Dogs Are Better People Than Politicians

Couldn't Keep Denying

It amazes me that the Abbott government keeps limping on being the way it is. Normally, being the host nation for something like APEC or the G-20 burnishes the standing of a nation, but somehow Tony Abbott and his miserable government managed to lower the standing of Australia, simply by being their climate-change-denying selves. At the end, Tony Abbott made a speech to the effect that all the governments represented at the G-20 wanted to do something about climate change. It hardly seemed plausible given the degree of resistance mounted and shown by the same government, during the lead up to the G-20 meeting. It sure was hard not to talk about something all these guests anted to talk about it.

I guess that's the nature of summit meets. The host nation doesn't really get to control the agenda if it isn't a nuclear superpower. Tony Abbott made Australia look like an adolescent who is in denial about having to do chores, on the international stage. I'm sure the world took notice. Now that China and America have decided to do something about climate change, then it also activated Clive Palmer and the PUP's agenda of keeping an ETS. Greg Hunt might think they've mothballed the thing but it might comeback from the dead sooner than people thought. After all, the problem with Direct Action is that it is not scaleable in the same way as the ETS. The more there is to cleanup, the better it would be to simply ramp up the ETS again, and be done with it.

No Cuts To Adelaide ABC? Then Don't Make Stupid Cuts

Chris Pyne, he of the Coalition Government that came to power promising not to make any cuts to the ABC and SBS but promptly started cutting as soon as they got in, started a Chang.Org petition to stop the ABC cutting the Adelaide production facility.
Let us now count the shades of stupid in this petition and petitioner.

1. He's a freaking minister of government. He's a lot closer the to the decision making than public petitioners and their petitions. 
2. He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting $254million to the ABC budget.
3. He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting that $254million in the face of the ABC asking them not to make such cuts.
4. The alarming hypocrisy of a minister of a government making largely gratuitous, political cuts, on alleged economic grounds (whether true or not) can't complain about such cuts affecting their electorate. 
5. Since when does Chris Pyne care about the ABC's production capacity anywhere? If he's going to start caring about that, maybe he should be looking into the plight of the Film & TV industries a lot more carefully?

Naturally we are underwhelmed. It would be a great shame if the Adelaide unit had to close because of the cuts. It would be a shame if any production facility had to close because of the cuts, because that's the very zero-sum game this government set up. You sort of wonder if these people have any actual brains.

Hooray For Jacqui Lambie (Can't Believe I Just Typed That)

Jacqui Lambie has been going rogue for a few weeks now, over the conditions of defence personnel and something to do with their Christmas bonuses. It has gotten to the point where to refuses to pass anything of the government unless they do as she says, which is to say, she's holding the government to ransom, all on her own-some. The early net effect of this ornery statesman-ship is that the ALP has corralled her into stiffing the Coalition's plans to water down the Future of Finance Advice changes.

This is no ordinary stiffing; this is being described as a "body blow" by the SMH, but more accurately, it's the moment when it has become untenable for the Coalition Government. To date, the Coalition Government has managed to get some of their idiotic plank of policy through the Senate thanks to Clive Palmer making deals with them. Only a couple weeks ago it looks like Palmer was the idiot in letting the Direct (In)Action policy through in time for the Brisbane G-20 summit. Yet now, the rogue PUP Senator is undoing done deals.

If it's bad enough that Joe Hockey's government hasn't been able to pass its awful-awful-awful budget, six months hence from its big debut, then the PUP disintegration ought to give them pause. This might be the moment where it forces the Coalition (the No-alition) to properly think about a Double Dissolution, because they ain't getting it done now. The earliest opportunity to vote out these drongos would be most welcome.

News That's Fit To Punt - 23/Sep/2014

It's Not The Burqa, Stupid

There are people making statements about the burqa and hijab, starting with Jacqui Lambie.  It's a funny thing - now the National Party is complaining that their anti-burqa message is being garbled by Senator Lambie's efforts. There's now an Islamophobia hotline to boot because anti-muslim sentiment has gone up in the wake of the arrests of the ISIL//ISOR-sympathisers and their random-beheading plot.

It needs to be said, hounding women with these head dresses is hardly going to achieve anything towards achieving the defeat of ISIL//ISOR or towards World Peace. If we're going on about Sharia Law and who intolerant Islamist muslims are, then it's probably worth talking about other religions that have a highly intolerant branch. Judging muslims by the behaviour of ISIL//ISOR is  like judging western society by the behaviour of Westboro Baptist Church. Complaining about the burqa is equally irrelevant as people who complained about bikinis. We've learned to live with bikinis, we'll learn to live with burqas.

Classical Music As Prestige Hobby

Pleiades sent in this story which deserves a bit of kicking around. It turns out that it wasn't just the ballerinas that got a reprieve from the Budget slashing knife wielded by Worst-Treasurer-Ever Joe Hockey; Melba Recordings which specialises in classical music recordings goat direct injection of $275,000 from the Federal Government, directly bypassing the Arts Council.

The story then tells us that Melba Recordings has been receiving Federal grant monies for a long time, and each and every time has been bypassing the Arts Council. This fact alone fills one with great mixed feeling - but I'll get on to that in a moment.

ArtsHub reports that: “Melba’s last published financial statements appear to be from 2011-12. They paint a dismal picture. The foundation recorded a $566,704 loss on revenue of only $630,848, of which the Federal Government grant was $500,000 – an extraordinary subsidy ratio of approximately 79 per cent.” 

“Melba’s sales record is equally glum. The 2012 annual report shows an “other” income, which appears to include CD sales, of only $39,225. Sales from earlier years were equally disappointing. In 2011 the foundation made only $18,000 and in 2010 as little as $3,500, according to a 2012 analysis by Samantha Randell, a researcher at the Association of Independent Records,” the website reported.

The amazing thing about classical music is not the years of devotion and training it takes to master the technique, only to end up teaching the stuff or working in some cruddy orchestra as fifth violinist down the back or something; it's that it keeps finding patronage in the most extraordinary places.

Like, the Attorney General's Office.

Jokes aside, you do wonder how valid it is to be spending money on a label of classical music, recorded in Australia by Australian musicians and artistes. On the one hand, it's good that there is a forum for classical musicians to get a go, recording stuff. Otherwise, it's forever going to be the cultural cringe of worshipping at the altar of 'Deutsche Grammophon' and 'ARKIV Produktion' and 'Decca Records' and all those wonderful, established recording houses in Europe. On the other hand you would think, if there's no market purchase whatsoever, it's in the same basket-case basket as Australian Film & Cinema. Why are we spending good money after bad to indifferent effect, pissing it into the wind when the very same government is screaming about cuts to everything worthwhile?
The mind boggles.

Equally, one understands what the funding selection criteria process would be like for a classical music label to undergo at the Arts Council. It would be a hard sell, and some weird-as left wing ideologue is bound to scuttle sending money to something so conservative and backward looking as a classical music label. They would have no shot - and as progressive and trendy-lefty as I am, the musician side of me wonders if the Arts Council should be the kind of arbiter body for something like this?
It would be really - make that tremendously - hard to make a case that an Australian playing 'The Goldberg Variations' on a harpsichord made in Australia was still culturally Australian in the way funding bodies like it. But is this a fair ruler with which to measure this kind of venture? Is this venture that lacking in national interest?

All the same, when you look at just how much money has been spent and how little money that's been made selling classical music from this label, one would have to conclude this is just this conservative Coalition wanking on spending public monies on something that belongs with private philanthropic enterprises. It says a lot about Australia that this sort of thing happens at all. Bottom line is this: why aren't Jamie Packer and/or Lachlan Murdoch forking out money for this instead of the government? What's wrong with these billionaires? Acute Philistinism perhaps?

Double Standards

It's That Kind Of Day

The reports in the news sites say that Australia really swung behind getting a meaningful resolution out of the UN, in the aftermath of the MH17 event.  The SMH is really giving our diplomats a pat on the back - seems to me they're just finally earning their keep after years of cushy livin' in New York on the public purse! Besides, suddenly beset with Julie Bishop's death stare, how could the unsuspecting people of the world say no?

Of course jokes about Julie Bishop's death stare aside, the dynamic diplomatic deal-making does stand in stark contrast to the way this government minces words and tries to parse interpretations that do not exist (let alone be supported) from our commitment to the UN Charter on Human Rights and how we treat refugees. On that score, we're one of the worst violators but we keep on coming up with legal fictions as to why it's okay to run concentration camps on Manus Island and Nauru. Millions have been displaced by civil wars in places like Syria, and our government is buys telling them they can't come. 37 Australians die in a plane hit by a Russian missile an we're all over it at the UN. No mater how you look at it, it's a kind of double standard.

In the mean time, PUP senator Jacqui Lambie has made international press on the back of an interview where she claimed her ideal man would be rich and well hung.

Later, when a prospective suitor called up the show, Lambie enquired (sic) if 22 year-old Jamie was "well-hung".
This induced great mirth from Kim and Dave (ratings gold!), but just imagine if a male politician had offered a similar opinion, about say, a woman needing to be "really rich and have massive boobs".

It would be a career-ending, resigning offence. Facebook groups would spring up in protest. People would make t-shirts and take to the streets in outrage.

In recent months, Tony Abbott has weathered howling storms for suggesting a Liberal candidate had sex appeal. And for winking when a talk back caller revealed she worked on a sex line.
Clive Palmer has also raised the eyebrow of disapproval for calling female journalists "madam" and "my dear".
And yet, Lambie is sure to stroll away from her Heart appearance and into her next set of public comments with nary a scratch.
Yes, they are lighting up the internet - but only for their "omigawd" value. Not because they might be construed as demeaning and well, sexist.

The thing is, it probably is some kind of double standard that lets Lambie off the hook when if she were a member of another party and a male, she might not have gotten off so lightly. I'm not saying she should be condemned or that this bit of double standard is particularly noteworthy - merely that double standards seems to be the notion of the day.

Obviously there's a fine line between the double standard thing and the deliberate hypocrisy inherent in the double think we are asked to endure with all its cognitive dissonance, but this is a country made up of inherently contradictory ideals. It stands to reason that there's a different rule or standard applied to everything, based on the values of nothing-in-particular.