Vignettes
May-July 2004 Gobbledygook of the Killer Scum (Courtesy: Bruce Petty, The Age) |
John Howard: Successful mediocrity built on others' toil If the Nine Network, in all fairness, did a program on John Howard, it's what they would not find that is important.
John Howard loves telling everyone about the wonderful benefits of individual effort and enterprise, but he himself knows nothing about it.
He lived at home with his mother until the day he got married in his 30s -- so he has never had the ordinary experience of being solely responsible for the care and management of a household.
He loves talking about mateship and mates, but he's never shared a flat with one. He loves playing with soldiers, but he's never shared a barracks either.
He hasn't even taken a commercial risk on himself.
He didn't establish his own law firm -- he just went into a big firm already built up by others and in there he climbed the corporate ladder.
He loves sweet-talking small business owners, but he has no idea of what it's like to be the only thing standing between his own prosperity and the opposite.
When he went into federal parliament, it was in a safe seat, of course.
G.T.W. Agnew, Letter to The Australian, 9/7/04
"John Howard" is a synonym for "Dirt Unit" If, for once, John Howard is telling the truth about his lack of involvement in the mudslinging then it would be a departure from his usual style.
Via his surrogate, Michael Baume, he was involved in falsely accusing Paul Keating of impropriety in his financial affairs in 1994. Via his surrogate, Bill Heffernan, he and his office were involved in the repetition of those false accusations in 1998.
Howard is worse than a muckraker. He is worse than a hypocrite. Throughout his political life he has used his acolytes to do his dirty work for him. He is a coward.
Robert Beech-Jones, Letter to The Australian, 9/7/04 |
This is why
JOHN HOWARD, PHILIP RUDDOCK, AMANDA VANSTONE,
All Liberal members of parliament,
And indeed, all Australians who support them
ARE GUILTY OF
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
An Iranian mother, Leila, was pressured to leave her husband at Baxter Immigration Detention Centre and move, with her one-year-old daughter, to the Federal Government's Residential Housing Project (RHP) in a dead-end suburban street in Port Augusta. She told Russell Skelton:
"We cannot go out into the community, there are cameras everywhere. All the windows and doors have alarms. After 11o'clock at night we are locked in, you cannot open any window. If you do, the alarm goes off and they come running."
Skelton continues:
Four times a day security guards employed by Global Solutions Limited (GSL), a private company that operates the RHP for the Federal Government, enter Leila's home unannounced to conduct a head count. Sometimes they routinely search her few belongings.
From a loudspeaker in the kitchen the guards broadcast instructions and announcements, often when Ghazal is drifting off to sleep. Older children who attend the local state school are also isolated from the community and cannot bring local kids home to play. Even the once-a-week shopping excursion for Leila and the other mothers can turn into a humiliating affair when the guards publicly chastise them for spending more than their $56 weekly allowance.
The policy of moving women and children out of the harsh confines of detention centres to supervised community-based residential housing was adopted by the Howard Government as a humane alternative to detaining children behind razor wire in an environment that doctors and psychologists say is causing long-term emotional and psychological damage.
Russell Skelton's full article: Home sweet home |
(Courtesy: Michael Leunig, The Age) |
(Courtesy: John Spooner, The Age) It Began With The Right-Wing Coup Of 1975 It is a measure of the deep cynicism in our party political system that many of the political class deride those who support the evolution of Australia as a fair, tolerant, compassionate society and a good world citizen as an un-Australian, "bleeding-heart" elite, and that the current Government inaccurately describes itself as conservative and liberal. It is neither. It exhibits a radical disdain for both liberal thought and fundamental institutions and conventions. No institution is beyond stacking and no convention restrains the blatant advancement of ideology.
Without ethical leadership, those of us who are comfortably insulated from the harsh realities of violence, disability, poverty and discrimination seem to have experienced a collective failure of imagination. Relentless change and perceptions of external threat make conformity and order attractive and incremental erosions of freedom tolerable to those who benefit from the status quo and are apprehensive of others who are different and therefore easily misunderstood.
Politicians mesmerised by power seem to be unconcerned that, when leaders fail to set and follow ethical standards, public trust is damaged, community expectations diminish and social divisions expand.
However, these matters are important to the rest of us. We are a community, not merely a collection of self-interested individuals. Justice, integrity and trust in fundamental institutions are essential social assets, and social capital is as important as economic prosperity.
In order to perform our democratic function, we need, and are entitled to, the truth. Nothing is more important to the functioning of democracy than informed discussion and debate. Yet a universal aim of the power-hungry is to stifle dissent. Most of us are easily silenced, through a sense of futility if not personal concern.
That a society which calls itself civilised continues to countenance the prolonged and indeterminate detention of children in conditions closely resembling those of a high-security prison, shocks me profoundly. That this society is Australia saddens and angers me more than I can say.
Tony Fitzgerald: The corruption of democracy - Edited text
Tony Fitzgerald: The corruption of democracy - Full text
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Proof That Aliens Dwell Among Us If Labor wins power, Mark Latham is promising to cull bank profits by forcing banks to provide more free services to welfare beneficiaries and low-income earners (21/6).
If the "people's bank" had not been sold by Labor, it could have provided all of the uneconomic services that Mark Latham is now proposing to force the banks to bear at a high cost to millions of shareholders and customers who actually save and keep money in bank accounts.
James Bowen, Letter to The Australian |
The Hero In Hell 
Many crowd members booed. At first, their disapproval seemed to be directed more at Merlin's abuse of his 15 minutes of fame than his protest message. But later, when Merlin had been sent packing, host Gretel Killeen repeated the words "Free the refugees". The crowd booed again. This time, their response was unmistakably aimed at the message, not the man.
Witnessing a crowd of ordinary Australians jeering at Merlin's simple humanitarian message was revealing of the nation as a whole.
In Australia, raising the topic of politics at a barbecue is regarded as akin to talking about God. Either way, you end up by yourself. Protesting against the detention of asylum seekers is a "barbecue stopper" in the literal sense.
Discussing the plight of the Jews at tea parties in Nazi Germany would no doubt have produced reactions similar to those we saw on Sunday night; jeers, taunts and entreaties to stop all the depressing talk. "Please, mein herr, sit down. Have some more tea and cake."
We can't hide our dark side. According to one of the nation's most respected pollsters, 90 per cent of us - by and large - ignore politics. It follows that Australians are - by and large - politically ignorant. Morally sound and well meaning, perhaps.
But the majority's ease with the detentions in the camps shows apathy in the face of cruelty.
Tim Ferguson The dark side of Australians |
Arse-licking Wreath-layer at it again A timely reminder from yesteryear:
Maurice Fairfield: Arse-licking Johnny |
DYNAMITE George Bush rubber-stamped John Howard's "how to vote" card yesterday. Bush needed help from an obliging Murdoch journalist, who in turn had got an assist from an anxious visiting Prime Minister who thought he was about to miss out. But even Bush knows what's expected of him if jolted hard enough. You know, like those hooded Iraqi prisoners with the electric leads on their privates.
Alan Ramsey One question makes it all worthwhile |
Later this year Australians will vote in a federal election. The principle choices are frightening.
Mark Latham appears ill-prepared for high office, suffers from foot-in-mouth disease, is inexperienced in foreign affairs matters, has yet to enunciate a credible economic plan and does not appear to consult his senior shadow ministers.
On the other hand, the incumbent Government tells lies to the people, believes it's OK to imprison children, is compassionless, politicises the public service, slavishly follows US foreign policy, and goes to war on a false premise.
Strewth! What a choice!
Noel North, Letter to The Age |
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