As a poet, Rinehart makes a great billionaire

Thank you, Gina Rinehart. As the editor of a long-running poetry journal, I thank Rinehart for putting the noble art of verse in the media spotlight.

The critics, as Rinehart knows, are harsh. They criticise your poetry. They criticise your attempts to become a media magnate. They are probably going to abduct your children. That could be handy, because you don’t like your children very much, but that is nobody else’s business. Get off my lawn.

But in all the talk of Rinehart as a crazy person, people are forgetting what matters — the poetry. Australia, it’s time to assess Rinehart’s work dispassionately, in content and structure.

‘Our Future’ (the full ode below) attempts a noble challenge: the rendering of economic theory and politico-economic ideology into stirring verse. Some call it impossible to include phrases such as “special economic zones” in a fluid and aesthetically pleasing poem. Those people are right. But Rinehart doesn’t let that stop her. If it doesn’t fit, she’ll shoehorn the bastard in there anyway.

The first thing you notice about Rinehart’s poem is that it passes the Crusty Old Bugger in a Pub test. Namely, it rhymes. Second, she starts out with noble intent. She’s read The Man from Snowy River. She knows poems go dum-de-dum. And in fact, the first two lines are in almost functional iambic pentameter.

If that phrase scares you, it just means there is an unstressed syllable followed by an emphasised syllable. That pattern repeats five times, for 10 syllables in total, which in combination form a line. Viz:

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life.

Obviously Rinehart is aware of the metre, as she’s thrown the word “now” into that second line to maintain it. Her only false step is “debt”, which doesn’t work as an unstressed syllable before a stressed “pov(erty)”. I might have suggested “with economies in strife”, had she had the forethought to seek my professional opinion. (Hint, Gina: good poetry editors are pretty freaking thin on the ground.)

In terms of content, it is perhaps a little dubious to hear sad tales of poverty from the person stewing in the most obscene swill of mineral cash in the entire country. For those who do want a better life, the poet in question would be in a better practical position to help them than any other Australian. Set up farms across the sub-Saharan belt? Still got change to play blackjack with Kerry Packer’s ghost. Dengue fever in India? Scrub it off like the Spray and Wipe chick. A team of mercenaries to take out Bashar al-Assad? Her PA would have his scalp in Gina’s inbox before she’d finished her morning muffin.

Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth
And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth

Not bad, not bad. The metre is a bit frayed, but still there in intent. Maybe a slight reshaping would help: “Their hopes are the resources buried deep within the earth / And the enterprise and capital which make ‘em what they’re worth.” Always read the lines aloud to yourself. Plus, the abbreviation of “them” gives it a nice bush-ballad feel, no? True blue and that. But then, we start to go off the rails …

Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax
The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore
This type of direction is harmful to our core

The first line of those four abandons metre, as rhetoric stirs from its meat-coma and begins to lick its spit-flecked jaws. Every bad poet loves adjectives. Who can resist “massive”? Who can resist an awkward phrase like “political hacks”? And then we get to that third line, which actually came from an Institute of Public Affairs white paper.

Poetry is basically about making something sound good, or putting across a new and interesting way of seeing. This sounds like a Joe Hockey press conference submerged in tomato soup. The line is overly long and awkward, the Bruce Reid of this poem, which is then followed by the Danny de Vito, jammed in there as an afterthought while Gina tried to think of something to rhyme with “offshore”.

Rhetoric is off the leash now, and it roams like the Beast of the Apocalypse (either Biblical or the weird creature in The Brotherhood of the Wolf). Those who criticise Rinehart for being insanely rich and still bitching about taxes are “envious unthinking people” who think wealth is magically created. (To be fair, inheriting an immense mining company does help sprinkle a bit of fairy dust on the old investment portfolio.) Rinehart is hurt and troubled by their attitudes.

And then, the final four lines: a crescendo of disjointedness, as both reason and poetic technique disintegrate.

Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores

One, the long line/short line thing again. Rinehart is getting all Ogden Nash on us here, if you replace the wit with self-righteous indignation. Two, “embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores” just doesn’t cut it as a line. Does that sound good to you? Does that ring with the authority of naturalistic rhythm and truth? Is this question rhetorical?

Three, is it strictly fair to equate “embrace multiculturalism” with “bring in a bunch of really cheap foreigners for a while to make us arseloads of cash and then make sure to send the dirty buggers back to wherever it is they came from”? The second phrase is even more unwieldy in a poetic sense, but I feel it cuts closer to the essential truth of the matter.

The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.

Ah, the crowning triumph. “Special economic zones” bounding in like a photobomber of verse, resting its nuts on the crown of poetry’s head. Again, the not-so-delicious irony of an appeal on behalf of the world’s poor. Not to labour a point here, but we are talking about the richest man, woman, or erotic llama masseuse in the country. And yet, this is about philanthropy.

The poor need our resources. Not for free of course, for an appropriate fee. So, the world’s poor need to buy shit from Gina Rinehart. Do not leave them to their fate of not buying shit from Gina Rinehart. Do not abandon them.

And you know, as it happens, those things that are in the interests of the world’s poor just so happen to be in the interests of making Gina Rinehart wealthier. Not that that’s the issue here. It’s just a coincidence. Rinehart just loves art and literature, and really, guys, this is all about the poor.

Rinehart’s philanthropy, it seems, is much like her iambic pentameter. It can be applied when it suits, and abandoned when it becomes inconvenient.

Yep. Poetic licence revoked.

Our Future

The globe is sadly groaning with debt, poverty and strife
And billions now are pleading to enjoy a better life
Their hope lies with resources buried deep within the earth
And the enterprise and capital which give each project worth
Is our future threatened with massive debts run up by political hacks
Who dig themselves out by unleashing rampant tax
The end result is sending Australian investment, growth and jobs offshore
This type of direction is harmful to our core
Some envious unthinking people have been conned
To think prosperity is created by waving a magic wand
Through such unfortunate ignorance, too much abuse is hurled
Against miners, workers and related industries who strive to build the world
Develop North Australia, embrace multiculturalism and welcome short term foreign workers to our shores
To benefit from the export of our minerals and ores
The world’s poor need our resources: do not leave them to their fate
Our nation needs special economic zones and wiser government, before it is too late.

Gina Rinehart

 

Article first published on Crikey.

Christmas, or How I learned to stop wishing a violent death on reindeer

One more sleep till D-Day… but this year, I’ve actually felt good about Christmas. It’s not a familiar feeling. In my adult life, Christmas tradition has involved ambivalence tending to hostility, a fortnight of creeping despair, then curling up after a bottle of cognac to cry in a corner and throw up mince on the rug. Many of those years, if the bloke in the red suit had existed, I would have left him out a roast leg of venison and hoped that the reindeer could smell it on his clothes. No doubt many of us go through stages like this, where we want to go out and club a ringy-dingy elf right in the head.

And no wonder. The season can’t compete with how it was as a kid, when days were as long as novels and “Ten more minutes” was a judicial sentence. The heat somehow arrived earlier. The lead-up to Christmas stretched out to the horizon, as afternoons led a charge deep into the evenings and the grass dried to gold. Stepping outside to air already hot before we’d dressed for school. The toy shops excruciating in their possibility. The advent calendar crawling by, glue and crappy chocolate marking days that dragged out their final demise like a row of dying grandparents. We packed three summers in before the holidays even began, then those final few pre-Christmas days, the wonder of a sky still light at 8pm, peeking through the leaves behind the little church at Research, the chirping of insects mixing with the sound of carols and the smell of evening air.

But with adolescence, the scale of time compacted like osteoporotic spines on a Bolivian bus ride. December came too soon each year, this unwelcome guest that muscled its way in, a bunch of K-Mart catalogues telling us how we should feel. The migraine stink of high-gloss paper and the shriek of Harvey Fucking Norman drill sergeants hounding us down our hallways into discount whitegood dreams.

Perhaps it was spending those early days in stifling primary-school portables that had conjured the feel of endless summer. But with our internal hormone supernovae boiling through our skins, we faced the world with simmering resentment. While still too close to childhood, and too disgusted by children, to allow nostalgia to flourish, we recognised the shift. Like most of life before the hormones hit, Christmas had been easy, and now it was not. Whatever it was, it was dead to us.

That view persisted. So with adulthood, and the options that it made available, I slowly withdrew from Christmas, an ever-more-peripheral participant. The year I dealt roulette at Melbourne’s casino was the death knell, and not just from being rostered on Christmas Day. While previous employees will no doubt remember fondly Kerry’s staff hampers (probably since axed by James), I remember the cas floor playing a 50-minute loop of Christmas songs on repeat from November through to February. Ten times a shift, five shifts a week…

Nor are we talking some classy Stille Nacht chorale here, but the most gut-churning discharge of kitsch to be excreted, hot and thick and yellow, from the pus-gland of the season – think ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ sung by seasons-old reality TV contestants, or some Bing Crosby fake doing Busty the Snowman (ten percent of the lyrics changed to avoid royalties), all sung in that breathy, idiot-grinning voice that fuckwits use to speak to children. As corny as an Aztec turd in a tortilla, and about as appealing.

On Christmas Eve, with a packed table in front of me and the dull drumbeat of murder behind my eyes, I spun a floater – one of those anomalies of physics where the ball hangs on the divider between two numbers for several minutes and refuses to drop. The only recourse is to wait. ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ filled the interim, caressing our ears like a gang of chainsaws fighting in fast-forward.

When the ball finally fell, away from the number that an agonised gentleman’s pulsing forehead veins had been urging, all I could say was a cheery “Looks like the Baby Jesus doesn’t love you!” as I swiped the table clean. My humanity had crawled back within some dim recess to die, and dragged the twitching corpse of Christmas with it.

From then on, Christmas saw me travelling, working, only using it as a means to examine other places. Years ticked by but that ambivalence remained undimmed. Then last December, recently returned from a long trip away, I led a house party in a 3am chorus of ‘Jerusalem’. After the neighbours yelled at us, my friend Em suggested I should come to carols that week.

“Arrright, sure…” I said, extricating myself from a fence.

“No, you’re just drunk,” she said. “As if you’ll do it.”

She was right about the first part. But as with many, alcohol in my system will see even the most innocuous challenge met with bloody-minded resolve. “Oh really? Is that right? As if. I’ll totally do it. I’ll go the day before. I’ll see allll the carols before you even get there. Whatever. I don’t care. Hey, chips.”

Drunken honour being what it is, I went. Em’s old school choir sang in the sweeping vault of St Paul’s. Those songs started creaking themselves out of the dusky corners of memory. Once in Royal David’s City, stood a… whosy-whatsit… yeah…

And all of a sudden it just felt right. I mean, I’m no fan of any religious doctrine, never sure why long-dead cultures should define our moral code. Something doesn’t quite gel about taking our cues on sexual conduct from people who thought that impregnating twelve-year-olds was a pretty sweet way to pass your day. But the more harmless traditions can be comforting, and there is much to admire in the Church’s art. In the strains of those songs and the glow of candles, the clock wound back. A certain stiffness of the heart fell away. Something felt like Christmas, and I left smiling.

I spent the next two weeks in my family home. The service had tagged a starting point, and now there was a prelude, not just December tripping over itself into a pile of tinsel. In the days leading up, I sat in the house where I was raised, the doors open on their screens, my father playing the piano, my mother mixing Christmas cakes dense as antimatter on the broad kitchen bench.

All those twinges from childhood came back. The memory of heat. Up late at night, when that alone had an illicit thrill. Coming down the stairs in short pyjamas, a tree all pulsing colour and gold. The residual happiness from singing, latent food aromas behind the sharpness of fresh pine.  A sense of ease, like everything and everyone was sitting back, the way Dad and I would sit together late when it was too hot to sleep, an hour or more without a word. The insects talked for us and the leaves were still and the night air gave warmth and sustenance like amniotic fluid. That and the quiet and the lights dimmed to burnt orange made it feel like we were floating in amber.

Yesterday, collecting a sack of dead poultry from my parents’ butcher, I drove past my old primary school, yawning vacant with holidays. On a whim I stopped and wandered in, for the first time in uncounted years. Between worrying that I would be picked up by the cops as the world’s tardiest kiddy-fiddler (come on man, iCal that shit), I was struck by those things I’ve read to cliché but hadn’t yet experienced. How the whole place seemed to have been miniaturised, its most epic expanses shrunk to a few dozen steps. How strange and yet familiar it was – around the new buildings and refigurations were the old roofs I’d climbed, old railings I’d sat on, the path to my Grade 5 classroom leading to a portable that was no longer there. Concrete trailing off into long grass like a half-finished sentence.

Across the road, the church whose yard had once meant Christmas had now been turned into a childcare centre, the old shortcut to the shops fenced off, the short sharp hill where I broke my leg landscaped to a child-friendly gradient. But the sense of it remained. Our early lives can be that close, if only we reach out for them. Poignant moment of reflection aside, I got home to learn that Dad had managed to trip over the dog and fall into the pool with the whipper-snipper.

This Christmas, I count my blessings. Despite their efforts, my parents and my sisters are alive and well. One sister is far from us in Canada, but she is safe and she is whole. This is not the case for so many families, who live with painful gaps around their table.

And this year, Christmas feels right. December’s skies are gold and salmon-pink, the evenings lie open in their mildness. Tonight I will meet my friend for carols again, and sing those songs that won’t seem so unfamiliar. Afterwards, late, I’ll sit in my family kitchen, hulling stone fruit, listening to the piano. Then sitting, still, lights dimmed to amber. And tomorrow my family will wake in a leisurely fashion, no small people driving us to early-morning ritual. We’ll cook, and eat, and make each other cry with laughter, and choose not to wonder how many more repeats of this we’ll be allowed. The season has its stories. Through them all is that little stomach-twist of anticipation, an echo of what I felt as a child. I can feel it stirring.

And so this is Christmas. And what have we done? We’ve done this. Not the way that junk-mail brochures told us it should be, but this, our own thing, that we have made. My lifetime’s worth of stories, and the gratitude that the collection may be added to. However long it took, I’m glad I found my way back to them in the end.

 

 

 

 

First published on The Punch.

Talking on the internet

Morning all. If you want to chat to me on the internet today, I’ll be live-blogging the first Test against New Zealand, over at The Roar.

The link is below, all comments and conversations welcome.

http://www.theroar.com.au/2011/12/01/test-cricket-australia-vs-new-zealand-live-scores-blog-day-one/

The life and death of Peter Roebuck: a good man, a bad man, or something in between

I was late to hear about Peter Roebuck’s death. Camping in a state forest near Narrandera, with New South Welsh clocks showing the early hours of Sunday, it was just one part of an outside world kept at bay. Come Monday evening, the news as fresh a shock as in any earlier iteration, I found myself tracing the story’s evolution back to its beginning.

The process has been desperately sad. As a fellow writer of sport, I held Roebuck above most others. As someone for whom cricket is about emotional resonance more than entertainment, Roebuck’s voice was part of my life, the soundscape of summer nostalgia as much as highway air past the car window or the shriek of seagulls.

At the same time, while bleakly, it has been instructive and fascinating to see how the various strands of media handle a case so complex and ambiguous. Roebuck has died leaving more question marks than the most enthusiastic YouTube commenter, and given the closed nature of South African policing, straight answers may never be forthcoming.

Reports through Sunday were brief, bare, and often wrong. Found dead in a hotel room. Fallen from a window. Police had spoken to him earlier that day. Were with him at the time. Visions of foul play circled thick and dark as evening bats.

On Monday came the obituaries. “Tragedy far greater than 47 all out has struck cricket, and this should be a Roebuck column. But it isn’t one, and can’t be one, and never will be one again, because the tragedy is Peter Roebuck. He is dead.” So wrote Greg Baum, in a front-page piece choked with emotion. Details were still hazy, but the final sentence of Baum’s quote was deemed the important part. Responses flowed accordingly – Neil Manthorpe, Vic Marks, Tim Lane all paid their respects.

As early as Monday night though, online reports were emerging, passed on in Tuesday’s papers. That Roebuck had been accused of sexual assault, that the visiting police were of the relevant ilk. That investigations were underway.

The eulogies, of course, have been heartfelt, mostly from colleagues and friends. In general coverage, though, the overwhelming sensation has been uneasiness, a media shifting awkwardly on its chair. As yet, they still don’t have a fix on this story. They want Roebuck to be A Good Man or A Bad Man. The prospect that someone might be both is too much to bear.

The stakes, given the conservative presentation of news, are high. No outlet wants to say nice things about someone who turns out to be Bad, or ill about someone Good. Early reports had more hedges than ever shared an advertising hoarding with Benson.

But ultimately, the lure of the lurid is strong. While Fairfax papers have stood by their man, others here and overseas have been sketching an unpleasant narrative, though one built sufficiently on insinuation and clever positioning that it can be backed away from at short notice.

Essentially, it is the suggestion of Roebuck as a long-term sexual exploiter of boys.

The main thing mentioned in each suggestive news piece, and embraced by vicious blogs as vindication, is the current accusation of assault. Apparently a reminder is due that allegations do not equal guilt, and that sexual impropriety is both the easiest charge to make and the hardest to dispel. Just ask Anwar Ibrahim.

The accusation itself has been given little study. Various reports have it as an ‘attempted sexual assault’, a hazy concept if ever there were one. Attempting a nightclub kiss could be classed as such if the recipient were not amenable.

It is in keeping with the implied narrative that every report refers to the complainant specifically as a “young man”. The man was 26, not the youth implied. To suggest he lacked the capacity to deflect an advance is specious.

Then there’s the possibility of a set-up, which no report I’ve read has yet considered. There are two potential motivations. Sexual accusations are frequently used in blackmail, especially in poorer countries. A high-profile foreigner with a seemingly large supply of philanthropic dollars, Roebuck would have been an obvious target.

Or something bigger? Roebuck was the single most outspoken critic of Zimbabwean politics in the cricketing world. He knew a lot about the country, and castigated ZanuPF politicians and Zimbabwe Cricket Board officials specifically and by name. Much of the diplomatic pressure on Zimbabwe comes from cricketing nations like Australia and Britain, who are more often than others minded of its existence. Roebuck was a wicked acacia thorn in Mugabe’s side.

Trading on one infamous incident in Roebuck’s past, a sexual allegation would be a most effective means of discredit. That a Zimbabwean national should make the accusation within days of Roebuck’s arrival in Africa, after seeking him out online and arranging a hotel meeting, is worthy of note and investigation. Strange that no allegations were ever made in the many years Roebuck spent in Australia.

After the assault allegations, most reports have also touched on Roebuck’s charity house in Pietermaritzburg. Again, the emphasis is on age, citing “young men” and often “boys”. The “boys” in question are mostly in their mid-20s and going through university. The coaching of language gives a different impression.

Look, says the implication. Here is a young African man accusing Roebuck of assault. Here are other young African men under his care and control. Some of the internet’s fouler repositories have taken this to its furthest conclusion, painting Roebuck as a colonialist pervert creating stockpiles of the vulnerable to satisfy his rampant demand for flesh. They have even read sexual malice into some of his sponsored orphans calling him ‘Dad.’

The suggestions are beyond obscene. Roebuck’s students past and present have greeted his death with shock and grief, and described him in glowing terms, as a generous man and a genuine father figure. Not one has suggested any impropriety on his part. Not one has been asked how they feel about his life’s best work being twisted into de facto evidence against him.

All this nudging, rustling, and whispering is essentially based on the one incident. In 1999, we’ve been told countless times in the last few days, Roebuck caned three white South African cricketers. This was well before his charity work started, when he was taking on aspiring players in England for a training regime.

The cricketers are always described as “boys”, despite being 19, and perfectly old enough to have told him to go and jump if they had chosen. The only one contacted by the media this week said he bore Roebuck no ill will, and described him as “a brilliant mind”.

Yes, it’s an odd one, but the level of assumption is unsupportable. Every report has implied a sexual aspect to the caning, when Roebuck belonged to a generation that was routinely caned at school. Much has been made of the judge’s line about it being “done to satisfy some need in you”, without quoting the subsequent sentence in which he refers to establishing a position of power, not to getting one’s rocks off.

This doesn’t mean I’m here to make the case for caning. But presumptions about things that don’t involve you are easy to get wrong. The most prosaic intent can become sinister in the telling. In 2003, I was spotted breaking into a Carlton apartment and leaving with a bag of women’s underwear. As it happened, my girlfriend’s faulty front door latch sometimes needed to be popped with a credit card, and it was my turn to make the run to the laundromat. Cuff me.

Whatever happened in Roebuck’s case, the caning trial was an utter humiliation, and probably the lowest point of his life. He went to ground afterwards, and thought about staying down. Whether he did or didn’t have a case to answer in South Africa, it seems likely that his memory of that first case led to his fatal despair in contemplating fighting another.

It is a sad end. Alive, Roebuck could perhaps have cleared his name. Now, the investigation will likely trail off. Conjecture will continue. The nation’s news services will maintain their vacillation between respecting the revered writer and sniping at the potential villain. We probably won’t get an answer. Roebuck will neither become a comfortably Good Man nor an entirely Bad one. Like the hypocritical mass of the rest of us, he’ll fall somewhere in between.

First published on Crikey.

Tie the Kangaroo down, Joyce

Jesus motherloving Christ. If Alan Joyce is making a late bid for Twat of the Year 2011, then he’s eating daylight on his competitors. On Saturday the Qantas CEO shut down worldwide operations of one of the planet’s biggest airlines, in an over-reaction that made King Lear look pretty chill.

Like one of those seasoned chooks you get all ready for roasting, some things come pre-satirised. On Friday, Joyce asked shareholders at Qantas’ annual general meeting to give him a pay rise of 71 percent, from under $3 million a year to about $5 million. They did. The next day, he shut down their company entirely, because of the “extreme demands” of workers. First prize, Alan. Believe.

Where unions have to give 72 hours notice of any action, Joyce gave zero hours. He stranded 68,000 people worldwide, upended the plans of tens of thousands more, and lost an unquantifiable number of future bookings.

And why? To force an advantage in an industrial dispute that was nowhere near crisis point. To stand on a milk crate in a pissing contest. And he got just the elevation he was after. An emergency sitting of the Fair Work Australia tribunal handed down its orders at about 2.30 this morning, terminating all Qantas industrial action – both the grounding and any strikes by unions. This was just what Qantas counsel had campaigned for from minute one of the hearing.

Planes could be up as early as this afternoon. But the scope of cancellations to date has already seen foreign leaders miss connections home from CHOGM. It will leave a huge dent in the Spring Racing Carnival, one of Victoria’s biggest weeks for tourism. 300 remote area doctors were stuck in Alice Springs with no way to reach their patients. And it happened to be smack bang in the middle of what is for many people a five-day weekend.

From all appearances, Joyce timed it to cause as much damage and disruption as possible. He gave no warning deliberately. He knew the chaos his airline could cause, and how much pressure it would place on the government. “Qantas apologise for any inconvenience caused” should be met with a hiss. The amount of inconvenience caused has been carefully maximised.

Imagine for a second that unions had shut down the airline without a minute’s forewarning. There would be calls for them to be criminally liable. For them to be disbanded. The Opposition would be tearing into the government tooth and claw.

Joyce wants to blame unions regardless, but it won’t save his reputation, nor that of Qantas. In his media blitz yesterday, as repercussions manifested in the form of stressed, worn, and teary passengers, Joyce was standing among the wreckage of the company he’s supposed to run, congratulating himself on his “bold decision”. Here was a man who wanted to get rid of the possums in his roof, so called in a napalm strike.

The reek of ego, rutting in the streets and smearing its musk on mailboxes, is the inescapable odour wafting through Melbourne’s streets in these quiet hours before dawn. From his comments on Sunday, Joyce was tired of negotiating. Manufacturing a crisis gave him a chance to skip it. He clearly believes the FWA intervention will get his preferred result.

Qantas and the three unions in question now have three weeks to reach agreement before having one imposed on them by FWA. But with Joyce’s muscle-flex having demonstrated just how firmly he can twist the national arm behind its back, the odds for something favouring Qantas management look good.

But the most offensive thing isn’t disruption. These things happen, sometimes for the best of reasons. For mine, the offensive thing is Joyce’s level of spin. Yes, a part of Spring Carnival is the unmistakable tang of horseshit in the air. It’s just not usually contingent on a Qantas CEO opening his mouth.

For starters, Joyce lumps all three unions together: those of the engineers (ALAEA), the baggage handlers (TWU), and the long-haul pilots (AIPA). He tries to claim they have forced this decision, with rolling strikes in recent months costing $68 million, and an unsustainable wage demand.

Yet the pilots’ association has made no pay claim, nor taken any strike action. Their campaign, completely separate to those of the other unions, is about insisting that Qantas-trained pilots are used to fly Qantas-branded planes, rather than using cheaper offshore replacements.

In AIPA’s first industrial action in 44 years, the extent of the campaign has been to wear red ties bearing a slogan, and to mention the campaign in their pre-flight announcements. They haven’t delayed a single flight to date.

As for the rest of the strike, the TWU has recorded just six hours of industrial action in the past eight months. And according to the Daily Telegraph, a full month of industrial action by engineers in September still saw Qantas cancel fewer flights than the unaffected Jetstar.

I interviewed a Qantas domestic pilot on Saturday evening, who unsurprisingly asked not to be named. He claims limited industrial action can even suit management. “It gives the airline a chance to cancel whichever flights they want. Airlines cancel flights all the time for various reasons, like if a flight’s not full enough. It gives them a nice excuse to hand out to the public.”

No wonder everyone was blindsided. Action was still relatively minor. Qantas had not even suggested government mediation, the logical step when negotiations aren’t going well. It appears that Joyce decided it was beneath him to participate.

And where his magical $68 million loss comes from is as mysterious as Joyce’s other accounting. According to Joyce yesterday, his pay rise wasn’t really a pay rise. According to Joyce a few months back, 1000 Qantas jobs would be lost offshore. According to Joyce this weekend, that number was zero. As my pilot interviewee said, “He’s a mathematician, but he hasn’t done anything to show that he has the qualifications.”

Of course, it’s the offshore threat that is the sticking point in negotiations, with unions wanting some guarantee this won’t happen. Joyce’s plans are for exactly that to happen.

You can see the model with Qantas’ New Zealand routes: planes with Qantas flight numbers, Qantas paintwork, and Qantas uniforms, but staffed entirely by New Zealanders employed by a Qantas front called Jetconnect. The difference? Staff cost 40 percent less, receiving NZ dollars on an NZ pay scale.

You can extrapolate, then, what Joyce’s plans for a large Qantas subsidiary based in Asia would mean. If you think the exchange rate is good in Auckland, try Kuala Lumpur. Try Bangkok. Jetstar, which Joyce used to run, is already using Thai crew, who cost a couple of hundred bucks a month. An Australian would earn that in a day.

No wonder they quietly withdrew that John Travolta safety video. “There’s no-one I’d rather have at the controls than a Qantas pilot,” said the man who played Vincent Vega. Union scum.

In grounding the fleet with no warning, Joyce and his board showed utter disregard for their employees, their shareholders, and their public. Even a couple of days’ notice would have ameliorated the consequences.

Truly remarkable, isn’t it, that it didn’t occur to Joyce to mention the prospect at the AGM. As the Financial Review’s Marcus Priest wrote, “There will be some interesting questions of corporate disclosure and directors’ duties to be explored in any subsequent legal proceedings.”

But this is where his other great dance begins: regarding premeditation. Joyce claims that he and the board only decided on the lockout scheme on Saturday morning. It was in effect by 5 pm. Mate, it takes me longer than that to organise knock-off drinks.

Pilot union vice-president Richard Woodward says Qantas were booking thousands of hotel rooms days or even weeks ago to accommodate stranded passengers. At Saturday night’s initial FWA hearing, counsel for the APIA and the TWU requested documents which showed the pre-existence of plans. Qantas, surprisingly, opposed the move. Nothing to hide…

Counsel for Qantas Frank Parry also complained that in potentially being ordered to continue negotiations, “Qantas has been dragged in here at short notice and been presented with an untenable alternative”.

Barman, I’ll have a Bullshitski. You want short notice, talk to the people whose planes were recalled as they were taxiing to the runway. Ask the woman rushing to see her father before he died. The only party with any notice was Qantas – as much notice as they liked, since it was up to them to pick the date.

The denials, in the end, are impossibly juvenile. We’ve got a kid arm-deep in the cookie jar while querying the existence of baked goods. This is the way of Joyce’s regime. Just listen to his Inside Business interview with Alan Kohler – every single answer starts with a refutation. Everything is justified. Poor brave Alan made the difficult decision. That’s why they pay him the big bucks. And if you want a culprit, those bloody unions are to blame.

Of course, those of a certain view will always find a way to blame unions. The unions faked the moon landings. The unions gave me herpes. Union dingoes took my baby. The unions are the reason why my kids hate me and my wife never quite looks me in the eye anymore.

It’s all their fault. Oh, and sorry, for punching you in the face repeatedly, but I couldn’t solve the crossword this morning, so, take it up with The Times.

Even the great Americain, dropping a few horse-apples as he heads out to early trackwork this morning, can’t match the size of these Joycean steamers. A company which has not even asked for arbitration can’t suddenly claim last resort. A guy who initiates crisis can’t deflect responsibility.

“They are trashing our strategy and our brand. They must decide just how badly they want to hurt Qantas, their members… and the travelling public.” Said the man who shut down the airline. Said the man who fisted every customer for his own tactical advantage. Said the man who made headlines in papers round the world for the worst possible reason.

See? The bloke must have a beef with workers. He’s trying to put satirists out of a job as well.

 

 

 

This piece was originally published on The Punch.

Too many names

When he first came back from Afghanistan, in one of those whiskey-hazed nights whose memory seems to be viewed through the glass of a window louvre, my friend The Soldier led a late-night toast. He’s a fan of late-night toasts. I think it was just me and him that night, not one of those rabble-rousing, we-happy-few circles. One of his officers had lost an arm in front of him, to a roadside bomb. The Soldier had had a few close shaves of his own. He led a toast to every Australian who’d died there, said them all by name.

It was the fairly early days. There’d been a dozen, maybe less. It wasn’t something he had to think about. The forces felt each one personally.

Yesterday, we lost three more. And no-one is asking who will name the Afghans, a decade’s worth this year. Even the number of digits in their toll is blurring into nothing. Their names are powdered rock. An Afghan interpreter died yesterday. We heard about him afterwards, an addendum. Harvard style or MLA. Just be consistent.

I never know what to say to this war, to our involvement. You get the positives. The ground support for the engineers putting in infrastructure, building the schools and building the bridges. Things that will help people live lives. The stories from The Soldier – no starry-eyed nationalist – about looking into the faces of people you had helped or saved. The growing of goodwill. And then the others, the pissing of goodwill away. The ‘incidents’, the ‘unfortunate events’, the collateral, the thousands of dead who certainly didn’t make themselves that way. And would there be more or less of them if the foreigners weren’t there? And would the lives of those there are be better, or degrade?

In one way, it feels kneejerk to support it. Cheap patriotism, cocking your ears to the sound of jingo bells. The missionary conviction that we’re the enlightened ones who show the way. In another, the opponents are kneejerk too. Self-righteous lines about situations they won’t ever understand, safe indignation, having opinions about warzones when the most dangerous thing they’ve ever handled is a garlic crusher. The ones who say it’s not to do with us don’t understand what happens to the ground where people die. Blood colours a connection that can’t be scuffed away.

And on it goes, no answer. Bad results and good intentions. Good results and repercussions. Little victories, grieving brothers. Breathing harder, bleeding hearts and beads of moisture. Beer and water. Scores of things don’t go to order. Out on orders, scouting, ration packs and stats and sleep disorders. Boys who fought in Afghan deserts, local peasants rise and fade, and join up with that number that nobody here could tell you, that no-one’s ever heard. And three more Australians die, and add them to the list: the other list whose paint is clear. And now we mark them off. I can’t recall the tally now, how many have we got? They had their tour: thirty nights of boredom for each hour of rising flame. By this point, even The Soldier would struggle to memorise their names.

 

 

 

 

Her Majesty the Queen versus Steve Irwin

The Queen has just left my home town, and my veins are singing with royal joy.

My copy of What Crown Jewel Is That? remains on the passenger seat. My monarch-watching trousers are still hung over the balustrade. I can’t quite bring myself to wash them yet, retaining as they do the faint odour of a divine mandate to rule.

And they may yet get another run – I’ve heard a rumour that she might be back for Cup Day. I’ve heard a rumour that she’s part-gecko. I’ve heard a rumour that she might be riding Americain. I’m looking forward to having a fiver on her.

Sometimes, in writing articles, I say things like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be nice if cops didn’t punch people in the head for standing in the street?” And then other people say “WHY DON’T YOU JUST HAND OUR COUNTRY OVER TO STALIN AND BOB BROWN YOU ANARCHO-CHAMPION OF THE LEFT.”

I don’t like being called left-wing, basically because most people who call themselves left-wing are wicked annoying. As are most who call themselves right-wing. Unless they are birds discussing methods of penmanship. (Penbirdship? No, that’s the editor of The Punch.)

So if you thought I wanted to tear down all of our traditional societal structures and replace them with IVF clinics for Afghan whales, I’m going to have to disappoint. See, I quite like the Queen. In fact I’m all for her.

The last few days, we’ve been harvesting frames from the beehive at my house. It’s had me thinking. In many ways, Queen Elizabeth II is like the queen bees in our hives. I mean, she lays up to 2,000 eggs a day. A grille called a ‘queen excluder’ keeps her from the harvestable combs. When a rival queen emerges she will lead a swarm of followers to start a new hive in our next-door-neighbour’s plum tree.

And yet republicans in Australia don’t like her. They’re a weird bunch. They come out once in a while and try to get everyone stirred up, and fail, and leave in a cloud of disgruntled muttering. Imagine that at your next house party, half a dozen people suddenly proposed that you all join a passionate campaign to bring back Young Talent Time, hosted by some Australian Idol wash-up.

Well, sure, you say. You… could do that. It could even be achieved. But why the hell would you bother?

Australian republicans don’t realise that they are purely ornamental. Like rubber vine leaves in your water feature (why not just have a real vine?). Like pointless zips on pretend pockets in your stupid jeans (why not just have real pockets?). Like Australian republicanism (why not have a real issue?).

Royal visits are the times when journalists are most likely to try and source republicans for comment, but it’s also exactly the time when most of those republicans get awfully shy and polite about it.

“Um,” they say, “well, just me personally, I think perhaps it’s time we moved on, politically…and…”

And why are they so shy and polite? Because the Queen is around and they don’t want to upset her. Because by their very nature they can’t help showing deference. It’s almost like she was born to reign over you or something, you snivelling serfs. Now harvest some grain.

You would think that this monarchist view would enrage the leftoid pinko bilby-chakra audience, even though they probably won’t notice because they’re busy Occupying everything from Green’s Head to Deniliquin Bakery.

But even they, friends. Even they. When Her Madge came to Melbourne, the Occupy movement welcomed her, and declined to protest. The Queen, they said, she goes alright. She’s a nice old bird. Don’t be rude. Somebody tuck those bloody shirts in.

The logical snag I’ve always hit with the republican campaign (though calling it a campaign is like throwing wet Scotch Fingers at a wall and calling it an artillery barrage) is that there is actually no good reason for seeing it through.

Why have a republic, we ask? And the answer is always an Arnott’s Assorted of generalisations and aphorisms. Own two feet, they say. Tied to apron strings. Young nation. Forging own identity. At the end of the day. Takes one to know one. Seven brides for seven brothers.

Then there’s some emotive rhetoric about moving on and grasping our future and evolution, as though the British monarchy is totally holding us back from our dreams, and making us stay home on Saturday nights, and saying we have to wear a bike helmet even though it totally messes up our hair and Jason Franks isn’t going to think we’re hot.

In fact the British monarchy couldn’t be doing a better job of leaving us alone, and has no real power over Australia in any case.

Getting rid of it would just be a hassle. We’d have to change the money and the stamps and the flag and the national anthem. (On second thought, please change the national anthem. The Wiggles. Khe Sanh. Anything.) There’d be interminable bitch-fights about every replacement. They’d throw it open to public voting. The new flag would be a picture of Alan Jones giving a thumbs-up while rooting a Four N Twenty pie.

And those are just the bare practicalities. See, unlike the republican arguments, the arguments against a republic are specific and real.

Like this one. If you don’t have a Queen, you don’t have a prime minister. If you don’t have a prime minister, you have to have a president. And if you have a president, do you know what you’re going to get?

Jeff Kennett. Or Eddie McGuire. Or Steve Irwin. I know he’s dead, but it’s our country now. Keep your rules, England, we’ll do whatever we want!

You’re going to get whoever is the cockiest and most ruthless bastard in the climb to the top, because then there’d be a chance they actually get to be the boss.

A constitutional monarchy is an excellent system of government. You have the Prime Minister and the Parliament who hold the power to propose and enact legislation, and to make executive decisions. Above them, you have the symbolic power of the monarch.

The monarch holds no actual executive power. Yet the government is appointed by and responsible to the monarch. There is a crucial psychological barrier there. Even the prime minister is still only the most senior servant of the Queen.

Presidents, on the other hand, have no-one above them. Where prime ministers can never quite treat the country as their personal possession, presidents can. Ironically, it’s the presence of the monarch that stops Australia being treated like a kingdom.

There’s just no reason to get rid of the Queen. She’s not hurting anyone. To the contrary, Queens are awesome. And old. You already know what we do with old things. We restore them. We maintain them.

There’s always a period of historical contempt for whichever era currently sits at medium distance. When buildings are 50 years old, everyone hurries to knock down. When they near 100, we have community protests to protect them, and wear out the word ‘quaint’.

The monarchy is a historical building. It must be kept, and it must be maintained, because it’s fascinating. It’s inextricably part of our history, and of world history. The institution costs some money to maintain, sure, but far less than the value it creates. How many people visit Buckingham Palace? How much cash flowed from the crowd at Fed Square? How many Wills-and-Kate commemorative colonoscopy pipes were sold?

Just as sometimes, at Christmas, even people who don’t buy into the whole God-made-me-pregnant excuse (and props to that chick for quick thinking) still quite enjoy going into a church and waving some incense about or singing some songs.

Why? Because ritual is nice. Tradition is nice. It’s comforting. You know how it’s supposed to go, and it goes that way. As your life seems to be constantly morphing like it were a cutesy animate French-Canadian blob of plasticine, here is something that more or less stands still. Something that makes you feel like you’re a part of something bigger.

On the wall of my house is a brittle, yellowed Leunig cartoon. It has been there since the republic referendum in 1999.

“Australia relax,” he says, “Have you forgotten how to enjoy Queens and Kings? Their beautiful golden carriages, their great castles and colourful flags? Their guards with swords?

“What’s the problem with that? Come on – your lips are all tight and pursed. Don’t be so mean and grim.

“If she waves, wave back. Try bowing if you please. It’s fun. Oh Australia, you’re all hyped up. Too much television and abstraction and caffeine. I double dare you to relax and have some Queen.”

And that, I’m afraid, seems to be the problem. Pursed lips, abstraction.

There are more than enough crapnesses going on in our world. Our cops are beating on people and denying it cold. Our Prime Minister couldn’t sell a cheeky foil to Keith Richards. Our Opposition Leader would send back Willy Wonka’s golden ticket with an angry letter.

You know who’s pretty sweet, though? The Queen. She’s nice to people. She pulls rocking crowds for an 85-year-old. She makes those people happy. There are a lot of them.

She represents dignity, she represents decency, and she represents history. She does all those things better than some president would do. And come on. Two thousand eggs a day. That’s impressive. So just relax. I’ll bring the bacon.

 

 

 

This piece was originally published on The Drum.