Painting Fakes

Here's the text of a letter I just sent by snail mail to our dear Prime Minister. Dear Prime Minister First of all, let me begin by congratulating you on your and your party's recent election win.  You have been handed a huge and difficult responsibility, and I pray for wisdom and compassion for you and your colleagues as you lead us over the coming three years. I should perhaps say, by way of honesty, that I didn't vote for your party.  I disagree with you on a number of things I regard as important.  However, one thing I know you and I will agree on is the value of a democratic system in which governments are elected and removed peacefully by the people.  This system requires all of us to compromise at times.  So I am happy to have the opportunity to graciously accept the choice of the majority of my fellow citizens, as I know you would have graciously accepted the opposite outcome. I am also not a member of any political party, nor a loyalist. ...

Climate change and energy policy go hand in hand.  The biggest source of greenhouse gases, and the easiest to change, is electricity generation.  Of course we need to reduce emissions in other areas too but the electricity system, as a unified system relying on a relatively small number of large scale generators, is an ideal place to make a big impact.  No surprise, then, that in Australia this is the policy area that is most fraught, as politicians and industry players jostle for position and advantage while trying to deflect blame for things that go wrong.  Sometimes it seems impossible to get at the truth in the cacophony of mutually incompatible assertions and accusations. I've recently been trying to get more of a handle on this subject and among other things have just finished reading Matthew Warren's new book, Black Out: How is Energy-Rich Australia Running Out of Electricity? Warren is an energy economist who has worked for the Minerals Council of NSW, th...

I was sad to read Clive Hamilton giving short shift to the role of traditional religions (including Christianity) in dealing with the Anthropocene.  After all, I mix with quite a few Christians who are passionate and active on environmental issues. Still, I have to sadly admit that Clive has a point.  Christian climate activists are decidedly in the minority.  Aid agencies like TEAR  and lobby groups like Common Grace  and ARRCC have picked up the issue, but many Christians are disengaged and it is not something that has been talked about regularly in any of the churches I have been part of.  When it does come up there will be the predictable skeptics and deniers, but many Christians will respond that while it's true and important, it's much more important for Christians to 'preach the gospel', by which they generally mean 'make converts'. I find this frustrating but also familiar.  It is exactly the same response I have heard over many year...

A few years ago I read Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough  by Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss.  The authors examine the ubiquity of over-consumption in Western societies, what drives it, why we keep doing it even though it doesn't make us happy, and some ideas for countering it. I remember agreeing with it, but largely from the standpoint that I had heard it before.  Back in 1975, the English theologian and later bishop John V Taylor wrote a little book called Enough is Enough  which urged Christians to resist the temptation to over-consume.  I still remember his advice to families watching TV - when the ads come on, cover your ears and shout 'Who are you kidding?'. I haven't really been paying attention to Hamilton since then, but recently I saw a reference to his book Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene  in an article I was reading and decided to check it out.  I'm both glad and sad that I did.  Glad because it i...

Australia has many myths about its history, and particularly about our history of invasion and dispossession of Aboriginal people.  Among them are the myth that Australia was terra nullius , an empty land, prior to the arrival of the British; the idea that Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers who roamed randomly around the country; and the idea that the Europeans named the various parts of the country , as if they did not already have names. Each of these myths has been comprehensively busted, but many Australians remain unaware of this fact.  Other myths also remain alive. Rosalind Kidd is a Queensland historian whose main work has been on the administration of Aboriginal affairs in Queensland.  At the start of the 1990s she was given access, through the intervention of Aboriginal academic and activist Marcia Langton, to the files of Queensland's Aboriginal Affairs Department going back to the foundation of the colony.  Aside from her doctoral thesis, the ma...

So I fell off my bike.  No-one helped me do it, I was not a victim of anti-cyclist road rage or a careless driver using their mobile phone.  I was just riding down Mt Gravatt one morning six weeks ago after a little bit of rain and the wheels slipped out from under me. I landed on my right shoulder.  Quite hard.  I broke my collarbone, bruised a rib and did something or other to my hip which meant I couldn't walk.  Six weeks on my hip is getting better although I'm still limping a bit, my rib is still slightly sore and I have a metal plate holding my collarbone together so it is gradually healing. Still, it's not all bad.  At least I get an opportunity to learn stuff.  Here's some things I've learned. 1. Don't Fall Off Actually I already knew this.  It's just that now I know it more.  Don't ride too fast for the conditions.  Concentrate around the bends.  Brake appropriately.  Etc etc.  Hindsight is a wonderful thin...

I don't watch breakfast TV.  I have better things to do with my day.  On the odd occasions I've seen these shows, usually sitting in a waiting room somewhere, they strike me as cheap filler for the time of day when no-one is really watching.  People sitting in a studio talking about stuff, much of it inane; paid product promotion; news updates; stunts.  On the odd occasion a host says something controversial it is tempting to see it as a publicity stunt, a way of creating the illusion that the show has some substance. So I was tempted to leave Kerri-Anne Kennerley's spat with Yumi Stynes alone.  I know little about Kennerley, and had never heard of Stynes before their argument hit the headlines. I was also tempted to leave the issue to the various articulate Aboriginal people who have objected to the comments.  However, I remember that years ago when Pauline Hanson first achieved fame on the back of racist comments, a senior Aboriginal person said t...