(Above: no, please, we don't want candy. Thanks to Janet Albrechtsen, we're on an abstemious ascetic anti-eighties diet).
Every so often, a header catches the eye at the pond.
Like Shaun Carney's Amid the poll frenzy, a nation yearns for inspired leadership.
Read down through the standard reading of the runes, aka poll gazing and poll divining, and you come to a rhetorical flourish at the end of the piece. Speaking of opinion poll releases, and the loud, often empty and irrational media buzz that accompanies them - a buzz to which he contributes - Carney concludes:
But if you fail, (to shut out the buzz) take heart from the fact that it will all come to an end, on election day, when there will be only one reality: the official result. Meanwhile, a nation quietly yearns for genuine, inspired political leadership.
Yep, somehow Carney can manage to discern the quiet yearning of the nation. Is it in the air? Did he need a divining rod? Can you find it as easily as the way the rod twitches in the presence of water underground.
Who's to know? Could the nation be quietly yearning for political commentators to just shut up and crawl into a nearby fox hole? Could the nation be quietly yearning for sporting success, instead of fielding the current crop of losers? Could the nation be quietly yearning for the end of winter and the return of a nice globally warmed hot summer?
Well it almost goes without saying that Janet Albrechtsen knows what the nation wants, or at least needs, and that's Margaret Thatcher.
If only pollies had Maggie's backbone, she muses, then immediately spoils the message with distracting details:
Excellent idea. Time travel, that is. Given the fiscal problems facing European economies, reliving the 80s era of Duran Duran, MTV, frizzy hair, high-waisted jeans and Margaret Thatcher makes eminent sense right now.
Dearie me, Margaret Thatcher as the Duran Duran, MTV, frizzy hair and high waisted jeans of politics?
Nope, it's all about that quiet yearning for leadership:
Instead of slaying the former British prime minister, today's politicians should reacquaint themselves with her backbone. Actually, let's be blunt. It's not at all clear that political leaders today, most of them men, have Thatcher's balls when it comes to transforming their sclerotic economies.
Funnily enough, Albrechtsen's column is all about the need for financial rigour and for living within our means and fiscal rectitude, and severe budgeting, and austerity that would make a Puritan shrink in fear and the Amish mourn the lack of fun in the world.
As usual, instead of worrying about billionaire miners, and the fat cats of the eastern suburbs, and the fancy expenditure of well-heeled Murdoch columnists, Albrechtsen knows where to find the extravagance. You've guessed it. Public servants!
Instead, talk of austerity is met with knee-jerk opposition. Each time the catchcry from public servants is the same. They scream about attacks against their rights, against their salaries, welfare and public services. They scream about their innocence, pronounce that "public servants didn't create the crisis" and point the finger at greedy banks. It's true that banks made plenty of mistakes. But instead of looking only at Wall Street excess and drafting up Robin Hood taxes, it's time to talk about government excess, too.
Uh huh. That'd be right. You might have missed the loud disclaimer attached to the column indicating Albrecthsen's deep and abiding interest in banking. You see, Albrechtsen is married to John O'Sullivan, one time senior Freehills partner. Here's The Age, back in 2005, in Critical voice gets keys to citadel:
Reportedly one of the highest-paid lawyers in the country - he has a remuneration package worth $700,000 a year plus various other sweeteners, including shares worth about $1 million and a $400,000 signing-on fee - O'Sullivan, 50, is also well connected in Canberra, having led the Commonwealth's legal team for the sale of the first two public offerings in Telstra, and the $5 billion sale of Sydney Airport.
Now in polite company, it's never done to draw attention to personal circumstances in an argument. Generic references to fat cat public services, and broad rhetorical flourishes about greedy excess are considered fair game, but you never play the person, not even if they pocket a nice little earner.
Who knows how much Albrechtsen gets paid? Let's just say it isn't likely to be a humble pension.
You see, it it's a bit like all those infamous references to dole bludgers and ne'er do wells making out like bandits and living grand life styles on a couple of hundred bucks a week. All this talk by fat cats of other fat cats making out like bandits is just so much whimsical grand standing, as is the harsh rhetoric for all of us to draw in our belts, live within our means, suffer on a pittance and so on and so forth. All except the rich.
Yet in terms of societal value, what on earth is the value of a Janet Albrechtsen column to the world, apart from the outrage and comments it provokes, and the frenzied hits that drive the punters to the associated advertisements?
This week it's a round robin header featuring bankers v. lawyers v. public servants, with Janet Albrechtsen performing the smack downs, and some yearning for Thatcher, and that's it? Why there's more value in the work of a garbage collector being paid fuck all by the local council.
It's okay, I suppose, if you read this kind of nonsense for fun, and remember that it was a poll tax that did Margaret Thatcher down - a tax in which property tax rates were made uniform, with the same amount charged to every individual resident, and a residential head tax. We tend to forget the dying days of the Thatcher regime, as proponents celebrate the mythology of Thatcherism:
Thatcher's system of local taxation was among the most unpopular policies of her premiership with working class and poorer citizens unable to pay the new tax and some being sent to Prison for non payment. The central Government capped rates resulting in charges of partisanship and the alienation of small-government Conservatives. The Prime Minister's popularity declined in 1989 as she continued to refuse to compromise on the tax. Unrest mounted and ordinary British people young and old took to the streets to demonstrate, the demonstrators were met with horse mounted Police in riot gear and demonstration turned to riots at Trafalgar Square, London, on 31 March 1990; more than 100,000 protesters attended and more than 400 people were arrested. (here).
In a chequered career, one of my jobs involved explaining to hapless workers why the cupboard was bare, the kitty empty, and why they needed to work for the smell of an oily rag in an abstemious fashion for the good of the company and thereby the good of the country.
Well it was a job, and someone had to do it, and you can rely on fat cat commentariat columnists to do the same kind of line in their line of work:
For years, European governments lauded their socially progressive model. Translated into English that model means workers retiring too early, public servants being paid too much, overly generous pensions and inflexible labour laws.
For years, economic rationalists warned that the bill would eventually cripple Europe. That bill has arrived and the grand total is a sovereign debt crisis highlighting a harsh reality: there is no human right to high salaries and cosy conditions that leave countries on the brink of bankruptcy.
Australia has its own problems with government excess. Whether it's sovereign debt or sovereign risk, the problem is the same poor government policy. The Rudd government's path to deficit reduction is as poor as it gets: nationalise 40 per cent of mining losses and slap a prohibitive tax on an industry that drives Australia's economic prosperity. It fits a pattern of Rudd-style excess, an old-fashioned, big spending, redistributive, interventionist government. On Monday, an Associated Press headline said it all: "Canada's economy is suddenly the envy of the world". Australia used to attract headlines like that.
And so there we have it. Unendurable yearning for a time when the British rioted in the streets, as a way of showing how individuals should do more:
For years, European governments lauded their socially progressive model. Translated into English that model means workers retiring too early, public servants being paid too much, overly generous pensions and inflexible labour laws.
For years, economic rationalists warned that the bill would eventually cripple Europe. That bill has arrived and the grand total is a sovereign debt crisis highlighting a harsh reality: there is no human right to high salaries and cosy conditions that leave countries on the brink of bankruptcy.
Um, so instead of starting with public servants, can we start with the fat cat bankers and the lawyers, and perhaps above all the excessive fees charged by commentariat columnists to upload drivel into their columns?
How about fat cat miners? Surely we can start with them, as they make out like bandits plundering one off Australian resources?
No, no, you goose, the miners are on a sacred mission to generate wealth for billionaires, so that they can afford the time to riot in the streets, and a driver to get their Bentley to the appointed place for the rioting:
Australia has its own problems with government excess. Whether it's sovereign debt or sovereign risk, the problem is the same poor government policy. The Rudd government's path to deficit reduction is as poor as it gets: nationalise 40 per cent of mining losses and slap a prohibitive tax on an industry that drives Australia's economic prosperity. It fits a pattern of Rudd-style excess, an old-fashioned, big spending, redistributive, interventionist government. On Monday, an Associated Press headline said it all: "Canada's economy is suddenly the envy of the world". Australia used to attract headlines like that.
And so there we have it. Unendurable yearning for a time when the British rioted in the streets, as a way of showing how individuals should do more:
Yes, by all means travel back in time. Thatcher circa 1980s. Kenneth Baker, a former Thatcher minister, summed up his boss as driven more by good instincts than ideology. She understood that the state should do less and the individual should do more. The state should spend less so that the individual could spend more. And the state should own less so that the individual could own more. When the unions flexed their muscle, she didn't flinch.
Really? Must we really travel back in time to those hideous times?
... a time when British bands such as Haircut 100 and Bow Wow Wow - decked out in op-shop bricolage with rags in their side-swept 'dos - ruled the waves ... The '80s - a decade that also gave us fingerless gloves, tangerine eyeshadow, "Lady Di" frilly blouses, naff "Choose Life" T-shirts and power-suited babes - is having a revival ... (here).
Oh god, Margaret Thatcher and hideous fashions. Is this why Janet Albrechtsen exists? To remind us of the worst of humanity? It is, it is ...
Recall what Thatcher told the Conservative Party conference on October 10, 1980, as pressure mounted for her to soften her resolve for reform. "For those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning." Thirty years later, with unions primed for battle, name just one political leader with that kind of political courage. Depressing, isn't it.
Depressing, isn't it? Luckily when it comes to yearning for a mythological past, this lady's not for turning ...
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