Canberra agog as the gabfest clears its throat
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Everything’s in readiness for Gabfest ’08, and Canberra is buzzing … well, lightly humming, with excitement. Between the summiteers this weekend and the will-they-won’t-they Chinese flame attendants next week, Canberra hasn’t had this much attention since Bob Hawke walked across Lake Burley Griffin on the night of the ’83 election. There have been teething problems for the Summit but, let’s be fair, fewer than might have been expected. Various people seem to have been nominated, selected, then subsequently invited without being any the wiser. Accordingly the likes of Nick Greiner and James Packer have had to regretfully decline at the last minute. There was also the unfortunate incident of the BCC invitation email that wasn’t quite so BCC as its sender intended. One can only imagine the sinking feeling the poor APS5 in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet felt when she realised her mistake. Ah well. There’s always the Department of Defence. And the recipients apparently had a nice Salon des Refusés discussion together. As always, there’s a few malcontents. John Roskam whinged that he didn’t get an invite, blaming a vast left-wing conspiracy, instead of the fact that the Institute of Public Affairs is ideologically better placed to attend a 1920 summit rather than this. And yesterday Crikey regular David Flint paused from watching his DVD of 2004 election highlights to lament the absence of monarchists, despite the fact that most monarchists will have died of old age by 2020. Flint may have also forgotten the Summit product label “best and the brightest”, which tends to exclude people who seriously believe in the divine right of kings. The Australian, too, has swung around from its initial support for the summit as a worthy successor to its own New Agenda for Self-Promotion to calling it a “gabfest” and muttering, in its usual mad-old-woman-on-the-bus manner, about chattering classes and Howard-haters. And yesterday, in the surprise of the year, Mark Latham had a go in the AFR. Starting off with his by-now regular piece of irrelevant tittle-tattle from the days when he mattered, His Bitterness declared to his readership of plutocrats and rugged individualists that there weren’t enough suburban Australians at the summit, it was all the fault of the feminists, and that the whole thing should be online. Given Latham, with his penchant for physical violence and verbal abuse, was about the most analog Labor politician since Paul Keating managed the Ramrods, this is ironic indeed, or at least faintly amusing, although he is slightly ahead of the ACTU, whose big summit idea is a tax on the internet to give more money to artists. Louise Adler, you’ve been trumped. The Campbelltown Poltergeist is also perhaps unaware that there are already plenty of forums, chatrooms and debates in cyberspace, and that sadly any national conversation conducted online is unlikely to get far beyond “LOL”, “OMGWTF!!!!!!!!!!” and “any single ladies like 2 chat?” Which, admittedly, may be where the discussion heads among participants late on Saturday night. Crikey will be there. At the summit, that is, not checking who’s snogging whom in the taxi queue after hours. Having failed to gain admission on our merits, or more correctly lack thereof, we’re sneaking in the side door via the Press Gallery to watch 1000 of Australia’s finest talking heads do what they do best. Read all about it on Monday, if we’ve survived. Read 200-word Summit submissions from Simon Mansfield, Robert Manne, Jon Altman, Marcus Westbury, Joshua Gans, Miriam Lyons, Clover Moore, Melissa Conley Tyler, Benedict Bartl, Louise Tarrant, Sarah Davies, Ann McGrath, Jason Glanville and Mary Crock … here. |
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16 Comments
Very funny Bernard and spot-on. David Flint is such a caracature of a royalist that he has us falling about laughing whenever he appears. He should have joined Howard and a few others at a 1950 summit - looking for ways to return Australia to the ‘good old days’ when the aristocracy (only men of course) ruled supreme and they could have instructed we peasants to ‘eat cake’ to counter the current large increases in the price of bread.
Loved this, some really funny writing here, particularly about the “Campbelltown poltergeist”, the most “analog Labor politician since Paul Keating managed the Ramrods.’ The adverse commentators on the 2020 Summit and those affronted by their non-inclusion have clearly not understood that this is meant as a national brainstorming designed to throw up new ideas, not a win or lose debate. Christopher Pyne’s idiotic comment today demonstrates the Opposition’s failure to understand this and how the agenda will proceed. Similarly Nelson’s sententious statement on Rudd’s “idea” about one stop pre-school care as if it were already commited policy. You’d think the Australian too would understand that Rudd more than anyone knows there is no copyright on ideas and claims none. The refreshing thing about the summit is that this government is ready to listen to and itself float new ideas.
Why should the IPA get a look in. They get more column inches in the major dailys than the Prime Minister. The ideas of the IPA can be summed up in about four statements.
Privatise everything that moves and if it doesn’t move privatise it sooner.
The Market is God driving a motor car and should be promoted above all else.
Global Warming is the conspirecy of left wing scientists trying to get government money; sack them all and give the money back to the deserving rich as tax cuts.
Finally, bring in flat taxes to pay for guns missiles and corporate welfare to ensure that new ideas that will upset the order of things ever see the light of day. The guns? Well they may be handy if the scientists are right and we are invaded by the starving hoards and the great unwashed.
Crikey is supposed to fill in the blanks for those who don’t have the inside gossip.
So, it’s disappointing to see that Bernard can’t help showing that he possibly knows stuff that is too juicy to share;
“There was also the unfortunate incident of the BCC invitation email that wasn’t quite so BCC as its sender intended. One can only imagine the sinking feeling the poor APS5 in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet felt when she realised her mistake. Ah well. There’s always the Department of Defence. And the recipients apparently had a nice Salon des Refusés discussion together.”
OK, Bernard, perhaps a bit harsh on you but we should not confuse your routine criticism as evidence that you’re not a committed red. After all, many of us on the right are highly critical of some in our nest but we do not pretend to be anything but correct (right).
Bernard, when they let a Catholic be King, then talk to me about an intersection. And google the definitions of ‘ejaculation’ and ‘conception’. I think you missed something at school or didnt listen to your dad.
“Flint may have also forgotten the Summit product label “best and the brightest”, which tends to exclude people who seriously believe in the divine right of kings.” Truly, that was ace.
I applied as contrarian community media practitioner. No BCC that was not a BCC, but I did get a rubber stamp letter brush off from Glyn Duly blog posted. But my feeling is this is the ‘bunker 1000’ in case of a nuke holocaust, though they will need some more breeders. There’s one exceptionally bright young lass who will be over worked as a latter day Eve. And if not the Rapture list then what are they really but a bunch of privileged sheep? Greenpeace said it all yesterday re lack of renewable energy champions. Rudd said it even louder having to rely on picfac of innnocent childhood to cover his exposed threadbare policy backside in relation to managing this soiree. I mean how gullible to suspend disbelief this is other than a a machine exercise of huge diversionary aspect. Are these brainy folks so devoid of real politik in their own academies? And PW will you please add “written and authorised by the ALP” on your supremely certain commentary? Sheep on crikey is too much (ha ha).
Someone needs to do a thesis on the crossover between the life-begins-at-ejaculation crowd and monarchists. I wouldn’t have picked much at all, actually, but JJ is evidently in the intersection of those two sets. Poor chap would explode if one of the Windsors’ girlfriends ever has an abortion.
Bitter his tone may be, but Latham’s criticisms of the summit were reasonable, and Keane’s rendering of them is a caricature. Latham noted that the main feminist complaint about the summit was the gender ratio, not the elitism of the summit in the first place. John Roskam’s criticisms were hardly a whinge, simply a fairly accurate assessment of the political fix of the summit selection. It was inevitable that the govt etc would portray critics of the summit as bitter for not getting a spot, and some are. But lumping all ts critics in together is ultimately cynical and, ironically, anti-intellectual
It’s not possible to exclude Institute of Public Affairs without admitting a political bias built into the summit. Is that what we expect from a supposed search for ideas? Obviusly not meaning the summit is as expected - a transparently contrived political stunt to create illusion of national consensus on left wing agenda!
Bernard Keane, I think I love you. David Flint, or Sir Ramatoolupabum, as I call him, is sad and pathetic to the point that he acquires an aura of all the old f*rts to be seen in mens clubs. Senility and mothballs. His Freudian clinging to the past is almost embarrassing; little man, product of a mixed marriage, at a time when this sort of thing mattered. Unable to think in the present, his monarchial musings are so retrograde he would be incapable of ideas for the future. Anyway, why invite someone whose opinions are so well known.
Finally he is a cheat. I once caught him passing off one of Marcel Proust’s lines as his own.
Bernard declares himself to be a brain-dead lefty who does not want to hear ideas that differ from his own, and neither does our PM, naked Kev (PM with no clothes). Same old lefty faces prattling same vacuous hubris that he left has run with since WW2 which shows that it is the left who can’t get past the failed communist visions from the 1950s. Whatever happened to all of Kevin’s ideas and plans that he claimed to have before the election. or was Kevin just lying?
Tone - please. Brain-dead, absolutely. A lefty? Ouch. You weren’t so nasty when I used to bag Kevin Rudd. And John - see yesterday’s AFR for the BCC incident. I didn’t think it worth recounting in detail, even if hardly anyone reads that august journal.
The last thing the right want is for it to be exposed that they have not had an idea since they decided to invade Iraq and that has been such a great success for them hasn’t it?
Lucy, Jean and cranky Marilyn.. the usual suspects trumpeting their passion for all things democratic except for those who can’t vote, like unborn children. The Australians who stuck with our 100 year old Constitution last time we debated ditching it may not believe in the divine right of kings but they sure don’t want any more Cromwells either.