Category: Australia

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Hanson’s looking for public money again

WHENEVER Pauline Hanson runs for elections, there is but one reason – the woman has run out of money. She made much of the fact that she was leaving Australia and moving to England last year but is back again like a bad penny to contest a seat in the New South Wales election that is scheduled to be held on March 26.

Hanson is the type of phenomenon one sees in countries like Australia and the US; countries which are built on immigration but where a certain percentage of the white people have unreasonable fears about being swamped by the tide of migrants. (Her story is told well here.)

The first time Hanson stood for election, she was accepted on the Liberal party’s ticket in 1996 for the seat of Oxley in Ipswich, Queensland. She had been a local councillor from 1994 till 1995 before that but lost her seat.

Shortly before the 1996 election, Hanson made some comments to a newspaper about the abolition of special government assistance to Aborigines; she was disendorsed by the Liberals but won anyway. Her first speech to parliament in September that year made headlines – she complained about Australia being swamped by Asians and raved against the benefits given to Aborigines.

The prime minister of the time, John Howard, made no statement to indicate that he disapproved of what she was saying; this came as no surprise, as he is also known to quietly harbour similar feelings.

Hanson has stood for election numerous times and often succeeded in getting the necessary percentage of votes to obtain funding from the taxpayer. She faced bankruptcy in 1999 after being sued.

She has a following among sometimes unusual circles – when I came to Australia in 1997, I was surprised to note that a senior Salvation Army official was a fan of hers. I had gone over to the Salvation Army office in Melbourne’s Bourke Street to borrow some furniture for use in the little house in which I was staying.

The man, one Captain Stevens, took my details and then advised me to listen to Hanson’s message as he said she was a very sensible woman. His attitude made me sick – that of a Westerner who thinks every brown man is an idiot and knows nothing. A little over a year before that I had been sorting copy at the paper I worked for in Dubai and, after reading the Reuters account of her maiden speech, wondering out of what kind of hole this woman had crept.

But Hanson still enjoys support among many classes of people in Australia. It is amazing than an uneducated person, who believes that every migrant who comes here is potentially taking away a job from a white Australian, can hold such sway. But then Sarah Palin has proved that it can be done, provided that one plays the them-and-us card. The two are birds of a feather.

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Surprising loss but no hint of foul play

WHEN Australia played Zimbabwe in the World Cup cricket tournament preliminary rounds, the openers, Shane Watson and Brad Haddin, took an awful amount of time to score their runs.

Haddin, one of the more adventurous openers in one-day cricket, took 66 balls to make 29 while Watson made 79 off 92 balls. Their opening stand of 61 took 18.5 overs.

As a result, soon after the match the International Cricket Conference. world cricket’s governing body, began an investigation to see whether the slow scoring had been done to aid the good work done by bookies in the subcontinent.

Spot betting is big business during tournaments of this kind and the Australian pair is not normally known for anything other than aggression.

The story was broken by an Indian paper, the Indian Express, and made big news all over the cricketing world.

As it turned out, there was smoke, but no fire and everything settled down as well as it can when a cricket tournament is being played in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

As the tournament is still running through its preliminary games, most of which are quite lopsided as they pit established sides against minnows, there was much interest last week when India played South Africa.

The Indian batsmen got off to a good start and at one stage the board read 267 for the loss of one wicket with about 13 overs left. The lower-end estimate by observers was that India would get 350. The more ambitious evaluations were that 400 was within reach.

But 29 runs later, India was all out. Most of the batsmen played really stupid strokes and threw away their wickets. The top three batsmen, Virender Sehwag, Sachin Tendulkar and Gautam Gambhir scored 73, 111 and 69 respectively.

The remaining 43 runs were scored by other eight men in the team. South Africa, which has a reputation for being a side that chokes when confronted by a task such as it faced that day, held its nerve and chased down the 297 it needed for victory.

Surprisingly, nobody has even raised the possibility that there might have been something more in the game than just careless batting. It smacks of double standards.

Both countries involved have a history of being involved in match-fixing; India’s Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Sharma, Ajay jadeja and Manoj Prabhakar had to end their careers after being found guilty.

South Africa’s former captain, the late Hansie Cronje, was found guilty and two other South Africans, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, have avoided going to India after Cronje was caught.

The ICC has not raised even an eyebrow at the way the Indian innings collapsed. Such are the mysterious ways of the world’s cricket administrators.

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Understanding the GFC

IT hit the world in September 2008 but the effects of the financial crisis, that was precipitated by the failure of Lehman Brothers, continue to haunt the world to this day. Apart from a minority of countries that are not closely connected to the global economy – some African countries, for example, the rest of the world took the hit when American financial crooks played fast and loose with other people’s money.

The film Inside Job is an excellent and detailed account of the crisis; it is made so much better by the fact that Matt Damon is the narrator.

Charles Ferguson’s film is a must watch for anyone who is interested in world events and wants to know how greed can spoil the party for everyone – except those who are at the grabbing end, people like those at Goldman Sachs. The film traces the genesis of the problem as it grew, examines the reasons why and talks to people around the globe to provide a broader perspective.

It is well-researched, authentic and gripping even though the main events took place more than two years ago. The film does not attempt to over-dramatise – it does not have to, the events it details are sobering enough in themselves. But hyping up things is a common failing of filmmakers and TV channels and by avoiding this altogether, the filmmaker emerges with a product that provides a more compelling viewing experience.

Telling the truth about the US of A is a difficult job; the country has done a magnificent job of selling itself as the greatest on the earth. Yet what we see in this film is a nation that is corrupt to its very soul, one where money is the only thing and everything, one where seemingly educated men behave like criminals, one where tenured professors turn into professional thieves with not a shred of integrity.

The magnitude of theft that took place to cause the crisis is amazing. Yet nobody went to jail; they were all bailed out and those in favour, like the Goldman Sachs bosses, continue to grow richer. At one level the film leaves one feeling sick inside; at another level, one is left with a profound feeling of respect for the filmmaker, the researchers and the narrator for making the tale one that is easy to comprehend, one that does not trivialise or sensationalise, one that seeks to educate above everything else.

And putting Damon behind the mike adds to the film in no small way – he is one of the few Hollywood stars who has integrity and puts his money where his principles lie. Inside Job is well worth the price of the ticket.

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ISP support staff are in a class of their own

IN JAPAN, friends of mine who visit the country regularly tell me, the attitude towards customers is summed up in one line: “The customer is always right [1].” When it comes to the men and women who man the support desks at Australia’s ISPs, the reverse seems to be the case.

There is no other way one can account for their attitude. The one overriding aim they have is to disclaim responsibility. The customer is asked to jump through numerous hoops and a great many customers are not able to do so.

The first test the support person puts one through is the “power-cycle the modem” test. I’ve never been able to figure out why one needs to do this. I can understand if one is asked to reboot (a more earthy term which means the same thing) a Windows box in order to restore it to its “normal” state of functioning.

But one has to go through this switching on and off of the modem before the support person will deign to continue the conversation.

Then we come to the more difficult tests. You are asked to test the modem by switching over to another modem. How many customers keep a spare modem at home? Well, says the support person, you have to do it to rule out the possibility that your modem is at fault. You know, modems don’t last forever.

If, by chance, you are among the minority who do keep a spare modem, why then you are asked to switch ADSL filters. The support person is just warming up.

Let’s assume that you are also one among the rare minority who keep a spare modem and spare ADSL filter at home. You do the switch and the problem still remains. What then?

OK, says Mr/Ms Support, disconnect all devices from your telephone line and see if the problem persists. And then there are a plethora of questions: do you have a fax machine on your line? what about any other device?

It goes on. After 15 or 20 minutes, finally the support person finds a loophole. Can you test the sync speeds at your end and let me know? comes the query. How many people know how to do that? What is sync speed?

Or there is another question: can you see what percentage of packets are being dropped? Either of these questions is enough to discourage even the hardiest – except for the 1 percent of nerds who know what this means.

At the end of it, you are left wondering why this is called “support.” One often pays top dollar for this kind of service.

[1] One of those friends adds a correction: “It is more correct to say The customer is God. It follows from this that the customer is always right. However, it’s important to note that in Japan the matter of right and wrong is besides the point. It’s more basic than that even, and operates at the level of obligation that starts with the standard greeting that one receives when entering any store in Japan: Irasshaimase!”

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Banks: people love to hate them

THERE are four big banks in Australia – Commonwealth, Westpac, National Australia and ANZ – which bitch right through the year about the rising costs of operating and then report stunning profits. It is the same year after year, no matter if there is a global meltdown or not.

The banks put it down to skillful management. I put it down to gouging.

Given the manner in which these banks rort customers by imposing fees for anything and everything, they are understandably not the most popular businesses in town. But I often wonder why the people do not react by taking their business elsewhere.

It is not as though these four banks are the only ones in town. There are plenty of other, smaller players who offer better terms and conditions, charge half as much or even less, and do not treat their customers as cash cows. One has to exercise one’s choice and switch banks.

This is easier said than done. When one has regular payments being debited to one’s bank account, it is difficult to pick the right time to switch. A single payment cannot be missed and the more such direct debits one has, the more difficult moving from one bank to another becomes.

My personal experience is that it is possible to move, once the move is carefully planned. All one needs is a good reason to move – minor irritants are often not enough to motivate one to take the trouble to organise a move.

The first time I moved, it was from the ANZ to Westpac. I opened an account with ANZ as soon as I landed in Australia simply because it was the one name with which I was familiar. ANZ used to operate in India, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates under the name Grindlays.

I stayed with them less than a year. The day I opened my account, I was asked for my tax file number. I didn’t have one at the time. Later when I obtained one, I did not bother to give it to the bank. The bank did not ask me for it either.

But one day I found that 92 dollars had been deducted from my account; on calling the bank I was told that it was because I had not given them by tax file number. On asking why they had not requested it, I was told ” it is not our role to remind you of government policy.”

That was enough for me. Two days later I closed the account and took my business to Westpac – once again convenience played a role, it was the one bank closes to my home. I overlooked the fact that I paying 20 dollars or a little more every month as fees and charges as the bank had combined my savings and cheque accounts in one. This was the advice they gave me – it was geared towards making money for them, not saving me from paying these charges every month. I even overlooked the fact that on one occasion when I went to make a withdrawal dressed in track pants, the bank asked me for identification; I had gone there in a suit the previous day and not been asked to identify myself.

The years went by and the number of direct debits grew. But again there was a seminal event which jolted me out of my complacency. In the year 2000, I asked the bank for a car loan and it was sanctioned over the phone. I was asked to come and pick up a cheque for the amount on a designated day in the year 2000. The amount was small, just $13,000. The interest rate was around nine percent.

When I went to the bank, they gave me some papers to sign and I noticed that the interest rate was considerably more; I then noticed that the money was being advanced as a personal loan. When I inquired why, I was told that one had to borrow a minimum of $20,000 for a car loan; lesser amounts were issued as personal loans. This was not what i had been told when I negotiated the loan on the phone. I had not asked the phone banking person for her name; when I was asked who had sanctioned the loan, I had no reply.

Given that I had committed to pick up the car that day, I had no choice but to take the loan on the terms that Westpac tricked me into accepting.

That ripoff was what made me move to a smaller bank. I paid off the loan, cursing Westpac every time I had to go to the bank. I planned the move carefully so that no direct debits would be missed and took my business to Bendigo Bank. The process was painful but I was determined to move. I got the right advice about accounts – keep a cheque account and a savings account separate.

Since then, rarely have I paid the bank any charges. The online service works well and the bank serves my needs. But I’m in this position because I was prepared to make the effort to move.

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Beating up on multiculturalism

TO ANY politician, people equate to votes. A particular community equates to a vote-bank. When it’s convenient to humour that community – i.e. when one needs their votes – the politician will speak good of them. If sucking up to another community will bring in more votes – doesn’t matter if it alienates the first community – the politician will take that route.

Multiculturalism is a popular political football. When politicians start talking it up or down it’s generally because they have spotted a potential vote-bank and want to try and consolidate their position
before the next poll comes around.

British prime minister David Cameron’s outburst about multiculturalism – at a time when the English Defence League was scheduled to hold a big rally – is nothing new. I’ve heard similar sentiments from former Australian prime minister John Howard, comments that contributed greatly to the Cronulla riots. Howard had form in this regard – he won an election in 1998 on the back of discrimination against Aborigines and a second one in 2001 by villifying Afghan asylum-seekers.

Others in the Liberal ranks, like Kevin Andrews, a former immigration minister, have also weighed in, drawing succour from Cameron. This Andrews is the same man who condemned an Indian doctor, Mohammed Haneef, to time in jail and trashed his reputation in the search for votes back in the run-up to the 2007 Australian national election.

This kind of beat-up often happens when economic conditions are bad – one can always blame the foreigners for it. And the UK isn’t in the best of economic health at the moment.

In the UK, within a few years, white people will be in the minority. If the experiment of bringing in migrants and making them part of British society has failed, then society and the government have to bear most of the blame.

A great deal of British policy on migration has been created in order to expiate guilt over its colonial rapaciousness. British guilt over the division of the Indian subcontinent is a classic example. No policy created because of such reasons will ever succeed. No politician has ever bothered to think about the settlement of people in such a way that ethnic ghettos will not be created. As the saying goes, birds of a feather…

Of course, one cannot dictate to people where they should live, unless one is living in a country like Singapore. But there can be more interaction to ensure that the kind of enclaves that one finds in places like Bradford in England are not created.

When ethnic people feel alienated from the mainstream, they tend to band together. This sense of alienation can be imagined or it can be real. Discrimination in the workplace, in public and the media – very subtle stuff at most times, things you can;t really pin down – tends to push people together with others of their kind and create a siege mentality. But when the government is only interested in is votes, these things do not weigh heavily on its collective mind.

There are cases when people in some areas realise the problems that are building up and move to make things better. Box Hill in Melbourne was a dangerous place to visit after dark; there were needles aplenty in the car parks some 10 years ago. But things have changed after local officials took steps to clean up the suburb. The population mix is still the same. But things are now very different because the community decided that it had to act and clean up the suburb for the good of its own children.

Politicians are unlikely to change their methods. People in various areas should act to ensure that newcomers get settled in and contribute to society. Making them feel they are outsiders greatly increases the possibility that the newcomers will turn against the very people whom they live amongst.

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Melbourne can learn from Brisbane’s bus system

MELBOURNE prides itself on many things. But when it comes to transport, it has to take second place to the much smaller and less-populated Brisbane. That city has a bus service that should be emulated.

No doubt, Melbourne is trying to put something in place. But its most recent effort, the myki, has turned out to be an expensive disaster. An inquiry is underway to decide whether the system should be scrapped or extended to the rest of the state. It is already over budget by about 200 percent with well in excess of a billion dollars having been spent.

The Brisbane system works, and works well. One only has to place one’s go card next to the reader when one is boarding and leaving the bus and it registers immediately with a moderately loud beep so that the driver knows the passenger isn’t cheating. If the card has insufficient funds, the beep sounds different.

There are two swipe points near the driver so people can get off the bus without delay, even at peak times. Touching the card to the reader does not delay people at all.

In sharp contrast, one has to hold a myki close to a reader for at least 5 seconds before it registers. And it does so with such a weak noise, that hardly anyone, except the passenger, knows it has registered. The same process happens when one leaves the bus.

If everyone in the bus was using the myki, it would delay those leaving the vehicle quite a bit, not something that would be welcome on a working day. One needs to remember that Melbourne has about four times the number of people that Brisbane does.

The myki also has its quirks. I normally pay $4.96 for a trip to the city – but if I do not close the trip the same day, the next time I touch on, I am charged only 2.02 for the journey. I found this out by accident when I forgot to touch off while leaving the bus one evening.

And on days when the trip to the city from the suburb where I live is different – the route is split into two on the weekends, the first bus taking one to the next suburb and a second bus taking one from there to the city – I get charged $2.02 for the first bit and 98 cents for the second part. Puzzling indeed.

The Brisbane system seems to be similar to London’s Oyster card. If you register the card, then you are asking for trouble because your movements are tracked. But an unregistered card does not open you to being tracked as you.

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Sexism reigns in AFL commentary box

FOR all the talk about the number of women involved in Australain rules football, better known as AFL, there are fresh indications that, like many other things in the country, it is run by, and meant for, middle-aged and old white Australian males.

The latest indication of this comes in the dumping of commentator Kelli Underwood by Channel 10, one of the two free-to-air channels which won the right to broadcast the game in the last bidding contest for TV rights.

Underwood was given a two-year trial and has now been relegated to doing the job of boundary rider; an all-male team will call the games for this season and, conceivably, for the foreseeable future.

The decision smacks of sexism. It was made after a local tabloid, the Herald Sun, published the results of an online survey that ranked AFL commentators according to the annoyance factor. That anyone could take an online poll seriously is surprising; further the Sun’s readers cannot be exactly said to be at the high end of the IQ spectrum.

My rating of Underwood comes from nearly 43 years of listening to sport on radio and watching various kinds of sport on TV. Among the many commentators I have listened to are Bob Harvey (Sri Lankan – rugby union), Dicky Rutnagur (Indian – cricket), Alan McGilvray, Jim Maxwell, Glen Mitchell (Australian – cricket), John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Don Mosey, Christopher Martin-Jenkins (all British – cricket), Tony Cozier, Reds Perera, Fazeer Mohammed (West Indies – cricket), Dennis Commetti, Gerard Whatley, Drew Morphett, Mark McClure, Stan Alves, Rex Hunt, Anthony Hudson, Sam Newman (Australia – AFL), and many more whose names do not come to mind immediately.

Underwood is no better and no worse than any male commentator employed by a TV channel or a radio station; in fact, several of the men who commentate on the game are much worse than her. She has the right approach to communicating the state of the game, and never allows herself to go overboard. Instead, in the manner of top commentators like Brian Glanville, she builds up the excitement, never indulging in the kind of yelling and verbal diarrhoea that many of the men do.

Hudson, one of the Channel 10 commentators, should not be allowed anywhere near a commentary box. His delivery is poor, he gets excited all the time and screams, and for him every goal is “unbelievable.” But he has the characteristics which Underwood lacks – he is white, middle-aged and male.

This isn’t the first time that a woman has ventured near the commentary box of a predominantly male sport: in 1983, actress Kate Fitzpatrick joined the cricket commentary team of Channel 9. She did not last long, only until the end of that season. There are other women like Rebecca Wilson (who lasted one episode of the National Rugby League’s footy show) and Caroline Wilson, who appears on Channel 9’s Footy Classified and has done so for some time.

The commentators of today indulge in a lot of hyperbole, in the belief that they have to jazz up the game that they are covering. They use tired, worn phrases all the time and try to outdo each other in the use of superlatives. For the most part these days, I turn off the sound if I watch an AFL game.

Australians are willing to endure Bruce MacAvaney (who when describing young Hawthorn footballer Cyril Rioli gushed “what a delicious young player he is), Hudson (who shoots off at the mouth all the time), and Hunt (who is prone to the occasional racist gibe and whose commentary is mostly understood by an audience of one – himself).

At a time when even a country like Pakistan has put a competent woman in the commentary box – sadly, after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, she has not been able to commentate because international cricket matches are not being staged in the country – it seems absurd that a country like Australia, which claims to be oh-so-progressive, cannot do as much.

But then, on reflection, why am I surprised? Graphic evidence of the sexism in the country was provided when elections were held last year. One shouldn’t be surprised that a smaller subset of the population expresses the same sentiment.

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Ashes to Ashes: Australia left in the dust

AT LEAST one Australia could have been happy after the catastrophic defeat in the fifth and final Ashes Test – but even that didn’t happen.

Ricky Ponting, forced to stand down due to an injury, would have been happy that the team had not done better under Michael Clarke than under him – but then any happiness would have been washed away when the chairman of selectors, Andrew Hilditch, refused to say whether Ponting would be captain again when Australia resumes Test cricket in August.

Poor Ponting will have to keep biting his nails and spitting on his hands and rubbing them together for the next seven or eight months.

At the end of a series in which Australia was humiliated, becoming only the second team to lose three Tests by an innings at home, Hilditch said he had done a good job. You’d have to wonder what would have happened had he done a bad job.

Maybe if Australia had lost all five Tests, Hilditch would have been a mite more modest and said that he had done an average job. One never knows with such an unassuming gentleman.

The coach, Tim Nielsen, backed players like Phillip Hughes (who lacks even the semblance of technique and insists ‘but that’s how I play”). Steven Smith (who spent the last morning of the series making cow-shots against England) and Michael Beer Australia’s future looks bright, especially given that Nielsen has had his contract renewed until 2013.

Nielsen still said he had done all he could, but did not specify whether it was all he could to destroy the team or to make them able to win Test matches.

The selectors, who have been clearly unmasked as a bunch of jokers, also said they had done a good job. Australia needs a couple more series like this and it could well end up in a battle for ninth place in the ICC rankings with Bangladesh.

Three innings victories in a Test series down the years:

1928 – England 3 home innings wins in a row v West Indies
1931 – Australia 3 home innings wins in a row v West Indies
1931 – Australia 3 home innings wins in 5 tests v South Africa
1936 – Australia 3 away innings wins in 5 tests v South Africa
1947-8 – Australia 3 home innings wins in 4 tests v India
1957 – England 3 home innings wins in a row v West Indies
1958 – England 3 home innings wins in 5 tests v New Zealand
1959 – England 3 home innings wins in 5 tests v India
1994 – India 3 home innings wins in a row v Sri Lanka
2007 – Sri Lanka 3 home innings wins in a row v Bangladesh
2010-11 – England 3 away innings wins in 5 tests v Australia

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Final Ashes Test: Ponting’s mixed feelings

RICKY Ponting faces five very difficult days ahead. Days when he will be torn between wanting Australia to do well in the final Ashes Test and also fully aware that any improvement will be put down to the stand-in captain Michael Clarke.

And any improvement will also decrease even the smallest chance he has of regaining the captaincy when Australia next plays Test cricket in August. Thus in a perverse way, Ponting will probably be happy if Australia suffers another defeat.

Would Ponting play under someone else as captain? He really wouldn’t have a choice – if the selection panel decides that a new captain must take over, then he will have no choice. And the new captain wouldn’t have much choice to having Ponting in his team if he merits a place on form.

Ponting is anxious about the captaincy and also highly insecure. This is evident from the fact that he wants to be in the dressing room for the fifth Test even though he is not playing. He wants to be around so that he can claim some credit in the event that the team fares better than it did in Melbourne.

Clarke must be feeling as though he has a millstone around his neck. It is highly unusual for a situation like this to develop but both the selectors and Clarke are being diplomatic about it. Nobody wants to make it appear as though Ponting has played his last Test as captain.

But that is what is very likely to happen. Ponting has some years left as a batsman but the team needs some rejuvenation and the long gap between Tests is exactly what is needed to blood new players.

The selectors have to look seriously at trying to regain the country’s ranking in Test cricket – it now stands fourth, thanks the weather in Sri Lanka that caused both Tests in the two-Test series between the West Indies and Sri Lanka to end in draws. Lanka thus slipped back from fourth to fifth and Australia moved up a notch.

It is always a touch tragic to see a good batsman come to a fork in the road as Ponting has. He is desperate to hang on to the captaincy and does not see that his time as captain is up. If he were to step down voluntarily it would be good for him. He could then continue as a player as long as his form warrants.