My brother has always been able to make me laugh but this time he was able to do it without trying.
We were at a petrol station outside of Sydney. I'd just bought something to eat as he was heading in to the cashier area to pay. I thought he'd used plastic at the pump.
"You're paying now?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"But you already got the petrol, right?"
"Yeah."
"The honor system?!"
That's right about when I cracked up.
Living in Las Vegas, I have about as much chance of pumping-then-paying as I do of beating one of the casinos into submission at the blackjack table. Ain't gonna happen.
And so it is that Australia is still a little bit, happily, behind the times.
But let's talk some Aussie politics.
Australia has a federal election this weekend. Following the lead-up while I was Down Under was simultaneously interesting, annoying and, to an extent, heartening.
Let's get this bit out of the way: The two party leaders vying to be Prime Minister are about as inspiring as a sea urchin. And that might be a bit "dirty" on sea urchins. The candidates are very average in the intelligence department, transparently rat cunning, evasive on specifics, and just bloody hard to listen to. They are, in short, true politicians.
They make promises and run through the "important issues," but make no effort to articulate HOW they will do what they say they are going to or WHERE the money will come from. And we all know damn well that they aren't going to be doing that stuff anyway. For example, the Liberal Party (conservative) leader, Tony Abbott, who is running to oust the incumbent Julia Gillard, is a proud Doubting Thomas about all this global warming stuff. Yep, a real genius who probably has mates in the petroleum industry.
So the pols in Australia have some commonalities with their U.S. counterparts; but they're not quite as vicious and evil and, frankly, don't have the same opportunities to be.
But one difference I did note about politics in Australia was in some of the media coverage.
One journalist on the government-run ABC TV station, Kerry O'Brien (pictured), has been dishing it up to the pollies for years. He totally exposed Abbott as an inept house plant with direct, meaningful questions. And Gillard was left to twist in the wind with parries like: "Yes, but you didn't answer my question!" It was like heaven to my ears after 15 years of the knuckleheads at Fox and CNN et al. And it shows why it's important to take media out of the hands of private owners.
(Visit the webpage for O'Brien's show "The 7:30 Report" here:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/)
And while the commercial channels were softer, Abbott and Gillard and co. definitely had to work harder for their biscuits than Obama ever has or ever will. Heaven forbid a "mainstream" American journalist should dare point out that, good gracious, the president-of-great-promise is, well, a liar. Or that his arithmetic on the "withdrawal" from Iraq doesn't really add up to a withdrawal at all. Five minutes with Kerry O'Brien would be very telling indeed.
Another Aussie TV station, SBS, was started 30 or so years ago -- again by the government -- to cover all the multicultural bases. So it offers news that really is international and films that you won't see on the English-speaking channels (not to mention excellent soccer coverage).
George Negus, another veteran Aussie TV journalist, hosts a show called "Dateline" on SBS. But unlike its American namesake, this program will actually show you deformed babies in Iraq so you can't just mindlessly eat your burger and fries and not think about the consequences of what your government does in the name of its "interests."
I urge you to visit http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/watch/id/600687/n/Iraq-s-Deadly-Legacy and watch Negus' report "Iraq's Deadly Legacy."
Here is the lead-in to the segment. It will give you some idea of the difference between between what is reported within the United States and what is reported elsewhere:
"It is seven years since the invasion of Baghdad and only now is the US withdrawing its forces from Iraq, but the Iraqi people themselves, meanwhile, are having to deal with what appears to be a more immediate and devastating legacy from the war - stories are now emerging of increased deformities in the country's newborn babies as well as a dramatic rise in the number of children with cancer. Dateline's Walkley Award-winning reporter Fouad Hady, an Iraqi-Australian, went back home to investigate. As you know, Dateline always warns it’s viewers when they are about to show images or sequences that they think you might find upsetting. Well, George Negus had a long look at Fouad's piece and it's definitely upsetting - confronting, in fact. Nevertheless, he urges you to stick with it. It says a lot about the ethical dilemma of modern armed conflicts like Iraq."
There is a long way to go to get all the ducks lined up and quacking in Australia but, like Europe and, well, just about anywhere that isn't America (or some other totalitarian regime), you do get some real news. In the States there's much more mass media, and much less news.
And the real news always reminds me of some bare truths. Especially when I see all those suffering children and the way the U.S. buries that kind of information. And the main truth that hits me is this: If you believe there is a God, you can believe that He is very pissed off with what we've done on this planet.
Not the happiest of thoughts but it's not too late to dig in and change things. If you really care.
Onward,
Adrian Zupp
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