A Working Port

The big house cleanup continues; finding old photos, getting organised; function without purpose. The bloke over the road has helped me get the scanner going. I've had it for two years but never been able to work out how to use it. Then the software dropped off the computer, something like that anyway. He was great. The technology still amazes me; just the fact that, like me, everyone on earth can have their own website for nothing. I don't even have a digital camera, just an old mobile phone. And like a lot of seprated blokes, I don't have much money, at a stage in life where it would really help. The computer's not bad, it can play Empire Earth and Age of Empires and all those other big games the kids like, but there are a lot of fancier computers out there. Yet here we are. Astonishing. And where the Information Age leads us in the next 20 years, it is hard to predict. Mobile phones would have seemed like science fiction when I was growing up.

This was the view out the window from where leader of the Opposition Kim Beazley was giving a speach on climate change. It was the day after former Opposition leader Simon Crean had trounced his factional enemy in a bitter and highly publicised by-election; unseemly for a former leader. From the imperial or was it foggy heights of leadership Beazley refused to intervene in the Victorian fight. Like much of the population he couldn't stand Crean. Those who knew him all said he was charming, but it didn't transmit. Whatever telegenic meant, Crean was the opposite. In victory, Crean acted as if he had just won the leadership; again. This was hyusterically reinforced when, after a crisis meeting between the two, with the wives present to dilute the intense awkwardness; when Beazley would happily have been anywhere else. Crean got into his white waiting limoousine; except it turned out to Beazley's. The4y kept the air conditioning running, just to reinforce the sound of our money vanishing.

He was like that this day. He just wanted to be somewhere else. The journalists couldn't have cared less what Beazley thought of climate change; when his enormous almost hour long fine sounding speach to something called the Leader's Forum, sponsored by one of the country's largest builders and developers took forever. He tried feebly to get the issue of climate change on the agenda; weren't we already tired of climate change? Albanese's release today suggested our failure to address climate change was hindering our campaign to stop whaling. And they wonder why they're in opposition; these issues your working Joe couldn't have cared less about.

There was a time when the phrase "working port" caught hold; a handy catch phrase to describe a nostalgia for a Sydney Harbour all but gone; the giant tourist cruisers, the James Cook, the Captain Phillip, their ample decks and kitchn galleys, taking two or three hundred at a time, a glistening, substantial money spinning machine; the polished deck, the gleaming white paint. Beazley had to be talked into walking through the media pack this day; something he normally thrives on; and was far too busy and important to answer the media's questions. So we all had to hang around for the coffee and sandwiches and that enormous speach. He held a presser on the renovated roof top; trying desperately and ridiculously to keep the focus on climate change. My half asked, unfinished question as Beazley pulled it all to a quick finish, "Is Crean guilty...?..." was played repeatedly on the news.

MEDIA WATCH:

From The Age:


THE first of a series of speeches designed to shore up dwindling American support for the war in Iraq, President George Bush has warned that the violence is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.
"I wish I could tell you that the violence is waning and that the road ahead is smooth," he said. "I cannot."
As the latest Gallup poll showed his approval rating at a record-low 36 per cent, a grim-looking Mr Bush pleaded for patience.

The Mail&Guardian

In the past 24 hours, police have found the bodies of at least 85 men killed by gunfire execution-style in a gruesome wave of apparent sectarian killing, the interior ministry said on Tuesday.They include at least 27 bodies stacked in a mass grave in an eastern Shi'ite neighbourhood.Much of the bloodshed -- the second wave of mass killings in Iraq since bombers destroyed an important Shi'ite shrine last month -- followed deadly weekend explosions in a teeming Shi'ite slum in which 58 people died and more than 200 were wounded.Iraq's interior ministry announced a ban on driving in Baghdad to coincide with the first meeting of Iraq's new Parliament on Thursday. The ban takes effect at 8pm on Wednesday and lasts until 4pm on Thursday.