View From The Couch - 27/Mar/2016

Propaganda And Nothing But Propaganda

Some days you just don't know what to make of the government's views on the arts and entertainment industry. Other days, it's pretty damn clear what they want from its workers. And so today we find that the immigration department dropped $6million to make a Telemovie about what a bad idea it is to be an asylum seeker from Afghanistan or Pakistan, hoping to trek to Australia by water.

Government tender documents reveal the Department of Immigration and Border protection paid the Sydney-based Put It Out There Pictures $4.34 million to produce the movie. It paid a company called Lapis Communications a further $1.63 million for to promote and advertise it, bringing the total to $5.97 million. 

By contrast, Priscilla cost less than $2 million, Wolf Creek about $1 million and The Castle just $750,000. Even adjusted for inflation, the total budget of all three films works out at about $5.8 million in today's terms. 

Filmed across three countries, the ninety-minute drama tells the story of a small group of Afghan asylum seekers trying to get to Australia by boat. A trailer available on YouTube – which has about 1000 views – shows scenes of asylum seekers talking, arguing and crying in Afghanistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.

I guess the obvious thing about this is that this government views propaganda films as being more important than any film that gets made with government assistance through Screen Australia. When the government has a point to put across through film, it actually has a bit of financial wherewithal to make its point forcefully. 

I know it wasn't intended but there probably isn't a bigger insult to the film makers of this country than a production where the budget provided by the government is bigger than anything it would normally hand out to a local production; where the content is purely political; the funding came out of a department that has zero involvement with the arts and entertainment sector, and the production money went out to a foreign production entity. 

One would think - rather cheekily - that the department of Immigration should have been forced to go through the process every other producer has to go through to secure government funding, and tried to set up its own distribution deals overseas. 

The production also brings up some interesting issue like, who in Australia might have undertaken such a project. I'd imagine the vast majority of film makers are pinkos. Some are even heavily Regressive Left types. There would be a lot of people who would object to this project for being propaganda and for such nefarious intent. All you have to remind people is 'Leni Riefenstahl', and they would've run screaming. As such, the government would have had immense trouble getting any kind of creatives going on in Australia. It kind of illustrates just why it was made out in Afghanistan:

Put It Out There company director Trudi-Ann Tierney declined to be interviewed. However she has in the past had some interesting things to say about her own work, describing her films as "propaganda". 

The former Australian TV executive and actress moved to Kabul to manage a bar but fell into the local TV industry and found herself producing a highly popular soapie, which she wrote about in her book Making Soapies in Kabul. 

In the book she said she was ostensibly head of drama "but in truth I was nothing more than a propaganda merchant". She also says her work was part of the "psychological operations" NATO and its allies used to influence the values and behaviour of its Afghan audience in a way that supported the war effort.

It's all about the war effort boys and girls! There's always more money for that. 

Rejoice, It's Joyce Season

The interesting news is that the "vengeful micro parties" are going after Barnaby Joyce. 

The Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is to be targeted by "far right wing" micro parties directing preferences against him in the seat of New England, according to the preference expert Glenn Druery. 

Mr Joyce holds the seat by 19.6 per cent but the micro parties revenge for being bundled out of the Senate is expected to greatly enhance independent Tony Windsor's campaign to retake New England. 

Mr Druery said on Friday the right wing micro party candidates would also direct preference against sitting Coalition members in at least 10 marginal seats.

The fun part of the news is that these are "far right wing" micro parties. These micro-parties are presumably for people to whom the current Coalition is not right wing enough. That's right, more right wing than the climate-change-denying', Coal-seam-gassin', asylum-seeker-hatin', gay-marriage-equality-resistin', Johnny-Depp-baitin', cockamamie Barnaby Joyce.

You wonder what the world has come to when a right ole rightwing nut like Barnaby can't rely on the far right wing nut vote.

A House For This Sinodinos

It's truly strange how political operators go about doing things and how money seems to swirl around the things they do.

Key Liberal fundraisers sounded out major donors to the party about chipping in to buy a house for Senator Arthur Sinodinos after the collapse of a potentially lucrative money-making venture. 

The audacious plan originated in early 2013 after Senator Sinodinos relinquished a 5 per cent stake in Australian Water Holdings, a company that later became the focus of a landmark corruption inquiry. 

Fairfax Media had earlier revealed Senator Sinodinos' shareholding in a company that employed Eddie Obeid jnr, the son of controversial Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid.
At the time Senator Sinodonis said that although his shareholding was recorded on his parliamentary pecuniary interest declaration it was not publicly registered with the corporate regulator "because it was on a gentleman's agreement".

How does that even work? Could, say, Terri Butler the current ALP shadow cabinet secretary go to the unions and ask for them to find money to buy her a house? Wouldn't Malcolm Turnbull and his ABCC bill jump up and down and point to such shenanigans as exactly how the unions and the ALP were corrupt? Isn't that what Sinodinos is being accused at this moment? This is some really weird stuff - especially because you see names like Obeid thrown in there, and we know "Obeid" can only mean "corruption" in this part of the English speaking world.

At some point they have to just 'fess up and admit that corruption is corruption is corruption.
And then there's this:

How Deep Does This Rabbit Hole Go?

Here's a doozy. The same ICAC inquiry that dug up the dirt on Sinodinos has also dug up the name of Peta Credlin. Yes, they tried to suppress that name, but it's out in the open now.

The documents were suppressed last week by the head of the Independent Commission Against Corruption after lawyers acting for Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos raised concerns they could be subject to parliamentary privilege. 

But the suppression order was lifted on Monday after the speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, advised the commission that no claim for privilege would be made. 

The emails reveal that, in March 2011, while the Coalition was in opposition, Ms Credlin used a major donor to the Liberal Party, Brickworks, as part of Tony Abbott's campaign against the carbon tax.

Oh doesn't that look like a bucket of writhing corrupt worms right there? Turns out Lindsay Partridge of Brickworks - who classifies as a Developer - was donating "illicit money" (The Sydney Morning Herald's words not mine BTW) to the NSW Liberals and Federal Liberal Party through back channels. The emails leave a trail of totally awful illustration of how money buys you so much access you get to put words into the mouth of a Prime Minister. 

Frankly, it's ugly and despicable that this is politics in this country, and how we in the electorate simply have to take it. All we do get is to vote for some person who may or may not get into Parliament, and may or may not represent our interests in that Parliament.It's really vague what the vote gets the ordinary citizen. 

The rich on the other hand, clearly get to dictate terms on a daily basis. 

News That's Fit To Punt - 19/Mar/2014

Scandal-A-Day Government

Arthur Sinodinos has been forced to step down from his cabinet role thanks to having his name linked in the ICAC surrounding more of Morbid Obeidity. Turns out Eddie Obeid was making 'political contributions' (read: Bribes) to the Liberals as well as to strategically placed Labor Party people. In that sense Eddie Obeid was colour-blind. This reminds us of Kakuei Tanaka and his penchant for bribing everybody who was running for office, regardless of party, affiliation or faction  because "in the end they're all people and people need a little help sometimes."

While Sinodinos has not been accused of a crime, what's become clear is that the company for which he was a director, Australian Water Holdings, was charging Sydney Water money, and then was using that money to make political contributions to the Liberal Party, where Sinodinos was also treasurer. This has meant that although circuitous, the tax payer was making contributions to the Liberal Party. What's breathtaking is the massive conflict of interest of being the both the company director for Australian Water Holdings and being the Liberal Party treasurer at the same time. One can only guess at the sums of money involved but you can be assured it wasn't exactly nickels and dimes because Sydney Water wanted to know why they were being charged these special fees and all their attempts to find out hit a brick wall. We can be pretty sure it was much more than the sum Craig Thomson racked up with hookers on the HSU credit card.

What Other People Are Saying

Walk-Off-HBP sent me this link about the people who marched the other day.

If Tony Abbott hadn’t cut the ribbon on the floodgates of senseless ridicule in Australian politics, maybe my sign could be considered distasteful. If the Liberal party had renounced rather than adopted mockery in Australian politics, maybe I wouldn’t be writing this right now.

In the garbage dump you’re trying to help turn Australian politics into, I obviously feel it was appropriate to call the Prime Minister a dickhead. I can’t speak for everyone who dislikes the Prime Minister, but I think he needs to know how strongly that sentiment is felt. You can’t just sell off parcels of our country without being told you’re a dickhead. You can’t dredge our reefs, chop down our world heritage listed forests and kill our animals without being told you’re a dickhead. You can’t abolish our important scientific and social institutions, oppress minorities or defund education, health and welfare without being told you’re a dickhead.

I think it’s fair to call him a dickhead. I hope that it sticks, and that for the rest of his life, Tony Abbott is known as Tony Abbott the Dickhead PM. I hope people who meet his daughters say “Oh, your dad is the famous dickhead!”, and I hope his Wikipedia page ends up with an entire chapter dedicated to the dickhead aptronym. I hope it stains his life in such a way that it makes every Australian politician worry about what they’ll be called.

I thought it was worth sharing just to say, "so you thought I was being mean yesterday!"

Clusterfuck Of Doxa

I have to say I don't really know Lena Dunham and her work. From what I understand, she makes TV shows about young women having a devil of a time in the dating scene. As such it surprises me none that she wants to come out swinging on behalf of Dylan Farrow who dredged up her old accusations against Woody Allen. Lena Dunham says she's nauseated by Woody Allen. I'd normally walk by these kinds of puff pieces but it caught my attention that Dunham makes an explicit demarcation between the man and his art.

“In the latest Woody Allen debate I'm decidedly pro-Dylan Farrow and decidedly disgusted with Woody Allen's behavior. But for me, when people go through his work and comb through it for references to child molestation, that's not the f*cking point.”

"I'm not gonna indict the work ... I think that you can decide that you don't want to support the work of somebody who has molested a child. That's a completely appropriate choice. But going through it and saying, 'Look, he's told us in 57 ways that he rapes kids.' That's not the thing. The thing is to look at the actual evidence that exists in the world, which I think strongly suggests that Woody Allen is in the wrong. But for me the point is not to go through his one-act plays looking for references to child molestation. Because I’m not comfortable living in a world where art is part of how we convict people of crimes.”"

Now, that's the right conclusion to come to at the end there. It's interesting she gets there because she's a public person creating works that are out in the public sphere; so presumably this is laying down a line to protect herself from being seen through the prism of her won work - even though she created exactly such a space where Lena Dunham actor and creator are all rolled up in her show. It seems more than a little self-serving to be arguing that line.

Be that as it may, a free kick at the venerable director still is a cheap shot. The man took a polygraph at the time of the accusations and came out clean. Something Mia Farrow refused to do when asked if she was coaching her kid to accuse Woody Allen. Colour me unimpressed when it comes to this business of Dylan Farrow's open letter. But I'm always surprised at the people who "yes but" me with "we have to believe the victims" or "but she really believes it, so there must be some basis in reality". I have to say this kind of cavalier attitude towards facts that have already been verified just as vexing as Dunham's nausea from the man himself.  If you're going to throw out polygraphs because they can be unreliable, what good reason is there to hold on to the testimony of somebody who might have been coached as an infant to believe what she says she believes?

Anyway. I figure it's worth grumbling about. I understand people not liking Woody Allen as a result of all this; I'd have to say I wouldn't want to particularly meet the man. I just don't see how you can be pro-Dylan Farrow given the reports. Oh, and by the way I thought Cate Blanchett handled all this really well by not talking about it, when asked about it.