Does Andrew Bolt Love Horse Cock? (Or: Why Freedom of Speech is Relative)

I confess I was looking avidly forward to the result in Eatock v Bolt, on the basis that the decision would either result in the expansion of the implied constitutional freedom of political communication in Australia, or it would result in Andrew Bolt receiving a widely publicised kicking and his followers engaging in highly entertaining championship tantrum-chucking.

Either one of these outcomes contained sufficient silver-lining to offset any negatives I could see. In the wake of the public spanking delivered to Bolt by the Federal Court, several things about the nature of free speech in this country have become clear.

Firstly, Andrew Bolt's free speech did not in fact extend to making factually innaccurate claims about pale-skinned indigenous Australians which had the effect of damaging them as a class . By the way, ragey tantrum-chuckers of the libertarian fringe, this doesn't mean that we live in less of a democracy than we did before Eatock v Bolt. A right against Bolt in such circumstances against racial vilification was only one civil option - the standard vanilla defamation proceedings would probably also have been successful.

Bolt's free speech didn't extend in this way because no one's does. It has always been limited by injunction, defamation remedies, rights to privacy and non-disclosure policy, and expanded and protected through alliance to a limited right to political information, which is derived from the notion that since we must vote, we have a right to make that decision without having access to that information hindered. That right has been extended to broadcasting material obtained of animal rights abuses while trespassing (Lenah Game Meats), prohibiting the government banning political advertising in the lead-up to an election (ACTV), or reasonable political critique (Lange). What is clear from the case law is that we're talking, with the possible exception of parliamentary privilege defences, of a situation where free speech derives from a right to be informed. It clearly runs into problems where the speech is baseless opinion misrepresented as authoritative fact.

As well as these restrictions, freedom of speech is, and has always been, a right which is correlative and accountable to other rights. It has never been unlimited. My right to photograph you in the shower and publish those photographs does not trump your right to privacy, and it shouldn't. Nor do I have an unqualified right to publish an article about someone who is not a public figure, making accusations about them without bothering to check the factual accuracy, or, knowing there is no fire, to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre. This should not be mistaken for state censorship -there is nothing preventing me putting that speech out there in the first place save my own awareness of the consequences, legal, ethical and practical, of so doing. If one is trampled in a panicked mob trying to flee a theatre which is not in fact on fire, well, that is a consequence of having shouted 'fire'. Similarly, a group of people you have attacked in a nationally syndicated newspaper bringing a civil claim against you is a consequence of the initial decision to publish. There's a reason for the phrase 'Publish, and be damned!'.

For example, if I were to make the claim that Andrew Bolt is routinely indecently engaged with farmyard animals. This is a claim that I cannot verify based on my current experience, nor one which I am basing on an authoritative source or considerable research. I could perhaps look through some of the columns he has written, and make use of innuendo to suggest such things, but on the face of it, I am likely only to turn up enough to suggest Andrew Bolt hates PETA and has changed his mind a few times on the live animal export issue. Our defamation law works such that even if it were true, publishing would as a starting point be grounds to sue for defamation simply as something likely to impair the reputation of the ordinary reasonable person - because, again irrespective of truth- we assume everyone's reputation is good at common law. Were I able to show any of a range of defences - such as truth, genuinely/honestly held belief - or make arguments on the mitigating factors, I may still get away with publication of such vicious rumour and defeat any defamation suit that's brought.

Most major media organisations have in-house legal counsel, whose job it is to answer questions about whether publication of a particular article is likely to open the organisation up to legal liability. Often, in practical terms, the decision may come down to not 'Is this libelous?' but rather 'Is the person we are libelling likely to sue?'. In the case of Bolt, the gamble is that Bolt's abrasive style and casual bigotry sells copy, and sales of copy mean the lifeblood of advertising revenue continues to flow. If no one sues - or if they reserve their right under the Australian Press Council to file a complaint (and thus waive a right to sue), then the paper wins out by publishing anyway, even when they know it's likely to be libellous.

In this case, one more attempt by Bolt to chip away at the credibility of indigenous rights in Australia did not go unchallenged. If you're outraged there's a law saying your free speech is limited by hate speech legislation, you should probably be even more outraged about the overuse of injunctive relief in interim civil cases and the use of defamation law to shut down critique of those with the money to launch applications for injunctions with relative ease. If you're not - if you're just angry that Bolt got slapped around for making a (not particularly well-informed) point about light-skinned Aboriginal people having access to government funding and grant programs, a group who initially didn't even seek damages, simply a judgement against - then maybe you should be wondering what your free speech is worth. When someone is allowed to pump untreated sewerage and profitably sell it as Evian, the marketplace of ideas needs a rethink.

Australia Has A Lot of Gay Friends, But...

Dear Local Australian MP,

In the world in which we live, the phrase "I have a lot of gay friends" is almost always a signpost for some form of bigotry. It usually prefaces words like 'but' or 'and', as though the speaker is keen to clarify that while they personally know plenty of gay people, they don't see a need for the political progress that is necessary to ensure that the LGBTIQ members of our community feel the full benefits of community membership and equal rights with their neighbours and friends. It is a peculiar and condescending kind of friendship that sees our friends treated with less respect and as lesser citizens purely because of the people that they love.

My friend Hannah spends long days working with Amnesty International, fighting for the political freedoms of people she will never meet. The Australian government won't let her marry her girlfriend, as though somehow their love is worth less than the love of any heterosexual couple, as though it is less considered, less passionate, less true.

My friend Victoria's parents nearly disowned her when she discovered she was in love with a woman. She faced harassment and bullying at school, a hostile home environment, and a government which sees a lesser recognition of the relationship she has suffered so much to realise and protect as unproblematic. She has always been a very traditional, family-oriented person, and marriage has always been important to her - her realisation that she would never be able to pledge her love and commitment to someone, exchanging rings and vows before trusted friends and family, was something that struck at the very core of her identity. I can't help but think that the hateful things she has heard were somehow made stronger because by not legalising gay marriage, the Australian government implicitly endorses the homophobic sentiments and attacks she has faced.

Another friend lives a life of quiet desperation, scared to acknowledge his longterm roommate as his life partner because he believes the most important relationship in his life is stigmatised in our community. He is a bright, senior and respected man who contributes a great deal to Canberra's community, and he feels that if people knew he was gay he would be respected less. Our Australia hurts him, too, because our government continues to signal to the him, and to our community at large, that there is something wrong with homosexual relationships, that there is something okay about treating the love between two men as somehow lesser. Our governments at territory and federal levels say "We have a lot of gay friends, but"; what we hear is that some loves are more equal than others.

So many Australians have similar stories. So many of us have brothers, sisters, family, colleagues, neighbours, friends - who are injured by the refusal of our politicians to take this necessary step - the simple recognition of gay marriage - to remove another bastion of inequality, another arbitrary barrier that serves only to harm. It is a move that costs so little, but means so much to so many.

Although I am not gay, I have a lot of gay, lesbian and queer friends, colleagues, neighbours. We share classes at university, cubicles at work, smiles on the bus in the morning on the way down Northbourne Avenue. We share a common humanity, we share dreams and aspirations for our own futures, and for an Australia which is fairer and more inclusive - an Australia which says that any dreams I may have of one day meeting someone I may want to marry are no more valid than similar dreams of my gay and lesbian friends.

I have a lot of gay friends, Mr. Local MP, and I'm tired of hearing my political representatives tell me that they personally support marriage equality, 'but...'. This is 2011. It is past time we stop making excuses for not helping our friends, for not protecting the members of our community. It is time our government stops quietly offering legitimacy to the sentiments of homophobes and bigots, and openly recognises that preserving marriage exclusively for heterosexual couples is the denial of a basic freedom which should be open to all Australians. Denying the LGBTIQ identifying people in our community any privilege otherwise open to heterosexual couples is discriminatory policy which belongs to an uglier era.

I trust that you will take these sentiments on board, and look forward to a more inclusive Australia.

Yours sincerely,

Canberran Curmudgeon

[This first appeared on the Letter Amnesty blog, where there are more brilliant, eloquent, poignant and strongly persuasive letters to MPs. It's a good place to start if you're inspired to write to your local representative to tell them how you feel about marriage equality.]

Heads on Spikes Are Sooo c.1650.

In an address that stopped a nation, President Obama confirmed for the world what twitter had been guessing for a few hours; Osama Bin Laden, significant Al Qaeda figure and the face of the twin towers attacks nearly a decade ago, was dead.

He had been killed in a firefight in a mansion in Abbottisbad, Pakistan. The body had been dumped at sea. The conspiracy theories began circulating almost as fast and loose as this falsely attributed Martin Luther King quote: "I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy."

A quote like this goes viral because it resonates with a sentiment which we feel we cannot express for ourselves - perhaps we feel unqualified, or ineloquent, or alienated by the more mainstream sentiments being expressed. In this case, this quote validated that feeling that there was something barbaric about the jingoistic fervour, the chants of "U-S-A!", the self-congratulatory ceremonies and celebration over a violent death.

I watched horror-struck as the plane flew into the second tower nearly a decade ago, as the buildings collapsed. As people jumped to their deaths to escape the smoke and flames, the uncertain death that their workplaces had turned into. As the death tolls climbed and the pieces of human wreckage were pulled from the rubble. I make no apologies for those who planned this nightmare, saw to its execution, and celebrated the fear, suffering and trauma that was its aftermath.

The world sat largely silent as the US launched first strikes against Kabul, bringing shock and awe into our living rooms and the horror of industrial warfare into the lives of Afghani citizens too poor to flee. There seemed to be a sense that such a response was necessary, because how do you wage a war against dead hijackers? How do you wage a war against a force which has no state? How do you feel safe as a citizen of this world, and how do you protect your own state? There was a sense in which even though the links between 9-11 and Afghanistan were tenuous*, the world recognised that America needed to do something other than lick her wounds and worry about what happens next.

I was disgusted at the parties in the West Bank, the comments that the US somehow deserved September 11. The sense that there was anything righteous, anything to be celebrated in the death, destruction and grief of that day left me cold. Commentators rightly came out to condemn these displays.

Where were those commentators when the mobs gathered to chant "U-S-A!" and pump their fists in the air? Where were they when an ex-judicial slaughter was described with gravitas by the President of the United States as 'justice' having been done, as though justice and vengeance are synonymous? I am not sad that Bin Laden is dead, but I am sad that this event reflects that humanity hasn't progressed much ethically beyond heads on spikes, saber-rattling, primitive, barbaric. A grave recognition that a violent act may be necessary is not the same as cheering for an execution.

Martin Luther King did say:

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

There is something unevolved about an eye for an eye, something dark, primitive and regressive that reflects the very worst motivations in human behaviour, that makes us all less safe. Our world is littered with political speeches claiming moral high ground against an opponent, but it is our conduct which defines who we are. If we are attempting to celebrate the ending of a life from the moral high ground, it may be time to cede our claim to it.







* You may recall that the grounds were that the Taliban, repressive and evil but not fantastically well-resourced, did not hand Bin Laden over to the United States when asked to do so. This would be the very same Bin Laden it has taken one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced military powers of the world nearly ten years to locate.

Cigarette Smoking is the New Ugly Green

Actually -- I'm not a smoker, and I've never really aspired to smoke.

It smells unpleasant, yellows teeth and skin, has various associated health risks and was immensely popular with all the people I aspired to be nothing like in high school. Add to that it's rather addictive and relatively expensive, and not smoking is a fairly easy decision to make.

The example of the inimitably cool Hunter S. Thompson and the romance of the smoke-filled press-rooms of yore, , the fact that it gives the socially awkward something to do with their hands and a quiet space to bond with others, and that it apparently helps maintain a svelte figure and looks cool in film noir is still not enough to convince me to buy and smoke cigarettes. My disapproving Grade Three teacher mentally looms Obi-Wan Kenobi style over my mid-twenties consciousness, tutting over the barest inkling of a thought that smoking might be that elusive step I need to take to be cool. Realistically, of course, I'm so far from cool that the minor image rhinoplasty of rebelling against relative good health is not going to be much help anyway.

This means I'm probably not the target for either the new mandatory snot-green plain packaging measures designed to make smoking less trendy, or even the reaction campaign by cigarette companies concerned to make the colour of cigarette packaging a civil liberties issue. By the way, congratulations Australia - if this is the direst emergency for individual rights going around, we might've just won best country in the world. Yeah -- Suck it, Sweden.

Cigarette companies are conscientiously very worried for small businesses, who are apparently going to find it time consuming and expensive dealing with selling cigarettes without conspicuous branding and it's going to put them all out of business... and, we're reminded, it won't work to stop smokers smoking anyway and it's an entirely pointless exercise of minor irritation.

If we look at the market for cigarettes, we'll see that it's made predominantly out of pre-existing smokers and prospective new smokers. Since this is a product which eventually kills most of its consumers, attracting people who don't currently smoke to the path of lung cancer is the way to increase profits and market share. We also know that smokers tend to be fairly brand loyal, and this is despite the decrease over time in allowable cigarette advertising, because smoking and purchasing cigarettes eventually become habitual behaviour. This means that it may be easier to increase sales by attracting new people to smoking than it is to convince a smoker to switch brands.

Given what we know of the behaviour of smokers as consumers, it seems odd that cigarette companies feel genuinely threatened by the advent of plain packaging. If all brands are forced to have the same shite packaging, this actually removes an element effectively creating a branding demilitarised zone, where all of a brand's competitors are being compelled to behave in the same way.

This surely means that cigarette companies are more concerned that olive green packaging will stop people taking up smoking in the first place, and so impact their bottom line. If the risk of lung and throat cancer's not going to do it, I hesitate to suggest an ugly package will have that much impact - but why else is Big Tobacco splashing out on these campaigns?

Funding public information campaigns for corporate self-interest is not new, and it makes sense as entirely rational behaviour for a corporate entity to engage in - if a new tax will cost your business $1 billion, but you can stop it with a $6 million television, radio and print media blitz aimed at convincing the average punter that your interests are their interests, then it makes rational sense to do so. We've seen it with the Mining Super Profits Tax, too (Clive Palmer really cares about your superannuation, kids, that's why so many of his profits stay in Australia). We'll see it again as various interest groups come out against carbon pricing, too. What these campaigns tell us is that someone within the corporate interest group has crunched the numbers and discovered that even a very expensive campaign will be cheaper than the cost of successful legislative reform.

So, cigarettes are doing us damage and green packaging is apparently going to make fewer people take up smoking, even the tobacco giants are placing their bets there. Cue half the Australian denizens of the internet calling for the government to show some stones and raise the excise by more than 50 per cent in line with the recommendations of the preventative health taskforce. Why, if the government wants to make a moral statement about cigarettes, do they not just raise the excise to price addicted smokers out of the market, or ban cigarettes altogether?

Libertarian moral panic inevitably follows, trailing conspiracy theories about how wedded to the income from tobacco excise the Australian government really is, so much so that it's worth the extra costs to the healthcare system which smokers inevitably bring. If the government really wanted people not to smoke they'd make it much more expensive, they say, with the kind of po-faced ignorant sneer typical of those who find the arguments presented on bumper-stickers compelling.

Smoking excise is a regressive tax. It's a tax targetted disproportionately at those of lower socio-economic backgrounds who are more likely to smoke. As an addiction, it becomes for some households a necessity in the family budget. Making cigarettes cost more means some families will buy less bread, milk, schoolbooks, and moreover it leaves the government open to accusations of cash-grabbing by the sorts of people who think speed cameras exist purely to raise revenue.

A balance needs to be struck between disincentivising smoking through pricing signals - because we don't want to be seen as promoting risky behaviour amongst the poorer groups within society- and recognising the nature of addiction means that people will often buy the product of their addiction even when they cannot afford to.

Sure, if the government really wanted to stop people smoking, they could ban it entirely (because that worked so well for alcohol in 1930s America). They could legislate that cigarettes have to taste like rotting arse, too. They could require that they be available only under prescription, thus making doctors waiting rooms places of cranky withdrawing nicotine addicts and week long queues for a check-up. Sadly, an excise on cigarettes does not exist in a vaccuum, and public policy considerations are necessary.

It was never going to be an uncontroversial move, but by making the available options less palatable but still allowing the individual free choice to smoke or not to smoke, the Labor government has come in for ridicule rather than aggressive criticism based more firmly in social justice, equity and civil liberties.

Even though Phillip Morris and Co are quaking in their large tobacconist cowboy hats at the prospect of generic packaging, I think the politicians have underestimated the appeal of communist chic with the indie/hipster kids generation. While I'm manifestly not a cool kid, and hence can't be certain about this, I suspect the kinds of kids who drink Pabst Blue/Melbourne Bitter for the irony value will lap up the plain packaging for the faux anti-consumerist trendy it will impart.

It is therefore possible that government is just starting a populist campaign to get rid of annoying hipsters, one diseased lung at a time, as they all rush to accessorise with some ironically topical tobacco products. As the spoilt indie kids come out to play once more with the conspicuous traits of the working class, the working class just might be so disgusted with the mirror being held up to them that there'll be a rush on cissy Nicabate and smoking will be something done exclusively by trendy elite of wankers. Chuck us the Winnie Greens, will you love?

Into the Advertising Abyss: Supermarket Wars

It might be the two years I spent studying BComms, but more likely it's my recent overdosing on (the frankly brilliant) Mad Men, that makes me feel so (unjustly) qualified to form opinions on the advertisements assailing me from supermarket aisles as I groggily and somewhat unevolvedly hunt for the essentials; juice, cheese, and for the love-of-shiny something caffeinated. This week, I'm looking at what some major campaigns are trying to convince you to buy this week, and how they might be considered to have somewhat cocked it up.

I'll start with the alarming. Woolworths' giant cardboard cut-outs of Margaret Fulton are an unkind thing to have jump out at a sleep-deprived and hungover undergraduate on a Sunday afternoon. I'm not entirely sure what this campaign is supposed to do except make children cry out in fear. I wasn't equipped with a ubiquitous cameraphone, but here's a much smaller sample image of Our Lady of Cookbooks. If I recall correctly, the only difference is the cutout is lifesized, and I think she may be wielding some cut of meat like the alpha Zombie at the front of the horde.

(frightening)

I'm as big a fan of Fulton's recipes as the next child of the Australian 1980s. For some reason, however, I had thought that she had passed peacefully away in her sleep at some point in the past few years. This is something I was genuinely a touch sad about, she seems a nice lady who really enjoys baking and who won't sue me for stating that her cut-out alter ego frankly terrifies me. This leads to the situation where this new campaign unfortunately makes me think "Tsk, Woolworths, using the re-animated corpse of Margaret Fulton to sell yourselves as fresh. Look at those cold, dead, betrayed eyes". Or it would, if my brain wasn't too busy quivering in fear and trying to hide behind my liver from what may be a scout send ahead from the apparently oncoming zombie hordes.

As a side note, I'm genuinely quite pleased Margaret Fulton is not dead. As is, I think, the organic supplier whose trademark "Honest to Goodness" is the subject of proceedings against Woolworths, since this is the phrase emblazoned across cardboard Maggie. The supplier claims it's a rip off of his trademark - Woolworths claim that it's a commonly used phrase which they should absolutely be allowed to whore out in to support their claim that they are fresher, healthier, more honest than their frankly identical competitors.

Aldi is back in the game as well, setting itself up as the third party for Australian shoppers with a campaign where they ask "What will you spend the your Aldi savings on?". I found the TV spot for this when I was looking for a copy of the poster to link you to, somewhat bewildered that the answer appears to be "A water feature".

The video merely confirms what I thought was an interpretation-fail by me ("no one could seriously be answering this question with water feature, maybe it's about family-time or purchasing small children on the internet or something. Wait, what the?")-but the answer is, depressingly enough, a water feature. They're presumably not saving up for water-feature number 2, or they would have remembered to bring their greenbags instead of buying the plastic ones instore.

I'm not sure what kind of market research went into this, but I get the impression it's founded in the notion that Australians can be convinced to change their shopping habits over Freudianesque fountain-envy, a point not-so-subtly rammed home as the non-Aldi-shopping neighbour in the piece holds a wilty looking, much smaller garden hose as he gazes covetously at his neighbour's spurty barrel-fountain. I think we're no longer talking about Jamie-Durie-esque decorative garden design at this point, although perhaps phallic competition has always been at the heart of Aussie garden design. Crap. That thought, and distant memories of Gardening Australia and Burke's Backyard are probably now going to cause me to wake screaming in fear at some point.

Also, I know virtually every wholesome Aussie ad runs a bingley jingle as background to their smiley family of actors, but that one is particularly grating.

It's probably a moot point at this stage, but does Aldi even sell water features?

Just once I'd like to see a "look what you can spend your savings on" campaign that doesn't result in the answer being some entirely boring unnecessary consumeristic status anxiety piece of crap. Why not have neighbour A's kids having a college fund by dint of the twenty-five cents Mum and Dad have saved buying Aldi brand fish-fingers? Why not show them getting mail from the family they're sponsoring in Darfur with the extra cash they have now that their bog-roll costs less? Hell, why not have a suite of adult escorts pull into the driveway in the last frame to show that a year's worth of purchases at a supermarket that does low-budget remarkably well gives you more money to spend on areas where you really shouldn't cut costs?

I don't know. Sometimes I think advertisers just aren't trying any more. Insert wholesome looking family + at least one cute child + tacky jingle + soft-focus homey backgrounds (kitchen/garden). Attach interchangeable brand, sell to highest bidder. Branding Aldi as a cheaper alternative - that's a reminder, not a rebrand. Woolworth's fresh food people imaging is also not really improved by continued attempts to reshape and redevelop it, particularly where they've tried (somewhat unsuccessfully, in my view) to attach another Australian brand to themselves as a kind of quality stamp. They'd almost both be better reverting to shouty community television ads where they just hope your brains will fall out your ears in a mushy goo trickle, and you'll end up craving whatever brand of snackfood it is that is exclusively available at one of the nearest major supermarkets. A tip, though- just try to be alert, and not alarmed, by the cardboard zombie Fultons.

Curmudgeon Asks: Where The Bloody Hell Are You, Then?

Forgive me internets, for I have sinned; it has been more than a week since I have updated this portfolio of cranky. The three spam-bots, two people and functionally literate chimpanzee who read regularly will, I am sure, grow and move on.



Canberra has been in the midst of what can fondly be termed IndieFest2011 (also known as the You Are Here festival) for just over a week now, with festivities winding up this weekend. I know it's fashionably post-hipster to sneer ironically at hipsters (and am clearly guilty of it myself at times), but I'm going to concede that this was actually a pretty cool idea. Any publicly funded arts event will inevitably raise some hackles about what the money could have been better spent on, but my best guess would be that this was run on a relative shoe-string, with the highest costs being printing the (admittedly very hipster) program and probably public liability insurance, with quite a bit of support being kicked in by local businesses like the alternative bookstore, all of whom will ultimately benefit if this grows big enough to rival Newcastle's This Is Not Art (TINA) Festival.

As with any festival of arts, attendees probably need to suspend their snark reflex, seek out the events they're most likely to enjoy, and try not to be whiny jerks about the free entertainment in some vain attempt to appear more interesting/complex/sophisticated/coolly aloof than everyone else. Fun and irony in equal measures abound if you're willing to kick in and explore, but if your idea of a great evening is pontificating about your general superiority from the couch then you'll probably have a terrible time.

Given the crapload of money the Territory will be spending on supporting a loud and sparkly firework background to bogan debauchery this weekend (Skyfire), recognition of Canberra's thriving and largely unpaid arts community goes some way to acknowledging the diversity of the Canberra community: we have, at the very least, bogans, hipsters, and the public service to consider. Plus, Friday night's Zombie prom was all kinds of amusement. Cheers to the organisers - you might be incorrigible hipster kids for all I know- but you manage some excellent festival.

CisforCurmudgeon: Why Sophie Mirabella is not Gaddafi; On Getting Along

Like all misanthropes, I cherish living alone as a sort of Valhalla-type paradise of win. Hells yeah, every day is pants-free day and I don't have to hide the gin! Unfortunately, the economics of being neither congenitally wealthy nor a high-priced hooker means that securing a one bedroom home within two hours drive of university or work is about as attainable as the Prime Ministership - should everyone else who wants to live in Canberra fall off the face of the planet in some freak accident that rewrites our understanding of gravity I might be in with a shot- otherwise it's housesharing, that quaint university town practice where people you don't necessarily know very well become your nearest neighbours and gen Y select-a-family. At some point, as well, you're probably going to have to leave your room and get to know these strangers you live with.

My current select-a-family is pretty decent. They're both literate, relatively clean, definitively not racist, and most of the time they pay the rent. We've reached a point of self-referential familial comfort whereby we now stage enormous twitter house civil wars over people's opinion of Black Swan (if you're new, you can find my thoughts on the matter here). Housemate B recently saw this film and decided that he liked it. Since Housemate B is in all other respects a gentleman of discerning tastes, I have to conclude that he is either trolling me (a unique experience when there is the continuous and ominous threat that either one of us might shave off the other's eyebrows in their sleep) or that some hipster zombie stole his brain once the film had lulled him into the semi-consciousness such faux-artistic travesty inevitably promotes.

The point is, like parliamentarians (and except for in relation to Black Swan, you hipster nerd) we've probably got more in common than not. All parties are able to recognise that leaving someone else's cheese on the bench to go sweaty is a crime against all that is right and good in the world. Likewise, all parties are aware that picking a fight over cheese is the action of a petty tyrant, and life mostly goes on and everyone gets to keep their eyebrows. Win! I think the important thing is that no one ever gets compared to Gaddafi over who takes the rubbish out, and I think that makes our house of largely itinerant student-types a cut above Coalition MPs like Sophie Mirabella, at least in terms of basic human decency and perspective.

If we want to split hairs on this issue, what Sophie actually said this week was that if PM Gillard believed people were actually willing to pay more for things to offset the risk of cataclysmic climate change, then she was clearly "as deluded as Colonel 'My people love me' Gaddafi". Which is not entirely the same as calling someone a mad dictator, but given the wide range of possible similes to draw other than unstable and violent dictators turning the army onto protesters, it is clear that Sophie was showing the restraint, civility and quality judgment of Charlie Sheen on a drug binge. Also, Tony Abbott gets shouty a lot, and so did Hitler. Not that I'm saying, of course, that the two have anything else in common...


Is it trite to compare what happens in the national parliament to what housemates do when someone won't take out the rubbish, or leaves the cheese to go sweaty on the bench? Yes. It absolutely is. We work on the assumption that our representatives are presumably supposed to be better than this, above petty disputes and the kinds of minor human failings that characterise the interactions of the mere plebeian class. If I have to put on pants and learn people skills in order to go downstairs and use the toaster, by all that is right I expect our politicians - practitioners of the 'art of the city-state', to go at least one better than that. Accordingly, however, when the Libyan people are dying on the streets for the sorts of basic rights we take for granted in this country, it is fair to say that is cheap and shallow, by any standard, to use the name of their oppressive dictator to describe a political opponent who wants to institute a carbon tax.

In other news, South Australians are represented by someone who is incapable of making a rhetorical point without an extended hokey-pokey dance session, so maybe we should just all hope our global leaders have long since lost access to the nuke launch codes, settle them down for a post-afternoon-milk nap, and teach them about sharing, toilet-training and human decency once they wake up. Think back to the most thuggish kid you knew in kindergarten - the one that threw sandpit trucks at other kids and who perpetually had one finger up his nose as though attempting to dig through to his scalp. That kid probably votes now, and there's a reasonable chance he might get elected to the Australian parliament to represent your interests at home and abroad.

Maybe we should just all climb back into the trees and wait for armaggedon, really.

[P.S - The Asshattery Award would go to Sophie Mirabella this week, except the fact that she exists and gets to wander around being a representative of the human race, much less a parliamentarian, makes me so despair of the human race that I want to go curl into the foetal position under my bed and wait for society to make some sense. Also, I think if we're handing out awards for worst human being this week Gaddafi probably ought to make the short list, and I don't want to fall into a Mirabellan rhetorical trap].