Andrew Bolt - Notes from Pig City

The Drones: Feelin Kinda Free

Music / April 25, 2016 / 3 minutes of reading

When right-wing columnist/performance artist Andrew Bolt heard the Drones’ single Taman Shud, he wrote that the band was “stamping on the ashes of the West’s musical traditions”. Supposedly offended by the thought that singer Gareth Liddiard didn’t give a toss about anything he said, he added: “critics like these make me feel like I’m offending exactly the right kind of people”.

Naturally, the Drones were delighted. First, they would no doubt feel exactly the same way about offending Bolt and his tabloid constituency. Second, the group has taken a serious left turn with their seventh album, Feelin Kinda Free. “We said ‘fuck it’ and went spaz,” Liddiard told The Guardian last October. He couldn’t have dreamed of a better critical endorsement than Bolt’s “stamping on the ashes” line.

“It’s a pretty weird record and you can dance to it,” Liddiard said of the album. “It’s time to have a groovy Drones record. We’re sick of being a bunch of drags.” With respect, Bolt’s description was pithier, more accurate and more complimentary. Taman Shud was one of the most compelling singles of last year, but good luck to anyone who hit the dance floor to its skittish rhythms.

Boredom, the sixth track on Feelin Kinda Free, is in a similar vein.… Read more..

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With a little empathy, Turnbull changes the tone

Australian Politics / September 22, 2015 / 4 minutes of reading

Whatever you thought of Leigh Sales’ interview with Malcolm Turnbull on The 7.30 Report last night, it had a defining moment; one that has the potential to recast the fortunes of his government. It was a moment of empathy, and empathy is a quality that’s become an endangered species in public life.

Turnbull recalled when he was a partner at Goldman Sachs in New York. Everyone, he said, was earning big money. But he queried the CEO about whether they were deserving of their good fortune, pointing out that in the streets below them, there were taxi drivers working far longer hours for a fraction of the rewards they were receiving.

I nearly fell off my chair. As someone who’d driven a taxi for many years – and who occasionally had to shrug off barbs from those who clearly regarded my line of employment as a reflection on my intelligence, as well as my station in life – this was an extraordinary thing to hear. Especially from a conservative politician.

Turnbull readily accepted Leigh Sales’ proposition that he’s been lucky. He has been gifted with high intelligence, a good education, good health, a beautiful family, and he’s been able to convert all of it into enormous wealth, which only a tiny few are able to do no matter how lucky they are, or how hard they work.… Read more..

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Giving oxygen to thieves

Australian Politics, Media / July 31, 2015 / 4 minutes of reading

In early 2007, I found myself on the Atherton Tablelands, researching a story about politics in far north Queensland for the late, lamented Bulletin magazine. This was the year of John Howard’s demise and Kevin Rudd’s ascension, and I wanted to see how the men and women of the frontier saw the up-and-comer from their corner of the world.

The piece was called “The Seventh State of Mind”, an acknowledgment that, yes, Queensland is different, and north Queensland even more so. It also stemmed from a long conversation I had with Bob Katter, who neatly showed me how he would partition the state from Rockhampton up, with the aid of a folded serviette (which looks a bit like Queensland) and a knife.

Katter practically left me with my ears bleeding that day, but naturally I couldn’t resist leading my story with this prominent and long-serving politician’s call for secession. I reported plenty of other interesting views in my travels, including those of a Yungaburra lady who was convinced tampons were laced with asbestos and who sold “rainbow rags” (colourful sanitary pads) in her shop as an alternative.

But there was one person whose opinions I chose not to report. I encountered him in the township of Mt Molloy, and he regaled me with some startlingly racist views, including a claim that Aboriginal people had smaller brains.… Read more..

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Baiters, haters and spivs

Media / April 12, 2012 / 4 minutes of reading

In the online edition of Melbourne-based publication King’s Tribune last month, editors Jane Gilmore and Justin Shaw came to a radical decision. They resolved – after a few months of earnest consideration was capped by one post of anonymous, misogynist bilge too many – to turn comments on their website ”off”.

Given the magazine deals mostly in robustly expressed opinion, and not wishing to discourage debate, Gilmore and Shaw made an even more radical suggestion: letters could be sent by email or Facebook, or even (are you sitting down?) by post. The most cogent, topical and witty of them would be considered for publication.

It’s important to note the Tribune is a small venture. It began five years ago as a newsletter for a St Kilda bar and became a ”real” magazine last October, extending its reach through newsagents into Sydney and Canberra. Its circulation is less than 1000; Gilmore and Shaw keep day jobs.

There are practical reasons for a small publication like the Tribune to disable comments: neither the editors nor individual writers have the time, energy or inclination to monitor and moderate, much less reply to them all. There are more pressing things, such as getting out the next issue.… Read more..

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Pokies: rent-seekers win again

Australian Politics / January 24, 2012 / 5 minutes of reading

The gnashing of teeth over Julia Gillard’s betrayal of Andrew Wilkie over pokies reform has been entirely predictable. Is this some kind of political masterstroke? Is it just another demonstration of Gillard’s fundamental untrustworthiness? It’s all as telegraphed as an old boxer’s jab, and irrevocably lashed to the 24-hour news cycle. About the furthest anyone’s looking into this situation is the polls, and what it does to Gillard’s chances of re-election.

The far more important point about what Gillard’s backdown says about Australia’s rotten political culture has been almost entirely overlooked. And that is that the rent-seekers have won again.

They won in 2010, when some of the world’s largest and richest mining companies saw off the Resources Super Profits Tax with a $22 million advertising campaign that, in the end, helped kill off a popularly elected Prime Minister (not that Kevin 07, perhaps soon be be known as Kevin 12, was exactly blameless in his demise, but that’s another story).

That occasion saw the likes of Gina Rinehart, Twiggy Forrest and Clive Palmer marching in the streets and carrying on like they’d all be rooned, I tells ya. The sight of Australia’s richest men and women playing the victim card – Rinehart (wealthiest of the lot) leading the chant of “Axe the tax!”… Read more..

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You can’t say no forever

Australian Politics / October 13, 2011 / 4 minutes of reading

IN case you missed it, the carbon tax bills were passed by the House of Representatives yesterday. I’m pleased to report the sun came up this morning. I presume it will set again tonight and in spite of the nation’s dilemma, the world will most likely move on.

Julia Gillard and her minority government have a lot of problems and a lot of faults, but they’re correct when she says they’re on the right side of history here (or, more accurately, that Tony Abbott is on the fag end of it). It’s just a shame it took so long to get to this point, and that the debate over this issue in particular has exacted such a shocking toll on rational and civilised political discourse – not that things were exactly tea and biscuits inside or outside the parliamentary chamber when John Howard was in charge, mind you.

I am, in some ways, almost a cartoon stereotype of the lapsed Labor voter: having voted with not a little optimism, goodwill and hope for Kevin Rudd in 2007, my faith collapsed after his abandonment of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in early 2010. It was bad enough that the legislation was so utterly compromised in its desperation to appease big polluters that it offered virtually no incentive to change their practices at all.… Read more..

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