Please invade us and terminate this 300 years of stupidity

Bonus! Our Head of State can now be a woman, even if there’s another option. Plus s/he can marry a Catholic (though naturally, she can’t actually be one, like say, me: a secular atheist who was baptised a Mick – and all my relatives).

Obviously, I've always wanted to be part of nation that wouldn't have people like me as top dog.

Thanks Commonwealth, for updating the irrelevance of the peevish and shitty Restoration prejudices we call our Constitution.

Don't blame me, I voted for Pemulwuy

Macarthur replaces Bligh in NSW Rum Corps Rebellion

Why the Citizen's Assembly on Climate Change is a dud

Here's my top six concerns about PM Julie Gillard's proposed "Citizen's Assembly" to investigate Climate Change. Feel free to disagree, or add others!

1. Struth, how many mandates does the Oz public have to give the ALP?
2. What if the assembly decides no action should be taken? This victory for 'deliberative democracy' won't alter the fact that measures needs to be introduced. This alone demonstrates what a complete farce the idea is.
3. Is it just me, or is this a bit like asking the passengers on the Titanic for approve an iceberg report before further action is taken? Its simply delay dressed up as consultation.
4. The other policies announced recently suggest a full retreat from climate change action. New coal-fired stations, wtf? That's soooo 1995. Even the new car rebate business is taken from solar money. The assembly has to be seen in the light of surrounding climate policies: its a distraction and a con.
5. As the Republic issue in 1999 showed, the best way to kill an agenda which enjoys popular support, but which leaders don't want a bar of, is through exactly this sort of mechanism. Pick opposing factions, then you can claim “see, the public cant agree on an actual model” and you’re off the hook, despite the public clearly wanting it.
6. Real leaders build consensus – or least majority support – around an agenda for change. They don't follow focus groups around.

Unimpressed, of Keating Towers.

The Light on the Hill

10 years after the referendum in East Timor

30 August is a good day for Australians to remember that the so-called 'realists' in Canberra got it wrong for 24 years. I'm pretty sure a whole lot of them still think 'well, our strategic priorities just changed pre and post 1999, the cold war was over, and who saw that the New Order regime would collapse?'. I'm pretty sure they also think 'teh Left' were just a bunch of unrealistic and idealist whingers who accidentally got something right for once.

Au contraire. Along with saying the occupation was wrong, and a human rights disaster, the East Timor solidarity movements were also pointing to a critical empirical factor: Indonesia was not likely to succeed. How could a forced integration - with no basis in international law, unrecognised by any other state, with no respect for human rights, and implacably opposed by a nation of people - succeed in the long run? Its like the inevitability of a Palestinian state. Power cannot operate without legitimacy forever. Foreign policy 'realism' does not equate to pragmatism, how ever much the back-slapping defence and security circle-jerkers might fancy it does.

The major parties in this country were frankly out of touch with reality. They appeared to believe that just because it suited our imagined strategic priorities, a military occupation that could not even establish a monopoly of force after 24 years was some stable 'fact on the ground', that we all just had to live with. Let history record that the Australian people saw through it all first, and the 'experts' in Canberra followed.

I hope the lesson is not lost. Justice matters in international affairs. Foreign policy 'realism' does not make you realistic.

Prime Ministerial Trivia

I've just been mucking around on the National Archive's Australian Prime Ministers site - and from there I bring you the following trivial notes about each of them, selected on the highly scientific basis of what interested me most within 10 seconds:

Edmund Barton : nicknamed 'Toby Tosspot' by the Bulletin.
Alfred Deakin: only PM to reject title 'Right Honorable'.
Chris Watson: First Labor PM in the world, established the solidarity rule by which he was expelled from the Labor Party. Youngest ever PM at 37.
George Reid: only Australian to serve in all three legislatures – colonial, Commonwealth, and British; first former Australian PM to die.
Andrew Fisher: first Prime Minister to hold a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, in 1910.
Joseph Cook: initiated first double dissolution of Commonwealth parliament, dubbed ‘the most humourless’ of the prime ministers.
Billy Hughes: 51 years as an MHR – the longest serving Australian federal parliamentarian. This does not include his prior 7 years as a NSW MLA 1894-1901. Woah!
Stanley Bruce: we all know that along with John Howard, he is one of two Prime Ministers to lose their seats while in office - but did you know he was the only Prime Minister laid to rest in Canberra?
Jim Scullin: first Catholic Prime Minister, and (possibly not entirely unrelated to the first fact) the only red-headed PM.
Joseph Lyons: first PM to win three successive elections, and with Reid (NSW), one of two PMs to have been a State Premier (Tas). First to die in office.
Earl Page: one of the first Australians to own a car (in 1904), record for the shortest official stay in Britain – 1 day (1925).
Robert Menzies: one of three former Prime Ministers awarded Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun, First Class! The others are Edmund Barton and John McEwen.
Arthur Fadden: PM for 6 weeks, but longest serving acting PM (nearly 2 years) while Menzies was tarting around Britain between 1949 and 1958.
John Curtin: the only Prime Minister to have been in jail (as an anti-conscriptionist in 1916).
Francis Forde: shortest term in office at eight days. On 11 July this year, should he make it, Whitlam will beat Forde's record of 92 years as longest-lived former PM.
Ben Chifley: refused to wear ceremonial clothes and became a Privy Councillor in his own suit in 1945.
Harold Holt: was a federal parliamentarian for 32 years - the same duration as Robert Menzies.
John McEwen: record for longest service in parliament before becoming PM (33 years). Holt 2nd at 30 years. Naturally, Menzies is the origins of these complaints.
John Gorton: only PM sworn in while a Senator, for three weeks was PM without holding a seat in the House of Reps. Only PM to have a non-Australian wife (American).
William McMahon: despite being 2nd oldest to become PM at 63 (McEwen oldest at 67), fathered his youngest child while in office. 'Respek!', as Ali G would say.
Gough Whitlam: only Prime Minister to grow up in Canberra, though spent the earliest part of life in Melbourne. Will (hopefully) become the longest-lived Australian PM on July 11 this year. Go Gough! Its time!
Malcolm Fraser: in 1955 was then the youngest MP to ever enter parliament - 25 years old. Keating matched this in 1969. Came to office with greatest winning margin in federal history (1975), and lost office with (joint) largest ALP victory in 1983.
Bob Hawke: 1983 win roughly ties with Curtin's 1943 win for largest ALP winning margin ever.
Paul Keating: third longest serving federal treasurer, after Costello and Fadden. Consequently, 2nd longest serving treasurer to ever become an Australian PM. ;)
John Howard: only Liberal Party Prime Minister educated in government schools, campaigned for the Conservative Party in Britain’s 1964 election. Other rare distinctions include losing his seat while in office.
Kevin Rudd: info on site "under development". But here's one: he used to clean Laurie Oakes' house while a student at ANU. Ewww!

Failed Federal Election Slogans 1951-2007

Election slogans tend to be left motherless at the best of times - even winning campaigns are generally sick to death of them by the end. And naturally, losing slogans are well and truly consigned to to the dustbins of history. So, I did of bit of scratching around, and found them in a journal article, cited below. A few initial comments and curios:

• Check out 1969! It practically sounds like an invitation to an orgy - possibly at Don's Party.
• The second slogan from 1998 ('Australia deserves better') was a recycle of the winning slogan from the winning 1993 campaign.
  
• Curiously, Menzies won in 1949 with "It's time for a change" - which demonstrates that the most famous electoral slogan of all was not exactly an original.

I can't decide which is the lamest. I think it might be the utterly colourless "Go for Growth" - though hot contenders would also include the bizarre brain-fart that was "Incentivation", the ever-irritating "Ease the squeeze", and perhaps the rather pointless and weird "We're not waiting for the world" (huh?). Anyway, here they are, in all their glory!

Year - Losing Party - Slogan/s
1951 ALP - What Labor promises, Labor will do

1961 ALP - Labor puts people first

1963 ALP - Time for Action

1966 ALP - Vote ALP and End Conscription / What Price Freedom

1969 ALP - Labor: Where the action is / Join the swing to Labor

1972 LNP - Right today and Right for your future/ Not Yet

1974 LNP - Think again

1975 ALP - Shame Fraser Shame/ Advance Australia Fair

1977 ALP - Get Australia Working / Uranium: Play it safe

1980 ALP - Raise the Standard

1983 LNP - We're Not Waiting For The World

1984 LNP - Stand up for your family. Vote Liberal

1987 LNP - Get in front again/ Incentivation (and also 'Joh for PM')

1990 LNP - The answer is liberal

1993 LNP - We can do it…together / Labor’s got to go/ Fightback

1996 ALP - Leadership

1998 ALP - A Safe and Secure future for all Australians / Australia deserves better

2001 ALP - A Secure future for all Australians / That’s what I stand for

2004 ALP - Opportunity for All Australians/ Mark Latham and Labor: Taking the pressure off families/ Ease the squeeze

2007 LNP - Go for Growth

Source: Sally Young (2006), Australian Election Slogans, 1949-2004: Where Political Marketing Meets Political Rhetoric, Australian Journal of Communication, 33(1):pp 1-20

Clueless of Cronulla spams for 'Straya

A friend of mine got this email uninvited today. Listen to this hapless drivel:

Australia- The Right to Leave

IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It! I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.

However, the dust from the attacks had barely settled when the 'politically correct' crowd began complaining about the possibility that our patriotism was offending others. I am not against immigration, nor do I hold a grudge against anyone who is seeking a better life by coming to Australia . However, there are a few things that those who have recently come to our country, and apparently some born here, need to understand.

This idea of Australia being a multicultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Australians, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language and our own lifestyle. This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. We speak ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, Learn the language!

'In God We Trust' is our National Motto. This is not some Christian, right wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.

If the Southern Cross offends you, or you don't like 'A Fair Go', then you should seriously consider a move to another part of this planet.We are happy with our culture and have no desire to change, and we really don't care how you did things where you came from. This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this.

But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our National Motto, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom,'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE! If you aren't happy here then move on! We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted. Pretty easy really, when you think about it.

*****

Where do I start with you witless chumps? 'In God we trust' is not 'our national motto', Brainstrust - its the American national motto. And Florida's, for that matter. We haven't even had one since "Advance Australia" was taken from the coat of arms in the 1920s.

So listen up here, Daniel Boone, of Bondi: if you don't like our own, non-American, fair go culture: the door's over there mate. Cop ya later!

And if you want to rampage pissed on beaches, chuck rocks and attack defenceless passers-by minding their own business - you're not welcome in our democracy.

Oh, and when we've got the maturity to have our own flag and head of state, I'll start taking you so-called "nationalists" seriously. You just look like little BNP Bovver Boys to me; waving a Union Jack around. Only with surfboards.

Multicultural Australia: if you don't like it, vote to change it. I don't like your chances, but you're welcome to exercise that right. But don't ever forget this: you weren't 'here first' either ... were you now?

Update: Ah, its all a 2nd-rate cut and paste job from US crazies. Talk about undesirable aliens! Septic Patriotism is best left where it is, Straya.