We all suspected it, and it appears the rumours are confirmed... The Big J has proved that Guy Rundle is infact Stalin!

Janet Albrechtsen has long been renowned for her right wing bilge over at the Oz. Her overt support for such grotesqueries in contemporary Australia's social backdrop as the History Wars, the bizarrely militant denial of climate change, Muslims, and pretty much any bigoted position she can postulate have confirmed her as the great voice of quasi fascism in Australia. Albrechtsen is not simply an imbecile like a Piers Ackerman or Andrew Bolt, her arguments are often carefully considered and detailed with occaisionally striking points, but she is very right wing and combined with such intelligence makes for a dangerous mix. On her blog today she takes aim at what she calls the "Orwellian Left".

Now, I am able to put up with her tripe peddling most of the time, despite the fact I believe her polemics to appeal to the very worst in people. But comparing the "left" (which I really consider meaningless these days and seems to be applied to anyone who doesn't spend their spare time beating black people and genuflecting before pictures of the queen) with Stalinism is not only obnoxious and vile in the force of comparison but is an utterly putrid reading of Orwell. Albrechtsen believes that "left" columnists such as Guy Rundle, who have called for her sacking to be akin to the pigs in Animal Farm:

" By calling for a purge of this conservative columnist and all like her, Crikey contributor Guy Rundle has compressed Animal Farm by going straight to the last chapter and skipping the irony."

I take issue with her statement that she is a "conservative" columnist. Conservatives, in the true meaning of the word, are concerned with maintaining the status quo, with not reforming, but opting for change in society through small gradual modifications. Albrechtsen "and her like" are radicals, seeking to completely turn on its head the accepted wisdom that white Europeans stole this country and proceded on a programme of cultural destruction for the better part of 200 years. This is radical, right wing revisionism at its worst and the word "conservative" hides the true drive behind their polemics.

The final chapter of Animal Farm is the best in what is not Orwell's most subtle book. Albrechtsen's analysis follows:

"Animal Farm subtly portrayed the big risks of totalitarianism. Over time, the pigs who had overthrown the human oppressors (remember the motto: “four legs good, two legs bad,") became the two-legged tyrants. At least Orwell’s classic allowed the passage of time to obscure the pigs’ hypocrisy a little. We could enjoy the slow descent into anarchy.

Deeming themselves the brainworkers, the pigs keep all the milk and apples for themselves. They steal the puppies and raise them as their vicious secret police, allowing the pigs to finally take over the farm declaring that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”. "

Predictably, Albrechtsen makes the comparison with her own situation, claiming Rundle, in petitioning the Australian for her dismissal is as totalitarian as the pigs in Animal Farm. She points to the "slow decent into totalitarianism" on Orwell's farm as proof of Rundle's danger to Australia. But Orwell was not talking about pigs. He was talking about Stalin. Albrechtsen believes that trying to kick her off the pages of the Oz is tantamount to the beginnings of a slow decent into Stalinism. Albrechtsen is drawing an extremely long bow. To those of us who may have studied or taken some interest in Stalinism, it is not only a long bow, but an extremely disturbing claim.

But Albrechtsen goes further, directly comparing Rundle with Orwell's Napoleon, the personification (or should that be cochonification? Swinification? or pigification?) of Stalin himself. Guy Rundle is, apparently, Stalin waiting to happen right here in 21st Century Australia. I can already see the gulags, full of people not guilty of anything, living out in the desert somewhere. Rundle will, no doubt, engineer a famine, killing all the Liberal voting West Australians. He will doctor photographs which had featured people who had fallen out of favour with him and turn Australia into a society of fear, insisting that children turn against their parents if they speak against him, murder artists and destroy freedom of speech forever.

Of course, it is the last point which Albrechtsen is getting at. She is appalled that it seems no longer to be acceptable to say things which are seen as morally offensive. When a prominent scientist recently suggested that there was some evidence to suggest that African blacks were genetically disposed to being less intelligent than Caucasians, the British press came down like a tonne of bricks on him and most of his public engagements were cancelled. Is this stifling freedom of speeck? No, of course not. Sitting interestingly alongside this is democracy. The weight of public opinion came down upon Dr. Watson, deeming it to be offensive. Those who had engaged him to speak withdrew their offers because of how it may reflect on them. This is the premise of our system of law. It used to be permissible in England to beat one's wife with a rod no thicker than the man's thumb (hence the expression "rule of thumb"), and invariably the social norms changed and this is now not only illegal, but considered abhorrent. The notion of the right to freedom of speech is one which is constantly questioned anyway, with it now being illegal in most countries to praise terrorists. I don't seek to excuse the actions of such people at all, but point out the difficulty with such rights. Similar issues are raised when David Irving does anything at all and Louis Farrakhan travels. Rights are contradictory in that in exercising them may lead to an infringement on someone else's. Albrechtsen trivialises the 30 or more million deaths attributed to Stalinism, the horrific reality thereof and displays a contempt for freedom of speech in denouncing Rundle's right to petition for her sacking. It seems her own right to make preposterous comparisons trumps the right to appeal for her sacking.

The big J's article goes on and gets stuck into Robert Manne over the History Wars, then insults people at the University of Melbourne for getting rid of Geoffrey "Australia's greatest living historian" Blainey as dean of arts for his puerile interpretation of Aboriginal history. There is way too much for me to tackle here and I may do so some other day, the point on freedom of speech is an interesting one and I would be interested to here peoples' views on the contradictory nature of rights.

To the manufacturers of pasta packets and writers thereof:

I don't understand pasta packets. They always say that the pasta will cook in some random time... let's say 10 minutes... but the time it takes to actually cook to the satisfactory point is invariably 3-4 minutes longer. This is almost a truism, such is the contempt felt for these guides in pasta consuming circles. My lovely wife and I are reasonably partial to the odd pasta, partly because of her Italian routes and partly because of my own love for starch and starch related products. But you expect the cooking time to be at least within the realms of possibility.

And now I get angry.

Today I am at work. Sitting, contributing to the economy of this newly enlightened country of ours, twiddling my thumbs and making up my mind what to eat at the next feasible moment. I have recently returned from lunch, before which my thought pattern consisted of much the same elements. Now, let it be known that I live around the corner from work and thus am able to enact the dream of the working person in being able to return to my abode for lunch. Today I decided I would cook myself a pasta.

I return home 8 minutes into my 45 minute break. I hun around the kitchen for the quickest cooking pasta. Coles brand pasta (no great advertisement to my culinary nouse, but we bought it because it was way cheap and to see if it was edible) cooks in 9 minutes. By this stage I have wasted a further 4 minutes. 33 minutes until I have to get back. I put on a pot of water and wait for it to boil and cook a nice little napoli with some garlic and the use of homemade passata. Nine mintues later, the water is bubbling away. I throw in a spoon of salt and wait for the rolling boil to return. 24 minutes to go. I put the pasta in. The sauce looks wonderful. I decide that I will make it tuna pasta and hunt around for a tin of tuna. I put on the TV, Philadelphia Story is on. I love that movie and watch the wonderful seen with Jimmy Stuart drunk and Cary Grant loving it. I eat a piece of pasta (I maintain this is the only way to tell properly when it is perfect). Still very hard. 16 minutes to go. I need to leave in 8. the pasta should be done (according to the packet) in 1 minute. I add five to this. This gives me two minutes to wolf down my pasta... not a fan of this and Italians would be appalled at such disrespect to the food. I decide I will ride back to work. That takes three minutes. I have a look at what else is on during the add breaks. A documentary on Johnny Hallyday, a rock deity in France where between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population have seen him perform live. I get up and taste again... better but not done.... I continue to watch Melvyn Bragg interviewing Hallyday, taste again... getting there. 8 minutes to go... I add the tuna to the sauce and swirl it around. It looks marvellous. Finally the pasta seems done. I strain it in haste (6 minutes left) and add it to the sauce. Calamity! In my eagreness to get back to work, I didn't let the pasta strain for long enough! There is now too much pasta water in my sauce. Thank god nobody was there to partake. I start wolfing it down. I have only 4 minutes to eat a large (that may be my fault for not measuring the pasta) bowl of watery pasta and be back at my desk. By the time I finish I fly out the door. I hop on my bike and "fang" it down to work. I am four minutes late. I could live with this but I have burnt my mouth... my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

As anyone who accidentally boiled the milk when making a hot chocolate will know, a burnt mouth means you don't taste things for the next few days. This will add to my stress tonight when I go to my bookclub (for which I haven't finished the book- sorry bookclubbers, but I was a little bored) as the food there is invariably good. Nor will I taste the wine after wine after wine... I may even be sober at work tomorrow morning. Get your act together writers of pasta packets! that thing underestimated the cooking time by 9 minutes, that's double the time it said it would take. If I'd had that time, I wouldn't have burnt my mouth and I would have finished the book club book (why the hell not).

We are moving to France and...

I strongly dislike administrative processes. Collect a blue form and put it in a green envelope then take it to the man down the hall to get a stamp and then bring it back to me. That sort of thing.

The Closest Thing to a Hero...

With reference to the picture I have added in aid of articulating the theme of my blog, I just wanted everyone to know that I love Charlie Chaplin.

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom...

This morning the Australian Liberal party will elect a new leader. There has been much talk about how they need to make a break with the Howard years. Malcolm Turnbull has outlined a programme of social moderation when compared with the thuggery of the Howard years. Nelson has made similar noises, though I am not sure I believe them given his record as a minister.

The Howard years have been charactarised by the leader's own introversion and small mindedness. International media has called Howard the most successful conservative leader in the world in modern times. But herein lies a contradiction. Howard called himself a conservative and a liberal. As a teenager my understanding of the word "conservative" came to be synonymous with the Howard government. There is a fundamental contradiction between liberalism and conservatism. The latter, as its name suggests, in its pure form is more concerned with not changing the status quo and opting for social change through gradual and natural progression rather than sweeping reforms. Howard was in many respects a radical. His GST, gun reform, flouting of international treaties on the treatment of refugees, Iraq, David Hicks, Timor... and the list goes on, all point to someone desperately trying to mould his country into his own vision. It is a mistake to call Howard a conservative. Reactionary is far better.

Unlike Gough, he didn't loot the economy, but he did loot the decency inherent in the Australian people. We are now a far more fearful, intolerant people than we have been for some time. Interestingly, Howard's racism has picked up a vote which was a traditional Labor stronghold. Indeed, that party was founded largely on an anti-immigration platform. But where the labor party was fearful of the loss of jobs, Howard was only fearful of a loss of votes. I'm not suggesting that it was as simple as a marketing ploy, I firmly believe Howard really believes that Muslims are suspect people.

For reasons such as these and many many more (not saying "sorry", for example), The Liberal Party must now move back to the centre. Its role as a moderate party has been lost and must be retrieved. The small "l' liberals within the party must triumph. For if both the ruling party and the opposition are of reasonable ethical and moderate persuasion, it will forge a more decent democracy in Australia.

UPDATE: Nelson and Bishop??? Beggars belief. The man looks like a bird that's got stuck in a fence and has the nouse of a hose. Still, it can only be good for labor. Bad, I feel, for democracy.

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.

I write this in despair. I write as someone who adores food. As someone who adores coffee and adores the way the Europeans do both. I write this in the hope that things can improve. I do this for those members of the Melbourne café scene who have been faithful to this Faraday St. icon for most of their lives. To those familiar faces on Saturday mornings. To Barry Dickens, who even wrote a play about it, such was his love for the place. To Red Simons, who I used to see most Saturdays, and to my family and their wonderfully faithful friends who all share a furtive and nostalgic tear each time they get a bitter, watery coffee. I allude, of course, to Brunetti.

I was born in 1982, a few years after Brunetti had opened. It was in 1985 that it moved to Faraday St. It is from this location that I remember many of my first encounters with real continental food. The panini were always very good, but as a child I enjoyed the hot chocolate and the gelati. Ahhh, Brunetti's gelati. Such memories. Where most children were waving down Mr. Whippy to get a soft serve cone with nuts and that strange chocolate coating, I was deciding which combination of Brunetti's flavours I would have. After experimenting with Bacio, Limone, even nocciolla (hazelnut), I eventually settled on the heavenly chocolate and tiramisù: a combination I remain faithful to wherever possible to this day. I grew up at Brunetti. I mean that in the sense that if my life were a film, you could shoot important moments there. Amusing child-like clumsiness, teenage awkwardness and adult self-importance. A sequence involving past loves could have them change as the camera tracks through the different rooms.

As Brunetti expanded, knocking down one wall to accommodate their ever expanding gelati bar, then putting up terrible rendered polystyrene imitation frescos, so did my tastes, with the opening of the restaurant, I discovered I enjoyed duck. So much so that the portly Italian man I remember as being called Gingin called me "duck boy" (although on second thought,s perhaps he was referring to my striking resemblance to ducks)... he also called the marinara "spaghetti marijuana", a pun I found both hilarious and naughty as a ten year old. Eventually Gingin moved on, or retired, or something, and was replaced by a very efficient young man with obvious experience but no devilish sense of humour. it is possible the decline and fall of the Brunetti empire started here... but the panini bar remained good as did the coffee, which, now in my teens and therefore able to enjoy, was ever reliable. I can still remember the place as it was, with wooden tables, an inconvenient and uncomfortable bar next to the coffee machine and the wonderful cakes at the pasticerria, right up until the end of first year uni, when they took over the crappy pizza restaurant next door and Johnny's green room upstairs. There had always been space issues. The place was packed every single day in the mornings and was only empty during week days in mid afternoon.

They spent months renovating, turning the place into what looked so enormous and monolithic that it was almost Freudian in its dimensions (I will refrain from jokes about Italian men and their mothers here). When it finally opened there was a sense of the bittersweet. Sweet, because it meant I could finally drink my coffee without the sound of a jackhammer in the background, bitter because I saw it as the inevitable decline of the place. Its sellout. Its appealing to the LCD. But I was wrong. And, at least momentarily, there was more space. But the "build it and they will come" phenomenon started and it filled up, making even this massive behemoth packed. Where did all these people come from? It didn't matter to me, I could still get my Crostata di patata and a damn fine latte. But I should have taken heed of the clientele.

I have absolutely no evidence for this, so forgive me if I'm wrong....but here is an anecdote to describe them... When I was in year eleven, I moved to a new school. I made friends with a wonderful bunch of people, many of whom I still see and am very close to. One of these friends was Italian. Well, his Dad was. Although, his dad couldn't speak Italian and had an accent so broad that it could rival Paul Hogan's. But at a certain point, my friend (perhaps in the midst of a teen identity crisis) decided that he was italian and should therefore adopt the Italo- Greek- Lebanese-Australo drawl... you know the one... alla Nick Giannopoulos and the crew from Acropolis Now, or Joe Dolce, that sketch from Fast Forward with the Lebanese guys in the car...only these are genuine representations of the migrant's child in Australia. My friend was a fraud. This kind of person. The kind with some vague connection to Italy, who jumps up and down at World Cup time pretending that they're actually Italian and not Australian, that in pronouncing Italian words with a rolled "R" believe themselves to be displaying their mastery of the language, who then pronounce bruschetta "brushedda". They have heard of La Dolce Vita but not Silvio Berlusconi, of Vespa but not Garibaldi (unless you intend to indicate a company which supplies a range of sub-standard smallgoods). This kind of person I call the fauxtalian. And yes, it was the fauxtalians that moved into Brunetti's in their droves. And yet, for four years, the standard remained the same. Top food. Good coffee. Inexpensive. Oddly, though, it suddenly started to slip... was it the fauxtalians? Did Brunetti's think they could finally turn a quick buck by selling out on quality? Whatever it was, it turned ugly.

The coffee became VERY inconsistent as a flood of new people appeared on the machine, until it finally became consistent again....consistently terrible! And the food too, pastries became limp and unflaky, panini became dull, using what I suspect is tasty cheese in lieu of the provolone from before and a giant chocolate fondue counter was set up! Waah? I began to go around the corner to Carlton Espresso Bar, where they serve a great little coffee and damn fine pizzas and panini like fare. But I felt like I was cheating. Sleeping with a younger, firmer and more attractive girl. So I went back last week. I wanted so hard for it to be good again.... we ordered 2 hot chocolates and two chocolate cannoli... and I knew we were in for disappointment when the hot chocolate arrived and the foam looked like pubic hair. It took me ten minutes to bring myself to have a sip without gagging and when I did it was soooo sweet. Now, lovers of a good hot chocolate know that for it to be good, it should be slightly bitter- so that you can taste the chocolate. All this thing tasted of was sugar. Revolting. And as for the canolli, the hitherto ever reliable Brunetti standby, the filling was over sweet, the pastry almost oily in its consistency.

Alas, as the demise of Brunetti's seems complete, I will continue to go to the Carlton Espresso Bar. It is a great place. But any true Italian would be equally sad at having to change their café due to a demise in quality. Indeed, it would not stand well at all. The problem that has emerged is that the changing clientele have demanded less and less in terms of quality, opting instead for being seen, for parading their children in the latest offerings from the Osh Kosh B'gosh catalogue and having loud conversations about their trips to Positano, the south of France and the "cute little" boutique hotels they stayed at. This same clientele will demand larger and larger serves at the expense of the quality which shrinks and shrinks and my moans of despair grow ever louder. I urge all and sundry to take arms against a sea of mediocrity and demand more from this hitherto glorious institution. Brunetti's fans of the world unite!

It is the best of times, having previously been the worst of times

I have, for some time, felt compelled to start my own rant of sorts. The watershed moment which spurred me into action came on Saturday night in a celebration of the triumph of good over evil. No, I wasn't watching Ten's rerun of The Empire Strikes Back (which is actually about the momentary triumph of evil over good), I was watching John Howard concede.


Yes, the rodent had finally lost. Not only had the electorate kicked him to the curb in a stunning repudiation of his WorkChoices laws and lies about interest rates, but he had lost his seat. He had been refused the grace and history which would surely have come after a coalition victory and his subsequent retirement, an endorsement which would have broken my little heart.


I consider myself a pragmatist. I don't believe in an out and out welfare state and believe that free markets are sensible (if not entirely without reservations). What I do believe in stronger than these things is that in a liberal, free market economy, it is the responsibility of the "haves" to provide a safety net for the "have nots". It is a basic principle of liberalism first trumpeted by Adam Smith more than 200 years ago. A principle by which those that slip through the cracks of the capitalist world are taken care of. This social justice should extend not only to people within our borders, but to those outside it. For the western capitalist world, which eventually triumphed over the communist one at the end of the 1980s, has a responsibility to the inhabitants of those countries which have fallen through the cracks. This is not a left principle, it is the ethically adroit and unavoidable reality we must face, as inconvenient as that may be in between dropping the kids at Taekwondo and hanging the new plasma.


Every country should be able to control its borders. I don't believe that free movement between borders is something which is feasible. But equally, I believe in international treaties on refugees. The Howard government completely ignored these treaties when refusing to take in the (mainly Afghani) refugees from the Tampa fiasco of 2001. I don't reproach the Australian people for voting in Howard on his racist platform. It is natural for people to fear the unknown. It is the role of government, however, to lead the people not only economically and socially, but also morally. Such a notion was absent throughout the Howard years.


Finally, IR. WorkChoices brought the Howard government to its knees. It was the extreme articulation of the sleaze and lack of morality which had come to articulate the years of that government. Not so much the law itself, but the manner in which it was introduced. Early on Saturday night I said to a good friend that if Howard won, I would blame Latham for losing so many seats. On the other hand, when Labor won I thanked Latham for having lost control of the senate. Control of the senate came to be the Howard government's poisoned chalice. WorkChoices would not have stood a chance of getting through the senate had the Libs not had control of it. Given they did and pushed the law through, they unwittingly brought about their downfall and crushed the mythology of the Howard years in their overwhelming defeat all in one fell swoop.

History will judge the Howard goverment harshly. True, the economy is strong, but only because of Keating/ Hawke reforms. This is the one achievement the government harps on about... oh and the defeat of "political correctness" as Howard put it the other night. I call it the triumph of racism, divisiveness, small mindedness and sleaze and it is this that History will remember, not interest rates.