Australia's Shame

Australian newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt has been convicted of a crime for two columns he wrote in 2009 in which he noted that many Aborigine activists were in fact white. This greatly offended people like Pat Eatock who did not appreciate it being pointed out that she is slightly less convincing as an aborigine than Ali G was as a Jamaican.

So naturally she wrote to the newspaper demanding an apology- wait no she didn't do that- she went to the police and demanded that Bolt be charged. Which he was, and rather incredibly convicted. This is a confidence trickster's charter- develop an identity in order to siphon government grants then sue for racism when it is pointed out.

The plaintiffs go well beyond simply being con artists though, one of them, Geoff Clark- is a serial rapist of teenage girls.One has to wonder whether his hyper sensitivity to having his identity queried is because that provided a useful shield against criminal proceedings into his sexual abuse.

Equally incredible other journalists have rushed to support the verdict- that is to say they support giving the state the right to criminalise somebody whose views fall outside of a narrow range- this loathsome editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald is an example that should become notorious. Apologists for the suppression of free speech are claiming that Bolt deserved to be punished because his columns contained inaccuracies- as if mistakenly saying that someone's father was white European rather than their mother is some kind of libel worthy of censure.

The judge- Mordacai Bromberg embodies the same mindset as Mohammed Bouyari- the assassin on Theo Van Gogh- in that he believes that certain ethnic groups have a right not to offended or treated with sarcasm, and that transgressors must be punished.

This is a shameful verdict that has empowered those who want to use their pretend ethnic identity to put themselves beyond any kind of criticism and is more suitable to countries like Iran and Cuba than to Australia.

Fear Of The New

It can be bizarre to see how irrationally wedded to the status quo people are.

For example when US liberal blogger, Matthew Yglesias, draws attention to the insane use of occupational licencing in the USA- for things like cutting hair- hordes of commentators pour on arguing that it would be incredibly reckless to to allow people to become barbers and hairdressers without satisfying a regulatory board or otherwise they would be over run with " Lice, hepatitis, using hazardous substances".

I've never been given hepatitis by the people  who have cut my hair despite the lack of a similar regulatory regime in the UK. Whilst I wouldn't go as far as say Milton Friedman and end licensing for all professions including medicine, it is clearly a silly and wasteful practice in most cases.

Irrational fear mongering about the new brings me on to the impending referendum on the Alternative Vote. While there are legitimate causes for concern about AV*, the claims being made by the NO2AV campaign are scaremongering on a par with """"" unless you licence hairdressers you will get Aids".  The evidence that it provides a massive boost for extremists can easily be shown to be false simply by looking at Australia where it is already in place and fewer minor parties have representation than in the UK.


* It seems likely that it will produce even more disproportionate results than FPTP on occasion for example.

Fun Voting Fact (No Actual Fun Guaranteed)

There are only three countries that currently use the Alternative Vote to determine their legislative elections- Australia, Papua New Guineau and Fiji.

This isn't a point against AV but it does make it harder to assess what the actual outcome of AV would be as there are very few countries to look at to compare with. Based on Australia it seems like minor parties won't actually gain any more influence than in FPTP so it is unlikely to result in more frequent coalition governments than  we have now.

Copycats

The Australians are copying our idea of a highly inconclusive and unworkable election result. Pick your own constitutional crisis, Australians.

We're Scum- Vote For Us.

Hey it turns out that the secret to electoral success isn't trashing your own supporters, your own legacy and pandering to people who will never vote for you.

Who knew?

The Conservative Party in the UK never did learn that lesson, during 13 years of opposition they kept electing leaders who apologised for being Tories and agreed with all the premises of the Labour Party (the terrible 1980s*, aren't Tories evil racist homophobes etc) before having to abrupt U-Turns before the general election and appeal to the core vote on immigration and crime after having already implied that doing that is reactionary and nasty.

* Historically Labour have been quite good at retroactively painting periods of Tory rule as being oppressive, impoverished and shameful even when the figures and contemporary feelings showed the opposite was true. Not many people seem to realise that the 1950s were a an era of growth and prosperity or that in the 1930s the Baldwin government largely avoided the extreme economic decline that hit the USA and continental Europe.

An Elegant Knifing.

Australia has a new Prime Minister after an internal coup d'etat by the ruling Labor Party replaced Kevin Rudd with Julia Gillard. They ditch leaders quite a lot in that party, Rudd himself came to office when he knifed Kim Beazley. Several other Labor leaders have found themselves unceremoniously dumped starting with Bill Hayden 30 years ago who was replaced by the much more effective Bob Hawke.

The ruthlessness of the party is in stark contrast to their British equivalent, our Labour Party develops a sentimental attachment to their leaders no matter how useless they turn out to be and no matter how much it hurts their party. Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and Gordon Brown have all benefited from this. The only leader they have knifed was the one who brought them multiple election victories.

The Australians have it right in my view, keeping a leader who isn't cutting the mustard is a betrayal of the voters, especially in a two party system.

Centrism Is Overrated.

As anyone who has read this blog for a while will know, I am not averse to the argument that it is often necessary to nominate moderate candidates who can win rather than more ideologically rigourous candidates. However arguing for centrist candidates by using the example of a centrist candidate who has very recently had an extremely disappointing election result shows a certain lack of interest in the real world. David Frum criticises the US Tea Party movement by invoking David Cameron:

David Cameron's Conservatism responds to local British conditions. It's not an export product. But there is at least one big lesson that Americans could learn from him when the Tea Party finally ends: yes, a party must champion the values of the voters it already has. But it must also speak to the voters it still needs to win

Why would Republicans want to learn how to blow a 20%+ poll lead? Whilst speaking to the voters concerns is one thing, surrendering the ideological argument to them is foolish. It is one thing to appeal to moderates, it is quite another to throw mud at your base in order to suck up to people who will never vote for you.

In Australia recently, the Liberal Party (the main centre-right party) deposed its moderate and media friendly leader, Malcolm Turnbull, last year and replaced him with the "extremist" and less compromising Tony Abbott. The result hasn't been what the pundits had predicted, as the Liberals have rebounded strongly in the polls.

This doesn't mean that it always right to select less centrist candidates but that it isn't always a mistake.

Headline Of The Day

Convoy raid condemned as Aussies found safe

Look Australians can be a little bit annoying but surely not harming Aussies isn't cause for condemnation.

But Don't Question Their Patriotism

I see Australian academics* are demanding that Australians stop commemorating ANZAC day, which commemorate those fine biscuits those Australians and New Zealanders who fought in wars for their countries.

Nina Burridge of the University of Technology in Sydney - said Anzac Day glorified white males.

"It's something about male mateship in many ways to me - it doesn't celebrate the wide diversity in Australia," she said.

"The very fact we focus on Gallipoli means we symbolically exclude others, even if we don't intend to."

Right. The implications of that idea is probably not what Burridge would intend, but her argument that Australia's history can't be remembered because it "excludes" non whites etc, implies that multiculturalism and large scale immigration necessitate forgetting a country's history and customs.

* No, Australian academics is not an oxymoron.

Idiot Found On The Internet.

Tim Blair claims to have found the "stupidest person on the internet" and he seems to have a strong case in Damian Lataan. Sample quote:

Australia is one of the most racist nations in the Western hemisphere

This isn't actually the stupidest part I could have quoted, but it is the pithiest, as like many far left types he has a really turgid prose style "the notorious neocon propaganda organisation that specialises in blatant lies and anti-Palestinian propaganda." and so on.

However if someone stupider can be found feel free to nominate them.

New Zealand Birds

An interesting headline in the Telegraph:

Legendary man-eating New Zealand bird 'did exist'

However according to the Australian press New Zealand's legendary man eating birds are quite real even today.

Why Gordon Brown Has Struggled.

I'm not going to say too much more about the Prime Minister (at the time of writing) Gordon Brown partly because I think it is getting a bit boring and partly because I'm beginning to feel sorry for him. I don't believe, as some people do, that he is mad but he is clearly under a great deal of stress and there is no obvious relief coming.

His 'Obama Beach' gaffe is vaguely reminiscent of former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin repeatedly referring to the allied invasion of Norway in a speech about D-Day a couple of years ago. The Brown/Martin comparison has often been made but it's worth going over: both men came to power as finance ministers in centre left governments after routing their Tory opposition, both men served in that role for a long time as their Prime Minister amassed multiple election victories, both men had leadership ambitions and ultimately derailed their leader and finally both men led their once invincible parties to defeat and the verge of electoral oblivion. Critically both of them were widely hailed in the media as being substantial figures who would bring renewal to their respective parties after a decade in power under formally popular PMs who had lost their lustre.

I think the reason that they disappointed their followers so much when they actually took office is because of "Overrated Finance Minister Syndrome". The world underwent a sustained period of growth from the early 1990s onwards because of the end of the Cold War, the opening of previously closed markets like China & India, the advent of the internet and just the economic cycle. This led people in various countries to attribute the economic success to the man lucky enough to be sitting in the hotseat when the boom was in full swing. Proclaiming a Chancellor as a political titan because he happens to be in office during an economic upswing is akin to declaring that a Defence Secretary is a genius because our army could invade Luxembourg.

As well as Brown and Martin, Brian Cowen in Ireland is an example of the same kind of thing as was Paul Keating of Australia in the 1990s (somewhat earlier than the others it must be said). When they actually took power and had to rely on their abilities to deal with multi faceted problems where their input actually mattered voters soon realised that they weren't particularly brilliant and in fact had been posted to the finance brief because they were fairly awkward figures who were not necessarily suited to roles that involve prolonged exposure to the public.

The question should not be why Gordon Brown is struggling as Prime Minister but why so many people were convinced he would do well given that he had never occupied a role which tested the qualities required to be Prime Minister.

Firestarters.

Fireman is to arsonist as lorry driver is to serial killer.

What proportion of arsonists are failed firefighters? t certainly seems like an awful lot.

The Children, Won't Someone Please Think Of The Childen!!!

Australia's government is planning web censorship:

The Rudd Government's plans to censor the internet in an attempt to protect children from inappropriate content and extreme and violent pornography has come in for some criticism.

The plan to impose mandatory filtering on Internet Service Providers has invoked the ire of a new generation of civil libertarians who regard any such move as a threat to their freedom and even some children's welfare groups say that mandatory filters, pointedly aimed at protecting children, are ineffective and a waste of money.

How can civil libertarians possible criticise this, after all they're only depriving people of their freedoms for the children.

Conservative = Rapist

Heh they have femiloons in Australia too!

"Antiwar" Movement Force Cancellation Of Remembrance Day Event

In Australia an upcoming event to commemorate the war dead has had to be cancelled because of threatened violence by supposed peace campaigners:

"FERAL" rioters who wreaked havoc at 2006's G20 meeting have forced a Remembrance Day event to be cancelled.

The three-day defence expo due to start on November 11 has been scrapped amid fears of violence by "low-life anarchists".

Organisers of the Asia-Pacific Defence and Security Exhibition, to be held in Adelaide, took the dramatic step after reports hundreds of protesters from Melbourne and Sydney planned to disrupt it.

In recent weeks, police gave several confidential briefings on the scale of the planned protests and the cost of countering them.

Subsidy Junkies

Australian PM Kevin Rudd is having a luvvie fest, or whatever the Australian equivalent of 'luvvie' is, which looks a lot like Tony Blair's infamous 'Cool Britannia' Downing Street reception for the likes of Noel Gallagher a decade ago. Actress Cate Blanchett is thrilled with the new direction of Australian government/luvvies relationship. The Australian film industry is already over subsidised and uncreativel and it looks like this will be exacerbated. Much like our own in fact.

I've quoted this before:

The director Stephen Frears recalls meeting him soon after he had announced a big increase in money for films. "Do you know what you've done?'' the movie man asked. "Created a rush of absolutely terrible British films?'' the benefactor replied, laughing.

Fair play to Gordon Brown, he does at least realise that subsidies are anathema to good movies. Sure he does it anyway in order to but publicity but at least he knows that it is wrong. There is a pretty decent correlation with the level of subsidy a country offers and the paucity of it's actual cinematic output.

Quite often after watching a few good films from one country I try to look up
details of their subsidy regime and almost always they have relatively low subsidy regimes, so for example Germany which has produced numerous excellent films in recent years and sure enough they spend less than half of what France spends and far less the the UK shovels out. So whilst we make tedious gangster movies the Germans are producing masterpieces such as 'The Lives of Others'. Similarly I've noticed a lot of good Brazilian films in recent years and sure enough their government drastically reduced subsidies in the 1990s.

The ironic thing about government film funding is that whilst the rationale is to preserve and promote the indigenous culture, once film makers are freed from competing on a level playing field with Hollywood, they tend to make low grade pastiches of Hollywood productions. In the absence of subsidies they are pushed to find niches that Hollywood doesn't fulfill and actually begin to reflect a distinctive national culture.

Australia Liberated!

Christmas has come early for the whining left as Australia's John Howard lost his bid for a fifth term. Howard was a superb Prime Minister who infuriated the sort of Australian who thought that Australian culture was something to be ashamed of, so naturally they are ecstatic even though the bloke who beat him won by positioning himself as John Howard 2 (from what I understand the Australian Labor Party can sometimes outflank the Liberals on the right). The Guardian leader column is naturally thrilled and after some national psychoanalysis of Australians, and their 'ungenerous national character'. Elsewhere in the paper an Australian novelist by the name of Richard Flanagan writes that:

John Howard famously said the times were his, and for more than a decade it seemed they were. Australia experienced the greatest and most sustained boom in its history. Yet at its end Australia's indigenous population was in a ruinous state

As opposed to before when they were doing wonderfully.

its extraordinary environment was threatened on numerous fronts

None of which you seem to want to name.

, and its people were beginning to ask where the wealth had gone: public schools and public health were in crisis, social welfare was straitened, housing was unaffordable for many

Well I'll take you're word for it Richard, but aren't Australia's schools run primarily by the state governments (mostly Labor for the last few years)? So Howard did his job well but his opponents failed in their tasks.

and wages and conditions were being cut under Howard's industrial reforms.

I'm willing to bet that Australian wages are rising steadily, andcutting back regulation will make them grow faster.

Howard had promised that Australia would be relaxed and comfortable under his rule, yet this year Australians had become more fearful and suspicious of each other than ever

No evidence is offered for this assertion. I'm guessing he means that he and fellow members of the chattering classes are sullen and resentful about their fellow citizens for not following the lead of their cultural betters. Whenever a conservative leader is fairly popular the left like to pretend that the nation is in a state of fear.

Yet while he often seemed little interested in Asia, over the past decade Australia became far more closely tied in terms of trade to China, India, Japan and Indonesia, and its destiny ever more deeply enmeshed with the coming Asian century.

The Australian left has an obsession with becoming Asian, something which I suspect derives from their sense of shame at Australia's actual culture essentially being an off shoot of British culture. This supposed interest in Asia amounts to little more than the most idolised Labor leaders sucking up disgustingly to some of the most brutal tyrannies on Earth, as with Paul Keating's sycophancy to the Suharto regime in Indonesia or Gough Whitlam prostrating himself before Mao's China. The rest of Flanagan's article goes on a bit and I can't be bothered to Fisk all of it, but there are several straightforwardly bogus claims throughout as well as yet more allusions to a national mood which is fearful, mean and selfish except when Labor wins when it becomes comfortable and optimistic.

Les Patterson Lives.

I've been greatly enjoying the Australian political 'scandal' involving Labor leader Kevin Rudd's frequenting of strip clubs (and being kicked out of them for 'inappropriate behaviour' or groping in layman's terms), whilst representing his country at the United Nations. Australia's MSM is rushing to the defence of their man by firing anyone who thinks that his bout of amnesia over what he did is worthy of satire. Exactly why tax payers have to pay for politicians to go to New York to enjoy a night on the town isn't explained.