Australia Day

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Daniel James

A couple of Australian beauties wrapped in the Union Jack

At this time of year in this big brown land of ours a national debate about Australia Day is rekindled. You know the thing- is it the right day celebrate the birth of our nation or are their other dates that better represents the essence of what it is to be Australian? Well let’s have a look at Australia Day and some of the alternatives.

Australia Day

On this day 223 years ago a bunch of scurvy ridden, flea bitten and over sexed convicts under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip laid anchor at Sydney Cove and hoisted the British flag, declaring British sovereignty of the east coast of New Holland. Thus we have the birth of “Australia”.

While this may have been good news for the first settlers, having arrived in paradise and all soon after their King George III had recently got his arse handed to him in the American War of Independence, it wasn’t such great news for the mob that had been inhabiting “New Holland” for the previous 60,000 years.

Thus for the past 80 years or so Australia Day has usually been marred in controversy as the Aboriginal community and an increasingly larger slice of the broader community recognise 26 January as Survival Day or Invasion day.

Should we recognise 26 January as Australia Day? Hmmm..nah, surely there’s a better day, one that’s less divisive.

Federation

On the 1st of January 1901, it was proclaimed, some some 123 years after the founding of New Holland, that the six self governing British colonies that covered the continental land mass of Australia would unify to form The Commonwealth of Australia. Even though the  Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (UK) was passed in the House of Commons and given Royal Assent some six months earlier. With these proclamations the Colonies became states and all within them became citizens of Australia…well almost everyone.

There was only one slight problem with the Australian Constitution drafted 0ver several painstaking years by Australia’s constitutional fathers, it was racist! It is quitely uttered in defence of the Constitution that it was merely a document of its time and that any racist undertones, ie the exclusion of Aborigines as having the right to be Australian citizens, was born out of the ignorance of the period. Nah it was racist plain and simple and just to make sure you couldn’t mess with their master work, the nation’s father made very sure that it would be very difficult to change and it wasn’t until 1967 that Aboriginal people were recognised  as Australian citizens.

So should we celebrate Federation as Australia Day? Nah, plus January the 1st is already a public holiday, what would be the point of that?

Commemoration of the 1967 Referendum

The sixties were a decade of cultural revolution. Across much of the world a liberation in sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll was defining a generation of Baby Boomers. Here in Australia, while we recognised Aztecs thanks to Billy Thorpe, it wasn’t until 1967 that Australia discovered that were a  race of people known as Aborigine’s that had been here for some time and refused to go away.

On 27 May 1967 with a vote in favour of 90.77% Australians decided it was time to recognise Aboriginal people as their fellow Australians. This was indeed a momentous occasion and came after generations of campaigning from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal warriors alike.

The victory was a clear sign that Australia had matured as a nation and was looking to move beyond the White Australia policies of…hang on.  One of the first acts passed in the new Australian Parliament of 1901 was the Immigration Restriction Act. In short the act formed the basis of a conglomeration of policies that became know as the White Australia policy that as the name suggests forbid the immigration or greatly restricted the immigration of  ‘non-white’ immigrants to Australia.

The policies were strengthened up until the second world war and then gradually relaxed there after. However it wasn’t until the legislation of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 that made the use of racial criteria for any official purpose illegal. So in 1967 while Australians decided to recognise the first Australians, government policy was still pretty iffy about letting non-whites into the country.

Should the commemoration of the 1967 Referendum be recognised as Australia Day? Nah, there’s still more work to be done on the Constitution and plus it’s too close to the Queen’s Birthday!

Hmmm what other days can we contemplate?  Anzac Day?

Anzac Day

Nah it’s Anzac Day! The day many brave young Australian and New Zealand men and even more British men gave their lives to make Turkey British. Maybe that’s a bit flippant, it was the first time that servicemen from around the country had served as Australian Armed Forces in a theatre of battle and it is said to have gone along way to defining the nation’s character or at least our character as perceived by foreigners.

Should Anzac Day be Australia Day? Nope, it’s an important day unto itself. Leave it be.

Bloody hell I’m running out of suggestions and smart arse wise cracks. When was Don Bradman born? When’s Shane Warne’s birthday? Nah neither of those would work, NSW wouldn’t be happy with Warne’s birthday signifying Australia Day, he’s Victorian for Pete’s sake!

Here’s an idea. Maybe, just maybe, if we amend the preamble to the Constitution to recognise the First Australian’s and in the same referendum pose the republican question again and both receive a majority of votes in a majority of states then that would be an historic day and one worth celebrating or even marking as Australia Day.

However could we do  it on the proviso that the referendum is held in the second half of the year? After the Queen’s Birthday, public holidays are pretty scarce in this big brown land of ours. Let’s say September/October? The weather’s on the improve and it’s around the time of the footy finals and a number of cultural festivals. Just a thought.

DJ


 


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The Paperless Promise

Posted on January 23, 2011 by Daniel James


I’ve been watching quite a few films from the 70’s and 80’s recently and I always find it amusing to reflect on how far technololgy has come since the days of typewriter pools, tea ladies and photo stat rollers. These days we have the world at our fingertips, an increasing number of us have smart phones in our pockets that are basically little computers that can tap into the ether at anytime of the day and night and provide us with the answer to our question or at least point us in the right direction.

Email has made it so much easier to communicate with a multitude of stakeholders thus allowing for a virtual paper trail, the written word with the speed of a telephone. It’s a great way for small or large businesses to participate or monitor progress on a project. You can inform many people of the same thing featuring pictures and reports in a much easier and quicker way than via a face-to-face meeting. You can make hundreds of people aware of business meetings or anything else with the click of the mouse. Those poor fools back in 70’s wouldn’t have dreamed of such technology.

Yet, something else also occurred to me. While the technology of the office environment has progressed in leaps and bounds, the office itself looks pretty much the same now as it did then. The workers or junior staff are usually out on the office floor in open desks or compartmentalised in carrels while the senior staff and decision makers have their own offices with framed photos of love ones and some patronising and irrelevant quote from a hero fixed on a wall, usually accompanied by a hideous piece of art created by their 5 year old child or grandchild. Accompanying all office workers are reams and reams of paper. Many of you may be reading this in such an environment.

It was back in the 70’s that our collegial forebears thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great if we could do away with all this needless and stifling paper and go paperless, I mean think of the rain forests of the world and future generations”.

A very noble sentiment and yet fourty years later and despite a totally transformed technological world, the office space remains relatively untouched, the office environment is an unhealthy place to spend 8 or more hours a day, five days a week for 40 odd years. New office buildings today have pretty much the same layout and lack of thought to the mental and physical health of their workers as they did 30 years ago, well to be fair, the lifts are probably more reliable these days.

So what happened to the paperless promise? Furthermore what happened to the notion of the home office? Many businesses have made greater progress on the flexible working front than has been made on going paperless, given the strain on the modern city paticularly on public transport. Even so a medium size city like Melbourne still has 771,000 people that travel into its CBD every working day taking a toll on the system and the people.

So in the world of email, instant messaging, skype, video conferencing twitter etc etc why do we continue to subject ourselves to this daily grind? Why the need to have everyone up and out on the roads and rails at the same time every day risking nasty paper cuts. Probably because the professionals in authority now were the junior staffers in the 70’s and 80’s and don’t know or want to know any better.


 

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A Jibe Too Far?

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Daniel James


The Golden Globes are seen as the leading indicator for a film maker’s chances at the industry’s night of nights  The Oscars! This all sounds very prestigious and compelling and is treated as such by the industry itself and increasingly an obsequious media. However, I am sure that there are many punters out there who think the whole awards season is a self serving, naval gazing load of tripe .

It would appear that one person firmly in the later camp is Ricky Gervais…the host of the 2011 Golden Globes Awards Ceremony. Less than 24 hours after the ceremony has been done and dusted Gervais has left a trail of devastation behind him. It would appear that Hollywood lumanaries haven’t seen anything like his performance before.

Many of Hollywood’s heavy hitters have sworn to never work with Gervais again. According to the BBC, Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein joked that Gervais would “not make it out of town” that night.

“There are seven people that we’ve hired to kill him and deservedly so. Knowing that Ricky Gervais will never work again means a lot to me, I’m going to make sure of it,” he told journalists backstage.

Many on Twitter were speculating that Gervais had been fired mid show while others expressed genuine concern for his safety because of some of his jibes relating to Scientology.  Robert Downey Jnr, Tom Hanks and Tim Allen made critical asides during their presenting duties and after suggesting he had to help HFPA president Philip Berk “off the toilet and pop his teeth back in”, Berk fired back at Gervais: “The next time you want someone to qualify your movies, go to another guy.”

Others in the audience such as Robert Deniro, Alec Baldwyn and Hallie Berry were seen laughing uproariously at some of Gevais’ venomous jokes. After the awards ceremony Christian Bale and others declared Gervais a genius.

So what does all this tell us about Hollywood?

Well the first thing to note is that television ratings for the awards are at an all time high after  several years of declining interest. A peruse  of the blogosphere does seem to indicate an overwhelming support for Gervais. It would seem that he was merely reflecting what many at home actually think about Hollywood and all the self congratulating and back slapping that happens during the awards season.

I for one think that Gervais is a breath of fresh air in what is a stale and unhealthy environment where the rich and famous are idolised to sickening levels. I think that many on the other side of the Atlantic and in places like Australia will see the funny side and I’m confident that many in the US already do or will do over time.

DJ


 

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Censure for Nothing

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Daniel James

In the past week a furore has erupted after the Canadian Broadcasts Standards Council declared  that any station wanting to play the 26 year old Dire Straits song Money for Nothing would have to edit it or disguise the word “faggot”. Naturally I deplore the use of the term, however here we see another example of political correctness trying to rewrite history through the censoring of  terminology in works of literature and music.

Unlike other forms of writing, there seems to be a natural assumption that songs written in the first person have to be from the artist’s perspective. Money for Nothing, for those who care to listen, is written in the first person but from the perspective of a bone headed departmental store mover and shifter.

Mark Knopfler said in a 1985 interview:

“The lead character in “Money for Nothing” is a guy who works in the hardware department of a television/custom kitchen/refrigerator/microwave appliance store. He’s singing the song. I wrote the song when I was actually in the store. I borrowed a bit of paper and started to write the song down in the store. I wanted to use a lot of the language that the real guy actually used when I heard him, because it was more real….”

The controversy sparked 26 years after its release is an ill informed reaction to a song that was relaying the words of the street. This controversy comes on the heels of the proposed  sanitising  by Alan Gribben of the Mark Twain classic Huckleberry Finn in which the  word “nigger” is used. Despite the main theme of the novel rallying against racism and for the promotion the freedom, it is now assumed that we here in the 21st century are unable to handle the realties and messages of a piece of writing from the 19th century. On this basis surely we must go back and re-edit almost every western made prior to 1993 and every gritty cop thriller from the last 40 years.

Let’s just let art be art. If Canadian radio find Money for Nothing offensive they don’t have to play it. If you think Huckleberry Finn is offensive, don’t read it.


 

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