A curious thing happened in lizard Oz la la land overnight ... well, actually, a couple of curious things ...
Note how Dame Slap came in and sharked poor old Remy by getting her name attached to the story?
The other curious thing? Well the headline and the lead were all about Wilkinson, so you had to break the reptile paywall to read ...
Mr Lehrmann, who has consistently denied raping former colleague Brittany Higgins, has launched defamation proceedings against Network Ten and News Life Ltd – an arm of News Corp Australia – in Federal Court.
Wilkinson, former co-host of The Project, and Samantha Maiden, political editor for news.com.au, are understood to be second respondents in proceedings.
Awkward.
And at the very end came this ...
The Australian approached Network Ten and Wilkinson for comment.
Well the pond supposes that there's no point in the reptiles approaching the reptiles for a comment ... because when it comes to reporting all they can do is pile in on one bête noire, and keep everything else out of sight, or at least behind the paywall.
Meanwhile, Dame Slap was busy blathering on about the voice down below the fold ...
Somebody must have told the feds about the bromancer's nonsense yesterday because this popped up ...
Say what? No voice in cabinet and the bromancer was, in his usual misinformed way, misinformed about the complete roon of Oztralian democracy?
The pond was still celebrating all the other fuss with a left over infallible Pope ...
And after all that, sorry, whenever Dame Slap carries on about the voice, it's red card time at the pond.
What else then? Well the pond couldn't help but notice simplistic "no conflict of interest" Simon out and about, after a mention in despatches, or at least a mention in Media Watch ...
Good old simpleton Simon, and when there was a question of any apology about the nefarious role the servile, supine reptiles had played in this sorry, wretched, utterly disgraceful saga, there came the punchline ...
The Australian’s Editor-in-Chief, Michelle Gunn, told Media Watch that Simon Benson was a “renowned newsbreaker” and the paper rejected Rachelle Miller’s characterisation of his journalism.
So that's what they say about a gigantic, reprehensible suck ...
Meanwhile, the Caterist was out and about, and of course he was spot on the money, because plucky little England had given this nation one of its greatest national treasures ... the Caterist himself ...
Ah, Borneo, a splendid colonial exercise, and the pond was moved to
rush off to EB, as it used to do in the Tamworth library when prepping history papers. The pond doesn't have time to celebrate the Brooke raj ...
Those who resisted British annexation or policies were portrayed by the British authorities as treacherous, reactionary rebels; many of the same figures, however, were later hailed in Malaysia as nationalist heroes.
Damn you, wretched, difficult, always uppity natives ... sit down and listen to the Caterist wax lyrical about the splendours of the British empire, and if anyone dares mention the Opium Wars, or the great partition of the sub-continent, or the many fuck ups in the middle east, not least whimsical lines drawn capriciously on maps, they'll be sent to the back of the class ...
Or much as kanakas laboured in Queensland, or Aboriginal people laboured for the Vesteys and were handsomely rewarded with tea, tobacco, sugar and rations, and never mind all that Wave Hill nonsense and songs about Lord Vestey and Vincent Lingiari being opposite men on opposite sides.
Why Australia was proud to welcome English black sheep into society and elevate them and even given them government cash in paw to study the movement of floodwaters in quarries, and we all, suh, are better for the legacy ... for never has the art of sociology flourished as it does today in the lizard Oz ... you know, some chicken, some neck, and all that ...
Indeed, indeed, let's not forget the brave lads who headed off to box the ears of the Boxers ... even if it turned into a bit of a damp squid ...
By the end of May 1900 Britain, Italy, and the United States had warships anchored off the Chinese coast at Taku, the nearest port to Peking. Armed contingents from France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Japan were on their way. In June, as a Western force marched on Peking, the Dowager Empress T'zu-hsi sent imperial troops to support the Boxers. Further Western reinforcements were dispatched to China as the conflict widened.
Australian colonies were keen to offer material support to Britain. With the bulk of forces engaged in South Africa, they looked to their naval contingents to provide a pool of professional, full-time crews, as well as reservist-volunteers, including many ex-naval men. The reservists were mustered into naval brigades, in which the training was geared towards coastal defence by sailors capable of ship handling and fighting as soldiers.
When the first Australian contingents, mostly from New South Wales and Victoria, sailed on 8 August 1900, troops from eight other nations were already engaged in China. On arrival they were quartered in Tientsin and immediately ordered to provide 300 men to help capture the Chinese forts at Pei Tang overlooking the inland rail route. They became part of a force made up of 8,000 troops from Russia, Germany, Austria, British India, and China serving under British officers. The Australians travelled apart from the main body of troops and by the time they arrived at Pei Tang the battle was already over.
Well done lads, but if the pond isn't careful, it'll drift off into the Boer War and the glories of 'Breaker' Morant and all that ... and instead must offer a bonus, and with it must come an apology.
The pond had thought it was done and dusted with the Pellists, and yet still the frock lover keeps popping up in the lizard Oz, this time no thanks to nattering "Ned" ...
The pond suspects that assorted reptiles will simply never get over their loss of a reprehensible failure of humanity ...
Oh sheesh, the reptiles decided they'd ran a snap of the box, and the pond is supposed to be mournful and sensitive?
Probably as sensitive as pious, pompous "Ned" is going to be about the victims of the Catholic church ...
Ah, the onion muncher. More of him anon, let's just note the wondrous way that "Ned" mentions the victims, and then urges them to move on ... all that talk of the need for more sensitivity is just a smokescreen for endless contemplation of the suffering of the frock lover ... and so "Ned" carried on with the persecution of a Christ-like figure ... and what do you know, it's all the fault of the ABC that the frock lover went the extra yard with the likes of the contemptible Gerald Ridsdale ...
The church has confronted its sins? Go tell that to the victims. And as for the chief frock lover crime, which will come to be celebrated for decades as the planet goes to hell in a handbasket, no thought of that by "Ned" in all his pompous, portentous blather.
And what might that crime be?
The finest speech of his life? A mawkish display of slobbering sentimentality...
...and then there's the planetary crime that "Ned" doesn't dare mention by name, the way those two climate science denialists flocked together to fuck the planet, and while the frock lover has dodged the worst of it by heading off to who knows where, his faithful acolyte was still at it.
The pond realises some correspondents have noted that the onion muncher continues on his deviant ways ... and it was all over the news, and at the very least, the pond should note it and suggest a search with whatever is the preferred engine ...
Note that only Sky News, sensitive reptiles that they are, had the discretion to call it a "climate think tank", while everyone else knew it was a climate science denying tank, which in name alone, let alone purported "science", was an insult to the notion of thinking ...
In all this, the frock lover's role as someone intent on fucking the planet in as many ways as possible is never mentioned by the reptiles, and you won't find it at all in "Ned" ...
Instead you'll find a nauseating assertion of Western civilisation, down there with the Caterist ...
Absolute truth? What a wretched man made of straw is this "Ned", or perhaps a tin man without a heart, and all this Dorothy knows is that it's tired of the con, and the conmen, with their faux crocodile tears, and this will be the very last time that the pond runs a reptile wailing for the frock lover, no matter what temptations the reptiles offer ...
Meanwhile, both the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe had other things on their mind, reminding the pond that there's more happening in the world outside the reptiles than is ever dreamed of within their dreams of faded, inglorious empires ...
It's always in the evocative detail ...
Ah, the old Orwellian pigs down on the farm routine ...
A very minor and pedantic point (but then I’m commenting on the Caterist, who is a minor and pedantic figure…) - was Penny Wong’s father actually named “Frances”? That, after all, is the feminine version of the name, whereas the male is “Francis”. Now it may be that the spelling used is correct, but it may also be yet another example of careless Reptilian writing, and the lack of decent stubbies in News Corp (what odds that the last ones go as part of the upcoming $20m savings?). I suppose I could look it up somewhere but I don’t see why I should do research, given that the Reptiles clearly don’t think writing an article on colonial history requires anything more than cribbing from “ The Boys’ Bumper Book of the British Empire”.
ReplyDeleteI looked it up, Anony, and Wikipedia definitely has it as Francis. But the main question is: do you really reckon that News Corp still has even a single subbie left on the payroll at all ?
DeleteIt would seem that Frances went by the name Francis ...
Delete1960s Alumni Profile: Francis Wong
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/lumen/issues/71342/news71346.html
But the pond thinks it suggests that the Caterist was caught out by his drooling over Frances Farmer and the drooling and the spittle led to the error (not that things worked out well for that Frances).
The pond deeply regrets not mentioning "The Boys' Bumper Book of the British Empire" and bows to a deeper knowledge and keen understanding of the inspirational history behind the Caterist's scribbling. The pond is chastened to be reminded that there's more than Rudyard Kipling to putting the natives in their proper place ...
Erm, not Oztralian, it's Oztrayun.
DeleteYair, right on: it really takes the likes of a well conducted Amritsar massacre to teach the natives to stay in their proper place.
DeleteBut here's a jolly good read for anybody with a few minutes spare:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_war_crimes
Yes, GB, it’s quite possible that the subbie is no longer an endangered species but has well and truely joined the dodo, the Tasmanian Tiger and the Moderate wing of the Liberal Party. It doesn’t matter whether it’s News Corp, the Costello mob or any of the minors. I have a little sympathy for the average working hack who’s presumably trying to edit and correct their own content while still uploading it by their deadline; I have less sympathy when it comes to heads of grandly titled Research Centres and Institutes who have plenty of time to knock out a weekly propaganda piece but still can’t be bothered checking it through properly.
DeleteAh - GB - your 'Wiki' link has introduced me to Major Pine-Coffin. A name unused by the authors mentioned below, who wrote on supposed adventures in the Empah!. Although Evelyn Waugh might have sneaked it in; it is just too good to pass up.
DeleteOf course when your CEO is a knight of the catholic church,you arent going to write an article acout a deceased cardinal that is not positive.The only think I can say is to use a quote in the bible that perhaps sums up Abbott,Howard,Dutton,Newscorp and their subsideries.By their fruits you will know them.
ReplyDeleteWe seem to be in sub-editor form today ;-)
ReplyDeleteWhen your column is identified as coming from the ‘executive director of Menzies Research Centre’ (not sure why the title is all lower case) it is only natural that you will write of ‘the Menzies government’s Colombo Plan.’
Menzies sent Percy Spender to the original Colombo Conference of 1950. Perhaps at that time the cricket in Colombo was not sufficiently interesting to entice Menzies to attend. In retrospect, both Menzies and Spender portrayed themselves, separately, as the major influence in putting the Plan together. Of course, the Australian delegate would have been much more influential than, oh - Ernest Bevin, Lester Pearson and some Indian called Jawaharlal Nehru, amongst others, who were also there.
Such was Spender’s devotion to the Plan, that by the time it was launched in 1951, he had already departed electoral politics, to pursue what was clearly his main interest - links to the USA, and to strut his stuff at the United Nations - as Ambassador to the USA.
There are several accounts of Percy Spender that disagree with his own assessment of the inauguration of the Colombo Plan, suggesting that he saw his chance to be identified with proceedings from the 1950 Conference as a way to promote himself as a ‘mover’ across the Pacific, rather than the Indian Ocean.
As we now have a Menzies Research Centre, and a Robert Menzies Institute to sustain the myths of Menzies, and no Spender Institute, it will be left to odd, unaligned, historians, to work over the archives of Australia’s supposed interest in Asia in the 50s.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Chad, but to my recall Spender was just one of a number of Libs back then who could see that, with Holt as the obvious successor whenever, they could not sensibly harbour any ambitions of becoming PM. So alternate venues were sought, especially in plum posts like Ambassador to the US or the UK. Or Chief Justice of the High Court, I think (Garfield Barwick ?).
DeleteCould well be, GB. His 'Wiki' entry has Spender standing for leader of the several attempts to unify non-Labor groups around the early 40s. Seems he was regularly shuffled out on the first ballot. I think Barwick probably saw being CJ as greatly superior to any kind of political appointment, but that a term in politics would help him get there. The only one of his judgements that I had to go through in detail - about the definition of Investigator Straight off South Australia - was weighed down with Barwick showing off his personal prowess as a navigator (he was a yachtsman, of sorts) to the extent that it was difficult to work out what conclusion he had come to on the technical aspects. It also confirmed that it is unwise for a judge to go on at any length on any technical issue, other than the law. In fact, if what Barwick wrote about navigation had appeared in findings of a lower court, I believe it could have been appealed, because it did not draw on actual technical evidence put before the court.
DeleteI wonder whether the Caterist harbours any nostalgic fantasies regarding the days of yore when a doughty Son of Albion - even one possessing only a humble BA in Sociology from a provincial learning institution - might be sent to an outpost of the Empire to bring the firm guiding hand of British administration and justice to the natives? Cue a few Kipling quotes (“take up the White Man’s Burden…”), or at least a battered 2/6 edition of Edgar Wallace’s “Sanders of the River”.
ReplyDeleteOr perhaps Percy Fawcett's Exploration Fawcett: Journey to the Lost City of Canberra in search of government gold?
DeleteIt was a huge inspiration for Lloydie of the Amazon, and no doubt each day the Caterist sets out in search of the fabled lost city, a story to match Heart of Darkness in its evocation of the horrors endured on the intrepid quest for riches ...
Entertaining speculation, Anonymous. I doubt that he might have come away with the emotional reset that Eric Blair had. Somerset Maugham's short stories have a sprinkling of Cater-type characters.
DeleteErrr, the whole of the British Isles has a generous sprinking of Cater-type characters. In fact, the poms have a parliament full of 'em even as we speak.
DeleteHi DP,
DeleteIf we are going Conrad, I would imagine Cater thinks of himself more as part of the “civilising mission”, you know like “Tuan Jim”.
“Mistuh Cater, he dead - Brian-dead, that is”
DeleteSo NickC would like to tell us that: "Yet to insinuate that her Hakka Chinese ancestors lived under the yoke of colonial oppression in British North Borneo is a curious interpretation of history." So there we have it: Wong and her ancestor's 'lived experience' counts for nothing against the Cater's highly learned knowledge of Asian history. He's a true polymyth, isn't he.
ReplyDeleteSo anyway, NickC would like us to know that: "Wong does a great disservice to the legacy of Sir William Hood Treacher..." whose "profound opposition of [sic] slavery was incorporated into the royal charter of the North Borneo Chartered Company." Oh wau, "incorporated into the charter", well that says it all, doesn't it - much like Governor Phillip's pronouncements about how the Aboriginals should be treated, and nobody, at least nobody of genuine British ancestry, ever mistreated an Indigene, did they.
So, anyway: "Wong's ahistoricism doesn't end there..." because "Frances [sic] Wong was one of the 20,000 Asian scholars who studied at Australian universities between 1850 and the mid-'80s." Ok, so that's 20,000 students over 25 years or basically a whacking huge average of 800 per year. Any idea what percentage of Asia's population that was ?
So "Far from making false accusations about Britain's past, Wong should celebrate our great inheritance of the rule of law, democracy and stable institutions." Yeah, no other peoples anywhere in the history of the entire world have ever had the "rule of law, democracy and stable institutions". Not ever, not even once - but does NickC actually recall the Peterloo massacre and is he aware where and when women were not only just 'granted' the vote, but also the right to stand to be elected to parliament. And where the secret ballot with preferential voting was invented and established ? When did that happen in Britain ? And who inherited it from whom ?
Great comment GB keep up the good work as I look forward to read your commentary as with most of the contributors.
DeleteThe pond always thought the Caterist would make a good character in a Somerset Maugham short story, perhaps with gin in hand, certainly with a somewhat bedraggled and battered Trilby ...
DeleteThat is certainly why with so much to write about he wrote tediously, for in writing the important is thing less richness of material than richness of character.
The Caterist certainly does have the air of a Remittance Man, DP, sent out to the Colonies for unspecified offences back home. Has he ever been spotted wearing a stained white linen suit and the tie of a public school that he didn’t actually attend?
DeleteOf course, of course, how could the pond have forgotten the stained white linen suit, marked by sweat dripping from the brow as he waits on his cheque from back home, or failing that, a cheque from the federal government.
Delete