Mr Roger Shipton, still currently of ASIC, likes to have his hand held.  He got me and other taxpayers to pick up a tab north of $100,000 for tax advice when he took his position at ASIC.  Since this came to light in October of last year, he has stood aside.  If it was not obvious then, it was certainly obvious by now that no one could have confidence in ASIC if he returned permanently – his position was untenable.  According to the press, he hired a platoon of lawyers to help him ride the current wave – three barristers and a solicitor, not from those at the bottom of the market.  Well, at least I will not be called on to pick up their tab – directly; but I may be called upon indirectly, because I am now up for about $200,000 foregone since he stood down.  Well, I suppose I will get more than half of that back in tax – unless of course he gets a flotilla of other lawyers to tell him how to avoid paying that tax. 

It was obvious that the man had to go.  But neither he nor the Minister had the decency to say so.  Instead we are told that ‘we believe that it is time for a fresh start at ASIC and a fresh start will begin with the search for a new chairman.’  All this comes after an investigation, we are told, cleared Mr Shipton ‘of any wrongdoing’.  So, he has done nothing wrong – but he must go.

Do these people think that we all came down in the last shower?  Why has this investigation taken months?  Why could it not have been concluded in twenty-four hours?  It is not a question of whether Mr Shipton has broken any law or infringed any guideline.  The question was whether a person who has claimed a payment for his personal benefit of more than $100,000 from public money while he was the chairman of a statutory body that regulates the conduct of business in this country could retain the confidence of the business community or the public at large.  There could only ever have been one answer to that question.

This is appalling nonsense of itself.  But it gets so much worse when you look at what the leader of the federal government did to Christine Holgate.  She authorised payments of $20000 to executives of Australia Post as a reward for very good results.  She acted within established authority within the corporation and derived no personal benefit from the transaction.  She too has now been cleared of any wrongdoing (although her investigator saw fit to refer to the views of some weasel directors and used terms like ‘inappropriate’ or ‘inconsistent.’)  But without hearing from her, let alone an independent investigation, the Prime Minister unleashed a posse that that predicably became a lynch mob.

And all this when all who knew what was going on at Australia Post said this woman was doing a great job.

No one said of that of Mr Shipton – not even his scripted despatcher.

If people in government behave like this, what do they expect from us?

And people who want to step outside their brief and offer gratuitous commentary of their own on a subject of their inquiry may wish to reflect on the standing of a man who may have changed the course of world history by doing just that.  His name is James Comey and the beneficiary of his backhander was Donald Trump.

Out of solicitude for my mental health, I have stayed away from the gongs announced on this dreadful dies non, but two items caught my eye today in the sports pages.  One concerned Mr Toby Price, the two time winner of the Dakar, the toughest contest on the planet.  They will have to invent a new word for courage for him – in hospital again with a broken body. 

The other concerns our PM who is increasingly looking like a strolling player in search of a sandwich board.  He said something very silly about sport and politics.  Politicians, especially those of the crude, retail populist kind – like ScoMo – just love mixing with sportsmen.  Remember Our Bob on the America’s Cup?  Paul Keating number 1 at Collingwood?   

But like the IPA on corporations, ScoMo thinks sports bodies should not have views on politics.  You do not have to live in a small town to realise that if you want to get on in business, you have to engage with people.  That’s what Cricket Australia did about this sad day’s name, and our PM said he thought they should prefer sport to politics.  I am not sure if the New South Welshman knows of Mr Adam Goodes, but Mr Gideon Haigh correctly analysed the bullshit.

The either/or foundation is of course perfectly fallacious.  Sport is pervaded by politics, especially when sports teams purport to represent whole nations, and beloved of politicians, who envy its capacity for engaging, exciting and unifying…..Which is exactly why Morrison flaunts his democratic credentials by cosying up to sports people …..So when the Prime Minister objects to the mixing of cricket and politics, what he is really objecting to is the particular mixing that doesn’t shore up his national daggy dad routine.  And when he says that it ‘wasn’t a particularly flash day for those people on those vessels’ of the First Fleet, it’s not just a lazy stab at moral equivalence, but the same tone-deaf approximation of the vernacular as Kevin Rudd demanding a ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle.’

Precisely, Mr Haigh.  Get a new gag writer, ScoMo.  The Mayflower at Plymouth Rock was more your go.  Puritans to their bloody eyeballs, but they never let God stand between them and a dollar.  That’s why your old mate Donny Boy is still so flush, and in with the chosen, God’s elect.  Just live for the Sharks of Cronulla on Saturdays and Hillsong on Sundays.  You bloody ripper, Mate.

Bloopers

It is hard to see what the world did wrong to land Rupert.  The Oz editorial yesterday counselled Mr Biden to be prudent and concluded:

The US does not need a rerun of the Obama years.

There in one sentence is the accumulated venom of Rupert Murdoch.

The Australian, 25 January, 2021

Dear Editor (New York Times),

Americans who say that those who violated the Capitol are not ‘us’ forget history.  The nation was conceived in violence.   The war against the English was also a civil war that Churchill compared to atrocities in Ireland.  The founding document was based on a lie about equality.  600,000 Americans died in an attempt to extirpate that lie.  This President could not believe a black president could be American. He has cheered on white violence and condemned black protests.  And this nation uniquely celebrates a constitutional right to bear arms.  The purpose of a gun is to inflict violent harm.  So, Americans, don’t say you’re not violent.  It’s in your blood. 

The divide between black and white led to the Civil War and Black Wednesday.  Those who razed the Bastille cherished equality;  those who stormed the Capitol dread it.  The question you face was stated at Gettysburg  by the greatest American –  ‘whether a new nation,conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal… can long endure’.

Yours truly

Bloopers

Donald Trump finishes his astonishing term as president in utter ignominy.  His behaviour since he lost the presidential election on November 3 has been far worse than anything he did as president….Trump was always a contemptible and unworthy character.  For any serious conservative, voting for him was always a 51-49 decision.

Greg Sheridan, Weekend Australian, January 9-10, 2021.

Where to start?  What does ‘conservative’ mean there, ‘serious’ or not?  What is there 50/50 about someone who has always been ‘contemptible’ and ‘unworthy’?  This proprietor does warp minds.  The Wall Street Journal broke ranks and said Trump should resign.  Since this is about 1000 to 1, the next question is what should otherwise happen?  They give no answer, although they concede that ‘Trump’s character flaws were apparent for all to see when he ran for president.’  Then the WSJ reveals the house flaw when it says that the 2019 impeachment was an abuse of process that has diminished Democrats’ credibility.  The alternative view is that that impeachment was a lay down misère which only failed because Republicans did not do their duty, and that the U S and the world are now much worse off because of their failure.  And, given that Trump is contemptible and a man whose character flaws are notorious, their failure is inexcusable.

The Presidency of Donald Trump and the events of 2020 have seen the return of the bogeyman and of conspiracy theories for those who take their news to suit themselves.  Catholics, Masons and Jesuits have fallen out of favour as scapegoats.  Stalin had the kulaks.  Mussolini had effete liberals.  Franco had the Communists and atheists.  So did Senator McCarthy; and, to a lesser extent, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies.  It is best to pass over Hitler in silence.  As of now (December, 2020), many Australians seem to be seeking a reprise of the White Australia Policy with vitriol against the Chinese.  Their anxiety is made worse because President Trump appears to have abdicated in favour of President Xi, or, on a bad day, Chairman Kim.  (Do you remember when Trump said that he and Kim had fallen in love?  Neither could even spell ‘reciprocal’ so the ending had to be sour rather than sweet.)  Renegade doctors blame Big Pharma.  (Well, who wouldn’t?)  The Murdoch Press has the Premier of Victoria, who is stubbornly refusing to lie down, Muslims and other victims of a civilisation that is not deemed to be Western (although all the major religions of the West come from the East), scientists who peskily worry about their findings, and anyone whose ideology allows them to be sane about saving human life from a mortal illness.  This last is a form of madness imported by those on the Murdoch edge directly from their brothers and sisters at Fox News and is particularly sought after by those whose minds have been launched into eternity on one-way tramlines coming straight out of sullen think tanks.  Their rallying cry was given by a Governor of one of the stricken Dakotas: ‘My people are happy because they are free.’  (Well, yes, m ’Lady, they are also dying, but what’s a spot of death between Comrades of the Pure in Spirit?)  And all of us have all that modern technology and those dreadful pretty boys who have got so filthily rich on our debasement.  So that when you get China, high tech that is all-invasive, and a big corporation that is all-pervasive, you get Open Sesame for the Conspiracy Theorists’ Dream Team.  What, then, about the outgoing President of the U S A?  It’s a veritable smorgasbord.  (His family did come from that part of the world, but he lies about that, too.)  He has the Muslims, the Mexicans, the migrants, the media – or just about all of it, including now Fox News – the Ivy League set, the military, the FBI, the CIA, the medical profession and any other scientist, and any activist, that is any person who threatens his view of law and order, or who threatens to demean a photo op of his standing before a church, that he has never been inside, with a silly look on his face, holding a book that he has never read and could not understand, the way having been made safe for him and his ensainted daughter and her handbag by the Army of the United States in full battle gear.  And above all, he has it in for any person who is better educated than him.  Since this includes almost everyone else in America, it is a very big problem indeed – not least because the most educated person of the whole bloody lot of them was a man of colour with a wife who can think, both of whom in a moment of madness the people of America put into that bloody white house on Pennsylvania Avenue.  It just goes to prove that old saying – even paranoiacs have real enemies.

And very best wishes for Christmas and 2021 – and no one is sorry to say good bye to 2020 – and at least we are still above the ground – and, yes, Australians picked a good time to do the right thing for all of us.

We would be better off – much better off – if we did not use words like ‘misogynistic’ or ‘anti-Semitic’.  One refers to an adverse view of women and the other refers to an adverse view of Jewish people.  But each term is used adversely to its subject and the range of conduct that might give rise to such a comment is so wide that such a comment is likely to be as unfair as it is vague. When I say that words like ‘misogynistic’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ are used adversely to their subject, I mean that we think it is wrong for people to assess the character of a person by reference to what some might see as the characteristics of other people from the same group – like women or Jewish people.  Decent people do not judge others by stereotypes.

Yesterday Mr Henry Ergas published a column headed ‘Why casual bigotry of Obama’s slur must be called out’.  The memoir of Mr Barack Obama referred to Mr Nicholas Sarkozy as ‘a quarter Greek Jew’.  He has ‘dark, expressive Mediterranean features’ resembling the figures of ‘a Toulouse – Lautrec painting’ and ‘all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric’ reflecting unbridled ambition and incessant pushiness’ while his conversation ‘swoops from flattery to genuine insight.’  These comments, which seem to me to be fair, leaped out at Mr Ergas and led him to compare those remarks to the insults ‘notoriously hurled at Benjamin Disraeli, the first person of Jewish birth to become Britain’s prime minister.’  (I might make two observations.  First, I greatly admire both Disraeli and Obama as statesmen of great character; one reason for my admiration is that both had to overcome real prejudice to get where they did.  Secondly, only one epithet leaped out of the page for Mr Ergas – ‘Greek’ and ‘Mediterranean’ apparently made no impact on Mr Ergas at all.)  Then we get:

…..if anti-Semitism involves using the label ‘Jew’ to evoke, emphasis or explain an inter-related complex of unattractive attributes, as Gordon Allport suggested in his classic book on The Nature of Prejudice (1954), Obama’s snide description of Sarkozy is unquestionably anti-Semitic.

Now, one might dismiss that as a mere blemish in an extremely lengthy volume.  It is however indisputable that had Sarkozy’s flaw been that he was black, gay, or Muslim, each with its associated stereotypes, the slur would have unleashed storms of protest…..In reality, the only roar was of a deafening silence.  From the New York Times to The Washington Post and beyond, not one of the gushing reviews considered Obama’s statement even worth mentioning.

In part that reflects the normalisation of casual anti-Semitism on the ‘progressive’ side of politics.

Mr Ergas went on to refer to a column by Mr Bret Stephens (whom I much admire) in the Times linking anti-Semitism to the criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism in ‘the left-leading media.’

Yet the left’s problem with Jews goes well beyond the blurring of the lines between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism.

He went on to refer to the benefits conferred by religion – principally for the West it seems, although both relevant faiths came from the East – and makes two further criticisms of ‘the left’ and says that it and Mr Obama are ‘trivialising faith.’

So Mr Ergas says that Mr Obama cast a ‘slur’ on Mr Sarkozy, that the epithet ‘quarter Greek Jew’ ascribed a ‘flaw’ to Mr Sarkozy, and that in its context that epithet entails the conclusion that Mr Obama used the label ‘Jew’ to ‘evoke, emphasise or explain an inter-related complex of unattractive attributes.’  And what is more – that conclusion is unquestionable, indeed indisputable.

The short answer is that the matters of fact alleged by Mr Ergas against Mr Obama are not in my view sufficient to warrant the conclusion that is alleged.  And, after all, what is being alleged is a slur on Mr Obama that entails that his character suffers from a serious flaw.  You may recall that Mr Ergas says that ‘had Sarkozy’s flaw been that he was black, gay, or Muslim, each with its associated stereotypes, the slur would have unleashed storms of protest…’  It does look like the position of Mr Ergas may be circular – he appears to be saying that by describing someone as Jewish, you are invoking the stereotypes that come with that label.  You might also recall that the terms ‘Greek’ or ‘Mediterranean’ don’t apparently come with same heavy baggage.

But in my view, there is more than a non sequitur here.  How does Mr Ergas arrive at his conclusion against Mr Obama?  He comes to that conclusion because this is just what he has come to expect from a person who belongs to or comes from the ‘left’ or ‘progressive’ side of politics.  Neither of those terms is defined, and both are vague, but to adopt what I said above –

When I say that words like ‘misogynistic’ and ‘anti-Semitic’ are used adversely to their subject, I mean that we think it is wrong for people to assess the character of a person by reference to what some might see as the characteristics of other people from the same group – like women or Jewish people.  Decent people do not judge others by stereotypes.

In other words, Mr Ergas can only support his conclusion adverse to Mr Obama by resorting to exactly the kind of prejudice that he alleges against Mr Obama.

Indeed, what we have is a good example of the kind of commentary that disfigures our public life now – an adverse conclusion based on inadequate evidence; a conclusion alleged with total confidence; an absence of restraint; a one-sided and coloured view in a battle of us versus them; we are right and they are wrong; and appeals to mythical history.

In other words, we have a celebration of prejudice.  I will not therefore comment on the venomously dangerous suggestion that an adverse comment on Israel or Mr Netanyahu may warrant a charge of anti-Semitism. It is all very sad, but some readers apparently go for this sort of stuff.  The letters of congratulation have started already