Sport’s asset bubble

Will there be a global sporting financial crisis?

The implosion of Tiger Woods last year was reported in the business pages; this is because Tiger is more than a person, he is a brand.

It is a status he shares with other leading sports ‘personalities’. The idea is that product endorsement by the likes of David Beckham, Roger Federer or Michael Jordan actually leads to consumers modeling their purchasing habits viz that same endorsement.

What David Bekham knows about mobile phones is probably up there with my knowledge of Canadian fungi, but it must work as Motorola paid him a truckload of cash to endorse their Razr phone. In fact, a lot of pseudo science has been peddled around trying to quantify how much product endorsements are worth.

Given that a lot of this “research” bleeds from the marketing industry, most of it can be dismissed out of hand.

Marketers do know that human beings aren’t rational. From this it flows that neither are marketing budgets. Most of it is just simple psychology aimed at making people feel like they belong. It works well in societies where real social networks (as opposed to facebook) are parlous or have collapsed, such as suburban Australia, especially at the more affluent end.

Exhibit A in this regard is Firepower.

Product endorsement by sports personalities is just a subset of the power of celebrity that has been growing since the mid-twentieth century.

Such endorsements are not new. Pope Leo XIII once endorsed a plonk laced with cocaine (left), which probably explains Tony Abbott.

Even if celebrity sports endorsements do work to some degree it is probable that their audiences, globally, are shrinking.

There may be more people watching, but as a percentage of total potential audience sports are in decline.

I base this assertion on declining TV audiences. No doubt many sports watchers have simply shifted medium, but that doesn’t help sports organisations whose main income stream is from traditional media.

Cricket Australia has a revenue stream of about $150 million, a fact it attributes to income from media. Cricket Australia isn’t doing media deals with the profusion of dinky little blogs and message boards that can keep you very up to date with matters cricket. They do their deals with the likes of Foxtel and Channel Nine who, in turn, rely on cricket’s drawing power to grab eyeballs and thence advertising and/or subscription.

It’s a simple business model that has two big, terminal problems. One; audiences for TV, especially free-to-air, are in decline; and two, advertisers are getting much more targeted in their marketing spend, leaving TV ads as poor value for return.

Radio has been through this revolution and the result is revenue from radio ads is a lot lower, the ads are cheaper, and the products they now flog are a lot more downmarket, generally speaking and radio as a whole is becoming a shoestring operation with a decreasing accent on celebrity.

The current crop of Australian players are already not loved by the Australian public, as David Sygall pointed out in the Fairfax papers a few weeks ago.

That cricket is aware of the potential damage this could do is undeniable. Sygall reported the market research they are doing. Also witness their ham fisted attempts to control the image of their ‘product’ by keeping news agencies from reporting test matches unless they signed ‘we love you’ waivers with Cricket Australia.

It is worth noting that if Cricket Australia’s revenue stream declines, so does the share going to the contracted players. So the deflation from lost media revenue will flow through to deflation in player’s incomes.

I’m using Cricket as an example here, but you could equally apply it to AFL, Rugby League, Rugby Union and Football. Globally, football will remain strong because of its sheer weight of numbers, but Tennis, Golf, the American sports and global Rugby must be getting nervous.

Sport as a product faces some big problems when it comes to the dreaded monetization. The problem that many of us have suspected for some time – that elite sports people and their organisations are paid far too much – is coming home to roost.

Celebrity is so vacuous that it relies on constant attention to survive. Paris Hilton knows that if the eyeballs stray elsewhere, they may never come back.

Sport as a business faces the big problem of continuing to attract eyeballs in a day and age when its very elitism and the carry on of its 'celebrities' alienates many viewers for a host of reasons that it isn't worth dwelling on at this time. Hence their need to turn to the vulgarity of 20/20 in cricket in order to feed the popularity beast so essential to the mainstream media outlets.

There is an alternative that is unthinkable to the moneymen surrounding elite sport. Sports could always return to being a past-time; an activity, rather than a spectacle.

But, who is going to endorse your product or watch your TV show if everyone is out there playing sport? Besides, humans are far too passive to reject the verisimilitude of spectating.

Actually doing it – as Nike suggests – requires more effort than western consumerism could stand.

Rupert Loves Kristina

A funny thing is happening in NSW. The News Limited stable is having a love affair with the latest ALP Premier Kristina Keneally.

Witness this

Simultaneously, over at the thinking right wing lunatic’s newspaper, the Australian, Liberal opposition leader, Barry O’Farrell is getting beaten about the head and neck for being, well, Barry.

A Canberra media source has suggested that Rupert likes to back winners, and perhaps News see Kristina as a winner.

An alternative reading may suggest that there’s a contra deal going on here. If so, what is News Limited getting for their gushing coverage? It’s a scary thought. Time to bury the silverware.

There is a genuine liking out in the community for Keneally. Her ‘li’l ole me’ routine is working a treat; as is the super-mum thing. The less said about the MILF factor (although it has to be acknowledged) the better. All of it is bullshit of course, but the public enemy number one running Kristina, Premier’s Department head Walt Secord (who did the same job for that equally talentless fluff, Bob Carr), at least has something to work with this time.

It’s not just News either. The Parrott was in on the act, reminding his listeners on Monday January 18 what an intellect Miss Ohio was, and how she bikes to work, performs miracles, etc. etc.

If News Limited think Kristina can survive it’s also assuming the ALP is going to survive, which is not beyond the realm of possibility, just beyond the realms of sanity. Maybe they’re just happy that Hamlet of Macquarie Street, Nathan Rees, is gone? Whatever it is, it sure is weird.

The psephologist’s psephologist, Antony Green pointed out that Rees received a similar (though marginally less impressive) bounce [link] when he ascended to the right hand of Joe Tripodi. None of that bounce flowed through to improving the ALP’s vote though and in the end he was bumped, along with his minder, Graeme Wedderburn, who was proving to be a looming problem come the ALP senate preselection.

So News, and Alan, may want to be careful. Preferred leader polls are always a beauty contest and have little to do with voting intention. Keating was preferred Prime Minister right up to election day in ’96 – and that ended up with the ALP wandering the streets crying “bring out your dead”.

Likewise, the primary vote numbers in the poll that prompted the WE LOVE KRISTINA headlines still has the ALP lying in a ditch with flies buzzing around its eyes.

She is also stuck with a team that is the end result of three generations of nepotistic inbreeding. None of those jokers have had an original idea since the Golden Palace in Sussex Street last changed it’s menu back in 1984.

What will be of greater concern for the Tyke Keneally will be the release of the attempted papicide, Mehmet Ali Agca.

Kristina is a good Catholic Girl – Quiet up the back! – and must be terrified at the thought of the guy who tried to kill the pope, who has God’s mobile number on speed-dial, being welcomed back into society, a la Denis Ferguson.

Ole Memsy is loose on the streets of Ankara, offering to kill Osama Bin Laden and declaring himself Messiah.

Such delusional antics prompt an idea that Mehmet is fine material to be the next Premier of NSW. Bob Carr is living proof that Mehmet wouldn’t be the first character the major parties have thrown up who came with his very own Messiah complex.

(Methuselah would like to declare that he is a former altar boy, and as such will have three Bloody Mary’s and a How’s Your Father as penance.)

Play Abandoned #25 - Say it ain't so, Kamran

What is really going on with the Pakistan cricket tour?

There is little doubt that if Pakistan was a racehorse it would have been swabbed by now.

There have been allegations that the fix was in at Sydney. None of these allegations have surfaced in the mainstream media because of the old juicy laws of libel, which can be a profitable earner for the professional litigant thanks to, amongst other things, the ACT Supreme Court.

So, did Pakistani vice-captain and wicketkeeper Kamran Akmal fall, or was he pushed? He did miss four catches and a relatively straight forward run out, which has raised  eyebrows in some quarters, but he has form in this department.

Some critics say he has lost games before. He dropped Lara during the World Cup a few years ago, never a good ploy. And has made some howler missed stumpings but, well, he kept getting selected on the basis of his batting. So what does that say about the Pakistani selectors?

But there was more to this than some inconsistency from the gloveman. Cricket is not a one man game. It would be a difficult job for one person to work alone to ensure the correct outcome for a punter or bookmaker on a cricket test. But there are the 'exotic' bets - highest scores, next wicket to fall, etc.

As far as Kamran throwing the game, the conservative captaincy of the Cat Stevens of world cricket, Mohommed Yousef, played a big part in Siddle and the little Hussey putting on the lead that they did. A lead that proved a winning lead.

Maybe they are all just playing us for mugs? It wouldn't be the first time.

But either way, reserve wicketkeeper Sarfraz Ahmed will make his Test debut for Pakistan against Australia in Hobart on Thursday. Apparently Kamran's brother Umar is having a sulk and may not be fit to play.

At this rate the Hobart show will be all over by tea on the third day.

This is a tragedy as a country like Pakistan needs a win right now. With the Talibs on one side and Uncle Sam on the other, life is not much fun in the land beneath the ancient Kush. One would hope a bit of Pashtun pride and Kashmiri dignity will see them, at least, compete.

God willing, it will be so. But maybe god has given up on Pakistani cricket as well.

Methuselah - playing forward defensively to the flighted ball

Applied Appliance Applications

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. 
- Brendan Behan

Most of the effective technology in use today is that which can be employed without necessarily understanding how it works.

F'rinstance, how many would understand the inner workings of radio, the internal cumbustion engine that drives their car or even the computer with which they are reading this?

Yet political technologies - the technology of making and changing public decisions - require a sound understanding of how they work before they can be used.

Political technologies? Put simply, it is the technique of organising a group of people to achieve a commonly desired outcome.

At the dawn of the second decade of the twenty-first century this technology (or 'the craft of politics' if you prefer) is a rare skill.

Governments and political parties of all hues rely strongly on the disorganised community. It allows then to govern by executive fiat; internally within their parties and at a cabinet level within government.

The community - the household community - is increasingly disempowered as decisions are made that are either illiberal or directly act against the interests of the household sector. A cursory glance overthe history of electricity privatisation in NSW shows this.

Social organisation needs to work in such a way that people can organise without necessarily understanding how they do so.

This already happens to some degree. It's called society. The problem is that it is ineffective in the face of the organised demands of an increasingly authoritarian state.

So, how can politics be applied in a way that gives people control over decisions that affect them, without them necessarily understanding how those decisions are made?


How we informally organise needs to be examined. How can political structures be built that do not require an understanding of how they work to be effective?


Such structures would radically alter how society is organised. Would it simply be mob-facism by another name?


The great beauty of Liberal Democracy is the protection it provides for the dissident. Democracy is not the rule of the majority - that is populism - it is the right to dissent.


Liberal Democracy increasingly looks like the 'Democracy' of Greece and Rome. A system that benefits an elite few and is made to work by an army of slaves. For now the 'slaves' have the vote, but given that elections have degenerated into little more than beauty contests where issues seldom see the light of day (or if they do, they are ignored by the political elite that benefit from them), this 'right' held by the slaves is viewed by many as an imposition rather than a benefit. As the Anarchists say of the democratic political class: voting only encourages them.


In the face of such cynicism demand for the innovation of a user friendly politics may appear to be wanting. This is probably true, but as Lord Bowden once attributed to Douglas Hartree:

"...in his opinion, all the calculations that would ever be needed in this country could be done on the three digital computers which were then being built — one in Cambridge, one in Teddington, and one in Manchester. No one else, he said, would ever need machines of their own, or would be able to afford to buy them."

 So, who knows what the future will bring? It is doubtful if it will be party political.


What would a society that applied such an innovative political technology look like?


The various incompatible values of humanity would need to be accommodated, as well as the ancient Siddarthian conundra, and the age old economic question.

Currently we are drifting into various flavours of totalitarianism, with little practical solace for the professed dissident, apart from being able to hold a belief. Outside of this the dissident is held as a crank or a nutjob, as effective and more insidious (if more comfortable) version than being locked away in a gulag or concentration camp. Totalitarianism has got smart.


Most political debate in this country is predicated on who can tell the better lie. No doubt the progenitors of these debates believe what they are saying or doing to various degrees, but that they are fundamentally untrue is a demonstrable (if more complicated than a sound bite will allow) fact.


Rather than lies that work we need to accommodate various competing and, at times, incompatible (or, dare I say it, inconvenient) truths. Not to build a global hegemony, world government or hand power over to some manifestation of conspiracy fantasy, but to make sure we get enough to eat and keep warm when we are old.

Debt and Destruction

Figures released in the silly season reveal that Australians are up to their ears and beyond in hock.

Figures released by the Reserve bank show that debt held by the household sector is somewhere north of a trillion dollars (That's $1,200,000,000,000.00), equaling our (very) Gross Domestic Product.

I predicted back in January 2008, incorrectly as it turns out, that the Global Financial Crisis would deliver a credit squeeze. The bailout of the banking sector didn't allow this, and the short term stimulus activity meant people could keep on racking up debt. This has continued to fuel an asset bubble. People are *over* the GFC, and, despite sluggish seasonal sales figures, appear to be tucking into business as usual with "no interest and nothing to pay until 2011", as Gerry Harvey puts it.

How long they expect this to go on before it begins to cause serious pain in the household sector is beyond me. We have created a population bonded in servitude to credit providers. The household sector is now owned by (largely) the big four banks - and, Australians being Australians, they will do what they are told.

We are two nations. A corporate nation and a household nation. The corporate nation drives the political and economic agenda and the household nation is left sucking on the social agenda.

When Rudd beams his message into wide screen TVs bought on easy credit into the loungerooms of the country he talks in the language of the social agenda. He says things that households want to hear. It's all very fluffy and aimed at Mr and Mrs McMansion and their 2.2 kids.

When he acts, he acts on behalf of the corporate nation, and delivers on an economic agenda that addresses the needs of the corporate nation. Bank guarantees, award stripping (or "streamlining" as the neo-liberal Gillard calls it), uranium mining and handouts for polluters in the name of carbon reduction are all par for the course. Add to this a looming assault on the nation's underclass through a tightening of welfare and runaway grocery prices and you start to see a picture where Rudd is no friend to the working stiffs, and possibly the best successor Howard's supporters from the big end of town could have hoped for.

Unfortunately their partisan blindness paints Rudd as a dangerous Marxist, so they are left with the debilitating Tony Abbott as their champion. But even Turnbull could see Rudd was open to some very accommodating, corporate friendly politics.

So households end up with three fifths of sweet truck all while much largesse is divested to our friends in the ASX 200, and any number of overseas multinationals.

And because Rudd is brand ALP there are many traitorous swine on the left that will suck it up while every month it becomes harder and harder to keep the good people at Visa happy.

Oh, for a champion of the household nation.

Play Abandoned #24 - It Couldn’t Happen To A Nicer Bloke

Crystal Gayle was right; the Australian First XI can dish it out but they can’t take it.

That clown Watson’s carry on over in Perth was pathetic. These flat track bullies are synonymous with the zeitgeist that sees cricketers pulling down six figure sums while nurses are expected to get by on less than 50K a year.

I don’t like cricket; I love it. And it is possible to love a sport and hate a team. And I intensely dislike the type of degraded human that is thrust into sport by a media machine that feeds of a nation’s need for vicarious success

How would pay TV survive if we were all out there actually having a go – instead of feeding off a few spoilt and gifted brats having a go in our stead.

Peter Roebuck, who says a lot of wise things between the occasional foray into excruciating hubris, warned us before the start of the 2009 Melbourne Boxing Day Test against Pakistan that the visitors had the potential to field like the ‘a fourth grade team after a night on turps’.

I play in a fourth grade cricket team and have, on occasion, been known to foray into the universe of spirituous liquors and fermented ales. Roebuck appeared to have correctly measured Pakistan’s frailties in the field. We drop sitters at first slip in fourth grade too.

Both Katich and Watson were dropped as they piled it on for two sessions of cricket. It made them look better than they are. But, to their credit, they made the most of the other fellow’s misfortune. Which is how Australia comes to dominate the long form of the game. Ruthless efficiency.

Both eventually fell in the nineties.

Watson’s downfall, via a rather bizarre mix up run out, seemed particularly judicious. While Katich’s dismissal simply seemed like a punchline to a very droll joke.

No doubt the vast majority two-dimensional thoughtless scoundrel patriots that pass themselves off as cricket fans were dismayed. They don’t understand that it is only through adversity that true champions are made. Not through a private school education and having every door opened for you as you pass through lif.

Steve Waugh always seemed genuinely affected by the very real poverty in the subcontinent. Michael Clarke seems genuinely affected by Bec Cartwright’s silicone injected persona. It’s all rather sad. How did it come to this?

When sport becomes business, both suffer. For the sportsmen this is more serious as it usually affects them personally as well as financially. Players like Watson and Clarke – who appear to be genuinely emotionally underdeveloped – are to be pitied rather than condemned.

Given the circus that surrounds elite sport in this country the chances of them ever being normal people appear non-existent. Is this a bad thing? Probably it is; certainly for the players concerned. Will anything be done about it? Unlikely, and less so if, as expected media revenues fall as carbon constraints begin to increasingly hobble western economies.

The players should be able to seek financial refuge behind the Indian megabucks in the IPL for the short term. But the money will never help them understand why so many people think they are jerks.

And no, it’s not envy. It’s a desire to see grown men be brave and honest, and not hide behind a roaring buffoon persona that doesn’t fool anyone with a bit of a grip on life, or knowledge of what makes up this wide and strange planet.

In the meantime Pakistan lurches towards failed state status under an unrelenting terror campaign by a fanatical minority. This can only escalate as irregulars fight a proxy war in Pakistan to counter the Pashtun baiting across the border in Afghanistan. More death and less time for civil society, let alone sport seems the order of the day.

In the face of that, the Pakistan First XI is a minor miracle to be celebrated and, certainly, respected (not just because I backed them at 5-1 to win this match).

More power to their arm. They will need it. Half the side, like my fourth grade team, can’t throw straight.

Methuselah – spilling a sharp chance at mid-off

And so this is Christmas…

Eighteen months is a long time in politics.

The blog that never sleeps would like to thank the following for contributing to these, as the Chinese phrase goes, interesting times;

• The Global Financial Crisis
• The bailout of banking executives affected by the Global Financial Crisis
• Iceland
• Sport
• Ian Plimer
• Tony Abbott
• The entire NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party
• The end of Liberal Democracy

This enforced furlough comes at some price. Luckily, looming homelessness has forced your humble scribe to return to going over the world’s entrails to discern what small truths can be gained there from.

Normal transmission will resume shortly.

You Do The Math

Maurice Iemma’s announcement that more carriages will provide an extra 1200 seats on our trains shows just how hopeless our state’s transport planning and management has become (Petrol prices push commuters onto trains, SMH Online June 24).

Iemma’s trumpet was blowing as Transport Minister Watkins was telling us that rail passengers have increased by over 4% in the last twelve months - on a rail network that carries over a million people a day, this means an extra 40,000 people; all squeezing into Iemma’s extra 1200 seats. With no end in sight for escalating fuel prices it can only be assumed that rail patronage will continue to increase exponentially. It is time that the NSW Government, particularly the Premier, the Transport Minister and the Treasurer, admitted that the RailCorp network is vastly inadequate, and returned to fix the problem.

This means finishing the rail clearways program, investing in a substantial increase in rolling stock, simplifying ticketing into a time based and zonal system like every other civilised transport network, having concessions that don’t penalise part-time low income workers with high marginal transport costs and providing more than Mickey Mouse Metros that won’t come online until this city is well and truly gridlocked.

Working people and business rely on a reliable transport system to keep this city functioning - it is not a cost, it is an investment. It is laughable - and typical - that the Transport Minister reaches for the Orwellian spin of a phrase such as “people are either coming back to rail or trying rail for the first time, and it is important that we continue to improve the experience they have”.

Well, derr! We’ve seen this coming for over ten years. The experience we have is timetables that are slower than in the 1920’s, dangerous overcrowding, poorly trained and insufficient staff, management who appears to carry incompetence as a badge of pride and a government that relies on spin doctors to deny reality.

We are well down the path of creating ghettoes where populations are stranded and isolated from employment and participating in the life of this city because they cannot access it as transport is too expensive or unavailable. The disconnect between government and the population it is supposed to serve has got to the point where the entire legitimacy of this administration is called into question.

At what point does the refusal of commuters to pay for this daily humiliation become a realistic act of civil disobedience to force the orgy of incompetence that passes as the NSW Government to live up to it’s responsibilities?

PLAY ABANDONED #23 – Welcome To Barbados And Have a Nice Day

In the fifties my Grandmother, who came from Paddington when it was a slum, worked in a match factory in Zetland, then an industrial suburb in inner southern Sydney. Her legs were stuffed for the rest of her life from mixing phosphate, but this was the post war boom, wasn’t it, and while my drunken Grandfather was off somewhere in Sydney driving a bus she threw a sickie - the West Indies were in town, and ‘Keithy’ Miller was batting.

“They had this big tall fast bowler,” she told me. “As black as the ace of spades. After the end of one over he went back to stand in front of the hill. A bloke offered him a bottle of beer; he upped and downed it all in one go. What a cheer he got from the crowd!”

These days he’d probably get banned for twelve months, while the bloke with the bottle would probably be ejected. The crowd wouldn’t cheer that. We live in conservative times, our lives controlled by yellow shirted goons with wires hanging out of their ears and IQs that match their shoe sizes.

Back in the fifties the West Indies were part of the orientalism that brought a cosmopolitan flavour to post war cricket. Australia hosted and went on a widening array of tours, more or less successfully, with nations from the Caribbean and the subcontinent, playing with a grace that was often forced to stand up under very trying circumstances.

A couple of generations later, after my Nan had become part of the working class retiring to the Central Coast of NSW, the Windies had grown into a fearsome pace battery backed by some of the most entertaining willow wielding seen in cricket. She still loved watching them.

I recall watching a NSW game against a touring West Indies side (when we used to do such things, letting touring sides get used to our wickets and thus making our domestic test matches competitive, rather than the learn-as-you-go fiascos we are presented with today, where touring sides get their act together by the second, third or - if they’re lucky enough to get one - fourth tests). It was at the SCG and Viv Richards was batting. Richards had played and missed against a NSW fast bowler, which might have been a young Geoff Lawson, and was rehearsing his shot as the bowler went back to his mark.

It was possibly Rick McCosker, fielding in the covers, who suggested to Viv that ‘you can’t hit the ball after it’s gone past you’.

The gum chewing of the Antiguan intensified and he fixed the fielder with a steely glare. Next ball was smacked about two feet to the right of the cover fielder, flying like Lord Mountbattens sandshoe to bang into the advertising hoarding in front of the [then] Paddington hill.

Richards rocked back on his haunches, resting on his bat to calmly observe that ‘you can’t field the ball after it’s gone past you either, mon’.

Which brings us to the surprising brittleness of Australia’s test campaign in the Caribbean.

On paper - and form - Australia should have won this series 3-0 by an innings in each test. It should be no contest. But it is. The Windies went close in the first test and, while never quite getting on top, weren’t disgraced in the drawn second test either. After the first days play in the third test in Barbados they appear to have a chance to take Australia cheaply in the first innings, but there is a lot of cricket left to go in this match.

Backed by a hubristic media following and a self induced air of supremacy, Australia has gathered an invincible aura about itself that was exposed a little during the Indian tour.

Has Australia, as Ricky Ponting implied about its bowling at least, come back to the pack? Or is the West Indies really improving? Caribbean commentators continue to bemoan the state of West Indian cricket, while the loss of Warne, Gilchrist and McGrath really are akin to losing Lillee, Chappell and Marsh in the early eighties. Does that mean Australian cricket is set for something akin to the wilderness years we experienced in the eighties?

Probably not, but the Windies have indeed lifted while Australia is not as certain of it’s status as it has been. A lot rests on the performance of the new spinner, Beau Casson.

Just as the Indians took a moral victory out of the tied test series in Australia last summer, the Windies ability to tie this series could see some serious soul searching - especially regarding Ponting’s captaincy - amongst the Australians and could herald something of (yet another) renewal for the formerly dominant West Indies.

But these signs have emerged before, after a win in South Africa and their most recent drawn (two test) series against Sri Lanka.

West Indian cricket - facing, as it does, the cultural onslaught from North America via cable TV to pull kids to Basketball, Athletics and Baseball - probably is terminal, but Indian cricket isn’t. They’re flogging all comers at the moment, and will take great glee in watching the Australians struggle.

The Australian cricket team is mortal after all. And my dead grandmother would be cheering for the West Indies today if she could. She always had a lot of time for the underdog - you get that working in a match factory in Zetland - and, if we lived in more enlightened times, someone would give Daren Powell a bottle of beer.

Methuselah, playing uppishly behind point

John Della-Bosca's Election Adventure

Mr John Della-Bosca, the St George boy who made the seachange to Woy Woy Bay, has been in the news lately - which prompts me to republish a piece from ten years ago that features a bit of history regarding Della and his partner Ms Neal, and a bit of nostalgia for old times that some may find interesting.

JOHN DELLA-BOSCA’S ELECTION ADVENTURE

October 1998.

When Kim Beazley gave his address to the party faithful on election night he went out of his way to single out for praise the General Secretary of the New South Wales Branch of the ALP, Mr John Della-Bosca. This was the first clue that Mr. Della-Bosca himself was already at the forefront of discussion within the ALP.

The praise itself was extraordinary. The ALP had performed remarkably well in Queensland and Western Australia, and had achieved a clean sweep in Tasmania, yet if there was ever an area where they stumbled it was in the marginal seats in the big eastern states. Della-Bosca, whose branch picked up a mere two seats, is elevated above the more successful party structures of the smaller states. What is going on?

The divisions within the ALP that coalesced around John Della-Bosca have an interesting history. Their public manifestation reveals the increasing stresses, external and internal, that face the dominant right wing faction in NSW.

The internal pressures publicly appeared in the once all powerful faction a few years ago with the formation of the so-called ‘Terrigals’ - a faction within the right that likes to see itself as more sophisticated than the more traditional right-wing supporters in NSW, known as the Trogs. It’s greatest success was gaining the defection of the prominent left-winger Peter Knight, now the NSW Olympics Minister [and what a success he was!].

That in itself was an indirect result of another problem that the faction faces - attracting bright young talent. There is a school of thought that Della-Bosca, and his deputy - Assistant Secretary Eric Rozendal, are not a patch on recent predecessors such as Stephen Loosely and Graeme Richardson, even in purely administrative terms. While there are many in both the faction and the broader party that are relieved that the right no longer relies on individuals like Tom Domican and institutions like the Balmain Welding Company, there hasn’t been the convincing replacement of these traditional methods with a more forceful intellectual competence.

Graeme Richardson himself, along with former Keating staffer, Peter Barron, are also understood to be offside with Della-Bosca. This is primarily over the New South Wales Branch’s decision to dump their long term advertiser, John Singleton. But this conflict all gravitates back to Singleton’s mate Kerry Packer. So any moves by Richardson or Barron would receive little support from within the ALP.

Along with this has been a number of preselection battles among competing right wingers. These have primarily been at a state level but it also popped up in the federal seat of Lindsay.

The whole situation hasn’t been helped by loose cannons within the right. the obvious example is Mark Latham. An intellectually vain man, it begs the question of political intelligence for an individual to publicly attack a Federal Leader who has achieved arguably the parties greatest result short of winning government. In doing so he was trying to go into bat for Della-Bosca who was under criticism immediately after the election from outside of NSW as well.

The Left was able to harness Right Wing trade union support on the floor of the NSW ALP state conference in 1997 - thereby rolling the NSW governments electricity privatisation proposals. This was probably the most significant achievement of the Left in NSW since the introduction of Proportional Representation in internal ALP ballots in NSW in the early seventies. The position of Della-Bosca’s Sussex Street machine went down with that of the Premier, Bob Carr.

The unthinkable had happened. The NSW Right had been rolled.

The Left in NSW, through Damian O’Connor, the Assistant State Secretary in NSW, were able to use industrial links that had strengthened during the waterfront dispute. The industrial wing of the Labor movement in NSW noted the absence of Sussex Street apparatchiks in important areas of that dispute. It seemed strange politics for the Right that at a time when the political and industrial wings of the faction were splitting that the titular head of the Sussex Street machine, Della-Bosca, should alienate important sections of their own base. The influence of the Sussex Street machine has also been assailed from interstate in a dispute that has been described as the ‘Rugby League’ states versus the so called ‘Southern’ states. The primary focus of this opposition is the Victorian Right. But Robert Ray and his pals have little to crow about after their own branch’s dismal performance on October 3.

Which brings us back to the recent federal election. Della-Bosca had criticisms of his own, especially about the ALP’s capital gains tax policy. Sources within the ALP revealed that Della-Bosca voiced such criticisms at NSW Branch Administrative Committee meetings immediately prior to the election. He has also described subsequent criticisms of himself as cowardly and challenged his detractors to come out publicly.

Della-Bosca has identified a whispering campaign against him that goes right to the top of the ALP. There are allegations that Kim Beazley made off the record comments about Della-Bosca while briefing journalists late in the campaign. A lot of the whispers surround Della-Bosca’s role in the campaign of his wife, the former senator for NSW Belinda Neal, in the marginal NSW seat of Robertson.

Robertson, which was held by former Hawke government minister Barry Cohen and NSW left-winger Frank Walker, covers the NSW Central Coast. Based on Gosford it is an area that in the last 10 years become the outer northern suburbs of Sydney.,

Della-Bosca and his wife, Neal, live in the seat. He was attracted to the area after working on the Peats By-election in the 80’s. Peats being a state seat wholly within the boundaries of Robertson based on the area around Woy Woy.

Neal’s pre-selection raised some interesting developments. The right propped up it’s support within the electorate by establishing the Peninsula Branch of the ALP, a daytime branch based on the Woy Woy/Ettalong/Umina area. The branch itself has been suspected of irregularities since it’s formation. The branch also appears to be remarkably close to the Catholic Parish of Woy Woy - raising the spectre of sectarian tensions that still linger beneath the surface of ALP, especially in areas like the Central Coast with a significant population of elderly retirees.

The NSW Branch Secretary was publicly accused by the Liberal State member for Gosford, Chris Hartcher, of focussing on Robertson in the latter part of the campaign to the detriment of the ALP’s broader NSW campaign. Hartcher slated Della-Bosca for ‘taking his eyes off the ball’, and said that the ALP had spent $75 000 on radio advertising alone during the final weeks of the campaign. Other local branch sources pointed to the highly personalised nature of the Neal campaign that focussed on the candidate with any mention of the ALP’s name being largely invisible. This also served to alienate the local party rank and file.

Other whispers emerged that the resources thrown into Robertson were greater than that thrown at other NSW marginal seats. Hughes and Lindsay, two of the other seats implied by these whispers, certainly faced the problem of unpopular or inadequate candidates, but Macquarie, Parramatta and Eden-Monaro are seats where extra resources may have changed outcomes, and where disaffection with Sussex Street may be harder to ameliorate.

Certainly Della-Bosca retains some powerful friends in senior ALP ranks, including Michael Lee and Laurie Brereton who will most certainly be in Beazley’s shadow cabinet, but the impact of all this tension may be harder for John Della-Bosca to deal with as a whole.

In all of it it’s hard to escape the fact that the once pivotal NSW Right is, through a combination of factors, on the slippery slope of internal division. The full extent of this may not be fully revealed until after the NSW state election, especially if the Carr government performs poorly,.

All in all it will make internal ALP politics less predictable in the months ahead. Even so, Della-Bosca’s position should be secure for now. Besides, Kim Beazley singled him out for praise on election night. I guess that this means he enjoys the opposition leaders total support.

Doesn’t it?

Of Course Beazley (and Latham) are long gone, and we now have a Federal ALP Government, and ten years have passed before we got to that. But the seeds of the devolution that is the Iemma Government can be seen here (cronyism, a lack of talent, hubris). The Iguanas incident is just fluff and nonsense, and Della Bosca may be one of the more capable members of Iemma's cabinet - but that isn't saying much. The greater issue is the sustainability of the ALP. Decades of self serving 'look at me' types rising like effluent to the surface of a very shallow gene pool have exposed something that may yet be terminal for Labor. As a party it attracts and promotes some of the worst types imaginable, with the populace as a whole suffering as a result. This is not the sole domain of the ALP. The Liberals have an equally dire problem on the talent front, especially at a state level. It's the logical end game of zero sum Machiavellian machine politics that dominate our major parties. This society faces some big problems, and fixers with their eye on the election cycle ain't gonna solve them. Exhibit A in this regard is Mr John Della Bosca. Thanks mate.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging lefty fought for minimum water quality standards.

With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie bastard fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $7.50 of his medications are paid for by the PBS because some lazy union workers fought for universal public medical insurance, Medicare – now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man fought for laws to regulate the meat industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby do-gooder fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the train station for his government-subsidized trip to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants socialist fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, sick leave, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy union bludgers fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment benefits because some stupid bleeding heart didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the Reserve Bank because some godless ALP hack wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is safe because some fun-hating technocrat fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by single desk trading boards that allowed farmers to bargain collectively. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government ALP stooge stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on a pension and a union superannuation fund because some Chardonnay swilling lefty made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home and turns on a radio talk show. The talkback host keeps saying that leftys are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Liberal Party and big media have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government socialists ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

With apologies to PunkVoter.com

How many revolutions per minute?

PR Watch is good. they appeal to me.  

Speaking of which, check this out.  

A year ago Elizabeth Lukin, a director of essential media communication (the company that sacked me in 2006), ran for the National Council of my union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). I contacted MEAA national secretary Christopher Warren at the time to voice my displeasure and his defence was that the union wanted more people from Public Affairs (aka turd polishing) involved in the union.  

Now we have the ninth MEAA turd polishers love in - and there's no sign of that carpetbagger Lukin anywhere involved in what you'd think would be the high point of MEAA and the esteemed world of what is euphemistically referred to as as public affairs. Little wonder her relationship with her offspring is a shambles. 

We're talking about people with serious developmental issues here. 

People who shouldn't be walking the streets of society, breathing our oxygen, let alone being a part of the union movement. Which is why we need PR Watch, who aren't just about exposing bottom feeding carpetbaggers like Lukin, as the following report from my contact over at the Wankersphere illustrates:

Now putting aside the obvious bullshit of the whole US election process and the idiots it dishes up to the rest of the world, as well as the level the whole thing is pitched at - to 10-year-olds - I found this analysis very interesting: "Obama's speech is a great test of the following question: Are we still living in the age of sound-bite politics, where the sharp attack line, even taken out of context, can become the 'truth' of an event or a person thanks to the amplifying and distorting effects of broadcast media? Or are we entering the age of sound-blast politics, where a 37-minute speech can actually be watched, read, and digested by millions of people (a million views already on YouTube!) using the abundant spaces of the internet -- and the themes and meanings they encounter and absorb will be not about the 'politics' of a speech, but its actual content? In other words, are we entering an age when politicians can be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character?"

All very interesting, but methinks that this guarded optimism is exactly that, optimism. I wouldn't go rewriting the rules of engagement just yet. remember, Uncle Barak is pretty light on when it comes to detail. 

As far as the three big issues of our time are concerned: global warming, the imperial war in Iraq and the ability of working people to organise collectively, he continues to be light on when it comes to the detail.  

Maybe they're just super long sound bites, or it's someone tapping into a culture that's now inundated with preachers and loves a good sermon, just so long as it makes the audience feel good, rather than uncomfortable.

The Tora Bora Blues

Liberal Democracy didn't die in the hills of Tora Bora (primarily because it never lived there), but the events in Great Game II certainly didn't help. This was, after all, the new home of the eponymous Al Queda after this arm of the US backed Mujahadeen went all native and started going after western interests after they sent the Ruskies packing. AQ became a household world in one of the more stunning examples of Blowback, when the jihadis landed a 747 on the observation deck of the World Trade Centre.

The CEO of AQ is the infamous boogie man of neoconservatism, Osama Bin Laden. And he was the subject of an off-the-record briefing from a 'Bush administration source' this week in what was a telling indictment of who the White House is backing in Central Asia.

The gist of the statement was 'Osama's alive and well in Pakistan, but we reckon the Paki military are the mob who can keep a lid on the situation.'

The Pakistan regime, of course, denies it - in the oblique way that tinpot dictatorships invariably fail to spot a subtle friendly gesture when they see one.

For what the Bush Toadie was offering Islamabad was a nod-and-a-wink green light for the military to run the show in Pakistan, especially if the Islamacists win elections scheduled in a week or so.

There was a very strong hint about who exactly they are backing - and here's a name for the little black book - General Ashfaq Kayani. As the Reuters' report says:

The Bush administration also has been very impressed with Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and considers him a 'promising partner,' the official said.

So there you have it. If the incumbent dictator Musharef is unpalatable to the Pentagon and the White House, they have a ready made replacement just in case the jihadis win control of the Pakistani parliament.

Ah, the land of the free, defender of democracy, hopelessly compromised dumb asses.

Pakistan will be an open civil war by the end of the year. they can cancel Australia's cricket tour now.

Meanwhile Osama, himself a creation of the Pakistani secret service, the ISI, can continue to hobnob around Waziristan at will if he likes.

What NATO makes of this - considering they are fighting a war against a Taliban that is tacitly supported by section s of the Pakistan military and ISI - is anyone's guess. But London to a brick the Europeans are probably less than impressed at the thumbs up the bumbling dodos over the border.

It also makes clear that the choices for Central Asia are a) Islamic fuindamentalism or b) military dictatorship. What a stunningly successful outcome this is after two centuries of meddling in the lands of the Pashtun.

Back playing hide and seek in the Library of Alexandria

The Blog That Never Sleeps is returning from a cogitating hiatus. This blog has been pondering the meaning of the sub-prime lending crisis, the US Presidential primaries, rain, Electricity Privatisation, Kevin Rudd, the Job Network and how and why Liberal Democracy died. That Liberal Democracy is dead is certain. It's just that nobody has told it yet. Those eponymous images of planes flying into the twin-towers will be as much an exclamation mark in history as Archduke Ferdinand getting his face blown off in Sarajevo or William the Bastard taking to the field at Hastings in 1066. Of this we can be certain. But even at those times I doubt most people understood the significance until the dust had fully settled, usually decades, or a generation, after. But Liberal Democracy is as dead as my grandfathers dog, leaving us swimming in a septic tank full of hubris that borrows the words and clichés of the democratic process, and liberalism, but leaves us a reality more akin to soviet Russia, medieval Europe or Pinochet's Chile. Luckily The Blog That Never Sleeps can make sense of all this, and maybe even name this new world order that looks like Hollywood, smells like a dead man and sounds like fingernails down a blackboard. Here's luck!

Warm Nights On A Non Moving Train

Further signs that the Third World lifestyle we all crave is coming our way...

RailCorp must revisit procedures for managing stranded trains after scores of CityRail passengers were trapped on an interurban service between Hazelbrook and Lawson on Wednesday afternoon for over two and a half hours, despite being metres from Hazelbrook station.

The delay, initially caused by a loss of power to the privately operated Indian Pacific, was exacerbated by train controllers needing authorisation paperwork before the stranded interurban service could proceed.

In these situations the health, safety and comfort of the travelling public must be paramount. Every effort must be made to get the passengers off the train as soon as possible. Two and a half hours is a pathetic and unacceptable response, but par for the course for a management whose response to the Glenbrook Disaster is to cover their own backsides while denying resources and authority to frontline operational staff.

Justice McInerney’s inquiry into the Glenbrook disaster and the tragic loss of life made recommendations, especially regarding train operator communications, which are still yet to be acted upon. Blustering arguments from RailCorp management about safety are just hogwash as it was perfectly safe on Wednesday night to transport passengers two hundred metres to the next station (as was acknowledged by operational staff on the spot) from where people could have made alternative arrangements.

Alex Tibbits from SMH Online reported at 6.51pm that delays were due to “a truck that had rolled on to the tracks at Blackheath at about 4.50pm today.” And that “commuters are being transferred to buses at Penrith [to continue their journey]” This wasn’t happening at Lawson nearly an hour after Tibbits’ report appeared online.

Tibbits relied on a CityRail spokesman, who made no mention of the failure of the privately owned Indian Pacific - which managed to travel on to Lithgow on the “closed” line, as did the service I was stranded on after the RailCorp paperwork was completed nearly four hours later.

This is shoddy journalism as not only was his report plain wrong - and I speak as an eyewitness - but would have added to the confusion for not only the travelling public, but caused anxiety for friends and relatives of those on the train trying to find out what was happening.

When newspapers meant something they employed people on the ground called stringers to inform news editors and journalists of stories, and act as a confirmation of official versions of events. This journalism-by-press-release has undermined the credibility of the Herald in the eyes of its many readers from the Blue Mountains.

It couldn’t undermine their view of RailCorp as that simply isn’t possible.

The Depression We Had To Have

George Soros is no screaming Trotskyite, but even he can see what's happening to global capital.
In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard, he has blamed "market fundamentalism" for the crisis afflicting global capital markets. He could have a point.
Deregulated financial markets in the US allowed capital traders to create easy credit, with no oversight from the Federal reserve. This is turn led to inflated property values as a whole bunch of people jumped into a market they had no place being in the first place.
The loans were chalked up by financial institutions - some of them banks, but a lot simply mortgage warehouses - who onsold these liabilities to a lot of chumps left holding a pile of candy no one wants to eat.
The financial institutions reward themselves with NINE figure incomes (The CEO of one mortgage warehouse, Countrywide, was on US$615 Million a year) and walk away whistling while the end-gamers - often retirement funds and municipalities (including here in Australia) take a bath.
Meanwhile, the poor marker who took the loan just loses their house. In reaction - and this is reaction as in reactionary - the leading candidates in the current race to be Emporer Of The World are falling over themselves to embrace Keynesian pump priming. This will, of course, horrify the very "market fundamentalists" Soros has been warning about. But will the pump priming make any difference?
Welcome To The Wankersphere has pointed out that the US recession - which is an actuality, if not technical reality - stems from over inflated asset values, not a lack of economic activity. Yet. Which is precisely the problem that bedevils the Australian finance market. People borrowing against homes that are vastly over inflated. It's not hard to see what will happen once the Easy Credit crisis starts to haemorrhage around the globe.
We are already seeing it with the bearish stock market fluctuating like manic depressive on amphetamines. The real crunch will come in the form of a credit squeeze, the like of which we have not seen in some time. Which is no doubt why Central Banks are flooding capital markets in an attempt to stay that frabjous day.
But western capital reserves are not exactly flush - witness the US deficit - and diving further into an already empty cookie jar will have to be paid for somehow. Which is when the Chinese will come along with the greatest foreclosure of all, and bye-bye liberal democracy for the duration.
Mind you, this seems to fly obliquely over the heads of a general populace - concerned more about partying teenagers and sooky cricketers than the fact that the roof over their heads is about to disappear like Dorothy's house in Kansas.
Housing is a significant player in the Australian economy - if it tanks then it is going to screw up the retirement and savings plans of millions of Australians. The flow on through the economy by a credit squeeze will affect the big employment sectors of retail and hospitality. We could see money dry up, along with jobs. All this at a time when the economy is 'growing'.
Of course a lot of this stems from the legacy of ten years of doing nothing with the proceeds of a mining boom apart from splashing cash around and inflating a housing bubble (that's now about to burst).
While responsibility lies with Howard and Costello, this won't wash with the Australian public - they'll be calling for Wayne Swan's head on a stick by Christmas. I noticed that the Harvey Norman retail chain has announced sales growth of over A$3 Billion, or a little over 12%, for the first half of this financial year. The bulk of these sales will be on credit, and if we drop into a recession that looks like being of the scale that Soros predicts, Harvey Norman won't see half of that money.
This is the problem with credit - it only works if there's a capacity to repay - and years of supply side market fundamentalism has destroyed the household sector's ability to do exactly that.
I was travelling back from Lithgow before New Year and was amazed at the number of cars, boats and bikes saw on the side of the road for sale.
The last time I remember this phenomenon was in 1990 when the then treasurer Paul Keating was assuring us that there was no recession . Later that became the recession we had to have.
This recession promises to be much deeper, as Soros has pointed out. The financial sector has gone a bridge too far - simultaneously calling for, and getting, policies that squeeze those on the bottom, then trying to milk those very same people through credit, as Ralph Nader pointed out this week.
They could never have it both ways and now the harvest shall be reaped. And a bitter harvest it will prove to be.

Play Abandoned #22 - We Hate Ricky

An interesting observation by Thomas Hunter over at Crikey regarding public attitudes to the man holding the highest public office in Australia - the captain of the Australian Cricket Team. Cricket is a game of numbers - a statistician's orgy - so it was interesting to see a collation of numbers courtesy of Mr Hunter from some online polls regarding the Australian cricket team. Hunter rightly points out the unreliability of voluntary online polls, but even so, the sentiment is rather staggering. The Age asked 'Are Australian cricketers bad sports?' to which 76% agreed. The more parochial Herald Sun asked 'Should Ricky Ponting be sacked as captain of Australia?' to which a staggering two-thirds, or 67% - 6958 votes - agreed. The Hun's sister paper, the Daily Telegraph, posed the question 'Do the Australian team play in the true spirit of cricket?' A suspiciously similar number, 6918 votes, said no, which equates to 82% of respondents. The considered folk over at Today Tonight asked: Do you think Ricky Ponting should be removed as Australian cricket captain? 28% agreed. Pay-as-you-go Foxsports offered three answers to it's 'Has Australia's behaviour in the current Test series changed the way you will support the team?' Yes: I will no longer support this side romped home with 61.8%, or 5342 votes, while 'Yes: but I still love the baggy green' lagged third on 11.63%, or 1006 votes; while 'No: I think their behaviour was appropriate:' captured 26.56%, or 2296 votes. Of course you'd think you'd have to allow for the participation of cricket fans from the subcontinent, who are unlikely to hold Mr Ponting in high esteem, but nonetheless these are pretty damning numbers. Hunter's contribution was somewhat more useful than that of Geoff Lewis Raglan who, in a letter that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on January 22 under the sub-headline 'Mongrel goes missing' wrote:

The Indians and the media had cricketer A. Mongrel dropped from the Australian XI and they lost. The same player was not selected in the Wallaby World Cup team and they lost.

Lewis may wish to reflect on the fact that A Mongrel is an insecure little bully who shouldn't be on the sporting field in the first place - and if winning means winning ugly, then it is no victory at all. In the meantime the Third Test in Perth was a cracker. With a highlight being Sharma having R. Ponting all over the place, the first time I've ever seen him batting like that. Ponting looked all at sea against the young Indian quick - weaving, leaving, missing and taking a few on the body before edging to first slip. With the series at 2-1 to Australia, there is a lot to play for in Adelaide. If the Indians finish this series 2-2, with a moral victory in Sydney, they will be well set to roll Australia in India this September. There is no doubt Australia missed Hayden, who was suspiciously omitted after the shenanigans in Sydney. The godbotherer was officially out with a bung leg, but was fit enough to go deep sea fishing the day after the 'injury'. But the Indians bowled better, and batted well when it counted. A spirited rear guard action made the final day's play a riveting spectacle. Adelaide, a city not known for its excitement, could be a defining moment - not just for this summer, but also for Australian cricket. If the Indians win, it could mark the end of an era.