Next time, SMH, get the surfboard to write the column

Really, it's not often that anyone – other than News Limited columnists talking climate change – can manage to cram so much utter drivel into the space of one column as this.

“I want to think we're too smart to pour 40, 50, 60 billion dollars, whatever the final cost, into a fibre-optic network system that sounds impressive now but may look like the greatest white elephant since the attempt to turn the stinking (literally!) Salton Sea near Palm Springs into a rich thang's playground; that a dozen years down the track the NBN will be the equivalent of "visionaries" 150 years ago building a network of hundreds of thousands of stables across the country to cope with the growth in horse transport.”

I think this individual, the founder of a surf magazine yclept Derek Rielly, is a subscriber to the “fibre will soon be obsolete” school of what passes for “thinking” (even when we used entangled photons to overcome the speed of light, fibre will be a better way to move them around than through the air. Noise, and all that.).

“According to the projections of the NBN Co we'll be getting a gigabyte per second once it comes into our lives.”

Well, there's a scale thing right there. The NBN is measured in bits (and megabits, and gigabits), not “a gigabyte per second”. And it's not a projection, the kit is already gigabit-capable wherever the network is, but you know, this is a column. It's like climate change: facts are optional when you have a dumb opinion to tout.

“Wouldn't it make more sense to just invest 20 billion dollars into developing the world's finest compression software?”

Well, no. Actually, no with a double serve of clue-stick, multiplied by “what on Earth?”

“Something like America's Manhattan Project in World War II that created a way to annihilate the world in just six years.”

Yeah, thanks for that analogy. But let's continue …

“All of us are familiar with today's compression software such as jpegs and PDFs which work little miracles every second of every day.”

At which point, head meets desk, because this sage advice, presumably passed by an editor between lunch and Alka-Seltzer, comes from someone who knows not the difference between “software” and “file format”.

Oh, and (say) a PDF is already compressed, which is why (say) PKZip ignores it.

Save me.

“Can you imagine the value in creating compression software so good it shoves the paradigm of computing way into left field? We'll be emailing movies, high-res photo albums, complete TV commercials, magazines, all over our existing networks and through our existing software.”

OK, that's enough quotation.

Compression is mathematics, and it's very well understood. It's a problem the world has been working on for nigh on sixty years, in the digital world.

Of course, even the ancients practiced a form of compression: setting a fire on a signal tower to signify invasion, for example, is a very compressed message in a specific context.

But as for modern communications: compression starts when Claude Shannon explained the limits of any communication medium: channel minus noise equals bandwidth. For any medium, you can precisely predict how much information it can carry.

So compression tries to reduce the amount of information that has to be carried – it says “what can I get into 'bandwidth'?” And it uses a lot of maths, and lots of billions have gone into it over three decades, and the world has created very good compression.

And all of the decades of compression work have been a matter of increments. Every now and again, someone claims a bigger breakthrough than anyone ever before.

Like the Adams Platform.

Next time, get the surfboard to write the column.

Yeah, defund the national emergency broadcaster. Good idea, Tea Party nutters

It's odd that the right always accuses the left of being city-based latte-sippers, because in their obsessions, the right always reveals itself to have a distinctly city attitude. Their suggestions reek of concrete and safety and next-week's-salary.

Take, for example, the persistent idea that the government should not be in broadcasting, and therefore should defund or dismantle or privatise the ABC.

Yeah, thanks for that suggestion. Because it reveals you to be the same bunch of insular, solipsistic twerps whose only trips away from Collins Street are on organised tours to the wine country, where you can pretend to have a palate and come back with the stuff sold at the cellar door that wouldn't rate in any competition, but you'll coddle it and cellar it as if it were gold, when its barrel-mate went to Aldi without a label.

Because you're so easily deluded. But let's get back to the ABC.

The soft city wankers have a monolithic view of the ABC, because in the cities, all they see is through the prism of obsessive compulsive disorder:

1. The ABC is funded by government, which is evil.

2. The ABC performs journalism that doesn't always support the (frankly) pud-pulling obsessives of the CIS and the IPA, and is therefore evil.

Since, to the ivory towers of the think-tanks, both these things are evil, they're constantly calling for the ABC to be defunded on the kind of American party-political basis that gives the Tea Party its power in the USA. That is: they're total nutters exploiting a tiny base to a disproportionate profile, rather than being drowned in the nearest farm dam, as they rightly deserve.

So let me relate, yet AGAIN, that the ABC's role as emergency service broadcaster is not some commercial activity that will be subsumed by the magic of free market economics.

When I was sitting in the presumed path of a serious in-the-crowns (if you're a soft city wanker, look up crown-fire and eucalypt and don't pester me with questions) bushfire, I wasn't listening to 2GB. Just trust me on that: the only time I choke my gullet with the paid patsies of commercial radio is when it's imposed on me by a taxi-driver who forfeited his tip by his choice of radio station.

The ABC was one of my three prime information sources – along with my family, reading computer feeds under my instruction, and a radio scanner that was telling me what fire-fighters were saying over their radio network.

(An aside: many fire-fighters on the ground are far more anxious, freaked-out and generally pessimistic than their headquarters. Which is natural, but also worth noting in the hierarchy of information. Even the “closest” information can be improved with a higher-level filter.)

Over this coming summer, any number of communities will find that their best information comes from whatever frequency their local ABC transmits on.

The IPA, the CIS, and the random nutters with Tea-Party inspiration would deny that. For them I can only hope that they find themselves in the path of a fire-storm, with nothing but the Macquarie National Network, syndication, and please to complete the irony, a product endorsement from Alan Jones as their information source.

Social media isn't the main game in a disaster

I'd so like to leave the bushfires alone, but no, life keeps dragging it back.

It's about this piece of drivel.

Yeah, Social Media Saves the World, and people actually saving homes and fighting fires are irrelevant without Twitter - says the for-pay social media expert.

This is the like the load of derp you find blocking your driveway because someone decided to back the derp-truck up and flick the lever on the tipper.

Let me explain what you're actually doing if you have a property with bush and buildings, an out-of-control bushfire to the North-West, and a North-Westerly wind.

You're panicking and fretting. Oh, in between, you're imagining your escape route, wondering if you've cleared enough space around buildings that they won't burn (probably not), watching the skies for ember attack, looking for places where your vantage point might let you see the fire coming before it traps you, and looking for information.

That last one is really important, and frankly, it doesn't come from Twitter. Not if you're in front of a fire. The very best real-time on-the-ground information comes from radios: the scanner listening to the fire brigades, and the regular updates that were delivered by ABC Local Radio.

Twitter? It needs a machine: a computer that doesn't have enough battery for a day (the power might be cut), or a phone or tablet that ... ditto. (Oh, and since you're not in the city, the phone's working harder to see its tower, data is slower, and battery life shorter).

Oh, and purely local infrastructure - like a mobile tower or a Telstra box - is at just as much risk as the houses people are trying to protect. Try logging into social media without a connection. Compare that to a city AM radio tower a long way from danger ...

Ditto Facebook or any other social media.

Not to mention the filtering needed to extract useful real-time information out of social media, which is even harder than getting useful real-time information from a radio scanner. The Twitter “real time information” question is so difficult there's a special CSIRO “big data” projected devoted to it – and my feed and spare-attention can match that?

So here's how my personal “emergency communications” worked on the day.

1. Family in another place: they were tasked with watching computer feeds and relating anything important. They also listened to the same radio broadcasts as I, in case I was occupied and missed something important. They phoned me at every change of situation.

2. Radio scanner: a friend, a former fire-fighter who had already evacuated the at-risk area, listened to the fire brigade chatter, calling me if there was anything important. Since the scanner is available as a smartphone app, this didn't involve any special kit.

3. My eyes. I was very vigilant: not just on my own property. I sought out vantage points and used them.

4. Conversation. You remember that? I waved down passing fire-brigade 4WDs (only a fool stops a tanker) and asked questions.

5. ABC Local radio. Because I know damn well that the car's battery can run its radio for more than a day and still start my engine.

But no: someone whose only view of the world comes from the inner city and the computer, is going to criticise the local council for insufficient Tweeting.

That's beyond silly. For a start, the local council is not even the agency responsible for disaster – that would be the Rural Fire Service, which was running half-hourly briefings at the time, and does have a Twitter account it uses. 

Also, the local council doesn't have an at-call army of Approved Social Media Experts, it's probably got a total communications staff of one. 

Also, the local council's staff was denuded because so many of them were on the fire grounds, fighting the fires – either as volunteers, or on the council's own response vehicles.

It's not just arrogant and insular to give the council a serve about emergency communications: it's ignorant.

But what makes me really hot is the same tech-press ignorance that infected the “wow look at this drone video” story.

The editors in the tech press are apparently incapable of assessing any story other than through their own myopic prism: they don't realise that there's a great big world that doesn't care about drones or Twitter, nor do they care that the world outside knows how to do things without reference to Twitter or Mark Zuckerberg.

So something as jejune, solipsistic and just plain silly as the article that started this rant – something like that gets a major-media run because the editor doesn't have the background knowledge to spike it, and is too insular to ask an expert whether it makes any sense.

>sigh<

Greenies aren't stopping hazard reduction burns: climate is

And finally the penny drops. I can be slow sometimes.

There is a reason the far-right keeps working the “blame bushfires on greenies” line at every opportunity (for example, when Miranda Devine slotted it into a gunk post ostensibly about education).

That reason? Fires are happening more often.

You can't attribute this to climate change, so you need something to blame. And “greenie opposition to hazard reduction burns” is easy. After all, Australia keeps voting Green politicians into places (in a minority nearly everywhere), and “greenies” oppose hazard reduction burns, right?

Wrong.

I'd have to be counted as a greenie. Skipping any personal voting information because it's none of your business, I run a solar-powered, off-grid, off-town-water tourism business. And of the 14 hectares, only about 3 hectares are economic: the rest, I intentionally subsidise to remain as virgin bush because I bloody well want it to remain that way. And since there's a hanging bog feeding a permanent creek, I'm providing about a billionth of greater Sydney's potable water at any given time.

Is that greenie enough for anyone? Good, let's continue.

There's about seven hectares of the land that the RFS wants to burn, and I agree. My reasons are purely selfish and economic: a decent buffer against a fire-storm is good for my business, should the worst happen.

But in seven years, it hasn't happened. Why?

Not because of greenie objections. Because of the combination of:

1. Climate change – which leads to a shorter back-burn season
2. Resources – volunteers can't be randomly called up on Wednesday merely because the weather's good
3. Weather – you can't burn if the ground is wet or there's high winds, which is pretty much a description of the Blue Mountains.

Anybody who tries attribute these three items to “greenie opposition” is a moron of the first water. Or they're – the point of this post – playing to a city political agenda.

Because that's what Miranda and all her acolytes are doing. The voters aren't out here where the fires burn: they're in McMansionville, wondering how it happened and who to blame. Blame, however, is hard to shoulder when you're putting three people in a seven-room air-conditioned house with three toilets. Better to subscribe to Miranda's agenda, that I'm worrying about bushfires because the greens are preventing backburns.

But that's the point. Climate change is what's screwing around with hazard reduction burns; the right-wing's greenie-hunt is a witch-hunt in the most accurate sense of the term.

Bushfires, and damn fools with drones

I didn't run the “look at this drone footage of a bushfire” in my real job, at The Register, and here's why.

The intensity of aerial bushfire-fighting is impossible to imagine if you haven't seen it.

But outlets like Gizmodo think it's just fine to run with the fools' footage. (No, I won't link to it: I'm not going to promote the video.) Here's the kinds of justifications given:

1. “We studied each flyover of the video and we can guess that the drone operator is part of an RFS crew.”

Funny, because the YouTube channel associated with the footage is mostly surfies following each others' great waves. Also, a “guess” isn't much of an editorial decision.

Furthermore the Whois for the Website of the YouTube account owner shows its domain (which redirects to its self-promoting Twitter account) was registered in June 2013 – in France. So no: I don't believe it's an RFS volunteer.

2. “I think the heights at which this operator were flying are safe and manageable for both manned and unmanned aircraft.”

Actually, Gizmodo, what you think matters not one damn. Unauthorised flights over bushfire grounds are flat-out illegal; so are unauthorised flights within 30 metres of other people; and it's clear that fire-drone-film idiots broke both rules, from the video.

As did someone else reported by AAP down near the Springwood / Winmalee fire – although I wouldn't be surprised if the same person went looking for better footage, having harvested 90,000 YouTube hits on the first outage.

At one point last Wednesday, during the 80 km/h wind gusts on the Blue Mountains, fire spotted across the containment lines to what I first believed to be Mount Hay, but was more probably Mount Banks. I know that the RFS was worried about where I was, because they were marshalling some resources at Wentworth Falls Lake, and the radio scanner chatter was identifying first-response locations.

I'm guessing that it was dealt with by choppers, for three reasons: it's hard to get to; it was dealt with fast (not so long afterwards, the RFS commissioner said “crisis averted”); and I heard (and saw one or two of) a veritable Apocalypse Now flight of choppers suddenly passed by to my north.

Later, once it was declared safe for me to relax, I headed down the mountains. While passing Valley Heights, in the space of less than 30 seconds (roughly, between the Hawkesbury Road intersection and Valley Heights), I spotted two Erickson air-cranes, and three or four smaller choppers. They were working an area that was currently active that went from Faulconbridge to Winmallee: the area would be in the order of four square kilometres.

That's a very close separation between aircraft.

And these choppers were working in valleys, which meant they were rising up from below my ground level – if I were running a drone say 30 meters above myself from Valley Heights railway station, it would be above the choppers rising out of the gullies around Sun Valley.

That's why the idiots who decided to film an active fire-ground from a quad-copter are idiots: because anything bar, perhaps, the Ericsson air-cranes, is at risk from a collision with a drone. CASA identifies fragile tail-rotors at risk; others mention air intakes.

I hope CASA is able to identify whoever shot the footage, and charge them.

Stage Three: roll out specialist climate deniers

For reasons I can't grasp, but I suspect is set down as bringing “balance” to the debate, the Canberra Times has wheeled out climate denier John McLean to browbeat anyone who links increased severity and frequency of bushfires to climate change.

The article is the usual combination of cherry-picking, straw-men, and ad-hominiem arguments.

“It seems that every time there's a major bushfire in Australia there's also a queue of people who try to blame it on man-made warming. They easily forget that our history of fires dates from long before the rise in temperatures, and they seem ignorant about science in general and meteorology in particular.”

“Our history of fires dates from long before the rise in temperatures” is true but entirely ignores the increasing frequency of major bushfire events.

And of course there's the mysterious and invisible “they”, a pasture full of straw men, who are ignorant.

"In its latest report the IPCC claims that it is "likely" that heatwaves have increased in Australia, "likely" being just one step away from "as likely as not". Two of the three cited papers in the report appear to have a co-author who is also a lead author of that chapter of the IPCC report, which might be fortuitous."

The IPCC report is either biased or wrong because of the work of one author: an ad-hominiem argument.

“A close check of the easiest obtained of the three references tells a less clear picture.” 

Of course, however, McLean doesn't provide us with the citation he cherry-picks. And of course, he picks one that fortuitously supports his position.

Skipping down, we find this gem: “This would lead to early drying of vegetation, although this seems not without precedent because major NSW bushfires have previously occurred in October and November.” 

This is a complete red herring: the statement that “major bushfires will increase in frequency and severity as a result of climate change” is not disproven by “major bushfires have happened before”.

There's a strange kind of meta-wrongness in the argument McLean presents, and which is present in the denialist “you can't blame this fire on global warming” argument.

If the circumstances of one fire don't prove that climate change exists (a statement I agree with), then neither do the circumstances of one fire disprove climate change.

However, it's pretty much stage three of a denialist strategy which went to work as soon as Adam Bandt of The Greens spoke out:

Stage One: silence environmental concerns with the politically-correct instruction that nobody politicise the bushfires.

Stage Two: politicise the tragedy from the perspective of the sceptic.

Stage Three: roll out professional climate change deniers to support Stage Two.

Stage Four is yet to come. I imagine it will be this: refuse to discuss the issue. “The emergency is over. We will not let extreme environmentalists further their anti-business, anti-family agenda by continuing to discuss the matter.”

The bushfire that didn't arrive, but still taught me lessons

First: wow. The Rural Fire Service. Words aren't enough. Their work in the three Blue Mountains bushfires beggars any praise I can offer.

Second: the fires didn't come near me or mine. A big reason for that is the RFS, which held the two fires that worried me (the Mount Victoria “Mount York Road” fire was the greatest concern, the State Mine Fire a close second) to their containment lines in horrific weather.

My nearest neighbours have two young children. Given the warnings that went out on Tuesday, they evacuated at 9:30 am Wednesday. “If you think you need to go, go now” was the message. They did the right thing. Other neighbours were also absent.

So I found myself in an expanse of perhaps 50 or so very bushy acres (neighbours' homes and bush included), quite alone.

One part of my brain was perfectly rational. I can read maps, look at weather, look at terrain, identify where the populated areas are. To burn the place I stood upon, under the prevailing wind, the fire would first have to ravage the north side of Wentworth Falls, a place which would have been very well protected since there's about 1,000 homes there. The RFS would defend that area, regardless of how they feel about my patch of bush.

That's the rational part of my brain.

The other rational part of my brain looked around: everybody else was gone. What did they know that I didn't?

Well, they knew about the risk of ember attack igniting spot-fires ahead of the blaze. That's why was where I was. A small fire started by an ember is something one person might be able to deal with; a fire-storm rushing through a property? My plan was to fight the first, flee the second.

Through the day, I settled into a pattern. Because you can't guarantee connectivity near a fire-ground, I didn't take a computer to check on data. Because mobile data sucks batteries, I didn't rely on that either. I made sure the family at home had all the links to check, and depended on them via phone, ABC 702 in the car, and local reports from my neighbour, who was listening to the chatter on the radio scanner.

My closest friend kept my eye on the clock via SMS. If I lost attention and didn't send a “still okay” message for too long, I'd get a demand for a status update.

And I waited and worried, and because a lot of that waiting and worrying involved stalking around a couple of hundred metres of driveways, re-assessing risks and wondering where burns could be safely ignored, or driving to other places seeking vantage points but still on my own, I think I learned something about myself.

The first lesson was that other people were worrying more, about me, than I was worrying about myself.

The second lesson was that in the circumstances, other people understood me better than I understood myself.

The first is easy to explain: I could see conditions on my particular patch of potential fire-ground, and they couldn't. They could only hear the news reports, the warnings and the suggestions that people get out. I could find a high vantage point – the foot-bridge at Wentworth Falls Station was fit for purpose – and make a simple assessment. “Is the smoke blowing towards me, or past me?” As long as smoke was blowing in other directions, I figured I was not in danger. If the sky darkened, I should run.

The second is more difficult. It took a conversation with a friend who's known me since about 1975 to crystallise it: “If you were watching your dream catch fire, would you have the strength of will to leave it to burn?”

That's a very difficult question to answer. You have to be able to answer it the right way, in the face of a circumstance you haven't yet encountered.

Look at it this way: one little spot fire, I can deal with. A couple of spot fires? Call triple-zero and get to work. What if they started arriving all over, all small, all manageable? What if the escalation from trivial to terror happened without me noticing? At what point would I decide to ignore the adrenalin and the “save everything” urge, and take care of myself instead?

Would I make that decision – would I turn my back, let the dream burn, start the engine and use my escape route – soon enough? Or would I fight until the last second, only to find the last second already past?

Since I never was in danger, I can't actually answer. I suspect there are people who answer that question the wrong way: they suffer injuries or death, because turning away would hurt too much. I understand, now, how that happens. I understand how my heroes in the RFS can become so driven that they perform miracles in the name of service. I honour them all.

But the other lesson I learned, the third one, is about how other people can help make the right decision.

I'm not an easy person to like. Finding myself with a veritable cloud of guardian angels was a completely new experience for me.

It was connections to other people that kept my feet on the ground. I could have receded into a bubble, and if a fire had arrived, perhaps I'd have died in the bubble: only my assessments, only my eyes and muscles and judgement, and a will too weak to leave.

I left earlier than I wanted to (although events proved others' judgement better than my own), because so many people stayed connected to me.

My family at home, speaking every half-hour for eight hours to discuss the latest RFS briefing, the current weather, the fire maps (PS, kudos to Google for its disaster maps, and ditto to the RFS for helping Google make it work in near-real-time).

My neighbour, who after evacuating his family, sought me out four times in the day in person to urge me to leave (and called at least another four times with the same message).

The best friend who demanded text message reports, half-past every hour. And others.

People called me away from the vigil. When I left at my wife's demand, I phoned my neighbour (“Call me tomorrow.”) and texted my best friend (“Oh, good”), and went home, even though I still feared the onset of fire.

It wasn't anything in me that gave me the will to leave: it was others. Their love and friendship had been in front of my eyes for eight hours, while my attention was occupied by other things. Even with attention diverted, though, eight hours is a lot of time to consider the various manifestations that love can take: my family reporting data to me so I can decide what to do; a neighbour's motorcycle arriving at Wentworth Falls Station because he'd worked out where to look for me when I wasn't where he expected me (his “I thought I might find you here” was extremely smug and very welcome!); the friend's clock-reliable text messages.

I learned a lot, in eight hours. And I owe thanks for that.

As well as owing so much more to the volunteers who have worked so hard, and saved so much.

Wikipedia: Even as a Wikipedia user, Greg Hunt is a mug

The story so far: to support the contention that there's nothing unusual about the 2013 bushfire season, our environment minister Greg Hunt has made himself a village idiot with a global presence with this statement:

“I looked up what Wikipedia says for example, just to see what the rest of the world thought, and it opens up with the fact that bushfires in Australia are frequently occurring events during the hotter months of the year. Large areas of land are ravaged every year by bushfires. That’s the Australian experience.” (Source: The Guardian)

That's set off a round of ridicule about his use of Wikipedia. That's fair enough, but there's another reason to make fun of Mr Hunt. Even if you believe Wikipedia records bushfire events accurately, Mr Hunt is using a source that undermines his position.

The data presented by Wikipedia clearly indicates increasing bushfire activity. All you have to do is make a chart of how many major bushfire events Wikipedia lists occur each decade.

Note that in this chart, I omit the current decade because it's only 2013.

I don't think you need me to add a trendline to get the picture.

Not only that: Wikipedia clearly supports another statement.

The current NSW bushfire season's early start is nearly unprecedented.

The chart below shows the number of days between the official start of summer (1 December) and the first of that summer's major bushfire events, as reported by Wikipedia. Negative numbers indicate that the fire season for that year began in September, October or November before the start of summer.

1. Every time the fire season started before 1 December has taken place after 1979.
2. Before 1979, only once did the bushfire season start as early as 1 December (1951).
3. Since 1979, there have been eight pre-summer starts to the major bushfire season (1979, 1980, 1997, 1998, 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2013).

So it seems to me that even as a Wikipedia user, Mr Hunt's grasp of the data in front of him is tenuous, at best.

About the Army's mealy-mouthed “apology” for the State Mine Fire

The headline is that the Australian Defence Force has apologised for causing the huge State Mine Fire that's destroyed homes and still threatens many, many more.

The other headline is that it took right until the end of a nearly 19-minute press conference for Air Marshal Mark Binskin to bring himself to use the word “apologise”, having resisted nearly all calls for exactly that word.

In fact, if you hadn't listened online but on the radio, you'd have missed the word “apologise” because most outlets cut the feed a few minutes in. So I've taken the trouble of recording Briskin's entire contribution to the press conference, so you can see how long it took before he got around to “sorry”.

I've put this below for relentless checkers, because my main point is this. The Army started the bloody fire, and it's taken days and lots of questions before the simple word “apologise” snuck into the language. The headline isn't “Defence apologises”, it's “Defence tries really hard to dodge apologising.”

I'm not surprised that Blue Mountains residents aren't satisfied. I can't say I was in direct danger on my watch-and-act patrol yesterday. I can't begin to imagine losing a home or a business to a bushfire. I was merely alone in a region that had been comprehensively abandoned, surrounded by bush, watching the fires and the weather, and hoping that I didn't have to try and actually fight a fire.

I didn't. Others, every one of which has my admiration and gratitude, did the hard work. But I'm not satisfied with the Army's attempts to dodge, deflect and hide behind process. And I'm furious that the apology gets elevated, and the attempts to hide behind process get … hidden.

Here's my transcript. Most of the journalists' questions are very poorly caught by the microphones, but the answers explain the context. The whole of the briefing is at the RFS's Facebook page.

BRISKIN: Training activity at the Marangaroo training area, which the NSW Rural Fire Service has identified as the cause of the State Mine Fire near Lithgow.

Let me start by saying Defence continues to treat this matter very, very seriously, and will not shy away from our responsibility to fully examine this activity, and importantly, to support the official NSW Police investigation.

As is normal in this situation, you will know that the NSW Police investigators are preparing a report for the coroner.

From the outset, Defence has been open and transparent in relation to our activities at Marangaroo, and we continue to cooperate fully with NSW authorities investigating the State Mine Fire.

In addition to the NSW Police investigation, we will also conduct our own inquiry into the specifics of the activity at Marangaroo that led to that fire. The Defence inquiry will look at the specific circumstances surrounding the explosion and ordnance training activity, and the fire on Marangaroo training area.

The purpose of our inquiry is to fully determine the facts, which may identify any lessons to be learned from it, and apply it to practices and procedures, not only at Marangaroo in the future, but possibly at other training areas around Australia.

We are not removed from what is going on around New South Wales at the moment, or what has been happening in the past few weeks as regards to fires. Defence is part of the local community, and our people live and work in and around Lithgow and the Blue Mountains, and indeed in many other areas affected by fires over the last few weeks.

Many of our members are RFS volunteers, and are involved with the fire-fighting effort across the state over the past week, and at the moment.

A number of Defence personnel have lost their homes, with many others also being affected by fires. Our thoughts are with them, and with everyone who is currently affected by the fires burning within New South Wales.

Over the past week, Defence has been assisting with the bushfire effort throughout New South Wales. We are providing accommodation and meals for fire-fighters, as well as refuelling and ground support for New South Wales Rural Fire Service aircraft, and we stand ready to support the emergency services in any way that we can.

I would also like to take this chance to offer my praise and admiration for the dedication and the courage of the RFS volunteers throughout their day-in, day-out fighting these fires in very difficult and terrible conditions.

I would also like to take this moment to personally say that my thoughts are with the family of the pilot who was tragically lost this morning, down fighting the fires on the South Coast. As a pilot, I appreciate the dangers of operations like this, and any accident like this really does hit close to home. So our thoughts are with the families and friends of him.

Thank you, I will now take questions.

QUESTION (inaudible)

BRISKIN: At the moment, we're ascertaining the facts. That's why we're doing our inquiry into that particular fire, [inaudible] the specifics.

What I do know, and I saw the report this afternoon that the commissioner has provided me, which was only finalised today, which has identified that that fire did lead to the State Mine Fire.

QUESTION: What do you think of the Blue Mountains mayor asking for an apology?

BRISKIN: Look, I felt for the mayor last night when he was talking on TV. It was a very emotional, very hard day, there's a lot of strain for him, and in fact everyone in the community. I've heard the senior Australian Defence Force officer in the Blue Mountains talk again this afternoon, he's [the mayor] actually very committed to the close relationship with Defence and with the community, and knows that we stand there to support.

But as I said, I understand his feelings, I really do. It's been a hard couple of days, for him and for the community.

QUESTION [inaudible but about training]

BRISKIN: We will ascertain the facts as part of our own inquiry, but what I do know to date is it was an explosives activity. It was a demolition in support of how people are trained for operations around the world. It was about 23 degrees, light winds at the time we made the decision to do it. The fire scale was on the lower end of the scale, and there wasn't a fire [?concern?].

But when the activity occurred, the small fire that started, they responded. We always have our own fire equipment on standby for this, but it's quite difficult because it's in an area where there is ordnance.

And within 30 minutes the Rural Fire Service were there as well.

QUESTION [inaudible]

BRISKIN: Personal safety always comes first, both for the RFS fire-fighters in this case and our own personnel. It was considered too dangerous to go onto the particular site, where this fire had started to burn. So they waited to clear that area, and then start to fight it.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: Oh, we're concerned with where the fire has burned, and as I've alluded to, we're not shying from our responsibilities here. And I am concerned with anyone that, or any property, that is threatened by this.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: No, this was not deliberately starting a fire. This was an accident as part of a training activity on a day where there wasn't a fire ban. But I want to be clear, we are doing our own internal inquiry into this, to make sure that any lessons out this, we can take to do better with our range practices both there, and there may be lessons that we can put to our other training areas around Australia.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: There's still a lot in the process to go here. This is not a Defence jurisdiction, that's why we're fully supporting the New South Wales Police investigation into this. And as you are aware, in fires of this type, the coroner normally asks the New South Wales Police to conduct investigations. That investigation will ascertain all the facts, and we'll wait until that comes out, when this all settles, so we can fully consider it.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: The actual details around that will be detailed in our own internal inquiry, but the time as I have it was that the explosion around about midday, twelve o'clock, very close to twelve o'clock, they had to wait for a small period after that just to check, after the activity occurred, that's only five minutes, they spotted a small fire, they started to fight that themselves, they had to move back because of the unexploded ordnance, the RFS were there within 30 minutes. So as I was told this morning, when I was talking to those involved, it's 12:30 and the RFS was there.

So that's very close timing, and it shows that we do work closely with the RFS not just there, but with ranges throughout.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: It was a course, I don't have the exact numbers, but a course to train our explosives demolition technicians, who operate throughout the world in those sorts of situations.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: Not in that fire. We have a number of Defence personnel, both uniform and I think some civilian, who have lost homes to fire or have been in harm's way, as you know we're a large part of the community around the Springwood / Faulconbridge area. I know there's some pretty horrific stories out of that, I know specifically force and Defence people there.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: We can take that offline, organise a briefing for the activities we do.

INTERJECTION

BRISKIN: It is significantly important. These are explosive demolition technicians. These are the people that go and defuse improvised explosive devices, and many of the instructors on this course have just come back from operations.

So that's the significance of the training that they do. Or they'll be out defusing unexploded ordnance, even ordnance that might be found from the Second World War around the region.

That's the work that they do, it is very important work, that these technicians do, not just around Australia but around the world.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: No, I don't know what the exact vehicle looks like ... a striker vehicle, I think that's the correct term for fire-fighting, plus they have all the back-pack equipment, very similar to an RFS [volunteer]. I'd have to put that to the expert.

QUESTION about fire-rating

BRISKIN: It was high, it was the second – it's right on the low-end spectrum of the new classifications. But we'll check all that – I know that for a fact – but what we'll do, take into account all the issues as part of this inquiry so we have all the facts, so if there's ways that we can do things better and take lessons out of this, we will.

QUESTION

BRISKIN: At the moment our focus is on, in terms of priorities right now, we'll let the New South Wales Police do their investigation, determine all the facts, and we'll look at the outcome. [inaudible]

I have, I have, I do apologise, because, it has been identified that this fire was the start of that fire, but as I've said before, we'll wait until the New South Wales Police to do their investigation, and they come out with their report, for the coroner, and then we can move on. I think there's far bigger priorities right now with the fire-fighting that's going on. Thank you.

No time to play nice: talk about climate change

There's the climate change science, settled long ago. And there's the political debate, stalled in the 1970s because special interests want it that way.

Against an utterly unprincipled and untruthful status quo, those who believe climate change needs an urgent response silence their own voices in the name of sensitivity and civility.

What nonsense: the only right time to make a political statement is when it will have the greatest political impact.

The only reason there's a “good manners” brigade trying to tell you “don't say this now” is: they know it. They know that the best time to talk about catastrophic weather, and emphasise its connection to climate change, is when the electorate has a shining example right in front of it.

Talking about cold abstracts to someone wondering about the best way to spend his Super-Cheap-Autos voucher while watching the Bathurst 1000 will get nowhere. When the same person is looking at a dirty orange-black Sydney sky and wondering if grandmother's nursing home is okay – that's when they're paying attention. That's when they'll think “gee, maybe this climate change is a bit of a bugger, eh?”

That's when ordinary people are receptive to the political message.

That's what motivates the urge to silence. It's not about respect or feelings, it's about chilling the debate. There's a moment when a sale can be made, when a mind can be changed, and the deniers don't want that to happen. They don't want the climate change sale to be made: every success is a disaster to them.

What's sad is that the Left – however you define it – has assimilated the university debating society good-form-rules, and is easily cowed by the suggestion of bad manners or bad form.

As if.

As if the Heartland Institute or the IPA or the CIS or Menzies House think about manners and form while they prime their sockpuppets and roll out the astroturf. As if screaming “lord” Monckton, WhattsUpWithThat or Joanna Nova play by manners and form. As if “climate change is mostly crap” is a statement according with manners and form.

The Left is playing soccer in the climate change debate, while the right carries the ball and plays the contact sport.

It's time to abandon the idea that just because one side of the political debate is working with science, it needs to follow peer-review and good manners in the political battle.

If there's a win to be had, seize it.

If there are balls to kick, kick them.

If there's an eye open in front of you, stick your thumb in it.

Anything less is yielding ground to liars who won't accord the slightest respect to those they defeat.

National security: the lie that's the thief of freedom

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: I'm more than 50 years old, and for nearly all of those years, “national security” has been trying to justify its existence with scare-stories to frighten children.

Look around the Australia you see right now, and ask yourself: is our lifestyle threatened more by terrorists, or by the toxic combination of right-wing politics and self-interested security agencies?

Well: in my entire life, Australia's terrorist toll is the bombing of the Hilton Hotel – attributed wrongly, with convictions overturned – and the bombing of the Israeli embassy in the 1980s. That's the crop.

Oh, there was once a post-911 fool who filled a Toyota Hiace with ANFO and set it off in the Dean's Park defence land to see what would happen. And there's been utterly incompetent plots to take over army bases, justly receiving their convictions.

But in my whole life, being tabloid-frightened by the idea that commies, Viet Cong, Serbian terrorists (in the 70s, look it up), hackers, jihadists, boat people, the Ananda Marga Sect (look it up) …

The net effect on “the Australian way of life is zero …

...except that the agencies wrap their dark wings around power and liberty, call it a success, and while local councils tap phone records to discover unregistered pets, and our communications are snooped and tapped, nobody is actually good at threatening us.

The Milperra Massacre – performed by the bikie gangs that hipsters now pay a tax to, to get their tattoos, or pay to provide a Harley-Davidson escort to their weddings – chalked up more deaths (seven) than Australia's entire terrorism toll.

But the world of “national security” isn't just about government agencies protecting their budgets: it's also about consultants to those agencies, protecting their budgets. And a consultant won't get rich saying “defund ASIO and ASIS by 20 percent because there isn't a credible threat”, will it?

And if there's no local client for consultant money saying “pour tax dollars into national security”, there'll always be an American client to foot the bill: because America has outsourced its vile trade in liberty and death to the private sector. And that private sector earns its every calorie sucking at the teat of the taxpayer in every damn country it plants its flag.

And as a result: Australia is bombarded by our terrorist threat, and we will lose our liberties and have our communications snooped on, and the kind of media that print a “think tank study” without criticism will work to lull us into accepting it.

I can tell you, from my interactions on Twitter, that the people giving this bad advice weren't even born – as in “I wasn't born when Andanda Marga was a thing, what's your point?” – when most of the scare-stories were the tabloid staples of my youth. Which means the entire history of “they're coming to get us” scare stories is in the unreal past, whereas fear-of-bearded-Islam is a Real and Present Danger.

As was every other damn fake fear I was peddled in my lifetime. As the cartoonist Matthew Martin put it: national security is a bunch of turkeys with paper bags over their heads. They've offered not a damn thing to my personal security nor political freedom in fifty years, and I don't trust them now.

Requiem for a friend

Let me tell you about Pat MacDonald, what little I knew of her over a few years as a customer Bunjaree Cottages.

She was frail when we first met. Physically, not mentally frail – although her voice quavered, her mind didn't. She could drive a bargain like some people drive a train: a thousand tonnes of metal on rails. She also insisted that she bring her small dog with her (in spite of the official rules about pets), couldn't work a television newer than when AWA still built them in Australia, and was quite demanding as a customer at Bunjaree Cottages, where she would holiday a couple of times a year, always with a friend as her carer and the small dog as her companion.

In holiday cottages notionally described as “self care”, she never visited without calling on my attendance in some way or other. And her conversation and, dare I say it of a woman who had kissed eighty goodbye when I first met her, flirtatious nature, meant that chores weren't chores.

I knew I had to be on hand if she was a guest, because the phone would ring. I knew that the calls would be relatively minor things, like getting the TV working or helping her carer light the fire. And I knew I'd be rewarded with the conversation of a woman who must have really lit up the room, fifty or sixty years ago.

I never met dear Pat in, say, my forties. I was already fifty when my wife and I bought Bunjaree Cottages. Even at fifty, I was “this nice young man,” and so I stayed throughout our brief and occasional association.

Oh, and her reaction to my elder son, who met her when we once lugged wood from outdoors to indoors for her, made me proud.

He is quite tall, solid about the shoulders, thin everywhere else. And because his grandmother lived with us, he could talk to old ladies.

After he left and I stayed to socialise, she simply pronounced: “Now, that's what a young man should be.” And I grinned, because most of the time I try to balance fatherly harshness with being proud of my sons, and I like to hear them praised by others.

Pat never met my wife, Ms T: by a quirk of fate, her visits always coincided with a hospital visit or an illness. Which meant that many of our conversations included her solicitations after a woman thirty years – at least! – her junior, who was unwell. And I received compliments for caring for Ms T, which perhaps I deserved and which I certainly enjoyed.

Oh yes, I mentioned a flirtatious nature. Once, because I love little flamboyances of courtesy, I kissed the back of her hand, and she giggled as if transported across decades, and if nobody was watching, she'd hold her hand up for a repeat performance. I was happy to oblige.

Pat, your passing has quite upset me.

Most of all, I am touched beyond telling that your friends decided to call me to tell me, and relate the circumstances of your passing, to be  assured that you didn't suffer a long, slow, horrible death, but faded in a few days. 

I thought I was only your host. Post-mortem, I learn that I was your friend. I'm honoured. 

Alice Springs is a pimple on a boil on the arse of a white hypocrite

[Since I'm on the Western World's Worst Broadband Ripoff this blog post is worth about five dollars.]

If I ever hear another variation on the white Territorian is “better than blacks” meme I'll take the radio control myself to guide the asteroid down on the dump.

There is no human more self-satisfied, smug and utterly hypocritical than a Territory white man whining about drunk blacks.

For the last few days, I've been covering the World Solar Challenge. It's a “best of the best” kind of gig: a combination of serious science, serious competition, camaraderie, and motor-sport excitement without burning dead dinosaurs.

Then I got within pregnant-man's bad-breath distance of Alice Springs, and started encountering the kinds of whites who live by pouring bad grog down black throats, and bleating to tabloids about the outcome.

It's Monday night in this bogan inferno. I've not only eaten shit for dinner, but eaten shit that arrived an hour late because the short-order cooks (in this dump, a mixed menu is means “steak, fish and supermarket curry and is called “innovation”) can blacken Angus in three minutes but need an hour and a reminder for a vegetarian pasta without the bain-marie chips.

Just don't get me started on this town's “we're just like London look we do curry” thing. Tonight, the “curry of the night” was beef vindaloo in three different places I called (before giving up), which tells me either there's a shared kitchen, a shared chef, or a shared brain cell.

My motel requires – I kid you not – a credit card swipe for the contents of the minibar, which are:

• Six Arnott's Nice biscuits stored in the refrigerator; and
• One UHT milk.

“Where's the water?” you ask. It's in a tap in the bathroom and flows from a bore and tastes of salt. It's captured in the glass shown in the photo, and although the motel runs to a “tavern” that can deliver steak and barramundi faster than pasta, it doesn't run to ice in the room although it's currently around 10:30 and in another hour or two if I'm lucky, I'll see the mercury dip below twenty by running the air-con.

In this WASP's nest, you don't even need to try to get some uninvited opinion about the darkies, Abos and boongs. Just sit still and look a teeny tiny bit not white, like I might in a bad light while waiting for two dollars' worth of pasta charged out at twenty.

Apparently, something in my face or hair or grey pattern or the way I talk strikes some “blackfella buttons” in Alice Springs, which is why I had endure the opinions of one “Katter hat” bigot and two “stupidly fat tourists with turned-back baseball caps” about what's wrong with The Blacks they'd seen.

Except, guess what, the fake pom beer-puller (WHY??? Why will someone from Sydney go to Alice and put on a fake Londoner act?) who can't operate a tavern with just six bloody dinner orders and get them right and in order can somehow:

• tell the difference between an utterly legless white electrician and a ditto blackfella, and
• deny service to one, while landing me – thanks shit-head – with the yelling bigoted ignorant pissed white as my entertainment while I waited for your cold fucking pasta, and STILL assume I was a black on a bender. “Nigel”, you are in every way due for the inferno.

(You also tried to appropriate a tip with a cash-register adjustment. And you didn't notice that I was using cash to drink, rather than charging to my room. The more I think about you, "Nigel", the more I want you taken to Darwin and fed to a salty.)

Yes, Alice Springs is full of staggering-drunk people and some of them are black! In a couple of hours, sitting still and eating, I've had two offers of fights (one for being a poof, which is the kind of assertion that truckies and fools should test before they get truculent over); I've had a long lecture from Mister White about What's Wrong With the Country, I've watched the bartender try to slide both white and black into a “buy the whole bar” oblivion, and all the rest.

I particularly liked the square-jawed superman wearing his “DuckDuckGo.com” T-shirt (“Dunno, mate, it was a present). If he finishes the third bottle with the girlfriend, you can bet that he'll get discreetly taxied home.

We aren't “better”. We just have more money, which means if the unpleasant square-jawed superman who was given his “Duck-Duck-Go” T-Shirt as a piss-take that he didn't understand finishes his third bottle with his girlfriend, someone will discreetly get them home instead of leaving them to stagger in the street for the Channel Nine cameras.

As it happens, if you visit Sydney with $20 and a taste for red wine and a pub to go to, you won't get served two bottles for it, no matter what. You'll be lucky to get enough Aldi Shiraz Merlot to make you blow 0.049 and get an indulgent raised eyebrow from a cop. But here in the Alice, five bucks will get a white man half a bottle of crap restaurant wine, but every delicate nose will wrinkle at a pissed blackfella.

That's Alice Springs for you.

While sitting in the shit-it's-hot of Ti Tree I met the stone-cold-sober, intelligent, talkative and way-beyond-me-wise shire service manager of the area. He knows shit from shallots, he understands how to talk to a soft city wanker like me while still sounding like a Territorian, he told me twenty things I didn't know in ten minutes, and loves his people. Here in Alice on the street below my window, a city-crap-big-screen-jukebox is watched by white bogan idiots whose bikie-tax is inked on their arms, whose moron-tax is labelled on the cans of flavoured ethanol they drink, and courtesy the pissants among the TV crews they still think they're ahead of the blackfella.

White Australia, you're a pimple on a boil on the arse of a hypocrite, and Alice Springs is your epitome.

Journalistic civility and a weak press

A vignette from 2010: I watched with cringing embarrassment as one journalist apologised to the gentleman at the front of the press conference, for the aggressive questions from another journalist.

The gentleman subject to the questions was the chairman of Indian company Tata Group at the time, Ratan Tata. And his response was humorous and slightly confused, along the lines of: “Oh, that wasn't impolite. In India, if journalists think you're leaving a press conference without answering their questions, they will put their hands on you to restrain you.”

I have no knowledge of Ratan Tata himself – naughty or nice, clean or corrupt, venal or visionary. But the vignette stuck with me, because Australian journalists wear a level of politeness that is nakedly sycophantic, with few exceptions.

And it shits me to tears.

A couple of years ago now, Paul Fletcher appeared in front of a bunch of tech journalists, desperately ill-prepared for the event. He got questioned hard – stood up, in fact – by a small handful of us.

Behind the stories, on a Website you can't access because you need a login, there was serious criticism that aggressive questions somehow represented ill-manners to an invited guest.

I said then, privately, and say now, publicly, “bollocks”. His job includes suffering in public, and mine includes being rude in the face of bad answers.

Let's move the time machine to April, 2013, when I tried to assert to Malcolm Turnbull that his favoured model for Australia's broadband, the BT rollout in the UK, was running behind schedule and over budget. I won't name my sources at the time, but events proved I was right – here are some links:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/05/national_audit_office_rural_broadband_report/

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/11/bt_broadband_ip_profile_throttled/

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/17/public_accounts_committee_bduk_and_bt_spending_scrutinised/

and

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/26/public_accounts_committee_report_on_broadband_rollout/

When I pressed Malcolm Turnbull on this point in a public press conference – recorded here but I'm not going to seek out the exact minute right now – he first responded with a simple “you're wrong” (I wasn't), before recommending that I “model my civility” on the example of some other journalist present (I know his name, and he dips as easily into sycophancy as a drunk dips into gin, but why add to my list of enemies?). 

In the clip, I'm the journalist with the WTF waistcoat, having a bad-hair-day. I didn't have an invite to the press conference, I gate-crashed, and wasn't dressed appropriately. Okay?

Oh, and Malcolm Turnbull had spent the past year deflecting questions about BT's experience by asking journalists “why don't you call BT, as I have?” My answer to that is, naturally, that I had no need to hear corporate bromides to assess what was really happening.

But this is about journalistic manners and the way that the death-mask of “professionalism” has been pressed onto the clay of journalism to make it compliant and well-behaved.

The worst thing that can befall a journalist is that he or she be considered a “valued member” of any community other than that of the reader. The interests of an industry, a political class, or any insider clique, are not the business of the journalist.

The second-worst thing is that the journalist be cleaned up, made neat and presentable, and taught to respond to peer pressure.

That peer pressure is used, manipulated and abused, to remake journalism in the evil banality of their surroundings. Instead of standing out, accepting the lightning strikes and abuse, we're taught by peer pressure and “good manners” not to challenge, not to demand answers, to serve the toxic club of insiders that's too easy to inhabit.

We're taught to let the leaders frame the debate, regardless of the facts (look at how climate change gets abused, as an example).

Hence the idea among other journalists that I and a couple of others behaved “unprofessionally” towards a “guest”, or that I should “model my civility” on a member of the inside club.

Bollocks. I don't owe anything to a politician's spin-doctor's attempt to frame the debate in terms favourable to his master. I don't even have to acknowledge the attempt to frame the debate.

And yes: I have my punishment for choosing truth over civility. The only way I'll ever get to a Malcolm Turnbull press conference will be by subterfuge or leak. I'll never be on the list of honoured insiders that are welcome because they'll kiss the ring.

It bothers me not: the only way I've ever been present in the same room as the communications minister is by subterfuge or leak. I've only ever heard from him indirectly, when a spinner demanded that I change a headline to remove an inference he didn't like. It was this one: “Turnbull floats e-vote, compulsory ID”.

I stand by that headline. Malcolm Turnbull said what he said, and my inferences are my own and I'm damn well not subject to a spinner's whines and whims. The advisor got the best of my tongue on that call and an invitation to call my boss.

So I'm an outsider? It's more fun here than licking boot-polish with the civil.

Compared to an Indian CEO, our politicians are a protected class, accustomed to being surrounded by lapdogs.

The result is a clique at the cloaca, only consuming what the politicians choose to let fall from their tails, and never going beyond the bounds of good manners.

All of which speaks to the stunning lack of diversity in the media. There are too few outlets, so nobody will dare ostracism or exclusion. The press is weakened by its monolithic structure; and no journalist in Australia would dare stop an interviewee from leaving the room for not answering questions.

Because if Fairfax gets ostracised and News doesn't, or vice-versa, it's a bloody disaster: there aren't another 20 outlets still demanding answers.

Which is why no politician in Australia will do anything serious about media reform: the near-monoculture in the Canberra gallery is controllable. Manageable. The threat of exclusion – not just from invitations to pressers, as I “suffer”, but from leaks, whispers, and parties – is too great.

And by the way: I'll stalk our communications minister. He will have public appearances in the next three years whose invitations are in the gift of others. And life, and memory are long. I'll have fun.

Patronising the punters won't light the fires of the left

I'll start with a couple of personal observations. I've never thought T-Shirt politics actually achieved much, which is why I never “bought the T-shirt”. Also, although I'm perfectly capable of swearing up a storm, I don't see much point in a T-shirt saying “Fuck Abbott” and I'm actually weary of the word “fuck” on T-shirts (yes, that probably makes me a hypocrite of some kind).

However, neither am I completely comfortable with Sarah Burnside's article, here, “Why it's futile to F*ck Abbott” saying in part:

“Arguably the most problematic shirt is the one boasting no foul language at all. It proclaims simply: “Abbott is not my Prime Minister”. Unless you're living in an alternative reality, yes he is. Those of us ideologically opposed to this government need to digest this truth, face the challenges before us, and hold our leaders to account — not close our eyes and believe in fairies.”

(An aside: nearly all political dissent is “futile”. It'll be ignored by the media, blocked by the insiders, won't get enough momentum to have an effect, and the only people who will pay attention will be ASIO, heaven knows why.)

The article was answered at AusOpinion here and I don't propose to discuss whether Abbott is my prime minister, but I do have further thoughts about dissent.

I agree with Ms Burnside's conclusion that “To make a real and radical change in our politics, we need something less stylish than belligerent despair: a commitment to the unfashionable notion of the collective good.”

However: I don't believe in fairies, and I've been around a bit, and it seems to me simplistic to think that dissent might or must or can take one form, agree on one voice, and align behind one vision and leader.

Since it's never happened that way, I don't see any reason to think it will happen in the future.

1. The voice of dissent isn't the act of dissent

I'm not splitting hairs merely for the hell of it, here. Buying a T-shirt is different from writing an article, which is different from marching behind a banner, which is different from taking part in the ongoing grind of organising, fielding candidates, fund-raising and the rest.

2. One is not exclusive of the another

Of the quarter-million people that once marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sorry Day in May 2000, how many continued, organised, did the grind, worked to change the world? A tiny minority, most of which were already schooled, involved, engaged.

The majority of the T-shirt wearers probably are disengaged. And a minority are engaged. It ever was thus.

To think that the person who buys the T-shirt is also incapable of empathy or organisation is to force-fit a very dull template upon the rest of the world.

3. Dissent with one party does not imply affiliation with another

Were I to by a “Fuck Abbott” T-shirt (see above), it doesn't identify me with the ALP. Even before the stupid antics of Kevin Rudd, the clear demonstration that the party has managed to invent a structure in which misbehaviour is rewarded, it had managed to convince me that it wasn't listening to me and cared for me no more than the Liberal party.

I'm not obliged to act in ways that support the ALP's cause. So I'm a fool who wastes his vote? I'd offer as counter-evidence the last parliament: faced with having to work to get consensus, the parliament managed a harder legislative workload than is seen when a self-indulgent dominant party dozes its way through its term.

4. Po-faced politics is a dead loss

There's this habit, as people mature, to suddenly treat every aspect of political discourse with the utmost seriousness, and to wrinkle the nose at the messy, rude or even humorous. I do it myself, sometimes. But I am aware that it's an alienating habit, and I try to stay as loose as I can.

***

“Stop laughing, this is serious” isn't just alienating. It also debases the discourse, because it demands inappropriate responses. When someone is being small and silly, it doesn't improve the world to treat them as being big and serious.

At its heart, the demand that dissent be expressed in acceptable ways, and should only exist in the context of an acceptably organised Proper Movement – it's just condescending. It assumes that the person who buys the “Fuck Abbott” T-shirt is a rootless bogan, incapable of understanding The Big Picture (in an acceptable context, which generally means “get the ALP back into office”); or is an alienated youth, too jejune to understand that their dissent is pointless.

Or – as is suggested in Sarah Burnside's article – that it's “an embrace of individualism rather than empathy”.

I take strong exception to this: I can't be alone in being able to maintain both anger without surrendering empathy. It's a matter of knowing my enemy.

The impulse to control dissent, to demand that my anger be channeled through someone else's paths: this is also a conservative impulse. It defines politics as the game of the aged insider: “here is the acceptable discourse, here is the right way to do it, trust me, I know.”

To most of the population, the insider's view is smug and comfortable, condescending and alienating, po-faced and joyless. I like to laugh, poke fun, and yell at the TV when some vile seat-warming time-server pretends to tell me what I'm thinking.

Fuck it, I might just buy the T-shirt after all.