Guy Beres

And so, as every media outlet across the globe has been blanket reporting for the last hundred hours straight, the King of Pop is dead. I suppose rationally speaking we shouldn’t be that surprised, given all he has been through and his legion of rumored health and drug issues, but the news still came as a shock last Friday morning. Even in spite of his last, horribly wasted decade, the bright lights of his prodigious talent managed to touch arguably more people during his lifetime than just about anyone else in modern entertainment history. He certainly has a rightful claim to be one of the three most significant acts in popular music in the twentieth century, alongside Elvis Presley and The Beatles. The word ‘iconic’ is thrown about loosely in this modern hyperbolic world, but Michael Jackson was, regardless of all his faults and absurdities, an iconic figure.

Jackson’s body of work and the sheer ubiquity of his contribution to pop music have ensured that he will be remembered for his talent first, and his history of scandal second. This is exemplified by the similarities in affect of the media’s treatment of Jackson’s death to that of Princess Diana’s. Strangely enough, both figures, in death, seem to enjoy similar levels of reverence in the public eye. There will no doubt be a lot of people all over the world who will always remember where they were when they heard the bad news. I was just about to start eating breakfast at home on Friday when the story started breaking across morning television. I don’t own a single Michael Jackson record right now, but Friday still felt like a bit of a bad dream.

I am a “rock” person, but there was still never any avoiding Michael Jackson.

There was a copy of Thriller in my household growing up, and of course as a card-carrying member of the music television generation, I was exposed to the title track’s magic at a young age. Weird Al Yankovic’s “Fat” and “Eat It” served as humorous lead-ins, growing up, to Jackson’s Bad album. I can recall playing as Michael Jackson in the Moonwalker game on the Sega Megadrive at some stage as a young adolescent, and indeed, generating a lot of static electricity but very little result whilst attempting to moonwalk on the carpet of the family home. I bought a copy of Dangerous on cassette tape, and was astounded at the cutting edge video clip cuts from that album, and intrigued that someone like Slash would collaborate with Michael Jackson (or maybe that someone like MJ would work with Slash). Jackson’s 1995 collaboration with his sister Janet, Scream, was as cool a tune and music video as anything he has ever done. Indeed, even the HIStory misfire included some worthwhile cuts, including quite a cool reading of The Beatles’ Come Together.

So, yes, he was a cartoon character; a garishly distorted caricature of his former glory by the end. But maybe that’s just what makes his passing so ultimately affecting… cartoon characters shouldn’t be able to die, just like that. Especially not characters with the whiz-bang genius of Michael Jackson.

The embarrassingly named “Utegate” saga rolls on, and the mainstream media has been getting itself into a right lather about it all. On Sunday the papers were suggesting that one of Wayne Swan, Kevin Rudd or Malcolm Turnbull were destined to have their position fatally undermined by the saga, depending on precisely how events unfolded over the coming days. The News Limited stable has been particularly vehement about the matter, making best efforts to turn what is realistically a molehill for the government into a mountain. I honestly can’t see it happening. If a head does roll out of this, it will be the head of a subordinate, and for the time being at least this is the most extreme consequence that seems justified.

Thanks to the introduction of the AFP, the matter with the email has become the real deal as far as political backlash from ‘Utegate’ is concerned; any accusations levelled at Wayne Swan regarding favoritism or cronyism are neither here nor there and were quite frankly drawing a long bow to begin with. Politicians of all stripes make representations on behalf of their constituents every day, some of whom, perish the thought, they may actually know. I don’t think there is anything untoward about this. There is no allegation that John Grant has benefited from the Treasurer’s or indeed the Prime Minister’s attention, at least not to a greater extent than any other constituent has. Big, fat, hairy deal.

In any case, now that it has emerged that the email at the centre of the scandal is a “fraud”, it only remains to be seen just who composed the email, if this indeed can be determined by the AFP. It seems to me that there are only really three plausible motives for the hoax:

1) The “email” was produced by someone with ties to (or sympathy for) the Government who hoped to trick the Opposition into taking the bait and overextending its reach.

2) The “email” was produced by someone with ties to (or sympathy for) the Opposition who hoped to generate a scandal from the affair.

3) The “email” was produced as a joke or by someone in a somewhat lighthearted vain and the Opposition and the media have caught wind of it and run with it.

I find it difficult to believe that either Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan or indeed Malcolm Turnbull would have implicated themselves in such an implausible and easily detectable hoax. Therefore one must suspect that a minor functionary with links to the Labor or Liberal Party within the Treasury is responsible for the email, and has acted generally independently on it. Idle speculation perhaps, but I suspect we will know a lot more about just which party will have egg on its face within the next 24 to 48 hours.

As time ticks by, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the position of any of the three political figures implicated in the scandal is at serious risk. The mainstream media might even have to start considering policy issues again sometime in the near future. Crikey.

So it’s done then. After nineteen months of near incessant speculation, Peter Costello has finally announced his intention to step down as the member for Higgins and resume his life as a private citizen. Personally, I am deeply relieved. No, not deeply relieved that a resurgent Coalition would surge to government some day in the future with the former Treasurer at its helm. Deeply relieved that the media can perhaps at this juncture resume talking about issues that really matter, and that this once important man can be allowed to move on with the rest of his life as an ordinary joe. For the good of all of us.

I am typically not the sort of person who gets all partisan when it comes time to eulogise a former politician. There is little doubting that Peter Costello will be remembered as one of our most historically significant Federal Treasurers. He was a great wit, and probably the best parliamentary performer of his generation. His achievements in relation to debt retirement during the first half of his reign are significant and should be remembered as such. His role in selling the GST to a notoriously sceptical Australian public was frankly worldbeating - when I think for a quiet moment about democracy in Australia and the nation’s attitude towards politicians, I can hardly believe that Howard and Costello pulled that election victory off. This sort of reform really does make one believe that people can accept difficult and distasteful reform if you do a good enough job of explaining the reasons why.

And now for the failures. As Treasurer, Costello and his brethren scattered hay all over the place instead of making it while the sun shone brightly during the course of the last five years. All across the country, people are literally screaming for better infrastructure and public services, and have been for some time. It has now reached the point where people are losing faith in the power of government to provide or even facilitate. The Howard Government’s performance on infrastructure and public services was inexplicably poor when one considers the good revenue times that it enjoyed for so many years. There was not nearly enough investment for the future while Peter Costello ruled the roost in Treasury. There were far too many handouts and politicised spending measures.

Peter Costello sadly also proved himself to be a failure as a leader. Under Howard, for the most part at least, he was a willing, loyal and able follower. Circumstances proved that he did not have what it takes to lead. He failed to force Howard’s hand in relation to the leadership during the last decade. He failed to scent the winds of change as Kevin Rudd emerged as Opposition Leader, even as his government was being strangled by its own foolish industrial relations crusade. And when it came to the crunch, and his party was finally willing to embrace him in a time of desperation, he turned them away. Kim Beazley was always unfairly lampooned as not having the ticker for the job, but in reality, he was infinitely more up for it than Howard’s golden boy.

As a politician, Peter Costello was always in John Howard’s sidecar, always looking on as the real hero of the conservatives lead the charge against Labor. Despite his numerous successes and indeed laudable achievements in public life, this is probably what he will always be remembered for.

Throwing in the towel weakly when the crown was his for the taking, just an enfeebled Robin for his crusading, calculating master.

The “demon” (or rather, “diemen”) certainly has a good sense of aesthetics but a questionable control over the weather. 

 

There’s quite a lot ado about parliamentary expenses at the moment, a little bit locally, but to paraphrase the Prime Minister, there’s a whole shitstorm going on in the United Kingdom right now. Even as Kevin Rudd clings gingerly to repeat-offender Joel Fitzgibbon like one does with a somewhat disliked cousin, it is beginning to look as though the ever-escalating UK expenses scandal might be the straw that finally breaks the back of the Brown Labour Government.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is reportedly set to resign from Cabinet, and Communities Secretary Hazel Blears resigned in a shock announcement today. Now backbenchers are threatening to push a petition letter throughout the partyroom calling for Gordon Brown to abdicate, and the Guardian has taken the extraordinary step of calling for the Prime Minister’s resignation in an editorial:

All must agree that the die is cast and a hard judgment made. Otherwise progressive politics will be dragged down at a general election in May 2010 that could lead to a much bigger defeat than Labour suffered in 1979. That might bring a chance for other parties to take it forward, as the Liberal Democrats are trying to do in this election. But they are not placed to enter government. Labour has a year left before an election; its current leader would waste it. It is time to cut him loose.

It’s a little unfair that Gordon Brown should be made to pay a price for the current expenses drama, a drama in which every sitting member of parliament has a stake. The Guardian editorial is nevertheless spot on. Gordon Brown has been given a good run, but he and his government remain on an express train to electoral irrelevance at the polls next year unless something drastically, and changes very soon indeed.

Roll on David Miliband as a fresh alternative to Gordon Brown, and a man of more substance than David Cameron.

It was getting a little absurd and starting to backfire dramatically, so the Prime Minister and the Treasurer were forced to halt their “billion ban” charade in parliament today.

As has been previously observed:

It’s been suggested Kevin Rudd would not utter the phrase ”$300 billion” for fear his words will be used in coalition advertisements during the next election campaign.

…

Mr Rudd said debt would peak at “around about 200, our gross debt at about 300” in 2013-14.

Asked to explain 200 or 300 of what, Mr Rudd responded: “These are billion figures.”

The genius (whoever they are) in Federal Labor’s leadership team who seriously believed that the government could get away with its senior members not saying the word “billion” for the next 18 months or so must be living on Planet Wacky. It’s a little disturbing that this wacky idea was even successfully sold to the men who are overseeing the nation’s response to the financial crisis, and that they ran with the “billion ban” for a day or two. The Coalition would be nuts not to make fun of the Prime Minister’s use of “200″ and “300″ in their election campaign next year.

Madness.

I’ve been out to the cinema twice in the last couple of weeks to see two very different films: the latest cinematic instalment in the Star Trek franchise and Warwick Thornton’s low-budget Australian film Samson and Delilah. It’s virtually impossible to compare the two films in a manner that is fair, given the fact that they span such different genres and are coming from such different places, but in judging each of them I have found that juxtaposing my observations of each has provided some much needed clarity. Hopefully that will come through in what follows, although this is by no means guaranteed.

So let me first turn to Star Trek. First, a confession. I am the sort of person who has digested all the original movies, most of the original series, all of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine and about half of Voyager. I had some fairly high hopes for this movie, and I was looking forward to the dynamism that someone like JJ Abrams promised to bring to what has become a flagging franchise. By and large the casting seemed pretty on the money; Zachary Quinto is a dead-ringer for a young Leonard Nimoy, Chris Pine offered the sort of youthful exuberance that one would expect from a young James T. Kirk, and Simon Pegg does actually look quite a bit like a young James Doohan in the right light.

Unfortunately for me the casting, along with the pleasantly brisk pacing, turned out to be the best thing about this movie. The origins stories for Kirk and Spock, which effectively make up about the first half of the film, are generally well executed, with a few glaring exceptions. The Nero (Eric Bana) half of the story, however, seems all too familiar and represents extremely well-worn territory. Mix the Star Trek TNG double-episode “Unification” with a couple of the time travel/reality warp plot devices of films like Star Trek Generations (VII) or First Contact (VIII) and you end up with something very similar to the plot here. Frankly, it is wafer-thin stuff and Star Trek fans have been brought up on better, so they should expect better from a full-length motion picture in 2009. They deserve better than science fiction stock sketch number 127.

My reasonably high expectations of Star Trek compare in an interesting way with my expectations for Samson and Delilah, an Australian film that has appeared on the national radar out of nowhere, without fanfare but some pretty hardcore critical acclaim in recent weeks. Yes, this is another “depressing” Australian movie. But this is a movie that will change you. It will make you laugh, it will make you want to cry, and it will change the way you think about the world, and quite frankly, I am not sure how much more you can ask for in a film. Unlike Star Trek, you will find it hard to forget that you have seen this film once you have seen it.

Samson and Delilah looks and sounds like no other film you have seen before. The cinematography is superb and makes wonderful use of the landscape of the outback. There is very little dialogue in the film. This might sound strange and put folks off, but the film’s characters are utterly expressive and fully-formed; which really does lay bear how much dumbed-down dialogue we all have to endure in most modern television shows and films. The story is languid and organic, and Thornton makes clever use of repetition to reinforce the mood he is trying to create. I am not even sure that it is fair to say that Samson and Delilah has a plot, in the normal sense of the word. This is total film. This is someone else’s life unfolding in front of you, a strange sort of dream that draws you in.

In short, Samson and Delilah makes practically all other films currently showing at your local box office seem childish, limited, and irrelevant. I don’t think I can put it any more bluntly, or truthfully, than that. Go and see it - see it now, and tell your friends.

Over the course of the last week, the expression on Treasurer Wayne Swan’s face has been even more deadpan than usual; so deadpan, in fact, that its as if someone from Treasury has swung an almighty great frying pan across his gloomy mug. In a sense, that is of course just what has happened. There is no tougher gig to have at the moment. Even before one considers all the election promises that Rudd Labor made back in late 2007, and the bold stimulus measures introduced during the past six months in an attempt to ward off the worst of the GFC, the government is starting behind. The tumultuous financial conditions have reduced profits, spending and incomes across the country, wiping a sizable $210 billion from the government’s anticipated revenue. Let’s be clear: whether the federal government was headed by Labor, the Liberals, or anyone else, it would have delivered a budget in the red in 2009-10 like the Rudd Government has. The buck must stop with the Treasurer, (if not he, then who else?), but its fair to say that a significant portion of the big red numbers being bandied around are not Mr. Swan’s or indeed Federal Labor’s fault.

Casting a considered eye over the opinions flying around in the mainstream media, it would seem that this is a Budget that is hard for people to support. It mixes almost evenly boosts and blows, to the point that some commentators believe it to be a confused budget, a budget that tries to stimulate the economy even as it withdraws funds from some, possibly lulling it back to sleep. There are welcome measures, such as the significant increase in payments to single pensioners, the introduction of parental leave (even if it is delayed until 2011), and the urgently needed $22 billion package of infrastructure measures. On the flip side of the coin, there are a few downright bafflers. The planned lifting of the pension age to 67 is a positively nutty idea, and gives credence to the accusation that Treasurer Swan is living blindly on the teat of the bureaucrats in Treasury. The means testing of the private health rebate is a questionable measure, given that it is likely to encourage people to ditch private health insurance and increase load on the public system. For once, Malcolm Turnbull might be on the right track by suggesting that raising excise on tobacco is a more sensible measure and can deliver the same amount of revenue.

It will be interesting to observe how Messrs Rudd and Swan react to Turnbull’s suggestion, and indeed to see how the public reacts to the Federal Opposition’s constant carping about the level of national debt. One does get the sense that the broader public is quite concerned about the hundreds of billions of dollars of public debt that Australia is now swimming in. This is a real concern, but it is a concern that is being simplistically tended by the Coalition. For his part, Malcolm Turnbull seems determined not to utter a word about the possibility (nay certain fact) that his team would also find itself in billions of dollars of debt if it were in government now. What remains to be seen is whether or not the sheer magnitude of the red numbers here are enough to get some people to lose faith and start to consider the opposition as a viable alternative government.

Make no mistake, this is the start of Malcolm Turnbull’s big chance.

After months of earnest assertions to the contrary, the Rudd Government has finally caved in to the pressure and postponed its emissions trading scheme. Although the nation’s worsening economic situation no doubt accounted for a substantial component of that pressure, its certainly fair to say that the government’s backdown represents a political victory for the Opposition. For some time now Malcolm Turnbull has been promoting the postponement cause, and despite the fact that his party has engineered yet another schizophrenic change of mind on the issue, refusing to back the government’s revised approach to emissions-trading even though it owes much to its own, it would appear that he has won this little stoush with the Prime Minister.

Personally, I think there are credible cases that can be made for either side of the debate. It goes without saying that while the economy was getting a pummeling, introducing a new, somewhat risky mechanism that threatened to impact profitability and therefore jobs for thousands of Australians was a politically dubious step to take. While I accept the fact that the climate change science demands swift and effective action, most people (myself included) instinctively feel that a delay of a year or two is probably not going to end life on Earth as we know it. In ideal conditions I would love to see action now, but we are living in far from ideal conditions. The government has already spent billions of dollars during the past nine months, stimulating the economy and sending the country into a significant amount of debt in the process. It must have a serious concern that it commands neither the requisite economic or political capital to launch the emissions-trading scheme during this time of crisis.

On the flip side of the coin, one really does have to question the Rudd Government’s commitment to climate change. The science calls for bold steps, not delays or a pragmatic watering down. I frankly don’t understand why the government has only now decided to cave in to the Opposition on this issue. If it really is the case that the economic situation is so dire that implementing the ETS would be unsustainable, the government should have known this six months ago. When economists the world over were saying six months ago that it is likely going to take over a year to get out of this slump, the government should have been paying attention and started sounding the alarm bells then. Instead, it continued to glibly peddle the line that the ETS would be implemented as scheduled, despite the fact that the global financial system was crumbling all around it. Putting the science aside completely for just a second, we would have to conclude that this exemplifies poor judgement.

While we have an Opposition full of climate change sceptics and opportunists and a government with such a wavering commitment to the issue, it’s hard to be very confident that we are eventually going to get an outcome. At this rate, I would certainly not be putting money on a functioning emissions-trading scheme being implemented in Australia any time soon - whether 2010, 2011 or 2012.

Ardent apologies for the lack of anything interesting being here for the past two weeks. Since Easter things have been slightly mad, with numerous relatives visiting, a trip or two back to Sydney and the odd “unexpected” event.

On the upside, I have had the opportunity to see a bit more of my local stomping grounds.

Bloody hell its getting cold down here though. Tell me Winter doesn’t get much colder than this in Melbourne. Someone?