Deflation Shock?

What They Mean By Deflation

Where do we start with the news that we saw deflation in Australia in the last quarter? We haven't seen deflation since 2009 when markets were at their nadir after the GFC broke.

The surprise drop in the price of a wider-than-usual range of items drove the Australian dollar down more than 1.5 per cent and could force the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut the cash rate as soon as next Tuesday, say economists. 

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Wednesday the consumer price index (CPI) contracted 0.2 per cent in the three months to the end of March, taking the annual rate to 1.3 per cent, compared with 1.7 per cent at the end of December. 

More importantly, the core annual rate, after lopping off or re-weighting volatile items such as fuel, came in at 1.55 per cent, well below the bottom of the Reserve Bank of Australia's target band of 2 per cent to 3 per cent. National Australia Bank described the core inflation rate as "the lowest ever".

And so we are led to believe that interest rates will be cut soon. 

I know it's contrarian of me to say this, but the inflation rate has been under-reported since the ABS changed the way it measures inflation rate. Given that it is prone to (or rather, intended to) under-report the inflation, it's not surprising that a few commodities dropping below trend would give rise to such figures. In particular it's notable that health, insurance and education still went up. In an overall sense, things are not getting cheaper  in the cost-of-living stakes as the deflationary figures would have you believe. It's not even certain that the deflation would persist into the next quarter. 

Still, the cheated inflation rate has led to a very big tendency towards looser monetary policy which has fed the Property Bubble through low interest rates. In a way it is a self-defeating feedback cycle where, as inflation is cheated downwards it creates conditions for lower interest rates, which in turn create conditions that results in a Property Bubble forming because there is nowhere else for the money to go. As more and more money is tied up in Property and Financial instruments, the less money is spent in the economy so there is even more pressure downwards on inflation figures but not necessarily inflation itself. We know there must be heavy duty inflation going on somewhere because the very definition of inflation is too much money chasing too few assets, and Australia for all its riches isn't that rich in assets beyond housing and mining and banking.

What should be galling to the Government if not the RBA is how all the money that's flowed into the market through low interest rates is finding a way not into industrial capital investment but into housing and property. Given the lowered interest rates there should be a lot of money going around but somehow it all finds its way to the big four banks who then don't invest in anything because, well, there's nothing of note into which to invest. While the mining boom was going on, there were any number of things in which to invest, but the post Mining Boom economy has shown just how hollowed out Australia's economy has become. 

Let's face it, the most glaring problem might be that even at 2% official interest rates, there is only anaemic economic growth in a country that cannot be described as mature industrial. It's not like wages are rising rapidly. It's not like the government has a plan beyond being excited and wanting to be agile. It sounds as hollow as the economy when the same government spent enormous political capital crippling the NBN. Should our country be in the sort of economic-figure-doldrums like Japan, Germany or France? 

From TwIRP Towards ZIRP

Of course, the markets are factoring in a couple of rate cuts this year. If they do cut 0.25% in May and the another 0.25% by the end of the year, we'll be a lot closer to ZIRP than ever before. 

I don't know if the Property Bubble is starting to affect people's spending, not so much through debt being a problem, but more in line with the fact that lots of Millennials are staying at home. They probably won't be buying whitewoods for a start but they are also restricted as to just how much stuff they can buy if they're still dwelling in their parents' house. There's a lot of demand right there that's essentially blocked by the very physicality of the economy. Even if people had money to spend, they can't buy things because they have nowhere to put them. They can't spend on services because in most part they are met easily by living at home. The only things they do buy are gadgets like smart phones. 

Indeed, one of the interesting things about the Property Bubble in Australia is that has been going on for so long that it hasn't needed to pop to significantly hinder economic growth. The low interest rates that continue to fuel extraordinary valuations has led to record profits for banks, and that's no accident. The post-GFC economy might be hard on primary and secondary industries but the financial sector has been doing really well on the back of all the easing.

And lets face it, the Central Banks of the world are most likely swayed by the opinions of bankers so it comes as no surprise that banks have made out like bandits under these loose monetary policies. Pretty soon all the bankers are going to be telling the Reserve Bank how 'deflation' is killing asset prices and make it like there's a major crisis going on out there in the various markets. If the deflation goes two or three quarters, it will be a clamouring of bankers knocking on Glenn Stevens' door. You have to wonder then how long the RBA is going to take before it gets down to Zero Interest Rate Policy. When we get there, we'll understand the wealthy have locked in their advantage, and that Australia is officially 'post-industrial' like Japan and European countries with low interest rates, low inflation, and low growth. The joke would be that we were hardly industrial before we got there - we put the money into housing and the road came to an end.

John Howard Did Us No Favours

I guess you have to go back in time a bit to the Howard Government to see where the number-fiddling started. Unemployment in the second half of the 80s and first half of the 90s was a big thing. The figures were such that it was part of John Howard's pitch that he would bring these figures down together with the high interest rates. It was under the Howard Government that welfare was cut and privatised, while pushing people off unemployment benefits and on to things like disability pensions. It was an attempt to recategorised the people who couldn't easily find employment so that they wouldn't all show up as unemployed. They no longer showed up as unemployed so it looked like the Government was finding people jobs.

Similarly the under-reporting of inflation started during the Howard Government. When governments talk about inflation rates of the 80s and 90s as if those figures can be compared directly, they're being mightily disingenuous. Back then the inflation rate and cost-of-living figures were in line and almost interchangeable. Today, there is a huge blow out in the difference between the inflation rate and cost-of-living, so much so nobody's even talking about it any more.

So if part of the Howard Government's big achievements were lowering unemployment figures and interest rates then it did so by cheating on the numbers. By cheating so hard it set up this decade for the inherent contradiction of its claims to surface. The economic growth figures are so low because the Howard Government didn't make proper investments in its time - it chose to fiddle numbers and created the conditions for the Property Bubble to manifest instead. Now it's time for the subsequent Coalition government to clean up the mess but it's flying blind because the numbers are phoney. All thanks to the Howard Government.

But hey, we kept our AAA ratings!

Quick Shots - 26/Apr/2016

Endless Summer To Go Into May

This is worrying.

Sydney's abnormally warm autumn will extend well into May, with unusually dry conditions inland creating late-season heat records across large parts of Australia in play. 

The city has had just two days this months with maximums below the long-term average of 22.4 degrees, and most days in the coming week will be several degrees warmer than that. 

With a warm start to May, temperatures will creep up to the mid-20s early next week – 30 degrees is possible in western suburbs. 

"We're still missing the significant cold fronts that are normally due this time of the year," said Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist with Weatherzone.

There's already a big pile of worrisome things to do with Global Warming so adding this on to the list of evidence is no big addition, but that in of itself is a worry because it means we've become inured to the ever growing pile of evidence indicating anthropogenic climate change is happening.

Overpopulation And Depopulation

Here's something interesting from Zero Hedge. It's a rare article that isn't screaming imminent doom. No, the doom is a bit further off in this article:

Strangely, the world is suffering from two seemingly opposite trends...overpopulation and depopulation in concert. The overpopulation is due to the increased longevity of elderly lifespans vs. depopulation of young populations due to collapsing birthrates. The depopulation is among most under 25yr old populations (except Africa) and among many under 45yr old populations. 

So, the old are living decades longer than a generation ago but their adult children are having far fewer children. The economics of this is a complete game changer and is unlike any time previously in the history of mankind. None of the models ever accounted for a shrinking young population absent income, savings, or job opportunity vs. massive growth in the old with a vast majority reliant on government programs in their generally underfunded retirements (apart from a minority of retirees who are wildly "overfunded"). There are literally hundreds of reasons for the longer lifespans and lower birthrates...but that's for another day. This is simply a look at what is and what is likely to be absent a goal-seeked happy ending. 

In a short yet economically valid manner, every person is a unit of consumption. The greater the number of people and the greater the purchasing power, the greater the growth in consumption. So, if one wanted to gauge economic growth, (growth in consumption driving economic growth), multiply the annual change in population by purchasing power (wages, savings) per capita. Regarding wage growth, I hold wages flat as from a consumption standpoint, wage growth is basically offset by inflation. Of course, there is another lever beyond this which central banks are feverishly torqueing; substituting the lower interest rates of ZIRP and NIRP to boost consumption from a flagging base of population growth. (There is one more boost to consumption, huge increases in social transfer payments primarily among the advanced economies...but while noted, these are a story for another day.)

Anyway, it has interesting graphs and the details make for interesting reading. 

We're Getting French Submarines! 

In a turn for the more interesting, the Coalition Government decided to go with the French submarine tender. 

The commitment to a local build shores up the government's political prospects in South Australia, which were looking shaky amid concerns work could be sent offshore. MPs including senior frontbencher Christopher Pyne faced losing their seats if the Coalition broke a pre-election pledge to build all 12 boats in Adelaide.

But the choice of France is causing ripples with rival bidder Japan, which branded the decision "deeply regrettable" and issued a please explain.

I don't know what to make of all this. 

From an Australian point of view, the government got what it wanted - 12 subs, built in Adelaide, with somebody else's tech. As an essential part of the decision, by picking the French, it stays out of China's bad books - which is spineless whichever way you look at it. 

From the Japanese point of view, it looks weird because Tony Abbott came bounding in wanting to buy the subs, only to be replaced by Malcolm who put it out to competitive tender instead and chose somebody else. It's a bit more mixed because there are voices in Tokyo that didn't want to sell the tech at all, and they'll now look like the more responsible voices. After all, with allies like these, how needs enemies, they'll argue. 

In a weird way, it's good that Australia picked the French because it really means we don't want to fight China, and it's good for Japan to know that Australia can't be relied on for much if it came to a shooting war with China. That being said the Americans will provide the weapons systems for interoperability. They've indicated the French subs are not as good as the Japanese 'Soryu' class subs so they'll be a bit unhappy that Australia deliberately opted to go with the French. 

China is celebrating the French choice as a victory for its diplomats. 

I guess the downside of this 'process' is that Australia was going to piss off two countries either way, but three countries if it picked Japan's tender. Based on this decision it seems Canberra and Tokyo are never really going to see eye to eye about mutual security, and that's bad (as in, I'm not going to write it's "not good" because it's worse than that, it's bad). Malcolm Turnbull was making noises about Japan still being a strategic partner but it's hard to see how he's going to make that statement stick right after he showed that the partnership didn't mean all that much to his government. 

You'd sure hate to be the Australian Ambassador to Japan tonight, trying to explain how the hell a surefire sale turned into a tender and a swing-and-a-miss. There's no spinning "fuck you." 

View From The Couch - 25/Apr/2016

Sophie Miserabella Is On The Loose

Ugh. Sometimes politics selects for psychopaths and puts them on a pedestal. Sometimes it simply allows psychopaths to display their symptoms in public as a warning to all. Sometimes politics simply is the playground for psychopaths. And then there is Sophie Mirabella, a.k.a. Miserabella.

"I had a commitment for a $10 million allocation for the Wangaratta Hospital that, if elected, I was going to announce a week after the election," she said. "That is $10 million that Wangaratta hasn't had because [independent] Cathy [McGowan] was elected." 

A confession doesn't need to be intended by the confessor as a confession; confessors often don't realise their words have proved their guilt. 

And taking Mirabella at her word, this confession is something else, admitting to a galling example of a political offence rather than a criminal one, the gangrenous pork barrelling which infects Australian politics, which in this case presumably hurt only the sick people of her former electorate. Beyond Indi, the gangrene floods marginal electorates with taxpayers' money, diverting spending on public services according to the political interests of political parties. 

That Mirabella felt so comfortable saying what she did on national television indicates how routine it is. Yet the preference for spending based on electoral marginality rather than demonstrated need is utterly improper.

The clearest sign that the Liberals have learnt nothing from Mirabella's defeat in the 2013 election where hers was the only seat to go against the trend of voters going towards the LNP Coalition; oblivious to the national trend, they swung hard against La Miserabella. Now the Libs want to trot her out again in the same seat where she was trounced in the hopes that people of Indi have clean-forgotten just what an awful MP she was for their seat, and to sweeten the deal, dangle some pork-barrelling money. If this doesn't sound like an abusive partner, then your electors in Indi have rocks in their heads or are experiencing Stockholm Syndrome.

It's all kind of strange when you consider that the Liberals (presumably) want to win back government. Why in the hell would they want to load up with a liability in this seat? Wouldn't they want a candidate who was strong and presentable than trotting out the same La Miserabella who actively cost them the seat? What has this woman got over the party to let her keep running their good name down like this? It's actually indicative of a party that's really short on talent. Just as it struggled to remove Bronwyn Bishop from her entitlement of the seat of Mackellar, they probably don't have a ready alternative to run in Indi instead of Sophie the Miserable.

Malcolm Turnbull On The Hustings

Here's Malcolm Turnbull out on the hustings saying her won't change Negative Gearing.

Malcolm Turnbull has ventured deep into Sydney suburbia to announce, once and for all, his government will not make any changes to negative gearing or capital gains tax in next week's federal budget. 

From the front garden of a family home in the southern neighbourhood of Penshurst on Sunday, he claimed Labor's policy to limit negative gearing to newly built housing and reduce the capital gains tax discount would drive down home values, drive up rents and discourage investment.

"That's why we won't have a bar of it," Mr Turnbull said.

At least he's consistent - he's taking the side of the investors. In doing so, he's saying he doesn't need the votes of people under 30. Maybe that's a good thing for the Libs who have always courted older stodgier crustier folk. - but you'd thank that was a bit different to actively pissing off the under-30s demographic. Sometimes it seems Malcolm Turnbull is just a different flavour of stupid to that served up under Tony Abbott. For all the people's expectation that he'd be a great Prime Minister, he sold his soul to the rightwing nut jobs of his party and so is incapable of delivering any policy that would help people. There's not a day that goes by that doesn't underline Malcolm's deal with the devil.

It's pretty bleak in Australia. There's never been a more bleak and underwhelming time to be an Australian than the circumstances we find ourselves in today.

What Was Wrong With Tony Abbott?

There are some days where I don't even know where to begin writing here because there's just so much to bitch about. Try this.

While Mr Abbott stands by his approach to same-sex marriage, climate change, asylum seekers and national security, he admits to failings on economic policy, including his expensive paid parental leave scheme proposal and his decision to abolish the debt ceiling. 

However he largely stands by his deeply unpopular 2014 budget, saying there was a "moral purpose" to returning the budget to surplus because it would have allowed the government to create a better society. But he admits the government misjudged the public mood on spending cuts and he accepts responsibility for failing to properly sell the blueprint. 

Mr Abbott says his decision to only include one woman - Julie Bishop - in his first cabinet was an "avoidable error". He also admits he misjudged how the public would react to his catastrophic decision to award Prince Philip a knighthood. He also regrets his decision to abandon changes to section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Tony Abbott is trying to analyse his time in office and ends up assessing so many things incorrectly. What was so wrong about Tony Abbott? - we might ask rhetorically for empty effect. It might be that compared to other leaders in the world, he was incredibly lacking in an understanding of the world around him.
Before I start my castigation of the man again, I'm just going to start with this video clip here.



Yes, that's the Prime Minister of Canada right there showing he understands quantum computing and why it's important. Tony Abbott is still trying to deny climate change. You can't exercise leadership when you don't and won't put yourself at the cutting edge of knowledge. In the 21st century, you can't have a national leader who wants to cut budgets for science and deny climate change. Does Tony Abbott need to understand the basics of Quantum computing to be a better politician? Who knows? But if he did, he might view the entire enterprise of science funding in a different light. The absolute vacuity and meaninglessness of even his mea culpa tells everybody plainly that he simply wasn't a human being of any amount of intellectual integrity to be leading the nation and making decisions about science spending. And if he was so unqualified for science, it is indicative of his lack of consideration for other human endeavours that make up a civilisation; Naturally, it draws the equivalent scepticism that he is unqualified to consider questions about engineering or the arts or town planning or farming or mining or animal husbandry or medicine or law. For a man who has a tertiary education, he looks remarkably like somebody who was untouched by its enlightening effects. Stumbling in the dark as a Prime Minister then, he is still stumbling in the dark of his own making.

Be that as it may, the tragedy isn't just his; it was and remains to this day all of our tragedy that he was even in the office of Prime Minister for as long as he was.

Prince (1958-2016)

Purple Reign

I remember distinctly the moment somebody raised my awareness of Prince on the schoolyard. It was a garrulous girl by the name of Gracie who couldn't contain her excitement about anything new romantic and oddly attired. Her hit-list of wow artist included (and not exclusive to) such bands as Culture Club, Duran Duran, Adam Ant, Howard Jones, and ABC ('The Look of Love' people not the Australian Broadcast Corporation). Men with makeup were big with Gracie, and clothes with frills were just top shelf for entertainment value. Anyway, Gracie marched up to us on the slope where we used to sit during lunchtime to regale her new obsession, Prince, with the album '1999'. That was way back in the early 1980s when the year 1999 looked like a long way off in the future.

And like the idiot I was I dismissed it because I was into other things. Which is the way things go when you're a teen. That being said...



...Throughout the 1980s I kept glomming on to the music of Prince, like it was some subliminal message. Some albums left more of an impression than others. 'Purple Rain' and 'Sign o' the Times'
stood out as works of a comprehensive artiste with a full vision of what he wanted put together. other times it was covers done by other artists like Tom Jones with Art of Noise doing 'Kiss' or Sinead O'Connor's transcendent 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. His music was infectious and unabashedly commercial.

Strangely enough the album that I thrashed to death was 'Emancipation', the big album he released after he got out of his contract with Warners. The evident sense of release and resentment about the big label reminded me of Frank Zappa's big battle with Warners which culminated in 'Lather'



As a guitar player, he had an extraordinary facility to swap between styles, and his band was legendary in its tightness and adroitness. While the extraordinary couture was hard to get one's head around, there was no doubting the virtuosity and command of his playing, and in the end that was always the opening I had to get into his music.

He was a singular prodigy who rivalled Michael Jackson in cultural influence. During the 1990s when I was in and out of the odd studio in Sydney, there wasn't an audio engineer who didn't carry around a Prince album as their reference disc. During the 2000s and with the advent of YouTube, it became impossible to miss the broad talents of the man.


I don't know what it is about this year. David Bowie, Keith Emerson and now Prince is just too much dying than I want to handle. It's like the rock apocalypse is going on in front of our eyes.
Vale Prince Rogers Nelson, 57 is way too young.

View From The Couch - 21/Apr/2016

Where Political Spin Comes From

A couple weeks back I got called in to a focus group to chat about political ads. Predictably there were some hardcore partisans in the room even though they look for people who can be persuaded one way or another. Anyway, this one guy who ran a trucking business, was a Coalition voter and started rabbiting on about how the Labor party "spends like crazy" because it's "other people's money". You know the type. So as any sane person wouldn't do, I called him out on it.

"You realise that it's all other people's money right?"
"What do you mean?" he responded.
"I mean, right now the Coalition is in government, spending money from the same pot. Is it their money? Of course not. They're spending 'other people's money' too."
"Yeah, but they spend it more carefully."
"How do you get that? Since they've been in, they've spent more and they've driven up the government debt, and for all the talk of infrastructure they made, they haven't exactly built anything."

At that point the moderator intervened, but you get the picture. The average guy that gets called in to a focus group, that happens to have an axe to grind doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.
And this is the really weird thing. The focus group would have fed into one or the other major party paying for it, who would then go and bang together some policy pitch based on the ramblings of a group of people who basically don't know what the fuck is going on. It tells you a lot about just how thin the material that goes into political campaigning is; and given that there's like 70-odd days to 2nd of July, it's going to be a long parade of ill-formed ideas cobbled together form the ramblings of people who don't know, can't think, but have ornery opinions.

Really, it's quite pathetic.

The Election Is (Allegedly) On

Here is a laugher.

In fact, the government seemed loath to even accept it was in election mode, with senior ministers starting the day merely talking about having a trigger for a double dissolution, as if unwilling to go into full election mode. And in a media conference conducted mid-morning at a building site in suburban Canberra, Malcolm Turnbull — introduced by local far-right zealot Zed Seselja — spoke about how successful the previous day’s Senate sitting had been. When pressed on the election, Turnbull hemmed and hawed and used lawyerly language that observed the constitutional niceties about requesting the dissolution of both houses of Parliament. 

It was a bizarre contrast with how election announcements are usually made — from the prime ministerial courtyard, complete with flags and “most important election in a generation” boilerplate, with the PM identifying the key themes of their party’s campaign, attempting to set the narrative from the outset, using the slogans and keywords of the weeks to come. Instead, we had a Prime Minister on a building site, explaining “I just want to be very clear that we are governing. We have a lot of decisions to make,” and leaving it slightly vague as to whether the country would indeed be voting on July 2.

It's a classic rant from Bernard Keane.
The Turnbull government hasn't exactly looked all that different in substance from the Abbott government. I think the earliest person to predict that Turnbull replacing Abbott would have no palpable effect on the setoff policies espoused by this government was Helen Razer. Right back when we were deep in despair at Tony Abbott's seeming list of stupid policies and polls kept telling us how much more popular Malcolm Turnbull would be as the alternative Prime Minister.

As it turned out, Malcolm had to make deals to get in the PM's office which effectively neutered his appeal to the electorate.

If anything, the Coalition must now be regretting that he didn't call the election earlier.
And Turnbull wanted the election to be about a confrontation with the unions. Fighting the unions is one of the only issues that reliably unites the Liberals. The Senate has given him that too. 

And the Prime Minister wanted a double dissolution election to maximise the Coalition's chances of winning more seats in the Senate and wiping out the obdurate crossbenchers. The Senate has granted him that, too. 

But Turnbull, his advisers and his party have done a remarkable job of damaging their own best electoral asset – the popularity of Turnbull himself. 

He remains preferred over Labor's Bill Shorten in every way. He is preferred prime minister by a margin of two to one. 

Turnbull is still the Coalition's best electoral asset and, on any analysis, he is still likely to win the election. 

But where the Turnbull of half a year ago would have devastated Labor in his image as a visionary leader with the promise of social reform and economic rejuvenation, he will now have to fight an election as just another politician.
If he wins, it will not be because he is loved or admired. He will win because he will force the electorate to choose the least worst option. He will campaign as the leader perceived to be a better economic manager and the leader better at fighting the unions.

Given just how much dithering there's been with Malcolm Turnbull as PM, it's not going to be a great advantage for him to claim better policies or judgment or economic management. It's actually not all that surprising that as the election date came into focus, the ALP fortunes in the polls began to rise.

Right now as we speak, the Coalition's main pitch to the electorate is that there have been five prime minsters in five years. Voting in the ALP would make that six in six years, and so for the sake of 'stability' we the electorate should vote them back in. It's deeply ironic when Turnbull himself makes that pitch because he himself instigated the dramatic change to become that fifth Prime Minister in 5 years - it's actually a self-defeating ontology.

Today I met somebody who thought that Bill Shorten and the ALP had a good shot at unseating this Coalition government. They weren't quietly optimistic so much as reading the public mood that is out to punish the Abbott-Turnbull government for lying to them. Given the magnitude of the Coalition's victory in 2013, it doesn't look that likely that the ALP would win, yet scenarios for another hung  Parliament are being discussed. All of a sudden Malcolm Turnbull looks like a lame duck.

'Creed'

Rocky In Retirement

Maybe the most apt description is Nietzsche's "eternal return". At points in the past a Rocky sequel only elicited groans as Sylvester Stallone trotted out one of his trademark roles. Over in the USA of course, Rocky movies are a cult thing so it's not surprising that while Stallone lives, there's always another bite at the same cherry. It's a mixed blessing that this film is being cast as a 'spin off' from the Rocky movies.

The big difference this time is the Rocky isn't going in the ring to fight any more; he's handed that part of the mantle to the next generation where the illegitimate son of Apollo Creed goes in to fight. It's pretty much the same story arc as the original Rocky, much like 'The Force Awakens' is a beat-by-beat retread of the original 1977 Star Wars. I guess the world needed another Rocky movie just like it needed more Star Wars. It's just hard to believe that there is so much mileage in this franchise.

If you need a spoiler alert, you haven't been paying attention to Rocky movies or this blog.


What's Good About It

For once, it's not all on Rocky, and so it's not all on Sylvester Stallone to carry the film. The film has cast him as the elderly trainer, and so Rocky Balboa is there to pass on Mick's expertise. The slurred speech and the tired diction suits Rocky-as-old-geezer and lends credence to the notion that he probably took a hundred too many punches to the head.

Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed is the real revelation. He carries the film and does it with great ease. There's something cheesy about the whole movie, but then that whiff cheese goes all the way back to the original 'Rocky' movie so you just go along with it. The film is relatively short on fighting scenes that go on interminably. Instead we spend time exploring the life of Adonis outside the ring quite a bit.

What's Bad About It

'Rocky' movies aren't exactly works of penetrating realism. This film blithely follows in the tradition of a formulaic and relatively haphazard rationale for a big fight to happen in the third act.

Also, I did some maths. The events of 'Rocky IV' where Apollo Creed dies take place 1985. Which means, at youngest Adonis is 30. I know Rocky Balboa kept winning but 30 is a bit old for this story. The film glosses over it but if this Adonis character is indeed 30, he's behaving more like a 22year old than a 30 year old. As good as Michael B. Jordan is in the role, he's not exactly Mr. Believable thanks to the tenuous set up whereby he is Apollo Creed's illegitimate son, conceived just before Creed's death.

The film might have been better had the main character not been related to Apollo Creed at all, but is a fraud claiming to be the son of Apollo Creed just to get Rocky to help him.  It would have had better gags and a decent (pardon the pun) punchline when Rocky finds out and Adonis says "man, can't you do the maths?"

What's Interesting About It

This is tough. More than any other franchise other than 'Rambo', these Rocky movies might be the least surprising, biggest crowd-pleasing movies going. As Stallone famously said "they call it show business, not show art". Naturally it follows that one really ought not to expect any surprises but that abandoning of hope also promises that these films are not terribly interesting or insightful.

There is nothing in this film that we didn't know already about the character of Rocky Balboa or the universe in which he inhabits, or for that matter boxing itself. The film offers nothing new or intriguing about character or obsession or repression or fixation or race relations or the joys of getting drunk when celebrating or crying when something bad happens. There is absolutely nothing of interest or note. One wonders just for whom exactly this film was made.

Instead of trying to find what's not there, I might offer this up: The Rocky movies as a whole, including this spin off, gives us a boxer character with remarkably bad instincts about people and things, and an intuition that is best described as blunt rather than sharp. Astoundingly, the character survives all these dramatic moments in the boxing ring, in spite of his tremendously bad instincts and blunt intuition. Then, in his old age, he runs into a youngish boxer with equally bad instincts and blunt intuition, who he then takes under his wing to take on a champion - and just as it happened with him, the youngish boxer doesn't win.

There is that soaring moment just as they go into the final round where we hear the theme from 'Rocky' soar, one last time. It wasn't exactly an interesting moment, but it was for a brief moment, an emotional moment.

News That's Fit To Punt - 18/Apr/2016

The End Of The Road For Bronwyn Bishop

It's minor news but I love it anyway. Bronwyn Bishop has lost her preselection for her seat of McKellar. She had long overstayed her welcome in Australian politics and she really won't be missed by the middle Australia that had no influence over her pre-selection. The more interesting aspect of her demise as a political figure might be that her ideological lovechild Tony Abbott had a hand in unseating her.

Tony Abbott has publicly praised Bronwyn Bishop amid anger in sections of the Liberal Party that the former prime minister urged his supporters in Mackellar to end Mrs Bishop's political career in Saturday's preselection vote. 

A bloc of 12 votes for Walter Villatora, a member of the hard right who was backed by Mr Abbott, became instrumental in Mrs Bishop's defeat by Jason Falinksi. 

Mr Falinksi is a member of the Liberal left - the moderate faction - and it is highly-unusual for the hard right to work towards the ascendancy of a moderate in a seat previously held by a conservative like Mrs Bishop. 

The 73 year-old former Speaker retained the backing of the centre-right in NSW despite loud public calls for her retirement and agreement in the senior ranks of the Turnbull Government that her time was up.

Members of the hard right were playing down talk of an official deal on Sunday. "There was no deal done, this one was free of charge," said a source. 

But the centre-right is convinced that the hard right planned the hit on Mrs Bishop in collusion with the left and that Mr Abbott had been "hitting the phones hard" to ensure that outcome.

It doesn't really matter. The woman was an ideological nut job that foreshadowed the Tea Party style partisan politics coming to Australia. She was also responsible for running up a huge bill on the public purse, flying around in helicopters on private business, while her resume shows she didn't really do much except be a big noise on behalf of the hard right. 

She really was a terrible human being before being an awful member of Parliament and even an awful Speaker of the House to boot. Together with Sophie Mirabella, it is best we consign her to the dustbin of history as soon as possible.

Double Dissolution Coming Down The Pike

Malcolm Turnbull recalled parliament early to debate that ABCC bill for three weeks. The Senate voted it down in a day. That now activated the 2 July date for a Federal election.

The sanguine news for both major parties is that the polls are pretty even.

The latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll conducted over the weekend put support for the Coalition and Labor across the country on a knife-edge at 50-50, assuming an allocation of preferences similar to those at the last election.

The national survey of 1402 electors was conducted between April 14-16 and showed support for the Coalition had dropped by a statistically significant 3 percentage points since the March poll. 

This equates to a 3.5 per cent swing away from the Coalition's share of the vote achieved at the September 2013 election, raising the prospect the election could produce a government with a wafer-thin majority or even another hung Parliament.

The only thing the Coalition have got going is that Malcolm Turnbull is far more popular than Bill Shorten. It's not much to go on if you're a backbencher looking to be wiped out in a 3.5-4.0% swing, but Bob Hawke with his personal popularity won on the back of such numbers in incumbency so it's not like they're toast just yet.

I'm sure I'll get plenty of opportunities to bitch even moe and louder about this truly horrible Coalition Government in the coming weeks so I'll just leave that bit for now. Stay tuned, I shall be whinging with all my might.

Meanwhile The NSW Government Wants To Go Orwellian On Our Sorry Butts

This is just awful, and it's flying under the radar.

On March 22, 2016, a set of bills was introduced to the New South Wales Parliament by Deputy Premier and Minister for Justice and Police Troy Grant that included the Serious Crime Prevention Orders Bill and Criminal Legislation Amendment (Organised Crime and Public Safety) Bill. 

The acts upon which this amendment is based are shockingly outdated bases for common law. Most date back to the early 90s and one was written in 1900, a time when the faces of both crime and civil liberties were starkly different than they are today. This would be one matter if the intent of the amendment had been to more clearly define violent crimes--such as differentiating hate crimes from others--but instead, the amendment's stated purpose was to "recast the offence of dealing with property suspected of being proceeds of crime so as to adopt certain provisions of the corresponding offence in the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth."

As another site puts it:

The bill would grant police the power to cut off your internet, terminate you from your job, tell you who can associate with, and where you can go if they think you have some association with a “serious” crime. 

These “serious crimes” can range from anything as minor as theft, possession of a cannabis plant or illegal gambling to major offences like homicide, kidnapping and extortion.

They are essentially the same laws used for a terror suspect, but they can be applied to any innocent person in New South Wales without their chance at a proper criminal trial. 

Why should you be worried?
If the police, who are often wrong, believe you were in some way connected to a crime, they can impose all of these restrictions on your life without having to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. 

One of the most concerning parts of the legislation is that it can apply to a range of potentially completely innocent people.

As the NSW Bar Association explained, it’s not just for people convicted of the crime – it’s anyone that’s seen to “facilitate” it, which is a very vague term.

You could even get done for simply lending your phone or car to a friend who uses it for a criminal act.

What’s even more sinister is that there’s also basically no reasonable way to appeal the control order once you cop it.

You can only prove it by way of ‘legal error’, which means it’s not a matter of proving whether you’re innocent or not, you have to prove the police didn’t apply the procedure properly.

Pre-crime here we come! It's sinister in that it tries to set up a zone where a person is not innocent because they're suspected of something, which would overturn the principle of innocent until proven otherwise. The government has minimal onus to present its case in any detail, is enabled into malicious prosecutions, and can't be stopped unless they happen to trip up on procedure. Keep in mind, we have no 'Miranda Rights' made explicit in this country, so procedural errors of the police are less likely to be spotted by the legal profession. This is like a leap back to the18th century. 

The terrible irony course is that the party wanting to do this is called the 'Liberal' Party. The party that supposedly values individual freedoms.  

'Lambert And Stamp'

Managing The Mighty 'Oo

If you've ever wondered what Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp were doing when they were running their 16mm cameras on The Who in the 1960s, this is the documentary that gives you that footage. It's a rockumentary that looks back in longing towards the early days of The Who, and... well, 1965 sure looks like a long way back.



What's Good About It

There's some footage that definitely hasn't been seen before as well as really sociographic stuff of the Swinging 60s London. Lots of interesting footage of the audience as well as street scenes. The interviews with Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey add a good deal of nuance to the story, telling it from their point of view. It does go into grea detail about Chris Stamp, the surviving member of the managing duo while explaining the bizarre motive behind the big search that took them to discovering The Who.

The interviews with people like Richard Barnes and Irish Jack also adds greatly to the narrative as they recall the context in which decisions and plans were being made. The Who through the eyes of Lambert and Stamp's camera look incredibly fresh and explains the beautifully documented rise of the band which was shown to us in 'The Kids Are Alright'. In some ays it's more of a film's film about The Who.

Throughout it all, Chris Stamp tells most of the telling moments of his side of the story, which is a rambling funny yarn.

What's Bad About It

Unfortunately it's really not great camera work for the old footage. It's strictly for fans and aficionados. I can't imagine this film makes much sense if you already didn't know a whole lot about The Who.

What's Interesting About It

Lots, really. In most part, it's a fitting epitaph to an era where music could communicate big ideas and things really mattered in the world of rock music. It's a long lost world since then, so getting a whiff  of the heady days of rock music's ascension is pretty cool.

Not only is it unlikely that music will ever matter so much again, it is also unlikely that cultural projects should be formed in such a cauldron of ideas and willing participation and cooperation from unlikely people.

The Lamberts

The documentary only manages to scratch the surface, but there is a book on the three generation of Lamberts out there which includes the chronicle the Lambert family and how third generation Kit managed to launch The Who and drown in drugs. George Lambert was the Australian painter whose works hangs in the NGA as well as the War Memorial. Constance Lambert, the father of Kit was a conductor of note, while Kit became this kind of degenerate aristocrat right out of Brideshead Revisited. Kit Lambert was very much like Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder and any number of upper class misfits Evely Waugh portrayed so well in his work.

The great cultural heritage of the upper class England filters down to The Who through Kit Lambert, and it is via his own sense of egalitarian devil-may-care attitude that puts the classical music and its forms through the back door into The Who's music. If you go digging into The Who's early catalogue, you see shades of baroque and classical composition scattered through songs as diverse as 'So Sad About Us', 'The Kids Are Alright' and 'A Quick One While He's Away', with chord
substitutions and suspensions of 2nd and 4th.

This stuff wasn't readily available without recorded music, but also a curator of decent understanding such as Kit Lambert who grew up living and breathing this material. It would be a shame if in future generations, the only understanding of The Who is reductionist image of London yobbos smashing their instruments on stage. There was a lot more to it, and most thankfully to Kit Lambert who made sure they were there.

The Stamp Brothers

In other tellings of the rise of The Who, it's never really discussed how much Terence Stamp floated Chris Stamp to be able to do his thing. It's singularly cool that the guy we know from playing the Limey and General Zod had a hand in launching The Who on an unsuspecting world.

There is also the delightful story of how Terence Stamp got his brother to get a job in the showbiz, which involves a scary photo of a young gang member Chris Stamp standing with Ronnie Kray of the Kray twins infamy. The fabric of London of the 1960s peeks right through the combination of characters, with the Kray Twins as underworld bosses on the one hand, with Terence Stamp the star actor, his brother Chris the budding impresario, Kit Lambert as the upper class toff who hacked the class system to get his way, and the amazing rock music being played.
it's a fascinating view.

Chris Stamp's best moment in the film is when he recalls the denouement of the partnership and management of The Who, which was negotiated the day after Keith Moon was buried. The lawyers for The Who argued Lambert and Stamp were mismanaging The Who. Stamp recalls he indicated to the surrounding location, Shepparton Studios, saying, "you guys now own Shepparton Studios. You tell me this is mismanagement?"

Stamp proves to be the better man by taking the separation on the chin. It's fascinating seeing how the men have mended their differences since.

Pete Townshend's Ennui

I was - for a very long time - big Pete Townshend fan. I probably still am a fan of his music, but I got put off by his autobiography and biography which appeared a few years ago. What got me really browned off was the fact that he spent most of his career trying to divest himself from The Who. If you're a fan, it's hard to take the kind of carping that Townshend unleashes in the two biographies. How can you hate the thing that takes you to the top? How can somebody be so miserable being so successful doing what people love? Pete Townshend essentially claims that he just wanted to be a jazz guitarist like Barney Kessel and not the windmilling rock icon he became. Yes, it strains credulity, but that is where he left us after the two biographies appeared.

All the same, there are a few telling moments in this film, where he explains The Who was a construct to which he was a party, but what the audience thought they saw as the band was actually a mirror. The things the audience might see and hear in the music is not him, it is what he thinks of us, and so we have never glimpsed the man in the music or the myth. Besides which, all this belies the origins of 'Quadrophenia', which relied on the identity of the band members being incorporated into the narrative.

Of course the upside is that Pete Townshend claims the reason he could never walk away from The Who was because he was working with geniuses in John Entwistle and Keith Moon. It's a laudatory admission he doesn't have to make.

Roger Daltrey Was The Boss

Another thing that becomes clear in the history of The Who is that Daltrey was the inadvertent spokesperson for the band because of many complicating factors. Townshend remained the spokesperson for te work, but Daltrey had the job of representing the band to the management. As the years pile on, and as The Who go on their slow farewell with their "Who Turns 50" campaign, it is becoming more evident how Roger Daltrey kept the band going when others would have walked away, and how it came down to him to take a sober stocktake of the band's business fortunes.

The conversation that takes pace between Townshend and Daltrey reveals a lot of nuanced reconciliation between the men. Townshend acknowledges Daltrey got the short end of the stick when it came to dealing with Lambert and Stamp. It leaves the lingering impression that there was a lot more to Roger Daltrey than just the singer and frontman. Now that Townshend has retreated from his position as the band' artistic light, it has fallen to Daltrey to keep the operation going.

It's a touching moment when the two men discuss Keith Moon. They both agree there was something deeply wrong with Moon. Townshend admits that he ignored that possibility while it was Roger who constantly tried to make things better for Keith who was a manic depressive. Pete admits that Roger was the one who had the compassion Pete so often talked about.

"Hope I Die Before I Get Old"

I've been wondering about Pete Townshend's claim that it wasn't about him, it was about us the audience. It seems rather unlikely. I think it really coms down to Pete's inability to live up to his most famous line, "Hope I die before I get old" from 'My Generation'. It's a great line, but the men who really did live to the line were Keith Moon and Kit Lambert. He has written about the anguish of that moment of Lambert's passing in the song 'Somebody Saved Me', which leads me to believe that he has indeed struggled with the legacy of the line.

There's a lot of self-flagellation in Pete Townshend's post-Who work which also betray his sense of struggling with something. When it really gets down to it, I think Pete Townshend formulated the notion that it wasn't about him, it was about the audience in order not to implicate himself in the line. After all, if the line represented the audience and not him, then it is easier for him to explain just why he didn't die before he got old.

It's also ironic seeing this film after the death of David Bowie, who as a young person was a Mod, and followed The Who. That David Bowie should pass before Pete Townshend would surely weigh upon his mind.

News That's Fit To Punt - 16/Apr/2016

When Governments Suck This Hard

Several people sent me this link yesterday. It obviously hit its mark because lots more were posting it upon Facebook. It's a veritable talking point sort of article, obviously because it sums up what most people have thought and continue to think of this sorry government.

How to explain the trainwreck that is the last three years of the federal government? The debacle poses a challenge that will dog journalists, policy wonks and historians for decades to come. The explanations for its dysfunction and sustained under-achievement are complex, but there are at least two distinct theories worth considering.

In Malcolm Turnbull’s second ministerial reshuffle in February, Alex Hawke was promoted to the office of assistant minister to the treasurer. In 2005, the then young Liberal office holder prophesied that conservative politics in Australia would move increasingly towards an American model. Hawke explained that: “The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity, and when they’re blended it’s a very powerful duo.” 

Can the relentless incoherence and incompetence of the current government be attributed to a particular blend of capitalism and religion that has found favour in the US? Perhaps. British author Will Hutton argues that a malaise has swept the political right throughout the west and that it has given up on the Enlightenment and in doing so has rejected “tolerance, reason, democratic argument, progress and the drive for social betterment as cornerstones of society.”

If there is a serious contest about capitalism being waged in Australian politics, it is invisible to most of us. To the extent that there is a debate, it focuses on neoliberal capitalism. Perhaps Hawke’s invocation of capitalism is another way of expressing an opposition deep within the modern Australian conservative; an opposition to taxes and to government itself. Despite the rhetoric, the recent experience of conservative governments including the current government is that they levy more tax than their Labor counterparts.

And so on it follows. Anybody with a modicum of education and a sense of fairness would find this unsurprising. Yes our government is unrelentingly crass and incoherent, and it's totally impossible to work out what exactly they came to power to do given their contradictory (mostly self-contradictory) positions on things.

China Boom Is Over,  She Says (She's Probably Right)

Here's even more confirmation Australia is headed for economic turbulence. 

The slowdown in China's rapid economic expansion and "rebalancing" away from resource-intensive construction activity towards domestic consumption has dramatic ramifications for Australia's quarter century of uninterrupted economic growth.
In the official lingo, Australia is being forced to "transition" away from the mining boom. But to what? 

Julia Gillard began grappling with the "challenges and opportunities" presented by China's maturing economic development in 2012 when she released Treasury's 'Australia in the Asian Century' white paper. 

It too extolled the opportunities that would flow for Australia to replace record iron ore exports with shipments of health and financial services, meat, wine and dairy.
Add to this list cherries from Tasmania and crayfish from Geraldton, Mr Turnbull this week told a "gala lunch", while extolling the virtues of the recently signed China Australia free trade agreement. "The early export gains have been extraordinary," he claimed. 

Of course Ms. Irvine goes on to argue that services exports from Australia are nowhere near lucrative or competitive as to what our mining exports were able to do during the Mining Boom.

It's a special kind of mess when a Liberal Government can't point at its own record to make the point that the people are better under their economic care. It's also sad that short of thinning exports, was we have to offer Chinaware primary produce - things that are well and truly the part of the commodity trade and where prices are always in deflation.

This probably doesn't need a refresher but the problem with the Gillard Government was that without a solution it opted to double down on the Property Bubble; which, if you think about is no solution at all because it pays no attention to the economy on the other side when ultimately property prices recede back to historic norms, and there's still no industry to replace the mining boom.

The clear and obvious idea lay in the value-add that Australia could provide, so science and technology would be your front line areas to secure an industrial future for Australia beyond the Mining Boom. But of course there aren't any typical union jobs in the ranks of science and technology so the ALP in its worst moments of self-interest would not pursue such a path (And frankly I can't think of any other motive).

The subsequent Coalition Government has been worse in that it helped shut down car manufacturing Australia (because those jobs are unionised) and managed to gut a good portion of the secondary industry while wielding a budgetary axe to science and technology as well as compromising the NBN. So just in case you're wondering, Malcolm Turnbull hasn't been a panacea for the extreme Stupid which befell the Coalition Government under Tony Abbott, any more than an ALP victory might be of any help if they should squeeze past this terrible government at the next election.

Why Pay Tax When You Can Do This?

Glory be. How in God's Green Earth do these big companies get away with not paying tax?
In case you've wondered ho, here is the explanation:

Once upon a time, multinationals had proper 'bodies corporate'. Typically, they had six or eight directors who made decisions in the interest of their Australian entities, a director's duty. 

Shell Australia for instance used to be called Shell Australia. It had a full board, board meetings were generally attended. After every year end, the company would produce a glossy annual report, its financials there for all to see. A press conference, though meagrely attended, would be held. 

Now the Anglo-Dutch giant refers to itself as "Shell in Australia". Its statutory financial statements are nowhere to be seen. If you fork out $38 a pop to the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) you can find them. Net, they have paid no corporate income tax on $60 billion in revenue in three years. 

Shell is a big one but the pattern is clear. Thanks to tricky financial structuring, multinationals regard paying income tax as optional. "Leakage" they call it in the land of tax lawyers. 

ASX companies, such as Woodside, Shell's peer on the North West Shelf, are bound to file their accounts publicly, and free of charge. They are visible, and they are filed – unlike Clive Palmer's accounts of yore – on time each year. 

Compliance, generally, has been in freefall over the past decade. Even the Business Council of Australia, which pontificates to government on good business practise, has only managed to get its accounts in on time in eight of the past 16 years. 

The question needs to be asked of multinationals: what is the economic reality?
Is Shell a little piece of London, and Chevron a little piece of America, which has been given carte blanche to plunder Australia's resources, pay little (in royalties in the case of Chevron) for them and bank all the proceeds of their sale in foreign head office bank accounts? 

Once Chevron has paid the money it pays to real Australians (during construction Gorgon & Wheatstone), there is not much in the way of ongoing economic benefits for Australians. 

Are these really Australian exporters? Multinationals used to run subsidiary companies and the money earned by those companies was banked in Australia and circulated in the Australian economy while the parent waited patiently for a dividend.

What a joke. The kind of money being discussed seems to be the kind of money needed to properly fund the NDIS and the Gonski Reforms and a whole lot more. It's not that these things are unaffordable, it's that our government both ALP and LNP has let their corporate donors run roughshod over the tax office. What we want is for the ATO to start going after these multinationals. That should be the platform parties run on if they want us to take them seriously about things like the budget deficit. 

'Suits' - Seasons 1-5

That Was A Big Binge

My better half has been watching this show regularly and I've sort of shrugged at it because the aesthetic of the show was way too smooth and manicured. I like my law shows a bit grittier; my fave law show was 'The Practice' back in the 90s where Dylan McDermott played criminal attorney Bobby Donnell and each week had a big trial speechifying moment. Of course the same person who created 'The Practice' also created 'Ally McBeal' so ... what can I say? Maybe 'The Practice' wasn't as gritty as I remember it to be - Wikipedia lists its genre as comedy drama. I sure don't remember laughing a whole lot watching 'The Practice'.

Anyway, I decided to take the plunge because FetchTV served it up on a platter, and I was researching how to write a series and it seemed appropriate to see what a multiple award winning show did. Plus, my better half is the better half for a reason. She has a sharp eye for character drama. It couldn't be bad at all to go through it all, could it?

80 episodes is a long journey to go through, but having gone through it, I think I at least understand what the hell is going on in the show, and why it might appeal to audiences. The one benefit of watching a show about lawyers is that they do it without special effects or masked vigilantes saving the day. It's nice watching something that is ostensibly content for grownups, and in most part it is.

'Suits' seems to hark back to the 'L.A. Law' style of slick lawyering show that inspired another generation. You can see how this works - the constant glamorising of the law sucks in the ever aspirational into a turgid career pushing paper. I once met a woman who wanted to be a trial lawyer who explained to me just how far one had to go just to be the kind of lawyer that gets up and works a trail. After her explanation it seemed to me law shows were far more misrepresentative of the career allure of its profession than medical dramas. Yes it takes a long time to become a surgeon too, but you don't exactly go into not expecting to see blood and gore.

'Suits' gives the impression that lawyering is not only glamorous, it might just be easy enough that you can watch a few episodes of 'Suits' and then you too can go into court and argue for a client. It is fanciful. But then so is 'My Kitchen Rules' or the Six o'clock News.

What's Good About It

The best thing about the show is the premise whereby a savant turns out to be a en excellent lawyer in practice but has no qualifications to be practicing law. Much of the tension in the series is built on whether the character Mike gets found out for this brazen fraud. The show teams up Mike with Harvey who is meant to be the sharpest lawyer going, and Harvey is complicit in the fraud because he can see the immense potential of Mike.

The show isn't as good a survey of the law as something like 'The Practice'. It's relatively light on the sort of procedural law show tropes. Instead, it spends a lot of time exploring the hierarchy and institutional strengths and weaknesses of a top flight law firm.

Gabriel Macht who plays Harvey is a very solid leading actor with great range. you can see why the show is so successful watching him. He has more range than the character he is playing so he surprises you at least once every few episodes. The show hangs on him more than the other main character of Mike played by Patrick J. Adams. Adams is also good, but when you watch 5 seasons in a row you start seeing his limitations. He just repeats certain moods and moves over and over again. It wouldn't be noticeable if you saw the show once a week, but it sticks out when you watch the series in a row. He's simply not as varied in voice or elocution or body language as Macht.

What's Bad About It

The writers of the show can't resist quoting movies. It's just time-wasting fodder when real character stuff could be explored. The show has many moments where they're just spinning wheels, which are more apparent when you sit down and binge watch 5 seasons. You get to hone in on which narrative lines are important and which ones aren't, and you find yourself watching quite a number of tedious exchange built on quotes from movies.

The worst moment was when they started quoting 'Mad Men' when 'Mad Men' clearly informed the template for the office politics. It was just bad writing, bad execution. The moment they likened a situation to 'Game of Thrones' was also terrible. I'm sure they meant it as an homage, but it killed tension and the sense of place of this show. It was these moments where the writers gave in to their own anxiety of influence.

Also some of the lesser characters seem have difficulty breaking out of their two-dimensional characterisation. Louis, the strange obstacle character, spends a better part of the five seasons until he finds himself enough to stand in solidarity with his cohorts. It's just not believable that somebody so smart could be so dumb about their circumstance - especially a circumstance the character claims to love and cherish above all else.

What's Interesting About It

The whole exercise turned out to be quite instructional on how to formulate a long-lasting TV series. The show has an overarching problem - that Mike Ross is a fraud - but it also has secondary story arcs that last the season where the show presents with a antagonist who seeks to destroy the firm or take it over. There is a tertiary arc where the character interactions reside whether it be romantic love interest or professional regard for one another or simply bickering over process; and only after then does something happen in each episode to nudge things along on all the arcs.

Some times you wish they spent more time on the big arc, while other times you're happy watching the lawyers do their TV lawyer thing. The tension between the story arcs goes a long way to pushing the show out to 5 series and counting.

Defending The Indefensible, Arguing the Implausible

The trick to writing a good lawyer show seems to be capturing the ability of lawyers to and do and say things normal people would never consider doing. The system is there to give a fair trial to people and that means somebody has to argue to the best of their ability in favour some unsavoury people and things. Take our foreign minister Julie Bishop who as a lawyer defended Big Tobacco and James Hardie in the famous cases before she turned to politics. I know some well educated people who hold this against her as a sign of bad character but you watch enough law shows, you quickly understand that those trials wouldn't have been fair trials had Big Tobacco and James Hardie not had their lawyer in their corner arguing the implausible to defend the indefensible. To that extent I sure don't hold Julie Bishop's legal career against her as having bad character. For our society to be as moral and ethical as it claims to be, somebody needed to be in that corner for the system to work.

In many ways the fun of watching these law shows is watching the lawyers do and say these extraordinary things. Harvey Specter then, is an interesting lawyer character because he often opts to not go to trial. Instead he looks to make sure he cuts the best deals for his clients. That is an interesting wrinkle because for a show about lawyers, they don't seem to go into the courtroom anywhere near the frequency that the lawyers in 'The Practice' or 'L.A. Law' or 'for that matter 'Ally McBeal' did. Instead we're treated to a world of finding the leverage and pressing hard to get outcomes. It's indefensible at times, implausible at others, but it sure makes for interesting viewing.

Race, Gender, Faith And The System

The main characters are palimpsests of American anxieties about race, gender and faith.
I was watching the series and it struck me that Harvey Specter was a dead giveaway name. Harvey is like the imaginary rabbit from the eponymous movie, and Specter is actually spectre, a ghost. He is the least present of the characters in the show, and so he gives us the least information of himself or what he is truly about. Harvey is also unlike any standard American character in that he hates his mother. That's something you don't see everyday in American media. He seems to be living out a WASP nightmare of repressed feelings and memories which are finding expression in his angry outbursts and terrible treatment of those around him. By season 5, he is sent packing by the writers to go see a Psychiatrist which creates its own troubles.

Mike, in stark contrast, is a Catholic boy haunted by a sense of guilt. He finds moral purpose where other sane, normal people might not choose to find them, but given that his character pretty much is at the centre of the main problem in the show, you sort of accept the whole thing. Mike is constantly flip-flopping about what to do, essentially weighing up what makes him feel less guilty as he goes along, but all the while repressing the fact that he is indeed a fraud.

Louis is a man full of self-loathing and a strange sense of satisfaction at his own idiosyncrasy. He's a man in search of one good friend, and he can't maintain friendships because he perceives his social standing only in hierarchical terms. If he is meant to be comic relief, then it is pretty psychotic. It is revealed Louis is Jewish by birth and upbringing but he seems to have devoted his faith more to the church of Harvard Law school as an institution than his own naive faith. It's not clear what exactly drove him to the self-loathing, but what seems to soothe his self-loathing is prestige. It is comic but also profoundly sad when put next to the fabulously WASP and cool Harvey, or the Catholic and empathic Mike. Louis' pettiness is the foil to distract us from the repressed anxiety of Harvey and repressed guilt of Mike.

The managing partner Jessica is a stern black woman of considerable fortitude. She protects her turf because she alone understands how far things can fall, and she is determined not to let that happen. And so her story combines the emancipation of both women and blacks. The system does not play by the rules it advocates, and so Jessica is eternally committed to managing the firm in a way to stay ahead of the volatile ructions of the system. The absolute lack of faith she shows in her staff except Harvey is very revealing. It asks, can Black people ever come to peace with the system that has prosecuted them for so long.

Institutional Elitism

The less appealing aspect of the show is the affirmation of a two-tiered society where the chosen elite reign supreme over the unsuspecting masses. The lawyers in the fictional law firm Pearson Specter Litt are all recruited from Harvard Law School and from that school alone. The other 20 or so leading law schools are given short shrift for most part simply out of snobbery. The characters in most part believe in the snobbery and the importance of maintaining this snobbery which reaffirms their social standing. It's quite unappealing even if Mike who is not from the school runs rings around these lawyers because in most part the status quo is affirms over and over again. The maintenance the elitist institution takes such precedence over so many real concerns.

In a sense a show that strives to give us diversity chokes itself by giving us an institution that would resist diversity as the party for whom the audience supports. There are moments in the show where you just ant to vomit all over the worship of Harvard University. It is all too reminiscent the misplaced awe in which University of Sydney graduates were once held. There probably are law firms that only hire from one place and make it a hallmark of their firm. It's an ugly look.

Because the law is by its nature conservative affair the show never really gets close to undermining the institutional elitism that underpins the socius in the show. Nobody really breaks free, nobody questions the validity nobody really finds the gait creates with the rest of the world to be  serious problem. Louis, at the end of Season 5 is forced to consider graduates from other law schools but by then the firm is in too much turmoil to make good.

Donna Paulsen is clearly a outsider to the coterie of Harvard educated lawyers. She looks in as she contributes mightily to the fate of the law firm. But for all her extraordinary talents and accomplishments and personal guidance to the lawyers, she will never be acknowledged the way Joan Holloway is acknowledged in 'Mad Men' when she ends up owning a share of the advertising firm. Interestingly enough they're both redheaded women.

The Law Is A Sorry Ass

When you watch 80 or so episodes of a show, you come see many moments where characters reverse course of action. And then characters apologies to one another for having done the 180 degrees. Sometimes a character is forced to do two 180 turns within the space of two episodes. Then the apologies ensue.

There'a whole lot of apologies going on in five seasons. If you run a show long enough, the characters end up being n bad enough conflict to have to apologies to one another so often. It's no surprise Harvey ends up seeing a shrink in season 5.

The Law Can Kick Ass

The central tenet of the show seems to be the law can be made to do anything. If it's written down anybody can argue anything and there is a whole posse of lawyers trying to push an agenda. It's interesting because the law is seen as a utilitarian guide to the smooth and fair running of a society.  It's a far cry form the conception of the law that comes from above and perhaps this is why there are so many characters that play fast and loose with the law in this show.

That being said, the procedures and protocols seem to be rigidly enforced and judges seem to frown on most anything bought in front of them. You can imagine being a judge in America is like being asked to intervene in so many idiotic disputes that one's initial response is to frown at any document being thrust under your nose.

There is a lot of document thrusting. And for the sake of the show, most of the characters take one look at the first page of any file and seem to understand the entirety of the content. It's like magic.

The Magical Characters

For all the talk about Harvey being the superhuman amazing lawyer, he doesn't seem to live up to his billing all too well. Instead it is Mike with his amazing photographic memory and Donna's telepathy that saves the day more than once. There are quite a number of episodes that hinge on the fact that the talents of Mike and Donna are simply not normal. If this were Marvel or DC it would make sense. The fact that it happens in a law show reveals that American fiction really is degenerating.

News That's Fit To Punt - 12/Apr/2016

Subsidising Education For The Rich

I know the wealthy like to condemn the Bolshy sorts who object to private schools getting Federal funding. They like to call it class warfare and that they think the Federal Government should fund private schools because they pay taxes, and some of that should go to private education. It's a lousy argument but they have had their way for some time now and the results are beginning to look a little obscene.

Twenty of Sydney's wealthiest private schools received $111 million in taxpayer funding last year, new data has revealed, allowing the institutions to subsidise plans for tennis courts, flyover theatre towers, and Olympic pools with underwater cameras.  

The schools, including The King's School, Trinity Grammar and SCECGS Redlands, have offset parents investments through the public purse courtesy of an $11 million increase in combined state and federal funding since 2012, according to MySchool data.

On Friday, Fairfax Media revealed that the oldest girls school in Australia, St Catherine's in Waverley, had won a battle to build a $63 million auditorium complete with an orchestra pit, a water polo pool, and a flyover tower for state-of-the-art theatre productions. 

It is one of several multi-million dollar developments underway at schools across Sydney, where five of the most expensive institutions have received more than $92 million in state and federal government funding since 2012, equivalent to the total cost of building up to three new public schools.

According to the NSW Department of Education it costs taxpayers $17,000 a year to educate the average public high school student, while taxpayers contribute about half that for each private school student. Sydney's wealthiest schools charge parents up to $30,000 a year in school fees.

Because I don't have kids, it's not really my immediate problem except I can't help but wonder how these people live with themselves. As I pointed out a few days ago, the Finnish educational system does not have any private schools. They had the good sense to ban them - and they explicitly say that it is important for the children of the wealthy to grow up with the children of the poor. If the wealthy want to spend on education, they can spend it on improving their local public school. This business of private schools entrenches inequality our society.

Of course, it would fall on deaf ears with this government that is working very hard to shore up the division and inequality, but it needs to be said that this inequality is going to tear this society apart. It amazes me they can't see that is what they're doing. 

Speaking Of The Finnish Schools...

...Here's why we'll never catch up. 

The clarion call is, of course, "we need better teachers".
Better teachers? Better at what? Filling in forms? Disciplining oversized classrooms? Raising standards with inadequate resources? Does this imply that teachers like me aren't any good? 

Hot on the heels of this comes the lament that we are falling behind the rest of the world: "why can't we be as good as the Finns?" 

I'll tell you why. The Finns don't spend their time arguing about who should fund their schools. They don't waste any ink on public versus private arguments. They don't bag their teachers. 

As Doyle discovered they regard their teachers as "the most respected and trusted professionals next to doctors". That's not the case here. 

I have yet to find out what is wrong with the training, just that it needs to be "better".
Finnish teachers complete masters degrees. Our unis and colleges are lucky to receive adequate funding to enable them to complete any sort of training. They are forced to lower entrance scores to attract students who will pay the HECS fees that fund the courses. It's Pythonesque. 

We want "better" training but we don't want to pay for it.
Not only are Finnish teachers respected and trusted, they are recognised as being the experts when it comes to education because they actually work at the coalface, not in an office. 

I haven't even mentioned comparable pay rates because a country that can't find the will and resources to implement a report that every educator in the land backs is never going to pay teachers what they deserve – let alone the kind of salary that will attract the "best and brightest".

We may as well be frank about this. Our government's nowhere near serious enough to be talking about raising standards when it won't put its money where is mouth is. 

Quite bluntly, it doesn't even look like they know what they're talking about. 

The Very Fast Train That's Slow In Coming

Here's a depressing little article.

If Australia's high speed train is as reliable as the rate at which it is promised by politicians, it will be a truly remarkable service. 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is expected to soon flag plans to once again pursue a high speed rail link down the country's east coast - a veritable favourite for Australian pollies under pressure. 

It's a bit like our version of the Springfield monorail from The Simpsons - a transport project sold with great fanfare to an adoring public that turns out to be a bit of a pup.
Over the years, politicians have promised high speed rail with such alarming regularity that SBS Comedy's The Feed predicted this very occurrence only weeks ago, jibing that it was "like a tired old lover teasing their partner with a sex toy they're too scared to open". 

Indeed, the elusive fast train has now cropped up for three elections on the trot - great fun for headline writers and satirists, but doing very little to inspire public confidence in politics.

Not many people know this, but the busiest air corridor on the planet is between Sydney-Canberra, followed by Melbourne-Canberra. We are flying two of the busiest air corridors in any part of the world because we don't have a Very Fast Train connecting our capital cities. As it turns out, there is a duopoly (and historically sometimes a monopoly) that earns big money from these congested air corridors and they form a powerful lobby group with the Federal Government.

Thus it has to be understood that if we are to have a Very Fast Train, like say Japan and Europe, it's going to be some tough lobbying to get it over the line with the politicians. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is how the rural sector votes for the Nationals and the nationals should be championing a VFT, networked deep into rural areas, but you never hear a peep from them about it.

The usual argument is that Australia's population density and distribution augurs against it, but that assumes two things - firstly that the distribution as it exists is not because of the transport available, and secondly that land use pursuant to public transport is demand-driven. The truth of the matter is that the land use we have exist because of our over-reliance on automobiles, and this has created the population distribution pattern we have as well as contributed to the Property Bubble. That the use of land pursuant to public transport is in fact supply-driven, seems to be a fact not well understood by our governments. If you put a trains station in the middle of nowhere, but if the train can access the CBD in 30minutes, that land suddenly has tremendous value. If it's a VFT that 30minute distance could be as far as Mittagong from the Sydney CBD. Or suburbs south of Wollongong , or north of Gosford.

It's not as if the expertise or technology isn't at hand. Japan's Shinkansen have had an office in Sydney since the 1980s for the day Australia would want to build a VFT. They've been waiting patiently for the day that Australia would build a VFT. As with the submarines - but probably more beneficial to a greater number of people - there are also builders from Europe who could put in tenders.

Amazing Things Happen Every Day

Amazingly it's John Alexander who is championing the VFT amongst the Coalition MP ranks. 

I say amazing because based on John Alexander's career as a tennis commentator, I never thought rational analysis was his strong suite. In all the years I watched tennis on Channel Seven, he would always be the one impugning the motivation of the athletes. Yes, he'd be the one to offer that a player missed a shot because they weren't trying hard enough. And I'd groan at the idiocy of suggesting for a moment that a professional athlete earning busloads of money playing tennis would decide in a crucial spot that maybe they didn't really want to be there and throw a point. But that was John Alexander, year after year - a man to induce face palm moments while watching tennis. He had so little to offer on technique, or tactics, or even statistics. He just offered his analysis of motivation as his commentary. It was terrible, so much so I stopped watching. Then he turned into a politician and a Liberal Party one at that AND he beat out Maxine McKew! Imagine my triple-decker horror.

Anyway, here's JA's input.

"The real purpose of high speed rail is to be able to develop regional areas," said Mr Alexander, who chairs the standing committee on infrastructure, transport and cities. 

While Sydney and Melbourne were straining to accommodate their growing populations, regional centres were "dying" with very cheap real estate, he said.

"It would appear there's a perfect storm of opportunity to liberate those cities through high speed rail," he said. 

New train stations would sit near but outside existing townships, including the Southern Highlands, Goulburn and Shepparton, with the areas around those stations rezoned for higher-density development. 

Mr Alexander suggested property in Goulburn now worth $200,000 could be worth $600,000 if it were just a 30 minute train ride from the Sydney CBD. Meanwhile, the newly-connected regional growth centres would act as a "pressure release valve" on property prices in Sydney and Melbourne. Under conservative estimates, 50,000 people could move into towns along the rail line each year, Mr Alexander said.

"You will push up prices enormously around Goulburn, people will be delighted," he said.

I guess the take-home message there is that the VFT would be good to spread the Property Bubble to far-flung places. The idiocy of wanting to spread the Property Bubble is absolutely in line with the kind of stupid commentary he used to offer Seven's Summer of Tennis every year, but he's got his basics right - the 30minute travel time window is critical, and yes, supply of public transport determines the ensuing land usage. It's amazing, really, that he gets that. Really, really amazing. 

If a chimp rolled into your office on a Segway and could explain General Relativity, it might not be as amazing as John Alexander espousing this position. 

Amazing. 

'Man Up'

A Rom-Com The Old Way

The deluge of comic book content has made the top end of the film market look like it has the mental maturity of a 10year old. In the mean time, you wonder where the adults get to go see things that's a little more - even fractionally so - relevant to the real world where people don't have super powers, they have anxieties.

I feel like Ive watched a lot of comic book content lately and as such I feel like it's a bit of an oasis when the film is about two people which might not amount to a hill of beans in the world, but at least the buildings don't explode and the cars don't flip.

And so we come to this British film replete with the witty repartee and strange characters that only those who write in Britain seem allowed to devise.

Spoiler alert. Also, I watched this Fetch TV. I wouldn't have even known this movie existed otherwise.



What's Good About It

The story is actually very simple so the art is in the telling so to speak. It has echoes of Woody Allen's 70s work in that it relies heavily on the mannered dialogue and the carefully staged situations where people reveal their character. It also smacks of Rob Reiner's 'When Harry Met Sally' where the theory of love is discussed as the focus of a burgeoning relationship. These aren't bad things at all in this film. At least the film doesn't posit the female character Nancy up for the kind of consumerist humiliation we've grown to see with the American varieties of this genre. The film is actually quite didactic, but it hides it well.

It adheres to short, sharp and sweet, and in most art the story moves along briskly. The characters are interesting because they're flawed so it shows some thought; and the pain they carry is something to which we can all relate. Certainly more than superheroes.

What's Bad About It

Simon Pegg is - pardon the pun - the square peg in the round hole. He's not really believable as this character any more than he is believable as Mr. Scott in the recent Star Trek movies. He's ill-suited to this kind of role. His charm comes across as facile and shallow while Lake Bell's Nancy is actually searching for the authentic. The un-believability of Simon Pegg subtracts from the experience of the film. There would have been any number of great British actors who could have played this role but it's the one guy who plays caricatures. It's a real shame.

It's also very un-diverse for a film made in 2015. There's not a non-white person within sight of this film, not even amongst the extras. It's just not what a modern Metropolis like London looks like. Somewhere in the first thirty minutes I wondered if the film might have been better if the guy Nancy met was Black or Pakistani or Chinese. Would she have gone and spent the day with that guy or not? It's not the kind of complaint I'd normally make but the film seemed too comfortable in its ethnocentric certainty of "we're British, we're white".

What's Interesting About It

The weird question that arises out of the film is whether love is fungible. Is out experience of love like repeating patterns or whether there is something new in each and ever experience. Is the love we find with our spouses the same as the love found by the parents who stayed together for 40years? If one's experience of love is somehow locked into a pattern, then it probably needs a complete derailing of character and circumstance to find something new and different.

The film doesn't even go to show that it is good orbed, it simply posits it amongst all the theories of being in a relationship. For instance, Jack meets Nancy mistaking her for somebody else. Does this make Jack's possibilities more open? Does Nancy going along with the mistake offer up the possibilities of something different for her? The film works to convince us that this is what these characters needed. Yet, when Nancy runs into Sean, who is hr obsessive stalker, you get the feeling that the experience of love actually is a kind of torture. Similarly running into Jack's ex-wife and her new partner opens up the conversation to phases of romantic entanglements, which strongly implies all experiences of love are repetitive and doomed to fail.

The Self-Loathing Of Post-Divorce Romance

Jack's traumatic divorce sets the background to his attempting to find a connection with somebody new. It's a likely scenario that earns him a likely put down from Nancy when the going gets a little hostile. Then comes the self pity in the toilet cubicle but in most part Jack is unaware that he is driven by self-loathing. After all, if his ex-wife couldn't love him to the end of their days, then how can he stand himself?

Nancy too is a captive of her self-loathing. We find this out when she talks of her relationship in her twenties which ended and has left her bereft of the desire to be out there or to embrace her life. She can't because she can't stop loathing herself for the failure of her important relationship. One imagines that the catharsis required in rom-coms is one which enables the viewer to find a cure to their own self-loathing they bring into the cinema.

The same self-loathing shows up in 'Annie Hall' and 'Manhattan' as well as 'When Harry Met Sally'. You could almost say that without this self-loathing, there is no romantic comedy because the true nature of these rom-coms are about getting over self-loathing. It is interesting then that the film has a lot of advice about how to get over oneself and one's loathing for oneself, but is oddly opaque about the elephant sitting in every scene.

I've got to say, half a generation ago, Hugh Grant used to make his movies look effortless. Simon Pegg makes us feel these burdens and there's not much joy there.