The art of the obit is a tricky one and potential exponents have had a field day recently what with Joh – a unique amalgam of the mayor of Porpoise Spit in Muriel’s Wedding and a dyslexic John Calvin – and Al Grassby. Al was a colourful – shall we say larger-than-life? – dude whose singular achivement was to be the worst-dressed person of the entire 1970′s. And achievements don’t get much more singular than that. It should be said at the outset that while Al knew a lot of Calabrians round Griffith, he wasn’t the Father of Australian Multiculturalism. That’s an accolade that properly belogs to Professor Jerzy (George)Zubrzyicki who is, of course a Sociologist.

Apart from Peter Costello who accorded Joh the title of ‘the outstanding premier of Queensland’ (presumably on the basis that Joh “stood-out” so to speak) most people have stuck to the tried-and-true “larger-than-life” stuff in respect of Joh which, fortuitously, can mean anything you want from “should’ve done at least 35 years in the pokey” to “morbidly obese” (vide Russ Hinze) and anything in between. For instance, Jenny Macklin observed that Joh was a larger-than-life character who dominated Queensland politics for many years and therefore earned a place in Australian political history. John Anderson suggested that he made Queensland what it is (which could work on a number of levels) and Flo declared that he’s with the Lord – which seems a bit more dubious.
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I could do with a 24 hour moratorium on Gallipoli roadworks responsibility wrangling. There’s been a road there for decades. I used it in 1990 when I went to Anzac Cove. From what I can make out, that road has been widened and the current brouhaha is about whether the widening has ‘desecrated’ the site. It doesn’t look like it to me, but I’m obviously in Sydney. Peter Cosgrove doesn’t reckon it has; Howard isn’t too sure but in the unlikely event that something untoward has occured he’d prefer that one directs any queries to the Turks. De Ann Kelly thinks that the needs of the deceased should be balanced with the needs of the living (or something equally inane) and Danna Vale wasn’t there at the time. Peter Costello suggested on Insiders that the Turkish roading contractor would have found the constant presence of the Australian PM (or his representative) a tad offputting but the Beazle insists that this is Howard’s Road to Political Perdition nonetheless.

When I was there, the road didn’t matter a toss. It was an incredibly evocative place caught between a metallic sea and rough, scrubby headlands. The sheer scope renders roads irrelevant. It’s not beautiful but it is grand and I had no difficulty envisioning that dawn on the beach when the boats emptied of shit-scared kids from Terrigal and Te Awamutu, Perth and Palmerston North, under the Turkish guns. A monumental fuckup as it turned out, but of such disasters, national consciousness is forged.
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I watched Denton tonight and needed a shower on conclusion. He interviewed Frederick and Mary Glucksburg. A couple who might have been a mid-ranked corporate duo anywhere in the western world really – perhaps a double -diamond Amway family or goodlooking Scientologists maybe. But they’re currently gigging as Crown Prince and Princess of Denmark.

Denmark last sprang to world prominence in the time of Otto Von Bismarck and the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Since then, it’s been pretty quiet – a silence broken only by the glurp associated with necking rollmop herrings, followed by interminable choruses of ‘Wonderful,Wonderful Copenhagen, Salty Old Queen of the Sea. ‘ Then Mary Donaldson, Sydney real estate agent, met a smiley little chinless bloke at some bar during the 2000 Olympics. He turned out to be Fred Glucksburg. They got married, they’re back in town and we haven’t been this far up to our ears in royalist sycophancy since the Queen’s post-coronation visit.
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The blogosphere doesn’t seem to have picked up on a recent presser from a couple of Macquarie Uni speech scientists. Their study has apparently revealed that the Australian accent is moving away from “the stereotypical broad Australian English – a la Paul Hogan” to a more generalised form.

“Part of the reason is that the stereotypical accent has been stigmatised because it sounds really ocker,” researcher Felicity Cox said. “People want to be more generally known as Australian but not carry those connotations of ockerism.” She said, “people are determined not to sound like Paul Hogan, the Crocodile Hunter or Kath and Kim. ”

Well, they may be determined but a hell of a lot of them still do – and why not?
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I recently bought new glasses. I’ve worn contacts for years but I decided that it was high time I invested in an alternative option. OK, Yes. This feeling was not unrelated to advancing senescence. So, I bought these rimless things made of utterly non-biodegradable super titanium kryptonite or somesuch. My optometrist assured me that they were totally au courant - and charged me several hundred bucks to prove it. Everyone told me they looked great. Then, at the December meeting of the NSW Ministerial Advisory committee on HIV/AIDS and Related Diseases (of all places) some tactless pox doctor (aren’t they all?) observed that my glasses made me “look like a Swedish biochemist.” Bjorn Lomborg is Danish. I know of no hot Swedish biochemists. I wasn’t flattered. Till tonight

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Maybe I’m a bit strange but it occurs to me that casting a vote purely on the basis of your sexuality is a pretty dumb way to exercise your democratic franchise. I share this insight because there’s a campaign underway within the gay community to punish the ALP for supporting the Coalition’s marriage bill. This brilliant strategy involves giving one’s first preference to the Greens (of course) but the fatal drawback as far as I’m concerned is that you’d have to – well – vote for the Greens.

“It would teach them a lesson,” I’m constantly assured but I’m more inclined to the view that the proponents of this initiative need a lesson in what motivates people to vote in a particular way. Who you have sex with doesn’t seem to me to be much of a prime motivator in that respect. Unless a particular candidate was exceptionally hot and willing to have sex with you of course but, inevitably, they wouldn’t respect you in the morning anyway. All tousled sheets, smeared How-To-Vote cards and dawn-lit disillusion.

Update:

I’ve changed the title of this post because the original one seemed to uncannily precipitate an avalanche of ‘medicinal’ spam.
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The ALP has played an interesting card in the FTA debate. Yesterday the Labor caucus voted overwhelmingly to support the FTA. The FTA is of course a deal or no deal affair. Either it’s accepted or it’s not.

Having done that, Labor then introduced two amendments to the enabling legislation necessary to pass the FTA. The first – which the government accepted – looks to have the effect of making local media content compliance monitoring the responsibility of Parliament rather than the ABA. It doesn’t in any way affect the FTA provisions in this area.

The second – which the government currently rejects – seeks to introduce specific legal provision aimed at stopping pharmaceutical drug patent “evergreening.” Evergreening is hitherto unknown in Australia but it’s a not uncommon practice in the US when highly profitable drugs are about to go off patent. Potential generic applicants line up to do cheaper “knock-offs” while the patent holder deploys an array of blocking manoeuvres in order to extend it’s price and market share control. These can include setting up bogus generic front companies, launching pre-emptive lawsuits etc. The FTA requires that anyone seeking to register an application for an existing expiring pharmaceutical patent with the drug regulatory agency must be identified to the existing patent-holder. Many people – including me – see this as a potential open door to evergreening. Labor’s initiative can be read in one sense as a means of providing enhanced overview and control in this area. Our existing trade practices environment should, one assumes, be capable of responding to shonky practices in this area but would it?
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Paul Watson has noted , stylishly, that a feature story in yesterday’s Oz looks, on the surface of it, to be a strange fit with the brief of the nation’s daily newspaper. That thought had also occurred to me.

The gist of the story is pretty unremarkable on the face of it, though there is that whiff of “flamboyant lifestyles” which is to New Ltd as truffles are to porcine foragers.

Gordon Stewart a wealthy, 75 year old Sydney lawyer, who is hardly a household name, cheats on his wife with another considerably younger party in an apartment that he owns in Darlinghurst The other party is a 31 year old hairdresser named Jason. Or as the Oz would breathlessly have it, “a hairdresser by trade, Mr Harvey relishes hardcore partying and has a penchant for interior decoration.” Naturally.

Jason claims that Stewart had orally promised him the apartment as part of their – uuhh – deal which Stewart describes as “naughty mucking around, once or twice a week.” Mercifully, he doesn’t elucidate further. Jason claims they were a couple and is reported as saying he was faithful to Stewart and “not a slut” – though what this highly subjective self-appraisal is supposed to convey isn’t clear. Jason’s reported idea of coupledom – passing round canapes at parties and purchasing “expensive artworks and antiques” (not, one assumes, from his hairdressing income) – evokes a rather post-modern take on the concept, but, no matter.

Stewart on the other hand insists that he spent every night with his good lady wife in Edgecliff and just let Jason move into the Darlo Muckarounder because Jason was having trouble paying his phone bill and needed to be close to a work assignment in North Sydney. At this point you’d be tempted to ask who cares – except perhaps for Mrs Stewart – and why this this story has made it into Mr Murdoch’s organ.

Enter Michael Kirby.
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