THE SUBS 'N' DUDS | Number 5 |
REPORT | 6 June 1996 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Melbourne, Australia |
Amanda the Hun and the Coalition Hordes Like a crash test dummy perched on the bonnet of a Mad Max Kingswood, Amanda Vanstone is hoisting high the banner of the conquering Coalition Hordes--"Contribute twelve percent or die!"--as she hacks and slashes her way through Higher Learning. And the civilised (led by capitulating RMIT vice-chancellor, David Beanland) prepare to roll over, as they always have. Instead of demanding that John Howard keep his pre-election promise not to cut University funding--and simply closing down all Universities until he agrees--the many will acquiesce to the few. History repeating itself: evolution overrun by slobbering goths, crusaders, huns, Thatcherites, each intent on committing devastation in the name of doctrinaire greed and sociopathic righteousness. To cover a fiscal black hole that isn't there (and even if it was, so what!), Amanda Vanstone is telling Australian educators and students--the backbone of any future chance this country has to be taken seriously by the international community--that they should feel honoured to voluntarily gut themselves. The truth is, educators and students have long been feared by right wing governments. Seeing themselves as rulers of the people rather than servants, these governments generally fall into two categories. At best they are visionless anal retentives, ill equipped for humanitarian endeavours, preferring instead to enforce half-baked ideologies in order to get what they can before being thrown out of office. At worst, they come down on the educated like Pol Pot, by having anyone shot who can so much as use a pencil. Amanda the Hun is one of the former, little more than a headless chook with the power to make misery. She could have been given any portfolio, the rhetoric would have been the same. She and her Federal mates, like the Kennett Corporation in Victoria, are running government as if it were a business, with the only possible result: a third world country where the philistine elite are educated and the rest no more than slaves. With close to a hundred members of the business community applauding and laughing, Jeff Kennett, on the occasion of the ground breaking ceremony of City Link, desecrated the Office of Premier by slinging four shovels of sand at the Media. Perhaps he was bristling at Patrick Smith's column that morning (see below), perhaps he was filled with the bully's false sense of power with so many toady's behind him. Whatever the reason, the Premier unwittingly typified the sleazy aura of City Link. In addition, he managed to desecrate the Japanese traditional ground breaking ceremony. Asian perceptions of Australian businessmen as galahs must surely be enhanced. This was but the latest in a series of disgraceful acts by Jeff ("I'm an arsehole." Chorus: "He's an arsehole.") Kennett. As Bruce Guthrie said on Peter Couchman's show, this man's "behaviour is no longer amusing." The PPF would add, it never was. It is time the entire Media came to grips with this problem, as they should have years ago, when Jeff routinely rounded on ABC reporters for asking critical questions. Kennett should be billed for all damaged cameras, and in fact should be charged with assault. Had you or I done the same, what would have happened? Subsequent comments in the press only confirm the assumption that not only the Premier himself, but everyone else regards him as above the law. The Political Prisoners of the Future, however, regard him as a criminal. In the coming days and years before he either goes to Pentridge or is seen to be the man who ruined Victoria, the PPF would love to see a member of the community, political or otherwise, get close enough to land a punch on his contemptuous face. We wish, for example, that John Brumby could have leapt the table and planted one on Jeff's kisser over the 'sleeping with boys' diatribe. John would have been a certain hero. We wish that Felicity could have taken a frying pan to Jeff's thick skull in the days before she succumbed to the perks of being a dictator's moll. Further, the PPF would like to see a petition circulated demanding his resignation. In addition, we would like to see mass rallies at Parliament, even on the street where he lives. He is not only erratic, as Rob Hulls says, but dangerous. He has sold our future out from under us with disdain and delight. After his removal from office, we would like to see to it that he becomes persona non grata everywhere. Threats against his life are to be condemned. The gun debate has been given eternal life precisely because Martin Bryant is still alive. And like the Port Arthur killer, we want Jeff kept alive for damn near ever. He needs to be made aware on a daily basis of his crimes against democracy. The outrage he has evoked in the community must be brought home to him every minute of his remaining days. This is Jeff's legacy: a surfeit of hatred among the normally generous of spirit. And a demand for revenge. Surely his column in the Sunday Age (26 May 1996) deserves some kind of award. Not even O. Henry, the master of the unexpected ending, could have surpassed it. Starting benignly, with a conversation between Doug Aiton and Barry Jones on the merits of 'Casablanca,' Terry then took us to the subject of violence in 'Pulp Fiction,' which Jones confessed to liking, and to the Federal government's mooted 'V' classification for violent films, i.e., censorship. Terry Lane is an advocate of Free Speech at all costs, believing that censorship at any level reduces our capacity to comprehend the complexities of life. The PPF cannot but agree. How are we to comprehend good and evil if evil is kept locked away? (A point Lane didn't make was the unhealthy relationship between sex and violence in our present state of evolvement. We have yet to come to terms with sex, the one all-powerful pleasure given to all. Beyond innuendo and it's use to sell every product imaginable, people are unsure about sex. But when it comes to confronting it directly and openly, society recoils with fear, making more laws to curb and prohibit. Our sexuality is still in the realm of the forbidden. Violence, on the other hand, is as common in our lives as breakfast. We watch it fictionally on TV and read about very real atrocities every day in our newspapers. The conclusion seems to be that we are better able to deal with violence than sex. A further conclusion: violence results from repressed sexuality.) Referring to a documentary recently screened on the SBS, Lane made an interesting point. "...the Roman Empire kept going 300 years past its use-by date simply because people were so morally enervated by the weekly spectacles of cruelty at the arena that they lacked the energy to do something about their tyrannical overlords." That is, if big business keeps us depleted by bankrolling screen and TV violence--which then becomes culturally acceptable--there is little we can do to stop their tyranny in every other field, as well. He concluded that watching so much violence is detrimental, but went on to point out that one of Germany's most notorious killers was incited to commit mayhem by repeatedly viewing Cecil B. De Mille's, 'The Ten Commandments.' So much for the merits of censorship. Terry then took us another step in the logical maze of his article, that America's "...all-pervading violence...is rooted in its economic system--the very system that the Howard Government is hell-bent on introducing here. Namely, a system in which the worker is rendered powerless and must accept whatever terms and conditions are forced upon him by an employer." In the penultimate paragraph, he noted that "America and New Zealand, the two nations with [Peter Reith's desire for] maximum flexibility in the workplace, are also the two nations with the most frighteningly violent gangs of unemployed or underpaid young men." His final O. Henry-award comment: "If any publication deserves a V for violence classification it is the Federal Government's industrial relations bill." WHERE'S ME TABLETS! Satire Verboten on Der Jeff's Parliament Patrick Smith, Age sports columnist and arch foe of economic rationalism --whether espoused by Ross Oakley or the Coalition--has provided us with another award winner. We knew two paragraphs in that Jeff was going to do another Rumpelstiltskin. His poor old leg must be through a foot of concrete by now...if only he'd split in two! It appears that rules have been set down for reporting on Parliament. Among them is the stipulation that reports must not contain satire or ridicule. Hah! What parliament in Australia deserves anything but! So Jeffrey, the Master of Spring Street, promptly summoned Mr Smith before the Parliamentary Sergeant-at-Arms. (Can't you just see Patrick, cap in hand, meekly obeying...) Good Lord, where are we? Back in the days of Louis Quatorze? What a load of crap. As Ian Smith said to Jeff in Patrick's article, "Go on, get out." |
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