Foreign minister Julie Bishop confronted by student protestors in Sydney last week
When prime minister John Howard introduced new laws to restrict ownership of certain firearms, in the wake of the Port Phillip massacre, he at least had the guts to stand his ground and face down protestors. Even if he did wear a bullet proof vest at a public event where protestors converged.
Prime minister Tony Abbott is pushing a budget that will force students to incur huge debts (with compounded interest) for even the most basic degrees, laying the ground for the eventual near full privatisation of Australia's universities. But Abbott cuts and runs when he has to face students unhappy with this decision.
The Prime Minister cancelling his trip to Geelong over security fears was a ploy to make students look like spoiled brats, the National Union of Students said.
Tony Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne were due to
visit a research facility at Deakin University today -- but cancelled on
advice from the Australian Federal Police.
“I think the Prime
Minister and Minister Pyne are trying to make it look like students are
violent rabble rousers who are out to cause trouble and that’s
absolutely not the case at all,” said NUS president Deanna Taylor.
Ms Taylor said Mr Abbott was “obviously scared of facing up to students” over the Budget.
A tiny minority of allegedly violent protestors is the excuse for Abbott and Pyne cutting and running.
She said Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne had a
“hidden agenda and vested interest in making (students) look like
spoiled brats who don’t know how good they’ve got it”.
Greens senator Richard Di Natale said the security fears were a furphy.
“He was a bully in opposition and now he has shown himself to be a coward in government,” he said last night.
“If
you’re going to wield the axe so brutally you owe it to the people to
front up and explain yourself. The least he can do is put up with a few
noisy protesters.”
Abbott claims he didn't want to be part of "a riot":
Prime Minister Tony Abbott says he cancelled a visit to a university to avoid what he predicted would be a riot on national television...
Mr Abbott told Fairfax Radio it was about not giving the protesters what they wanted, “which is a riot on national television”.
He
played down the protests pointing to his days as a student activist at
Sydney University when protests and counter-protests were regarded as
sport.
“I think they were looking forward to a big rumble today,” he said.
Labor frontbencher Richard Marles, whose
electorate covers Geelong:
“security measures can always be
managed”.
“At the end of the day this was a decision by the Prime
Minister and it is a really disappointing decision that he is not taking
up the opportunity of coming to Geelong today in order to tell the
people of our city — the people at Deakin University — why he’s
deregulated the university system, why he’s going to make fees higher
for Geelong students who want to study at their university.”
The Prime Minister was advised by the Australian
Federal Police to ditch his planned university visit today after other
high-profile Coalition figures were targeted by protesters opposed to
the deregulation of university fees.
“The visit to Deakin
University has been postponed, based on security advice,” the Prime
Minister’s office said in a rare statement about security matters.
Liberal
frontbenchers scorned student protests as driven by “socialists” who
are “intent on shutting down democracy in Australia”.
Education
Minister Christopher Pyne told ABC’s Lateline last night: “The Prime
Minister made the decision and his office that it would be wiser to not
go and to create that tumult at Deakin University so students can get on
with their studies unmolested by the Socialist Alternative, which seem
quite intent on shutting down democracy in Australia.”
Deputy Leader of the federal Opposition Tanya Plibersek said students had a reason to protest.
The
deregulation of university fees would mean poor kids wouldn’t make it
to university and would be denied a successful career, she said.
“This
will take us to a two-tier American-style university system where the
best courses and the best universities are completely unaffordable to
ordinary people,” she told ABC radio. But she condemned the protests
against Ms Mirabella and Ms Bishop and said students should rally in a
peaceful and democratic manner.
If PM Abbott is going to duck and run from every protest or public opposition to his extreme policies over the next few years, he won't be appearing at many public events.
Meanwhile, former popular Murdoch blogger Andrew Bolt first labels those exercising their democratic right to protest as "totalitarian", then suggests women who don't sympathise with Julie Bishop after she was confronted by students might need be more sympathetic if they were roughed up themselves. Astounding:
Andrew Bolt is out of control.
Mass protest movements against de-funding of schools,
universities, hospitals, and cutting incomes of families and elderly
pensioners - protests that kicked off with 100,000 attending the
peaceful national March In March, and grabbed media headlines with last
Sunday's March In May - are only just beginning.
Many
are already likening the protests, that are bringing together
Australians from almost every social and economic background, to something like the start of an 'Australia Spring.'
I find it absolutely bizarre that the Daily Telegraph would slam March In May protesters in Sydney as "revolting ferals." It's very clear what the headline and image is implying. Protest against PM Abbott, and you're nothing more than a Feral.
Uni students, and 'anarchists', or ferals if you want to go that far, made up a tiny percentage of the 15,000 to 20,000 marchers in Sydney last Sunday. 5 per cent at most, probably less.
I stood near the entrance to Victoria Park at the conclusion of the march and watched more than 10,000 people walk by over an hour. Families, elderly people, disabled people, 'Mosman Mum's', lots of people from western Sydney, it was more like a crowd at the Royal Easter Show than a traditional 'Lefty Students' protest. There were at least 1000 kids, many with signs they'd made themselves. And most of the protest signs I saw were funny, or heartbreaking, very few were insulting to Abbott in any way. Most just asked variations of 'Why Did You Lie To Us? Why Are You Punishing Us? What Did We Do?'
The Daily Telegraph's "Revolting Ferals" front page seems to have pissed off and disgusted many of the families who turned out for March In May. Not surprisingly.
And some more of the "ferals", as claimed by the Daily Telegraph:
Reaction on Facebook and Twitter is absolute disbelief, and disgust, and strong feelings of betrayal, that the Daily Telegraph would brand them as "revolting ferals" simply because they are opposed to Abbott government lies, budget cuts and backflips on very clear election promises. People were carrying copies of the Telegraph under their arm to read in the park. Then they get called "Ferals" on the front page the next day?
Seriously, talk about burning your readership.
Who does the Daily Telegraph think will buy the paper when they trash families from Western Sydney?
Just bizarre. But it does show just how out of touch the Daily Telegraph's editor Paul Whittaker is with his dwindling readership.
Here's Whittaker laughing it up with Tony Abbott on Budget Night, before his newspaper gave Budget 2014 mostly glowing coverage and headlines:
Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker, Budget night 2014
Perhaps sucking up to the prime minister is more important to Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker than fairly representing his readership? Or putting into print their overwhelming shock and disgust at the deceptive way Abbott ran his election campaign, and the brutal punishment of families in his first budget.
Australia's richest man and the CEO of a top-rating TV channel shame themselves
By Darryl Mason
UPDATE: Australia's richest man James Packer and Channel 9 boss David Gyngell want their ugly Bondi Bash to go away, fade from view, but it won't. As an example of how international this story now is, Taiwanese animators have immortalised the brutal street violence and police investigation:
For someone trying to maintain casino licences in Asia, and score new ones, this is about the worst headline you could get on the BBC, short of being accused of murder:
Headlines and opinion pieces in Asian business media are unanimously negative about James Packer, it doesn't seem to matter that he may not have started the fight. Anti-casino campaigners couldn't have dreamed of a better way to attack Packer's character and ability to control himself.
Last night, police were not going to investigate the brutal street brawl between Australia's richest man James Packer and Channel 9 boss David Gyngell. The following screengrab is of a NSW Police message to a Twitter account that tweets on media issues, there were a number of others who asked why police had not launched an investigation and police responded with the same tweet:
NSW Police: "As we have not received any reports regarding this specific incident there is no current investigation,"
It seemed odd that after all the media and police campaigns to stop Sydney street violence, they weren't going to do anything about two men violently smashing the shit out of each other on a Bondi street on a Sunday morning, an event captured on cameras, and blasted across the media.
But procedures are procedures.
Someone had to call it in.
So what happened overnight?
Australians on Twitter learned that the street brawl had to be officially reported to police, Bondi police station's phone number appeared on Twitter and people started calling in reports, and tweeting reports, of the street fight to Bondi police and the official NSW Police Twitter account. The disgust from a handful was palpable. Why should these two get away with it? Why shouldn't they have to live by the same laws as the rest of us?
This morning, while Ray Hadley on 2GB, Karl Stefanovic on The Today Show, and virtually every other friend or associate of Packer and Gyngell in the Australia media tried to dismiss and talk down the seriousness of this street violence - "just two mates biffing" "just a bit of slap and tickle" - police dramatically announced they were investigating the incident and went out and started doorknocking in Bondi,
Some media commentators could hardly disguise their disbelief. But the police said last night they weren't investigating!
Yeah, that was last night.
I know all this because I was following Twitter accounts that were
talking about it, and posting under #PackerGyngell. There was anger, people expressing disgust that Packer and
Gyngell "were going to get away with it:". Should rich people brawling in Bondi be treated differently to suburban kids fighting in the streets of Penrith or Kings Cross? Most of what was posted was true. So they took action, and began encouraging each other to report
the Bondi street fight. I saw a whole series of such reactions unfold on Twitter late last night, and early this morning, and it was remarkable.
This was the real power of Twitter in action. People saw what they believed was an injustice, they learned what they had to do to try and set it right and they moved into action.
And by 9am, with police officially investigating, suddenly the media couldn't pretend this street brawling wasn't a big deal and the whole thrust of coverage changed. Well, some of it. Panelists on morning breakfast shows, including formerly avid campaigners against street violence, were still cracking jokes and trying to convince viewers Packer and Gyngell's Bondi Brawl was "no big deal."
But it was clear, once police began investigating, and once the possible repercussions for Packer and Gyngell's business interests, and their jobs, started to be examined, the Bondi Brawl began to look very, very serious indeed. And it was serious, it is serious. The tweeters were right. If it was Aboriginal youth videod brawling on a Bondi street, or Muslim teenagers, radio shock jocks would have demanded their community leaders denounce their appalling behaviour.
If the same media personalities who shed tears on TV over coward punches and ugly street violence earlier this year weren't shocked and disgusted by these two men punching each other out in broad daylight, then, seriously, what the hell was the whole anti-street violence campaign about?
But be sure of this one thing - if people on Twitter hadn't rallied and taken action to make sure even James Packer and David Gyngell are dealt with by police the same as the rest of us, and have to live by the same laws, their media pals, and employees, who were talking down this brutal act of street violence and pretending it was meaningless and "no big deal" would have won, and no police investigation would have begun today. Or at least, it would have been far less likely to have begun.
The prominent media identities who used to determine what events the mass public should be outraged about, and which events should be quickly forgotten, would have beaten down any and all opposition to calls for police action this morning. We probably would have seen Packer and Gyngell's political mates hitting the airwaves to hose down any public anger.
The script would have been shaped and set. Those demanding something had to be done about an ugly, offensive street brawl, by two men who should know better, would have been dismissed as "whingers" and "haters" and "jealous of rich people" and all the other garbage lines used to try and steer people without power and influence from making sure those with power and influence have to play by the same rules.
This story has a long way left to run, and serious implications for both men seem to be piling up by the minute. But there are only two people to blame for what is now happening to James Packer and David Gyngell, themselves.
They did what they did, and now they have to live with the results of their actions.
Just like you and I have to.
A detailed timeline of the Bondi Brawl and its repercussions will be posted here later tonight
The Screaming Jets Paul Woseen is grabbing some attention for his debut acoustic album 'Bombido', released on my label Misty Mountains Music, and available here. Sadly, he's also grabbed a few headlines for attacking The Angels, who are now fronted by The Screaming Jets lead singer Dave Gleeson.
It took just 12 hours for The Screaming Jets bassist Paul Woseen to record his solo album Bombido.
"Pretty much every song on that (Bombido) is one take, the first take," he says.
Woseen did some metaphorical time travelling to achieve what he
wanted with the album, which comprises new solo tracks alongside hits he
wrote for the Jets.
"I did it the way I wanted to do it, I had in my mind of how they
used to do singer/songwriter records `60s/'70s style - come in, sit
down, play the songs, record it and that would be it - and that's just
how I approached it," he says.
"I recorded it in two six-hour blocks."
The Screaming Jets fans who have come to check out Woseen's shows have been surprised by Woseen's voice.
"They don't expect it (the voice) to come out of the head they're looking at ... such a rough head," he says.
"Singing and sitting around writing songs is a pretty good way to earn a living," he says
Woseen is also attracting mainstream media attention for diving headfirst into a horrible pile-on over over Doc Neeson's serious illness, and how members of The Angels, the band that made Neeson famous, and are now fronted by Woseen's friend Dave Gleeson, have supposedly had 'no contact' with Neeson since he was diagnosed with cancer, after The Angels parted in 2011 and then formed two separate line-ups in recent years.
The Doc Neeson line-up, 'The Angels 100%', announced their 2013 tour after 'The Angels with Dave Gleeson' had a solid run of sold-out shows and scored huge gigs on the Day On The Green tour.
But Neeson's 'The Angels 100%' had to cancel their tour in early 2013, which would have seen the two line-ups of The Angels in the same cities in the same weeks, after Neeson was diagnosed with brain cancer.
I've been told there has been contact between the The Angels founding members, Rick and John Brewster, and Doc Neeson, but because the Brewsters haven't been public about the contact, and because they chose not to take part in the recent Australian Story episode on Doc Neeson, they've been absolutely slammed on social media, and elsewhere, by people who don't know what's really going on.
People like Paul Woseen:
It's all very unfortunate, and ugly, and the Brewsters will hopefully clear the air soon by talking to the media. It's just wrong that they have to do so.
Some background:
As any old fan of The Angels know, Rick and John Brewster formed the earliest line-up of The Angels with Doc Neeson in 1974, and they then played thousands of shows, and recorded more than 14 studio and live albums together, before Doc announced he had to leave The Angels in 2000, due to a back injury.
They reunited for a tour to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their mega-multi-platinum Face To Face album in 2008, and split again in 2011, when Doc Neeson decided he didn't want to record another album with the band, and pursued a solo career instead. A dispute over who owned the name of the band then erupted. Again.
Original members Rick and John Brewster and bassist Chris Bailey (who died of cancer last year) brought in The Screaming Jets singer Dave Gleeson and recorded the Take It To The Streets album, toured, and released a second album with the new line-up, Talk The Talk, earlier this year.
So, yeah, the bassist of The Screaming Jets, Paul Woseen, is attacking members of The Angels, who are now fronted by his long-time friend and bandmate, The Screaming Jets' vocalist Dave Gleeson.
Rock n' roll can get pretty stupid and ugly sometimes.
It took almost a decade before conservative pundits turned on prime minister John Howard and helped hound him out of the Lodge.
PM Tony Abbott hasn't even clocked up one year, and the knives are out, the wolves at his door.
Here's Miranda Devine, of Murdoch's Telegraph, with nothing but praise for Abbott just before the election:
I won't quote her talking about Abbott's musky odour and brutish manliness as reasons why she thought Australia had to make him prime minister. It might still be breakfast time where you're reading this.
And here's Miranda Devine blasting 'lefties' for being mean and horrible for calling Abbott distrustful and a liar who would do anything to get elected:
But when news breaks that her and her six-figure and seven-figure earning colleagues and friends may have to pay more tax to help Australia cope with the "budget emergency" treasurer Joe Hockey has been fretting over, LOOK OUT TONY!
NO wonder Tony Abbott fled to
Melbourne straight after his pre-Budget speech to the Sydney Institute
on Tuesday night. He would have been cold-shouldered if he’d stuck
around.
The income tax hike he has proposed on workers earning over $80,000
cast a sour note in The Star casino ballroom. It was widely condemned
as “moronic” by business people, journalists and politicians in heated
discussions into the night.
The Prime Minister who promised no new
taxes, and whose campaign was based on the deceit of Julia Gillard’s
carbon tax, has scored the most inexplicable own goal on the eve of the
May 13 budget which will define this term in office.
No one expects instant miracles from Abbott and Joe
Hockey but nor did we expect extra spending and strategic leaks about a
“great big new tax” in their first budget.
Of course Abbott calls it a “deficit levy”, is
coy about whether it will be in the Budget, and claims he hasn’t broken
a promise because it will last only last four years. And after letting
speculation run for three days about the new tax, late yesterday the
hoses came out. Now the tax isn’t even a “levy”, the government has told
Simon Benson. “It’s a temporary change to the two top income tax
thresholds”.
Good grief. Voters are sick of that kind of rank sophistry from politicians. We overdosed on it during the Gillard years.
Let’s hope that the public outcry has put the kybosh on the whole idea.
But it’s disturbing to have a supposedly conservative government even considering playing Labor’s tax and spend game.
The
problem with the economy is not too little tax. It’s too much
government spending. Abbott understood that before the election. It was
the basis of his campaign.
This
proposed “deficit levy”, in its latest incarnation, equates to a one
percent hike in income tax for those earning over $80,000 and 2 percent
for those earning above $180,000.
If
your income is over $180,000, you currently pay 45 cents in the dollar,
plus the 1.5 percent Medicare levy. The new tax hikes your tax rate up
to 48.5 percent.
The potential harm to an already fragile economy of increased taxation is
obvious. You are reducing discretionary spending, which is the amount
of extra cash the biggest spenders have to spend.
Unlike the
government, real people don’t keep spending when their income goes down.
They tighten their belts, maybe give up a restaurant meal, stop buying
takeaway, postpone the family holiday, spend less on the child’s
birthday party, buy fewer clothes, cut back on grocery bills.
When
they went into the voting booth last September and ticked the box to
put Tony Abbott into office, they weren’t voting for an income tax hike.
The Coalition won the election because voters knew spending was out of
control and had to be reined in.
A temporary new tax is just a lazy fix. It’s easier to tax
people more than do the grunt work of running the red pen over every
government program, line by line.
Who hurts most from this
thriftiness? Small business. The engine room, the people who depended on
the Coalition to rescue them from Labor.
When they went into the
voting booth last September and ticked the box to put Abbott into
office, they weren’t voting for an income tax rise.
The Coalition won the election because voters knew spending was out of control and had to be reined in.
Most people would consider a workplace right is being
able to take your hard-earned salary home without the government
snatching it.
Devine was so filled with rage, the online version of this column had paragraphs doubled up, so blinded with betrayal she barely edited it.
Well, she can't say she wasn't warned Tony Abbott might not be entirely trustful.
Maybe it's worth while remembering that Tony Abbott used to be a Labor Party man, and pretty much switched to the Liberal Party because he believed he'd have a better run at getting somewhere. not being in with the unions. Well, that, of course, is just a crazy conspiracy theory.
It's still two weeks until the budget is delivered, and Abbott's conservative cheerleaders are already preparing effigies of him to burn on Budget Night.
'One Term Tony' doesn't sound such a crazy nickname anymore. Not when it's already been shouted from the offices of Liberal MPs as they fend off raw fury from constituents and Liberal Party donors over Abbott's Great Big Huge New Tax.
Senior Liberals have described plans for a possible deficit tax in
the budget as "electoral suicide".
Some talked of a party-room revolt
and one warned the Prime Minister Tony Abbott would wear the broken
promise as "a crown of thorns" if the government decided to go through
with it.
"I worry that this is Tony's Gillard moment, when she announced the carbon tax," said the senior Liberal.
Several other Liberals also expressed dismay at the prospect
of a government, elected to restore trust to politics, overturning a
"crystal-clear" policy commitment of no new taxes, in its first budget.
Incredulous Liberals contacted by Fairfax Media said they had
been given nothing to tell voters who were beginning to call electorate
offices to complain.
The mood in government-held marginal seats was particularly
febrile. One MP revealed that neither he nor his colleagues had been
warned about the tax.
One Liberal MP said he woke on Tuesday morning to the news of the tax.
"It's just shock," the MP said. "There was no communication
from the leader's office. We're all just scratching our heads. It's the
biggest f----up we've had in a long time."
"I can't say anything on the record because it's just too
stupid," he said. "If it's wrong, then it's bulls--t, because why would
you scare the electorate? And if it's right, then it's even worse
because we said before the election there'd be no new taxes."
Another branded Mr Abbott's attempts to recategorise the tax
as a levy as "sophistry", calling it "an offence to voters" that was
"worse than Gillard's claim that the carbon tax was not a tax".
The legendary Doc Neeson, frontman for The Angels for nearly four decades until 2011, has revealed the brain tumour that saw him leave the road has returned and he's been told it may prove fatal in the next 3 to 6 months. He has vowed to keep fighting.
"It was a shock of course when somebody puts a use by date on me," he said of the initial diagnosis, that predicted he might not live 18 months without surgery, "but I
still hung on to a shred of hope that I'd get back on the stage at some
point,"
Neeson was first diagnosed in late 2012. He had brain surgery, a long period of radiotherapy, chemotherapy and recovery followed, through 2013. His health was looking good. He was hoping to get back on the road. But an MRI in February this year revealed the brain tumour had returned and Doc Neeson has now been told to expect the worst:
"The news is grim, but some people can get through this, and that's
the way I try to think about things. So I'm looking forward
optimistically to the future."
Profiled on ABC's Australian Story, Doc Neeson has opened up his battle against brain cancer, his addictions and what he believes were his failings as a father, during the busiest days of The Angels,
when the band would play more than 150 shows a year.
Image via ABC's Australian Story
Here's a great tale, from Australian Story, from Australia's now governor-general, Peter Cosgrove, on Doc Neeson's performance for Australian troops in East Timor in 1999:
"I'm sitting up there with people like Jose
Ramos Horta (East Timorese spokesman at the time) and Roman Catholic
Bishop Belo of East Timor, overlooking the crowd and they had some
alternative lyrics to Am I Ever Going to See Your Face Again," Mr
Cosgrove said.
"I'll call them ribald lyrics.
"Bishop Belo
leaned forward and said to me, 'Mr General, what are they singing?' And I
said, 'Well Lord Bishop I really can't quite make it out'.
"Then Ramos Horta looked at me and I could tell that he could make it out!"
Doc Neeson's last live appearances were at the Rock For Doc concerts in April 2013, and the Rockwiz live tribute to Vanda and Young, last December, where he performed his new single, a Vanda and Young cover, Walking In The Rain.
The Rock For Doc concerts, at Sydney's Enmore Theatre in April 2013, included friends like Peter Garrett, Jimmy Barnes, Angry Anderson and former members of The Angels. But founding members of the band, Rick and John Brewster, were not invited to play or pay tribute to their friend and former frontman.
Rock For Doc was a fundraiser. There's no superannuation in Australian rock.
"When
The Angels were big, we invested a lot of the money that we made into
the band itself to try and go overseas again. So there was no kind of
money salted away somewhere to fall back on," Neeson said.
"It's a pretty lean time at the moment."
A few weeks after Rock For Doc, which raised more than $200,000, Doc Neeson was presented with an Order of Australia medal by NSW Governor Marie Bashir, who has confessed she is also fan of The Angels.
In January 2014, Doc was profiled in the Sydney Morning Herald, the cancer was in remission, he was hopeful, it had been a hard year, but picking up where he'd left off in December 2012 and taking a lineup of The Angels back on the road was looking like a reality. It had been a difficult journey since his first diagnosis.
It was at Christmas dinner that Doc Neeson's
family realised something was wrong with the enigmatic former frontman
of veteran Australian rock band The Angels.
"You could see in his face and how he was talking that something wasn't quite right," recalls Neeson's son Keiran.
An ambulance rushed Neeson to Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital where the 65-year-old singer had a seizure.
After a CAT scan, he was diagnosed with a high grade brain tumour and told that statistically, he had 18 months to live.
Plans
for a national tour were put aside. Neeson's tumour was surgically
removed and he began intensive rounds of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
That
radiotherapy and chemotherapy did not destroy the tumours completely, it would seem.
They have returned, and Doc Neeson is now both preparing for his end,
and fighting to extend his life as long as possible.
Very sad news.
I'll follow up once the episode of Australian Story has aired.
This is a video I shot of Doc Neeson leading a protest march through Newtown, Sydney, against the closure of iconic inner city rock venue The Sandringham Hotel.
Good to know the prime minister's staff are spending their taxpayer-funded time on important things. Like writing more than 130 pages of correspondence and spending more than 36 hours discussing what to do about a popular app that replaced PM Abbott's face with a cute kitty in news stories.
Developers Dan Nolan and Ben Taylor made the "Stop Tony Meow"
browser extension in January. Downloaded more than 50,000 times, it
automatically swaps any picture of Mr Abbott encountered online with
pictures of cats.
Curious as to what the Prime Minister and his staff thought of the extension, Mr Nolan submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for any correspondence that mentioned the words "Stop Tony Meow".
‘‘There was an issue where the Liberal party website and
other sites were slightly modified so the extension didn’t apply
there,’’ Mr Nolan said.
‘‘I had a gut feeling that maybe someone had sent an email
internally saying that we need to stop this thing from working on our
site, what can we do?
‘‘I don’t think there’s going to be any high-level stuff ...
but it would be really interesting to see how a government department
reacts to these weird new kinds of technology and culture jamming stuff,
which previously they wouldn’t have had to deal with.’’
However once the Department had approved the release of 137
pages of correspondence relating to the Stop Tony Meow request, it
charged Mr Nolan $720.30 in fees for access.
Charging such huge fees for Freedom On Information replies is obviously an attempt to dissuade the public from making them.
In an interview with UK Daily Mirror, AC/DC's lead singer Brian Johnson makes it clear that the band's future is still in doubt, and that even a new album is not a locked-in possibility:
“I don’t know what happens next. We are just going to take it one day at a time.
"I think we are going to into the studio again anyway just to get together again after four years.
"It’ll feel nice to sit in the same room and knock a few tunes out. We’ll see where we go from there.”
A curious comment from Johnson on the leaking of Malcolm Young's illness to Australian media.
“I
didn’t know they were going to do that because Malcolm is a very proud
man. It is a debilitating disease, it’s fucking horrible and I hate it!"
The band didn't end up holding a media conference on their future, but friends and some family members were talking about Malcolm's condition, and what might or might not happen next with the band, within hours of the news being leaked to a Perth radio station via an anonymous email. It was like a dam of emotions bursting, people who love him dearly had been living with the secret for many months, unable to discuss Malcolm or how they were feeling. Once the news got out, some wanted to talk, needed to talk.
And so they did.
On the likelihood of a new AC/DC album, if sessions do go ahead, if AC/DC members do reunite in the studio next month, and that's if, they will go in without new songs already written by Malcolm and Angus Young to work on. Malcolm is, some say, not in any condition to join the rest of AC/DC in the studio, or to even write songs anymore.
Australia has some of the oldest living trees still left on Planet Earth.
Artist Rachel Sussman spent almost a decade journeying across the world and photographing 'The Oldest Living Things In The World' and has now published the results in a remarkable book.
Here's two of the world's oldest living trees, both in Australia.
The first is an eucalypt, it's location is secret, but it's somewhere in New South Wales. The tree system is believed to be an extraordinary 13,000 years old.
This is a 6000 year old Antarctic Beech, in Lamington National Park, Queensland:
AC/DC's lead singer Brian Johnson has said members of the band will still reunite in Canada next month to try and write songs for a new album, while founder and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young is recovering in Sydney, but plans for a 40th anniversary tour "are still up in the air at the moment."
"We are definitely getting together in May in Vancouver," he said.
"We're going to pick up some guitars, have a plonk, and
see if anybody has got any tunes or ideas. If anything happens, we'll record
it."
In the interview, Johnson denied Malcolm Young's ill health will be the end of the road for the band, but with the caveat:
"I wouldn't like to say anything either way about the future. I'm not ruling anything out. '
The idea of 40 concerts in 40 different venues, to celebrate 40 years of AC/DC, before the end of the year would be, "a wonderful way to say bye bye."
"We've stuck to our guns through the
Eighties and Nineties when people were saying we should change our clothes
and our style. But we didn't and people got it that we are the real deal."
That might be all we'll hear from anyone in AC/DC on the proposed new album and tour, or Malcolm Young's illness, for now.
"After
forty years of life dedicated to AC/DC, guitarist and founding member
Malcolm Young is taking a break from the band due to ill health. Malcolm
would like to thank the group’s diehard legions of fans worldwide for
their never-ending love and support.
"In light of this news,
AC/DC asks that Malcolm and his family’s privacy be respected during
this time. The band will continue to make music."
So it sounds like AC/DC will work on new music, towards a new album, and presumably do the 40th anniversary tour, possibly with Stevie King (who filled in for Malcolm on the 1988 Blow Up Your Video tour), or another guitarist playing Malcolm's parts live.
Just to clarify, information about Malcolm Young's illness reported here in earlier posts did come from a family member, and friends of the band. At the time it was published, there was a belief that AC/DC would not continue without Malcolm Young, that they couldn't continue. Obviously, the remaining members of AC/DC have decided to try and go forward, at least for now.
“If you look at The Beatles, they started out as a rock & roll band,
playing in Hamburg. They became really successful. And then they
started doing things like Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour...
“But eventually they came back to playing straightforward
rock & roll like ‘Get Back’. The Stones did much the same. We’ve
learned from bands like that that it’s best just to stay where you’re
at; you’re going to come back there anyway, so why leave in the first
place? Why not simply work better and harder at what you’ve got?”
A story I wrote for The Guardian's 'Australian Anthems' section on The Angels and one of the most famous, legendary songs in all Australian rock - "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again?" The story includes a bit of an explainer on the origins of the NWGFFO crowd chant.
It’s
a song about grief, mourning, loss and the afterlife. It’s played at
funerals, 21st birthdays, retirement parties – even
weddings. It’s popped up in a spectrum of Australian
TV shows and movies over the decades, and with the 1980s addition of an
expletive-laden audience chant, this failed debut single
from the Angels is now one of the most famous in Australian rock
history.
Back in the 80s, Neeson told me the song began its life as a
slow, acoustic ballad. The inspiration for the lyrics, he said, came
from hearing a friend describe his grief
following the death of a girlfriend in a motorcycle accident.
Not
all Angels fans were happy with “No way, get fucked, fuck off!”
becoming attached to See Your Face Again. The ones moved because the
lyrics were about the death of a girlfriend to this day insist on
fan forums that the chant cheapens the song and robs it of its powerful,
nostalgic strength.
Leave a comment at The Guardian on what this songs means to you after you read the full story there. All comments appreciated.
UPDATE, SEPT 29, 2020: A poster appears on a pole outside the Sydney school where Angus Young once went to school:
Hours later, a new AC/DC website launches:
Rumours are running hot in Australia that AC/DC will return with a Sydney live show of some pandemic-friendly kind. But that's all they are for now, rumours. We were supposed to make the 'AC/DC!' link between the poster outside the school where Angus was once a student and new AC/DC music.
But why would AC/DC want to evoke 'school days nostalgia' around their new 2020 work?
Maybe because Angus Young has searched back through decades of tapes of brother Malcolm's rhythm guitar recordings, noodlings and jams so his brother can be a part of this new album and he's gone right back to start of when they first began laying down riffs and rhythms on tape.
Exactly what AC/DC's touring plans for 2021 are not yet known, or if there will be a tour at all. Other bands are currently cancelling their recently rescheduled shows for 2021, as the COVID19 pandemic seems determined to stop all reasonably crowded live gigs, anywhere, for possibly 2 or more years to come. It's unimaginable to get an AC/DC album without a new tour. So maybe they have something else planned. A VR Live Experience? Pay-per-view gigs for home concert rocking out?
Is there a new single? Of course. A new video? Definitely. A new album? Assuredly. Power Up, or PWR Up, will be the name of the album, and presumably a single. But when? That is not known at the time of posting.
AC/DC are just teasing us for now. But something is coming. A new album by Christmas is all but confirmed.
UPDATE: DEC 12, 2017: Brothers George and Malcolm Young, the foundation builders of the 1980s new age of hard rock, are dead now. Their legacies and legends live.
The deaths of these two brothers, only a few months apart, reminded me of the first time they worked in the studio together. Back in 1973. The recording project was a fictitious rock group, The Marcus Hook Band, with George Young and Harry Vanda producing, playing and singing.
At 17 years old, Malcolm Young went into the studio, after school, with his big brother to lay down his first recordings. Angus also got his start on the Marcus Hook Project, contributing a few solos and rhythm guitar parts. This was the first project for George Young and Harry Vanda after The Easybeats that looked like it might be a winner. There was interest from the United States in the first recordings, completed back at Abbey Road before they returned to Australia. In a month, the brothers Young and Harry Vanda.
Working from a heavily scratched vinyl, I've remixed some of the songs to highlight the guitar playing of the brothers Young. All the Marcus Hook Band songs are worth hearing in full.
As well as being a test-run for Vanda and Young's Flash And The Pan, the month of late night 1973 studio recordings also revealed how incredible Malcolm and Angus sounded playing together, just how talented they were. And they could get it down in the studio, and do it fast..
AC/DC were born in these sessions - the swinging hard blues is already there, the boozy, chant-friendly pop, some of that AC/DC pummelling attitude, and the tone of the guitars. Oh, Boom. There's that sound.
I'll do a separate post for the rest of the remixes, but here's two for now, to remember the time in 1973, when George Young invited his younger brothers into a recording studio and created the sound of Australian hard pub rock. Or at least, fashioned the Australian pub rock sound that would soon take on the world. And win.
If you think that sounds like Malcolm Young on slide guitar, it probably is. The Angus Young solos are already signature. He was 17.
UPDATE: April 13, 2015 - Very happy to acknowledge, one year later, I was wrong in the below story in stating AC/DC would come to an end without Malcolm Young. AC/DC have now debuted their new first new live show in five years to mostly positive responses at Coachella, have sold more than 2 million tickets to concerts across Europe and the US and tickets are about to go on sale for stadium and arena shows Australia later this year.
Here's a few more predictions that may, or may not, turn out to be wrong:
- By the time AC/DC's 2015 tour winds down, they will have sold more than 4 million tickets, making it the Biggest Tour Of 2015.
- AC/DC have lots on open dates on their Australian tour (between the announced capital city shows), which means if tickets sell well, they could keep announcing more shows. Predicting this will happen, and AC/DC will play to more than 500,000 Australians by Christmas.
- AC/DC's new 'Rock Or Bust' album will be either the biggest selling album of 2015, or within the Top 3 best-selling.
AC/DC are ending their 41 year career on a terribly sad note.
Plans were underway for a new studio album, their first since 2008's monumental Black Ice, and a '40th Anniversary' world tour, 40 huge shows across the globe.
More than a month ago, founding member, rhythm guitarist, co-producer and co-songwriter Malcolm Young had a stroke, which left a blood clot on his brain.
When AC/DC reunited at the start of April to begin a month of rehearsals, in the lead-up to new album recording sessions, Malcolm discovered he couldn't play. At least, he couldn't play like he used to play.
Nothing has been officially confirmed, as of this writing, but friends and family members have been discussing what happened to Malcolm for the past couple of weeks. The blood clot, resulting from the stroke, is believed to be why Malcolm couldn't keep working.
Although friends have described Malcolm's condition as serious, it doesn't mean he won't recover. People do get better after strokes, and people do recover lost skills.
But friends and family of band members believe the decision was made last week to call it quits.
Media in Australia have gone ballistic today on rumours of The End Of AC/DC, and it appears the news got out ahead of a planned official announcement from the band and management.
Right now, that announcement is expected Wednesday, April 16, and a press conference has been scheduled.
Angus, Malcolm and George Young working on AC/DC songs in the mid-1970s, on piano
AC/DC won't continue playing and recording without Malcolm. It can't be done.
While Angus Young is the more famous, and more recognisable, AC/DC is most definitely Malcolm Young's band, he started AC/DC, under the guidance of big brother George Young (ex-Easybeats, and co-producer) and encouraged his younger brother Angus to join him, and take on the world.
Malcolm Young has been the quiet motivator and boss of the band for four decades, co-writing nearly all of AC/DC's classics, and making sure nothing happened to harm or damage the band's reputation, or disappoint the fans who've stuck by them for decades.
His passion for the band and its music, and integrity, were so intense, back in the 1970s he used to have fistfights with his younger brother, Angus, in the studio, when disagreements about a sound or riff couldn't be resolved. Proper punch-ups, teeth were lost, blood was drawn.
So that's it. AC/DC are coming to an end.
But what a career. AC/DC set out to conquer the world, and they did it, multiple times. Even the death of singer Bon Scott barely slowed them down, and only slightly delayed recording sessions for Back In Black.
Back In Black is still one of the biggest-selling albums in rock history, and AC/DC have easily sold more than 180 million albums, and probably half as many singles and DVDs and videos and special edition packages. They've influenced pretty much every hard rock, heavy rock and heavy metal band that has followed in their wake, including Nirvana, Metallica, you name them, they probably grew up loving AC/DC. And AC/DC are still in the record books for one of the biggest live audiences in rock history, playing to more than 1.6 million people in Moscow, in 1991. They were invited to play by the youth of Russia, who grew up on AC/DC bootlegs, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The band have been written off by critics, numerous times, but they stuck to their guns and beliefs and never compromised their sound. They were rarely, almost never, tempted by the musical fads that came and went over the decades. They dabbled in glam rock at the start of their career, but that barely lasted through the recording sessions of their debut album. Their fans wanted rock n roll, heavy rock, they could rely on, and that's what AC/DC delivered, across more than 14 albums, and numerous live-in-concert releases.
Malcolm Young never gave up on his belief that 1950s and 1960s rock n roll was rarely bettered, and he used the riffs and rhythms of black blues players as the basis for AC/DC's sound. He's also cited The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards as a key influence, and talks about that influence in the below interview.
The secret to Malcolm's playing, as Guitar Magazine explained, was open chords with the amps turned down, not up, and mics shoved right up close to capture all the details. He didn't churn out huge rock riffs through blasting amplifiers, his playing, and magic, is much more subtle than that, despite the rawness of the early studio albums.
I still reckon AC/DC's 2008 album Black Ice was amongst the best they made, right up their with Back In Back and Highway To Hell (their last album with Bon Scott), it's absolutely killer, and filled with excellent playing, classic AC/DC songs about rock n roll and some of Brian Johnson's better vocal performances. It's also pretty much a live-in-the-studio album, with minimal overdubs, just like they did it back in the Alberts Studio days in the mid-1970s.
Malcolm's work on Black Ice, in particular, is superb, not just the detail of his playing, but also his songwriting with brother Angus. They worked on the writing of the Black Ice songs for five years, and gave themselves the time to get it right. They nailed every single one, and Black Ice became the 2nd highest selling album of 2008.
Rock N Roll Dream, from Black Ice, is everything AC/DC was about. They wanted the rock n' roll dream, they got it, then they lived it.
"And it could be the very last time..."
Malcolm Young and his family have now returned to Australia. Everyone is hoping he makes a recovery, but close friends are saying the situation is not looking good, right now. Things may change. We can hope they change, and Malcolm recovers.
Instead of linking to an AC/DC classic, most of which you've probably heard a thousand times already, here's a rare treat instead - Malcolm Young's rhythm guitar from Let There Be Rock, way back in 1976.
It is understood Young returned to Sydney with his family before
Christmas and was having in-home care at his house in East Balmain. He
is now said to be having difficulty remembering familiar faces and
having increasing problems communicating.
"His memory loss is so bad it is consistent with Alzheimers
or dementia although we do not know that is what it is. There has been
talk about cancer too."
The response online, and on radio, to news of Malcolm's illness has been massive. If AC/DC were in any doubt that millions of people around the world still love and respect their music, and their skills and talent at songwriting, they should wonder no more.
AC/DC are still the biggest rock band in the world, with devoted fans across three generations and from just about about country. Nobody can really believe it.
UPDATE: Brian Johnson has spoken to the UK Telegraph. He said members of the band are still planning to meet in the studio in May, "and have a plonk." On the future of AC/DC, he said:
Cyclone Ita is now expected to hit Far North Queensland as a Category 5 storm, winds of 280kmh predicted, with a predicted path of destruction that could spread from Cooktown to Cairns.
Still a chance it can blow out a bit, and reduce, before making landfall Friday night, April 11, or lose some of its power when it starts crossing the coast. Maybe. Hopefully. But it's looking like it's going to wreak some terrible destruction and kill people before it's done.
Here's how the storm looked from satellites on Thursday afternoon:
This is the predicted path of Cyclone Ita late Thursday afternoon.
The infamous boogie board bag and 4 kilos of cannabis
As Schapelle Corby gets closer to release from jail, here's a recap of one of the most extraordinary stories that emerged during Corby's trial. It was covered briefly by the media, and soon forgotten.
June, 1997.
This is a true story, but we'll call them Lisa and Colin. Lisa and Colin lived in Melbourne. They’d been working too hard and Melbourne had been too wet and too grey. They decided they needed a holiday. Like hundreds of thousands of other young Australians each year, Colin and Lisa decided Bali was just the ticket. A short flight there and back, cheap airfares, endless sunshine, tropical heat and all those bars and nightclubs and endless miles of white sandy beaches. They asked each other a simple question. What could be more fun and more relaxing than two weeks in paradise? Nothing. Colin and Lisa flew out of Melbourne and into Bali. They grabbed their bags off the luggage carousel at Denpasar Airport, checked through Customs and went straight to their hotel room. Colin lifted the bags onto the bed so Lisa could start the unpacking while he headed to the toilet. Lisa zipped open the first bag and looked inside. She froze. Tucked snugly between the neatly folded clothes was a fat brick of compressed cannabis, tightly bound in plastic wrap. The brick was the size of a loaf of bread. Oh, shit... Lisa yelled for her husband. “Colin? Colin!” When Colin rushed back into the bedroom and saw what Lisa was holding in her hands he thought for a moment he might actually be dreaming. This simply couldn’t be happening. Colin wasn’t an idiot, he read newspapers, he watched television, he’d seen the movies about this kind of thing, he knew what the punishment was for being busted in Bali with a big fat brick of cannabis. Drug traffickers got the death sentence. Signs all over the airport they had just passed through told him that. It didn’t matter that Colin and Lisa had no idea where the cannabis had come from, all that mattered was that it was in this hotel room with them, it was in their possession. The death sentence. And Colin knew what that meant. Death by firing squad. For him and for Lisa. Panic hit him like ice water in the face. Colin was smart, or smart enough. He knew he had to make immediate contact with an Australian official in Bali, someone who could tell what the fuck they were supposed to do. He had to tell an Australian official what they had found in their luggage before the Indonesian police found out. Colin located the number of the Australian Consulate and dialled with trembling fingers. When he finally got through to someone at the Consulate and explained what had just gone down he was placed on hold, for long minutes. An Australian consulate staff member eventually came onto the line. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" "Well," Colin said, "give me the good news." The voice laughed, "There isn't any." Colin swallowed hard. "What's the bad news then?" The voice that was supposed to help fix everything then told Colin something incredible, something impossible to believe. "You get caught with that mate,” the voice said, “and you'll be eating nasi goreng in jail here for the rest of your life." Colin was shocked. Stunned. What the fuck is going on here? "Here's what you do," the consulate staff member told him, "flush it down the toilet. Break it up and flush it down the toilet, now. Get it out of your possession and do not, under any circumstances at all, do not make contact with the Indonesian authorities." So that was it. Colin hung up and told his wife. She was as dumbfounded by the advice given as Colin was. But he had to do it. And he had to do it now. Colin grabbed the cannabis loaf and stripped off the plastic wrap as he lurched into the bathroom. The rich smell of the tightly compressed cannabis heads hit his nose and swirled his brain. The fumes was breathtaking. With trembling fingers Colin broke up a third of the brick and dropped the fat clumps into the toilet bowl. Not too much at a time, he had to be careful. If he tried to flush it all it might block up the toilet, and when the plumber came and found out what had caused the blockage.... Colin flushed the first lot and looked down. Oh, shit... Some of it had been flushed away but the rest was still there, bobbing away, and there was a ring of cannabis detritus and resin around the bowl. He flushed again, and then again, but the water wouldn’t get rid of it all. There was always something left, something obviously suspicious floating there, or glued to the porcelin. Colin knew he couldn't take the remaining brick of cannabis downstairs, that would an act of sheer lunacy. There could be Indonesian police down in the foyer, right now, tipped off or something, waiting to bust him. But then another thought hit Colin and the rest of the blood drained from his legs, they nearly buckled beneath him. Worse, much worse than the cops. Right now, down in the foyer, there might be the people who owned this cannabis, asking about him and Lisa, or lying in wait. The people who missed the pick-up at the airport could have followed them back to this hotel, they could be on their way up right now.... Colin was freaking himself out with such thoughts. The smell of cannabis resin in the room was cloying. He dashed for the balcony. He looked around, tried to contain his panic, but there was nowhere to hide all this cannabis. He couldn’t just throw it off the balcony. What was he going to do? Colin looked closer at the little garden that was the main feature of the balcony. He had a brainwave. While Lisa watched on and urged him to hurry, Colin tore the fat half brick of cannabis heads into small clumps and spread them across the balcony’s garden. He sprinkled the cannabis amongst the fallen leaves, he buried long fat heads that his sticky, trembling fingers couldn’t break into pieces deep down into the soil. “Hurry up!” Lisa cried as she watched the door of the hotel room, thinking at any moment it would be broken down and Indonesian police would come charging in. Colin hurried. And then it was done. Colin and Lisa looked the garden over carefully. Was anything suspicious still visible? No. Unless someone looked real close, and dug amongst the garden's dirt, nobody was going to notice there was more than a kilo of cannabis heads buried and scattered. That rich, pungent smell lingered still but the heat of the day and the cooler evening breeze to come would take care of that. Colin and Lisa looked at each other, laughed nervously. They thought they would be safe now. All the evidence that could have seen them both shot through the chest with six bullets each had been destroyed. They were relieved the minutes of high panic were over, now their holiday could begin. And they had one hell of a travellers tale to tell once they got safely back to Melbourne. But for years afterwards their minds were still full of questions. How often did travellers like them find fat bricks of cannabis tucked neatly away in their luggage? Who, with access to their luggage, would have put it there in the first place? And why. So many whys. Why had the Australian consulate official been so downright casual about what Colin had told him? And why hadn’t the official come to the hotel to help them out? How often did the Australian consulate get such phone calls from Australian travellers who had suddenly found they had become unwilling drug mules somewhere on the way to Bali? Nobody from the Australian embassy or the government ever made contact with Lisa and Colin. Nobody ever questioned them about what had happened. There was no Australian Federal Police investigation, no phone call from the Department of Foreign Affairs to find out more. Years later Lisa and Colin would still, occasionally, talk about their experience and ask each other, “What the hell was that all about?” And they remained haunted by the lingering questions, the what-ifs. What if they hadn’t found the cannabis in their luggage when they did? What if the people who owned the drugs had come to try and get them back? What if their hotel room had been raided by the Indonesian police? What if someone at the Customs desk of Denpasar Airport had opened the bag after they picked it up from the luggage carousel and had found that brick of cannabis? Would they be in a Bali jail still? Would they now be waiting on death row, still trying to get judges to believe that they really were innocent? That they didn’t know how all that cannabis got into their luggage? Would anyone believe them? - This is a chapter from a book draft I wrote in 2006 about the Schapelle Corby saga. I'll be publishing excerpts from it here over the next few weeks.
