That was then, this is now
Not so much a tin ear as a wall of concrete.
Then opposition leader Anthony Albanese, talking about Scott Morrison’s response to the March4Women, March 15, 2021.
Do you want me to speak or not? I’m the prime minister.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to Sarah Williams, domestic violence rally organiser, April 28, 2024
ACT like you know
The Chris Luxon government in New Zealand is copping a remarkably swift backlash from voters, with polling released by TVNZ-Verian Monday showing a drop in support for his National Party as well as coalition partners ACT and NZ First. It is, according to TVNZ, the first time in modern NZ history that a government has been less popular than the combined opposition parties so early in a term.
Adding to the coalition’s woes is a wonderfully “scornful” interview with ACT arts spokesperson Todd Stephenson, conducted by Steve Braunias for Newsroom. The tone of out and out contempt is set by the headline: “ACT’s arts spokesman once watched a musical”.
The whole thing is a hoot, but we particularly like the following exchange, in which the pair discuss Stephenson’s only arts-related press release, complaining about the poet Tusiata Avia receiving a publicly funded award.
Braunias: You wrote in that press statement about Tusiata, ‘With the new government looking to make spending cuts at low value departments, Creative New Zealand is tempting fate.’ Can you expand on that?
Stephenson: From ACT’s perspective, we’re really saying, you know, are the individuals in these organisations representing what the majority of New Zealanders would want to see supported? I don’t think that they can do that.
You know, people have very individual tastes. And so it’s better that individuals make those decisions rather than, I suppose, you know, a bureaucratic agency imposing their choices on New Zealanders.
Braunias: But you don’t have individual tastes yourself, do you? You’re kind of an arts ignoramus, really, by your own reckoning.
Stephenson: No, I certainly have individual things that I like to go to. We talked about that earlier.
Braunias: You’ve been to see Hamilton.
Stephenson: Well, I was just giving you an example of the things I like to do.
Braunias: What are your tastes, other than musicals?
Stephenson: That’s the main one in the creative sector.
Braunias: Musicals.
Stephenson: And I watch movies. I watch TV.
Braunias: “I watch TV,” says the ACT spokesman for the arts.
Putting their plans on Iceland
Whoever wins the upcoming presidential election in Iceland will have big shoes to fill — the departing President Gudni Johannesson received a thumping 92% of the vote in 2020, before announcing in January he would not seek a third term.
Obviously with such a popular candidate out of the running, a lot of people are backing their chances — Ástríður Jóhannesdóttir, the director of Iceland’s electoral commission, told the Iceland Monitor that there have never been so many people put themselves forward as candidates. The only criteria is the candidate be over 35, have citizenship, and have 1,500 endorsements.
For the first time in Icelandic history, those endorsements can now be sourced digitally, with candidates simply directing people to a website to log their endorsement. So greater ease of access might be part of it. But there’s another explanation: people straight up don’t realise they’re doing it.
At least 11 of the Icelanders collecting endorsement for president apparently had no idea that they were running. “That’s hilarious!” one candidate said when a reporter let them know they were in the race.
Content designer Anne Henderson took a look and found the glaring design fail that led to a baffling number of baffled candidates.
Famously, before he became president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy starred in Servant of the People, a comedy about a non-politician who accidentally wins the Ukrainian presidency. With a little coordination, the people of Iceland have a unique opportunity to bring that sitcom to life.
Orwell Watch
Sound the highfalutin klaxon! The reliance on George Orwell as a reference point among News Corp commentators shows no sign of easing. Indeed, since last month’s horrors of Bondi Junction and the attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, Australian conservatism seems to be cycling back through a lot of its old hits: after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton suggested video games are partly to blame for male violence, Greg Sheridan thinks security agencies are being too mealy mouthed in correctly ascribing the religious motivations of Islamist terrorism. He concludes with a reference to 1984:
In 1984, George Orwell’s hero Winston Smith claims the ultimate freedom is to say that two plus two is four. Every day British politicians recite the mantra that Islam is a religion of peace. These many pronouncements haven’t stopped terrorism. There is no good policy that proceeds from a refusal to tell the truth. Islamist terror is Islamist terror.
You will note that the phrase bears almost no specific weight — while it gives the impression of depth and learning, you could cut it without losing a scintilla of clarity. It’s a great example of that old passage (we forget who wrote it): “Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.”
