| A Squiz at Australia's | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | 19 March 1999 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Volume 1 Number 5 |
The Mainstreaming Of Corruption If present trends continue, we'll soon have corporate slogans on our TV screens like this: IOC, AOC, SOCOG: corruption working for you! That is, business as usual. In a process beginning most recently with the election of the Kennett government in 1992 (the shonky Crown Casino tendering process is but one of Jeff's contributions), Australia has seen a rise to commonplace of the worst aspects of business--bribery, favours, secret deals--and the fall of what we used to expect of our governing bodies--probity and service to the community. Anyone who saw the Four Corners report into the Sydney 2000 bid, will have been chilled by the brutal face of business as represented by John Coates. His cold blooded attitude could not have been bettered by the most hardened criminal staking out his territory in the highest maximum security prison. And he now stands before the country, proud of his shady manoeuvres (protected by "complicated legal argument") to secure the 2000 games. Then there is "Technical" Nick Greiner, the man who left politics by the back door (on ICAC's "technical finding" of corruption against him) and was promptly rewarded by seats on innumerable corporate boards. He wants us to know that "there is absolutely not one thing that I would be ashamed of, embarrassed about, or wouldn't do again" with regard to the bid team's sickening largesse to faceless nobodies whose votes were for sale. Although, he conceded, SOCOG may have been in "technical breach" of IOC guidelines. The unfettered control by business of all levels of government is turning Australia into a corporate state where those unwilling or unable to lie and cheat there way to the top are being used as pawns to prop up the liars and cheaters. The Howard government is leading the charge with its fanatical dismantling of society, where education will soon be denied to the poor or even the middle class, universal health care will be all but nonexistent, and the work force will become, like George Orwell's proles, servile and powerless. The Olympics scandal is a turning point, with the unconscionable denial of wrongdoing by its bureaucrats. "We did what we had to do," implies that anything goes in the name of the almighty dollar and that the almighty dollar is the only pursuit which matters. Our one hope is that the present periodic frenzy of corruption will eventually crash in a heap of long jail sentences. Do we see Born Again Christians on the horizon? HH Coalition Wowsers: The Plague Is Back Within the first fifteen minutes of the film Scream, a teenage girl is terrorised over the telephone and then stabbed several times in the chest, the sounds of the knife piercing flesh and bone, and her death rattles, coming through loud and clear. As her assailant drags her corpse across the front lawn, we note her virgin white blouse smeared with sticky blood and the grey death pallor on her face. Her parents will shortly discover the mutilated body of their daughter. Where were Brian Harridine, Trish Draper and John Howard when this film was released? Or the hundreds upon hundreds of similar films that screen regularly on pay and commercial TV? They were, of course, nowhere, blissfully ignorant of the world beyond their narrow agendas. It would appear they condone, or have no opinion on, the gratuitous slaughter of teenage girls on film, but get downright ugly when teenage girls have anything to do with sex, as does the over-aged nymphet in Lolita. It's an old story. Fear thrives on isolation, and Coalition folks are genetically isolated from the creative life force, that scary, irrepressible vitality they are in the business of perpetually trying to shut down. They fear therefore they repress. Violence is much more akin to their world view than sex. Peter Reith's dogs and balaclavas were the physical manifestation of violent tendencies which usually reside in legislated, indirect violence. But with sex they are truly uncomfortable. You get the impression that sex is something they hire in secret for a one-way thrill and then roll off of, to snore and fart in self-satisfaction. Of course we all know sex and violence isn't the real issue here. It's Brian Harridine's vote on the GST. For only tax can arouse John Howard, and, like all tax addicts, he will stop at nothing to be sated. HH WHERE'S ME TABLETS! "Live By The Spade, Die By The Spade" (Tandberg) How contrite was Jeffrey Kennett the morning after he lost his money grab from The Australian. By afternoon he was getting less humble, and by now the method for retribution is no doubt well in place, though it may take years to execute. You don't fuck with Jeff and get away with it. Bruce Guthrie didn't. And neither have Victorians who voted against him during his stint as Boofhead opposition leader. The Herald Sun devoted an entire front page to his public whinge: "I've got a huge bloody mortgage at the moment. So I don't have a pot full of money. I don't have a beach house to sell … I may be paying for this for the rest of my life …" The HS could also have printed (but didn't) Rob Hull's remarks on the same front page, "This bloke's a millionaire who has about $1.4 million in his superannuation account." You can't help wishing that one courageous journalist could have cut Kennett short by asking him if the moral code he used to sue The Australian for defamation was different from the one he used (under parliamentary privilege to be sure) to defame John Brumby by asking him if he slept with boys. "Do you?" he hammered over and over, the taste of blood warming his bully's maw. GS Why this recent frenzy to destabilise Kim Beazley? Is it nothing more than a hyena's picnic? Column inches to fill? Currying favour with Coalition huns? In case most commentators haven't been paying attention, it's the government who is guilty of destabilisation. But no, every day another hack gets a crack at the whip. It smacks of Tall Poppy ... or even worse, Crucifixion ... Syndrome. Beazley is no angel, but like him or not, he's the only Labor politician capable of beating the Howard scum. He won 19 seats and took the majority of the popular vote! Furthermore, it's only five months down the track from the last election, the time a new government usually goes for broke. I'm no Labor party cheerleader (lay off the Senate, Beazley!) but with an entrenched two party system, who else can take on the government? (Surely no one but Neo-Nazi's and big business think Howard is doing a good job?) Though he may not be a man of our times--he's no philistine--Kim Beazley could easily become one of the worthiest prime ministers Australia has ever had. His task, and it is nearly insurmountable, is to rise above the self-interest of his party (see Svengali Hogg's call to back the GST and big business). Because, let's face it, neither party holds the interests of the people as a priority. GS Geoffrey Blainey could say something we agree with! His recent comment that the proposed republican constitution is a dangerous document lacking clearly defined balances between the powers of president and prime minister couldn't be more accurate. (We would add that the entire effort has been poisoned by John Howard, and should be put on the back burner until a genuine government comes to power.) He referred to Germany in the 1930's and how easily it slid into dictatorship because those balances were tipped. Rodney Hall, former head of the Australia Council agrees, saying the revised constitution "raises the possibility of absolute chaos. One consequence of chaos is that someone steps in and imposes their own autocratic order to it." And who might that someone eventually be? Jeffrey Kennett. The horror … GS Coalition Tops At The Shame Game Granted the UN is an ineffectual coterie of suits out for Michelin Guide Number 3's at the end of the First Class Jetstream, but they do have a charter meant to right the wrongs of an evil world. And, on the odd occasion when they are able to surmount their bouts of isometric stasis, they can be highly effective. On paper, that is. Of course, John Howard and Daryl Williams … arch isolationists to world opinion … will have none of UN meddling into Australian affairs. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination's condemnation of the government's amendments to the Native Title Act is an "insult" to the Australian Fodderland, according to Williams. Taking the baton from South Africa, the Coalition is determined to become a pariah state alongside such third world notables as Rwanda and North Korea. But hey, they've gone one better. Australia is a developed nation, the only one since 1930's Germany to earn this fabulous distinction! How proud our rulers must be. That the rest of us have to wear this shame is revolting. And the sooner the better. GS |
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