THE END OF AC/DC? NOT YET. ROCK IN PEACE GEORGE AND MALCOLM YOUNG

Brothers Malcolm Young, George Young and Angus Young, 2012 (photo from Facebook)

By Darryl Mason

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. 

The AC/DC-Angels Intersection (1975-1976)

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.

And now, just a 25 second tease: 

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iKOlC8hNMZA" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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.

Remix of 'Watch Her Do It Now'



Remix of 'Goodbye Jane'



More To Come. The story of AC/DC is not yet done.

1975-1976: The AC/DC-Angels Intersection

'The Last Original Member Of A Legendary Band' 

 
NOV 15, 2014: Angus Young Reveals Brother Malcolm Has Been Suffering Symptoms Of Dementia Since 2008, Kept Touring, Co-Wrote Riffs On New Album


SEPT 26, 2014 LATEST NEWS: Malcolm Young Officially Retires From AC/DC, New AC/DC Album 'Rock Or Bust' Announced For Late Nov Release, Track Listing Here


AC/DC Latest News, April 19: Brian Johnson Confirms AC/DC Future Still In Doubt - "I Don't Know What Happens Next" 


By Darryl Mason

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.


----------------------------------------------------

ORIGINAL STORY FROM April 15, 2014 BELOW:


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.



Updates to follow

1975-1976: The AC/DC-Angels Intersection 


UPDATE:

Mark Gable, from The Choirboys, provides another confirmation on the sad news about Malcolm Young:

"That is true, Malcolm is sick.

"From what I understand, and it's even been confirmed in part by his son Ross (Young), that it would appear Malcolm is unable to perform anymore.

"It's not just that he is unwell, it's that it is quite serious. It will constitute that he definitely won't be able to perform live.

"He will probably not be able to record."

An official comment/announcement from AC/DC management is still expected today.

Fairfax media claims the following is from a "family source":

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:

"I wouldn't like to say anything either way about the future. I'm not ruling anything out. '

That might be the last we hear from anyone in AC/DC for now about a new album, or tour, or Malcolm Young's illness, for now. Sounds like there won't be a media conference, and the studio sessions will be to see if anyone comes up with new songs and if they're worth recording. We can only hope.

UPDATE: AC/DC have officially confirmed Malcolm Young will have to "take a break" from the band due to ill health, rest of the band will try to "make new music." Click for the full story
 
'The Last Original Member Of A Legendary Band' 

More Rock Writing From Darryl Mason Here - Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Buckley, Silverchair, Kyuss

From The Orstrahyun archive:

When AC/DC Were Glam

AC/DC: The Product

AC/DC: Kings Of Father's Day

2008: AC/DC - The Musical?

Cyclone Ita Prepares To Smash Far North Queensland

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.

And the infrared view:

Updates to follow.

Massive Unexplained 'S' Formation Appears on WA Radar

For now, at least, the appearance on Bureau of Meteorology radar of a giant 'S' off the coast of Western Australian is unexplained.

The BoM:

There's no cloud, there's nothing to produce a rain echo, ...which we do see a lot, but not this particular shape," he said.

"They don't take on S shapes and things like that."

ABC News asked the Department of Defence if the 'S' has anything to do with them. No comment.

This isn't the first time bizarre looking things have shown up on BoM radar. Check out these giant discs from 2010. Here's just one:

If that catches your interest, check out this:

Australia's Bermuda Triangle? Or Is It Australia's Area 51?

Bizarre Discs Appear On Bureau Of Meteorology Over 3 States

A Remarkable, Almost Forgotten Story About Drugs Found In A Bag In Bali

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.

Murdoch Media Not Pro-Murdoch Claims Murdoch Editor

Nick Cater, senior editor at The Australian, went on ABC's QandA panel last night and made hilarious claim about Rupert Murdoch's The Australian:

"...some may think the editorial judgement may be affected by the company's commercial interest. In my 24 years at (Murdoch newspapers) that was never the case."

He's saying Murdoch's The Australian has never let the commercial interests of Murdoch's NewsCorp (formerly News Limited) impact on the stories its editors publish, or the editorial line taken when publishing stories.

No, that would never happen.

Not once in the past 24 years, according to Nick Cater.

Here's just two examples of The Australian crowding its front pages with 'editorial judgements' that clearly push and promote pro-Murdoch commercial interests, or strike back against those that don't.

An absurd hyping of Murdoch media's new business model from a few years ago, while they were also firing hundreds of journalists and staff:

And the absolute bitterness of The Australian on clear display when Murdoch co-owned Foxtel didn't win a $250 million government contract for the Australia Network: 

Nope, no pushing of, or defending, Murdoch's commercial interests there. None at all.

Nick Cater said so.

How he managed to make that claim without giggling, or blushing, is remarkable.

Must be those decades of working for Rupert Murdoch.

And to further his claims that the Murdoch media are not biased, Nick Cater took a moment in the same QandA episode to threaten a Labor politician with "war" :

image via @KieraGorden

You Don't Commission A Poll When You Don't Want To Hear The Results

Rupert Murdoch's The Australian newspaper couldn't commission Newspolls fast enough when Tony Abbott and the Liberal/Nationals coalition were riding high. Once a fortnight was standard. But when they got really excited, it was every week, sometimes twice a week.

But as the reality of Tony Abbott as prime minister settles over Australia, and unsettles Australians, The Australian newspaper has decided it really don't want to know what Australians think, anymore.

Below is the last Newspoll commissioned by The Australian newspaper, eight whole whole weeks ago. Since then nothing. Did The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell see something in the last Newspoll results he didn't like? Let's take a look:

Oh. The Australian Labor Party was leading the Abbott government by a healthy 2PP margin.

Oh.

And here's a snapshot of how the Abbott government has delivered for Australian families, after just five months of government. Image via @GeeksRulz

PM Abbott's 'Promises Delivered' Video Banned By YouTube For "Deceptive Content", His Channel Suspended

By Darryl Mason

In the world of Social Media Fails, and in politics there has been plenty, it's pretty hard to top this.

Here's what happened.

The Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, posts a video to YouTube boasting of how "we've delivered on our promises" and spends a lot of the time pretty much calm-ranting about "illegal" asylum seekers.

YouTube decides the video is "deceptive content" and blocks anyone from viewing it. For hours, the boast about 'promises delivered' and YouTube's denial sits there on the linked video right on PM Abbott's Twitter feed, while the below image is tweeted and Facebooked across the planet, to much amusement and mockery.

Is YouTube calling PM Abbott a liar for claiming he's delivered on his promises, or did they can the vid because in the vid he called aslyum seekers "illegals" when international law decrees they are most certainly not?

This screengrab originally posted on Twitter by @Mumbrella

The above tweet is then deleted from PM Tony Abbott's Twitter feed. Meanwhile, YouTube suspends Tony Abbott's entire YouTube channel.

Screengrab via Reddit

That's right. The Australian prime minister has had his YouTube channel removed, after a review by YouTube.

And it's not like YouTube does such things on a whim, anymore. They're very clear in guidelines about why they would take such drastic action:

"When a video gets flagged as inappropriate, we review the video to determine whether it violates our Terms of Use—flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the system. If we remove your video after reviewing it, you can assume that we removed it purposefully, and you should take our warning notification seriously."

Someone, or presumably more than one person, at YouTube looked at Tony Abbott's 'Achievements' video, decided it was "deceptive" and made a decision to have it removed and the prime minister's account suspended.

Remarkable.

Keep up the "good work", Tony.


 Tony Abbott: 'May I Compare John Howard To The Lord?'

2008: Tony Abbott - The Secret Of Great Comedy

2009: Tony Abbott on 'Those Damned Kids'

When Tony Abbott Lifted A Good Line From This Blog

Tony Abbott: Bible Classes Should Be Compulsory For All Students

The Australian editor Chris Mitchell: 'I Love The Sydney Morning Herald'

The Daily Telegraph's editor Paul Whittaker, Rupert Murdoch and The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell (right)

Well this was unexpected. The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell, that is the newspaper that regularly feasts upon the alleged fetid "Leftism" of Fairfax media actually believes The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are fantastic newspapers.

Via Mumbrella:

Chris Mitchell: "...the Saturday Age and SMH...remain very strong products with breaking news, a colour magazine, good arts and sport coverage, very strong business sections and lots of heavyweight opinion from people who really move national debate."

Eh? What could have motivated Mitchell to sing the praises of The Australian's key rival in this age of rapidly declining newspaper circulations?

The arrival of a third Saturday newspaper, called The Saturday Paper.

So incensed are Mitchell and Fairfax's Gary Linnell they have supplied some absolutely choice quotes to Mumbrella, desperately trying to hose down any interest The Saturday Paper might be generating.

This quote from Linnell is pure gold, and pretty much sums up far too much commentary content in Murdoch and Fairfax newspapers, beautifully so:

 "I desperately hope it doesn’t end up being a boring collection of opinion writers sifting through each others’ navel lint..."

Mumbrella has the full story here.


Rupert Murdoch Admits He Does Tell His Media What To Print And Who To Back

2007: The Australian Editor Chris Mitchell Claims Pro-Peace Aussies Hate Hearing Less Iraqis Are Being Slaughtered

Chris Mitchell's War On Australian Bloggers

The Australian's Obsession With Twitter Is Just Plain Stupid

Slow Mo Croc Porn

Beautiful slo-mo of saltwater crocodiles in action, by Allen Dixon at NT's Crocodile Cove. Quite hypnotic:

Aboriginal Martial Arts 'Coreeda' Based On World's Oldest Martial Arts?

'Coreeda' is being used to control aggression in young people in Western New South Wales, but it's also good for fitness, fun and community ties:

Based on Aboriginal combat, the ancient martial art of Coreeda has played a crucial role in controlling hostility for thousands of years.

Gavin Dickson of the Coreeda Association of Australia is using this art form to similarly manage the aggression among kids on Mornington Island.

He said the children often resorted to violence and experienced aggression as a result of boredom.

"We were invited to Mornington Island to try and utilise the sport to help the kids in town manage aggression and inspire them towards traditional culture," Mr Dickson said.

 Great background story from Living Black:
  

Some more background:

"The legendary Dreaming account of how Coreeda first came into being was told in the Ngiyampaa Nation of Western NSW and is about a lizard man named Beereun, who was told by a giant snake to watch the Red Kangaroo bucks so he could learn how to fight without weapons. He then brought these fighting techniques back to his clan and initiated a wrestling tournament as an important peace-keeping ceremony, which instigated an era of great prosperity for the Ngiyampaa people.


Based on the dating of rock art at sites like Mt Grenfell near Cobar in Western NSW, it is estimated this first Coreeda tournament began over 10,000 years ago, making Coreeda one of the oldest documented styles of Folk Wrestling in the world"

More at the Coreeda Association here

More Australians Die From Heatwaves Than From Fire And Floods Combined

 How crazy are the heatwave extremes now frying West Australia, South Australia and Victoria? Well, the Northern Territory News is claiming Darwin is "chilly" and just the place to "beat the heat":

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The number of heatwave-related deaths in Australia’s major cities is set to quadruple by mid-century, research shows.

There will be more than 2000 heat-related fatalities in 2050 compared with about 500 recorded in 2011, according to a federal government report.

The meteorological bullet will hit Brisbane and Perth the hardest, with deaths predicted to climb to nearly 800 in each city by 2050, compared with less than 200 in 2011.

Launching the State of Australian Cities Report on Tuesday, Deputy Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said climate change, population growth and the ageing population would all contribute to the growing death toll.

‘The overriding evidence is that our cities are getting hotter,’’ Mr Albanese told reporters in Sydney.

‘‘Heatwaves are our biggest national killer, well ahead of fire and floods.

‘‘This has particular relevance as our population ages.‘‘City residents are more vulnerable because of the Heat Island Effect (HIE) ... which can add up to four degrees to temperatures.’’

The report shows that heatwaves in the major cities are more deadly than other natural disasters, causing 2887 deaths since 1890.

This is more than bushfires (843), cyclones (935), earthquakes (13), floods (453) and severe storms (124) combined.

More than 400 people died in Melbourne and Adelaide alone from the 2009 heatwave in southeast Australia.The 1939 and 1895 heatwaves also caused more than 400 fatalities.

Here's a graphic of Australia's hottest days on record: 

 

 

 

Robin Williams On Australians: "I Hate Them, They're So Smug In Their Board Shorts"

Comedian Robin Williams knows more about Australia than most Australians might think. He practically lived here, in a beach house on the Central Coast, for many years during the 1980s. This gave him opportunities to make unannounced appearances at Sydney stand-up comedy venues, like The Harold Park Hotel. During one of these shows, he improvised about Australian men and culture for more than 20 minutes, and it was absolutely brilliant.

Williams is still riffing on Australia, in his new show The Crazy Ones about a NYC advertising agency:

In a recent episode, he pitched a campaign to officials of the Australian Tourist Board, who kept telling him to “dumb it down”.

Williams improvised this aside to his colleagues: “Oh God how I hate them. They’re so smug in their board shorts. And that accent. It’s like sand in your ears. Gday mate, no worries, put another shrimp on the barbie, Sheila this is Bruce. Their two dollar coin is smaller than their one dollar coin. Every single animal down there can kill you. And it takes forever to dry your hair.”

One of his colleagues protested that “they gave us Naomi Watts”. Williams replied:  “They also gave us The Wiggles, which are only enjoyable if you’re high. What kind of message is that for kids?”.

Williams admits his only experience of Australia was a drinkathon, after which “I woke up in a speedo on a beach in Perth, being pulled into the bush by an eastern grey kangaroo. An Aboriginal woman fought him off and I was with her for a while. There’s more, but I don’t want to bore you.”

Eastern grey kangaroo? In Perth?

 

Williams sparked a mini-controversy in 2010 when he called Australians "rednecks":

PM Tony Abbott On Australia's Booze And Violence Culture

Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott writes for the Daily Telegraph, in a front page "exclusive" about Sydney's drunken street violence culture, and reveals details of his personal opinions about alcohol and it's role in Australian society that may surprise some:

"...there's a world of difference between having two or three drinks a night and occasionally a bit more on a Saturday night and this new binge culture which sees young people drinking nothing from one week to the next and then, when they drink, not knowing when or how to stop."

So it's not drinking, it's not knowing how to, well, hold your piss (as Australians used to say).


Here's the full piece by PM Abbott:

Like most Australians, I enjoy a drink on social occasions.

However, as a father and as a citizen, I'm appalled by the violent binge drinking culture that now seems so prevalent, especially at "hot spots" in our big cities.
I'm sick of the fact that alcohol-fuelled violence has turned places that should be entertainment precincts into "no-go zones".

Hospital emergency departments should not be overflowing with the victims of substance abuse every Friday and Saturday night. The media should not be full of stories about the latest casualties from our own streets.
 
We've got two problems. The first problem is the binge drinking culture which has become all too prevalent among youngsters over the last couple of decades. I'm realistic enough to know that young people won't always be perfect and that making mistakes along the way is a normal part of growing up.
I certainly made a few mistakes as a younger man and have got into some embarrassing situations.

However, there's a world of difference between having two or three drinks a night and occasionally a bit more on a Saturday night and this new binge culture which sees young people drinking nothing from one week to the next and then, when they drink, not knowing when or how to stop.

The second problem is the rise of the disturbed individual who goes out looking not for a fight but for a victim.

We are seeing these king-hits, or coward punches as they are now being called. They are random acts of unprovoked, gratuitous violence.

Inevitably the target is an individual quietly getting on with life. This is a vicious, horrible change.

Brutal people, often with a history of violence, are getting it into their heads to pick on a vulnerable individual. It is utterly cowardly. It's brutal, it's gratuitous, it's utterly unprovoked and it should be dealt with very severely by the police and the courts.

It is well known that as a university student I played rugby and boxed. Boxing taught me many things, including the power of a single punch. If there's danger from a single punch in a boxing ring, it is multiplied exponentially when it's delivered to an unsuspecting or unprepared victim on a concrete footpath, or in a crowded pub or club.

Tragically, it's not just one young life that is destroyed but many. In an instant, one person becomes a victim, another a criminal - and the lives of their families are irrevocably damaged.

As Prime Minister I accept that the fundamental responsibility in this area lies with state governments. It's not just Barry O'Farrell's problem, it's an issue that communities are facing in suburbs and regional centres across Australia.

While we all want to see the courts absolutely throw the book at people who perpetrate this kind of gratuitous, unprovoked violence, we have to recognise that courts can act only after a crime. The challenge for officialdom at every level, for the police, for pubs and clubs as well as for parents and young people is to tackle the binge drinking culture and the violent behaviour that is accompanying it.

We also have to identify if drugs like steroids are also contributing to this outbreak of violent behaviour. There is enough anecdotal evidence from police and our emergency rooms that what we are seeing is not fuelled by alcohol alone. Alcohol is consumed along with other drugs such as ice and other amphetamines.

We need to tackle this issue in a comprehensive and considered way. We don't need kneejerk reactions and stunts that give the illusion of action, but don't make any real, lasting difference.

We need community solutions between police, local government, pubs and clubs and residents. Some communities have already demonstrated that progress can be made and many pubs, clubs and alcohol providers have discovered it is better to solve a problem and be part of the solution, than have a solution imposed on them.

We have to approach this in a way that makes our streets safer. That means resisting the idea one single action will change everything; that one group is responsible for this problem or one politician has the answer or is the cause. While this is not an easy area, with much control in the hands of state and local governments, the Commonwealth stands ready to work with the states, parents and communities. to tackle this scourge.

Alcohol has and always will be part of life in our country - and most countries. Our challenge is to get the balance right.

Abbott is giving a free pass to alcohol profiteers, saying alcohol is a part of Australian society, and that's it. Is this really the right message to be sending out to youth? It's OK to drink 20 or more alcholic beverages a week, as long as you learn how to hold your piss?

He is also claiming that alcohol alone might not be responsible for drunken rages, and while that may be true, the proof is not in yet. Violent idiots are getting pissed and attacking innocent people. This was happening long before steroids or amphetamines infiltrated Australian culture.

The rest of the story is here

Education Minister Christopher Pyne Warms Up For His Rewriting Of History Curriculum

This piece written by federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne was paywalled by The Australian. Here is is for free:

A robust, relevant and up-to-date Australian Curriculum is essential to improve the quality of education of all school students.

The Australian government wants a curriculum that delivers what students need for their future, what parents want and what the nation requires in our increasingly competitive and globalised world.

It must be both content-rich and, importantly, focus on the 21st-century skills of critical thinking, team work, problem solving, creativity, analytic reasoning and communication.

It must help students to be the best they can be. It must be based on high standards and high expectations for all students.

A modern and relevant curriculum must also be one that teachers are excited to teach.

More than anything else, we want to take the politics out of this issue. What really matters to students and parents is whether the curriculum is the best possible that we can create.

That means a curriculum that is balanced in its content, free of partisan bias and deals with real-world issues.

But that doesn't mean the curriculum should be dull. Australia needs a curriculum that helps teachers to breathe life into a child's time at school, one that challenges students and assists them to make the right choices for their future.

It means a curriculum that is dynamic and evolves as necessary while maintaining an independent, robust foundation so it is effective in meeting student needs.

A small nation like Australia must develop a curriculum that is national in breadth, rigorous in content, flexible and innovative in delivery and is a key driver in our goal to improve genuine education quality results for all Australian students. We cannot afford to do otherwise.

Working with the state and territory governments, the Howard government got the ball rolling. The previous government continued this work and now it is timely to review the content of the curriculum to take into account the many views expressed so far.

In particular, concerns have been raised about the history curriculum not recognising the legacy of Western civilisation and not giving important events in Australia's history and culture the prominence they deserve, such as Anzac Day.

Today, I am announcing the appointment of Ken Wiltshire AO and Kevin Donnelly to review the Australian Curriculum so we develop and implement a curriculum that is on par with the world's best.
Between them, Professor Wiltshire and Dr Donnelly have enormous experience in education and improving the performance of educational systems.

The time is right to bring this exceptional expertise and insight to bear on examining the robustness, independence and balance of the Australian Curriculum. They will do this by evaluating both the process of its development and the content.

I have asked them to gather the views of parents, state and territory governments and educators to inform their analysis.

I am excited about putting the Australian Curriculum on a robust and sustainable path, but this is just one aspect of how we are putting students first in our education policies.

In his new year message, the Prime Minister reminded us that we are a strong, resilient and smart people, and that the strength of our country lies in the willingness of Australians to improve their own lives by "having a go".

That's why the two principles I always come back to are putting students first and implementing what works.

There's a great deal of research that shows higher school achievement depends on teacher quality, school autonomy, a robust curriculum and parental engagement in their child's education.

Adequate funding for schools is obviously necessary, but increasing funding should never be an end in itself.

Countries that spend a high proportion of their GDP on education do not automatically produce high-performing education systems.

So this year I will be working hard with the states and territories to ensure our children are getting a high-quality, world-class education by focusing on those four key areas of teacher quality, principal autonomy, parental engagement and strengthening the curriculum.

I'll be focusing on these areas because they will make a real difference to students and their education.

Professor Wiltshire and Dr Donnelly have a great responsibility to help the government ensure that what we are teaching our children is true, worthwhile and meaningful.

"And into this deadly crevice they fed their heroic, young obedient populations"

 Personally, and coming from an old Australian family that had more than a few members serve during World War I, I think Paul Keating's 2013 "controversial" Remembrance Day speech was one of the finest ever given on the awful human disaster that robbed Australian of so many young men,  and left us saddled with an Imperial War debt in the hundreds of millions of pounds. And for what?

Paul Keating, November 11, 2013:

Nine months from now, one hundred years ago, the horror of all ages came together to open the curtain on mankind's greatest century of violence the twentieth century.

What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.

Modern weaponry, mass conscription and indefatigable valour produced a cauldron of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen.

The statesmen who had set these forces in motion had never assumed that their conflict might be limited only by the scale of their young populations. They failed to understand how developing industrial organisation, railways, science and rising productive capacity rendered almost inexhaustible the ability of each to deliver the death blow and keep on delivering it.

The generals, especially the Allied ones, knew through military training that not since the Napoleonic Wars had frontal attacks been effective certainly not against the foil of barbed wire fortified by the modern machine gun. Yet, a line of trenches was dug, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps - a front which denied commanders the opportunity of that classic military manoeuvre - the turning flank and encirclement. This denied, the line was fortified by major cannon and howitzers, while
the generals fell back on the only policy left to them - the policy of exhaustion.

And into this deadly crevice they fed their heroic, young obedient populations.

The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism. A complex interplay of nation state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.

The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.

But at the end of the century, from the shadows, a new light emerged. Europe turned its back on the nation state to favour a greater European construct. Individual loyalties are now directed from nationalist obsessions toward an amorphous whole and to institutions unlikely to garner a popular base. It is difficult to imagine these days, young Europeans going into combat for the European Commission, or at a stretch, the European Parliament.

This advent means that European leaders are no longer in a position to ask or demand the sacrifices which once attended their errant foreign policies. A century beyond Armageddon, young men and women are now freed from that kind of tyranny.

The virulent European disease of cultural nationalism and ethnic atavism not only destroyed Europe, it destroyed the equilibrium of the world.

While a century ago Australia was an outreach of European civilisation, here we had set about constructing an image of ourselves, free of the racial hatreds and contempts which characterised European society.

Though White Australia institutionalised a policy of bias to Caucasians; within Australia we were moving through the processes of our federation to new ideas of ourselves. Notions of equality and fairness suffrage for women, a universal living wage, support in old age, a sense of inclusive
patriotism.

And our sense of nation brought new resonances; Australian stories, poetry and ideas of our Australian-ness. We even developed a celebratory decorative style in our architecture and named that Federation. We had crystallised a good idea of ourselves and had begun to break free of the dismal legacy of Europe's ethnic stigmatisation and social stratification.

By 1915 we had no need to re-affirm our European heritage at the price of being dragged to a European holocaust. We had escaped that mire, both sociologically and geographically. But out of loyalty to imperial Britain, we returned to Europe's killing fields to decide the status of
Germany, a question which should earlier have been settled by foresight and statecraft.

Those bloody battles in Flanders, on the Western Front and at Gallipoli nevertheless distinguished us, demonstrating what we were made of. Our embrace of a new sense of human values and relationships through these events, gave substance to what is now the Anzac tradition. For whatever claims Britain and its empire had on those who served and died on the Western Front and at Gallipoli, the primary claim remained Australia's.

Those Australians fought and died not in defence of some old world notion of competing empires and territorial conquests but for the new world the one they belonged to and hoped to return to.

This is why Australia was never in need of any redemption at Gallipoli, any more than it was in need of one at Kokoda thirty years later. There was nothing missing in our young nation or our idea of it that required the martial baptism of a European cataclysm to legitimise us.

What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity. We liked the lesson about supposedly ordinary people; we liked finding that they were not ordinary at all. Despite the fact that the military campaigns were shockingly flawed and incompetently executed, those ordinary people distinguished themselves by their latent nobility.

The unknown Australian soldier interred in this memorial reminds us of these lessons as much as he reminds us of the more than 100,000 Australians lost to us by war.

I regard as a singular honour, the decision by the Council of the War Memorial to permanently display an engraving of the oration I gave as Prime Minister at the funeral service of the unknown Australian soldier on 11 November 1993. And to have some words from that oration inscribed
on that hallowed tomb. My time as Prime Minister spanned the period of the Pacific War, 1941 to 1945, fifty years on. It caused me to visit the sites of our military action from Papua New Guinea through to Thailand. It made me think much and write about the various episodes of conflict,
of the bravery and suffering of Australian service men and women during the Second World War.

This context sharpened the memory and essence of the Anzac legend, within which it was decided to inter an unnamed, unknown Australian soldier in the Memorial's Hall of Memory.

Indeed, the War Memorial's then director, Brendan Kelson and his deputy, Michael McKiernan, were instrumental in the process that led to the interment of the soldier.

The words the Memorial enshrines today were written for that occasion.

When Don Watson and I first discussed the writing of it, we both felt the poignancy of the occasion. My uncle, William Keating, had died in 1945 on the death march from Sandakan to Ranau, while Don Watson's grandfather was twice wounded in Flanders after being infected with Spanish flu. He returned to Australia, never recovering from it.

The history of those two theatres of war had haunted each of our lives in differing yet similar ways.

I thought it important that the speech express with clarity, simple notions of understanding and appreciation that went in personal terms, such that we might have been speaking of a relative who had died in some contemporary calamity. Hence the notion that he was all of them yet one of us.

By his interment, I thought it important to say that this unknown Australian soldier would serve his country yet again. That his presence would give us a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian as well as serving to remind us of the sacrifice of the more than one hundred thousand men and women who never came home.

As Prime Minister, I was particularly pleased to bring these episodes of our history, especially the First and Second World Wars, into sharper relief. To remind us that the deeds of our men and women at war give us an opportunity to renew our belief in the country, while renewing our appreciation of their faith, loyalty and sacrifice.

The soul of a nation is the richer for it having been warmed by its stories and traditions. Yet its stories and traditions should not stifle or constrain its growth as it needs to adapt.

I am greatly heartened that so many young Australians find a sense of identity and purpose from the Anzac legend and from those Australian men and women who have fought in wars over the last hundred years. But the true commemoration of their lives, service and sacrifice is to understand that the essence of their motivation was their belief in all we had created here and our responsibility in continuing to improve it.

Homage to these people has to be homage to them and about them and not to some idealised or jingoist reduction of what their lives really meant.

One thing is certain: young Australians, like the young Europeans I mentioned earlier, can no longer be dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on the whim of so-called statesmen. They are fortunately too wise to the world to be cannon fodder of the kind their young forebears became: young innocents who had little or no choice.

Commemorating these events should make us even more wary of grand ambitions and grand alliances of the kind that fractured Europe and darkened the twentieth century. In the long shadow of these upheavals, we gather to ponder their meaning and to commemorate the values that shone in their wake: courage under pressure, ingenuity in adversity, bonds of mateship and above all, loyalty to Australia.

There is a lot more to be said about Australia's role, and sacrifice, in World War I, and boy, are we sure going to hear about it this year. All year long.

NINE months from now, one hundred years ago, the horror of all ages came together to open the curtain on mankind's greatest century of violence the twentieth century.

What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.
Modern weaponry, mass conscription and indefatigable valour produced a cauldron of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen.
The statesmen who had set these forces in motion had never assumed that their conflict might be limited only by the scale of their young populations. They failed to understand how developing industrial organisation, railways, science and rising productive capacity rendered almost inexhaustible the ability of each to deliver the death blow and keep on delivering it.
The generals, especially the Allied ones, knew through military training that not since the Napoleonic Wars had frontal attacks been effective certainly not against the foil of barbed wire fortified by the modern machine gun. Yet, a line of trenches was dug, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps - a front which denied commanders the opportunity of that classic military manoeuvre - the turning flank and encirclement. This denied, the line was fortified by major cannon and howitzers, while the generals fell back on the only policy left to them - the policy of exhaustion.
And into this deadly crevice they fed their heroic, young obedient populations.
The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism. A complex interplay of nation state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.
The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.
But at the end of the century, from the shadows, a new light emerged. Europe turned its back on the nation state to favour a greater European construct. Individual loyalties are now directed from nationalist obsessions toward an amorphous whole and to institutions unlikely to garner a popular base. It is difficult to imagine these days, young Europeans going into combat for the European Commission, or at a stretch, the European Parliament.
This advent means that European leaders are no longer in a position to ask or demand the sacrifices which once attended their errant foreign policies. A century beyond Armageddon, young men and women are now freed from that kind of tyranny.
The virulent European disease of cultural nationalism and ethnic atavism not only destroyed Europe, it destroyed the equilibrium of the world.
While a century ago Australia was an outreach of European civilisation, here we had set about constructing an image of ourselves, free of the racial hatreds and contempts which characterised European society. Though White Australia institutionalised a policy of bias to Caucasians; within Australia we were moving through the processes of our federation to new ideas of ourselves. Notions of equality and fairness suffrage for women, a universal living wage, support in old age, a sense of inclusive patriotism.
And our sense of nation brought new resonances; Australian stories, poetry and ideas of our Australian-ness. We even developed a celebratory decorative style in our architecture and named that Federation. We had crystallised a good idea of ourselves and had begun to break free of the dismal legacy of Europe's ethnic stigmatisation and social stratification.
By 1915 we had no need to re-affirm our European heritage at the price of being dragged to a European holocaust. We had escaped that mire, both sociologically and geographically. But out of loyalty to imperial Britain, we returned to Europe's killing fields to decide the status of Germany, a question which should earlier have been settled by foresight and statecraft.
Those bloody battles in Flanders, on the Western Front and at Gallipoli nevertheless distinguished us, demonstrating what we were made of. Our embrace of a new sense of human values and relationships through these events, gave substance to what is now the Anzac tradition. For whatever claims Britain and its empire had on those who served and died on the Western Front and at Gallipoli, the primary claim remained Australia's.
Those Australians fought and died not in defence of some old world notion of competing empires and territorial conquests but for the new world the one they belonged to and hoped to return to.
This is why Australia was never in need of any redemption at Gallipoli, any more than it was in need of one at Kokoda thirty years later. There was nothing missing in our young nation or our idea of it that required the martial baptism of a European cataclysm to legitimise us.
What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity. We liked the lesson about supposedly ordinary people; we liked finding that they were not ordinary at all. Despite the fact that the military campaigns were shockingly flawed and incompetently executed, those ordinary people distinguished themselves by their latent nobility.
The unknown Australian soldier interred in this memorial reminds us of these lessons as much as he reminds us of the more than 100,000 Australians lost to us by war.
I regard as a singular honour, the decision by the Council of the War Memorial to permanently display an engraving of the oration I gave as Prime Minister at the funeral service of the unknown Australian soldier on 11 November 1993. And to have some words from that oration inscribed on that hallowed tomb. My time as Prime Minister spanned the period of the Pacific War, 1941 to 1945, fifty years on. It caused me to visit the sites of our military action from Papua New Guinea through to Thailand. It made me think much and write about the various episodes of conflict, of the bravery and suffering of Australian service men and women during the Second World War.
This context sharpened the memory and essence of the Anzac legend, within which it was decided to inter an unnamed, unknown Australian soldier in the Memorial's Hall of Memory.
Indeed, the War Memorial's then director, Brendan Kelson and his deputy, Michael McKiernan, were instrumental in the process that led to the interment of the soldier.
The words the Memorial enshrines today were written for that occasion.
When Don Watson and I first discussed the writing of it, we both felt the poignancy of the occasion. My uncle, William Keating, had died in 1945 on the death march from Sandakan to Ranau, while Don Watson's grandfather was twice wounded in Flanders after being infected with Spanish flu. He returned to Australia, never recovering from it.
The history of those two theatres of war had haunted each of our lives in differing yet similar ways.
I thought it important that the speech express with clarity, simple notions of understanding and appreciation that went in personal terms, such that we might have been speaking of a relative who had died in some contemporary calamity. Hence the notion that he was all of them yet one of us.
By his interment, I thought it important to say that this unknown Australian soldier would serve his country yet again. That his presence would give us a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian as well as serving to remind us of the sacrifice of the more than one hundred thousand men and women who never came home.
As Prime Minister, I was particularly pleased to bring these episodes of our history, especially the First and Second World Wars, into sharper relief. To remind us that the deeds of our men and women at war give us an opportunity to renew our belief in the country, while renewing our appreciation of their faith, loyalty and sacrifice.
The soul of a nation is the richer for it having been warmed by its stories and traditions. Yet its stories and traditions should not stifle or constrain its growth as it needs to adapt.
I am greatly heartened that so many young Australians find a sense of identity and purpose from the Anzac legend and from those Australian men and women who have fought in wars over the last hundred years. But the true commemoration of their lives, service and sacrifice is to understand that the essence of their motivation was their belief in all we had created here and our responsibility in continuing to improve it.
Homage to these people has to be homage to them and about them and not to some idealised or jingoist reduction of what their lives really meant.
One thing is certain: young Australians, like the young Europeans I mentioned earlier, can no longer be dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on the whim of so-called statesmen. They are fortunately too wise to the world to be cannon fodder of the kind their young forebears became: young innocents who had little or no choice.
Commemorating these events should make us even more wary of grand ambitions and grand alliances of the kind that fractured Europe and darkened the twentieth century. In the long shadow of these upheavals, we gather to ponder their meaning and to commemorate the values that shone in their wake: courage under pressure, ingenuity in adversity, bonds of mateship and above all, loyalty to Australia.
- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/paul-keatings-remembrance-day-commemorative-address/story-e6frg8yo-1226757270589#sthash.16vxOzMf.dpuf

NINE months from now, one hundred years ago, the horror of all ages came together to open the curtain on mankind's greatest century of violence the twentieth century.

What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.
Modern weaponry, mass conscription and indefatigable valour produced a cauldron of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen.
The statesmen who had set these forces in motion had never assumed that their conflict might be limited only by the scale of their young populations. They failed to understand how developing industrial organisation, railways, science and rising productive capacity rendered almost inexhaustible the ability of each to deliver the death blow and keep on delivering it.
The generals, especially the Allied ones, knew through military training that not since the Napoleonic Wars had frontal attacks been effective certainly not against the foil of barbed wire fortified by the modern machine gun. Yet, a line of trenches was dug, from the English Channel to the Swiss Alps - a front which denied commanders the opportunity of that classic military manoeuvre - the turning flank and encirclement. This denied, the line was fortified by major cannon and howitzers, while the generals fell back on the only policy left to them - the policy of exhaustion.
And into this deadly crevice they fed their heroic, young obedient populations.
The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism. A complex interplay of nation state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.
The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.
But at the end of the century, from the shadows, a new light emerged. Europe turned its back on the nation state to favour a greater European construct. Individual loyalties are now directed from nationalist obsessions toward an amorphous whole and to institutions unlikely to garner a popular base. It is difficult to imagine these days, young Europeans going into combat for the European Commission, or at a stretch, the European Parliament.
This advent means that European leaders are no longer in a position to ask or demand the sacrifices which once attended their errant foreign policies. A century beyond Armageddon, young men and women are now freed from that kind of tyranny.
The virulent European disease of cultural nationalism and ethnic atavism not only destroyed Europe, it destroyed the equilibrium of the world.
While a century ago Australia was an outreach of European civilisation, here we had set about constructing an image of ourselves, free of the racial hatreds and contempts which characterised European society. Though White Australia institutionalised a policy of bias to Caucasians; within Australia we were moving through the processes of our federation to new ideas of ourselves. Notions of equality and fairness suffrage for women, a universal living wage, support in old age, a sense of inclusive patriotism.
And our sense of nation brought new resonances; Australian stories, poetry and ideas of our Australian-ness. We even developed a celebratory decorative style in our architecture and named that Federation. We had crystallised a good idea of ourselves and had begun to break free of the dismal legacy of Europe's ethnic stigmatisation and social stratification.
By 1915 we had no need to re-affirm our European heritage at the price of being dragged to a European holocaust. We had escaped that mire, both sociologically and geographically. But out of loyalty to imperial Britain, we returned to Europe's killing fields to decide the status of Germany, a question which should earlier have been settled by foresight and statecraft.
Those bloody battles in Flanders, on the Western Front and at Gallipoli nevertheless distinguished us, demonstrating what we were made of. Our embrace of a new sense of human values and relationships through these events, gave substance to what is now the Anzac tradition. For whatever claims Britain and its empire had on those who served and died on the Western Front and at Gallipoli, the primary claim remained Australia's.
Those Australians fought and died not in defence of some old world notion of competing empires and territorial conquests but for the new world the one they belonged to and hoped to return to.
This is why Australia was never in need of any redemption at Gallipoli, any more than it was in need of one at Kokoda thirty years later. There was nothing missing in our young nation or our idea of it that required the martial baptism of a European cataclysm to legitimise us.
What the Anzac legend did do, by the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, was reinforce our own cultural notions of independence, mateship and ingenuity. Of resilience and courage in adversity. We liked the lesson about supposedly ordinary people; we liked finding that they were not ordinary at all. Despite the fact that the military campaigns were shockingly flawed and incompetently executed, those ordinary people distinguished themselves by their latent nobility.
The unknown Australian soldier interred in this memorial reminds us of these lessons as much as he reminds us of the more than 100,000 Australians lost to us by war.
I regard as a singular honour, the decision by the Council of the War Memorial to permanently display an engraving of the oration I gave as Prime Minister at the funeral service of the unknown Australian soldier on 11 November 1993. And to have some words from that oration inscribed on that hallowed tomb. My time as Prime Minister spanned the period of the Pacific War, 1941 to 1945, fifty years on. It caused me to visit the sites of our military action from Papua New Guinea through to Thailand. It made me think much and write about the various episodes of conflict, of the bravery and suffering of Australian service men and women during the Second World War.
This context sharpened the memory and essence of the Anzac legend, within which it was decided to inter an unnamed, unknown Australian soldier in the Memorial's Hall of Memory.
Indeed, the War Memorial's then director, Brendan Kelson and his deputy, Michael McKiernan, were instrumental in the process that led to the interment of the soldier.
The words the Memorial enshrines today were written for that occasion.
When Don Watson and I first discussed the writing of it, we both felt the poignancy of the occasion. My uncle, William Keating, had died in 1945 on the death march from Sandakan to Ranau, while Don Watson's grandfather was twice wounded in Flanders after being infected with Spanish flu. He returned to Australia, never recovering from it.
The history of those two theatres of war had haunted each of our lives in differing yet similar ways.
I thought it important that the speech express with clarity, simple notions of understanding and appreciation that went in personal terms, such that we might have been speaking of a relative who had died in some contemporary calamity. Hence the notion that he was all of them yet one of us.
By his interment, I thought it important to say that this unknown Australian soldier would serve his country yet again. That his presence would give us a deeper understanding of what it means to be Australian as well as serving to remind us of the sacrifice of the more than one hundred thousand men and women who never came home.
As Prime Minister, I was particularly pleased to bring these episodes of our history, especially the First and Second World Wars, into sharper relief. To remind us that the deeds of our men and women at war give us an opportunity to renew our belief in the country, while renewing our appreciation of their faith, loyalty and sacrifice.
The soul of a nation is the richer for it having been warmed by its stories and traditions. Yet its stories and traditions should not stifle or constrain its growth as it needs to adapt.
I am greatly heartened that so many young Australians find a sense of identity and purpose from the Anzac legend and from those Australian men and women who have fought in wars over the last hundred years. But the true commemoration of their lives, service and sacrifice is to understand that the essence of their motivation was their belief in all we had created here and our responsibility in continuing to improve it.
Homage to these people has to be homage to them and about them and not to some idealised or jingoist reduction of what their lives really meant.
One thing is certain: young Australians, like the young Europeans I mentioned earlier, can no longer be dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on the whim of so-called statesmen. They are fortunately too wise to the world to be cannon fodder of the kind their young forebears became: young innocents who had little or no choice.
Commemorating these events should make us even more wary of grand ambitions and grand alliances of the kind that fractured Europe and darkened the twentieth century. In the long shadow of these upheavals, we gather to ponder their meaning and to commemorate the values that shone in their wake: courage under pressure, ingenuity in adversity, bonds of mateship and above all, loyalty to Australia.
- See more at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/paul-keatings-remembrance-day-commemorative-address/story-e6frg8yo-1226757270589#sthash.16vxOzMf.dpuf

2013 - Too Lazy To Do A Year In Review, So...

Yes, I've neglected the hell out of this blog, and my other blogs, during 2013. I've missed a lot of great stories and untold controversies. But I have been finishing books, writing songs, editing music videos and a few music documentaries, many of which should surface sometime this year and in 2015 (fuck that's weird to actually type that, 2015, such a futuristic year, and now so close...).

So, instead of me attempting to round up all the Orstrahyun-related stories I should have been running, I'm going to cheat and use these excelletn videos by Shaun Micallef instead. If you were paying to read thi blog, you could complain, but you're not, so you can't.

2013 - The Year In Review Part 1



2013 - The Year In Review Part 2



2013 - The Year In Review Part 3



2013 - The Year In Review Part 4



What a year. But 2014 is going to be even crazier. Wait and see!

Oh right, you don't have to wait, 2014 has already begun.