Is SBS in breach of its own advertising guidelines?

Tonight I began to watch "Race to the Pole", a program on SBS TV about the 1911 race between British and Norwegian expeditions to the South Pole . It looked and sounded reasonably interesting (despite being filmed in Greenland because dogs aren't allowed in Antarctica) though I was put off by the number of commercial breaks - three in the first half hour - which (1) disturbed the flow of the narrative and (2) seemed to take up an inordinate amount of time. I didn't time the breaks but my perception was that the SBS Advertising Guidelines were, if not not broken, stretched to the limit.

The Guidelines were introduced about six months ago when SBS effectively became almost a fully commercial network. The preamble to them states:

Section 45 of the Special Broadcasting Services Act, 1991 (SBS Act) provides that SBS may broadcast advertisements and sponsorship announcements before or after programs and during natural breaks and that run in total for not more than five minutes in any hour of broadcasting.

All decisions regarding commercial revenue are subject to the overriding principle that the integrity of the SBS Charter and SBS’s editorial independence are paramount and shall not be compromised in any way.

Decisions about the placement of advertisements in programs will be considered on a case-by-case basis and will have regard to program content and context. SBS will exercise sensitivity in the placement of advertisements. All advertisements will be clearly distinguished from SBS programming content.

The relevant sections state:

1.2 Natural breaks in documentaries and information programs

A break may be taken when:

(i) there is a change of topic, or

(ii) there is a change of method or treatment, or

(iii) recorded inserts occurring in live programs, or

(iv) new participants in a discussion program are introduced.

.....

2.1 Identification of breaks

SBS will assess programs to determine where, and if, there are natural breaks in content according to the definitions under section 1 of these Guidelines.

SBS will then decide which of these natural breaks will be used to carry advertising based on the five minute per hour limit and other considerations, including viewer experience.

2.2 Placement of breaks

Editorial considerations and the interests of viewer experience will be taken into account when considering the placement of breaks.

Within the definitions of natural breaks and the individual context of the program, the following schedule provides an indicative guide for the placement of internal breaks:

Scheduling Slot	Program Length	Parts/Breaks
Up to 10 minutes		No Break
30 minutes	25 minutes	3 Parts / 2 Breaks
45 minutes	40 minutes	3 Parts / 2 Breaks
60 minutes	52 minutes	4 Parts / 3 Breaks

Where the interests of viewers would be better served by a different format, for example to fit in with a particularly suitable interruption of continuity, there may be deviation from this guide. This will be assessed on a case-by-case basis applying these Guidelines in relation to natural breaks in accordance with the SBS Act.

How are "the interests of viewer experience" determined? By examining the entrails of a chicken? SBS is trying hard to sell its decision to increase advertising within programs : it's now prefacing some programs with an explanation along the lines of more ads, better programs, which is an indication that it's failed to convince viewers.

If it wants to "suceed" (as its on-screen announcement says) it should rethink its practices. Frequent breaks do have one advantage for viewers: they provide an opportunity to change channels or switch off, which is what I did tonight.

More controversy from the Sheik

According to The Age:

CONTROVERSIAL Muslim leader Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali has savaged Australia in an interview on Egyptian television, claiming there is no freedom or democracy for Muslims and that English people are the most unjust and dishonest.

The Mufti of Australia said Muslims were more Australian than Anglo-Saxons because they came here voluntarily, that Australians played the "fear card" to keep Muslims down, and that racial prejudice was the reason for the 55-year sentence given to gang rapist Bilal Skaf.

"Anglo-Saxons came to Australia in chains, while we (Muslims) paid our way and came in freedom. We are more Australian than them. Australia is not an Anglo-Saxon country — Islam has deep roots in Australian soil that were there before the English arrived," Sheikh Hilali said.

Australia's most controversial cleric was talking on the Egyptian news program Cairo Today, shown in Australia on the Orbit satellite network on Tuesday morning.

The ABC reports:

[Islamic Friendship Association of Australia spokesman] Keysar Trad says says he apologises for the comments if they have caused offence, but says the Sheikh has been misinterpreted.

"I do understand that some people taking these comments without looking at the full video would take offence to them," he said.

"As an Australian Muslim... I do feel like apologising to these people and also appealing to them to understand the context, it would seem he was trying to explain away that controversy and put it behind him and there were a couple of slip-ups."

Mr Trad says the Sheikh's comments were not intended to be malicious.

"The question was put to him, before making that comment, is that if you're under the spotlight so much why live there, why not come back and live in the country of your birth, and he said we have every right to live there basically we're not shackled to be there, we don't choose to be there, we paid our own way, implying that he loves Australia and loves being in Australia," he said.

The Prime Minister, according to The Age report, has played a reasonably straight bat, though some South Australians and others who agree with his support for more Australian history teaching might be disappointed that he's made the point that SA was founded as a convict-free settlement

Mr Howard was asked about the sheikh's reference to convicts and replied: "I think it will bring a wry smile, if it's true, … to the face of many Australians who sort of don't actually feel the least bit offended that many of our ancestors came here as convicts.

A little straight talking about unemployment figures

The official measuring stick of unemployment in Australia - if a person over 15 works for an hour a week they are counted as "employed" - is preposterous, even though all governments of both political persuasions go along with it.

Fortunately there are a few voices offering a different view. Henry Thornton is one. The link is to his post today, which in turn links to other sources including the Roy Morgan Unemployment estimate (which estimates unemployment at 7.1%, not the official 4.6%), and two other posts from his own site: one last month from Marcus L'Estrange and another from Henry himself last July.

They are all worth reading closely. Each goes into considerable detail so it's hard to summarise them here, but I'll quote a little from L'Estrange:

The OECD reports that Australia is the third lowest spender in the developed world on training unemployed people (Melbourne Age, June 26, 2006).

Many things are wrong with the monthly, or headline, "Labour Force" figures. Some examples are that advanced countries such as Germany and Singapore only count a person as employed if he or she works 15 hours or more. In Australia, you are counted as being employed if you work for as little as an hour.

Currently 400,000 Australians work between 1-14 hours a week. They are counted as being "employed", but in many other countries would be counted as unemployed. The person who works an hour a week in Australia has the same status in the employment statistics as one who works 40 hours! Consequently, unemployment comparisons between countries are largely illusory.

While she doesn't concur with this view, Shadow Minister for (among other things) Workforce Participation Senator Penny Wong has, in a brief media release today, drawn attention to the numbers of Australians who are underemployed or who for whatever reason want to work but aren't included in the official unemployed figures.

It's hard to see any government changing the current flawed definition of "employed", but is it too much to hope that a future ALP government might offer a more varied range of programs aimed at encouraging greater workforce participation by the groups Senator Wong's mentioned? Perhaps someone will come up with an term (preferably one which can be reduced to a snazzy sounding acronym for them). Any ideas?

Is he any closer to being charged?

Recent developments on the David Hicks front.

Following yesterday's reply from Lex Lasry QC to (the Australian) Attorney General Ruddock's "Why he can't return" article The Age today has the case against him according to the chief prosecutor of the US Office of Military Commissions, Colonel Davis. DH's US lawyer Major Mori replies to this in a piece added to the paper's website this afternoon.

The gloves are off for the military lawyers. Col Davis has (1) asserted that DH "was a fully fledged al-Qaeda operative who took orders from Osama bin Laden, conducted surveillance on embassies and was armed to battle against coalition forces in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks", and (2) attacked Major Mori "I'm concerned about the health of Australians because he [Mori] comes down there and he blows smoke, which can't be good for your health."

The Major has responded: "It is disappointing to hear Colonel Davis make derogatory comments attacking my integrity...When a prosecutor's case is weak, he or she often resorts to attacking the defence lawyer ...I am sure it was disappointing and shocking to Australian ministers to hear Colonel Davis say that he hoped David's five years at Guantanamo would not be taken into account if he is sentenced. "

I'd thought that this was one of the issues (another is no death penalty, but maybe even that needs to be checked) on which even the Australian government was firm.

Two ALP spokespeople, Joel Fitzgibbon (Defence) and Kelvin Thompson (Foreign Affairs) have
also increased the pressure to resolve the matter rapidly.

For his part Prime Minister Howard has stated today: "I discussed this matter with the President at some length yesterday when he spoke to me [about the revised US policy towards Iraq], and he's been left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling of the Australian Government" [that DH should be charged by the US as soon as possible].

If the Australian government is to be believed, then they and the US are increasingly at odds. In an opinion piece in today's Australian Leigh Sales, the ABC's national security correspondent, makes just this point:

Do not imagine the Government wants Hicks's repatriation. It does not. It wants him to stand trial at Guantanamo. But it is not prepared to accept more promises without results. When the FBI arrested Nazi secret agents in the US during World War II, their trials via military commission and subsequent executions took less than a month. From capture to execution, the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein spent two years and 17 days in custody. Hicks has now spent five years, one month and two days in prison, with no end in sight. The Pentagon must now act quickly and efficiently to fix that. It is said that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. On that basis, the Australian Government must be terrified.

Mr Noodle

The recent death of Momofuko Ando (aka Mr Noodle) at the age of 96 has seen many tributes, including a very affectionate one from The New York Times :

Momofuku Ando, who died in Ikeda, near Osaka, at 96, was looking for cheap, decent food for the working class when he invented ramen noodles all by himself in 1958. His product — fried, dried and sold in little plastic-wrapped bricks or foam cups — turned the company he founded, Nissin Foods, into a global giant.

......

Ramen noodles... are a dish of effortless purity. Like the egg, or tea, they attain a state of grace through a marriage with nothing but hot water. After three minutes in a yellow bath, the noodles soften. The pebbly peas and carrot chips turn practically lifelike. A near-weightless assemblage of plastic and foam is transformed into something any college student will recognize as food, for as little as 20 cents a serving.

.....

Ramen noodles have earned Mr. Ando an eternal place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything.

Brewhaha

The debate about one of life's major minor questions - how to make a good cup of tea - has been refreshed by a report in The Times (and elsewhere) that adding milk to black tea is harmful to one's health.

I'm an occasional tea drinker: as I write I'm sipping a mug of tea, which I'd intended to make without milk but my automatic pilot intervened so I've ended up with my customary brew, without sugar but with milk.

Whenever I think about tea making advice I recall George Orwell's 1946 essay "A Nice Cup of Tea". Orwell was dogmatic about this, as he was about many other matters. He sets down 11 precepts, beginning with an instruction to use only Indian or Ceylonese [Sri Lankan] tea: "China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea."

If you accept this then you may not disagree with too much more of what he says, though you may not feel comfortable about giving the pot a good shake instead of a stir. (This is reminiscent of the traditional Australian tea-making practice of swinging the boiled billy several times to assist the infusion) .

Orwell didn't for a moment think that tea could should be drunk without milk, and came down, after a moment's hestitation, firmly in favour of milk second:"The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round."

His last precept was really a prohibition: no sugar. "I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water."

Whereas for Orwell tea making was a ritual, for me it's a routine, made easier by the availability of tea bags, (though I sometimes make a pot of tea using leaf tea). I've googled to see what others have said about the art (or science, or call it what you will). Here's one site which lays down a different version of Orwell's precepts (it approves of Chinese teas) yet in similar fashion to him (it prescribes 8 steps) Despite this it is open minded enough to include a number of links to "bad advice from other people" (including Douglas Adams and Orwell).

As well as reporting the bad news about adding milk to tea, The Times, in another article and the BBC try to reassure the tea-drinking public by putting the German study into some sort of perspective. They quote a British cardiac nurse: "It is difficult to say from this small study the impact of adding a drop of milk to your tea can make. The tea break is a great British tradition which provides time to relax with a cuppa in hand. Leaving milk out of your tea is far less likely to help protect your heart health than other measures, such as taking regular exercise, avoiding smoking and eating a healthy balanced diet."

I'll bear this in mind as I try to turn off my automatic pilot and move to a black (Indian/Sri Lankan/Australian) tea drinking regimen. I'm not sure however whether I'll be able to stop using tea bags.

Flog that murse and you may be plutoed

The Age , the BBC , The Washington Post and many other media outlets report on the selection of the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year. The winner was "plutoed", which means a demotion or devaluing, such as happened to Pluto, which in 2006 was demoted from full planet to "dwarf planet" status.

The word even has its own blog.

Other people from around the world eg Goa have also tried to claim credit for inventing the word.

Despite all the excitement I don't think it's as memorable as the 2005 winner "truthiness", a word which suggests its own meaning and is therefore likely to remain in use for some time to come.

Snake closes playground near city

Adelaide Now reports that a large snake, identified as a king brown has been sighted in a playground in the parklands. I think that the snake in question is more likely to be an eastern brown snake, which is often sighted in and around Adelaide, though rarely as close to the CBD as in this instance.

The playground will remain closed until the snake is caught.

A program well worth listening to

I highly recommend ABC Radio National's Prisoners of War: Australians Under Nippon a radio documentary which is being broadcast each weekday morning until 20 January at 11 am. You can also listen to it online or download the audio.

It was first broadcast 20 years or so ago, when there were more survivors of Japanese captivity still alive, including several well known ones such as Russell Braddon (author of The Naked Island, IMO one of the classic accounts of Australian POWs. Each program draws heavily upon recorded interviews, linked by commentary by Tim Bowden.

A program such as this reminds us of what a public broadcaster can do to record important aspects of our history. The suffering of the POWs is not, as far as I'm aware, where there's a lot of 'history wars" style disputation, even though the fact that many of the deaths were caused by "friendly fire" (US submarines sinking ships transporting POWs to Japan) is, while not suppressed, not given as much attention as it might be.

The program also reminds us of the importance of recording the memories of the survivors of WW2 and other important (and less important) events. I'd assumed that there are very few ex Japanese POWs still living so I was pleasantly surprised last week to meet an ex-Royal Marine who lives in an aged care home near me, and who was a survivor of HMS Exeter, which was sunk off Java in 1942. I said that I was interested in hearing more about his experiences and hope to be able to talk further with him about them, provided he is not too disturbed by having his memories trawled.

The power of the "moral middle class"

Today the lead Weekend Australian editorial advocates bringing David Hicks to trial promptly.

It begins with a lot of huffing and puffing (eg " the clamour by some to claim Mr Hicks as a metaphoric indictment of everything wrong with the Howard Government, the Iraq war, George W. Bush and Australian society, is misguided.") but eventually gets to the heart of the matter, if not without some disingenuousness:

Some of the delay in bringing Mr Hicks to trial is a result of appeals by his defence team on the legitimacy of the process. The US Supreme Court has now acted to ensure any trial contains a minimum level of safeguards for Mr Hicks, including a presumption of innocence, a right to be present during the trial, a right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, a ban on evidence obtained by torture, access to evidence and the provision of military defence counsel. He certainly could not ask for better advocacy than that offered by Major Mori.

These points noted, Mr Hicks deserves justice and he deserves it now. His day in court is long overdue. It is hard to imagine any circumstances under which it would be justified to hold a person in custody for five years without trial, even in a case as exceptional as this. Mr Howard, AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty [sic]and Australia's newly appointed director of military prosecutions, Brigadier Lyn McDade, have been right to call in recent days for Mr Hicks's prosecution to be accelerated.

While Mr Howard's "call" has been a fairly muted one, more in the nature of a whisper, at least he seems to be preparing for the possibility of shifting his ground.

The editorial concludes:

As long as his guilt remains unproven in a court of law, there will be those who will attempt to exploit his continued detention to push their own causes, clouding the real reasons why we are at war with terrorists. Mr Howard would also be mindful that in an election year, a case which has become a lightning rod for discontent among what we might call the moral middle class has the potential to backfire on his Government, particularly as it faces an opponent who has vowed to campaign on the issue of morality...The crimes that Mr Hicks has been accused of are indeed appalling, and offend our fundamental values. The magnitude of the alleged offences, however, should never outweigh the right to natural justice.

"The moral middle class". What an interesting term. Is it meant to be taken as an alternative, if a slightly less harsh sounding one, to pejorative terms such "chattering classes"? Or does it belatedly acknowledge that there are Australians who for years have felt genuinely appalled on moral grounds at our government's hypocrisy in calling for Hicks to be brought to trial in a system which is being made up on the run? I am more than willing to be counted among them.

Update 7 January


The Age website reports today that it will be at least six months before David Hicks is charged.

...Hicks' US defence lawyer, Major Michael Mori, attacked the integrity of the proposed new military commissions after the Federal Government was assured Hicks would be charged. Major Mori said he was troubled that the Government was being told Hicks would be charged, when the person who should decide that was yet to be appointed.

Federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said his US counterpart, Alberto Gonzales, had told him there was enough evidence to charge Hicks and he would be among the first Guantanamo detainees to be charged.

Major Mori said the assurances showed "the political fix was in" and that Hicks' case would not be independently evaluated and reviewed.

Mr Ruddock replied it was "not inappropriate to check on the progress of the matter and to receive advice as to the likely timetable for resolving issues relating to Mr Hicks".He said a trial timetable could be influenced by factors including detainees exercising their rights to challenge the process.

The website also has an an article by Mr Ruddock "Why he can't return" . It is probably as detailed a summary of the government's position as I've seen, but several flaws remain in the AG's reasoning, eg

# If the government has spent more than $300,000 on the case and there have been 17 consular visits (over five years) to Hicks, why isn't it able to confirm that his mental health is still sound?

# In attempting to distinguish between the situations of the British citizens who have been released from Guantanamo and Hicks he uses the terms "citizen" and "resident" as synonyms: he of all people given his former position as Minister for Immigration knows that this is misleading.

Seeking advice about stocks? You could do worse than ask a psychic

Today's Australian at p18 (not online) has a piece "Expert stock tips 2006: how they fared" reporting the results of its annual stock tipping challenge, in which several "experts" each chose 10 stocks which they believed would perform best over the year.

The competitors included six fund managers, the Oz's Business desk team and, for the first time, a psychic.

The results: everyone, unlike the previous year, achieved positive gains, ranging from 7.7% to 71.5%. And Mr Turnbull (the psychic)? 18.3% with a cautious selection of blue chip stocks (inc BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, four major banks and News Corp).

There's plenty of scope for this to be used in other fields, eg horse racing and, with a federal election due later this year, politics. Had it been used for the Ashes series which concluded today there'd be some very red faces among cricket commentators.

Update 6 December

Today's Weekend Australian (at p32) has the tips for 2007, including predictions for the price of oil, gold and the value of the $A: $US.

"Abominable": senior Australian military lawyer's description of Hicks situation

Brigadier Lyn McDade, the first director of military prosecutions of the newly established Australian Military Court, has, as the Sydney Morning Herald reports, described David Hicks' continued detention as "abominable":

"Quite frankly, I think it's wrong. I don't care what he's done or alleged to have done. I think he's entitled to a trial and a fair one and he is entitled to be charged and dealt with as quickly as is possible. As is anybody."


In a report just posted on the SMH website Attorney -General somewhat surprisingly is quoted as supporting Brig McDade's opinion:

"It reflects the Government's position," Mr Ruddock said.

"The fact that a trial has not yet occurred frustrates us and we have been arguing very strongly with the United States that these issues need to be resolved quickly.

"We believe the delay is very unreasonable and inappropriate and that's why we've been arguing that it needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible."

Mr Ruddock is assuming that there will be no challenge to the second set of regulations establishing a US military commission. If there is such a challenge, what will he and Mr Howard do: keep sitting on their hands and wait until the matter is heard by the US courts, or say "enough is enough" and request Hicks's return to Australia? Their previous course of conduct suggests the former.

Update 3 January 6.15pm CST

The SMH website now has an updated report by Brendan Nicholson which contains much the same information as the earlier reports , though with something extra, a classic piece of doublespeak which sounds more Rumsfeldian than Ruddockian:

Asked whether he agreed with Brigadier McDade's view that the treatment of Mr Hicks had been abominable, Mr Ruddock said: "I agree with the Prime Minister, who frequently says numbers of people express themselves in different ways but have the same meaning and intention."

Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy also makes some pithy comments.

Some books and films which impressed me in 2006

Films:

Borat (V funny, not least for thumbing its nose at political correctness)

Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman excellent but whole movie more than just a party piece for him)

Flags Of Our Fathers (Gritty depiction of war and some of the home front implications)

Hidden (Perplexing, though not as bloody as some of Haneke's other work: have bought DVD to scrutinise key scenes)

Kenny (Earthy homespun comedy)

Ten Canoes (Slice of traditional Aboriginal Australian life pre white contact)

Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Converging/ parallel plots on contemporary themes: similar to Amores Perros and 21 Grams, which were written by same writer)

The Squid and the Whale (Simply told tale of growing up in1980s New York)

Walk The Line (Well crafted and acted and surprisingly well sung - by the actors - country music biopic)


Novels (I didn't read many):

Theft: A love story (Peter Carey's recreation of the world he lives in and the world he has left; also notable for excellent depiction of two brothers)

Snow (Complex Orhan Pamuk exploration of aspects of late C20 Turkey)

Non-fiction books:

Frontier Justice (Eye opening depiction of how the northern Australian frontier was won: I've yet to read any criticism of the author's findings))

The Great War for Civilisation (Robert Fisk's weighty tome - in both senses of the word - which I've not yet finished).

End of year reflections

Another year has almost passed. I was going to write at some length about some of the highlights of 2006 as I saw them (including books read, films seen etc), but will content myself with mentioning the times I've seen my grandchildren (who are shown in the photo above scrutinising a bandicoot at Cleland Wildlife Park ) and my first circumnavigation of the world, including a long awaited visit to New York.

The grandchildren are returning to London with their parents early tomorrow so I'll be retiring shortly so that I can rise in time to farewell them at the airport.

Best wishes for 2007 to everyone who reads this. I hope that it is a more peaceful year for you personally and for the world in general.

Another step towards a republican Christmas

While the Prime Minister/ de facto President has issued his Christmas message("Think of less fortunate, says PM"), the Governor General, for the third year running, does not appear to have released one.

The last GG's CM that I can find is from 2003. Oddly enough it looks very similar to Mr Howard's 2006 one (but I suppose when you've read one, give or take a reference or two to recent major events, you've read them all).

Has Mr Howard instructed (or "advised") the Governor General not to issue Christmas messages? I would be surprised if he hadn't.

Devaluing the office of G-G is one means of preparing Australia for transition to a republic but doing it by stealth will mean that when the opportunity arises to change our constitution to a republican one it will be harder to argue the case for having a President with some real powers. I'm not saying that this will be necessary or desirable but without seeing further and better particulars I'd like to keep as many options as possible on the table, not under the carpet.

In the UK this year, an alternative Christmas message far more radical (I think) than anything the GG is likely to put out here has been given a platform, as The Age reports.

Other reminders of the origin of Christmas

In today's Australian Ross Fitzgerald writes an opinion piece "Still no room at the inn".

It begins

On Boxing Day it behoves us to consider the plight of the destitute and the homeless. Cities and towns across Australia all seem to have skid rows or no-go areas and, sadly, the numbers congregating in these places are increasing. How can this happen in our affluent society?

As freeways transect the city, inner suburbs become gentrified and local councils impose "dry zones", and night refuges close because they can't meet government measures of performance, homeless people are being funnelled into zones of hopelessness. Add housing and income-support policies that are increasingly short term and outcome driven and the punishing sanctions on those who fail the work tests imposed by government, and we have a pincer movement of social pressure squeezing the most vulnerable into insecure housing or on to the streets.

Politicians and administrators often ignore the homeless, opting for glossier issues or, worse, blame them for their misfortune when it's a national problem that every community needs to address urgently.

Read on for more details.

Also today Bill Leak 's cartoon "Joseph goes for another miracle", showing Joseph preparing to watch the test on a borrowed TV while Mary feeds the infant Jesus, is another comment on our current values.

"The most hilarious press release ever issued by a senior politician"?

This (minus the question mark) is Matt Price's assessment of Mike Rann's tribute to Shane Warne (who as I post has just taken his 700th test wicket). It hasn't yet appeared on Mr Rann's website but Matt has transcribed it to his blog . An edited highlights version is in Price's sport column at p39 of Saturday's Australian.

I'm reluctant to agree with Price's opinion that it's the most hilarious press release ever, but I agree that it is over the top. I'll have more to say about this and other cricket matters at Nudges and Deflections.

Bushfires one week, white Christmas the next: could it only happen in Australia at Christmas?

Two stories from The Age show how the Australian (or more accurately, the Victorian) climate can turn around so rapidly:


One reports that an area which a week ago was threatened by bushfires has been covered by snow. The other reports hail in the outer suburbs of Melbourne which, with the accompanying photo, has given the headline writer sufficient licence to judge it a white Christmas.


Here in Adelaide it's been cold by our standards, with a little rain falling at times. A grey Christmas, as somebody in the group with whom I shared an excellent Christmas lunch, described it.

A Christmas message for our times

The Anglican Archbishop of Perth has, the ABC reports, accused the Prime Minister of hypocrisy over the delays in bringing David Hicks to trial (if what the US authorities propose can be described as a trial).

How many other leading citizens will have the small amount of courage need to follow his lead?

Would you hire this man?

As I read Barry Cohen's piece in The Australian about a journey he made in 1970 when he was a member of the ALP's Aboriginal affairs committee to some remote communities in the NT I felt that this was a somewhat longwinded description of some bushbashing and hijinks. Wrong. Read the last paragraph (it's on p10 if you prefer the hard copy version).

Surviving the bush

No , not advice to the people of Iraq. Today's Australian (p9) ran a lengthy and well informed article by D D McNicoll about how t survive in the bush. It was prompted by the unfortunate loss of 17 year old David Iredale who died while bushwalking in the Blue Mountains. Unfortunately the article isn't online though several of its key points are covered in this report.

While stories about lost people are always newsworthy it's not often that papers print, as today's Australian does, detailed advice about how to survive in the bush. Since I can't link to the original here's a precis of the advice:

# Carry an EPIRB.

# Travel in groups of at least four (if one person is injured, two can go for help while one remains with the injured person).

# Carry a whistle (I'm not sure that there's such a thing as a 50c one as the paper claims, but they shouldn't be that much more expensive): use it if you're lost.

# Carry a "flash mirror" (a small mirror with a hole in it to point towards a searching aircraft or helicopter). Apparently very effective, even in wooded country.

# Keep hydrated: don't wait until you feel thirsty.

Hicks "at breaking point"

The Age reports that David Hicks is, according to his father, "at breaking point" after he recently refused to take a pre-arranged phone call.

Mr Hicks said his son was unable to communicate properly during their last telephone conversation in July this year.

He was now convinced his son was suffering severe mental problems, exacerbated by spending the past nine months in solitary confinement.

"We have been worried about David's mental state for three years," Mr Hicks said.

"This shows he's not as well as everyone says he is.

"He has probably thought 'do I need to go through this mental stress' and speak to the family.

"The Australian government says he's OK ... but they're cold, they have got no heart, they don't care about him."

According to another report in The Age the Federal government will question a decision to ban forensic psychiatrist Professor Paul Mullen from visiting Hicks at Guantanamo Bay.

Given the government's record of equivocation on all Hicks related matters I'd be surprised if the questioning was very robust. It seems that those who want to see the matter resolved are being fobbed off with bureaucratic waffle which appears to hold out a slight chance of a resolution while preserving a ruthless and immoral status quo.

There are some, such as Mirko Bagaric, who criticise people like me for focusing on David Hicks to the exclusion of the other Guantanamo detainees. I take their point, but justify my position by saying that the Hicks situation is different because he, like me, is an Australian citizen and therefore deserves the protection of our legal system. Once this has been given I'll turn my attention to the remaining detainees (and other persons who have been detained without trial).

Seasonal froth #1: Blog-media cliches

Gawker has published a list of cliches which it says infest the media and blogosphere. I can't say that I'm familiar with many of them, which may only confirm that my three day visit to New York earlier this was insufficient to acquaint me with the language of the Manhattan sophisticates who are Gawker's primary readership.

What does the word really mean?

Have you heard the word 'macaca'? It has, as news.com.au reports, been given an award in the USA for the most politically correct term of the year.


What does it mean? The report doesn't tell the full story. It says the word is "an offensive slang term for Indians from the Sub-continent", but according to Global Language Monitor which organises the awards, it has a narrower, more regional meaning, being "an offensive slang term for Indians of the Sub-continent in the West Indies" (emphasis added).

In its report of the incident which brought the word to prominence The Washington Post gave it a different meaning again:

Depending on how it is spelled, the word macaca could mean either a monkey that inhabits the Eastern Hemisphere or a town in South Africa. In some European cultures, macaca is also considered a racial slur against African immigrants, according to several Web sites that track ethnic slurs.

Wikipedia has further details.

Here's the complete Global Language Monitor list (with an interesting bonus item at the end):


1. Macaca – Might have changed the political balance of the US Senate, since George Allen’s (R-VA) utterance (which is an offensive slang term for Indians of the Sub-continent in the West Indies) surely has impacted his election bid.

2. Global Warming Denier – Since there are those who now believe that climate changed has moved from scientific theory to dogma; there are now proposal that ‘global warming deniers’ be treated the same as ‘holocaust deniers:’ professional ostracism, belittlement, ridicule and, even, jail.

3. Herstory for History – ‘Herstory’ again attempts to take the male element out of ‘HIS story’. Though there are nearly 900,000 Google citations for ‘HERstory, they are all based on a mistaken assumption. When Herodotus wrote the first history, the word meant simply an ‘inquiry’.


4. Flip Chart. The term can be offensive to Filipinos, please use ‘writing block’.


5. 1a and 1b -- The headmistress of a grade school in Midlothian (Scotland) had to split a grade into two equal classes. Though the split was purely alphabetical, parents objects because those with children in '1b' feared they may be perceived as academically inferior to those in '1a'.


6. Politically Incorrect Colors -- Staff at a coffee shop in Glasgow refused to serve a customer who had ordered a 'black coffee', believing it to be ‘racist.’ He wasn’t served until he changed his order to 'coffee without milk'. Around the world we have reports of the word ‘black’ becoming emotionally charged and politically correct or incorrect depending upon one’s point of view.


7. Oriental – Asian, please. Though this is generally a purely American phenomenon. In Europe, Asians prefer the term Oriental, which literally means ‘those from the East’.


8. Menaissance – The rise of a ‘manliness’ culture or male renaissance. Replaces metrosexual, which evidently appealed to women but not men.


9. Momtini -- A Michigan mother invented the term ‘momtini’ as an act of rebellion against ‘parental correctness’. This has raised the hackles of child protection and ‘anti-alcohol’ groups.


10. “Our Mother and Father Who are in Heaven” – From a new, ‘inclusive’ Bible translation (The Bible in a More Just Language) that replaces what it believes to be “divisive” teachings of Christianity.


Bonus: Political Correctness -- 'Equality Essentials,' a 44-page training manual book called has been used for staff training courses at Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire suggests that the term Political Correctness is now politically incorrect.


For more about the council manual see here.

ADDENDUM 18 DECEMBER

Time magazine's cover story for the 25 December issue includes a segment about the man who incurred Senator Allen's wrath. Ironically, the story states, he's lived all his life in Virginia while Allen is a Californian carpetbagger.

Ghan involved in accident

An accident to the Ghan passenger train has apparently left a passenger and the driver of the "truck" with which it collided about 130 kms south of Darwin severely injured.

The Age online report includes a graphic photo, though the headline describing the scene as "desert" is wide of the mark, as anyone who has travelled through the area in daylight knows.

On my travels up north earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised to see that most if not all level crossings had warning lights, though not boom gates. I took the photo above at the crossing on the Buchanan Highway between Dunmarra and Top Springs, a remote area more than 500kms south of Darwin.

I'm curious to find out more about what happened.

[Links accessed 13 December 2006]

Update 6.00 pm CST 13 December 2006.

Today several media outlets including news.com.au and The Age report that the driver of the semi-trailer involved in the collision with the Ghan has been arrested in the Royal Darwin Hospital.

Each of these websites has a photo of the scene which conveys something of the scale of the collision. Adelaide Now has a sequence of seven images taken from a number of perspectives.

ABC News Online doesn't have a relevant photo but does report on the safety and environmental concerns which have been brought to the fore as a result of the crash, eg whether boom gates should be installed at all level crossings, the difficulties of rendering prompt medical assistance in remote areas and the heightened hazards of transporting uranium on the railway.

It's worth noting that the NT government recently announced proposed changes to its road traffic laws to try to reduce its road toll, which is the highest in Australia per head of population.

With all these developments there is no further news of the condition of the passenger who was last reported by various sources, including the Northern Territory News , to be in a critical condition in the Royal Darwin Hospital. I wish her, and any others who may have been injured, a speedy recovery.

"A public scandal" as PM's chief of staff moves to corporate world

In today's Crikey Stephen Bartos Director of the National Institute of Governance at the University of Canberra, writes about Arthur Sinodinos, who has moved from his position as the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff to a seat on the Goldman Sachs J B Were board.

As GSJBW undertakes extensive business for the Australian government, Mr S's move, says Bartos, creates "massive conflict of interest" problems, and is something which wouldn't be allowed in many Australian states and other countries.

He cites an online Parliamentary Library e-brief (issued 15 June 2006, updated 19 July 2006), which includes a summary table showing that in Australia only the Federal, Vic, Qld and NT parliaments do not have policies regarding post-separation employment.

While Bartos does not allege that Mr Sinodinos is making improper use of information he acquired during his time as the PM's chief adviser, he points out that conflicts of interest can be potential as well as actual:

Post departure, given Arthur Sinodinos as the Prime Minister’s top adviser was privy to every important government policy decision, how can he avoid a perception that he’s able to use that knowledge to unfairly advantage Goldman Sachs?

Sinodinos is undoubtedly ethical and will not deliberately take advantage of his inside knowledge or disclose sensitive information. But we’ve not yet invented the Men in Black device for removing memories: so there can be no certainty that his information won’t indirectly influence his work. Conflicts of interest are about not only actual but also the perceived potential for conflict.

PS As I post Stephen Bartos is speaking on ABC RN's Perspective, this time about AWB. The link takes you to the transcript.

He also participated in a panel discussion about the effectiveness of Australia's overseas aid on this week's Counterpoint, another ABC RN program.

Why do do many Australians not care?

This, not "Why is the Australian government leaving Hicks to languish at Guantanamo Bay?", is the question which Leigh Sales , writing in today's Australian, thinks David Hicks's supporters should be asking.

She makes the point that the weekend rallies did not attract much support: I'd have to agree with her about the Adelaide one. This and other examples, eg little coverage in mass circulation newspapers or commercial TV, lead her to the view that both government and opposition are "convinced the issue is of no great concern to mainstream Australia". This, she believes, is why Hicks's lawyers are now, as I posted last week taking action in the Federal Court.

Reading between her lines, I don't detect many signs of optimism, though her final paragraph is a good summary of why Australians should care more:

Regardless of what people think of Hicks and whether he is guilty or innocent, his case raises issues that matter and ought to be debated: should Australia allow a foreign country to lock up an Australian citizen for five years without proving a case against him? And is Australia prepared to sacrifice fundamental principles and values, such as the right to a speedy trial, in the name of the war on terror? The fate of Hicks as an individual is important and after five years, needs to be resolved urgently. But long after he has either been released or convicted, the broader questions will remain.

I don't doubt that Ms Sales has accurately summed up the government's position at the moment, but I wonder how long Mr Ruddock's pledge of a fair trial will hold up if the foreshadowed proceedings don't get under way soon:

Hicks would likely be charged after January 17, when new regulations for the US military commission expected to try him come into effect, Mr Ruddock said.

"We've sought assurances that there'll be a presumption of innocence, that he will know the evidence that's going to be presented against him, that he will be effectively represented in the military commission process, that there are appeals ... into the civilian court system," he said.

"We are certainly pressing the US and have received certain assurances from them that a fair trial should be possible under the scheme that they've legislated for."[Emphasis added]

This is all pretty vague. What happens if Mr R's requirements for a fair trial aren't met within the time frame? Will he or Mr Howard then ask the Americans to release Hicks, as the British and many other governments have done about their citizens who were incarcerated in Gitmo?

More on loss of HMAS Sydney

Speculation about the loss of HMAS Sydney in 1941 (see my previous post for more background info) has come back into the news with a report (headlined "Shrapnel deepens cruiser mystery") in today's Australian.

The discovery of shrapnel in the skull of the body of the one sailor who has been identified as a crew member of the Sydney has raised questions about the authenticity of the "official" version of the ship's loss:

Experts at Sydney University initially identified a metal object in the skull as a bullet from a low muzzle-velocity weapon, possibly a hand gun.

Now, sources close to the forensic scientists confirm that the object is shrapnel from a German shell, a finding which appears to be at odds with the official version of the attack.

According to that version, Sydney, under captain Joseph Burnett, sailed parallel and 1km away from Kormoran at 14 knots, while checking its identity, and was fired on when the Germans could not respond with a secret signal.

Hit by six 15cm guns, 3.7cm anti-tank weapons, 20mm cannon, machinegun fire and a torpedo, Sydney is said to have tried to ram Kormoran, missed astern, and made off at six to 10 knots until it blew up late at night.

But shrapnel in the skull poses the question of how a man mortally wounded in the head could have got into the float[in which his body was found] with Sydney still moving when Kormoran last fired at her.

The tests are expected to be completed by next February. It will be interesting to see how the results will modify the "official" or some of the other versions which are floating around.

I shall keep watching developments with interest.

Where is cricket's left field?

"Voges call comes out of left field" is the headline of an article attributed to Courtney Walsh (the former West Indies quick bowler?) and Malcolm Conn in The Weekend Australian (not online) which reports an unexpected selection in the Australian squad for the third cricket Test.

"Out of left field" is a term which derives from US baseball, not cricket. It's global English managementspeak missapplied to this situation. Why should our distinctive and descriptive sporting language, have to follow the current iteration of our foreign policy and be embedded in the US variety?

What's wrong with "Voges surprise selection in squad" as a headline?

The current issue of Quadrant has an article "Americanising Australian English" by Robert Solomon (not online) which explores this further.

[Also posted at Nudges and Deflections]

Fair Go For David rally

Here are some pictures of today's Fair go for David rally in Victoria Square Adelaide, which was held in 40 degree plus heat.

Charles Southwood (ex-ABC FM presenter, MC)

Kay Danes

Mem Fox

Brian Deegan (lawyer whose son was killed in 2002 Bali bombings)

Professor Leon Lack (expert on sleep deprivation)

Ahmed (Australian citizen of Iraqi origin who returned to Iraq in 2003, was detained without trial, interrogated by British and US intelligence and spent some time in Abu Ghraib prison before being released without conviction) with Steve Kenny (his lawyer who has also acted for the Hicks family).

Terry Hicks (David's father)

[All links accessed 9 December 2006]

More on David Hicks

Today The Age prints two different opinion pieces about David Hicks. One titled "Shameful neglect is the John Howard way", is by shadow Attorney-General Nicola Roxon.

The other, "Critics of US tribunals turn blind eye to UN" by Liberal Senator Brett Mason.

Read them both and decide for yourself. For my part I think the senator is not confronting the central issue, which is about the rule of law and its application to David Hicks's situation, not about the critics of US tribunals.

It's good to see Ms Roxon coming out more forcefully in support of Hicks than she seems to have done to date.

Tomorrow (Saturday 9 December) a series of rallies will be held in mainland Australian state capitals: see here for details.