Various lockdown hacks and escapes — 56 — what happened next in 2001

First — regarding the Albury Hotel

28 Oct 2001

… Last night I called into the Albury Hotel for the very last time; it was the last day the grand/jaded/notorious old watering hole to the gay community was open to the public. There is a private farewell party today, but 1) I am not sure I was invited and 2) I am all farewelled out. So I am giving it a miss. There was quite a good crowd there last night including a few faces I have not seen for a while.

Sirdan, Malcolm, the Empress (who was not there, but see below for what he was doing) and I will probably pass our time in future at another venue where cider is served, along with various Irish ales.

I may call in later to St Vincents Hospital to see how my friend Father John is getting on. He had his operation on Friday. John is an interesting character, a man of 70 whose life has been in the service of the Anglican Church, much of it in Islamic countries as chaplain to British Embassies. His insight into the Islamic world is deep and charitable; in fact when asked at the hospital what his religion is, he said “monotheist”. When they said, “The computer does not have that; do you mean Methodist?” he replied “Definitely not: you can put ‘Islam’ if you like.”

Speaking of hospitals, the Empress had a very interesting courier job last night, taking a sample of a certain exotic but well-publicised disease* to the lab for analysis. The person involved had been on holiday in the USA recently.

*Ebola?

28 Oct 2001

UPDATE

I went and saw Father John in hospital and he has come through well; indeed he expects to go home tomorrow.

After that I decided to drop in on the Albury’s final party. There was an invitation list; I was never sure I was on it, as I am in some ways a rather anonymous person there. It turned out someone of my first name was on the list, albeit apparently associated with the Bayswater Fitness Centre. Despite my denying any association with fitness centres, they let me in anyway; not sure what happens if the other N. turns up!

Sirdan, the Empress and Malcolm were there, with many a person I didn’t know and some I did. “Hugh La Rue” whose caberet act I have described in an earlier entry was there, but not performing, and recognised me. It was nice to see him again. I didn’t stay all that long–the free punch was dangerous I suspect. I saw a fair bit of the final “Pollie’s Follies” drag show and some of the acts were very good; one even actually sang. Miss Lucy was the first number after Pollie and did “The Lonely Goatherd” from The Sound of Music, with some quite remarkable leaps (in high heels) for such a large person.

A. was there. Not quite at war yet, but hoping; very much at home at a drag show.

So, there goes an association (with The Albury) going back about thirteen years–longer with a few visits when I was still living in Chippendale, so it must be sixteen years since I first went to the long-defunct piano bar.

The crowd today was still not as big as when the pub was at its height, but big enough. The Empress, of course, was at The Albury’s opening night as a gay bar–I am not sure how many centuries that is–and was determined to see through the last night. When I saw him last someone had given him a schooner of punch. I do hope we see him again…

Was that the beginning of the decline of Oxford Street?

Here is a retrospect from 2019 looking back twenty years — and more!

Second — regarding the 2001 election October-November 2001

November 5: Priorities…getting them right.

With carpet bombing starting in Afghanistan, and an upcoming election here (both pretty depressing), I thought I should mention that Mitchell’s famous Melbourne Cup Tips are now up. You only have a few hours to make use of them!

5 November 2001

It’s that time of the year again! Well, the election also… but, more importantly, the Melbourne Cup. My tips for this year:

1. Curata Storm
2. Marienbard
3. Hill of Grace

Mitchie told you so.

Very busy but satisfying day at the University of Technology Sydney, as a result of which I am quite excited about possibilities for the ESL research project Phase 2 next year.

November 7: Australian elections on 10th… and I am praying for a change of government

I have had the vote now for 37 years.

For the first half (approximately) of that time, being of mainly Scots/Ulster Protestant background, I voted Liberal, as did my parents and grandparents before me. For most of the second half I have voted Labor, except in the Senate where I have favoured one or other of the minor parties. For the first time ever I will not be voting for either major party in either House.

As Ian McPhee rightly observed today, there are no Liberals left in the Liberal Party. What we have are conservatives (like Costello) and reactionaries (like the Prime Minister). Of course there are precious few Labor politicians in the Labor Party either, and the crunch issue separating me from them, and the government, has been the obscene asylum-seekers “crisis”. I have canvassed that issue before on this diary, so do not propose to do so again tonight.

Further, while not excusing those responsible for the attacks of September 11, I find myself increasingly appalled by the crudeness of the response by the United States and by our government’s alacrity (supported by Labor) to leap into the action. (Of course I also wish our ADF members well.) Our “non-evil” weapons, to paraphrase George Bush, are likely directly and indirectly to exact a human cost far in excess of the 6000 in the twin towers. I just hope the causes of terrorism are addressed by the world community more effectively at some time in the future. I fear the present course will in sum probably increase the appeal of terrorism in those parts of the world that currently feel, for whatever reasons, obliged to take that path.

I hope that liberal and secularist religionists of all faiths will become stronger in their opposition to fundamentalism and fanaticism.

Back home again, I am impressed with much of the argument in Quarterly Essay 3:2001: “The Opportunist: John Howard and the Triumph of Reaction” by Guy Rundle. If you want an image of the kind of prat the Liberal Party throws up (and in this case out, after he fell on his face) look no further than Jonathan Shier. He embodied the mindset beautifully. He was just too nakedly prattish to succeed, but he was their man, very much their man.

You are free to disagree with any of the above.

I do lean more towards the Labor Party in certain policy areas, especially social welfare, health and education. I feel they could form quite a respectable government, if not an adventurous one. I also feel they will be quite conservative in terms of economic management this time around; their options are limited there anyway.

M, who experiences nausea everytime he sees John Howard, asks: “Why does Australia want tough leaders? What Australia needs is wise leaders, compassionate leaders.” Amen to that–but I can’t recall many: John Curtin maybe? Gough Whitlam? Not wise. Paul Keating? Flashes of wisdom but too much folly. Malcolm Fraser? Only since he retired. Who? Menzies? No, too deep a concept to sum him up, but he was much more of a Liberal than the current crop. Bob Hawke? Plenty of compassion, less wisdom. It’s a lot to ask, M. Depressing isn’t it?

If you want some idea of what wisdom looks like, revisit the International Declaration on Human Rights.

November 8: Responding to P P McGuiness

According to P P McGuiness, those eminent Australians (“elites”) who have expressed disagreement with the majority view (“out-of-touch”) on Australia’s current migration and refugee policies are, at heart, worshippers of Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao “and assorted other mass murderers”.

It is always a bit rich when McGuiness attacks the “self-described intellectuals” and the “chattering classes”, as the Chairman of Free Balmain is all of the above himself. He was also in his youth strangely attracted to “assorted other mass murderers”, but in seeing the light he has adopted another -ism, populism and a species of ultra-libertarianism (pace Bernard Crick) that borders, in my view, on irresponsible government and social anarchy.

I am not looking for a man with a white horse, nor do I seriously see myself as an intellectual. As an ESL teacher who lives with a Chinese who would, had the populace been asked back in 1990, probably not now be an Australian citizen, I may be biassed.

Populism sounds like democracy, but is in fact as old as the hills and refers either to demagoguery or, more honourably, to the utopian concept of “direct democracy”. “Direct democracy” is another of those shattered myths of the hippy era, along with worship of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. When we elect a government we choose a set of elites (elected and non-elected) who we hope will serve the long-term interests of the nation. I see nothing wrong with that.

If elites and intellectuals are a critical presence, a conscience, in an otherwise ill-informed populace, they are merely fulfilling their proper function. It is because writers and such are articulate that we value them, though we all need to take what they say critically. If judges from time to time act on principle rather than political expediency, then cheer them on! Many of those who have spoken out on the boat people/asylum seekers are those who really are in a position to know what they are talking about–people with experience of the highest levels of diplomacy, the military and government. They are not mere journalists–or even ESL teachers.

In such ways we progress; but then progress is something else McGuinness would not believe in. Disillusion as an ideal is very romantic, but where does it leave us?

McGuinness actually writes well. Sometimes he writes good things well. Too often he writes seductive nonsense well. The latter is, in my view, what he has done today.

November 9: ..the case of David Flint

Professor David Flint has an opinion piece in The Australian today. It is worth a read; Flint gets a guernsey from his old school mate P P McGuinness in the Sydney High Old Boys’ Bulletin for October, incidentally.

Now I actually know Professor Flint. I have wined and dined with him and been a passenger in his car. He is a charming fellow. I really mean that. There is much else one could say about him, but one won’t. I even agree with some of what he says, but it is interesting how his hobby-horse infects all he says; he is a classic instance of the old school where the Church of England (especially the High Church variety) has been described as “the Tory Party at prayer”. He is almost a Dickensian character sprung to life, and in his own way another anti-elite elite, for he is elite (and dare I say a crashing snob to boot) as any elite could be! Perhaps we all become caricatures of ourselves in time.

Few people I have met so thoroughly inhabit a fantasy world, I really must say. It is a charming and cosy world, but it does not really exist outside his somewhat rarefied circle. It did once, perhaps, in England many decades ago, but bears no relationship to the Australia most of us live in. And yet his constitutional arguments are worth more than a passing glance at times, as he is a learned man, simply one who has devoted his learning to shoring up the essentially aristocratic world he has fantasised himself into. Such is my impression having observed him on several occasions.

I have also taken the opportunity to correct a spelling mistake in yesterday’s, and to clarify the notion of populism.

November 10: Australia votes…and so does Ninglun

So, I have just recently done my democratic duty. Now we wait. I am not optimistic about the outcome, though I do hope we may achieve the minor change that a Labor victory would bring, including (among other things) a somewhat harder ride for the present government’s rich and powerful friends–though they will continue to do very well I am sure– and a more liberal (in the true sense) approach to issues of multiculturalism, national identity, indigenous issues and social issues generally. I’ll stop boring you now.

On the way back from the polling booth I saw the almost terminally cute recent vice-captain of our school setting off to make his first vote. I urged him to vote the right way, which he said of course he would do. We did not actually discuss what the right way might be. (I do hope he did not misinterpret my words.) Another new voter of my acquaintance is in another electorate, in fact the same electorate, curiously enough, in which I voted Liberal on a number of occasions. (Come to think of it, even before I had the vote I scrutineered for the bastards–sorry!–in a local election; it was interesting, but I am not sure if it was legal, but the candidate wanted bodies on the tally room floor.) He was a local developer–you know the scene–and my father was a real estate agent in Jannali.

Curiouser still is that my old Presbyterian Church is a polling booth in that electorate.

With respect to yesterday’s diary, which may have seemed uncharitable, I should point out that I actually quite like Prof. Flint as a conversation partner and fellow-guest at a dinner. Pompous, indeed, but not without humour. I even agree with him that the Westminster system of government is better than the American model. However, while he seemed yesterday to rejoice in the fact that the American system stymied “elites” (or “pointy-headed intellectuals”/”eggheads” and other delightful American expressions), I actually think that is one of the things wrong with it.

I also do not want Australia to have an elected president; in fact I don’t want Australia to have any kind of president with the powers of an American one. If we become a republic (and there are still good symbolic reasons for that, even practical ones further down the track) I hope it is a minimalist model that gets up. Prime Minister Costello would probably see us right on that one 😉

Imagine what I might have said about Prof. Flint if I didn’t like him!

Finally, I decided to cheer myself and others up by buying a car. It had to be within budget, and although I won’t be driving it myself (though I may be allowed to use it), it had to be something a bit classic, I felt, and expressive of machismo. I think I have succeeded, and got change out of a ten-note too!

It is beside me as I write 🙂

November 11: Howard wins…wish the Melbourne Cup tips had been as good! Oh yes: 1815 Hansard!

Well, you can look forward to me getting back to book reviews rather than political rants now.

It’s over, but life goes on. The Senate could prove interesting with an increased Green presence.

I saw on NineMSN that there was in the New York Times some fairly scandalous reporting of our virtual reassertion of a White Australia Policy; I have looked, but all I get is this. And it isn’t too shocking. I do think we are going to regret the smarty-pants “solution” to the asylum seekers situation. (NB change of terminology, Mitchell.) There is the cost, the fact that they will not be able to stay forever in Nauru etc. and will probably end up, many of them, back here, and the fact that we will run out of viable dumping grounds.

Pauline Hanson is down and out at least. Bliss, joy!

Still, a government that brought us some honour over East Timor is not all bad. Let’s hope they respond to some of the serious criticism, especially that from eminent community members of whom many have been members of or supporters of the governing party in the past.

Kim Beazely, the Labor leader, has just conceded and spoke very well.

The car* is a success I feel. Sirdan thought it looked nice. (See last entry.)

*2021 — I have no idea now what this was about!

All examinees–good luck over the next few weeks….

I left out the bit about the 1815 Hansard — it was a reference to a funny incident at the Green Park Hotel concerning myself, Sirdan, and another friend — a rather opinionated one at times — PK.

Various lockdown hacks and escapes — 42 — let’s go back 15 years

Surely everything in the garden was lovely back then? Well, one advantage/disadvantage of having such an extensive blog archive is that I can actually call that year back! Or at least, whatever I chose to blog about!

I was not all find of Prime Minister John Howard!

He has transformed Australia…

… and sadly this is true, except I would say “deformed”. The image above derives ultimately from The Arabian Nights, of course, though this one is from Marvel Masterworks. You know the story, don’t you? “In the story of Sinbad the Sailor, the Old Man of the Sea, hoisted on the shoulders of Sinbad, clung there and refused to dismount. Sinbad released himself from his burden by making the Old Man drunk.” Getting rid of the Garden Gnome may not be so easy.

Yes, that is what I thought of John Howard. hence my nickname for him — which I still rather like. The links in this post are to 2006 Herald stories, so they may or may not work.

A grey garden gnome

Scenes from life under the Great Grey Garden Gnome of Kirribilli House

1. Too late John, my trust has been destroyed. “Liberal Party supporter and mother of four, Debbie Bridgman, said she felt ‘ripped off’ by the Howard Government’s pledge before the last election to keep rates low.”

2. Howard begs MPs: don’t stray on asylum. “JOHN HOWARD pleaded with government backbenchers in his party room yesterday not to vote with Labor on new legislation to process offshore all asylum seekers arriving by boat. It would be a disaster if government MPs voted with Labor, Mr Howard said, calling on those opposed to the controversial legislation to instead abstain. But in reply, the small ‘l’ Liberal MP, Petro Georgiou, said he would be voting against the legislation because it breached an agreement struck with Mr Howard last year, and Liberal values meant voting on principles.” I’m with Petro on this.

3. Teacher morale at rock bottom, survey finds. Oh the joys of the Howardite workplace “reforms” and also of their (and our) naive preference for private schools! “NEWINGTON College has threatened to sue a parent whose company conducted a survey that found 43 per cent of the school’s teachers were considering quitting, and just 13 per cent have faith in the headmaster and council. The study was commissioned by the teachers’ representative body, the Common Room, after a failed attempt by the headmaster, David Scott, to force the 40 most senior staff to reapply for their positions on lower wages with shorter holidays. The author is a management consultant.” See too Funds review to exclude public schools.

4. This one is close to home, as much the same has happened to Lord Malcolm. This really, really sucks. You can work, teen told.

MATTHEW PEARCE has leukaemia. With it comes aching limbs, blood tranfusions, lumbar punctures and being forced to stay at home or in hospital, leaving the 16-year-old cut off from his friends.

But, according to Centrelink, leukaemia is not a permanent disability, making him ineligible for the disability support pension.

Matthew’s mother, Vicki, had hoped to receive the payment to help cover the loss of her income after she quit her job as a Perth cleaner to care for her son.

Instead, she received a letter last month telling her that Matthew had failed the assessment test which disability pension applicants must pass to receive the payment.

And it gets worse; read the whole story.

Why on earth do we tolerate this government?

I looked for hopeful signs, as I still do.

Two posts with heart in a troubled world

The first is a poem by George El-Hage of Columbia University, written July 29, 2006. It is on the Tabsir site and the title is “A Letter to the Children of Qana”. It is quite a long poem. Here is a short sample.

We sprinkled you with flowers
And wiped your faces with the covers of the holy books.
Alas, the Torah did not inspire us
Nor did the Gospel save us or the Qur’an console us.

All of us,
Both sides of the border,
We are all Cain
We are all Yazid
We are all Judas.
We are all vampires and murderers
And we are all responsible for your sacred blood and your innocent souls.

The second on the Killing the Buddha site is Searching for Sufis by Jill Hamburg Coplan.

…I was raised with two religions, neither one Islamic: Judaism and Zionism. In fact, I’m a not-so-distant relative of Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion. Probably it was rebelliousness, but I’d always felt a gravitational pull towards the Arab and Muslim side of things. Late in 1992, with Communism’s fall, I suspected that, as two minorities (“nationalities” was the preferred Soviet term), the Jews and the Muslims were heading for interesting times. Central Asia was also appealing as the birthplace of Sufism — mystical, ecstatic, meditative Islam. I’d read that Sufi mathematics, medicine, and poetry, developed in the medieval courts of Avignon and Andalusia, had spread from there to permeate Europe’s Enlightenment. Sufi masters were jesters and folk heroes. Carl Jung equated their mental-healing techniques with psychotherapy.

And how about this: Through the centuries, wherever Sufism held sway — like Ottoman Turkey — Jews could find safe haven. If I could find a Sufi, I thought, I could approach him with genuine respect, bringing my own real curiosity about mysticism, and produce for American newspaper readers a kind of encounter that might help them understand Islam in a different way than a demonizing story about a radical hostage-taker or half-crazed suicide attacker ever could. And if not, well, Judaism reserves its mystical texts and practices for old male scholars who’ve mastered everything else. Perhaps the more tolerant Sufis would open a door for me…

Read them both.

This short post was a bit depressing — still is! And now we are over twenty years into a new century!

A place to reflect on human folly…

…and the obscenities we visit on ourselves. Go to Death Tolls for the Man-made Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century. You will be drawn into a journey you won’t soon forget.

Now the buzz word among reactionaries is “woke”! But this is much the same and I am happily guilty of both.

Sam, this is so true!

Read Sam (Queer Penguin) on political (in)correctness.

There’s been much theorising (I couldn’t be arsed linking stuff today as I’m writing this in about 20 mins prior to my first Monday morning meeting – just trust me) that Howard won the 1996 election as a counter-offensive to the politically-correct Keating government; middle Australians (whoever the hell they are) felt left behind by the PC thugs who’d hijacked Labor for their own elitest and ultimately irrelevant causes, such as reconciliation, becoming a republic, multiculturalism and so on.

But am I the only one who reckons the PC pendulum has swung massively in the other direction? That these days the modern mainstream discourse is strongly grounded in the Right’s court? Between the ruling federal government (and, dare I say, several state ones too), highest profile media commentators and, increasingly, bloggers, there seem to be a whole new set of rules for dictating thought and opinion – what are the “right” things to think and feel and what are “wrong”.

No, you aren’t the only one. You are absolutely right, even correct! See also my earlier post PC but with a sense of humour .

OK, another topic….

Wisdom abounds if you would seek it…

Or so I like to think. I have been finding much in the challenging pages of If God is Love by Philip Gulley & James Mulholland.

…President Bush, in the days after September 11, suggested we were fighting to defend our way of life. But what if our way of life is unjust and oppressive toward much of the world?

When we fail to acknowledge our complicity in the injustice in the world, we often replace real justice — economic and political equality — with retribution. What we seek is not to rectify injustice, but to defend our inordinate piece of the pie. The answer is “homeland security” rather than global equality. We seek an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth from people blinded by rage with no food to chew. Unfortunately, when we attack the poor, we seldom do justice. Ungracious justice is merciless, justifying the ugly and violating the principles we pretend to value.

It is nice to know such Christian prophecy (in the proper sense) still exists in the USA. Unfortunately, many Christians, locked into fundamentalism or narrow dogma or into a literalist view of scripture, reject what this utterly Christian book has to say, the true reason being, I suspect, statements like the one I just quoted, which Americans (and the world) really do need to hear.

Yesterday I mentioned that amazing software package that delivers me 4000+ classics, among which is Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ. (Note that The Communist Manifesto is also in the package, and so is The Origin of Species.) According to Wikipedia:

He was born at Kempen, Germany (40 miles northwest of Cologne) in 1380 and died near Zwolle (52 miles east-north-east of Amsterdam) in 1471. His paternal name was Hemerken or Hämmerlein, “little hammer.”

In 1395 he was sent to the school at Deventer conducted by the Brethren of the Common Life. He became skillful as a copyist and was thus enabled to support himself. Later he was admitted to the Augustinian convent of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle, where his brother John had been before him and had risen to the dignity of prior. Thomas received priest’s orders in 1413 and was made subprior in 1429.

His classic treatise on the religious life is shot through with the almost Manichaean dichotomy of flesh and spirit characteristic of that age; mind you, I suspect hedonism, or exaltation of the flesh, is equally wrong. A life predicated on crystal meth and sex seems to me as inhuman as any. But there is still much wisdom in the old Thomas.

TURN your attention upon yourself and beware of judging the deeds of other men, for in judging others a man labors vainly, often makes mistakes, and easily sins; whereas, in judging and taking stock of himself he does something that is always profitable.

We frequently judge that things are as we wish them to be, for through personal feeling true perspective is easily lost.

In another tradition altogether, ABC Radio National’s Encounter was quite fascinating this week. I happened to hear it early this morning, having woken very early. See Heaven Doesn’t Speak, an account of Confucius that was both fascinating and informative. This is part of the Australian mix now and we can all learn from it.

Confucius

Then right near the end of the month — strangely relevant today! However, I would no longer put much store in the 9/11 conspiracy theories Weiner toys with.

Let future historians decide how well we have been led…

When they do, they could do worse than attend to Bernard Weiner, whose “Twenty Things We Now Know Five Years After 9/11” was referred to me by The Poet, with the note that he would send “The Boys” to get me if I did not publish this here. No need, Poet. It is indeed a masterly summation, with some strong words thrown in with the undeniable facts.

In sum, we know that permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home are taking us into a kind of American fascism domestically and an imperial foreign policy overseas. All aspects of the American polity are infected with the militarist Know-Nothingism emanating from the top, with governmental and vigilante-type crackdowns on protesters, dissent, free speech, freedom of assembly happening regularly on both the local and federal levels. More and more, America is resembling Germany in the early 1930s, group pitted against group while the central government amasses more and more power and control of its put-upon citizens, and criticizing The Leader’s policies is denounced as unpatriotic or treasonous.

The good news is that after suffering through six-plus years of the Cheney-Bush presidency, the public’s blinders are falling off. The fall from power of Tom DeLay is a good symbol of this, and the true nature of these men and their regime is finally starting to hit home. Cheney is acknowledged as the true power behind the throne, and Bush is seen for what he is: an insecure, uncurious, arrogant, dangerous, dry-drunk bully who is endangering U.S. national interests abroad with his reckless and incompetently-managed wars, his wrecking of the U.S. economy at home, and with his over-reaching in all areas.

If a Democratic president and vice president had behaved similarly to Bush and Cheney, they’d have been in the impeachment dock in a minute.

And speaking of “Know-Nothingism emanating from the top”, check today’s Sydney Morning Herald front page story Weapons cover-up revealed: “The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, issued instructions to suppress a damning letter about the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the war, a former senior diplomat says.”

Sigh.

The Chris Lilley story took me back to the Howard era — eventually.

And what a miserable place that turned out to revisit! As you will see, I was not only still teaching then but in an area (ESL) that his particularly anal retentive philosophy impacted badly.

But to the Chris Lilley story. As I noted on Facebook: “I saw that original series “Our Boys” — it was one of the best education documentaries ABC has ever made. I was in awe at the teachers I saw in it, and what the school was doing in circumstances I may not have coped well with. At that time I was still teaching.

“I have definitely changed my mind about Chris Lilley.

“‘Young Filipe Mahe faced tremendous difficulties — the death of his dad, family illness and undiagnosed dyslexia — only to be ‘used to create a national figure of fun’. This background story to Chris Lilley’s ‘Jonah’ caricature is quite sad’.”

That’s a still from the original Our Boys, showing the young Felipe. I went back through my own archives to see how I and others had reacted to Chris Lilley’s shows when they first came out. I am not totally ashamed, as I did have reservations.

Mr Rabbit, a teacher, younger than Chris Lilley who turns 40 next year, thinks Ja’mie is about as funny as childhood cancer.  Maximos, a former colleague of mine in SBHS days, could not watch after Episode 1. The Sydney Morning Herald critic Annabel Ross has a good valedictory on the last episode, screened last night.

As others have pointed out, it’s hard to know if Lilley’s critique is aimed at private school girls like Ja’mie or at the society that has bred them.

Ultimately, though, it all feels a bit so what. There’s been no redemption, no downfall, no real sense that Ja’mie has learned anything at all. But maybe that’s the point.

Ja’mie lives without consequence, and should temper tantrums and tears not win her arguments, the rest of her problems can usually be summarily dismissed with a breezy “whatevs”.

Ja’mie shed a third of its viewers over its Australian run, dividing critics, and attracting mainly brickbats in the US this week when it debuted on HBO.

The announcement that high school bully Jonah will be the next Lilley character to get his own series will doubtless delight many fans. But I can’t help wondering if, like Ja’mie, it will feel a little like more of the same.

Perhaps it’s time for Lilley to go back to the drawing board and unleash a new creation….

I watched the whole thing.  Having taught in state schools but also in three private schools – and the South African references were very pertinent to one of those – I found myself having to cringe but acknowledge the degree of truth in Chris Lilley’s merciless satire. His performance is truly amazing – for a guy pushing 40 now! Linguistically he has a great ear. But I did find the whole thing just TOO dark, too, well, cruel.

I had posted on Facebook earlier on another story from the Sydney Morning Herald: “This really has affected my reaction to that Chris Lilley character. I recall that episode of the excellent ABC documentary on Canterbury Boys High, which has unfortunately disappeared into the for sale only department — if indeed it is still available there. In the comment section I will place a summary of it, and in another comment a more recent video about the school.

“It does now seem cruel, mean-spirited even. And I feel soiled by the fact I actually enjoyed it.”

‘I knew that Jonah was me’: former Tongan schoolboy reveals anger and pain about Chris Lilley character.

You will find an account of the 2004  episode of Reality Bites: Our Boys Filipe there.

Welcome to Canterbury Boys High, Prime Minister John Howard’s old school and the setting for a compelling four-part documentary series, Our Boys, screening on ABC TV from Tuesday February 10 [2004] at 8pm.

Our Boys follows the lives of five teenage students and their teachers at this cash-strapped government school in south-west Sydney.

Filmed over a school year, it tells the personal stories of today’s public education system – a school ‘starved of funds’, boys ‘at risk’ and teachers going far beyond their traditional classroom roles.

Canterbury Boys has a rich mix of nationalities – 90 per cent of the boys come from non-English speaking backgrounds. Many are refugees or come from disadvantaged homes.

This week, cheeky, disruptive 15 year-old Filipe Mahe from Tonga has slipped through the net. He’s made it into Year 9 without being able to read or write….

Have a look at Canterbury Boys High more recently.

Yes, back when former PM John Howard was a boy Canterbury was a selective school like Sydney Boys High and Fort Street. Over time it had become a multicultural school serving a disadvantaged local area.

I thought again of the Howard era. I was none too fond of him at the time and have the blog to prove it!  On the sadly vanished Diary-X I wrote:

19-20 January 2004

Dear me, I was annoyed yesterday!

And rightly so, even if perhaps instead of notorious hypocrite I could just have said canny politician, and for being disrespectful I might have written totally despising. As Labor frontbencher Julia Gillard quite properly said last year, the evil of the Howard regime has been the imposition of a bleak political correctness of the most ruthless kind upon what once was a country showing signs of developing values and attitudes more in tune with the age in which we currently live.

It’s time for those who oppose Howard’s agenda to admit that he and his helpers have succeeded spectacularly.

The nation is in the grip of a neo-conservative political correctness that is out of touch with the values of the majority of the Australian people. It’s a political correctness that has elevated values that most Australians don’t share: individual selfishness and a strange envy of the less fortunate because they are receiving Government assistance.

It’s a political correctness that has produced greater divisions in our society between the haves and the have-nots, indigenous and non-indigenous, new migrants and old. And it is a political correctness that puts winning before all else, where ethics, integrity and values like equality and looking after others less fortunate don’t rate.

John Howard has won his culture war, for now.

My argument is that it’s time for Australians of all political persuasions who don’t like this new political correctness – from Green on the left, to small-l liberal on the right – to wake up to the fact that they have lost the culture war.

Australia has been changed for the worse by John Howard. We can make it better again.

Howard is guilty of squandering important spiritual advances made over the decades since the 1960s and 1970s. He has done this with deliberation, partly out of his own small-minded convictions, but even more so out of “wedge politics”, knowing that the paranoia unleashed some years back by the Hanson phenomenon could be harnessed as a key to power.

So I am glad I sounded off yesterday, and particularly glad that I transcribed the NSW Department of Education’s statement about values. That is a fine document, distilling much thinking — indeed much of the spiritual advance Howard is so antithetical to. True, it is a statement of principles: but isn’t it nice to have principles? Also, from my experience, state schools do try, often in very difficult circumstances to put these principles into practice….

Howard’s agenda:

1) To spend as little as possible on public education, skewing what funding there is towards the private sector, so that privatising education will seem both desirable and necessary some time in the future, and ideologically in keeping with everything else this government stands for. One therefore undermines public education at every turn, without seeming to do so, as Australians are in fact rather fond of their century and more of public (free, compulsory and secular) education: it has been a core Australian value.

2) The teachers have a powerful trade union. The government is intent on destroying the union movement, or having a totally compliant one. It is now the turn of teachers, wharfies and other undesirables having been dealt with some time ago.

If there are flawed values at work in all this, just look to The Lodge (or Kirribilli House) to see where they are coming from….