47 former Australian Defence personnel, including former Navy and Army chiefs have written a letter calling for more truth in Government from both sides of politics. They accuse the current Parliament of having misled the Australian people on their reasons for going to war with Iraq and various other things. It caused a ruccus in Parliament yesterday, with the Government refusing to answer the questions raised by the letter. My response: From John Howard’s side-stepping around the issue of...
As you can imagine, I’m not very comfortable with the fact that the only satire I’ve put up so far has been Right wing satire. What kind of a red-blooded Commy am I? Time to rectify that. As I said, I will be posting the occasional article I wrote for my University’s mag last year. This article is precisely one year old. (Americans won’t get the first half I’m afraid, but scroll down to the second half). Do you have problems keeping your mouth shut? Ever accidentally revealed your plan to ...
As you can imagine, I’m not very comfortable with the fact that the only satire I’ve put up so far has been Right wing satire. What kind of a red-blooded Commy am I? Time to rectify that. As I said, I will be posting the occasional article I wrote for my University’s mag last year. This article is precisely one year old. (Americans won’t get the first half I’m afraid, but scroll down to the second half). Do you have problems keeping your mouth shut? Ever accidentally revealed your plan to ...
This is one of these articles where I’m actually going to be upfront and honest about what I believe, rather than hiding behind my left wing shock jock alter-ego. I have just finished watching the BBC docco “My Foetus”, which showed an abortion being carried out. It was certainly confronting, which I found surprising because although I am pro-choice it is not an issue I have ever been passionate about. In fact I’ve always felt a fair amount of sympathy for the pro-life case too. Perhaps pa...
At a recent concert, Aussie band Frenzal Rhomb played a set. At the end, Jackie O (of Popstars and Kyle & Jackie O’s Hot 30 infamy) was to introduce Shannon Noll as the next act. When she came onstage, Frenzal continued playing guitars and yelling obscenities about Australian Idol and Shannon. No matter how rude you may think this was, it doesn’t justify threats of violence. In fact, rudeness is all part of rock n roll. This is the transcript of a subsequent on-air discussion between Jackie O...
There was a radio piece this morning about the satire industry in the US. According to the piece, up until recently the creative industries have all been dominated by left-leaning artists. Now there is a backlash and there are Republican satirists. As in satirists who are Republican-backers. That’s great I reckon because there should be wide political debate and I think one of the best, most inclusive ways to participate in debate is to engage in comedy. But in all the clips they played, ...
This letter was my most published letter. The Aus, Age and SMH all went for it. A few weeks ago Channel Nine's Sunday programme did a "profile on Opposition Leader Mark Latham. It was much hyped beforehand. Supposedly we were going to hear all sorts of things about Latham's past. I watched it and wrote this immediately afterwards.. I tuned in with anticipation for the slaying of Latham on Sunday but I was sorely disappointed. I awaited figures showing Latham's alleged financial mismana...
The ABC's long-running children's TV programme, Playschool a few weeks ago repeated an episode in which a young child (as opposed to an old child) talked about her "two mums". Playschool regularly features sections in which children talk about important events in their life. This was about a child going to a merry go round and playing. She happened to mention that she was taken along by her "two mums", who were indeed lesbos from lesbos. Well, no they were from Australia, but they was dykes...
It has become the concern of the government That the kangaroo population is too large Kangaroos are endangering the planet And must be culled. While humans are peacefully detonating nuclear bombs, While they safely pollute the air with fossil fuels, And carefully log or mine the last remaining rainforests, Kangaroos continue to hop viciously from place to place. While humans politely bash, rape and murder each other, And subtly suck the last rivers dry, And quietly clear forests...
I’m tackling the big issues in this one. If you don’t like harsh sarcastic comments about reality TV, probably best you don’t read this one. I was kinda tired and irritable when I wrote this. This issue’s a few weeks old, but it was brought up again on telly on Rove Live. (To fill in any Americans, Gretel Killeen is the host of Big Brother, Rove McManus is our Dave Letterman, and Merlin Luck was a BB housemate). How irritating it was to watch Rove McManus and Gretel Killeen comforting each...
In Canberra, the capital of Australia, there has been much controversy over the culling of their kangaroo population. I'll be posting a fair bit about this over the next few days as animal culling has been a passion I have pursued for some years now. Supposedly the animals are causing soil erosion and thus are dirtying the human water supply. I sent this letter to the Canberra Times It is the height of hypocrisy for members of the human race to kill other animals on the basis they are poll...
Don’t you hate lists compiled by music mags claiming to have the 50 Greatest Rock n Roll Artists of all time and the like? As though there is some objective test one can apply to music. As though these people are somehow more expert than us on the topic of rock n roll, the music of the ordinary people. Don’t you just hate shit like that? I hope so, cos here is my list of the 20 best Protest songs ever written. No, but seriously, these are just a list of protest songs and songs of social comme...
Who'd have thunked it? Andrew Bolt and I agree on something! The debate over whether to have homework or not has resurfaced. Many are arguing homework should be abolished, and they're not all students or even necessarily parties who stand to gain from this. I remember being set so much homework in Year 6 that I was up past my parents' bedtime. It was the year I learned the least. Not only that, but it robbed me of a year of my childhood and contributed to it being the unhappiest year of my...
Recently a popular childrens' author, Morris Gleitzman published a book in which he tells the story of a refugee child who arrives in Australia only to be sent to jail for not going through the proper channels of visa application. This has caused a lot of discussion of the place of politics in our education system because many teachers have decided to read this fascinating book to their students. As a future primary school teacher this subject fascinates me. Personally I think it is impos...