Blame Canada!
We have long suspected there is nothing a writer for The Australian could see, hear or experience that they would not consider lobbing out of the trench as another culture war grenade. Read a single piece criticising boys’ schools? There’s a “campaign” to oppose! Popular children’s entertainers hire a few people of colour? Someone can be found to imply it’s indoctrination. M&M’s not making you as horny as they once did? Get on the blower.
But this one is new. Columnist Janet Albrechtsen has penned a whole article about getting lost in the mountain ranges of British Columbia, Canada. Her point? That the nanny state culture of over-regulation is to blame for her actively ignoring a sign that would have prevented her from getting lost: “I have grown so accustomed to, so bored by, so immune to stupid directions, rules and regulations imposed by governments of all kinds, at all levels, from mountain bureaucrats to Canberra politicians, that I thought I knew better”.
We were keen to understand all this, so we checked in with a Canada-based friend of Crikey, David Thomas. He sent us a few thoughts, noting that Albrechtsen taking a bell with her to warn bears of her approach reminded him of an “old hikers’ joke”: “How do you tell black bear poo from grizzly poo? The grizzly poo has bells in it.”
Albrechtsen further complained she had been unable to have a drink outside in Vancouver (as a “downtrodden” bar owner ruefully explains, “Here, the government knows you. It knows you’ll turn into a wild animal after an alcoholic beverage so they demand a fence”).
Thomas — via some reminiscences of his time on Fleet Street in the early 1970s, when “Australians would solemnly circle Trafalgar Square in a rite of passage akin to Muslims spiralling around the Kaaba at Mecca … fouling Punch Tavern’s carpet with excessive Foster’s foam” — hit up on a different explanation: “It’s only Australians who are not allowed to drink alcohol at a sidewalk table. As the bar owner said, we know you.”
This is my idea of fun: playin’ video games
On June 25, the Parliamentary Friends of Video Games held an event at Parliament House. Actually, it was more accurately two video game industry lobby groups — the International Social Games Association (ISGA) and the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA) — that organised the shindig. As some emails Crikey recently obtained reveal, the ISGA hired a PR firm to approach Communications Minister Michelle Rowland to attend.
“Thank you for making the time to catch up yesterday in relation to the International Social Games Association (ISGA, our client),” the PR firm wrote to the minister’s office on June 5. “Also, when you have a moment, if you are please able to let us know if the minister is able to attend the Parliamentary Friends of Video Games event at Parliament House … the ISGA and IGEA are in the process of working on the running sheet for the event at the moment.” (Rowland’s office said she didn’t actually end up attending the event.)
We were surprised it was the lobby groups themselves, and not the parliamentarians behind the friendship group, who took charge of the event. Even more surprising was that the parliamentarians in question — Labor Assistant Foreign Minister Tim Watts and Liberal National Party Senator James McGrath — wanted nothing to do with our questions about the event.
Watts’ office flat-out refused to comment on the record, and McGrath’s office never emailed us back.
The lobby groups themselves were more forthcoming: the ISGA said the friendship group had been running since December 2020, and acting chief executive Nick Stringer said the event had been an opportunity to showcase “several different genres of games from Australian game developers” and to highlight the sector’s “commitment to local jobs and economic growth”.
An IGEA spokesperson said the group provided “a non-partisan forum for parliamentarians to meet and interact with stakeholders and representatives of the video games industry on matters relating to the production, showcasing, and distribution of video games”.
Which all sounds fine. We just don’t get what all the secrecy is about.
Slapping the Bass (Strait)
What does it say when potentially catastrophic spills become such a regular occurrence that they barely merit a mention in the press? A tipster pointed out that this popped up on the website of the offshore oil and gas industry’s environment and safety regulator NOPSEMA earlier this month: a finding that Esso had “contravened a provision of an environmental management law” after as much as 21,000 litres of diesel spilled from its Marlin B facility in the Bass Strait.
And yet, with the exemption of The Mercury, barely anyone seems to have reported on it:
This is the third such spill involving this project. Previous instances got a bit of attention, but we guess this story is reaching “dog bites man” predictability. Luckily, the notice mentions that “Esso … is likely to contravene that provision again … As a result, there is, or may be, a significant threat to the environment”. So there’s always next time.
Another one bites the dust
Independent publisher Hardie Grant has snapped up Pantera Press, in another blow to the diversity of the Australian publishing industry. On Tuesday, Hardie Grant announced the purchase for an undisclosed sum, spruiking Pantera as a publisher that “championed emerging Australian writers”.
Pantera was founded in 2008 by the Green family, who are stepping away from the business. Ali Green is the current CEO, and will be replaced by Pantera publishing director Lex Hirst. The acquisition has also meant job cuts at Pantera, with a number of redundancies confirmed to Crikey by Hardie Grant managing director Roxy Ryan.
Asked whether she held concerns for the future of independent Australian publishing, particularly following the recent acquisition of Affirm Press by Simon & Schuster, Ryan told Crikey she thought independent publishing was “in pretty good shape … though I’d love to see the sort of public campaigns to buy from your local independent bookshop replicated for Australian independent published books and the support that comes with that”.
