Features

A number of features are run each issue. These features are archived here.
Order of the Red-Back Spider- for distinguished disservice to Australia. Readers are invited to nominate Australians, dead or alive, for this award, either for a single meritorious action or for consistent performance.
The red-back spider usually lurks in wood heaps and outback dunnies. Bush lore has it that it bites just when you make yourself comfortable. Rarely fatal. but a real pain in the bum.
The Bull Ants' Nest
The Australian bull ants fiercely defend their territory and can deliver a powerful sting to intruders. This column is named the Bull Ants' Nest because it will defend Australian values and traditions and deliver a verbal sting.
Who Said That!
Outrageous statements, mostly from those 'ashamed to be Australian'..
Worth Remembering
Well said quotations

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Spring 2008 Issue No 16

Jon Faine, currently on sabbatical, morning presenter on ABC 774 is awarded an ORB for openly displaying his authoritarian beliefs on air. Faine is a denizen of the inner city. Over the years he has promoted their values, but in a carefully calculated manner, as expected from a lawyer.
Like so many of his ilk, he could hardly hide his triumphalism at the election of the Rudd government. He challenged Bruce Guthrie, editor of the Herald Sun to look at his stable of conservative columnists  in view of the election result.
Guthrie: ‘I guess that it comes down whether you think newspapers need to be in step with the government.’
 Fine: ‘Oh, no, not with the government, with the electorate. (Faine obviously thinks that a 5.5% swing represents a major shift). Does the result of the election mean you rethink any of the component parts that make up your weekly diet?’
Guthrie: ‘It’s very hard to contribute a column on a weekly basis over a very long time  so we are forever monitoring that.’
Faine: So you are not going through a cleansing  process?
Guthrie: ‘Definitely not.’
The use of the word cleansing is ominous; it is word used by totalitarian governments throughout the world. Of course, Faine was not the only offender. Guy Rundle and Robert Manne expressed similar views.
Faine has taken leave from the ABC to trundle across Asia in a 4x4. His ego was getting in the way of good presentation anyway. We just hope he finds employment elsewhere when returns.

Bull Ants

In Issue No !4 it was suggested by Bull Ants that these days in the lexicon of words carrying social condemnation paedophile wins as the most odious, but only just, from racist. Pornographer, wife beater, homosexual etc. are well back.
It would appear that in certain left-luvvy artistic circles paedophilia is being promoted; so that it is only a matter of time before racism is left as the word carrying most social condemnation.
Photographer Bill Henson has a following in the art world. Not all of his photographs are controversial and some hang in public galleries without comment, but he has a fixation on photographing girls in their early teens naked.
“Creepy’ is one comment from an art critic and it seems most appropriate.
Even Phillip Adams concedes that Henson’s photographs would be pin-ups for the paedophiles.
‘But having talked to Henson in the past I’ve no reason to question the moral purpose of his work, though there’s little doubt that among those who crowd his exhibitions, camouflaged by sophistication of the setting, are paedophiles. Of course, the high arts have always aided and abetted voyeurism. (The Australian 27 May 2008).’
All the furore inspired Menzies (of cleaning contractor fame, see p. 8), to post on his auction house site a Henson photograph of a naked girl on her back on ruffled sheets, legs spread out apart. One for the paedophiles to down load. Menzies is of the auction house whose standards of doing business has come under fire in Four Corners and other places.
In all this Prime Minister Rudd got it absolutely right when he immediately described the Henson and other photographers’ similar works as ‘revolting’ (and has used the same word again since). Then again:
‘A little child .cannot answer for themselves about whether they wish to be depicted in this way. Frankly I can’t stand this stuff.
The left intelligentsia set were taken aback. People like Cate Blanchett, vocal supporters of the ALP  prior to and after the election were muted. A year ago Howard would have said much the same thing and they would have felt comfortable in shrill abuse. But fanatics like David Marr did not resile from claiming that Rudd had ‘killed Camelot’.
However, Malcolm Turnbull was equivocal about artistic licence. It has become increasingly obvious that Turnbull is a ‘liberal’ in the American use of the word. He is a product of his inner city electorate, Double Bay rather than Balmain, but similar social attitudes. ‘Conservative’ is not a word to be associated with Turnbull, the Liberal Party is now moving towards libertarian.
Controvery flared again with David Marr’s revelations that Henson toured school grounds, trawling for models. The school principal at one such school, in a trendy area of Melbourne, was defended by ‘celebrity’ parents, such as Trevor Marmalade, the resident comedian on  the Footy Show, which includes lowlifes such as Sam Newman. The Education Department is still considering the principal’s case.
Turnbull now shifted ground, saying it was ‘astounding’ that such a visit occurred. Not quite Rudd’s unambiguous stance on the same matter. The Prime Minister is at his best when he speaks unvarnished commonsense, rather than longwinded dissertations.

Winter2008 Issue15