Full steam ahead ...

(Above: the master of we)


So Bob Carr, the man who would be Strom Thurmond, and hang around forever and ever, such was his infatuation with serving the Australian people, has created confusion by his unseemly and hasty departure.

Do they appoint his replacement for the current sitting, or for the next one, or both?

As for the replacement, the nominee is a lower house MP who was recently evicted by her electorate, and now gets the consolation prize of a Senate pension. No doubt Deborah O'Neill is committed to parliamentary service - unlike her predecessor - but what a farce the whole affair is.

Consult the rank and file? You have to be joking. And for his farewell thought, Carr offers Parachute talent into Senate, says Bob Carr. Because it worked out so well with him ...

Carr is big on the parachute.

He urged Australian political parties to adopt the US approach and use casual Senate vacancies to parachute talented people into government for short stints. 
 "A private sector banker, former head of the Reserve Bank, former head of Treasury coming in to add talent and heft to a government," Senator Carr told Sky News.

You know, like that talented, hugely skilled, hefty individual Bob Carr.

Individual? Wrong, because the specious Carr offers this superficial insight:

"People don't vote for an individual," he said. 
"I'd love to believe that there were people who flocked to that section of the voluminous Senate ballot paper to say 'yes Labor because Carr Bob is at the top of the list'. They don't. They vote for a party." -

In which case can we see at the top of the next Senate ALP list a candidate with the name "Ms. Parachute", never mind the party machine, just think of me as a talented hefty individual, who at the same time is a humble, virtually invisible, servant of the party ...

What else?

Well it seems like a bloody irritating foreigner has turned up and pretended to be an Australian:

Australians are a naturally competitive people. Maybe it's because of where Australia sits geographically. Whatever the reason, Australians are curious about the world – and the great Australian diaspora proves we have never been shy about taking it on. 
That is a testament to our competitive streak. You see it in our sport and hear it in our everyday language: “Have a go, mate.” Don't look for entitlements, have a go! 

We? Our?

Yep ... and he knows how to blather ...

...Australian values. Some people say we need to abandon Australian values. The truth is that if we want to lead rather than follow, we need to promote Australia's values and strengthen the institutions that sustain them.

And what are these Australian values?

Why to piss off your Australian citizenship at the drop of a hat, and take up the citizenship of another country, for a mess of moola and then still have the cheek to pretend you're as dinky di as a gum-chewing, permanently high, always pissing koala ...

There were so many "we" and "ours" littered through Murdoch's speech (too freely available here) that you'd swear that Murdoch hadn't abandoned his Australian citizenship for the Hunited States way back in 1985 for monetary consideration, proving yet again that cheap patriotism is indeed the first refuge of the scoundrel ...

Speaking of Australian values, what is it that sees Australians get agitated and excited, flock together like sheep, and breathlessly await the word of a passing billionaire, dropping in to check on one of the outposts of his empire, in the way the British once dropped into the colonies?

As for the foreigner's insights, it turns out that they're just more parrot speak of the kind that litters his rags:

Let me start with Australian values. Australia had a long history before it became a British colony. But that colonisation created a large convict class, disproportionately Irish, and resulted in class pretensions that have lasted a long time. These pretensions include not only the stuffy, narrow-minded elitism that still exists in some small quarters of society, but more recently the faux class war that has been stirred by contemporary politicians grasping for an election theme. 
Thankfully, Australia has emerged from its inauspicious colonial beginnings to become a proud nation, a nation that overcame those primeval prejudices.

Yes because the faux class war started by the bloody Irish still lurking in the Labor party has given way to the rightful recognition that US citizens are really dinky di Ozzies, oi, oh won't someone give an oi ...

It was a speech full of cant, as you'd expect of Murdoch, and the most amazing cant was reserved for the notion of a "free media":

You can't have a free democracy if you don't have a free media that can provide vital and independent information to the people.

The media is owned, not free, and the print media is largely owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it spends much of its time faithfully stirring up talk of faux class wars, and regurgitating the talking points of its owner ...

Oh how they listen to their master's voice.

But back to the ownership chatter ...

"A nation as small as ours ..."
"... our way of life"
"... we can't wait for later"
"The heart of Australia today is our belief in a fair shake for all"
"...we should be proud of what we have built"
"... if we can make ourselves more nimble"

And so on and so forth.

Murdoch seems to think he's a fine example of a new kettle of fish, the "global Australian", but he's not. He's a damned Yankee, and nothing wrong with that, except when you engage in false pieties and claim to be a member of a tribe when you've consciously and deliberately, for reasons of commerce, chosen to be a member of another tribe ...

Was there any end to this infamy?

Well no, because Murdoch then had the cheek to talk about an app which transmits information to the cloud, allowing him to track his health, and to talk about the potential of the internet to help diagnose and suggest treatments.

This from the head of a company which in its local incarnation has ruthlessly and relentlessly, in the most luddite way, opposed the delivery of broadband to the home by FTTH, and now we face a half-arsed, copper-based bastardised system of FTTN which, if implemented, would seriously impede the sort of initiatives already being explored and developed elsewhere in the world ...

No doubt Murdoch thought he was giving an inspirational speech - you could feel and hear the forelock tugging in Holt street right here in Campberdown - which suggests he has zero idea of what an offensive twat he is when he comes to talking of futurism.

Next Murdoch throws in a bizarre detour by way of a little-known movie, Spotswood, and uses the show to caution against its happy ending.

Yes, the 'Australian values' celebrated in the show - mateship, pulling together, a mocking of damned furriners - are mocked and maligned by Murdoch as being a fairy tale.

He might just as easily have chosen The Castle, and explained why the little man challenging the compulsory acquisition of his property was deluged and standing in the way of progress.

Tell him he's dreaming in this modern age, big Rupe might have said, and if he doesn't watch out, the citizens of Beijing and Bangalore will be beating him hollow with breakthrough drugs and intelligent robots ...

Yep, it's the oldest routine in the book. Fear. Keep your nose to the grindstone, or the Asians are going to wipe the floor with you.

Not to worry, it all builds to a splendid bout of "we-ism" and national pride, as we and the furriner become one:

All around us we face something this region has never had before: a wealthy, educated and globally competitive middle class of more than 2 billion people. That is not something we need to fear. That is something we need to lead. And we can do it with a society that values people and knowledge. 
So let me leave you with this. Let's stop thinking about Australia's place in the world as defined by its alliances, by its trading partners, by its government. Yes, we will fight regulations that hamper growth and economic development. But it is the Australian people who will, collectively, define this nation's destiny. 
We must be leaders, not followers. We must be egalitarian, not elitist. We must be victors, not victims. It won't be easy. But the Australia that I know and love has never shied from a challenge.

Enough already with the "we-s". There's way too much "wee-ing" going on here ...

It is of course easy for a billionaire to talk about how we must be egalitarian, not elitist. Because, as you know, billionaires are strictly anti-elitist, determinedly egalitarian ...

What's remarkable is the idle chatter about valuing people - coming from an owner of tabloids that routinely denigrate and devalue people - and valuing knowledge, coming from an owner of rags that routinely denigrate climate science, broadband technology, and anything else that threatens the business strategies of News Corp ...

A collectivist Australia defining the nation's destiny?

Why that sounds dangerously like socialism.

And if you've swallowed Murdoch's talking points, lordy, have we got a malformed, distorted, rabidly ideological, anti-knowledge, climate science denying, anti-genuine broadband, essentially duopolistic print media to sell you ...

UPDATE:

A handy piece from Richard Ackland this morning, Compliant media fed on leak soup and other titbits, alongside the sight of Murdoch sucking up to Abbott in his speech:

Prime ministerial briefings of editors are a regular feature of the landscape. But last Saturday in Kirribilli was different. The fact that the guests were right-wing advocates and overwhelmingly came from News Corp reinforced the uniqueness of the occasion.
In the main this was a clutch of the freshly minted PM's favourite Murdoch claqueurs being thanked for their reliable coverage of the Coalition and their relentlessly toxic demolition of the Labor government. You might argue that they were, in the main, columnists and opinionists and so entitled to act as boosters for whomever they liked. That is only part of the story. On occasions, columnists break out of the caged perimeters of the opinion pages and spruik something in the news pages. In any event, their lord and master Rupert Murdoch sees no difference - as he once famously put it, ''opinion is news''. There was a time when journalists, whether they called themselves reporters or columnists, saw it as their duty to be agin whoever was in power. Holding the government to account, and all that. To be outside looking in was a journalistic virtue. It meant the fourth estate was not acting as an outrigger for favoured political aspirants or causes.
What that dinner shows us is the extent to which journalism in this country has mutated, and that carries important implications for our democracy. All new governments on day one say they will govern for ''all Australians'' and then promptly set about governing for their sponsors and cronies. Selected media voices are now seen to be part of that cronyism, where reporter and politician are locked in a mutually rewarding clinch. Don't expect too many stinking rebukes of the Abbott government from this bunch. To change from booster to critic is not a credible transition.

Read the rest of it and weep.

And marvel at the way the head crony can do a tour of the antipodes and lecture us - which is to say we - about our brave, bold future as lickspittle lackeys to the Murdoch empire ...

(Below: full steam ahead, Captain Murdoch)