Brisbane's Bonds of Empire

WHAT LIES within the legislation program of the Queensland government in 2013?

According to the Queensland Attorney-General, we may be passing laws to tighten the bonds of Empire.

Our future of head of State (somewhere behind the flowers)

The Queensland Attorney-General wants to bring in an Act to nominate the unborn child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to be a subsequent Head of State in Queensland.  The Federal government may be doing the same.

Let us pause and consider the long term implications of this rush to solidify the links to Empire.

Do we want to legislate that an unknown Englishman or woman will be the font of authority in our democracy in about 50 years time?

Many Queenslanders feel we will get nothing from being attached to the British Crown.  In fact, it is an attachment that has always entailed a significant cost.

Startlingly, I found this very sentiment reflected by Benjamin Franklin in 1775.

Franklin had spent months trying to negotiate with the British government to avoid war in the American colonies.  As Don Cook says in The Long Fuse, Benjamin Franklin became disgusted by the "futility of his efforts" and the continued British attempts at bribery.

Here’s what Franklin said:

When I consider the extreme corruption prevalent among all orders of men in this old rotten state … I cannot but apprehend more mischief than benefit from a closer union.  I fear they will drag us after them in all plundering wars which their desperate circumstances, injustices and rapacity may prompt them to undertake; and their wide-wasting prodigality and profusion is a gulf that will swallow up every aid we may distress ourselves to afford them.

Benjamin Franklin: still relevant today

These are the rapier-like words of a man whose nation was about to launch into a colonial war. Yet they have a real resonance with Australia in the 21^st century.

One phrase that leaps out is “swallow up every aid”.  It is what happened to Australia in the 20th century.

After World War II, Australians endured rationing for years as we sent our grain, meat and butter to England to relieve their paucity of food.

Yet the biggest aid we have always sent the English was ourselves.  In uniform.

“ … drag us after them into all plundering wars …” is a line that should send a thrill of recognition through nearly all Australians.

Most of the tens of thousands of Australians who have perished in war have died fighting under the British flag, not the Australian flag.

And although not plundering wars, they were wars of Empire that gave us no benefit.

The Australians who served in wars in Sudan and South Africa helped deliver an African empire to the British Crown.

And The Great War, a war that transformed our nation as much as any other event, was an avoidable clash of European empires within Europe.

The supply of men in uniform to fight the wars of Empire was what the British government really needed from Australia.  To make sure we were up for the job, Lord Kitchener toured Australia before World War I and assessed our military preparedness for colonial adventures.

Pick who is enjoying the "bonds of empire" here.

And when we ultimately needed our military, they were tied up under a British flag, half a world away.

Our airmen were in the air over Europe, inexorably embedded in the Royal Air Force.  When we needed our own air force above our own troops in New Guinea, we had to rely on American aircraft and American airmen.

It is our experience at the forge of war that makes Australians truly question if our system of government should be hinged upon a British monarchy.

One Australian Prime Minister saw the bonds of Empire through the prism of that war-time experience.

In 1992, Paul Keating addressed in Parliament Opposition “charges” that he had snubbed and insulted the Queen.  Echoing Benjamin Franklin, he said:

I learned about self-respect and self-regard for Australia – not about some cultural cringe to a country which decided not to defend the Malayan peninsula, not to worry about Singapore and not to give us our troops back to keep ourselves free from Japanese domination.  This was the country that you people wedded yourselves to, and, even as it walked out on you and joined the Common Market, you were still looking for your MBEs and your knighthoods and all the rest of the regalia that comes with it.

It’s a speech delivered like a mace more so than a rapier, but many get that same rush of recognition.  It articulates a sense the British Empire has got much more out of us than we have from it.

So why are we running to bind ourselves once again to the British Crown?  Why not let future generations decide if they want the child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to be our Head of State?

They can assess whether, as Ben Franklin said, there is any benefit from a closer union with this European nation and its ruling family.

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Bless the Parking Fairies of Noosa

PLEASE don’t send church missionaries or The Inquisition around to our place, but my family is currently praying to the parking fairies.

At Noosa in January, we feel the appearance of vacant parking spots seems like the true Miracle Of Christmas.

Our current devotional obsession started off as a joke.

Hastings St, Noosa: where the super cool need the supernatural

My family holiday near Noosa every year, and we start each day with an early morning swimming pilgrimage to Laguna Bay. 

One morning we got a brilliant parking spot, and one of us made a toast to the parking fairies that night.

But for three days in a row, we have got a parking space just off Hastings Street.  Right near the Gaston café, so we can hop into the car with cappuccinos after the swim.

I don’t want to jinx it.  Should we keep offering a toast of champagne, or do these parking fairies need some more substantial form of offering?

Do we need to make a sacrifice that involves the spilling of blood, or should we leave out a serving of scrumptious food or alcohol at night, like we do for Santa Claus?

Here’s another question.

Is it profane to assume it is the work of parking fairies?  Should I be praying to God for the continued deliverance of convenient parking spaces?  

I don’t want to disturb Him or Her with such a trivial request, when They have so many more profound requests to handle.

My friend Pastor David would say it is the work of God. I can see him slightly shaking his head and patiently explaining it to me in a quiet voice, the one he uses for difficult customers.

Does St Christopher also handle requests for parking?

But, I would say, it seems like a bothersome request for the Almighty.  Maybe God has delegated decision making capabilities for parking down to an angel.  Or a saint.

Is there a patron saint for parking?  If so, there should be a shrine to this saint at Noosa at Christmas time.  The order maintaining this shrine would have celebrity status on the Sunshine Coast.

Or it might be a local deity at Noosa in charge of parking miracles.  Minor gods arise to explain to the most important of baffling phenomena to a local population.

And the sudden magical appearance of empty parking spots near the surf at Noosa must be an all-consuming subject of conversation to Noosa residents and visitors. 

Whether it is parking fairies, God or a local magical being, it has placed me in a metaphysical dilemma.

Whoever or whatever is responsible has delivered the goods, and their wrath or indifference must not be provoked.

But I am safe in assuming there is a degree of supernatural intervention.

As anyone who holidays at Noosa in January can attest, the appearance of free and available parking spots just next to Laguna Bay surely ranks as an eye-popping miracle.

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2012 and the Sunset of Newspapers

2012 was the year I stopped reading newspapers.

After a lifetime of ritual, I realised the act of purchasing, unfolding and thoughtfully trawling through a newspaper was like an out-dated religious ceremony long divorced from any original faith and belief.

"How many advertising brochures can they fit in this paper?"

This year I have been unshackled from a compulsive action that has come to hold little value to modern day life. 

Two hundred years ago buying and reading a newspaper meant you were helping battle ignorance, and helping build a “fourth estate” that was a bulwark against repressive and unrepresentative governments.

Not now.  Buying and reading a newspaper is more an act of consumption, the forced swallowing of square metres of advertising and corporate messages from those that can afford it.

Truly, the realisation that I do not have to feel guilty about not purchasing the Sydney Morning Herald each week end is liberating.

What broke the habit was the Gillard misogynist speech.

It was a fascinating speech that addressed an issue that personally resonated within so many people.  It was grand theatre that meant something.

They don't  make papers like this any more (hooray).  Benjamin Franklin 1750

But many mainstream media commentators, the icons pictured on newspaper columns, could only view it through a narrow prism.

What did it mean to the machinations of Parliament over the next 24 hours?  And they even got that wrong.

They said it was a miscalculated rant designed to preserve the political skin of Peter Slipper.  Most everyone else said it was a speech of importance that would persevere, much long than the career or memory of Peter Slipper.

The lack of touch and perception by some newspaper columnists was exposed by the furious movement of opinion and comment over the web.

Especially on social media sites, countless people explained how the speech touched on what they experienced in their lives, how it electrified them.   It was plain the paper giants had got it wrong.

To me, the columnist line that the Gillard speech was a “misguided rant” looks like it was a line fed or created by professional political media advisers.

That makes sense because I know journalists are outnumbered and harassed by media advisers, whom have more time and resources at their command than the harried journalist.

If so, it is an indication that some newspaper commentators are embedded in the castle up on the hill with those that govern.  They look down upon us through the arrow slits in the towers.

The misogynist speech revealed to me I could get the news I wanted from linked pages, not inked pages.  So why should I persist in buying newspapers?

The forsaking of the newspaper gospel was slightly shocking to myself.  I used to consider the great columnists such as Alan Ramsey and Michelle Grattan as infallible and all-knowing giants.

Nowadays I go online and search for pieces by Daniel Hurst and Steve Wardill, both of whom I feel know the issues on the grounds outside the castle on the hill. And anything by Daryl Passmore and Kelmeny Fraser gets my attention.

For the others who have also abandoned the sacraments of the newspaper, we have found it is surprisingly not such as drastic change.

We had not fully realised we had already virtually stopped reading them anyhow.  Most of us are already getting our news from websites, or links on social media sites. 

However, I still get ink on my fingertips. I read my local newspaper: it arrives free on my doorstep.  I like to see if anyone I know is in it, and who is writing letters to the editor.

This kind of intimate newspaper experience probably reflects the desires and needs of the original newspaper readers two hundred years ago.

Do we need to despair that so many like me are perhaps condemning the daily newspaper to death?  Are we contributing to the demise of reporting?

Simply, no. Some broadsheets and tabloids may be on their way to extinction, but journalism is alive and thriving.

After all, the human need for news and gossip, timely and fresh, is as strong as ever.  The internet means reporters and journalists can fill that human craving in an instant.

For the rest of those who have stopped reading newspapers in 2012, even if they do not admit it to themselves, we will continue to pursue the news and a good read.

We have just forsaken the crinkly pages of newsprint to find the truth and facts that reflect the world we know.  

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The Homoerotic In Politics

AS THE YEAR gracefully folds and we look back at the year in politics, well may we say “who would have thought it?”

Who would have thought some banter, with supposed gay overtones, between Slipper and Ashby would have such a dramatic impact? Who could foresee that one side of politics would pursue the former Speaker with such monomaniacal vitriol?

The homoerotic impulse and a countering homophobic reaction are not unprecedented in politics.  They’re not even unusual.

In fact, together they have played a strange part in the evolution of the system of our government.

Who would have thought it – a homoerotic crush helped initiate the emergence of democracy in Ancient Athens.

A vase depicting the death of Hipparchus.  Phallic imagery abounds.

Hipparchus, Hippias and Thessalus were the three sons of the early Athenian tyrant Pisistratus.  All three had murky reputations for carrying on the aristocratic family trade of political intrigue and launching coups. 

In 514BCE Thessalus had a crush on a young male aristocrat.  Thessalus was rejected, and in a fit of pique, he refused to allow the aristocrat’s sister to take her place in the Panathenaic festival parade.

The shame of it was too much for the object of Thessalus’ affections, and he organised a gang of assassins to strike at Hippias, the brother of Thessalus.

Trouble is, they got the wrong brother.  They couldn’t get at Hippias, so they actually settled for Hipparchus. 

It was the furious retribution of Thessalus and Hippias to their brother’s death that had political consequences through the ages.

They organised the brutal murders of two of the assassins, Harmodius and Aristogeiton.  Finally, appalled at the cycle of violence, Athenians eventually overthrew the rule of the tyrants.

Guided by the first real democrat, Cleithsenes, Athenians in 507 BCE brought in a constitution, and rule by an assembly that represented all citizens.

All because Thessalus couldn’t get his way with a good looking young man.

Still, look at the reaction when a ruler did get his way with a young man.

Edward II, with his jewels, crown and a nice shade of lippy.

The relationship of Edward II with his “close male companions” so vexed the ruling English upper classes, they created a system of checks on the power of the monarchy that still exist today.

Edward II (who reigned from 1307 to 1327) not only flaunted his relationship with Piers Gaveston and Hugh Despenser, he made them powerful. 

Edward had it bad for Gaveston, his childhood friend, who in turn had a knack for outraging and mocking the English nobility.

After Edward’s wedding, where Gaveston apparently out-dressed the bride, the King presented him with the best of his new wife’s wedding gifts and jewels. 

Edward ostentatiously showered Gaveston with power and gifts from the public purse.   

The response of the English nobility was to force “The Ordinances” upon Edward, which like the Magna Carta, imposed limitations upon the power of the monarch to dispense public wealth.

Faced with another ultimatum to let him go, Edward finally chose to flee north with Gaveston, abandoning his capital and pregnant wife.

Gaveston was captured, and on Blacklow Hill, the nobles finally halted his all-too-visible career by simply chopping off his head.

The gruesome end of  Hugh Despenser.  Of course, times have changed ...

Edward’s true gift as a monarch was to keep repeating his mistakes.  Gaveston’s replacement was the young Hugh Despenser, an even more hated figure.

Once again, the favourite was gifted enormous power and money, and once again, the English reacted by executing the King’s close companion.

To get rid of Edward, the English aristocracy created the Articles of Accusation.  Under these Articles, Edward was accused of breaching his Coronation Oath to look after the country, and was formally deposed by his spurned wife Queen Isabella.

So there it is. The furore over Edward’s overt relationship with Gaveston and Despenser led to the creation of mechanisms where a king can be fiscally restrained and be legally deposed.

The furore over the spurned advance by Thessalus led to the creation of Athenian democracy.

And the furore over Slipper’s supposed request for a more communal form of showering drowned his career, and will continue to dampen the careers of others.

Who would have thought this would be a lesson from politics in 2012? That homoeroticism holds a strange place in our system of government.

Or rather, the crushing reaction against it can have political consequences that far outweigh the original transgression.

It is the death of Edward II that symbolises the retributive barrage that can be unleashed in response to the homoerotic.

Legend is that Edward II, imprisoned in the Guard Room at Berkeley Castle, was killed by the insertion of a red-hot poker into his fundament.

Homophobia has no place in the private or public realms.  And we need to remember that historically, it has had an effect on politics and government in a way that would be almost comical if it weren’t so bloody tragic.

*Read "The Life and Death of Democracy" by John Keane and "Crown and Country: The Kings and Queens of England" by David Starkey.

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