How to be Australian (Jeremy)

I remember, back in China, I was travelling with some (in fact, quite a lot) of our UK buddies through the very heart of Somewhere with Nice Noodles, Somewhere with Funny Name, China when one of them turned around to me and said, “Jez, you don’t sound like an Australian!”. I suddenly grasped what they were looking for and replied, “THAT’S nord-a knoif, THIS! is-sa knoif!”, followed up by an ocker-smeared, “I wunda whadd’ll happen when I feed this baby ter this crocer-dile!”. Naturally, all the good well-mannered Brits turned around as one and said, “THAT’S Australian!”. (In retrospect, I really should have thrown in a “Gimmee your mobile number you ar*ey f***n’ ****!” (Shane Warne Joke), but they got the idea soon enough). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, our international reputation has fallen upon the shoulders of, in no particular order, Rolf Harris, the Cricket team, Steve Irwin and Paul Hogan, with Russell Crowe as a backup for far more subtle times. I would rather have Ian Frazer, Fiona Wood and Peter Weir (I know he’s not Australian but we’ll naturalise him anyway) but that’s not really what the world seems to want to know us by. And it’s a shame.

I write this, of course, in light of poor Steve Irwin’s recent death. I am rather ashamed to say that my first reaction to this was a tastleless joke involving babies feeding him to the crocodiles, before I realised that the rumour was actually truth, but upon later reflection this was an avoidable personal tragedy which should never really have ever happened. What I cannot fathom, however, with all due respect to the man, is the effusive level of praise that has flowed forth from Australia’s media outlets which has pinned everything bar quite possibly the health of the national economy and the earth spinning in the correct direction down to the hard work of Steve Irwin. Don’t ever get me wrong, for there is no doubt that he was a good man, but it reminds me somewhat of the passing of Diana in the late nineties.

Back when Diana died, there was a scurry of activity amongst all the world’s media as the various papers and programs of the world all fell over each other trying to find the most lavish words of praise possible to bestow on the “People’s Princess”. It was almost as though they were too scared not to call for instant sainthood, and in the rush to find portraits and paint halos on them, not one media outlet really ever dared to highlight the most salient, and, in terms of a lasting message to leave the community, relevant, three points that arose from the accident; One, that if Diana, Princess of Wales had not got in the car with a drunk driver, she would still be here with us today; Two, that if Diana, Princess of Wales, had not been inside a car which had been travelling at a warp speed which was hugely dangerous to not only the occupants of her car but also all other road users, she would still be here with us today; and Three, that if Diana, Princess of Wales, had not stupidly disobeyed the most simple and basic of safety rules, and actually not deigned herself above the wearing of a seatbelt, then Diana, Princess of Wales would still be here with us today. This is not to invalidate the words that were said about Diana after her death, but more so to point out the words that should have been said, but weren’t for fear of stepping outside the boundaries of what was deemed “safe to say”. And because we did not learn from that history, then we leave ourselves open to repeating it.

The media in both Australia and the world has suddenly become scared of itself, especially where any sort of coverage calling for an opinion is concerned. It is almost as though they are scared of taking any path bar the line of least resistance, and pander to what will upset the public the least rather than what often needs to be said. Take the example of the recent-enough death of former Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen; upon his death, the tributes began flowing in for both Joh and Flo, with people calling them Queensland visionaries and an inspiration, mourning the tragic loss of Mr Bjelke-Petersen from this nation. The only tragedy I really saw on the national level was that he ever left the Kingaroy peanut farm; and, above all, I was completely astounded at the amount of effusive praise which spattered my Saturday newspaper like bird poo on a windscreen. Joh was known for being a megalomaniac who was highly abusive of his powers, managing to both gerrymander the electorate (ie change the electoral boundaries at will to give his National Party more seats; it even became known as a “Bjelke-Mander”) and cream-skim off the top of any governmental deals which were approved in his state. My mind skims back to a Phillip Adams article in which he applied, in the days of Joh, to film in Queensland for a feature-length film. To do such a thing he had to apply for permission, and so he went to see Joh. “What’s in it for me?” asked Joh, and Phillip, trying to dance around the question, explained the benefits of future exposure for the Queensland economy and the provision of jobs and employment for the film. He was abruptly cut short by Petersen, who had clearly decided that enough was enough. “No…” he said, “what’s in it, FOR ME?!?”! This is the sort of man who all the major politicians in the land were queueing up to publicly bestow nothing short of sainthood on upon his death. It was quite funny, however, to see Howard doing exactly that, given that Joh’s aborted run for Prime Minister in 1987 cost Howard exactly that job at the time. (Joh’s entire government was later the subject of an entire police inquiry, the findings of which are both unclear and disputed to this day). For anyone who doubts Joh’s lack of integrity, he won the 1972 election with roughly 20% of the vote. That’s a gerrymander.

Whilst I’m on the subject, and warming up quite nicely, the other recent event that comes to mind on this subject would be that of the death of one Kerry Packer. Ever-mindful of the man’s massive media presence even after his death, Kerry’s omniprescient power seemed to develop a magical extension beyond the grave as various media outlets engaged in an unspoken competition to print the biggest possible picture of this repulsive bohemoth upon their front pages, routinely followed by a round of obituaries that were matched in their complete worship only by their ability to induce nausea. (And this was just the non-Packer publications! Channel Nine entered a whole new stratosphere, whilst Channel Seven was the only outlet to buck the trend, and that was to air a revengeful shitfile that they would have never dared release whilst Packer was still alive). Much was made of Packer’s Cricketing Revolution which did single-handedly change the face of cricket, and also of the fact that he once gave a woman several tens of thousands of dollars. Little was made of his continually unpleasant manner, his unfathomable ability to consider himself above both the law and the tax agent (see: “Packer; inquest”), the fact that his cricketing revolution was entirely generated by profit (his famous quote, “There’s a little bit of the whore in all of us, gentlemen. Name your price” to the Cricket Board resonates in my mind) and his breaking of the anti-apartheid ban in signing South African cricketers so soon after the death of Steve Biko in custody. Above all, it mentioned absolutely nothing of the reason why it had continued to mention absolutely nothing throughout his entire life; Packer’s unbelievably close connections with the Governments of the day and his continual campaign to flaunt and destroy every impartial media code in this entire country. Every politician in the country was scared of what Packer could do with his enormous influence over the Australian population simply by way of Channel Nine, and rightly so.

It is not at all a fair comparison, to draw a line between Steve Irwin and the gruesome couple of Packer and Bjelke-Petersen, and it was never my intention to do so. Irwin was not a bad person as those two were; he did not make other’s lives worse; indeed, far from it, judging by what has been said by family and friends. My point is more so to highlight the Australian media’s inability to correct itself. I have no issue with the media saying that he was a nice guy, but to label him one of the great environmentalists is somewhat overstating it. Although I have no doubt that he loved the environment, the methods he used to film it were far from sensitive and non-invasive and one wonders just how inappropriately close one must get to a stingray in order for it to sting you through the heart. Let the man’s legacy be who he was, not who we are too afraid to say he was not.

And, in the interim, hopefully the Australian media will find the ability to correct itself. The ability to deviate from the line of least resistance, if you will.

jez