..and I really have no idea why people seem to be going for Labor. None at all. Can people's memories really be so short?
I mean, I personally felt that John Brumby was a pretty good guy. Just because I'm a conservative voter doesn't mean I hate the Left. I felt that he was genuinely trying to do good. Most people in Labor are, as far as I can tell. But it cannot be denied that much of the things done in the name of good during the last Labor government were not especially good. The desalination plant comes to mind - a hulking great thing that cost us billions. Yep, with a 'B'. And we're making absolutely no use of it. It's costing the government millions of dollars a day.
Then you've got myki, which I've never been able to dredge up much rage over. After all, I did used to need three different Metcards in order not to pay through the nose for my daily commute. But having been to places with far better public transport systems than ours, the question I have is why didn't we simply import an already working system rather than spending years and billions on essentially reinventing the wheel and swearing when it wouldn't turn? The only answer I can come up with is a misguided, typically Labor desire to do good for the local economy by employing local people. And that is a noble goal....but nobility doesn't always get you the best results, as myki has shown. I would submit that all the money could have been better spent in lots and lots of ways.
And look at what Daniel Andrews has promised to do - reneging on the East West Link contract. ABC's Vote Compass says most Victorians actually support the East West Link. I can understand the grief and rage of the residents in the acquisition corridor, but if it wasn't for the wailing of professional activists, the media perception wouldn't be so muddied. The simple truth it is a highly necessary road that should have been built years ago. The fact that peoples' homes are in the way is unfortunate, of course, and yes, The Castle taught us to hate these sort of compulsory acquisitions, but long-term, Melbourne needs this road. I know there's the environmental standpoint that we should build more public transport rather than roads. What I don't see is why we can't do both. In fact, last time I checked, Napthine is promising to do both. It might take a while, but the airport train tunnel is a thing that the Victorian Government wants to make happen, along with a bunch of other improvements they've spent this past term building up the money to do.
Right now, the government is in surplus. Everything the Libs want to do is accounted for. Meanwhile, Labor has made around $24 billion of promises when the aforementioned surplus is only around $6 billion. My point is that even if you get both sides of politics doing the same major things over this upcoming term of office, you can bet that Labor will be thinking only in terms of what looks good, what feels good, what will make it appear to be doing good. And all the while, the CFMEU and its thug tactics will be allowed to continue to strangle the Victorian construction industry. If Labor is voted in, and we then have a surplus the next time there is a state election, I will eat a Guatemalan insanity pepper.
No, the only reason I can come up with is that Victorian voters want to punish the state Liberal Party for the Federal Government's mistakes. People are conflating Abbott and Napthine, (as are Labor's attack ads) which is amazing to me. I have not been especially happy with the way the Federal Goverment has gone since its election last year - I was hoping that their experience in the Howard era would mean they'd be able to get things sorted quickly, efficiently and with a coherent message. Instead they're lumbering around like morons, which does not please me or anyone else. But that is not the story of the Napthine Government - they have been a quietly efficient. They have passed some good legislation, built up a great surplus. And now they want to use it to improve our roads and our public transport, but because people have trouble remembering past their last birthday and find Tony Abbott repugnant, they're going to vote out what is actually a very good government in favour of a whole fresh Labor sideshow.
Not me. Nope. Going to go out and vote for Napthine, because he's a man with a sensible plan. Daniel Andrews was a terrible health minister and he's likely to be an equally useless premier. I mean, what does it say about Victorian Labor that they didn't have a better leader to offer the public?
And to people at large, I say this - give Napthine and company more time. Very little has changed in the state Labor party we voted out in the last election, and I really don't want to go back to a slew of massive, feel-good projects that aren't properly thought-out or costed. As boring as it is, I want there to be money in the bank and a reasonable, decent, if slightly uninspiring, man in Victoria's top job.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Monday, August 12, 2013
On Right versus Left
I understand why people
could never vote Liberal. I could never vote Labor. The simple fact of that
matter is both sides want to do good things for this country – the priorities
are just in a different order. My main concern is that the Labor government has
been repeatedly, wildly irresponsible with our money. I know for a lot of
people same-sex marriage is the top priority, and I understand why. It is the
only thing that has ever made me consider voting for the left side of things,
because I don’t think you can be a thinking, feeling human in the 18-30 age
bracket these days and not see same-sex marriage for the logical step that it
is, as well as the right thing to do. I don’t at all like the fact that my
chosen political party won’t get its arse into gear about it, even after the
youth section of the party called for it, and a conservative government in New
Zealand passed it.
But Labor has done a
bad job with this country. They just have. There’s a Scrooge McDuck sized ocean
of money (with interest) we’ll have to pay just to get back to a nice, shiny
$0. And I think anyone who has a household budget must understand why that
matters.
I believe in things getting done. I believe in grand
projects and ideas and doing great things for the country. I just want these
things to be done properly, and to be done in ways that will ensure we have
money to spend, rather than a debt to increase. It’s the way I run my own life, albeit on a
much larger scale.
In the lead-up to this election, which is probably going to be
extremely tight, many people will feel a strong urge to yell. To scream what
they believe, to denigrate the people who don’t agree with them. To those of us
who are feeling like this, whatever your political persuasion, I beg of you,
put away the bile. Discard the disrespect for people whose only crime is
disagreeing with you. Leave the people who are genuinely undecided to make up
their own mind. Goodness knows the rest of us have no plans of changing theirs.
Let’s just get to September 7 with decency and dignity. We owe each other that
much.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
Some thoughts for September 7
Very often when I come to this site, it's to wail and scream about one of two things - the fucked-up way people think about themselves, and the fucked-up way in which the Labor Party has been running this country for the past six years. This is a post about the second thing, but I'm not going to throw a tantrum today. I'm not going to get angry, because it just clouds the point. Instead, I'm just going to tell you, my largely left-leaning or Greens-voting friends, exactly what it is I believe as a Gen Y atheist with right of centre views, and why I feel that regardless of political persuasion, continuance of Labor government would be a poor decision for this country.
So first up, let's talk about me - because it's my blog and that means I get to be a narcissist. So there. I think I have mentioned this before, but I was raised in a Liberal voting household. I have a lifelong distrust of unions as a result, and personally I think it is wrong that being part of a union, or better, being a union lawyer, gets you a fast-track into politics. I think it is wrong that those unions have as much control over the Labor Party as they do. That was the building block, I guess. In the lead-up to the 2010 election, I passionately believed (and still do) that the best thing for the country at that time was a Coalition government. I spent an awful lot of time angry both before and after that election. The past six months have had a curious deja vu about them, what with the 11th hour leadership swaps and public opinion on a knife's edge. But the difference this time is that my political views have finally finished baking, after being put in the oven all the way back in 2007. Here are my basic desires from a government, and the reasons why they mean a vote for the Liberal Party:
1. Proper management of taxpayer funds
My major issue with the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Government is their misuse of our money. You can go all the way back to the 'money for everyone' scheme, Building the Education Revolution, the insulation, the 2020 summit, etc, etc. None of these things were properly thought through, and money was wasted as a result. The vast majority of our current debt was born out of those days, and was only by compounded by the Gillard/Swan combination's baffling mismanagement for the last three years. In short, we have a massive debt going on, and though in terms of worldwide debt, it's small, we are in fact a small country, and we cannot act like a teenager with a credit card. Rudd has been behaving like that for the last six weeks. He has announced thing after thing, and while one in particular I do support completely (which I will mention later), most of these things have involved large sums of money going places. That is why the Budget update is even worse than the original Budget - because Rudd is happily spending money that he does not have, and cannot hope to have. I am all for things Disability Care, but the question I am always going to ask is, "What money, and from where?" And the Labor Party generally doesn't care to answer that question, and on the rare occasion that they do, the response is, "Well, we'll just levy this little tiny bit of money from you...or you...or this industry..." They are only interested in what will look good and sound good, and if they realise they've fucked up on the money side, they'll just snatch more off us. Hence the fringe benefits tax which has destroyed the car industry, hence the fact our money is now going to get taxed just for being in the bank. If there's one thing the last six months of supporting myself has taught me, it's that you must keep your house in order. Labor doesn't do that. The Liberals do.
2. Stability
I don't think I need to explain this one too much. While I was typing the previous paragraph, I could hear Tony Abbott speaking on the TV about just how many different people have filled the various ministries and jobs in the government in the last six years. Four immigration ministers kind of explains why Labor has lurched from one stupid plan to the next. I think back to my high school years, and though I was definitely less engaged with politics then (and missing a fair chunk of my future understanding besides), I could have told you the names of just about every major member of the cabinet and what they were minister of. I feel quite strongly if Labor had been able to hold its nerve and unity for more than a month at a time, things might have worked better for them. That and not putting celebrity candidates like Peter Garrett in important ministries. The Liberals will pick a team and stick to them.
3. Refugees/Asylum Seekers/Border Protection/Immigration/Whatever
Trying to arrive at this country by boat is a bad idea. That has been proven tragically over and over during the Labor tenure...and with Tampa in the Howard years. Whatever your feelings about our immigration/refugee intake, I think we can all agree that stopping people smugglers from trying to bring people here in leaky tubs is the most sensible and humanitarian thing to do. I think if you can prove you're a refugee, then fine - come on in. The reason I support the Liberal point of view on this on is that the Howard version worked. As terrible as being shipped off to Nauru, Manus or Christmas Island might be, at least it stopped people from trying to traverse our bitch of an ocean and dying. And I don't like the PNG solution that Rudd has offered at all, because while it does offer the deterrent I believe is vital - we must stop people coming our way only to drown - it denies the chance at living here I think all genuine refugees deserve.
4. Same-sex marriage
When I was in high school, I didn't know of anyone who was gay...or perhaps it's better to say that I did, but no-one was openly so. There was one kid who according to rumour had been hounded out of his previous school by merciless teasing about that very issue. My memories in regards to how so many of male peers reacted to him makes me want to time-travel and slap them all for being such a motherfucking disgrace. It wasn't until uni I met openly gay, bi, lesbian people. And I came to the same conclusion I think pretty much everyone with a heart and a mind capable of stringing six words together ought to - it does not matter a single iota who the hell you prefer to love and screw. It does matter that same-sex relationships cannot currently be enshrined in law the way opposite-sex marriages are. It should be changed. It should be changed now. And this is why I identify as right of centre, not right. At the end of the day, while these points are in a definite order, and my vote will lie with the Liberals as a result, I think this is something any secular government should be doing for its people. If I could speak to Tony Abbott now, those are the terms I would couch it in. I know I'm not the only conservative young person with this opinion, I would dearly love to tell him that - and that a conscience vote would be a great start.
5. Banning cigarettes
This is the least important thing here by a fair margin, but it's still important to me. I was surprised to discover this week New Zealand's planning to ban cigarettes entirely in 2025, and that smoking has dropped by 11% since Rudd hiked up the tax on cigarettes by 25% in his first stint as PM. His latest increase on that particular tax I think is fantastic, though goodness knows he's done it because he needs the money. The fact is smoking costs the health system billions, and it's all preventable - stop inhaling tar and nicotine, folks. My paternal grandfather died of emphysema, and believe me, it's not something you want to happen. He may have lived to be 90, but the last two years were fucking awful for him. So yes - let's just get rid of the fucking things. It's a worldwide regime of stupidity. And for the record, yeah, I do not at all like the fact the Liberal Party still takes tobacco donations. In the aforementioned hypothetical conversation would Abbott, I'd remark about that too - if no tobacco money means less shiny brochures, at least you can sleep at night knowing you're not taking money from a company whose business is giving people cancer.
In short, of the the five things I consider most important, the Liberals offer me three of them. The other two - the institution of same-sex marriage and, if we're talking about the realistic near-future, the end of the Liberals accepting money from tobacco companies - I think we can work on. The polls are showing clearly that this will be a close race. I think a majority Liberal government, even if it is a small majority, will give me what I want.
And once again, because this is my blog and I am definitely on my soapbox, I'm going to quote 'The Newsroom' and the glory that is Will McAvoy:
And you know all those times you two asked why I'm a Republican, as if that's something that needs and explanation? I've never heard either of you ask anyone why they're a Democrat. Well, it's here - the purposeful suspension of common sense.
The reason I've put it here is that I often feel that people are surprised, even shocked, when they find I have conservative beliefs. I don't doubt there are people who have judged me on that fact alone. In my travails in the internet dating world I've certainly come across a fair few people openly saying that a person of my political persuasion shouldn't bother even talking to them. There is a mindset among my generation, I feel, that conservatism = coldheartedness. That conservatism = evil. That conservatism requires an explanation. While the difference between a Democrat and a Republican is not the difference between a Labor voter and a Liberal voter, I guess what I'm trying to say, and what I've tried to illustrate by outlining my views above, is that there are reasons for a sensible, decent human being to have conservative beliefs. And - this is the soapbox part - there are reasons why left-leaning people should be voting Liberal at this election. Firstly, if you want big programs and initiatives for this country, we have to pay for those things properly, not by getting into more debt. The bank only piles on more interest you if you max out your credit card and don't pay, and Labor has no real plans to pay. They have plans to spend. We need people who can manage our money, and that's not Labor. Secondly, the revolving door on Cabinet this past six years has not been good for the country. Rudd is not exactly the most popular bloke in the Labor caucus, despite being their leader - who's to say that the people who currently work with him won't very quickly come to feel as all the people who quit in the wake of his return do? The Coalition has a stable structure, and that is something this country could do with at the top.
And to come back to the line about common sense, that's what I believe we ought to be talking about in the context of this election. I don't think anyone could possibly believe that Labor has done even a passable job this past six years. It has, on the whole, been a pretty crappy job. Voting them back in would be very definition of a purposeful suspension of common sense.
So first up, let's talk about me - because it's my blog and that means I get to be a narcissist. So there. I think I have mentioned this before, but I was raised in a Liberal voting household. I have a lifelong distrust of unions as a result, and personally I think it is wrong that being part of a union, or better, being a union lawyer, gets you a fast-track into politics. I think it is wrong that those unions have as much control over the Labor Party as they do. That was the building block, I guess. In the lead-up to the 2010 election, I passionately believed (and still do) that the best thing for the country at that time was a Coalition government. I spent an awful lot of time angry both before and after that election. The past six months have had a curious deja vu about them, what with the 11th hour leadership swaps and public opinion on a knife's edge. But the difference this time is that my political views have finally finished baking, after being put in the oven all the way back in 2007. Here are my basic desires from a government, and the reasons why they mean a vote for the Liberal Party:
1. Proper management of taxpayer funds
My major issue with the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd Government is their misuse of our money. You can go all the way back to the 'money for everyone' scheme, Building the Education Revolution, the insulation, the 2020 summit, etc, etc. None of these things were properly thought through, and money was wasted as a result. The vast majority of our current debt was born out of those days, and was only by compounded by the Gillard/Swan combination's baffling mismanagement for the last three years. In short, we have a massive debt going on, and though in terms of worldwide debt, it's small, we are in fact a small country, and we cannot act like a teenager with a credit card. Rudd has been behaving like that for the last six weeks. He has announced thing after thing, and while one in particular I do support completely (which I will mention later), most of these things have involved large sums of money going places. That is why the Budget update is even worse than the original Budget - because Rudd is happily spending money that he does not have, and cannot hope to have. I am all for things Disability Care, but the question I am always going to ask is, "What money, and from where?" And the Labor Party generally doesn't care to answer that question, and on the rare occasion that they do, the response is, "Well, we'll just levy this little tiny bit of money from you...or you...or this industry..." They are only interested in what will look good and sound good, and if they realise they've fucked up on the money side, they'll just snatch more off us. Hence the fringe benefits tax which has destroyed the car industry, hence the fact our money is now going to get taxed just for being in the bank. If there's one thing the last six months of supporting myself has taught me, it's that you must keep your house in order. Labor doesn't do that. The Liberals do.
2. Stability
I don't think I need to explain this one too much. While I was typing the previous paragraph, I could hear Tony Abbott speaking on the TV about just how many different people have filled the various ministries and jobs in the government in the last six years. Four immigration ministers kind of explains why Labor has lurched from one stupid plan to the next. I think back to my high school years, and though I was definitely less engaged with politics then (and missing a fair chunk of my future understanding besides), I could have told you the names of just about every major member of the cabinet and what they were minister of. I feel quite strongly if Labor had been able to hold its nerve and unity for more than a month at a time, things might have worked better for them. That and not putting celebrity candidates like Peter Garrett in important ministries. The Liberals will pick a team and stick to them.
3. Refugees/Asylum Seekers/Border Protection/Immigration/Whatever
Trying to arrive at this country by boat is a bad idea. That has been proven tragically over and over during the Labor tenure...and with Tampa in the Howard years. Whatever your feelings about our immigration/refugee intake, I think we can all agree that stopping people smugglers from trying to bring people here in leaky tubs is the most sensible and humanitarian thing to do. I think if you can prove you're a refugee, then fine - come on in. The reason I support the Liberal point of view on this on is that the Howard version worked. As terrible as being shipped off to Nauru, Manus or Christmas Island might be, at least it stopped people from trying to traverse our bitch of an ocean and dying. And I don't like the PNG solution that Rudd has offered at all, because while it does offer the deterrent I believe is vital - we must stop people coming our way only to drown - it denies the chance at living here I think all genuine refugees deserve.
4. Same-sex marriage
When I was in high school, I didn't know of anyone who was gay...or perhaps it's better to say that I did, but no-one was openly so. There was one kid who according to rumour had been hounded out of his previous school by merciless teasing about that very issue. My memories in regards to how so many of male peers reacted to him makes me want to time-travel and slap them all for being such a motherfucking disgrace. It wasn't until uni I met openly gay, bi, lesbian people. And I came to the same conclusion I think pretty much everyone with a heart and a mind capable of stringing six words together ought to - it does not matter a single iota who the hell you prefer to love and screw. It does matter that same-sex relationships cannot currently be enshrined in law the way opposite-sex marriages are. It should be changed. It should be changed now. And this is why I identify as right of centre, not right. At the end of the day, while these points are in a definite order, and my vote will lie with the Liberals as a result, I think this is something any secular government should be doing for its people. If I could speak to Tony Abbott now, those are the terms I would couch it in. I know I'm not the only conservative young person with this opinion, I would dearly love to tell him that - and that a conscience vote would be a great start.
5. Banning cigarettes
This is the least important thing here by a fair margin, but it's still important to me. I was surprised to discover this week New Zealand's planning to ban cigarettes entirely in 2025, and that smoking has dropped by 11% since Rudd hiked up the tax on cigarettes by 25% in his first stint as PM. His latest increase on that particular tax I think is fantastic, though goodness knows he's done it because he needs the money. The fact is smoking costs the health system billions, and it's all preventable - stop inhaling tar and nicotine, folks. My paternal grandfather died of emphysema, and believe me, it's not something you want to happen. He may have lived to be 90, but the last two years were fucking awful for him. So yes - let's just get rid of the fucking things. It's a worldwide regime of stupidity. And for the record, yeah, I do not at all like the fact the Liberal Party still takes tobacco donations. In the aforementioned hypothetical conversation would Abbott, I'd remark about that too - if no tobacco money means less shiny brochures, at least you can sleep at night knowing you're not taking money from a company whose business is giving people cancer.
In short, of the the five things I consider most important, the Liberals offer me three of them. The other two - the institution of same-sex marriage and, if we're talking about the realistic near-future, the end of the Liberals accepting money from tobacco companies - I think we can work on. The polls are showing clearly that this will be a close race. I think a majority Liberal government, even if it is a small majority, will give me what I want.
And once again, because this is my blog and I am definitely on my soapbox, I'm going to quote 'The Newsroom' and the glory that is Will McAvoy:
And you know all those times you two asked why I'm a Republican, as if that's something that needs and explanation? I've never heard either of you ask anyone why they're a Democrat. Well, it's here - the purposeful suspension of common sense.
The reason I've put it here is that I often feel that people are surprised, even shocked, when they find I have conservative beliefs. I don't doubt there are people who have judged me on that fact alone. In my travails in the internet dating world I've certainly come across a fair few people openly saying that a person of my political persuasion shouldn't bother even talking to them. There is a mindset among my generation, I feel, that conservatism = coldheartedness. That conservatism = evil. That conservatism requires an explanation. While the difference between a Democrat and a Republican is not the difference between a Labor voter and a Liberal voter, I guess what I'm trying to say, and what I've tried to illustrate by outlining my views above, is that there are reasons for a sensible, decent human being to have conservative beliefs. And - this is the soapbox part - there are reasons why left-leaning people should be voting Liberal at this election. Firstly, if you want big programs and initiatives for this country, we have to pay for those things properly, not by getting into more debt. The bank only piles on more interest you if you max out your credit card and don't pay, and Labor has no real plans to pay. They have plans to spend. We need people who can manage our money, and that's not Labor. Secondly, the revolving door on Cabinet this past six years has not been good for the country. Rudd is not exactly the most popular bloke in the Labor caucus, despite being their leader - who's to say that the people who currently work with him won't very quickly come to feel as all the people who quit in the wake of his return do? The Coalition has a stable structure, and that is something this country could do with at the top.
And to come back to the line about common sense, that's what I believe we ought to be talking about in the context of this election. I don't think anyone could possibly believe that Labor has done even a passable job this past six years. It has, on the whole, been a pretty crappy job. Voting them back in would be very definition of a purposeful suspension of common sense.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Insanity
The definition of insanity is meant to be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Three years ago, Labor axed Rudd for his poor polling in advance of an impending election, which ended up resulting in a hung parliament. Today, Labor is looking to axe Gillard for poor polling in advance of an impending election - frankly a continuing hung parliament after September 14 is probably the very best they can do.
Quite apart from my political feelings on the matter, I truly wonder what's more important to Labor - retaining power or listening to its people. At the moment it seems like they will do anything, anything to save a few seats. The polls are pretty clear - even with Rudd in charge, this country is pretty much all set to vote Liberal come September. Because it is not about Rudd (has an ideology and little else) or Gillard (little at all) or even Abbott (who moonlights as the boogieman, if you listen to either of the former pair) - it's about the condition of this country. This country alone, not in comparison to any other country's economic and social climate. Ours.
And Rudd's big ideas claptrap nearly two hours ago is not what this country needs. We don't need bullshit about WorkChoices, or the ongoing labelling of Abbott as a monster. If it's really about policy and not about personality, then surely then all Rudd should be talking about is policy. How his will differ from Gillard's, and how, in point of fact, he will differ from the substance-free ship he ran three years ago. And obviously, key differences between his plans for the country and Abbott's. We don't need a man who looks ice-cream who gets a rock star reception in schools and shopping centres. No.
What we actually need is this - capability and competency in our government. Experience, above all. At the end of the day, Rudd made a huge quantity of the debt this country is currently in, thanks to the thousands of dollars thrown out people to stimulate the economy...and everyone promptly went out and bought a Chinese-made plasma. Well, not everyone. I bought a (now-deceased) Siamese fighting fish, if I recall. And Gillard? As education minister, she presided over the heavily rorted schools scheme. As Prime Minister, she has presided over lies, broken promise, backflips, schemes put forward without talking to the people who need to agree in the first place (see Malaysia) and an almost unbelievable level of poor political know-how. I couldn't do it myself (nor would I want to), but I think the current state of affairs shows how little she can control her party or indeed how the public sees her. No amount of spin has fixed the problem.
And while as a Liberal voter, I know what I say next must be taken with some salt, hear this - I think the best thing that could happen to this country right now is a Liberal prime minister. Even if you hate Tony Abbott, the fact is we actually need the penny-pinching sobriety of conservatism right now. There are things I'd like to see happen that will never happen under the Liberals - the legalisation of same-sex marriage, the end of religious institutions' tax-free status, the list goes on - but we are in mountains of debt, some of it for no good reason.
And for all Rudd's talk of himself and his party as the experienced people in Parliament, the fact is I don't know of a single Labor politician who had a career in government prior to 2007. Whereas the Liberals have - lots of them. Whatever you may have thought of Abbott as health minister, he did the job for a long time. And the same can be said for a fair quantity of other people who would form the basis of a Coalition cabinet. 11 years in gun-abolishing, surplus-producing government is experience - six years of lurching from one crisis and stupid remark to the next is not.
In short, expecting sanity out of any Labor government in the near future is insanity. It's the same people, the same problems, no matter how you shuffle the deck. Whatever happens tonight, the current make-up of the Labor Party is in no state to govern this country. Not when Rudd himself quite rightly points out the resources boom is set to end. Not when the Aussie dollar is losing ground on the greenback. Hate the Liberals all you like, but at least they knew how to keep the house in order. We should give them the chance to do it again.
Quite apart from my political feelings on the matter, I truly wonder what's more important to Labor - retaining power or listening to its people. At the moment it seems like they will do anything, anything to save a few seats. The polls are pretty clear - even with Rudd in charge, this country is pretty much all set to vote Liberal come September. Because it is not about Rudd (has an ideology and little else) or Gillard (little at all) or even Abbott (who moonlights as the boogieman, if you listen to either of the former pair) - it's about the condition of this country. This country alone, not in comparison to any other country's economic and social climate. Ours.
And Rudd's big ideas claptrap nearly two hours ago is not what this country needs. We don't need bullshit about WorkChoices, or the ongoing labelling of Abbott as a monster. If it's really about policy and not about personality, then surely then all Rudd should be talking about is policy. How his will differ from Gillard's, and how, in point of fact, he will differ from the substance-free ship he ran three years ago. And obviously, key differences between his plans for the country and Abbott's. We don't need a man who looks ice-cream who gets a rock star reception in schools and shopping centres. No.
What we actually need is this - capability and competency in our government. Experience, above all. At the end of the day, Rudd made a huge quantity of the debt this country is currently in, thanks to the thousands of dollars thrown out people to stimulate the economy...and everyone promptly went out and bought a Chinese-made plasma. Well, not everyone. I bought a (now-deceased) Siamese fighting fish, if I recall. And Gillard? As education minister, she presided over the heavily rorted schools scheme. As Prime Minister, she has presided over lies, broken promise, backflips, schemes put forward without talking to the people who need to agree in the first place (see Malaysia) and an almost unbelievable level of poor political know-how. I couldn't do it myself (nor would I want to), but I think the current state of affairs shows how little she can control her party or indeed how the public sees her. No amount of spin has fixed the problem.
And while as a Liberal voter, I know what I say next must be taken with some salt, hear this - I think the best thing that could happen to this country right now is a Liberal prime minister. Even if you hate Tony Abbott, the fact is we actually need the penny-pinching sobriety of conservatism right now. There are things I'd like to see happen that will never happen under the Liberals - the legalisation of same-sex marriage, the end of religious institutions' tax-free status, the list goes on - but we are in mountains of debt, some of it for no good reason.
And for all Rudd's talk of himself and his party as the experienced people in Parliament, the fact is I don't know of a single Labor politician who had a career in government prior to 2007. Whereas the Liberals have - lots of them. Whatever you may have thought of Abbott as health minister, he did the job for a long time. And the same can be said for a fair quantity of other people who would form the basis of a Coalition cabinet. 11 years in gun-abolishing, surplus-producing government is experience - six years of lurching from one crisis and stupid remark to the next is not.
In short, expecting sanity out of any Labor government in the near future is insanity. It's the same people, the same problems, no matter how you shuffle the deck. Whatever happens tonight, the current make-up of the Labor Party is in no state to govern this country. Not when Rudd himself quite rightly points out the resources boom is set to end. Not when the Aussie dollar is losing ground on the greenback. Hate the Liberals all you like, but at least they knew how to keep the house in order. We should give them the chance to do it again.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Just a short one to say..
Wayne Swan is an idiot.
Wayne Swan is an offence to the office of Treasurer.
Why?
Because when you start using the same rhetoric as A Current Affair or Today Tonight to speak about the banking sector, and when you start self-righteously bullying private companies on business decisions, especially if it's apparently on behalf of the good old Aussie battler, is when you stop being a politician and start being a media panderer. And I don't like that someone so beholden to people as amoral as journalists is holding the purse strings of this country. Best Treasurer in the world? It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn depressing.
Wayne Swan is an offence to the office of Treasurer.
Why?
Because when you start using the same rhetoric as A Current Affair or Today Tonight to speak about the banking sector, and when you start self-righteously bullying private companies on business decisions, especially if it's apparently on behalf of the good old Aussie battler, is when you stop being a politician and start being a media panderer. And I don't like that someone so beholden to people as amoral as journalists is holding the purse strings of this country. Best Treasurer in the world? It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn depressing.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
In tonight's news...
Well done, news media. You've got your priorities completely right. Ashton Kutcher getting his junk out to erase the memory of Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men IS blockbuster news. So is some skewed statistics about the number of drownings this year. Uh, floods unfortunately equal drownings, and more drownings than usual. Doesn't mean we've all forgotten how to swim. Aussies are generally pretty ready to deal with being dumped by a wave at the beach - in the street, not so much. It's not the shock they're making it out to be. It's just a sad reflection of the terrible events that occurred earlier this year.
But the one that really pisses me off is this At Home With Julia thing. So two actors representing our nation's prime minister and her partner are depicted nailing each other literally under the Australian flag. Seriously, so what? We're a country of sarcastic quips and unashamed satire - not to mention the fact that we respect our flag so much we (some of us, anyway) wear it as a cape on Australia Day.
Honestly, if you think about it, somebody must have done it. Probably loads of people have done it. In fact, I bet you'll be able to Like 'Doing It Under the Aussie Flag 'Cause You Fucking Love Your Country' (or similar) in a matter of days, if such a page doesn't exist already.
As with the stuff above, it's nothing extraordinary at all - not even with what the media is now calling 'fake Julia' and 'fake Tim' (because if you dropped the qualifiers, Mrs and Mr PM could slap defamation on any media outlet's ass and win the case in a matter of seconds) being the ones doing the deed.
And I really don't buy into the whole 'disrespect to our war veterans' thing. Yes, the flag is the symbol our nation. Yes, people have fought and died under it (figuratively in this case, because people realised a long time ago that having standard bearers in war is a terrible idea), and yes, people are still fighting and dying under it. Sadly, probably people will die for it before the year is out.
But I think all this talk of disrespect a massive misunderstanding of semiotics. That's right - popping out my much-maligned comms learning here. At the most basic level (which is really all I remember) everything, including each and every word I'm typing here, is made up of signifier and signified. In other words, meaning is not inherent to the words that I'm typing. They are merely the signifier indicating a signified.
Let's return to the main point for an example. The Australian flag is a signifier. The meaning we draw from it is the signified - in this case, love and/or pride in our country and all that it stands for. So we associate the flag with that idea - but the flag in itself does not mean 'Australia'. You show that to someone who's never seen it before, they won't just magically understand what it can mean, because it is just a symbol.
And to try and tear myself off this tangent, I don't believe you can disrespect so vast a concept as Australia by having actors portraying key political figures simulating sex (or implying that sex has occurred - after all, the bloody episode hasn't even aired yet!) underneath it. It's too big an idea and too normal an act. And as I said, the flag is not a physical incarnation of the idea we connect it to. It's just a bit of fabric, at the end of the day.
I can understand that the parents of recently deceased soldiers might be most upset about this. But it's still mistaking a symbol of a thing for the thing itself. The way we conceptualise Australia will remain even if we were to, say, change the flag, as has been suggested by other stupid media beat-ups.
I don't blame the people who are upset about this, though it is a result of ignorance. The ones who annoy me are all the media people out there who quite literally made this into a thing. Studying journalism as I did, and abandoning it as a career, (on grounds of not wanting to spend my life intruding into the lives of others) I know one or two things - specifically, that there are actual lists of what constitutes news value, one of which is conflict. Something I've long since realised is that this value of conflict is the single most called-upon news value in pretty much any media outlet anywhere in the world. What I imagine happened with At Home With Julia was this:
A: Person sees advance screening of episode
B: Possibly laughs at the scene
C: 'Nose for news' detects potential for conflict
D: Tells boss
E: Interviews people they know will respond with outrage
F: Publish
Rinse and repeat for every single reporter who saw the episode ahead of time, or just blame the Herald Sun, who, though I feel they are more likely to show both sides of political opinion than The Age, are into some serious muck-raking nonetheless.
So basically we live in an age where our Fourth Estate, our bastion of the public's right to know, goes around picking silly little fights that only a select few emotionally fragile people will truly be upset about, filling up newspapers and websites, and blowing our radio and TV stations full of hot air. News is not an entertainment product and nor should it be. It's meant to ensure that essential (and some non-essential) truths cannot be hidden from the public. And the sooner editors, journos and reporters remember that, rather than just using it as an empty excuse to accost people in the street (looking at you, ACA and TT), the better.
But the one that really pisses me off is this At Home With Julia thing. So two actors representing our nation's prime minister and her partner are depicted nailing each other literally under the Australian flag. Seriously, so what? We're a country of sarcastic quips and unashamed satire - not to mention the fact that we respect our flag so much we (some of us, anyway) wear it as a cape on Australia Day.
Honestly, if you think about it, somebody must have done it. Probably loads of people have done it. In fact, I bet you'll be able to Like 'Doing It Under the Aussie Flag 'Cause You Fucking Love Your Country' (or similar) in a matter of days, if such a page doesn't exist already.
As with the stuff above, it's nothing extraordinary at all - not even with what the media is now calling 'fake Julia' and 'fake Tim' (because if you dropped the qualifiers, Mrs and Mr PM could slap defamation on any media outlet's ass and win the case in a matter of seconds) being the ones doing the deed.
And I really don't buy into the whole 'disrespect to our war veterans' thing. Yes, the flag is the symbol our nation. Yes, people have fought and died under it (figuratively in this case, because people realised a long time ago that having standard bearers in war is a terrible idea), and yes, people are still fighting and dying under it. Sadly, probably people will die for it before the year is out.
But I think all this talk of disrespect a massive misunderstanding of semiotics. That's right - popping out my much-maligned comms learning here. At the most basic level (which is really all I remember) everything, including each and every word I'm typing here, is made up of signifier and signified. In other words, meaning is not inherent to the words that I'm typing. They are merely the signifier indicating a signified.
Let's return to the main point for an example. The Australian flag is a signifier. The meaning we draw from it is the signified - in this case, love and/or pride in our country and all that it stands for. So we associate the flag with that idea - but the flag in itself does not mean 'Australia'. You show that to someone who's never seen it before, they won't just magically understand what it can mean, because it is just a symbol.
And to try and tear myself off this tangent, I don't believe you can disrespect so vast a concept as Australia by having actors portraying key political figures simulating sex (or implying that sex has occurred - after all, the bloody episode hasn't even aired yet!) underneath it. It's too big an idea and too normal an act. And as I said, the flag is not a physical incarnation of the idea we connect it to. It's just a bit of fabric, at the end of the day.
I can understand that the parents of recently deceased soldiers might be most upset about this. But it's still mistaking a symbol of a thing for the thing itself. The way we conceptualise Australia will remain even if we were to, say, change the flag, as has been suggested by other stupid media beat-ups.
I don't blame the people who are upset about this, though it is a result of ignorance. The ones who annoy me are all the media people out there who quite literally made this into a thing. Studying journalism as I did, and abandoning it as a career, (on grounds of not wanting to spend my life intruding into the lives of others) I know one or two things - specifically, that there are actual lists of what constitutes news value, one of which is conflict. Something I've long since realised is that this value of conflict is the single most called-upon news value in pretty much any media outlet anywhere in the world. What I imagine happened with At Home With Julia was this:
A: Person sees advance screening of episode
B: Possibly laughs at the scene
C: 'Nose for news' detects potential for conflict
D: Tells boss
E: Interviews people they know will respond with outrage
F: Publish
Rinse and repeat for every single reporter who saw the episode ahead of time, or just blame the Herald Sun, who, though I feel they are more likely to show both sides of political opinion than The Age, are into some serious muck-raking nonetheless.
So basically we live in an age where our Fourth Estate, our bastion of the public's right to know, goes around picking silly little fights that only a select few emotionally fragile people will truly be upset about, filling up newspapers and websites, and blowing our radio and TV stations full of hot air. News is not an entertainment product and nor should it be. It's meant to ensure that essential (and some non-essential) truths cannot be hidden from the public. And the sooner editors, journos and reporters remember that, rather than just using it as an empty excuse to accost people in the street (looking at you, ACA and TT), the better.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Uther/Arthur, Morgan/Morgaine
I've just finished reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's 'The Mists of Avalon'. It says much for the quality of its story that I enjoyed it just as much as I did T.H. White's 'The Once and Future King'. However, I'm not really one of those people obsessed with the Arthurian legend, (and I stress legend - more on that in a moment) and those two novels are the main literary contact I have had with it. For my purposes, or indeed anyone's, that movie with Richard Gere and Sean Connery, that telemovie with Sam Neill (as ultimately awesome as that guy is), and that silly teen drama thing that casts Merlin as a kid with big ears speaking to a CGI dragon in a cave, do NOT count. So it's not at all surprising that I found myself thinking of 'The Once and Future King' quite a lot as I read 'The Mists of Avalon', and quite definitely inevitable that I should end up writing how they relate to one another, and indeed why the story is still such a drawcard.
But first, let me be clear - there has always been this...idea that Arthur, Guinevere et al were all real people to an extent, that the story is on some basic level, true. The reality of the legend is a matter of debate, and in all honesty, if even the Wikipedia entry is long and complicated, I doubt the question will ever be settled. But in my opinion, it is a myth - a fiction in the most fundamental sense. Oh, it's a great story, never doubt that - why do you think it endures? But there is no truth in it. And its value to people is the basis of that - a tale that ultimately belongs to everybody, to be transfigured at will, but always to depict the playing out of unavoidable fate. Arthur shall marry Guinevere, and Lancelot shall love her, and doom shall come of it. Camelot will fall.
So, to the books in question. I did not reread 'The Once and Future King' for this (as much as I love it, it's one of the those rare books I am forced to read slowly), so I'll be going along on memory.
It would be very easy, I think, to simply say that the two texts are diametrically opposed - two sides of the same coin, for sure, but never to meet. This is due to two obvious divergences - the feminine viewpoints of 'Mists of Avalon' in contrast to the male-centric 'Once and Future King', and the bright Christianity of the latter to the complex religious struggle of the former. It would simple to leave it at that, to take the depiction you like best, and run with it. But 'The Once and Future King' is not just the stories of the Christian men of Camelot, and 'Mists' is not just the stories of Goddess-serving women. To say that would be to sell both short. Ultimately White and Bradley were both working with the same tale, and the similarities are there.
Let's begin with Lancelot/Lancelet. (I'll be referencing the OAFK name before the MOA one.) T. H. White's Lancelot is simultaneously one of the most wretched, and most brilliant characters I've ever seen rendered in text. His torment, his identity as the 'Ill-made Knight', the consistent feeling he has of being inescapably and eternally evil, even before Guinevere, is gut-wrenching. In 'Mists', due to the persistent use of feminine narrators, you hardly know how deeply torn Lancelet is until his son dies. Both are valid portrayals of the archetype we call Lancelot, but they are not at all far away from each other. At the end of the day, Lancelot is Lancelet is Lancelot, regardless of the matter of vowel use, and the pull of love and loyalty to his king, and the opposite pull of love to his king's wife, creates that torment which is common to both novels.
Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar is another I could reference as being fundamentally the same person in both texts. Though 'Mists' depicts her mostly as annoyingly pious and pitiably agoraphobic, and in 'Once and Future King' she is largely just a woman, not in the object sense, but in terms of her humanity. Nonetheless, they share an important thing in common - they attempt to stay faithful to Arthur. Ultimately the bond between Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot/Lancelet is too strong to be denied (though in 'Mists', Arthur quite literally puts his wife into the arms of his dearest friend -and what happened after that point was definitely NOT canonical!), but the fact that both versions strive honestly to do right by their husband (and indeed, so too does Lancelot/Lancelet) links them.
And then we come to Arthur, who is the same. The Arthur who is King of Camelot is fundamentally identical in any story - ultimately he is even less a character and more of an archetype than any other of the names associated with the legend - Morgan/Morgaine, Galahad, Mordred - all of them have more substance of humanity about them than Arthur does. Arthur is in some ways unimportant to the stories that grow around him because he is their linchpin. He is the symbol of beneficent rule, at the end of the day - a peacemaker, ill-fated like so many great leaders. Even in T. H. White's novel, which some would suppose to be centrally about Arthur, the only time true focus is put upon him as a person is in 'The Sword in the Stone', i.e. when he is a child, before he is the king and thus the epitome of all good in the world. (Slight touch of sarcasm there) And though Lancelot is probably the most strongly written character in 'The Once and Future King', and the four sons of Orkney are definitely more rounded out than Arthur, and that holds true for 'Mists' as well, that's actually how it should be. What keeps people interested, keeps people writing, is that Arthur created a society that was both joyous and peaceful, and that others conspired to tear it down, while still others invited its shattering through no fault of their own.
And that happy peace is the heart of it - no matter how different the interpretations and emphasis may be, no matter if Morgan le Fay is shown to be an evil witch, or seen as Morgaine, a Druid priestess simply doing as her Goddess wills, no matter if Christianity is the enemy or the backbone to the narrative, that is why the Arthurian story endures. There was peace, and it was good, and then it was lost. But it will come again. That is the message. Though White deals with this ultimate thrust of the tale and all those that have grown out of it with the burial mound, under which Arthur lies sleeping in order to come again some day and resurrect that world, Bradley is unequivocal -Arthur is dead. And as I said before, I doubt there ever actually was such a person, at least in the form we read him as today. It's not real, but like many things that are not factual, they are valuable and important all the same - and really, there are some facts and truths that are not as important as an idea like King Arthur at his Round Table, regardless of the former's status as 'reality'. Sometimes dreams are as crucial as the world they grew from. The Arthurian legend is one of these - and despite the ruin of Camelot, the utter certainty of that fate, and the tragedies of all kinds which occur in the process of its demise, it's a good dream.
But first, let me be clear - there has always been this...idea that Arthur, Guinevere et al were all real people to an extent, that the story is on some basic level, true. The reality of the legend is a matter of debate, and in all honesty, if even the Wikipedia entry is long and complicated, I doubt the question will ever be settled. But in my opinion, it is a myth - a fiction in the most fundamental sense. Oh, it's a great story, never doubt that - why do you think it endures? But there is no truth in it. And its value to people is the basis of that - a tale that ultimately belongs to everybody, to be transfigured at will, but always to depict the playing out of unavoidable fate. Arthur shall marry Guinevere, and Lancelot shall love her, and doom shall come of it. Camelot will fall.
So, to the books in question. I did not reread 'The Once and Future King' for this (as much as I love it, it's one of the those rare books I am forced to read slowly), so I'll be going along on memory.
It would be very easy, I think, to simply say that the two texts are diametrically opposed - two sides of the same coin, for sure, but never to meet. This is due to two obvious divergences - the feminine viewpoints of 'Mists of Avalon' in contrast to the male-centric 'Once and Future King', and the bright Christianity of the latter to the complex religious struggle of the former. It would simple to leave it at that, to take the depiction you like best, and run with it. But 'The Once and Future King' is not just the stories of the Christian men of Camelot, and 'Mists' is not just the stories of Goddess-serving women. To say that would be to sell both short. Ultimately White and Bradley were both working with the same tale, and the similarities are there.
Let's begin with Lancelot/Lancelet. (I'll be referencing the OAFK name before the MOA one.) T. H. White's Lancelot is simultaneously one of the most wretched, and most brilliant characters I've ever seen rendered in text. His torment, his identity as the 'Ill-made Knight', the consistent feeling he has of being inescapably and eternally evil, even before Guinevere, is gut-wrenching. In 'Mists', due to the persistent use of feminine narrators, you hardly know how deeply torn Lancelet is until his son dies. Both are valid portrayals of the archetype we call Lancelot, but they are not at all far away from each other. At the end of the day, Lancelot is Lancelet is Lancelot, regardless of the matter of vowel use, and the pull of love and loyalty to his king, and the opposite pull of love to his king's wife, creates that torment which is common to both novels.
Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar is another I could reference as being fundamentally the same person in both texts. Though 'Mists' depicts her mostly as annoyingly pious and pitiably agoraphobic, and in 'Once and Future King' she is largely just a woman, not in the object sense, but in terms of her humanity. Nonetheless, they share an important thing in common - they attempt to stay faithful to Arthur. Ultimately the bond between Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar and Lancelot/Lancelet is too strong to be denied (though in 'Mists', Arthur quite literally puts his wife into the arms of his dearest friend -and what happened after that point was definitely NOT canonical!), but the fact that both versions strive honestly to do right by their husband (and indeed, so too does Lancelot/Lancelet) links them.
And then we come to Arthur, who is the same. The Arthur who is King of Camelot is fundamentally identical in any story - ultimately he is even less a character and more of an archetype than any other of the names associated with the legend - Morgan/Morgaine, Galahad, Mordred - all of them have more substance of humanity about them than Arthur does. Arthur is in some ways unimportant to the stories that grow around him because he is their linchpin. He is the symbol of beneficent rule, at the end of the day - a peacemaker, ill-fated like so many great leaders. Even in T. H. White's novel, which some would suppose to be centrally about Arthur, the only time true focus is put upon him as a person is in 'The Sword in the Stone', i.e. when he is a child, before he is the king and thus the epitome of all good in the world. (Slight touch of sarcasm there) And though Lancelot is probably the most strongly written character in 'The Once and Future King', and the four sons of Orkney are definitely more rounded out than Arthur, and that holds true for 'Mists' as well, that's actually how it should be. What keeps people interested, keeps people writing, is that Arthur created a society that was both joyous and peaceful, and that others conspired to tear it down, while still others invited its shattering through no fault of their own.
And that happy peace is the heart of it - no matter how different the interpretations and emphasis may be, no matter if Morgan le Fay is shown to be an evil witch, or seen as Morgaine, a Druid priestess simply doing as her Goddess wills, no matter if Christianity is the enemy or the backbone to the narrative, that is why the Arthurian story endures. There was peace, and it was good, and then it was lost. But it will come again. That is the message. Though White deals with this ultimate thrust of the tale and all those that have grown out of it with the burial mound, under which Arthur lies sleeping in order to come again some day and resurrect that world, Bradley is unequivocal -Arthur is dead. And as I said before, I doubt there ever actually was such a person, at least in the form we read him as today. It's not real, but like many things that are not factual, they are valuable and important all the same - and really, there are some facts and truths that are not as important as an idea like King Arthur at his Round Table, regardless of the former's status as 'reality'. Sometimes dreams are as crucial as the world they grew from. The Arthurian legend is one of these - and despite the ruin of Camelot, the utter certainty of that fate, and the tragedies of all kinds which occur in the process of its demise, it's a good dream.
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