there to lose

Opinion polls out today in the Sydney Morning Herald show that the Opposition has nudged in front of the Government. Its not hard to see how this has happened - what, with a week of leaked documents, focussed campaigning by the Opposition and a second rate campaign by the Government.

I can only pray that somewhere in Gillard's Election HQ, someone is saying, with absolute clarity, that the population are not going to buy safety and spin, and that they want to see what the PM has planned for her term in office in very plain language. Gillard, with the exception of her leak-driven defence last week, has looked subdued, almost robotic and nowhere near as convincing as Tony Abbott. Now I know that the latter is a shameless opportunist, but he is a plain-speaking one.

The Government may not be able to control the leaks, but it can enter into a spirited fight over its generally excellent record and its plans for the immediate future. Gillard needs to take some risks and engage with the population.

That, or else we get another conservative government. In three, short weeks.

the swinging voter

Most elections these days are centered on wooing the swinging voter. These are, after all, the kinds of people who change their vote, so running campaigns that pander to their interests is understandable. The problem is that the kind of issues that are likely to tip their vote one way or the other are not necessarily those that are at the foreground of the national interest. They may be significant, but their importance is overblown. So it is with the current election.

Rearing it's head once again is the 'boat people' debate. I have seen the figures that demonstrate that about 2% of all 'illegals' coming to Australia use this channel. The other 98% come in through the airports. Yet one would think that this paltry figure was actually an all-consuming avalanche bearing down on the fragile Australian hinterland, bringing with it pestilence and a queue-jumping mentality. It's absurd and immoral and at least one of the major political parties should be honest enough to say so. Instead we have a mutual rush to the trenches.

The Government and the Opposition are both wedded to the so-called centre ground where these swingers and aspirationals apparently reside. It's not necessarily a moderate or a rational centre. After all, the middle can be the place of greatest ignorance and prejudice, of poor awareness and shameful apathy. And of course, the centre has shifted over the three decades or so that I have been interested in politics. It further to the right these days. Significantly further.

election update 01

We are into the second week of the campaign now and things are just starting to reach tepid, after a phoney war in week one. Neither of the major parties, nor their respective leaders, have made major gaffes yet. The policies are safe and uninspiring and aimed at a frugal costing regime, such is the atmosphere of hey, small spender!

Today the Government released a Climate Change non-policy, a disappointing and timid squibb aimed at dressing up the backdown on this issue some months ago. A citizen's assembly comprising at least 100 people will be drawn from the electoral roll! What an abrogation of leadership and good government this is! We voted three years ago to have a climate change policy developed and enacted. Why not just use the Joe Hockey preferred Tweeting consensus? Hey gang, do you think we can come up with a climate policy?

I hope things get better than this. Timid government is not government that's worth having. Leadership is about making some decisions that will be unpopular and difficult to undertake. Labor leaders in the past have managed it. So too, can Ms Gillard.

who will it be?

Rumours concerning the new Socceroos head coach have been circulating since midway through the World Cup. A number of names have been tossed into the mix, including the ubiquitous Philipe Troussier (who impressed me as the Japan boss in 2002), the former Cameroon coach Paul Le Guin, Lothar Matthaus, Jose Peckerman and El Loco, Marcelo Bielsa. It's hard to know just who else the FFA has been talking to and precisely who is really interested.

There are a few things I would like to know about them too. Are they genuinely interested in developing the game in Australia? We don't really need any more 'paying out' on the A-League, Verbeek-style. We do need encouragement, mentoring and an emphasis of finding and developing talent. Will the new coach reside in Australia? I think that they should. Will there be an emphasis on a more attacking football, as opposed to the dire defensiveness of the Verbeek era? I hope that the new coach can find that happy medium between strong defence and a desire to attack.

Pim Verbeek had significant success with the Socceroos, fullfilling his remit impeccably. But the manner in which a team plays is just as important as the results and if football is to win over more hearts in Australia, then the post-Verbeek head coach needs to ring in the changes.

hey abbott!

Australia goes to the polls on August 21st in what is likely to be a tough-fought, possibly not-entirely-clean campaign. The Government under new PM Julia Gillard is marginally ahead in the polls, though the ALP's primary vote if down. The opposition have a formidable scrapper in Tony Abbott, though whether middle-class Australia will wear his morally conservative credentials and tendency to say silly things is another matter. It has to be said though, that he is very competitive and articulate on key issues, even if one disagrees with his positions.

What matters then will the election hinge on? In recent months, the Government's handling of the mining tax, the home insulation scheme, climate policy, boat people (!) and the manner in which the former PM was deposed have proved to be stumbling blocks. The opposition will hit hard on these issues. The Government, which, on the whole, has been competent and broadly social democratic, should prevail if it can run a half-decent campaign. This should mean jettisoning spin doctors and focus-group pollsters, whose baleful influence is too often apparent in Western democracies. There is nothing wrong with leading from the front or even having a little conviction, is there?

until later

This morning we heard the sad news of the passing of Tracey Thomson. Tracey and her two little boys were pretty much a fixture at Thursday morning playgroup in Hazelbrook and she also served on the same pre-school parent committee as me. I count myself fortunate that I was able to get to know her even a little, to chat about the sorts of things parents chat about, to share a laugh now and then.

It was a struggle for her, both boys having mild developmental delays that doubled her worry and her workload. But I never heard a complaint from her. She had had serious health problems for many years - open heart surgery, missing a kidney, then finally a brain tumor. Still, no complaints, ever. Only fears for her boys if things turned out for the worst.

Life is rarely fair though even in the most difficult cases, one can sometimes discern a scintilla of hope. Tracey was that hope and rarely was it about herself. It was for others that her energy and kindness were directed.

Rest in peace in the arms of God, Tracey.

During the World Cup, I played one of the Fifa online 'games', the World Cup Predictor Challenge. There were no prizes but it was fun to see how well I could guess the winner, the scoreline, the number of corners, first scorer, etc. etc. As it turned out I finished a creditable 41,585th. Before you say "Well that's a load of bollocks", I should point out that there were nearly 500,000 players, so I actually finished in the top 10%. If I had remembered to complete every game I would have done better.

BTW, congratulations to Spain on getting to and winning their first World Cup, 1-0 against the Dutch. They are deservedly the best team in the world.

not kfc

Understanding the individual factors that made up the Global Financial Crisis is a bit like learning a new language, one whose rules are subject to change. Just when you think you have got on top of basic sentence structure, along comes a grammatical flip that fosters confusion.

I have been burrowing through an excellent book, IOU, by John Lanchester, that explains the GFC is very lay terms. In fact, the author is a fiction writer with a beautiful turn of phrase and an eye for the absurd. And even though it reduces complexity to clear rational jargon-free prose, I still have to read and re-read pages. There is lot to know and the fact is, some of it is quite counter-intuitive. I can handle explanations of how the fundamentals of banking function (quite simple really) but when matters move into the more complex financial instruments developed to free up capital and reduce risk, well, there is difficulty. Quite brilliant chaps, mathematicians and physicists among them, created these products, so it's little wonder that poor old bank managers, fund directors and the like didn't really know exactly what they doing. In time, these canny financial instruments became instruments of torture.

I'll have more to say on this amazing(tax-payer funded) schemozzle as I delve deeper into the book. Or then again, I might have forgotten it all by the time I reach the keyboard.

teaching spaces

I taught in Australian high schools for over 15 years and, naturally that was a big help when first starting work in Japan. It's funny how I felt most comfortable when doing guest teaching stints in Japanese Elementary and Junior High Schools. I suppose it must have been the ubiquitous architecture of schools - long corridors with classrooms either side.

I was thinking about the kinds of places that I taught in whilst in Japan just the other day. Nadia and I taught in a wide variety of environments - not only our converted tatami room at home in Mukogaoka. We worked in private homes, churches and community centres. I worked in a juku (see previous post), the boardroom of an engineering company and a variety of school situations. One of my last assignments was at a high school for intellectually-impaired students in Sanda. What lovely kids they were!

Going away from home to work always entailed the careful packing of bags. Books and teaching records were stowed, games and activities chosen. There was always a double check for cassette tapes or CD's that complimented certain texts, without which lessons had to be quickly re-jigged in situ. More than once I provided 'the soundtrack' to a text, using different voices when needed. On many occasions I popped in to a Seven Eleven or Lawson Station to photocopy class sets. Not all students had books and some classes had specialized or idiosyncratic programs of study. It was often just rush, rush, rush.

Right now, my mind is wandering the thin bitumen strip that is the 176. I am watching the speedometer (the limit is usually 50kms) and checking the clock. The first class is at 9.30am and I am going no-where, fast.

js 46 juku life

Over the course of our time in Japan, I was often involved in teaching English in cram schools or juku. Unlike the the activities happening around me (usually self-directed further study under the supervision of a tutor), I was facilitating English conversation, similar to the classes at home in Sanda.

I found the juku classes very hit and miss in terms of satisfaction, particularly if students were unmotivated or simply too tired. Sometimes classes changed with little warning, students dropped out or new classes formed with wildly differing levels of competence. It was pretty clear that the juku were keen on maximising returns, or minimising losses. I had little choice but to play along and do my best.

The juku classes were always upcountry in Sasayama-guchi or Kaibara and gave me a little window into another aspect of the Japanese education system. It was hard work for the average high school student - to spend all day at school, participate almost daily in 'club' activities after school, then front up for more study at a juku. On top of that they would have a pile of homework from regular school. Tired - who us?

I have chosen a number of shots here, including, a nearby shrine attached to Kaibara Hachiman jinja, one of the kitchen classes, 'the stairway to learning' and the street that our juku was located in. The cyclist in the last shot is right about at the door of our establishment.

paths to abstraction

Today I took the long journey to Sydney to catch the Paths To Abstraction exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW. I was excited because this period in Western Art is one of my favourites, bridging the period between realism and pure abstraction.

It was pleasing to re-familiarize myself with so many old friends, works by Monet ('Haystacks') and Cezanne, woodcuts by Gauguin, references to Fauvism, Symbolism, Cubism, Futurism(enough -isms. ed) and my old buddy, Dadaism. There was a book of verse by Tristan Tzara in French and I was amused that I could remember parts of the English translation. No, I'm not smart, it's just that I once taught Dada as part of a performing arts course.

So I felt comfortable with the arty discourse that was being bandied about. Except for one concept or word I had never heard before. Rayonism. It bothered me all the way home. What was rayonism? Presumably there were artists who were rayonists with whom I had no acquaintance. Their works were displayed very near the Fauves and indeed they were quite colourful. But their distinguishing feature (I'm sure you can guess) were ray-like strokes or spikes of colour intersecting each other in a dynamic way. A short-lived movement, apparently, but one crucial to the development of Russian abstract art.

The jostling of ideas and gentle shifting of tectonics fascinates me. Maybe I should have studied art history at uni.