I was having a few beers the other day with a friend who is on speaking terms with various people associated with the remnant of B.A. ‘Bob’ Santamaria’s ‘Movement’ (although I am not sure that the NCC and the DLP are as unified as paranoiacs in the Labor Party would believe). He said that there is a minor push to canonise Bob Santamaria underway.

I have considerable ambiguity about Bob Santamaria. On the one hand, he played what I consider an invaluable role in eliminating the influence of the Communist Party from public and industrial life in Australia even before the advent of the Cold War [Anti-Communism is very much a good thing in my view, and watching his TV commentary ‘Point Of View’ on Sunday mornings as a child has helped shape my views on the subject]. On the other, his Machiavellian ruthlessness in pursuing the Communists with their own methods and his high degree of social conservatism [which makes me seem very progressive in comparison] were not so laudable.

I will leave aside his economic views, which are best described as unrealistically romantic, based on a medieval Utopianism where everyone would live on farms under the guidance of Mother Church, and where there is no room for Capitalism, as it is worldly and unspiritual.

But on the whole, I do still have a strong degree of sympathy for Bob Santamaria. Regardless of that, Sainthood for him would be a bad move for the Catholic Church, on the grounds of Divisiveness, Saintliness (or lack thereof), and Absurdity.

Taking Divisiveness first. The 1955 split in the Labor Party, precipitated by the politically inept but jurisprudentially brilliant H.V. Evatt, then Opposition Leader, was not one where Evatt himself was solely to blame.

It occurred sometime after the communists had been effectively purged from the union movement, with their influence within the ALP mostly eradicated. However, the various groups either led or predominately influenced by Santamaria (the Industrial Groups, the ‘Movement’, and Catholic Action) had continued their activities.

Mark Aarons, in his recent book ‘The Show’, has argued, with quite some evidence, that Santamaria’s Movement was aiming, with the communists purged, to transform the Labor Party into a party with predominantly Christian (ie Roman Catholic) values. Evatt, in that context, may well have had some justification for his preemptive strike.

The consequences of that decision led to the creation of what we now know as the DLP, which served as the principal thorn in the side of the ALP both federally and in Victoria and Queensland, well into the 1970s.

Federally, thanks to The Spilt, the ALP did not win government again until 1972, and in the states, it caused the fall of the Queensland and Victorian governments, with the ALP not winning government again in Victoria til 1982 and in Queensland til 1989.

There is still, given the romanticism of the myths woven around the ALP, a great degree of ill-feeling towards their antagonists in that Split, with Santamaria enjoying the role of principal villain.

Given that, even though we are a lot more secular now than we were in the 1950s, a lot of Catholics traditionally have tended to support the ALP, any canonisation of Santamaria (except in the Simpsonesque manner with an actual cannon) would not bode well for the Church.

There is also a lack of Saintliness around Santamaria. As Mark Aarons indicated in his recent book, not only was there was a degree of ruthlessness in the way that Santamaria ran his machine, but a degree of dissimulation (not to say mendaciousness) in his words.

In Shia Islam there is a concept called ‘Taqiya’, which involves a precautionary denial of one’s religious beliefs and practices in order to avoid persecution. This concept does of course lend itself to abuse, such as being used to gain advantage in less dangerous circumstances. Moral relativism, which most of us practise, whether we like it or not, does lend itself to rationalising our conduct. You could argue that in getting his followers to adopt a lot of the methods of the Communists, such as ballot fraud in union elections and covert tactics, Santamaria was practising a distorted form of Taqiya.

And then of course there is the Absurdity around the idea of Santamaria becoming a saint. After all, he was a mad keen Carlton supporter and can you imagine Carlton Football Club producing a saint?

Then, what would he become Patron Saint of, aside from Carlton Football Club? Branch Stacking?

And whilst he went by ‘Bob’ publicly, the B.A. stood for Bartholomew Augustine. In an era defined by The Simpsons, can you really imagine there being a canonisation of a Saint Bart?

There were protests in Melbourne this week, principally motivated by opposition to the technocratic pandemic bill proposed by the Andrews government, a proposed law with significant overreach, no sunset clause, no effective oversight by the Parliament (indeed, it represents an abdication of the Parliament’s duties), and limited (if any) right of review to the courts.

From what little I have gathered about it, there was a bit of a carnival atmosphere about the protests (we do miss our Moomba). Clown World have placed some considerable and interesting material on their page (aside from alluding to my recent mention of Julien Benda’s writings in this blog):

https://www.clownworldau.com/story/nov-20-protests-2021/

More seriously, there has been quite a lot of faux outrage and hypocrisy by apologists for the Andrews Government, particularly around bandying accusations of fascism around at people who are protesting against technocratic government policies.

Let me start by saying that I consider the use of accusations of ‘fascism’ in political argument as signs of either ignorance or immaturity by those who wield such terms. I recently was in a conversation with a fairly articulate (and therefore presumably intelligent) union organiser who spoke of opposition to capitalism and fascism in the same sentence. That did not really help her credibility.

Most people who are protesting are exercising their right of freedom of expression against some quite objectionable laws and repressive measures by a technocratic government. There is nothing illegitimate about protesting such appalling laws.

Yet they are being accused of being loonies or fascists, and herein lies a significant degree of hypocrisy on the part of the active ‘left’.

Take for example the use of placards featuring pictures of Daniel Andrews with a Hitler moustache. This has been subject to very loud howls of indignation.

Whilst parallels between the technocrat Daniel Andrews and the genocidal Hitler are excessive, and of course, extremely childish (ad hominem attacks of this nature are always a poor substitute for a rational argument), the degree of outrage against these placards is extremely hypocritical, given the eagerness of leftists to use such imagery and accusations against those they disagree with.

Take for example Melbourne during the 1990s, when Jeff Kennett was premier. His most unpopular policies involved necessary tax hikes and drastic cuts in government spending – necessary because of significant mismanagement by his predecessors.

Not only did this result in protests against his newly elected government within six weeks of his election (suggesting a contempt by those who organised such protests for the democratic process), but in the use of images of Kennett as Hitler. There was a novelty store in either Lygon Street or Brunswick Street which proudly featured in the front window plastic busts of Kennett with a Hitler moustache. Where was the outrage against that? I presume the people indignant at the portrayal of Premier Andrews in that guise would not have been offended by Kennett’s similar portrayal.

I believe that the right to protest is one which people are entitled to regardless of what they believe. During the past 18 months of repression of the right to protest, some people expressed the view to me that because the people protesting against the lockdowns or other measures were not the sort of people who protested against Australia Day, or in BLM marches, or climate change rallies, that somehow, their right to protest was less than (or inferior to, perhaps) those who protested for progressive causes. This is not so. A healthy democracy requires that all people who feel strongly about a cause should be able to peacefully protest in public without repression by the police.

I have been avidly reading the novels of Alexander McCall Smith for about twenty years, since I first discovered The Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and avidly devoured the first four novels (all that was in the series at that time).

McCall Smith is quite prolific, and has since then started two other major series, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, and the Scotland Street novels, as well as several others which he picks up or puts down as time goes on (I have not seen Cordoroy Mansions in a while, whilst Professor Inglefeld has made a comeback, and I really enjoy his new Detective Varg series).

Having come out of lockdown recently, I have blitzed through the most current McCall Smith novels available, the latest of the Ladies Detective books, the third Detective Varg, and the newest of the Scotland Street books.

One of the very appealing things about McCall Smith is that he does not really have dark or villainous people in his books. Detective Varg is busy heading the Department of Sensitive Crimes, solving very strange puzzles which usually involve transgressions rather than victims, and husband stealing Violet Sepotho in the Ladies Detective books is usually showing up on the sidelines trying to gain some sort of unearned advantage only to be eventually thwarted by Precious Ramotswe and her cohorts.

There is usually a very bright and optimistic perspective on human nature in his writings.

There is, I think, one exception. That is the character of Irene Pollock in the Scotland Street novels. She is the mother of the long suffering seven year old Bertie, and (thankfully now estranged) wife of Stuart Pollock.

Irene is a misandrist, with a bleak view of males in general (although with the obvious exception of her lover, the psychiatrist in Aberdeen whom she has now joined, having deserted her husband and sons in Edinburgh).

What makes her a villain is the emotional and psychological abuse to which she has put her son Bertie (Ulysses, the obvious love child of the psychiatrist lover) and husband Stuart during the course of the novels, given her rampant misandry. Stuart has been gaslighted constantly over the novels, whereas Bertie has been regarded not as a boy, but as a ‘project’, who is forced to attend psychoanalysis, yoga, and Italian classes, where all he really wants to do is join the scouts, own a pen knife, and play rugby. Instead, Bertie has his nascent masculinity suppressed by his misandrist (and now mostly absentee) mother.

It does get difficult to read the passages involving the odious Irene without getting angry, and hoping that something rather more bad happens to her than to any of the other characters who get their comeuppances in McCall Smith’s novels.

Whilst there are many people, like Irene (who left Stuart under the pretence of starting a PhD in Aberdeen where her lover had moved to) who are very educated but still not very intelligent, out there in the real world, one really hopes that she is just a straw woman, and that such dogmatic misandrists like her do not exist in real life.

Sadly, I am probably wrong. After all, I have a passing acquaintance with the utterances of Clementine Ford, who is quite real.

I can be quite the contrarian sometimes, particularly in relation to sports.

I have written a few times over the past couple of years about my decision to become a Cleveland Browns fan, specifically based on their lack of success, which reminds me of my beloved Footscray (aka Western Bulldogs), who, prior to the current golden era starting in 2016 under Luke Beveridge, had suffered from a particular lack of success.

Whilst they made the ‘play-offs’ last season (it takes a while for me to learn American jargon), this season they are sitting at 5-5, so I am not too optimistic about the Browns’ chances of doing better this year.

Obtaining fan gear to show my support for the Browns has been challenging as lack of local availability meant that I had to order a t-shirt online.

This has now changed. I discovered this past week that NFL merchandise can be bought from a shop at Highpoint, including caps, jerseys, and hoodies. And so I happily bought myself a Browns hoodie – brown with an orange helmet on it – on Thursday.

Until it gets too warm in the coming weeks, this will be my coat of choice.

Go Browns!

There was no bar on campus when I was an undergrad at Monash, which was probably a good thing, on sober reflection. Aside from not having the disposable income or the ability to hold copious quantities of beer or wine that I do now, I would occasionally wander north to the Nottinghill Hotel, affectionately known as The Nott to generations of Monash students.

Yesterday, visiting old haunts in a masochistic fit of nostalgia, I felt a bit the way F. Scott Fitzgerald did, when he wrote (perhaps with an ironic wink at his reader): ‘Once more the belt is tight and we summon up the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth.’

When, in my late teens and early twenties, I would visit the beer garden at the Nott, there used to be chickens roaming free range around the tables. I mentioned this to the barmaid as she poured me a pint of Little Creatures, but she had already heard this.

It was a very different time, almost worlds away really. 1987 is as far away in time from 2021 as 1953 is from 1987. Chickens in the beer garden was a charming quirk about the Nott, as was the publican, Kath, who had been there since the late 1930s as a newly wed not quite 20, and who remained the publican for about 70 years. [I did not know that then, as my visits to the Nott were an end of term thing, rather than an end of week thing, as they more than likely would be if I was to be transported back to that time now.]

Aside from the chickens and the record breaking publican being gone, the Nott is probably much the same as it was then, even if Nottinghill has changed much since the market gardens surrounding the pub when Kath first took up the license. The University Bar is currently referred to as the Steakhouse, and the food is probably better than when I did lunch there one rainy day in 1993. And the beer garden is still one of the best in Melbourne.

Which got me thinking, as I sometimes do, particularly as summer approaches, as to what are the best beer gardens in Melbourne.

Let me start by saying that I will disqualify those beer gardens which relate to bars which are not traditional pubs. I am a traditionalist, and I cannot keep up with all the inner city bars which sprout up and then just as quickly disappear. Nor am I going to include rooftop bars, like what Young & Jacksons and The Imperial now have.

So, here is my list:

1. The Nottinghill Hotel

How can I not rank the Nott at the top of the list, given all I have already written about it above? Aside from the character and history of the place, it has a beer garden which, even sans chooks, is spacious and shady and comfortable, running in a long oblong from the buildings of the pub down to the bottleshop out back.

2. The Standard Hotel

The Standard is located in a side street parallel to and immediately west of Brunswick Street Fitzroy. Surrounded by workers’ cottages, it occupies a spacious block immediately behind the pub, with many trees providing space. I have spent many happy afternoons there, mostly at work related Christmas lunches.

3. The Retreat

There are two pubs with the name The Retreat in Melbourne. One is in Abbotsford just south of Johnson Street and is famous for where the pub scenes in The Sullivans were filmed. But it has no beer garden. There is another Retreat in Sydney Road Brunswick, and this is the one with the beer garden, which is well worth visiting.

I had a very fun afternoon there last December with some colleagues, and the December before that with some other friends. What makes the Retreat particularly special in my mind is that its beer garden is dominated by an ancient (but still marginally alive) almond tree which would have to be the largest specimen of the genus prunus I have ever seen.

4. The Anglers Tavern

The Anglers Tavern is located on the banks of the Maribyrnong River, just opposite where a sign in the 1990s used to welcome motorists to the City of Sunshine, with ‘Maribyrnong Township’ in slightly smaller lettering.

I used to live on the other side of the ‘township’ (I much prefer that to suburb), about 10 minutes’ walk through the side streets from my flat. As a result, I have visited the Anglers many times over the past 30 years and it has many fond memories.

For example, Sunday afternoons in the mid 1990s when Wendy Stapleton would sing covers of various other peoples’ songs with the aid of a backing tape and one guitarist (sadly, she never would play Reputation or any of the other songs from when she headed The Rockets in the early 80s).

As the beer garden is located on the banks of the river, it has a lot going for it. However, I think that putting up semi-permanent roofing over most of the beer garden has diminished it. I much prefer a beer garden which is mostly open to nature, with more trees, as it used to be.

5. The Great Northern

The Great Northern is in Rathdowne Street in Carlton North, just before the street ends at the abandoned railway line. The pub itself seems to be a time capsule of early 1980s decor, and I find that charming. I have been there quite a number of times, most notably at an old friend’s 40th birthday drinks there, over a decade ago.

6. The Keilor Hotel

I really am not sure about including the Keilor Hotel on a list of Melbourne pubs. Technically, Keilor village is a part of Melbourne, and suburbia these days extends well past it to the north and west, but Keilor has always felt to me like a small country town tucked away around a few bends in the river, with only the hum of the freeway and the roar of planes approaching or departing from the airport nearby to remind us of Greater Melbourne.

The pub itself has the charm of a giant old country pub. I think it dates to about 1850, and was a stop over during the gold rush for chancers heading out to Bendigo to try their luck. The current publican has been there since 1974, and is related to a local family which owned it since the 1860s.

The beer garden area is out the back of the pub, surrounded by ancient gum trees, and offers a very comfortable afternoon of beer drinking. I was there on Cup Day, and it was strangely deserted.

The Keilor Hotel is one of those hidden gems of Melbourne, and well worth a visit, if you can spare the time for such a remote trek.

Honourable Mentions:

Given that I am on a staycation of 13 weeks duration, I will have sufficient time to visit more than a few pubs in coming weeks. From memory, there are a few which I do need to reevaluate.

The Kingston Hotel – Richmond. If I remember correctly ( and I have only been there twice), this has an awesome beer garden. I will have to investigate.

St Andrews’ Hotel (aka The Pumphouse). Does an atrium area out the back count as a beer garden? Not sure. As an aside, a former owner of this pub some decades ago was rumoured to harbour a pet monkey upstairs.

Bells Hotel. I have not been here in a very long time, so I am not sure that this pub, somewhere just off Clarendon Street in South Melbourne still exists, but I am pretty sure that it had a great beer garden. Maybe I need to try and find out again.

The Clyde. This place has been a haunt of Melbourne Uni students for a very long time, and is probably the only pub left in the area that still welcomes them (I think that Naughtons is not called that anymore, assuming that it is open at the moment). It has a beer garden, but not in the same league as the ones listed above. But any beer garden which is not just the concrete space with a plastic table and an ashtray en route to the toilet (eg the Courthouse Hotel in Footscray) deserves some commendation.

If anyone reads this post, please suggest some more beer gardens in the comments.

I was reminded this morning of the October 2020 incident at Qatar Airport where a number of Australian women were taken off a Qatar Airways plane and involuntarily subjected to invasive gynaecological searches when a newborn baby was found in the toilets at the airport terminal.

The sorry story, if you need reminding, is here:

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/australian-women-threaten-to-sue-over-airport-incident-in-qatar/news-story/0e10ed3299ca2cb8286f4da8cc254c93

It appears both that neither the Australian government, aside from the initial noises of outrage at this incident, and Qatar Airways, who were responsible for the safety of those passengers at the time, are taking this matter particularly seriously.

No one has been punished (beyond a metaphorical slap on the wrist for one official) and no one has been compensated, with Qatar Airways apparently dismissive of the claims of those passengers as ‘lacking merit’.

I do feel that this is wrong, and that Australia, both through its government, and its broader community, need to take steps to make the displeasure felt at this violation of a number of Australian women by Qatari officials more widely known to the authorities in Qatar.

There are three measures that I think should be taken.

The first is for Qatar Airways to be banned from Australian airports until they take steps to adequately compensate the women involved and issue a sincere apology. In the olden days, this could be done by the various airport related unions (eg the time Frank Sinatra was pressured into apologising – he didn’t – to Australian female journalists in 1974 by having unions place bans on flights carrying him out of the country). But these days, unions are rather toothless, and it would be up to the Australian government to show some backbone and impose such a sanction.

The second relates to the 2022 Soccer World Cup, which is widely believed to have been awarded to Qatar in circumstances involving (to be more tactful than I am known for) somewhat questionable probity. Assuming the Socceroos qualify for the World Cup (and as I loathe soccer, I fervently hope they do not), it would be good for soccer’s governing body in Australia to make a stand on principle against both the bribery which resulted in Qatar getting the hosting rights, and the 2020 Qatar Airport incident, by announcing a boycott of the Qatar World Cup and keeping the team home. That would also show that Australian soccer is no longer a soft touch for sports washing.

The third measure is up to the board of the Sydney Swans. Qatar Airways is one of their major sponsors (as is not surprising when we examine the practise of sports washing). The Swans are also a team which has worked hard to become female friendly, having a large female supporter base, as befits a team which has fitted into a boutique middle class niche market in Sydney:

https://www.sydneyswans.com.au/news/875541/celebrating-the-women-of-the-sydney-swans

I think the Sydney Swans need to man up and make a statement against the misogynistic behaviour of their major sponsor, especially as they have a responsibility to their female supporters. The 2020 Qatar Airport Incident cannot be easily excused. Qatar Airways needs to offer meaningful compensation to its victims.

Back in the 1980s, there were some committed communists in the UK who loyally voted for Maggie Thatcher’s Conservatives because they believed that her policies would cause the proletariat to achieve class consciousness and start a workers’ revolution.

Perhaps they were ideologically pure in their faith in Marx (Commo, not Groucho), or perhaps they had been banging their heads too hard when listening to the Sex Pistols.

However, as someone with Libertarian (much as I dislike that word) inclinations, I occasionally fear that my somewhat cautious trust in Free Market Capitalism is not too dissimilar from those Marxists on the other side of the spectrum, who argue that communism has never really been tried (such as the ones who instead of moving to the USSR or PRC, chose to stay in the UK and support Maggie Thatcher).

I particularly felt that way last night, after I finally got around to reading ‘Game of Mates’, a self-published 2017 expose of how those with wealth and influence in Australia are able to manipulate the political system and bureaucracy in order to get greater advantage and profit than the vast majority of the population, helping to extend the gap between the richest and the poorest (and those shrinking numbers of us in the middle).

‘Game of Mates’, whilst written by academics, is not an academic publication. It is better described as a pamphlet, written in plain language and with the arguments simplified for easy consumption by the general public.

Most people will have never heard of it, nor will read it. This is because it is only available online, rather than through bookstores (still my preferred way of buying books).

There are flaws in this pamphlet, and not just in the simplified, almost Zoroastrian clash between ‘James’ (the person with the power and influence to change policy) and ‘Bruce’ (the average mug punter who is deprived of what they otherwise would benefit of through James’ gaming of the system in different ways) which makes up the narrative running throughout the book.

The book takes for granted that any ideological position which questions the extent to which government power exists and is exercised is legitimate, or the purpose of taxation (such as Classic Liberal or Libertarian philosophy), is ‘myth making’. No it is not myth making (even if it comes from the Institute of Public Affairs, who are drawn up as an oversimplified straw man for half a page), questioning the power of government is a very valid part of political philosophy going back to the time of Plato (to say nothing of Locke and the other doctors of the Scottish Enlightenment who have helped to shape our own modern political thinking), which itself is a subset of Ethics, one of the four classical branches of the discipline of Philosophy (the others being Logic, Aesthetics, and Metaphysics).

Another, probably more serious flaw, is that the book, whilst almost anecdotal in its narrative of instances where the elites are gaming the system at the expense of the Hoi Polloi, does not really apply any rigorous theoretical structure to its argument, or at least not to do so sufficiently as to strengthen the argument and give it more impact.

Specifically, it does not talk about concepts such as ‘Crony Capitalism’, which is far more insidious and prevalent than the pure and possibly idealistic ‘Free Market Capitalism’ which I believe in.

To quote from Wikipedia:

Crony capitalism, sometimes called Cronyism, is an economic system in which businesses thrive not as a result of free enterprise, but rather as a return on money amassed through collusion between a business class and the political class. This is often achieved by the manipulation of relationships with state power by business interests rather than unfettered competition in obtaining permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other forms of state intervention^[1][2] over resources where business interests exercise undue influence over the state’s deployment of public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works. Money is then made not merely by making a profit in the market, but through profiteering by rent seeking using this monopoly or oligopoly. Entrepreneurship and innovative practices which seek to reward risk are stifled since the value-added is little by crony businesses, as hardly anything of significant value is created by them, with transactions taking the form of trading. Crony capitalism spills over into the government, the politics, and the media,^[3] when this nexus distorts the economy and affects society to an extent it corrupts public-serving economic, political, and social ideals.

Essentially, without saying so in so many words, ‘Game of Mates’ is a book which criticises Crony Capitalism in Australia. By not distinguishing it from Free Market Capitalism, and being dismissive of the philosophical underpinnings of Capitalism and Liberalism more generally, the argument is diminished in its impact.

Having said that, there are significant issues raised in the book, in its anecdotal way, which are of concern.

As a first example, the capture of state planning authorities and political decision making at a higher level of planning decisions by property developers, in a manner as to cause disadvantage to the general public and the consumer and great profit to those said developers, is a matter of considerable concern.

To me, this is best illustrated by the fact that local council elections are more fiercely contested than state or federal elections (I live in a very safe Labor area, where the other parties do not really bother in the latter two), due to the value which a council seat will hold if a candidate sympathetic to property development interests wins.

The analysis of how the rise of the superannuation industry has caused both the corporatisation of the union movement (such that it is now run almost exclusively by professional apparatchiks rather than by those who have worked in those industries) and the legal channelling of large (and mostly unjustifiable) amounts of money through various fees into the pockets of fund administrators and trustees to the detriment of the super balances of the average worker is also disturbing. [And there I was, naively thinking that the industry super funds were slightly less dodgy than those run by the banks and other financial institutions.]

The mining industry and farmers also are examined in detail, for the privileges they are able to extract from our political leaders which are frequently at our own expense as taxpayers. Examples cited include railways and ports which will exclusively serve those mining companies, but which are frequently subsidised by the taxpayer, and the way that farmers are indemnified by the taxpayer from loss in the lean years, but keep all their profits in the good years.

But perhaps the area of most concern is the use of ‘Public Private Partnerships’ (aka PPP) in the building of infrastructure over the past three decades. In many, if not all, instances, it appears very clear from the research undertaken by the authors of this pamphlet that the taxpayers in those states where PPP have been undertaken would have been better off if the roads had been built by more traditional finance (such as the government raising the loans directly) than by such partnerships.

I do not see that private ownership of freeways is a bad thing. What I see as a bad thing is that the terms under which such agreements are made are excessively skewed to the benefit of those corporations, to the detriment of the taxpayers and consumers in those jurisdictions.

In all cases, the problem is a bipartisan one. The major political parties, whenever either of them holds power, is very willing to acquiesce to the wishes of the vested interests and their lobbyists, rather than consider the broader interests of the public generally, and to make decisions which frequently enrich those interests at public expense.

How do we fix cronyism? The authors of the book make it very clear that this is a matter of human nature, it always emerges over time. Perhaps this sociological insight needs to be explored further, but at the very least, we need to keep cronyism under the spotlight, as it does thrive in darkness.

Yesterday, I received my fortnightly edition of Newsweekly, and I found an ad in it by the DLP which caused me to pay even more attention than to the article written by a friend who regularly writes for them. Here is a link to the concerns raised by the DLP which caused them to draw on their cousins in Newsweekly whom they do not always align with:

Minor Parties Under Attack by Federal Government

Personally, I find minor parties both annoying and helpful.

When I want a protest vote, whether in the upper house (as I usually do), or in the lower house (as I have only done twice in my adult life), I like the idea of being able to give my vote to a party whose values most align with my own, and whose integrity may be greater than that of the major party for whom I would otherwise vote.

I find minor parties annoying when they either misrepresent their values, or cause the election of persons blatantly unsuited to more sophisticated participation in the political process. As a disturbing example, I will call out the misnamed Reason Party, which was set up as lobbyists for the pornography industry (nothing wrong with that), who claim to be libertarian (they are actually only libertines at best) but who (shame on you Fiona Patten, you smug timeserving hypocrite) slavishly give the state government extensions of authoritarian powers with very limited parliamentary oversight in the current plague situation.

But much as I, as a private citizen, might find minor parties annoying or helpful, their existence does fill a valuable role in the competitive market of ideas which should underline our democracy.

Rules, such as those which have been recently passed by the Federal Parliament by a consensus of the Coalition and the Opposition, are designed to impede minor parties, with the intention of limiting their ability to compete on any semblance of a level playing field with the major parties.

That the major parties see a need for such regulation is a poor reflection on them, and particularly on the value proposition that they offer potential members, particularly in Victoria, where I have an informed view of their current situation. In the Victorian ALP, the rank and file are totally disenfranchised as a result of branch stacking issues, and decisions are imposed on them by administrators appointed federally. The Victorian Liberals are not much better – COVID has prevented them from holding meetings to elect (or reelect) their ‘administrative committee’ ( ie state executive) – and as a result they are led in a way where they have had limited consultation with their rank and file in the past two years.

Where long standing and major political parties are unable to govern themselves in a manner reasonably compatible with the norms of corporate governance standards, nor to give their financial members (ie share holders) an opportunity to hold the leaderships of those parties regularly accountable, there is a serious crisis in legitimacy.

Seeking to suppress alternative parties, such as the DLP, just illustrates those failures in the major parties to offer an attractive value proposition to existing and potential members. What is someone going to get by joining or remaining a member of a political party, paying the better part of $100 and being expected to donate at least several hours of their leisure time for an election campaign, other than the dubious satisfaction of doing their civic duty towards the ongoing health of our democracy?

Both the Coalition and the ALP are failing to attract either primary votes or nominal (let alone active) members to their cause. Instead of improving their own value propositions (eg becoming more responsive to their members and supporters), they are simply trying to suppress any minor party alternatives, using their powers as the legislative majority consensus.

This is not healthy for our democracy, and is not going to attract either more votes or members to either Liberal or Labor.

At some freshly reopened bar on Friday night, whilst sipping a glass of red, a colleague of mine said that he had gone to high school with someone who is now a member of the Victorian Parliament, the second generation of her family to proudly represent the Labor Party.

He said that at school, she had a tendency, like some of the more malevolently minded women of Southern European peasant extraction of an earlier generation, to place curses on classmates who had incurred her dislike. She gained some credibility when she told one girl that she was going to die on Tuesday, and the girl actually broke her leg.

As someone from a Southern European peasant background myself, this aspect of Italian and Greek (in that particular case) peasant culture is something I am familiar with. My mother is regarded as the go to woman whenever her network of family members and friends (and indeed any of my friends who give credence to such things) fear that someone has placed the evil eye or some such hex on them, as she knows the specific prayer (or spell, if you prefer) to remove such curses.

I was thinking of this when the news broke yesterday morning that Liberal Party luminary, Tim Smith MP, had been forced to resign from the opposition front bench after crashing his Jag into a cheaper car and the front of someone’s house when driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.13.

I have occasionally (or at least think I have) written about this somewhat oafish scion of the landed gentry before, a chap whose wise utterances in the course of representing his constituents include demands to: reopen pubs, reopen golf courses near his home, and drive out the fruit bats currently living in the Yarra Bend park along the edge of his seat.

Given that I do not really believe that this fellow has the intellectual capacity to be an independent moral agent (ie to make his own choices like a normal person who can tie their own shoelaces), I do not think that Tim Smith MP was actually drink driving. I think that his Greek opponent in the state parliament has dusted off her high school era hex book and placed a curse on him, causing him to drive Golem-like in a manner imitating a drunk driver.

I may be wrong. Hexes and curses might not exist. But what is more likely, a hex, or some of the stuff which has already happened, ie that a towering intellect like Tim Smith MP could be elected to the state parliament and recently promoted to the opposition front bench? You be the judge.

This year, the second of the plague, I think the end (for now) of our lockdown has left people needing to cheer themselves up a bit.

Which is why Halloween seems to have been celebrated a little more fully, even though it is a uniquely American tradition whose import to Australia still seems rather bizarre to me.

For the first time, I actually decided to play nice rather than grinch out and bought a few bags of chocolate frogs and wrapped lollies, which I left out in a bowl at my front gate, all covid-safe. I passed the evening sipping summery wine (ie sparking and rose) with one of my friends who lives in the next suburb along, watching the trick or treaters come by with their adult supervision from my front verandah.

From passing comments with the grown ups, some of whom were wearing pretty elaborate costumes, I think that once the kids were asleep, the Halloween parties were really going to get going, in celebration of the prospect that perhaps we finally have our freedom back.

And why not? After the past 19 months, people need something to cheer them up, and why should it not be a festival where the dead rise and walk the earth again?