Spec 30.5: North West Shelf: Albo drives progressivism onto the rocks; Bad Take City; We need a better Book Review; praise God for drop-kicked things

Welcome, a number of new subscribers to Spec! We’re just getting started! We - we! huh, me! - think this is a place where things can be said that won’t be said otherwise, now that the Australian non-MSM media, from Guardian to Crikey to Schwartz is one unified Borg of unquestioning progressivism, logrolling and nepobabying. So please consider taking out a paid subsciption, to keep it rolling - GR

North West Shelf: Albo drives progressivism onto the rocks

Labor’s decision to give the go ahead for the North West shelf gas project, licensed until 2070, pumping a lethal dose of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and destroying the 50,000 year old rock art at Murujuga, is of course a political, not an economic one. Few jobs will come from it, and the gas will go overseas. Its importance is to draw a line in the desert sand for Labor. It is decisively abandoning both green and indigenous commitments, and it is doing so in a way that is visible to the suburban mainstream. The slap in the face to the environmental and indigenous movements is deliberate and meant to hurt. Tanya Plibersek is gone. Her reputation was destroyed by the environment portfolio, which was the intent of the posting, as well she knew. Trying to mediate to some degree between industry, green, and black forces, she pleased no-one. Now, her engaged, friendly persona is not required. Instead, gray grim apparatchik Murray Watt has been dropped into the role, to say ‘niet’ to everything. The aim? To further replace the Coalition as the natural party of well-managed, ‘sensible’ Australian government. To show that while the Coalition is driven by appeasing its funders, Labor is no longer driven by appeasing its old progressive partners. To enforce that indigenous groups really now have no dialogue partner in Labor. Labor has simply withdrawn its consent to indigenous groups to make claims that Labor will recognise the legitimacy of. Labor knows it needs the Greens in the Senate. It also knows that the Greens have got a strong message from their supporters in key seats, that the party has to be one of constructive government, not insurgency. They will have to pick their battles in the Senate very carefully. It is all going to be this way for quite some time.

Bad Take City

Who had the worst op-ed take this week? A look round the gully traps….

James Massola’s ‘Will Albanese Be Bolder Now?’ (linked)

is a strong contender. This is a mini-genre that has arisen in the wake of the election by op-ed writers who really have nothing to say, given Labor’s comprehensive political victory. So they kite a few bold proposals, before declaring that they won’t happen. Massola suggests that Albanese could go for a referendum on a republic four year terms, change the flag etc, while pretty much realising he will do none of these things. Mainstream op-ed writers don’t really do social analysis, so political kibitzing is all they really have. This must be about the twentieth or thirtieth article of the ‘wise counsel’ type. It’s easier to write about all the things Albo won’t do, as if he might, rather than working out the reasons why he won’t.

M’former colleague Keane has gone in the other direction, with a symmetrically opposite simplistic take, dubbing Albo ‘the new John Howard’ (linked). Now, this writer was the first to suggest that Albo Labor was pursuing ‘left Howardism’, only a few months after they took office in 2022. But left Howardism was simply a mobilisation of the idea of a residual acceptance and conservatism to avoid being outflanked on the right. And it worked. It didn’t mobilise the rodent’s particular combination of neurotic nostalgia, cynicism and wilful blindness, because that isn’t the way albo Labor has put things together. Keane has a dose of the Megalogenis Tingle - the thrill boomer/gen X writers get from thinking about the years of Hawke/Keating reform, a unique period of consensus system modernisation in which policy largely replaced politics. For those with the Megalogenis Tingle, policy is politics, they pine for it evermore. Everyone who does politics falls short. Albo is the new Howard is the new etc etc….

But the winner is probably Planet Janet Albrechtsen, whose orbit took on more than a bit of a wobble this week, after getting slammed by Noel Pearson, for …something. Pearson ‘s currently streaking across the public sphere, his tail burning brightly with his years of epic political failure, culminating in the Voice referendum. What’s interesting about Planet’s piece is that it’s the new op-ed style of the cash-strapped Australian, which is basically to paste em in without editing by their overworked and depressed core staff. Planet’s is notes for two articles, one an attack on lefty author Clare Wright, then a pivot to Pearson in what becomes an 800 word inter-office memo. This is the GOAT folks. Worth a read like free jazz is worth a listen: stopping trying to hear a tune, and it’s great.

–

Browning versions: notes on culture

‘Ello Rose, it’s drek as: time for change at ABR

When the great diversity revolution swept through Australian high culture, two great old white totems remained untouched, like untopped Rapanui stone heads: Fairfax books editor Jason Steger and Australian Book Review editor Peter Rose. Steger came over as a scrivener with the Second Fleet. Rose played in the 1922 Fitzroy v Collingwood grand final. They were left undisturbed by the diversity push because they decided which books got reviewed. Steger has departed. He spent decades defending some sort of high-culture presence in the books pages. Now, the dumbing down has begun, as can be measured by the amount of books getting reviewed that have pastel covers or are sports biographies. Rose has now (self-) toppled into the soft sand, going from ABR. He should have left 15 years ago. The publication is dowdy, unambitious, dull, and looks like it was laid out on Quark Express 2.2 in 1989, ‘desktop publishing’ style so bad it’s almost retrochic. Though it has, rather pointlessly, markedly increased its reviews of overseas books, it doesn’t really feature review essays on them. Now it’s reviewing films on at Cinema Nova, god knows why. In the meantime, good Australian books from small presses, Australian Scholarly Publishing and Interventions being two, get few reviews at all. Its awards have become bogged down in cliche. The Elizabeth Jolley short story prize is always won by a young woman’s understated record of romantic disturbance within a friendship group, and the Calibre essay prize is usually about an adult child coping with their parent’s Alzheimer’s and the journey back into their own past that such reversal takes them on. If Rose has kept it going all these years, props to him, though the organisation has a bad rep for treating junior reviewers poorly. It’s been a long time since ABR really mattered, or even did its basic job. The whole thing needs a total renovation. But the new editor is Georgina Arnott, Rose’s former deputy editor, so we’ll seeeeeeee……..

Erewhon

Inquiry finds all returned home bowel-cancer testing kits being sent to one mid level public servant in South Australian motor vehicles department

Shock and concern today when an inquiry into cancer prevention found that all stool samples in South Australia provided as part of return mail colon cancer bowel testing kits are being sent to Trevor Chandlice, a compliance and policy officer in the heavy vehicles section of the Motor Vehicles department in Adelaide. Mr Chandlice, 47, whose principle duties include regulation revision concerning electric motors, loads and weighing stations, has to date received 141,733 completed tests, and is statutorily required to retain them for a period of eighteen months. ‘I’m also required to respond to all tests, but there’s no direction on how’ Mr Chandlice noted today ‘so i’ve just been giving them all the all-clear’.

The inquiry found that the mix-up started as a joke by a former friend of Mr Chandlice’s, Dave ‘Davo’ Prentice, in federal health monitoring. ‘Yeah we was all having a few bevvies at the Austral one day, and Trev gave me a bit of shit about something, and I said ‘you give me shit, I’ll give you shit’ and Tev said ‘ha you couldn’t give me shit if you tried’ and I thought you wait mate you wait’.

Mr Chandlice has now filled his house and garage with the kits, and has now rented an entire storage facility at his own expense to house the material. His wife left him eighteen months ago, and his teenage daughter retches in his presence, though that began sometime before all this started. ‘Yeah it’s fucking funny as’ said Mr Prentice.

The blanket all-clear diagnoses are estimated to have caused 29,345 unnecessary deaths, saving billions in intensive health care costs, with the federal government looking to expand the approach nationwide

Spooooooooooooooooooooooooooort!

Round 11 AFL match report

By Spec’s AFL correspondent Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hawthorn versus Lions

Lions caught this week, Hawks’ dominion, battered

Flattening tackling possession, thirty three more

Causing clearances from to score rending Rayner, Cam

Cameron, Charlie Callum Ah Chee Oh forward

Coming flick passed ovoid despite low go goal wise

Crows versus Eagles

For soar oh western kestrel captain Jordan Dawson

Boosting Brownlow hopes with beaucoup disposals

Seven-and-twenty, near-ten tackles, as alas O

Forward Waterman, Jake bunched, pack crunched

O’Brien, Reilly, Corvids, goal scores touch from

Ruck, also Pedlar, Peatling, Rankine, Neal-Bullen

Kangaroos Vs Magpies

second-bottom Kangaroos, buoyed by stronger form ,

smelled blood early, Frampton restricting damage

predictably, Collingwood rallied, Daicos prominent

Magpies racked up third term 20 with wasteful 3.8

Fixed with emphasis blasting through 8.1….

(273 more lines omitted here)

South Melbourne Swans vs University

Bye.

till next week….