Hunting In Packs: The Column

Against my principles of refusing to write for nothing, and against my better judgement, I've been persuaded to do a column for my local rag called Hunting In Packs, about the media. Of course the only thing that has been going on in NSW in the last month has been the state election, which all comes to a peak this Saturday. So here goes. Doubling up the blog and my other duties.

One day early in the recent NSW state election campaign Opposition leader Peter Debnam held a water taste test on the Corso at Manly. The object of the exercise was to prove to the general public that recycled water tasted just like tap water and the Liberals would save the state hundreds of millions by not opting for a desalination plant.

Rivetting stuff.

The event provided television with their shots of Debnam for the day but not much else; for the print journalists it just left them yet further exasperated.

On this occasion, trying to write something about an utterly un-newsworthy event, I asked Debnam whether they were launching anything, doing anything, announcing anything. No no no came the answers, we're just doing a taste test.

Nothing could have shown up the ineptness of the Liberal campaign better. Really, what were the journalists supposed to write? What were they to tell their news editors when they got back to the office?

You should learn from the Labor Party I said to his young and clearly inexperienced press sec come campaign manager, the very likeable Brad Burden.
Make ceaseless announcements about anything and everything. You could have put out a press release announcing that Debnam was lauinching a series of taste tests across Sydney's suburbs to familiarise the public with the complex issues of water management as they prepared to launch their vitally important new water policy. Along with this you could have announced the setting up of a string of community and expert consultative groups in a desperate attempt to avert the looming water crisis and rectify years of Labor inaction and incompetence.

No one falls for that crap, Burden said.
I looked at him, like, well have it your way. Because of course they do fall for that crap, all the time. Just put your name on the list for press announcements for Labor and you will be almost instantly flooded with transcripts, announcements releases, with committees being formed, strategies, developed, policies announced. Much of this means absolutely nothing on the ground and rarely evolves into anything solid. But it gives the journalists something to write about and makes the politicians look as if they're doing anything.

After his taste test in Manly Debnam caught the ferry back into town with his wife, lining up for a coffee at a take-away cafe like everybody else and then buying a ticket, like everybody else. It was, well, unimpressive. A weak man, I heard one of the old girls on the ferry say, and that may be unfair; but people don't want their politicians to be ordinary. They want them to be familiar with the running of high public office, able to meet visiting dignatories, impel the attention of the world. Debnam's infamous appearance in front of the press in board shorts, the so-called budgie snugglers, turned out to be one of the highlights of the campaign.

In a porn drenched universe the almost-sight of Debnam's manhood turned on absolutely no one.

Instead of being impressed, warming the cockles of the ordinary person's heart, it turnedoff the electorate in droves. It even made the newspapers in London, along the lines of only at the bottom of the world...

Iemma held an election launch which tried to gloss over the fact that Labor has been in power for the past 12 years, most of it under the increasingly unpopular Bob Carr. Bob was an autocratic, almost aristocratic, oddity for Labor, a book worm who would rather die than be seen with a cigarette and a beer in his hand, lightyears from the working class or the dispossessed that Labor used to represent. I remember going on a three day bush walk with him once, when he was Environment Minister, and I can't say I warmed to him any more at the end of it than at the beginning. But Bob had down pat the art of the press conference. He would sweep in, a busy and important man, make his announcement, pick the two dumbest hacks he could see in the pack and answer their questions in full, and then sweep out; off to another important meeting in his busy and important life. In truth he was probably just going back to his office for a sandwich, but like so many people stuck in offices, he had the art of looking busy down pat. Unfortunately when I'm not doing anything I look truly unemployed.

The latest Newspoll and AC Neilson poll both show that Debnam has gone backward during the campaign; and stands a snow flakes chance in hell of becoming Premier, with something like 58 per cent preferring Morris Iemma as Premier. Whatever Iemma's virtues or vices, the electorate is utterly fed up with Labor and the fact that nothing much actually works in this state and their billions of dollars in taxes have been squandered on pointless bureaucracy, not on trains that work and hospitals that deliver good service. But so resigned are they to this, and so unconvinced are they that Debnam can solve the state's problems, they're prepared to vote for the status quo. There have now been 25 state and federal elections since there was a change of government in Australia....

We detorioate into notes.

Our lives deteriorate into notes.

This is a picture of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on its 75th anniversary; when it was shut to traffic from about 4am to 11pm; the longest period in its history.

Only 48 hours before 4,000 motorists had been stuck on the bridge after yet another transport fiasco when a train broke down on the bridge.

Then in a carefully orchestrated feel good yarn choreographed by the state government; the bridge everyone could be proud of, this monument to steel as the state governor Marie Bashir declared, NSW Premier Morris Iemma walked across the bridge holding the hands of his children, pretending to be an ordinary person....

THE BIGGEST YARN:

Spinning around:

NSW Premier Mr Iemma dismissed as "not valid" a government-commissioned report which said Sydney had the worst train system in the world.
The report, prepared for the budget committee of cabinet, said trains on the CityRail network had far more delays and cost more to operate than networks in other cities around the world.
Mr Iemma said the government was determined to improve the rail system but the report had made unfair comparisons.
"The comparisons in the report are just not valid," he told reporters.
AAP

Out-Spent and Out-Spun

The Liberal Coalition was out-spent, out-spun and out-manoeuvred.

Once again Labor showed just how brilliant they are on the campaign trail.

There have now been 26 state and federal elections since there has been a change of government in Australia.

Iemma used incumbency to full effect, spending $100 million of your money on "government" advertising of services to convince the electorate that when it came to basic services the people of NSW weren't doing so badly after all. At the same time he pulled off the magnificent sleight of hand to suggest his government was only 18 months old and that somehow he shared none of the blame for the debacle Bob Carr left behind.

As Alex Mitchell, chief political correspondent for the Sun-Herald and president of the NSW parliament's press gallery, noted: "There has been a very big difference in the editorial writers, who by and large have been critical of the Labor government; and journalists in the field, who are more influenced by spin doctors." One editorial suggested the Carr/Iemma government was the worst in 75 years. But you wouldn't know it from the coverage, and Mitchell is critical of his colleagues for letting Labor get away with it. "Journalists should be less susceptible to spin doctors,"

The Coalition was solidly out-spent. State political correspondent for The Australian Imre Salusinszky described it as almost a David and Goliath competition. Iemma had at least four highly capable staff members who's sole job was to deal with journalists. Debnam had one young and under-resourced press secretary. While Labor could afford to fly plane loads of journalists around the state, the Liberals often resorted to public transport. "The Labor machine is expert at running campaigns and spin doctoring," he said. "The media has been harder on the coalition than Labor. There has been a ganging up on Debnam, but they really didn't run a very professional campaign."

Much of it boiled down to a an over-simplified battle between Iemma and Debnam.

As Anne Davies at the Sydney Morning Herald pointed out: "It was a very presidential style campaign. We have focussed heavily on personalities rather than issues." This suited the need to simplify everything for TV and ignore boring things like policy.
And in this regard Iemma used his position as Premier to full effect. While Debnam was just another man in the crowd that crossed the Harbor Bridge for its 75th anniversary, Iemma's team had carefully controlled and staged the event. He walked across the bridge at the head of the crowd with governor of NSW Marie Bashir, holding the hands of his children, pretending to be an ordinary person. It was a gift for Iemma and a gift for TV. It was left to the ineffective detail of the press world to point out that only two days earlier 4,000 motorists had been trapped on the bridge for hours after yet another public transport debacle, a broken down train, once more created transport chaos across Sydney.

Despite Labor's many advantages; it took pure genius to turn Iemma into a winner. As Mitchell points out, they couldn't run on their record, which under Carr was abysmal, they couldn't run on Iemma's charisma, he didn't have any.

Instead, far from the minister he had performed unexceptionally in his portfolios and been part of the Carr cabinet, he was transformed into a likable bloke, a suburban man, in counterpoint to Debnam, the "toff" from Vaucluse.

One day early in the recent NSW state election campaign Opposition leader Peter Debnam held a water taste test on the Corso at Manly to demonstrate that recycled water tasted just like tap water and the Liberals would save the stat billions by not opting for a desalination plant. The event provided television with their shots of Debnam for the day but not much else. Trying to write something about this utterly un-newsworthy event, I asked Debnam whether they were launching anything, doing anything, announcing anything. No no no came the answers, we're just doing a taste test.

Nothing could have shown up the ineptness of the Liberal campaign better. Really, what were the journalists meant to write? You could have put out a press release announcing that Debnam was launching a series of taste tests across Sydney's suburbs ahead of the Liberal's launch their new water policy, vital to avert the looming water crisis and rectify years of Labor inaction and incompetence.

No one falls for that crap, Debnam's media spokesman said.

Oh yes they do, and yes they did.

Just Another Frustrating Day

It was just another frustrating day at the office, another call for inspirational dreams wasted; pearls before dots, he muttered in a failed joke. Everything fell flat when it could all have been a masterpiece. Well it was a masterpiece, until the brutality and banality of the page took over. Wind him up and point him in the right direction; a guided missile eloquently capable of taking out its target. How to tell your target, determining what the bosses wanted and what will be published, that was half the problem. The actual writing, that was the easy part.

It was just another assignment on the evening shift, a "fine" art auction with a Brett Whiteley painting up for sale; one of the first auctions of a season expected to break all records as millions of dollars slushed around the top echelons. Stockbrokers, financiers, trust managers; these were the new rich with money to burn. They just needed a few paintings to stock their second or third mansion. Baby boomers awash with cash in a booming economy.

A Brett Whiteley painting is a status symbol. In Sydney, the centre of the Whiteley market. having a Whiteley on the wall shows you've arrived; particularly if the painting matches the harbour views from your own windows.

Because, of course, the meaning of life in Sydney is to own a water view; and many have dedicated their entire working lives to achieving just that end. "Water glimpses," as the real estate agents say. It's a flimsy basis for the raison d'etre of everything; bright colours and burning, flashy heat.

Bidding began at one million dollars and climbed in $50,000 increments to $1.25 million. That's $1.5 million with the twenty percent buyer's premium. The buyer or the man representing the buyer had a bald circle on his head, and the minute the bid was made he dashed out the door. An anonymous bidder, as the papers said. It all had the feeling of a ruse. They thought it might go for $1.5 million and that's exactly what it went for.

The painting was a view from his studio window in Lavendar Bay, with the harbour painted a dark wine red; foreboding and ecstatic all at once. It was painted a year before his death from a drug overdose in a very ordinary motel room in Thirlmere south of Sydney. Despite all his millions, that was where he went when he wanted to get plastered; ordering in the scotch and the smack and the smoko in a redbrick motel. None of the locals had any idea who he was; that they had Australia's most famous, successful and wealthy artist in their midst. Nor, probably, would they have cared. Art was not high on their agenda. Money and drugs most certainly were.

I saw Brett not long before he died. We used to go to the same cafe, the Tropicano in Kings Cross. I had a job as a reporter at the Sydney Morning Herald, a job which saw my name jump up regularly on the front page and in that circle of lost hope and small recoveries carried a lot of kudos. And he was Australia's most famous contemporary painter; knew everybody and cut quite a figure with his moppish hair and his little white BMW; when most of the people hanging around there were fresh out of detox and couldn't afford a coffee, clinging to each other in the fight not to drift down the road to the Cross and all it represented.

Both being famous in our own ways, because the Sydney Morning Herald was regarded as the bible of the chattering classes and in those days I was used to being someone that others were curious about, we got to know each other. There was something wrong with my car, last time I saw him, and he dropped me off at work that Sunday morning, whizzing in that georgeous little car through the for once quiet streets to the old Fairfax building in Broadway.

In those days; before everything turned into just another office, there were trucks lined up at the delivery docks, and the wrappings and sheets of newspaper drited in the grimy wind.

We agreed, in a rapid fire conversation as the coffee took affect, that most of the people we knew from meetings were all a pack of pygmies - quivering little drones just out of detox and rehab who had never done anything with their lives. They might be straight for once in their lives, but they weren't doing much now either. We confessed, in our own oblique but knowing ways, surrounded as we were by twelve step zealots, that we had the occasional little dabble; and he told me how he used to go down to Thirlmere where nobody knew where he was, for his own private party.

Within weeks came the news that one of Australia's most famous charcters, the internationally renowned artist Brett Whiteley, had died from a drug overdose in a cheap motel room on the the south coast, in a seaside suburb most people had never of called Thirlmere.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

The Oz has just published an excellent piece by Michael Fullilove from the Lowy Institute on Iraq, saying it's time for a bit of ruthless honesty from the pundits and neocons who once supported the war.

He writes that in sharp contrast to their American counterparts, Australia's prominent intellectual supporters of the Iraq war are not owning up to their own errors.

"The balance sheet on Iraq is now pretty clear: it was a mistake. Yes, a murderous tyrant who brought suffering down on the heads of his people has been ousted.

"But the country is a bloody mess and numberless Iraqis have lost their lives; the fabled weapons of mass destruction were not located; the jihadist fire has been fuelled, not smothered; the Middle East has been reordered only to the extent that Iran has been strengthened and emboldened. The blood and treasure spent by the Americans totals well over 3100 troop fatalities and $US400 billion ($513 billion).
Most analysts believe the eventual financial cost of the war will be between $US1 trillion and $US2 trillion, but the cost to US prestige and influence is even greater."

I don't know Howard has got away with leading Australia into such an unpopular fiasco; and why he has not had the gumption to own up to the fact that it was all a terrible mistake and Australia should never have been involved.

Fullilove concludes that "Iraq was a once-in-a-generation, system-shifting foreign policy decision, and we got it wrong. Now we need - in fact, we are owed - an exercise in due diligence on the part of the commentators who cheered Canberra on."

Chaos At The Crossroads

It looks like I'm being offered money to finish the book I started Chaos at the Crossroads on family law reform in Australia. I've always wanted to finish it but just never had the resources. I started it a couple of years ago and most of it was finished in the early hours belting it out on the typewriter till 4am, a lonely and obsessive pursuit. Finally my fingers just gave out, it was too much to ask from one person after finishing a general reporting shift; and I put what I had done up on line and left it at that; never getting back to it.

I've just converted it all into a google document - google docs and spreadsheets is a wonderful piece of technology, typical google wizardry, easy to use and incredibly clever - and am rewriting the introduction right this minute.

I'm struggling with it and thought I'd give it a go here; where I feel more free to write just about anything.

++

The Howard Liberal Government was presented, early in the millenium, with an historic opportunity to fix once and for all the rotten mess that was child welfare and child custody in Australia. The routine stripping of children from their fathers and the creation of single mother households that characterised separation rose from policy decisions made as long ago as the 1970s. It represnted a well of pain that was disfiguring the country. MPs across the country were besieged with complaints about family law and child support; hour upon hour of their time was being eaten up by distressed parents with intractible problems made worse by their interactions with state agencies.

Modern fathers had embraced with gusto the increased involvement with and hands-on parenting of their children sparked by a feminist push to remake the family and remodel women's roles. The traditional nuclear family was painted by feminist academics and their bureaucrat foot soldiers as a patriarchal prison from which women must ecape. In a modern urban environment, where both parents often worked in order to pay massive mortgages, shared parenting was already the norm in many intact families. Not to be at a child's birth was now the exception rather than the rule. The cigars and slugs of whisky down the pub while the woman screamed her way through childbirth were now a distant memory. The shopping centres of the era were full of kids crawling over their fathers, of holidng hands, dribbling and drooling, whle the cheerfully harassed dads struggled to do the shopping.

But in one moment these same fathers laughing in the sun with their children at their local shopping mall could be transformed into the now familiar sight of the lonely, said and suicide prone separated dad.

The mistreatment of fathers and their chidlren by state institutions was fostered by the gender politics of those in the highest reaches of the country's bureaucracy and judiciary. These injustices were protected by a bi-partisan veil drawn across the entire arena. Both major political groupings in Australia, the "conservative" Liberal National Party coalition and the Labor Party, knew their was little to be gained by bashing each other over the head with the issue, and much to be risked in openly attacking the courts.

The mistreatment of fathers and their children led by extention to the mistreatment of their new partners and often enough of her chldren, along with the child's grandparents and extended families. In the meantime the mistreatment of non-custodial mothers was swept under the carpet, an embarrassment to women's lobby groups focussed on working for single mothers, elevating their victimhood status to the front of those queuing for the welfare dollar.

The ideologically driven state and taxpayer funded creation of the single mother household spawned in the 1960s as the normal family pattern post-separation had created a massive multi-billion dollar industry. Enormous slabs of the country's $80 billion welfare tab were taken up catering for their welfare; with a slew of benefits flowing on from obtaining custody of children. These included family and child payments, child support, rental assistance, and reduced medicine and transport costs. Any attempt to reform family law was a threat to this empire.

But by the early part of the millenium, public debate had shifted and the suffering of separated families came on to the political radar. With public and media support, the government was in a position to alter for the better the destiny of the country's one million children from separated families, The familiar sight of bitter couples at war with each other, burning through hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own and taxpayers money in a bitter fight over the custody of their children, could have been relegated to history.

The Prime Minister of Australia John Winston Howard set the hares running in mid-June of 2003 when he told Australia’s coalition Members of Parliament, and thereby the country, that it might well be worth re-looking at joint-custody.

This was an issue who's time had come. In a rare confluence of opinion, the public, the media and politicians all supported change. The mind-boggling bureaucracy of the Child Support Agency and its staff's overt hostility towards separated fathers rubbed salt into the wounds from dysfunctional Family Court cases. In the padded surrounds and heavy security of their plush offices judges continued to make judgements "in the best interests of children" while out in the real world politicians, counsellors and ambulance officers were left to pick up the mess.

Howard, always one to sniff the political wind, knew that a large number of voters were looking to him to fix the lunacy of Australia's Family Court and its Child Support Agency, both creations of the country's left-wing Labor Party during its many years in power through the 70s and 80s. It was a storm which had been brewing since the creation of the Family Court of Australia in 1975 and the Child Support Agency in 1989. As a suburban solicitor promoting traditional family values, many assumed that he could not have personally condoned the extreme anti-father bias of these institutions, their arbitrary decision making processes, or indeed what many saw as blatant corruption in the rigging of evidence and procedures advantaging the mother at virtually any cost. While separated fathers were routinely painted as violent to their partners and indifferent to the welfare of their children violent, abusive, drunken and drug addicted mothers routinely gained custody in the Family Court of Australia.

Keeping Up

Keeping up. These posts are still going up out of chronological order because I put a batch of five photographs up at the same time, trying to speed up the process. It's new technology, well new for me and indeed new for everybody. Rapid adapters, or adopters. I've got a 250 word column to do for the local rag, the South Sydney Herald, which is due on the 23rd but which I should really bash out as soon as possible. I've done other stuff for them over time, but they don't pay and essentially it's against my principles to write for nothing, this blog excluded. I think if you write for nothing for all these greedy and exploitative community rags, then they just take you for granted. They pay the printers, they pay the editors, they just don't pay the writers. And of course you get what you pay for.

Our paths are clogged by a stream of stray thoughts; fear of being a wanker, fright at the thought of a mistake.

It's 4.08am and already I am off and running, the ideas and projects queuing up for attention. I need to get the voice recognition software working on this machine. There is so much to do. I'm negotiating to get paid $10,000 to finish a book I started on family law reform in Australia called Chaos at the Crossroads. I sat down and started writing it almost two years ago; and then ran out of steam. I would bash it out in the early hours of the morning after I finished work when I was on the night shifts - get home at midnight and run out of steam sometime before sunrise.
It was a lonely enterprise. I was incensed by what had happened, but was entirely alone in my obsession. Working the night shift while the kids were over at their mom's, I had discovered that there were all sorts of people up at that hour; working on the internet. But at the end of the day it was a lonely obsession nonetheless.

It's been up on the web unfinished ever since and the Shared Parenting Council of Australia is now negotiating to get it finished. I've always wanted to complete it; that gnawing feeling when something is half complete. It's a long way from Pai, where the fingers stopped flying and each day was a calm offering. I have to be at Observatory Hill near the Bridge by 7.30am for a day of wonder, chaos and crowds; dodging cliches, leaning down to people in wheel chairs; asking them to croak their reminiscences of what it was like to walk across this very same bridge 75 years ago. How many cars have driven across since? The population on the other side was all of 15,000 people. I lived once in a tiny little room in an Allen's private hotel at Kirribilli and walk across the bridge to work. There was so much to say. And today, in professional mode, I'll be walking across it again. There isn't going to be a disaster after all. There's just so much to do.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

ABC:

350 Iraqis poisoned in chlorine bomb attacks
At least 350 Iraqi civilians needed hospital treatment after insurgents detonated three trucks filled with toxic chlorine gas, killing two policemen, the US military says.
The attacks were carried out on Friday afternoon, two of them just south of the town of Fallujah and one north-east of the nearby city of Ramadi, both hotbeds of Al-Qaeda militants in the Anbar province.
"Approximately 350 Iraqi civilians and six coalition force members were treated for chlorine gas exposure," said Lieutenant Roger Hollenbeck of the US-led Multinational Division West, based in Ramadi.
Iraqi state television reported that at least six people were killed in the blasts, but the US military could initially only confirm the deaths of two Iraqi policemen in the second explosion, in Ameriyah, outside Fallujah.
"Coalition forces confirmed that the Ameriyah citizens exposed to the chlorine were treated locally for symptoms ranging from minor skin and lung irritation to vomiting," Lieutenant Hollenbeck said in a statement.
In each attack a suicide bomber detonated a vehicle packed with explosives and gas canisters near police and civilian targets.

Crash

Skittering across melancholy, wild thoughts queuing up for expression, lists of things to do forming in wave after wave; that was just another morning. Adult ADHD Suzy at work diagnosed the other day; as if we all need to be labelled with defects and profound psychological disorders. Maybe it's just hormones. The glass half full or half empty; and we agreed that struggle as we might we were the half empty types. Other people are just born positive; they enjoy their lives, they would be honoured to be labelled sperm donors, but don't really care one way or the other. I really wanted to have kids; didn't want to grow old sitting on a bar stool, a profound compulsion which stretched back over years.

I can remember, when Clara said she was pregnant one morning, walking past White Bay and across what is now the Anzac Bridge into town, when I lived at Quirk Street in Rozelle. I felt cozy, warm and protective of someone who hadn't even been born, and in this case wouldn't ever be born. I just wanted to be a parent, I wanted a kid in my arms; I wanted to have to go to work to provide money and a living for my little family. Cara had an abortion and the day it happened I just went to work like it was just another day. I didn't want to be there; I didn't want to lend support. I didn't agree with killing the unborn. I must have been a right-to-lifer in another life.

It never happened and I was shy of sex, particularly with women. Some blokes can raise the mast for any occasion, think nothing of banging away to a mounting organism several times a day, and if they don't get enough of that a wank or two or three keeps the urge at bay. That wasn't me, I don't know why. Up until about 24 sex was always for financial gain; the sad, lonely, desperate and the rich; but even then they didn't get much bang for their bucks. The Thais might believe in happy endings, their professional roles an art, or a job, all in itself. Not me. I had to be completely drunk before I let them suck me off; and as for the rest of all that grotty stuff, I just didn't want to do it. Even in later life; whole relationships and possibilities have passed by while I diddled and daddled and held back. You put what where? I can hear a kid's voice ask. You've got toe be joking. Yuk. And yet the bestiality of man and the flashing thoughts and images; it's meant to be our most profound drive.

Just like everybody else, your whole life can change in a moment. Just like these two blokes, who headed off for a flight one afternoon from a quiet little aerodrome in Sydney's west; only to find minutes later their dream plane in pieces, the sirens screaming and the waves of pain hacking through their damaged bodies as they sped towards intensive care.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

More and more it looks like Australia may be heading for a change of government. Elections must be held by the end of the year.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/santoro-a-setback-that-howard-can-ill-afford/2007/03/16/1173722750147.html

Santoro a setback that Howard can ill afford

Michelle GrattanMarch 17, 2007
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John Howard is angry at Santo Santoro and probably at himself.
There he was earlier this week, defending Santoro's blunder over one parcel of shares, while his minister didn't mention 70 other transactions.
It is almost inconceivable that this could have happened. Santoro didn't explain it adequately yesterday, other than saying he had his mind on his ministerial work.

We are told that last year Santoro discovered he had undisclosed shares in a company, CBio, that impinged on his portfolio. He informed the PM, and got rid of the shares, giving the profit to "charity".
That initially sounded straightforward. But it wasn't. It emerged that the shares had been offered to Santoro by the head of a conservative family organisation — and that was the body to which Santoro donated the profit.
But that's not what brought Santoro down. The story got worse. The message came to Santoro from Tony Nutt, chief of staff to the PM (who was overseas): tell us your finances are OK. The answer — that there had been all these other transactions — sent waves of shock and fury through Howard.
No wonder he said Santoro's resignation was an open-and-shut case.
It's a mystery why Santoro failed to declare his finances, an even bigger mystery why he didn't put his affairs in order when fixing up the error over CBio. He changed his story within an hour yesterday, first saying Howard had not asked about other shares last year, and then saying he had.
Howard says he did. No doubt he will be pressed on the detail when Parliament resumes next week. He will be kicking himself for not pursuing his minister harder. But whatever the PM said, wouldn't any halfway brainy minister have made the connection?
Some will be tempted to see Santoro's fall as part of the general mudslinging that has dominated federal politics in recent weeks.
But it should be viewed as a stand-alone issue. Members of Parliament are supposed to declare their financial interests; ministers have the additional requirement of declaring them to the Prime Minister. As Howard said, a genuine oversight can be tolerated, but this cannot. Either deliberately or because he is totally flaky, Santoro has thumbed his nose at parliamentary and ministerial standards.
Until Ian Campbell was sacrificed to the Coalition's pursuit of Kevin Rudd over his contact with Brian Burke, Howard had let his code of conduct gather dust. But even if the mud wasn't flying, it would have been hard to overlook this one.
Santoro's share transactions are pretty extraordinary, although both he and Howard claim they didn't amount to "trading".
Santoro is an unusual character. "He has been a tribal Liberal warrior since he was in short pants," says Queensland Liberal Cameron Thompson.
He is the action man who in his political dealings doesn't fuss too much about the niceties. In this case, that neglect has not only caused his fall but inflicted a setback that the Government, already beleaguered, can ill afford. Especially in Queensland, where the police have recently raided the offices of three Liberal MPs.

Waves of Excess and Success

Confounded by rigorous belief, patterns of thought that he knew not, Henrietta is talking about how she's going to have a black cousin because her uncle David is having a baby to Laura, who's Cambodian. She's nice, most blokes would be eternally happy, but he was never one for the single life, or a single woman. She's on the plane back to Pnom Penh and before the fuel has finished burning in the sky doors are shutting and the boys are off to the nearest brothel, the squirming trails of activity, the girls, professional hostesses, gazing in concern if you're not immediately hooked up, satisfied. This is all for you, she said, with the streams of crowds parting around them, the boxing rings, the groups of Westerners, the Singha and Heinekin beers crowding on to the tables, people from everywhere, absolutely everywhere; in a sex industry astonishing for its size - and diversity.

There was just about anything you could possibly imagine; from the middle aged tourists having foot massages to the marauding gangs of Aussie boys out to get pissed and party, party, party. One particularly ugly gronk from near the German border says, within sentences of having introduced himself, the girls are fantastic here, they even let you piss on them. Oh great, that fulfils every sexual fantasy. As if the clouds and crowds and teeming life really meant anything. It's the 75th anniversary of the Harbour Bridge this Sunday and I have to be at Observatory Hill at 7.30am. It will be a long day, while my skin crawls and the bright dizzying flashes of the harbour wash across us. Pad in hand, pose in hand, we'll get through. He didn't know where the enjoyment had gone.

I still keep thinking of Pai, of Thailand, of how nice it all was. Perhaps it was just being on holidays with a good exchange rate; when Calcutta comes to mind, they'll jump a hundred foot for a rupee, Sada Street and the Fairlorne; or however you spell it, the faded elegance and the little stories that you couldn't really repeat; not here. Crossed Wires has gone; completely gone; the blog I was following of the mentally ill gay boy who saw himself as a disciple of Burroughs and wrote, really quite well at times, of his wild escapades drunk in the bars of border country; outposts, fringes; going off his scone in porn theatres when someone older, uglier and fatter than himself approached; of the desolation and mental illness; he was always taking something to put his head on right; it's all gone now. He was pretending to be something he was not; crunchy in milk, and when he put up a post of what he really looked like; when people twigged that his photograph wasn't really him and he suffered a bout of honesty, it all seemed to unravel. He was always threatening to take everything off the web and turn it all into a novel. Perhaps he's dead.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

ABC:

PM 'angry and disappointed' with Santoro
The Prime Minister says his Minister for Ageing, Santo Santoro, had no choice but to resign after failing to disclose dozens of share transactions.
John Howard says he is angry and disappointed Santo Santoro breached disclosure rules in relation to up to 60 share transactions.
"This incident is embarrassing, I don't like and I don't mince words, I don't like it at all," Mr Howard said.
"This is a very annoying thing to me, I'm angry about it and I'm entitled to feel both annoyed and angry."
He says Senator Santoro had no alternative but to quit after inquiries from the Prime Minister's office sparked the latest revelations about his share holdings.
Mr Howard says his Government is not falling apart, despite the resignation of a second minister in a fortnight.

Transitions

My next problem is that I can't alter the dates on the drafts of the photographs so that they go up in the correct date sequence. This post, for instance, will appear out of chronological order. There must be a way to fix it but I'm not sure what. Last day of the working week for me, pay day, and I'm glad it's all over for another week. Seven days.

I had this hunch, premonition, looming suspicion, whatever you want to call it, that my life ran in seven year cycles; but I'm not sure what the current seven year cycle is. Things are on the move, in a subterranean way; if I had the money and the kids weren't still in school then I'd think seriously of moving on. I may be strategically placed in the heart of the Australian media; with my physical location indicative of other things; but part of me pines, and has pined for a long time, for a different life.

That said, it's all a matter of practicality; and the comfort of the familiar. Pai was just so nice, it offered a real alternative to the frazzled life that we all live in this town, but there was a peace, a wholeness, a feeling of being at right with the world and the surrounding landscape, that you just don't get here.

I finished work at midnight and there was nothing to do. I lingered, finishing off some paper work, and suggested to one of the gay boys that we go out somewhere, do something; but he didn't take the bait and I was left alone; with the streets quiet and nowhere to go. There had been a shooting on Oxford Street; coming, shooting, plays on words didn't work. You're pathetic, a voice said, and yes, those sort of jokes just don't work.

A body lies on the pavement and I'm trying to make a joke out of it because whoever it was hit the pavement on the gay strip, one of the only parts of town where there's any life at all late at night. For a town the size of Sydney there really is very little activity. I think, for whatever reason, of the main gate to the old town of Chiang Mai; back in Sydney there aren't any food stalls, there isn't the smell of cooking in the streets. There aren't people who are happy with their lot; or even the high pitched voices of the katois, the drag queens, looking for one last customer as the sun rises. They try to attract your attention, follow you down the street, no doubt ready to rob you if they could corner you in a back lane; and I say as politely and as firmly as possible, no thank you. But with sympathy; for as the Thais say, the life of a katoi is a hard one. I pass through the gate of the pensione and lock the grill; safe at last; and they drift away into the lightening dark, tripping on their high heels, another chance having passed them by.

We're so controlled, so down trodden, that the inappropriate analogies of a Stalinist era grey aren't that far off the mark, even if the colours are all wrong. We are herded; victims of a controlling social agenda; the instrumentalities of social order dampening us all down. The voices of control are the layers of bureaucrats; the politically correct voices of authors saying all the right things, mouthing social justice agendas which at the end of the day really mean nothing. My own role in this, the piece of flotsom with the camera eye, being tossed in the surf while trying to maintain and internal order, keep body and soul together; make a home for my children; all of it open to review.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

Sydney has once more descended into traffic chaos; with some commuters stuck in carriages deep underground for almost three hours; unable to get off the trains. Couldn't think of anything more claustrophobic. One train broke down on the Harbour Bridge, in a great piece of symbolism; having a ripple effect which meant trains were stranded between stations across the inner-north shore lines. City grid locks once again; all in the run up to the election. Debnam, for once rising to the occasion, said a broken down train was just the beginning of a political culture and inept public administration bringing the state to a halt.

ABC:

Probe launched after thousands trapped on Sydney trains
The New South Wales Transport Minister says a full investigation will take place into last night's transport chaos in Sydney, which followed a train breakdown on the Harbour Bridge.
Thousands of rail commuters were left stranded after the train broke down between the bridge and Wynyard Station around 5:45pm AEDT.
About 14 other trains were also stopped along the North Shore line due to the blockage, with some passengers trapped on trains for about three hours.
Other trains were delayed

Zen and the Art of Mistakes

This was a particularly beautiful Zen garden at the Chiang Mai horticultural exhibition. I think it was from Japan. Without the people it was a very striking exhibition, with the square patches of green grass and concrete, the strange wooden cone construction. We bought chicken and rice and I had a Black Canyon take-away coffee and we sat on a bench and watched the crowds, exhausted. There is grime and an ever-sinking feeling; as if nothing was the aim of the game and the grasping for meaning and coherence was long since gone. I just want to be back in Thailand.

The holiday, particularly in Pai, was the happiest I had been in a very long time; and now, back in Sydney, I often wished we were still back there. A brand new three bedroom house with views up and down the Pai Valley, all for $50,000. Ninety year lease. There weren't kingdoms we could expose, tiny little secret valleys where hundreds of years of history had been swept over; when the real world out there passed by, civilisations rising and falling, and the cruelty that was the main stream of history kept falling over, leaving us in this tiny place, secret, hugging one's options to oneself, sacred, but most of all secret.

We were masters of the art; and it all made perfect sense as long as the money kept flowing. It was when the ATMs stopped working and the credit cards ran low; when the debts that we hadn't yet cleared mounted up on top of each other; and the casual success was no more. We were desperate for a solution. We wanted a consciousness that didn't do the wild swoops of anguish, ending in tears, but kept us calm and considered while everything we wanted was moved in part by an evil that wouldn't go away.

I was harassed, time and again. She was persistant in her demands beyond all normal bounds; stone cold greed that would rort any situation. No phone call or demand from that woman was ever in my interest. She picked up Sammy last night and she demanded to speak to me from the car. I tried to back away but got caught anyway. She had activated all the things with Centrelink, she told me, talking from her new $33,000 car. I'm entitled, she said, in that voice designed to raise the hackles of even the most tolerant bloke.

I tried to protect myself from the ceaseless demands, always over money I didn't have that much of anyway. Any target was worth going for, and my attempts to steel proof myself had failed. They were small amounts of money at the end of the day; bnt it was the principle of the thing. The government dished out money to the undeserving, while those who got up and went to work every day, who paid PAYE tax, we were the suckers supporting a massive and grotesque abuse of our money, all in the name of income redistribution.

Prime Minister John Howard, faced with appalling polls that give him no chance whatsoever of winning the next election, has played both sides of the fence; and is now paying the price. He dished out billions upon billions of dollars through Centrelink in family payments, catching up most of the country's families in the Centrelink bureaucracy because you needed to be registered to get your payments, basically to get your own taxes back. It was little more than buying votes. If he had done the right thing, and reformed the family court and the child support agency, he would have had a million or more separated parents out there campaigning for him. As it is, they have been dudded and must realise that by not fixing the problem, all the votes they might have had have disappeared. Your children are a vote changing issue; but instead they ducked and weaved, not having the guts to stand up the feminist lobby groups. They could have won so much support. They could have done the right thing by the nation's kids. Instead, they protected the bias of the Family Court and the discrimination of the welfare system in favour of the single mother model, they perpetuated the chronic welfare dependence amongst separated parents, denied hundreds of thousands of kids a proper relationship with their dads, and will pay the price at the box office. Serves them right.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

ABC:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1868897.htm

Attacks over Burke fail to dent ALP: poll
The Federal Opposition has opened up a huge lead over the Government in an opinion poll published in this morning's Fairfax newspapers.
The AC Nielsen poll has Labor leading 61 to 39 on a two-party preferred basis.
Labor leader Kevin Rudd's rating as preferred prime minister is up five points to 53 per cent, while Prime Minister John Howard's has fallen to 39 per cent.
More than 80 per cent of those polled said they did not care about the Brian Burke affair, despite nearly two thirds saying they believed Mr Rudd had been less than truthful about his meetings with the disgraced former Western Australian premier.
The poll of 1,400 voters was taken from Thursday to Saturday.
It suggests Mr Rudd's personal approval rating has risen three points to 67 per cent, while Mr Howard's has fallen three points to 46 per cent.
Labor's deputy leader, Julia Gillard, says the Government's attempts to attack Mr Rudd over the Burke affair have backfired.
"These polls are really telling the Government it's time to put down the mud bucket and pick up the tool box and start concentrating on the national interest," she said.
"All the Government's done over the last three weeks is throw mud."
Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane says he is not concerned by the opinion poll.
"The real test will be when we do go to the election and Australians have to think about Australia's future," he said.
Mr Rudd's approval rating of 67 per cent is a record for an opposition leader.

Exploding Stars

This is a NASA image of an exploding star, apparently the biggest and brightest that has been seen in more than 400 years. The computer is moving very slowly and keeps jamming, adding to my already immense sense of frustration. The damn thing is not even aligning to the left properly and I don't know why it is doing that either. It's been one of those days, I just feel intensely uncomfortable; nothing is quite right, the soul grimy and worked over, my body feeling old, pains in the kidney.

I bashed out two stories at work today, one on kids keeping Australian bearded dragons as pets, the cutest picture of a kid with a lizard, sounds like it might not be getting a run; and the launch of the Greens election campaign.

The Greens launch was down at the New Theatre in King Street, Newtown, ironical in some small way because I had been there a couple of times recently, taking Henrietta down and trying to say to them that she was interested in the theatre and was there anything they could do, encourage her to hang around. All these things are is a matter of finding the right person at the right time, persistence, determination, but most of all, being in the right place at the right time.

There were times when we were cast adrift and couldn't explain what had happened, why there were pains in the neck and why nothing absolutely nothing gelled. The Greens were just classic, the whole event full of earnest healthy people so joyfully committed. I sat next to Jack Mundy, a hero of the left because he was a building unionist who launched the green bans on a couple of particular sites around Sydney, including from memory over on the north shore around the Shell Refinery. How you going, aging well? He asked. No, I replied, and fiddled determinedly with my phone. I knew I knew him but didn't put the name to the face at first, until the compulsory aboriginal ceremony at the beginning, the recognition of country which has become an essential part of many Australian functions, and an aboriginal chap went on about respecting our elders and the spirits of all the elders who had gone before, and the elders in our midst, including Jack Mundy, who was sitting there in the centre of the theatre. The place burst in to applause and the lights shone on us and I looked around to see where exactly he was, only to realise he was sitting right next to me and had been friendly because of the stories we had done in the past. I had a reputation, or used to have a a reputation, for being an old fashioned straight shooter, someone who you could trust in the media, who wasn't going to do you over, in a business where everyone was five minutes old; and so I was often greeted in friendly terms.

I wish I believed in things like they do, I said back at the office. They're so committed, so convinced they have grabbed the high moral ground. Climate change has been a gift to these people, they've all found something to believe in which sounds so wonderfully high minded and really doesn't require any more commitment than saying all the right things at all the right places. I used to be on the side of the sceptics, that it was just another mass hallucination by the left, but maybe, as the evidence mounts, they've got it right after all. I don't know. All I know is they've found something to believe in; and have adopted it with religious fervour. If you don't believe in combatting climate change as the greatest challenge to face us all; then you're clearly a moral moron.

Love Greens Stop Homophobia went the kaleidoscope of images; with the hip-hop soundtrack grunting "Green Solution" and the crowd waving their placards, No More Coal Mines. Vote for tomorrow, today, is their slogan. Will you vote for your children, asked the federal leader Bob Brown. It feels good to be amongst the Greens, people who are prepared to gift their own efforts to future generations. Oh if only I believed, in anything really. Once I grasped at the notion of falling, or exploding stories, as a way of describing all the gifted disaster prone friends who had fallen into disarray, died young, left me here as an accident careening unguided into the future; but even that was open to suspicion. The human capacity for delusion knows no bounds.

Done Eddy

"How shall I explain the dying that was done?
Shall I say that each one did his math, and wrote
The value of his days
Against the bloody margins, in an understated hand?
They will all want to know
How was the audit done?
And I shall say that it was done,
For once,
By those who knew the worth
Of what was spent that day."

Richard Morgan
Altered Carbon.

This is Done Eddy, who I met on the first day I was in Pai. He was wearing his police t-shirt, as above. That's a way to win friends, I said, and we talked every day after that. He was often up early, at the general store where beer was 22 baht a bottle and the ramshackle chairs and tables outside gave him somewhere un-demanding to sit and hold court.

I've never laughed like I've laughed here, he said, echoing others. They came from everywhere; sitting briefly or for hours outside the store. Inside they took it all with an exasperated calm. At least we weren't Israelis.

Everyone walked past those tables at one time or another, and he was constantly saying hello to denizens of the night before. Although he hadn't read Under The Volcano, Eddy was doing his bit for the cause, wiping himself out on a daily basis, launching into streams of poetry. He came from one of the roughest housing estates in England and had spent half his life in prison. Being outside in the tropics pissed and partying was his idea of paradise. Kind of like a runaway trainspotter. Young women stopped to say hello, blokes from all over Europe, the Balkans, America, Canada, they all stopped and sat and exchanged notes on the day, where they were going, where they had been, how rough the visa run to the Burmese border had been this last time round.

Besides, if he went home he would be arrested at the airport, and because of his past, delivered straight into maximum security. Over some stupid driving charge, he said.

Many of his tales involved being pursued by coppers. They featured, from what I could tell, in the relevant escapade.

But of course there had been a lot of escapades. Whatever had been going on before he left, it all sounded wild. As had been his time in Thailand, which was meant to explain why his ex he'd argued with who had gone storming off back to England with the kids who weren't really his kids anyway had taken his credit card and he had to rely on Western Union; going up and down the strip once a week to pay his bills.

Stuck in isolation. No tobacco. He'd smashed everything. What can we do with you? asked the chief warden. We've already taken everything off you. Some tobacco, and a chance to watch the game, that's all, he said. He got what he wanted. When the prison drug counsellor said the most dangerous thing you could do was shoot up in your neck he couldn't wait to try it.

He got what he wanted; on that occasion, but he didn't want to go back. He was well happy to stay where he was; getting his dole money or whatever courtesy of Western Union. I love Western Union were the yellow t-shirts, one give-away week. He wore it with gusto. Just another scumbag, you may say, and yes, well, you might be right, but in all the chaos and drunken selfish generosity and full-on conduct, the party man that never did say die, the man who once had hair down to his knees, wore white suits and was a plaything for the rich, to skulking across housing estates and fleeing through backlanes, Crazy Eddy, as he was also commonly known, had all the charm of the doomed; the eddies of joyful hysteria folding into chaos. These things never end well.

My most vivid memory of him was one night when I was pottering around on perfectly good $3.00 a day motor scooter just at the end dusk near the river; always just beautiful at that time of day, whatever angle you looked at it; and there was a commotion on the bridge up ahead; always a spot for falling off your bike.

People rushed past me, there's been an accident they said. Then out of the almost-night, with people's headlights already on, the heightened sounds of everyone on the way home from work, emerged Eddy, blood streaming from all over him, concerned people bending towards him, clothes awry, someone wheeling the smashed bike, the traffic starting up again.

We stood in the forecourt of the Banana Bar, some name like that, and later he would say how helpful they had all been. But in fact they were standing back, alarmed at the sight of him, dishevelled, drunk, bleeding badly. We got the water going and I splashed water all over him, helping him to wash the blood off him. The fawcet was broken, and we couldn't turn it off. He'd broken his plates, had scrapes all over his face, his hands, his legs.

We washed the blood off him in what seemed like a prolonged bizarre embarrassment. Eventually he got himself together and insisted on getting back on the bike and driving back home. The Thais watched in a kind of pained disbelief, I feel sorry for you for that, they would say over the smallest misfortune. I watched him go, and then decided to follow him up to make sure he got home.

At his hut he was shaken and beyond; embarrassed by his broken plates, unable to talk properly. Kind of glad to see someone, or maybe not, on the verge of passing out. Looking at his broken plates. The last time that happened, someone stuck a gun in my mouth, he said. Yeh, and I bet you deserved it, I thought. We had a cigarette on the balcony, the moon out over the rice fields and the mountains behind, houses and lights far-off. I'm going to die here, I'm going to die here, he said.

I said something positive and inane, the night will claim us all, you could stop drinking and fulfil your dream of running a bar, there isn't any real reason it has to be a disaster. I'm going to die here, he repeated.

Portraits

It feels odd putting a picture of myself up here, even though it's my blog. I'm so used to writing about other people's situations, excising my own views or opinions and being completely neutral, reporting the bare facts, that it seems egotistical or something to have myself in here. For a long time there were only glimpses; now I've stepped boldly into the open. A humble hack on the highways of print; now it's a record of everything that was, everything that could be. It's a strange but interesting process. I always wanted something like this, a daily diary of events which included pictures. Because swear as you might that you will remember everything, the events so vivid, in fact much of it is washed away by declining memory. I remember once, when I was 12, as the plane climbed out of Los Angeles heading to Mexico City and the sunset across the mountains was astonishingly beautiful, that this was an experience I would never forget. Now the technology has caught up with the dream; and a life recorded, for what purpose I know not. I think of Vincent van Gough's beautiful three volumes of letters; and wonder what he would have done if there had been the blogging technology way back then.

I've called in sick and am just spending the day at home. Normally I just go to work, no matter how I feel, day after day, year after year; the slow evolution from young hopeful to old hack, from talented to experienced; from star to has been. She didn't pick the same things I would have, but then.... I start to say to my boss, when he asks about the performance of a young intern. But then, I've been around a long time. You're an old hack, my boss says, without meaning offence. I laugh, it's true, I've seen so many stories come and go now. We were thinking on Sunday morning of various stories, and one hardy annual up for grabs was the streets of Sydney after Mardi Gras.

You could write a really funny story, I said, it's the main thing going on in Sydney today, the hysterical collections of washed out party goers still bopping into the daylight of the morning after, looking a sight in their bedraggled costumes; their ecstasy tablets wearing off as they keep drinking, refusing to give up. Tens no hundreds of thousands may have paired off and gone home with whoever, whatever, but others just wanted to stay out. Sydney didn't have much nightlife anymore, there were too many rules, the grey and repressed culture that we had become saddled by the puritans and the bureaucrats and the ideologues. Well, it's the main thing going on in Sydney, today, I said of the remnant partygoers, but the problem is the story never gets a run. By Monday Saturday night's Mardi Gras is already old news. And having worked Sundays on general news in Sydney for the past 20 years, I knew perfectly well the fate of the story we decided in the end not to write. At least us old guys know where the furniture is. Young editors, 20 years my junior, rise the corporate ladder and I sit in the same place, under the same flourescent lights, watching as they come and go. They walk past me as if I don't exist, only useful when a crisis is on, and wonder, what the fuck am I doing?

THE BIGGEST STORY:

THE first badly injured Australian survivors of an airliner that exploded in flames on landing in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta are expected to arrive home this morning.
Five Australians are feared dead after the Indonesian Garuda Boeing 737-400 overshot the runway at the provincial capital's airport yesterday and exploded in a fireball about 7am local time (11am AEDT).
Some of the 133 passengers were burned alive in their seats.
Garuda last night said 22 people died, including one of the seven crew members, while 118 other passengers and crew escaped.
With at least five more Australians surviving, some with severe injuries, Australian authorities scrambled emergency teams to evacuate victims.
The first of the Australian repatriation flights was expected to touch down in Perth early today.

MORE CHAOS IN IRAQ; From playfuls.com

At least 30 Iraqis were killed and 29 wounded Wednesday in a suicide attack at a cafe west of the Iraqi city of Baquba, local media reports said. The attack followed one in southern Baghdad that saw least three more Shiite pilgrims killed and 11 wounded by unidentified gunmen. In the later attack, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the cafe in Balad Ruz town, 35 kilometers north of Baquba in a mixed Shiite- Sunni region in Diyala province north of Baghdad. The earlier Baghdad attack was a continuation of violence against Shiite pilgrims walking to Karbala to take part in a memorial ceremony marking the martyrdom of Imam Hussein. The victims were shot at in the Sunni-dominated Doura district of southern Baghdad. The violence came after Iraqi authorities had announced Tuesday that security had been beefed up in and around Karbala in preparation for the ceremony due to begin Friday. The death toll of Tuesday's twin bomb blasts also targeting Shiite pilgrims near the Iraqi city of Hillah climbed to 120 on Wednesday, with 170 others wounded, medical sources said. Two suicide bombers wearing explosive belts blew themselves up in quick succession amid a crowd of pilgrims on the road linking Hillah and Najaf, sources said. Imam Hussein was martyred in 1680. Shiites still commemorate both his death on Ashura festival and the memorial of his death 40 days later in accordance with the ancient tradition of honouring the dead. Also Wednesday, US-led coalition forces detained 24 suspects during raids Wednesday morning across Iraq targeting the al-Qaeda terrorist network in the country, the US military reported.

Drapes

Concealed as an afterthought, hidden within, much of what passed now was passed in secret, doors shut, the protection of tiny courtyard gardens, the city outside not to be embraced. Michael was over and we yacked in the backyard, hidden even from the back lane by the washing on the line. We were all tromping into our fifties with disaster ahead, as if the focus had moved and we were no longer confident of anything we did. The times had passed us by. Once young men full of fascinating foibles, we drifted into being old men who's problems were boring, our issues unresolved and therefore our own fault; evoking no sympathy, our martyrdom ignored.

Not feeling well. Came home early. Just want to hide behind a closed door. Surely there will be other consequence; but not today; it's just a matter of juggling the order of things, of regrouping, of starting again for the umpteen millionth time. We were hoping for order and came within a breadth of doing nothing, of disappearing while new generations took over our path. Come hither, he whispered, and lost erotic moments had disappeared into history.

Sometimes voices speak to us from our own future, warning us to be careful, to look after ourselves, to protect our physical presence; not to smoke, drink or destroy ourselves, as we had once done with such abandon. I still want a dog; a secret garden, emotional sanity. Tides were hugging us away, and we clapped each other on the back, good to see you. And the memories we held in common, threads of parties and houses and people we used to know, they were all disappearing, our bodies wracked as we subsided. They sent me messages; I had been slow to respond. Be careful, they said, and it was advice I was only just taking. Embrace yourself, look after yourself, in the quiet times and the secret paths. There was a future, you just needed to be alive to see it.

Roundup of Iraq Violence -- March 6, 2007
by Dalia Hassan
McClatchy Newspapers
The daily Iraq violence report is compiled by McClatchy Newspapers Special Correspondent Dalia Hassan in Baghdad from police, military and medical reports. This is not a comprehensive list of all violence in Iraq, much of which goes unreported. It’s posted without editing as transmitted to McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.
1- Baghdad. The Source: The Ministry of Interior Operations Room
- 2 civilians were killed and 10 were injured in a parked car bomb explosion targeted Shiite pilgrims walking towards Karbalaa province near Um Al Tobool mosque in Yarmook neighborhood at 10,30 am BLT.
- 4 Iraqi army soldiers were killed and 1 was injured in an IED explosion targeted them in Al Ubaidi neighborhood east Baghdad at 12,30 pm.
- 1 Iraqi army soldier was killed and 3 injured in a suicide car explosion targeted Iraqi army check point in Al Arba Shawari'e area ( the four streets area) downtown Baghdad at 12,30 pm BLT.
- 9 civilians were killed and 23 were injured in a parked car bomb explosion targeted the Shiite pilgrims walking to Karbalaa province. The incident happened in Saidiya neighborhood south Baghdad.
- A civilian was killed and 3 others injured when gunmen opened their weapons fire targeting Shiite pilgrims on Mohammed Al Qasim high way east Baghdad at 12 pm.
- 5 Shiite pilgrims were injured in a mortar round attack in Dora neighborhood south Baghdad.
- 2 Shiite pilgrims were killed and 10 were wounded in separated fire shooting incidents in Dora and Saidiya neighborhoods south Baghdad.
- The head of relations and media department in tourism committee Ahmed Gati’a was killed when gun men shot him in Al-Iskandariya district (South of Baghdad)
- 24 anonymous bodies were found in Baghdad. 23 were found in Karkh, the western part of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (7 bodies in Dora, 5 bodies in Hay Al Amil, 3 bodies in Baiyaa, 2 bodies in Ghazaliya, 1 body in each of Saidiya, Hurriya, Abo Disheer, Jami'aa and Amiriya). A body was found in Al Ameen one of the neighborhoods of Rosafa, the eatern part of Baghdad.
2- Tikrit – North of Baghdad
- 6 people were killed (one of them was a women and 2 were police men) last night when 4 mortar rounds fell in Balad which is part of Salah addin Province.
3- Dayala- East South of Baghdad
- 1 child was killed and 2 men were injured when a controlled IED exploded targeting a group of pilgrims going to Karbala. The explosion happened in Hibhib which is part of Al-Khalis town (15 km. North Baaquba).
- 2 police men from Al-Abara (North Baaquba) were injured in an armed attack. The police men were injured when they exchanged fire shooting with armed men.
- 1 civilian was killed and another one was shot by un known gun men in the center of Al-Muqdadiya town (North Baaquba) market.
4- Basra
- The spokesman of Basra police directorate said that a civilian had been killed and 4 injured in two separated incidents in Bsara city. The spokesman explained that a civilian was killed and two others injured (including a child) when mortar rounds fell in Al Najibiya area north Basra. The mortars targeted the British base in Shat Al Arab hotel north Basra. He added that a man and his wife were injured when mortar rounds fell on their house in Al Sa'ie neighborhood downtown Basra city.
5- Karkuk
- The operations room chief Colonel Yadgar Shukur said that gunmen kidnapped yesterday Sheikh Farhan Abdalla Ghanim, one of the Arabic consulting council. The colonel said that the incident happened in Hay Al Askary in Karkuk city north of Baghdad and the kidnappers took Ghanim to an unknown destination. Its to be mentioned that the Arabic consulting council is a council for the Sunni tribes and Arab people who live in Karkuk city and its one of the opposites of implementing the article No. 140 from the Iraqi constitution related to Karkuk issue. The council supervised lately the Arabic protests demanding to cancel the resolution issued by supreme committee of implementing the article 140 which asks to return back the immigrant Arabic residents in Karkuk to their original residence places in the middle and south of Iraq. The consulting council used to have a member in the supreme committee of the article 140 called Moahmmed Khaleel but after issuing the resolution of returning back immigrants, he suspended his membership according to a decision taken by the Arabic consulting council.
- A source in Karkuk city police said that an IED was exploded near Al Asdiqaa fuel station near the celebration park in the city of Karkuk. The IED exploded yesterday afternoon. According to the source, two civilians were injured seriously in addition to damaging the close vehicles.
- Tow children were injured seriously in an IED explosion near one of the police stations in Hawija district south west Karkuk city on Monday evening, police said

Averse to Reason

This is Sammy and his friend Todd at Central Station, probably on Sam's 16th birthday. I have to do the Driver Qualification Test to finally get off my Ps so he can drive. You have to have a fully qualified driver when you're on your Ls. He has been driving around with Suzy, and loves it of course. I lost my licence over parking fines, $10,000 worth in fact, not all of which were mine, in a classic circle only Sydney could devise. We were living in Riley Street, Darlinghurst, when Sammy came home from the hospital. He was much beloved by the gay boys who ran the trendy cafe come eaterie on the corner called Dov. He was tiny, and I used to take him out for breakfast every morning.

We were one of those couples, having a baby wasn't going to change our lifestyle. Sammy had seen Silence of the Lambies before he was one month old. We ended up with a screaming little bundle. Where we went a riot followed. Then wiser heads stepped in and said, he's just a baby. He wants to be at home in his bassinet. And suddenly a kind of calm enveloped our lives. Suzy had been doing her last shift at the youth refuge before taking three weeks off for the birth when she went into Labor. It was Mardi Gras night. It was the best, really, that Sydney had to offer; unique unto itself. The ugliest blokes, they all beamed. They'd all gotten off. It was a community duty; well more than that...

If anything was unsettling me at the moment it was the vivid violence of Altered Carbon; where torture, the burning off of legs elongated through sleeve after sleeve, efficiently produced insanity. It was a florid kind of violence on an Earth saturated in tetra meth, centuries old personalities that seemed far from here. In the here and now they were good kids; I don't know how it turned out so well.

Solutions

There were times when he knew there were no solutions, when the clear skin of the harbour surprised him, the salt air and the surprising drama; when so much of his life was spent in the thick of the inner-city, the collapsed hope that surrounded Central Station where he worked, the dregs of former accomplishment that cluttered the suburb of Redfern where he lived. Yandi, yandi? a local aboriginal man asked as I walked past, making a smoking gesture. What? I asked, then realising, said no. Spare change, mister, they kept asking, and no I would reply sternly, as if my rejection was going to make the slightest difference.

But none of this was here, outside the Sydney Theatre Company on the famous finger wharves that stretched out into the habour, which provided a middle class comfort which didn't exist around where we dwelt. There were times of confusion and loss, but also, surprisingly, times of hope. This is my daughter Henrietta, dressed neat as a pin, excited at doing acting classes at the Australian Theatre for Young People. The setting could hardly be better, away from all the dingy turmoil that had once seeped into our souls but was now recast. Almost everyone I dealt with was younger than me now. Once I had always been the youngest in whatever scenario I found myself in, exploiting my youth blatantly.

But it's hard to exploit your age. Foibles which once seemed so fascinating, the struggle with my parents, leaving home early, very early, the private investigator that had followed me when I didn't come home on the weekends, leaving at the first opportunity. The psychic strength, hearing people's thoughts as clear as a bell, being able to move things merely by thinking, knowing that destiny was unique and God was close. None of these dramas afflicted my own children, who despite the difficulties of their parents had grown up to be decent, well centred kids, determined to make something of their lives; appreciating the sophistication of city life; aware, surprisingly, how much opportunity they had in contrast to country kids. I was astonished, I guess, by their decency; the complexity of young adults when not so long ago they had just been children.

Our days passed, and with them the fresh hopes of lives and careers and loves; all looking forward not back. I'm 54. I look forward with horror, no matter how much people say their older years were the happiest of their lives. I never wanted to be old, I never expected to live past 30, and in these remnant outposts they call the future, I'm surprised by their canny intelligence, their level of perception, the strong clear optimism they bring; while I wonder why I can't just be happy. So many people are dying, Billy Thorpe, friends of friends, people in the news, their obituaries recording achievements, many not much older than me, their lives already lived; while band after band of the young prepare to take the world that was once ours. There was a story today on research which suggested the McDonald's Supersize Me film exaggerated the impacts of a fast-food diet and we were instructed to find some cute young woman. We found her, 21, and she couldn't have been more co-operative, eyes wide open as if in a modelling stint, the cross bouncing between her breasts, attracting the eyes of every man. And more, what's more, the thing that always startled me the most about these people, she wasn't just a stunner, she seemed like a really nice person. Job done. I hope they don't know what goes on in our minds, I said to the driver as we clambered back into the car, rushing to finish our shifts. They probably do, he said and I sighed. Let's go.

THE BIGGEST STORY:

Howad has betrayed many of his own constituents; and that's what will lose him the next election in the end. Separated dads would have virtually died in the ditch when in 2000 he suggested he understood their pain. Millions of dollars on useless bureaucratic inquiries later, they have been entirely double crossed, with little or no reform to the Family Court. The Child Support Agency remains a brutal bureaucratic mess. He could have had a million separated parents out their campaigning for him. Serves him right they've seen the light. For those who thought he was anti high levels of immigration, the immigration rates have gone up. He doesn't care about social dislocation, as long as his business mates can sell more cornflakes. For those who thought he was anti big government, he has inflated the public service and spread welfare into the middle classes, so that now more than 90% of Australian families have a relationship with Centrelink. For small business people, he saddled them with the GST and reams of paperwork. People want their conservatives to be conservative, not clever little dicks playing both sides of the fence. Their panicked, peurile attacks on Kevin Rudd are backfiring, making them look nasty and shallow. People want their politicians to run the country, not smear campaigns against each other. But that's what we've got. There is a strong mood for change in this country, and Howard's days now look very numbered indeed.

Rudd's Labor sweeps ahead
Staff reporters and wires
KEVIN Rudd's Labor would sweep to power with a record 57 per cent two-party preferred support in an election held now, the latest Newspoll survey says.
But Mr Rudd's personal rating as preferred prime minister appears to have peaked, with support wavering slightly from 47 per cent a fortnight ago to 45 per cent. But it is still higher than the 38 per cent support for John Howard as PM in the poll taken at the weekend when the Brian Burke affair dominated headlines. The poll reveals support for Labor is the highest it has been since 1993, despite scandal dragging Rudd back down to earth. The coalition has slipped three points to 43 per cent. The poll was taken on March 2-4 at the height of the government's personal attacks on Mr Rudd over his meetings with disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke. Labor's primary vote is the highest it has been since 2001, nudging up one point to 47 per cent, while the coalition's primary vote has slumped four points to 37 per cent.


And:
How disgraceful is this?

Op-Ed Contributor, New York Times
Casualties of the Budget Wars

By PAUL D. EATON
Published: March 6, 2007
Fox Island, Wash.
IN his 1997 book “Dereliction of Duty,” Col. H. R. McMaster wrote that “the ‘five silent men’ on the Joint Chiefs made possible the way the United States went to war in Vietnam.” So it is today with the war in Iraq. Regrettably, the silence of our top officers has had a huge impact not just on the battlefield but also on how we have brought our injured warriors home from it. These planning failures led to the situation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently reported by The Washington Post, which resulted in the firings of the hospital’s commander and the secretary of the Army.
The sad truth is that The Post’s reports weren’t entirely new: Mark Benjamin, of United Press International and the Web magazine Salon, and Steve Robinson, the director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, have been reporting on the disgraceful treatment of our war wounded since 2003. More important, the Walter Reed scandal is simply the tip of the iceberg: President Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Congress all pointedly failed to provide the money and resources for our returned troops wherever they are, both the obviously wounded and those who may seem healthy but are suffering mentally and physically from their service.
Soldiers have long joked: “If you are really sick or injured, Army medical care is O.K. But if you are hurting only a little, especially if it isn’t visible, you’re in big trouble.” The American soldier still receives the best trauma care in the world, especially at Walter Reed. The problem there has been with deplorable outpatient care management. The military health system is seriously undermanned and underfinanced for the number of casualties coming home. Also, there has been little preparation for identifying and treating post-traumatic stress injuries.
Last year, because of spending in Iraq, the Army had a $530 million shortfall in its budget for posts at home and abroad. This forced the Army’s vice chief of staff, Richard Cody, to tighten belts that were already at the last notch.
Hospitals have taken a big part of the financial hit. General Cody has warned Congress that failure to shore up the tottering military health care system could become a “retention issue.” David Chu, the Pentagon’s under secretary for personnel and readiness, told The Wall Street Journal that veterans’ costs “are taking away from the nation’s ability to defend itself.”

Mysterious Skin

Back in town, back at work, stomach in turmoil, the quiet times and hell bent, I didn't know where I was going. Reading Altered Carbon, where people are sleeved in and out of bodies and you never quite know whether the person you are talking to is the person you're looking at; or some clone out of a vat; or someone that's been unstacked and put into another body. Lots of people feel that way, fragile within their own body; strangely at odds with the world. He couldn't have been more slow to offend. He wanted to be back in Pai, where there was plenty of company and the views were spectacular, where everything was new yet everything felt right.

The morning is full of people saying goodbye at the door, smiles on their faces as they walk off into the street, all night passion, I've basically forgotten what it was like, well it's been a while, let's say, random acts of kindness not all that frequent, although it doesn't really seem to matter right now. There is nothing but darkness, he laughed, because he wasn't depressed at all. The farm looked beautiful after the rain, but there is so much work to do. We could be harnessed, but we weren't.

This is another picture from the Chiang Mai flower show, 80 hectares of exhibitions, the largest in the world. Millions of visitors. Dedicated of course, like everything in Thailand, to the king, who seems, in some cosmic way, to represent all that is positive and good about the country. We are all part of the country and the king is the country, so we are all part of the king, one Thai in a cafe tried to explain to me. They're all wearing yellow tops, well not the girls wearing "I'm just happy to be with you" t-shirts, but a lot of them, signifying their loyalty to the country and the king. And this was the bug exhibition, which after tramping all day we spotted and had to go to; Sam being keen on bugs.

Mysterious skin. Yeh, well I loved the film, too. It reminded me a lot of kids I used to know.

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(CBS) The scandal over the substandard care and poor living conditions for veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center continues to shake the Bush administration and the military establishment. But, as CBS News correspondent Joie Chen reports, swift, sure reaction by the new defense secretary has signaled new and different leadership at the Pentagon. If anyone had somehow missed the point, the new Pentagon boss ended the week with a sharp jab at his own team. "I am disappointed that some in the army have not adequately appreciated the seriousness of the situation," Robert Gates said told reporters Friday. In an unusually blunt and swift – by Washington standards – reaction Gates ousted army chief Francis Harvey over Harvey's handling of a spiraling scandal at the nation's premier military hospital. News reports last month exposed filthy conditions facing Iraq war veterans at Walter Reed hospital.