In one of the early seasons of The Simpsons, there is an episode ‘Lisa The Beauty Queen’ where Lisa is runner up for the Little Miss Springfield pageant and then becomes Little Miss Springfield after the winner gets struck by lightning. Lisa being Lisa, she is not content to be a figurehead for the powerful interests behind the pageant and quickly becomes outspoken on issues she feels strongly about, to the point where those vested interests come to see her as a major liability they need to depose.

Krusty the Clown, Big Tobacco, and the corrupt town fathers anxiously look for a way to remove their problem. The solution comes when they realise that Homer wrote something on the application form in a spot which he was not mean to write in. On that minor hitherto overlooked technicality, Lisa is stripped of the Little Miss Springfield title.

When I read some of the details as to why Communist China has just slapped an 80% tariff on Australian barley imports, I am reminded somewhat of Krusty the Clown and his corrupt henchmen in Springfield.

Apparently there has been issues in relation to our barley exports for about 18 months. That they now come to the boil just as Australia is leading calls for an enquiry into the origins of the Pandemic, an enquiry which Communist China was most hostile towards until the last possible moment, does not appear merely coincidental.

The allegation is that Australian barley is subsidised and that this makes the imposition of a high tariff justified. The main purported subsidy is some sort of social security payment to farmers. This is risable, and not even the barest of fig leaves to cover the naked intentions of the Communist regime’s desire to punish Australia for leading the calls for an International enquiry.

This of course, not the only threat to our trade. A couple of years ago, when Huawei was unsurprisingly bundled out of contention for our 5G network on national security grounds (you would need to be very naive to consider that a company based in a totalitarian regime was a safe bet to run a nationwide communications network), there were bans on coal imports from Australia (however, there are a lot of Australians, myself not exactly one of them, who would welcome an end to all Australian coal exports). And Canada, after it honoured an international arrest warrant on a Huawei executive, was also subject to retaliatory bans on their exports to Communist China.

Communist China is a rogue state, which is treated as a mainstream nation mainly for the sheer size of its economy, which countries and companies worldwide wish to trade with. The human rights abuses (think of the Uighurs for example), the thefts of intellectual property, the menacing behaviour in the South China Seas, these are all matters which are conveniently ignored.

However now, with the global economy under serious threat from a Pandemic which probably originated in a biowarfare lab in Wuhan (not, mind you, created there, simply a naturally occurring virus which was being studied under conditions of criminally negligent biosecurity), and people forced to bury their loved ones in conditions which are less than ideal, the degree of tolerance for a country which has so many inherent flaws in its political system is dropping fast.

When threats are not even thinly veiled, and followed by punitive measures whose stated and technical justification is highly unconvincing, it is time to wonder. The Communist Chinese ambassador recently said that perhaps Communist China might not now want to let its students come to Australia, or to buy our beef or wine.

I say OK. Let’s trade with the rest of the world instead. Whilst the opening up of trade with the PRC 30 years ago was done in the hope of both liberalising their economy and their political system, only one happened. For such a large part of the world’s people to still live under such capricious tyrants is a tragedy.

Our universities are turning into degree mills, rather than focusing on providing quality education to the Australian community. Wines popular in the export market are priced out of the reach of Australian drinkers. Houses in our major cities are being priced out of the reach of our community due to the flight of money from Communist China from those who get rich on that regime, but wisely do not trust it to allow them to keep their wealth or their lives. We should be finding a way to either trade our coal and iron ore to other nations, or to use them in our own neglected industries. We should be eating the best of our red meat here, not sending it there.

Who really needs to be Little Miss Springfield, or to trade with Communist China? Our leaders, both political and business, need to reflect on that.

www.youtube.com/watch

As a twelve year old I liked this song. As an awake (not ‘woke’) fifty one year old I love it!

Postscript- not sure that the link works but the song is Pell Mell ‘No Word From China’ . YouTube, you are unfit for purpose.

I recently read Jarrod Diamond’s latest book, Catastrophe, in which he discusses how various countries he knows well have dealt with an existentialist crisis facing them. One of those is Australia.

The first country he writes about in his book is far flung Finland, somewhere on the far side of the world close to the frozen northern wastes, sandwiched between Russia and the Scandinavian countries (of which Finland insists it is part).

Finland’s existentialist crisis arose from the war of aggression which the Soviet Union launched against it at the start of the Second World War, at the same time that the Soviet Union sought to reclaim the other recently independent nations which had been part of the Russian Empire. Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia all ceased to be independent.

Finland, although it had the misfortune to find itself a co-belligerent of the Axis Powers, managed to retain its independence. This came at a great price – 100,000 dead out of a population of less than four million (that is approximately eight times the losses per capita that Australia suffered) and the loss of its second largest city and a slice of its territory.

After the war, faced with the menace of a very large and aggressive neighbour, the USSR, Finland sought a modus vivendi which many in the West (including a young Dr Diamond) found appalling. They compromised on their foreign policy, their internal politics, and on their freedom of press and speech, in order to prevent the USSR from feeling a need to invade and remove their remaining independence.

They also maintained a very high ratio of reserve forces, so as to remind the Soviets that whilst military victory over Finland was inevitable, it would again be extremely costly.

The USSR hence came to accept the independence of Finland, the politically neutral neighbour which would not criticise them or give them any cause to invade and establish it as a buffer state, the way that it had in several instances in Eastern Europe.

Finlandize became a verb, meaning:

to induce a country to favour, or refrain from opposing, the interests of a more powerful country despite not being politically allied to it.

Which brings us to the current state of relations between Australia and the tyrannical state that is Communist China.

Two years ago, Clive Hamilton, a respected academic, wrote a book called Silent Invasion, in which he sought to warn Australians about the subversion of our democracy and the compromise of our political process by Communist China. His usual publisher, Allen and Unwin, declined to publish this book. Accusations have been made that this is the book that Communist China tried to stop.

I bought three copies, and made sure that each was widely circulated and read. It is the least that I can do as a responsible and patriotic citizen.

I do not recall Dr Hamilton using the term ‘Finlandize’ in his book, but I do recall that he voiced concerns that Communist China’s goals included reducing Australia to a client state, where our alliance with the USA was abandoned, where criticism of China’s interests was suppressed, and where we might even be prepared to compromise on our legal and political freedoms.

Dr Hamilton did mention various ‘soft power’ techniques being used, such as the mobilisation of the Chinese student population in Australia to oppose Free Tibet demonstrations, and the donations strategically being made to our major political parties, so as to mute any scrutiny.

Soon after that, the then Senator Sam Dastayari proved the effectiveness of this when he was found to be parroting support for Communist China’s aggressive foreign policy in contravention of his own party’s policies. Thankfully, in his indiscretions, Mr Dastayari has done the Australian people a great service, in that he has provided a very stark illustration of the peril under which our democracy now can be compromised.

He is not Robinson Crusoe, sadly. Politicians of either colour, usually on their retirement from politics, have taken Beijing’s shilling (or yuan) through lucrative lobbying fees, or company directorships. Paul Keating, sadly, seems to be the most vocal of those in defending the interests of the PRC and criticising those Australians who are concerned about that influence, proof, as I have always suspected, that a nationalist is not a patriot.

Twiggy Forrest, for all the the good that he has done and continues to do, featured heavily in Silent Invasion, given that he has such extensive business interests dependent on trade with the PRC. His recent behaviour and utterances would probably cause him, if this book was to be revised for a second edition, to feature more prominently again.

His recent comments about the origins of coronavirus reek of Finlandization:

“Because it just might be Australia, it just might be Britain, it just might be China.”

This is nowhere near the standard of the Communist Chinese official who speculated that the US Army had brought coronavirus to China, but it is the sort of supposedly offhand comment which will reassure PRC officials about the wisdom of continuing to do business with Mr Forrest and his companies.

Of course, Communist China would like to be reassured about the wisdom of continuing to trade with Australia more generally. They do not like it when our political leaders call for an international enquiry into the origins of the pandemic. As a direct result, our beef and barley trade with Communist China is currently under threat.

Finlandizing is a drastic step, and not one that Australia should ever take in relation to Communist China.

Firstly, the consequences of Finlandizing are terrible.

Do we really want to abandon our long held military alliances with other anglophonic democracies such as the US, which give us protection from the risk of foreign invasion, and which would leave us at danger of aggression from regional powers such as Communist China?

Do we want to abandon our ethical and decent voice in foreign affairs, where we do call out tyrannical and appalling behaviour?

Do we want to institute practices where we silence internal critics of our government and its policies, particularly where those criticism may offend our economic interests offshore?

Do we abandon the strong guarantees of political and legal liberty that have developed since the time of Magna Carta in 1215?

Ask yourself as to whether the trade and economic benefits which we gradually have obtained over the past 30 years are really worth selling our legal and political liberties for, the birthright of the Australian people? It really would be similar to Esau selling his birthright for some red pottage.

Secondly, is there any real need for us to Finlandize?

Finland is a small nation, which shares a very long land border with Russia (ie the former Soviet Union). It was very far from any potential help, and even further from any help whom one would want to call upon in 1939.

Australia, on the other hand, lies about 5000 miles south of Communist China. To reach and threaten Australia militarily, Communist China requires a much more reliable army than that it now has, and a blue water navy. It first needs to threaten a large number of its neighbours to the north. They will need to neutralise our alliance with the US, who do have the largest blue water navy on Earth, as well as other superior forces. They cannot menace us militarily.

Through the use of soft power, various politicians and business leaders have become sympathetic to Communist China. This is now on the public record and in the public eye. Such views cannot now be held and expressed without being closely scrutinised as for motive and for loyalty. Thank you, Mr Dastayari.

Communist China is currently a major trading partner of Australia. However, this is a problem we share with much of the rest of the world, where many have been burying their dead without ceremony during the pandemic. There will be a reckoning, and a trade reorientation out of the recession which has been caused by the Wuhan pandemic.

The costs of trading with Communist China now threaten to seriously outweigh the benefits for the rights and liberties, not merely the prosperity, of all Australians, and indeed of the nation.

Let us not Finlandize, or even make the diplomatic noises associated with complicity with the tyranny that is Communist China. This is the time where we need to call them out for the threat that they pose to their own people and to world peace.

Rodney Dangerfield was, in my view, rather intellectually underrated. His movie characters tended to be crass and nouveau rich, but rather than showing that money can’t buy you class, they showed up the posh snobs with inherited money, who might have more refined accents and manners, but who were far more ruthless and grasping.

That is never more so than in his 1986 film, Back To School, about a self-made tycoon who decides to enrol at University so as to encourage his son not to drop out. He was able to attract some pretty smart screenwriters, as well as persuading Kurt Vonnegut to make a cameo as himself (that is always a plus with me).

It was my first exposure to the writings of James Joyce, some four or five years before I read Ulysses (assuming that anyone can claim to have read the unreadable), and about three years before Kate Bush covered some of the same prose from that passage in her song The Sensual World.

It also was my first exposure to the poetry of Dylan Thomas, where the final act of the film starts with Dangerfield reciting Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night to inspire himself to pass the rigorous oral exam.

I did not get around around to actually reading Dylan Thomas until a few years later, when I was about 25 and first opened his unique and lyrical voice play, Under Milk Wood, left completed but unperformed amongst his papers when he died in 1953, at age 39.

Dylan Thomas could perhaps be described as so typically Welsh as to be untypical, hard living, hard drinking, and melodically lyrical. He drank himself to an untimely death, and perhaps the daemons that drove his writing drove much more than that.

A few years later, a young American, Robert Zimmerman, was to adopt the surname Dylan after reading some of his poems, and to become, many years later, Nobel Literature Prize Laureate, despite writing songs, which are best to listen to, not read.

Perhaps that is not grounds for objection, given that the foundation of our Western literary tradition lies with the mythical Homer, the blind poet, and the centuries of oral recitation of complex poetry by illiterate Illyrian bards, between the dark ages after the fall of Troy and when the Greeks learned to read and write again.

Nor, when I write here about Dylan Thomas, and I dive back into my copy of Under Milk Wood, can I ignore the fact that he did primarily intend for much of his work to be recited out loud, rather than to be read in silence.

Dylan Thomas displaced T.S. Eliot as my favourite poet about nine years ago, and when I dive back into his rich lush lyricism, I remember exactly why I made that choice, and why I feel that for all that modern Western culture owes Bob Dylan, the wrong man bearing that name holds a Nobel Prize for Literature.

Dylan Thomas’ prose and poetry are beautifully interwoven, like an ornate spider’s web, such that to quote an extract from one of his works is like holding up to the light one piece of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, far insufficient to do him justice.

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless

and bible-black, the cobble streets silent and the

hunched, courters’-and rabbits’ wood limping

invisible down to the sloeblack, slow black,

crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are

blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the

snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there

in the muffled middle by the pump and the town

clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in

widows’ weeds. And all the people of the lulled and

dumbfound town are sleeping now.

So opens Under Milk Wood, with the First Voice so ably performed originally by his fellow hard living Welshman, Richard Burton.

Come closer now.

I am so enraptured by the poetry of Dylan Thomas that, a bit like those eager evangelical gentlemen of the Gideon Society who hand out free Gospels to passerbys and ensure your motel room has a Bible in it (Hunter S Thompson owes them a lot), I was so keen for others to come to appreciate Dylan Thomas that I lent my copy of his collected poems to a friend about five years ago. I am still waiting for it to be returned.

So this week, being starved of his work for so long, I ordered another copy of his poems from the local bookshop. It arrived on Friday, and it is open in front of me as I write.

Do not go gentle into that good night is one of his greatest and most accessible poems. Aside from Rodney Dangerfield’s recitation of it in a movie, Michelle Pfeiffer a few short years later (and yet already a quarter century before today), in Dangerous Minds, introduces it to her English class, alongside the lyrics of the other Dylan. Nineteen lines, in six short bittersweet stanzas, grieving the decline into old age of his father:

And you, my father, there on the sad height

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The controversial prize winning novelist briefly known twenty five years ago as Helen Demidenko named her novel after Dylan Thomas’ short poem The hand that signed the paper, and quoted the first and third stanzas at the front of the book (I have more than one first edition of this novel):

The hand that signed the paper felled a city;

Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,

Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;

These five kings did a king to death.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,

And famine grew, and locusts came;

Great is the hand that holds dominion over

Men by a scribbled name.

I thought after re-reading these prescient words that perhaps he had written it after Munich, but no, it was published in 1935, when he was barely 21.

But what really cements Dylan Thomas as my favourite poet, and as truly great, are the one hundred and eleven lines in the two verses which make up In Country Sleep. This is truly a work of genius, which runs and rolls and rhymes in uncounted ways.

Here are just the last few stanzas of it, to give you an idea of just how beautiful and ingenious it is, and how his death was such a true loss to the world of letters:

Illumination of music! the lulled black-backed
Gull, on the wave with sand in its eyes! And the foal moves
Through the shaken greensward lake, silent, on moonshod hooves,
In the winds’ wakes.
Music of elements, that a miracle makes!
Earth, air, water, fire, singing into the white act,

The haygold haired, my love asleep, and the rift blue
Eyed, in the haloed house, in her rareness and hilly
High riding, held and blessed and true, and so stilly
Lying the sky
Might cross its planets, the bell weep, night gather her eyes,
The Thief fall on the dead like the willy nilly dew,

Only for the turning of the earth in her holy
Heart! Slyly, slowly, hearing the wound in her side go
Round the sun, he comes to my love like the designed snow,
And truly he
Flows to the strand of flowers like the dew’s ruly sea,
And surely he sails like the ship shape clouds. Oh he

Comes designed to my love to steal not her tide raking
Wound, nor her riding high, nor her eyes, nor kindled hair,
But her faith that each vast night and the saga of prayer
He comes to take
Her faith that this last night for his unsacred sake
He comes to leave her in the lawless sun awaking

Naked and forsaken to grieve he will not come.
Ever and ever by all your vows believe and fear
My dear this night he comes and night without end my dear
Since you were born:
And you shall wake, from country sleep, this dawn and each first dawn,
Your faith as deathless as the outcry of the ruled sun. 

Let me start by saying that despite the suggestiveness of the heading of this posting, I am not announcing a Road To Damascus style conversion to Marxism, socialism, or even social democracy. I remain a cultural conservative with a commitment to politically and economically libertarian values (much as I dislike the word ‘libertarian’).

But I have always had a degree of sympathy for protesters. Aside from the fact that they are needed for the continuance of a healthy democracy (as is the tolerance of protesters – by tolerating them so heartily as I do, I am actively contributing to the health of our pluralistic society, no?), I admire the Quixotic idealism of protesters, even when I think they are way wrong or being just plain silly.

At the time the Occupy Movement were active several years ago, after the Global Financial Crisis, I thought that they were either way wrong, or almost crazy. But whilst I am still a believer in free market capitalism and the idea known as ‘democratic capitalism’, I cannot sit around unquestioningly accepting the current practices of reserve banks without thinking that there are a few things which are very wrong, and which require me to at least ponder whether the people in the Occupy Movement had a point (rather than feel inclined to call out at them something witty like “Hey you, get off the drugs and get a job!”).

Skepticism is not a bad thing, and it does not mean that you abandon the beliefs or values that you try to adhere to. I have been skeptical, to varying degrees, about religion and the existence of God since I was 15, yet I still tick the Roman Catholic box on the census form and self-describe as Catholic in the profile for this blog.

Similarly, I can and should be skeptical about some of the tenets of capitalism, in theory or in practice. Especially at the moment, when not only are we facing the most serious economic crisis since the Second World War but I have significantly more in savings than I did at the time of GFC or any of the other financial downturns since 1987.

‘Economic rationalism’ is a good starting point. This is the assumption that individuals are going to behave in a rational and self interested way, and that cumulatively, the synergy of enlightened, rational, self-interested individuals is going to result in the best economic outcomes for the whole.

On the whole, this still remains better (both from a moral and a utilitarian perspective) than what the main alternative is – central planning. After all, if you cannot trust individuals to make decisions which are the best for themselves, can you trust one person, or (even worse) a committee of people, to make better decisions for everyone else? What makes the central planner cleverer or more rational than each other individual?

But that is the fallacy both of Capitalism and Communism. Both doctrines place great weight on human rationalism. Capitalism, in that individuals through rational decision making, are going to make separate decisions which cumulatively are going to result in greater riches for all. Communism, in that all individuals will form some sort of collective consciousness that will result in a paradise.

As I have observed in a previous posting, I am skeptical about rational economic man. Markets are mostly driven by fear and greed, as I am finding out from my daily observations, and the greed is mostly just ‘fear of missing out’. The markets should be lower than a Chinese coal mine right now, but they are bouncing around the 5000 mark (I am talking the ASX 200 here, not the Dow Jones).

Let’s take another fallacy of the capitalist system (or of human nature) – ‘ethics‘ – ie that people are going to almost always behave ethically in their economic dealings with others. I am a very trusting person on the whole, and I do not want to change that aspect of myself. But when you look at the financial edifices that fell apart in 1987 (why were some instruments called ‘junk’ bonds?) and in 2008 (‘subprime’), not so close inspection reveals that many people put avarice in front of ethics, and that whilst Bernie Madoff went to gaol, so many others who did not behave well seem to have gotten off Scott free.

And nothing has been done to fix those sorts of ethical issues – we just allow more complex financial instruments to develop, which few people understand.

Even P.J. O’Rourke, great defender of free markets, conceded on a visit to Australia after the GFC that there were ethical problems.

Then there is the assumption of ‘free‘ markets. To quote Team America, albeit in a totally twisted context, ‘Freedom isn’t free’. Not only do governments pursue policies which regulate or manipulate markets and currencies, but reserve banks do so on a major scale.

Which goes a long way to explaining what is going on at the moment financially.

Let me qualify this by saying that whilst I am very good at managing my personal finances and share investments, I do not have an economics degree, or any training in finance or accounting. I have self-taught myself quite a lot from remaindered textbooks and from reading economists like Galbraith, Von Mises, Von Hayek, Friedman, Stieglitz and Levitt. But in the past few weeks, whilst trying to make sense of bond markets, currency moves, interest rate cuts, and commodity prices, all whilst trying to work out whether or not to put my money back into the share market and if so, when, I have been made starkly aware as to exactly how ignorant I am about finance.

[As Socrates would put it, true wisdom means realising that you know nothing. This makes me wise.]

Reserve bankers are very clever people. They understand all these levers which they can pull to manipulate markets, and how each decision will play out. It is the rest of us who get befuddled and who end up scratching our heads and wondering what is going on and what should we be doing.

What is going on is that governments and reserve banks worldwide, but particularly the US Federal Reserve, are pursuing policies which effectively mean that money is being printed. This is not physical money, as in the Zimbabwean or Weimar German variety. It is conceptual money, like what you have in the bank rather than under your mattress.

There will be several effects of this money printing. One is inflationary. The money you have, whether in the bank or under your mattress, is going to lose some of its value faster due to higher inflation. Low interest rates will mean that you cannot offset this inflationary movement through earning interest in the bank.

Another effect is to prop up asset prices. As money is going to be worth less due to inflation, shares and other assets (such as investment properties) will not decline in value.

A third effect is to potentially spur people into riskier asset classes. If bank deposits are getting eaten by inflation and low interest rates, but the share and property markets are being stabilised by money printing, then those becomes a safer place to leave your money – even though shares are a higher risk proposition for most people and property itself is a very cumbersome and sometimes even more risky investment.

Which leads to the question:

Cui Bono?

Who is it that benefits from those interventions in the market that inflate prices? Is it the average mug punter in the street who is struggling to pay off their mortgage or save for a house deposit? Is it the over-educated bum hipster barista who disdains capitalism and thinks Che Guevera was a good guy (he wasn’t, by the way, he was a murdering butcher) and who wants to hop on their fixie and go to a protest rally? Or is it someone with a large share portfolio, large salary, and a mansion in Toorak (who has been able to exploit tax loopholes to pack away a large amount of money into the family trust and their superannuation fund)?

It is more likely to be the Toorak mansion owner, although I would hazard a guess that a mere multi-millionaire has less to gain than a billionaire does.

Is it any wonder that the Occupy Movement have something to get angry about? Inflationary government interventions are constantly occurring that transfer wealth from the poor to the mega rich. This is not free market capitalism. It is not really any form of capitalism. This is plutocracy, the state sponsorship of the rich.

About seven years ago, I made a very speculative (and ultimately spectacularly unsuccessful) investment in a venture which was seeking to close a deal to clean up some of the abundant pollution in mainland China.

As I trusted the friend who put me onto this (despite his starting to live a fantasy life approaching that of Walter Mitty), I ended up ignoring more red flags than Moscow on Mayday.

In retrospect, the utterances of the ‘director’ of this venture comprised several red flags. He regularly spoke not so much about how they were going to close one or other deals with the communists, but how he was going to spend the money he was going to make from the deal. He sounded like an Amway pitch in reverse (my exposure to Amway is limited, but I am familiar with the style of their pitch), in that he needed to convince himself, rather than others.

The shopping list included:

. a private jet

. a villa on the Amalfi coast

. a very big party at a cigar bar in Hawthorn to celebrate and share the good fortune when the deal was closed

. buying a title of nobility from the deposed Italian Royal Family.

None of this ever transpired, although, given his subsequent conduct as a director in relation to the conflict of interest between his own interests and those of his trusting investors, I get the feeling that he was 80% of a Count anyway – he just needed to buy a vowel.

But I can laugh, mostly.

One conservation with him was particularly revealing about the pragmatism of his political convictions. He said: “In Australia I am a monarchist, in America I am a Republican, and in China I am a communist.”

When we are looking at the current situation with the Pandemic and relations with the Peoples’ Republic of China, you have to perhaps wonder how many other, far more successful and decent, businesspeople share this pragmatism, and whether it is indeed in Australia’s national interest for them to have that pragmatism.

The incident engineered by iron ore magnate Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest yesterday at a press conference involving the Australian Federal Health minister, where an official from the Chinese Embassy was able to use the press conference as a soap box to criticise Australian government policy is in the minds of most people today, and with legitimate concern.

Twiggy Forrest is one of Australia’s bunyip aristocrats, related to Sir John Forrest, one of the fathers of Federation, and a far better bunyip aristocrat than most. For many such, the idea of noblesse oblige is now one of supporting the spending of taxpayer money on the less fortunate, rather than one’s own money. Twiggy Forrest however, has pledged billions of his own fortune to support worthy causes (and unworthy ones, like Western Australia’s local Super Rugby team).

He is a very decent and generous man, who seeks to use his fortune in part at least for the benefit of his community.

However, in the incident with the Chinese Embassy official, he has brought into stark relief the conflict of interest which many of our richest people, and many of our retired politicians, continuously hope the public ignores.

That is, that due to their significant economic dependence on the Peoples’ Republic of China, their interventions in the public area in Australia are frequently tainted with the interests of Communist China, rather than those primarily of Australia.

I am not a Marxist who will claim that property is theft and that capitalists are exploiting the workers (not only is that theory a gross oversimplification of economics which ignores the evolution of high finance over four hundred years, but it also is based on an erroneous absolute theory of value). Nor am I a militant conservationist who wants to see us stop mining. Making an honest living under a democratic capitalist economic and political system allows for the greatest real good for the greatest number of people.

But what is going at the moment, and which has been troubling a growing number of people in this community since before the publication of Silent Invasion two years ago, is that there are serious attempts by the Chinese Communist Party to unduly influence our society and our democracy.

Where your company sells iron ore principally to Communist China, as do many of our mining magnates, you have a strong interest in keeping your customer happy.

Right now, many Australians are angry at that customer. Whether or not the coronavirus escaped from a Wuhan research laboratory due to poor biosecurity measures (psst.. would you want to buy an infected pig?), the communist regime still is perceived as having quite a lot to answer for in relation to the Pandemic. It is believed to have acted too secretively and mendaciously in relation to the early days of the Pandemic.

In January, before the severity of the outbreak was widely known elsewhere, companies owned by Chinese communist officials stripped the shelves of stores of sanitiser, thermometers, masks, and medical supplies and shipped them back to the PRC. The communists also tried to weaponise the virus against Taiwan, by trying to exclude Taiwan from access to information about the growing health emergency.

Now, people are angry, and many are scared – if not for themselves, then for their elderly relatives. Many people are worried about their jobs, their small businesses, their savings, and their homes, due to the economic chaos which has been unleashed worldwide.

Whilst Twiggy Forrest’s heart may be in the right place, he is understandably silent on many of the flaws of his major customer who is such a large trading partner of our nation. He talks about us sharing ‘one heart’, but he does not mention the millions of Uighurs who are locked up in ‘re-education’ camps, or the repressive Orwellian technology which now ensures the sheep like compliance of the ordinary Chinese citizen, or of the repression of Falun Gong, or the involuntary harvesting of organs for profit.

By engineering this incident, Twiggy Forrest has given his fellow citizens further cause to consider whether we allow companies owned by members of the Chinese Communist Party and their associates the social licence to operate in Australia, and whether indeed we should reassess the level of ties and trade with the Peoples’ Republic of China going forward.

In the Aeneid, Virgil wrote the famous words:

Timeo Danae Donae Ferentes

History has taught us the Trojans’ mistake. You do need to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially now when he is wearing a mask.

There is a saying I read somewhere several years ago, but which I cannot attribute to any source (believe me, I tried to find one today), which goes along the lines of:

‘Blessed is the country without a history.’

This is because when you look at the details in history, you usually find the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence and Death.

War is a big one. The Temple of Janus in Ancient Rome had doors that were only ever closed in times of peace. From the death of King Numa until the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War, the gates were open for 400 years. They then were closed for 8 years, and then open again for 200 years. The history of my ancestral homeland for the subsequent 2000 years probably does not need any further illustration.

With due respect to the original inhabitants of Australia, who will probably disagree (and no offence is intended), the homeland of my birth is different, particularly since the peaceful commencement of the Australian nation at Federation 119 years ago. Our wars have been mostly far from our shores, although my visits across Northern Australia (Broome, Derby, Darwin, Cairns) have impressed on me that the air raids during the Second World War are well remembered.

The 20th Century, and the first two decades of the 21st Century, have seen much of the four horsemen. My parents were born in Italy in the 1930s during a Fascist dictatorship, and lived through the fighting around their villages, which they both could vividly recall years later.

Whilst my collection of books on Australian history includes many on the First and Second World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, most Australian history tends, in comparison to what occurs beyond our shores, to be rather pacific – unless you count what happens south of Lake Burley Griffin (the writings of Alan Reid about the period 1967 to 1975 are most interesting).

To a large extent, we have so far effectively banished the four horsemen from our shores, at least compared to the rest of the world. I think my parents realised that when they settled in Melbourne in the late 1950s, and I think I inherited that realisation from them, which is why it took me until age 47 to make my first ever journey back to Italy.

Perhaps that narrow minded Italian Catholic conservative peasant from Footscray aspect to me is not as limiting as people sometimes think. People who are more broad minded are more likely to walk across the Global street without looking both ways.

Take for example an acquaintance of mine, someone with whom, to be honest, I share a mild, mutual, but civil dislike. I heard last year from mutual friends that this chap was tired of living in Melbourne, and was planning to up stumps and move to France, and had started taking lessons in French to facilitate this plan.

Apparently, he was sneeringly describing Melbourne as a ‘provincial’ city.

As someone born and raised in Footscray, who has spent my entire life living and working in Melbourne or its metropolitan surrounds, I did raise my eyebrows a bit at this condemnation of my home city (Melbourne is my home city, Footscray is my home town). After all, Melbourne is a city of five million people, with many parks, clean air and water, a very cosmopolitan and tolerant society, and the consistently highest liveability scores in the world. (To say nothing of the largest tram network on the planet!)

I might not have seen much of the rest of the world yet, aside from Italy, where most people, including in relatively small cities, live in five or six storey apartment blocks rather than in houses on decent sized blocks, but I am a bit skeptical about whether you are going to see a higher degree of sophistication in Europe than you are in a ‘provincial’ city like Melbourne. We have all the trappings of high culture here: opera, ballet, symphonies, theatre, art. We also lack the arrogance and chauvinism of much of Europe.

Nor has Australia suffered the direct threat or reality of totalitarian tyranny, the way that Europe has during much of the 20th century. (This is not by luck, it’s by the concerted commitment of Australian society to resist and defy tyranny – something that is an inherent part of the nature of our society.)

And right now, the third horseman, Pestilence, in the form of the Coronavirus, is running roughshod over much of the world, especially Western Europe. However we seem to have it mostly under control in Australia now (at a breath taking financial price, mind you).

So… how appealing does living in a city in France look to you right now?

Aside from which, my acquaintance lives off his dividends from a large share portfolio (I should be so lucky!). We don’t have Famine, but the second horseman has an accounting degree, and not only has the share market dropped, but dividends are falling due to the economic contraction caused by the Pandemic. To continue to live his semi-retired life of Riley, he is going to have to sell capital.

So I doubt this chap is going to be able to head off to live in Marseilles or Lyon or Nice anytime real soon. I feel so disappointed for him that he will have to suffer living amongst we Hoi Polloi in Melbourne, especially at a time when all the cafes, bars, and restaurants in Fitzroy are closed.

As a general rule (with a few exceptions like A Tale of Two Cities), I dislike reading Charles Dickens. I find him verbose and preachy and most of his characters are mere caricatures. When reading The Old Curiosity Shop, I found that I wanted to punch the grandfather in the face, he was so exasperating.

Bleak House is very much in the above mould of highly unenjoyable Dickens novels. As he was paid by the word for most of his work, Dickens can be very unreadable. Bleak House is only saved by the manifestation of the deadbeat Skimpole, an arch-sponger who preys on the trusting and kind-hearted. We probably all have met at least one Skimpole in our lives, I know that I have.

The underpinning issue driving the plot of Bleak House is Jamdyce and Jamdyce, a long ongoing inheritance case being considered in the Court of Chancery, on which several of the main characters pin their hopes of being able to make their fortunes. Apparently it was based on a real case at the Chancery, where a contested will read in 1797 was not determined until 1859.

The extradition case of Puneet Puneet, currently before an Indian court, reminds me of Bleak House, and the snail-like grindings of the Court of Chancery in its deliberations in Jamdyce and Jamdyce.

For those who do not know, the unusually named Puneet Puneet was an Indian student and learner driver who, in 2008 at age 19, was speeding in South Melbourne whilst under the influence of alcohol, and hit and killed a pedestrian. He subsequently was charged with serious driving offences, and pleaded guilty, and was released on bail pending sentencing.

At which point, his apparent willingness to take responsibility for his actions and his grievous mistake (who cannot remember being 19 years old and an idiot) turned out to be a charade. Either through deceit or complicity, he obtained the passport of one of his friends who superficially resembled him, and fled the jurisdiction, returning to his home in India.

This did cause some outrage in the community, resulting in a reward being posted by the Victorian government. For a few years, Puneet Puneet was able to go about his life in India, putting his mistake in Australia behind him, and even to fall in love (or at least to agree to a marriage arranged by his parents for him).

This resulted, in 2014, in his arrest on his wedding day by Indian police. Apparently one of his friends had decided that the lure of the reward money outweighed the value of Puneet’s friendship (well, this friendship might not have been worth much anyway, given that I recall reading that the friend whose passport had been used by Puneet to flee Australia had gone to gaol for this unfortunate coincidence) and dobbed him in to the authorities.

And this started an extradition case which has stretched for some six years so far. Some of that time, the first couple of years or so, Puneet Puneet spent on remand in an Indian gaol. Since then, he has been out on bail, and he has engaged a lawyer who appears to be highly effective at delaying tactics. Either that, or the rules of court in that jurisdiction are extremely lax.

Some of Team Puneet’s legal defences have been rather hurtful – it has been argued (along with the appearance of some Australian citizen witnesses who later felt remorseful for doing so) that he would not get fair treatment in Australia, and that Australia is a highly racist place. It would be naive to say that there is no racism in Australia, but I think the same situation applies in any other country, particularly one with several sectarian political parties whose adherents are prone to violence against their opponents and who enjoy great political success.

But some of the most recent tactics strike me as exposing an inherent weakness in the court system. A judge who was newly appointed to the case late last year ruled that he wanted the extradition side to make their verbal submissions to the court all over again, as he had not been there to hear them. That itself would add months.

And last month, the lawyer representing Puneet Puneet has made many excuses for not attending the court. One was ill health, although he was reportedly seen in another court shortly before that.

Just as in the Court of Chancery 200 years ago, justice delayed is justice denied. How can the family of the young man who died in that tragic and highly avoidable accident move on with their grieving and achieve closure when the perpetrator of that tragedy is refusing to face justice and hiding behind a highly inefficient system?

There are no winners in this. If Puneet Puneet had faced the consequences of his actions 12 years ago, he would have probably been dealt with leniently by the courts – his youth and guilty plea would have resulted in some mercy. Now, if he does return, it will be after having been a fugitive for over a decade, where his claims of remorse and regret will seem very hollow indeed. And he has already, whilst fighting to avoid justice, spent two years in remand and had this entire matter hanging constantly over his head, consuming the wealth of his family. Is all that punishment enough? That would be for an Australian court to decide.

I thought I would just give a shout out for Andew Buller Wines of Rutherglen, my favourite winery of all.

My favourite wine, since the year 2000, was the RL Buller & Sons Calliope Shiraz, which Andrew Buller would make.

Sadly, the winery has changed owners in recent years, but Andrew and his wife Wendy are still in business, making fantastic big wines at their Cannobie property just outside Rutherglen.

Not only do they make amazing big shiraz and durif based dry reds (but they also make great fortifieds and sparkling wines), but they are also very very nice people. I have attached a link to their cellar door club in case anyone wants to join it and support them in their amazing wine making endeavour. Come on, you won’t regret it!

The author (above, middle), with the fine winemakers Wendy and Andrew Buller on my visit to Rutherglen in February 2017.

https://www.andrewbullerwines.com.au/pages/become-a-cannobie-club-member