Advance Australia Fair

On 11 March we became Australian citizens. Which means we never have to leave!

The ceremony itself was a rather peculiar affair which reminded me a little of my graduation. It was one of those peculiarities of local government that's obviously a regular and not insignificant event but which has to somehow stay fresh for the regular participants and might occasionally struggle a little to do so. Migration is a serious contributor to Australia's population and according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics consistently exceeds natural growth so these ceremonies must be pretty frequent.

The mayor of Randwick presented the certificates and  another councilor acted as MC. There were various community members there to represent wider society including quite a few (elderly) former servicemen. For what could be quite a stuffy and tedious affair it was handled quite well and was quite touching in it's earnest sincerity - which I should have expected - formal without being stuffy.

When you arrive at the ceremony you have to go and put your name on the electoral roll (sensibly, voting is compulsory here) and are directed to your seat, on which rests a bag of goodies. It contains:

• A welcome note from your new federal MP
• An information leaflet from the Australian electoral commission and,

A cue card with your citizenship pledge on it

With rights come obligations

iiNet Ruling | Piracy Fight Takes a Body Blow

HOLLYWOOD studios and record labels are being forced to go back to the drawing board to come up with a new way of combating online piracy after the Federal Court ruled that internet service providers are not required to police copyright infringement on their networks.

The music industry says it may have no choice but to sue individuals for illegal file sharing unless the federal government intervenes with a solution to its piracy woes.

Let's just look at the last sentence there. Read it again. What it says is that a large, rich industry that holds almost more copyrights than any other is asking for Government protection because it feels unable to defend its' property and is taking the passive-aggressive line that if it doesn't get it then it will have to sue individuals. If you sue an ISP for "authorising" illegal downloading you may as well sue the power companies as well. After all they provided the electricity, they knew people might be doing it with the electricity they supplied and they too failed to monitor if people were or were not doing so. Suing individuals is what they should have been doing in the first place, they don't want to because individuals are the customers. 

If you have rights, responsibilities come with them. In law when you hold a copyright and you wish to continue to hold on to it you are obliged to defend it. It is not the job of federal government or anyone else - with the possible exception of a an industry body with careful oversight - to police your rights for you. You can report rights violations as a crime and then the actual police will step in.

Warning: it's going to get a bit dull and polemic after this so I've put the rest behind the read more link

Get your Johnson out

Oh I say, how utterly ludicrous

3 Years ago, almost to the day, I left London:

Goodbye London, look after yourself!

We will Tom, have fun in Australia

A few months pass, and then:

KABOOM screams etc.

Er, what was that?

Terrorists, nothing new, as you were

3 years pass:

Oh Tom, we've decided to ditch one anachronistic old dinosaur of a mayor for another far more ridiculous one that will hugely damage our international reputation and make us the subject of stereotype ridicule for decades.

Never speak to me again.

Sorry Day

13 February was been a big day for Australia. The Prime Minister officially apologised to the Stolen Generations. This term refers to Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander people forcibly removed from their parents and sent to live either with white foster parents or in camps governed by white people. This was a nationwide and state-by-state policy in Australia ostensibly to protect children at risk of harm but in fact enforced as a brutal piece of 'ethnic cleansing' and out and out racism as has been seen at any time in history. It lasted a hundred years or more.

Apologising for this atrocity has been a sticking point with governments ever since the idea was suggested. A large part of white Australia feels that it has nothing to apologise for; that Aboriginal people do nothing but drink, sniff petrol and laze around. Apologising to indigenous people for Australians of this viewpoint is feeding a victim mentality and validating the perceived lack of endeavour. This is, obviously to me, ignoring the fact that the parlous state of a lot of indigenous communities is a result of the interference of another culture.

This is not to ignore that child abuse, alcoholism and petrol sniffing are immense problems in many indigenous communities. These are symptoms of much bigger problems to do with poverty arising from the treatment of the indigenous population. A distributed hunter-gatherer culture had a concentrated capital economic white culture imposed on it that attempted to force its own values to the fore, removing autonomy and self-determination along the way. This was also done without providing a framework for development or progress – i.e. opportunity to access education and employment – without which many of these communities lapsed into third-world level poverty where they remain today. The average indigenous life expectancy is 17 years shorter than that of the white population.

There are reasons for this too; many indigenous communities are very remote making it very difficult to provide these opportunities even when the impetus to do so is present (from either side of the equation). The traditional ways of living, which supported these communities in the past, had been devalued and eroded by the encroaching culture, hopelessness and an apathetic helpless inertia was the result.

It is against this background that one federal MP when asked whether he supported an apology commented on camera that there were places in Australia where he thought children should be removed from their parents (his emphasis).

Nice one Kev

The wording of the apology needed to be right. Australians of any background are straight talking honest people and any half-hearted effort would have rendered the exercise pointless for absolutely everyone. The word sorry was particularly important as an apology can be without regret and regret as well as recognition of the past ills are what was needed. In the photograph is Sally Pierce who was herself removed from her parents. For years she has worn a black tee shirt with the word Sorry on it, after the PM’s speech she changed it.

Below I’ve included a couple of things, some thinking on what the apology might mean from the Special Broadcasting Service, a video of the PM’s speech, the full text of it and some reactions to the speech again from SBS.

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Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past mistreatment. We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were stolen generations - this blemished chapter in our nation's history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians. We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry. To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry. And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation. For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again. A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity. A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed. A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility. A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

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Kevin 07

Labor took the election early last night. I can't say I noticed as we were out and about and horribly sunburnt having been out all day.

It's about time I stopped with this politics tripe and got on with some real blogging...

Election day

My coverage of the federal election here hasn't been what I'd hoped but buying a flat and changing job roles seem to have got in the way of it a bit. However, it is election day in Oz and so I shall be going to go surfing all day and then to a party in the evening as I am not elligible to vote.

Australia's electoral practices are far more progressive than a lot of other westernised nations. All citizens have to vote, even if overseas a plane ticket actually has to be produced to avoid a substantial fine. Australia also uses a proportional representation system in which voters order the candidates to match their preference (a 1 for the first choice, 2 for the second etc.).

For some arcane reason that I don't really understand some seats in the senate are also being decided and for these you can either order the candidates or just put a 1 in a box for your party of choice. You can actually practice voting at the Australian Electoral COmmission's website.

Polls suggest that Australia is in for a change of government but it could be a nailbiter. There's been some great last minute wrangling including questioning the validity of 12 candidates applications with the promise of legal action andhanding out fake pamphlets supposedly saying that Labor support Islamic terrorists.

Honestly, I have no real idea what's going to happen.

Election 07: So where was I?

If you're worried about the lack of sanity evidenced by writing about politics at 3 in the morning don't worry. I was woken by a bizarre noise from next door that sounded like an entire skelton being dropped on a hard surface from a great height. Worry about that instead.

I was covering the Australian election from an TV/internet and ex-pat perspective when all of a sudden having a life got in the way. Oh yes, and the whole thing became really tedious.

We've had more of the same from both sides. Liberals first:

And now Labor:

We've also seen some genuine thinking by the two main parties. Liberals first, again playing to their economic record versus that of the oposition and doing so against the background of an interest rate rise (the first ever during a general election campaign in Australia):

Labor's latest plays to the uncertainty of electing a Prime Minister who will be stepping down soon (Howard said yesterday that he would probably be in office for at least 18 months):

To give you a taste of what it's actually like here if you're reading from outside Australia all of these video embeds are on television here. You can't get through an ad break without seeing at least two of them.

Street canvassers have been at a minimum and I am grateful that an English accent can give you the instant get-out of not being able to vote. I can't help feeling that with 10 days to go something a bit more dramatic ought to be happening. The fact that it isn't is probably because both of the parties set out their stalls pretty early on and have stuck to their guns pretty doggedly.

Some spending plans were announced on Monday from the Liberals but Labor doesn't seem to have done quite the same thing and in the interest of research and reasonable comparison I'll go through those later in the week.

Insert worm gag here

At the weekend a worm caused a storm in a teacup. The worm in question is not a political candidate but a screen graphic used by Channel 9 to measure public approval of candidates. It takes the form of a line at the bottom of the screen that changes colour and tracks up and down an onscreen graph based on the real time electronic voting of a studio audience of undecided voters.

The storm in a teacup was because Channel 9 did not have permission to use this under the rules the National Press Club applied to allocate broadcast rights of the debate between Kevin Rudd and John Howard. They used it anyway and the NPC killed their feed. Channel 9 then switched to rebroadcasting ABC's feed with the worm patched over the top and claimed that the Press Club had bowed to pressure from the Government in killing their feed and called it a violation of free speech.

Almost everyone is ignoring this non-story except the two broadcasters involved and the international press who love a claim of free speech violation. Channel 9 may not have had permission to use the worm but do they really need permission? The damn thing was more of a distraction than anything, particularly if, like me, you had absolutely no idea what it was.

Oddly though Channel 9 had a news crew inside the online production suite; not something you do without good reason. Might they have had an inkling that this was going to happen and have actually bent the rules deliberately in a cynical ploy to gain ratings? Surely not.

The worm was an issue because John Howard does not fare well under the gimmick. He had only been on screen 3 seconds when the graph(ic) went into a negative reading from Rudd's immediately positive reading. The worm being left out of the broadcast was almost certainly part of the negotiations to actually get a debate aired. Rudd had wanted 3 debates, Howard has cleverly agreed to only one.

Cleverly because Howard is a very professional and polished politician with 11 years practice at being PM. People know who he is and his extempore speaking seems natural, he appears to know what he's talking about even when he is winging it. Rudd is not a familiar face nor do people necessarily feel they know what he's about. There is an air of Blair about him, although he is much less creepy and seems more genuine. Actually on those criteria he's nothing like Tony Blair but you take my point.

Rudd used the time well outlining policy and using phrases like "what my party stands for", "what I would do in office" etc. but on balance I'd have to give the debate to Howard. The PM consulted his notes far less, seemed more composed and didn't make the error of breaking eye contact with the camera or the person posing a question when he had finished talking, which Rudd did. Phone polls by the broadcasters and the newspapers broadly agree with me. Political analysts though split the honours evenly, citing Rudd's better use of detail and Howard's slight hesitancy on reconcilliation with Aboriginal people and troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq.

The worm firmly gave the debate to Rudd. If the audience really was composed of undecided voters then Howard may not be the totem he once was. This election is going to be a hard faught one in the marginal seats and if Howard provokes disapproval just by appearing on screen then he is going to need something extra. For me though the debate was proof that Howard is still tough and definitely more than a contender. [lazy joke about electorate being worm that turned goes here]

Naked PM?

I either have astonishing reach and influence or a talent for stating the blindingly obvious. Today’s video clip is the Liberal Party response to the Labor response to the Liberal unions campaign ad.

Look, it’s Howard and he’s perched on a desk (they must have sawn the legs off). In a bit to out-casual Rudd he’s also jacket-less; how outré! This is begging the question how far will they go? Until Vladimir Putin’s recent photo shoot and since Mussolini politicians don’t really strip off. The fat Italian fascist’s favourite political posturing involved going bare-chested and do manly thinks like mucking in with the hay balers. In a close election are Rudd and Howard prepared to bare flesh? Will we see Kevin in his grundies and a string vest? Will there, the Australian public wants to know, be Prime Ministerial nipple? According to the viral marketers the two are already prepared to change their hair.

As the dominant narrative of the moment the election has considerable use as a marketing too if you can get in people's heads. The election has been expected for so long that companies and their agencies have had plenty of time to prepare and as a media meme an election is all pervasive. Commercial ad campaigns are beginning to mirror the political one.

Apologies, I haven’t actually watched the video above, I’m at work and can’t be bothered. It’s probably Howard saying that he’s not scaremongering but engaged in informing the public about the potential unionist content of a Labor cabinet that would mean the thin end of the wedge for [small] businesses. He probably says something about flexibility in employment and industrial relations and taxes too.

I have noticed from the front page that the theme of embedding your rival’s advert in your own is continuing. Will we also then see this repeated so that by the time a government is elected you will be able to trace the story backwards by finding the adverts referenced in each clip? Has that actually been the case and are you reviewing this post 6 weeks from now tracing things backwards to see how Australia ended up with a naked PM? Interesting.

For speed, and appropriateness of response the Liberals score some points here but this is a definite ‘me too’ advert. It’s the same thing without a jacket (I reserve the right to change my opinion after having watched the video, but I doubt I'll have to).

First blows in the campaign

The first blows in the election campaign fell early in the week. Things are going to move quickly of necessity, 6 weeks is not long to win hearts and minds especially when people already have a well formed impression of your party. Possibly this is why I was a little disappointed with the standard of the opening salvo.

The Liberal Party, rather predictably, weighed in to Labor for its’ Union connections, as it has been doing for the last month.

The move was so predictable in fact that Labor had a reply ready to go which was posted on their website within half an hour of the Liberal ad going live.

Perhaps it is a little early to expect innovation. The Labor – yes, that is the correct spelling here as wrong as it looks – political movement has been linked to Unions since its’ inception (in Australia 1891). That the Labor front bench might contain unionists seems a little obvious.

Whilst the ad is very polished and hammers its’ point home with the requisite force it has opened up with a negative, attacking the opposition not starting from a positive. The Liberals have plenty of positive at their disposal, unemployment is at the lowest rate for 33 years, the Australian economy is booming and the Government is in a position to offer big tax cuts and arguably still manage spending. Why not remind people of that? The polls say they've forgotten.

Strange too that it was left to the Treasurer and deputy PM to launch the advert. Costello is a credible financial manager and is most likely to succeed Howard as PM in the medium term. Immediately before the election was called the Liberal party suddenly had a tizzy fit about who would lead, and for a while it looked like Howard might not be fighting the election as leader. The party eventually decided to hold on to Howard but what does that say about the election prospects of ‘Captain Smirk’? If Costello is not seen as strong enough to win an election and Howard has said he will step down in the not too distant future who exactly are Liberal voters voting for? And, more importantly, why associate this problem so closely with the opening of your campaign?

Howard is notably and noticeably absent from Liberal advert as is mention of any Liberal politicians or policies. Rudd’s response was concise - perhaps overly so - and personal. In a country still so conservative in outlook that any and all newsreaders appear behind desks for even the briefest of bulletins Rudd was perched on the front of a desk with a TV remote in his hand talking to the camera with an easy non-threatening manner (not that I suspect he is capable of being very threatening). It builds on the media created notion of the election as Rudd vs. Howard and it shows Rudd as the voice of his party. The image of the much shorter John Howard trying to perch on a desk flickered briefly through my mind. Rather unkindly I wondered if his feet would touch the ground. I expect Rudd on his desk to become a motif of the campaign.

Round one to Labor.

Election

The two countries that I have lived in for any substantial time are both gearing up for a general election; one definitely and soon, the other probably and not until next year. All being well with visas I will have the peculiar sensation of watching the Australian election, that I cannot vote in, from the perspective of living in the country and in the new year watching a British election which I could vote in, from the other side of the world.

In my native Britain the sitting Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, would be seeking the validation of having won an election on his own merits, having inherited leadership from Tony Blair, but has ruled this out until 2009 saying that he 'needs more time to lay out his vision'. Brown had considered an Autumn election and has faced criticism for leaving the country in suspense about his intentions, most notably from his deputy.

In Australia, where I currently live, the Liberal coalition will be seeking another term in office to return the 10 year veteran of the top job, John Howard, for only a few years before he steps down in favour of, who we don't quite know but probably the current treasurer, Peter Costello.

In both counties questions were being asked about when the election would actually be called. As the Head of State for Australia is in fact Queen Elizabeth II, John Howard is obliged to get permission from the Governor General to dissolve parliament and call an election; something he flew back to Canberra to do this weekend. I have just learnt from the BBC News website whilst doing a light bit of research for this post that he has, as expected, called an election to for the 24^th of November.

Howard had been expected to call an election before now and his reluctance to do so has caused some bitter acusations from the Labor opposition. The accusations are that the Australian Federal Government is using its' advertising privilidge to market government policies and the delay in calling an election was to allow these to run their full course before polling day. There does seem to be some weight to this argument given the noticeable increase in frequency of these adverts on the TV every time a poll comes out favoring Labor and a definite slant in the advertising towards selling the legislation rather than telling people how it works.

The major election campaigning issues which I may do further posts on are going to be:

• Work Choices and employment law (unpopular - favouring opposition)
• Australian involvement in Iraq (unpopular - favouring opposition)
• Assistance for drought areas (popular - favouring government)
• Cuerrent economic position (popular - favouring government)
• Ongoing climate change preparation (varying but mostly favouring the opposition)
• Aboriginal and indigenous affairs (varing and impossible to place also a latecomer to the party)
• Howard vs Rudd - it might come to punches, which speccy nerd will you be cheering for?

The last and probably the critical issue is who can maintain credibility not just personally but throughout their party and their campaign. This is going to be tricky as Howard has probably the greatest credibility of any Australian politician and is a real political street fighter with a knack for finding vulnerabilities his oponents didn't know they had.

Rudd has weathered a few storms on this front with his wife effectively being forced to sell her interest in the Australian arm of the business she runs, and Rudd having a boozy night in a New York strip club in his past revealed. Rudd should not be underestimated though. He might, as Dame Edna Everidge(CBE) pointed out, look like a dentist but he is also a former diplomat with postings in Stockholm and Beijing. During the APEC summit Rudd was able to address the chinese delegation in fluent Mandarin. The night in a strip club story only made him look human and has actually strengthened his position.

This is going to be a tough fought election that has another interesting aspect to it. Every party has embraced the internet as a campaigning tool. Google are running campaign channels on YouTube for all the parties and have an Election 2007 tab for their very popular homepage. Both of the main parties have been using social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook for a while. This is going to be Australia's first real internet friendly election.

For you Mr Blair

It's a good thing I can't get on the net to vent my spleen. I would like to rail against Tony Blair but I can't. Instead I shall simply remind everyone that it was a man calling himself a socialist that enforced student loans and ignored 2 million people on the streets of London to go to war illegally. He has today said that he thought he was doing the right thing.

Edit: How will history judge Blair? - more on this later.

Peter Costello Bought me a Beer

The Chancellor: Peter CostelloAustralia has just had a budget. Beeing the penultimate budget before a general election it contained much of the gumph you might expect. However it was also quite a clever one as Australia's current financial situation gives the chancellor a fairly sizeable sum to throw around - over $10bn this year alone.

Australia, after a long period of what it's population sees as fairly high taxes, has got a measure of control over it's public spending and eradicated government debt. There is no budget defeceit and no public sector borrowing. Unlike almost every other westernised country in the world Australia is in the black.

The cash for the chancellor's recent generosity hasn't just come from taxing the populace but an Australian economic boom powered by the mining industry. Oz has minerals and they are relatively cheap. Oz is also sells to the fastest manufacturing economy on the planet, China.


The PM: John HowardYou might have expected a chancellor with that amount of money to use to throw it around and gloat a bit. Peter Costello though is after John Howard's job and doesn't want to appear reckless; this may be his last budget as chancellor after all. Howard is almost certain tostep down before the next election having been in power for 10 years. Costello is seen as the natural successor.

Much of the budget spend was on infrastructure - Australia's roads could do with a bit of attention - there was additional spending on childcare and support for families. All good commendable stuff. It's all pretty boring really so what's the clever bit? The clever bit of this budget is that there were notr the predicted vote winning cuts in income tax. Instead Costello tinkered with the tax thresholds.

Unsurprisingly like most taxation systems Australia's derives most of its' income from the tax bands where the majority of the population pays its' tax, in the middle tax bands. The 30% tax band, the second one from the bottom, has been carefully manipulated so that 80% of Australians pay the vast majority of their income tax in this band. The bottom Threshold has been pulled up and the top end extended upwards massively. Much the same has happened with the next tax band up, at 40% has been massively extended upwards.

The net effect of this is that not a great deal has changed for the middle income earners. The average Aussie brings in about $53k a year and their income tax burden will be 1.6% lighter. Low income earners do better; someone on $30k is 2.7% better off, but this is before low income benefits are taken into consideration. The percentages are a bit deceptive here as the dollar amount is the same $822 that has come out of the bottom 2 tax bands. The rescaled tax bands mean that very low and high-end salary earners benefit the most whilst things are not too different for anyone earning below $75k. In fact the biggest benefitters percentage wise are people earning towards $150k coming in at 4.3%, or $6,500. After this point the percentages start to fall again, though obviously the fact that this is more money doesn't.

What's happening here is that the chancellor is taxing people at virtually the same rate but giving people money back in the form of tested benefits - they are primarily available to families. This has allowed the chancellor to put through what is virtually a tax and spend budget whilst giving benefits to lower earners and not driving off the high earners so that the economy stays lively. Interesting strategy, it might just work.

How did I do? With most of Australia I will be a little under $16 a week better off after 1 July. With beer at around or below $4 a glass Peter Costello has effectively bought me a beer Monday to Thursday. The Aussies have a word for someone who does that: mate. The chancellor's prospects look pretty rosy.

Milosevic dead

My initial raction to this provided one of those moments when your first instinct is entirely the wrong one. I though 'good, one less murdering bastard'.

The important thing about Milosevic's trial was that he was on trial. Had a guilty verdict been secured he (and those that assisted him) in turning neighbours against each-other, turning whole countries into the site of the bloodiest and most foul outrages seen for a generation, the world, through judicial strength of character, might have been able to look itself in the eye again over the entire Yugoslav afair.

The wars in what used to be Yugoslavia weren't territory wars, they weren't even what you might call a civil war. It was war carried out as vendetta. Rape was used as a weapon. Mass murders weren't just common they were organised and carried out with the intention of removing entire ethnic groups. Because of the way this war was propogated there were no civilians, no possibility of non-involvement for anyone.

The world failed to step in to Yugoslavia to mediate. In fact it deliberately and in a considered manner decided to do nothing until it was too late to be able to do anything effective. There are various reasons excuses for this. Firstly that for a while at the beginning it looked like a war might not happen, that there would be a skirmish and that Yugoslavia as a nation would cease to be and democratic states would emerge.

Second that interfering in the sovereign affars of another nation without invitation is in itself an act of war. The debate over this at the United Nations prevented any quick action and certainly any police action with a 'robust mandate'. This is often the excuse given by people that find the third possibility a little tough to stomache.

The third and most contentious excuse was that NATO had no purpose now that global communism was effectively beaten. Its' member states saw the opportunity for it to become a global policing body leading them to delay any military commitment from/to the UN. The delay allowed a full blown war to develop which the UN was prevented from doing anything about by the debate in excuse number 2. NATO rolled in the tanks, giving the appearance of impatience with the UN and allowing a lot of talk about the UN being a paper tiger. NATO acted too late and with not enough understanding, it was by then a guerilla war and tanks were inneffective to stop the pogroms taking place in the woods and hills.

Excuse four is that this was a european problem and that the European Union should have taken more of an active role in solving it. Particularly as the intended aim of the EU is to prevent European conflicts by enabling closer political and economic ties. Yugoslavia was not in the EU as it saw it as a partisan organisation in the cold war and Yugoslavia was still in name communist. Prior to the Maastricht Treaty being signed the EU was essentially an economic body. Whilst there was a European Parliament and some European laws all the member states were extremely cautious about any action that implied the sovereignty of the European body over that of the member states. Post Maastricht the Sovereignty of Europe over its individual states is implicit, but very very slow.

Excuse five is more of a flat statement: there was no oil. The conflicts in Yugoslavia began in 1991, the same year that George Bush senior invaded Iraq over Kuwait. A fairly minor infraction compared to the cross border horrors taking place in eastern Europe. Had Yugoslavia been an oil state and of greater economc significance then the world would have acted to protect its' economic interests. Yugoslavia's main industry was tourism and instead of action the world decided it would rather just not go there.

These five pitiful excuses shamed the world and it's post cold war naivety. The world watched and talked whilst people were murdered and displaced. The only possibility of the outside world actually being able to act as if it did anything about the conflicts at all would be to demonstrate that justice was attainable without the use of a gun. The prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and other perpetrators of offences against humanity on every side of this conflict might have gone some way to extend the reach of international law outside of that merely imposed by force by interested parties. It was important that Milosevic be shown to be guilty that he could be called a convicted war criminal, important because that is all the world had left from the wars in Yugoslavia. Part of me is pleased that the world is denied the right of convicting Milosevic because it serves to underline the fact that all attempts at sorting those bloody wars out were pointless talking shops as his trial has now ultimately become.

Am I sorry the man who gave the world ethnic cleansing is dead? No I'm not, not at all, but it might have been better had he died after being sent to jail.

Sydney's 'race riots' (bloody hell, actual news!).

You may have heard that Sydney is currently experiencing a few public order difficulties. This is not a new phenomenon. It's summer, beaches and sunshine attract young people and have always been regarded as territory. Add beer into the mix, a liberal dosage of racial intolerance, beat well and hey presto your very own riot-ette.

The actual facts of how the race riots came to be are both unclear and unimportant. The events of the previous weekend are part of an ongoing attitude of intolerance by everyone concerned. The state premier has said that the riots are a sign of an undercurrent of racism in Australian society, I'm rather afraid he might be right. The Prime Minister said that he did not think that this was the case, even Aussies have greeted this with a degree of disbelief.

This is difficult to explain and has a lot to do with the Australian national character being more than a trifle confrontational. In absolutely no regard is anyone blameless in this situation, everyone involved has some level of culpability. That is not to suggest that there are no victims. As normal everyone ends up suffering for the actions of the idiotic few.

Talking to people this week everyone has some dubious 'a friend of mine' story of being hassled by 'Lebs' on the beach (people of middle-eastern appearance, normally young men). Most of these seem to centre around dress code with people being surrounded and told to cover-up if the girls are wearing bikinis. This pretty much typifies how everyone approaches this situation. The caucasian majority are not too keen on people that look different and the immigrant population are not too keen on assimilating. These stories were all too prevalent and the Aussies were a bit too quick to give them to everyone else.

The original intent of the protests at Cronulla was as a demonstration against gangs on the beach. This demonstration was meant to be a peaceful family event . A text message was sent round by someone who had clearly got the wrong idea calling on people to 'reclaim their beach'. From that point on the whole process seems to have been hijacked by people who had an axe to grind.

The media too must take their share of the blame, which is a sizeable chunk in their case. You may have seen footage and photographs of the riots and they are as unpleasant as one might expect. I doubt very much if anything about them struck you as odd. Compare these pictures to other footage you have seen of riots. All the shots are very close up and are taken from the point of view of the rioter. The photographers and cameramen were in the thick of the action, right in the middle of it. How the hell did they get there?

The media had been talking this story up all week into a race issue in the hope of actually having something to report. Their presence is enough to bring about the display mentality and alchohol and group presence the diminished responsibility that triggered people into idiocy. The reporters were going into the heart of the crowd and asking difficult questions of people that had not the intellect, the vocabulary or inclination to answer. Something the replies showed up:

"No I'm not a racist. I love everyone. We've just had e-fucking-nough. We've had e-fucking-nough."

What he'd had e-fucking-nough of he didn't say, possibly this was the subject of the leading question given to him by the journalist looking for a good vox-pop or possibly he didn't have the wit to qualify his statement.

And then there are the racists, quite a lot of them. Many of them were wearing the cross of the 1854 Eureka rebellion. This flag is very similar in intent to the American confederate cross. This is a shame because it should have none of the racist overtones given its origins. The Eureka rebellion ought to occupy a place in Australian cultural history similar, to that Magna Carta has in England - smaller scale obviously.

Despite all the sound and fury this was pretty small beer as far as riots go. Nothing got burned, no-one was killed, there was no looting and no planned violence. LA, Paris, London and just about anywhere that has had real civil unrest would have laughed this off. To give you some kind of idea of the scale of it, there has been worse violence at football matches in the UK, probably with more pronounced racist overtones. So how did it get in to headlines worldwide? Well for a start because the Australian media are keen to make a name for themselves and really want to export news as much as they import it - which is a little difficult as they are a bit short on product - also because the way they report here has to be seriously overblown to make an impact on an unusually pragmatic and sanguine populace, something that doesn't translate very well elswhere. Secondly because the received image of Australia elswhere in the world is red desert with some kangaroos in it interspersed with beach paradise inhabited by sports obsessed beer drinkers - which is more or less correct - the idea that Australia has overwhelming social issues is a bit new to people who don't think very hard about its' origins and history i.e. everyone. And lastly because nothing happens here and anything of significance happening in Australia is news almost for that reason alone.

The police in any country do not normally cover themselves in glory in situations like this but I have to say the Sydney police seem to have handled themselves pretty well. They protected people from the mob, didn't get involved, and didn't allow themselves to become a target. Actual violence was for the larger part confined to property, there were a few unlucky individuals but it could have much, much uglier. The reaction afterwards has been enourmous. There have been peace and anti-racism rallies, emergency legislation and additional police brought in. All the beaches were locked down this weekend with police putting roadblocks up, searching cars and in real trouble spots not allowing anyone but residents access to the beach. This could be seen as a major over reaction but the police did manage to confiscate a few petrol bombs and some home-made weaponry but total arrests this weekend were in single figures. It is also only 2 weeks to Christmas, and Aussies spend Christmas on the beach. Everyone wants this finished before it ruins the biggest holiday of the year. The cynical amongst us might also be tempted to suggest that this is a result of the Prime Minister being asked difficult questions at an international conference. Whatever the reasons the beach was beautifully quiet. If that is the way things are going to be then the police can have road blocks every weekend.