Rudd, and Anthony Albanese pleaded for unity. It was busting him up that the ALP had come to such straits.  Holding back tears he fronted the microphones and pled. Seeing that footage again just broke me. It was pure grief.

But then it made me think, "who are these people making Albo cry? Who are these people in Parliament moving these machinations?"

They're the first beneficiaries of Whitlam's free tertiary education. They are that generation who got the free tertiary education and did with it whatever they could - and they made it parliament. It wasn't a birthright, it was serendipitous that it fell on their laps; and now they're milking it for what it's worth, damn the country, the future generations, the budget bottom line or any kind of integrity. They're grubs.

You Missed The Bit That Pissed Me Off, Sarah Ferguson

It's a very simple thing if you are not a union member but support the broad Left. In this country, if you can't go with the radical idealism of the Greens, then you have to find your place with the ALP. If the ALP tells you, we're putting union concerns ahead of your concerns - your 'social democrat' ones - then you are deprived of a political platform that represents you. Now, I might not agree with Kevin Rudd's do-gooder Christianity-tinged ethos on a personal level, but in all his time as leader and PM, I never felt like the ALP somehow didn't represent my broadly Left-y position. Julia Gillard set about narrowing what the ALP stood for, to the point she was telling us proudly she is not a leader of a 'social democratic' Party.

Gillard sold us out. She told me and my friends who are educated and progressive, and who broadly support her cause, to fuck off. And while I'd never vote for the Tories, she wonders why the middle ground never came back.

Alan Jones & Tony Abbott

Years ago I met a producer who was worried what would happen to an Australia where right wing shock jocks ruled the airwaves with their extraordinary rants. At the time it seemed a little too sensitive to the carping of people who were exercising their right to freedom of expression. Nonetheless it is abundantly clear that years of this kind of hateful bilge from the likes of Alan Jones has infected our democracy to the point where sensible dialogue does not find traction, and instead we get slogans and obtuse rhetoric.

The destruction of nuance and meaning in our polity by the likes of Alan Jones directly led to the rise of Tony Abbott, who can only be described as an utter disaster as Prime Minister. Now, Alan Jones might console himself by saying that he was a kingmaker, but what is the point of installing a functional imbecile as the Prime Minister of this land?

The poisonous slogans and rhetoric that emanated from Alan Jones and his kind has for worse and worser and worst-est, destroyed the political discourse in this country. It is shameful that Alan Jones still has a job and keeps doing it. It is shameful that the Prime Minister of this land takes his cues from the likes of Alan Jones.

Shameful and vile, is what all this is.

It's All Over Now

It's all a little quaint now that we've adjusted to the daily horrors of an Abbott Government. Right up to the last minute of Kevin Rudd's first Prime Ministership, there was a semblance of intelligent discussion about policy and where our nation was going to go. Julia Gillard did try to keep it going, but in the face o the monolithic negativity and feigned-stupidity that marked Tony Abbott's time as Opposition Leader, it never really survived.

Today, I have been reduced to just laughing every time somebody tells me the latest study thing Tony Abbott has said or done. The short answer is, on some level we have no control over any aspect of this stuff. Our democracy only offers us a delusion that our votes count, our opinions matter, facts trump opinions, that our democratic ideals are somehow intact. The fact is, Tony Abbott's government goes to show everyday how venal and menial our existence is, how much our political classes disrespect us, how little integrity there is going in Canberra, how close we are to an authoritarian state where things get decided by decree and not proper discussion.

There are days where I blame Rudd and Gillard for what transpired that brought us to this place. Then again, it might just be a reflection of just how dumb the population has become, and was inevitable that we would come to this point in time. We may marvel yet at Rudd and Gillard in future years - it becomes more likely the longer we are forced to live under the rule of these tories.

Quick Shots - 23/Jun/2015

Good Heavens Is That You?

The Sydney Morning Herald now wants to campaign for action on climate change. Unfortunately it reinforces the notion that Darren Goodsir is a moron.

Human-induced climate change is real. The risks of inaction are real and mounting.
The Herald today offers an opportunity to be part of something special - the climate for change. Our aim is to help Australians reconnect with the urgency of acting, by seeing how our nation is contributing more than our fair share to the problem but also how our best minds and businesses are hunting for solutions. 

We can all support them and do our bit. But fine intentions will mean nothing if our leaders do not do more. And that, ultimately, is up to us all.
The time is 2015 - not 2009 when the world split over how to tackle global warming; when the then prime minister Kevin Rudd was caught out and retreated; and when climate sceptic Tony Abbott swooped to defeat Malcolm Turnbull for the Liberal leadership. 

It's not 2012 or 2013 when Labor's shenanigans and the carbon tax made it impossible to have a reasoned climate debate; when the climate sceptics capitalised and gained disproportionate sway with their boutique views. 

It is 2015. The overwhelming evidence is that the Earth is warming and will heat further without concerted action. The Australian Alps, the Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Strait Islands will be affected regardless of adaption strategies. Rising sea levels will threaten some of your homes and contribute to more extreme weather events. Higher carbon dioxide levels will even reduce proteins in wheat and change the sort of bread you eat.

If they were going to get so worried about the climate, why in the nine hells of stupidities would they back Tony Abbott at the last election? Seems utterly self-defeating to me. As for this business of 2009, well, more on that in a moment.

If you want picture on what the world might look like food wise, here's something really scary from Lloyds.

The ability of the global food system to achieve food security is under significant pressure.

Global demand for food is on the rise, driven by unprecedented growth in the world’s population and widespread shifts in consumption patterns as countries develop. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that global agricultural production will need to more than double by 2050 to close the gap between food supply and demand.1 As this chronic pressure increases, the food system is becoming increasingly vulnerable to acute shocks.

There is a pressing need to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the impacts of an extreme shock to the food supply.

Sudden disruptions to the supply chain could reduce the global food supply and trigger a spike in food prices, leading to substantial knock-on effects for businesses and societies. The food system’s existing vulnerability
to systemic shocks is being exacerbated by factors such as climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation, and heightening political instability.

Lloyd’s commissioned the development of a scenario of extreme shock to global food production in order to explore the implications for insurance and risk.

Experts in the field of food security and the economics of sustainable development were asked
to develop a scenario describing a plausible, relatively severe production shock affecting multiple agricultural commodities and regions, and to describe the cascade of events that could result.

The systemic production shock to the world’s staple food crops described in the scenario generates widespread economic, political and social impacts.

There are uncertainties in the scenario, arising from the difficulty of obtaining key data, the applicability of historical data to modern food trade networks,
and the uncertainty surrounding future impacts of climate change. However, the scenario provides a robust tool to allow these uncertainties to be explored, and to begin to think about the possible implications of a global food shock for the insurance industry.

It's actually grim reading inside. So yes, take that!

Climate Change Retribution

According to 'the Killing Season' episode 2, Kevin Rudd was there the earliest and was the last to leave in Copenhagen 2009, working and hoping for a climate change deal. It never happened. In that moment in history, the Prime Minister of Australia was the most progressive leader in the world, trying to get a deal done. The failure to do so led to his demise; and in the subsequent flip-flopping and backstabbing and argy-bargy, led to a Carbon Tax which was then repealed by our current idiot-in-chief Prime Minister.

It strikes me as odd that we are in this situation where we've gone from the most progressive to the most regressive, but what annoys me more is when other countries get self-righteous about this situation. Tony Abbott is known as the wrecker of the climate according to our Nobel laureate Peter Doherty. Yes it does reflect badly upon us.

Nonetheless if there is something that needs to be said, it is this: the country that expended the most political capital in trying to reduce emissions was Australia, and the politician who gave their political life to that cause was Kevin Rudd. Dare I say, the progressives of Australia lost out big in Copenhagen in 2009.

If the world thinks so highly of itself and its engagement with the issue, why wasn't there a deal in 2009? If the world reviles Tony Abbott now, well, frankly they got what they deserved. I take delight in their suffering. If they're discovering only now just how much was riding on an agreement in 2009, well, I say stiff shit. It's too late now. Sometimes too late is just too late.

Because As Mrs. Gump Said, Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Peter Hartcher is now pleading with Tony Abbott to do something about climate change.

Abbott and his ministers are being guided by two opposing influences.
One is international movement. This is accelerating rapidly in the direction of solving the problem. 

Illustration: John Shakespeare 

In just a few months, the global debate has gone from cutting carbon emissions to "decarbonising" altogether, as the Group of Seven rich democracies illustrated with its June 8 communique.

Australian public opinion has been moving in the same direction, as the Lowy Institute poll last week revealed. 

The other is the right wing of Abbott's party. This refuses, still, to admit that there is a problem to be solved. 

Abbott himself mightn't hold deep personal conviction on this. In opposition, he said that he was a "weathervane" on climate change. 

But, as Malcolm Turnbull said after losing the leadership to Abbott: "The fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming." 

Most of them have not gone away; many were promoted into Abbott's cabinet.

Thus Tony Abbott will do as little as possible.

'Storytelling In The Digital Age'

I went to this forum chaired by none other than my favourite whipping post Darren Goodsir. He was up on stage with some other luminaries of the SMH, but did most of the speaking. It struck me that these people were way too much in awe of themselves. They wear a nice suit, but gee, that was a really shallow talk.

The audience was predominantly white with greying hair, if they had hair at all. A lot of rhetorical questions were asked and in response got largely mundane answers. Nothing controversial was uttered all night long. I wanted to ask Darren Goodsir whether the NBN was an asset to the digital storytelling, and if so, why did he support the worse candidate with the worse NBN offering? Of course, I never got the damn microphone.

News That's Fit To Punt - 22/Jun/2015

The Narrative Has Turned

The recent talk on property bubbles in our capital cities has been getting more intense. Housing affordability is becoming one of those bugbear stories in the news every week as politicians and vested interests try to talk it down. Of course when the Treasury Secretary and RBA boss say Sydney prices are crazy and there's definitely a bubble going on, it's the-Emperor-has-no-clothes moment of perspicacity for most of us. There is an elephant in the discussion room - and so now people are talking about it fairly openly.

"Contrary to the analyses of the vested interests, the data clearly establishes Australia is in the midst of the largest housing bubble on record. Policymakers are caught between a rock and a hard place, as implementing needed reforms will likely burst the bubble," Mr David and Mr Soos state in a submission on behalf of real estate and financial services research house LF Economics.

They believe the current bubble is worse than those in the 1880s, 1920s, mid-1970s and late 1980s.

"Australian economic history and recent international events illustrate collapsing housing bubbles can quickly increase the number of unsold properties [stale stock], shattering the pervasive myth of a deleterious dwelling shortage," they wrote.

"Falling housing and rental prices, including sales, would be a doomsday trifecta for investors as they suffer losses in both capital prices and net rental incomes.

"This calamitous outcome is especially likely in Melbourne where rents have not increased in real terms since 2010. Melbourne is primed to become the epicentre of a legendary housing market crash due to the combination of a staggering boom in real housing prices [178 per cent]. Perth is also in a serious predicament.

"Housing prices across all capital cities remain grossly inflated relative to rents, income, inflation and GDP. What event or set of events triggers the beginning of the end of the housing bubble is not yet known. A bloodbath in the housing market, however, appears a near certainty due to the magnitude of falls required for housing prices to again reflect economic fundamentals."

'Bloodbath' sounds a touch apocalyptic. These two gents think the officials have underestimated the coming collapse, and that there's so much speculative money in the property sector it's going to blow up with a bang. It's curious there is now such drastic talk. Back in the days shortly after the US subprime burst, there was much talk that Australia was somehow different, and that narrative has prevailed for years. The only person to point out that private sector debt was the problem indicator was Dr. Stephen Keen and he of course lost his bet. He of course lost his bet because the Rudd government guaranteed the banks and spent up big on the stimulus when it mattered; but what that did was merely kick the can down thread indefinitely. 

Since then the political landscape has changed around the bubble, and now we have an idiotic government that can't seem to distinguish between government/public sector debt and private sector debt. The Federal government under Tony Abbot is furiously (or languidly depending upon to whom you speak) trying to rein in the deficit in the hopes controlling Australia's debt levels, but of course that's not where the problem debts reside. The colossal ballooning of Australia's debt is in the private sector, and much of it is tied up in property. Yet that is all by the by.  

The way this government will go will be no different to other governments in history that faced down a bubble and lost. They won't do anything to remove the laws that are encouraging it - like negative gearing and capital gains tax breaks; and they will go lockstep with the vested interest groups who are denying it is there because it is better to keep ushering in the greater fool to keep buying their wares at inflated prices on money loaned by banks. This happens because all the vested parties want to keep their vested interests and bake it in to the pricing. And of course MPs are rarely renters or outside the  property market, so they're not exactly incentivised to do the right thing. 

I will share an anecdote from Tokyo just to give you a picture. For five years leading up to the Bubble bursting in Tokyo, housing affordability was the hot topic every day. The newspapers reported, statistical analyses were tabled, developers and real estate agents denied it, politicians acknowledged it, and yet no policies or laws were passed to ameliorate the factors causing the Bubble to inflate. Valuations went through the roof and people felt so threatened by the pace of the rise, they hocked themselves to the eyeballs to get into the market. Once it burst, everybody with an unrealistic mortgage was wiped right out - and naturally that was a significant portion of the market, who hadn't seen it coming. Prices collapsed to a fraction of peak valuations, and Tokyo housing has been at historic norms and trends for 25years since. 

Not many people want to hear about it, but there is life after the bubble bursts. It's better to admit it's a bubble and make plans rather than deny it's there and get wiped out. 

Grexit - The Revenge

Michael Pascoe thinks the potential Grexit is no big deal. He may even be right except the greatest creditor bank in all this is Deutsche Bank. And DB has 50trillion dollars worth of derivatives tied to the Greek Bonds. I don't know if people have been able to get out of those positions, but last I looked into it over at Zero Hedge, Deutsche Bank was the primary candidate to blow up when Greece defaults. So as the can keeps getting kicked down the road for Greece and its debt, it occurs to me that they - as in the IMF, ECB and EC - are going to have to invent a new narrative to keep giving the Greeks money to pay themselves back lest Deutsche Bank goes up in smoke. 

Greece and her leaders at this point probably don't care. They've put yet another final final final proposal to the Troika, but it's probably not going to go far enough in concessions. This austerity business not only doesn't work, it's creating a lot of unnecessary pain for the person on the street in Greece as well as shrinking their economy. So you sort of wonder why the Troika keep on insisting on the fiction that somehow cutting pensions and services in Greece is somehow going to grow the  Greek economy to be able to pay back the debt. At this point in time, everybody needs to come up with a better way to kick the can down the road. 

'The Killing Season - Episode 2'

We Really Lived Through That?

If there's one thing tougher than living through the tumult of the Rudd to Gillard change over and seeing it happen (and having no control over it, as with most things in politics), is having to relive the emotions of it all in this documentary series. I think it's a very valuable account by those who were there as participants and witnesses and perhaps it will serve as a lesson to the future.

The agony of watching the CPRS put on hold, watching Rudd's support fail and having Julia Gillard suddenly emerge as the Prime Minister was one of the greatest horror sequences of the ALP's time in government. It's hard to believe these people managed to forget what got them into government and pissed both the climate change issue and their Prime Minister down the toilet.

I'm sorry Ms. Gillard, but you don't come up smelling of roses when you swim in that toilet. As for Kevin Rudd himself, he hasn't really changed my mind about him. He was a populist PM, but he did have the big picture right. We were incredibly lucky to have had him at that time.

What's Interesting About This Episode

The number of people who contradict Julia Gillard's account is mounting. Sarah Ferguson has said she believes both Rudd and Gillard lied to her in the interviews, but as far as the headcount goes, quite a number of people are disputing her version of events. And she looks quite shifty in the interviewee's chair. Maybe Kevin Rudd was always a better media performer, but nobody except Julia Gillard is seriously contradicting his account. If indeed both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are lying, that's one thing; what we're seeing is that Kevin Rudd might tell little lies to smooth over difficulties and problems whereas Julia Gillard tells big lies to coverup her tracks.

Worse still, Wayne Swan was hardly the honest broker as Gillard went and white-ant-ed Rudd's Prime Ministership from her position as his deputy. The Removal was fomented on the backbench by first-timer rookie MPs, and the cabinet ministers were either on-lookers or unaware until it happened. It's quite insane when you think about that. A bunch of rookie MPs scuttled the very Prime Minister whose popularity brought them to power and at the first sign of trouble, they panicked. Nobody seems to have thought ahead to what that would look like and how it would play out in the electorate.  The colossal stupidity of it is breathtaking.

Which brings us to Tony Burke who comes across as this big doofus who let the whole thing roll into action. Whatever his reasons and his latter-day rationalisations, it is clear he totally ignored the contra-indicators and fairly historic reasons why you should not roll a Prime Minister in his first term. As such, he deserves his place in ALP history as one of its villains. Not that anybody's saying out loud, but yes, he did a damnable thing in fomenting the challenge. He should never be allowed to live that down.

We're Hostage To The Cult Of Personality

There's no other explanation for the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd in the eyes of the public as well as the Caucus. The ALP needed a man who could get its message out to the public. Once they put him in as Prime Minister they were constrained by the fact that he exercised power. As idiotic sit seems, the ALP clearly couldn't handle the conditions of victory any more than they could handle the condition of defeat in Opposition. Mark Bishop offers up a picture of how the various Senators started panicking at the polls while Tony Burke started spreading the word that Gillard should replace Rudd.

For all the high-minded talk about policy from Kevin Rudd, it's unbelievable that all these other politicians went about the business of replacing Rudd out of a sense of grievance against the persona. i.e., it wasn't a policy thing at all. At one point Julia Gillard starts psycho-analysing Kevin Rudd to justify her sabotage efforts and well... it drove me to drink I tell you.

Both Gillard and Swan let all the talk fester and pretended it wasn't going on and kept it from Rudd. The only person who conveyed to Kevin Rudd there was trouble brewing was Albanese. Justifiably, Rudd has not forgiven either Swan or Gillard. Seeing that the both of them presided over the election that brought about a hung Parliament and the subsequent government followed by the Abbot government, they have a lot to answer for. It makes it worse to think that Gillard wanted to ride through it with the 'First Female Prime Minister' branding as if this was going to negate the issues of how she came to power. As it turned out, the electorate was not interested in her gender, they were interested in the fact that she just rolled a popular PM, and in a most negative way.

Bitar, Arbib, Howes

Paul Keating referred to the Senate as unrepresentative swill. In the case Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib, he was right. What Paul Howes - who is not an MP, not an elected official in any government - had to do with any of this and why they needed his consent remains a kind of nudge-nudge-wink-wink mystery.

The most objectionable of the lot remains Mark Arbib who brought his NSW Right faction bullshit to Canberra and promptly applied the machinations (addition, it's called Mark Arbib, addition. Not 'calculus') he used to usher in the likes of Iemma, Reece, Keneally in quick succession in NSW with the help of the likes of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. Yes, the stench of foul Morbid Obeidity stretches all the way into the Rudd Removal as it does to so many other things.

It goes to show that there is a great problem with the nature of party politics and the upper houses, and how people are chosen to preside there. If you had a normal street view of things and life, there's no way you give that kind power to the likes of Bitar and Arbib. Somehow, they happened to have it, and exercised it against the will of the people.

Careerist Politicians

It used to be the case that people had careers in other things before they went into politics. Now, they seem to go straight into the business of politics as soon as they are able to, after finishing school or university. Being in office is kind a bonanza - a winning lottery ticket - that attracts all kinds of ambitious people, but it can also be seen from this series that they might be the wrong people.

It's hard to like the Nationals and Liberal Party in this country. The Nationals are old school fascists while the Liberal Party at this point in time seems like a Neo-Fascist party. The Greens at the other end of the spectrum appear to be just as mercenary and self-serving as the Nats and Libs. The worst thing about all this is that the whole lot of hem are careerists trying to look after their butts. It's despicable. And that includes the ALP in the ostensible 'middle'.

The light at the top of the hill is clearly only there to attract the worst moths in our society.

The Limits Of Holding Power

I might have pointed out this before but the modern ALP Prime Minister has a short time in power with the exception of Bob Hawke. For all this talk about the glory of the Hawke-Keating years, the second part where Paul Keating was PM only went four and a bit years. He won the incredible 'This is the Sweetest of Victories' '93 election, but from there, he only had 1 term. Whitlam was really only in power for 3 years. The same goes to Kevin Rudd and now Julia Gillard.

So if there is a pattern emerging, it is that the ALP has structural issues where it can't keep its Prime Ministers in power for long. This lay dormant through the Hawke years exactly because Hawke was an expert peacemaker and the ALP was still shocked from the events of 1975, nobody dare rock the boat. Perhaps the events of the late 2000s and early 2010's will be remembered as so shocking that the next ALP Prime Minister will be able to stitch together a long consensus based stay.

If this doco is anything to go by, it shows that there are simply too many factions and people who can destabilise even the most popular of Prime Ministers, and that they are none too wise about the consequences of doing so. The fact that the Removal was organised from the backbench and the cabinet were last to know indicates that a bunch of novices got way ahead of themselves simply because they could; but when they got what they thought they wanted in Gillard, they spent the next 3 years wondering why the electorate was in a punishing mood.

The worst aspect in all of this is that there are echoes of Bill Hayden's time as Opposition Leader in Bill Shorten already.

Hate Tony Abbott Coming To Power? Blame The Greens

I forgot how in the fray the Greens scuttled the CPRS because wasn't sufficiently pure for their liking. Given the opportunity to do something for the environment and nothing but grandstand, they clearly chose the latter. Then they held the Gillard government hostage and put in the carbon pricing which was more pure to their liking but saddled Gillard with a broken election promise.

In a roundabout way and then a direct way, all of that combined led to the Tony Abbott Government of today - and we know how environmentally un-friendly they are. Way to go stupid Greens, way to go! I'd forgotten just how odious the Greens were in this time. If you want proof that the Greens are just as careerist and self-righteous hypocrites, their actions during the Rudd and Gillard governments tells you plenty.

*ugh*.

Answer The Questions II - The Return of Serve

Part 3 - You Did It Too? Oh You Suck Too!

Turns out the ALP Government paid the people smugglers too!

After telling his caucus that Labor had made mistakes in this fraught area of policy and learnt "difficult lessons", he was unable to articulate what these mistakes were and how they would be rectified in the policy Labor will take to next year's election. 

As Julie Bishop sees it, this failure is a product of tensions within the Labor party on what direction that policy will take, with the sections of the party determined to oppose aspects of the Coalition's extremely punitive, but successful, approach to stopping the boats – including turn-backs. 

Labor's shadow immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, is promising a better balance between border protection and humane treatment of those who ended up in Australia and in offshore detention centres, as well as a more concerted effort to build a regional approach. The detail may become clearer at next month's Labor national conference.
Is this the end of the payments-to-smugglers issue? Hardly. Both sides of politics are guilty of using taxpayer funds to disrupt people smuggling ventures and both refuse to comment on the activities of Australian intelligence operatives abroad for obvious reasons. 

But only Labor has asserted that it has never paid people smugglers to turn around boats at sea (or put asylum seekers in new boats and pay the crew to take them back to Indonesia).

Just fantastic. So much for beating upon the government after that comes to light. Bill Shorten was doing the "won't deny that they did or did not get paid, but not to turn back boats" routine. 

Was there a difference between the Coalition paying people smugglers on the water and Labor paying out on the land, he was asked? 

"I'm not using the land-sea distinction. I am saying Labor has never paid people smugglers to turn back boats as it appears the Government has done," he said. 

And, as Mr Shorten's face took on that green patina suggesting seasickness, there was this: "We don't know who paid what to where. When it comes to national security, there is bipartisan on that." 

By which he meant no one talked about operational matters; and certainly not what ASIS might have done with great wads of secret cash when Labor was in power. 

Which, he almost certainly saw by then, left him a pretext short of justification for demanding to know what the Coalition's secret operatives had been up to on the ocean. 

And so the subject was allowed to sink without trace, as often happens when politicians find themselves at sea clutching at nothing more than a pot or a kettle.

Well that was most unedifying. 

Part 4 - "Show Me The Money? I'll Show You The Money!"

And here it is!

Oh what joy. 

Answer The Questions

Part 1 - "We Did What?"

This week's odd burbling news is that our government officials paid people smugglers to take asylum seekers back to Indonesia. It is in many ways unsurprising that such a thing should happen when our government decides that 'Stop the Boats' is some kind of high-minded policy platform instead of an electioneering slogan that it was to begin with. Indonesia are investigating the claims, an their foreign minister has called in the freshly returned Australian ambassador for a "please explain" chat. naturally, the Prime Minister is dodging answering the questions. To not too fine a point on it, it is reported that he is not denying it.

I mean, really? Is that what you've got Tony Abbott?

So what we are now to make of this government is that it doesn't want transparency or scrutiny, it doesn't want to be answerable to the people, it doesn't want to explain its thinking or its methodology, and it sure as hell doesn't want to criticised for the on-arrival of asylum seekers on boats and the manner which it delvers such results.

In short, you have a government that is holding all of us in contempt as it takes us down some very dangerous directions with regards to our human rights record. Honestly, it's a joke that this was good governance promised by this bunch of buffoons.

Part 2 - "You Wouldn't Have Cared Then, And You Don't Really Care Now"

Meanwhile the insidious trawl through the mud of unions has fished upside awkward facts about the stewardship of the AWU by Bill Shorten, back in the day when he was its president, continues. The strange thing about the ALP is that its total symbiosis with the union movement means that it's always going to throw up veterans of union politics as their political candidates - unless you're Kevin Rudd and we all saw what happened to him. The increasing awareness we have of this symbiosis is actually what is driving down the ALP primary vote as the genuinely leftists move to the Greens while educated social democrats are stranded outside of the ALP power structure, unable to help it change - but these are all gripes for another day.

The whole inquiry into union corruption is a cover for the coalition to be using the power of the state to impugn their opponents like some tinpot dictatorship in Africa, but given the depth to which this government is willing to sink, it should come as no surprise then that this kangaroo court wants to interview the leader of the Opposition. Then again, it is the same government that wants to indulge in stripping people of their citizenship,so we shouldn't be surprised that they want to behave in a manner that can only be described as rampant authoritarianism.

We've had patriarchal governments before but this is the first government in my memory that tries to behave like a teenage bully rather than a scolding father, in order to get its way.

Once More For The Dummies Blowing Bubbles

I'm Just Sitting Here Watching The Bubbles Go Up (I Just Had To Let It Go)

Yeah, I know I know. I've been saying there's a property bubble in Australia and it dates back a good decade and a half, but the RBA, Treasury and all governments have been talking it down for the entire time. All of a sudden this quarter, Treasury, then the RBA have come out and stated they've seen the elephant in the room. What's even more astounding is that in the face of expert advice, the Prime Minister said he just wants property prices to go up because it's in his personal financial interest; Worst-Treasurer-Ever Joe Hockey said, get a better job if you want to buy into property; and the real estate sector pundits are coming up with all manners of statistics why it might not be a property bubble that is unfolding. Some are even arguing that it can't be a bubble because it's only a shortage of supply - which makes as much sense as "get a better job". Post-hoc arguments like that don't really count as analysis.

The cycle of blame in the media has gone into overdrive as foreign investors who have bought up the top end of town are blamed, as well as negative gearing and the relative lack of supply, record low interest rates, and the notion that property never goes down. One imagines there are any number of journalists who will never get into the Sydney housing market with their straight up journalist's salary. But they're all barking up the wrong tree. Is there a bubble? Yes. Did it start yesterday? That would depend on what you mean by 'start' and 'yesterday'. I can assure you the phenomenon didn't manifest itself out of the blue, out of seeming nothing.

The point is, when too much money chases too few assets, that's the definition for inflation. In the past when inflation reared its ugly head, central banks would raise interest rates to calm down prices. This was how the inflation component of Stagflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s was tamed in America by Paul Volcker, and is the very mechanism by which we understand "the recession we had to have" in the early 1990s in Australia when interest rates soared to 17.5%. Those were some heady days!

Since then, our central banks and governments have indulged in a few naughty practices and it comes down to this: They've been screwing with the way inflation is measured in such a way as to under-report it. They've been doing it for some time, and to such an extent that inflation looked markedly lower than the Australian Bureau of Statistics' own cost-of-living measures. For a good decade now, we've lived in the condition where inflation has been reported markedly lower than the cost of living.

Simply put, the RBA is setting interest rates too low because it's measuring inflation incorrectly. Why does it do so? Because it gets rewarded easier that way, by lowering the hurdle just a bit each time. And because it's setting it too low, there's a property bubble going on; and because it's measuring it incorrectly, it took until this quarter for both Treasury and the RBA to come out and say there's a bubble.

Seriously folks, if inflation is reported lower, it gives licence to central banks to ease monetary policy rather than tighten it. By underreporting inflation for so long, there has been a cumulative easing of monetary policy to such an extent that we're now at 2% interest rate as a property bubble rages on. There's simply too much money chasing too few assets, but the RBA won't pull back from easing because it's believing its own inflation figures. Meanwhile, the general populace who have inelastic economic needs - food, clothing shelter, power & telco - have faced a rising cost of living for so long that they hardly have the disposable income to keep consuming. Private debt has reached incredible highs in Australia, as it has in other anglophone countries, and it's stopping people spending the way the RBA thinks it should. Adding more credit and easy money to the mix isn't going to work.

So what should they be doing? The answer is pretty simple.
The RBA needs to dust off the old way of calculating inflation used back in the 1980s, and figure out just how much they've under-reported inflation over the years; then they need to jack up interest rates just like they did in the early 1990s, to convincingly take away the punchbowl. But without doing so, they're letting all the easy money take up zombie positions in the economy and there will never be a return to strong growth. And at the end of the day, strong growth is their mandate.

'The Killing Season - Episode 1'

The 'Phantom Menace' Of Australian Politics

Earlier in the week it was reported that all the TV stations rejected a TV drama series based on Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership, a project that had Rachel Griffith attached. The TV stations all rejected it because basically Julia Gillard was still hated. I laughed when I read that because we all know it was low polls hat eventually brought her Prime Ministership to an end. 27% support at the end of 27  straight losing polls would do it to you; so maybe there is some truth there.

In any case, the ABC doing a documentary on the Rudd-Gilard-Rudd years was exactly the kind of thing I didn't want to watch. After all, I don't think I've ever endured as much trauma at the hands of the ALP at another time in my voting life, and I hoped not to be subjected to the same teeth-grindingly-awful sequence of events so soon. All the same, it has been 9 years since Rudd and Gillard took over from Kim Beazley and 8 years from Rudd's victory over the Howard Government. It might just be the right time to reflect on what once was and could have been.

And let's face it, for all the turmoil of those years, it was still a much better government than the daily farce presented to us by Abbott, Hockey & co.

Whats's Good About It

As long time readers know, I was in fact down on the ALP and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard when they deposed Kim Beazley. John Howard had been in power for a good part of a decade and stinking up the joint while the ALP in the wilderness of opposition were doing a fine impersonation of the Coalition in their wilderness years. So it's good to be reminded of just what Kevin Rudd did as Prime Minister. He was indeed formidable as he was prescient on the GFC, and he was the right man at the right time.

What's Bad About It

It's in such a rush to tell the story leading up to Julia Gillard's coup, it glosses over some really important details about the unfolding GFC. it also glosses over just who some of these players were beyond their job titles. Some time is spent on the Godwin Grech affair, which was one of those awful things that ultimately had very little to do with Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan and just about everything to do with showing us why Malcolm Turnbull was a terrible alternative Prime Minister.

What's Interesting About It

It is the battle for posterity and my gut reaction to finding out about this series was "for the love God, please - both of you shut the fuck up and go away and leave us in peace!" That being said, once you start watching it, it does bring back memories of things and events that seem so distant now. The GFC really was terrifying. It still is terrifying; but back in 2007 and 2008, it looked like financial Armageddon was going to consume the planet.

The documentary goes some distance in explaining just how out of the ordinary Kevin Rudd was as an ALP politician. He didn't come up through the traditional Union ranks and he was also the right man at the right time even for the ALP to lead them to an election win. The ALP had gone through most of the Howard years recovering from the '96 election loss and reeling from the leadership failures of Simon Crean and Mark Latham; and without any meaningful direction or policy ideas worth spit, had fallen back on the caretaker Kim Beazley, and were going to lose again.

They really needed new policies, a fresh face, they needed a new direction, and had they been brave enough they might have settled on Julia Gillard right there and then. The reasons they didn't probably highlight the sign of the times more than anything else. The ALP of that era probably didn't want to go to the polls with a female leader against John Howard and taken extra punishment for gender politics, and they didn't really believe they were in any kind of winning shape in 2006. they sure didn't look like it.

I went back and did a quick scan of my own blog here and I can attest to the fact that all ALP supporters were deep in a funk, so picking the seeming populist in Rudd and pairing him up with the party apparatchik in Gllard made some kind of weird sense. What the doco goes on to show is that Julia Gillard saw herself as the person of destiny - Kevin Rudd turning up was a spanner in the works for her. And so the seed of the eventual destruction was sown right there at the beginning in the unholy alliance of expediency and need.

Still, all this machination and party-politicking seems quaint next to the monstrous stupidity of the Abbott Government. In trying to escape the horror circus of the ALP this decade, our electorate voted in the greater horror that is the Abbott Government. Just don't ask me how subsequent governments are going to repair this damage.

Horrible Bosses

Kevin Rudd's reputation as a boss was in tatters. It may still well be the case, and it comes down to this business of the kitchen cabinet "gang of four" and the urgencies and demands that the events made on the government. Ken Henry who was Treasury Secretary says in this doco that the cabinet process would not have been able to deal with the GFC. These were indeed extraordinary times. If Climate change was the moral challenge of a generation, the GFC was a once a century financial challenge that had to be dealt with and put to rest.

What's struck me as odd through out the latter part of Rudd's year as Prime Minister was just who was spreading this notion that Rudd was too chaotic, and how they were making a comparison.
Who was leaking? You can eliminate Rudd from the 4, and Lindsay Tanner who retired shortly after the period could not have a motive to be doing it. Wayne Swan was the Treasurer and neck deep in the GFC questions and by Julia Gillard's own reckoning she was going down to Swan's office to bitch about Rudd's style. By her own words she was destabilising Rudd in the same language that was used to bury him.

Even as events were unfolding it was hard to believe that the ALP would roll their own PM in the first term - especially one who was so popular for so long - and then run out an argument that he was a horrible boss. Naturally, the argument never really stuck with the electorate and Julia Gillard deservingly was hung by that rope.

Just A Side Note On Conservatives And Moral Fortitude

It was pretty galling to be reminded of the whole Godwin Grech saga. Like some evil Gollum from the dungeon caverns underneath Treasury came upon this land a blighted man of much negative charisma and visibly distorted persona with a fake email to bring about the complete humiliation of Malcolm Turnbull as Opposition leader. It was bad because it was stupid; and yet Malcolm Turnbull was willing to be that stupid because he believed so strongly that Gordon Grech had some kind of moral fibre as a whistleblower when there has been no such bone in the conservatives of this nation, all the way back to mother Britain.

The really strange thing is that after the Grech-fake-email-debacle, Malcolm Turnbull hung on as Opposition Leader despite an 18% support rating in the polls. The Liberal Party really didn't think they could do better than Malcolm Turnbull who basically humiliated himself with the chasm that was his "lack of judgment" (as described by Paul Keating). But when the topic got to carbon pricing and introducing the ETS, that was different, the Liberal Party and its climate change deniers erupted into an open rebellion and managed to put Tony Abbott in as their leader.

And Australian politics has been in a state of lobotomised moron-ry ever since. It's like our political leaders cannot talk about anything in sensible ways because Tony Abbott single-handedly destroyed all nuanced discussion of anything and everything by turning all topics into into three word slogans.  We've been dragged down to the abyss of unfathomable, intolerable, execrable stupidity by our very own political leaders.

Which just goes to show that for all this talk of morality and moral fortitude that conservatives love to bandy about, they're just as likely to excuse themselves and their friends of any unconscionable acts and keep pretending they have some kind of high ground in the morality stakes. If you could ever build a moral argument out of economics, then surely Kevin Rudd saving Australia from the GFC-induced recession was a much more high-minded act than the subsequent carping about deficits that the Liberals and Nationals have done. The brazen hypocrisy of the conservatives in this country - who undoubtedly benefited greatly from Kevin Rudd saving their bacons as well, for they had more to lose - essentially captures the intellectual bankruptcy of the government that today exults in winding back renewable energy in this country.

Movie Doubles - 'Exodus: Gods & Kings' & 'Noah'

The Biblical Imagery With CGI

These things come in a cycle whereby special effects become so much bitterroot the point that it makes the older attempts to bring biblical stories to life, look crap. Naturally there's cache for doing biblical stories because if you live in the Judeo-Christian half of the world, the audience is always going to have some kind of handle on it. And let's face it, the imagery conjured by the stories in Genesis and Exodus are pretty extraordinary. It stands to reason that they stand as an inviting challenge for film maker to put to screen, whether it be Cecil B. deMille or Melvyn LeRoy. 'The Ten Commandments' is still pretty out there, while 'Quo Vadis' is looking pretty tired the blue screen front. The fringing is pretty bad in 'Quo Vadis'.

Plus, in the 1950s, the surest way of putting salacious sex and violence and semi-nudity into movies was the biblical story where censors couldn't tell you it was inappropriate. The ancient world is full of decadent looking wardrobe for women in which to prance around.

What's weird is that we're suddenly seeing a couple of the more recent entries; and they're being directed by directors with tremendous amounts of causal capital and track record. Neither of them are anywhere near the emotional confrontation of 'Last Temptation of Christ', but the special effects department sure packs a punch.

God, The Character As A Mental Health Case

'Exodus' has one interesting thing going for it, anti is the characterisation of God as a petulant, demanding boy. Unlike Noah where we are reminded the Creator God is there to communicate with Noah in some strange semaphore and signs, Moses' God in 'Exodus' is pretty upfront about what he wants done, but a little short on 'why'. He doesn't exactly say why he waited 400years for his chosen people to remain in slavery, though hints that he needed Moses to come along - but that fact eats into the claims of the Judeo-Christian God being omnipotent.

In 'Noah', the God of creation is hell bent on wiping out all humanity except for Noah's family. It's not exactly made explicit but the ramification of this unforgiving God is that he changes his mind, and once again is dependent on Noah being Noah for his will to be done. So it strikes out omniscient from the list of God's alleged resume. when you combine both this and the God in 'Quo Vadis' you develop the picture of procrastinating figure who radically changes their mind now and then, and is often not actually paying attention to their Creation until it is necessary for him to intervene. It's a pretty nutty track record when you put it all together.

Both films got plenty of complaints from Christians and non-Christians alike, but it really comes down to the problem that God - in his own book no less - is pretty inconsistent and perhaps a tad psychotic.

Are We Happier When We See Disasters?

It's one of the paradoxes of the Judeo-Christian religion that it wants to impress upon us the original sin. In the case of 'Noah', it really wants us to focus also upon Cain killing Abel, thus implicitly critiquing the violent people and the problems caused by violence as well. And yet both films essentially hinge on a kind of retributive and just violence propel the plot. It also discounts just how violent God is. God's pretty violent in both films.

Not to mention the problem of rooting for figures to succeed against the people with the burden of the original sin - which technically would mean all of us if the Jesus sacrifice routine is to be believed for half a moment just to make sense - and we're all sitting there relating to the main character who wants to save his family from the people with original sin. 'Noah' goes into the problem a long way but comes out with a sort of demented answer that our volition coming from love and empathy voids the issue of original sin. It kind of makes you wonder if this God is just hooked on wiping out swathes humanity or inflicting great harm to his un-chosen.

More to the point, why is God so interested in the spectacle of these things? These kinds of odd theological questions spring to mind when both films are combined. The criticism I've seen from Christian quarters is that these films are not close enough representation of the Biblical text, but surely the bible itself is trying to impress us with the spectacle just as surely as Ridley Scott and Darren Aronofsky are trying.

It really does beg the question, why else would we be watching these movies if we weren't interested in seeing the disaster movie aspect of these films. God's a BIG bastard and that's what we enjoy watching. Think of the perversity in that interaction. Just think about that.

An Unpleasant Patriarchy

Christian Bale as Moses and Russell Crowe as Noah essentially gives two actors known for their intensity and perhaps personal unpleasantness, front and centre playing Old Testament patriarchs. Christian Bale's Moses is surly and tart while Russell Crowe's Noah is just generally mean and specifically murderous. If these are the guys God is choosing, it sure doesn't say much about God and - I'm sorry I keep harping on this point but - his ability to pick people to do his dirty work.

If God wasn't a bastard enough, he picks these surly guttural bastards to do his bidding. Yes, they complain a bit here and there and sometimes don't do as he says, but in most part, they're compliant with the violent bits- an that's good enough of the Bastard-in-Chief-Upstairs. Russell Crowe's Noah in particular wants to kill Emma Watson's character's babies. It's just mean and horrible and we're supposed to decipher the greater glory of God somewhere in the unforgiving, brutal, murderous mentation.

Christian Bale's Moses is a bit more caring, but when it really gets down to it, he too is unforgiving, brutal, and murderous. The affirmation of patriarchy that follows in both films, sticks in craw as you watch. You sort of wonder why women want to uphold the Judeo-Christian religious traditions when they really disempower women so much.

The Bad Guys Are More Charismatic

These biblical epics need good bad guys and that means it needs a good actor to really play up the heathen/infidel/goyim villain. The classic of this genre would be Yul Brynner as the pharaoh in Cecil . deMille's 'The Ten Commandments' but also Peter Ustinov's fantastic Emperor Nero in 'Quo Vadis' (the best thing by far in QV is Ustinov's inadequate, ranting narcissistic poet-king Nero).

Joel Edgerton as Ramses is intriguing and has enough charisma to suck you right in. There's something of an accidental everyman in Egerton's pharaoh which is at once both vulnerable and appealing as well as intriguing, even when he's being angry and vicious. Tubal-cain played by Ray Winstone in 'Noah' is equally fascinating precisely because he is at once so aware of the utter absence of God's love upon him, as well as being a utilitarian philosopher about man's place in the universe. believe me, it's a lot more credible than Russell's Noah going on about visions.

With all these films, it's a lot easier to root for the bad guy. At least they're honest. The good guys are scary surly bastards on a dastardly mission from a bastard God.