How To Be As Smart As Wayne

BEEN behaving yourself lately? Not running up stupendous debts, tithing to a crackpot cult or turning the blind eye to the activities of your old mate, a brothel-creeping embezzler, who does you quite a few favours?

Yes, yes and yes? Well that’s just bonza, but surely you feel a little underappreciated now that Wayne Swan, who cannot answer in the affirmative to any of the above, has been honoured as The World’s Most Fantabulous Fiscaleer?

Don’t be down in the mouth because now you too can enjoy the recognition you deserve with a lovely, stainless steel facsimile Chippendale plate, just like the one that made Wayne the Wonder Treasurer’s day when he dropped in last week on the editors of the most influential magazine you did not know existed.

See, it is exactly like Wayne’s.

And all for just 32 quid, postage not included, from UK outfit SilverTrophy.com! Look, it’s just like Wayne’s plate. Exactly like Wayne’s, actually. And in no time at all you will have the confidence to tell everyone on your street what they are doing wrong.

Impress your friends, enhance your mantelpiece, use it to awe the bank manager and extend that overdraft. Who knows when you might feel the need to splash some mad money on ceiling insulation, grace the backyard with a million-dollar shelter shed or a write lots of cheques to dead people and strangers at $900 apiece?

But wait, that’s not all! For the sort of union members' small change Craig Thomson leaves as a tip on the dresser you also get 20 characters of free engraving, enough (with two left over) in Wayne’s case to emblazon “Treasurer Of The Year”.

So if you want to add a pair of exclamation marks at the end of your inscription, go right ahead. They will certify an even greater authority than our acclaimed treasurer, and all for a fraction of the amount your bills will rise under Wayne and Julia's tax on carbon dioxide.

The Age Lets Truth Slip Out

SEE a story in the Fairfax press about the coming Low Carbon Economy and experience warns to brace yourself. Here it comes, you think, another exercise in opacity by some kid crusader who will be burying the grim news in a compote of clichés, determined dissembling and incoherent writing. That has certainly been Adam Morton’s schtick in the Phage, which on Saturday allowed its environmental editor to heave a weary sigh and help his newspaper’s remaining readers see through the “smoke and mirrors” of the ecosphere’s enemies. The result in that instance was a streak of incontinent advocacy that dribbled down the page and pooled in a pair of final paragraphs astonishing for their evasions:

…each Chinese is responsible for about one-fifth of the emissions of each Australian. Australia continues to have the highest per capita emissions of any major developed nation.

For a fellow who, earlier in his column, sniggered at sceptics for not comparing “apples with apples”, such immediate recourse to the per-capita sleight of hand might strike some as rather brazen. Are a billion closely packed and mostly poor Chinese the best yardstick for judging 21 million thinly smeared and rather wealthy Australians? Morton seems to think so, or at least hopes he can persuade you to do so.

Despite this, China is acting. This week it again signalled it would pilot an emissions trading scheme, expected to expand nationally in 2015. And estimates suggest it is on track to meet its UN target of a 40-45 per cent cut in emissions intensity by 2020. At some point soon after that it is going to have to do much more, but government bureaucrats have said its 2020 target equates to Australia cutting emissions by 25 per cent by 2020, far more than either major party supports.

Catch the trick? Spot the artifice? China is “on track” to a “40-45 per cent cut”, but not in actual emissions, just “emissions intensity”. Morton neglects to explain what this might be, so take it from a Bunyip: China will be burning lots and lots more coal, much of it dug up in Australia, but its next generation of ravenous power plants will make the combustion process far more efficient. In other words, more of the wicked gas that keeps Morton tossing and turning of a night between his organic cotton sheets. That’s emissions intensity, folks, and it has no closer relationship with reducing CO2 than the Phage does with clear and honest English.

All of which means there could be angry words if Morton encounters colleague David Potts over a cup of fair trade coffee in the Phage cafeteria. For perhaps the first time in the newspaper’s coverage of the Gillard Gouge, a Fairfax journalist goes with facts and hard numbers. The whole piece is worth reading, but these quotes are its nuggets:

* It's a permit to pollute - just like getting a licence to drive - for a fee. Who calls that a tax?

* It's a funny tax where a government hands back more than it raises

* Gas and electricity utilities ''may have to bear some additional costs in the near term but longer term there should, ultimately, be full pass through [to consumers]''

* The Housing Industry Association estimates a carbon price will add an average $5500 to the cost of a house.

* [Food] prices will rise but, hey, what was that diet you were thinking about?

* Winners would have to be companies that can sell carbon credits and all this puts a new perspective on those dodgy, I mean tax-dodging, June 30 tree-plantation schemes.

* [for investors] green chip stocks  … need to be well run [companies] with strong balance sheets, a proven technology and not continually calling for more capital … Unfortunately, most green chips fall foul on at least one of these.

* the biggest problem is that the carbon price needs to [almost triple to] $60 a tonne before it is profitable for electricity generators to switch from coal to gas and renewable energy.

* The carbon price will rise by the inflation rate plus 2.5 per cent a year … Treasury's guess is $131 a tonne in today's prices.

* over time "it might slow the rate of increase" is the most the prime minister is promising.

* China and India buy most of our coal, so any pollution created is for them to fix.

* as some products and services become dearer the budget-conscious among us will switch to something cheaper.

Apart from ruining his chances of landing a job at the ABC as Fairfax goes under, Potts can expect much grief when he applies for one of those Fit & Proper Person permits which Christine Milne is so keen to introduce.

Morton’s application should sail straight through.

Let There Be Light (for him)

 AD MAN John Mescall is hip, edgy and socially aware, the sort who laments not being able to use the f-word in his productions. So cool is Mescall, who no doubt earns enough to dress properly and visit the barber on a regular basis, he prefers to get about in Keith Haring T-shirts and a coif that would move a $2 hooker to a fit of jealous spite.

He is also quite the smartie, as he demonstrated when explaining how a sharp ad man goes about making his home attractive to prospective buyers. His first tip, hire a stylist to make the place look as nice as possible.

Next, chuck those energy-saving light bulbs, the ones that cost a fortune, burn out just as fast as incandescents and make it almost impossible to read:

Energy-efficient lights are rubbish. I can’t draw any parallels with advertising on this one, but this stylist guy swears energy-efficient globes make people feel gloomy and depressed. I know these things represented the previous government’s entire climate change policy, but our stylist was right: having just replaced all our lights with old school Kyoto-defying relics, our house looks twice as bright and 20% bigger.

A very sharp man indeed, our Mr Mescall, whose Smart agency has reportedly begun work on the $12 million contract to sell the Gillard carbon tax.

At least, with those “Kyoto-defying relics”, he will be able to see the campaign his team is developing. Given how much Gillard's scheme is going to cost, Mescall probably reckons it is just as well the rest of us are going to be kept in the dark.

Sustainable Footy Bets

PORT Macquarie is a lovely spot, the tranquility disturbed only by the crackle of support hosiery hardening in the sun and the crash of Zimmer frames as Rob Oakeshott shoulders aside any senior citizens silly enough to have placed themselves between their local member and the nearest microphone. A public address system was operating yesterday in the town and Oakeshott was, as usual, behind it. These days the Member for Lyne is a bit more subdued, as are his poll numbers, so the audience was spared yet another of those copyright sermons about integrity and independence that accompanied his post-election decision to represent a conservative electorate by throwing in his lot with Bob Brown’s kept woman and her crew. But the ego was not entirely absent, as Port Mack’s long, thin streak of self-importance made clear while discussing why he may, or may not, back the Prime Minister’s carbon tax on everything.

It will all depend on the evidence, Oakeshott told an audience consisting largely of constituents who believe the planet to be melting. You cannot fault him for that. Facts are good things to weigh when making important decisions, although one might quibble about the evidentiary standards Oakeshott and his sort believe to be sufficient, emotion and preconception all too often figuring as Exhibits A and B. But let us give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that belief and faith are powerful analytic tools. Indeed, let us put theory to the test with the week’s most important question: Which AFL teams will triumph in Round Six’s remaining games? A hard-edged punter will make those calls on the strength of stats and form, but the Oakeshott method, as with the carbon tax, puts purity of motive at the fore.

Swans vs. Blues

Swans are gentle and graceful creatures while the Blues are actually, as the club song states, the Navy Blues, coloured by a heritage of seaborne militarism and ironsided imperialism. It is clear Sydney is the more moral team and deserving winner.

Kangaroos vs The Power

No-brainer, really. A native animal trumps a carbon-spewing electricity generator every time.

Tigers vs Lions.

Now this is a tough one, as both are large and endangered cats, so the moral advantage is difficult at a glance to discern. Tigers, however, kill more humans, which makes them planet-friendly activists for a better world.

Crows vs. Saints

This one is counterintuitive. Yes, all members of the corvid family live in tune with Gaia’s moods and seasons, while any invocation of the holy and haloed can only bring to mind Tony Abbott’s much-detested Catholicism.

But there is a kink in that logic. As a series of stolen photos recently brought to public attention, at least one of St Kilda’s stars is a devotee of all-body waxing. This suggests a yearning to reclaim the innocence of childhood, to reject all those wispy notions of adult responsibility and the electric-powered razors that go with them. From croup to nuts, the naked Saints quite clearly deserve to take this one.

Bombers vs Suns

The Suns, of course.

Magpies vs. Bulldogs

Another trap for the ideologically unaware. Yes, magpies are natural and organic creatures, but consider the poor bulldog, which was developed for fighting and oppressed by men from the moment of the breed’s conception. Magpies swoop on golfers for the sheer devilment of the exercise, but a bulldog has a real motive for yearning to throw off the collar of servitude, rise up and savage its oppressors.

Plus, the Bulldogs are dedicated re-cyclers – the reason they picked up the discarded Rodney Eade, who was unable to secure a flag for Sydney and is staying true to that form at Whitten Oval.

So, gentlemen, place your green bets and watch as Gaia nobbles the unworthy: Come Sunday night it will be Swans, Roos, Tigers, Saints, Suns and Bulldogs at a sprout-fuelled canter.    

The Cavalcade Of Crap

SO, why blog? Experience leaves no doubt the urge can get well out of hand, demanding a good deal more time and energy than the subject matter – or rather, the fruits of that content – might actually warrant. In olden days, in this blog’s initial incarnation, grains of uncovered truth tumbled irregularly with the chaff of snark and sarcasm from the posting mill. Those were the little triumphs to be sure, and it would be a lie to say that there was no thrill of the hunt about them. Pouncing on Phillip Adams’ repeated lifting of others’ work, for example, was always satisfying, moreso when even Media Watch was obliged, eventually, to pass comment on one particularly egregious example of literary theft. Indeed, it was the jolliest fun to observe David Marr’s discomfort as he wriggled like a victim of extreme constipation in search of a more comfortable position. Marr succeeded, eventually, in extruding truth as it is recognised at the ABC: Yes, the beloved Phillip had been a little naughty, but that wicked Janet Albrechtsen is genuinely vile and, as Marr strained to explain, so much more deserving of contempt. At the ABC, as in the schoolyard, relativism’s shelter shed is always open to playmates caught in heavy weather.

Why, only the other week, the latest bottom on Media Watch’s chair of ease was doing much the same, although with an emphasis on energy efficiency that befits a fellow so ready to rebuke those who doubt that our planet is in the process of melting. Where Marr strained and winced while declaring Adams innocent of serious wrong, Holmes has simply ignored another matter altogether, one many might consider more serious. That would be the late Alene Composta’s letter to Drum editor Jonathan Green, the one in which she explained how her expose of Liberal moose knucklers would help Labor at the polls. Holmes did address Green’s gullibility in a little item for The Drum (which allowed no comments), but of his colleague’s eagerness to put the ABC’s resources at the disposal of an attempt to influence an election, so far not a word.

So why bother with blogging? Time and again the liars and luvvies, the wholesalers of cant and dribblers of sophistry, are exposed by the likes of Blair, Bolt and Beck, yet the cavalcade of corruption goes ever on, brazen as ever. Consider Mark Scott, for example. Fresh from trailing three steps behind Fred Hilmer as his master led Fairax down the road to ruin, the former chairman’s godson took charge of the ABC, where one of his innovations, Mr Green’s Drum, now features a daily cavalcade of columnists whose inanity might have given even poor Margo pause to publish. Well, at least for a second or two.

Golf is more fun than blogging, as is sailing, fishing and roasting dead flesh over coals for boon companions, especially those who bring available women to the Billabong’s backyard gatherings. Yet against the dictates of common sense and the needs of an easy life, a blog is being revived. Put it down to mischief and, to be frank, just a dash of malice. To be lectured and hectored day after day, to be reminded constantly of one’s moral, physical and dietary shortcomings, well it gets on the wick.

One example: As an experiment, or a drinking game for the younger set, count the number of times “climate change” is uttered in the course of a typical night’s viewing. It is not a concept so much as an aural wallpaper plastered over every show and topic, relevant or otherwise. Young Master Bunyip, who is nesting temporarily at the Billabong, took up the challenge and nipped himself into a state of near alcoholic coma on a recent Monday evening, so frequent were the mentions, prompting a concerned Papa to go on at length about the younger generation’s moral, physical and dietary shortcomings.

Climate change perplexes the New Inventors’ panelists, draws anxious nods on the Gruen Transfer and, via David Attenborough, there are reminders that it causes fretfulness amongst other lesser primates. It overloads our screens with icebergs, deserts, chimneys, and men in Steve Irwin shirts. No documentary regardless of subject, be it bewildered clown fish or flooded farmers, is complete without a fierce pontificator in his laboratory, CSIRO office, campus research centre or field-tripping LandRover, each and every talking ad well-paid head sounding dire alarums about the bad things to come. As the money flows and the cameras roll, it seems almost every political issue is now to be framed in climate change’s prism. The topic sloshes endlessly about our newspapers and nightly viewing, bilge from the bottom of Tim Flannery’s wee tin boat.

Such ubiquity is dangerous, as it poses only the question of how we must deal with climate change, not whether we must deal with it at all.  Make no mistake, our Prime Minister would never be pursuing her plan to place a surcharge on everything if the ground upon which she plans to make her stand had not been so thoroughly prepared. When Jonathan Holmes, who purports to cover media sins, becomes a hunter of heretics, as he did through the course of an entire recent show, it can be taken as a given that dogma long ago trumped rational discourse.

Immigration, regulation, the very role of government and the extent to which it may meddle in citizens’ lives and attempt to regulate their follies, the prevailing mindset has dressed those subjects in the same armour, established their nostrums as the wisdom received. They are the concepts whose presumptions must be kept immune to challenge, quarantined even from the innocent query.

It may do no major good, but blogging can be a therapeutic cleanser amid such a storm of crap. Posts may come often or not at all. That will depend on which way the wind is blowing, whether the fish are hungry and if the Billabong’s barbecues continue to draw admiring women, ideally young and firm, whose sympathies can be rotated with relative ease, and after no more than one ordeal by ballet, into the horizontal.

Even if it does no good in the long run, a little venting can still put a shine on the soul.