Radio Australia Today Editorial
Archive for August, 2009
Personal responsibility. Sometimes you gotta take it.
21 August 2009
There’s a story out of the U.S. today about a woman suing a zoo after she fell near a dolphin exhibit. The woman blames zookeepers for her fall, accusing them of encouraging dolphins to splash water on spectators. Her beef is that this made the surfce near the pool wet, meaning that it was dangerous.
There are bound to be groans today, not just from zookeepers around the world, but from a lot of ordinary citizens who lamenting the increasing cost of insurance premiums.
The question here has to be about personal responsibility. You go to a zoo. You walk on a surface that is obviously wet or likely to be wet (it is by a dolphin pool, after all). Take care would be the thought that should enter your head. If it had been raining, would you sue God? If the splashed spectators got a cold, should they sue the zookeepers?
I remember covering a court case where a Sydney athlete got a quadriplegic injury after sitting on a 100 year old stone fence that backed onto a beach. A friend, in a joke, lifted up her legs to frighten her, but she overbalanced, and fell three metres onto the sand below. The woman sued, not the friend but the council, claiming the wall had been too low and encouraged people to sit on it. In 100 years she was first person that we knew of to be injured like this, yet she tried to blame a council for her mishap. It was a ridiculuos case, but she fought for her argument with vigour. Common sense won and she lost.
As for the American zoo woman, it was an accident. Watch where you’re going. I have been thrown off my bike after riding over a fallen branch in the dead of night. It was no-one’s fault. It just happened.
You just get on with it. If you not looking where you’re going, anything could happen.
That’s just life. There doesn’t always have to be someone to blame.
– Phil
Iraq. The U.S. leaves and the bombing resumes.
20 August 2009
Terrorists in Iraq have made the deadliest attacks since the U.S. started their troop withdrawals. At this moment at least 95 people are dead and up to 500 people are injured.
The attacks targetted Afghanistan’s Foreign and Finance ministries, and the issue here is that the attackers could barely wait for the U.S. troops to leave before trying to bring down the government. Clearly the bombers thought their targets out. The Finance ministry is the economic centre of Iraq, which is still a tettering economy. There was never going to be any way that some bombs at a ministry were going to collapse the economy, but it’s symbolic gesture that says much about the terrorists’ desire to bring the country down.
Interestingly, our correspondent in Washington, Lisa Millar has reported that the bombings didn’t seem to be the big focus of the Obama government overnight.
Which also speaks volumes. The psyche of the U.S. government may well have already shifted away from Iraq onto other issues. Lisa says that all the Washingon talk at the moment seems to be about the Obama health care reform, which is getting to a crucial stage in development.
So as Barack Obama throws off the shackles of his predecessor’s incursion into a foreign land, it is to be expected that at last he doesn’t feel the obligation to be forever commenting on Iraq, but looking at important matters closer to home.
This change in Washington had to happen, just as many said that this violence had to happen. There were plenty of predictions that once the U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraq, terrorists would try their hand.
And a heavy hand it is. It is now up to the Iraqi government to be even heavier, for this is truly its first test. If it can fight these bombers; if it can recover; if it can win the hearts of the Iraqi people, then there will be some hope, not just for the government, but the poor battered people of Iraq too.
– Phil
China & Australia’s gas deal.
19 August 2009
Six hours is a long time in politics.
Yesterday political analysts here in Australia were lamenting problems in the relationship between Australia and China. There were media reports that China had decided against sending high level diplomats to meetings with Australian delegates, because of fury about Australia granting a visa to Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.
Now a simple six hours has seen things turned on their head, with the announcement that Petro-China had signed a 50 billion dollar deal to extract and export natural gas from the Gorgon field off the West Australian coast. It is a deal that has been trumpeted by the Australian government as the biggest export deal in the country’s history, and a deal that would boost Australia’s economy prosperity for years into the future.
So it seems things are all hunky-dory with China once more. The words of the West Australian premier, Colin Barnett, that Australia needed China more than China needed Australia seem superfluous, as the relationship is clearly more symbiotic than reliant.
Those concerned about the environmental impact of the continued mass mining of fossil fuels, might be relieved to hear the government here saying that the project includes a stipulation that carbon be put back into the ground, in a world-leading case of smart technology that avoids emitting greenhouse gases. The Australian government seems as happy with selling the clean-gas technology as it does with the investment itself. It’s not certified technology yet, but the government is confident that it will work when the time comes.
So it’s claiming a win-win. The consternation over the Uighurs, Tibet and Stern Hu, all so important yesterday have been dashed off the front page by the biggest business deal of all. Six hours, my friends, six hours.
– Phil
Bushfire. Blame offered. None accepted.
18 August 2009
In February, Australia had its worst natural diasaster in recorded history when bushfires tore through some towns in the south-east of the country, killing more people than any other disaster of its kind and destroying many hundreds of houses. Such was the intensity of the fire that the exact number of properties lost isn’t certain.
It was to be expected that a Royal Commission would be called to look into how such a thing could happen in such an advanced age of technology.
It seems that technology could do little to save anything. The Commission’s report, which was handed down yesterday afternoon, found the the Country Fire Authority (CFA) Incident Control room was understaffed, but even if there were enough people, they would have had no working fax machine or computer to send out warnings. As one witness said, the CFA was in a mess.
The head of the CFA, Russell Rees, came in for some criticism for failing to get involved in the management of the fire fighting, and was cionsidered by the Royal Commissioner to be not effective on the day. For his part, Russell Rees said he did his best on the day, and says the procedures set up never anticipated a series of fire of such intensity. That, he says, will change. The State government, it has to be said, has retained its full confidence in Russel Rees and has reappointed him in his position.
The most chilling statement about this whole thing was made by John Brumby, the premier of the state involved (Victoria), who said that climate change is certain to mean that conditions are only going to get worse, and we should expect more disasters. In fact, the next fire season is due in only 71 days, and yes, conditions are worse already. An errant cigarette, or an arsonist could bring similar results to February.
If you doubt climate change is upon us, come visit our poor and cindered state.
– Phil
Elvis. It was 32 years ago today..
17 August 2009
In 1977 I was in school and Elvis was a dork. Anyone who dared to own an Elvis cassette was also a dork.
I had an Elvis cassette. My brother-in-law had bought it for me, a tape of Elvis singing his gospel stuff. I played it and loved it, but when I got to school and bragged about my new cassette, I was labelled a dork, a moniker that stayed with me for the rest of my schooldays. You see, most of my friends were way too cool for the King of Rock. The fools, they had failed to see how Led Zepp, Deep Purple and the Small faces were all heavily influenced by Elvis.
Sadly, I too became foolish. I held it against my generous brother-in-law that he bought me that cassette, and I also forgot how much I had loved Elvis singing to the Lord above. Such is the power of peer pressure.
It was some years before I fell for the King once again. I happened when my heart and soul kickstarted (as it does in your 20′s), and I began appreciating the grace of Matt Monro, Dean Martin, and of course Elvis.
Once, when Elvis was asked at a media conference what he thought about Richard Nixon’s stance on the war in Vietnam, Elvis made no comment, saying he was just an entertainer. But he was much more than just an entertainer. He made it okay to feel music and to gyrate your hips, if that’s what turned you on. He brought together the cool of the rhumba, the soul of Billie Holiday and the funk blues of Charlie Christian. And he was pretty good-looking too.
But in the sad truth of life, he just wasn’t cool for the generation that was born after his first big hit.
That, of course, doesn’t mean he wasn’t cool. After all, what do 17 year olds know?
The King has been gone 32 years today. That’s a lot of songs that were never sung, never recorded. And we’re the worse for it.
– Phil
