Painting Fakes

So, I've been too busy to blog lately and it has taken a real piece of political idiocy to draw me out of my cave. No, it's not the controversy about Zaky Mallah and Q&A, although it's related.   Zaky Mallah is a 31-year-old Australian man of Lebanese descent who is currently in the headlines here in Australia for his appearance on an ABC talk show. Back in 2003, at the age of 20, Mallah was charged with terrorism offences after making a video in which he threatened to carry out a suicide bombing on ASIO headquarters.  After two years in remand, he was acquitted of the terrorism charges on the basis that he was incited to make the video by an undercover ASIO agent.  He was convicted of a lesser (non-terrorism) charge of threatening Commonwealth officials.  Two years in jail is a long time for making a stupid video. These days he is an outspoken Islamic activist of independent mind.  He is an firm opponent of Islamic State but also a fierce critic of...

In the wake of Joe Hockey's comments about housing affordability in Sydney there are various memes circulating which suggest he, and the Coalition government in general, are out of touch with ordinary Australians.  I've been wondering if this is what the comments really show. Now, if the question was "did Joe say something foolish and insensitive" then the answer would almost certainly be "yes".  No surprise here.  Joe often says foolish and insensitive things.  But that's not the question.  The question is, is he out of touch? The context was a press conference about an ATO investigation into possible breaches of foreign investment restrictions on real estate.  Apart from the actual subject at hand, Hockey made two key statements about Sydney housing.  The first: "The starting point for a first home buyer is to get a good job that pays good money,"  And the second: "If housing were unaffordable in Sydney, no-one would be buy...

I'm sure all my readers will at least think they are familiar with the art of scapegoating. It happens in companies.  When something goes wrong, and the company accidentally kills someone or loses lots of money, there are usually multiple system failures that lead up to the problem.  However, as often as not someone will get the blame, and the sack.  This will usually not be the CEO or the Board of Directors, even if it was actually their fault.  It will usually be someone more junior - a person with enough authority to be plausibly blamed for the problem, but not enough power within the company to protect themselves.  They take the blame for everyone else and are ceremoniously banished as a way of removing the stain from the company as a whole. Countries and the regimes that govern them tend to do the same.  Regimes that are corrupt, or oppressive, or govern in the interests of a small minority, find themselves the target of their people's anger. ...

I'm sorely tempted to not write about asylum seekers.  I really don't want to.  It's too awful.  But my conscience compels me.  It seems like every time I write an article about this, the story is worse than the last one. The last time I wrote, our government was complaining that while the Human Rights Commission was criticising them for holding children in detention  and the United Nations was highlighting their failure to respect the human rights of asylum seekers in general, no-one was was giving them credit for the amazing human rights achievement of preventing people from drowning at sea.  Mind you, they have never presented a scrap of evidence that they have done this.  They have prevented boatloads of people from arriving in Australia by intercepting them on the way here and sending them back, but there is no evidence that I have seen about where they end up. Now we are seeing just how hollow this claim is.  It is becoming clear th...

I've been thinking about human sacrifice lately.  A lot.  It's not a pleasant subject, but there seems to be a lot of it going around so it's hard to not talk about it, especially with the the Anzac centenary celebrations still ringing in my ears.  On the day after Anzac Day we even had the subject mentioned from our church pulpit.  It was a long time since I had felt so let down by my church. It was the Australian poet Les Murray who first made me aware of the place of human sacrifice in Australian religious attitudes.  His essay, 'Some Religious Stuff I Know About Australia', was published in 1982 in a book called The Shape of Belief:   Christianity in Australia Today  although I probably first read it some years later.  Here's what he had to say. Since the spiritual dimension universally exists in human beings, it has to be dealt with by them in some way or other; a sacramentally-minded Christian would say that it has to be fed.  It ...

One of the endearing things about Australia is that we are just as bad at national days as we are at national songs . Our supposed official national holiday, Australia Day, marks the day when the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove in 1788.  It provides a telling contrast with its US equivalent. Thanksgiving Day celebrates the anniversary of the pilgrim fathers' first harvest in New England, their heartfelt thanks at the progress of their new community of religious freedom far from the tyranny of their English oppressors. By contrast, very few of those who landed in Sydney Cove in 1788 were inclined to celebration.  Most of them were in chains, with their oppressors on hand and well armed to keep them down.  Nor were the soldiers who guarded them much more enthusiastic, sent on this posting to the ends of the earth to guard dangerous prisoners.  The original inhabitants were none too pleased either at having their best lands taken by these strangers. Our celebratio...

I remember travelling to Petrie as a child to play against the Pine Rivers soccer team.  It seemed like a long way away.  Reading Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland makes it seem even further.   Tom Petrie was born in Scotland in 1831.  In that same year his father Andrew accepted a post as supervisor of works in Sydney, and in 1838 the family transferred to the penal colony in Brisbane, then a ramshackle affair just over a decade old.  When Queensland was opened up to free settlement a few years later and his position was abolished, Petrie senior refused the offered transfer back to Sydney in favour of setting up his own building business in the younger colony, and the Petries became pillars of early Brisbane society. All this meant that Tom had a very unusual childhood.  Brisbane in 1838 was not really a community, it was a prison.  Although there were some women prisoners the population was dominated by male convicts and soldiers. ...