Painting Fakes

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 to a group of us t

So, today is the 231st anniversary of the first British convict fleet landing in Sydney Cove.  This was the beginning of the British invasion of Australia, but far from the end of it.  In my home town, home of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, and the surrounding country of peoples including the Quandamooka, Kabi Kabi and Mununjali, the invasion did not start in earnest until 1823.  In November of that year the surveyor Lieutenant John Oxley sailed through Quandamooka waters and slowly rowed up the Maiwar River, surveying as he went.  Unaware that the river already had a name, he renamed it the Brisbane River after his boss Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of NSW.  In consequence the surrounding land, originally called Meanjin, also came to be called Brisbane. Among more peaceful encounters with the land's owners was an ugly confrontation which resulted in a young Aboriginal man being shot and possibly killed.   A year later a small party of convicts and soldiers arrived to found a co

In Lady Windemere's Fan  Oscar Wilde has one of his characters define a cynic as someone who 'knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'.  This much quoted aphorism provides the title of Mariana Mazzucato's recent book, The Value of Everything: Making and taking in the global economy. Mazzucato is an academic economist, born in Italy, educated in the USA and currently working at University College, London.  Her central concern is, how does value get created in modern economies?  In an earlier book, The Entrepreneurial State,  she examines the often overlooked role of government in creating valuable and even game-changing innovations.  This book repeats some of that, but focuses mainly on the position of the financial industry.  Does this industry create value, or simply extract it? The problem, she says, is that economists, and hence the rest of us, are confused about what value actually is.  The classical economists - Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Ma

You might remember that I have a bit of a soft spot for disgraced Aussie cricketer David Warner.  It's irrational - after all, he cheated - but rationality is not everything. For those who came in late...  In March last year Warner, then Australia's cricket vice-captain, was suspended along with captain Steve Smith and fellow opening bat Cameron Bancroft for tampering with the condition of the ball during a test at Newlands, South Africa, and for lying about it afterwards.  Bancroft, at Warner's suggestion and with Smith's knowledge, applied sandpaper to the ball to rough up one side so it would swing.  Warner and Smith got 12 months, Bancroft got nine. In the last month, as the Aussie cricket season has rolled on, we have heard from both Smith and Bancroft.  Smith was first out of the blocks, featuring in some Vodaphone ads which neatly commercialise his suspension and doing a press conference as well as some interviews.  Here's one he did with former Auss

I am not a Christian because it makes logical sense or because I can prove the message to be true.  I am a Christian because the teachings and life of Jesus seem to me to be the best and most compelling guide to living a good life. A few years ago I read lots of apologetics of various sorts. It started with me reading some of the New Atheist writers - Dawkins , Dennett , Harris , Shermer - who were getting a lot of airplay.  With the exception of Shermer, these learned gentlemen all have a great certainty that religion is an ancient anachronism.  However, their efforts to refute religion are compromised by their failure to actually learn anything about the religions they are attempting to disprove.  Nuanced, mature faith just seems like a mystery to them - Harris even suggests that religious 'moderates' are dangerous because they provide cover for fundamentalists.  Dawkins seems to believe that if he can disprove young earth creationism he has therefore disproved religion.

In 2019, the National Rugby League will be played without Johnathan Thurston for the first time since 2001.  Cue the obligatory memoir! The latter part of Thurston's 2018 season was somewhat surreal. His North Queensland Cowboys had a terrible year and were out of title contention by mid-season.  Thurston himself was playing like a man who may possibly have stretched his career one season too many.  If his career had finished with his final on-field act of 2017 - overcoming a busted shoulder to kick a classic curling conversion from the sideline and win Queensland the second State of Origin game - that would have a been a more fitting farewell.  Yet everywhere he went he was feted, with opposing teams presenting him farewell gifts after each game. His final act on the field, so to speak, was perhaps an appropriate sign-off for both the season and the career.  The match was an otherwise inconsequential game between the Cowboys and the equally struggling Gold Coast Titans, played

So it's Christmas. For some reason this year I've been thinking of this wicked little poem by TS Eliot. The broad-backed hippopotamus Rests on his belly in the mud; Although he seems so firm to us He is merely flesh and blood. Flesh and blood is weak and frail,       Susceptible to nervous shock; While the True Church can never fail For it is based upon a rock. The hippo’s feeble steps may err In compassing material ends,       While the True Church need never stir To gather in its dividends. The ’potamus can never reach The mango on the mango-tree; But fruits of pomegranate and peach       Refresh the Church from over sea. At mating time the hippo’s voice Betrays inflexions hoarse and odd, But every week we hear rejoice The Church, at being one with God.   The hippopotamus’s day Is passed in sleep; at night he hunts; God works in a mysterious way— The Church can sleep and feed at once. I saw the ’potamus take wing Ascend

One of the prevailing myths of Australian history is that the European invaders who arrived after 1788 were the first to 'settle' the land.  In this story, the country's original inhabitants were nomadic hunter-gatherers, wandering randomly over the countryside plucking its riches without doing anything to create them. It's a myth that dies hard.  Our recent Prime Minister Tony Abbot (now, ironically, the government's 'special envoy on Indigenous affairs') loves to celebrate the wonders created by the arrival of the First Fleet. I guess our country owes its existence to a form of foreign investment by the British government in the then unsettled or, um, scarcely settled, great southern land. The arrival of the first fleet was the defining moment in the history of this continent. Yet over recent decades, historians have steadily chipped away at this myth.  Most Australians now know that Aboriginal people did not roam randomly, they travelled on a seas

I turn 57 this week.  I'm at the stage of life where each birthday is not so much a cause for celebration, cake and presents, as a reminder of the passing of time. My father lived to 77, so if this is any indication I might have about 20 years of life left.  Of course I am healthier than my Dad.  He smoked, and was overweight, and he died of heart failure.  I don't smoke, am barely overweight, and ride my bike to stay fit.  So perhaps I might live longer.  Maybe I have 30 years. Then again, my Mum was also much healthier than my Dad.  She didn't smoke, and never carried an ounce of extra weight.  But she was cut down by a brain tumour, and died at the age of 71.  So who knows, perhaps I only have 14 years. Perhaps next time I go for a ride I'll get cleaned up by a careless motorist and die on the spot. No-one knows the day or hour of their death. This might sound maudlin and a bit creepy, but I don't spend a lot of time worrying about it, to be honest. 

So, it seems that Scott Morrison is our new Prime Minister, less than a year out from the latest possible date from our next election.  This is hardly strange.  Each of our last four Prime Ministers has ascended to the post in exactly the same circumstances, unceremoniously booting their rival mid-term only to be booted just as unceremoniously some three years later.  The last PM not to lose their job this way, unless you count Kevin Rudd's mercifully brief second attempt at the role, was John Howard way back in 2007.  Old fashioned type that he is, he lost his job in the time-honoured manner by leading his party to a crushing election defeat and then retiring gracefully. In an immediate sense, each of these internal coups has been fuelled by dramas with opinion polls.  In each case, consistent polling over a number of months has shown that the government will lose power if it faces an election.  Mostly (especially with the switches to Rudd and Turnbull) they switched because