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Marius - Politics

The major debating point in Federal politics over the past week has been whether Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership will last longer than the romance of Chris Evert and Greg Norman.

To do that he has to survive - and in fact prevail - at the joint party room meeting which will decide whether to back his line in negotiating with the government on its emissions trading scheme.

The consensus is he will survive.

While the moment of decision on an ETS appears to be a decisive one - an appearance reinforced by headlines portraying Turnbull’s position as “Back me or Sack me” - in fact there is plenty of wriggle room for the opposition leader.

He can come away with the appearance of leadership if the party room can agree on amendments to be put to the government, amendments the government may well then reject.

At the weekend Malcolm Turnbull was bemoaning the way the debate on the critical issue of our time, the future of the planet, had been overtaken by fevered argument over political gossip.

That is a recurring complaint of politicians - that is when they’re not reducing the arguments of their opponents to laughable parodies, oversimplifying complexities and offering false choices between their way and ruin.

Politicians are often serious minded individuals with a deep knowledge of current events. But when they “throw the switch to vaudeville” - in the Keating phrase - in an effort to woo or scare voters to their cause, truth is often the first victim and subtlety, complexity and nuance go out the window.

Likewise if Malcolm Turnbull displaces the weighty considerations of saving the planet with eye-catching talk of “anonymous smartarses” in his own ranks and putting his leadership on the line - well he can’t complain if that generates quite a few column inches, at the expense of weightier policy considerations.
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Mark - EP

Here’s a tale of two Grand Finals….and human psychology.

I caught a plane from Melbourne to Sydney last night…..travelling pretty much as the NRL Grand Final between the Melbourne Storm and the Parramatta Eels reached a nail-biting climax.

There was no TV in the budget airline terminal at Tullamarine, so I was none the wiser about who was prevailing in the twilight game at the Olympic Stadium.

So when I arrived in Sydney — well after the game had finished — I thought I’d conduct a bit of an experiment.

As I emerged into the terminal I resisted the urge to ask who’d won.

Rather I thought I would try to see if I could divine defeat or victory by the look on people’s faces.

There were heaps of Storm fans waiting to catch planes back to Melbourne.

If anything they looked rather tired and deflated.

Further down the terminal, a man in an Eels jumper proudly waved a large Parramatta flag.

“Gee, Parra must’ve won” I thought to myself.

So you can imagine my surprise when I looked up the result on ABC Mobile as I waited for a train into the city.

In a fast-food restaurant near Circular Quay there were plenty of middle-aged men in Parramatta jumpers.

They all looked strangely contented.

A girl who knew nothing about sport asked one “Did Manly win?”

“No, that was last year”, said one of the men patiently, “Our team’s Parramatta. We came second. But that’s okay. We did good. We got beaten by the best team. Actually, one of the great teams of the modern era.”

It was a fact acknowledged by Parramatta captain Nathan Cayless in his magnanimous speech at the trophy presentation earlier in the evening.

Yup. Great end to the season after a pretty poor start. Just scraped into the finals. Gave it a shot, but the best team won. Rugby league was the winner.

I even saw a smiling Parramatta prop Nathan Hindmarsh on Fox Sports this morning.

Good grief.

I just contrast that with the absolute devastation eight days earlier of Nick Riewoldt and co. when St Kilda went down to Geelong at the MCG.

I watched the game on tv at home at my parents place near Moorabbin …deep in Saints territory.

No one said very much when the final siren blew.

Best team during the home and away season. Needed to break a 43-year premiership drought. Failed.

You could have fired a gun down the main street of Moorabbin, Bentleigh or Cheltenham any time that cold, wintry evening and you wouldn’t have hit a soul.

No quizzical contented looks or flag-waving here.

Total devastation.

Glen - presenter …

What a week of epic coverage of relentless disaster news from the Asia Pacific region.
From the Phillipines to Samoa and Indonesia, the bad news just kept coming.
Reporters from the ABC and many of our partner networks, such as BBC and CNN, are now on the ground and face the daunting task of covering the awful aftermath of the death and destruction - a difficult task but already some outstanding work has been delivered.
If only it wasn’t required.

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Meanwhile, the return of a familiar argument :

A nude photo of actress Brooke Shields when she was ten years old has been removed from an exhibition in London, after a police pornography probe found it inappropriate.

The photograph was reproduced by Richard Prince, and titled Spiritual America.
It was due to go on show as part of the Pop Life: Art In A Material World exhibition at the Tate Modern gallery.

The picture shows the young actress from the knees up, naked, oiled and wearing heavy make up. A Scotland Yard spokesman said it was working with gallery staff to ensure it did not “break the law or cause any offence to their visitors”.

The case echoes that of Bill Henson’s exhibition in Sydney last year, which was cancelled after complaints to police about photos of naked teenagers

Where do you draw the line on this stuff ?

AND, in more online related news :

The US Secret Service says a juvenile was behind a Facebook poll asking whether US President Barack Obama should be assassinated - and no charges will be brought in the case.

Facebook quickly removed the user-generated poll, which was titled “Should Obama be killed?” and offered answer choices of “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and “If he cuts my health care.”

More than 750 Facebook users had reportedly cast votes by the time the poll was yanked from the wildly popular online social networking community.

Nice.

Technology - just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
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Marius - politics …

Friday reflection:

Human circumstance is, to a large extent, a product of the law of unintended consequences.

This general truth was brought home to me again while reading recently about the Dreyfus case, the legal drama which was played out in the last years of the 19th century in France.

If you aren’t familiar with the case, it saw a French army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly convicted of spying for Germany, in a court action that was fuelled by anti-semitism.

Exiled to jail on Devil’s Island, he was finally freed and exonerated as a result of a defence led by his brother Mathieu and featuring the most famous newspaper editorial ever penned: J’accuse, written by Emile Zola.

Among those who watched the Dreyfus proceedings was a Viennese journalist Theodore Herzl who, as a Jew, felt the primary lesson on the legal travesty that Dreyfus had experienced was that justice could be denied to a Jew, simply because they were Jewish.

He turned away from his journalism to become the spiritual father of political Zionism, providing the impetus for a movement which, half a century later, would see the foundation of Israel as a Jewish homeland.

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

In Australia similar sequences of circumstance and fluke dictate public life.

In a parallel universe, John Hewson would have won the unloseable election of 1993 and John Howard vanished into the political ether. Similarly, Kim Beazley would have won in 2001 and the Labor river run a different course.

Chance, somebody once observed, moves through life like a homicidal maniac.

As of early October, Malcolm Turnbull has set the Australian political hounds running again by declaring that the emissions trading debate is an issue on which his leadership could rise or fall.

It will be interesting over the next few weeks to see how events play out.

Marius - politics

John Howard, in the depths of Opposition, wrote off his own political life.

Famously, he was Mr 18% and by his own assessment, any chance of a political resurrection was: “Lazarus with a triple by-pass.”

He then opened the exit door on politics and looked out at the world beyond.

Whatever it was John Howard saw, he closed the door and went back to the long, long haul that eventually led to the door of the Prime Minister’s office.

In retrospect, it’s impossible to believe that the man who would be the Liberals second longest serving PM would ever leave politics - he was always a “lifer” - politics and life were interchangeable terms for him.

Malcolm Turnbull is completely unlike John Howard in every conceivable way; Howard is the dull solidity of Sydney’s leafy north shore compared with the glitter and bling of Turnbull’s eastern suburbs.

The Howard Way was always was one of political mono-mania, Turnbull’s a life of many parts.

In the mid-70’s, I was beginning a working life in journalism covering state parliament in NSW for the Daily Telegraph. The Tele shared an office in Macquarie Street, flanked to our right by AAP and on the left: 2SM Radio, the Bulletin, from memory the Nation Review and a few other radio stations.

That gaggle of outlets on our left was embodied in a single correspondent, one Malcolm Turnbull. My memory is of a whirlwind in a suit powering through the door, oscillating wildly over the phone and serving his many masters.

And that was between completing a law degree and launching a business career.

Malcolm Turnbull has always been riding a few horses in the circus of life, politics just one of them.

And the impression among some of his colleagues is that, while he is hurling his considerable energies into the Liberal cause now, any serious adversity - like losing an election - could see him swirl his cape spectacularly, bow deeply to the vastly amused audience and exit……stage left.

In a remarkable display of political candour last week Turnbull, Peter Costello and Ian MacFarlane all admitted the next election, especially if taken early, was probably lost.

For most observers, that is no more than a statement of the obvious, but the obvious is not something that is always admitted openly by politicians.

With discussion for some opposition members already turning to what happens after the anticipated loss, one unknown to be pondered is whether Malcolm Turnbull will stick around - quite apart from whether his colleagues will want him.

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Debbie - Sport

“I guess to have Jarryd up against Billy that’s really a promoter’s dream. It’s certainly the NRL’s dream given the season those two guys have had.”

These are not the words of some sporting conspiracy theorist, but a direct quote from the NRL’s chief executive David Gallop at this morning’s Grand Final Breakfast in Sydney.

I’ve spoken to plenty of sports fans this week who believe the NRL took the soft option allowing Jarryd Hayne to play in the Final, after the way he used his knees on the head of the Bulldogs’ Bryson Goodwin last Friday night. Mr Gallop’s words this morning are sure going to give those cynics plenty of ammunition to work with.

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When it comes to the Billy v Jarryd debate, you can put me firmly in the Slater camp.

Sure Hayne’s been impressive this year, but Slater’s been ripping defences to shreds with his sheer speed and uncanny anticipation for more than six seasons now. Opposition coaches have had plenty of time to go to school on what “Billy the Kid” does, but they haven’t found a way of shutting him down yet.

Let’s see how Hayne copes with being a marked man for a few more seasons before flinging around “the best in game” tags.

By the way, Slater’s skills aren’t confined to the demands of rugby league. I happened to catch just one episode of a show on Channel Nine earlier this year called “Australia’s Greatest Athlete”. Slater was representing rugby league against athletes from other sports including the AFL’s Brett Deledio, soccer’s Joel Griffiths, rugby union’s Lote Tuqiri, cricket’s Andrew Symonds and the Olympic pole vault gold medalist Steve Hooker. These stars competed against each other in a range of sporting challenges that included things like sprinting, golf, mini ironman, bench pressing. Channel flicking, I just happened to catch Slater taking on Hooker in the final of a rock climbing challenge.

I thought a fast, strong and agile Olympic athlete like Hooker would beat him easily, but Slater won. If you check the results of the 12 events, you’ll see Slater was top three in 10 of them. He won the title in a canter. And speaking of cantering, that’s a challenge that wasn’t included that Slater would’ve dominated: horse-riding. He was a champion show rider as a kid and rode track work for Gai Waterhouse for six months before deciding to make a career out of rugby league.

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As was the case with Geelong last week, Melbourne Storm go into this weekend’s Grand Final with the reputation of having been the benchmark team of the past four seasons.

Like Geelong, they’ve got recent experience: the disappointment of last year to spur them on and the advantage of having hit form with their best lineup on the paddock at the right end of the season.

And like Geelong, I think they’ll win.

For some real inside perspective on what to expect in Sunday evening’s big game, tune into Weekend Half Time this Sunday morning.

Scott Wales and I will talk tactics with two premiership winning coaches: Chris Anderson who coached the Storm to their first Final win in 1999 and Michael Hagan, who won a premiership in 2001 with Newcastle, and was in charge at Parramatta up until the end of last season.