Austraya Day

Ah, Australia Day 2010.

Lest we forget that day 222 years ago when the British took ownership of Australia’s east coast and decided it was a good place for a prison.

Of course we’ve moved beyond that (to a certain extent) and now we celebrate our national day by going to the beach, having afternoon barbecues and studiously avoiding domestic beer.

The other favourite activity (for me, at least) is being embarrassed by ostentatious displays of nationalistic pride, particularly as the past few years have a seen a resurgence of the patriotic bogan.

You know, the ones that think “Australian” is some sort of tribal name, wield the flag like gang colours and proudly display a “Fuck Off We’re Full” sticker on their Holden ute.

Who doesn’t cringe inside when they see a cartoonish representation of the Southern Cross emblazoned across the torso of a guy for whom it was clearly a toss-up between that and a naked chick wrapped around a dagger?

Having said that, it’s better that the Australian-flag-under-torn-skin motif.

So on this day, let’s be cautious about our national face becoming one of hostility rather than welcome.

But let’s also remember that Australia is all about diversity.

And that even includes the dickheads who think it isn’t.

Calling All Literalists

Religion seems to be on the minds of some of our politicians, and for once it’s something other than dog-whistling for easy conservative votes.

Last week Coalition leader-in-waiting Joe Hockey made a speech to the Sydney Institute about the evils of religious ‘literalism’, and this week senator Nick Xenophon called Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’ that should have its tax-exempt status revoked. (I agree, but why stop at Scientology?)

I’d like to think it’s because the increasingly vocal atheist community is getting noticed as a potential vote-winner … but sadly, ‘tis not the case.

Hockey has no time for atheists, despite taking the same line as Dawkins on fundamentalists. The interesting thing though, is that he has no time for theists either.

Hockey wants to promote a kind of touchy-feely deism, where scriptures can be accepted or ignored as you like and God doesn’t intervene in the world in any meaningful fashion.

Sounds a lot like atheism doesn’t it?

It strikes me that that’s what moderates like Hockey effectively are. They just choose to eschew the label.

Why? Maybe it’s the desire to distance themselves from the Dawkinses and Hitchenses of the movement. Or maybe it’s the inexplicable desire to continue considering the bible a source of meaning and purpose.

Either way, I’d like to see more moderates calling out the literalists in their midst. But I can understand why many don’t.

After all, to remove the literalists from Christianity is to remove the movement’s core support base.

Without those who consider God an extant interventionist force, and the political and financial clout they bring with them, Christianity would be just another school of philosophy.

And not a particularly interesting one.

Hey Hey Let’s Not Overreact

I wasn’t going to weigh into this debate, but here goes.

Let’s get one thing very clear: a white person putting on make-up and pretending to be a black person is not inherently offensive.

This may seem obvious, but I have a feeling that this ridiculous Jackson Jive skit is going to cause some to disagree with that.

Let’s take a recent example: a few weeks ago the US series Mad Men had one of their white characters perform a minstrel show to an amused garden party.

Far from being offended, The New York Times (that bastion of liberal politics) hailed it as one of the best episodes of the series. So what’s the difference?

Simple. The Mad Men episode was relevant, poignant, funny and meant something.

The Jackson Jive skit? It wasn’t funny and it meant nothing.

It may have been a sad indictment on the state of Australian television but it said nothing about racism in Australia. If you want to find evidence of that just google “stolen generations” or “Cronulla riots”.

The point is that any reference to old American blackface shows in the Jackson Jive skit is a projection on the part of Americans. The performers weren’t aware of it.

Should they have been aware of it? Maybe. But maybe they’re just not as steeped in American culture as some of their detractors. That’s hardly a crime.

The people who should have known better were the producers of the show.

What the hell were they thinking getting Harry Connick Jr, not just an American but a white southern gentleman, to judge this thing? Did it not occur to them that he might be offended?

What next? Getting Cat Stevens to judge a pork-pie-eating contest?

No wonder it went viral. US cultural sensitivity around this stuff is running hot right now. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

What I’m worried about is this falling over into knee-jerk censorship, whereby any white actor in black make-up is automatically deemed censurable.

That would be a bad reaction.

Worse, it would mean we were giving trash like Hey Hey it’s Saturday an influence that it just doesn’t deserve.

The Rise of Atheism

Tickets for the 2010 Global Atheist Convention aka The Rise of Atheism, are now on sale!

Get your tickets here, and along with them your chance to meet Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Catherine Deveny, Philip Adams, Peter Singer, Robyn Williams and … me!

(I’ll just be hanging around being a fanboy, but still … come up and say hi!)

In an early shot at media coverage, religion columnist Barney Zwartz had a snippy little piece in today's Age, announcing the convention and referring to Dawkins as the “high priest of atheism”.

Barney was clearly less-than-impressed at having to write the story in the first place and was trying to be clever. Unfortunately (for him) he just came across as a grumpy old man in a cardigan unable to see the world beyond his self-imposed religious filter.

Referring to Dawkins as a “high priest” comes from the same school of thought that gave us “atheism is just another religion” and “science can't answer all questions about life therefore this wafer turns into Jesus flesh when the man in the dress spits on it”.

Still, a plug is a plug.

Get your tickets now!

Australia and New Zealand Atheists Blogroll

Astute readers may have noticed the new blogroll in the right-hand column.

This was put together by Sean the Blogonaut, and offers a convenient one-stop-shop for atheist bloggers in Australia and New Zealand. As such it features some of the best atheism bloggers on the planet … and (in the case of blogs like mine) some amateur windbags with too much time on their hands.

Particular shout-outs go to Podblack, Bastard Sheep, A Drunken Madman, Dave The Happy Singer and OzAtheist, but it’s all good stuff and well worth your time.

One of our main tasks is to promote the next Atheist Global Convention, a.k.a. “The Rise of Atheism”, to be held in Melbourne in 2010.

Guests for the event include Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers along with local heroes Catherine Deveny and Phillip Adams.

It should be a blast. Stay tuned for further details.

Australian Idol Stalls

The once-proud ex-juggernaut Australian Idol has limped to an unimpressive third in Sunday night’s ratings.

But why, I hear you ask? What could possibly put the kaibosh on this most venerable of reality TV staples?

Was it an audience backlash against professional tool Kyle Sandilands and his penchant for questioning 14-year-olds about their sex lives?

Was it the sudden realisation on the part of the audience that in all likelihood it’s going to be just as mediocre as last year?

Or has the audience started to twig that Australian Idol is just a relic of a bygone age?

After all, it’s just a glorified karaoke competition where the prize is a recording contract. And seriously, what’s that worth?

Once upon a time a recording contract was something to be valued. Once upon a time you needed a contract to get the capital to put a record together.

That meant teaming up with a record company and convincing them to stop snorting cocaine off the arses of Thai ladyboys for long enough to help you out.

But the party’s over. The record companies have lost their relevance.

Now any kid with some musical ability and a few hundred bucks for equipment and net access can record and distribute an album worldwide.

The game’s changed. If Idol wants to survive, it needs to change with it.

Of course, that’s probably giving the viewing audience of Australia too much credit.

It probably was Sandilands.

Discrimination In Religious Schools

A review of Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act has made some interesting recommendations.

At the moment, religious schools in Victoria have the right to discriminate on the basis of faith. For example, a Muslim school can refuse to employ a Jewish cleaner or a conservative Christian school a woman who is unmarried and pregnant.

A parliamentary review has recommended broadening the definition into “core” and “non-core” roles, so discrimination would only be applied to roles where it actually matters. Under this model the school chaplain can’t be a Satanist but it doesn’t matter so much if the maths teacher is (although he does go on about pentagrams a fair bit … ).

People running religious schools obviously think it’s a bad idea. And I agree.

This is just too one-sided. Even now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find any number of atheists teaching in Christian schools, where their atheism is overlooked just because of their teaching ability.

This proposal takes us in completely the wrong direction. We should give more discriminatory power to these schools, not less.

In fact, let’s go the whole hog. Religious schools should be obliged to only employ people who share their faith.

Before being appointed, applicants must prove their allegiance by swearing on their particular holy book and passing a detailed examination on the tenets of their doctrine.

All staff must be monitored constantly to ensure their behaviour is in line with the appropriate religious doctrine. Any breaches of protocol, whether on school grounds or in the person’s home, will result in immediate dismissal.

Of course religious schools might struggle to retain staff under such a regime, and student numbers would drop off as teaching standards fell.

And Government funding would have to be cut because they’d now be straight religious institutions rather than educational institutions.

And in fact, after a while we’d probably see very few religious schools remaining.

That’d be a shame.

But keeping the schools’ religious values pure is obviously critically important, so surely that’s a small price to pay.

Samson and Delilah

Every few years a film comes along and is touted as the saviour of the local film industry.

“This is the one,” say the breathless critics and industry lobbyists “that shows what we really can do.”

Samson and Delilah is the latest unfortunate to be tarred with that brush, although it was probably unavoidable given its Camera D’Or win at Cannes. And while it’s a good film, it’s far from the pinnacle of creative achievement.

Largely played as dumbshow, we track the movements of the eponymous young aboriginal couple through their awkward courtship, tribal excommunication, hopeless struggle to fit into a white world and something that might be redemption depending on how you choose to look at it.

As a movie it’s not dissimilar to Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, although here the sleepy town of Alice Springs is the unforgiving wilderness and the outback represents the comfort and safety of home.

The main difference for this film is the role played by the majority of those sitting in the audience. The impact of European culture on aboriginals is a central theme, both in terms of passive neglect and active exploitation.

It’s an important point to make, although it wasn’t entirely successful.

A pointed dig at the indigenous art industry for growing fat off the back of a starving community is justified, but one can’t help feeling the film-makers here are indulging in a similar sort of behaviour.

3.5 out of 5

Vaccination Story Shock

Last night Channel 7 aired a shocking story on vaccinations.

The shock was in its complete lack of tabloid scaremongering, its scientific content and the fact that it was clearly a carefully researched story.

We really needed this. The anti-vaccination crowd has been incredibly vocal of late. The whole vaccines-cause-autism thing just won’t go away, despite its architect Andrew Wakefield being discredited as a fraud.

The anti-vax cause has impassioned believers and celebrity endorsements (most recently Jim Carrey), which have real power to sway a public sadly under-educated on this very important topic.

While the smackdown on Carrey’s ill-informed rant was swift (this one was my favourite), the damage will have been done.

The science is in on this topic but the message just isn’t getting out there. The voices of reason are all too often drowned out by the cries of those irrationally and ideologically opposed to vaccination, and children die as a result.

For all these reasons, Rebecca Maddern is to be congratulated for her great segment on last night’s Sunday Night.

This also gives you some idea of the scientific non-credentials of the anti-vax crowd.

Homeopathic treatment for whooping cough? Please. Your magic homeopathic water does nothing. How could it? After all, it’s just water and nothing else.

It’s a shame that nonsense wasn’t exposed for what it is, but maybe in the next segment. How about it Channel 7?

The New Normal

The death toll from the fires continues to grow. The final figure will likely be over 300.

We've not seen a peacetime tragedy on this scale in the history of our nation.

As we sift through the ashes of this disaster and comfort the wounded and rebuild our communities, our thoughts must turn to where we go from here.

This is our climate now.

We can no longer talk about the ongoing drought with the vague notion that at some point it will end. We can no longer hold any hope of getting "back to normal".

We may see wet periods in our dusty future but it will soon be clear that these are the rare exception, not the rule.

Hot and dry is the new normal.

We will see more heatwaves like the one last week. We will see more years with record low rainfall.

And we will see more fires.

This is the human impact of climate change.

Not in any particular event, because no single event is attributable.

But rather in the frequency of events, and the severity of events, we will see the impact as we adjust to a new way of life.

Fires

Over the weekend my home state of Victoria experienced the worst bushfires ever recorded in Australia.

The count is 131 dead. The figure is being updated hourly.

Entire communities have been lost. Countless acres of land have been razed. As more and more tragedy is uncovered, the scale of the disaster grows.

This is one of the moments that will still be spoken of for decades to come. Stories both horrendous and heroic pile upon each other and will become, in time, the legends of an event rarely seen but long remembered.

At times like this we understand what it means to consider humanity a united family.

The fires have taken no heed of race or religion. Nature doesn’t care about our petty beliefs or concocted tribal distinctions.

We are no more important to this planet than the bugs and worms crawling in the scorched and blackened earth.

All we have is each other. We have our common humanity.

And we have our deep shared empathy for those who have lost so much.

Osstrayenopen

Ah, the Australian Open.

A time when people of all cultures gather in one place to be burnt by the sun and entertained by the rhythmic alternate striking of a small rubber ball by two incredibly well-paid young people who, in turn, are surrounded by a grim-faced coterie staring at lines painted on the ground, concerned to the point of obsession about which side of the line the rubber ball may fall.

For some reason understood by none except the eldritch brotherhood of “promoters” and “officials”, these ingredients alchemically combine into one hella Fun Day Out.

 

 

A Zen-like state of serenity descends upon the crowd, brought upon them by the rhythms of the game.

The attention of all is focused on the smallest of details . . . the direction of the serve, the curve of the ball, and the light glinting off the sweaty buttocks of the streaker.

For this moment in time the thousands are joined as one. And thus peace is achieved.

Freeview. Ho Hum.

The final move to digital television in Australia is still a long way off, with latest estimates putting it sometime in 2013.

It’s taking so long because getting the Australian government to organise something like this is like getting an Amish family to produce a video podcast about World of Warcraft.

They’re making feints in the direction of activity though, with the 2009 launch of something called “Freeview”.

The big claim on the official site is that there will be fifteen new free-to-air channels starting up sometime in 2009, ten standard and five in HD.

<sarcasm> Well, that should get the punters ditching their rabbit ears and flocking to Harvey Norman for a set-top box. </sarcasm>

The thing is, those of us with set-top boxes already know that those fifteen channels are already there, but the only ones being used for new content are ABC2, SBS News and Ten HD. Channels 7 and 9 are just showing their basic broadcast across all three of their stations.

So here’s my question: what’s going to happen in 2009 to encourage the networks to put different content on each one?

On the official government website it announces a big-arse industry conference in March to “discuss the future of Digital TV in Australia”.

All the interested parties will be there, so presumably that’s where all the bribery, blackmail and back-scratching will happen. And we definitely won’t be freeviewing anything until all that’s done.

It’ll be a nauseating exercise in faux-concern and ham-fisted negotiation, as the government tries to save face on its bungled implementation and the networks try to get away with doing as little as possible.

That’s the thing about free-to-air television. There’s no advantage to any of the networks in increasing the number of channels they transmit.

In the long term it might make them a viable competitor to Pay TV, but with streaming media just around the corner even that’s looking shaky.

In the short term, and this is where their focus tends to lie, all it does is increase expenses while spreading the fixed revenue base more thinly. No-one wins.

Except maybe the viewers, but no-one cares about them.

It’s Not Mystifying

John Clarke QC has wrapped up his investigation into the Mohamed Haneef affair, in which an innocent man was accused of being a terrorist.

Amongst all the damning evidence of Federal police incompetence and political interference, the most interesting thing was Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews’ decision to cancel Dr Haneef’s visa.

That was described as “mystifying”.

Of course it’s not mystifying at all.

Andrews was a populist little toady pandering to a government led by a racist and autocratic leader who knew that fear is a much better way to control the public than compassion.

And it was in the lead-up to an election, when then previous election had been won on the back of appearing to take a hard-line on issues exactly like this.

So where’s the mystery?

Humanism in schools. Hooray.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum for primary school students based on humanist ethics.

Their focus is the wonderful idea that ethics can be derived without reference to any religion; that you don’t need to defer to some magical God or ancient book or (more often) the authority of the clergy to know what’s right.

This is a really important idea, and absolutely the sort of thing we should be instilling in our children.

But of course that’s not the way it’s being reported.

Instead, we get headlines like this:

Religion in schools to go God-free

Students to be taught there's no God

This angle completely misses the point. But that’s to be expected in a culture with such an entrenched religious tradition.

And the predictable backlash from religious, particularly Christian, vested interests has begun.

This is my favourite quote, from fundamentalist godbot Jenny Stoker of Christian lobby group Salt Shakers:

"If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism? If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools."

Wrong, Jenny. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you teach Christianity in schools then all those things have an equal claim. They’ve all got precisely as much evidence as each other to support them.

Our government should never promote any one religion over another, and certainly not in our government schools.

So, Jenny, unless equal time is given to all religions (and that includes Wicca and Satanism and Scientology and The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) then no time should be given to any of them.

Won’t Someone Think of the Cartoons?

There comes a time in every moral panic when common sense completely takes a holiday.

Case in point: the ludicrous ruling by NSW Supreme Court Justice Michael Adams that pornographic cartoons of Simpsons characters constitute genuine child pornography.

Now, tell me: when did the crusade against child pornography stop being about protecting children?

Because that has most definitely stopped. At some point it become all about political point-scoring, puritanical moral grandstanding and theocratic thought-policing.

And that’s where we are now.

If our judges can consider stupid pictures of cartoons having sex as anywhere near equivalent to actual child pornography, then quite frankly we’ve entered the Twilight Zone.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sinister.

What’s next? Well, The Simpsons Movie will obviously have to be banned, because we got a glimpse of Bart’s cartoon willy.

Then we’ll have to ban all TV shows and films that feature crime of any sort. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t real . . . because it might encourage someone to really do it!

Then we’ll have to ban any books that describe crimes. It won’t leave us with much in the way of literature, just a selection of Dr. Seuss books (although obviously not The Cat in the Hat . . . he’s a bad influence on children) and Miffy by Dick Bruna.

And how many otherwise-abused children will be protected by all this nonsense? Precisely none.

But of course, that’s not the point is it? This isn’t about protecting children anymore. It’s about policing morals, even when those morals affect no-one except the individual.

And when the judiciary starts deciding they have the right to do that, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.

Australia

It’s entirely appropriate that a movie called Australia should be directed by someone called Baz.

Ever since Barry Crocker and Barry Humphries did Barry McKenzie it’s a name that’s more representative of the country than just about any other.

Having said that, the earlier Barries managed to make their film a genuine (if narrowly-focused) cultural article, unlike the latter Baz’s odd mixture of nostalgic jingoism, selective cultural memory and a broad-brush style intended to mimic epic storytelling.

While Australia is trying hard to be Gone With The Wind, it ends up somewhere between We of the Never Never, Crocodile Dundee and Pearl Harbour.

That’s not to say it’s a bad film, but there’s probably one too many moments that provoke an unnecessary cringe . . . I’m thinking it’s around the fourth or fifth time Hugh Jackman says “Crikey!”

On top of that, Nicole Kidman is dreadfully miscast as uptight Brit Lady Sarah Ashley. While her stony-faced persona is fine in the early stages of the film, the story demands that she soften at some point and while you can see her Acting with all her might, it just never happens.

The film is really grounded by Hugh Jackman, who manages to channel the outback spirit as the otherwise nameless Drover. But even he can’t save a relationship doomed to a dire lack of chemistry. Where was Kate Winslet when this movie was being made?

Beyond these minor quibbles though, the film ticks all the right boxes.

The cinematography is Oscar-worthy, the cast is peppered with All The Big Australian Names^TM (Bryan Brown? Check. Jack Thompson? Check. Bill Hunter? Only for about two seconds . . . but check), and the story ticks along nicely making the film seem much shorter than its almost-three-hour running time.

It’s all highly entertaining, but probably not the cultural classic some were hoping for.

Still, it’s worth seeing if only for Hugh and Nic’s incredibly awkward kissing.

Crikey indeed.

3.5 out of 5

That's It Then

In a final termination of the vestiges of the Howard years, the question about Don Bradman has been removed from Australia's citizenship test.

Well, huzzah for that.

After years of being embarrassed by our government, this is I think the final nail in that particular coffin.

Now a year into the reign of K-Rudd, it's back to the normal pre-Howard days where our government is just a source of low-level disappointment and bemusement.

Michael Atkinson is Pure Evil

The Rudd Government is apparently gunning to out-conservative the conservatives, with a proposed mandatory internet filter that will

(a) significantly slow internet speeds,

(b) put Australian censorship in the same category as that enjoyed by China and Iran, and

(c) fail to stop one single person from downloading illegal content if they want to.

There's naturally been a major industry backlash, so here's hoping the whole ridiculous idea gets shelved.

Then, straight into this maelstrom of Luddite lunacy comes the announcement that Michael Atkinson (remember him?) is no longer satisfied just passively resisting the introduction of an R18+ rating for video games, but is now actively scuttling any chance of advancing the issue by blocking debate.

Back in March it was announced that there would be public consultation on the issue, which has apparently now been completed. It obviously had the results I predicted it would, because Atkinson has rejected its publication.

Just who the hell does this guy think he is?

Not-So-Invisible Hands

In a move that has stunned journalists who know nothing about basic economics, house prices have jumped in the wake of the Government's increase to the first home-owner's grant.

What's really funny is that this was precisely the Government's intention in the first place. They want house prices to go up. That's what K-Rudd means when he talks about "growth in the housing sector".

At least I'm pretty sure that's what he means. It certainly doesn't mean building more houses.

We're coming off the end of one of the longest housing booms in history, and people are conditioned to see the value of their house as a measure of economic health.

What they don't seem to realise is that the economy's temperature is being taken rectally, and the thermometer is being artificially heated by a systemic colonic imbalance in supply and demand.

Prices are high because there just aren't enough houses.

A nice fibrous diet of more houses in the system would clean things out, but it would also end up very messy. K-Rudd knows this. So for the moment, he's decided it's better to stoke the fires.