An open letter to New Zealand, or maybe a suburban diaspora

Dear New Zealand,

although it may have seemed like a joke or a funny little aside for so many Australians to say after the result of the 2013 federal election, I am not playing around when I say I’m considering moving to your fair shores to escape the misery, strife and economic rationalism of a Tony Abbott-led government.

I have always had unwavering respect for your nation, believing it to be a smaller yet cleaner and far more progressive version of Australia. As Mark Latham said in one of his moments of lucidity, “New Zealand is the Switzerland of the Pacific”, obviously without the discrimination of migrants in parks and public pools and without Oprah Winfrey getting in a flap over being refused the purchase of a gaudy piece of fabric as a handbag that costs five-figures or some such.

I’ve been to New Zealand only once before, for a week’s holiday when I was 13, but I was very impressed with how bright, friendly and switched-on both your people and country is. I do not wish to piss in your pocket, but how are you not a bigger presence on the world stage? Oh but of course, you’re humble and happy to stay as one of the few happy and content wallflowers on the international stage.

As an Australian, I’ve always been conscious of not automatically claiming the people and products of your good country as “our” own, to me, Split Enz is New Zealand. Sam Neill is New Zealand. Russell Crowe. John Clarke. Pavlova. New Zealand.

I’ve enjoyed the films of Peter Jackson, specifically the pre-Hollywood titles: the ribald Bad Taste. The divine Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners for having that foxy Trini Alvarado in a lead role.

Yes, I am willing to leave Australia because of a hard-line conservative government elected to rule, and yes, I am aware that currently New Zealand is governed by a conservative party, but hey, any conservative party that legalises marriage equality can’t be that bad, can it? I’m only a 23 and already a staunch Labor voter, but how impressive are the people of your own Labour Party? Helen Clark, Mike Rann and especially Georgina Beyer, the world’s first elected transgender MP! I am also impressed by how more equitable your society is in relation to your indigenous people, unlike Australia’s own.

New Zealand, if you’re happy to have me, I pledge full allegiance to Aotearoa, because after all, if a country that can give the world such happy and peaceful people (no, I’m not one of the Australian fools that idolises and glorifies the socioeconomic thuggery as a way of life of Once Were Warriors, seriously, how many skinny white teenage Aussies have to be a starfucker for that guy?) like Edmund Hillary, The Topp Twins, Ernest Rutherford and Janet Frame … well, I’m gushing so I’ll conclude.

Already quite a few left-leaning Australians are rhapsodizing migrating to New Zealand, and indeed this has already been decried as “comfortable, well-off white people”, but fuck that, I’m getting in first.If anyone wishes to fund my passage across the Tasman, please contact me to exchange bank details 😉

If he can accuse Gillard of playing a “gender card”, then I call him out on playing the “right-wing psychopathic fuckwit” card

Today I came across a “meme” from a Facebook page that is anti-Abbott (so clearly my kind of people) and this was the image:

Tosser

Yes, Mr Abbott, who is somehow an “honourable” man, really did compare Nazi Germany to women having abortions in Australia. Obviously, Mr Abbott has been making “gaffes”, “faux pas” and general displays of behaviours of being a dick not just during this election campaign, but since he was first elected to parliament as the Member for Warringah. He made the above remark during his first-term, having been elected in 1994, and so convinced that there is surely a treasure-trove of more ridiculous statements to be found in Hansard, I set out to read Mr Abbott’s maiden speech, way back on May 31, 1994.

If I can achieve anything at all in this place, I will owe it to the people of Warringah who have sent me here. If I can amount to anything at all in our national life, I will be indebted to my great predecessors whose shoes I struggle to fill: Michael MacKellar, who stood for the humane and the decent; Edward St John, who never shirked a fight in a good cause …

Yes, Michael MacKellar, who imported a colour television-set without declaring it to customs and who with a fellow minister tried to cover it up.

Edward St John, an arch-Tory who rubbed shoulders with that crazed Catholic crusader Bob Santamaria, yet who somehow years after leaving parliament became an anti-nuclear activist and founding the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa, yes, a Lib who was against Apartheid – unlike John Howard who generally supported (and has never rebuked since) Margaret Thatcher’s wish for Nelson Mandela to be hanged.

You’re a scrapper but never for anything other than your own parochial, patriarchal pursuits.

Since Labor came to power in 1983, government has become a means for applying bandaids to social problems rather than an instrument for giving cohesion and purpose to our national life.

Which must make Mr Abbott’s policies of putting an end to people-smuggling by paying, if not bribing and/or buying out rickety, leaky old boats in Indonesia off people-smugglers (Honest Tony’s Used Cars, I mean Boats) and paying up to $75,000 for North Shore breeders who are already well off to eke out taxpayers money because their of selfish sprog spawning, seem like the medical equivalent of cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. A skin-graft for a paper cut? Find a band-aid for your own stupidity, Tony.

“In the quest to solve social problems, government reaches into our schools, our workplaces and even our bedrooms.”

And are these problems what society, and I mean everybody in this country considers to be problems Mr Abbott or they, as per, just your own crazed beliefs after being the bottom tutored by Santamaria’s dick Catholic crusades? Like Mr Abbott as Minister for Health putting a stop to RU-486 being legal in this country and putting your own personal views of abortion as “the easy way out” and a woman’s virginity (oh, is Queen Victoria still on the throne? Then get yourself a Prince Albert at the dirtiest joint around, you blue(blood)-tongue lizard) as a “precious gift”.

In closing, Mr Abbott ends his speech with a litany of thanks to the usual suspects (I wonder who is Keyser Soze, boom boom):

To my parents and to my grandparents;

There were four siblings, with Abbott the only boy. He was spoiled and, as one sister later remarked, “Tony was always the star”. His mother thought so highly of him that she predicted he would become either pope or prime minister.

to my sisters, who have made me what I am;

Should’ve come out earlier, Christine.

May God and the ghosts of great men give me strength. May those who have laboured greatly to build this nation fortify my resolve to make a worthy contribution in this House.

We’re still waiting for you to make one, Tony.

5 days until D-Day.

Oh to be one of those people who had the funds to be able to say, “If Tony Abbott becomes Prime Minister I’m leaving the country!” And I seriously would – Britain, Germany, New Zealand, the list is endless to get away from this blue(blood)-tongue lizard.

PS – If anybody else has the patience and determination to trawl through the archives of Hansard from 1994 onwards to find lesser known quotes made by Mr Abbott that are rather telling, submit them here! 😉

An attempt at culture jamming the 2013 Election

Recently Opposition Leader (and aspirant to the top job – knock him down, people!) Tony Abbott has had letters sent to voters all over the country, tailored and suited to their constituency, pleading for them to vote Liberal and by describing how we can “choose a stronger Australia and a better government” and his “Plan” to do so, which is in itself vague, non-descriptive and mistier than the vision of somebody with cataracts being stuck in a Gaussian blur.

Inspired by the few “responses” to these letters I’ve seen, mostly to be found on anti-Abbott Facebook pages (may Abbott’s own mad Mick God bless these people’s efforts instead of his), including this excellent and inspiring one from a constituent of the Division of Wills (thankfully held by Labor’s Kelvin Thomson – GO KEL!):

Whoever did this reply I will happily buy them a pint and bake them a cake.

I decided to knock out a reply to this one sent to Mumsie, (yes, my shame is that I’m enrolled to vote in the Division of Fisher, where I’m hoping that the result will not leader to Angus Deayton’s only quip of “No change there then”):

Unfortunately, the ink was dying on my pen and I was without a scanner for the full high-resolution of my facetious responses.

If you’re reading this in Australia and have received one of these untruthful, PR-driven and ultimately failed missives, do as I’ve done and send it back to whichever candidate Mr Abbott has sent it from on their behalf. Also, if you’re on the other side of the world, I’d love to see what you can do with your political pamphlets too.

VOTE LABOR!

 

Spills, Thrills and Bellyaches

June 26, 2013:

Will he? Won’t we? Who cares? Who else is sick and tired of what the Australian Labor Party has become – a popularity contest worse than any to be found in primary school. There’s been pissing contests less juvenile and (ultimately) less self-harming than this. Although a bit of fun has come from Leader of the House Anthony Albanese emerging from his office to a media scrum and using Manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne as a human shield. Hmm, is there a publishing spin-off here, 1001 Uses for a Christopher Pyne?

At 4.30pm, after a day of frenzied (more so than usual) speculation that a leadership spill would occur, and rumours of a petition to reinstall Kevin Rudd to the leadership, Julia Gillard announced a ballot to be held tonight at 7 pm.

So here’s me eating a Shirley Valentine-esque dinner of egg and chips in front of ABC News 24, ready to take it all in for you.

I’m in two thoughts over this: 1. If Rudd wins and becomes Prime Minister again, will he behave better than he did last time? For all the hissy fits over hairdryers, shunning and dismissing members of the cabinet and generally showing more signs of petulance and megalomania than Tony Blair (if that’s possible), Rudd better have learned his lesson and govern for all with all members of government. 2. It’s going to take a long time to get over this history of squabbling and in-fighting. Although I’m a proud “Gillardite”, if Rudd returns will that not give Labor the vote of the political apathetic who encourage the on-going popularity contests? I hope so, for more than anything I hope Labor triumphs, whoever’s at the helm, in order to keep Tony Abbott out of the top job.

And who is left to step up to a Rudd ministry? ABC News 24’s Lyndall Curtis earlier pointed out that there are “those within the party who have very strong opinions of Kevin Rudd … they are expected if he wins to stand down from the ministry.” So that leaves out Wayne Swan, Kate Ellis, Tanya Plibersek, and Peter Garrett … If Rudd is successful, it will be interesting to see who is elevated to a cabinet position. Bill Shorten’s announced that if Gillard remains leader he’ll resign his position as Minister for Workplace Relations and go to the backbench.

Independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, both famous for endorsing Gillard and Labor in this minority government, resigned today. Interestingly, Bob Katter has said he’ll support a Rudd Labor government. Until the election in September, if it’s not brought forward, will Oakeshott and Windsor continue to support Labor in the meantime?

“If I lose, I announce that I will not contest the next election.” Yes, Kevin. We’ve all heard you say that before. Gonna keep a promise this time?

It’s 6.57pm and Team Gillard has made its way to the caucus room – a defiant show of whose gang’s bigger than whose. Kevin Rudd trailed behind a minute later, on his own, curiously resplendent in a blue-tie.

—

I’ve been into politics since I was 14. I practically voted then despite being underage as from the 2004 election, my mum would ask who to vote for and I said she should vote Labor. Yes, we voted for a Mark Latham-led Labor, which in hindsight would have most likely been catastrophic, but it would have been bloody interesting. Who could forget when Marky Mark shouted down then-Prime Minister John Howard introducing George W. Bush to the House of Representatives as an “arselicker!”? And when he allegedly broke a cab-driver’s arm in an argument. And that handshake. The day before that election, Latham and Howard’s paths crossed at a radio station with dozens of photographers in attendance. Both decided to cordially greet each other and shake hands – instead, Latham grabbed on to Howard’s hand a bit too hard, and the resulting handshake turned into a body shake for the short and older Howard. Still, plenty of laughs though. Though hardly having the wit of Paul Keating, lest we forget Latham’s barrage of insults with a bully-boy edge. “Conga line of suckholes”?

—

7.19pm

Curiously, Leigh Sales is presenting an earlier edition of 7.30, and on the screen behind her is a picture of Rudd in close-up with “Rudd P.M.” as the title. Not even a question mark? Prescience or carelessness? As an aside, 7.30’s Chris Uhlmann, reporting from outside the caucus room, is married to Gai Brodtman, the Member for Canberra. Sure, a possible conflict of interest may arise from time to time, but I’ve never seen Brodtman in Question Time – is she the most hermit-like of backbenchers or is it just me?

—

PROS for Rudd:

–          He’s got the popularity vote – mindless, apathetic, gormless halfwits will vote for him in their droves.

–          He’s had the top job before, so therefore experienced.

CONS for Rudd:

–          Temper tantrums

–          Being held up to even higher standards than before.

PROs for Gillard:

–          Personally, she’s awesome.

–          She doesn’t get into a flap. I’ve yet to hear anything of Gillard ever “losing it” and becoming a sweary scary rager like Rudd.

–          In the face of adversity (i.e. the “Noalition”), she’s never backed down from a challenge and never shown any signs of stress or difficulty with it.

CONS for Gillard:

–          All that crap since 2010 about her “knifing” Rudd. I don’t know why people and the media keep spinning this lie. She asked for a leadership spill, Rudd agreed and resigned before the vote. So she never really “knifed” him, did she? Why has nobody ever understood this?

8.30 PM

And the votes are in, with Rudd the victor with 57 votes to Gillard’s 45. Still no official word from either party and now I’m bored with the constant (over-)analysis of everything that’s already happened by the usual pundits. Truth be told my interest is waning – I now want to go straight to tomorrow and find out who’s got what cabinet role, and Jewish Mum of the Year is on ABC2. Typical, me.

So there we have it – Rudd as leader and ultimately to be Prime Minister. Will there be an earlier election? Will the Gillard-loyal politicians be sent forthwith to the backbench? Will Rudd learn his lesson and become a truly unifying leader for the ALP? All I know is I’m off to get me some simcha (and I mean that in the most respectful way) action on the other channel.

L’chaim, Kevin.

Don’t fuck it up.

— LINKS ADDED SOON

Related articles

• Rudd wins 57 to 45: Gillard defeated in ballot (theage.com.au)

Cory Bernardi and his illiterate groupies

Cory Bernardi is still opposed to same-sex marriage, believing that his earlier predictions of the consequences of marriage equality would be bestiality and polygamy have come true; though how same-sex marriage between two humans could be seen as a green-light for matrimony with mammals and for swingers to be “normal” – isn’t the whole point of swinging that it is “frowned upon”, and thus a group of horny and boring people with nothing better to do than get their rocks off can throw their stones at others? Bernardi previously voiced his opposition to marriage eqaulity in September 2012, claiming that if same-sex marriage was legalised,

“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship … there are even some creepy people out there … who say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals.”

before adding

“Will that be a future step? In the future will we say, ‘These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union’.

Today he’s gone one better, saying that a petition presented to Parliament by the Polyaction Amory Lobby has proved him “right”, and then deciding to hit out at the entire left (as only a Lib can) by claiming it was a Greens-endorsed group (again, as only a Lib can do), and that bestiality and polyamory are part of the Greens “radical agenda”.

Bernardi is well known for subscribing not to the loony left but  – even worse – the loony right, once again proving that the Liberal Party should be done for false advertising. “Ah yes, but they’re only called ‘Liberal’ because they believe in a ‘free’ market’,” I’m told. Yes, and look where that’s got the world – KFC, GFC and sweet F.A.

Bernardi is a founder of the Conservative Action Network, known as CANdo, a right-wing rival to the left-leaning Get Up! group of grassroots activists. “Conservative Activist” sounds like an oxymoron to me, which reminds me: for all the talk of “well meaning liberals”, why do we never hear of “well meaning conservatives”? CANdo? More like a brat saying “shan’t”.

After a poke around on the CANdo site, there’s a page for supporters to suggest things for CANdo to campaign on. The best I’ve found is by someone called Ken Barton, “Stop This High Spending Government From Crippling Us – And Worse! (sic)”:

This crazy crazy Government, ruled by Fabians and deranged International Monetarists, must stop spending even if it means:
Stop funding the Aged Pension
Healthcare will now be 100% user pays
End all Welfare – churches will have to pick up the slack
All Education is users pays including childcare, universities etc
Armed Forces disbanded
All Foreign Aid will cease as of midnight
Close all Foregin Embassies
Sell all public buildings in Canberra and Capital Cities in first 12 months of an Abbott government
All tax revenue will go to repay the foreign debt – will take approx. 28 years to do so under this funding scenario
Until this is put into place we will have no chance of returning this society to the glory of the Howard years.

Spelling and grammar aside, it’s laughable. Yes, let’s scrap the aged pension so that Granny has to spend her twilight years begging for alms. Though the suggestion that social welfare should be junked and churches responsible for it is food for thought. For two seconds. Yeah, let the Catholic church pay all the oldies, disabled and unemployed a stipend – shouldn’t take too long, just look at how efficient they’ve been with victims of the church’s abuse getting compensated, if not finally acknowledged. And as for closing all Foregin embassies, perhaps that can wait until the nation of Foregin is established. Back to the drawing board, Ken!

In December 2011 in The Monthly, Sally Neighbour wrote a profile of Bernardi, and what I remember most of it are the quotes by unfortunately unidentified members of his own party:

“Cory is deluded,” says a Liberal Party colleague. “He is one of the least effective or important members of the parliamentary team. Cory is a person without any intellect, without any base, and he should really never have risen above the position of branch president. His right-wing macho-man act is just his way of looking as though he stands for something.”

and

“He wants to be some sort of conservative warrior but he’s not up to it intellectually,” says a Liberal associate.

Much like retiring Liberal politician Judi Moylan was widely quoted on yesterday, it’s time for the moderates in the Liberal Party to speak up, if not the party properly, to denounce the nuts who are moving inwards from the fringe; because with three months until the next election, there’s nothing worse than the thought of Cory Bernardi as President of the Senate.

UPDATE – Senator Bernardi has now claimed that his words yesterday were “taken out of context”. This article in The Australian reports on Liberal leader Tony Abbott’s sister Christine Forster, a lesbian, responding to Bernardi in a tweet. Again, another Liberal non-apology for hatred and stupidity.

Crying foul of crying fowl

Sorry, but it’s time for another rant.

The “menu” of Menugate, from theconversation.com

Another day, another sexist jibe at Julia Gillard with the usual defence of “I didn’t mean it like that” and “It’s been taken out of context”, and with the usual non-apology of “If I’ve caused any offence I’m sorry”. Well, how is someone supposed to take the insult of “Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail, with small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box”? I’ve never known any male politician to receive insults based on his gender and appearance on the same level. And to all those who cry foul – and in this case crying fowl if not wolf – over Tony Abbott’s bathers getting branded “budgie smugglers” – are you not abusers enabling abusers? I’ve only ever heard two cracks based on gender and appearance at a male politician, to wit:

1. My then stepmother after a few glasses of wine greeted the news of former Deputy PM John Anderson resigning due to a prostate condition as, “Yeah, he’s got a small dick!”
2. My aunt didn’t vote for Labor led by Mark Latham because Latham “had man-boobs”.

Not exactly in the same league as a constant barrage of references to gender, sexuality and appearance is it?

This week started off with Prime Minister Gillard making a speech at a fundraising event where she stated that if Tony Abbott was to become PM, then abortion would be used as a “political plaything” and denouncing the Liberals as “blue ties”. For some reason everyone took umbrage to that remark and thought it flippant. The next day “Menugate” was revealed where at a dinner for more Liberal losers a menu was supplied with the aforementioned Quail remark. There was also some pith about eating your greens “before the Greens take over everything”. Hardly in the same league as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde or the writers of Frasier.

Then come Friday the Prime Minister was against insulted by Perth’s 6PR’s Howard Sattler, who asked the PM if her partner Tim Mathieson was “gay” because he used to work as a hairdresser, and trying to accuse the PM of being Mr Mathieson’s “beard”. Thankfully Sattler was sacked, but is now doing the usual Liberal thing of crying wolf or fowl by claiming he was dismissed from his job because he has Parkinson’s disease. Don’t start getting the shakes now, Howard. To top it all off and make this a week of rubbish, Daily Telegraph columnist Piers Akerman (has there ever been a high-profile columnist in a News Limited publication that isn’t right-wing? Bloody Rupert) appeared on ABC1’s Insiders to say he’d heard plenty of rumours about the PM and her partner’s private lives and was basically trying to repeat Sattler’s theory, only to again offer the usual non-apology when called out on it.

Do I again need to share the link to Dr Anne Summers’ lecture on the barrage of misogynistic abuse, not that it doesn’t already bear endless re-reading to hopefully educate people to make a stand when sexism occurs?

So where does all this misogyny come from? Stupidity is the obvious answer, but how is it allowed to be ingrained and grow in the first place? Why are the criticisms of the current government based on gender and sexuality instead of policies? There’s one lesbian in parliament, the awesome Senator Penny Wong, Minister for Finance; but why do deadshits have as an insult that all women in the cabinet are lesbian? Are these not the same homophobic idiots who repel from the sight of a single gay man yet love to get their rocks off watching lesbian porn? And why is that? Really, I’d like to know as I’ve never been able to fathom that old chestnut of idiocy.

The whole thing is fucked up, and it’s time to end it now as there’s less than 100 days until the next election. For if Tony Abbott and his band of bullying thugs form the next government, then misogyny and abuse will become legislation; even though I’m just a single white male (UGH!), that scares the shit out of me.

Could this end up a blogging Pygmalion effect?

For the nth time since the age of 15 I’ve been told I speak with an “English” accent which gives me no end of pleasure, Anglophile that I am – but how did I get it? I know when I speak I sound more “refined” or “cultivated” (as linguists would put it) in contrast to the stereotypical “broad Australian” accent i.e. sounding like your nose is congested and unable to free the blockage. Those who tend to do pronounce Australia as AWSTRAYLEEA or STRAYA (thank you, John Clarke!). This is known as speaking “Strine”, for in a broad Aussie accent “Australian” becomes “strine”.

Apart from the broad strain of Australian English, the only other regional variation I know of is from Melbourne. Not only is the Melbourne speech-pattern to flatten and shorten every ‘a’ – castle is cassel, mall is mal, Reservoir is Resev-war, Malvern is Molvern and Beaumaris is Beaumorris; even Balcombe Road where I lived in Melbourne is said more like “Baulkham” – but with females especially I’ve picked up on a nice little throaty thing happening with their voices too, and I’ve only found it in women from Melbourne: Marieke Hardy, Catherine Deveny and sometimes you can still pick up a few traces from Germaine Greer. I don’t know how it happens though, whether from smoking, laryngitis or something else – not that I’m complaining. I love it – it’s “well lush”. Sadly there’s not a lot to be found online that isn’t academic (read: boring) for an irreverent source here, but this is interesting – at least it mentions the most known mismatch of an accent to be found in public, the Prime Minister’s. Born in Wales, grew up in Adelaide and is pretty much a Melbourne type of person; I’ve heard Julia Gillard’s accent to be described as either (from that Age piece) “strine with a cavalier defiance” to “Wendy Harmer on Mogadon”. Better to sound like Julia Gillard than the pantomime schoolboy blubbering of former PM John Howard (the only person to start speaking like his impersonators).

So how did I get my accent? I was born in Gosford, (an hour north of Sydney) and the only thing speech-wise I notice there is how we all say New South Wales as if we’re from South London (“New Sarf Wales”). I then spent my adolescence in Queensland (which I dig as having a broader accent anyway, so parochial and backwards the place is) where I started getting all the nods to my supposed phantom accent. It’s not a conscious thing either. Despite a somewhat passable skill of putting on an English accent (I can do RP, Mockney (thank you, EastEnders) and two strains of Northern: Manchester and Yorkshire), I’ve only ever used it for mucking about in drama classes. And some things sound better English anyway, especially swearing or witty asides (I’m no Dorothy Parker). Have I gone up my own arse with my pretentious tendencies and try to sound “posh”? No! Do I spend my days swanning around as if I’m Noel Coward? I can’t think of anything worse.

Nobody else in my family speaks like this. I’m the only one who’s got it and I still can’t work out from where. Maybe it was from acting or the years of teenage misery where I hardly spoke anyway so that when I did my words would be forced and thus “cultivated” – the only way my speech is cultivated is from not coming from the nose but the back of my throat. I sound pretty normal amongst my friends apart from a lack of Strine and slang, but it’s not a put-on, I just happen to speak “properly” with what I say not how I say it.

A few afternoons ago, a friend and I had to make statements to the police after two “blaggers” (there’s some non-local lingo for you) tried to break in over the weekend. Prior to making our statements, my friend and I were discussing the many time I’ve been told I sound “English”, only for one of the cops to actually be English and even ask me where in Britain I was from. Of course it thrilled me to be actually told this by an Englishman, but I didn’t ask from where my accent sounds like it comes from. He was probably from the Home Counties if not somewhere in the South of England, and after his disbelief of me being Australian asked where I was from.

COP: So where were you born?

ME: Gosford.

COP: Down south isn’t it?

ME: Yeah, Sydney basically.

COP: Nobody talks like that in Gosford, do they?

ME: Nope.

So where in England is my accent from and how the freak did I get it? I’m not knocking it – no doubt when I do eventually go to the UK I’ll fit right in and nobody will believe I’m not native – despite having a “natural” (if that’s the word for being constantly exposed to the Queensland sun) tan. Even my local cop from Blighty remarked that I’ll never be able to get into a Walkabout bar (why would I?).

If time permits I may add a clip here of me reading this post out and you can decide if I sound English or not. If I really do sound English then I’d at least like to know what dialect I’m speaking. The Henry Higgins of blogging, here I come!

Why I hate the BDS movement

Since the age of sixteen, I’ve had a deep love, interest and respect for Jewish people, whether they be practicing or just of the blood pure. It all started from reading the columns of Julie Burchill, the British journalist who is known as one of the fiercest defenders of Israel in the British media. Where are the defenders of Israel in Australia?

Why do I have such a thing for Jews? I can’t explain but I hope the following list will. How many of the people listed are either clever, talented, intelligent, funny, switched-on, interesting or even downright sexy, and all because they’re Jewish, regardless of whether by birth, religious observance or descent:

• John Safran
• Deborah Conway
• Sir John Monash
• Malcolm Fraser
• Frank Lowy
• Abe “Mr Sin” Saffron
• Robert Manne
• Peter Singer
• Sir Peter Abeles
• Poppy King
• Sidney Myer
• Renee Geyer
• David Helfgott

And that’s just a selection from Australia alone. I could go on with a list of people from overseas but we’d never hear the end of it, such is my passion.

I consider myself a philosemite (a Judeophile if you will, but small-minded people hear the suffix of “phile” and their minds go instantly to child abuse – I can’t fathom it either) and am very slowly learning all about Judaism, Israel and Zionism. Thanks to Burchill’s and others’ writings and the dozens of books I’ve read, I’m gradually becoming more passionate and learned.

I overcame the slight dislike of my name once I learnt it was of Hebrew origin, (Yeshua, translated to God is Salvation) and that even the alias I tooled about with, Levi, was again by coincidence Hebrew, meaning “joined in harmony”.

But the real turning point for me was when I decided to join a political party. Being of a lefty persuasion (despite favouring Israel over Palestine, a slap in the face to any left-leaning cause) I decided to join the Socialist Alliance, cheap at only $15 a pop for yearly membership. I only attended meetings and such for a fortnight before realising what a crock it was, of people brainwashed by words like “solidarity” and “cause” and “consciousness” bandied about like stones, the same stones that Israelis are pelted with by Palestinians. Also I got out before the question over the Middle East arose and would surely have been kicked out anyway. I can just picture myself being chased out of Trades Hall for refusing to kow-tow to the demands of a group of people whose chosen fashion accessory is one of Mum’s tea towels, straight out of the third drawer down.

Months later and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign kicked into full swing in Australia, spearheaded by Senator Lee Rhiannon of the NSW branch of The Greens, and a few mimsy words from then party leader Bob Brown, who didn’t anywhere near calling it out on the anti-Semitic bullying it is (And doesn’t Lee Rhiannon always remind you of that weird teacher from primary school that nobody liked and always smelled like they’d pissed themselves and rolled round in chicken-salt before leaving home?).

I’m glad I cut all ties with the lefty loonies by then, because at that time they all decided to do the only thing a BDS campaign can do, to picket a chocolate shop because it was started by two guys who happened (by fortune) to have been born in Israel. I was livid and had a near panic-attack when I read in the papers that 19 protestors (some of whom were from the S.A., just one letter away from S.S.) were arrested for protesting outside a Max Brenner store in Melbourne’s CBD, on charges including riotous behaviour, trespass and besetting premises. In my upset state I seriously thought that the next thing the S.A. would do was goose-step down Glen Huntly Road to Caulfield, Elsternwick and Balaclava (the home of most of Melbourne’s Jewish population) and attack any newsagent that dared to sell the Australian Jewish News. Thankfully, this has not happened, but if anything so resembles that sickening thought I’ll be on the first plane down there to abuse them in turn whilst proudly wearing my Israeli flag-patterned bandana (sorry,  it was cheaper than buying an actual flag-sized flag, of which I hope to buy a few to put up in my front windows).

Picketing Max Brenner stores and other businesses with links, however tenuous, to Israel is not just confined to Melbourne, or even Australia, but has happened throughout the world too – from London to Los Angeles. It also happened at around the same time to another Max Brenner store in Brisbane, and delightfully the BDS mob were met by a counter-protest, with bigger numbers and louder voices. Happily there was as a pro-Israel protest and show of support for the beleaguered chocolate shop in Melbourne, although sadly (to me personally) was sponsored and organised by the Liberal Party (don’t let the name fool you, international readers – the Liberal Party of Australia are conservative and currently there’s a right-wing Catholic at the helm), but at last Josh Frydenberg, Liberal MP for Kooyong, finally endeared himself to me, by asking BDS protestors to their smug faces: “Where is your Boycott, Divestment, Sanction about the butchers in Syria, about Ahmadinejad in Iran and the perils of Hezbollah?” If I should ever move to Anglican, leafy, upper middle class Kooyong – he’s got my vote.

So why do we hear nothing from a pro-Israel point-of-view in the Australian media? Granted we hear precious little about the Middle East anyway, usually only a few seconds on the evening news of rockets being launched over borders. And even that’s only on World News Australia on SBS! Australia needs a shake-up to scrape off the anti-Semitic crust that somehow most people I’ve met have inherently got. Even last week a 17 year-old (now former) friend of mine heard me mention that I was reading about Israel. His response to this was “bomb the shit out of them.” Considering that the political history of the Middle East isn’t taught in high school history (for shame), how could he say this without knowing a thing? How come in February 2012 on a block of toilets in near-redneck Wantirna of all places, some yobs chose as graffiti “The best Jew is a dead Jew” and a picture of a stick-figure in a noose, in a place with no Jewish people at all?

As Peter Finch cried in Network, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna’ take it anymore!” Why is there no history of out-and-proud philosemitism in Australia, particularly in the most Jewish-populated cities of Sydney and Melbourne? Why do studies say that anti-Semitism in Australia is on the rise since 9/11? Correct me if I’m wrong but was Israel in anyway involved in an attack that was orchestrated by the suicidal shareholders of Al Qaeda PLC? I know Muslims, whether fundamental or not, have taken stick (if not a branch), since then but blaming Jews for a cowardly offence committed by people? Have you not heard of Nick Griffin? Isn’t this just fringe-dwelling conspiracy nuts blaming Jewish people for everything wrong in their lives becoming mainstream?

It’s not on.

NOTE: Next I’ll be writing about what it’s really like attending a Socialist Alliance meeting and joining them on a protest – in other words, “My Brush with the Loony Left”.

Bread and bullshit circuses

What a hard time Julia Gillard has of doing her job. Running the country, trying to get policies legislated and out there and instead the media’s focus is – again – on a sandwich being thrown.

Granted it is out of the ordinary to have food as a weapon (apart from all those old Hitchcock-esque murder mysteries where a wife who’s had enough belts her husband with a leg of lamb and then cooks and eats the joint so there’s no evidence), but how will the PM be able to go to Aussie’s café in Parliament House without riot gear? Bring out the shields, lads – there’s sangers about!

Today whilst on a meet and greet at a high school in Canberra to spruik the Gonski education reforms, the Prime Minister had a salami sandwich thrown in her direction; I could say thrown at her but it was so widely off the mark that even non-athletic and bone-idle moi could have aimed better. In a gale. With my eyes closed. Listening to Elvis Costello’s “My Aim is True”.

Only last month whilst visiting a school in Brisbane, Ms Gillard had a sandwich thrown at her in a school playground for the first time. Again, the sliced-bread assailant missed, and the alleged offender was suspended from school – not before getting his mug all over the evening news – what more could a teenager want? Instant fame (or infamy) and the beginnings of what Max Markson would surely call a “media profile”. Add that one to your show-reel, kid.

And hasn’t the humble sandwich come a long way from it’s unsure and indefinable beginnings? There’s the whole Earl of Sandwich lark where either his good lady wife or his valet stuck a chunk of meat between some bread and gave it to the Earl so he could gamble whilst eating. That’s nothing – try filling out your trifecta slips at the pub while eating chips and gravy without a fork.

Other sources say it was Hillel the Elder, ancient Jewish religious leader (Philosemite that I am – my heart has swooned and my stomach is rumbling) who “invented” what we’d call a wrap now, by putting some leftover Paschal lamb on a bit of matzah. Next time you want to stir up a radical lefty, look them in the eye and with the most deadpan look you can muster, ask them: would you be eating that (no doubt wholemeal) sandwich now if it wasn’t for the Jews? I dare you!

I’ve never considered food let alone a sarnie as a weapon. Drinks, yes – the number of times I walked past then-Lord Mayor and now Queensland Premier Campbell Newman in King George Square with a coffee in my hand hot enough to cause GBH. Instead I behaved and laughed my head off instead when nearly he fell off a bicycle outside City Hall. Unfortunately (to me) despite not wearing a helmet, if he did fall Mr Newman would have no doubt been unharmed by just bouncing off his ego instead. And does drowning in your favourite cocktail count as “death by misadventure”? I’m off to enquire about a swimming pool of gin and a dash of tonic.

So why do the mishaps and unfortunate events overshadow the Prime Minister’s actions? Is it because she’s a woman? Yes – I’ve known of no other political leader in my 20-odd years be abused and insulted for their gender; from being considered “unfit” to be Prime Minister because they’re “deliberately barren” to having Opposition Leader Tony Abbott continue the insult from shock-jock (more like joke) Alan Jones that Ms Gillard’s father “died of shame” and that the “government had died from shame”. The Prime Minister’s response to this in Question Time was the best 15 minutes of 2012.

Yes, I’ve voted for and support Julia Gillard as Prime Minister – sometimes I must be the only young white guy (ugh!) around who does. For more on the abuse the PM cops just because she is a woman, read this lecture by writer and journalist Anne Summers: Her Rights at Work – it is powerful in it’s truth and shows just how much bullshit the Prime Minister gets thrown her way – and, in Dr Summers’ words: “a conspiracy of silence” by the media.

With all that happening, who gives a rat’s about a sandwich?