Fairfax Media claims underdog status

Back in March I blogged about the use of the sobriquet "independent" by Australia's media outlets but since then there's been a major shift in our understanding of this word since in the last couple of weeks one of the big names of Australian news, Fairfax Media, has seen fit to add the word to the mastheads of its two major dailies, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Only these two. The other vehicles the company runs, in Brisbane, Perth and Canberra, don't get it.

It's a rather startling move. I think it's fair to say that most people know that Fairfax, a publicly-traded company, is doing it tough. The share price is still way down below $1 per share. The company has introduced paywalls but so far no figures have yet been published to tell us how that move is panning out. Mining heiress Gina Reinhart is still a major shareholder though as far as I know she's not been able to secure any more board seats since her mate Jack Cowin was given one. Given these facts it's quite reasonable for Fairfax to claim that is in the process of reinventing itself with a view to remaining economically viable into the future - "Always", as the masthead boasts; the word also points back to 1831 when the company was established.

Signs Fairfax mastheads really are independent are not, of course, hard to find. In the run-up to Saturday's federal election, for example, The Age came out for the ALP and Rudd while the SMH came out for the Liberal-National coalition and Abbott. I wasn't watching any of the website-only vehicles closely enough to notice how they oriented themselves in relation to the political contest but it seems reasonable to assume that editors there also had a free hand. This independence is in stark contrast to the way all of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers lined up behind Abbott in the months and weeks before the poll. Clearly, in this case, there is a distinct lack of independence for individual editors and, by extension, the journalists themselves. (I have written about the lack of editorial independence at Murdoch vehicles on numerous occasions in the past, for example here and here and here.)

Given the journalistic landscape in Australia and the companies that feature in it I find it a tad surprising that Fairfax would add the word "independent" to those two mastheads, but not unduly so. Having written about this issue here myself it makes sense in a real and important way. It makes sense because of the dominance of Murdoch and it makes sense from an intellectual point of view. It also makes sense from an economic perspective: Fairfax is indeed struggling to remake itself in the new, post-internet media environment, as are newspapers all over the world. Their crisis of identity, spawned by poverty, is resulting in new ways of earning money and new ways of making news. If Fairfax wants to claim underdog status while it goes back to fundamentals as it works to resolve the crisis then I, for one, have no objection. Australians should pay attention to words such as "independent" because it is through them, and through what they represent, that their interests are best served especially, now, as public broadcaster the ABC is well underway on its slow shift to the Right.

Obama flatters Americans while sending messages

Barack Obama's public speech today on Syria was a PR exercise aimed at a multitude of international players including Syria, Iran, Russia, China, the UK and other countries. The fact that it contained little of substance tells us how much a part of the theatre of international diplomacy it was. In the end, Obama notified the world that a military solution of a limited type - a "targeted strike" - was an option should further diplomatic endeavours involving Russia fail. Syria has admitted that it possesses chemical weapons.

But Obama's theatrical piece was also full of contradictions, and these especially appeared toward the end of the speech when the president's logic convinced him to address the issue of America's sense of manifest destiny, which is core to its identity. "For nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements. It has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy but the world's a better place because we have borne them."

I find it staggering that an American president can be so wilfully blind as to the truth of history especially when he dares to call history to his aid while working to gain support for military action. The fact is that "nearly seven decades" takes you right back to the end of WWII. Does Obama sincerely think that people do not remember the unwarranted aggression that led to the disastrous Vietnam War? Incredible to think so, but it appears he's conscripting that crime against humanity to give himself support now. And what about the outrageous destabilisation of the Mossadegh government in Iran in the 1950s? Does America sincerely feel that the animus that continues, to this day, to motivate Iranians against it, has no valid basis in reality?

Under Obama America continues to see itself as the world's policeman, a sobriquet the president was eager to distance himself from (much like John Howard in Australia hated being called George W. Bush's "deputy" despite his fawning eagerness to get involved in the twin stupidity of Iraq and Afghanistan). But for Obama as well as for most Americans the truth of a belief in manifest destiny continues - despite all the military failures and the illegal wars the country has embroiled itself in - to buttress their sense of identity. If we go on to listen to Obama right to the end of his speech we find more evidence of this belief, and of this sense of identity.

"Our ideals and principles as well as our national security are at stake in Syria as well as our leadership of a world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used. America is not the world's policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe and it is beyond our means to right every wrong but when, with modest effort and risk, we can stop children from being gasses to death and thereby make our own children safer over the long run, I believe we should act. That's what makes America different. That's what makes us exceptional. With humility as well as resolve let us never lose sight of that essential truth."

As usual in official pronouncements, the sentiment gets thicker the closer you get to the end; it's sort of like a rhetorical money shot. In Obama's case the sentiment is so thick you can carve chunks off it and use them as fuel for a barbecue. America is "different" and "exceptional" and so it can never make mistakes. As in the case of Nixon, time dilutes the stain of ruthless self interest and washes away the lies and the deceptions. An experienced orator, and a good one, Obama has leveraged Americans' sense of self - their very identity - in order to sway international opinion and gather support from himself in the broadest possible public sphere.

Add childcare to parental leave on family wishlist

A mini baby boom in Australia added to a continued high level of migration is putting pressure on families in the big cities. Since 2001 the birth rate has been increasing steadily, from 246,000 in 2001 to 302,000 in 2011 and while the net migration rate has dropped from its high in 2008-09, we still welcomed 170,300 people in 2010-11. In that year Sydney alone added over 50,000 migrants to its suburbs.

Low interest rates and an increase in the use of self-managed super funds to buy investment property has furthermore led to a seven percent rise in Sydney property prices this year, and the boom looks set to continue through spring and into summer. Demand continues to strongly outstrip supply. "Urban Taskforce chief executive Chris Johnson said the projections showed Sydney would need 100,000 more homes than planned in the next two decades," writes Leesha McKenny for the Sydney Morning Herald.

The image accompanying this blogpost shows Sydney council areas and their expected population growth to 2031. Note that some inner-urban and inner-suburban areas are dark-coloured, showing areas where the biggest population increases are expected over the period. Places like Canterbury and Ashfield, as well as places like Blacktown and Liverpool, are expected to grow in terms of resident households. For a young couple to afford a home in the former - in a suburb close to the CBD in Sydney - usually two incomes are needed but childcare costs often mean mothers are returning to the workforce after giving birth only to see their salaries sucked up by this single budget item alone. "The number of children using approved childcare has increased 20 per cent since 2008, yet the sector has failed to keep pace with demand," writes Cosima Mariner for the SMH. "The cost of childcare has risen at three times the rate of inflation, according to the Work and Family Policy Round Table, despite ballooning government subsidies which will top $22 billion over the next three years."

Kevin Rudd promised to do something about the acute shortage of childcare places but failed to deliver on his 2007 promise. As for housing affordability, local councils appear to be delivering the goods by approving infill construction of apartments in Sydney's inner suburban areas, but the fact remains that two incomes are needed for the most part for young couples wanting to buy a property there. A commitment to childcare would help not only to support the housing sector, it would also allow more women to work, hence lifting national productivity by a significant margin.

Given these realities, it seems that better childcare is a no-brainer for Tony Abbott if he's looking to do something useful for Australia's struggling young families. Sure, maternity leave and paternity leave are important but even more important is the longer-term security that childcare can provide to working families. Quality childcare would also be nice but I suspect that for many mothers any childcare is probably considered enough to aspire to.

The audacity of the feminine

I've been thinking a lot about the Opposition leadership, as have a lot of people, and a conversation I struck up on Twitter with Sarah Joseph (@profsarahj) keeps coming to mind. Sarah is an engaged and intelligent participant in my social graph. We talked about what had made Abbott successful. "I think [Right] is more audacious and it pays off," she said. "Thatcher. Reagan. Roosevelt. Even many Whitlam values hung around til Howard."

"I also think people crying out fir audacity. Majors on the nose. I mean, why vote for Palmer?" Sarah went on. And it made me think about, for example, Campbell Newman running in the Queensland state campaign in 2011 and early 2012 without even holding a parliamentary seat. Newman went on the crush Anna Bligh's government so badly Labor were reduced to seven seats statewide. A devastating and surprising result.

Tony Abbott has been working away at the ALP since 2009 when he took the Coalition leadership, and reduced their lead in the 2010 election to nothing - literally. In fact the Coalition had more lower house seats then Labor. By sticking to his message and by not making any glaring mistakes Abbott converted that slight lead into a convincing lead in 2013, attaining a 3.5% swing nationally.

Now that the usual suspects from Labor have been canvassed - Albo, Shorten, Bowen, Swan - and have all passed on the offer of the poisoned chalice, it's time for the ALP to do something to really capture the imagination of the electorate. Give a big "fuck-you" to the Coalition as it starts to settle in and find its stride. To really upset the apple cart Labor needs to do something big and I suggest bringing Tanya Plibersek into the leadership role, reignite the "misogyny" debate and really get right up the nose of the now-complacent Coalition. Never mind going for the safe option - the stabbing of Rudd in 2010 and the execution of Gillard in 2013 belong in this category - and really go all-out to make a splash that the electorate won't expect.

Plibersek for ALP leadership will completely set the cat among the pigeons, unbalance the still-uncommissioned Coalition, and get the electorate talking. Let's make another Clover Moore. Sydney, you've come of age!

Democracy sausage trended for good reason

Parliament has often been called a sausage factory for legislation but the community groups who set up barbecues outside polling booths on Saturday probably never thought of such an analogy. For them, selling sausages wrapped in a slice of wholesome white bread was merely a way to raise funds: you have a steady stream of mid-morning voters, a beautiful spring day, an irresistibly low price. Bingo!

When I went to vote down the street at the community centre I saw a man intently occupied with the terribly important job of looking after the onions. I only had a $50-dollar note so I had to cadge a gold coin from my mother to buy a sausage. It turned out to be delicious, just the thing to dissipate the hunger pangs of 9.30am; a magpie eyed me crossly as I walked back to the car. But when I got home and got online I was startled to see the number of posts in socmed from people who had snapped photos of the offerings they had found at their own polling booths. Not just democracy sausage (like the example shown here from erstwhile blogger and Guardian journalist @grogsgamut) but biscuits shaped like the then-PM and the then-leader of the Opposition complete with budgie smugglers and nerdy glasses, second-hand book stalls, and chocolate peanut clusters like the one @julieposetti snapped.

From @saraheburnside we learned: "North Perth Primary has a sausage sizzle, cake stall and mini-fete including second-hand books. Recommended voting location."

The culinary component of the Australian election booth was quickly an opportunity for humour, as @gavindfernando also found: "Not a huge sausage sandwich fan, but bought one figuring it's the most funding those public schools will receive if Abbott wins." For her part, @beth_blanchard came up with her own cheeky take on the phenomenon: "Well I *would* post a pic of the sausage sizzle I enjoyed too but it looks rude so I'm not. You can all just imagine." Crikey journalist @bernardkeane saw fit to remark: "and the bellwether sausage sizzle is?" Even from the far north, @theNTnews tweeted: "EXIT POLLS SHOW SAUSAGE ON BREAD LEADS MOST NT BOOTHS, STEAK SANGA HANGING IN THERE, SALAD ROLL SUPPORT TOTALLY COLLAPSED."

Good weather, a bunch of people always ready to add a touch of pleasure to whatever they are doing - that vaunted Australian hedonism - and a tokenistic monetary outlay - $2 is small change, after all - meant that the term 'sausage' was soon trending on Twitter for Australia and the trend even had its own hashtag in #sausagesizzle. Later #snagvotes would emerge to exemplify our desire for alternatives when it comes to democracy regardless of how similar they turn out to be. Socmed is all about sharing - and the number of posts showed how engaged we were that day - but the sausage sizzle is also a demotic nod to the role food plays in bringing people together in a spirit of fellowship; think of the loaves and the fishes or the last supper.

Brit @kathviner editor of Guardian Australia tweeted: "Love the celebratory vibe of an Australian election.. sizzles, cake stalls, face-painting, amazing." I think it's suitable to leave the final word to an outsider. Sometimes we are too close to the things that surround us to know they are special. It can take the fresh eyes of the foreigner to see what is bleedingly obvious: give Australians a sunny day and the outdoors and they'll soon be eating something.

Abbott's victory not unalloyed with impurities

Well, I was wrong but not by much. I'd predicted a five percent swing to the Coalition in yesterday's poll but it turned out to be about three-and-a-half percent nationally. In the end, the Coalition looks set to hold a strong majority in the lower house but I hope Tony Abbott isn't expecting that mandate to convert itself into supine capitulation by Labor and the Greens on the matter of a carbon price. He'll be disappointed. From comments made by various Labor figures during the post-vote programming last night Labor looks set to sit on its heels over this key piece of legislation inherited from the Gillard government. The Greens, of course, are hardly likely to back down on a central plank of their policy platform.

With the lower house wrapped up - bar a few details still to be worked out in a few seats around the country where counting of pre-poll and postal votes continues now - Australians will be turning their eyes to the make-up of the Senate. Here, the final make-up of the chamber will be no precise guide as to how efficiently Abbott can push through his legislative agenda. In any case only half the Senate was chosen this time around, and those members will not be sworn in until the beginning of July next year. Given the Greens' dominance in the Senate at the moment, it looks unlikely that Abbott will be able to reverse the carbon price law this year or early next year unless he follows through with his promise to call for a double dissolution - in which case both houses of Parliament will once again be contested in a federal election. To do that would be to go the Newman route - in the 2012 Queensland state election LNP leader Campbell Newman ran without even holding a seat; his convincing win in March justified his hubris.

As for the rest of Abbott's policy platform, it looks likely that the national unemployment rate will rise as the Coalition cuts public sector jobs; Canberra will likely suffer a lot. On the economic front, we'll see how the markets react to yesterday's result, on Monday, and that is likely to be positive although Abbott has given us few details as to how Australia is now "open for business". The mining tax cannot be easily removed, for a start, but that cannot, surely, represent the full extent of what Abbott has planned to ensure that Australia transitions from an economy that has looked so consistently to the mining sector to provide jobs. I guess that the best we can do is to watch this space and wait.

In Queensland, the Palmer United Party did very well on the Sunshine Coast. There are two seats here: Fairfax to the north and Fisher to the south. The area has suffered economically since the GFC due to its having a very thin economy that is based on the three pillars of retail, construction and tourism. In his pre-election pitch, Clive Palmer promised locals an international airport and better roads, which are things that would translate into more employment for local tradespeople. Beyond that it's hard to look past good-old Queensland parochialism and the ever-present sense of frustration at the dominance of the southern cities of Sydney and Melbourne. Locals will have judged that Palmer would finally give the Sunshine Coast back some of the confidence that the European financial crisis, especially, had sucked out of the region.

What is certain is that yesterday's Liberal-National victory is not unalloyed with impurities. There will be plenty of opportunities for progressives to celebrate over the coming years and months as Tony Abbott struggles to get his way in Parliament. Reputations will be made and possibly lost. And there is also the ongoing drama of Labor as it works to remake itself after this defeat. I think that everybody will be kept busy watching how things unfold. It's early days yet.

Massive day in Oz as the big top stages its marquee performance

With just zero days to go folks there's a new opinion poll out showing the centre-right Coalition on 50.8 and the centre-left ALP on 49.2 on a two-party-preferred basis. Roll up! Roll up! Unlike the other polls it's a mobile-phone-only poll - which is likely to be more accurate than polls relying on landlines, which mostly older Australians use - so get ready for a nail-biter. Will it be a 5% swing or another hung Parliament? WHO KNOWS!

The biggest show in town - bigger even than the Olympics - is about to stage its marquee performance and Barack Obama, for one, must be relieved. To this point the US president has been deprived of one of his country's most stalwart supporters. Those pesky Brits! If Australia hadn't been staging a federal election right now would the darn limeys have been more willing to go to war in Syria? A curse on their lower House!

For environmentally-conscious people globally this election is also important. The ALP government introduced a carbon price last year but the Liberal-National coalition has promised to repeal the law. Outside Europe, Australia is one of a few countries that officially prices carbon releases, so this election is a big one for people who want to see concrete action on greenhouse gases - not just here but everywhere.

Public servants in Australia will be hoping for an ALP win: the Coalition has promised to cut government employment drastically. But in these economically fragile times does the national economy need a whole slew of new unemployed? Shouldn't the government be taking up the slack in bad times to ensure continued growth? Australia enjoys GDP growth of about 2.6% right now - high by international standards but low historically - but a national survey by the public broadcaster says that it's young men in trades jobs who are saying they support the Coalition. Australia has had 22 uninterrupted years of growth to date. Will a Coalition win put that record in jeopardy?

If broadband is all you care about the choice is easy. The ALP is currently funding a country-wide high-speed fibre broadband network but the Coalition says it'll do it cheaper. The downside in that case would be slower speeds. An international overview run by the ALP showed that the Coalition's solution is far less than impressive: most people would not pay for the speeds they are promising by 2019. But do people really see the benefits of fast broadband? Has the ALP done enough to describe the kinds of future uses of such a network?

The left Greens party looks set to increase its performance on the last election in 2010, and the elephant in the room as always is the Senate, where the Greens have traditionally done very well. If the Coalition wants to repeal that carbon price legislation they'll need the support of both houses. If the Greens dominate in the Senate as they have done in the past few years then their job will be that much harder.

From America's perspective it doesn't really matter which party wins because both the ALP and the Coalition have a strong record of working closely with the US in matters of international importance; Australia is the only country in the world that has gone to all of America's wars since WWII. What is important for Obama is a settled mandate for either of the two majors. But that mobile-only poll makes the landscape a bit more uncertain; to date we've been told the Coalition would get a swing of between three and five percent. That's up in the air now. Up in the space above the big top, and we also have 15 million Australians who will today make their choices among a larger range of political parties than we've ever seen before. Roll up, folks, it promises to be a big day out.

Faceless editorial backs Abbott in tomorrow's poll

People this morning will be surprised to see a faceless editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald backing Tony Abbott in tomorrow's poll and while this might seem sneaky it's got to be preferred to the recent habit of Murdoch papers dressing editorial up as news as the billionaire's henchmen work to ensure a Coalition win. In fact, editorials published without a byline and dinkus are a long-standing staple of the media economy.

The Herald efficiently outlines its reasons for backing the favourite, which boils down to the matter of trust, especially the twin-engined toxicity of Labor scandals that have plagued the party for months and months; it's useful to remember that the Herald has spent a lot of reputational capital covering the NSW Labor scandals that culminated in an ICAC ruling, and that continue to play out as different individuals pursue their options through the courts and the media.

Then there's the matter of the hung Parliament and the deal with the Greens that caused Gillard to renege on her promise not to introduce a carbon tax. Many Australians still find it hard to move beyond this barrier as they think about who to vote for federally.

Putting this single issue aside it's clear to a lot of people that Labor has behaved badly and that it's just too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff; no doubt some in Labor will point to legislative excellence and white hands for others in the party's ranks. The Herald editorial asks Labor to think on its sins and to make sure that - next time - it respects the "privilege of power" bestowed by an electorate that usually votes politicians out of office, rather than voting them in.

Another thing that strikes me is the residual animus against Labor's tendency to stage leadership coups. Republicans should take heart from this dislike, as it points to an attitude among many in Australia that leans toward a more presidential type of role for the prime ministership. The (possibly) ugly truth is that the party chooses its leader; it can do so at any time in the electoral cycle. But there seems to be a view that the voters should be the ones to be ultimately consulted in the matter of federal leadership. Time for a new referendum?

Crabb draws a more human Abbott out of the closet

Things looked unpromising, at first, on the ABC's Kitchen Cabinet last night when it appeared that the tightly-scripted Tony Abbott would prevail in the face of Annabel Crabb's relentless domesticising. In the early parts of the program Abbott's daughters somehow got mixed up in the melange - shunted into action, no doubt, by wary spinners intent on softening Abbott's image for the benefit of female voters - and were suitably cast, taking responsibility for the salad. And helping dad put butter on fish (really, Tony? That's it?). In this part of the show the conversation remained similar to any other stage on the hustings, now, three days out from the poll. The conversation was stilted, unremarkable, and wooden.

The way things panned out once the kids were shunted off-stage demonstrated how inappropriate the set-piece political mentality is for a program such as this, where a congenial, sociable tone tends to edge out the more ghastly forms of verbal utterance, those which we are delivered day-in and day-out through the media on doorstops and in shopping malls and in press conferences.

Abbott clearly hates this kind of unscripted performance, but he soldiered on regardless and delivered something more human than we're used to. There were bits and pieces about his early years, about life in the Liberal Party following the Ruddslide of 2007, and plenty of other topics of discussion that enabled Abbott to show how uncomfortable it is possible for a politician to be once you get him or her away from the backroom minders. Abbott looked distinctly uncomfortable throughout the show but at least it was a genuine sort of uncomfortableness. He hates scrutiny, it's clear. (He really hates it.) But Crabb managed to let us see aspects of the aspiring leader that we rarely ever see.

The season of Snowden continues to bite

A New York Times story from a few days ago illustrates how unconvincing intelligence authorities have become in their war against whistleblowers, describing an open court decision in the UK where the government and the Guardian made their cases regarding data taken from hardware that had been carried by David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the journalist most responsible for stories relying on information received from Edward Snowden. The decision allowed authorities to further analyse the contents of the hardware.

The [senior national security adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron], Oliver Robbins, said in a written statement that the information could put the officers and their families at risk, or even make them vulnerable to recruitment by foreign intelligence services. 

In all, he said, the files contained about 58,000 highly classified documents, which were “highly likely to describe techniques which have been crucial in lifesaving counterterrorist operations, and other intelligence activities vital to U.K. national security.” Allowing the material to become public, he said, “would do serious damage to U.K. national security and ultimately risk lives.”

How? asked the Guardian: "the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger ... [accused] the government of making unsubstantiated claims." If the information was so dangerous, he asked, why had the government done nothing about it before detaining Miranda? And what about copies of the information that had been given to the NY Times and ProPublica, both US-based news companies? Where was the urgency evident in those cases?

As I wrote two weeks ago, targeting Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras shows the US is in looneyville and the UK authorities have also drunk the Cool-Aid. Their current gyrations in the face of the inconvenience of open court and the rule of law - two bulwarks of Western legal practice that have been bequeathed to us by generations and partly constitute, precisely, the institutions the intelligence services are tasked with protecting - do nothing more than reveal the logical and moral abyss in the depths of which spies daily operate. So certain of the crucial nature of the data in question yet unable to reveal publicly just why that information is so crucial. It's a kind of nightmare scenario for organisations who have operated behind a pall of secrecy for over 100 years, since their establishment in the years leading up to WWI.

But the situation also highlights how badly WikiLeaks handled the media. UK and US media organisations like the Guardian and the NY Times are operating all stops in their effort to support Snowden by ensuring that the data he released becomes public in news stories, and by working to protect people associated with the release. Julian Assange, meanwhile, has largely dropped out of the public arena following well-publicised run-ins with editors at those publications. In fact, WikiLeaks makes it a point of pride in social media and press releases to distance itself from such organisations, including by claiming that it, itself, is a publishing venture. Instead of working closely with these companies, WikiLeaks has set itself up as a rival venture. The result has been disastrous for WikiLeaks.

The relationship is well-illustrated by the falsehoods that entered the movie Underground: The Julian Assange Story, which was screened in Australia on TV in April. As I wrote at the time:

Julian's meeting with the journalist - a sloppy, careworn specimen well played by Simon Maiden - that is so important in the movie, and of course in real life, does not appear in the book [Underground by Suelette Dreyfus]. The idea that Assange at this early stage, in 1989, sought to publicise the material that he found online is correct by the logic of 2013, or even 2009, but its appearance in the movie is a piece of teleological wishful thinking. 

But of course in the court of public opinion just as in a UK open court the protagonists must appeal to the public for its support. Having neglected - and even insulted - the gatekeepers, WikiLeaks must fall back on its own devices: what vehicles can we control in order to get our message across? Undoubtedly history will decide in favour of Assange in the longer term; in the short term his hubris has made his life harder.

Baddies schmaddies

Unlike the last time we had a federal election and unlike the last US federal election I've been fairly detached from the debate this time, mainly for family reasons but also out of a sense of curiosity as I try to place local discussions in a broader context. When I get up in the middle of the night to watch socmed activity from overseas it's hardly surprising to see no mention of Australia's Saturday election - yes, it's just that close folks. Which is why Tony Abbott's "baddies versus baddies" comment - which attracted so much opprobrium from certain sectors in Australia - was so interesting for me.

The comment was of course taken out of context by the commentariat. In truth, Abbott basically supports Western intervention in Syria. And Abbott was also right in bringing attention to the fact that there are very few actors you can unequivocally support in the Syrian conflict, as the rebel groups have clearly been comprehensively influenced by Islamofascists intent on establishing sharia wherever they succeed in throwing out Assad's forces. It's clear they intend to do the same should they win the larger battle in the longer term. Unfortunately, Christopher Pyne was quite correct in saying that Abbott's interpretation of the conflict was "sophisticated". But there are certain sectors of the commentariat in Australia for whom anything Pyne says will be ludicrous regardless of the individual merits of the case.

The SMH headline - 'Tony Abbott urges caution over Syria intervention' - is actually more accurate than the Guardian's. In fact, Abbott's response was very clever. This close to an election would be a bad time for a small-target campaigner in the prevailing atmosphere of non-stop attention-grabbing headlines where getting out a complex message is almost impossible, to say much else. As Abbott remarks, he supported Iraq and he supported Afghanistan. He's basically a US man, like his hero Howard. In this sense there's precious little to distinguish between Abbott and Rudd, both of whom would unquestionably urge Australian participation in a Syrian intervention that had congressional backing (the vote in Congress is apparently due on 9 September, two days after the election).

Given the timing and given the low awareness in Australia of what's actually happening on the ground in Syria - there is little media involvement, and the Assad regime is pushing a heavy line of propaganda - Abbott can hardly have said much else. The "wait and see" attitude is inevitable in the circumstances; Abbott hardly wants to upset the apple cart over such a minor issue as the vaguely-articulated human rights abuses that may of may not have happened in a largely invisible foreign country.

A more interesting question is whether the timing of our election has turned out to be a major problem for Obama and Cameron. If Australia had not been in caretaker mode would the three tradition allies have more readily decided in favour of armed intervention? There has been no comment in the press in either the UK or the US about the lack of executive leadership here. Which is hardly surprising. It's common for Australia to appear to be invisible when the larger picture of world affairs is addressed.

For Australian voters who care about their financial situation the Syrian crisis must be important inasmuch as it has started to impact on the price of equities. For their part, Australian investors are used to keeping watch on overseas developments - particularly those in Europe, the US and China - because of the relative size of our stock market. At just three percent of the global total, it tends to be heavily influenced by things that happen in other places. Because so many Australians participate in the equities market through their superannuation you would think they would act in their own self interest when it comes to choosing a political party to support.

Both major parties in Australia are centrist and both are more tolerant of the other side than the more ideologically-inclined politicians you find in the US for example. Oddly, it has been ideological considerations that brought both New Zealand and the UK - where conservative governments are in power - to support marriage equality.

Such considerations are foreign to the broader public debate in Australia, particularly in relation to the Liberal-National coalition. The real question that should be occupying the minds of Australian voters is whether a Coalition government would be better for the economy than the alternative, or worse. Going by the lift in Queensland's unemployment rate following the election of the Newman government there in March last year you'd have to think that in the aggregate the Coalition presents a real danger to the economy.

Australia's economy is relatively strong in global terms - and this is one thing that people overseas pay attention to when they talk about Australia - but something as seemingly minor as a 1-percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate could have a major impact on the material wellbeing of millions of Australians.

We don't need Romantic heroes any more

News arriving on my social graph that Irish poet Seamus Heaney has died gives me pause because poetry is such a neglected artform, and people talking today about Heaney with such poignancy surely ignore the ones who have come after him and who write the poetry that he will never see. One person even posted an item about the poet many talk about when talking about Heaney, W.B. Yeats, which chronicles a public spat between the poet (who died in 1939) and conservative social stalwarts of the time (1913) who opposed establishing a public art gallery showing Impressionist works. The visionary versus the penny-pinching philistine.

As if poetry had a specific, utilitarian function, like a sewerage works or a piece of wetlands or a packet of dental floss.

It reminds me of a scrapbook my Communist grandfather kept filled with poetry he clipped from newspapers of the Left throughout his life, and which my mother gave to me. Useful poetry dedicated to the great cause.

But poetry is usually something entirely invisible, like sunshine at a picnic: you don't even notice it but if it wasn't there you would complain. The irony is that those who regret the passing of Heaney couldn't name the next rank of aspiring big names of poetry if you used hot iron on them. Where are these people? Because, surely, someone out there is still writing poetry. They want to be published and read. They want to make you cry and weep. They are ignored studiously by a cultural nexus fascinated by the minutiae of movie stars and singers of popular music. They practice an almost-dead artform in societies where capital dominates cultural production just as it dominates the provision of services (insurance, telecommunications) or the production of manufactured goods (cars, washing machines).

The thing that struck me reading the article about the Yeats disagreement was how little necessary Romantic figures are in today's world. Romantic figures are always associated with struggle, bloodshed, war and cataclysm. But where poetry figures today is in the quiet rooms of comfortable houses - the houses of the children of the capitalists Yeats lambasts (don't forget the children) - that are situated in quiet, comfortable suburbs on peaceful, silent streets. I'm reminded of the opening scenes of the new film about Steve Jobs where we see Apple Computer housed in the garage of an ordinary-looking suburban bungalow somewhere in California.

We don't need Romantic heroes anymore. In countries full of strife they have plenty of them and what have they actually got? Economies run down to the nub because civil strife chases away the vital overseas investment needed to build the industries that can - eventually - lead to the establishment of quiet, comfortable suburbs where the children of the capitalists can go about their business in peace, and build something new on the back of the old, dead things.

In one of those houses perhaps there is a young poet writing her verses and hoping to get published so that she can make everyone cry hot tears of desire and longing, the most beautiful words ever to be written down in any language. After all, Shakespeare's father made gloves for a living. Gotta hand it to him.

Growth of the secret state a global problem

It appears that US authorities were given a heads-up about the UK's planned detention of David Miranda as he was passing through Britain's Heathrow Airport last week. Now, European media have complained to the UK's prime minister, David Cameron, about this unreasonable use of anti-terrorism legislation, being to target journalists. In related news from the Guardian, it appears that the police watchdog has been trying to get information from UK police about its use of the legal instrument in question, schedule 7 of the UK's 2000 anti-terrorism law.

Legal means remain an avenue for the IPCC to take as the police continue to procrastinate and refuse to hand over the relevant information.

The story also mentions measures being considered by the Internet Engineering Task Force, a body that makes internet standards, to use encryption on internet transactions, thus making it harder for entities such as the National Security Agency to snoop on people's internet use. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has passed information to Miranda's partner, Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, used to work for the NSA.

Elsewhere, it turns out that the NSA is the US's second-largest employer, with 850,000 on its payroll, placing it just behind retailer Walmart in importance nationally. It's hard to see how the NSA can continue to operate given the size of its workforce, which must function as an inbuilt weak-spot in its system of information control, given that individuals with a conscience, such as Snowden, are likely to continue to emerge in its ranks.

US president Barack Obama has disappointed many supporters because of his record of working against the interests of whistleblowers, a group of people who continue to perform an essential function in democracies worldwide, and also, no doubt, in countries where due to historical precedent or due to adverse contingencies, democracy does not exist. Many have rightly criticised the US president for failing to acknowledge the importance of the actions of individuals who possess a conscience in the effective operation of democracy, given the increase in covert government activity since 9/11.

In Russia, the secret state has already taken over operation of many parts of the state apparatus, giving rise to egregious abuses of power by state actors, corruption on a wide scale, and unreasonable targeting of individuals who show an unwillingness to cooperate with the secret state. The secret state continues to grow in other jurisdictions. Operating partly as the NSA in the US, the secret state has emerged as a severe burden that actively works against the interests of individuals, and that is working to subvert traditional systems for the check of authoritarian power, such as the media.

Cars are a dead proposition, clean-tech is a winner

In an interesting interview, BMW's Australia head predicts the death of Holden's local manufacturing operations. This year, Ford announced that it would stop making cars here in 2016 and that the "iconic" Falcon brand would be scrapped. The picture accompanying this blogpost shows a detail of Holden's new "VF" Commodore, another major Aussie brand, but it will probably be the last Commodore to emerge considering the Coalition looks set to win the September election.

Which can only be a good thing as these brands are cornerstones of Aussie cultural chauvinism, a phenomenon that has enjoyed a distinct resurgence in our apolitical (though possibly not uncritical) age - Gallipoli anyone? - and so rev-heads in this country will be forced to find points of reference for their intellectual nihilism in products made elsewhere. Falcon and Commodore will no longer battle it out on the Supercar track because these models will not exist. Instead, there will be some unrealistic box of tricks-on-wheels imported from Korea, perhaps, or Indonesia to entice the mouth-breathers and the whacked-out tradies to strip off their shirts and stand around drinking stubbies all afternoon in the sun. (You know you love it!)

Kevin Rudd's campaign ad - the one where he's standing on the verandah of a multi-million-dollar inner-urban standalone bungalow - makes it clear he wants manufacturing to survive in Australia: "I want Australia to make things people want." But making cars is not that thing, and Labor's attempt to prop up the failing car-making industry in Aus is so far misguided as to verge on the irresponsible. You want to use my taxes to pay people to make things noone wants? No thanks, Kev.

What Rudd and Abbott should be looking to promote are green manufacturing companies, who can - and do - make things noone else makes, here in Australia, and whose products can be exported to countries (like China) where official displeasure with set emissions targets goes hand in hand with proactive policies on the ground designed to reduce carbon emissions. The whole world is looking for technologies that Australian manufacturing companies already make. What they need - this is especially for your benefit, Tones - is an incentive to grow. An emissions trading scheme is the thing they need, not a "Green army" (what even is that?) running around planting trees on nature strips like a horde of shorn Costas.

Paintings of the Danish 'Modern Impressionism' movement

Mum's aunt's husband Elmer Johansen had these paintings. Although he was Danish - and she was Australian - they lived in New Zealand where Elmer was a ferry-boat captain transporting people between the North Island and the South Island. They had no children. Madge predeceased Elmer and when Elmer died the paintings passed to mum's brother, who died about five years ago. His son passed the paintings to me and I had them cleaned and reframed. I also had a valuation made through Art Valuation Services Australasia, which is based in Sydney.

Madge Dean met Elmer on a Pacific island where she was working as a teacher and he worked as a stevedore. It seems that Elmer received a painting of his father's done by an artist named Fritz Kraul. On the back of the painting someone has written in explanation:

Fritz Kraul lived in Koge, a small fishing village, 18 miles south of Copenhagen. There was a Battle of Koge Bay in the 17th century. He was a member of the Academy of Art. He specialised in tree paintings. This was painted in 1912. Elmer’s father did not like the figure of a lady, and had it repainted …

The rest of the explanation has been peeled off, so I can't read it. According to the market valuation report Kraul was best known for his many illustrations of children's books, almanacs and Christmas books. "Kraul adopts a traditional, naturalistic style, and mainly features landscapes, cityscapes, interiors and the still life." More important from my point of view is the fact that Elmer seems to have gained an appetite for acquiring paintings from his father.

It's almost impossible at this point in time to say which painting Elmer acquired next, but I presume it was this one by Elias Petersen, dated 1921, which shows a maritime scene with sailboats and a steamer, and waves rolling into the foreground.

When I received the paintings they were in a sad state and had acquired a heavy coat of grime from exposure to the domestic environment over many decades, so I had them cleaned. This small work by Petersen was in addition quite badly warped on its stretcher and the art restorer restretched it so that it sits true and tight.

The market valuation report notes that the pictures belong to the 'Danish Modern Impressionist' movement which, it says, "is not deemed as important historically compared to other Danish movements from the same period". It also says that the painters of this movement are not well-known outside Denmark and "received their greatest acclaim in the 1920-30s" when "the Modern Impressionist artists flourished the most". Most of the artists represented in the group attended the Academy of Arts of Copenhagen at the end of the 1880s.

Probably the next painting in the group was this one by Ole Wolhardt Stampe Due, who died in 1925. Due has nine works displayed in Danish museums.

I assume that the next painting in the collection was this one by Poul Friis Nybo, who died in 1929.

The valuation report notes that Nybo has two works in Danish museums: Den Gamle By and the Skagens Museum. It also says that the artist "is highly sought after for his interior scenes".

The next one I think is this one by Elias Petersen, which is dated 1930, and shows a sand dune running down to a beach and a bay.

Then comes a painting dated 1932 by Theodore Bernard Dahl showing a farmhouse and a large tree.

The last painting in the group is by an unkown artist whose name ends with 'ensen', so it could be Jensen or Hohensen. It's quite a richly-coloured piece showing a large tree with deer grazing on grass in the forest in the background.

'Does this guy ever shut up?' asks Tony Abbott

In last night's leaders' debate opposition leader Tony Abbott briefly reverted to his thuggish type when, referring to the prime minister, he asked the audience - many of whom laughed, guffawed and applauded - ''Does this guy ever shut up?'' thus appealing to all the wife-beaters, the cashed-up bogan ice-smoking tradies, the dumb-as-fuck Anglo troglodites, the whacked-out mouth-breathing NRL fans, the narcissistic entitled middle-aged white grandfathers, and the closet pedophiles. By reverting to type, Abbott briefly showed us what he really is: an over-educated goon with zero imagination and absolutely no respect for the office to which he aspires. But we shouldn't be surprised. What's more surprising is that Abbott's minders have managed to keep him on-message and out of trouble for so long. But every now and then - like last night - Abbott slips up and lowers the tone of social discourse to a level with which he - a father of three daughters! - is happiest with: the after-game fly-off-the-rails barbarism of the teenage shoolboy. He's a disgrace to Australia.

You can also read a sequel to this by Billablog.

Targeting Greenwald and Poitras shows the US is in looneyville

After I read the story of how Edward Snowden's releases of information about the US National Security Agency occurred with the help of video-maker Laura Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald, I wasn't surprised to read today that Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, was stopped and questioned by British authorities as he travelled home to Brazil from Europe.

Not surprised, but still deeply offended.

Barack Obama is turning out to be a total looney when it comes to whistleblowers, ignoring the right to free speech cemented in the US Constitution, which protects the media from unwarranted actions by government authorities. Obama's record on whistleblowers is dismal. It got worse with the court case against Bradley Manning. With whistleblower Edward Snowden, Obama's administration has hit new levels of sleaze.

From the point of view of any right-thinking citizen, the actions of Manning and Snowden can only be viewed as impressive. The US government has entered looneyville by continuing to target and harrass journalists - and even their friends - in much the same way the Chinese government targets the families of human rights campaigners and democracy proponents in that country. Truly, the US government has jumped the shark, and has ended up somewhere over on the dark side where people die in secret in dark and unhealthy conditions, far from the people they love and absent recourse to any legal assistance. This is the territory frequented by Argentinian death squads and tin-pot dictators who have flourished - often with the help of the US government - in many countries around the world over the past 40 years.

Obama risks being viewed by good citizens as a zombie-politician, someone who survives by eating the brains of careless travellers and small animals. The detention and questioning of David Miranda means that absolutely noone is safe from the predations of this megalomaniac president and his legions of spooks, whose tentacles can reach into any home and even into the pockets of friends of reporters who dare to expose the criminal activities of a government gone mad with impotent rage as the contours of the world shift inexorably following the great wave of nationalism sparked by WWII. The US is behaving like a surly teenager who throws a tantrum when people stop listening to his blatant fabrications. Obama does not see that the fourth amendment was designed to protect people from just such a leader as he is turning out to be.

Mainstreaming marriage equality needed to erase gay stigma

It's with relief that I find this morning a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by writer Paul Paech that echoes what I've been telling people for years. Paech correctly attributes to discrimination embedded in Australia's marriage laws an affirmation for bigots - who are frequently violent, even today - who target homosexuals for special treatment. Violence of this kind is something I have always known even though I am not gay. In the 1980s living in Sydney's inner suburban liberal heartland - I lived in Glebe, Newtown, Paddington, Centennial Park, Bondi and Woollahra at different times - I frequently came across the kind of threats that gays in those days - we learn this year in a Fairfax expose of gay bashings and murders of gay men in Sydney's eastern suburbs - experienced all too often.

I remember myself one day queueing at a fast-food outlet in Bondi Junction. I was still at school and I felt the menace of the boy standing in the line behind me who, with his mates, was giving me the eye and making remarks under his breath. Was I dressed wrongly? I asked myself. What was it about me that had attracted the unwanted attention of this tough? I trembled and stayed silent; got my food and got out as soon as possible.

Another time as I was walking back to my Glebe apartment a carful of young men drove past and one of them leaned out the passenger-side front window. As the car went by he verbalised the sound "poof" while making an exploding gesture with his hand: fingers releasing outward as he move his hand upwards. What could I do? I lived in Glebe and went to university; of course I was fair game along with any other fashionable-looking young man in that area. At least for the bogans driving past in their Torana.

I graduated in 1985. One of the jobs I got after that was in a Paddington cafe situated right next-door to a well-known gay pub (it's now something else but the art deco exterior still stands). After work I would go down the road to an Oxford Street disco and there I met several people who were homosexuals - they still are as far as I know, if they're still around - and I'd sometimes go to the home of one of these men, who was kind and funny. In those years I did have some homosexual experiences but it was not serious; I was just a lonely young man looking for companionship and took it where I found it.

Because of these experiences it is not surprising that, in 1989, I took my camera to Oxford Street to chronicle an anti-gay march that was organised by religious conservatives living in Sydney. The following photographs show some of the people who attended, on both sides. First, here are the young, trendy people (the words we used in those days instead of "hipster") who supported gay rights. In the first five photos here you can see their good fashion sense, their sense of fun, their outgoing temperaments.

The next five photos show the people on the other side of the equation: the religious conservatives. They are badly dressed, earnest, combative and sometimes show hatred openly.

It's not remarkable that I identified strongly with the first group and completely failed then - as I do now - to understand the way of thinking of the second group. Later, in 1991, just before my marriage to a young woman, I staged my buck's night in that same art deco Paddington pub I had frequented years before. Now, with two adult children, it is even easier for me than it was then - in my creative and confusing years of youthful discovery - to pronounce on the one hand and censure on the other. It's second nature for me. It's the way I am. It's me, so get used to it. Tony Abbott's comments on marriage equality are so abhorrent to me that it makes me physically ill to even read his words in the media. People like Paul Paech are the ones I identify with. Some things - good things - often never change.

Hard to sympathise with Morsi in light of Egypt's recent history

Egypt's new round of bloodshed is drawing condemnation from many people but it's hard to sympathise with Morsi, the elected president since removed from power by the army. His supporters have been protesting on the streets and it's their blood that is now darkening pavements in Egypt as live ammunition is being used in addition to tear gas by the armed forces.

Egyptian democracy seems to belong to the streets. Back in December I wrote about new protests by the country's liberals against measures taken by Morsi and his political party, the Muslim Brotherhood, in an effort to mold Egypt's polity in their own image. Those protests were repeated six months later, in June, which led the army to remove the president from office on 3 July. Instead of regular elections, Egypt has had regular street protests, with the army fulfilling the functions of the head of state and the ballot counters, combined.

In December Egypt's liberals - and no doubt many of its Christians - were complaining about special powers the president had abrogated for himself in order to place himself in a position of immunity with regards to the country's judiciary. That move was in the context of the drafting of the country's constitution, which Morsi had delegated to a panel of individuals dominated by Islamists. Protests therefore focused on the inclusion of words considered too close to sharia.

It's therefore hard to sympathise with Morsi, even though some Western liberals are now doing so - the same people who probably complained about Morsi's actions late last year. The fact is that Morsi has had plenty of time to listen to the views of regular Egyptians. Each time those views were heard Morsi ignored them, preferring to steamroller through the obstacle rather than find a point of consensus that all could agree on. It has been this tendency from Morsi's political party - to crash or crash through - that removes so much of the potential pathos from their current plight in the face of military fiat, and the use of live ammunition to break up street protests. On whose hands is the blood being spilled now?

Morsi had plenty of opportunities to find another way through the debate. The fact that he failed means that many people who would otherwise sympathise with him and his supporters will look on current events with disinterest. Many will be merely waiting for the machine to go through its motions - a bit like in the case of Thailand or Fiji - so that eventually a new government can be elected by popular vote. Let's hope that whoever wins office then has more sense than to completely ignore the views of their political opponents.

Obama's NSA debate redefines the term 'bizarre'

Public debate about US President Barack Obama's national security measures - including the recent revelations about the country's NSA communications analysis and monitoring, and drone strikes - is redefining the meaning of the term "bizarre" because of the thick cloak of secrecy that militates against transparency, making it utterly impossible to discern truth from official spin. The New York Times had a good go today with a story on its website ('Threats Test Obama’s Balancing Act on Surveillance') but the contrary forces at play result in some strange quotes, and this verbal throwing-up-of-hands from the newspaper's editors:

It is yet unknown who exactly was killed in Yemen during the past two weeks. Therefore, it is hard to judge the recent strikes against those standards the president laid out in May. Specifically, did the dozens of people reportedly killed all pose a “direct and imminent threat”? And, with American officials fearing that an attack could happen at any moment, just how much care was taken before each strike to determine that no civilians were in the missiles’ path?

Earlier in the story we have this quote from Obama:

“I will not have a discussion about operational issues,” he said.

But later in the same story we have this from the president:

“Let’s just put the whole elephant out there, and examine what’s working,” he said.

It's too strange. Admittedly, that first quote refers to drone strikes and the second quote refers to the NSA's activities - which have come under intense scrutiny in the press, making it incumbent on the president to at least appear to be open and transparent. But where even the existence of the NSA's colossal data mining activities were unknown until the Guardian's reporting Edward Snowden's disclosures, we're unlikely to get much satisfaction even from the top press vehicle in the country.

Hence the strange creature from a Medieval bestiary that accompanies this post: a combination of a rabbit and a snake; a creature like this seemed to me to be the only way to quickly illustrate the kind of fantasy-world of government spin and government obfuscation these issues produce. As the NY Times' headline shows, we're dealing with a trade-off between the legitimate public right to know and (what we're told is) an operational imperative to spy - on everyone, everywhere.

War always results in the reduction of the rights of the individual. The suspension of habeus corpus, for example, is a common outcome of war. Similarly, national constitutions globally are being ignored in order to "protect" people from (unknown, unknowable) threats by millions of people. Snowden was a rare man of conscience in a crowd of obedient functionaries. The strange kinds of official utterances and the odd stories appearing in the press are a product of the bizarre situation we find ourselves in, now, as the world changes shape inexorably. It seems that the first thing people do with new wealth is buy guns to protect their interests. The mere pursuit of wealth appears, in this context, rather anodyne. The urge to guard one's honour - and so prop up the basis of personal identity - seems to be rather unattractive, then. Let's hope there will arise institutions adequate to satisfying the (apparently) conflicting needs of people in all countries. War is a price too high to pay for repose.

Post mining investment boom needs new acronym: PMIB

There's a headline on the Sydney Morning Herald website today that just doesn't make sense: 'NSW to lead in post-mining boom', it says. The newspaper's subeditors aren't alone in being wrong on this point, of course. On the 7.30 program last night during her interview with the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, journalist Leigh Sales made the same mistake by pointing to a "post-mining boom" that she somehow linked to a "slowdown" in China to suggest that Australia's economy was due for a readjustment - and what was the government going to do about it?

Rudd quickly pointed out to Sales - correctly - that what is occurring in the mining industry is a slowdown in the amount of construction of capital works that has fuelled the shift of thousands of workers to fly-in-fly-out jobs in the outback. Mining itself, as Rudd also pointed out, is doing great guns. With all the new capacity that is coming online in Australia's vast hinterland added to continued strong demand for commodities like coal and iron ore - the raw materials for still-massive construction projects in places like China and India - Australia is set to enjoy a positive balance of trade going forward (both coal and iron ore are required to manufacture steel).

So the short conclusion is that we need a new acronym, something like PMIB ("post mining investment boom").

As for China, it's true that China's leaders are trying to rein in growth there in order to ensure that housing is not completely unaffordable for the millions of people who have moved to the country's cities over the past decades - and who will continue to make their homes there going down the track - but growth of seven percent per annum is still very strong indeed.

In short, there is no "post-mining boom" period to lament, now, in 2013 and going into 2014 and ensuing years. What we are now entering is a period where jobs in Australia dedicated to constructing mining infrastructure are tapering off; now it is the production phase we are entering. We see figures that allow us to understand this kind of thing all the time; the mooted casino for Townsville announced recently, for example, was announced in such terms: X number of jobs in the short term and Y number of jobs on a permanent basis. Let's get our terms right. It's so irritating to hear people like Sales - who otherwise does a competent job - muffing her lines so badly out of mere ignorance.

Abe wins upper house, mortgages country's future

Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister since December, has led the Liberal Democratic Party he heads to another win, in the country's upper house, following elections this week. And the guy obviously dyes his hair. Would you vote for a guy who dyed his hair?

Apart from this distasteful cosmetic subterfuge, under Abe Japan the economic body has been bulking up, sucking in craploads of cash in order to print money in its own version of QE, adding to a public debt bigger than two times national GDP. Abe is behind the push to stimulate the economy, which has stagnated for 20 years due to the country's restrictive immigration policies and regulations; a low birthrate and rapidly rising quotient of retirees means nothing's replenishing the tax base as the country ages.

But Japan's ingrained xenophobic essentialism means it will never open its doors to the thousands of Chinese and Koreans who would otherwise rush in to help support the sagging economy. Instead, Abe - a chest-pounding nationalist who continues to anger China and other victims of Japanese pre-1945 colonial policies - has decided to further burden Japan's yet-to-vote youngsters - those who will have to service the staggering debt in the future - and has thrown caution to the wind. Easier to cripple the economy for a couple of generations than tackle the parochial mums and dads and grandparents who continue to view Japan as a special case, a nation apart. It's all wind; one day its direction will change and it's not hard to predict where the crap will land.

Glebe tram sheds a palimpsest of urban change

Seeing news that developer Mirvac will turn the old Glebe tram sheds into a food retail complex made me scan the article closely, looking for clues as to how a corporate giant would treat the palimpsest of urban change embodied in the graffiti that has been applied there over decades. After talking about how the sheds had been originally used, the article says:

More recently it was a haven for graffiti artists and [Stuart] Penklis [Mirvac's national director of apartment and commercial development] said Mirvac was hoping to keep some of this graffiti in the new complex, as well as restoring one of the old trams that had sat derelict in the sheds for years. 

That "more recently" is more than a little obtuse. The graffiti in the tram sheds is at least 30 years old, and dates from at least as early as my undergraduate days at Sydney University, a time when I lived in Glebe. Back in those days the architectural feature now labelled officially the university's Graffiti Tunnel was just a convenient access way between two points on campus, one that happened to be slathered in graffiti. The university was smart and later decided to make the impromptu work of late-night daubers the defining characteristic of their subterranean alley. As a result of this liberal foresight, university managers have given due weight to the cultural meaning of the tunnel, and have thus enriched their campus - surely one of the most extraordinary collections of architectural styles existing in the southern hemisphere - forever.

Mirvac owes it to the history of Glebe to do as much as the company possibly can to retain the graffiti in the Glebe tram sheds. In my day, 30 years ago, Glebe was a haven for poor students - much as Newtown also was - although it's too pricey for most now; you see besuited young professionals today tramping up Glebe Point Road of an evening going from Broadway with their shopping bags to their apartments or rooms further up beyond the old Valhalla Cinema. It is people like these who will be living in the Harold Park apartment complex when it's finished. But people don't live in Glebe to get away from the grungy vibe, it's what makes the place so special, and gives it the social cachet that attracts young people with good incomes to buy and rent there.

Mirvac has a huge responsibility now as they face the prospect of maintaining the cultural artefacts - the rich layers of graffiti in the tram sheds - that give the structure a unique meaning and a special charm. Let's hope that they choose wisely and do the right thing, just as the university did.