| Australia's Journal of Political Character Assassination | Melbourne, Australia |
SCUM AT THE TOP | Next Issue: 24 Jun 2000 |
| Editor: Harold Hark | Volume 4 Number 12 |
The New Voice of Oz: Christian Fundamentalism Maybe the Federal Government wants fundamentalist Christians to be the new voice of Australia in South East Asia. Australia's prissy little Robespierre, John Howard, may be looking forward to the day when he can celebrate with a fresh bowl of Nutri-Grain (with an eye on that fluffy new role of white toilet paper for the real festivities to follow) as the word of his White Anglo Saxon Protestant God is delivered to the Muslims of that grand island/land mass that so frightens him. After all, the Coalition isn't exactly innocent of pushing a fundamentalist line when it comes to censorship at home. And most of them belong to the Lyons Forum, a group that meets regularly to pray and discuss policy issues. Then again, maybe this is just another payoff to Brian Harridine's need to reduce us to a nation of pious simpletons. Most likely the sale of the Cox Peninsula Transmitter to a mob of bible thumpers is just another example of the parsimonious incompetence we have come to expect from The Incorruptible One and his mob of Feudalists. Howard's unconscionable act in 1997 to cut funding for Radio Australia was seen at the time to be outrageously short sighted and stupid. What did they save? Less than $2 million! And what did the Asians who relied on Radio Australia for the only source of unbiased events occurring in their region think of it? By now it must be obvious to them that Australia has become a nation ruled by white supremacists who care only for the bottom line. Whatever the reasons for the cutbacks to RA and the sale of the transmitter, they vividly demonstrate a government caught in the grip of an amoral, anti-intellectual, anti-social ideology. Senator Robert Hill said as much when he announced to Parliament that he could see nothing wrong with the sale. The only glimmer of hope is in Kim Beazley putting Labor on alert for a possible election after the Olympics. The Howard Government might just call one out of sheer exhaustion from having pushed for too long the lie that it was fit to govern. Then Little Johnnie could trundle on home to Janette and together they could listen to Kamahl records while painting their white picket fence over and over and over again. HH Refugees Break Out of Ruddock's Farm Shouting "Give us freedom!" some 500 Middle Eastern refugees broke out of the privately run Woomera Detention Centre, citing beatings by privately hired guards, poor conditions and uncertainty of eventual release. "We come to Australia expecting paradise and find only hell," said one. Minister of Detention for Swarthy non-white Zimbabweans, Heinrich Ruddock, acted swiftly by setting up a review of security at detention centres around the country. His second move was to threaten those who escaped with the cancellation of their appeals and an escalation of their repatriation to certain death back home. His most recent move is to deny them food and water until they move back behind the wire. And funny thing, he said it using the same cool, smooth-talking George Speight voice he used to refuse help to the Kosovar family stranded on the railway platform in the middle of the night. In addition to beatings by guards, the inmates say they are suffering:
At the moment, the refugees are still holding out in the centre of town. They are being asked to return to the detention centre, but refuse to do so unless media accompany them. If the Coalition's treatment of the Kosovars is any indication, these people are doomed. And the response of the good folk of Woomera? You don't want to know. HH Coalition Holds Evacuees to Ransom (Defence Minister John Moore has stepped in to rescind the order to charge repatriation costs to evacuees from Honiara. But for at least 24 hours Australian citizens were held to ransom.) What will it take for Australians to rise up and throw this abominable government out of office? In yet another example of mind-boggling avarice, the Howard Government is forcing Solomon Island evacuees to sign IOU acknowledgments of debt to the Commonwealth of Australia before they can be evacuated from Honiara on the HMAS Tobruk. These people, and by the likes of them many are Illiberal Party supporters, are being forced to pay the ludicrous sums of $717.50 for a wife and $72 for a child. Some anal retentive in the Foreign Department was so exacting that he decided not to round off the 50 cents. Worse, these people must literally sign away their passports until the debt is paid. "Cancellation or confiscation of passport" is written into the agreement. "It was a voluntary evacuation, but I don't think we had a choice," says Andrew Simpson, one of the evacuees. What a nasty little business and how typical of John Howard's government. The shit he's been holding back for his greatest of all bowel evacuations on 1 July is about to hit the fan. Surely! HH Cynics briefly took a back seat as the good folk of Oz swelled with emotion at the beginning of the torch relay. There were many moving moments (and snuff-outs) as the flame was carried first by Nova Peris-Kneebone and her daughter and later by Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, who inspired us with that love for all beings so foreign to the Prime Miniature when she passed it to the Aboriginal children running with her. However many moving moments to come, the cynics have retaken their positions on a more or less permanent basis as the former symbol of athletic excellence now makes its way from one McDonald's franchise to the next, passing incidentally through towns and cities along the way. Weighing the same as a full sized bottle of wine, the torch will be proudly held aloft by privileged and innocent alike, as it wends it's way over the next 100 or so days to that final thrilling moment when it reaches the finish line at wherever and entrepreneurs pop their Krug with glazed eyes (due to that simultaneous dollop of milk and honey plooping forth into their silken undies). Then, over the next few howeverlongs we can watch the $40,000 taxpayer donated gold medals awarded to upheld arms of triumph along with less costly silver and bronze to the tears of also-rans. These events will of course be squeezed into the filler time between commercials aired relentlessly by whichever chump channel managed to secure the exclusive it's-ours-'n'-you-can't-have-it television rights. Then, after it's all over, the flame will be snuffed, the entrepreneurs will holiday for lengths of time the rest of us can only dream of in places we'll never get to, while everyone forgets the event ever happened, and Sydneysiders can proceed to pay it all off for the next three decades. Over to you, Athens. HH Remember Joe Cocker? The singer many thought was coming down with cerebral palsy on the stage at Woodstock, only later to realise it was just an excessive intake of all sorts of dope? Crikey, he's still alive! On tour somewhere in Europe, eking out a living on the stages of provincial towns, Cocker must be in a quandary over the unexpected windfall of $169,000 from the Australian Liberal Party in its pathetic attempt to sell the GST. (An ad, by the way, that is costing taxpayers around $500,000 within an overall campaign costing upwards of $500 million. That's HALF A BILLION HARD-EARNED SLIPPERY EELS, FELLOW SUFFERERS!) On the one hand, Cocker is reported to be upset about having his name used to back the evil tax. On the other, his management isn't exactly demanding that his name be removed from the ad, just that a disclaimer be added stating that Joe doesn't endorse it. Festival Records, the Oz rights holders to the song in question, Unchain My Heart, are reported to be furious. But their fury is not over the use of the song by a rabble of hapless philistines, but because they thought the ad was going to be informational, not blatant political lying. Are they naïve or simply business folk? Unfortunately, they appear to be the latter. They should have refused the Howard government, full stop, but beezness is beezness. Joe, your rep is in tatters; you should be suing the bastards. And if you can't decide whether to sue them for belittling your good name or for more of that half-billion honey pot, or even worse, which bunch of bastards to sue for either of those reasons, then sue all of 'em for both. HH Beware the Ideologies of Costello 1: Reconciliation Tandberg's cartoon in The Age Opinion section (30/5), shows John Howard, with the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the background, being asked, "Do you want a divided nation?" His reply: "I want one nation." The cat is not exactly out of the bag here. It's been obvious that Howard has more in common with Pauline Hanson, whom he has all but championed in the past, than with the nebulous "mainstream" he claims to represent. Letters to every newspaper in Australia, as well as commentary, reveal outrage at his position on a lack of apology in specific, and his attitude to reconciliation in general, a position The Hag from Hell would champion in turn. How much of his government's policy dovetails with One Nation's policies? Too much, way too much. Robert Manne wrote in The Age (29/5) that, in terms of reconciliation, Peter Costello is suspect as an alternative to Howard. Manne says, Costello's "broadly sympathetic biographer Tracey Aubin is compelled to conclude that while Costello's anti-racism is unquestionable, he is 'unconvincing on the issue of Aboriginal reconciliation' and has achieved no 'understanding' and made no 'contact' with Aboriginal Australia to this day." Manne points out that when "Costello entered parliament in 1990 as the most promising candidate of the New Right . . . two of his most influential supporters in the H. R. Nicholls Society--the former head of Treasury, John Stone, and Ray Evans of Wester Mining--were and are among the most zealous opponents of Aboriginal land rights and the reconciliation process found anywhere in this country." If this is true, then Australia is in a bad way, because Peter Costello is without doubt the best of a very bad lot (now that Tim Fischer is gone). No one else can be taken seriously as Howard's successor. That Peter Costello's brother Tim is perhaps one of the country's living treasures may not help if Peter is still influenced by the H. R. Nicholls Society, a right wing think tank promoting anti-social ideologies that, along with the Christian fundamentalist Lyons Forum, seems to be running the country. The only real solution is to dump the lot. HH Beware the Ideologies of Costello 2: Pulping Friction Taking over from the closed little world of John the WASP, Peter Costello will ensure you don't write anything bad about him, whether it's true or not. Random House, publishers of Bob Ellises "Goodbye Jerusalem," the book Abbott and Costello sued them for over allegations that Costello's wife used sex to lure them into the Liberal Party (an idea so ludicrous that no judge could take it seriously . . . except that one did), has once again felt the repressive arm of the Coalition. Only this time, Random House caved in early and had the new book, "Waterfront: The Battle that Changed Australia," pulped. It seems the book contained an allegation "that someone in Costello's office was responsible for forged letters given to Labor Treasurer Ralph Willis during the 1996 election campaign. The letters purported to show that a Coalition government would slash commonwealth funding to the states." (Christopher Niesche, The Weekend OZ 3-4/6/00.) Random House acted upon Costello's complaint by sending a letter of apology for the "error" and pulping the book. They didn't just remove the "error," they pulped the entire edition. And they pulped it because Costello refused to withdraw his threat of legal action even if the "error" was removed. Random House is being coy about why they destroyed the book, and Costello's office is being equally non-committal. This act of capitulation to repression must indeed signal the end of investigative reporting in Australia. What's the point of putting in long hours when the end result is going to find the investigator and his or her publishers in court before a wowser judge on the losing end of a taxpayer-funded libel action initiated by the government? HH THE CHARLES GRIMES BRIDGE, linking the Docklands to Colonial Stadium, was built in the wrong place. Instead of adhering to the original design, the bridge occupies a 2.7 metre-wide strip of privately owned land along its 32-metre length. "Strange as it may seem, the previous Kennett Government allowed the bridge to be built on the wrong spot," said Transport Minister Peter Batchelor. VicRoads negotiated an $80,000 deal for access to the land during construction and eventually the Kennett government decided to buy the land at a cost of $270,000. The total cost to taxpayers for the bungle: $350,000. (Adrian Rollins, The Age 31/5/00.) MELBOURNE'S LANDMARK FEDERATION SQUARE project has been mismanaged from the start says the Auditor General, Wayne Cameron. The lead contractor, Multiplex, is seeking $6.1 million to cover design changes. The steering committee, including representatives from the government's partner--the Melbourne City Council--was frozen out of key decisions by a relationship between the Office of Major Projects and former premier Jeff Kennett. Current Major Projects Minister John Pandazopoulos said the International design competition had shown a complete disregard for taxpayers' money while the previous government had ignored the budget blow-out (up from $128 million to $262 million). The Auditor General found that:
Premier Bracks' review on contracts entered into by the previous Kennett government has revealed that taxpayers have been left with an $11 Billion bill for the next 20 years under Kennett's contractual arrangements. The Auditor General will investigate seven out of 70 contracts deemed suspicious. They include:
Bracks said the highly touted management ability of the Kennett Government has been brought into question. The review found that unnecessary secrecy surrounded the sale of key assets and major contracts, while neglecting the social, environmental and regional impact of the deals. (Adrian Rollins, The Age 2/6/00.) HH says: The Great Australian Myth that the Liberal Party is made up of good economic managers is finally being put to rest. The Libs are simply better at prostituting themselves to Big Business than Labor. Trickle-down ideology from born-to-rule arrogance may have aligned them with the business community ideal of short-changing the poor to bolster the rich, but it has no place in government. Both the Kennett and Howard regimes have made a mockery of good management of taxpayer funds. It is indeed time for the lie to be exposed. Convicted Rapists to be Unleashed on Lesbian "Sadists" "Sri Lanka's Press Council has ruled that lesbianism is an "act of sadism" and that a letter in a newspaper calling for convicted rapists to be unleashed on lesbians was published in the interest of the community." That's the Press Council standing tall for ignorance, folks. For only ignorance could equate lesbianism with sadism. When the Sri Lankan national press upholds incitements to violence based on such ignorance, you have to start barracking for the Tamil Tigers. Unless they hold such views too. In which case the Great Buddha at Candy needs to be evacuated. But not to Australia; it'll cost him that beautiful big sapphire. HH |
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