Ratface wandered over a planet he no longer recognised.
I know most of you will think I'm mad. Whatever.
While the Liberals thrill to the possibility of a spill they fail to see opportunities for jobs in new industries which are clean and green.
If they watched The New Inventors last night they would have seen an Aussie duo with technology for a recyclable mobile phone.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/
Manufacture it in Australia and sell it to the world - design it as well as the i-Phone and it'll be deadly on the market.
While the Liberals champion old-world industries they are failing to open up the new world for Australia.
And all the media focus on the short term stuff of what's going down now.
Always the same story.
Reading The Trouble With Dragons to my four-year-old niece last night many questions arise - always questions.
http://www.bloomsbury.com/childrens/Books/details.aspx?isbn=9780747595410
The dragons learn that they must recycle, reuse, put less of the world on the end of their fork and stop cutting down trees. Yes, it's a global warming tale. The dragons learn that our stories (dragons and other animals) are linked. I can excuse a four-year-old for not understanding what linked means. Tony Abbott and his dinosaurs have a "single story" - they plod along doing things the way they've always been done looking in the rear view mirror. Well, look closer Mr Abbott the GST introduced by John Howard was a new tax. It was a reorganisation of taxes. Is this not possible with the Emissions Trading Scheme? Look beyond the single story view.
Who ignored this report last year before deciding to go live with the system?
Doctors threaten to walk over payroll bungle
Quote from 4.5.2 Integration within the solution: "Given current stage of the project it is too late to re-architect the solution. However, it should be considered during the next opportunity (new project release, solution upgrade)."
I swam the Paroo River once on the way back from the Birdsville Races. It was a photography trip with the Queensland College of Art.
After sitting in a little bus for hours I needed solitude and that wide, brown river looked perfect.
That little river must've been about 500m wide back then. Thanks to the Queensland floods in recent months it's running towards the Murray-Darling River system in NSW/South Australia.
The Paroo has only ever flooded that far twice before - according to tonight's 7pm ABC news. (April 10, 2010)
The rains are bringing life to the outback after a long dry spell that's seen communities dwindle away.
I was reading all the reports on the Murray-Darling Authority's website and it seems that aging farmers with little help are keeping the place running out there.
Communications, hospitality and leisure services have left isolated regions to die off - we're talking about Australia's salad bowl here.
Young people too moved away to study and find jobs. Banks and schools closed.
Some communities in the Murray-Darling Basin still thrive but they are only the ones near big regional towns like Toowoomba - one of Australia's fastest growing regional centres.
Now the State Government's mooted this idea of having two capital cities in Queensland Townsville and Brisbane to stop the clutter of suburban spread, traffic gridlock and overpopulation in our capital.
I reckon we need to build grids of cities across the Great Dividing Range: Brisbane, Charleville, Charters Towers, Townsville - cities that are near rivers. Rivers always mean life.
Then you connect them up with a river of broadband and we build communities - not residential suburbs with no public transport, jobs or opportunities - we can accommodate that big population the Federal Government is talking about building - the one that the community doesn't want.
When I drove through the mountains of NSW at Christmas time I found some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen - on both sides of the range. All that land.
It's funny isn't it. We who live here don't actually appreciate the opportunities we have here.
But the refugees who keep arriving in leaky boats and who are now cramped on Christmas Island - all they see is opportunity. That's why they're willing to risk it all on the toss and pitch of the ocean to get here. Would you pack up your kids and hop a broken down hovel of a boat for a holiday?
I attended my first Screen Producers of Australia Queensland branch meeting this week. And this topic of broadband - as far as I'm concerned it's like the HOLY GRAIL!
We debated the fate of Australian film - it's on on-going debate that started decades back - but this was an interesting session because experienced feature film producers are now talking about doing interactive stories and asking the question: Does Screen Australia (Australia's main funding body for film) need to change its funding criteria to support 360 productions - not lump the interactive stuff in the budget for a "feature" film but actually fund Transmedia Productions. I know... HELLO! But it made my heart sing to hear established practitioners raising the question I've been thinking about for years.
The problem is still BROADBAND. Australia can't support transmedia storytelling because we have God-awful broadband - even if the people here are the world's most prolific users of social media. This ain't Korea.
And there's another problem! People still want to do co-productions with Hollywood when we have Korea on our doorstep. Have you seen Korean films? They are AMAZING storytellers not to mention the production quality.
The installation of National Broadband Network (NBN) will be like the flooding of the Paroo and the Murray-Darling River - life-giving properties. But business and politics are still slugging it out over that one too. Never mind the national interest. If they had to build the Snowy River Hydro-Electric Scheme today it would still be a pipe dream.
Are Australian values dead? I think those values I see in my 92-year-old grandmother who lived on the land without electricity or running water for a significant part of her life has different values.
Perhaps those values do still exist in the hearts of those refugees on Christmas Island.
Do we really know what Australian values are any more?
And don't say mateship! Say cronyism.
Say all for one and... "gee how does that go again?"
The juxtaposition of ideas often throws up new meaning.
Eras collided in the statements thrown around in two consecutive interviews on the ABC's Inside Business.
The program kicked off with Peter Brecht, CEO of a new company called Valemus that's being floated by German construction giant named Bilfinger Berger.
Mr Brecht was doing a good job talking up the prospectus launch as a good investment in a rotten economic climate etc...blaa..blah.
Seemingly ordinary and uncontroversial, this statement struck me between the eyes:
It's an old mantra which always proved right - it's accepted wisdom that in financial crisis people buy blue chip stock and real estate.
I on the other hand dream of a country that wants to invest in new industries and new technology that may lead us to a bright and prosperous GREEN future.
Anyway, he went on to say that they believe this accepted wisdom (as evidenced by the buying trends) put Valemus "in the sweet spot".
Basically it sounded like caveman talk to me like he was saying: "What risk? Australia has "aging infrastructure" and needs big strong construction and resource companies to stroke economy."
Well - it is Australia's brown paper bag isn't it? This is all "a given" isn't it? Sure we need roads, ports and whatever else I hear Kevin Rudd talking about. One kind of infrastructure he obviously leaves off his list is digital infrastructure because Australians just don't understand it and don't vote for it. Right?
So the Rudd Government wants a big slice of pie from the mining sector cause that's where the money is.
They want to scoop 40 percent off the top of super profits to get it up - the new infrastructure I mean.
The Government says we need to pay to (a) pay off the debt and (b) build infrastructure.
A question arises here: How come our infrastructure is aging?
It's a question that seems pertinent.
The Opposition says we had the money in the bank before Rudd spent it staving off the GFC.
But the infrastructure didn't just age in the past three years - since the Rudd Government was elected - did it?
No I'd say that this problem goes back at least 25 years - that's a few governments coming and going of different persuasions.
If the Howard Government had spent all that money on infrastructure maybe the Coalition would still be in power and maybe we'd have a stronger economy.
Bricks and mortar - resources and growth.
"Sweet spot". That's how it goes right?
Or is it? Is it the entire story? The next interview was about climate change.
Former Blair Government advisor Nick Rowley didn't talk about bricks and mortar.
He thinks climate change isn't even an environmental problem at all.
"We've got an extremely hard problem here, it's not an easy problem, it's not an environmental policy problem, it's a fundamental policy problem about the way in which we run our economy, " Rowley said.
He's questioning accepted wisdoms.
But this is only my opinion. What do you think?
Nothing will change as long as people hold on tight to those "aging" dreams.
"We will remake our future so it is as beautiful as our past, but to take this path we need to prepare ourselves, discipline ourselves and believe in ourselves. If we have to start again, working in the sand, with dedicated teachers, then so be it."
The former Australian of the Year (1992) was the first Aboriginal to become a school principal.
I didn't know that until I Googled him. I knew he founded the band Yothu Yindi.
Love this song which was co-written with Paul Kelly: Treaty (1992 Best Song of the Year ARIA)
These guys are basically cultural superheroes in Australia - or were once. They even got a treaty promise from then Prime Minister Bob Hawke.
Of course, it didn't happen. The Australian Constitution is a fearful creature which assures the Constitutional Monarchy, Massive Government and well, I suppose they did manage to change it to recognize the Aboriginal people as citizens in 1967.
Yothu Yindi's song was a powerful political statement that resonated in the hearts and minds of many Australians - perhaps a band of "illegal asylum seekers" or "queue jumpers" (Joke! I see them as refugees if they have a legit claim to asylum) should put out a hit song, hey? I'm sure Channel Ten's Australian Idol could feature them in their upcoming season - or even Seven's new talent X Factor.
Culture actually makes culture - it's organic. Politicians they react to culture and if people feel fear it's easy to fear monger than to allay fears - isn't that how WWII started?
It's amazing the impact poets have on a society - if there's no poetry in a person there's probably one hell of a lot of arrogance and ignorance.
There's a lot of poetry in Galarrwuy Yunupingu - and he learned his ABC's drawing the alphabet with a stick in the sand!
On the weekend, he wrote a column in the Weekend Australian about education which contains some really good power points.
Pity the newspaper didn't put it up online so I could link to it.
I'll just quote a few lines.
He starts:
"The first time I heard the word "school" I was about seven, living with my extended family on the Gove Peninsula in the Northern Territory under the strict eye of my father. I spoke no English and knew no white people."
He goes on to explain how he only went to school out of respect for his father who decided that it was as necessary to learn the white man's language and culture as it was to maintain his traditional heritage and language.
Yunupingu explains how his father was taking his lead from an ancestoral hero named Ganbulabula who made a habit of looking up and to the future.
I don't know but this sounds like a worthy kind of Australian hero to me - don't you think? I think that as we head to a national election politicians generally should keep these few things in mind as they formulate the words they speak and policies for our future.
At the recent X/Media conference I attended there was an Indian entrepreneur, a former journalist, who is busying himself with building a comics/animation studio that produces native stories about the superheroes from their ancient culture.
Gotham Chopra's Liquid Comics is collaborating with the likes of John Woo and Guy Ritchie, Nic Cage and Hugh Jackman in a fight against terrorism - yes you heard me!
He explained how as a TV journo a few weeks before 9/11 he was in Pakistan visiting an Islamic school to talk to the Imam about whether the fears of the West were justified. The school had a large poster of Osama Bin Laden on the wall. Chopra was on a plane bound out of New York when the planes struck the Twin Towers. His plane was diverted and he made his way to Ground Zero to cover the story and then help out as a volunteer.
But it was something he saw in Pakistan which made him think: Where the hell was Superman? He could've stopped this.
He had talked to a student, a boy who was wearing a Superman t-shirt, at the school. And the Imam then answered his question about whether the West need fear with another question. "Who do you think should be afraid of who?" - he was referring to cultural domination as an act of terrorism against their heritage.
And so Liquid Comics was born.
Galarrwuy Yunupingu laments, not disbanding Yothu Yindi but the disbandment of his school which deprived people in his homeland the opportunities he enjoyed to stay home and be educated in both English and Gumatj. He ends his column with these words of hope:
"My father's vision will be renewed at this year's Garma Festival which starts on August 6 at Gulkula near Nhulunbuy. The theme is "looking up to the future".
"We will remake our future so it is as beautiful as our past, but to take this path we need to prepare ourselves, discipline ourselves and believe in ourselves. If we have to start again, working in the sand, with dedicated teachers, then so be it."
To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking. - Johann von Goethe
Defamation Tute: JR 212
My old uni notes (20 years old)
* Unlawful to publish defamatory matter unless it is protected, justified or excused by law.
Need proof of:
• publication
• it was defamatory matter
• no defences - protected, justification or excuse
"Liar" "Cheat" "Thief" "Coward" "Murderer"
I found a suitcase of old uni notes in the garage all dusty but readable.
The last time I did a "Law for Journalists" course - around 2002-2003 I think - the law had not changed. High Distinction too.
All the amateur publishers - for that's what most everyone is on the web in these days of social media - don't know anything about all this. That' why the mainstream publishers cry in their soup at night because there's nothing better than the thrill of pushing that envelop to the edge. A lot of what is published these days anywhere is careening down a chasm.
And the law - on paper hasn't changed - all the cases still stand. But you wouldn't think so watching what's been happening in our society with the Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his crew calling the Prime Minister Julia Gillard a liar all the time, for example.
Interesting really. As if people in real life don't have to compromise, as if circumstances don't change, as if you don't change with the circumstances.
Reading these old notes I realised that I hadn't changed with the circumstances because the stuff of these notes is still what I believe. And reading my old Ancient History tute papers I see that politics hasn't changed at all either.
Tutorial No 5: The Alkmeonidai and Marathon: What was the significance of the signal at Marathon in the context of Athenian politics in the early 5th Century BC?
A record made by Herodotus of a shield signal to the Persian invading fleet of Darius was made probably by members of a pro-Persian force - possibly a respected Athenian family, the Alkmeonids. Lot of possibles there. No defamation laws. No defences.
Recorded in stone. Were the Alkmeonids defamed? They apparently did not believe that Athens could beat the Persians so they wanted to be on the winning side. Does all this sound familar at all?
I think that Arts students and generalists - as opposed to engineers, librarians and specialists - do get a better "education". Pity we don't rule the world. ;)
