I’m writing this on the way back from Perth, which is now officially a one-party state after Mark McGowan’s scorched earth election victory last week. Yet even while Labor was savouring its success in the West, the NSW Labor Party was receiving polls that suggested it would be thrashed were an election to be held today. This is plainly not a reflection on the great job that Gladys and her crew have done in blowing gigantic amounts of public money, porkbarrelling their own electorates and treating their critics with contempt.
No, it’s not a reward for Gladys declaring she didn’t approve funding for a $30 million conservatorium in her former boyfriend’s electorate, even though the letter of confirmation is on her own letterhead. It’s a reward for getting through the pandemic without a major disaster – a feat for which public gratitude has been handed out indiscriminately to whichever party happens to be in power. It’s as if we’ve forgotten about everything else.
The only political leader who comprehensively stuffed up the electoral gift of the coronavirus has been Donald Trump, who seemed frustrated that it didn’t simply go away when he decided it was a boring nuisance. Now it’s up to his loyal supporters in the right-wing media to discourage the masses from being vaccinated (even while they get the jab themselves). If enough people continue to die they can claim Biden’s management hasn’t been a success. Fair enough. What’s another 100,000 fatalities if you manage to smear your political opponent?
Scummo has also leant back into the soft recesses of the COVID-19 political cushion, but his smugness took a battering this week when 100,000 pesky women marched on Parliament House and asked him to come out and address them. Naturally he would never accede to such an outrageous request. Couldn’t they just send an email to his Department head? One has to give him credit though for reassuring the marchers they wouldn’t be shot.
As women make up fifty percent of the electorate it would be nice to think he’s just lost half of his potential votes, but it’s never quite that simple. As I’ve never been able to understand how ANYONE – male or female – could vote for this mealy-mouthed hypocrite, I’m not ready to make any predictions.
While we’re watching him squirm over the “women problem”, we might also note that the Industrial Relations bill intended to help out the Coalition’s mates at the expense of their employees, has struck a reef in the Senate. It seems the Centre Alliance’s Stirling Griff actually read the thing, which the so-called populists of One Nation either failed to do, or simply decided that their constituents could go jump in the lake.
And then there’s the Rebuilding Tourism initiative, intended to soften the blow of removing the JobKeeper scheme that has been helping newly-unemployed people pay their rent and buy food. Hey, all you breadliners, what about a holiday on the Gold Coast? Scummo tells us that Australians “deserve a holiday”, and cites his previous experience in the Tourism industry.
This has led to a monumental Twitter stream that looks more closely at his work in tourism, which saw Scummo sacked from his job as Managing Director of Tourism Australia in 2006, and from a job with NZ Tourism. Tweeters have discussed governance issues, lack of accountability and probity, contracts going to favoured companies associated with the Liberal Party – and that’s not to mention the disastrous “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign. This in turn led to a discussion of how this twice-failed Tourism czar achieved preselection – another nasty little tale. It’s nice to know we’ve got a man of character in the Lodge.
This week’s column is – or rather was – on the Papunya Tula: 50 Years exhibition at the S.H.Ervin Gallery, but the dreaded “space problems” have intervened, and the piece has been held over for a week. This means, as per my agreement with the newspaper, that I’m obliged to hold the version that will appear on the website. Meanwhile, the Margel Hinder piece has appeared exclusively on-line, as there was no room at the inn whatsoever. Apparently the only way to fix this ongoing issue is for everybody to take out more advertising in the Spectrum section. I won’t be get a commission, but I may get a more regular run in the weekend supplement.
If you think I’ve been goofing off this week, I also wrote a piece on NFTs for the SMH Arts section and an obituary for Jenny Manton, both of which have to be saved until after the newspaper decides to run with them.
No such problems at the Australia Financial Review (touch wood), where the film column appears with reassuring regularity. This time around the movie is Judas and the Black Messiah, which I approached with some trepidation. Was it going to be a political tract telling us that racism is bad and the American cops are a rotten bunch? Well yes, but it’s a lot more complex and nuanced than that. Shaka King has made a film that goes beyond the simple black and white issues, showing the ethical dilemmas, the tensions and veins of flawed idealism that ran through the Black Panther movement in the late 1960s. Panthers’ chief, Fred Hampton may have been a fiery Marxist-Leninist revolutionary but when it comes to charisma and political integrity I’d be happy to back him over our own Dear Leader.