thegoodwills.com

Only the NT News would dare describe this week’s dramatic political story with the headline: “Rich dude becomes PM”. Such is the Darwin-based tabloid’s sense of independence, the leadership spill story was pushed ‘below the fold’ by a court story. Given the over-the-top live coverage assigned to the breaking story, the NT News evidently decided to play the story for laughs.
There was much room for satire and cruel amusement as social media lit up with one hastily-made meme after another (a meme being a picture with irreverent words). While the narcissistic nature of Australian power politics is no joking matter, it was predictable that some of the media coverage would focus on a list of Tony Abbott’s gaffes. The most recent was when Abbott and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton were caught on an overhead mike making thoughtless jokes about Pacific nations and climate change. Alas poor Tone, he was always putting his foot in it: he was caught luridly winking at a radio interviewer while talking to a sex worker; few veterans are likely to forgive him saying “shit happens” about the death of a soldier; not to mention his misuse of the word “suppository’ and the farcical dubbing of the Queen’s hapless husband, Sir Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, when inexplicably re-introducing knighthoods.
Even Rupert Murdoch thought that was naff.

Five PMs in five years

While Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s fifth prime minister in five years (KR is counted twice), is enjoying his brief honeymoon, perhaps we need to be reminded of the duplicitous nature of power politics.
There have been 17 inter-party leadership spills since 1981, many of them brought about by the incumbent’s poor opinion polling. Let’s not forget naked ambition and treachery.
Australia stands in an unusual position with our incumbent Prime Minister ousted by party room spills on four occasions since 2010. This has caught the attention of international media, as one might expect.
As Andrew Coyne wrote in The National Post, the leader of the party in Canada’s Parliament is chosen by an entirely different group of people (a broad cross-section of Party members).
“(It is) a body that is brought together for the sole purpose of voting, and having voted, disappears. Under the Westminster model, the leader is accountable to caucus; under our system (ie the Canadian system- Ed.) the leader is effectively accountable to no one.”
Coyne asked his Canadian readers if they really wanted the kind of ‘manic leader-shopping’ Australians had just gone through? From his desk somewhere near Toronto, he sent this warning to Malcolm Turnbull:
“A big part of Australian Labor’s defeat at the last election was attributed to voter weariness with the party’s leadership shenanigans.”

Onion-eating eccentric

Amelia Lester in the New Yorker saw Abbott as someone who “exhibited a feckless machismo, which often verged on eccentricity”.
Lester mercilessly ran through all of these macho eccentricities and more, including his bizarre little lunch, chomping on a raw onion when visiting a Tasmanian farm.
Soon after the result of the dramatic leadership challenge was announced, #putoutyouronions was trending on Twitter. Few Australian Prime Ministers have attracted such universal scorn.
But Abbott wasn’t just the butt of other people’s jokes.
Whether you agree or not, he didn’t muck about when implementing core pre-election promises. Abbott was opposed to the Labor Party’s implementation of a price on carbon, repealing it on his first day in office, telling the world that climate change was “faddish”.
It was his stand on boat people, however, which upset the international community and deeply divided communities at home. Earlier this month The New York Times castigated Abbott for overseeing “a ruthlessly effective effort to stop boats packed with migrants, many of them refugees, from reaching Australia’s shores”.
“His policies have been inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country’s tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war,” The NY Times editorial said.

Two lost fish swimming in a fish bowl

In all then, Monday’s leadership challenge, the second for Abbott in seven months, should have come as no surprise.
The past 15 years have been notorious for unrest at the top, as opinion polling, the 24-hour news cycle and the relentless clamour of uncensored social media turned Australian political life into a giant fish bowl.
Don’t fart – someone will see the bubbles.
The list of Tony Abbott’s gaffes, coupled with inexplicable “captain’s calls” and tardiness in resolving the Bronwyn Bishop saga amounted to a lot of bubbles.
Political analysts with long memories are making comparisons between Abbott and Billy McMahon, another veteran politician who did not deal well with life at the helm.
McMahon became PM in March 1971 after a leadership spill between him and incumbent John Gorton resulted in a tie. Gorton saw the tie as a vote of no confidence so resigned, leaving McMahon to lead the Libs into a general election in 1972. It was McMahon’s bad luck to be taking on a consummate young politician by the name of Gough Whitlam who had helped Labor to a clear lead in the polls.
Meanwhile, McMahon’s approval ratings had dwindled to 28% and his press profile was abysmal. British psephologist (election expert) David Butler said he could not recall a Prime Minister in any country being “so comprehensively panned”. This was despite McMahon’s record of (a) setting up the first Department of Aboriginal Affairs and (b) extracting Australia from the Vietnam War.
It was said at the time that McMahon simply “did not look or sound like a Prime Minister”. Forty-odd years later and it seems Tony Abbott got the flick for much the same reasons.

Spills aplenty

A Wikipedia summary of leadership spills shows how the trend accelerated in the 21st century, with consecutive challenges in 2003 to oust Simon Crean as Labor leader. It worked and Mark Latham became leader until the next election. Then Kevin Rudd in December 2006 challenged and beat Kim Beazley as Labor leader.
In the intervening years there were changes at the top of the Liberal Party too, first with Brendan Nelson, toppled by Malcolm Turnbull in 2008 (ah, you’d forgotten that, eh?). A year Later Turnbull was challenged as Opposition Leader by this Abbott chap, who at that time won 42-41.
Then we fell into the three-ring circus of the Rudd/Gillard era, but all had been relatively silent until February 9 this year when a motion to bring about a leadership spill in the Liberal Party was defeated 61–39. Seven months later, Malcolm Turnbull challenged Tony Abbott and won the vote 54-44.
A close vote ensures Turnbull will have a difficult time turning the ship of state around, even assuming he is unlikely to stray far from party policy. After all, he’s been there all the time Abbott was ostensibly calling the shots.
We wait, Facebook memes at the ready, for his first gaffe, or more hopefully, his first statesman-like act:
• A free vote on gay marriage;
• The re-introduction of solar and wind farm subsidies;
• The protection of remote Aboriginal communities;
• Higher intakes from refugee camps;
• Increased foreign aid to war-torn countries;
• The scrapping of Knighthoods;
• Re-instatement of the onion as a common garden vegetable.

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.

So went a children’s skip rope ditty of 1918-1919, when Spanish Flu swept around the world and knocked off more people than the so-called Great War. Isn’t that so like children; to make light of something so awful they can’t comprehend it.

My free range imagination set off on this journey when confined to bed with something approaching flu, but probably not. After all, I had the vaccination in April. It started with a headache, a dry, irrepressible cough which brought on asthma, hot and cold spells and low-grade aches and pains.
The asthmatics among us would agree that we soon know if a virus inhabits our respiratory system. It’s never much fun. I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac, but you knew that. But if you see me out and about this weekend and I’m wearing a gauze face mask, stay well away (more about masks later).

The media is fond of a good plague story – they daren’t call it a plague, as that would be inaccurate and irresponsible, but the word epidemic often gets an airing. At the end of August 2015, Queensland Health had reported 18,500 cases of influenza including 10,000 cases of Brisbane B, which last emerged in 2008.

News.com.au reported that Queensland was “in the grip of its worst flu season on record”. They obviously forgot about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 that killed between 20 and 40 million people worldwide. The Spanish Flu or “La Grippa” came on really fast, invading the lungs, leading in many cases to pneumonia and death.
According to the Australian Disaster Management website, Australia fared relatively well, by enforcing strict quarantine regulations. Nonetheless, the Spanish flu killed 12,500 Australians, mostly younger people (ages 15 to 35) at a time when Australia’s population was just five million. (The picture above of nurses in Brisbane circa 1919 comes from the John Oxley Library).

World Health Organisation warnings about Influenza B last September came too late to include it in the free vaccination program. There have been 15,403 cases of influenza in Queensland this year, about 5,000 more than last year. Of those, more than 10,000 have been Influenza B, compared with just 1161 last year.

Another 3,000 cases in the last week of August took the number of people diagnosed with influenza to 18,500, making it the worst year since the swine flu in 2009. Still, that is only 0.39% of the State’s population of 4.7 million, so let’s not panic yet.

A musician friend had just left on a cruise ship for a holiday when she became ill. Soon after, she was diagnosed with Brisbane B and confined to her cabin for the duration. That’s just plain unlucky, but when you catch a genuine case of flu, you won’t resent too much being confined to quarters. Bed rest is really the only cure.

In between the genuine cases of influenza, which can be isolated as this or that strain, come a range of head colds and what we Aussies call lurgies, wogs or dog’s disease. Last time I came down with a rapid onset lurgie, a young Asian doctor who used to practice around here checked me out and pronounced: “It’s just a wirus – antibiotics are no use. Go home go to bed, take aspirin and drink lots of fluids.”
Good advice. It crossed my mind that I probably infected some of the people who were in the waiting room at the time, unless of course they already had a ‘wirus’.

There’s a fair gap between a bad head cold, a non-specific virus and influenza. Each can make you feel like putting a pillow over your face and pressing down hard.
I usually keep good health in this regard, but our passion for rugby league led us to Lang Park Stadium last Thursday night, along with 44,000 other people. Then we were stuck on a packed train back to Caboolture, breathing in all those dubious germs. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I’m thinking about it now.

Not that I want to blight your weekend, but here’s a sense of what it was like in 1918, living with ‘La Grippa’. Molly Billings of Stanford University Department of Human Virology writes:

“The effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the US was depressed by 10 years. The influenza virus had a profound virulence, with a mortality rate at 2.5%, compared to the previous influenza epidemics, which were less than 0.1%. The death rate for 15 to 34-year-olds of influenza and pneumonia were 20 times higher in 1918 than in previous years (Taubenberger). People were struck with illness on the street and died rapid deaths.”

The curious thing about influenza is that it fades away – the strain mutates into something less crippling, less contagious and people get better. That certainly happened towards the end of 1919.

When Florence Nightingale (not) and I were in Hong Kong for a few days, it seemed every second person was wearing a gauze face mask. At first, I assumed this was to protect them from the appalling air quality, as pollution from coal fired power stations and motor cars drifts in from mainland China.
A friend who lives in HK says it is also to stop the spread of colds or flu generally, or in the case of the only well person in a household, it’s worn for personal protection.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) says it is neutral on general mask-wearing “because there is hardly any evidence either way”.

Little research has been done to see if wearing masks helps protect people. The ECDC says that in some societies, e.g. in the Far East, masks are worn a lot in the influenza season, “but they still get plenty of influenza”.

As any general nurse can tell you, thorough hand washing is the best protection against spreading influenza or being infected. ECDC recommends using hand-washing to reduce influenza transmission and alcohol gels work against the influenza as well. So good general hygiene, hand-washing, and using and disposing of tissues is important.

Many people around here swear by ‘hippy cures’ – echinacea, olive leaf extract, ginseng, nasal rinsing or throwing a towel over your head and inhaling pine/menthol vapour. No better or worse than over the counter medications. A rum toddy with lemon and honey and two aspirin on the side is another option. Make it a double.

Meanwhile, I’m choosing to stay in bed and drink lots of fluids, as advised. For distraction I’m reading the New Internationalist’s coverage of Syria and its myriad woes. The irony does not escape me that I will soon get better and return to my cushy life.

 

 

There’s a tradition in the folk music scene at folk festivals and in selected pubs where singers and musicians gather and play, surrounded by those who sit on the fringes, tapping their toes in time to the music.
The folk session (photo by Steve Swayne) is wedded to repetitive tunes, played by whoever turns up with whatever instrument they have, and interspersed with songs which tell of the plight of the urban proletariat. The former are usually Irish or Scottish tunes which commonly have an A part (played twice) and a B part (played twice). The tune is repeated until whoever is leading the session switches to another tune and another key.
The stridently political song, tending as far to the left as one can possibly go, is another matter. Someone will break into the cycle of diddly diddly tunes when the players are sitting back, supping their pots of Guinness and thinking of what to play next.

Rebel songs

The classic World Turned Upside Down (sometimes called The Diggers) by English songwriter Leon Rosselson often turns up at sessions. It sounds like it was written in the era in which it is set.
“In sixteen forty-nine to Saint George’s Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people’s will
They defied the landlords, they defied the law
They were the dispossessed, reclaiming what was theirs.”
So it goes – they came in peace to dig and sow, to work the land in common and make a “common treasury for all”.
Now that you understand the socialist rhetoric, you will either spend all weekend in the session tent or not go there at all.
The closest I came to this genre was The Almost Armageddon Waltz, written in 1980 when the Russians invaded Afghanistan and the world once again was thrust into anxiety about the possibilities of nuclear war.
I penned a corny but catchy chorus: “Armageddon, Armageddon, Armageddon out of here” which led to a song writing award, a run of T-shirts and requests (still, after all this time). The references to Malcolm Fraser, the Holden Kingswood and hi-fi gear quickly dated. Unhappily, Afghanistan is still a basket case.

Why censoring does not work

Happily, authoritarian attempts to censor politically or morally ‘incorrect’ songs usually backfire and lead to the rebellious authors developing a cult following. The Guardian reported this week that an environmental scientist working for a Canadian government agency has been suspended and will be investigated for recording a protest song about the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.
Harperman was written by Tony Turner, who worked at Environment Canada and is, in his spare time, “a mainstay on the Ottawa folk music scene”.
The song contains lyrics like “no respect for environment / Harperman, it’s time for you to go”, and “no more cons, cons, cons / we want you gone, gone gone”.
Crikey, as we say down here, if he (Turner) didn’t write the song in work hours, where’s the problem?

Chewin’ the fat again

Governments over many eras have elected themselves the guardians of people’s morals, if not their freedom to speak out when not entirely pleased with the way things are going. Nazi Germany is an example of how this can be taken to extremes.
In 1960, officials in Adelaide blocked American satirist Tom Lehrer from performing until he agreed to omit “morally corrupting” songs from his repertoire.
Lehrer’s funny and sacrilegious anthem “The Vatican Rag” attracted a lot of complaints when first aired in 1967. An academic paper by Jeremy Mazner says Lehrer was relatively unaffected by the complaints about lines like this:

“There the guy who’s got religion’ll/Tell you if your sin’s original/If it is try playin’ it safer/Drink the wine and chew the wafer/Two four six eight/Time to transubstantiate”)

“It was kind of fun to see them squirm,” Lehrer remembered.

A teacher in Putnam Valley, New York, was fired after playing The Vatican Rag to his seventh grade class as an example of satire. The teacher was eventually reinstated.
Lehrer the piano-playing Harvard math professor who gave up songwriting and performing in 1965, told Tony Davis of the Sydney Morning Herald in a 2003 interview that there was no place now for his kind of humour.

“I’m not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn’t figure out what sort of song I would write. That’s the problem: I don’t want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them.”

Lehrer’s granted the SMH a rare interview because he wanted to reflect on his 1960 Australian tour, the “highlight of his life” when he was banned, censored, mentioned in Parliament and threatened with jail.
Brisbane was the problem town.
“The chief of police said I couldn’t sing the Boy Scout song, particularly.”
Be Prepared! includes revised Scout pledges: “Don’t solicit for your sister, that’s not nice/ Unless you get a good percentage of her price.”

I’m not awful, I’m a satirist

Satire often goes over people’s heads, especially those who have a literal sense of humour and don’t grasp irony; the ones who thought Randy Newman was being racist and offensive writing songs like Red Necks and Short People. Eric Bogle copped the same kind of misdirected abuse over “I Hate Wogs” where he adopted the persona of a bigoted Ocker.
It also works in reverse. Lancashire punk band The NotSensibles wrote a satirical song “I’m In love With Margaret Thatcher”, which was inadvertently adopted by some of Thatcher’s supporters.
The Guardian assembled a lengthy list of songs of politics and protest in 2009 including three Beatles tunes, many Dylan songs and things you would expect to find in a list of this nature, like Bob Marley’s Redemption Song and Billy Braggs’ Between the Wars. Eric Bogle is the only Australian on the list for And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
Maybe what Lehrer said was true – there’s little room now in mainstream music for songs of protest. I found only 17 songs on the list from the last 15 years.
It can be a career-defining/defying moment when a mainstream band decides to take a stand (to wit the Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready to Make Nice), which sharply divided their audiences and led to the musical equivalent of book burning).

There are Aussie rebels too

The Guardian recognised the subjective nature of the list, encouraging people to post their own favourite rebel songs. There is an enduring history of Australian songs of this ilk. Start with Tex Morton’s 1930s story of Sergeant Small harassing swaggies riding the rails, divert through the folk catalogue (e.g. Judy Small, John Dengate) then progress to popular music (Redgum, Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly, Warumpi Band and Kev Carmody), through to rebels of today like Xavier Rudd and John Butler.

It would be comforting to think that a public servant working for a government could write and perform a song like The Lurkers’ Mining Man without fear of reprisal.
But in this political climate, I doubt it.

Postscript: She Who Also Sometimes Writes (SWASW) has penned her own piece about the loveable, eccentric folk scene, which you can find here: