The New and Improved Blog of The Punter

The 4th Test - An opportunity

2012-01-16T15:20:00.000+11:00

Hands up who had Australia leading 3-0 after three Tests against India while batting only four times in those three Tests? OK, so nobody.

Despite Michael Clarke's protestations yesterday after the Australian bowlers finished off the Indian batsmen for the second time in just over two days, the final Test match against India won't hold the same importance with regards to the final result as the first three have had.

Normally it would be a steady as she goes approach, but the changes instituted by Cricket Australia with regards to coaching and and team selection since the release of the Argus Review mean that the upcoming Test match in Adelaide may be a little different.

After he was diagnosed with a stress reaction in his foot, James Pattinson was apparently due for a rest in the Perth Test match so that his workload could be managed. According to the Australian's team's physiotherapist, this means that Pattinson would not have played even if he had been deemed fit to play.

This completely changes the threshold for playing Test cricket for Australia. According to the new ethos, not all Test matches are created equal and players will be managed for the long term even if they are available in the short term.

Of course, this only recognises a reality of the global cricket landscape. And now with a "dead rubber" coming up, it gives the Australian team an opportunity to try some new things in Adelaide.

First of all, some changes to the side. While the side has been successful, some cylinders are sputtering, while others are not firing at all.

Shaun Marsh did very well in Sri Lanka, but he is past 30 years old and has a first class over 36. In fact, his century on Test debut was only his 7th First Class century.

With Shane Watson still recovering from his latest injury, let's get Usman Khawaja back in the side, batting at number 3 against a depleted attack on a friendly Adelaide pitch. Hopefully he would get that maiden big score and his career would be off, and we may have found our long term replacement for Ricky Ponting at first drop.

With Adelaide a much more friendly deck for spinners than the one at the WACA Ground, Nathan Lyon comes in. There has been some talk that Ben Hilfenhaus would be the one to get a rest in Adelaide considering his ordinary First Class record there, but he deserves the opportunity to improve on his 23 wickets at 16 so far in this series. Hilfenhaus is also unlikely to play in the T20 or ODI matches which will round out the Australian international summer.

The man who deserves a rest, if the decision is to be made on that basis rather than form, is Peter Siddle. It would leave the Australian tail a little long, but in fairness, that's not much of a concern for a team that has won its last two matches by an innings. Siddle may feature in the shorter forms of the game in February and March, so better to give him a rest now. He'll be needed in the West Indies.

The final change is one that needs to happen, and it's the completion of Brad Haddin's international career. Neither aspect of his game is where it neeeds to be, and one struggles to see any circumstances arising where he'd be in the side for either Ashes series next year. Get Matthew Wade into the side while the stakes are low.

So onto Adelaide, where a couple of youngsters can be blooded, a tired body can be given some rest, and hopefully, for us true cricket lovers, we may see our first Day 5 of the Test season.

To Test Cricket, with love

2011-12-23T09:30:00.001+11:00

There's a thin volume on my bookcase, among the other books about cricket, and it has been there for about 20 years. The book is penned by Ian Brayshaw and is about the Chappell brothers, but the opening pages of the book contain just about the best description of the first morning of a Test match one could hope to read.

It describes the walk down King William St over the River Torrens to the Adelaide Oval. But is also describes the feeling of anticipation and excitement that surrounds the hours before the commencement of that longest of sporting contests.

There is the weather to consider. Early humidity and cloud cover can affect the shiny, red sphere of leather differently than a blazing Australian sun accompanied by a spotless blue sky. There are the teams, and anyone who thinks that this is not much of a consideration should look back to Australia's most recent Test match, when Daniel Vettori pulled up hurt during pre-game warm-ups and was replaced by a pace bowler, which despite Vettori's auspicious record, probably benefited the New Zealanders.

And finally, there is the pitch. So much that happens over 30 hours of cricket depends on the horticultural conditions of 22 yards of rolled turf. Is there moisture? How long will the moisture keep the pitch “lively”? Is there a green tinge? Is there rolled-in grass cuttings? Will the ball start to turn and spin on the latter days as the pitch wears and dries out? These are the sort of things that make this gardening philistine think wistfully about dropping everything to become a country cricket ground curator.

And then, when the game begins, among the excitement, the seemingly infinite possibilities (look at the India/West Indies Test from last month for an example of those possibilities), there is the space. The space to think, the space to breathe, the space to share, the space to talk. This space does not exist in the other forms of the game. If T20 cricket is Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, then Test cricket is the music produced by George Martin; sparse in places, action filled in others, always interesting, never the same twice.

According to their coach, the newborn Melbourne Renegades of the T20 Big Bash lost Thursday's game in 21 balls. No Test match can be decided in 21 balls. This is a decidedly good thing.

At a Test match, one can discuss many things while never dismissing what is happening on the field. Batsmen can get through good spells of bowling with patience, resilience and nous. Bowlers can think a batsman out, taking time to craft a plan in their head and implement it. Not all cricketers were born as naturally instinctive and wise for the game as Shane Warne.

One of my favourite hours of Test cricket was Ishant Sharma's spell to Ricky Ponting in 2008. Ponting fought bravely against a viciously moving ball for 50 minutes, while Sharma probed the Australian captain's defences. Eventually Sharma got his man, and the wicket was well earned.

This enthralling episode would simply not happen in the shorter forms of the game. The pace of the game, the pressing need to set a target rather than survive, would have meant that Ponting would have probably surrendered his wicket quickly and foolishly. His shot would not have been worthy of the delivery.

Many lament the state the longer form of the game is in. Only in England and Australia is Test cricket consistently well attended, and even in Australia it only demands good crowds from the three oldest venues, Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.

I make no such lament. So much can happen in five days, so many changes in the complexion of a match, whether they be small or significant, so much can be speculated and chewed over with a quiet ale or roast chicken sandwich, that the gift of Test cricket keeps giving right through the duration of a match.

This is what makes Test cricket the most unique sporting contest in the world. To compare it to any other single sporting contest in the world would be inaccurate: it plays out more like a NBA playoff series or an entire tennis tournament.

The fact that the best attended Test match every year occurs in my home town only deepens my love for the game. I'm pretty sure I know what will happen Christmas morning. But I don't know what will happen Boxing Day morning, or over the next five days. And I love it.

An unenviable (20)11

2011-12-22T10:31:00.000+11:00

Ed Cowan will make his debut for the Australian cricket team on Boxing Day at the MCG. He'll join such illustrious names as Brett Lee, Steve Waugh and Craig McDermott, among others, who have made their debut for Australia in our most iconic annual Test Match.

Dan Christian may also make his Test debut, and if that happens, Australia would have had 11 debutants in Test Cricket in 2011.

Recently, I compared the cricketers Australia has debuted since Shane Warne, Justin Langer and Glenn McGrath retired to the ones that debuted immediately after the retirements of Rod Marsh, Dennis Lillee and Greg Chappell.

The period of rebuilding Australia is currently undertaking has also regularly been compared to the rebuilding that Australian cricket undertook in the mid 1980s under the stewardship of Allan Border and Bob Simpson.

However, never was a single year in the 1980s as tumultuous as 2011 where debutants are concerned. The largest number of debutants for a single year of the 1980s was 7 in 1985, and that included Geoff Marsh, Merv Hughes, Bruce Reid and Steve Waugh.

No, one has to go back to the bad old days for establishment cricket; the birth of World Series Cricket and the Packer split to recall a year where so many fresh faces toiled under the baggy green. For the last time at least 10 players debuted for the Australian Test Team in a single year was 1977.

From David Hookes famous debut in the Centenary Test, through six debuts in the doomed Ashes Tour of England in 1977, and finished with another eight debuts, replacing the Packer defectors, in the exciting series against the Indians back in Australia, 15 debutants were blooded in 1977.

Now, 1977 was a disaster for Establishment Australian cricket by any measure. Thirty of the nations best cricketers turned their backs on first class cricket, leaving such household names as Clark, Hibbert, Ogilvie and Gannon to officially represent their country.

When another nine players debuted for the official Test team in 1978, the calibre was much more powerful. That year's debutants included Graeme Wood, Bruce Yardley, Jim Higgs, Rodney Hogg, and of course, Allan Border.

Fast forward to 2011, and of the nine players who have already debuted for Australia this year, two may have already played their last Test match for Australia. Michael Beer has been replaced by the able Nathan Lyon, while Trent Copeland is now not even in the best eight pace bowlers in the country, according to the selectors (behind current squad members Siddle, Pattinson, Starc and Hilfenhaus, and injured bowlers Harris, Cummins, Cutting and Johnson). Don't expect either of them back in the side any time soon.

While the wraps on Usman Khawaja have been huge, his inability to show concentration for long periods of time have seen him dropped from the Test side for the second time in his debut year. I can't think of another specialist batsman who's had that rather unenviable honour bestowed upon him.

While gold appears to have been struck with Lyon, Pattinson and Cummins, and Dave Warner's underrated innings in Hobart shows a clear ability to take instructions and work on deficiencies, one would have hoped for a better strike rate with debutants than is currently being shown.

The upside is that in 1985, the selectors went through Rob Kerr before getting to Geoff Marsh, Simon O'Donnell before getting to Steve Waugh, Dave Gilbert before getting to Merv Hughes and Bruce Reid.

In more recent times, selectors also picked Wayne Phillips (the second one) before getting to Justin Langer and Michael Slater, they picked Michael Kasprowicz before picking Jason Gillespie, they picked Simon Muller before picking Brett Lee, and they picked Clint McKay before picking Ryan Harris. So here's hoping the Christmas present our Test team has been waiting for is a Cowan, and perhaps a Christian.

Don't do me no favours

2011-12-12T09:46:00.000+11:00

While some members of his team, namely the bowlers, may have thought differently, I'm sure Michael Clarke wasn't happy with the colour of the pitch when he first ventured into the middle at Bellerive Oval last week.

Australia's bowling is looking dangerous and youthful at the moment, and as such, could be relied upon to deliver a robust performance without any extra assistance from the pitch.

Australia's batting is another matter. The top three are inexperienced, the number four is playing for his career every time he bats, or so it seems, and the wicketkeeper is also trying to delay the inevitable. Only the captain really looks confident and in form at the moment.

So the curator at Bellerive was really doing the home team no favours with his preparation of the pitch.

So what's new?

If there has been a theme common to Australian Test Cricket and foreign to other countries over the last 20 years, other than regular dominance, it has been producing pitches so fair as to almost render a disadvantage to the home team. This is pretty much in direct comparison to the pitches prepared everywhere else in the world, where producing a pitch that will advantage the home team's strengths is common practice.

Last year on Boxing Day, a juicy pitch met both teams. Despite a lack of heavy rain in Melbourne before the match (it has been cool and humid in the weeks preceeding the match), a green tinge rendered the toss of vital importance. England won the toss, inserted the Australians, and the Aussies failed to make triple figures. After lunch the pitch flattened out, and the game was effectively over.

To say the Aussies needed a flat deck would be like saying the Wallabies need a better performance from the forward pack.

Once upon a time, visitors cringed at the thought of playing on the bounciest pitch in the world in Perth. While Australian cricketers were used to the bounce of the WACA strip, visiting teams, especially those from the sub-continent, struggled to adapt as they were used to the low bounce of the pitches from home.

But the WACA hasn't played like that in 20 years. A replacement of the grass wicket area after the debacle in 1993 against the West Indies has meant that the WACA pitch has become docile and has maintained a lesser, consistent bounce for all five days. While England continue to struggle there, losing six straight test matches, India and South Africa have both won in Perth in previous years.

Contrast this to what happens in other areas of the world. Pitches in India are either roads, to suit their batsmen, or dustbowls, to suit their spin attack. In England, pitches can vary, either to suit their pace attack led by James Anderson and Stuart Broad, or their world class off-spinner, Graeme Swan. In the final test of 2009, England spun to victory behind Swan's bowling effort on a vicious turner.

No pitch is ever prepared to play to Australia's advantages. With Shane Warne closing in on 700 Test wickets on Boxing Day 2006, the MCG curator produced a slow, damp pitch. Only Warne's brilliance gave him five wickets, including his 700th.

Brisbane is generally considered one of the best cricket wickets in the world, and the Aussies haven't lost there since 1988. But England made 1/510 there last year.

The truth is a little bit of assistance wouldn't go astray, and the Aussie players who need the assistance now are the batsmen. The drop in wicket at the MCG will hold no promises, but has been playing very consistently through four days at Shield level so far this season. It'll play fair, because that's what we Aussies do. We produce pitches that give everyone a fair go. It may be time to give our own players a little leg up. Everyone else does it.

Gillard's Biggest Problem is Rudd

2011-12-05T14:51:00.000+11:00

If it wasn't clear before this weekend, it is bloody clear now: Julia Gillard's biggest problem is not the Opposition Leader; it's the Foreign Minister.

Despite the ordinary quality of Ms Gillard's remarks at the ALP conference on the weekend, she got what she wanted: a conscience vote on same-sex marriage, and an endorsement of her proposal to sell uranium to India.

If one were to put a positive spin on what the opinion polls say has been a terrible year for the Prime Minister, it's that she has shown an uncanny knack of somehow, some way, getting what she came for.

While Tony Abbott gambled on an unstable Parliament and the possibility of an early election, Ms Gillard got her Carbon Tax passed through the Parliament, got her Mining Super-Profits Tax passed through the House of Representatives, and got Peter Slipper to resign from the Coalition to become Speaker of the House of Representatives.

She has a well earned reputation as a very good negotiator, and with results like the ones listed above, it is hard to argue the opposite.

However, any time she tries to gain some momentum by spruiking her policy or political achievements, up pops the former Prime Minister to take the headlines and deflate the promising momentum.

This weekend it was Mr Rudd lamenting the lack of real organisational reform at the ALP conference. Despite a wide-ranging review with recommendations that would bring greater grassroots involvement to the upper echelons of Labor Party decision making, nothing really happened on this front during the weekend-long conference held in Sydney.

Mr Rudd said the conference was an opportunity for "fundamental reform", but instead "the truth is we (the ALP) have barely moved at all".

Aside from the derailing of a potential good news story for Ms Gillard, what must really annoy her is it is being by derailed by Mr Rudd not talking about policy, but internal party process. When the public hear Mr Rudd complaining about how the ALP works internally, they are probably not going to associate it with fighting climate change or better health and education services.

The issue now for Ms Gillard has come to a head: what to do with the former Prime Minister?

Surely her first concern would be how to keep Mr Rudd quiet. But if Ms Gillard comes to the conclusion that keeping Mr Rudd quiet is impossible, which is a pretty fair conclusion, then all that is left is for Ms Gillard to remove Mr Rudd from the Cabinet.

And considering what time of the year it is, now would be a pretty good time to do it. We've just had the last Newspoll for the year, Parliament has risen for the year, and the cricket has started. Plenty of time for a new cabinet to settle into portfolio responsibilities before the cut and thrust of a new parliamentary year commences.

If Ms Gillard continues to make progress on her agenda in 2012, she needs the clear air to prosecute her case and make headway against the Coalition in the polls. Sacking the Foreign Minister may be the best thing she can do to achieving that end.

Cummins Early Arrival a Good Sign

2011-11-21T10:10:00.000+11:00

If any one event suggests that Australian cricket may be heading back to days of glory, it was Pat Cummins six-wicket haul in Johannesburg yesterday.

No, not because he took six wickets in an innings, but for the very fact he is playing as a precocious eighteen year old.

Australian cricket history is littered with many recurring themes, such as tough, uncompromising batsmen, enterprising captaincy, hopeless attempts to chase small totals in fourth innings, and the occasional heartbreaking loss by a small margin.

Another is the young talent included in the side seemingly before his time. In the last 30 years, celebrated fast bowlers Craig McDermott and Glen McGrath entered the Australian Test Team earlier rather than later, and while they may have struggled at times early in their career, with McDermott having an extended two year stay out of the team, both eventually developed into stalwarts of the Australian bowling line-up, with McGrath becoming one of the best fast bowlers of all time.

McGrath, in particular, resembled a baby giraffe when he first played for Australia back in 1993. But after two Australian summers around the Australian team, he performed superbly when called on to lead a depleted Australian attack in the West Indies in 1995, after injuries to McDermott and Damien Fleming. McGrath was integral to Australia's first series win against the West Indies in nearly 20 years.

McDermott had more instant success and then regressed, but came back a better bowler in 1991 when he destroyed England in Perth in his comeback test. From them on he was Australia's spearhead, and won two International Cricketer of the Year awards.

The other Australian bowler who debuted before he was probably ready was Shane Warne. In his first two tests, both against India, he was hit all around the SCG and Adelaide Oval, but within 12 months he had bowled Australia to victory in the 1992 Boxing Day Test against the West Indies, and was about to embark on his famous 1993 Ashes Tour of England, when he would bowl the ball of the century on his way to one of the most dominant displays of bowling ever seen on a tour of England. The rest is history.

Compare that to someone like Mitchell Johnson, who had to wait until he was 26 years old to play Test Cricket, while McGrath, Stuart Clark and Brett Lee led the Australian attack. Perhaps Johnson would not have been so mentally fragile if he had been thrown in the deep end at a younger age? We'll never know, but we do know that it has been a while since we've seen consistent success from Johnson.

There is already plenty of talk about managing Cummins workload, and history also suggests that he'll find himself out of the test side at some stage in his career. Now, Cummins is very young, but if his form and fitness permit, he should stay in the side. Use the shorter forms of the game to manage his workload, and also control the amount of cricket he plays when not representing Australia, but Cummins should play Test Cricket whenever he has the chance. With all the other cricket played nowadays, there should be no shortage of non-Test opportunities to give his young body some rest.

Now, if only the Australian selectors can find a young batsman to blood in the side. Khawaja and Hughes have shown glimpes in the current Test Match. Is there another waiting for an opportunity before his time?

Rebuilding the Test Team - A comparison

2011-11-16T12:05:00.000+11:00

Four and a half years ago, Australia completed a five-nil sweep of The Ashes, and greats Glenn McGrath, Justin Langer and Shane Warne retired.

Twenty eight and a half years ago, Australia completed a ho-hum series victory against Pakistan, and greats Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell retired.

The immediate period after these two generational changes went on different paths: the 1980s Australians would run into the might of the West Indies and not win another Test Series for another three and a half years, while the 2000s Australians were in the midst of a record-equalling sixteen consecutive wins.

But while Australian cricket suffered in the 1980s, the team was rebuilt effectively.

Post Lillee/Marsh/Chappell, the next twenty five players to debut in the Australian Test Team were Steve Smith, Dean Jones, David Boon, Bob Holland, Murray Bennett, Craig McDermott, Simon O'Donnell, Dave Gilbert, Robbie Kerr, Merv Hughes, Geoff Marsh, Bruce Reid, Steve Waugh, Simon Davis, Tim Zoehrer, Chris Matthews, Greg Dyer, Peter Taylor, Mike Veletta, Tim May, Tony Dodemaide, Ian Healy, Trevor Hohns, Mark Taylor and Greg Campbell.

Post McGrath/Langer/Warne, the next twenty five players to debut were Mitchell Johnson, Chris Rogers, Brad Haddin, Beau Casson, Cameron White, Peter Siddle, Jason Krejza, Doug Bollinger, Andrew McDonald, Ben Hilfenhaus, Philip Hughes, Marcus North, Bryce McGain, Graham Manou, Clint McKay, Ryan Harris, Tim Paine, Steven Smith, Peter George, Xavier Doherty, Michael Beer, Usman Khawaja, Trent Copeland, Nathan Lyon and Shaun Marsh.

Which groups looks more compelling? In the first group, only Smith, Kerr and Davis played in only one Test Series. In the second group, Rogers, Casson, White, McGain, Manou, McKay, George, Doherty, Beer and Copeland have played in only one Test Series, although Beer and Copeland are currently with the Test Squad in South Africa.

Although the keeping spot has been more settled in the later years, both groups include three wicketkeepers. Also, both include a number of spinners. And as with any cricketing group, bowlers are churned through more quickly than batsmen.

And here lies the problem with our current state of cricket. Whether through a lack of genuine quality coming through the ranks, or a desire on the part of selectors to persist with older guys at the expense of younger guys, the really good batsmen have not materialised. Any XI created out of the most recent XXV would have to include someone like Cameron White, Andrew McDonald or Steven Smith batting in the top six, or both Brad Haddin and Tim Paine playing.

On the other hand, from the first XXV, and XI would boast a top five of Marsh, M Taylor, Boon, Jones and S Waugh. Sticking in Mike Veletta as the other specialist bat then seems less problematic, especially considering how outstanding a fieldsman he was.

The courageousness of selectors to move older batsmen on has not been evident. While it would be folly to compare Michael Hussey with Greg Ritchie, the fact is Ritchie was moved on when he was performing reasonably well, and his spot was taken by other, younger batsmen, like Steve Waugh.

In the final analysis, there would be at least 12 out of the latest 25 who would have next to no chance of every playing another Test Match. All 25 have debuted in the last four years. Think about that.

Democracy the Smokescreen

2011-10-24T16:13:00.000+11:00

It's official. According to representatives of both sides of the political spectrum, democracy is dead. Or at least woefully lacking in our current society.

According to the "Occupy (insert metropolis here)", they are part of a large proportion of the population not being heard or represented. What they need is more democracy.

On the other side of the divide, it is obvious that democracy doesn't need a doctor, it needs a priest. The passage of the carbon reduction scheme is proof positive that, in Australia at least, democracy is no longer alive.

Now read those first few paragraphs again and try to suspend your disbelief. Done?

This is clearly hogwash, but claiming a lack of democracy is a wonderful and effective tool for advocating for a policy position, and criticising those who don't agree with you.

Those who occupied city centres across the world are critical of the current capitalist system that operates in many successful nations. That is their policy position.

Their problem is the democratic process hasn't worked for them, or they're just not very good at it. In fact, what many anti-capitalist policy positions have in common is they've been adopted by nations at roughly the same time as they've abandoned democracy. So pluralism isn't one of the anti-capitalist's strong suits, but don't let that get in the way of a really good demonstration and sit-in, followed by the inevitable removal and scuffle with law enforcement officers.

On the other hand, does the passage of the carbon tax really signal the death of democracy, such as those who participated in the "convoy of no-confidence" suggested? Of course not.

In fact, the whole damn saga related to the Gillard Government's efforts to introduce a scheme to reduce the amount of carbon Australia collectively emits has been a clear demonstration of democracy at work, for all its successes and failures. Australia, pluralist and tolerant, with her government expressing a compromise between mainstream and minority opinion, arriving at a policy position developed by representatives as wide ranging as the land it comes from; the laneways and townhouses of inner Melbourne, and the wide expanses of the frontier of north-western New South Wales.

What we see in this debate is not another fatal blow for democracy, but a mere policy disagreement, albeit on a area of policy which may or may not be the most important to human kind since the Cold War.

It is important that a wide range of views are represented in a vibrant democracy, but this clearly is happening. Bob Brown and Barnaby Joyce share the same house of our parliament. And both are having a meaningful effect on our national discourse, and the legislation our democratically elected parliament is passing.

So, for now, save the obituaries for democracy. It's quite clearly alive and well.

And let's consign the lack of democracy talk to the archives of overblown political hyperbole.

Why Depth is Vital

2011-01-24T10:37:00.000+11:00

After the disappointment of a humiliating Ashes defeat, it hasn't taken long for the Australian One-Day team to restore a little pride. They have done so by re-establishing a key aspect to Australia's success for many years over the 1990s and 2000s: depth.

Both teams were missing large chunks of their best line-ups yesterday at the SCG, and rather than bemoan the demise of the 50-over-a-side game, it would be better to put the blame for an uninspiring game at the feet of injuries. Regardless of this, the Australians performed admirably with a side that is well below full strength.

For the English, Pietersen, Swann, Anderson, Broad & Bresnan were missing. This is their entire first string bowling attack, and perhaps their best ODI batsman.

However, the Aussies were missing Ponting, Michael Hussey, Johnson & Hauritz to short-to-medium term maladies, and Clint McKay and Ryan Harris are both nursing stress fractures in their feet. McKay and Harris were Australia's best performed fast bowlers in ODIs through 2009 and 2010.

Replacing these men for Australia have been David Hussey and Shaun Marsh, who have both made match winning contributions with the bat, a rejuvenated Brett Lee, clever Victorian all-rounder John Hastings, Xavier Doherty (who has been recalled from cricketing Coventry) and Doug Bollinger. All have played well and had a hand in at least one of Australia's impressive three wins so far against the English.

Brett Lee has reminded everyone why he has a place in Australia's all-time ODI side ahead of such greats as Dennis Lillee. He has always been a great ODI bowler, and having missed out on the 2007 World Cup win due to an ankle injury, he is energised and excited about what will be his last chance to play in a World Cup winning side.

The selectors also took a punt on David Hussey, considering it had been 18 months since he had played an ODI, but Hussey's knock last night was full of intelligence. The situation called for calm, and he provided it. It helps that he plays his state cricket for Victoria, who have made an impressive habit out of winning cricket matches. Having said that, Cameron White could use some runs, as well as the man he deputises for, Michael Clarke.

Clarke is doing a great job with his captaincy, but when Ponting returns, he may not be playing well enough with the bat to sustain his spot in the side, especially with David Hussey doing so well. Remember Hussey's brother also needs to come back into the side if fit.

One should also be reminded that a place for Callum Ferguson and Usman Khawaja cannot be found in this side at the moment. While Australia are not favourites to win their fourth consecutive World Cup, to count them out would be folly.

The importance of language

2011-01-10T14:33:00.000+11:00

Actions speak louder than words, the adage reminds us. As we start to fully embrace the possibilities presented to us by the World Wide Web and social media, this adage seems to collapse, as do many actions, under the weight of words. To put it another way, actions are beginning to become outweighed by the sheer volume of words spoken in today's media.

This is why it is vitally important to be careful with our words. You could argue that limiting your comment to 140 characters, as Twitter does, would promote care with words. But in encouraging wide ranging comment from those whom we would not have heard from even 15 years ago, even if limited to not much more than sentence, has in fact had the opposite effect. The publicised soundbite from a nobody, such as someone like me or a young girl who feels like she has been wronged by a group of footballers, means that comments that are short in nature must now be high in impact. The inability to waste words has meant stronger words are being used.

Historically, the strongest words in our lexicon have been reserved for warfare and violence. Pain and conquest, along with the very real possibility of death, have meant that the words describing the theatre of warfare have often been the most impactful, with the greatest ability to inspire and motivate.

These words have been used in other contexts too, most notably when related to team sports. Considering the inherent violence of some team sports, the language of battle can seem entirely appropriate. However, no matter how dangerous sport can seem (most of the time, exceptions occur), or how important the result can feel, the field of sporting contest is not a matter of life and death, unlike the field of warfare.

I've played football on ANZAC Day, and the only theme of warfare I invoked was one I thought appropriate in a collective effort: you don't let your mates down today. Nothing about battle, or being in the trenches, or anything similar. Just about co-operation and camaraderie, which can be applicable to any number of pursuits, and also do not diminish what many people did in any number of armed conflicts by comparing their last full measure of devotion to a mere pastime.

Lately, the vocabulary of warfare has entered the political spectrum. This has not only been proven dangerous, it's also hopelessly misguided.

For people living in a pluralist society like Australia or the United States, we share more with our political opponents than we sometimes care to remember. For the most part, we all have the best interests of the citizenry at heart; we just differ on how those interests can be furthered. On occasion, a commitment to ideology can colour our best laid intentions, but generally the policies differ but the objective is shared.

While we should encourage this difference in order to promote the best ideas being utilised, we should refrain from using unnecessarily inflammatory language to articulate our arguments. We can aim to defeat our opponents, but we must remember that in a pluralistic society it is the right to a minority opinion which enables us to have the sort of society where anyone can flourish, based on their ability or their talent.

Also, the use of inflammatory language can lead to misinterpretation, arousal of anger and hatred, blame rather than acceptance, misunderstanding rather than dialogue.

The accusations and counter accusations that are being made regarding the tragic shooting of a Congresswoman in Arizona are an example of what can happen when we use language without proper consideration for the consequences, what can happen when we use language to divide and conquer rather than share, converse, learn and improve. One side is using the tragedy as an opportunity to apportion blame to the other side, which have been loose in their use of strong warlike language. In response, the blamed side accuse the other side of politicising a tragedy.

In this case, it would be easy to say "a pox on both their houses". It crystallises so much that is wrong with politics in America, which I once described as "politics on cocaine". But as politics, sadly, becomes less about improving lives and more about which side wins, we can see this seep into our own political discourse.

All the more reason to be careful with what we say. Let's not use the language or warfare inappropriately, and let's not treat our political opponents like less than they are. And let's pray for those victims of the horrible event in Arizona on the weekend.

Protecting the Sheffield Shield

2011-01-10T12:12:00.000+11:00

The review of the state of Australian cricket in the media has been a little over the top, but this amateur pundit thinks that it is starting to identify the causes of some of the problems that have resulted in our poor performance in recent times.

In Sunday's Herald-Sun, former South African opening batsman Barry Richards spoke of the need for Cricket Australia to retain the Sheffield Shield in its current form or strengthen it, and not to sacrifice it to the Gods of the shortest form of the game. He contends that the 10-match format must be retained despite pressure to find room for the proposed eight-franchise Twenty20 competition planned to start next summer.

Then today in The Australian, Ricky Ponting has spoken of the need of review of the lower levels of Australian cricket and how it affects the quality of the representative teams that have lost so many games in 2010.

Well, they're both right. It has been the strength and consistency of the Sheffield Shield first class cricket competition that has provided the cornerstone of quality on which the success of the test team has been built on for all those years. Ten matches, home and away against everyone, in all conditions in all states, four days of 100 overs each.

The only problem with this competition is it loses money, hand over fist. Twenty20 cricket, however, even at a non-international level, does make money and therefore Cricket Australia wants to expand it.

However, the Sheffield Shield must be defended. Try to get along to a day or two of it between now and the end of the season if you love cricket, because it clearly needs our support.

The solution is simple: play the Shield (and a truncated 45 over competition) between the middle of October and the end of January. This would also coincide with the international itinerary, to be played from November to the end of January.

The Shield would be played with two matches every three weeks, with one 45-over match during that time. The entire competition would take 15 weeks, players would regularly be playing quality, tough, first-class cricket and would benefit greatly. If you could organise it that the test players were available for the first couple of games, even better.

Then, in February, with all international cricketers available, play the Twenty20 Big Bash. All the attention would then go to this competition, and the schedule would be free (except if the Australians needed to tour New Zealand, South Africa or the West Indies). Then play the Shield final in the first or second week of March.

This would open up stadia like the MCG, the SCG and the Gabba for mid-March footy. And let's face it: Aussie Rules pays the bills at those three grounds; not cricket. The Adelaide Oval will soon be used for footy too, so all the more reason to get cricket season over and done with by the second weekend in March.

The 45/50 over form of the game is already suffering from Twenty20 cricket. The reason Twenty20 cricket was invented was because ODIs were becoming predictable and boring. But there is no reason to see Test Cricket suffer.

It is quite clear from the media reaction of the Ashes loss that Test Cricket is still the most important form of the game to Australians. Time to protect it by protecting the Sheffield Shield.

What will arise from The Ashes?

2011-01-06T11:24:00.000+11:00

As Australia struggle to take only their 54th wicket of the series on this Thursday morning (remembering 20 of them were taken in Perth), our minds now must be cast forward to the future of Australian cricket.

Despite the struggles of the top order, the regeneration has started. Smith, Khawaja and Hughes are all under 25 and are all already in the team. Clarke could do himself a huge favour in the second innings by making some runs, otherwise he may find himself not only being replaced as captain when the Australian Test Team next play.

Michael Hussey should probably be moved on with a huge thank you from the Australian selectors, as he is not going to England in 2013. Ponting could come back down the order as well.

On further examination of Shane Watson, maybe he could bat #4. Of course, that would necessitate a new opening batsman to accompany Phil Hughes at the top of the order, and none are putting their hand up in such a way that could not be ignored. Suggestions of Shaun Marsh are folly; he doesn't average 40 in first class cricket. The dearth of opening options probably keeps Watson at the top of the order for a little while yet.

So Watson, Hughes, Khawaja and Smith stay, as well as one of Ponting and Clarke (and perhaps two if Clarke makes runs and Ponting keeps the captaincy). Maybe one spot opens up for a Callum Ferguson or another New South Wales wunderkind, but for now, the top seven (with Haddin or Tim Paine) seems fairly settled. Now all they need to do is make some bloody runs.

The bowling doesn't seem so settled. Ben Hilfenhaus has probably done his dash, to be consigned to the same area of historical record as Dave Gilbert. That Doug Bollinger didn't get a go in front of his home crowd at the SCG, when the selectors preferred him over Hilfenhaus at the same venue only 24 months ago shows the inconsistency of the selectors clearly.

An even more clear demonstration of the lack of consistency is Nathan Hauritz. If the selectors weren't persisting with Hauritz because of the upcoming Ashes series, then I don't know what they were doing. And before getting injured, he has a good summer in 2009/10, bowling well against both the West Indies and Pakistan.

After a poor tour of India (and let's face it, the last Australian spinner to succeed in India was probably named Benaud) he was sent to Coventry, never to been seen again in a Baggy Green. Enter Xavier Doherty, who was selected on the back of one four-wicket haul in a one-day match, and Michael Beer, who will probably not play for Australia again after this test match. Even Peter McIntyre (and Doherty, for that matter) got a second test.

That leaves Siddle and Johnson. Siddle is the workhorse whose career should follow the trajectory of that other Victorian hero, Merv Hughes. He's energetic, tireless, and his infectious personality helps the team keep things light and happy. That and he can bowl a bit too.

Johnson is a massive headache. Clearly no other bowler in Australia can produce spells and deliveries so devastating as Johnson. The problem is when he doesn't bowl incredibly well, he bowls utter tripe. The gulf between his best and his worst makes the Grand Canyon look like a crack in a concrete footpath. Only adding to the dilemma is the fact that he may be the best pure ball striker in the batting order, meaning a Johnson innings can also be like a Johnson spell - match winning or just plain awful.

With Ryan Harris' injury probably meaning he has missed his chance, now is the time to get someone like Mitchell Starc or James Pattinson into the side.

As for the spinner, I don't really care who it is as long as they persist with him for more than a couple of test matches. Considering the problems so many teams (West Indies, England, South Africa, New Zealand) have with wrist spin, Cameron Boyce may be a risk worth taking. It is important to note than absolutely no spinner in Australia is knocking down the door for a spot, with the possible exception of the aforementioned Nathan Hauritz.

Having said all that, the next focus should be on the ICC World Cup, and we should present a settled ODI outfit. As for the test arena, hopefully something can arise from the ashes of a ruined summer.

Dissecting a Day at the Cricket

2010-12-29T15:28:00.001+11:00

A day at the cricket can be entertaining, it can be educational, it can be both and it can be neither.

To watch the Australian batting order dismantle themselves on Day 3 of the Fourth Ashes Test Match was depressing. My 12 year old brother in law put it best: first two sessions good, last session miserable.

Firstly, there was the galactically poor judgement of Shane Watson. Anyone who could advocate his elevation to the Test Captaincy after this demonstration of what not to do must have rocks in their head.

In order to provide some context, the Australian openers in Watson and Hughes were scoring freely, but also pushing the fielding team with enterprising running between the wickets. However, this was when the ball was pushed into the spacious MCG outfield, as Watson and Hughes regularly turned twos into threes.

Turning zeroes into ones is a harder task, and one Watson failed at miserably as he ran out his partner who was looking good and in need of a confidence building extended stay in the middle. So much for that plan as Hughes was left short, and the rot began on a pitch that gave little aid to the bowling attack.

Clearly a poor or ordinary throw at the stumps can turn a dicey run into a safe run. On the other hand, not using the bat to defend an inswinger on the diminishing bounce of the MCG drop in wicket was a clear example of Watson's complete lack of judgement. If he had played a shot, he would not have been out. It is clear now that there is good judgement, there is bad judgement, and there is Watson judgement.

The next two men in the batting order provided much the same option on the menu, but while I feel no sympathy for Michael Clarke, I feel plenty for Ricky Ponting. Determined to make his stay at the crease time consuming, he resolved to play at the ball only when required. With his broken finger filled with anaesthetic, he struggled his way to 20 runs before the curtain came down, another inswinger finding the inside of the bat and the fullness of the stumps.

Ponting trudged off a defeated man. It is clear he is finished as a test cricketer, not only defeated on skill and ability, but also in heart. The only thing he can do now is hurt his legacy, as players like Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid get to enjoy a swansong, away from the harsh interrogation of character being captain or batting number three provide. Ponting has become a victim of Australian toughness in a way Steve Waugh never did.

Watching Michael Clarke, I made the comment he wouldn't get a game for St Kilda CC 2nds. After unbelievably charging Graeme Swann on the first ball he faced from him, only to miss the ball (fortunately Matt Prior did as well), he then decided to be completely subservient to Swann's whims, letting the cocky English spinner dictate terms until Swann finally decided to stop playing with him and put Clarke, and more importantly us watching, out of our collective misery.

Swann is the barometer of the English team. He is energetic, feeding off his own success and the reaction it gets from the Barmy Army and other English supporters, who were clearly much too numerous at the MCG for economic benefit to allow. Maybe the Aussie Dollar needs to hit parity with the Pound before all those loud Poms stay at home to be snowed under and finally silenced.

Back to Swann: you need to hit him out of the attack. By the time Peter Siddle and Brad Haddin were doing the right thing on the fourth morning, it was too late. Siddle made 40 by whacking Swann down the ground, and Siddle is a solid number 9/10 batsman.

Clarke just sat there pushing the ball back to Swann time and time again, like a kid being pushed in the chest by a bigger kid until he starts crying. Clarke needed to literally knock the smile from Swann's face, and instead he just embarrassed himself.

Clarke's career showed all the promise of maybe a all time great of Australian cricket, but at the moment I think I'd rather Damien Martyn's career than Clarke's.

Michael Hussey played his most uncharacteristic shot of the series, but while Hussey has plenty of credits in the bank, he won't be around for the next Ashes and should announce Sydney will be his last Test Match. Better to go while they miss you and all that guff.

The best innings of the day to watch was Steven Smith's. He had a crack, and while his technique doesn't look great, his ability to just play his game regardless of circumstances is more than encouraging. Smith is clearly one to stick with, and stick with at number six. The fact he is a wrist spinner will help him succeed, especially against the likes of England, the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand, who don't face wrist spinners much and therefore don't like facing wrist spin.

The lack of fight by the Australians, personified in the once talented but now unable batting of Michael Clarke, was the most disappointing thing about a day at the cricket. Let's hope the inclusion of some new blood in the top six, and the collection of a solid bowling attack, will enable the road to our next Ashes triumph to be a short one. But if a twelve year old is pencilling in 2017 as our next series win against the old enemy, who am I to argue?

Sledging: It's for the best

2010-12-20T11:24:00.001+11:00

It took almost three years, but the Australian Cricket Team is starting to put the after effects of the Harbhajan Singh - Andrew Symonds incident behind it.

I opined in this space during the disastrous South African series in 2008/09 that the Australians were too quiet on the field, and this reflected a state of mind created by the media furore after the New Years' Test of 2008 versus India. At that time, Graeme Smith even commented publicly about the lack of any chatter on the field from the Australians.

The furore was to blame for this retraction of the Australian Cricket Team into their collective shells. Despite the clear, indisputable fact that it was the Indian and not the Australian who used the racial slur, the Indian media went into a frenzy. Well, that is not entirely accurate - they're always in a frenzy. For the ideal paradigm, as Obama is for Fox News, Australia is for the Indian media.

Generally, Australians play hard. They use any legitimate means to unsettle opponents, and they do this to opponents of all colours and creeds.

The Australians rediscovered the art of sledging at the WACA Ground, but only after Kevin Pietersen stirred the sleeping giant by verballing Mitchell Johnson. Johnson was suddenly more emotionally involved in the contest, and produced a spell that turned the test match and perhaps the series.

Suddenly, the Aussies were sledging the English, and this is for the better, because a verbally aggressive Australian side is usually a successful one. However, this on-field banter, despite being obvious to all and sundry watching at home on the High Definition TV sets, did not set off the left-wing sporting intelligensia of the Fairfax press and their associated cheering brigade the way it did when we were playing India. To sledge a white South African playing for England is A-OK, but to do it to an Indian of colour is racism and shames all Australians. What tosh.

I don't really care if the Australians are liked or make friends. They are paid, very well in fact, to win games of cricket, and they lost a whole bunch of them quietly, but only when they started to show some real backbone and started to talk back to an English line-up starting to resemble their supporters for annoyance and arrogance, they started playing better cricket and the results came swiftly and dramatically.

So, here's to the Australia of old, in it to win it, taking no prisoners, and not caring what people outside of the team think about their manners and other such bunkum. On to Melbourne for Boxing Day, and hopefully the Christmas spirit of generosity won't extend to the field of contest.

Tanking for Dummies (and cricketers)

2010-12-07T15:16:00.000+11:00

Before the expansion Suns and Giants came around to steal the AFL club's much beloved priority picks, it was in vogue, when met with a situation where finals were impossible, to try to ensure you won less than 5 matches for the year. This would mean an extra pick either at the start or the end of the first round, depending on the length of a club's malaise.

Well, considering the Cricket Australia selection panel's desperate ability to grasp onto any hope of a reversal of fortune before making any sort of significant change to the side, the reality is clear that for the long term success of the Australian Test Team, they need to lose in Perth, in addition to the match already lost in Adelaide. The selectors need to be convinced as soon as possible that the Ashes are not for reclaiming this time around. Only then are the selectors likely to embrace the hard decisions that are now well past overdue.

We are now as far away from an Ashes series as one can be in the current cycle, overlooking the current "contest" we are playing in. The next Ashes are in England in 2013, more than two-and-a-half years away. So, if Test success is the pinnacle for Australian cricket, and the Ashes are the most important series for Australia, then now is the ideal time to start the rebuild. And it must start, rather surprisingly considering our inability to bowl anyone out without a hat trick, with the top seven in the batting order.

You see, this is where the age is. All of our bowlers are under 30, including the blokes who are on the outer depending on who got belted most recently. So, rather than recommend who is to be dropped and who is to be played, it would be better if the selectors just settled on a line-up and gave them some time to work together.

The top seven is a different story entirely. If the Australian Test team is to renew and rebuild, some very hard decisions need to be made about the top and middle order of the batting.

Take Simon Katich for example. As tough and courageous as he is, he doesn't convert enough of his scores into hundreds, has a Achilles injury that will keep him out for the rest of the series, and is well into his thirties. Hopefully Phil Hughes makes plenty of runs after he replaces Katich so the decision is made easy, but time's probably up for Katich's international career.

It would also be a tough decision to leave Michael Hussey and Brad Haddin out, as without these two Australia would be 2-0 down in the series. But no one can honestly expect them to be in England in 2013 in anything other than a commentary capacity, or perhaps hosting a tour of Aussie cricket fans. Haddin should probably survive the rest of the summer due to Tim Paine's injury, but Hussey is keeping a youngster out who needs experience.

It is clear that neither Ricky Ponting's captaincy, or batting, for that matter, are up to scratch, and at nearly 36, he should probably retire at the end of this summer to go and earn some serious coin hitting bowlers all over grounds the size of tennis courts in the IPL.

There is no defence for Marcus North - there should be a riot if he survives to Perth.

That leaves Shane Watson and Michael Clarke, who should be retained. Watson is a bankable 50 runs at the top of the order, and a valuable change bowler who makes the batsman play and can swing the old ball. Clarke is still one of the two or three most talented cricketers in the country, but the sooner he gives away the Twenty20 garbage, the better for all and sundry.

Anyway, here's my side for Perth, and hopefully the selector's side for Melbourne:

Hughes
Watson
Ponting (c) (to be replaced at the end of the season by Usman Khawaja)
Clarke
Ferguson
White
Haddin (to be replaced at the end of the season by Tim Paine)
Doherty
Johnson
Bollinger
Harris
Siddle - 12th man

I wish the selectors all the best, but I suspect they'll only have the courage of a dummy.

Beware of One Term Too Many

2010-11-24T14:51:00.000+11:00

If you have a relative in Queensland or New South Wales, it may be an idea to give them a call or drop them an email before the weekend.

If you do just that, ask them about the performance of their respective state governments since the last time the state went to the polls.

If you don't have a relative north of the Murray, you may just want to cast your minds back, if you can, to what happened after Paul Keating won the 1993 Federal Election, or John Cain won the 1988 Victorian State Election.

Australian political and electoral history is littered with examples of Labor Governments somehow eking out a final victory against the odds, only to keep on performing like the tired old government they were previous to the election, but managed to keep under wraps enough to get 50%+1 of the seats.

The writing was on the wall in 1988, with financial disasters completely of the Cain Government's making just about to become public knowledge, coupled with the global downturn associated with the stockmarket crash of 1987, conspiring to create a most important election. Only nobody knew it, and after Jeff Kennett made a silly remark about not needing the Nationals to govern, any chance of a change of government was very slim. We all know how that turned out, with the state exponentially more of a economic basketcase in 1992 than it was in 1988. Those were a very costly four years to the people of Victoria.

To a lesser extent, the surprise victory of Paul Keating and his government in 1993 against the John Hewson-led Coalition led to a three year term of indifference to real problems facing middle Australia. Keating instead chose to focus on the Republic, the Arts and Aboriginal Affairs, in a vain attempt to reshape Australia in his own image and likeness. Clearly a government governing for one term too many.

These all pale in comparison with the sideshow that has become the New South Wales ALP Government. This term, after Morris Iemma beat the unelectable Peter Debnam in 2007, has seen three Premiers, voluminous changes to the ministry, corruption allegations related to the urban planning processes, criminal proceedings against former ministers, and swings of biblical proportions in a number of by elections caused by the resignation, whether voluntary or forced by political embarassment, of many members of this dysfunctional government. To call it a dog's breakfast would be an insult only to what canines eat first thing in the morning.

While you may accuse me of hyperbole, the truth is 2010 in Victoria feels a lot like 2007 in New South Wales, or 2009 in Queensland, or 1988 here in Victoria. It doesn't appear to be an important election, but , at the time, neither did the ones I mentioned, with the exception of the 1993 Federal Election. Unfortunately, you sometimes don't know how important an election was until it is over and done with.

Sometimes it is said about sporting figures that it is better to retire while you are missed, rather than being forced out after your welcome has been warn out. So it is in politics, and it is certainly time for John Brumby and his crew of merry meddlers to be put out to pasture. Time for a change.

The Right Kind of Campaign

2010-11-12T10:32:00.000+11:00

Victorian Election pretty boring, huh? Good. As it should be.

Recently, we've seen a increase in the amount of loud hyperbole coming from politicians. Some of it can seem to be lacking thought, and some of it can seem downright psychic, like Joe Hockey's comments on the banks, but for many politicians and elected representatives, it seems like they only have one volume that is constantly stuck on 11.

Take the midterm congressional elections in the United States as the best example. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives behind a groundswell of resentment at the economy, Washington politics, and reforms proposed by President Barack Obama, such as those relating to health care, the financial industry, economic stimulus packages, and the military.

Americans know and love hyperbole better than most, and their politicians even more so. The use of emotive terms like "death panels" and "refounding our constitution" are meant to elicit visceral, emotional response, and mostly they do from citizens who feel very strongly about being patriotic to the American ideal.

The problem is that this sort of fearmongering doesn't address the real issues facing the US Congress and the United States as a whole: a poorly performing economy, a Federal Government laden with trillions of dollars of debt with no end in sight and no program to reduce the deficit with any chance of being approved by Congress, and fighting two wars on the other side of the world without a realistic exit strategy.

The number of high-profile Republicans proposing realistic, yet necessarily drastic, solutions to United States' crippling debt, could be fit into a small room. And because many of these people are libertarians, their lack of support for moral issues, such as outlawing abortion or preventing same-sex marriages, make them unattractive to many Republican "values" voters.

So you get elections with, as Shakespeare put it, "a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing". That is why it is so refreshing to have a low key election campaign here in Victoria, with the focus on announcing programs to address the problems facing Victoria and her citizenry.

While the media shows many signs of tiring at this understated campaign, focussing on "process stories" such as preferences and candidates flip-flopping about whether they will remain the endorsed candidates, both campaigns have on the main, with the exception of the entirely hateable Rob Hulls, stuck on a policy oriented message. This is to be commended.

Hopefully people will continue to engage with the leaders between now and November 27, and this engagement will produce a result that provides real action for all Victorians.

Hopefully the campaign will not degenerate into namecalling and the like, no matter what Rob Hulls wants.

So, don't be too unhappy this election is not very entertaining: that's the way it should be.

The Sands of Time

2010-10-15T11:38:00.000+11:00

This week the great Sachin Tendulkar passed 14,000 Test runs, while amassing his 49th Test Century, both clear records. It caused some in the media to enter into a discussion about whether Tendulkar should be regarded as the equal, or perhaps a superior cricketer to Don Bradman.

This debate is now going on all over the world, and while also possibly feeding into a rivalry between Australia and India which borders on the unhealthy, it is getting heated with many cricket followers, despite having never seen Bradman play, having strong opinions about the subject.

I'm not going to really get into the Bradman v Tendulkar debate, other than to say that Bradman scored all of his runs on uncovered pitches, and played most of his Test Cricket against the second best side in the world, so add this to Bradman's amazing average, and Bradman still remains the best, and probably always will.

However, it feeds into a deeper trend about disparaging, even if only by the mere mention of another in serious comparison, of many sportspeople who came before.

Haydn Bunton made his name in Aussie Rules at the same time as Bradman was dominating attacks and scoring a century every third time he batted. He won 3 Brownlow Medals before turning 27, and then won three Sandover Medals in the WAFL.

His 122 Brownlow votes in 119 games stands alone as the most incredible feat in polling votes in our game, and is also the best candidate for a stat like Bradman's average of 99.94.

But Bunton died young (he's been dead for 55 years), and his legacy has been mostly forgotten.

In more recent times, the AFL awarded the Full Back position in the team of the VFL/AFL's first 100 seasons to a then current player, Stephen Silvagni, over Jack Regan, the Collingwood champion of the 1930s. Regan was known as the "Prince of Full Backs", and duelled with Bob Pratt at the height of his powers.

Silvagni's feats were fresh in our minds, while Regan's had been consigned to history, forgotten in the deep archived compactus of the game. Numerous other examples exist of such thinking.

William Goldman, the famous and successful screenwriter, co-authored a book on sports in 1987 with Mike Lupica titled "Wait Til Next Year". In a chapter by Goldman defending Wilt Chamberlain, he gave us this::

"The greatest struggle an athlete undergoes is the battle for our memories. It's gradual. It begins before you're aware that it's begun, and it ends with a terrible fall from grace. It really is a battle to the death."

He suggested the best players of that day, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, would also get the same treatment as many that had gone before, with pundits suggesting that "they couldn't play today".

While it is both honourable and right to celebrate the genius that is Sachin Tendulkar, we should never forget what those incredible sportspeople who achieved their greatness before the 24-7 sports blogosphere Twitter media circus became the norm.

As Halls of Fame become fat with the mere passing of time, we should also occassionally take time to recognise those that revolutionised the game with pioneering play, whether it be the way Bill Russell played defence, to how Polly Farmer handballed, to how Usain Bolt is changing sprinting by his mere size.

Without Bunton we would not have had Judd. Without Regan we would not have had Scarlett. And without Bradman, we would not have had Tendulkar. The best, often, is not the most recent in the memory. Let us remember that.

Time for an Appointed Speaker

2010-09-28T14:53:00.001+10:00

If you thought a pair was a piece of fruit that was a not-so-distant relative of the apple, then you haven't been keeping an eye (or ear) on what has been happening in Australian Federal Politics recently.

A hung parliament, the result of Australia not really deciding on August 21, leads to all sorts of issues, not the least of which is the common practice of the Speaker of the House being taken from the government ranks, leaving them with one less vote on the floor than they normally would have, except when there is a tie when the Speaker can cast a deliberative vote to break the tie.

Now, I'm not calling on Harry Jenkins to use that vote to ensure a premiership for St Kilda. But the razor thin majority the Gillard Government has in the House of Representatives is effectively halved when Jenkins gets up in his high chair and starts presiding over parliamentary proceedings.

This means that any planned government travel during sitting days, illness, parental leave or unexplained absence at an inconvenient time could leave the government without the required numbers to pass legislation, regardless of the whims of Messrs Bandt, Wilkie, Oakeshott and Windsor.

Government ministers need, on occasion, to travel overseas to meet important people, and that opportunity may not always present itself during a week where parliament is not sitting. If Tony Abbott insists on playing hardball with parliamentary numbers, this may render the House of Representatives largely unworkable from a government standpoint until the minister returns to the House.

Which begs the question: why does the Speaker still need to be a member of the House?

It has been mentioned during the process to attract the support of the independents previously mentioned that taking the role of the Speaker would render the member unable to represent their constituents through Adjournment Debates, Matters of Public Importance, Member's Statements, and debates on individual pieces of legislation. To summarise, the Speaker cannot make any statements in the House except to rule on the conduct of the House and its members.

Despite the pay rise and additional staff, this makes the Speaker's job a less attractive one. You also need to be ever present in Parliament House in case of a division, and you need to be an expert on all the Standing Orders and Sessional Orders of the House.

Surely, this is a job that could be given to an appointed public servant, above party politics, expert on parliamentary procedure and practice, who would administer the rules of the House, without having a say on the composition of those rules, which would remain the responsibility of the lawmakers themselves.

In this country, governments appoint judges whose role is to interpret and administer law, but not to write law. The Speaker of the House would be a legal expert on the government payroll but administratively independent, part of the Department of the Parliament.

The person would also not be an elected member of a political party, and would therefore be above accusations of bias and partiality in their rulings in the House, which has often been a problem with governments usually enjoying more favour from the Speaker's chair than oppositions.

This would leave all 150 members of the House of Representatives free to represent their constituencies equally, and would also reflect the totality of the will of the people expressed at the most recent general election. This could also be applied to the Senate, although the reasons relating to representation, as Senators do not represent small constituencies but large states, are not as compelling.

Surely it is time that Australia leads the way, as it did with the secret ballot and the extension of the vote to women, in this important area of parliamentary practice, and made the Speaker of the House an appointed official, rather than a elected politician.

The Good News - It Won't Last

2010-09-08T11:43:00.000+10:00

Apparently the grapes are sour. Or so I have been told, as we wake up to the reality of a ALP/Greens/Oakeshott/Wilkie/Windsor Federal Government. There is plenty to dissect regarding the new state of play in the Federal Parliament.

Julia Gillard will enjoy the confidence of Adam Bandt, now the only Green House of Representatives member of the new left-wing Federal Coalition, Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Andrew Wilkie.

However, that won't mean much. If Ms Gillard manages to prevent the sort of things that have happened very rarely in Federal Politics, such as corruption of gross economic mismanagement (think Whitlam or John Cain), she should be able to serve a full, three year term if she is determined to at all costs. The three independents who have pledged their support to the ALP have said they would do this, but no more, reserving the right to judge legislation on a case by case basis. Rob Oakeshott will not be able to reserve this right if he becomes a Minister of the Crown.

That three years, on the other hand, may be the least productive three years in Federal Legislative history. This is because Julia Gillard must please her left flank and her right flank completely on any legislation her government proposes.

The state of play is this: the Gillard Government enjoys the confidence of 76 members, while 74 members do not support her. From those 76 members, Gillard must select a Speaker of the House, who, under parliamentary reforms agreed to by both major political parties and the independents, will not sit in either party room and will be independent from any political party.

This leaves the Gillard Government with a 75-74 situation (Speakers of the House can break ties, but in this situation there will never be a tie). All Tony Abbott needs to do is keep his parties together, along with Bob Katter and Tony Crook, and get one of Rob Oakeshott (if he is not a Minister), Tony Windsor or Andrew Wilkie to cross the floor, and any legislation will be dead before it ever sees the Senate.

The fact that Ms Gillard needs both Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor, along with Mr Wilkie, means she will be constantly trying to walk both sides of the street. Messrs Oakeshott and Windsor represent rural, northern New South Wales constituencies. Mr Wilkie represents a metropolitan constituency from southern Tasmania.

On exactly how much Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie agree will hinge the entire effectiveness and productivity of the Gillard Government. A government may do plenty of governing without being able to pass voluminous amounts of legislation, but if they cannot pass the legislation they see as necessary, then the government will rightly be seen as weak and largely ineffective. Ms Gillard needs all three of these independents to pass any legislation, and on her ability to do this will lie the entire success of her government.

The last Australian Federal Minority Government didn't last long, and despite assurances made to the independents, I can see Australia heading back to the polls before Winter 2012.

Climate Change Policy - You Decide - NOW

2010-07-23T10:23:00.000+10:00

While many in our society like to complain that our elected officials don't know what it going on in "the real world", or aren't in touch with the real issues facing "real Australians", the fact is that we elect them to do a job and run the country, the government, and the economy. Julia Gillard would like that to change.

Climate Change is one of the more contentious issues facing policy makers today. Not only do we have a debate about whether the climate is changing, we also have debates on whether we should have a debate (hard-line climate change believers like to use words like "we need to move on from debate", "the science is settled", and "there is a consensus"), whether it is caused by human activity, what we should do about it, and whether we should do anything if bigger and larger overall polluters like China and India do nothing, preferring economic growth to carbon reduction.

Regardless of what has occurred in the last three years, Kevin Rudd and the ALP ran at the 2007 election on a platform of introducing a scheme to reduce the amount of carbon Australia emits. Faced with a hostile Senate, filled with Liberals and Nationals who felt the scheme went too far, and Greens who felt the scheme didn't go far enough, the scheme did not pass the Senate and was not reintroduced by the Government, or used as a trigger for a Double Dissolution election.

Now, at the next election with Kevin Rudd relegated to local member and the ground shifting in this policy area, Julia Gillard wants to create a "Citizens Assembly" to develop a "consensus" on climate change.

The assembly, which would include 150 "ordinary Australians", would be "informed by experts" about climate change before making recommendations. The speech announcing this, of which The Australian has obtained a copy, apparently states "this must not just be a debate between experts ... it must be a real debate among involving many real Australians".

Firstly, I don't know who to be more offended for first, but experts are experts for a reason: they know what they are talking about. Could you imagine the government creating such an assembly to determine economic policy? Not in a million years. Also offensive is the implication that experts, or to put it more plainly, public servants, are not real Australians, but live in a land of make-believe called "Government land". They have mortgages, grocery and petrol bills, friends, hobbies, children, and all that other stuff that "real Australians" have as well.

It's also a significant abrogation of the responsibility of government, chosen from the party in the majority in the House of Representatives. We elect governments to govern.

There already exists a "Citizens Assembly", which has 150 "real Australians", informed by experts on various areas of policy and public administration: it's called the House of Representatives.

Gillard is being disingenuous as well as condescending and offensive when she plans to handball this key area of public policy, labelled by her predecessor and member of her party as "the greatest moral challenge of our time", off to 150 people, randomly selected like they have just won the Reader's Digest Sweepstakes.

What Gillard should do, considering she has been in Government for 32 months, is outline what she and her colleagues in the ALP is the best course of action regarding this issue, and if the Opposition offers a different policy, then let the people decide at an election, which we will be having on August 21. That way 13,000,000 Australians, rather than 150, can decide on policy direction the Commonwealth Government should head on Climate Change.

Australia needs better leadership than this, and this proposal demonstrates exactly why Gillard is unfit for office.

A Claytons Debate

2010-07-22T12:14:00.000+10:00

The election campaign, still in its infancy, seems to be about only a few things. For the ALP it is about whether Tony Abbott will bring back WorkChoices, defined by the ALP as any Coalition proposal of legislative change vaguely related to industrial relations between now and the end of time. For the Coalition it is about government debt.

Probably the only topic both political powers want to talk about is population, only they are talking about while not really talking about it.

Unfortunately, population growth is a "dog whistle" issue for really speaking about immigration, and the feelings many in the community harbour about immigrants, whether skilled or refugees, whether sanctioned by the government and its processes, or arriving in a manner both political parties (and many constituents) find problematic.

The problem with this is that it substitutes itself in place of a real debate we should be having about how many people should live in Australia, how we house our residents, and the location and amount of infrastructure that is needed so Australians can be productive members of the community.

As a rich nation, we have a responsibility to provide refuge (or fund some alternative) to people fleeing persecution and life-threatening danger in other countries. It's part of our history and heritage as a nation of immigrants, and we should not shrink from this.

Governments also have a responsibility to the citizens who elect them, and can use immigration as a tool to foster greater levels of economic growth. The right level and composition of immigration will be of benefit to all Australians, not just the new ones.

A part of the population debate is also encouraging birth rates. In purely economic terms, the Baby Bonus puts upward pressure on birth rates, meaning that to keep population levels static, the government needs to reduce the immigration intake. The Howard Government introduced the Baby Bonus to encourage the nation to increase the population internally, rather than through immigration.

Once born or allowed in from other countries, then comes the issue of infrastructure, one which both political parties have struggled to come to grips with. While the Howard Government has been accused of not funding a satisfactory amount of infrastructure during a time of economic sunshine, or pushing the burden (along with GST revenue) to the states, the Rudd/Gillard Government priorities, infrastructure wise, are school halls and libraries over transport and water.

The largest impediment to the open and frank discussion of these issues in the public arena is populist politics, which both parties are now participating in fully. While modern mass-media makes it difficult to undertake long-winded policy debate, the sound-bite nature of the current population debate doesn't help educate a citizenry. The spectre of racism that is often attached to debates relating to immigration also doesn't help matters.

What we are left with is a debate replete with terms and slogans that may be code for something else, and the country being no closer to adopting a comprehensive, evidence-based policy on population. The country deserves better, but won't get it unless we demand it.

An Election without a Government

2010-07-19T10:32:00.000+10:00

Listening to the opening salvos in what promises to be one of the least predictable Federal Elections since the Second World War, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is a "starting from scratch" election.

Julia Gillard has been Prime Minister for about five minutes, but she has been a member of the Commonwealth Government for nearly three years. Not that you'd know from listening to her.

Her mantra of "Moving Australia Forward" calls on the electorate not to think about the malaise that the government, of which she has been a member, has presided over since the demise of John Howard. She wants the electorate to think about what she says she will do post-August 21, and not what has happened before.

Almost paradoxically, the ALP will be calling on the electorate to look at history when considering Tony Abbott. When the ALP suggests the Coalition may bring back "WorkChoices" some time in the unforeseen future, they are stirring the Ghosts of Governments Past in the minds of many middle and working class people living in the Mortgage Belt suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney.

However, Labor's suggested recollection of history would be reminiscent of an Essendon supporter calling their team a finalist based on last year, and not on the last sixteen matches. Dear Electorate, remember what has gone on in the past, but not what has happened in the last 32 months.

By almost abandoning the record of the Rudd Government for the sake of "moving forward", the ALP creates a election environment completely unique to the Australian experience: an election without an incumbent. The choice being presented is between the Her Majesty's Opposition, and the informal opposition to the Rudd legacy, currently residing on the Government benches and offices.

This is not an unusual or rare proposition for American electorates, with their separation of the legislature and the executive, and their term limits. Presidential elections in 2008, 2000, 1968 & 1960 presented without a current President or Vice-President as one of the two main candidates. Barack Obama may have run against the Bush legacy, and Bush's Grand Old Party, but he didn't run directly against President Bush or his administration.

However, this situation is one entirely of the ALP's construction. They obviously believe the best way to win in August 21 is to disown the Rudd years, and try to rub the slate clean. It only adds to the unpredictability that this election will likely present all the way up to polling day.

Wonky Politics

2010-07-09T10:43:00.001+10:00

Kevin Rudd apparently loves policy detail. "Policy wonk" is the term of endearment used most often to describe his way of doing things ("control freak" is not a term of endearment).

Rudd led a government that for all intents and purposes still exists. While Julia Gillard may have replaced Kevin Rudd as the leader of that government, Rudd himself is the only change to the government. The continuity is so set in stone that Ms Gillard has chosen to retain two "lame-duck" cabinet members who have indicated they will not continue in the cabinet past the next election.

Another way you can tell this is the same government is the way that they develop policy, which has demonstrated that suggesting Mr Rudd is a policy wonk is a little like suggesting Michael Barlow has an intact tibia bone.

This Rudd/Gillard Government has in fact a well earned reputation for glossing over policy detail in order to announce and implement policies and programs as soon as possible, for maximum PR effect.

The most glaring example under the previous Prime Minister was the insulation scheme. Rather than creating a much needed regulatory framework for the registration and examination of competency of tradespeople performing the work of installing insulation in private homes, the Rudd Government got the money into the economy as soon as possible. This was the main objective of the insulation scheme.

However, this dereliction of basic policy development, admitted by outgoing Finance Minister Linsday Tanner, contributed to thousands of homes becoming "live-wired", and the increase of activity also led to the deaths of a number of installers.

The provision of solar hot water heaters to various community used facilities was also another policy where the overarching objective overrode the proper development of policy detail, leading to football ovals across Australia possessing more solar hot water heaters than they had showerheads.

Unfortunately under our new Prime Minister little has changed. Ms Gillard announced that she had discussed with the President of East Timor the possibility of processing asylum seekers in the tiny nation.

Now, here's a lesson of what not to do in politics, especially government: don't think out loud about policy.

The result of Ms Gillard's thought bubble has been that the media has been taking her "plans" as official government policy. Only problem is that all Ms Gillard has done is talk to the President of East Timor, not the Prime Minister who would usually make this sort of decision, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Her total discussions with these national leaders has probably totalled about sixty minutes.

This policy of a processing facility for asylum seekers on East Timor is light on for detail, hasn't been agreed to by East Timor itself, and is opens Ms Gillard to accusations of hypocrisy, given her previous opposition to the Howard's Government "Pacific Solution", which also processed asylum seekers away from Australian soil.

If Ms Gillard wants to spend longer than 100 days in the Prime Minister's chair, then it may be an idea to increase the level of work done on important government policies between now and the election, or else it may be experienced former government minister Tony Abbott who gets her job.

Our latest Ex-Prime Minister

2010-06-24T13:27:00.001+10:00

So how will history remember Kevin Rudd?

Let's start out by stating that things weren't nearly as bad for Rudd in the electorate as the mainstream media made it seem. This week's Newspoll, Morgan and Essential Research surveys all had the ALP with a small two-party-preferred lead. The man on the other side of the house, Tony Abbott, while differentiating himself emphatically as the anti-Rudd, is prone to bouts of public utterances that can bring more harm than good. There was a good chance he may say something refreshingly honest but possibly offensive between now and polling day.

However, the media had the die cast. Once the polls started diving after Rudd's backdown over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, he was unsalvageable as far as they were concerned. Bored by the new found stability in Opposition ranks, they played up a contest on the government benches.

After all this, still nothing would have happened today if Rudd didn't get suspicious and send one of his staffers, instead of himself, to count the numbers. It was around this time that Julia finally decided enough was enough, and relented to the pressure being brought on her by factional heavyweights inside the Parliamentary ALP. Rudd blinked and called for a spill he eventually didn't even contest.

Rudd now, despite his somewhat ridiculous choice to stay in Parliament past this upcoming election, will be consigned to the annals of history.

Rudd's greatest achievement was the avoidance of a recession that enveloped the rest of the developed world. While the more begrudging of us may try to take this away from Rudd by claiming that China's demand for our natural resources mean Rudd's measures were only slightly contributory to the economy's resilience, the stimulus did get a massive amount of money into the market, which powered demand and kept the economy growing.

Rudd's real problem with his stimulus legacy is not just the rows of unneeded, unused solar hot water heaters littering the outside of sporting pavilions around the country, or the volume of school halls built over the last few years, but the incompetent handling of the insulation scheme.

In short, flooding an unregulated trade with tons of cash is asking for trouble, without serious regulation and bureaucracy in place before hand. The scheme was simply asking to not only be exploited by fly-by-nighters looking to make a quick buck at the expense of John and Jenny Q Taxpayer, but was also making the always possible safety problems that are associated with working in the roof space of residential homes more likely. In short, more tradespeople, not necessarily trained and certainly not regulated, in the roofs of homes all over the country, working in cramped spaces in close proximity to electrical wiring.

But, by admission, the Rudd Government didn't have "time to cross the 'i's and dot the 't's." It would have been better for everyone if they had made the time.

These were the most grandiose of Rudd's great schemes. He apologised to both the Stolen and Forgotten Generations, and signed the Kyoto Protocols, but these were all symbolic measures.

Rudd won't be remembered as well or as fondly as Gough Whitlam, who became a Labor hero by failing grandly and losing power incredibly. Some of Whitlam's measures still endure today, which is unlikely to be said of Rudd's.

Unfortunately for Rudd, the post-war Prime Minister he will most likely be coupled with will be William McMahon, in that, for many, the Rudd years will be completely forgettable. He will never be judged to be the equal of the man he defeated in 2007, or the great reformers Hawke and Keating. He will never be remembered as having the infamy of a Malcolm Fraser, the incredible circumstances of the Gorton premiership, the electoral success and demise of Harold Holt, the endurance of Menzies, the gumption of Chifley or the toughness of Curtin.

Rudd's greatest punishment may be, for someone whom it has been suggested longed for a legacy and a place in the collective memory of the nation, that he, and his time as Prime Minister, may be largely forgotten. For that, he can blame the media. He can blame the ALP factional heavyweights. He can blame the polls. But he should also keep a little bit of the blame for himself.

The last week - Ireland

2010-06-22T13:17:00.001+10:00

Land of my ancestors. We finished our trip in Ireland.

First up was a dinner with my cousin Antoinette and her family. Her son, Bobby, can only be described as a card. Very energetic, very enthusiastic, emphatically male and 22 years old. Amy, his older sister, is acerbic, but she remembers fondly me teaching her how to slide down the bannister when I visited in 1991. Sophie, the youngest, wasn't around then, and she's still going through high school, which in Ireland has an incomprehensible structure for those from Australia.

I finally had my first proper Irish Guinness, and it was worth the wait. I would return to this elixir when we got back to Dublin.

After leaving Dun Laoghaire on Saturday morning, we drove through Kilkenny on our way to Rossdale in County Wexford. This time we were driving a Mazda, on the correct side of the road.

Kilkenny is officially a city, but it really is a nice, medium sized, town. As we got closer to the coast and the south, the weather got windier and colder. Once we checked into our B&B, we found out very quickly there isn't much to do in Rossdale if you don't play golf. So we played golf.

We actually went to the driving range, where Rose didn't do too well and I got my usual welts on my hands from the grips on the clubs. My slice reared its ugly head on a regular basis. The evening was spent much better, when after dinner, we discovered that the video collection in the sitting room had Aussie favourite Strictly Ballroom, which, for some inexplicable reason, Rose hadn't seen. I saw it in the cinema and loved it, but Rose thought it was silly, despite one of the best chill scenes ever.

The Sunday was spent driving past Cork (which we were warned to stay away from due to crapness) on our way to Killarney in County Kerry. Before embarking on this trip, we sampled every Irish person's favourite Sunday morning excursion: going to mass celebrated in a modern church by an odd looking man with classic Irish hair. His sermon on circumcision was a comedic highlight of the trip.

Killarney has a beautiful national park right next to the city centre, which stretches on to the nearby mountains. After a short wander through this wonderful park, we went and got some dinner. Two plates of magnificent Irish Stew went down a treat.

Then I decided to purchase Rose a tin whistle, which is something I regretted for the rest of our tour around country Ireland. Whenever the radio decided it was too far away from anywhere to get a signal, Rose would decide to attempt to play the whistle, and the resulting noise pollution was almost unbearable. Serves me right for buying it for her.

The next day, between trying to stick gauze in my ears, we drove up to Galway. We stopped in the town for one main purpose - to buy some soda bread and some Kerrygold butter. The best bread and butter combination in the world. I will not argue about this.

Then we drove off to the Connemara mountains, which are some of the most rugged, inhospitable yet incredibly breathtaking mountains anyone could ever see. Mountain sheep wandered on the side of the road looking for feed, and we pulled over to eat our simple yet delicious improvised picnic of bread and butter. While it was difficult to stand up outside of the car, we enjoyed the rest, and Rose enjoyed her home made lemonade.

On the way back we stopped in a local craft shop and purchased a pretty photo of a sheep and a rainbow. The shopkeeper assured us the local sheep were worth three Australian sheep. A monument outside the shop memorialised a place where "nothing happened".

In short, it was lovely to see some of rural and regional Ireland that I didn't get the opportunity to do when I was in Ireland last.

Driving into Dublin I struck some luck, when after driving down the River Liffey for a period, I decided to turn over to the other side of the road, only to find I was turning into the street our hotel was in. After dropping Rose and the bags off at the hotel, I went off to drop the rental car back at the depot.

Driving out there, along the same route I caught the bus to where we stayed in 1991 brought back memories of being with my grandmother all those years ago. The city felt smaller, but still effectively the same.

After sorting out our room (we had been given a smoker's room, and it gave Rose a headache), we started to venture into Dublin. The city has no skyscrapers (tallest building is 16 storeys), but a large spike coming out of the middle of the main street, O'Connell St.

I took Rose to the Pro-Cathedral, where all the memories came back strong and I lost it a little bit. It's a small little place where the cities many Catholics can come to worship, as all the other large Cathedrals in Dublin were, and remain, Protestant places of worship.

Our last Wednesday of our trip was spent with the relos, as we got the Magical History Tour of my family. We were shown where all my Great Grandparents are buried (as well as some other ancestors), drove past Bono's house, the house where my Grandfather was born, baptised and went to school, as well as the Monks family home (my Grandfather's mother's family). We stopped off for lunch, and I had some more scones (I love scones), and did some window shopping.

We also visited the youngest of my Lewis generation, who is only a couple of months old. We had some dinner, then went off with the younger relatives into town, where Bobby took us to a rather comical "college night" where the uniform of short dresses, long straight hair and unbelievable tans had Rose, Amy, Amy's partner and myself all highly amused.

We paid for it the next morning, as we started slowly due to the after effects of a late night. When we did go out we eventually got to the Guinness Storehouse, where Guinness is made. An incredible exhibition of exactly how the lovely drop is made awaits, as well as related Guinness paraphernalia such as advertising and packaging. Near the top of the exhibition, which is shaped like a seven storey tall Guinness glass, you can pour your own pint, which I did with glee, before receiving my diploma and finishing my drink. We also visited a bookshop where Rose bought an Irish cookbook, and I tried not to buy about 50 books on Irish history.

The last day included a trip to Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Since being here last, they've really improved the whole set up as to the Book of Kells' display, and it was a nice way to finish.

I know I've taken my time to write these travel notes, but writing on my blog while away was a solitary activity that didn't involve Rose. Some people have enjoyed reading them, some have seemed to pledge never to speak to me again. Anyway, my thoughts and experiences have been exactly that: my thoughts and my experiences.

I would be lying if I said I didn't wish we were still travelling the world. The first few days in Istanbul seem like decades ago now.

Our favourite place was France, and particularly Paris. I know I'll be getting back to Gallipoli, the UK and Ireland, and Rome one day. I've already pledged any future trip to Poland will include everything but Auschwitz. There's a little town in France we desperately want to go back to.

Anyway, that's it. Photos will be up on Facebook soon - I was waiting to finish these. And this blog will go back to what it was before: me pontificating about stuff I think I know stuff about. Thanks for reading.

Day 48-52 - Scotland

2010-06-21T13:08:00.000+10:00

Our bus trip into Edinburgh took us through Lockerbie, where there was still light in the sky at 10:30pm, and the temperature in the surrounding countryside was nearly zero. We arrrived in our hotel not long before midnight.

The next morning did not greet me well, but I managed to rouse myself for a full Scottish Breakfast. In this respect, the Scots are the anti-Italians: black pudding, tattie scones, sausage, bacon, eggs and many other culinary delights. This is the sort of breakfast that makes your heart soar, then go into arrest.

We had one day in Edinburgh, which is probably the most unique place we went other than Venice. The old part of the town, which houses Edinburgh Castle, is on a massive hill. The newer part (only 300 years old!) is on the lower valley in front of the hill, and the main street and shops reside here.

After a walk down that main street, we went back to board the bus to do the bus tour of Edinburgh. The ticket seller engaged us in some small talk, like where we were from and such. Then, with only the slightest hint of cheekiness on his face, he asked me if I wanted to buy bus tickets for myself and my daughter. Smart @rse.

The bus ride around Edinburgh is great, because of it's uniqueness. From the painted on windows to the private park (?), we enjoyed the ride until we went up to the Castle.

Now, Edinburgh was the first place I had been on our little trip which I had previously visited. As a nearly-eleven-year-old, my grandmother and I walked up to the Castle, but I remember being disappointed that most of the Castle was not accessible to visitors.

This time was different, and explored nearly every area of the Castle, which looms large over the skyline of the surrounding area, impenetrable and inaccessible to marauding raiders and armies from the south.

We had some lovely scones, jam and cream in the cafe right at the top of the Castle, and the views all around are some of the prettiest you'll ever see.

Unfortunately, dinner wasn't nearly as good as the mid-afternoon repast. Rose felt like a roast, and we could only find it in one of the pubs near where they used to execute people. I think one of the victims ended up on Rose's plate.

The next day we were off to Glasgow, a short train ride from Edinburgh. After all our travels, this was our last train ride, and therefore the last time we'd have to carry those bags into a train station, onto a train, and then find somewhere to put them. Recommendation - anything more than one large suitcase is too much for train travel.

If Glasgow is more touristy than Liverpool, then it isn't by much. Bigger, with a classy shopping strip, the CBD sort of sprawls to much bigger than Melbourne's, but then the suburbs do not spread for much further than that.

Our visit to Glasgow coincided with a bout of slight illness for Rose, and we spent at least a couple of afternoons resting. But we did manage some high tea at McKenzie's Tea Shoppe, which was more food than two people should eat in one sitting, some more shopping for Sylvanians, and a special visit.

Glasgow is the city in which my mother grew up, and rekindling memories of my own visit there with my grandmother, we went up to Maryhill to see where my family lived before coming to Australia.

There has been some scrubbing-up of Maryhill, but it remains essentially working-class, with the old tenement buildings mostly replaced with orange brick apartment blocks. The shopping strip remains, but the church has lost its primary school. The church was closed when we went past, but a incomprehensible groundskeeper, who may or may not have been named "Wullie", assured us it would be open the next day.

We then walked through Maryhill, along a small creek, to Kelvin Grove Park. It's a lovely place I hadn't been to before, and we walked around and fed some squirrels something they probably shouldn't be eating.

The other side of the park couldn't be more different to Maryhill, as it houses the university and several lovely terrace houses, very much like the ones seen in East Melbourne. Rose wondered aloud why the Lewis family chose the wrong side of the park.

There was plenty of football going on while we were in Glasgow, including an Old Firm match between Celtic and Rangers. The combination of the mutual hatred of these two clubs, along with the fact that Rangers had already secured the League title, made the match an entertaining fusion of attacking the goals and attacking each other. The next day Tottenham beat Man City to claim the final Champions League spot.

The next morning we were rudely awoken by a rather loud fire alarm in our otherwise fine hotel. We had to evacuate, with yours truly donning a towel around the waist, and eventually an anti-hypothermia blanket around my shoulders. This is in case any Scottish bloke tells you a story about the time they saw Ricky Ponting standing outside a hotel in Glasgow at 7:20am wearing a towel and tinfoil.

There's not an awful lot to do in Glasgow, but it did give us a chance to hit the gym for the only fitness work of the trip, and also recharge the batteries before a busy last week in Ireland.

Day 47-49 - Liverpool

2010-06-03T14:41:00.002+10:00

Liverpool is not touristy. It’s grey, urban, lived-in and teeming with people. To put it another way, it’s brilliant.

Our hotel was down on the docks, where quite a lot of reconstruction and redevelopment has occurred, giving it a similar feel to the Docklands area in Melbourne. Unfortunately, a large Ferris wheel was right outside our hotel window, and Rose doesn’t need much to prevent her from sleeping.

It was also almost the first time on the trip we’d endured any sort of inclement weather. It tended to rain in secret in London (at least twice when we had popped back to the hotel to grab something), but we got caught in it a little in Liverpool.

We’d walked into the centre of town and then through Mathew St, where the Cavern was (and is again), and where statues of John and Paul sit on the balconies of the surrounding buildings. Other than that, there are the new buildings, and the older ones. The famed Lewis’s Department Store was closing down, so we went in to see if they were clearing any Sylvanians, but the clearing had already taken place. The advertising posters were there, but the Sylvanians were not.

For our first dinner in Liverpool we ventured inland, past the centre of town and the train station, to partake in some genuine fish & chip shop food.

The British “Chip Shop” offers a vast array of take-away food items, from Chinese to Pizza to Kebabs to the old fashioned Pie or Fish supper. The Potato Cakes, called scallops, are massive and spurt oil when pierced, like a striking a deposit of clear vegetable oil. The chips are thick and fattening. It was a great meal, although we felt it for the next few hours as our bodies worked hard to digest perhaps the most fattening meal of our lives.

Between extended bouts of watching an Aussie march to a World Snooker Title, we filled our short time in Liverpool going to the Beatles’ Story, which was entertaining but didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. The highlight for me was in the post-Beatles exhibition, when in the area dedicated to George, they played a clip from a mid-1970s broadcast of Rutland Weekend Television. George Harrison is introduced by Eric Idle, and starts to play the memorable opening chords from “My Sweet Lord”, before breaking into a pirate song, much to Idle’s fake protestations. Oh, how we miss having a living Beatle not take himself too seriously.

Attached to the Beatles Story is a “3D Experience”, which really is just an excuse to get people wet. But I was more convinced about 3D television after this experience than I was before it.

We had to wash clothes in Liverpool, in your typical suburban laundromat. After walking past 50 men, aged between 16 and 35, riding down a hill on BMX bikes, we washed our clothes, and got called “pet” and “love” by the woman who operated the coin laundry. Rose found it off-putting; I found it endearing. It was also an excuse to have some more English crisps, which are cooked longer and taste smokier, and therefore better, than they do in Australia.

Dinner on Saturday was a little bit more of a struggle, as we couldn’t find anywhere that was satisfactory and didn’t have a minimum 30 minute wait. We finally settled on the restaurant inside our hotel, where I had a curry and lost my black Raider cap.

Our time in Liverpool had been extended by the fact that the match we had planned to attend had been moved from Saturday to Sunday. We carefully planned our Sunday to ensure a quick and speedy getaway from Liverpool to Edinburgh.

We caught the bus out to Anfield on Sunday, to experience one of the great sights and sounds in all of sports. Anfield inside is small, with no particularly poor seats. The only thing particularly poor on this day was Liverpool’s play.

Just before the game, the crowd broke into song, and the two of us, Liverpool fans from half way across the world, joined in with all our might, with our brand new scarves above our heads, adorned with perhaps the greatest motto for any sporting club in the world: YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE. It really is the one area that soccer has it over our indigenous Australian game.

After looking frisky for about 20 minutes, Gerrard tried a pass back to the keeper which was intercepted by Didier Drogba, and it was 1-0 Chelsea. The tiny enclave, draped in royal blue and surrounded by what seemed like 5,000 police officers and security guards, went into an absolute frenzy. They did the same when Frank Lampard doubled the lead.

Only when the Chelsea crowd started pointing to the Liverpool supporters, chanting “You are Ancient History”, did the crowd start to get restless, and this elicited a loud response from the home faithful. Overall the Reds looked listless, tired from a physically and emotionally draining loss only three days previous in the semi final of the Europa League.

Apparently the players come out and greet the fans after the last home game of the season, but we couldn’t hang around. Somewhere between here and the train I left behind the match program and book of posters intended for Rose’s younger brother, Deaglan.

When we got to the train station, which was not easy as Anfield is deep in suburban Liverpool and the buses weren’t getting through, we were greeted by some delicious Cornish Pasties (apparently the best Rose has ever eaten), and the news that our long train trip to Edinburgh had just become a longer train and bus trip, thanks to maintenance works on the tracks being done over the Bank Holiday long weekend. After changing at Preston (as planned), Oxenhome & Carlisle, we finally got into Edinburgh at 11:30 pm, exhausted and relieved.

On reflection, after spending time in Liverpool you will know two things: the Beatles come from here, and so does the Liverpool Football Club. Nothing else really matters. I wish the Reds had won, but just being there was great. Actually, being in the city of the Reds, John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Dave Lister, was a blast.

Day 43-46 - London

2010-06-03T12:02:00.002+10:00

Anything after Paris and France was going to be a bit of a let down. Unfortunately somewhere had to follow it, and this was London. We arrived on a Monday, spending the working week in what is perhaps the most important city in the world.

Our hotel was near Hyde Park, so after dropping off our bags we went for a wander through. While parks can be few and far between in London, when they do occur they are large, full of wildlife, and closely resemble urban countryside.

We next saw the Wellington Memorial, which contains the London War Memorials of Australia and New Zealand. Both are recent, and reflect this in their design, so one has to know beforehand they are war memorials, or get close enough to see for oneself.

From there we walked past Buckingham Palace, which isn’t really that big from the front and the changing of the guard was inconveniently timed. We didn’t manage to see the guard being changed at Buckingham Palace over the next few days.

What we did see was the Guard Marching Band practising in the open, but with their backs to the street, facing their barracks. Rose was very interested in hearing these guys, while I was more perturbed with the fact they weren’t facing the large crowd.

St James’ Park separates the Palace from the Prime Minister and Westminster, and contains perhaps the first squirrels I had ever seen in the flesh. Rose took great delight in taking many photos of the squirrels in different parks in different places.

The guard was changing at Westminster – the mounted guards. The crowd of normally-sized people prevented Rose from seeing much of the inspection of uniforms and such, but I managed to get the camera above the crowd for some more pictures.

Big Ben didn’t exactly loom over us from that vantage point, primarily because it isn’t that tall. After the Eiffel Tower it seems like you’d struggle to reach terminal velocity if you leapt from the minute hand.

The West End is packed with theatres hosting musicals, which pretty much prevented us from going to one, as Rose has no love for musical theatre. There are also many, many shops on Regent and Oxford Streets, and we walked these many times over the next few days as they led from the centre of London to our hotel back near Paddington.

I had waited until London to have some Indian food, and I wasn’t disappointed, although apparently Bangladeshi-town is the place to go for the best Indian food. We were happy with our choice, and the waiter was more than happy to ensure Rose’s dishes were not too hot.

After weeks of Italian and French breakfasts, I was pleased to see a cooked breakfast and Weetabix. Cumberland sausages are particularly nice, along with eggs, bacon, baked beans and mushrooms. Rose ate my tomato.

The breakfast got us ready for St John’s Wood, site of two of the most significant places in London for me: Abbey Rd Studios and Lord’s. They are about ten minutes walk away from each other, and Rose dutifully stood on a roundabout to take a picture of me walking across the famous zebra crossing.

Our tour at Lord’s was led by a Yorkshireman. If you go to Lord’s, insist on a tour guide from Yorkshire – they were put on Earth to talk about cricket. He showed us Real Tennis, which may be the most ridiculous sport still played on the planet today, and as compensation for not being to enter the Long Room, as it was a match day, we were taken onto the ground surface during the lunch break. No truth to the rumour I was asked for my autograph.

I could have stayed all day, listening to our guide talk about all the greats to have played at Lord’s, but this was a honeymoon and not a bachelor trip. We resumed our search for a pair of shoes for Rose, which eventually ended the next day when we finally found a cheapish place that had shoes small enough to fit her.

St Paul’s is a wonderful cathedral, spacious and grand. Westminster Abbey, on the other hand, is a cluttered mess, trying to fit in everyone important who wants to be buried there. There is a touch of class at the Abbey, with the audio guide being Jeremy Irons, although this means you walk through one of the most famous churches in the world quoting lines from Die Hard 3.

We did the Tower Bridge, and its incredible moving drawbridge, and the Tower of London. We didn’t really leave enough time to properly enjoy the Tower of London, but our “beefeater” guide was humorous and the Crown Jewels incredible in their size and beauty. It was here at the Tower where one feels the history of London, and the English Royal Family, more than anywhere else in London.

The highlight of our time in London was catching up with three people I went to high school with. Julie I had not seen since I was 15, Brad was a good mate of mine and one of most genuine people anyone would ever want to meet, and Tom is a great bloke to have a drink or fifteen with, as I did at my informal 10 year high school reunion in 2007 at the Espy.

It was also one of the few places in London that served a Parma, and considering I medically needed one, this was very good news. Plenty of beer was drunk, but I made sure my original plan to wait until I was

Ireland

to drink a Guinness was preserved, albeit under some pressure.

Thursday morning, after shaking off some sore heads, we headed down to Madame Toussaud’s, where, much to my disappointment, there was no Ricky Ponting wax dummy. I really wanted to have a photo taken of me with myself.

It’s good fun, however, and the dummies are quite hardy and in some cases, eerily lifelike. After a while, if one of the patrons stands still for a little too long, you’ll start to confuse the dummies with the living people. A hideously out of place fright experience comes after the dummies, and then a cab ride through the history of London.

If nothing else, London is very commercial. You go there to consume. Our last real outing of the time we spent in London was to Harrod’s, so Rose could buy some tea, which she is drinking back here in Melbourne, and some Sylvanian Families figurines, which she has an unhealthy obsession with.

The food in London was mostly pub food, with a great devotion to the hamburger and the hot chip. Aussies should not be afraid to drink Fosters in England – I’m positive it is Crown Lager, and tastes much better than that rubbish in the blue cans we get sold back in Oz. An attempt at high tea at the Ritz was kyboshed by the lack of pounds in my pocket (caused by a money transfer snafu), and by my casual attire. I quickly vowed to be appropriately dressed and cashed-up the next time we were in London.

Our final act in London was to watch Liverpool get knocked out of the Europa League by Athletico Madrid, who had an extra 30 minutes to score the away goal that put them into the final. After this I completely cracked the shits at game of soccer. As usual, I didn’t stay mad for long.

If Paris is beautiful, and it is, beyond description, then London is functional. Apart from the Tower of London, the history of the place is beneath the surface, or contained in gaudy shows like the ones at Madame Toussaud’s, or near the Tower Bridge. Paris seems comfortable that the history and beauty almost need no promotion (when have you ever seen a tourist ad for France?), but London seems to need to promote it in the tackiest was possible (except for the Tower).

It is also described, by one of its inhabitants, as the least English place in England. If so, we were about to see the real England, at the end of a train ride from Euston Station, arriving at Lime St in the early afternoon.

Day 42 - ANZAC Day

2010-05-04T05:01:00.002+10:00

Just before we were due to get out of bed for our early morning trip to Villers-Bretonneux, I twisted in bed and my back went into spasm. What seemed like five seconds later, my phone started going off signifying it was time to stop sleeping, not that I had gotten much sleep.

I managed to shave somewhat stiffly when the phone in our room started ringing, but it wasn’t working sufficiently for Rose to hear the person at the other end of the line. After three attempts, they gave up ringing, but shortly after, a knock came on the door to tell us our tour was ready to leave, about 20 minutes before we thought they would come. So much for that shower.

It was bitterly cold as an early morning in Paris met us. It would not be a long drive out to Vil-Bret, but still half asleep, I was trying to use the arch of the seat to stretch my back sufficiently as to stop it hurting so much.

We stopped in a petrol station just after we got off the motorway for a brief toilet stop, before arriving at the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. It was now extremely cold.

The crowd was large but respectful. A public servant asked for some room, and he escorted the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, through the mass of Aussies so far from home. His staffer’s assertiveness enabled Minister Smith to look more casual, asking a passerby how far she had travelled to be there.

The service was solemn, without being morose. The story of the Aussies in France is one that is often overlooked, as Aussies are beguiled by the myth that is Gallipoli. It is here, in fact, and not on the sand, rocks and shrubs of Turkey, that our great World War I victory was earned.

And so it was, on April 25, 1918, three years to the day since the ANZACs had stormed the beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula, that the Australian Imperial Force liberated the small town of Villers-Bretonneux. The residents of this town are forever grateful: the streets are named Rue Melbourne and Rue Victoria, and the school, built with contributions from Victorian schoolchildren in 1923, has the mantra looming across the quadrangle, “DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA”.

At this time of year, the town becomes like a mini version of Australia. Graphical representations of kangaroos, koalas and wombats line the streets, either in front of the town hall or stuck to the windows of the houses that line Rue Melbourne. For the last couple of years they’ve even played an Aussie Rules game here.

After the service and visiting the town, we are taken on a broader tour of the area and its memorials: the AIF memorial, the British Arch with its dour looking brown brick, in stark contrast to the Arc D’Triomphe in Paris and the Wellington Arch near Hyde Park in London, the Canadian Memorial with its bronze elk.

What strikes one about the commonality of these memorials are the names of the fallen AND unfound. Literally millions fell on the Western Front in World War I, a foolish folly of a war fought for little good reason on outdated military strategy, which basically wiped out a generation of able bodied, proud and brave men.

Most of these men were either never found or never identified. It wasn’t long before this war that soldiers were not afforded individual memorials, such as a tombstone or individual grave, but this had started to change. The area of France known as the Somme is littered with them.

Every French town, regardless of size, has a memorial to the fallen of World War I, and a list of names; men of the town who never returned.

At the final town, we have lunch then visit the Great War Museum there, which is heavily anti-war. After seeing the volume of names on memorial after memorial, it is difficult to argue with this sentiment.

Rose is war weary, and we steal naps along our trip, and we get back to Paris just as the afternoon is starting to inch towards evening.

It is great to share an experience like that with people like our tour group, a small collection of mostly Queenslanders, and two Mexicans on their honeymoon. Our tour guide was an extremely affable and gregarious man, who finds everything funny and has a warm demeanour that helps us all relax.

The ground of the Somme is hallowed for so many, and for Australians, where so many more died than near the Straits of the Dardenelles, this is also true.

But the sacrifice made here can be felt, and one spends any time in a place like Villers-Bretonneux, it’s hard not to be proud to be an Aussie. No matter how long we’ve been Australian, or what our thoughts on the machinations and politics of conflict, we have a place where, as a nation, we can share a common bond, brought home by the warm welcome and gratitude of a small Frence village called Villers-Bretonneux.

As I signed in the visitor’s book at the visitor’s centre of the USA Memorial at Omaha Beach, where so many French people had signed the book, echoing similar sentiments towards the Americans as the townsfolk of Villers-Bretonneux had done to us Aussies:

“They shall not grow old, as we that are left, grow old. Lest We Forget”

Day 38-41 - Paris

2010-05-04T04:59:00.002+10:00

Our arrival in Paris was eventful, to say the least. Not quite as significant as Charles De Galle’s or as graceful as Rudolph Nureyev.

We drove into Paris while continuing to avoid paying to use a road. Eventually we were forced onto the motorway, but at this stage we didn’t have to pay for it. The road threw us off at a place called St Cloud, leaving us a short but tricky trip to the centre of Paris, and our hotel on Rue Tronchet.

This car ride quickly became a disaster. Paris celebrates France’s love of the one way street, meaning the route Rose had carefully planned from the map in her Lonely Planet guide went out the window (metaphorically, we didn’t throw the book out the window) pretty early.

Then my initiative failed me when I decided to take the car through the roundabout around the Arc D’Triomphe. Quite simply, of Paris’ metropolitan population of roughly 11 million people, 5 million of them, at any one time, are in a car going round the Arc D’Triomphe.

Shortly after that my courteousness and gentlemanly manner while driving obviously irritated the priest behind me, who decided to honk me. A first, to be sure.

When we finally got to the hotel I couldn’t really park, so hurried the luggage out of the car and left Rose with it at the hotel while I went to find my drop off point.

To cut a long and boring story short, two car parks, 30 minutes and one more honking from a priest (he had a nun as a passenger this time), I finally managed to drop the car off. I was drained and ready for a rest.

The cafes that fill Paris are very similar in menu and decor, and it is difficult to tell them apart. We had dinner in four of them, but not on the first night when we found a cosy little restaurant.

Next morning we went off, armed with our four day museum passes and two day tourist bus passes. This is really the way to visit Paris, although it took a while to get the audio guide’s voice from the bus out of my head.

The first museum, at my insistence, was the Musee Louvre. I love all the religious paintings as they tell a story I’m somewhat familiar with. It’s a huge place that it is impossible to get around without better ankles and great motivation, but I saw the Mona Lisa (probably the creepiest painting in the world), Madonna on the Rocks, St John the Baptist, and many other paintings, along with sculptures, mosaics and frescos.

After that we got back on the bus to go to Notre Dame Cathedral, described as the world’s worst tourist trap. We firstly looked under the quadrangle in front of the Cathedral, then went in and looked around the magnificent church.

Then we decided to go up to the spire and lookout area. This is when Rose discovered my situational dislike of heights.

The ledge was narrow, about 12 inches wide in parts when walking around, and although one is always quite safe behind wire, looking down was not pleasant. I politely declined an opportunity to go further up. This would not be the first time on the trip.

After finally descending all the way to the bottom and fighting off quadriceps cramp, we partook two of the footpath crepes Paris is famous for. Rose, faithful to her sweet tooth to the last, had her crepe with Nutella and Banana, while I predictably had cheese, ham and mushroom. Both were delicious.

For our final excursion for the day, we headed to the Saint Chappelle, which has what our possibly the most beautiful stained glass windows in the world. The church is being renewed and renovated at the moment, so some of the glass was unavailable due to repair, but the view was breathtaking none the less.

After that we were back on our tourist bus, which one can hop on and hop off at their leisure. It was a long trip, going around the Eiffel Tower a couple of times, before finally getting us back close to home.

Day two’s main museum attraction would be the Musee D’Orsay, which holds the most impressive collection of impressionist paintings in the world. Continuing on from our visit to Monet’s Garden in Giverny, this was a particular treat for Rose, who loves this kind of art. I was honest in my appraisal, liking some stuff and not others, leading Rose to inform me she thought I had an “eclectic taste” in art. This may be one of the nicest things Rose has ever said to me. No kidding.

The D’Orsay, like the Louvre, is very big, housed in an old train station that had fallen into disuse. We probably spent three hours there before moving on to the Arc D’Triomphe.

The Arc is another large monument, under which lies the tomb of the Unknown French Soldier, who died in the Great War, as it is known in France (although in French). While I did know you could ascend to the top of the Arc, what I didn’t know was the top section underneath the roof contained an exhibition, one half dedicated to France’s war successes (which contrary to popular opinion are many), and the other half dedicated to the Arc itself, and other like Arcs of Triumph all over the world. Anne will be pleased to know the only one in Australia is located in her home town of Ballarat.

Standing on top of the Arc is less daunting than standing on the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral, but we had taken our time getting there, and Rose had enjoyed an ice cream break at Haagen Daas, so instead of trying to cram something else in on Day 2, we enjoyed instead a leisurely walk back to our hotel, via a cafe, before heading off later in the evening to watch Liverpool in the Europa League. Unfortunately, the English Pub we were in insisted on showing a frightfully dull Fulham game before Liverpool’s.

Day 3 started with a trip through the Place D’Concord, where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, among others, were permanently separated from their heads, to the Musee D’Armee, which exhibits the military history of France, a great exhibition containing all manner of medieval armour and weapons, and also Napoleon’s tomb, which despite him being cremated, is a massive construction.

Nearby is the Musee Rodin, which is dedicated to Rodin himself, the great sculptor who made “The Thinker”. He was obviously a busy man; the private house is full of his stuff and he was quite prolific.

After a stop at a cafe for some food, we decided on a romantic night in the hotel.

We had to move to a different hotel on the Saturday before ANZAC Day, as our tour for the day required it. As a big, stupid man, I thought we could make it by availing ourselves of the Paris public transport system, specifically the underground.

Too many stairs, having to change trains, and a longing walk from the final train station finished Rose off, and she firstly suffered a nose bleed, and then duly decided to sleep for a few hours, leaving me with the laundry, which, in fact, I was happy to do.

Rose felt a little better after a sleep, and we went out for some food. Rose was captivated by a girl happily tucking into a dish of Steak Tartare, which is quite simply, raw beef. On this occasion, the beef was minced and served with an egg’s yolk.

We had an early start on ANZAC DAY, beginning at 2:30am, so we tucked in early, ready for our big day on April 25.

Day 27-37 - Driving Through France

2010-05-01T18:49:00.002+10:00

We spent ten days driving through France. Here are some observations from this trip:

Driving

In the cities, a propensity for one way streets can make things difficult to get around. I struggle to see the point of so many one way streets, including my favourite in Nice, when after taking nearly two hours to get my car, the street I was driving down turned from a two way street into a one way street without announcement.

The French motorways come in to forms: toll roads and free motorways when there is no free alternative to driving on the motorway. Our first day we spent 16 Euro getting from Nice to Aix-de-Provence , which is about the equivalent of driving to Ballarat from Melbourne. After this, we managed to avoid tolls for the rest of the trip.

Driving on the roads between towns can be interesting. Trucks have their own, much lower, speed limits in France and cannot leave the right hand lane. On a motorway, this usually leaves trucks and other slow coaches in the right hand lane, people roughly doing the speed limit (which is 130kmh on motorways) in the middle lane, and guys in very fast cars going very fast in the lane closest to the centre median.

The smaller roads are generally 90kmh, and while some try to go faster, this is not always possible if only one lane goes each way. Sometimes you can get stuck behind a truck doing 70kmh for quite some time before a passing lane gives one the opportunity to pass it.

The French are also strongly committed to the roundabout. While they can be exasperating, they often give the driver the opportunity to either reverse a wrong turn, or check which direction they should be going in.

Parking

Associated with driving is parking. Quite simply, large French cities don’t want you to park in their city. We went around Avignon a few times, Pau for almost an hour and drove through Bordeaux (where we had planned to stay) because we couldn’t find a spot to stop and look for accommodation. In the end, we amended our plans to avoid big cities like Nantes and Amiens and stay in smaller places instead.

Food

The best discovery of the driving excursion was a little town called Castelnaudary, which we had planned to stay in on the first Sunday evening, driving from Avignon. Castelnaudary is the self-appointed capital of a dish called Cassoulet, which is a peasant dish from South East France.

They cook white beans in pork and sausage fat , then cook the sausage and pork and duck (France’s favourite poultry, much more prevalent on menus than chicken) in the beans, then put it in the oven covered with breadcrumbs and shaved pork crackling. It is quite simply one of the better dishes I have ever had.

Overall the food in France is good, but menus don’t vary an awful lot. They like lamb, beef (cooked or uncooked), pork and duck. And contrary to some reports, the food is not too expensive.

Anyway, let’s look at each of the places we stayed:

Nice

A lovely resort town on the Mediterranean. As we went to Nice from Ventimiglia, we stopped in Monte Carlo, and suddenly the train was like a sardine tin. Nearly everyone who got on in Monaco got off in Nice. We didn’t see an awful lot of Nice, except for when I was trying to find a way out of Nice, but it seemed a very pleasant place.

Funny story – the rental car company needed a credit card. I went back to the hotel to get my one. Then they needed 200 Euro credit on it for the guarantee. I had like $110 in my non-holiday bank account. Fortunately my dear Mother had just transferred some money into my bank account, otherwise we may have been stuck in Nice for another three days without booked accommodation. All was well that ended well.

Avignon

Hope of the papacy in the 14th Century, we toured around the old Papal Palace at dusk. It has an old defensive wall around the old city and a charming main street with a carousel. It was here that I discovered the world’s worst beer – Leffe.

Funny story – on the Sunday morning we did our washing in the local coin laundry. In case a man of Algerian heritage smoking and drinking. He was friendly, and tried to continue a conversation with us for about an hour, although neither of us could speak his language, nor he ours. The only he said in French we could recognise was “Sarkozy – Merd!” As our clothes stubbornly refused to sufficiently dry, his seedy mates joined him. When our clothes finally dried, we left in about 0.0008 seconds.

Castelnaudary

Home of the Cassoulet. The town has a small lake, and the carnival was in town. We shared a goat’s cheese salad that was magnificent before I had Cassoulet and Rose had some chicken which was equally good. If we ever get a holiday house in the South of France, it’ll probably be very close to Castelnaudary.

Funny story – early next morning a local market decided to spring up, around my parked car. We barely made it out.

Lourdes

We visited Lourdes on our way to Pau. There were three churches on the spot of the apparitions, one on top of the other, and we managed to get some water in a small vial. There was a long line for people to bathe in it, and many people afflicted with some sort of disability moving around.

Funny story – all the crappers (not urinals) in the Men’s toilets at Lourdes are crouchers.

Pau

I know I’ve been criticised for being overly critical of various places, but I say this with no hesitation – Pau is a dump. Don’t go there. The only good thing about Pau is I watched the replay of St Kilda beating Collingwood there.

Bordeaux Libourne

We did stop in Bordeaux, and have some coffee. I had a B&B in mind, but when we finally found it, no one opened the door when Rose knocked. After touring around for about an hour, we finally decided to split this joint and keep driving, until we arrived at a smaller town called Libourne. We stayed at a lovely old hotel run but two older women who dressed comfortably (wink), and it was a wonderful experience. The room, which was really quite cheap, reminded us both of the rooms at the Windsor in Melbourne.

Funny story – we had dinner at an American themed diner, where we ordered massive burgers and milkshakes with more cream than shake. I think Rose is still eating her burger.

St Leonard de Noblat

A small town just through Limoges, we arrived and stayed at the only hotel in town, which was fortunately quite nice. We walked through the old cemetery; the carnival followed us here as well. I spent 15 Euro winning Rose some cups. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant, where we had Duck’s leg in pastry, which was delicious and perfectly cooked.

Funny story – On the way to Limgoes, we stopped in Angeloume and bought some Brie. When we got to the hotel a few hours later, it smelled funny, like it had gone bad, so we threw it out. Later in the evening for dessert we shared some cheeses. The Brie smelled exactly the same. Turns out Rose threw out 4 Euros (a lot) worth of perfectly good cheese. Brie smells that way in France.

Poitiers

A bigger town with a large cathedral and a tiny Statue of Liberty, more one way streets you can poke a stick at, and a hotel in the middle of town with a car park. We sent postcards from there, and reacquainted ourselves with Italian food for the first time since leaving Italy. A very nice place indeed.

Funny story – we decided to go bowling, and we sped off in the rough direction of the bowling alley. On what I assumed was a 90kmh road, I got pulled over by the cops. I was doing 94kmh in a 70kmh zone.

The fine was 90 Euro exactly. The policeman asked from where I was, and I informed him. He then asked for my driver’s licence, and I produced the International one I had purchased for the very purpose of driving through France (and later Ireland) before we left. The policeman told me it was no good here. At this moment I started wondering what the inside of a French lock-up cell was like.

He asked me if I had a driver’s licence in Australia, and I did. It was also in the car, in my wallet, which was in my big bag. I went to open it, but remembered that the key was back in the hotel room.

I only had 50 Euro notes on me as well, so out of the blue, he took pity on me and gave me a warning. I drove off to look for the bowling alley and settle my nerves.

We couldn’t find it, but eventually did. Looking for a car parking space, I took a wrong turn and was suddenly back on the road, about to go past the cops again. Rose thinks we should go bowling more often.

Rennes

Rennes is another bigger city, and parking was again difficult. We had a picnic style lunch planned for along the way, but the road between Poitiers and Rennes was almost all motorways, so we had to have lunch in a nice park in a truck stop.

We stayed in a nice, new hotel that punched above its weight, and went to the movies in the evening, seeing the only movie we could in English, a movie called “New York, I Love You”.

Funny story – They didn’t sell any snacks at the Cinema. No popcorn, no drinks, nothing.

Bayeux

Bayeux is in Normandy, and seems to be the centre of tourism related to D Day. It is also the home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which at 70 metres long, tells the story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and accession to the throne of the King of England.

After that, we drove down to Omaha Beach and the US War Cemetery there. The visitor’s centre is one of the better done war museums, and the cemetery itself is carefully planned and laid out. A cool wind came in from the coast, across the beaches stormed in June 1944.

Funny story – there is an Omaha Beach Golf Course, because if there wasn’t, the Nazis would win.

Dieppe

Kind of like a northern Nice, this is the resort town on the north coast of France, with its beach devoid of sand but overflowing with small stones and pebbles, and its stalls and games. Parking was again a struggle but inventive, as people just took up any space they could. We played mini-golf which Rose duly won (about time, she had lost bowling) and had dinner at the Casino.

Funny story – the Casino has two roulette tables, one blackjack table and one poker table. And some pokies.

Giverny/St Marcel

Giverny is the home of Monet’s Garden, and a gallery of impressionist paintings from his genre. It took some finding, as we drove to the wrong town to get there and had to drive back. The garden is maintained meticulously, even down to a guy dredging the lack with a net to get the algae out. We bought a Monet print in Giverny, but had very little money after that and a big lunch, so we went down market in a nearby industrial town, St Marcel.

Funny story – Monet’s Garden is basically owned by a large rooster with a sore throat.

The day after Giverney we were due in Paris, so that is where this road trip ends.

Day 24-26 - Milan

2010-04-27T18:50:00.002+10:00

There’s not really much to say about Milan, as I managed to get sick there. We were only there for a few days, sort of as a stopping point between Rome and France. The original plan was to commence our drive from here, but the car rental companies don’t like you picking up a car in one country and leaving it in another, and they also don’t miss an opportunity to charge you for something.

When we arrived, we felt like an early dinner, but found this was impossible. Restaurants in Milan open for dinner no earlier than about 7:00pm, and sometimes as late as 8:30pm. We walked what seemed like half way to Paris looking for somewhere that was open before heading back to the hotel, only to leave later.

Rose decided to do some shopping in Milan, but her comically small feet betrayed her again. Rose really does struggle to find shoes that fit her, and this was no exception. She had to leave a very nice pair of red shoes at the shoe shop because they were too big.

There’s not too much to do in Milan unless you are there to shop, and you have sufficient cash reserves. The Last Supper by Da Vinci is here, but I only learned this half way through our time in Milan, and by the time we turned up we found that the rest of the day was booked out as they only let 25 people in every 15 minutes. Ah, well.

I managed to purchase a Torres top for our Liverpool excursion. This seemed to be a bad omen as Torres himself immediately went in for season ending knee surgery.

The cathedral in Milan has a marble exterior which makes it look very different to most Italian cathedrals, and the city has the highest density of Dolce & Gabbana’s stores anywhere in the world.

Other than that, we left Milan after a couple of days where I attempted to get plenty of rest. The highlight was probably seeing Torres score a double as Liverpool beat Benfica in the Europa League. It was Torres’ last appearance for the season for the Reds.

The train trip to Ventimiglia was picturesque, and we got off there to change to a French train to cross the border and get to Nice.

Days 19-23 - Rome

2010-04-09T03:40:00.002+10:00

The first task when arriving in Rome was getting from the train station to the hotel. We decided to walk – a mistake we would not make again when returning to the train station to catch our train to leave Rome for Milan. The footpaths and the human traffic made it very hard work.

We arrived on Holy Thursday, and I had no opportunity to go to confession. It would have been nice to go to Communion while in Rome at Easter, but, alas, it was not to be.

Our first dinner in Rome was tremendous. We found a little boutique place near our hotel, which served wild boar. I could not resist, and my temptation was rewarded by one of the better meals I’ve ever had. The vegetables were asparagus, zucchini and eggplant, and I did my best, which was considerably better than Rose’s. She had a beef fillet done with a sweet sauce that she enjoyed very much.

It turned out our only opportunity to see the inside of the Vatican would be on Good Friday morning, bright and early on the other side of Rome at 7:45am. We were greeted at our meeting place by a young lady who worked for the tour company. She demonstrated an incredible ability to look lost, confused, exasperated and slightly annoyed, all at the same time. The other couple who were meeting her there got lost, and so we were a little late getting to the Vatican Museum, and then there was more waiting outside the Vatican Museum, and a little more waiting inside the foyer of the Vatican Museum.

It was certainly worth the wait, although there isn’t much time on one of these tours to look around about 7km of Vatican Museum. Apparently some overly prudish Cardinals had ordered some of the ancient Roman statues have their naughty bits covered up, and one would have liked a little more time to look around the place.

However, the main event is down the corridor, as you enter the Sistine Chapel. Despite being full of people, it is still an amazing place. You can see the famous creation scene, as God leans out of a giant brain to touch the hand of Adam. You can see the Judgement Day scene, with the Cardinal who complained about all the naked people on the painting, so Michelangelo painted him in the lowest corner of hell, with Satan himself as a snake, surrounding the Cardinal and biting his Jatz Crackers. Somehow this greatest of artistic f**k yous has survived five hundred years.

After the Sistine Chapel we went outside, and fortunately the queue for the Vatican catacombs was short, so in we went. The most popular tomb is for John Paul II, who still garners a massive amount of admiration and love in Rome, and all over the Catholic world. The prize for me, however, was a little bit further.

Behind a glass screen is an artistic representation of Christ, and about fifteen feet under that is the tomb of St Peter.

In 1939, during renovations, the floor collapsed, and they were able to gain access to the original graves and tombs on which the original St Peter’s was built. They found a body, which tests proved to be a man of 65-70 years of age, who had the build of an agricultural worker such as a farmer or fisherman, who had both feet missing. St Peter, legend says, was crucified upside down at his own insistence by the Romans, and in order to get his body down from his cross before the Romans tossed his body into the Tiber River or fed it to the dogs, the early Christians in Rome took his body but left his feet. Pretty convincing story, that.

St Peter’s itself is a massive church, with mosaics all around instead of paintings, which mean that people can happily use their flashes on their cameras. Just like in the churches of Venice, corpses, or to be more accurate, one corpse, is on display. It is that of Pope John XXIII, the “People’s Pope”, who was elected as a stopgap and started the Second Vatican Council and changed the church for ever. Even after all these years, he looks in good condition.

The crowds inside St Peter’s and all around were crushing, to say the least. In one corner, a number of small confessionals advertised confession in different languages. I was tempted to wander off, but I was on a tour and couldn’t.

It was still morning when we left the Vatican City, and it was time to do what I call the “Rome Salute”. No, this is not some remnant of ancient times carried on through in the new, modern, Italian capital, but what seems like an endless stream of tourists looking at maps, then looking for street signs, then furrowing their brows and looking generally bewildered. It took us a while to get back to the hotel on foot, and having been walking for hours, we decided to rest.

Our pace in Rome soon began to resemble the pace in Venice – not as hectic, but a little more relaxed. As many citizens of Rome work on Good Friday, services for the commemoration of the Passion of Jesus are generally held in the evening. Our afternoon was spent watching snooker on Eurosport and relaxing. Rose now considers herself a bit of a snooker expert.

Rose then did something very nice to me: she accompanied to the Good Friday service down the road. Let the record show that probably Rose’s first attendance at Catholic services outside of weddings (including her own) and funerals was in Rome at Easter. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

Saturday would be filled with mundane things in the morning (laundry) and the ancient Roman area, including the Colosseum, in the afternoon. We took the opportunity to slowly wander down there in the early afternoon.

Rome is filled with people trying to sell you crap. One suspects that many may be illegal immigrants the system here ignores, so they are free to try and make a few Euros in order to live. Almost none of the stuff they sell is of any use, but they are persistent.

They have managed to preserve a massive amount of ancient ruins right in the middle of Rome, and it did seem a great time to go down there, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. However, we were met for our tour by our friend from the day before, looking more frustrated and completely lost than the day before. If all people are blessed with one world class talent, then looking like she didn’t know what was going on was this person’s.

Unfortunately they didn’t provide enough earphones and receivers for the group, which delayed us about an hour as our guide, a French woman, had the limits of her patients tested by a group predominantly made up of Americans. Americans are everywhere in Rome. By the time the extra sets had arrived we were already in the area of the ruins, and everyone was somewhat jaded by the experience.

By the time we got to the Colosseum we were hungry and tired, but the Colosseum is worth the trouble. I couldn’t help but feel sorry and sad that this great arena had been scavenged for marble and other materials for so long, leaving the site a sorry shell of what it once was.

Early on Sunday morning we made the train trip back to the Vatican City for Easter Sunday mass in the square. We had been told that we wouldn’t be able to get a seat, but it started to rain and this seemed to keep enough people away that a seat was easy to get.

We sat in the light rain for a while before a family two rows behind us gave their spare umbrella to us. It was a little broken, but we were grateful for the shelter.

The rain did its best to mar the mass in the open air, with readings and general intercessions in different languages, and a beautifully sung gospel, but the rain did stop for a short while, and at the most appropriate time – from the start of the consecration to the end of communion. Then it began to come down in bucketloads.

The Pope returned after mass to give his Easter address, followed by an Easter proclamation in what seemed like 43,387 languages. By this time we had decided it was time to try and get warm and dry.

Walking through a crowd of people with umbrellas fully expanded isn’t easy at the best of times, but when that crowd is 100,000 people in St Peter’s Square, it becomes nigh on impossible. It took a long time for us to even get to the edge of the Vatican City.

A long, wet walk down Rome’s incredibly narrow footpaths awaited us, as the rain continued to fall, and Rose started losing feeling in her lower extremities. I think we got back to the hotel just in time for a couple of hours of defrosting and drying.

Our Easter Sunday afternoon had been well planned – going to the local Irish Pub to watch Liverpool and Birmingham. Liverpool were once again disappointing, but five pints of beer each wasn’t. And, of course, we managed to have a group sitting next to us that included a young married couple from Mount Waverley.

We planned some shopping on the Monday, but almost everything was closed, so the day became a bit of a wash, which was probably just as well as we were both feeling the after affects of plenty of beer. Two burgers from Burger King always helps that along, and we bought a couple of DVDs to break the monotony. The only disappointment there was that we bought the wrong Bridget Jones movie, but it wasn’t quite as bad as advertised.

Only on the last morning did we really get to experience, albeit for a very short trip, the joys of being a passenger in an automobile in Rome. This town’s reputation in this regard precedes it, and a short trip to the train station (which we had walked with much difficulty on the way in) was certainly enough.

Days 14-18 - Venice

2010-04-08T01:27:00.001+10:00

Venice is possibly the last truly unique city in the world. It has 300,000 people, but no cars (except for a car park near the train station, which is basically the entry to the city). The airport is on the mainland, and you need to catch a water bus (or a hideously overpriced water taxi) from the airport to Venice proper.

It is easy to get lost in Venice, but, at the same time, it is almost impossible. On more than one occasion, we followed a lane and ended up almost walking into one of the canals. But you make your way back and eventually find your way. I became so lost once I led us into a industrial shipmaking area, walking over a metal gangway attached to an outer wall over the sea.

We took the opportunity to enjoy a more relaxed pace in Venice, as we were there for five nights. We sampled plenty of food, some very good, some pretty pedestrian.

On the negative side, I tried to order an 18 Euro bottle of wine on one evening, and ended up being charged (successfully, as we drank it completely unknowingly) for a 50 Euro bottle of wine. It almost ruined a carefully planned evening, as we were going to a Vivaldi performance afterward. The beauty of that music managed to take a bad taste out of my mouth regarding dinner, which had left me wishing out loud for the predictability and honesty of home.

We visited plenty of churches. An Italian Catholic tendency is to house fully viewable corpses of holy people inside their churches. Needless to say, this completely weirded Rose out. I was somewhat prepared for this eventuality, but for Rose it was a new experience.

Churches in Venice generally have their walls covered in paintings, some of which depict easily identifiable religious events, and others that require a little explaining. There are more graves and crypts under the floor, and as a rule, the high altars that were used under the Old Catholic Rite remain untouched, as well as unused in the New Order.

Our stay in Venice coincided with Passion Sunday, and it was about time I went to church. The priest tended to do his preaching before each reading, contributing to my confusion, but I followed when I could and responded in English most of the time. Meanwhile Rose did the washing at a laundry that required many visits to local vendors for small treats, in order to garner the needed change for the machines.

We did the gondola thing – I don’t want to ruin it for anyone but everyone in Venice knows you, the tourist, are coming, and the gondola is the one identifiable aspect about Venice known all over the world. The shortest ride available is 80 Euro, which is about $115, but when you are on your honeymoon, you spare the money, even if the ride lasts only twenty wonderful minutes. The added bonus was our gondolier (the driver) looked exactly like my Year 12 Politics teacher.

We each tried a pizza in Venice – and I think they probably try to cater to the tourist’s expectations too much. All pizzas have a thin base, but then the varieties are pretty compatible with those you’ll find all over the English speaking world.

Rose and I also visited the former Doge’s palace in San Marco, one of the districts of Venice. While the palace is full of paintings, sculptures and special rooms, and also a prison, the real interest is in the administrative system used in the Republic of Venice for many years. A council of esteemed male citizens elected a Doge, sort of like a President, who acted much like a modern head of state, with a mostly ceremonial role, while the council made the important decisions and ran the city. This mode of government lasted for 500 years without any great change until a little bloke called Napoleon came through the area.

I have to confess – one evening was mainly spent watching St Kilda beat Sydney on my laptop.

The greatest joy one can experience in Venice is merely being there, walking through the laneways, discovering another square with its church. The church next to the Palace in San Marco is reputed to have the body (not the head, apparently it is still in Alexandra) of St Mark the Evangelist, reputed author of the first gospel written, the Gospel according to Mark. The line was so long to get into this church we gave it a miss.

The story of how St Mark came to be in Venice is a great one. Apparently when still alive, his ship ran aground here and an angel visited him and informed St Mark that it would be here that he would be at eternal rest. For over a millennia his eternal rest was in Alexandra, until the newly formed Republic of Venice needed a patron saint. They didn’t want it to be St Peter, as to differentiate it from the Holy Roman Empire. So they went and stole St Mark’s body and moved it to Venice. The official emblem of Venice now includes the Lion of St Mark, holding a book opened to the page where the message the Angel gave to St Mark is written.

There is only one McDonalds in Venice, although there is a Hard Rock Cafe (which cannot be said about Melbourne any more). Sitting down for a drink during the day is expensive, and having been brought up on Melbourne sized portions in restaurants, one needs to get used to smaller amounts on the plate in Europe generally. It is, however, better for the waistline, as is walking everywhere.

My April Fool’s Day joke was on myself this year, as I got the idea in my head that we were leaving a day before we actually were.

The next day, we were actually on our way, after five days without seeing a car, bus or train, of seeing water transport vehicles with two men on board, little outboard motors, and boxes and boxes of goods, of hearing “Gondola, Gondola” about four hundred times, and of wandering around this beautiful, romantic city that is Venice.

Day 11-13 - Berlin

2010-04-02T03:03:00.000+11:00

I got to admit – Berlin was probably the first place we went where I felt that we could have done with another day there.

It didn’t take me long to get in the spirit of Berlin, and of Germany – within three hours of our arrival, I’d already eaten a schnitzel. But that was not before a somewhat terrifying cab ride from the main train station in Berlin, which, by the way, is massive, has four levels and numerous shops. Our taxi driver insisted on trying to strike up conversation in a loud, outrageous voice. All this was fine, but he didn’t speak a syllable of English. The only information we were able to convey was where our hotel was located, although he took us there via what seemed to be Berlin’s red light district, and that we were married and on our honeymoon. It was good fun.

The restaurant where I devoured the aforementioned schnitzel was in a posh hotel, but prices were reasonable, the service was excellent and friendly, and the food was very good. They even insisted on giving us free cucumber soup, which was served cold. I avoided a Rimmer moment.

Next morning we were up, and had a clear plan for the day. On the other side of Berlin from where we were staying, which we later found out was very close to the city centre of the old West Berlin, is the Museum Island, which is a small portion of land surrounded by canals and rivers, on which is located five museums. More importantly, nearby at the corresponding train station, was Rafferty’s Irish Pub. Priorities.

The first museum we went into was the Art Museum, which contained mostly German art from the 18th and 19th Century. One of the great things about Berlin is they sell you a three day pass for about 20 Euro, and this enables you entry into about 30 different museums located all across Berlin. During our two full days in Berlin, these came in very handy indeed.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am not much of an art buff, but Rose is and I was happy to accompany her, always, it seemed, one or two pictures ahead of her. Most of the art in this museum was of a similar theme; there were a lot of landscapes and portraits, and also a lot of Romanesque sculpture. It also encompassed three large floors, and took about 2 and a half hours to get around, so after that we were quite ready for a sit and a cool drink.

Unfortunately, we only really had time for the Pergammon Museum after that. This is the Ancient History museum, or if you wanted to be more blunt (and possibly more offensive to Germans); the stuff the Germans stole from Egypt and Greece. There are entire reconstructions of ancient Greek and Egyptian city walls included in massive rooms. In fact, the Germans don’t really do small museums.

The sheer volume of artefacts stored in the Pergammon Museum is pretty overwhelming, and nearly all of them date before the time of Christ. Another two and half hours and it was time to get back to West Berlin and have some dinner.

A little like Czech or Polish food, there really isn’t anything too light on a German food menu, and this is not ideal for someone like Rose who isn’t a big eater, and likes to have plenty of vegetables on her plate. After trying the sauerkraut in Prague, she decided she didn’t like it, while much to our surprise, I didn’t mind it.

We searched in vain for what seemed to be an hour for an Irish Pub that was advertised in the main business district around our hotel, only to eventually find it and discover that their food menu was more snack oriented. So we went next door into a Bavarian place. I tried to order a litre of beer, because I was in Germany and wanted to drink out of one of those huge steins, but they brought me back a litre of shandy (beer mixed with lemonade), and then made me pay for it. Not the best end to the day.

The next morning we decided to get on the tour bus, as you could get on and off all day, and we had some museums marked that we didn’t have to pay to enter with our free pass. First stop was a Potzdamer Platz, which was No Man’s Land when the Berlin Wall was up. Our tour guide on the bus gives information in both German and English, but forgets to pause between speaking languages, leaving the passengers little time to catch up. He explains about the Platz, and that all the bits of the “Wall” that have been sold would, if put together, make up about three walls.

Near the Platz is the Musical Instrument Museum. This is a fun place, and a school group is being toured through with an expert from the museum playing different instruments as he goes. There are some incredibly complicated and involved organs and keyboards, and more wind instruments that you can shake a clarinet at.

We pass a giant Lego giraffe on the way back to the Platz, and a group of women campaigning for equal pay. They try to give Rose some paraphernalia until they realise she isn’t German. Maybe it was the Dunlop Volleys that gave her away.

Next stop is Checkpoint Charlie. This is a pretty over the top place, and fake soldiers man the place where one could travel from East to West and vice versa when the wall stood. There are large chunks of the wall in various places around here, some hanging on the front of buildings.

From here we walk to the Jewish Museum. Housed under an older building, the Jewish Museum is actually a very modern piece of architecture centred on three narrow hallways called the Axis of Continuity, the Axis of Exile, and the Axis of the Holocaust.

Between different segments of the building are intended voids, and the artistic intention of the building is hard to ignore. At the end of the hallway for the Axis of the Holocaust is a massive, empty room several stories high, devoid of heating and almost devoid of natural light.

Upstairs is the actual museum, but trying to follow a continuity of Jewish history is a little like trying to find a sequential narrative in Pulp Fiction. Needless to say, the events of World War II and the deeds of the Nazis left a massive hole in German Jewish history that is only being started to fill as we speak.

After getting back on the bus we toured more of the area located in what was East Berlin, which was the traditional city centre, and is also where Museum Island is located. After moving through the city centre we landed at the Brandenburg Gate; the ancient gate to the city. It was entirely located on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, so no one went through it for nearly forty years. I was so excited I went through it twice.

Symbolically, just past the Gate on the eastern side is the Kennedy Museum. It is a private museum so we had to pay, but as far as I was concerned, it was worth it. It is a small yet significant collection of Kennedy items and photographs, and it gave me the opportunity to fill in Rose on the Kennedys while walking her around. My definition of a productive afternoon.

We got back on the bus for the last time and went past the Reichstag, where the parliament of the German Republic sits once more, and also the offices of the Chancellor and the residence of the President. We were also shown a cobblestone line through Berlin which indicates the former location of the Berlin Wall.

Back in West Berlin, we stopped by a German pub and drank some genuine German beer, Rose the regular variety, and me the dark variety, which tasted and drank very similar to stout. Rose had some Roast Pork which she enjoyed, although she didn’t touch her red cabbage, while I had some German Sausages, with sauerkraut.

While dining, Rose remarked that the history in Berlin was “in your face”, and it was hard to avoid. I love recent world history, so Berlin was somewhere I wanted to go from the outset, but it seemed Rose had been convinced by Berlin of its significance. I could have easily spent another day going out to the town hall where Kennedy Platz is located, where Kennedy gave his famous speech where he avowed himself either a citizen of Berlin or a donut, depending on your interpretation of German grammar and expression. You could visit numerous other museums with a three day pass, exploring ancient art, modern art, the history of the Berlin Wall, or many other things.

So that is why I say that three nights, and two full days, is simply not enough time in Berlin. It demands a deeper study. I will return to Istanbul, but only because I am, at some stage, going back to Gallipoli. I’m not done there; I’m not finished. But I know I’ll be back in Berlin one day, because it is required. So much to do, so little time.

Day 9 & 10 - Poland

2010-03-28T04:43:00.003+11:00

I’ve got to admit – this blog took me a while to commence writing. I wanted to avoid cliché, and also avoiding writing crap. So here goes.

The train ride from Prague to Krakow via Katowice was pleasant enough. The train station in Prague is sufficiently modern, plus I’m pretty sure the roof doesn’t begin to collapse when they have a hail storm.

We had to change trains in Katowice. The quality of the train stations fell significantly once we entered Poland, and the one in Katowice made the old Spencer St Station appear like Buckingham Palace.

My initial feeling about Poland was it seemed colder and greyer. Our hotel was reasonably close to the train station, but our one bed had to single doonas on it. We stopped by an English themed pub for some dinner. Neither of us seemed game enough to try authentic Polish cuisine, and this continued on the second evening when we had pizza and gnocchi.

The next morning we had breakfast and went to the meeting point for our tour. The town of Oswiecim is about one hour away from Krakow, and the road is winding and only one lane each way.

It’s not surprising that the road is not a eight lane freeway, as the countryside is mainly dense forest, dotted with smaller towns.

Oswiecim arrives, and the trip was made shorter by a video being shown in the bus during the trip. The documentary was related to the liberation of the Auschwitz camps by the Soviets in January 1945.

Just on the other side of the town centre is the Auschwitz Museum, which was created in 1947 out of the ruins of the first Auschwitz camp. Photography is prohibited inside the buildings, and that is why we don’t have any photos of what was in them. An English speaking guide is provided to us, along with headsets so she doesn’t have to raise her voice speaking to 30 people at once.

On a side note, our group for the tour is mainly made up of middle aged or older English people. We have a World War II veteran on board with his son, and a young teenager with his parents.

The different buildings that made up the Auschwitz A Camp, and are still standing, make up the exhibitions, for want of a more meaningful term. Each of this buildings is devoted to one aspect, such as the deportations of the inhabitants of the camp, made up of Jews, Polish political prisoners, homosexuals, gypsys, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Monks, and Russians, or what happened when they arrived, and so on. Each group or nationality of inhabitants has a building of their own to tell their story.

The most striking room is the collected property of those who died at the camp. A wall of brushes, shaving brushes, combs, and so on. A wall of spectacles. A full room of suitcases, most with addresses written inside in case they were lost and needed to be returned to owners destined never to return. And most harrowing of all, a case, probably two metres deep, three metres high and ten metres long, containing almost two tonnes of human hair, shaved off the prisoners after they arrived, destined to be used in the war effort as socks or stockings. To call it macabre is a gargantuan understatement.

Between two of the buildings is the death wall, where prisoners were summarily executed. One of these buildings was a prison inside this prison, where cellmates were kept four to a room that was a square yard big, thus preventing any prisoner from rest. It also contains the cell where St Maximillian Kolbe gave his life up for one of his fellow inmates after he tried to offer him food. Kolbe was deliberately starved to death.

In another building are the photos of hundreds of dead Polish prisoners, taken early on in the camp’s use when the prisoners arrived. Most look incredibly forlorn, but some have the hint of wry smiles on their faces. The women seemed to last around two months, the men more like six. In most cases they were worked to death.

The last thing we are shown in Auschwitz A is the original gas chamber. Next to it is gallows, created after the war for the express purpose of one execution – Rudolph Herss, the first governor of the camp. A more appropriate setting for an execution of a particular individual one cannot think of.

We are taken inside the chamber. It is dark and cold, and is death made concrete.

How does one turn a place like Auschwitz into a place to visit? The place is teeming with people of all ages and all nationalities. There are no souvenirs, only books, and the cafeteria is modest. We sit around for a little while before our bus returns to take us to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It is fitting that the Museum is at Auschwitz A. The very worst atrocities happened not here but at Birkenau. Most of the buildings at Auschwitz A were left standing by the Nazis, although some required reconstruction.

Birkenau is where many people met their end. The rail entrance is one of the most famous images of the war, and on the platforms inside, Nazi “doctors” selected those strong enough to work and therefore doomed probably to a long death of hard labour helping the German War effort against their will, or those not strong enough to work, who were all immediately sent to the larger, more efficient gas chambers located at Birkenau. It is said that those entering the chambers thought they were going to get a shower. After they were all dead, the bodies were removed, and things such as gold fillings were removed from the still warm bodies before being cremated. Gruesome stuff.

The living quarters at Birkenau, of which very few buildings remain, were cruel. Prisoners could only use the toilet twice a day, only for a few seconds. As sickness spread, this became more difficult, and sleeping quarters became latrines, only exacerbating the problem.

Finally, we went up to the tower on top of the rail entrance. Just before we enter, I see a young man, probably a teenager, wearing an Israeli flag in the same manner many Aussies wear our flag at the cricket or tennis. This sight picks up my spirits.

The most difficult thing about this place is ensuring an appropriate memorial. Should it be a tourist attraction? Almost certainly not. It wouldn’t surprise me if they bulldozed the place. The memories, for the most part, are too difficult. Another thing I discussed with Rose would be why anyone would want to live here. There are houses 50 metres away from Birkenau.

I know people who were a bit horrified when they found out we were going to Auschwitz, but ever meeting a survivor in Helen Shardey’s electorate office in 2003, along with going to the Holocaust Museum in Elsternwick, I’ve felt compelled to go. Having said that, I wouldn’t begrudge you from keeping your distance. Almost any opinion about this place except glorification is acceptable. Come, don’t come. Commemorate or raze to the ground.

I feel satisfied I went, but unlike Gallipoli, I have no desire to return. One visit is enough. We certainly could have used another day just in Krakow, but we came for one reason only. The next morning we were back at the train station, with another long train trip, this time to Berlin, awaiting us.

Day 6,7 & 8 - Prague

2010-03-23T06:23:00.002+11:00

We arrive at Prague around lunchtime on March 19. It’s obviously snowed fairly recently around here, and I can honestly say I’ve seen snow, but it was old snow iced and congealed at the side of the road. My Winter Olympics career still goes wanting.

The drive into Prague was less terrifying than the drive into Istanbul, but drivers still turn around corners when they feel like it, and stopping at pedestrian crossings sometimes happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Our hotel, the 987 Prague Hotel, is just on the outskirts of the old town, in the new town. Of course, the new town is over 600 years old, for Australians here the irony is thick. It doesn’t end there.

• The town square isn’t square.

• The old Charles Bridge is being renewed, so the bridge will effectively be entirely new.

• One of the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter is the Old New Synagogue.

On our first afternoon in Prague I am majorly frustrated by the inability to get the internet on my computer. The wireless network provided (and promoted) by the hotel is unsecured, and Windows 7 doesn’t seem to like to connect to unsecured networks for obvious reasons. That is the main reason there has been no update on my blogs since our first few days in Turkey.

Eventually we walk towards the river and encounter a couple of beautiful white swans. In Melbourne one only encounters black swans on Albert Park Lake, and those encounters make me wary of the swans much talked about temper, but the wall of the river is too high for the swans to attack, although they eye me suspiciously.

Only a cursory walk through Prague reveals that they love Casinos, Pizza & Thai Massages. Places for getting these things abound like 7/11s abound in metropolitan Melbourne. Rose and I agree that Thai Massage may somewhat be code for something else. Either way, at first appearances Prague looks like a young single man’s paradise.

We visit the old town square for the first of many times, and marvel at the towers and decorations on the buildings. They love gold adornments on their buildings too, and glorious domes and spires on the top of the churches. One could go to Prague, look up the entire time, and never be disappointed. Sort of the opposite of the Gold Coast.

Night is falling and hunger is growing, so we begin to look for somewhere to eat.

Firstly, a bit of background. Rose is a notoriously fussy eater, caused by her fantastic ability in the kitchen, an incredibly keen sense for identifying ingredients in food she is eating, and an insistence that any food she eats be as good as the cuisine she would produce.

Couple that with my tendency to select places to eat where almost invariably something goes wrong: the food isn’t cooked, they bring Rose a different dish to the one she ordered, or something even more catastrophic. There has only been one real exception to this rule, when we found Bottega in Bourke St the night I proposed.

That has begun to change in the Northern Hemisphere, giving both of us a Bizarro Food World vibe. This continues on our first night in Prague when we go into a restaurant that serves the best Carbonara I’ve had, on a par with the Carbonara that I had when I was 16 in, of all places, Swan Hill.

The other thing to mention about our dinner is the quality of the beer. The Czech Republic is famous for its beer, and this is reflected in most of the souvenir t-shirts and pullovers you can buy here, which refer to the country as the “Beer Republic”. That would probably make Australia the Commonwealth of Beer.

Prague is a little cheaper than Melbourne, but probably even cheaper outside of the tourist area. Of course, the city is so touristy that it is almost impossible for someone to get outside of the tourist area to see for oneself.

Our visit to Prague coincided with a weekend, and we decided on an all-day tour for the Saturday. The meeting place is Wenceslas Square, which is in the new city. Think of it like the Bourke St Mall. It contains, predictably, a statue of St Wenceslas, whose Christmas Carol is known all over the world except in the Czech Republic, and a monument to the two students who immolated themselves after the Prague Spring in 1969. It also contains the balcony where the speeches were made during the Velvet Revolution in 1990, when Communism was finally defeated in what was then Czechoslovakia. The building now contains a Marks and Spencers which our guide assures us is more expensive than the Marks and Sparks one would find in the UK.

Our guide is a Czech lady who seems to revels in irony and bad jokes. Her English is very good, which it should be considering she also teaches it. It seems no one earns much money here, and she is grateful when a South African couple give her a very generous tip at the end of the day.

The other ancient hero here in Prague, other than Good King Wenceslas, is Charles IV, who built the bridge and the university. The bridge contains a statue of him that, if you approach the statue from a certain direction, looks like he has his willy in his hand. It is in fact a document, and the bridge is filled with food stalls and many, many artists offering to draw caricatures of the passing tourists.

We enjoy a cruise of the river between the two man-made waterfalls (they are only about a foot high each, but you wouldn’t go over them) along with some more fine Czech beer. During the cruise we chat with a young American couple. The man is stationed in Germany, hasn’t seen his wife for eleven months, and has never seen his little boy. They are originally from Dallas, and seem to be enjoying the city as best one can dragging a baby walker around over some many stairs and cobbled streets. After this, it is back into the old city for lunch.

This is when both of us decide to partake of the traditional Czech cuisine. We had avoided it the night before, but there was no more avoiding it. Most meals seem to be some part of a cow or a pig, cooked but not fried, along with some cabbage creation and/or bread dumplings which seem to be bread without the best part (the crust).

After some nice light soup, we both have some pork with sauerkraut and bread dumplings. Everything about the dish was underwhelming except for the chest pains that come with eating such food. One needs a good walk after such a meal, but it was nice to come all the way to Prague to sit next to a man from Adelaide. I also talk sport with a man from County Kildare.

The post-lunch portion of the tour involves crossing the river and going to the Castle, which looks quite new except for more phenomenal churches included in the complex. From here, you get the second best view of Prague. The best view comes from the massive radio signal-jamming tower built by the Soviets across the other side of the new city, but that view is the best only because from there, you cannot see the massive radio signal-jamming tower built by the Soviets.

Included in our price for our all-day tour is a “ghost tour” in the evening, but our budget for the day only allows us the most rudimentary of meals for dinner on this Saturday night. I can now testify that the Big Macs in Prague taste roughly the same as the ones in Melbourne.

The Ghost Tour is quite simply absurd. Our new guide, unlike our acerbic friend from earlier in the day, isn’t quite as good with the English, and her emphasis, designed to build the clearly non-existent suspense, only makes her sound more ridiculous. She has an offsider who runs between stopping places with a backpack, and changes into a ludicrous costume for each place. If he isn’t dressed in a sheet he is dressed in a Goonies mask or a skeleton costume. As it was included free with the all-day tour, we feel like we got our money’s worth.

Sunday morning comes and the excitement of being on our honeymoon is replaced with the need for clean clothes. Unfortunately, it seems the only coin laundromat in Prague is a thirty minute walk away, but we get there and clean some clothes.

For the afternoon, we visit what maybe the silliest museum in the history of museums – the Prague Sex Machines Museum. We simply couldn’t resist. There is a movie theatre in the back showing old porn from Spain in the 1920s, commissioned by the then King (who is current King Carlos’ grandfather). Needless to say the buxom ladies in this film wouldn’t get a job in today’s porn industry.

After a good giggle looking at all the various contraptions built to enhance sexual pleasure, we wander down to the old town square for a birds of prey exhibition. Owls of various sizes are paraded through the crowd, including one who quickly devours two small dead chicks. They don’t eat much, but they shift a lot. We also visit the coldest church ever built. The other thing to note about this church is that it would not be the place to ease into Christianity, which some of the imagery about the church being quite confronting.

At the risk of sounding unadventurous, we went back to the restaurant from Friday night for dinner on Sunday night, only this time we both had carbonaras and drank quite a bit more quality Czech beer. We were serenaded by the great four piece strings and guitar band playing at the venue that Rose wanted desperately to hear more of after Friday night, and sitting closer to the “stage”, we were bound to get some more attention. The leader first asks for a suggestion for a romantic song to play, and then asks our nationality to which we respond honestly. He announces they will play a “Australian Happy Song”, and you know what comes next.

After a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda, a Slyvester Stallone lookalike sells me some roses, and we sit and talk some more.

Rose’s verdict on Prague is that it is a little too touristy, but after living behind the Iron Curtain for 45 years, they are only making up for lost time. It’s a fine city, filled with beautiful churches and landmarks. But in case you are not that way inclined, feel free to come for the beer and Thai Massages. Prague has at least a little something for everyone. Now we are off to Poland, for what will undoubtedly be the least “enjoyable” part of the trip.

Day 4 & 5 - Gallipoli

2010-03-23T06:21:00.000+11:00

Late on March 16, after we had both taken an early night, the phone rings. We were both asleep, safe in the knowledge that we had to be in the lobby of our hotel at 6:00am the next morning.

At first, I think it is my phone, the alarm set for 5:00am to wake us up, but it feels like we’ve only just fallen asleep, and we’re right. It’s the phone for the room.

At the other end of the line is a man from our travel agency, informing us to be in the lobby of the hotel at 10:30am. So the bread we had bought for an improvised breakfast on the bus would become our lunch on the bus.

Come next morning, and a man comes into the lobby to get us. After we are joined by three other people from Queensland, we drive around the main road on the shore in Istanbul, which is funnily enough named Kennedy. Rose would like to think it is named after her, but it’s probably named after JFK.

After about ten minutes, the man who came and got us announces he works in Istanbul, so he will leave us with our driver, who may know the least English in the entire country.

As we leave Istanbul, we are struck by the “suburban” landscape. No one in Turkey lives in a building of only one storey. Gated communities of numerous apartment towers, ten stories high, spring up out of the Earth, for miles and miles out of the city. These are replaced with “resort” towns on the Sea of Marmur, which might be delightful during the summer months, but look decidedly Eastern European at this moment, but I guess that is where we are.

Most of the cars on the road are later models, and the people are well dressed, but they don’t seem to care much how their homes look from the outside. Driving outside of Istanbul is less dangerous, although our minibus struggles with the hills.

Half way to our destination and we stop off at what seems to be the “Ataturk Roadstop”. Asking the driver where the toilets are doesn’t get us far, but we eventually find them. The roadstop looks more like a hospital cafeteria on the inside, and we decide against getting any food. There is another identical roadstop five kms up the road on the other side.

Eventually the terrain becomes a lot more rural, and the odd horse-drawn cart makes an appearance. Then we come across a town called Gelibilou – in the English Gallipoli.

The town is at the very entrance to the peninsula, and we have to cross the straits of the Dardenelles to get to our stopping place for the night – Cannakale.

In Cannakale, there is Anzac House, which runs our particular tour. We are invited back to the house for a film showing at 6:30pm. We check into our hotel, and struggle to find some food, eventually settling on some incredibly cheap yet filling pizza and chips.

Something is clearly happening in Cannakale, and we find that we have come into town for Naval Victory Day. On March 18, 1915, the Turks sent three Allied Battleships to the bottom of the Dardenelle Straits. Turkish flags and pictures of Ataturk hang out of almost every balcony, and small Turk warships sail up and down the straits.

The movie is an ABC documentary by Chris Masters of “The Midnight State” fame, produced in the mid 1980s and called “Gallipoli: The Fatal Shore”. While looking quite dated, it includes interviews with actual Gallipoli veterans from both sides. For this reason alone, it has great worth. After watching this documentary, along with my “bible” (Gallipoli by Les Carlyon, which along with the books comprising “The Lyndon Johnson Years” by Robert Caro, are the best non-fiction books I’ve read), I feel ready to visit the fatal shore.

In the morning we have breakfast watching the ceremony on the pier, Hundreds of Turkish sailors line the pier. The event even makes it onto CNN Turk, as we can see in the restaurant where we are having breakfast. God I miss English TV.

Our morning is a tour to Troy, and we are joined by our English speaking guide. He is a friendly faced fellow, and we make our way down to Troy after picking up the others from their much better hotel.

Troia is about half an hour from Canakkale. There is a big wooden horse, which we are told looked so old once that tourists were mistaken for thinking it was the real thing. I would have thought the metal Phillips-head screws would have given it away.

After that you enter a small museum, which informs you that there was not just one city at Troy, but nine, the new one built on top of the last one. Trojans, Greeks, Persians and Romans all fought here, and the mythology is powerful.

Unfortunately, a little like the Hagia Sophia, the place has an unfinished quality, and they are still endeavouring to find more stuff. Also, the lack of road signs and attention paid to Troy give the place a similar feel to Glenrowan: the place should be a bigger deal. Paris and Helen, Xerxes and the 300 Trojans, Achilles, Hadrian and many others all left their mark here.

On the way back we pass a small place and get some souvenirs. One of these is a book on the Gallipoli campaign, and the writer hangs around in front, willing to personally sign copies. The book contains some good colour photographs of the area, and I get a copy along with a little Trojan Horse for Deaglan. The author personally signs our copy, and soon we’re off.

Lunch is back on the other side, and we leave Canakkale for the last time. It’s a set menu at the restaurant, with the main dish fish. Rose’s vegetarian alternative is a plate of dips. As she says, it’s fine, but it is a plate of dips for lunch.

After lunch our guide gives us some preliminary information about the campaign, and then we’re off to the other side of the peninsula.

Only one problem – it is Naval Victory Day. Literally thousands of Turks have descended on the peninsula in coaches, and because the President of Turkey is here, along with many other dignitaries, the security is high. And there is only one road to the other side of the peninsula.

Us Aussies on the bus are getting restless. We have one afternoon here and we want to see all that we can. Our tour guide gets out, speaks to the troops manning what appears to be a makeshift checkpoint, and with the possible assistance of a few bank notes, we get through the checkpoint relatively quickly.

The road to the other side is a little like the rest of the Turkish roads we’ve been on: bumpy. We stop at the museum, which again is rather rudimentary. For the Turks, this campaign signifies a great victory, and the birth of a national hero, and the nation he created almost through sheer personal will. The hero is Gallipoli is the same man who is the overall father of the nation: Ataturk.

The closeness of what we are about to see makes me toey. From the car park of the museum, where local vendors sell whatever they can, one can see Chunuk Bair and the New Zealand Memorial, and also Lone Pine and the Australian Memorial.

The road ceases to be sealed as one nears Anzac Cove. The Turkish landmark nearby quotes Ataturk as reassuring the Allies that their fallen lie in friendly ground, Johhny or Mehmet is no distinction, and the fallen our Turkish sons now as well as British and Australian and New Zealand ones. Despite their victory, the Turks lost more like 2 soldiers for every dead Allied soldier.

To be honest, Anzac Cove ain’t much, but that was the problem. On a 100m stretch of beach, 15,000 Allied soliders landed. They got further the first day than they would for the rest of the campaign. They underestimated the enemy, so they landed, but once they landed, the overestimated the numbers of enemy soldiers, and therefore didn’t get far.

The 57th Regiment saw the Anzac’s off. But at the end of the day, every last man in the 57th Regiment was dead. To honour these Turkish heroes, there is still no 57th Regiment in the Turkish Army to this day.

After Anzac Cove we begin to visit the cemeteries. The first is on the beach, and they all have a consistency to them. In fact, it is the consistency of the monuments that affects you, as if someone thought that the sheer numbers, row upon row, would properly convey the gravity of what happened here. Whatever he thought, it works.

The cemeteries have three different categories, if you will. Firstly, some headstones are above the people whose names are engraved on them. Secondly, there are headstones that also have the inscription “Believed to be buried in this cemetery”. Thirdly, and for the Aussies this is at Lone Pine, there is the wall of names of those who were never found. For the British this is down at Cape Helles, and for the Kiwis is at Chunuk Bair, right at the highest point.

Chunuk Bair was the prize, and the Kiwis held it for two days. As a result, their memorial is there, along with an equally tall monument to Ataturk, who was hit by shrapnel above the heart at this point. His pocket watch saved him, and he presented it to his commander, Limon Von Sanders, as a gift. As a result, this relic of modern Turkish history, which gave a nation its leader, is in Germany.

We pass a stretch of road where the trenches were eight metres apart, and the Anzacs and Turks threw each other tins of Bully Beef and Cigarettes. We pass cemeteries with no more than five headstones in them.

The land is tortuous in places, and no grass grows on the ground except at the cemeteries. The trees have grown, but they were all blasted out in the first few weeks in 1915. Our guide mentions this as the last gentlemanly war, and the prevailing wind meant that the Allies did not use gas here.

The Nek and Walker’s Ridge Cemetery are too treacherous for us to get too close to. This motivates me to return, and make my own way. Up near Chunuk Bair is the Turkish Memorial and Cemetery. Hundreds of Turks are there to pay their respects on Naval Victory Day.

If there is anywhere where the Gallipoli Campaign makes sense, it is at Chunuk Bair. One can see the Aegean See on the landing side, and the Dardenelles on the other side.

Of course, it is silly to describe the Gallilpoli Campaign as foolish, as if to distinguish it from the rest of the First World War, well thought out and planned, and executed with exacting precision. The entire reason for the war, and everything that went with it, was folly, and almost everything bad that happened for the rest of the 20th Century was as a result of it.

After Chunuk Bair, we begin to make our way back. It is late, and getting cold. The ride back reunited us with our non- English speaking driver, who tries to make up with politeness what he lacks in communication.

The only interruption was our mid-way stop at the other Ataturk Roadstop, which unlike the other one, was teeming with people and roughly resembled the food court at Chadstone during the week before Christmas. The toilet was half a Turkish Lira to use, and apparently the Meatball Rolls were really good. I wasn’t game.

We got in about 10:30, and were asleep probably ten minutes later.

We’re on our way to Prague right now, as I pen this entry on the Turkish Airways flight. The big Hollywood name on the Turkish Airways promotions is Kevin Costner. It says quite a bit.

Day 2-3

2010-03-17T05:25:00.000+11:00

The rest of our first day in Istanbul was eventful. After gingerly walking around the Blue Mosque for a little while, a man started talking to us. He convinced us to go into the Mosque, for which Rose had to put her scarf over her head. I think she believes it was worth it - the detail on the walls inside made it worthwhile for her.

Our new friend was waiting at the exit for us. He walked us through the bazaar to his carpet shop, promising to show us his "magic flying carpet". He had a nice store, and took us upstairs to demostrate his wares, and offer us some hospitality.

Rose and I instantly fell in love with a silk carpet which would have been the same size as a large teatowel. No matter what Mustafa showed us, we always came back to that carpet. He told intricate stories of questionable accuracy, but this carpet, which changed complexion when viewed from different angles, had our complete devotion.

Eventually, after some Apple Tea and forty-five minutes of swirling carpets, we got down to cost. He gladly gave us the price in Australian Dollars for the one we had our eye on: $3280.

If it had been $500, we would have it right now. Unfortunately we had to leave Mustafa (after he showed us some cheaper stuff which we could not abide) and his shop empty handed. We were pretty tired anyway from the long flight, so the rest of the day (or what was left of it) was spent relaxing and eating dinner, which was pretty average.

Next morning started at 5:15am when morning prayers were announced all over town. The alarm was set for 7:00am, but that was folly. Breakfast in Turkey consists of some more Western European things like Corn Flakes and Toast (but it was Vienna Style loaf sliced rather than larger bread), but the local variant also included pastrys with fetta cheese, some cured meats, some greens, raw tomato, cucumber, and French Toast. Our intention is to eat as much for breakfast as we can each day as it is included in our package. We didn't disappoint.

Tea is interesting in Turkey, especially for someone who likes their tea as weak as Rose does. Breakfast's offering had been brewing in an urn for what seemed like hours, so Rose could only manage one sip. Same for morning tea later in the day, when the tea was too strong and bitter. Coffee isn't too my liking too much either, but I've had the local variety, and some of their attempts at Western Style Coffee.

Also, Coca-Cola is a lot less fizzy here, so goes flat quicker. By Day 3 I was onto bottled water, which is incredibly cheap (1.5 litres costing 1 Turkish Lira, or about 70 cents).

Our post-breakfast stroll took us into the main park, which includes a massive statue of Ataturk.

I tried to imitate his incredible stare in one of the photos, but to no avail. Mustafa Kemal, better known as Ataturk, was a fearsome battle commander who fought the Australians at Gallipoli and Palestine.

He became the father of the modern Turkey, creating it as the secular Islamic democracy. His image is on every note of currency here, and also around in many buildings.

Turks are very nationalistic, and the flag flies on many buildings here in Istanbul. And for many Turks, Ataturk is their hero. It's difficult to think of any other nation which holds such intense devotion to one founding father.

After the park, we went to the Hagia Sophia, the world famous building which was the World's Largest Cathedral for 1000 years, then a Mosque for 500 after the conquering of Constantinople, and finally, at the insistence of Ataturk himself, now a Museum.

While not as pretty as the Blue Mosque, the structure is huge, and some excavations just outside date 1600 years. The remaining Mosaics inside are devoted to the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus on the most part, except for the most famous Mosaic of Judgement Day, of which roughly half remains. The burial places of many Sultans and their relatives live next door.

The afternoon was spent cruising the strait which separates Europe and Asia, and also leads into the Black Sea. Tankers and other large ships wait hours to get through these narrow straits. Temples, which all seemed to be built in the 19th Century, line the shores.

I must confess my first voyage on the high seas (the Murray River or the Swan River don't really count) took a bit of getting used to, but the trip was the favourite part of the two days in Istanbul for both of us. We disembarked on the other side (Asia), and got to see a bit of the real Turkey, rather than the touristy stuff in the Old City. We also managed to do a bit of shopping.

When we returned we walked from the wharf through the Grand Bazaar, which vaguely resembles Queen Victoria Market at Christmas on crack. An amazing experience. After exiting the Bazaar, the famed Lewis sense of direction failed me, and we walked around in circles for a little while. A familiar Dominos Pizza jogged the memory, and we managed to find our hotel.

The fact that the long walk tired us out was serendipidous, as we decided on dinner just across the road (more like a laneway) from our hotel. While on our first night, Rose's kebabs were too spicey for her liking and my lamb was pedestrian, on this occasion I had some great Calamari with yoghurt, then we both partaked some of the best chicken wings anyone could possible have.

Anyway, we're ready for Gallipoli and Troy tomorrow, and we leave the hotel at 6:00am. Time for sleep.

March 15 - Days 1 & 2

2010-03-15T21:24:00.000+11:00

Greetings from Istanbul!

Highlights so far:

- We weren't told we needed a visa to enter Turkey, and we didn't have enough local currency to pay for them. Fortunately I was able to go to the ATM, where I took out the sufficent funds, and left my NAB Visa Debit card in the ATM. That's right, folks, it took me about 15 minutes on Turkish Soil to lose my ATM card. Rose insisted on getting a card of her own only two weeks ago. Bless her soul.

- A special mention to Sass, whose wedding present of 20 Euros (among other things) was invaluable as we tried to get through the airport.

- The first smile I got was when I introduced myself at the customs as Australian. "ANZAC", came the reply, followed by a big grin. Most people here seem to like meeting Aussies.

- We had a private transfer to our hotel in the old city of Istanbul. The driver was a pleasant enough chap, but he left his seatbelt off, and drove 120kmh through 80kmh zones. Apparently speed limits are optional in Turkey. The side of me convinced that he knew what he was doing managed to override the side of me that was sure I was going to die.

- Later in the morning, we walked around the local area and went to a new hotel for morning tea and Turkish sweets. The view was spectacular, as we were able to see around 250 degrees around the Old and New Cities. Sweets and refreshments very nice, and hospitality first class. Even got told we were a "very nice couple".

- First impressions of Turkey are as a male dominated society, where most smoke to keep warm, and the place is still under construction. Massive, beautiful houses of God adorn the skyline, and the walls of the ancient city, thought to be some 2500 years old, double as walls for some four story weatherboard apartments.

- Next post tomorrow night, with cruise today and museum vist tomorrow, and hopefully some more good eating in between. I leave you with the prayer announcements reverberating in the background.

And now, a Special Presentation...

2010-03-12T15:50:00.000+11:00

Well, I am interrupting your normal transmission for the next nine weeks.

No politics.

No footy (I hope).

No cricket.

From March 14 until May 16, this will be the place where you can get my daily thoughts about travelling through Europe with my darling wife, Rose.

Our itinerary can be found here.

This will hopefully include photos, and something different every day.

Very exciting!

And to my (three) usual readers, we'll return to the normal pontifications when we get back.

Abbott Needs to Recognise The Game Has Changed

2010-03-09T12:24:00.000+11:00

Tony Abbott announced a comprehensive 24-week Parental Leave Scheme on Monday. The Coalition scheme would pay the primary care-giver at their previous weekly wage, and the scheme would be funded by a tax on the biggest businesses in Australia.

Abbott obviously has a clear idea of what is required of him between his elevation to Opposition Leader and the upcoming Federal Election. Make bold announcements, prosecute government mistakes such as the insulation fiasco, and generally keep himself in the public eye.

This worked very well over the summer as Kevin Rudd and his Government recharged their batteries for the new year and kept a low profile.

However, the new year has presented a changing political dynamic. The Opposition are doing better in the polls, and are no longer languishing at the depths they were under Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull.

This has seemingly forced the Prime Minister's hand. Last week, Kevin Rudd announced a major shake-up of how public hospitals were funded, and the carriage of this proposal is convoluted and difficult.

The fact that Kevin Rudd has chosen to stake his political future on either convincing the states to add to their irrelevancy or become an Australian electoral trailblazer by winning a referendum without support from the Opposition benches has changed the game. Rudd's actions have enabled the possibility that Rudd will blaze a new electoral trail in another way - by becoming the first Australian Prime Minister since the Great Depression to lose office after only one term.

Rudd is clearly taking risks, and is obviously less comfortable than he was six months ago. What Tony Abbott and the Opposition need to do now is show they have another gear.

A government prone to taking risks is one that is prone to making mistakes. If risks continue to be taken by the Rudd Government, then opportunities to publicise and criticise mistakes will surely materialise, and that means that Abbott no longer needs to be the story, and can do well to just ensure marks are hit, and the Opposition don't cough up the football.

Tony Abbott needs to recognise that the game has changed, that Rudd has himself made this change while feeling under pressure, and all Abbott may have to do between now and the election to ensure a good election result is let the Rudd Government make mistakes, and then make them pay for those mistakes.

Rudd Takes an Election Gamble

2010-03-04T10:04:00.000+11:00

Kevin Rudd yesterday announced a major reform to the way public hospitals are funded, in an attempt to fulfil his election promise that if the states continued to underperform in the administration of public hospitals, then he would take over the public hospital system.

Rudd needs the states to cede control over public hospitals, because under the Constitution of Australia, states retain control of hospitals. Mr Rudd will move this reform at the April 11 COAG meeting, in the hope that the State Premiers will agree to his request.

If they don’t, Rudd has stated that the Government will take the funding takeover of public hospitals to the people at a referendum. This would likely take place alongside the Federal Election later this year, to save on costs and prevent election fatigue.

The task in front of the Rudd Government is a tall one. Currently two of the six State Premiers are suggesting they will not agree to this power grab. With good reason too, as any move to remove responsibility for public hospital funding from the states would be the beginning of the end for state government and Australian Federalism.

If Mr Rudd wanted to lean on his ALP buddies in the states, that may be less likely by April 11. With already one ALP Premier telling Rudd to nick off (Victorian Premier John Brumby), he needs friends, but with two ALP Premiers facing tough elections before the end of March (David Bartlett in Tasmania and Mike Rann in South Australia), he may see fewer friendly faces in April than he has seen previously.

If the COAG meeting does not provide Rudd with the results he seeks, then it's off to the polls - a referendum to alter the Constitution of Australia so the Federal Government would have responsibility for funding public hospitals.

This could be even more problematic for Rudd than convincing the six State Premiers. As a rule, referenda in Australia fail, with only 8 out of 44 succeeding in 109 years of Federation. This is in part due to referenda needing an overall majority of voters voting in the affirmative, as well as a majority of voters in a majority of states.

Further to that, no referendum has ever succeeded in Australia without having the support of the two main political parties of the time. With the Coalition opposing the federal takeover, you can see that any referendum on public hospitals would have to make Australian electoral history in just succeeding.

Now, if Rudd held the referendum at the same time as a Federal Election in order to save money, then he takes on an added risk of both votes becoming referenda on his leadership. It would be a groundbreaking situation; a referendum on a key area of government policy being held at the same time as a Federal Election. Previous referenda held concurrently with Federal Elections have generally been related to areas of electoral housekeeping.

Three things can occur if Rudd holds an election and a referendum at the same time, as there is no chance that Rudd loses the election but wins the referendum.

Firstly, Rudd could win both the election and the referendum. Mr Rudd comes out with a stronger mandate than any Prime Minister in living memory, a ringing endorsement of his leadership, and a separate endorsement of a key election platform.

Secondly, Rudd could win the election but lose the referendum. This seems the most likely given Australian electoral history (Australia does not have one term federal governments, or pass referenda without bipartisan support). This would leave Mr Rudd as an impotent Prime Minister, without a mandate to implement policy in a vital area of government administration. It wouldn't be long before Rudd was replaced with Julia Gillard, and the government moved on without implementing its plan for funding public hospitals.

Finally, Rudd could lose both the election and the referendum. The real kick in the guts would be that the defeat of the referendum would probably be a major contributory factor in his losing the election, and he would break new ground in leading the first one-term Australian federal government since the great depression.

It's a massive risk for Rudd to take, and it's hard to see why he is taking it. Despite the Coalition's improved showing in the polls, the Rudd Government is still most likely to be returned. He's staking his political career on either the states commencing their own demise by signing away their most important area of responsibility, or the Australian public doing something it hasn't done in 109 years: endorsing a change to the Constitution of Australia without the support of both the Government and the Opposition.

The 2010 election year just became a lot more interesting.

Bring back the AK

2010-03-02T14:47:00.000+11:00

Does anyone know who the most decorated Australians are?

The highest award an Australian can currently receive is to be made a Companion of the Order of Australia. Twice a year (Australia Day and the Queens' Birthday holiday), a handful of worthy Australians are bestowed this honour, and they receive a medal, and the ability to put "AC" after their name. You can find the list of ACs here.

But do we know who they are? More importantly, is the simple addition of two letters after a name sufficient reward for a life's work making a real and lasting difference to the quality of life of fellow Australians?

That is why I suggest the Australian Government re-establish the Knight (AK) and Dame (AD) of the Order of Australia.

I'm sure many of you would be surprised, but such a honour did in fact exist, from the creation of the Order of Australia on 14 February 1975 under then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, until being abolished by new Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

During that time, twelve Knights and two Dames were created. This included three Governors-General, a state Governor, a Prime Minister, a state Premier, two Industrialists, the first woman elected to the Federal Parliament, a historian, a physiologist, and the Prince of Wales.

The Australian Labor Party's policy is anti-titles, but this smacks of good old-fashioned class warfare and Britain-bashing. So I don't expect Kevin Rudd to re-establish the AK and AD, even if tempted by eventually being known as Sir Kevin.

However, we live in one of the greatest meritocracies in the world, where great achievement is accessible to any person talented and motivated enough to try. Anyone who understands Australia knows that such an honour would be available to people of all racial and socio-economic backgrounds, as long as they had had achieved the highest level of public service.

And do we have a better idea for a before-name title than "Sir" or "Dame"? They are titles of utmost respect, and despite some republican dislike for the titles, they are entirely appropriate.

So who should currently be an AK or AD, who isn't? Professor Marie Bashir, long-time Governor of New South Wales, Professor Graeme Clark, developer of the Cochlear Ear Implant, General Peter Cosgrove, former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, Tony Fitzgerald, head of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, Murray Gleeson, Chief Justice of the High Court and former Chief Justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court, Marjorie Jackson-Nelson, Olympic Gold Medallist and former Governor of South Australia, Major General Michael Jeffrey, former Governor-General and Governor of Western Australia, Ian McFarlane, former Governor of the Reserve Bank, Reverend Dr Gordon Moyes, founder of the Wesley Mission, Professor Fiona Stanley, leading maternal and child health specialist and Nancy Wake, WWII hero, would all be uncontentious receipients of either an AK or an AD, who currently have an AC.

I wouldn't have any problem with calling any of these people Sir or Dame. It would be an honour, and a richly deserved recognition of a life full of achievement. It's about time we started making these recognitions once more.

Practicality and Symbolism

2010-02-25T14:50:00.000+11:00

Anyone who has spoken to me at any length about what I believe government should so, and how governments should act, knows that I am a results-oriented guy.

Anyone who has seen me subjected to a labourious or painful task, also knows that I am results-oriented guy.

Governments, too often in my opinion, immerse themselves in symbolism in order to enhance their chances of having a lasting legacy, rather than quietly and efficiently working towards improving the quality of life of their constituents.

There are many reasons for this. Symbolism is powerful, yet easy, inexpensive, and shallow. It usually makes many people superficially pleased, and as the political sphere is more completely swallowed by the public relations machine, focussed as it must be on creating a good story and establishing a "narrative", this means more purely or largely symbolic measures will be initiated and championed by governments, in order to cheaply improve their popularity.

On the other hand, practical measures aimed at providing real improvements to the quality of life of the citizenry are often difficult, complicated and very costly indeed. The full positive effects of such initiatives may take decades to come into full effect and appreciation, encompassing numerous political cycles.

There are two very good examples of how this trend is having a detrimental effect on decision making by governments regarding vital policy.

In February 2008, Kevin Rudd stood up in Parliament House and said sorry to the Stolen Generations, millions of Indigenous Australians who were taken from their families and relatives and put into government operated and foster care.

The symbolism was powerful, and as someone who participated in the same symbolism when I signed an online Sorry Book during the first Sorry Day in 1998, I can understand why this apology was made. It undoubtedly made many people feel better.

However, the necessary and difficult debate on required policies to improve the quality of life of Indigenous Australians has not happened, has not sufficiently happened, or has been seriously inadequate. More importantly, a discussion on whether a reconcilliation between the need for sensitivity and recognition of Indigenous Australian culture and the basic right for all Australians to enjoy the best quality of life possible has not occurred. You'll find this discussion at the bottom of a basket labelled "TOO HARD".

Indigenous issues are the abyss of Australian politics from which very little ever escapes. It may take two or three generations to see real differences and improvements. But nothing will happen without an important, practical, first step. Stuff needs to happen, and it needs to start happening now.

Half way across the world, Israel is struggling with their own existence, surrounded by bordering nations you could describe as "barely friendly" to "openly hostile", trying to deal with the problem of a Muslim Palestinian population that wants to return to the land their ancestors lived in, while maintaining a Jewish nation.

At the moment, Benjamin Netanyahu is supporting a policy of greater Jewish settlement in the disputed "West Bank", and now talking of starting a program of restoring holy sites in this area, some of which have religious and cultural significance to both Jews and Muslims.

Like our government here in Australia, the Israeli government is dealing in powerful symbolism. This plays on the real fears many Israelis have of being attacked by those determined to deliver some measure of justice for perceived past transgressions by the Jewish state, or simply push Israel into the sea.

The fact remains that a two-state solution, one Jewish and one Muslim, in the land knows as Palestine, is the only sustainable, practical solution that has ever been suggested with regards to this issue. However, the related issues that need to be dealt with to the satisfaction of all parties, are so contentious that the all-important first step of commencing a dialogue barely gets off the ground. The "TOO HARD" basket is big, but it is also really quite full (you'll also find US Government Fiscal Discipline in there).

While the symbolism of many of Netanyahu's initiatives and statements may help add to his popularity among a perpetually frightened Israeli populace, it doesn't go anywhere near a long-term solution for peaceful co-existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East in a largely Muslim area of world. The practical solutions will take time to discern, and more time to establish and allow to work.

A little while ago I voiced a preference to call governments "administrations", because it was a recognition of what politicians and governments were fundamentally good at. However, it is clearly not an entirely accurate reflection of what governments do. It should be.

Winter Olympic Ramblings

2010-02-23T15:03:00.000+11:00

Thoughts while watching a couple of Russians dancing around in fake plants to the sounds of Didgeridoos...

Eddie Maguire may have gotten in trouble for making fun of figure skaters, but he incessant ranting during the snowcross made one thing perfectly clear to me: most commentators at a niche sporting event like the Winter Olympics are just there to avoid silence. They don't know enough about the sport, so it sounds like someone doing a race call, and little else.

Why do we have a Winter Olympics anyway? Imagine if the real Olympics was just "summer" sports?

"That was great action from the sandcastle making finals. Coming up later tonight, beach volleyball as the Brazillians take on our Aussie girls, but first the Surf Lifesaving preliminary rounds, after this break."

And another thing ... it seems the great majority of sports are judged. Doesn't that sort of make them pseudo-sports? Figure skating, ski jumping, moguls, aerials, half-pipe & ice dancing all rely on judges viewing the contest and handing out a score to determine who wins.

Sorry guys, but in a real sport, you either go faster, jump or throw something further or higher, lift a greater weight, put something in a goal more often, hit a target more often, or beat the crap out of someone else. These are real sports.

While I agree that these pseudo-sports have a significant physical component, the judging rules it for me.

However, both versions of the Olympics are the only places where one can see athletes as varied as figure skaters and ice hockey players competing at the same event. Yeah, I said it.

Recently added to the list of things that are offensive: being a ridiculous looking Russian couple on skates.

Recently removed from the list of things that are harmless fun: luge.

Least envied body part at the Winter Olympics: Moguls competitor's knees. Second least envied: aerial's competitor's head.

When it is all said and done, the Biathlon is my favourite Winter sport invented by the Nazis.

Winner of the Martin Vinnecombe Award for Australian (!) Athlete most unhappy at winning a Olympic Silver Medal: Dale Begg-Smith.

And finally, does anyone remember what the Winter Olympics were like before they became the Winter X Games? Me neither, but it has something to do with Eddie The Eagle and Katarina Witt.

Not in the Olympic Spirit

2010-02-10T14:01:00.000+11:00

The Australian two-person female Bobsled team will compete at the Olympic Winter Games starting on Saturday, Australian time. I'm sure the ladies involved are very happy, and I'm also sure the Irish team are happy that the Aussies have been included as an extra team, and not at the exclusion of the Irish.

But I'm not. Not because I don't care about winter sports, or because the Court of Arbitration for Sport was required to make a ruling in regard to this matter. No, I'm unhappy because I think that the people involved haven't truly embraced the Olympic Spirit.

The rules with regard to bobsledding at the Olympics state that one team from both Asia and Oceania are entitled to compete, as well as the best eighteen performing bobsled teams. Australia argued successfully they were entitled to the Oceania spot in the competition. I'm sure many Olympic events would have similar rules allowing competitors who could not qualify, but come from weak areas for the sport, to attend and compete at the Olympics.

However, weren't these rules created to ensure teams that struggle to compete at the Olympics can? While Australia are a minnow when it comes to bobsledding, that is certainly not the case when it comes to the Olympics overall.

Australia have never had a problem sending a conventially-qualified team to any Olympics. We've won gold medals at the last three Winter Olympic Games. We've competed in 16 Winter Olympic Games. We've won 438 Olympic Medals overall.

These spots were created so people like Eric Moussambani could compete at the Olympics. He's from Equatorial Guinea, a nation that has never won an Olympic medal, and in all likelihood, never will. Hardly anyone from Equatorial Guinea would compete at the Olympics if not for these spots.

Sorry if I'm not terribly concerned by a couple of Aussies missing out on an opportunity to finish in the last two in an Olympic Event. It's not in the spirit in which these rules were created, and not in the spirit of the Olympics.

Religion and Sport

2010-02-04T10:15:00.001+11:00

Tim Tebow is a champion quarterback for the University of Florida football team. He's a interesting case from a sporting point of view, because many argue his skill set isn't easily transferable to the professional game, the NFL.

He's also a devout Christian. So devout, he writes Bible verses on the black stickers he wears under his eyes. And he's about to cause some controversy in the USA.

Tebow and his mother will star in an ad due to run during the Superbowl on CBS on Sunday evening US time, which will detail his personal story. Tebow's mother suffered complications with her pregnancy, was advised to abort the child that became Tim, and went contrary to that advice and carried the child to term.

The ad will advocate a strong pro-life position, but it is the placement of a major sporting star at the centre of perhaps the most contentious political and moral issue facing the USA today, during the most popular sporting and television event of the US calendar, that makes this all the more interesting.

One could argue that this sort of thing could only happen in America. Sports stars routinely thank God for intervening and helping them make a major impact on the sporting field.

The fact is this simply cannot be the case. God is not picking favourites in a mere sporting contest - if he did, the sentimental favourite would always win.

In Australia, we've always been a bit more muted in this regard. Matthew Hayden copped some flack when he crossed himself whenever he scored a century. Shaun Hart mentioned "his Lord and Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ" when he won the Norm Smith Medal, and Gary Ablett did a similar thing.

The difference between Hayden, Hart & Ablett's utterances and some of the utterances that occur on the other side of the Pacific is the Australians were merely thanking God for making their performances possible. That's not the same as making the performances happen, or altering that ethereal element we know as luck to favour one side over another.

Tebow is crossing another line again - he is proselytising. He is doing so in a time and a culture where the idea that God is intervening in the everyday lives, and in particular the politics, of people, is becoming more prevelent. That Tebow feels the impulse to make the sporting field an arena for publicising certain extracts from the Bible demonstrates how strongly he feels, but it also makes intensifies the idea that all sports people are role models.

This may lead to some thinking Tebow is some sort of expert on this matter. He's a professional athlete; a "jock" if you will. He's not a theologian, or even ordained. But many, many young people would look up to him, certainly more young people than would a famous evangelist or Archbishop.

I, for one, hope we don't ever go down this road in Australia, and this opinion comes from a church going Catholic. God, whatever God is, doesn't care about recreational pastimes such as sport, even if they are careers for many people. I don't like playing the perspective card when it comes to sport, but this blows sport's importance out of all proportion.

I have a very strong view that religious belief is something that is very personal: a covenant between a person and God. Lord knows I've looked to the heavens and implored God's intervention in a sporting contest, but those have been moments of illogical weakness, brought about by the performance of a beloved sporting team. To use the sporting field as a platform for religious conversion is something that is inappropriate and potentially dangerous, and also doesn't sit well in a pluralist, multicultural society. The less of this, the better.

Ancient History

2010-02-03T09:56:00.000+11:00

There's a by-election in Altona on February 13. According to the calendar, this by-election will happen in 2010. According to the ALP's election ads, it will happen in 1997.

At the 2006 State Election, the ALP attacked Ted Baillieu for the role the company he was a director of and bore his name, Baillieu Knight Frank, played in selling the land and buildings that had been government operated schools, before the Kennett Government closed them down. This occurred at the same time as Ted Baillieu was President of the state Liberal Party organisation.

Whether these ads were effective is unclear, but Steve Bracks secured a comfortable election victory. winning about 54.5% of the two party preferred vote.

Now it is 2010, and the good people of Altona are being informed of the role Baillieu Knight Frank played in selling Laverton Park Primary School.

Regardless of whether you think that closing schools with something like 30 students, or classes called "1/2/3/4/5/6A", is bad policy or good rationalisation of precious government resources, there needs to be a discussion about whether going this far into the past for election ad content is fair game.

The facts are these: some people voting in their first state election later this year would have been born after Jeff Kennett was elected in October 1992, and would have been in Grade One when he lost the premiership in October 1999.

At the other end of the scale, someone born in April 1978, meaning they'll turn 32 in two months, would have never voted in a state election that the Coalition has won. I was born in May 1980, and have voted in the 1999, 2002 & 2006 state elections.

When the Kennett Government was closing and selling schools with low enrolment in an effort to rationalise government resources, Paul Keating was Prime Minister, the best player in the AFL was Gary Ablett (not the one now, but his father), the West Indies held the Frank Worrell Trophy, Billy Ray Cyrus was #1 on the charts, and Apple was a company that made those huge, slow computers with the black and green screens that sat in the computer room down the corridor from home room. Mobile phones weighed kilograms and people had just started watching Seinfeld in this country.

The ALP obviously want you to think of the Liberal Party as that party that did all those horrible things in the 1990s. Forget repaying the ALP's state debt, building CityLink, the Casino and the Exhibition Centre, reviving the state's economy and reducing unemployment, and modernising the state's public service. They want you to remember the (necessary) cuts made to ensure that Victoria stopped spending what it didn't have.

That the ALP have nothing constructive to say in order to win a seat they held with 70% of the two party preferred vote at the last state election is an endictment on the fact that there is not much good to say about the performance of the Brumby Government. In fact, the only spruiking of their own "achievements" that is done is done with taxpayer's money. (Don't worry - it's all part of the plan.)

So it's about time the ALP moved into the 21st Century, and stopped relying on ancient history.

2010: Rudd's last election

2010-02-02T09:47:00.000+11:00

Before you start, this is not some bold prediction about the result of the upcoming 2010 Federal Election, made on the back of this morning's Newspoll that shows two party preferred voting intention at 52-48. I still think the ALP will win the Federal Election comfortably. In fact, if you offered me a 52-48 result at that upcoming election, I would take it in a heartbeat.

So I think Rudd will win. However, I also think that Rudd won't be around to fight a third election as leader of the Australian Labor Party.

A number of things influence my thinking on this matter. The first is Julia Gillard.

Ms Gillard is undoubtedly the success story of the first Rudd Government. She has successfully navigated changes to the industrial relations system, but her implementation of the MySchool website has been popular, while aggravating the education unions. This means that Gillard gets points for standing up to those who supported her my advocating and introducing an unpopular (with unions) policy.

She's also had plenty of practice at being Prime Minister, with Kevin Rudd out of the country for so much of his Prime Ministership. Mr Rudd has been away for parliamentary sittings, important events, and Gillard has handled her duties with aplomp.

On top of that, she is also a much improved media performer, and as time has passed, she has appeared more comfortable in all kinds of situations.

Helping her in her ambitions to be our first female Prime Minister is the conclusion that Kevin Rudd does not see the Prime Ministership of our fair country as the apex of his professional life.

Andrew Bolt can tend to be a little bit obsessive, to put it lightly, but I think he has hit the nail on the head when he suggests that Kevin Rudd holds a deep desire to be Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Think about it: Rudd, the career diplomat/politician, former Shadow Foreign Minister, enamoured with all things global, noted sinophile and expert on everything related to China, lumbered with a job whose purview is mainly domestic.

To lead the world, not just our little island nation, across the morays of 21st Century geo-politics, maybe win a Nobel Peace Prize, and effect the world profoundly as the most senior diplomat, would be a pretty daunting legacy for any other Australian Prime Minister to emulate. And it's right in Kevin Rudd's wheelhouse.

So, if anyone does actually enjoy Kevin Rudd - Australian Politician, enjoy it while you can, because by about mid-2012, we might be saying goodbye to Rudd PM as he boards a plane to take on one of the most important jobs in the world.

Measuring Education

2010-02-01T13:38:00.001+11:00

There is good politics, there is great politics, there is transcendant politics, then there is the introduction of the MySchool website.

I've got in trouble on here before for wading into the muck that is talking about education in this country, but the verdict is clear: Australians love having the ability to see how their kids' school compares to other schools.

I've seen Principals and Education Union Leaders get on TV shows regularly since the start of last week. And they talk about inappropriate metrics, and mitigating factors, and the effect MySchool will have on enrolment levels at their particular schools.

The problem for them is that none of this matters. They may as well be speaking Cantonese, or whatever language the Prime Minister chooses to speak. The populace is not listening to them.

In short, schools (particularly those operated by government) in this country have been sheltered from competition for too long. Education Union leaders can talk until their blue in the face about what sort of a school culture overt competition creates, and children slipping between the cracks, but the reality is that if we, as a nation, can create a system or metric that can help children in schools know more, you know, stuff, that will be beneficial.

Trust me, I know teachers deal with a ton of stuff that is well outside of what should be in their job description. But with the crisis in the quality of parenting in this country, they are often the only ones that are consistently raising, and in some cases feeding, this nation's children.

But we need to do better. To increase the number of children who know more. Who know how to spell, how to multiply (I'm talking numbers not teenage pregnancy), who Henry Parkes was and why he is important, and stuff like that.

And any tool that puts upward pressure on these things, that cause them to be more likely, has to be good. Suddenly schools will be focussed primarily on educational results. Schools should be educational facilities, not mass child raising centres. That schools feel that they have to be mass child raising centres is a tragedy that will not get addressed, I fear, until it is not politically radioactive to call parents on not raising their children well.

On top of all that is the fact that most parents love this sort of thing. Why do you think Mr Rudd is already talking about expanding MySchool's scope, despite the site not being operational for even a week? He's knows how good this website is politically.

So you won't get me criticising the government on this one. It's something that should have, but unfortunately could not have, happened under the previous government.

The uncontrollable Politician

2010-01-28T12:00:00.000+11:00

Tony Abbott would like his daughters to think long and hard before having sex.

The story is not that he thought it, or even said it to his daughters, who in all probability, rolled their eyes about their hideously dorky dad if the above conversation did occur.

No, the story is that he said it to a reporter from that great bastian of all that is accurate and fair in hard news, the Womens' Weekly (which is issued monthly, but no one would dare call a publication the Womens' Monthly).

The thought occurs that maybe someone in Abbott's office with the word "Media" in their title should have advised Abbott not to make the above remark.

However, after a bit more thought, it occurs that maybe someone did provide this advice to Tony Abbott, and either told them where to go or just quietly ignored it.

All this is pure speculation, but is Tony Abbott impossible to handle? Not in the way Malcolm Turnbull was, impossibly smart and completely aware of his mental superiority, and therefore incapable of tolerating work not up to this personal standard, but in a "Tony being Tony" way, where Tony will just do what Tony was always going to do. Maybe there is very little use in advising him in this way.

It's certainly a point of different between him and Kevin Rudd, whose language sometimes sounds like it's been "advised" to within inches of being a language almost irreconcilable with English. Not a lot unlike that sentence I just wrote.

We here all the time how politicans aren't like other people, live in a alternate reality away from "real people", and are so driven by issues and media presentation that we can't tell anything about who they really are.

On the other hand, there is Tony Abbott. While many in the middle to far left would disagree strongly as a matter of principle, I think Tony Abbott wants people to know who he really is. He's either not interested in spin or couldn't be bothered participating in it. From this we get quotes like the ones this week that have driven the media cycle for days on end.

There is a larger issue of politican's families and private lives that comes into play here. Abbott opened the door, even if he did it absent-mindedly, Julia Gillard played it for all it was worth, and George Brandis jumped all over Gillard's comments and played the "no children" card, and now we're off to the races. The truth is Tony Abbott was asked what he would tell his daughters about sex before marriage. Julia Gillard took this honest, if ill-advised, answer and used it to work to her goal, which is every woman outside of Abbott's household voting Labor later this year. It may backfire, but probably only if the Libs keep their counsel a bit more, which has as much chance of happening as the Pakistani cricket team becoming world leaders in fielding and running between the wickets.

Tony Abbott is what he is. Expect an eventful year with plenty more of stuff like this.

My Australia Day thoughts

2010-01-27T10:34:00.000+11:00

I did something yesterday I can never really remember doing.

I did something celebratory on Australia Day.

Normally, I usually just sit at home and watch Australia play someone at cricket, occasionally flicking over to the tennis. If the day is a Monday, it may coincide with the Championship Games in the NFL. In short, I'd probably give the answer about Australia Day that the little kid in the BigPond ads does.

However, yesterday I went to one of Rose's school chums' places for a barbeque and some fun in her pool. Despite all attendees being required to wear Aussie Flag temporary tattoos, I somehow got out of that. And Skye's family house is a testament to pretty much all that is good about Australia: her father is caucasian, probably of British heritage, while her mother is Muslim. All over the house are posters promoting Australian flora and fauna, a very kitsch "Advance Australia" rug in the hall way, pool and barbeque out the back. It was, on all accounts, a very good day.

I'm not really comfortable with overt displays of patriotism. While I deplore the word "jingoism", I like to think that Australia has always embraced an understated patrotism, one that doesn't surface during while the National Anthem is being played (an ordinary, but fairly inoffensive anthem by international standards), but does surface after events like Black Saturday.

Australia is moving towards more overt patriotism: there's not much doubt about that. This can manifest in something as benign as wearing the Australian Flag as a cape, but can also move towards racism and intolerance, which is actually when you stop celebrating Australia Day. After all, almost everyone in Australia is from someone else. While I would like to think we could stay as respectful and dignified about our national pride as we were before, we are becoming a little more like the US in wearing our patriotism more obviously.

There is also the unease many people feel with celebrating a day such as January 26, when the white man landed and never left. However, the fact is that most any date that Australia Day could be celebrated, would be problematic. And there are no dates of national significance in August or September, when people (especially in Victoria) really need a day off.

In the final analysis, we need to accept, celebrate and acknowldge who we are and where we've been. We're a country that has a national broadcaster who has the same post office box in every capital city because it was a cricketer's final test batting average. We have another national day which commemorates one of the greatest mistakes in military history, but we see it as the birth of a national spirit. We have a holiday for a horse race. We've had a Prime Minister almost encourage people to take the day off work, and another who crowd surfed while in office. We have highways named after footballers and lanes named after rock bands.

I don't know what you'd call that, but I call it pretty close to the best country in the world. Hope you had a good one.

This Australia Day, here's something to give thanks for...

2010-01-21T15:18:00.000+11:00

If any of you have seen Michael Moore's film Sicko, you probably don't want to get sick in the United States of America. While his movies are more essays than documentaries, he paints a picture of the USA being almost the worst place in the world to require medical attention. To prove his point he travels to Cuba, and is assured he will receive low-cost quality care.

Probably quite a few people who watched Sicko voted for Barack Obama in November 2008. The reasons they voted for him are wide and varied, but many of them would have agreed that the health system in the USA was fundamentally flawed. It needed fixing.

Therefore, armed with the Presidency, a large majority in both houses of the US Congress, Obama championed reform and a bill was introduced.

Now, it is said that the two things you should never see how they are made are laws and sausages. (I would add black pudding to that list.) The process of how a bill becomes a law in the US is one of the more convoluted legislative situations in the world today.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the passage of any bill through the US Congress is the Senate filibuster.

In Australia, the party which has the majority of the members in the house can stop any other member talking by simply moving a "Point of Order" that the member who is talking no longer be heard. This is called "the guillotine", and is usually used by governments to ran through contentious legislation at speed.

This is the same in the United Kingdom, and in many parliamentary democracies all over the world that subscribe to the Westminster tradition.

However, in the United States Senate, the tradition that members should debate any issue or bill uncensored and uninhibited prevails over nearly all other rules.

Therefore, as long as a United States Senator can stay upright, and keep talking, they never cede the floor. There is no time limit on how long any Senator can speak. They can speak for as long as they are physically able to. This is known as a filibuster.

Over time, the US Senate has worked to put some roadblocks in front of the filibuster. Currently, it takes 60 Senators to invoke what Australians would know as the "guillotine", that is, to stop another Senator talking.

Yesterday, Democrats lost their 60th member of the US Senate, as Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown in the Senate seat that has been effectively held by the Kennedy family since 1953. The seat became vacant due to the death of Ted Kennedy.

This will almost certainly kill any chances of meaninful reform to the health care system in the USA. So the next time you are lamenting the sort of country you live in, or the inability of governments in Australia to get anything done, look over the Pacific Ocean, and thank your lucky stars.

Drawing (and rambling) a long bow

2010-01-18T15:20:00.000+11:00

It has been an interesting week in God's Own Country, otherwise known as Victoria. Between 43,000 attending a sport bastardised and the beginning of this nation's yearly fortnight-long obsession with tennis (immediate correction - we will get interested in the second week of Wimbledon if an Aussie is still playing), quite a bit of stuff has happened.

In Collingwood, The Tote, a legendary live music venue that I never attended (being from Elwood anywhere north of Victoria Parade is Woop Woop), closed down due to exhorbitant increases in the cost of it's liquor licence. This event was mourned by those who frequented the place, many who didn't understand why it was closing, and directed their momentary anger at those in charge of writing and administering this state's laws.

The Tote is a victim of the State Government's focus on curbing alcohol fuelled violence on our streets. Many people, mostly young men, but often innocent bystanders, are being maimed, paralysed, and even killed in attacks by men who have filled their bellies with booze, and then searched for a target for their anger, now ready to escape after being supressed inside ever since the last time they decided to have a drink or 23.

Probably, no one ever got more of a scratch outside The Tote, or inside for that matter. But because the statistics say that The Tote is a high risk venue (amount of alcohol stored, location of venue, hours of operation), this place where friends met each other, had a few pots of Coopers and listened to some live rock music now must close. The statistics say this place is as dangerous to society as QBH, or a litany of places on King and Queen Sts.

I think what most people should object to in the case of The Tote is a unintelligent application of the law, where individual circumstances (and results, as The Tote had been proven a safe venue) were not taken into account. As I am always saying, we live in a world in many shades of grey, not one of black and white.

On the same side of town over the weekend, but closer to the urban fringe, 5 young men lost their lives in a car going at a speed of 140 kilometres an hour. On any scale, this is a complete tragedy. The driver was driving on a restricted Probationary licence, and was carrying five passengers, one of which miraculously survived.

What do these have to do with each other? Well, this morning many people were calling on governments of all levels to do something more to stop carnage on our roads.

Forget the fact that the National Road Toll is significantly less than it was 35 years ago. The main factors in this reduction have been government action and enhanced safety features in cars, such as seat belts, roll cages and airbags. There's no way around it: huge improvements have been made, and they have produced results.

What should not be forgotten is that the driver was already speeding. He was already breaking the law. What makes anyone think that more law would have prevented this situation occurring? Maybe the real tragedy here was that, from a legislative standpoint, this event was largely unavoidable.

I can tell you what you won't hear from governments: any mention of poor parenting.

The main reason for both the tragedies that happen on our roads or outside our drinking establishments, which were the driving force for the regulations that brought about the death of The Tote, is the lack of respect for authority.

In previous generations, playing up while drunk would have meant either a beating at the hands of the police, or at the hands of a stroppy parent. We've moved on from that barbarism of older times, but what we haven't done as a society is replaced it's effectiveness as a tool of societal control.

Quite simply, many people today aren't afraid of what the authorities can do to them. A speeding ticket will get paid. A night in the lock-up will come to an end the next morning, minus the bruises it may have contained in the times of our parent's youth. Discipline is about making the perpetrator of an offence feel worse than the victim, so he or she does not commit the offence again. In our modern language, it's about a disproportionate punishment.

The Tote is gone, partly because case-by-case administration costs money that no one is willing to pay, and partly because the thugs who started this mess feel untouchable.

The young men who died in Mill Park in Saturday night probably felt untouchable as well. Their whole lives ahead of them, unable to be conquered until their youthful exuberance and hubris brought on the final consequence. We pray for their families as they try to make sense of what cannot be made sense of.

Yet we have to. Two diametrically different events on the one weekend may bring a turning point in how we, especially young men, act in our society. If so, I'm all for it.

A predictable result

2010-01-15T10:58:00.003+11:00

Insanity has been described as doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results. Someone should tell the Pakistani cricketers.

After dropping Ricky Ponting yesterday, the writing wasn't on the wall so much as it was on the scoreboard, or it should have been, even before it has technically "occurred". Because once Ponting had been put down on nought, in one of the worst dropped catches of all time, he was always going to score big. You couldn't change it any more than you could change what you had for breakfast a week last Thursday.

Pakistan coach Intikhab Alam lamented a cultural indifference to fielding in Pakistan, but unless that is turned around, this will inhibit the Pakistani side much more than any inability to play Test Matches on home soil. In short, "catches win matches" is a cliche not just because it rhymes, and the sooner Pakistani cricketers learn that, the better.

The defensive tactics shown on the fourth morning in Sydney that played a vital role in letting Australia bat to a position they could, and ultimately did, defend, were also revived as Pakistani captain Mohammed Yousuf decided the best way to play Australia was to stop Ponting and Michael Clarke score boundaries. Half an hour into the second morning they are both still at the crease, having scored a combined 260+ runs, with less than half coming from boundaries.

One would suggest that Pakistan would have to try something different, but they never do, so why should we expect them to now? They've always been a side that has seen cricket, and particularly Test Cricket, as a purely linear game. Pakistan has always solely relied on the batting and bowling talent of their players.

Unless you are the West Indies of the 1980s or the Australians of the early 2000s, you simply cannot consistently win Test Matches without some other method of gaining the advantage. You can either put a increased focus on fielding and catching, as the Australians did in the mid-1980s when their talents stocks were low (replicated by Zimbabwe in the 1990s and New Zealand in the early 2000s), or find a innovative thinker, make them captain, and try new things like opening the bowling with a spinner or setting attacking yet unorthodox fields. For this method think Martin Crowe at the 1992 World Cup.

However, Pakistan seem committed to mediocrity in much the same way George Pell is committed to Catholicism. They seem to want to win only one way, which is irresistable brilliance with bat and ball. Not only is this method unsustainable for long-term success, it's also incredibly lazy. They seem to have an aversion to working hard or thinking in an innovative fashion.

The fact that Australia has Pakistan on their calendar again in a few months augurs well for the confidence of the Australian Cricket Team leading into next year's Ashes series. That is, unless Pakistan do something different. Don't hold your breath.

A turning point

2010-01-14T12:40:00.002+11:00

It's on.

This is not an over-reaction, but today's announcement of the State Opposition's plans to abolish suspended sentences signals a real turning point in the election campaign that will officially begin in late October, but has been unofficially running for quite some time now.

The move draws focus to an area of weakness for the government, as judges are being blamed for soft sentencing, when they are only carrying out the law as written and amended by this decade old government.

It also draws focus on the current State Government's wonderful tendency to only adopt recommendations from their numerous independent inquiries when it suits them. Abolishing suspended sentences has been proposed in one form or another on numerous occasions, and the State Government has stated that it will act, without really doing so.

If this sounds familiar, then that is because it is familiar. I wrote a piece late last year on governments reacting rather than acting, and adopting recommendations only when some serious public tragedy left them no choice, after only paying them lip-service when previously recommended. (The piece can be found here.)

Now, the State Opposition has beaten them to the punch, and the Brumby Government is worried.

While Rob Hulls is on holiday, Bob Cameron argued at a press conference today that this will "send Mum and Dad motorists to prison for one month for a second and subsequent driving offence".

As the law currently stands, yes it would. But the law currently contains suspended sentences. You would think that any changes to the law regarding suspended sentences would include a wide ranging review of all offences that currently contain a provision for the handing down of a suspended sentence as punishment for the offence.

It's a poor argument from Mr Cameron if ever I've heard one, but one we can expect much of in the coming 11 months, as the Brumby Government tries to take the public's focus off a deteriorating public transport system, and ticketing system for public transport that regularly and consistently over charges people for riding a train or a tram, a water infrastructure that will be upgraded in the most expensive and eco-unfriendly way possible in order to barely avoid political fallout, and the incredible hypocrisy of John Brumby, 1995's crusader against government funded political advertising, being the greatest addict to government advertising ever seen in this state, or any Australian state, for that matter.

This move marks a clear turning point in the campaign, and despite all the criticism of Ted Baillieu from inside and outside the Liberal Party, he has done well to hold his serious fire until the year of the election. Thankfully he has stayed working through the holiday period, taking advantage of Brumby's sojourn to recharge his batteries.

It won't be easy, but Ted's made a good start.

Honeymoon 2010

2010-01-11T11:52:00.003+11:00

When I began this blog, I stated that I would only deal with topical issues, and not make this blog mainly of a personal nature.

I'm changing my mind.

For our (Rose and I) honeymoon, I'm going to post daily about the places we are and what we have seen, and generally how things are going. Photos will also be posted on Facebook.

Anyway, for those who would like to know, here is our current itinerary:

Sun March 14 - depart Melbourne for Istanbul via Singapore
Mon March 15 - arrive in Istanbul
Tue March 16 - Istanbul
Wed March 17 - Istanbul to Gallipoli (overnight tour)
Thu March 18 - Gallipoli to Istanbul
Fri March 19 - Istanbul to Prague
Sat March 20 - Prague
Sun March 21 - Prague
Mon March 22 - Prague to Krakow
Tue March 23 - Auschwitz
Wed March 24 - Krakow to Berlin
Thu March 25 -Berlin
Fri March 26 - Berlin
Sat March 27 - Berlin to Venice
Sun March 28 - Venice
Mon March 29 - Venice
Tue March 30 - Venice
Wed March 31 - Venice to Rome
Thu April 1 - Rome
Fri April 2 - Rome (Good Friday)
Sat April 3 - Rome
Sun April 4 - Rome (Easter Sunday)
Mon April 5 - Rome to Milan
Tue April 6 - Milan
Wed April 7 - Milan
Thu April 8 - Milan to Nice (pick up car in Nice)
Fri April 9 - Driving through France
Sat April 10 - Driving through France
Sun April 11 - Driving through France
Mon April 12 - Driving through France
Tue April 13 - Driving through France
Wed April 14 - Driving through France
Thu April 15 - Driving through France
Fri April 16 - Driving through France
Sat April 17 - Driving through France
Sun April 18 - Driving through France
Mon April 19 - Arrive in Paris
Tue April 20 - Paris
Wed April 21 - Paris
Thu April 22 - Paris
Fri April 23 - Paris
Sat April 24 - Paris
Sun April 25 - ANZAC Day at Villiers-Bretonneux
Mon April 26 - Paris to London
Tue April 27 - London
Wed April 28 - London
Thu April 29 - London
Fri April 30 - London to Liverpool
Sat May 1 - Liverpool v Chelsea @ Anfield
Sun May 2 - Liverpool to Edinburgh
Mon May 3 - Edinburgh
Tue May 4 - Edinburgh to Glasgow
Wed May 5 - Glasgow
Thu May 6 - Glasgow
Fri May 7 - Glasgow to Dublin (pick car up in Dublin)
Sat May 8 - Driving through Ireland
Sun May 9 - Driving through Ireland
Mon May 10 - Driving through Ireland
Tue May 11 - Dublin
Wed May 12 - Dublin
Thu May 13 - Dublin
Fri May 14 - Dublin to London
Sat May 15 - London to Singapore
Sun May 16 - Singapore to Melbourne

Expect one update per day. We're very much looking forward to it.

Twenty20 is a different game

2010-01-08T09:08:00.003+11:00

In April, the Caribbean will host the third World Twenty20 tournament, in which the best cricketing nations in the world will take about five minutes to decide which ones are the best at the newest form of the game.

Australia will be about four weeks removed from playing the Trans-Tasman trophy against New Zealand. While four weeks seems like an eternity between matches, this is an anomaly in the crowded international schedule, with the Aussies going to England immediately after the World Twenty20 to play Pakistan in Test Matches and ODIs.

Australia are currently the undisputed best team in ODIs and in the middle of a mild rebuilding phase in Test Cricket. The one form of the game where Australia have enjoyed no global level success is Twenty20. If only all Twenty20 matches were played in Australia (The Aussies are 7-0 in Twenty20 matches played on home soil).

Ricky Ponting has already given the shortest form of the game away at international level (although scheduling a press conference for this announcement was a little much). Michael Clarke is Australia's current Twenty20 captain.

The only problem is Michael Clarke has never really had any success in this form of the game. He averages less than 20 at Twenty20 level, while averaging over 40 at Test and ODI level.

And this is widely representative of what Australia has done at Twenty20 level: select cricketers who generally excel at Tests and ODIs, and hope they play alright. At the two World Twenty20 tournaments, this hasn't translated into a trophy.

So the time has come to think differently. You could argue the best Twenty20 sides in the world are Victoria and New South Wales, so we should be taking the vast majority of the Australian Twenty20 team from these two sides.

In fact, I think none of the current Test team should go to the World Twenty20. This would protect their confidence, which took at battering last year in England which could have helped going into the Ashes, and will also protect them from injury. As hard as it is to leave Mitchell Johnson or Brad Haddin out of any form of the game, these things should be done to preserve Australia's supremacy at ODI level, in which there will be a World Cup within 16 months, and keep an improving Test line-up intact.

So here's my crack at a different squad of 14 for the World Twenty20:

Cameron White - captain

Brad Hodge - vice captain

David Warner
Mitchell Marsh
Shaun Marsh
David Hussey
Tim Paine
Adam Voges
Moises Henriques
James Hopes
Steven Smith
Nathan Bracken (if fit)
Dirk Nannes
Shaun Tait

(If Bracken is not fit, replace him with Clint McKay.)

That's not a bad squad, and all have some record of performance at Twenty20 level. Installing White as captain is a good move, considering he's been doing it longer than any other Australian captain other than Ponting, and he's very good at it.

As you can see, there aren't too many specialist batsmen in the squad, and the ones in the squad can all bowl (except the Marshes). It would give youngsters like Henriques, Smith and Mitchell Marsh valuable international experience, and it would also almost completely remove any pressure on the team to win the tournament, as expectations would be low.

It's time to treat Twenty20 appropriately, and select a team of specialists with no association to the Test team. Let's start with a team from the above fourteen for the match against Pakistan in February. Should be exciting.

A victory for all Australia

2010-01-07T08:36:00.004+11:00

I'm not one prone to overstatement or overestimation. As much as I love sports, I realise, and try to emphasise, their rightful place as an entertaining distraction and money making enterprise. So, permit me what I am about to write.

A little over three years ago Australia won a Test Match they should not have won, and really had no business thinking they could win on the fifth morning. At that stage, England were 1/59 in their second innings, with a lead of 97 runs, and only one 90 over day of play remaining. In short, all England had to do was bat for 50 overs at 2.5 per over to effectively end the match.

Somehow, the Aussies thought they could win. England came out in an extremely defensive mood, the Aussies, and particularly Shane Warne, sensed the fear in their opponents, and the English were bundled out for 129 in 73 overs. Australia needed just 168 runs to win. They did it comfortably.

I remember writing before that fateful final day in Adelaide three years ago, predicting a tame draw. I was wrong and admitted as much. (My day four thoughts here, my end of match thoughts here.)

Fast forward to 2009/10, and sentiment is against the Australian team. The events of 2007/08 have soured many people's thoughts about our cricketers, and the further antics seen in Adelaide and Perth this season haven't helped matters. Many have been quick to jump on the cricket team and their attitude.

As such, by Boxing Day I had taken to referring to myself as "the last unconditional lover of the Australian Cricket Team". While I am sure CJ would probably disagree, the amount of people who could accurately claim unconditional love for the Aussie Cricket Team has seriously dwindled in the last couple of years.

My love can be directly attributed to two things: the form of the Australian Cricket Team in my formative years, and the fact that a significant part of me is still a big kid. When I was growing up, Australia weren't very good. So my childlike love of Australia winning has not (and hopefully never will) been sated.

The bigger issue coming from this match is why Australia won. Many people are poo pooing Pakistan's performance, and it was pitiful. However, this was not the entire reason, or even the most important reason.

Casting our minds back again to Adelaide 2006, only one team in the world could believe they could win from 97 runs behind with nine wickets to take on the flattest of pitches, where over 1100 runs had been scored in four days for the loss of 17 wickets.

Again, only one team in the world could believe that they could win from the position the Aussies found themselves in yesterday morning. Two wickets in hand, eighty-odd runs in front, pitch improving for batting all the time.

However, it wasn't just the cricketers. All over yesterday, you could hear people suggesting that if only the Aussies could get 150 in front, or 170 in front, or 200 in front, then they would have a fighting chance.

An essential aspect of the Australian spirit is to never, ever count yourself out of a contest. No matter what the situation is, you can always dust yourself off and overcome adversity. Again, it wasn't just the cricketers yesterday who believed that the remarkable could be achieved.

So, yesterday's result was more a reflection on Australian society generally than only on the eleven who played yesterday.

On final reflection, there are those who view the Australian Cricket Team as a microchosm of Australian society more widely, and this is seen as a negative. On this day, and at this time, I have to say I agree with them, but with completely different affections. The Aussie Cricket Team, and the Aussie spirit, are victorious this morning, and it feels great.

A more solid order

2010-01-06T08:45:00.004+11:00

Today, in all likelihood, the Australian Cricket Team will lose at Test Match to Pakistan on home soil for the third time in 28 years. During those same series (3 Tests in 1981, 5 in 1983/84, 3 in 1990, 3 in 1995, 3 in 1999, 3 in 2004/05 and the Boxing Day Test Match just finished), Australia have defeated Pakistan 14 times, with 5 draws.

In fact, those two previous defeats have occurred in dead rubbers where the series was decided, at Melbourne in 1981, and in Sydney in 1995. The last time Pakistan won a "live" Test Match in Australia was 1977. Yet, Pakistan will probably win the Test Match today, levelling the series at 1-1 and making the Bellerive Test Match the series decider.

In short, Australia's problem is their batting. Everyone knows that Australia's bowling is not what it once was, considering the departures of Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne & Jason Gillespie, and the subsequent apparent ends of the careers of Brett Lee and Stuart Clark. However, the Australians have four very promising fast bowlers in Mitchell Johnson, Doug Bollinger, Peter Siddle and Ben Hilfenhaus, and if they could find a genuine speedster to compliment that bunch, then they would probably be all set for some time.

Obviously, Australia still needs to find a good spinner, but Australia won plenty of Test Matches from 1989-1991 with either Trevor Hohns, Peter Sleep, Peter Taylor or Greg Matthews. Nathan Hauritz is doing his job as well as can be expected, and not one spinner's form at domestic level is making Hauritz's position untenable.

No, the problem is the top seven.

Shane Watson is playing well, and yesterday's dismissal in the 90s was the result of an absolute brute of a delivery, rather than mental demons on Watson's behalf. The solution to Australia's woes certainly does not lie with moving him to another position in the order. Watson is playing better than anyone in the Australian side right now, and protects his wicket appropriately. Leave him at the top of the order.

Philip Hughes is worth perservering with. While hot headed in the first dig, he'll learn, and showed glimpes of that education with a measured effort in the second dig, before he went to a brilliant return catch by Kaneria.

Simon Katich is a number 3 batsman. He played some great innings there in India in 2004, and would add a resoluteness to the top of the order, where either Hughes or Watson can go for their shots with Katich at number 3. As a long-time advocate for Matthew Elliott at number 3 before he calcified, an batsman with opening experience would not be a bad idea at the most important spot in the order.

It would also take some of the pressure off Ponting, whose form doesn't really warrant a place in the side right now. However, it is (rightfully) difficult to drop someone with 11,500 Test runs at 55, and he is capable of incredible batting. His elbow clearly isn't right, and he probably shouldn't be playing right now, but as his actions in India in 2008 demonstrate, nothing is more important to Ponting than playing Test Cricket. Despite the fact he has never batted there for Australia, I think he should drop himself a spot and come in at four.

Michael Hussey is the "in-form" Australian middle order batsman right now. Read that again. I hope he gets a century today, as it might be the basis for an unlikely series-clinching victory, but his spot isn't really in jeopardy. Considering his ability to bat with the tail, a drop to six in the order wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but it's probably too low for him. I've always liked him at five.

Michael Clarke is the next captain, but his form has dropped off somewhat since England. Someone has to bat six, and Clarke would have little pressure on him if he did. Also consider than Ian Bell is batting six for England right now, and Duminy for South Africa. Batting six doesn't mean you are a dud.

Marcus North simply has run out of chances. He should look on the careers of Jamie Siddons, Brad Hodge and Darren Lehmann and consider himself most fortunate.

Brad Haddin would want to make some runs pretty soon as well, but he has enough credits in the bank. However, if the selectors are looking to renew, Haddin's age will work against him. Tim Paine gained many fans with his efforts in Haddin's absence in England during the ODIs.

Having Katich, Hussey and Watson all in the side together should ensure enough batsmen are protecting their wicket appropriately, and Ponting at four would act as a pressure release, and maybe prolong his career. The pressure would also be taken off Clarke coming in at six, where Ponting himself made a name for himself before finally ascending to three in 2001.

Considering the side you could pick out of those not playing at the moment (Rogers, Jaques, Klinger, White (c), Bailey, Henriques, S Smith, Paine, Geeves, McKay, Nannes), the current side, and particularly the batsmen, should be feeling some pressure to perform or find themselves back at state level. The time for tough decisions is coming.

The decade in Australian Cricket

2009-12-22T11:12:00.006+11:00

It's been an eventful decade for Australian Cricket.

I've selected an eleven, a "team" if you will, of the most memorable moments in Australian Cricket during the noughties.

1. McGrath's hat-trick

Also including a first ball dismissal of Brian Lara for his 300th Test wicket, McGrath snared Jimmy Adams with a softer-than-melted-ice-cream dismissal for his hat trick. This played part of an incredble 5-0 whitewash of the West Indies in the last full-length Frank Worrell Trophy series to be played in Australia.

The West Indies would the first two Tests by an innings despite Australia not scoring 400 in either match, and eventually the West Indies would manage only three innings scores of over 200.

2. Laxman and Dravid bat and bat and bat and bat...

Australia had won 16 Tests in a row when they went to Calcutta to extend their streak and finally win a series on Indian soil. After securing a massive 274 run lead on the first innings, Steve Waugh's confidence got the better of him and he enforced the follow-on before lunch on day 3.

VVS Laxman was joined by Rahul Dravid shortly before tea on Day 3, India still in arrears by 42 runs, and looking at the possibility of a humiliating defeat. They batted out day 3, all of day 4 and into day 5, putting on 376 for the fifth wicket, and leaving India in a position of dominance. India would win the Test Match, the Third Test and the series, and Steve Waugh would never play another Test Series in India again.

3. Steve Waugh's 100 - New Years, 2003

Steve Waugh was under incredible pressure to keep his spot in the Australian side when the Aussies and England travelled to the SCG for the last Ashes Test of the summer. He had been replaced as ODI captain eleven months before, seen his brother's international career ended before The Ashes, and had struggled through a summer topped off by a gruelling and laborious knock in Melbourne while suffering from severe pain in his mouth.

And so he came out and raced to a good score on the second day of the Fifth Test, and with time running out in the day, Waugh hit Richard Dawson to the extra cover boundary with the last ball of the day to record a career-saving hundred.

What everyone forgets is that Waugh was out in the first over the next morning, and Australia lost the match.

4. Symonds and Ponting bookend a remarkable World Cup

At the start of the 2003 World Cup, things were falling apart for the Aussies. A concerted media campaign to replace an out-of-form Andrew Symonds in the Cup squad with Steve Waugh had failed. Darren Lehmann had racially villified his Sri Lankan opponents in the Tri-Series in Australia, and had been suspended. Michael Bevan was recovering from an injury, and promising youngster Shane Watson had been ruled out with stress fractures in his back.

But the bombshell that would come with Shane Warne, playing in his last ODI tournament, being banned for taking a prohibited diuretic, right before the opening game of the tournament for the Aussies.

The Australians, playing a Pakistan team led by Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar, were in early trouble before the maligned Andrew Symonds played one of the greatest ODI innings ever, scoring 145 and setting the tone for a tournament where the Australians would remain unvanquished.

In the final against India, captain Ricky Ponting made his own nominee for the greatest ODI knock of all time with 140, as he hit India's attack all around Wanderers Stadium.

5. The Greatest Test of All Time

McGrath rolls his ankle before the match. Ponting wins the toss and bowls. England makes 407 in less than 80 overs. Australia collapse from 3/194 to 308 all out. Warne bowls Strauss with one of the best balls ever bowled. He takes 6/46 to restore Australia's chances. Australia need 282 for victory.

Australia collapse to 7/137. Warne joins Michael Clarke. They put on 38 before Harmison bowls Clarke. Lee comes out to bat to start day 4. There will be no day 5. Warne and Lee put on 45. Warne treads on his wicket, leaving Australia 62 runs short of victory with one wicket in hand. Kasprowicz joins Lee. They edge closer. Three runs short of victory, Flintoff bowls one short down the leg side. Kasprowicz gloves the ball. Jones dives to his left. He holds the catch. Flintoff consoles Lee. England win by 2 runs.

6. Gilchrist's 100 in Perth v England

To see this innings was to see Gilchrist, his powers beginning to deteriorate, at his punishing best. He lofted Monty Panasar into the stands at the WACA three times in the one over, each six longer and deeper into the crowd than the last. He falls agonisingly short to the quickest hundred in Test history when Matthew Hoggard decides to play spoiler and send one so wide Gilchrist could hardly reach it.

Gilchrist's 100 help decisively swing the Test Match to the Aussies, and when Warne clean bowls Monty Panasar two days later, The Ashes were back in Australia's grasp.

7. Warne's 700th Wicket

Just a few days later on one of those cold, wintry days you can only get in Melbourne in December, Shane Keith Warne, at his spiritual home, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, clean bowled Andrew Strauss to claim his 700th Test wicket, on Boxing Day no less. Warne was the first cricketer to take 700 Test wickets. He would play only one more test, as Warne, Glenn McGrath and Justin Langer all retired after the final Ashes Test.

8. Another World Cup Triumph

The 2007 World Cup was, on almost any measure, an unmitigated disaster. Despite a schedule designed to ensure the eight best teams in the world made the Super Eights, Pakistan and India were beaten by Ireland and Bangladesh respectively and knocked out of the tournament. Pakistan's coach Bob Woolmer died within 24 hours of the shock loss to the Irish. And, of course, the debacle of the final finishing in almost total darkness.

However, for the second straight World Cup, the Aussies didn't lose a game, extending their unbeaten run at World Cups to 28 matches. And Adam Gilchrist played one final incredible innings, hitting Sri Lanka to every corner of the park.

9. Ugliness in Sydney

The turning point of Australian dominance in World Cricket was almost the most unseemly event in the game this decade. Harbhajan Singh, long a tormenter of the Australian side, allegedly repeated an ethnic slur at Andrew Symonds, and this was heard by his good mate Matthew Hayden. Singh is reported, but the controversy boils over when coupled with numerous dubious umpiring decisions, overall hostility between the two teams, and a knife-edge Australian victory which doubles as the 16th victory in a record-equalling streak.

Suddenly, the Australian Cricket Team are villians, and cricket becomes the latest frontline in the culture wars, as it is suggested that our cricketers are reflections of nearly all that is bad about our racist, petulant society.

India, not satisfied that some is being chided for petulance, threaten to end the series and go home if Singh does not have his suspension for his racial abuse overturned. Eventually, a mealy-mouthed alternative is devised that sees Singh fined for regular, garden-variety abuse.

From this point on, the Australian Cricket Team is never the same. They are quiet on the field, and over the next 20 months, lose Test Series to India, South Africa and England.

10. Sharma/Ponting

Despite the furore in Sydney, the most enthralling, must-watch session of cricket for the decade occurs in Perth in the Third Test, when Ishant Sharma, the 19 year old Indian quick, battles with Ricky Ponting for one incredible hour of Test Cricket at its absolute best.

That Ponting survived for that long is a testament to the champion that he is, but eventually Sharma claimed Ponting caught behind, and India go on to win in Perth for the first time ever.

11. Another Ashes Failure in England

The decade ended on a poor note for Australia, as they lose an Ashes Series they absolutely dominate statistically.

Pundits blame the selectors for not playing Nathan Hauritz at the Oval as the pitch turns square, but Hauritz is hardly Ashley Mallett. The most overlooked facet of the series is that Australia were one session lost to rain in Cardiff away from a squared series and retaining The Ashes. The Australian also show a propensity for spectacular batting collapses that will plague them into the new Australian summer.

Just let them play Cricket

2009-12-09T13:08:00.005+11:00

It seems that I have to come in to bat for the Australian Cricket Team. Again.

Today, Jonathan Green, over at the new ABC blog site "The Drum", opines that a losing Australian Cricket Team would be good for cricket. You can read it here.

Now, "The Drum" is a new addition to the ABC website, and features contributions from writers such as the often entertaining Annabel Crabb, Barry Cassidy, and of course Green, who also is the big wig running the site.

Before Green was running "The Drum" he was Editor in Chief of Crikey.com, and oversaw the transformation of the site and it's associated members-only newsletter from small, plucky, gossip-filled insurgency to overblown, overimportant and supercilious soft-left tome. So coming from Green, this article is hardly surprising.

Green's basic premise is that the Australian Cricket Team are bad losers, petulant in their behaviour and far from humble in defeat.

Now, he probably wrote this after seeing Doug Bollinger throwing the rattle from the pusher after the abomination of a decision he received after Asaud Rauf gave Brendan Nash not out, Nash not offering a shot. With Australia out of replay challenges, Nash was safe.

Bollinger's reaction was not one usually associated with grown men, but it was in isolation. A way of telling this is it is the only specific incident Green refers to. The rest is broad generalities about behaviour, including a description of Ponting's behaviour that defies all reason.

Green writes that he wants to like the Australian Cricket Team, but only a cursory perusal of his article would indicate that this is lip service of a fairly high order.

Unfortunately this is indicative of a recent trend that has seen the Australian Cricket Team become a key issue of debate in Australia's Culture Wars. They are either just a team of highly paid sportspeople trying to justify their large salaries, or a boorish and boganistic (!) reflection on all that is wrong with Australian society at large.

I wrote about this when this sort of guff began to appear in the mass media: when Australia controversially beat India at the SCG in the New Year's Test in 2008. (My thoughts are here.)

I also wrote about the effect this had on the behaviour of the Australian Cricket Team here. The Australian Cricket Team's talk and swagger on the field was nothing compared to the intimidation opponents felt when coming up against the teams led by Steve Waugh. This had had a manifestly detrimental affect on the team's results, and since that 2008 SCG Test Match, Australia having lost series to India, South Africa and England, while beating the West Indies, South Africa and New Zealand.

The truth is the Australian Cricket Team do not behave like spoilt little brats, and never have. Under Waugh, the Australian Cricket Team was focussed on winning Test Matches, and anyone who didn't like the behaviour of the team, as long as that behaviour wasn't contrary to the rules of the game, could sod off. Waugh's loyalty was to the team, and to success.

Even Bollinger's dummy-spit in Adelaide could be attributed to a man whose spot in the side is uncertain, and whose team was badly needing wickets against a much weaker rival. It doesn't make it right or any less embarrassing, but it's no reason to start barracking for Pakistan.

If the Left are tired of the cricketer's behaviour, or more likely, are never going to be satisfied with their behaviour no matter what they do, then they should find a new sport, ideally one where no member of the Coalition of the Willing (e.g. USA, UK, Australia) are world beaters. Fencing would be a good example.

Australians play Test Matches to win Test Matches. It is that pure and simple, and we should just let them do it rather that submit to a national therapy session.

The truth is ... Abbott is polarising

2009-12-03T10:25:00.003+11:00

Ever since Tony Abbott was elected leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, I've found myself feeling a need to defend him increasing.

Why is this feeling occurring? If I was a Federal Liberal Parliamentarian, there is every chance I wouldn't have voted for him, and certainly wouldn't have voted for him if there was a more palatable moderate alternative to Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey.

Yesterday I joined the "Tony Abbott for PM" Facebook group. This immediately drew derision. My explanation that the choice was between Rudd and Abbott, so I choose Abbott, appeared to be fairly satisfactory.

However, it is clear that a solid constituency of people in the Australian electorate firmly believe that if elected Prime Minister, Tony Abbott will begin to work to create TraditionalCatholicistan. That he will immediately go to work to restrict the rights of women to such things as abortion, IVF, no-fault divorce, contraception, and other items that are synonymous with women's rights.

It is also clear that, no matter how many times Tony Abbott says he will not do what is described above, that these people don't believe him. They will not take him at his word.

Whether you think this is because of Abbott's alleged dishonesty, or his flip-floppery, or if it is just a stronger-than-usual manifestation of the electorate's distrust of their elected officials, doesn't really matter. I get the feeling Abbott could promise free condoms for everyone and he wouldn't be believed.

Abbott doesn't do himself any favours with women with little slip-ups like calling Julie Bishop a "loyal girl" or promising to avoid flirting with the Deputy Prime Minister. However, he also gets in trouble for some of his more substantive, sincerely held views on important issues.

He is on the record as stating that "100,000 abortions a year in Australia ... is a tragedy". Well, isn't it? He knows, as well as I (and we have both stated it publicly) that the solution isn't a ban on abortions. The solution lays elsewhere, but this statistic is tragic.

If you believe in the sanctity of life, and part of that belief is that life begins at conception, then chances are you are going to believe IVF technology as less than perfect. I'm certainly not a fan of the extreme wastage of embryos that is central to successful IVF treatment. But that doesn't mean either Abbott, or I if I was King for a day, would legislate to prohibit it. And Abbott has said as much, just yesterday.

The only affect the attacks on Abbott will have on someone like me, is that we'll feel compelled to defend him (his sincerely held religious beliefs also make me feel this compulsion), and we'll end up moving to the right in order to do that.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, many people who had received the raw end of globalisation and free trade heard a (completely bonkers) fish-and-chip proprietor from Queensland, and felt that she made some sense in some areas. She was immediately attacked and given attention she clearly didn't deserve. Only one political leader of any stature believed that the best way to deal with someone like Pauline Hanson was to ignore her, just as you would an annoying child in Art Class at Primary School. Hanson flamed out pretty quickly, out of Federal Parliament after just two-and-a-half years partly due to her insanity, but mainly due to her nutty policies, like a 2% flat tax.

I know a lot of women are afraid of what Tony Abbott may do. Remember that chances are he is not going to win the next election, or ever become Prime Minister. Maybe the best thing you can do is ignore him.

Liberals ... and younger people

2009-12-02T14:34:00.006+11:00

I've been reading. As you may know, I read widely. The links down the right hand side of the page are from sources as wide as left-wing unreformed socialists to conservative, gay, HIV-positive, ex-pat Brits living in Washington to right-wing ideologues, to the Sports Guy.

Over at Crikey, the website that started out as a small-l liberal insurgency and now operates as a social democratic hate fest, Possum Pollytics was having his own two-bobs worth. You can read his poll focussed prattlings here.

Today, Possum has suggested that Abbott's move away from the now blocked Emissions Trading Scheme means that "he risks alienating a group -- the under 40s", that will prove vital to any future election result.

Hey, Possum, here's some news for you: they were already alienated.

For many young people today, the Liberal Party is thought of as an organisation full of old, nasty people wanting to take away your rights and enslave you for the rest of eternity, at the same time as pillaging the planet and ripping money away from the arts. Large, evil, old men in suits.

How on Earth did young people get this idea?

Firstly, the Liberals have made some blunders. WorkChoices was a bridge too far for many people, especially the ACTU who sold the family china to ensure it was consigned to history. Many hold the Liberal Party personally responsible for ending the TV life of "The Glasshouse".

Apart from that, you won't hear too much praise for the Liberal Party from the group of people to whom our younger generation look to for their entertainment. While in the USA a man like Arnold Schwarzenneger can become Republican Governor of California, it is inconceivable that an Australian actor could become a leader of a political party whose identity lay right of centre.

That's not to mention our musos. I wouldn't even be surprised if Delta Goodrem voted Labor.

However, the largest issue, I believe, is our government-operated education system. I can remember my school days back at Elwood Primary School and Elwood College, and my memories are mostly fond. I can remember great sparring sessions with fellow classmates about all manner of things. One particularly keen memory is debating a GST in a Year 7 Ceramics class. I was twelve.

I was certainly on my own in that environment, a young advocate of right-of-centre ideas in a left-of-centre world. If anything, I am more left now than I was then, which is contrary to the accepted wisdom of how people's political beliefs move during the course of their lives.

One of the main reasons I was on my own was the pervading disgust and disapproval that the teaching staff felt towards the Kennett Government of the time. This had started even before Kennett was elected, when my Year 6 teacher put on her car a "Kennett: Nightmare on Spring St" bumper sticker. It would later be joined by a hilarious "Was that the truth, or did you read it in the Herald-Sun" bumper sticker. These political statements were clear for all the pre-pubescent kids to see on her car parked right outside the school's main entrance.

Teachers, and my extension their professional organisations, would like to see more teachers. For unions, this means more members, so the nexus between the two is easy to identify. For other teachers, it means smaller class sizes and less pressure.

Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily mean better education, and that is why successive Liberal governments have been reluctant to simply "hire more teachers". I have long been an advocate for significantly fewer but significantly better paid teachers. The generation running the world right now grew up being educated in classrooms with 30-40 kids in the room. Such a move would also recognise that teachers are not parents, and responsibility for parenting must lay with parents.

But I digress. The truth is it is almost impossible for a child to emerge from the government-operated education system without a large dose of loathing for the Liberal Party.

So, instead of changing what Liberals believe in to satisfy the whims of the young, not yet forged at the trials and tribulations of extensive experience in adult life, maybe we should look at why government-operated schools have become, among other things, assembly lines for 18 year old Labor voters. Time to level the playing field.

A clear, unmitigated mess

2009-12-01T11:44:00.003+11:00

I am not about to wax lyrical about whether it should have been Malcolm or Tony or Joe. It's Tony - for now.

However, the circumstances could hardly have been worse.

Firstly, the number of votes cast for the spill was different to the number of votes cast in the first leadership ballot, and both of these were again different to the number of votes cast for the second leadership ballot between Turnbull and Abbott. An informal vote of "NO" was, in the end, the deciding non-vote that confirmed the leadership for Abbott by a 1966 Grand Final like margin of 42 votes to 41.

Fran Bailey, the Member for McEwen (not unfamiliar with close finishes herself), was absent from Canberra today as she recovers in a Victorian hospital from a ear infection. She was unable to fly, and therefore did not attend. All the sources I have read are certain she would have been a vote for Turnbull. Bailey apparently asked to cast a vote via a proxy, but this is currently not permissible under Parliamentary Liberal Party Standing Orders.

Furthermore, there will be two by-elections this weekend for seats currently held by the Liberal Party. It has been suggested that the Liberal candidates would have represented two more votes for Malcolm. Add those three, and Malcolm Turnbull would win the balloting 44-43, after assuming the "NO" vote went to Tony Abbott.

I can already see some of the noise in cyberspace from people I know in the party indicating that at least in our little inner-city hamlet of Melbourne Ports, Abbott's elevation to the Liberal Party leadership will not play all that well.

However, because of the circumstances detailed above, he may not get that long to make his mark. Could the Liberal Party possibly go through four leadership changes in the space of one Parliamentary term? What a mess.

A few points to clear up...

2009-11-30T13:28:00.004+11:00

Firstly, despite no comments on my blog, there was a pretty strong reaction to my open letter to Andrew Bolt on Facebook, where I automatically upload my blog entries as notes. As a result of this, I feel I need to clear some things up.

I have, and remain, emphatically on the left of the party I am a member of. Overall, I consider my political views moderate, and reject any suggestion I am an ideologue. My political heroes still remain Robert Kennedy and Jeff Kennett.
I have never considered myself a supporter of the Republican Party in the United States, and cringe whenever I hear anyone refer to the Republican Party as the "sister party" of the Liberal Party, even if it is more true than it used to be.
I consider myself a social liberal, demonstrated by my belief in state-sanctioned same-sex civil unions, the abolition of the reading of the Lord's Prayer at Australian parliaments, and my well-documented difficulty with dealing on legislation that governs abortions.
I still remain a Catholic, although a much-poorer one since my parish changed priests, and my grandmother died. Having said that, the thing that disappoints me most about my church is it's practical obsession with being more of a non-profit organisation than a church. All of this has nothing to do with my political attitude, and nor it should be, as a strong supporter of the demarcation between church and state.
Finally, in many ways I am the same person I was when I was 17, but in other ways, I am very, very different.

On a few meat and potato issues:

I think the CPRS as negotiated by McFarlane and Wong on behalf of Turnbull and Rudd is a dog of a piece of legislation.
Any legislation passed before knowing what the rest of the world will commit to (or won't commit to) in Copenhagen is foolish.
If Malcolm and a few of his moderate mates in the Liberal Party split off and formed their own party, my joining it would be predicated on limited, and I mean very limited, amounts of focus spent on the issue of an Australian Republic. This is not an important issue, and should not be given time and money which could be spent on other issues that can actually affect people's lives.
All of this is only relevant to the size of the next election result, and not the result itself. Rudd is going to win, and it was always thus.

Finally, I'd like to say that I firmly believe in the old adage, "Decisions are made by those who show up". That is why I entered into political debates with sons of future members of parliament when I was twelve, and attended conventions in my teens, and joined a political party when I was barely old enough to vote.

I live in the best country in the world, and I care deeply about it's future, and that is why I'm not going anywhere. Decisions are made by those who show up.

An open letter to Andrew Bolt

2009-11-27T11:47:00.004+11:00

Dear Andrew,

In your capacity as self-appointed leader of the socially conservative silent majority in this country, I thought I should right this to you at this time, when the political party I have been a member of since I was 18 is threatening to split quicker than a pair of aces at a $50 blackjack table at Crown.

Look, I know where you are coming from. It is hard to support a man feels the strong urge to call a press conference to publicly defend Bill Henson. It is a problem you also have with Ted Baillieu.

Malcolm Turnbull's problems are legion. He's convinced of his own mental superiority, has major issues suffering fools, and desperately wants to drag his party back to the middle after 25 years of influence from the self-confessed "most conservative leader in the history of the Liberal Party".

However, we've never really had a successful government in this country not governing from slightly to the left or slightly to the right of centre, and the electorate know this. They also know (unlike nearly the entire Parliamentary Liberal Party) that no matter what happens, Kevin Rudd is going to win the next Federal Election.

That is why the Liberal Party must not lurch to the right in such a fashion as they would with Tony Abbott as leader, a man I have much personal affection for, but a man who would be electorally unpalatable for many women and socially liberal men. They would send their votes away from Abbott because of values, and we would suddenly be entering a American-style political landscape, where policy development gives way to emotive moral issues best left out of the sphere of political discourse.

Look at the history of right-wing Liberal leaders. The ALP New South Wales government can owe their incredible re-election in 2007 not to Morris Iemma's "kavorka"-like charisma, but to the fact that he was running against an Opposition Leader who made Genghis Khan look like Mahatma Gandhi. By any objective measure the Iemma Government deserved to lose that election, but they didn't.

Lawrence Springborg has lost twice in Queensland Elections, mainly because as a populist, reactionary creation of the Queensland National Party, he is completely unacceptable to people living in Brisbane.

A close friend of yours, Robert Doyle, represented the right-wing of his party when he lead the Liberal Party to their worst election result ever in Victorian in 2002, a state which was once "the jewel in the Liberal Crown". From there, things got even worse before he finally saw the writing on the wall.

So, in conclusion, while I respect your sincerely held beliefs and will continue to read your blog as long as Uncle Rupert considers you worthy of a salary, I ask you very respectfully to calm down on the future of the Liberal Party. Despite differences, those like Abbott and Minchin, and those like Turnbull and Hockey, have more in common than not. We need a functioning opposition in this country, and you're not helping.

We also need to have a functioning and broadly representative right-of-centre political party in Australia. That position at right-of-centre shouldn't be too right.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Lewis

West Indies Series Preview

2009-11-25T11:51:00.004+11:00

Australia will win 3-0.

It's that simple.

The real issue as we start this summer which promises little but will probably over-deliver is the ridiculous schedule that has been adopted ever since Australian Cricket authorities gave the one-day Tri-Series the flick.

The West Indies will play Test Matches in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth between tomorrow and December 20. They will then go home.

The Pakistanis will come for three more Tests, renewing their love affair with Bellerive in mid-January after Boxing Day in Melbourne and New Years in Sydney. They then play ODIs in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and two (?) in Perth, before a Twenty20 in Melbourne. This will all occur before the first week of February ends, or traditionally when the International summer used to finish during the time of the Tri-Series.

Then back come the West Indies for ODIs in Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne (again), before two Twenty20s in Hobart and Sydney. Remember than Australia have never lost an international Twenty20 match on home soil.

The International summer will finish on February 23.

First of all, the Test Matches should start the weekend after the Melbourne Cup, or at the latest the weekend after that. This year we are starting three weekends after the Melbourne Cup.

That would give the program an opportunity to play three Test Matches (say for 2009, Nov 12-16, Nov 20-24 and Dec 3-7) before a series of ODIs and Twenty20s before Christmas (Dec 11, 13, 16, 18 & 20 with a Twenty20 on Dec 22).

Then the Boxing Day and New Years Tests would proceed as usual, followed by a Third Test at the same time it is in 09/10 (January 14-18). The ODI/Twenty20 fixture would also be the same for this second series, meaning the International summer would finish in the first week of February, meaning that interest and crowds (especially in a place like Melbourne, where AFL interest really kicks in mid-February) wouldn't peter off. Have you ever been to a ODI in Melbourne in February or March (like in 07/08)? It's like a chore just to attend.

Moving Tests earlier in November would also ensure that cricket fills a sporting void after the Spring Carnival that is currently being filled by speculation about Luke Ball. Anything would be better than that.

Touring teams would also come and go, rather than come and go and come again and go again.

Anyway, here's hoping the Aussies bat tomorrow, Punter makes a 100, and all this stuff is soon forgotten.

The trouble with cricket

2009-11-23T14:23:00.002+11:00

Apparently, cricket is in trouble. Shane Warne is in today's stable of News Limited newspapers articulating, if you can call it that, his panacea for all things ill in today's game.

For my part, I must state first and foremost that I love Test Cricket, enjoy One-Day cricket and pay to attend ODIs, and tolerate Twenty20 matches, while vowing never to pay money to attend one in person.

Recently it has been asserted Test Cricket is more popular than ever in places like Australia, England and India. James Sutherland, CEO of Cricket Australia, said as much on Offsiders on Sunday morning.

That isn't entirely true. In Australia, Test Cricket is popular in Melbourne and Sydney. Attendances are really good in Adelaide, but many of the attendees are tourists from other states. Attendances are poor in Brisbane and Perth, but the GABBA Test survives because of tradition and inability for states that lay to the south to host a Test Match in mid-November, and the WACA Test survives because the last session of each day screens into the Eastern States in primetime.

In India, while Test Cricket may be at an all-time high of popularity, that doesn't mean it is popular. A recent poll indicated that 9% of Indians consider Test Cricket to be their favourite form of the game.

It is clear that Australian cricketers still consider Test Cricket to be far and away the pinnacle for any cricketer. However, the lack of enthusiasm for this form of the game in other countries, and the lack of quality cricketers, means that Australia may have to endure more summers like the one about to occur, when Australia will host the pathetic West Indies and the nomadic Pakistan.

The money being offered for Twenty20 cricket in India will provide another problem for administrators. If the ICC would create a two month period for this form of cricket each year, then that would be advantageous to other forms of the game.

Also, no more One-Day series of more than five games, unless the World Cup is up for grabs. And it is difficult to see a reason for retaining the Champions Trophy, despite the fact Australia have won the last two.

Cricket also needs to think about innovative solutions, and stop being so married to traditions of the past. Ninety overs in six hours of cricket per day in 2009 is almost impossible, as captains, rightfully, spend significant periods of time on field placings and bowling changes. Give teams an extra half hour at the start and the end of the day.

It is nowhere near too late for Test Cricket, and the game overall is growing. But a few small changes could make plenty of difference.

Malcolm - It's Over

2009-11-20T08:53:00.003+11:00

Next week in the Senate chamber of Federal Parliament, push will finally come to shove over the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme. And without too much study, I can tell you, it's going to be a bad week for Malcolm Turnbull.

In fact, in my estimation, I think it will be the week where Malcolm Turnbull's political career effectively ends. He will be dead meat come this time next week. And it's all his fault.

Firstly, he messed with the wrong hombre. Nick Minchin is what some of us "The Godfather" fans might call "a war time consiglieri". He plays politics for real, and he doesn't mince words or pull punches. He hopefully participates in cliche a little less than me, too.

Minchin knows he has Turnbull by the proverbials. He's essentially put an ultimatum to Turnbull by stating that he'll vote with the party room rather than with Shadow Cabinet.

That cannot be how Shadow Cabinets work. They must be united, and being united is a demonstration that one is ready for Shadow Cabinet. They do the great bulk of the policy and political work, and must present as one mind as much as is possible.

If the party room decides against supporting an amended Emissions Trading Scheme Bill, then Minchin really must leave Shadow Cabinet. He won't. This will leave Malcolm Turnbull little choice but to remove Minchin from Shadow Cabinet. Only problem is Minchin is definitely the sort of person you want inside the tent pissing out, rather than the other way around.

If Minchin is retained inside Shadow Cabinet, then Turnbull is hopelessly weak and not fit to lead. If he sacks Minchin, then Minchin will make the remaining period of Turnbull's leadership of the Opposition unbearable, as Minchin will enjoy being completely off the leash. And there won't be much Turnbull will be able to do about it as Minchin is much better at internal Liberal Party politics than Turnbull could ever hope to be.

This is all because Turnbull either hopelessly read the mood of the party (parties if you include the National Party, who will support ETS legislation under almost no circumstances), or was too arrogant and headstrong to even bother reading the mood of the party.

I think the Liberal Party falls into four groupings on this issue. The first group is those like Turnbull, who believe climate change is real, is caused by humans, and we need to do something about it, but not anything ridiculous. The second group is those who have the same feelings about climate change, but believe to do anything before we know what the rest of the world, including developing countries like China and India, is going to commit to doing would be sheer bloody-minded lunacy.

The third group is those members who are undecided about whether climate change is happening, or whether it is human activity that is causing it. The fourth group is the Wilson Tuckey group, who believe climate change is a left-wing con.

Simply, there are not enough of the first group for Turnbull to get his way. There may be enough of them in Shadow Cabinet, but not across the entire party room, especially when you include the Nationals.

Considering Turnbull staked his leadership on this one issue, then any significant division in the Senate next week will render his leadership terminal. With as many as fifteen Liberal Senators seriously wavering at the prospect of voting for the amended ETS legislation, which now more closely resembles the fish from "The Old Man and the Sea", significant division seems unavoidable.

That means one thing. Sorry Malcolm, but it's over. Time to revive that promising merchant banking career.

A rambling post on television

2009-11-16T10:20:00.003+11:00

A warning: this blog entry is going to seem a little like a self-indulgent whinge.

Correction: this blog entry is going to seem a little more like a self-indulgent whinge than my usual slightly self-indulgent entries.

Anyway, last week Rosso, or Merrick and Rosso "fame", announced he was quitting his breakfast radio show in Nova in Sydney. He currently hosts the show with his comedic partner, and former Home and Away actress Kate Ritchie.

The news coverage about this was something akin to the moon landing.

This morning the lead article on both the Herald-Sun and The Age websites was about Rove McManus ending his self-titled Channel Ten show.

For me, Merrick and Rosso are just some comedians who have had some success. They had a TV show on Channel Nine called Merrick and Rosso: Unplanned (I used to call it Merrick and Rosso: Unwatched), and I liked Merrick's work on The Hollowmen (I, rather surprisingly, didn't like the show overall).

While Rove won three Gold Logies, this is not the big deal it was in the 1980s. For God's sake, Kate Ritchie won Gold Logies in consecutive years, the second just last year! Rove's three wins just go to show the dearth of real personalities we have on Australian television, considering the award is for the most popular personality. Actors have won 10 of the last 13 Gold Logies.

Rove's flagship Channel Ten show was never "Can't Miss" TV the way IMT or the Don Lane Show was, anyway. You could argue that the last Australian "Can't Miss" TV show that wasn't acted or news-related was The Comedy Company.

Australian television has been veering towards low-cost entertainment that use unknowns as the stars for sometime. It's just embarrassing that if in 2002, instead of giving it to Georgie Parker, they had given the Gold Logie to the person who probably was the most popular personality on TV in the preceding 12 months: Sara-Marie Fedele from Big Brother.

Next week, Australian Idol will conclude, and Channel Ten has promised at least another year. It will probably be it's last.

I know shows like Today and Sunrise have to fill their 3 hours somehow, but a little bit of proportion please. The end of Merrick and Watts on radio is not Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis breaking up, and Rove leaving his tired show isn't exactly big news.

Maybe I'm just too concerned about television for someone who is getting married in 20 days. My fiance would agree with me. For once.

Another World Cup Win Coming Up

2009-11-10T09:36:00.003+11:00

It is amazing how quickly things can change. Not three months ago we were bemoaning the lack of planning and character as the Australian Cricket Team meekly wilted against a barrage of swing at The Oval, unhappiest of all locations in England for Aussie cricketers. By the time the next Ashes take place in England, in 2013, chances are highly likely Australia will take a squad that includes no one who has tasted victory in a series in England. The good thing about that was that the last time this happened was 1989.

Fast forward those three months, and the Australians are victorious once more. What is more impressive is that is has been accomplished with an eleven of similar quality sitting back in Australia either injured, or with papers marked "Never to play for Australia again" (and I'm talking about you, Brad Hodge).

The side that destroyed India on Sunday was Marsh, Watson, Ponting, White, Hussey, Voges, Manou, Johnson, Hauritz, Bollinger and Clint McKay. Graham Manou is Australia's third string keeper, so comparitively inept with the bat he bats at number eight. Paine and Haddin often open the batting when playing for Australia.

Cameron White has left no one pining for Michael Clarke's return, and Adam Voges has more than covered for the promising Callum Ferguson.

The side that's not playing at the moment? Haddin, Paine, Clarke, Ferguson, Hodge, D Hussey, Hopes, Holland, Siddle, Lee & Bracken. A match between those two teams would be a coin flip. And I couldn't find a spot in either side for David Warner , Ben Hilfenhaus or Moises Henriques.

This is why, if Australia can maintain their form in the one day version of the game, they should be looking forward to a fourth consecutive World Cup win in 2011.

Australia should start selecting one-day squads now for 2011. Despite his reasonable current form, Michael Hussey should probably be left to resurrect his test form (and dropped to number five in that form of the game). Brett Lee should be filed in the same area of the cabinet draw as Brad Hodge. He's old and brittle.

The selectors should also consider Brad Haddin's long term future in one-day cricket. It's not like he's a long time fixture in the team, anyway. Keep him fresh for the test matches too, and groom Tim Paine now.

A fifteen man squad for the next 18 months could ideally look like this: Ponting, Marsh, Watson, Clarke, White, Ferguson, Hopes, Johnson, Hauritz, Bracken, Siddle, Paine, Bollinger, Voges & Henriques. Plenty of quality outside of that fifteen, including players we may have not heard much about yet.

The Australians probably won't get much of a challenge this summer from the West Indies, and Pakistan are notoriously unpredictable. Let's hope the Aussies can get the challenge they need to keep at top form, and over the twelve months after that before the next World Cup. Things are looking good.

Another decade of Monarchy

2009-11-06T09:48:00.003+11:00

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the defeat of the proposed amendment to the Constitution of Australia to create the Republic of Australia. It would have abolished all references to any monarch from the Constitution of Australia.

This referendum, along with a proposal to insert a preamble into the Constitution of Australia, were defeated reasonably comfortably, with neither proposal achieving a majority of votes in any state of Australia. Currently, referenda are only carried with an overall majority of votes cast across Australia, and a majority of votes cast in a majority of states. As such, only eight out of forty-four proposals have been carried, most recently in 1977.

At such a time, it is expected that some will try to revive "The Republic" as an issue for discussion. It is also expected considering that the current Prime Minister is much more receptive to the idea of an Australian Republic that his predecessor. Unfortunately for Republicans, the Prime Minister has plenty on his plate at the moment, and this issue is on the back burner as a low priority.

Which is where it should be. While many Australians would prefer the idea of being an "independent" nation, as opposed to still connected to the United Kingdom in such a way, the truth is that this is essentially the case already.

Australia is an independent nation. The Australia Act 1985 completed moves that had begun as early as the 1920s to ensure that Australia was independent from Great Britain in every way except the most cosmetic. After 1985, Australian Prime Ministers were no longer appointed to the British Privy Council (you can tell a Privy Councillor by the title "Right Honourable"), and Australians could not pursue legal recourse through the Privy Council after exhausting their options at the Australian High Court.

Another thing Republicans often mention is that the Queen of the United Kingdom is Australia's Head of State. The only problem with this is that she isn't. This is caused by two things: firstly, only the Queen of Australia is mentioned in our constitution. Secondly, unlike in other Commonwealth countries that are not republics (like Canada and New Zealand), the Governor-General of Australia does not receive his or her power from the British Crown. He or she receives his or her power from the Constitution of Australia.

Therefore the Governor-General of Australia is our head of state. In fact, when Queen Elizabeth II first came to Australia, the Menzies Government actually had to enact legislation to enable Her Majesty to preside over an Executive Council meeting. Otherwise, Her Majesty would not have had the legal power under the Constitution of Australia to do anything other than wave and cut ribbons.

In 1975, the Speaker of the Australian House of Representatives wrote a letter pleading with Her Majesty to act and overrule the actions of Sir John Kerr, then Governor-General of Australia. She wrote back saying that she simply did not have the ability under the Constitution of Australia to do so.

Ten years ago I voted against the Republic, feeling that a system that was not broke needed no fixing. I feel more strongly that our system now is as strong as ever, and should be celebrated and not amended.

Any move to revive the Republic debate would be a waste of time, and any referendum would be a colossal waste of taxpayer's money, as any move to a Republic would be little more than a costly and potentially dangerous move to make Australians feel better by a small amount. It would probably not make many people feel discernibly less ashamed about being Australians, because we would still make a huge amount of noise about mateship and football and boat people. These people will always find something to be ashamed about when it comes to the nation of their birth.

So, on this tenth anniversary of the spending of millions of dollars of taxpayer's money for not much, let us commit to not do it again unless some real problems with our constitution develop that would be remedied by the cumbersome and expensive process that is a referendum.

Beyond Debate

2009-11-04T13:37:00.002+11:00

The Federal Government is hiring. The newly created Department of Climate Change needs to employ an organisation full of public servants in order to administer a number of policies and accompanying legislation that relate to Climate Change.

The only problem is if you are not completely sure that Climate Change is happening, or if you believe that it is possible that Climate Change is happening but humans aren't necessarily causing it, then the Department of Climate Change doesn't want to know you. Thanks for the effort, but keep looking.

I knew this would happen. This is why I didn't apply. All those jobs, and I was pretty sure I couldn't get any of them.

Not that I am a Climate Change non-believer. I'm just not convinced.

For people like me, it is a difficult time. We keep reading stuff like this. We keep getting told the debate is over.

Only a brief, cursory perusal of the public record related to Climate Change would inform one that the debate is far from over. In fact, there are plenty of people out there saying that Climate Change is not happening, or that it is happening, but it is not entirely caused by humans.

This is very confusing. A bunch of scientists release a report, accompanied by some complicated figures and formulas, and some rather stark looking but still pretty graphs, arguing one conclusion. Another bunch of scientists release a report, accompanied by some complicated figures and formulas, and some rather stark looking but still pretty graphs, saying the exact opposite.

What I object to is this idea that the debate is over, and anyone who doesn't agree is a denier. Let's overlook the repugnant use of this word, and it's obvious tacit comparison to denying the Holocaust (which actually happened, rather than being projected to happen), and just deal with the attempt at the conclusion of debate.

For many people, the scientific data and arguments that accompany the Climate Change issue are difficult to understand. Add to that the fact that we are talking about a problem that may already be happening, or is going to happen. It is also possible that the problem is almost certainly irreversible if it has already begun happening.

This gives the believers a better argument for circumventing debate. There's only one problem.

Debate is good. We find out more about an issue when all the arguments and contentions are laid out to bare in the public arena. It is part of the reason we have newspapers, the blogosphere, radio and TV news, and it is also part of the reason we have elections.

One side, armed with the contention that it may or may not already be too late to act, now want to silence debate with a simple statement: the debate is over. Well, it is not over. The debate about Earth being spherical is over.

So let's be reasonable and continue to encourage debate. Help uninformed and undecided people absorb the facts and arguments from both sides until we have a population so well-informed that the best decisions can be made. Organisations and government departments should embrace people with different views (or no views at all). It is the best way and the democratic way. It is also the most representative way.

Time for a BHAG

2009-10-29T10:30:00.003+11:00

A constant criticism from the Victorian Government has been that the current Opposition does not have any policies. It's the thing you say before the policies have been released, no matter what time it is in the electoral cycle, and then when they do release the policies, you criticise the policies themselves, even if the Government eventually adopts those policies (see desalinisation plant).

Well, I have a suggestion for the current Victorian Opposition, and it's a BHAG: Big Huge Audacious Goal.

This morning, if you're from the Northern suburbs, and you weren't driving, you may have had some delays getting to work. That's because some silly old bugger got caught on the train tracks at a level crossing at Cramer St, Preston, and his car (which he had just timely vacated) got hit by a train originating from Epping. You can find the story here.

This sort of thing happens much too often in Melbourne, and it usually has a massive effect on the train network on the day in which it happens. This is not to mention the occasional loss of life, serious injury and property damage (and associated costs) such an incident carries with it.

The ability of trains and car traffic to co-exist in the same piece of land at various times is one that will always be fraught with some element of danger, no matter how many educational and advertising programs governments run.

Apart from that, as many of you can attest, being caught trying to cross level crossings at places like North Rd at Ormond, or anywhere on the Glen Waverley line in Hawthorn, Camberwell and Glen Iris (Glenferrie Rd, Toorak Rd, Tooronga Rd, Burke Rd and High St) can be incredibly time consuming and frustrating. The Glen Waverley line problem effects all traffic for kilometres in every direction, as it also comes with nearby off-ramps to the Monash Freeway.

So this is what the opposition should announce (not too soon, so not to look like a knee-jerk reaction to this incident, and also to validate my earlier post on Reactor Governments): the commencement of a program for complete grade separation of trains tracks and public roads in metropolitan Melbourne.

Firstly, despite being incredibly expensive and time-consuming, this would save lives. It would be an irrefutable public good with regards to safety.

Secondly, it would help solve massive, long term, systemic traffic issues we are now experiencing in Melbourne to extents we never have before. It would also enable the train network to work more efficiently, thus adding to the attractiveness of travel on public transport and therefore lessening traffic volume.

Thirdly, it proves the credentials of the Liberal and National Parties as long-term thinkers with a clear and executable policy plan for Victoria, being committed to large and badly needed infrastructure projects. This plan would also be responsible for the long-term employment of thousands of people.

We are thirteen months out from a vital state election. We've had a government for a decade which has repeatedly fail to deliver on major projects as promised, and as budgeted. Time for the Opposition to put its money where its mouth is, and offer a clear difference between themselves and the tired Brumby Government, and start working towards the long-term solution for a problem that plagues Melbourne and its citizens every day.

Lowering Expectations

2009-10-23T11:55:00.003+11:00

Forgive me, I have a bee in my bonnet at the moment, which may or may not be related to red-meat deprivation.

You may have read recently that we are getting a new ticketing system for our trains, trams and buses. It's called Myki, and has cost the Victorian Government a lot more than it initially thought it would, and taken a lot longer to implement than it thought it would.

This week, a story in the paper of record in this state, the Herald-Sun, contained warnings from a contractor engaged by the Victorian Government that the Myki system may have a few glitches when it is finally launched later this year, and commuters should check their bank accounts to see if they are being unintentionally overcharged.

This story makes me think of a different example.

Next month, the Reserve Bank of Australia will likely raise interest rates. The economy didn't fall into recession, and now we're well on the way to getting back to the sort of economic performance we were enjoying before the Global Financial Crisis.

Markets don't like uncertainty, and once something is likely, then it's effects will be taken into account, even if those effects haven't happened yet.

This is why the Australian Stockmarket has almost certainly already "factored in" a 0.25% increase in official interest rates as of Melbourne Cup Day, when the Reserve Bank Board meets and announces their decision.

Now, this is what the Victorian Government is doing by announcing that there will likely be glitches with Myki.

They want you to mentally "factor in" the fact that this turkey of a system will not work as it should, not work as easily as the current system, and will take money out of your bank account for trips you haven't taken. They are playing the expectation game, and if expectations are really low, like Richmond's chances of winning a premiership in the next decade low, then all they can do is exceed those expectations.

The Victorian Government has had many, many years and spent literally billions of dollars on purchasing and developing a ticketing system for Melbourne's public transport network that should be world's best practice. Instead they have a system that will not come anywhere to working as it should.

Cast out of your minds the fact that the system, as it is proposed, will create cues at tram stops across lanes of traffic and make travelling up a road like Sydney Rd or Glen Huntly Rd at peak hour completely impossible. These things should have been considered and planned for. Instead we are left with a government playing the low expectations game, which they will probably win.

No wonder people don't expect much from governments any more.

Reactor Governments

2009-10-22T13:38:00.003+11:00

You may have noticed a trend happening at the moment with our governments at various levels.

Things happen - government does something about it

I guess you could say this has been happening for ever with regards to governments. It's not necessarily a bad thing either, and governments aren't psychics, able to predict the future by looking inside a crystal ball.

However, the truth is, they don't need to.

Two recent examples in our fair state of Victoria give us an insight into how governments all over the country now prefer to govern. Both centre around human tragedies.

In January, a father took his four year old daughter and threw her off the West Gate Bridge. She died as a result of her injuries. He now waits to be tried for murder.

The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, acted swiftly after this incredible act to make the West Gate Bridge safer, and since about February, a rather unattractive high-wire fence has been attached to the outside of the bridge to prevent anything that is on the bridge ending up in the Yarra River or surrounding land below.

As a policy response, superficially it cannot be criticised. There have been no more throwing of children off the West Gate Bridge to their deaths since the bridge was erected. There were also no similar examples before this one, as the West Gate Bridge sat there, high-wire-fence-less for nearly 40 years.

What did happen on the West Gate Bridge, with unerring regularity, was people jumping from the bridge to take their own lives. This is a story which is ongoing, is generally not reported, and the press, by their own standards, prefer not to report. Media guidelines are quite strict regarding the reporting of suicides, for obvious reasons.

However, the horrific death of one four-year-old girl spurred the government into action.

In February, Victoria suffered a natural disaster the scale of which had not been felt often in this state, when the Black Saturday bushfires ripped through many areas of the state. The bushfires were responsible for the deaths of 173 people.

Subsequently, the Victorian Government created a Royal Commission into the bushfires, and has pledged to adopt all of the recommendations of the commission's interim report.

This is welcome, but somewhat hollow when you realise that many of the recommendations of the Black Saturday Royal Commission were already recommended to the Victorian Government as a result of inquiries and reviews conducted after other bushfire incidents that have occured over the course of the current Victorian Government.

Again, it took the deaths of nearly 200 people for the government to be spurred into action.

Governments are vast organisations full of well-paid, well-qualified people working towards the improved welfare of the community at large. They should be well aware of issues facing the community, and generally, they are.

Governments need to be proactive, and address problems before they become chronic or acute. On these two occasions, while the eventual actions by government will save lives, an earlier action to an identified and accepted problem would had saved more lives.

As leaders of governments feel the need to comment on the petty minutae of society more and more to get on the evening news, let's hope they don't become so driven by media mentions that real problems that may not engender great sorrow or interest are not ignored until they are "sexy" enough to get a mention before the first ad on the nightly news.

Definition of Irony

2009-10-16T15:17:00.007+11:00

A little Friday fun.

This dude doesn't like gay people. He's tattooed a section from Leviticus, Leviticus 18:22 to be exact.

The problem is if he had read (at all is probably closer to the truth, but I digress) a little further.

Leviticus 19:28 reads:

"Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD."

I like the Jules Winnfield finish. Have a good weekend.

The right to laugh

2009-10-14T10:26:00.004+11:00

The last two weeks have been a low watermark in this country for the cause of whimsy. A giant step backwards in the aims of flippancy.

This morning, during my (week)daily dose of the Today show on Channel Nine, I saw an interview with newly svelte Aussie comedian Madga Szubanski. The subject of the interview was Szubanski's participation in "Ride to Work" day.

Now, Magda made a bit of a ruckus a few weeks ago when she aired her grievances with bike riders on Good News Week. She flew into a mock-rage, and suggested than running the cyclists over may be an acceptable solution.

Now, which car driver hasn't thought that? I know that driving on Beach Rd on weekends is made much more difficult by numerous cyclists riding five abreast almost across the entire width of the road.

It's a momentary thought that is almost never seriously entertained. What's more, Szubanski was on a comedy program where the news of the previous week, most of it deadly serious, is treated in a whimsical manner.

She didn't really suggest these people should be dead. Two years ago I got into a mid-level email war with a few people on Crikey.com.au when I suggested that the term "oxygen thief" should not be used for humourous purposes (it was used by Guy Rundle, renowned lefty, to describe John Howard and Phillip Ruddock). It was suggested that I didn't have a sense of humour. (Yeah, me not having a sense of humour. Can you believe it?) In short, I amended my way of thinking, and moved on.

Last week, some people inpersonated the Jackson Five on Hey Hey It's Saturday. It was part of a segment where the lack of talent of the contestants is one of the main aspects of the segment. Other than there donning of shoe polish (or whitewash, depending on the Jackson being impersonated), it was an ordinary, but straight, homage to the group. It was also some blokes from Sydney playing silly buggers.

Harry Connick Jr was right to air his concerns. He almost certainly genuinely holds those concerns, and has to think about his own popularity in his country of origin. And as I have said previously, I think the act should never have gone to air.

But there was no malice in what took place. As I read someone suggest on a comments section of a blog, if the Jackson Five has been orange, the protagonists would have come out with orange faces. When an entire debate occurs, and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News can sound the most sensible (he stated this was not representative of Australians, and was, in essence, just a poor decision by a producer).

Then on the weekend, we had midgets on punters at the Cranbourne Cup. This is really strike three as far as having fun is concerned. It was suggested the event was tacky and possibly offensive.

Let's forget for a while that the "vertically challenged" people involved are recognisable performers (one of them is a regular on The Footy Show). The stunt was also vetted by the jockeys, the real target of the gag, and they were fine with it.

The fact is this: all comedy is offensive. Fifty years ago, I sure there was a mother-in-law shaking her head as some funny guy made fun of his mother-in-law, or some doctor who felt belittled by some prankster making light of his unintelligible hand writing.

This is why I have such respect for Matt Stone and Trey Parker: they make fun of everyone. They don't believe in sacred cows. Some of their stuff may make you cringe, but some of the other stuff is incredibly funny. The fact that the late Isaac Hayes was offended by an episode about Scientology indicates that he probably didn't understand completely the objective of the show. Send everything up. Also, it's about time other religions (and in Scientology's case, I use the term as loosely as one can) got made fun of, not just us Catholics with our Transubstantiation and fiddly priests.

Unfortunately, there is a darker side to this move to complain about genuine, although in varying degrees of success, attempts to entertain and make people laugh.

The Rudd Government has just received a report from a consultation as to whether Australia should have a written and enforceable Charter of Rights.

Such a Charter of Rights could possibly intrude on people's ability to be funny; that is, to make fun of something, because the target of the fun could be offended. The target could consider the ridicule racist, or sexist, or bigoted.

In Australia, we have a great tradition of not taking things too seriously. This is at the centre of the Australian character and ethos. Despite the events of the last three weeks, let's not eliminate this essential part of our nature in the pursuit of political correctness, which leads to middling debate and incredible banality. Sometimes, you just have to let it go as someone playing silly buggers.

Whom I don't want to see on TV: Turnbull

2009-10-09T09:31:00.005+11:00

I have one little wish when it comes to the political sphere at the moment.

I don't want to see Malcolm Turnbull on the television. I don't want to hear him on the radio, or see his picture in the newspaper.

If I was Mr Turnbull's Chief of Staff right now (if Turnbull listens to that person), I would tell him to go on holiday. Leave your mobile at home, tell no one where you are going. A media blackout.

The main problem with the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party at the moment is that they have become the story. A story about the Libs seems to run every night, and usually before a story about what the government is doing. And the government should be the story: they are the ones who actually get to do things.

This comes from a deeply held belief in the Liberal Party that they are the Government-in-exile. The Liberal Party is built for government but terribly inept at Opposition. Most Liberals believe that they are the natural party of government all the time.

The first thing any Liberal leader should have said after the federal election loss in 2007 was that there was no chance of winning the next election, so don't act like it. Just get our heads down and get to the work of generational renewal and policy renewal. But, Liberals cannot help themselves, so they swing at every pitch, make comment on every government issue, and now when they desperately need to avoid publicity, they cannot get themselves off the news or the front page of newspapers all around Australia.

I can understand that Turnbull is between a rock and a hard place with regards to the Rudd Government's plans for an Emission Trading Scheme. Turnbull desperately wants to avoid a double dissolution election fought on any issue, let alone climate change, which he genuinely believes is happening. But his party room remains unconvinced that climate change exists, or that humankind is responsible for it.

The reality is that Australia would be stupid to do anything before the rest of the first world. Without Europe and the United States, Australia would really be out there with their proverbials hanging in the wind. However, Turnbull is trying to deal with political reality.

The best thing to do from a political point of view would be to let Rudd's ETS go through unamended. Then whatever resulted from a flawed or premature ETS would be completely the responsibility of the Rudd Government. Sometimes, you just need to give 'em enough rope. It is what essentially destroyed the Howard Government (WorkChoices), and it is what could kill the Rudd Government.

There will be a Federal Election within the next 14 months. The Australian Labor Party will win it. Time to start thinking past that inevitability.

In defence of Hey Hey

2009-10-08T10:32:00.005+11:00

First of all, let's get it out of the way. The black face skit on Red Faces last night was terrible, and should never have gotten to air. Someone should be sacked for allowing it on television, because people were going to be offended, and rightly so, and this entire controversy could have been avoided. I'm in no way defending that skit.

But I am defending the return of the show.

Look, I don't really want to sound like a culture warrior when talking about the return of a little TV show like Hey Hey It's Saturday. But the line dividing those who attack the very fact that the show returned in the first place, or that somewhere between 2 and 3 million Australians would watch it on a Wednesday night in 2009, and those somewhere between 2 and 3 million Australians who did watch it last week (and watched it last night) resembles the lines that divide the culture warriors.

On one hand you have what best can be described as "the arts/entertainment elite commentariat" (if that can best describe anything or anyone). Reading The Age over the last two weeks, you wouldn't have read one good thing about Hey Hey's return. Critcisms ranged from laziness and mere nostalgia on Channel Nine's part to indulging in jingoism and old-fashioned, backwards values that should have disappeared long ago.

Marieke Hardy, The Age's commentator and niece of Australian comedy legend Mary Hardy, has written twice in the last fortnight about how appalling Hey Hey is. She describes Hey Hey as "mindlessly bad", and suggests "We're better than this, I'm sure we are."

It's this kind of holier-than-thou attitude which makes people who watched and enjoyed Hey Hey over the last two weeks, and when it was on TV regularly over ten years ago, furious.

And at the risk of rivalling Hardy in being holier-than-thou, we're right. We're right because we take TV, and especially commercial TV, for what it is: unpretentious entertainment, and nothing more.

Commercial TV is not a tool for social change, and it's a fairly safe bet it never will be. It is by its nature uneducational, but not everything needs to be. If you want something more highbrow, watch or do something else. It's a free country.

Criticising Hey Hey because you personally don't find it funny is fine. However, many other people do. Criticising those people (and Hardy does it, and Catherine Deveny does it all the time) for finding Hey Hey amusing is like criticising a person for liking cheeseburgers purely on issues relating to the taste of a cheeseburger.

When it comes to food, or music, or movies, people just like what they like. Hardy says she is fine with nostalgia, and is "going to see Fleetwood Mac in December. But Daryl and the gang have never produced something creatively on par with Rumours and the sooner everyone realises that the better."

Marieke, that's your opinion. But it is not a matter of logic. It is not something that can be argued to a agreed position. We live in a pluralist society. Not everyone is sophisticated, or erudite. Live with it.

It's just entertainment. Masterchef isn't exactly "Hot Docs" on SBS either.

It's also not a reflection on greater problems with our society. Molehills shouldn't be made into mountains, and long bows shouldn't be drawn.

The saddest thing is that I, and people like me, have to read this stuff and get angry, because for many people my age and a little older, Hey Hey reminds them of a simpler time when they were children and the mere sound of a fart sent one into hysterics. I guess Marieke would have been yelling at these kids to "GROW UP!"

Personally, I find myself in tears when the show began, precisely because it was just as I remembered it, and I found myself sitting on the couch at what is now my house, but was the house where I watched and loved Hey Hey for 19 years with my departed grandparents. It reminded me of how much I missed the show, and how much I missed them. It's getting dusty in here just thinking about it.

And that is what nostalgia is really about. I don't need some too-smart media scribe telling me I should be more intelligent than that. It's not about smart, and it makes me feel sorry that they don't understand that.