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TOWARDS AN IDENTITY

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As we again commence a new year here in Oz and worship all things ‘Australian’ on January 26, the obvious question remains……….. What are we celebrating? Intertwined with this question is another……….. What is Australia’s identity? Alistair Thomson, Professor of History at Monash University, flags an immediate problem with mounting the ‘Identity’ steed. ‘As soon as you start talking about a distinctive national identity or character, you begin to exclude and you define those who are IN and those who are OUT.’ (2019) A reactionary offering for what describes Australia’s physique normally includes reference to the lucky country, a ‘fair go’ focus, mateship in abundance, battlers ahoy, an egalitarian understorey with a ‘you can succeed if you really want to’ neoliberal canopy and, of course, hordes of hilarious larrikins. It’s easy to see the problems with such an assessment as it ignores vital components of our history. And this is a common theme when pegging an Australian identity. ...
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HANDLES, HERITAGE and HYSTERIA

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The Coronavirus is taking its toll on Oz citizens at the moment and the duress is being demonstrated in alarming ways. The lucky country has become quite parochial while the beast dances around the continent and there has been a continuing and justifiable emphasis on borders, containment and biosecurity to slow down the soundtrack’s tempo. Globalisation and all things ‘foreign’ have been assigned peanut gallery seating as a national march towards the ‘new normal’ begins. Cue in an accompanying and competing military-style beat. But COVID-19 has not just been fooling with our physical well-being. Many punters’ brains appear adversely affected. Over the last three months, a few familiar food products here in Australia have been wrangled into a bush holding pen in preparation for long overdue name changes. Such items include Red Skins confectionery bars and Chicos dark jelly babies. The owner/ manufacturer ‘Nestle’ has stated that ‘ These names have overtones which are o...
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OUTRAGE

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Am I the only one who has noticed that ‘outrage’, ‘the politics of outrage’ and ‘the outraged class/ mobs’ have been everywhere in the newspapers and on the box lately? Hardly a day passes before you hear one of these three expressions enjoying its place in the 24 hour news cycle ‘sun’. This onslaught of ‘outrage’-based phrases/ clauses/ exclamations etc. has made me wonder what kind of punters would use them. Besides the root word ‘first derivative’, they also appear to be linked to that most awful of categories….the NEGATIVE. The people allegedly associated with outrage are the trendoids, the greenies, Trots, lefties, commies, public servants, hipsters (maybe), teachers and some nurses with brown hair. When you consider both the users of this language AND the citizens they’re attempting to describe, a couple of things then come to mind- 1. A punter only references others with ‘outrage’ when he or she disagrees with their point of view. 2. The sub-classificat...
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SIGN OF THE TIMES

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  The focus of one of my earlier blogs was on herding the copious amounts of time that one is confronted with after the world of work has imploded from either exhaustion or a cosmic collision with some other stellar thing. Retirement is cool but it comes at a price. I turn 64 soon and my family genome points me in the direction of having ten more years on the firmament before the reaper comes a knockin’. While the uneasiness of mortality isn’t something that comes around for a coffee ‘catch-up’ every day, I do have the feeling that we’re going to get to know each other much better as those ten or so years progress. The caffeine conferences may well increase in frequency and that’s not something I look forward to. Maybe I should forego the sugar insertions to the flat white as a buffer to impending doom but who knows? Free time and thought sometimes aren’t good companions. Death doesn’t quite terrify me as yet but that’s probably because I figure that I’ve only jus...
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NATIONALISM- ITS PLACE IN CURRENT AUSTRALIA

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  The concept of ‘nationalism’ has always seemed foreign to me. I’m an Australian because I was born here and the feds have given me a passport which labels me as from ‘Australia’. There’s a coat of arms on the cover and everything……….. along with my name and weathered image. To the international set and support officialdom, I’m definitely ‘Paul Regan’ and I’m from ‘Australia’. I quite like living in Australia because it’s really the only place that I know and this familiarity thing bolsters the comfort setting. Since jettisoning from mum in late 1954, I’ve grown up here, gone to schools here, worked here, entered holy matrimony here, scratched my arse here many times and, yes, I’m composing this blog here….right now. Is the apparent close association between the lucky country and me something that I cherish and/ or self-inflate my athletic chest over? Response- negative. That association is primed by sheer chance and it’s nothing that either party (i.e. country and...
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WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD

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One of the things that does my head in is that discussion (in oral and written forms) seems to have become an endangered species in 2018. Points of view, opinions and even the humble exposition are notable for their failure to leave footprints in the comfortable turf that’s been laid around our ranches. I also reckon that it’s a relatively recent development that has brewed for only a decade or so but it is now a strong marker of our times.   What is also strange is that we live in an age where data generation is increasing at dramatic rates yet information which helps to order and explain such data is missing in action. It feels like the ‘understanding’ filters have been switched off and we carry on as if everything’s cool. I believe that one of the reasons for this lies in the changing structures and roles of the media and by the media I mean both the traditional ‘mass media’ and the networked fourth estate. The transformations that have occurred in the way we re...
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WHEN HARRY MET SALLY......OR SOMEONE ELSE

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    Well, it all starts again in a few days with that semi-regular visit to the House of Windsor. This time it’s for one of those fucked weddings. When Harry met Sally, there was an immediate vibe which has blossomed into true love and paved the way for Saturday’s exchanging of vows. I can hardly wait. Harry has promised that his 2018 vows will be very similar to those uttered by big brother Will when he married Grace in 2011. Of course, those original vows have been tested dramatically since Will and Grace’s wedding. Subsequent sprog generation has resulted in a nest of royal infants who, when assembled, look like something out of a Town and Country fashion shoot from the 1930s. The fact that Princess Bluto hasn’t uttered a sound since her birth some three years ago is also of mounting concern. Sources close to the palace reveal that Will’s eyes are now pointed firmly in the direction of Scary Spice, especially since she’s lost all that weight. And she’s managed t...
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