Real Freedom News – A Symptom But Not The Illness
One of my favourite characters in literature is the Scarlet Pimpernel, the elusive hero of a series of novels about the French Revolution, a mischievous fellow who somehow is always half a step in front of the Jacobins in his efforts to rescue worthy people from Madame Guillotine, much to the annoyance of the zealots.
To that extent, I find the concerted attempts (as reported the Age yesterday) to unmask the authors of the anonymous Liberal Party insider blog ‘Real Freedom News’ highly amusing. Whoever is the author(s?) of this blog obviously is irritating a lot of Victorian Liberals, as well as amusing a whole lot more. They are, in their own blogosphere manner, a parochial Victorian right wing form of the Scarlet Pimpernel.
This blog is in itself quite fascinating. From early 2021 til last October, it aired to public view many insider issues around the Victorian Liberal Party, including machinations of the Admin Committee (the strange term for the State Executive), and the personalities and private lives of many of the parliamentarians, candidates, and prominent activists.
The existence of that blog even caused Liberal Party HQ to be subject to a workplace safety inspection, given some of the concerns which were raised within it.
As someone who sees himself very much as an outsider rather than an insider, I do not know the truth about anything that has been written in that blog, although I do find it highly plausible (just like Agent Mulder, I want to believe!). But what I do know is that the emergence of such a blog is not in itself the malaise, but merely a symptom.
In most political parties, there are far more sinners than saints, and I doubt that there would be any blameless people in any of the divides now facing the Liberal Party. Blogs like this have emerged before – prior to the 2010 State Election, a couple of employees at Liberal HQ were discovered to be the authors of an anonymous blog attacking the then Opposition Leader Ted Ballieau.
Telegenic but shallow on policy, Ballieau was not exactly a success when he become Premier, and his first action was to settle factional scores by blacklisting a large number of people from jobs in the offices of his ministers, a feat of micromanagement which crippled his government.
Now, there is a giant existentialist crisis facing the Liberals in Victoria. The volunteer arm of the Party barely exists outside of the federal seats of Higgins, Goldstein and Kooyong, seats which it lost last May.
In recent years, there has been a divide between the more socially progressively minded (forgive the use of two adverbs in a row) Liberals and those who are not only socially conservative, but religiously inspired. There were accusations not too long ago of Mormons and members of various protestant churches (I find it hard to tell the difference between pentecostalists and evangelists, so I don’t know how to describe those people) being stacked into the Victoria Liberals.
These issues continue to spill over into the public, whether it is news about branch stacking allegations involving conservatives, or about the views of prospective MPs who belong to very conservative churches.
I believe that these issues, given that they involve different views of the direction that the Liberals should go, are more serious than any since the old divide between the economic ‘Wets’ and ‘Dries’ of the 1980s. Everyone is an economic Dry now. I doubt that social policy divides, particularly as Liberal philosophy encourages individual liberty and tolerance, is something which can result in easy agreement when some people are committed to particular illiberal religious teachings.
But this is by-the-by.
Where blogs like Real Freedom News and its predecessors emerge, it is because the authors feel that they are not listened to internally, and that they hence need to air their grievances publicly.
The commentary in Real Freedom News has frequently spoken of dodgy machinations around parliamentary preselections, and selective action by party authorities on alleged branch stacking (ie only taking action against factional foes rather than allies).
When people make such accusations see the light of day outside of a (no longer smoke filled) room of faceless men (and women), it is because they are concerned, and feel that they are not being heard when they raise their legitimate concerns.
When insiders talk to me about their own concerns and frustrations in the management (or is it cat herding) of the Victorian Liberals, they do feel frustrated at matters where they feel injustices have occurred and have not been addressed, or have been wilfully overlooked.
It is therefore no surprise to me that Real Freedom News has found such a wide audience.
Real Freedom News still offline and obvious to see why….
I find Real Freedom News highly entertaining and am disappointed that it remains offline. But you can understand why.
If the identity of its author becomes known then I expect that their piggy bank will be rather pinched.
Treasury Wine Estates: Devourer of Brands
Red wine has been my poison of choice since my mid 20s. And I have considered myself fairly well informed about red wine since my early 30s.
And since my early 30s, I have also frequently been an investor in publicly listed Australian wine companies. That started with BRL Hardy (now the privately owned Accolade) in 2000, followed shortly afterwards by Southcorp and Fosters Group (whose combined wine interests now form Treasury Wine Estate).
I chuckle now at the idea that 1000 shares in Southcorp at about $5 per share comprised a large part of my then share portfolio. Right now, I have 1000 shares at about $14 in Treasury Wine Estates, and 25000 shares at about $0.60 in the much smaller Australian Vintage Group.
I don’t own those shares anymore because I think they are a good investment – I own them because I believe in Australian ownership of important companies which produce things which matter to me, and because I feel better about my high expenditure in and consumption of wine through being an investor.
But I am not really interested in talking today about whether there is a point in continuing to invest in the remnant of what, 20 years ago, was a very promising sector of the Australian sharemarket.
What I want to talk about is the disappearance of quite a few once ubiquitous wine brands, which I just realised this past week.
Treasury Wines appears, from its website, to be devoting itself to only 18 or so wine brands. Several others which it owns appear to have suddenly and unceremoniously disappeared. This is a bit of a panegyric for three of them.
Let’s start with Ingoldby’s. Foster’s Group’s wine arm, Mildara Blass, took them over around 1995 or so. I remember a friend (whose brother worked in a pub) giving me a tip to buy some of the bottles if I found them as they were a bargain at the price after the takeover. Ingoldby’s has always been a respected but low key brand. It no longer appears to exist, although Google diverts you to the Treasury website.
Then we have Jamison’s Run. Who can remember drinking red wine in the mid 1990s without encountering it at lunchtime? It was a quaffable $15 or so (when $15 did mean more than it does now) dry red, made of either Cabernet or a Cabernet based blend, with a distinctive purple hued painting on the label. Jamison’s Run was pretty popular in its day, and then became a brand featuring a lot of other blends and varietals from which you might choose. Gone.
And there’s Rosemount Estate. I will save the narrative about its reverse takeover of Southcorp (which valued it at over a billion dollars) and the disaster which followed for another time. What I remember is the wine. I occasionally drank their premium flagship, the Balmoral Syrah, but I usually stuck (I was only 30 then after all and not as well off as I am now) to their cheap and cheerful diamond label series- particularly their Shiraz Cabernet blend.
I remember as a sign of their upcoming demise when they launched a diamond label Sangiovese. There were posters all over bus shelters featuring a raven haired beauty with very pale skin raising a glass to her luscious red lips. It really made you want to go out there and buy a bottle of the varietal. But you could not find it anywhere.
Right now, that does not matter. Rosemount Estate does not seem to exist as a separate wine brand anymore, whereas in the year 2000 it was the second most best selling wine brand in Australia.
And that does make me rather sad – I remember many happy evenings in a Chinese restaurant in Canberra in the winter of 1999 with the Rosemount Shiraz Cab blend, just as I remember sipping the classic original Jamison Run version over lunch circa 1995.
Along with my youth, these wines too appear to have gone. Treasury Wine Estate has abandoned them.
But I will remember them, with fondness and nostalgia. Possibly more than they deserved.
It seems I’m not the only one at ‘Peak Library’
This article does remind me that my 2000 volume library is unlikely to be reread, and that adding to it doesn’t really give me pleasure anymore.
In Case Disney Are Really Listening….
The other day, a colleague who is really into all the Star Wars derivative shows on Disney+ asked me if I was up to date with The Bad Batch and had finished watching Andor yet.
I told him that I was not even up to date on the rebooted How I Met Your Father (a rip off of the hugely successful How I Met Your Mother) which Disney is currently flogging.
Then I said to him that perhaps there could be a Star Wars version of How I Met Your Father.
It would be an animated series (like Clone Wars or Bad Batch) with the force ghost of Padme retelling the prequel trilogy to Luke and Leia.
My colleague replied: Ssssh. Disney is listening and they might do it.
If they do, Bob Iger, then remember me for show runner!
Embracing late middle age
In totally unrelated news to my recent post about Jane Caro’s latest Karenseque tirade, I have ordered some t- shirts more suitable for a man in his soon to be mid 50s.
Our Favourite Karen is at it again
it’s great to see that age does not weary my favourite Karen, Jane Caro, who accuses a baker who called her husband “young man” of ageism.
Kangaroos actually do sometimes hop down the street….
My front verandah is one of my favourite parts of my home. Provided it is not too warm, it is a great place to sit in the evening and enjoy the end of the day.
I was sitting on it last Saturday night with one of my friends, sipping some wine (red of course – I am now over the Covid impacts on my taste), when a kangaroo hopped past my house.
It was fast, and the picket fence obscured the view, but it was definitely a kangaroo.
A few minutes later when a couple of neighbours walked by and I asked them if they had seen it, they laughed and asked if I had seen it before I had opened the wine bottle.
Not long after, the joke was on them, as other people texted them with videos of the kangaroo as it advanced further into Avondale Heights.
As one of my neighbours observed, there is a mob of 6 or 8 grey kangaroos down on the valley floor near the river, not very far from my home.
And whilst I have not seen a kangaroo hop down my actual street before, I have seen them near the river three times (counting the time over a year ago when one hit my bus near the bridge).
I find it gratifying to know that there is still a lot of native fauna not far away, even though there has been a fair bit of development close to the river in recent years.
Lost For Words! 