• Needless to say, the visual images obtained by 4 Corners ‘Bloody Business’ episode are horrific, distressing and irrefutable proof that the current trajectory of the Australian livestock export industry’s attempts to improve slaughtering standards in Indonesia is one of failure.
• If the inhumane practices are as widespread in Indonesian abbatoirs as suggested on 4 corners, then a moratorium is an appropriate response.  This should theoretically allow Indonesian abbatoirs that are up to standard to apply for exemptions and to resume the importation of Australian cattle.
• Andrew Wilkie and Nick Xenaphon’s desire to implement a permanent ban on the exportation of live cattle, supported by Getup and the RSPCA is, I’m sure, well-intentioned, but it also implies that Indonesians will forever be incapable of treating animals in a manner deemed acceptable within Australia.  This strikes me as a fairly pejorative judgement that doesn’t accommodate the complexities of the disparity in living standards between the world’s tenth richest state (PPP per capita) and the world’s 122nd ‘richest’ state. While the wealth gap is certainly not an excuse for animal cruelty, developing a sensibility for animal welfare is something that traditionally comes with being a highly developed economy (something that Indonesia definitely is not) and, however untrue it may be, this whole issue is at risk of being seen as a case of ‘Rich white country knows better’. I simply reject the notion that Indonesians are incapable of installing the appropriate stunning equipment and slaughtering procedures that are used in Australia
• So, what to do?
• The solution to me seems to be fairly clear – the slaughtering standards in Indonesian abattoirs are currently beyond despicable and need to be rectified. Also, we can’t directly impose regulation in Indonesia meaning anything we do in Australia is really just fiddling around the edges and will fail in tackling the source of the problem. So, rather than looking to policies that smack of ‘punishing’ the Indonesian livestock industry that are likely to incense the Indonesians, while simultaneously forking over 100s of millions of dollars in subsidies to Australian farmers for lost exporting revenue (for an interminably long period), a much more cost effective solution is likely to be that of directly upgrading Indonesian abattoirs with a combined investment program from the Australian federal government, Australian livestock exporters and, where possible, the Indonesian beef industry.  This could likely be achieved in a relatively short period of time (up to a year), ensuring a prompt return to australian exports. Such a scheme would also mean a year or two of directly employing Australian/Australian trained personnel directly in the abattoirs to oversee the slaughtering process. The program could even be included in Australia’s aid budget and/or in order to wave off likely objections from the opposition, could be arranged such that some percentage of revenue taken in by the upgraded abattoirs is used to pay off the (ideally interest-free) loan.
• This strikes me as a much more cooperative and sensible solution, which is probably why it will never see the light of day.
• Finally, With regards to the broader debate about banning all live exports of livestock…there is probably a case to be made for extreme distances such as Egypt, but Indonesia is literally only a couple of hours by boat … I’m sure this is still too much for some but it seems no worse to me than driving cattle by road-train across the outback.

What's not to like about kiwi apples?

ANZETS – to emissions trading what ANZCERTA is to free trade?

On a particularly memorable September day in 2008 I found myself being chauffeured down the cobbled backstreets of Prague in the company of Mike Moore, former director-general of the WTO and momentary Prime Minister of New Zealand.  While we inevitably ended up discussing the prospects of the All Blacks looming European tour, Mr Moore revealed two gleaming insights into the trans-Tasman relationship: firstly, how proud our two nations should be that the Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement (ANZCERTA – a.k.a CER) was a WTO-endorsed role-model for free trade agreements (FTAs) everywhere and secondly – judging by his steely glare when I brought it up – how serious a stumbling block Australia’s ninety year embargo on New Zealand’s apples was to further bilateral cooperation. Yet even that hurdle has now been lifted, on February 16 Julia Gillard informed the New Zealand parliament (to rapturous applause) that on the recommendation of the WTO, the fire blight embargo was no more. Whether Ms Gillard made this announcement under the duress of kiwi secret agents wielding sharpened wide-comb shears I do not know, but in the face of protests from Australia’s ‘big apple’ lobbyists it signalled a golden-delicious victory for the positive experience of CER and more broadly, good global citizenship.

As Australia painstakingly moves towards the introduction of an emissions trading scheme, with the eventual intention of joining a global carbon trading market, it is hard to think of a better policy ‘road-test’ than a CER inspired ‘Australia and New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme’, hereby dubbed ‘ANZETS’. For despite a similarly inauspicious beginning, CER has proven itself so effective in boosting bilateral investment channels, trade in goods and services and in synchronizing our quarantine, customs, transport, regulatory and legal standards that DFAT estimates two-way trade has seen an average annual growth rate of 9% since 1983 and places the agreement’s collective worth at over A$22 billion in goods and services and over A$110 billion in investment flows.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) CER was met with derision at the time of its introduction on the basis that nobody had attempted such a comprehensive policy before – sound familiar?

Thankfully, in what is now seen as a win for economic logic and good policy, the CER was ratified in 1983, a full twelve years before the christening of the WTO and some twenty years before Australia’s second-ever FTA with Singapore. Indeed CER is arguably the blueprint on which all of Australia’s subsequent FTAs have been designed and is an internationally recognised poster-child for the benefits of free trade – showing how valuable it can be to trial and refine a politically risky cross-country policy with a like-minded international partner before going global. An ANZETS scheme designed as well as CER will go a long way to dispelling the arguments made by those against pre-emptively adopting an ETS before the rest of the world.

Undoubtedly there exist a number of challenges in terms of harmonising New Zealand’s recently implemented ETS with Australia’s currently vague framework, but based on our experience in ANZCERTA, it is time to show once again just how influential our two countries can be as a policy laboratory for the rest of the world.

*I recently submitted this piece to an undisclosed event, so, while it hardly seems necessary, I wish to confirm that I am the same Hugh Jorgensen who wrote that piece as well.

I realise this sound flippantly macabre but I think everyone should know I’m aware of the problem and that I intend to seek help. Maybe I’ll watch a couple of eps of Dr Phil or something.

I wasn’t always this way—growing up, disaster coverage basically meant occasional snippets on the news, no more than a brief time-decelerating interruption between Rugrats and the Simpsons.

My first memory of an international crisis comes from 1994 when Mr Carey – my favourite teacher of all time – started one particularly memorable day by silently tracing a succession of six letters in the air with his forefinger: R…W…A…N…D…A. We watched on in abject confusion as he repeated the feat three or four times until I clicked, jammed my own know-it-all finger in the air and smugly shouted out RWANDA! It was an inappropriate time to preen, in hindsight. Not that I or any of my standard 4 colleagues really had any grasp of the scale of events at the time – Rwanda was little more than a far away place in a far away continent where I had an aunt who I’d never met.  I vaguely remember some grainy footage from a cameraman gingerly poking his lens through foliage in what I now assume was downtown Kigali, but let’s face it, I was seven and I had a lego village to think about governing.

So too for the 1995 Bosnian climax – all I remember from this crisis is that a girl called Irina joined our class, whose family had fled the Balkans all the way to our big kiwi farmtown. Not that Irina ever spoke about it anyway. She was far too busy teaching us the Macarena, keeping an exotic tan and being the object of a fantastic crush from myself. Plus, even though I had now upgraded (?) from lego-world omnipotence to magic eye posters, I was still a long way away from taking an interest in international relations.

The death of Diana Spencer in 1997 proved a watershed in terms of my addiction to televised news pornography.  Of course, Diana’s death was a bizarrely captivating case of British grief rather than an ethnic genocide, but the 2.5 billion people who tuned in to part or all of her funereal proceedings proved it was an historically important event – if only because they all agreed it was.

But what many people forget about that particular episode is Mother Teresa’s funeral was held the following week and by then, we’d generally snapped out of the hypnotic Diana media cycle (at the end of the day, she was another rich white dilettante with good looks who lived fast and died tragically young). Such that when Mother Teresa carked it, it would have seemed shallow, I felt, not to accord her funeral with the same visual devotion (Indeed, it’s worth asking whether Teresa’s funeral would been broadcast live at all, were it not for the rubber-necking prying that had consumed the world only seven days earlier). Either way, for the first time in memory, I sat and watched televised grief for no reason other than an internal sense of guilty responsibility.

On some level, I felt it would be an admission of indifference to human suffering to turn away from televised tragedy and sorrow. Thus, not only was I sating my curiosity by staying up all night and bearing witness to the world – simultaneously munching on toast in the comfort of my dressing gown – but I felt I had a goddamn obligation to do so. It was just too addictive a thought to know that you had watched a crucial moment in which part of the world changed forever, and like a perverse sports fan, that you had watched it live.

In the aftermath of September 11, I was practically freebasing live tragedy. My retinas, much like the nasal septum of a crack addict, were likely so bloody and dried with overuse that consuming any more CNN would have required injecting a television antenna directly into my optical nerves.  I would soon find myself making up pretences about special study requirements during class, just to take a hit of online coverage in the school library, hopeful that a few minutes of low-buffer stream could tide me over until I stumbled home and collapsed in a state of near-paralysis thanks to a few quick lines of the widescreen lady.

Hokusai's famous woodblock print

And like any good dealer, network television never missed an opportunity to load me to the gills. Monochrome green night-vision footage of cruise missiles pounding Kabul. Russians incompetently dealing with Chechen hostage takers in a Muscovite theatre.  The perils of Baghdad and Basra. Hercules aircraft ferrying the wounded out of Bali. Three days of terror in Beslan. Madmen in Madrid.  230,000 dead in a single tsunami.  Lacerated double-decker buses. Kashmir destroyed.  Levees torn asunder in New Orleans. A gunman loose in Virginia. Flames licking through the Victorian bush. Pakistan’s submersion. My own city’s inundation.  Christchurch eaten by the earth. An Arab spring. The return of Hokusai’s great wave and the radioactive nightmare of Fukushima.

And I uncontrollably OD’d on all of it.

In my defence, and in an unconscious effort to plaster over my clearly self-serving voyeurism with a thin veneer of ‘compassionate interest’, I’ve now read reams of reports on American military strategy, the London rapid response emergency network, gun laws in America, urban planning issues in New Orleans, the Pacific Tsunami warning system, forest management in Victoria, Pakistani aid programs, Brisbane’s meteorological history, Edward Said’s essays on Arabian politics, liquefaction of the Cantabrian upper crust, the history of TEPCO and the peculiarities of Japan’s nuclear energy history.  All of this to assuage the guilt I get from condemning journalists for shoving microphones in the faces of distraught and stricken humans, all the while endorsing their sticky-beaking craft in the only way that matters – by not changing the channel.

I vaguely recall that I used to speak to people. Now, I can sit for hours watching an eternally unfurling stream of tweets on the #disaster of the day. Indeed, I suspect I have spent a greater proportion of 2011 trawling for updates on rolling disasters than I have on my honours course and my job combined.

So I’ve decided to enter rehab from disaster coverage. I am adopting the philosophus porcinus of Pyrrho who, in the midst of a terrible storm at sea, observed that whereas the entire passenger cohort was on the verge of panic-induced seizure for fear of drowning, only one of their fellow travellers was capable of acting with calm and contented poise: a little pig, ambling peacefully about the ship’s deck, completely unfazed by that which it could not control.

So cold turkey on disaster coverage here I come.

At least, right after Gaddafi’s fallen. And maybe Yemen and Syria.  Oh and after these Japanese reactors are back to…..

It seemed polite to include a picture of John.

It seems only fitting that I present a right of reply of my very own. I’m not going to apologise for this, frankly, if you’re still reading this exchange then you have no one to blame but yourself.

As for John’s reply, I think there are a few points of agreement:

• It is unlikely that we can reconcile our different perspectives on why Libya is not like Iraq or Afghanistan (or why it is, for John), or on whether it’s prudent to wait for more atrocities to occur or to act pre-emptively and cut them short before they reach a massed scale. I’ll touch on this below.
• I accept that a no-fly zone does require the elimination of anti-aircraft deployments, most likely via ground operations.  It is probable that the rebels will not be able to perform such operations without assistance from any American led coalition/NATO personnel.
• Neither of us are particularly qualified to be commenting on Libya and it would likely be better for everyone if we stuck to pointless cultural observations and our thoughts on tax.

I would point anyone interested in this topic to an interview with General Wesley Clarke (hat tip to Gene) and his thoughts on what needs to happen before a no-fly zone is enacted. I don’t agree with everything he says but, given he is a four star general, I can understand why anyone would appreciate his thoughts over mine.

The two most important points Clarke makes relate to the significance of designing a clear objective, something I agreed with in my piece (although Clarke would probably not agree with my stated objective), and his second, which I didn’t touch on, is the importance of confirming any claims of human rights abuse before proceeding to intervene in Libya. As an aside, I note that many of those against the no-fly zone think it is somehow threatening to Gaddafi and his henchmen that ‘one day’, they might be brought to justice at the International Criminal Court - a powerful deterrent against human rights abuse (which this statement implicitly accepts is happening) to be sure.

On the issue of the objective – the goal is not just to prevent Gaddafi from bombing the protestors from above. If the reports of foreign mercenaries being flown in to to kill civilians and rebels are true (the confirmation of which, relates to the second point of the need to confirm such claims) then this is outrageous and unconscionable behaviour which must be stopped. I note Clarke didn’t touch on the issue of mercenaries but the interview was from three days ago and the facts still remain admittedly hazy.

Clarke then raises the concept of the ‘slippery slope’ argument, also implied by John, that blocking Gaddafi’s air power might lead him to escalate his ground personnel (more tanks etc.) and that as a result, an American led coalition or NATO will have no choice but to respond in kind.

I see no reason why Gaddafi would not already be deploying his forces in a maximum capacity, in combination with his fighter jets – he already has every incentive to launch every weapon in his arsenal (everybody prays that this doesn’t include chemical weapons), as hesitation will only bring him closer to defeat. The only reason I can think as to why tank attacks have been somewhat sporadic to date is that many Libyan soldiers share similar sentiments to the heroic pilots, who, on being told to bomb protestors, flew to Malta instead and sought asylum (If only my tank could fly, commanders must be thinking). The thirteen soldiers who were burned alive for refusing to fire on civilians in Benghazi (found alongside 67 other mutilated bodies), suggests this is more than plausible.

As far as the potential tit for tat escalation between Gaddafi and allied forces is concerned, this is a possibility – but one that I think can be avoided if it is stated from the very outset that assistance will be limited to air support for the rebels and no more. Gaddafi is going to lose this fight with the rebels, the question is how long it will take and how many lives he will take with him. John speaks of the ‘puke’ test – seemingly indicating many more innocents need to die before a no-fly zone is justified. A no-fly zone implemented sooner rather than later, will save the lives of many pro-democracy supporters.

Again, there are perfectly valid reasons for not supporting any military assistance in Libya – the challenge of international legitimacy is not insignificant, with the difficulty of obtaining a resolution from the Security Council being the primary obstacle.   But given the Arab League supports a no-fly zone and that there are (some) rebels calling for a no fly-zone, I’m still inclined to think it is an option worth supporting and worth putting one’s name to.

Finally, I should note that I don’t agree with Hitchens implicit desire for America to act on this alone (I would hope for NATO or NATO-lite) or his his seeming lack of concern (by omission) for whether they should at least wait for the fig-leaf of an invitation from Libyan rebels (I think they should).

The symbol of the Libyan revolution - Libya's flag prior to Gaddafi.

In which I disagree with John’s latest post

A thought experiment: If Col. Gaddafi was informed that a few thousand protestors had gathered in Tripoli’s ‘Green Square’, would he a) resign immediately b) hope they’d eventually move along as ‘there was nothing to see’ c) shoot them all.

If the answer is c) and we can do something about it, should we?

Although the hypothetical nature of this multiple-choice arrangement absolves one from having to deliver an answer, it is worth noting that the reason it is a hypothetical is that Gaddafi’s brutal henchmen are murdering anyone with a potential whiff of a revolutionary air, well before they’ve suffered their way through the Tripolitanian streets that lead to the city’s centre.

There are a number of philosophically consistent reasons as to why the West (led by the US) should not provide military assistance to the Libyan uprising, yet none of them are synonymous with the fundamental values of social liberalism and it is this hypocritical equivocation, I think, from (otherwise) champions of the social democratic movement, to which Hitchens objects and John – unintentionally (I assume) – lends his support.  Take the following statement from Obama in 2009, in Cairo no less:

“America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for … human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere…. There is no straight line to realize this promise…And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments – provided they govern with respect for all their people”

This on the back of an earlier passage:

“Words alone cannot meet the needs of our people. These needs will be met only if we act boldly in the years ahead; and if we understand that the challenges we face are shared, and our failure to meet them will hurt us all”

Gaddafi is governing with utter disrespect for his people and he has contravened the human rights of millions – it is time for Obama to act boldly and to seek the implementation of a no-fly zone.

It is interesting that John references Reagan’s famous conversation with a wall in 1987 as similarly influential to Obama’s response to revolution in North Africa; there is, I agree, a continuity, but only in so far as neither President really has/had any idea how rapidly the veil of autocracy can slip before them, completely unaffected by their patently empty rhetoric. Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s hardball, a station for Democratic blowhards, also happily laid the first planks of an eerie Reagan-like revisionism when he declared of the Tahrir revolution: “it took Obama to have this happen, or it’s just so serendipitous.’ Much more of the latter, than the former, I should think.

The reasons against military assistance are, despite John’s claims to the contrary, wholly based in the principles of utilitarianism and realpolitik (one could reasonably highlight pacifism as a factor but I don’t think it applies in this scenario). This is not inherently immoral – unless one is a moral absolutist – but when there is blood on the streets and you can do something about it, one cannot be both a utilitarian and a social liberal.

Before I delve into the arguments surrounding liberalism, I’d like to object to the myth that the American administration and its diplomats (and the rest of the world, for that matter) are on top of the seething uprisings throughout the Middle East. If US diplomats are genuinely all over this situation, then why the nine-day time lapse between the initial Libyan uprising on February 15th and the evacuation of American diplomatic corps on February 24?  The NY times details some of the reasons here – but the excuses seem to confirm that the Americans are scrambling to keep up with the revolution as much as the Libyan protestors, Gaddafi, and, well, everybody else. This alone runs counter to John’s suggestion that Obama’s “Inaction, crossed wires, conflicting statements and apparent confusion…has been a co-ordinated response” to disguise which horse America is backing. And, even if that is the case  - however unlikely – the idea that America the hegemon should be afraid of showing even rhetorical support for democracy anywhere in the world leaves a somewhat bitter taste in my mouth (similar to Swiss cheese, I should think).

Back to the utilitarianism v liberalism distinction: on the ideal desirability of an organic revolution I agree with John. Where I differ is in the idea that America and any willing allies should be cowed by a faulty cost-benefit analysis into retreating into the shadows and waiting for a Libyan bloodbath to unfold, gambling democracy will win in the end (and if it doesn’t, at least America’s strategic regional interests are unchanged). This is the essence of Nixon-Kissinger realpolitik – an attitude that Woodrow Wilson would deplore.  I agree that the choice is not so stark as ‘intervention = moral good’, ‘non-intervention = moral bad’.  Clearly any military operation against Gaddafi’s loyalists is tantamount to a declaration of war and supporting a no-fly zone via the use of the US air force demands an honest acceptance of this reality.   In the words of Clausewitz, ‘War is such a dangerous business that the mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.”  War should be a last resort, but a war is already happening in Libya, and international assistance can greatly alleviate the level of suffering.  A conservatively minded utilitarian has every right to be cautious over Libya and probably should be, but a true social liberal who has the power to assist the powerless and the knowledge that they have extremely good prospects of success, cannot sit idly by while a mass killing is on the cards.

However, even if we are to go down the cost-benefit route, I still think the calculus provides a different answer to that suggested by John. Not all military engagements are homogenous in their parameters and the call for a no-fly zone thankfully demands a specific and limited objective, with none of the long-term demands that arise from sending in ground forces such as in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here, assistance to the Libyan people is provided simply through liberation of the skies, and the provision of freedom to Libyan civilians from marauding murderous mercenaries who are flying in from places such as Nigeria, Guinea, Mali and Serbia with the promise of up to $2500 a day for the service of blowing the brains out of Gaddafi’s Libyan brothers and sisters.

The clarity of the Libyan objective is also why I disagree with the use of Afghanistan and Iraq as direct comparisons.  The strategic tragedy of ‘operation Iraqi freedom’ was the incongruity between the initial mission objectives and the aftermath and in Afghanistan, an inability to cope with the geographical terrain (and the Pakistani border). As Vizzini the Sicilian in the Princess Bride would tell us, Afghanistan demonstrates that most classic of blunders – ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’. Of course, that George W. Bush’s ‘mission accomplished’ declaration was technically accurate in the strategic sense is not particularly comforting to the families of dead soldiers and Iraqi civilians (the army was told to oust Saddam Hussein from power and that they undeniably did). But it doesn’t take a genius to predict the extreme difficulty of winning the favour of a local population, under your occupation, when you’ve blown up their electricity and water grids, as well as decommissioned their entire police force and wider legal system. This is why the Iraq and Afghanistan missions have proved to be such huge disappointments to liberal interventionists – Hitchens included – the ineptitude of the army’s political masters to devise an appropriate set of objectives for dealing with conditions on the ground after the initial liberation was particularly galling for those who believe in humanitarian intervention.

On this count, the terrible cost in ‘blood and treasure’ to the United States, members of UNAMA and the coalition of the willing in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, not to mention civilian casualties, is reason enough to make even the most hawkish of observers think twice about embroiling American troops in another middle eastern/north African conflict.

But Libya is different.  Firstly, this conflict did not begin because of the West. Secondly, there is little reason to believe that provision of air support will lead to total ownership of the political outcome – that air support is for a wholly homegrown Libyan rebellion that is only too happy to control its own future.  Thirdly, Libyans want change and have demonstrably shown they are prepared to seize it on their own, in a way that their counterparts in Afghanistan and Iraq did not. Unlike Tunisia and Egypt, however, their murderous ruler has not hesitated in revealing his absolute darkest side.  Protestors have had bombs dropped on them from above, have been rounded up and shot while at prayer and have met miserable ends in the back of ambulances hijacked by Gadaffi’s henchmen.  We also know that thousands of refugees are piling up on the Tunisian border, further destabilising that already dilapidated state, and the region.

As I write this, there are reports from Benghazi that certain rebel groups are already calling for foreign assistance.  Undoubtedly, some will not want it. But in the long run, will Libyans really object to our assistance in their hour of need? Is the fear that other Middle Eastern dictators might start producing even more propaganda against the West (than they already do) really worth the price of a stillborn Libyan revolution?  It’s bad enough we’ve dealt with Gaddafi for some forty years while he’s run Libya and his people into the ground.

With international assistance, what might otherwise be a long, bloody and violent struggle for freedom can be significantly curtailed. There’s evidence enough that the help of America and willing allies is wanted, we know we can give it and we know that more will die if we don’t.

So on this issue John, I respectfully disagree.

Rubberneckers giving oxygen to a previously unheard of Koran-burning pastor.

ABC is bringing the Tojo talkfest to Brisbane tonight and it seems I know someone who knows someone who has tickets.  I found out on Friday, shortly before Qanda changed its lineup to include the totally outrageous Ian Nelson, State director of the One Nation party. I considered not going as a result, for fear of being unable to contain my shoe-throwing tendencies (I first threatened to throw a shoe at my High School graduation back in 2004…way before it was cool), but I guess I’ll just a pop a valium or several, or something.

I can only assume that given ONP’s statistical invisibility in modern Queensland (See below), #Qanda are looking to create a torturous hour of programming that leaves political nerds unable or unwilling to look away.  This is pretty sad for a program that prides itself on building a more interactive democracy – for mine, it’s like chartering a tour bus through Brisbane’s flood ravaged suburbs, it’s a wanton trivialisation of serious issues and a perfect example of the increasingly base political-pygmy-gladiatorialism promoted by Australia’s political journalists.

Nelson’s inclusion naturally raised a lot of ire in the Twitterverse (not least from myself), especially after @abcqanda justified the inclusion on the basis of this article in The Australian, which accuses the Coalition of lifting its policies on immigration straight out of the One Nation manifesto.  Despite the less than water-tight nature of the accusations (One Nation are hardly the first party in the world to demonise asylum seekers), the fact remains that, these days, One Nation has about as much influence on issues affecting Queensland as dessicated sheep dags.

According to the Electoral Commission of Queensland, the ONP scored an infinitesimally small 0.38% of first preferences at the 2009 state election (9038 votes out of 2,419,559 cast), which isn’t even half of the 22,170 (0.93%) votes cast for the political heavyweight ‘DS4SEQ party’ (Daylight Savings for South-East QLD party). At the 2010 Federal election, ONP did even worse, garnering only 0.16% of the QLD vote (a mere 3,921 votes). Their figures were slightly better for the Senate, with 0.87% of the vote – 0.91% after the distribution of preferences (zounds!!!).

It’s worth noting that these are aggregate figures across the whole state – so there’s something to be said for the fact that votes for ONP in QLD ‘09 came entirely from two districts – Dalrymple and Watson (31% in the former and 2.81% in the latter). But that ONP were only able to field 2 candidates out of 89 seats says it all.

And to round off the reasons why no one of reasonable mind would deign to give One Nation a mouthpiece, here are a few of their more batshit crazy policies in recent times:

• replace the education system with a syllabus system and reinstate school inspectors, morality and aptitude tests for guiding students.
• strip World Heritage status from the Great Barrier Reef and Fraser Island to have them “returned to the people of Queensland”,
• scrap multiculturalism for assimilation.
• fund state hospitals via funding from lotteries.
• Introduce a federal tax policy of a 1% across the board with direct debit from bank accounts.

And here some of my more favourite quotes from the office that Ian Nelson works out of in Beenleigh (It’s worth noting that the ‘philosophy’ expounded on this page begins with a multi-paragraph adoration of Henry Ford’s puritanical approach to capitalism, which has won plaudits before – Ford is the only American referenced in Mein Kampf) – mind the bad grammar:

One Nation assert that:

“a nation wide uniform pump price of 20 cents per litre would provide all in the gravy chain with excellent profit margins, beyond that it is usury.”

“The labor party is committed to the CFR’s [Council of Foreign Relations, I assume] agenda which demands globalisation and taxing the very air we breathe, this does not allow for the use of the generation of cheap energy as they have to satisfy the greed of the vipers.”

Typical of [Bligh’s] governments socialistic ideals she is about to put forward a referendum to vote yes or no for a preamble for the state constitution, however if you vote yes you will also cop a lot of her nasties [sic] that that have been hidden in this agenda. These include the loss of your fee [sic] simple land rights and a lot of other free doms [sic], the sale of many of your states assets which will mean higher taxes, for example the recently increased taxes on motor vehicle, boats & trailers etc. Loss of recreational fishing grounds and many other rights which she is seeking your yes vote to justify. [you’ll be amazed to learn that the preamble does no such thing, and that it was passed with the clause that ‘[this insertion does not] create in any person any legal right or give rise to any civil cause of action].

Labor party leader Rudd: A member of Socialist International, taking instructions from the CFR and the international banking vipers…committing Australia to the genocidal UN world government climate change scam…spear headed the Zionist vipers push to coordinate a global bail out using tax payers money.

It is frankly offensive that the QandA team have seen fit to contaminate a discussion that is nominally on serious issues affecting Queensland and, by giving credence to One Nation, thereby associate all Queenslanders with this irrelevant party of paranoid loons.

• The Hunter becomes the Hunted – Esquire. Hands-down the best piece I read all week, where Daniel Voll does a brilliant profile piece on Omar Mohammed, Iraqi terrorist hunter.  All I can say is that there are men, and then there are Men. This guy is definitely of the capitalised variety and you need to hear his story – the passages on how he met his wife (by shooting Al-Qaeda lackeys blasting their way through her house), and his motivation to hunt down the murderers of Margaret Hassan, Irish aid worker, is harrowing, touching, depressing and inspiring all at once.
• In the New Yorker, Lawrence Wright delivers a lengthy (and I mean lengthy – it’s 100,000 words) but brilliant expose into the Church of Scientology – via a profile on one of its previously most prominent figures in Paul Haggis.  Haggis wrote the screenplays for Crash, Million Dollar Baby and several other major films, and the story recounts Haggis’ journey from diehard Scientology advocate in the 70s to his current stance as, ‘The apostate’.  If you’re inclined to have an opinion on Scientology, I would tend to think this is pre-requisite reading.  As a follow up, NPR did a great interview with Wright, which also serves as a convenient summary of the piece, if you don’t have the time to sit around reading lengthy tracts on esoteric cults.
• ‘Mind vs Machine’ from the Atlantic: Brian Christian writes about his experience as a representative of the human race in the annual Loebner prize – a competition held in Brighton that puts the famous ‘Turing test’ to the test.  The event addresses the 1950s philosophical conundrum posed by Turing of whether a machine that can fool humans into thinking it is a human, is still a ‘just a machine’ in the traditional sense. Judges sit behind a screen typing questions into a panel, whereby they have to determine whether they are interacting with a robotic entrant, or a human. According to Christian, demonstrating you are human via words alone is not as easy as it sounds.
• Adam Smith and the Wall Street bonuses – John Paul Rollert in the HuffPo. A piece for boffins of Economic history on what Adam Smith would have thought of Wall Street’s ballooning bonuses.
• ‘What happens in Vagueness, Stays in Vagueness‘ – Clark Whelton. A piece, like, about cloudy language and stuff. Contains an attack on my most hated of bugbears – the interrogative inflection in non-interrogative statements (a contaminant in Australian vocal language more than anywhere).

Happy reading folks! (the site-statistics tell me that no one ever clicks on these links but I live in hope of being useful).

How much Berlusconi exposure is too much? This much, I would contend.

There is a running joke in Europe that “Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, the police German, and it is all organized by the Italians. Paradise is where the police are British, the chefs French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss. Well step aside Switzerland, there’s a new puritanical society in town…

For most of us in Australia, coverage of Italian politics has become a source of guaranteed mirth, a kind of Punch and Judy show meets Jersey Shore that bridges the newsworthiness gap between harrowing reports of revolutionary bloodshed in Arabic autocracies and Lindsay Lohan’s latest cocaine escapades. And yet, after the latest round of allegations against the most depraved and lecherous of lotharios to govern the Italian provinces since Caligula, it appears that Berlusconi’s compatriots have accepted, at long last, that he has become too big even for il strovale - their boot-shaped peninsula.

The parlous state of Italian politics became apparent to me during the several months I spent living in Milan in the fall of 2008 – shortly after Berlusoni had stormed to power for the fourth time. The Italians I met were more than aware that they were led by a buffoon, but, when pressed, shrugged their shoulders and sighed the Italian sigh of uffi; one Genovese friend noted, “the real legacy of the Romans in Italy isn’t a pile of ruins like everyone thinks, it’s greedy and corrupt rulers.”  Even Berlusconi’s supporters, when pressed on his nefariously garnered billions, reply: “Italy is not a normal country. Even an anomaly like Mr Berlusconi must be understood in the context of the country. He has done nothing worse than any businessman in Italy.”

Of course, this sentiment is not unanimous.  Of Obama’s storming ‘super Tuesday’ primary success, one doe-eyed honeytrap of a reporter on RAI dreamily exclaimed “wouldn’t it be fabulous if one of our African immigrants could become Prime Minister…one day?” To which my housemate responded by choking on his dinner and screaming angrily back at the television: “Vaffanculo! African Immigrants??? What about me! Normal homegrown Italians can’t get into power let alone African Immigrants!!!”

Australian cities never flood.

Perhaps disgraceful behaviour is inevitably systemic in Italian politics, such that Berlusconi is merely the embodiment of the Italian national character (ironically, this would accord with the views of Gramsci, Sardinian Marxist, on who gets into power and why). Indeed, Bepe Grillo, the hugely popular comedian-cum-political watchdog estimates there are some eighty ‘crooks’ (convicted or only narrowly acquitted) in the Italian legislature (which, as he tells the New Yorker, explains his support for an MP exchange program with Japan, where representatives in the Diet accused of corruption are known to commit Hare Kare). But with cancer-causing garbage piling up on Neapolitan streets, Silvio’s personal desecration of historical sculptures, the gradual submersion of the most beautiful city in the world – Venice, and the incompetent management of the crumbling ruins in Pompeii, I have devised a solution to Italian apathy: it should become a state of Australia.

Why not? We’re good for it: Australia’s public debt is only 20% of GDP while Italy is practically insolvent at 120% – our unemployment is hovering around 5% while the eyeties are ‘officially’ at 11% [1] (which is potentially anything up to seven percentage points higher if it weren’t for the busloads of Kon-Tiki touring Aussies keeping Italian tourism afloat). And it’d be a two way street of mutual gain: our wine, opera and museums are stunted pygmies compared to Italian fare while Italian transport networks, its education system and its public service are the laughing stock of Western Europe. Our baristas could learn to make proper macchiatos, their barristers could learn to apply the law.  We could quench our yawning cultural void, Italians could start opening their shops on Sundays. It’s a win-win exchange all round!

Just consider the most recent charge placed against the madman from Milano – the procurement of an underage prostitute for one of his notorious ‘Bunga Bunga’ parties. Admittedly, as Slate reports, no one is particularly sure what ‘Bunga Bunga’ actually means, but rumours vary between pole-dancing competitions in which the best dancer gets a bag of cash in return for sleeping with the host (i.e. Berlusconi), a bizarre water ceremony involving numerous naked women creating a whirlpool around a group of men – before enclosing upon them, or just your regular Roman run-of-the mill debauched orgy.  Whatever’s on a Bunga Bunga run-sheet, it’s clear that it involves sex, payment for said act, and that at the time Moroccan belly-dancer Karima El Mahroug participated in one of these events she was underage.

I can reassure any Italian pining for more sanguine leadership that the current contenders for Australia’s top job couldn’t find tits on the internet. The mere thought of any Australian politician partaking in general coitus, let alone ‘Bunga Bunga,’ would leave the nation, and any involved party, dry-retching for months. For in our protestant democracy, the accusations levelled at Silvio would place the political reputation of a national ruler about on par with that of Mussolini’s at the moment his bullet-riddled carcass was strung upside down at a Milanese petrol station and pelted with rocks (Berlusconi’s own thoughts on Benito, however, suggest he mightn’t be so repulsed by this comparison, famously informing Boris Johnson that “Mussolini had been a benign dictator who did not murder opponents but sent them “on holiday.” If Berlusconi ever creates a ‘mystery tour’ that involves cattle trains heading north-west over the Alps in the general direction of Prussian labour camps, I would advise against making a booking).

The Italian minister for equal opportunity, Mara Carfagna.

What’s more, the Karima case is a relative mote of dust in comparison to the truly obese pile of allegations that now weigh against Berlusconi’s name.  The Economist detailed a number of these charges in a lengthy 2001 expose on Silvio’s dubiously accumulated fortune – and it doesn’t stop there: he’s since gone on to pluck a showgirl off the stage and make her the ‘minister for equal opportunity’; ask a councillor if he could ‘fondle her’ while walking through the earthquake ravaged ruins of L’aquila; shorten the statute of limitations so as to absolve him-self from his corrupt past and prevented doctors from switching off the life support of a patient who had been in a coma for thirteen years on the grounds that, “she could still menstruate.” Hell, if this is the best Italians can hope for in their leaders then even Kevin Rudd would have left with a legacy akin to Abraham Lincoln’s.

So here’s to an Italo-Australian unification, the ultimate manifestation of Australia’s self-identification with all things European!

Oh wait, what’s that? 5000 asylum seekers from Muslim countries reached the Italian coast last week?

Sorry, looks like you’re on your own Italy.

[1] Figures from Google’s ‘publicdata’