Investigate AU edition, May 2005

INVESTIGATE

May 2005

Face T ransplants

War on Privacy

The Sex Slaves

W ayne Bennett

Issue 3

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Australia’s new cur rent affairs magazine

INVESTIGATE BREAKING NEWS

MAY 2005

IN

TRAFFICKING IN TEARS

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They land every day at our airports: young Asian women lured to Australia with the promise of a respectable job and a ticket out of poverty. As SHAUN DAVIES discovers, what they get is anything but

GONE TOO FAR Forget nosejobs; why not get a face transplant? And instead of a donated organ, how about one grown from a human embryo? JAMES MORROW looks at whether ethics are keeping up with the brave new world of medical technology

NOWHERE TO HIDE If you think security cameras and ID checks at the airport are bad, wait until you see what’s around the corner.

JAMES ROBERTSON and JAMES MORROW look at the growing surveillance state, and why a Canadian case against bloggers may just be the canary in the coalmine

DOING IT TOUGH Ordinary or extraordinary, who has the toughest job in Australia? Investigate talks to those for whom the 9-to-5 is anything but boring

GHOST IN THE MACHINE IAN WISHART’s interview with John Tamihere rocked New Zealand politics. Now, for the first time on this side of the Tasman, read what the controversial ex-cabinet minister really had to say

WAYNE’S WAY He’s one of the most storied coaches in the game, with a style all his own. JENI PAYNE talks to Brisbane Broncos coach Wayne Bennett about life, the game, and how his management style keeps players out of trouble

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EDITORIAL AND OPINION

INVESTIGATE vol

1 issue 3 ISSN 1832-2794

Chief Executive Officer Group Managing Editor Customer Services

Heidi Wishart Ian Wishart Debbie Marcroft

Editor James Morrow Advertising Director Jamie Benjamin Kaye Money Books Health Movies Science Sport

Peter Higgins Alice McCormick Claire Morrow Shelly Horton Pat Sheil Jake Ryan

Contributing Writers Alan Anderson, Alan RM Jones, John Quiggin, Matt Hayden, Shaun Davies, James Robertson, Jeni Payne, Dan Donahoo, Steve Edwards, Ian Wishart, Ben Wyatt

6 8 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26

Focal Point Contributors Freeze Frame The Arena The Watcher Spin City Right Hook Left Hook Tough Questions First Draft

Time for a tax cut The people behind the bylines The month that was James Morrow goes nuclear Alan RM Jones puts on the pyjamas Alan Anderson on the ALP’s foreign policy Ann Coulter gets Purpose-Driven John Quiggin uncovers the right’s tactics Ian Wishart on the Resurrection Matt Hayden reads Kofi Annan’s blog

Contributing Photographers/Agencies KRT, ZUMA, FOTOPRESS, NEWSPIX, Nathan Wyatt, Dan Donahoo, Ian Wishart, James Morrow Design & Layout Art Direction

Bozidar Jokanovic Heidi Wishart

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Money Toybox Technology Science Health Food Travel Books Movies Music Sport Diary of a Cabby

Peter Higgins on choosing a financial advisor High-tech goodies from the cutting edge Josephine Cooper finds a plasma that works James Morrow on the global dimming scare Claire Morrow copes with stress Eli Jameson takes comfort in the kitchen Amsterdam is more than just sleaze Alice McCormick on insanity, and more Shelly Horton looks at all the latest releases Jack Johnson is sleepy but not tiresome Jake Ryan relieves WrestleMania memories Adrian Neylan drives a passenger in denial

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FOCAL POINT

EDITORIAL

Time for tax reform – too bad we won’t see it

I

t is unlikely that there will be many surprises when the Government submits its budget on 10 May: a few tax cuts here, a few spending cuts there, plus a fair whack of money to meet our commitments to tsunami relief. With the economy showing signs of running out of steam, the Treasury doesn't want to rock the boat – instead, Peter Costello has gone on record as saying that Australia ‘will have a strong surplus... this is not the time to weaken the Budget strategy, this is not the time to have a paper-thin surplus. This is the time to have a strong surplus.’

For a man who is Australia’s longest-serving Treasurer, Peter Costello has developed an odd view of how economics works. After all, with a slowing To listen to much of the economy, what is the commentariat tell it, Australians point of keeping what don’t deserve a tax cut, because could wind up being $10 billion locked up in govthey’ll just go spending it on a ernment coffers? Freeing big screen TV that won’t make it up to be spent in the private sector, where it can them any happier anyway create jobs, fund ideas, and grow the economy would seem to be the most logical thing to do.

Ample precedent exists that tax cuts, rather than increased budget surpluses or government spending, are a great way to give an economy a needed shot in the arm. In the United States, for example, the administrations of both John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan – two vibrant presidents from opposite sides of the political aisle – both used tax cuts to stimulate the American economy and kick off the booms of the 1960s and 1980s.

Yet here in Australia, with the growth of the past several years (growth which was stimulated largely by structural economic reforms) petering out, there is 6, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

precious little talk of serious tax reform from either left or right. Never mind the fact that the OECD says we’re one of the most over-taxed industrialised nations in the world, or that once a worker starts making a moderately decent wage upon which to support a family in a capital city, he or she is effectively going halfsies with the government.

Instead, the talk is of whether all that money would be better off spent by the government, or handed back piece-meal in fortnightly chunks to those who are engaged in what is currently deemed worthy behaviour – at the moment, having kids.

To listen to much of the commentariat tell it, Australians don’t deserve a tax cut, because they’ll just go spending it on a big screen TV that won’t make them any happier anyway.

(Tellingly, this was the same argument used against Kennedy’s plans by his own advisor and ghostwriter Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who snobbishly fretted that tax cuts would simply be squandered by the middle class on tacky consumer goods - ignoring that that's what drives the economy in the first place).

There is very little chance of major tax reform in the coming budget, which is a shame. But for both economic reasons (tax cuts would stimulate the economy) and moral ones (being forced to place half one’s income in the government's profit column is obscene) Australia is in urgent need of a new tax regime.

James Morrow

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 7

CONTRIBUTORS

CANNON FODDER Mentioned in dispatches

Known to friends as ‘Shelly on the Telly’, Investigate movie critic Shelly Horton knows a good story when she sees one.

Although she started her career as a crime reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Melbourne, her big break came when she was sent to England to host her own entertainment program, What’s on in London, before returning home to work first as a correspondent on Australia’s Entertainment Tonight, then as South Pacific Correspondent for the flagship American version.

When not attending movie premieres, she can be found fighting the battle of the sexes on Nine’s Today Show every Tuesday morning opposite the ABC’s Richard Glover, and also making regular appearances on the weekly comedy-chat roundtable, The Glass House.

8, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

Shaun Davies, who in this issue looks at underground sex slavery in Australia, has been writing for magazines for over five years – some of which are foolish enough to pay him properly.

He’s been published in Black+White, Men’s Style, The Australian, the Sunday Telegraph, Hotpress, What’s On UK, FILMINK and The Big Issue. But of all his achievements, none comes close to the time he spent subediting Packaging News, the premiere trade magazine for Australia’s packaging industry.

In addition to working as a journalist, Shaun co-runs The Salon, a monthly Sydneybased event held on the last Thursday of every month which not only encourages drunken, no-holds-barred debate about all sorts of controversial issues but also features guest DJs and original artwork.

Investigate’s new Money Editor, Peter Higgins, has twenty years experience in media and journalism. He is a well-known personality who is heard, seen, and read on radio, television, and print.

He has worked on the Today Show, Burke’s Backyard, Terry Willessee Tonight, Radio 2UE and 2GB, New Idea and Now Magazine, has written two books and has many published articles. Peter is equally at home either on air or behind the scenes production.

Peter can currently be heard on Sydney’s Radio 2UE and is also a lecturer at the University of Sydney. In addition, for the past 15 years, he has been a popular commentator and ‘The Voice of the Royal’ at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show. In 2005 he received the prestigious ‘Contributor of the Year’ award from the Royal Agricultural Society.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 9

LETTERS

BACKCHAT RIGHT WAY, WILSON’S WAY

ON THE OTHER HAND

In her Left Hook column (March), Laura Wilson makes the case that an international culture of respect of women is the key to respecting women, stating that ‘until women are honoured, loved and respected, and men and women are raised with a healthy approach to sexuality in great continents like Asia and Africa, AIDS will have its way’.

Perhaps, but this ignores the fact that, properly used, condoms are effective against the spread of the disease in 99 out of a hundred cases. Respecting women is fine, but it will do nothing to prevent the homosexual transmission of AIDS, which generally happens with precious little involvement of women.

Changing attitudes is hard and can take decades – even centuries. Until that happens, condoms are everyone’s best bet.

D.O. Morton, Darlinghurst, NSW

You want to know why Australians aren’t having kids?

As they say in French, cherchez la femme.

Spend any time in the bars in any of the capital cities, and you’ll be confronted with the same thing: hordes of arrogant young women who all think that unless you drive a Porsche you’re not worth the time of day.

If the ladies want to know why men won’t commit, maybe they should stop being so up themselves and start talking to ordinary blokes.

Nathan Pye, Mascot, NSW

DESPERATE AND DADLESS Thanks for an informative package of articles on family issues in your April edition – these topics are, it seems, never far from the front burner in Australia.

As you said in your editorial introducing the issue, there really isn’t anything so tough about getting together and starting a family – so why is it so tough?

Focusing on the role of dads, I think, was a great move, because in all the daily papers it seems as though women cop most of the blame for being too selfish or flighty or picky to actually get it together, settle down, and start popping out bubs.

Men today are encouraged to live in a state of perpetual adolescence until they are well into their thirties or beyond: if they are on a good salary and drive a flash car, they are told they will always be able to pull lots of pretty young ladies.

Karen O’Leary, Carlton, VIC 10, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

REVENGE OF THE BUILDERS Samantha Ho writes (‘Revenge of the Nerds’, April) that ‘the trades are not for the squeamish – wielding welders can be a good deal more hazardous to one’s health than waving about a sociology text.’

Maybe so, but it’s a good deal healthier for the wallet. In six years of living in Sydney, I’ve found that all the richest people I know are builders, while all the poorest people who mucked about for ages getting arts degrees that seem to qualify them to do little more than work in bookstores, make lattés, and go to protest rallies.

I think there’s a reason why they call certain types of work ‘an honest living’.

Bruce Czochalski, Sydney, NSW

DON’T GET SNIPPY! I thought that Claire Morrow’s story on circumcision was very enlightening, until I was left confused by the surprise ending: she’s against it.

For instance, a woman who has sex with an uncircumcised partner has twice the chance of developing cervical cancer, but not if the man wears a condom.

Okay, we’ve solved that problem. All we have to do now is figure out a new way of having babies.

I have a 10-year-old who, in spite of my many

lectures, persists in cracking his knuckles and who spends half an hour in the bath only to leave behind a cake of dry soap. I can’t stop him from developing arthritis, but I’m forever grateful that I had him circumcised when he was a week old.

W. L. Guy, Eastern Creek, NSW

‘legalize it!’ advocates suggest. I’m terrified that we are raising up another lost generation, lost this time to the ravages of chemicals whose effect on the brain we are only now beginning to understand.

Lisa Tan, North Sydney, NSW

BROKEN OVER CODE A NON-UGLY AMERICAN Congratulations on a fine magazine. I recently picked a copy of your April issue before boarding a flight home to Los Angeles, and finally finished reading the whole thing cover to cover somewhere over the Pacific several hours after we took off.

One article which particularly peaked my interest was Claire Morrow’s look at circumcision, which is a topic that people sometimes joke about but which one – in America at least – never hears about in any serious way, except perhaps for a few men’s organisations whose members claim they were still traumatized by the procedure, decades after the fact.

But the debate over circumcision is one my wife and I had when our sons were born – she said no, and, naturally, she won. I’m still not convinced it’s such a terrible idea myself, but Morrow’s article helped me see the wisdom of my wife’s ways.

Again, well done on Investigate. I wish there was something like it in the US! John J. Rizzo, Beverly Hills, CA, USA

HAIL, CABBIE! What a delightful treat Adrian Neylan’s ‘Diary of a Cabbie’ is! I’ve loved the first two installments, and hope this continues as a regular feature. There’s so little good writing in this country that is published in a mainstream publication rather than some obscure little literary journal. Great work signing him up.

The next time I fly in to Sydney, I hope I’m lucky enough to step into Adrian’s cab when I land!

Erin Franzman, Toorak, VIC

FAT FACTS Eli Jameson must not have kids. If he did, there is no way he could have written his article about fast food and kids (‘The Taxation Diet’, April) with a clear conscience.

Everywhere I go, I see kids who are way over what would ever have been considered a healthy weight when I was a kid – and those extra kilos aren’t coming from muscles, either. Why? Because for just a few bucks they can shovel a huge fast food meal into their gobs, and wash it down with a half-gallon of sugar water, and then go back to playing video games.

It’s pretty clear for those of us who spend any time in the real world that it is the poorer elements of our society who are the most victimized by this predatory pricing whereby shopping malls push unhealthy and cheap food at every turn. Let the government tax the stuff, just the same way they tax petrol to discourage driving. It probably won’t bother Jameson; he sounds like the sort of bloke who wouldn’t be caught dead near a Maccas.

Oh yeah, and that wine he likes so much? Over-priced plonk!

E. J. Barone, Kingaroy, QLD

X MARKS THE SPOT What a great piece on the ecstasy trade! (‘X in the Suburbs’, April).

While on one level, it’s all very exciting stuff – gangs, smugglers, pill pressers, guns – on another, the authors of the piece also suggest that dealing in party drugs is not a victimless crime, as so many

If I have to read one more word in your magazine about The Da Vinci Code, I’m going to scream.

D. Francis, Glebe, NSW

PULL THE PLUG As much as I enjoyed taking a little flight of fancy when I read Ian Wishart’s article on the possible end of income tax in the Western world, I’m afraid that there is no way it will ever happen. Australia’s federal government (to say nothing of the American one) is at its core a business just like any other, and much of its core service is bureaucracy, for which it collects payment in the form of taxes.

This is why government tends to expand; like any other business, it wants to grow. This is also why there is no way it will ever ditch the income tax: no business would ever consent to giving up such a reliable income stream that is collected, for all intents and purposes, at the barrel of a gun!

Tim Zollmann, Canterbury, NSW

SPEAKING OF TAX… In your interview with Bronwyn Bishop (‘Bishop to Check Mating’, April), the Hon. Mrs. Bishop suggests that the government needs to crack down on ‘black economy’ carers. Yeah, right. Considering how far two-income families are already being stretched these days by both taxes and their schedules, the idea that hordes of people will start doing all the paperwork and paying the extra cost of taking on their carers as formal ‘employees’ is ludicrous.

B. Wyeth, Melbourne, VIC

PHONE ZONE James Morrow may have almost gotten nicked (‘Open-and-Shut Case’, April) for using his mobile phone on the tarmac at Canberra’s airport, but even if the law wasn’t on his side, science is.

Both Morrow and the people who run the airport should be aware that the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States are both strongly considering allowing the use of mobile phones on aircraft, and in my experience many airlines allow phones to be used even while taxiing.

For Morrow to have been told off for his ‘crime’ of checking voicemail on the tarmac is a travesty.

S. Davis, Canberra, ACT

DROP US A LINE Investigate welcomes letters from its readers. Send e-mail to australia@investigatemagazine.com, with the words “Letter to the editor” in the subject line, or snail mail PO Box 602, Bondi Junction, NSW 2022.

Letters may be edited for clarity, and all submissions become the property of Investigate Publishing Pty. Ltd. Unless expressly stated otherwise, all letters will be presumed to be for publication.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 11

FREEZE FRAME

KAROL WOJTYLA, R.I.P. Farewell to one of the greats

B

y now at least the basic outlines of the story of Pope John Paul II are familiar to just about everyone: the young Polish priest whose character was formed in the crucible of the twin evil ideologies of the twentieth century, Nazism and communism; who went on to be the spiritual leader of a billion Catholics; and who played a starring role in the toppling of the Soviet Union.

Much has been said and written about Karol Wojtyla, but if there is room for a few more words, it seems safe to say that the name of the recently-departed pope will resonate for hundreds of years. Never before has a Catholic leader traveled as widely, exerted his influence so strongly, or pushed his ideas so prolifically.

While other popes have been content to communicate through infallible encyclicals, John Paul II was a prolific intellectual as well as a moral and political giant; Amazon.com lists 206 titles by the deceased pontiff, including works of philosophy, theology and poetry.

Nor was his appeal limited simply to Catholics: his death brought out outpourings of genuine sympathy from Jews, Muslims, and Protestants alike. As an American Southern Baptist once famously put it, John Paul II was ‘a pope who knew how to pope.’ ❖❖❖ While two billion people reportedly tuned in to fare12, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

well John Paul II, the spectacle of a Vatican funeral wasn’t the only international media event this past month. Freeze Frame, being something of an insomniac, had the privilege of watching every last minute of the wedding of Charles & Camilla and notes that what was most striking was how ordinary the whole affair was. Strip away all the pomp and ceremony and stony grandeur of St. George’s Chapel, and in the end it was a couple of middle-aged folks on their second marriage having a simple civil ceremony and hiring a couple of coaches to get the family to the reception hall.

Sure, a few people in Australia have tried to use the marriage as a way to reignite the republic issue. But while the fact that the arrival of the guests at St. George’s looked a bit like an open casting call for a remake of Monty Python’s infamous ‘Upper-Class British Twit of the Year’ sketch might give one pause (‘you mean, technically, these guys are in charge?’), at the end of the day, it’s just a wedding. Australia will gently detach from the Commonwealth soon enough, and there will be better and classier ways to bring the issue up in the future. John Paul II isn’t the only one who deserves a little peace. ❖❖❖ Meanwhile, both parents and educrats were baffled by a study released a few weeks back suggesting that regular kids who go to regular public schools fare better at university than their peers who went to selective or private schools.

Apparently, despite all the bleating that Australia’s public schools are being starved by a heartless Howard government, the kids are alright. Which is great news in and of itself, but pretty terrifying where other areas of government are concerned: For example, if we cut the ATO’s budget, would they suddenly become better at collecting tax? The mind reels...

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 13

THE ARENA

JAMES MORROW Save the Earth. Go nuclear

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few Saturdays ago I met one of my neighbours for the first time. He’s the father of one of my son’s playmates – we all live around the same little inner-city playground – and though I’d met his wife and child a million times, the two of us had never crossed paths. We stood around making small talk while the kids ambled around the swings, and the conversation turned to commuting and cars. My neighbour mentioned that he had a 90-minute drive to and from work.

When I asked him where he worked that required such a long drive, I caught a brief anxious flicker in his eyes as he answered At its core, the environmental my question: ‘Lucas Heights’, he said. movement is about opposing new For those not familiar with it, Lucas Heights is technologies, no matter what they the outer-Sydney subare, or how much they could urb that is also home to improve the lot of humanity Australia’s one and only nuclear reactor. We don’t get any power from it – it’s pretty much used solely for medical research – but it is a huge source of controversy. Thanks to a combination of junk science, environmental journalism that consists largely of checking the fax machine for the latest Greenpeace press release, and naked political opportunism, in many peoples’ minds, Lucas Heights is simply a Chernobyl waiting to happen.

No wonder my neighbour was nervous about telling a stranger where he worked.

This anti-nuclear attitude is bad for Australia on several levels. For one thing, the same environmentalists and commentators who scream bloody murder over John Howard’s refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty are the same people who want to deny Australia 14, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

a source of power that produces virtually nothing in the form of so-called greenhouse gasses.

For another, Australia has the planet’s greatest wealth of uranium, and is just about to become the world’s biggest exporter of the stuff. This may be great for our balance of trade, but it is also an indicator of how we are being left behind in the race to develop safe nuclear energy. Today 17 per cent of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear power that flows from 435 reactors in 33 countries – and a further 42 reactors are under construction or on order.

What is behind this refusal to develop nuclear energy, which even Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore has famously described as ‘clean’? Part of the problem is that along with uranium, we are also blessed with enormous coal reserves – another great Australian export – which means that there isn't much imperative to develop some other way to light our houses.

But more than that is the sustained campaign by environmentalists to wreck the future of the nuclear industry here, even as nations like France and Canada stake their future on atomic energy. As Brian Martin, a radical-left professor at the University of Woollongong put it in a paper entitled, ‘Education and the Environmental Movement’, ‘Several factors made nuclear power a prime target for opposition.

The rise of the environmental movement meant that the existence of any environmental impacts of a technology made it vulnerable to attack. Nuclear power was particularly vulnerable because it was not yet entrenched, as was, for example, the automobile. Therefore nuclear power could be opposed outright, as well as regulated to make it safer.’

Meanwhile in the schools, Martin writes that, ‘the anti-nuclear power movement has put some effort into institutions for formal education, by talking to school classes, putting on occasional adult education courses and encouraging academics to study and

CHAIN REACTION: Nuclear power could help clean up Australia research the issues.’ While Prof. Martin was writing in support of the campaign against nuclear energy, he also quietly gave the game away: at its core, the environmental movement is about opposing new technologies, no matter what they are, or how much they could improve the lot of humanity. It’s an anti-progress agenda that American television journalist John Stossel, himself a famous campaigner against junk science, calls the BANANA syndrome: ‘Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone’.

And it doesn’t matter if they have to stoop to a little brainwashing to do it. Martin and others are explicit about the need to get to kids early on in life to make sure they are indoctrinated with the antinuclear message (if you can’t win a debate with grownups, after all, why not try with children?) One teachers’ guide distributed in South Australia encourages English assignments such as, ‘Students imagine they are living near Chernobyl at the time of the nuclear disaster.

They write a diary covering the week before and the week after the disaster’, and, ‘Students write a story describing a typical day in their life – without sunlight’.

Not a word about Chernobyl’s cardboard-and-duct-tape containment systems, just nuclear nightmares. It’s a 21st Century version of how Cold War geopolitics were taught in the 1980s: just scare the

pants off the kiddies with a bunch of apocalyptic nuclear war flicks like The Day After and hope enough of them go home and pester mum and dad to vote left.

Of course, not all environmentalists are opposed to nuclear power, though failing to hew to the anti-atomic precepts of the green church is a pretty fast route to excommunication. The aforementioned Patrick Moore, who says that on the nuclear question, ‘activists have abandoned science in favour of sensationalism’, has started his own group, Greenspirit, which bridges the gap between environmentalism and technology. On his website (www.greenspirit.com), Moore – who has been branded an ‘eco-traitor’ for his efforts – proclaims that responsible forestry is the way to save trees, and that genetic engineering can help poor farmers.

But while Moore may not see a conflict between human progress, saving the planet, and making a buck all at the same time, the environmental movement in Australia is mired in a decades-old fantasy world where giant wind farms or solar arrays will save the day.

In the meantime, with oil prices spiking and much of the rest of the world cleaning up their own backyards by using our uranium, isn’t it about time we re-opened the nuclear discussion – minus the propaganda?

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 15

THE WATCHER

ALAN RM JONES Of screaming plastic turkeys and fish wrap

A

few weeks back, it was reported that the BBC had tried to book an interview with Bob Marley. I don’t mean Robert Marley, Dean of Engineering at Montana State University. No, the dear old Beeb wanted to chat with the very late ganja-worshiping Rastafarian musician, Bob Marley.

The British broadcaster admitted to being ‘redfaced’ over the attempted séance – a Freudian slip no doubt. And there are apparently no plans afoot at Broadcasting House – home to the BBC – to set up a dead rockers occult internetwork, featuring In the view of these midnight view such legends as Hendrix, warriors, the mistakes of the MSM Joplin and Elvis (oh, demonstrate all too clearly that the wait, he’s still alive).

You couldn’t be traditional media is anything faulted for wondering but mainstream how a network with billions of pounds at its disposal in the form of compulsory licence fees could make such a blunder. But alas, worse mistakes have been made by one of the MSM’s most influential global media establishments. (‘MSM’, by the by, is not a trendy new 24-hour music video channel, nor is it an unwanted ingredient found in your take-away chow mein that jacks up your blood pressure – though it might do that anyway.

MSM stands for mainstream media. Television, radio and newspapers: collectively they are the MSM. News and views on the Internet, though also an MSM medium – as in the singular of media and not as in spirit conduit – is also the domain of what is not mainstream: web diaries and blogs.)

It’s a definition based on scale and means, though not necessarily one based on content or viewpoint. It alludes to the Goliath-like resources network TV and 16, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

major publishing mastheads bring to newsgathering.

That world, with its foreign bureaus, editors, subeditors and huge circulation numbers, stands in stark contrast to the legions of solitary, keyboard bashing, sleep-impaired Davids inhabiting the so-called blogosphere.

But, despite their comparatively meager resources and typical amateur status, bloggers have made their mark on the MSM. The early retirement in the US of CBS anchor Dan Rather last October, and more recently the resignation of CNN president Eason Jordan, were both attributed to the role played by bloggers.

Those resignations have prompted some mainstreamers to hit back. One former CBS executive complained on Fox News that ‘these bloggers have no checks and balances…. You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of checks and balances and a guy sitting in his living room in his pyjamas writing.’

Fair enough. But so far it’s bloggers in pyjamas, 2; television executives in Armani, nil.

To a good many of the pyjama brigade – in both America and Australia – ‘mainstream’ is a glaring misnomer. In the view of these midnight warriors, the mistakes of the MSM demonstrate all too clearly that the traditional media is anything but mainstream and that its values and motivations are at odds with the beats they cover.

As the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Marr admitted, ‘The natural culture of journalism is kind of vaguely soft-left inquiry skeptical of authority [sic]. I mean, that’s just the world out of which journalists come. If they don’t come out of that world, they really can’t be reporters. I mean, if you’re not skeptical of authority, find another job. You know, just find another job. And that is the kind of soft-leftie kind of culture.’

RATHER STARTLED: Wait a second, who let in those guys in pyjamas?

The irony, apparently lost on Marr, is that the inquiries of bloggers, themselves skeptical of MSM authority, have forced some ‘softleftie’ journalists to rethink their own career choices.

Bloggers and their contributors provide a refreshingly democratic, and highly efficient, alternative. They can get to the bottom of an issue at lightning speed. Bloggers exposed CBS’s journalistic malpractice in days, not weeks or months.

Tim Blair agrees that blogs are providing a watchful eye on the media. Blair is uniquely situated to judge. Since 2001, he’s been writing one of Australia’s most-read blogs (http://timblair.net), which also has a big world-wide following. When not in his pyjamas, he’s a standard-bearer for the MSM, as the Bulletin’s deputy editor. ‘The impact [of blogs] on the traditional media is big and getting bigger’, says Blair.

I asked Blair if he thought there was any conflict between his two roles? ‘All the time’, he quips. ‘Seriously, though, I find having a hand in the blog world helps me in my role as editor. It’s another check. It help keep me grounded.’

Was Blair surprised by some of the attacks leveled at bloggers?

‘I’m always amazed by the sheer preciousness of those working in the news media. They’re happy to make fun of everyone else, but have wafer-thin skin – you couldn’t measure it with an electron microscope – when the finger is pointed back at them’, says Blair.

But Blair believes that most Australian journalists see value in blogs, though some, notably Peter McEvoy, executive producer of ABC’s Media Watch, ‘are dismissive or hostile.’

‘His loss’, adds Blair. ‘That show could do with some blog-like scope and attention to detail.’

Until recently, unless you had a lot of information at your fingertips – like a news clipping service and a vast reference archive as well as a staff to search it for you – you could never compete with traditional news outlets. They really had an effective monopoly on information. News consumers were at their mercy.

Reporters could much more easily slither out of their own words from one news cycle to the next. As Blair says, ‘there was a time,

basically before Google, when yesterday’s mistakes were today’s fish wrapper’. No longer.

Blair points to the Iyad Allawi ‘executioner’ story as a good example – an unfounded rumour that Iraq’s interim president had personally executed prisoners. Blair says the story had been quickly and thoroughly discredited thanks to bloggers in Iraq and elsewhere.

‘By the time [the Herald’s] Paul McGeough latched onto the Baghdad urban myth, bloggers were ready to pounce’, says Blair.

The ‘Dean scream’ is another excellent case. There was something about former US democratic presidential challenger Howard Dean that said, Maybe having this guy’s finger on the nuclear button isn’t the best idea. But when Dean made his unsettling primal scream, the Washington correspondent for the Age and the Herald, Marian Wilkinson, didn’t file.

It was the scream heard round the world, ending Dean’s presidential hopes, and Wilkinson didn’t think it rated a mention in dispatches. Bloggers everywhere heard it and knew what it meant. Somebody else – who didn’t yelp like a wounded animal – was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee.

‘Good old-fashioned reporting sense said Dean’s scream was newsworthy. Look, it’s not necessarily a left-right thing. Look at the way the media stuffed it up on [Mark] Latham. It wasn’t only left-leaning journalists that hadn’t cottoned on that Latham was going to crater’, says Blair.

But Blair admits despite blogdom’s best efforts some stories, no matter how wrong, are repeated over and over again as if true. Blair points to the mythical plastic Thanksgiving Day turkey Bush is alleged to have served to the troops in Iraq. ‘Even though that story has been shown to be bogus, some reporters and columnists won’t – or can’t – let go of it’, Blair laments.

On further reflection, Blair admits that he’d be disappointed if the plastic turkey faded away altogether. ‘It’s been around so long, I think many bloggers, myself included, have become attached to it.

That turkey has become part of the lore of the early days of the revolution now sweeping the media’, Blair says somewhat wistfully.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 17

SPIN CITY

ALAN ANDERSON Time for a re-think on Labor's foreign policy

S

ince Kim Beazley’s resurrection, Labor’s focus has been largely reactionary and confined to the domestic sphere. It com plains about the marginal fluctuation of interest rates and criticises the government for not spending more (God forbid!) on infrastructure and training.

The party’s one major foray abroad, an attack on a troop deployment to Iraq, was a flop.

The reluctance to discuss foreign policy is understandable in an era of unprecedented Australian prestige and influence abroad. Yet Beazley’s domestic focus is driven equally by a desire to conceal the yawning gulf between himself and his party.

Beazley has been here before. In the wake Howard's embracing of Australia's of September 11, he Anglo-Celtic cultural background successfully muffled the put our neighbours at ease: they no anti-American sentiin Labor’s ranks longer had to humour the crazy ment for the duration of an white man trying to go native election campaign.

But that discipline was never going to hold. Over the past few years, Labor has fashioned an internal foreign policy consensus based on two tenets: regionalism and mulitlateralism. The failing credibility of both concepts threatens to expose the sham of that consensus.

First, some history. The debate over Iraq exacerbated Labor’s anti-American sentiment, while elevating the importance of national security in the public mind. After Mark Latham’s ‘troops home by Christmas’ debacle, Bomber Beazley was summoned to restore Labor’s national security credentials. In the leadup to last year’s election, while its lightweight leader read to children, policed junk food advertising, and reminisced about Green Valley, Labor left defence and foreign affairs to the grown-ups.

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Awed by the magnitude of Latham’s defeat, most commentators failed to appreciate the effectiveness of Kevin Rudd and, in the final months, Kim Beazley.

Realising that Labor’s increasingly shrill anti-American ranks would not let them side-step national security, but wishing to conceal the takeover by Labor’s lunatic fringe, they employed a brilliant tactical ruse.

With Howard strategically ascendant in foreign affairs, Rudd and Beazley fought a diversionary battle using the tenets of regionalism and multilateralism.

Focusing on procedural criticisms (e.g., the way Iraq was liberated), they papered over Labor’s internal gulf by shifting debate away from the US alliance and onto peripheral issues.

Now the two tenets are reaching their use-by date, and Beazley faces an unravelling of Labor’s sham consensus. Here’s why.

The first tenet is regionalism, and Labor uses it to claim that Howard’s fixation on US operations causes him to neglect regional anti-terrorist efforts and hence Australian security.

This line is completely disingenuous. There is no reason why Australia cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, and it is unclear what our troops could do to enhance regional security if they were withdrawn from Iraq. (Invade Indonesia, perhaps?) Nonetheless, this argument largely neutralised the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta in the last election campaign.

The other element of the regionalism argument is a clone of Keating’s failed bid for cultural assimilation into Asia, dressed up in anti-terrorist clothes.

Keating claimed that Asia would not trade with us if we did not abandon our Anglo-Saxon heritage. The new argument is that Asian nations would not work with us on security if we were too close to the US. Most Asian nations run pragmatic foreign policies.

Paul Keating’s post-colonial guilt and incessant cul-

CLOTHES ALLIES: Howard’s foreign policy in Asia beats Labor’s every time tural cringing before Asia aroused puzzlement amongst some, as well as undisguised contempt from Malaysia’s outspoken Dr Mahathir. By contrast, Howard’s embracing of Australia’s AngloCeltic cultural background put our neighbours at ease: they no longer had to humour the crazy white man trying to go native. Asian nations never wanted us to forswear our origins; they merely wanted J.H.,with PHONE HOME: to trade us. They are.

Has theunashamed PM got what Similarly, promotion of our relationship with the it takes United Statesto hasreconnect not led to friction with Asia. Asian pragmatists base? havewith beenhis happy to take security relationships to unprecedented levels in the War on Terror precisely because of our clout with the US, still the principal guarantor of stability in the region. This has discredited claims that Australia is neglecting the region.

In any case, the argument that support for the US in Iraq undermined us in the region always rang hollow, with regional powers like Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea taking Bush’s side. In reality, opposing Bush would have devalued our greatest strategic asset, the US alliance, and left us marginalised regionally, apart from the poorer Muslim powers of Indonesia and Malaysia. With last month’s historic visits by the Indonesian President and Malaysian Prime Minister, the final vestiges of credibility were stripped from the regionalist argument.

The second tenet of Labor’s foreign policy approach is an appeal to the traditional Labor preference for multilateralism. It gave the anti-Americans carte blanche to rail against the dangerous cowboy Bush and his Australian poodle. Yet it left foreign policy ‘realists’ like Rudd and Beazley with a clear conscience, as there was no question that the war on Iraq was ripping up the established order in the United Nations as well as the Middle East.

With a compliant Australian media ever eager to portray the UN as a global ‘parliament of man’, not a corrupt club of autocrats

trading in grubby commercial interests, the argument was sure to play well. Today, the media is finding it difficultDEFENSELINK to ignore the UN Oilfor-Food scandal. An interim report stated that Kofi Annan’s chiefof-staff ordered the shredding of three years’ of documents the day after the investigation was announced. The final report will be far broader, addressing the largest program of embezzlement in history.

Even with biased reporting, the stench of corruption, not to mention sexual abuse and paedophilia, hangs thick over the UN. The Australian public already knew the UN was ineffectual; its claim FOTOPRESS to moral legitimacy was its only redeeming feature.

Soon that claim will be tarnished beyond repair.

Meanwhile, that grand project of multilateralism, the European Union, is unravelling. With polls now foreshadowing a defeat for the proposed European constitution in the upcoming French referendum, and with the debate over Turkish membership starting to expose the lie of a united ‘multicultural’ Europe, the greatest exponent of multilateral consensus politics is in retreat.

The two tenets of Labor’s foreign policy approach, regionalism and multilateralism, are thus increasingly discredited. Without these distractions, the foreign policy debate will return to substantive issues. The shaky détente between Labor’s leader and his anti-American party on these issues will fracture under pressure.

Beazley hopes that a more stable international environment will allow him to keep the focus domestic and avoid that pressure. One look at George W Bush’s recent appointments should dispel that hope. History is still on the march, and Labor cannot indefinitely avoid the great question of our age: Do we believe Western Civilisation is worth fighting for; or, like post-modern Europe and Australia’s artistic and academic classes, have we ceased to believe in the idea of the West? Labor's leader, so enamoured of dissembling and equivocation, will have to decide – and convince his party to follow.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 19

RIGHT HOOK

ANN COULTER

The purposeless-driven left

I

t’s been a tough year for the secular crowd.

There was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the moral values election in the U.S., the Christian hostage subduing her kidnapper by reading from The Purpose-Driven Life, and the Christian effort to save Terri Schiavo.

And now, for all the hullabaloo in the media, you’d think the Pope had died.

In defense of one of the Catholic Church’s most ‘controversial’ positions, I wanted to return to a story from a few weeks ago that passed from the headlines far too quickly. The ‘controversial’ position is the ban on girl priests.

I’ll leave it to the Catholics to explain the theological details, but we have a beautiful pair of bookmarks to the exact same incident illustrating women’s special skills and deficits. The escape and capture of Brian Nichols shows women playing roles they should Today’s university women not (escorting dangerwould be dead: They know ous criminals) and women playing roles nothing about Jesus Christ they do best (making and can’t cook a good meal men better people).

Nichols’ murderous rampage began when he took the gun from a 5-foottall grandmother who was his sole guard at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia. It ended when an otherwise unremarkable 26-year-old woman appealed to the Christian conscience of this same violent killer holding her hostage.

At 2 a.m. one Saturday night, Ashley Smith went out for cigarettes while unpacking her new apartment.

Returning from the store, Smith was grabbed by a man at her front door, who put a gun in her side and told her not to scream.

In Smith’s apartment, Nichols bound Smith’s feet and hands and put her in the bathtub. Later, at Smith’s 20, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

request, Nichols allowed her to hop into the bedroom, where she began talking to him.

In short order, Smith was reading aloud to Nichols from the Christian book The Purpose-Driven Life – in direct violation of his constitutional right to never hear any reference to God, in public or private, for any reason, ever, ever, ever!

After reading the first paragraph of Chapter 33 aloud, about serving God by serving others, Nichols asked her to read it again.

Smith read to Nichols some more, both from the Purpose book and from another popular book that’s been dropped from all news accounts of this incident: the New Testament. (In the Hollywood version, Smith will be reading from the Koran.)

Nichols told Smith she was ‘an angel sent from God’, calling her ‘his sister’ and himself her ‘brother in Christ’. Nichols said he had come to Smith’s home for a reason, in Smith’s words, that ‘he was lost and God led him right to me’.

This lasted long into the night. They watched Nichols’ shooting people on TV. Nichols said he couldn’t believe he was that man. In the morning, Smith made Nichols eggs and pancakes. Then she left the apartment to call the police. When the cops arrived, Nichols surrendered, utterly transformed.

Heaven help the average liberal if this ever happens to him! What would an urban secularist do? Come, let me read to you from Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men. It’s also another example of how universities are failing students. Today’s university women would be dead: They know nothing about Jesus Christ and can’t cook a good meal.

Smith saved the soul of a man on a killing spree by talking to him about Christianity. But liberals think this won’t work with the Muslims? We ought to fly this Ashley Smith to Saudi Arabia. We could just make her a box lunch every day and send her on her way.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 21

LEFT HOOK

JOHN QUIGGIN How does the right win? By aping the worst habits of the left

O

ne of the problems of war is that you inevitably come to resemble your enemy.

Nowhere is this more true than in the battle of the American right, and its Australian derivatives, against the ‘politically correct’ left of the 1980s and 1990s. The PC left, never a group with much in the way of numbers or influence, have long since been routed, but they have been successful in having most of their main ideas adopted by their erstwhile foes.

First, there’s the famous obsession with ‘correct’ language. This was the subject of both justified criticism and innocent amusement when leftAll the old complaints ists tried to reclassify fat about 'hostile climates' people as ‘gravitationally challenged’, and so on. that were once made by But now it’s the right lefties are now being who are most keen on resurrected by the right this kind of thing.

As an example, I can’t count the number of articles and blog entries I’ve read insisting that unauthorised asylum-seekers must always be called ‘illegals’. The writers, many of whom bewail declining educational standards in their spare time, don’t seem to be worried by the fact that this is an adjective masquerading as a noun. And they appear to be unaware that the same term was used in apartheid South Africa to describe people who broke the various migration and residence laws there.

The victim mentality was another unappealing feature of the postmodern left. No group, it seemed, was immune to oppression of some kind, except perhaps for dead white males. But nothing in the campaigns mounted by the left can be matched by the whininess of right-wingers (led by former whining 22, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

lefty David Horowitz) complaining that they are under-represented in academic (and media) jobs. By definition, those excluded from academia must be highly educated, and in most cases therefore on above average incomes. Most likely, they have no desire to earn much lower salaries as academics. But, in the classic logic of victimology, explanations of this kind are illegitimate. If a group is under-represented in any field, discrimination is the only possible explanation.

At the same time all the old complaints about ‘hostile climates’ that were once made by lefties are now being resurrected by the right. The Florida legislature is currently debating legislation to stop biology professors hurting the feelings of creationist students by telling them their beliefs are false. And any academic who doesn’t support Ariel Sharon all the way down the line had better keep his or her mouth shut if they don’t want groups like Campus Watch on their back.

Finally, and most revealingly, there’s the postmodern disdain for objective truth. While there was a lot of evasive talk on this point, there’s no doubt that the postmodernist left was eager to cast doubt on the idea of objective truth and to argue that truth, particularly scientific truth, was a socially constructed concept.

Most of this was harmless nonsense, spouted by underemployed literary critics. But to many on the right, it seemed to spell the end of Western civilisation.

Now, however, the right has learned the lessons of postmodernism better than its proponents, who failed to make the obvious point that, if all truths are equal, the truths of those with money and power are the ones that will prevail.

There was a time when rational leftists were embarrassed by their political allies. Now, it is the minority of those on the right who still adhere to old-fashioned notions like scientific truth who have to blush constantly for the absurdities uttered on their side of the debate.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 23

TOUGH QUESTIONS

IAN WISHART

Debating the Resurrection – is it important?

S

o that was Easter. You know, the time of year when we all jump in cars for a long weekend away, enjoying the rain and high winds, before coming back to a week of sunshine. You know, the time of year when the Good Friday movie on television is invariably something like Deep Throat or – as it was this year – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

In the midst of the stormy weather and the Bacchanalian dancing on the cross of Christ by hostile TV programming mavens, hundreds of thousands of people nevertheless Buddha, Muhammed, Confucius? turned out to Easter services nationwide They’re all still dead and buried. Of where they would all the great religious leaders, only have also heard a wide Jesus Christ actually claimed to be range of opinions on the Resurrection God the Creator and performed of Christ.

If you’d gone to the miracles to prove it liberal New Age Buddhist hang-out centre formerly known as St Matthewin-the-City Anglican “church” in Auckland, you’d have heard a sermon telling you Easter has nothing to do with whether Jesus Christ was resurrected – because he probably wasn’t – it was all about the circle of life, and rebirth and other symbolic New Age concepts.

In other words, a sermon based entirely around the Easter Egg. Across town, at a genuine Christian church, you’d be more likely to hear a sermon on the real significance of the crucifixion and resurrection. In other words, a sermon based on hot cross buns.

Out of all that, the ordinary punter is expected – once a year, anyway – to try and make some sense out of Christian doctrine when it seems even the churches don’t know what they stand for or what they believe. Is the actual resurrection important? Yes it is, and here’s why.

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Without the real death of Christ on the cross, and a real, bodily resurrection out of the tomb, there is no Christianity. Sure, Jesus was a wise man and a great teacher, but if he’s ultimately still in the grave then he cannot have been God and cannot have been telling the truth in that regard. He’s just another wild-eyed wannabe and whether you follow his principles of living or not is entirely up to how you feel.

But, if Christ was indeed resurrected such a feat would prove his claim to be God, to be someone far more powerful than mere mortal humans. In short, if Jesus really was resurrected then everything else he said must be true, because he is the only person in all human history to have not only claimed to be God, but given evidence to prove his claim and done so in front of witnesses.

Buddha, Muhammed, Confucius? They’re all still dead and buried. Of all the great religious leaders, only Jesus Christ actually claimed to be God the Creator and performed miracles to prove it.

Buddha said there were many paths to Nirvana, but offered no evidence of his authority to make the statement. Hinduism bases its religion on ancient legends, not demonstrable historical figures whose existence we can prove. Moreover, Hinduism is like a throwback to the ancient Greek and Roman gods.

Hinduism believes in different classes of humans, that some people are scum just because of the social class they’re born into. Does that sound like a religion founded by the Creator of the Universe?

Muhammed claims God can only be attained through his teachings, but he never performed the miracles that Christ did to show his divine authority.

So we’re left with a resurrected Jesus Christ saying “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me”.

So it all hinges on the resurrection. If it happened, then his comment immediately above affects every

living human on this planet, regardless and vengeance against those who had of what religion they think they follow. dared to harm him. Instead, whipped ZUMA If the resurrection really happened, then and scourged to within an inch of his Jesus’ call to the disciples to preach that life, they’d watched from the sidelines as fact to all nations is not just Christianity the Romans taunted Jesus on the cross seeking “equal time” alongside other relibefore he drifted away suddenly crying gious beliefs; it is Christianity saying every out that even God had forsaken him. other belief system out there is wrong, Maybe, thought the disciples, he really and if you choose to follow them you’ll was only a man after all. So their own be committing spiritual suicide. visions and dreams of the Messiah died Did the resurrection happen? on the cross with Christ, and when the The evidence clearly suggests it did. women first talked about a risen Jesus Firstly, we are struck with the fact of an they thought the women were insane. It empty tomb. It is abundantly clear both just wasn’t computing in their heads. from the Gospel accounts and from Let’s assume, for the sake of this, that Jewish writings that Jesus’ body was missJesus only fainted on the cross and woke MODERN DISCIPLES: ing. The Jews accused the Christians up in the tomb, still alive. A Roman cruEaster pilgrims in Jerusalem of stealing it. So fact one: the tomb cifixion was not a smack on the hand was empty. with a wooden spoon. It was a bloody Then there’s the role of women. In the Gospel accounts, women and brutal affair where death was guaranteed. On the remote were the first to witness the empty tomb, and witness the risen, offchance that Jesus was only a human who survived the cross, are resurrected Jesus. So what? Well it may not seem a big deal in our we to believe that – after rolling away the two-tonne boulder – a modern world where men and women both get to vote, but in half-dead Jesus, blood-encrusted, gaping nail wounds in hands and Middle Eastern countries of the time, as today, women were sec- feet and a spear gash in his heart, crawled into the disciples’ meeting ond-class citizens whose testimony was so worthless they couldn’t room triumphantly muttering, “see, I’ve beaten death, I’m Lord and even be witnesses in court. If the Gospel accounts were fiction, the master of the Universe”? Would such a spectacle have inspired the authors would definitely have made men the first witnesses, to lend disciples, or would they assume, like you and I, that he must simply credibility to the accounts. They would not in a million years have have survived and not died at all? Hardly a triumph over death. dreamed of making women the first witnesses unless, of course, But the Gospel accounts speak of a radiant resurrected Jesus. An that’s what really happened and they regarded the facts as more inspiring figure. Could the disciples have invented the resurrection important than the spin. accounts? Obviously they could have, but it is extremely unlikely.

Fact two: with women being first to witness the risen Christ, this First and foremost, virtually all the disciples were later executed by indicates the story is more likely to be factual because it is counter- Rome for continuing to claim that Christ really was God and really cultural – it runs against what people of the day would have ex- had been resurrected. Roman documents in British and European pected, yet tells the story straight despite the risk of alienating po- museums show the Roman emperors gave instructions that Christential converts. tians were to be shown mercy if they publicly renounced their faith, Which then brings us to the other witnesses. A resurrected Jesus and executed if they did not.

Christ appeared to the women and the 11 surviving disciples and It is highly significant that the disciples were fed to lions; dipped around 500 others during the six weeks after his death on the cross. in tar and set alight as garden lanterns; and put to death by crucifixSearch the annals of Sigmund Freud’s cases, or search every library of ion because they refused to renounce their claims. It is one thing to every psychology department at every university in the world, and you die for something you believe to be true, but we’re not arguing here will never find one case of a hallucination appearing to hundreds of over whether the disciples “believed” it – critics say the disciples people at different times, or 11 people in a room all reporting that a knowingly made the story up. hallucination sat down and ate fish with them, or that they could Question. Would you volunteer to be torn apart by starving lions touch the hallucination. So the only other possible option here is that to defend a story you’d made up, when you could go free just by all the witnesses were simply liars who constructed a fictional story to admitting to the con? Why would the disciples die such horrible help sell their message. deaths for something they knew was fake? It doesn’t make sense.

Fact three, then: the resurrection appearances to hundreds of peo- The only rational explanation for it is that the disciples genuinely ple were not hallucinations, and must either be true or the deliberate believed they’d seen the resurrected Christ (which, for reasons covfalse creation of the early Christians. ered above, must have been the genuine Jesus), and that fact gave So could the resurrection appearances have been deliberate lies to them enough faith to endure a few moments of pain from lions, sell the Christian message? Let’s examine that for a moment. Such rather than give up an eternity in heaven. deceit stands in direct opposition to everything Jesus Christ stood And that, folks, is the ultimate power of the resurrection. It is for, and everything preached in the Gospels. In other words, if you Christianity saying to the world, in the words of a recent song: No truly believed Jesus was the way and the truth, how was inventing matter what they tell you / No matter what they do / No matter what they the mother of all fairy stories going to reflect that “truth”? teach you / What you believe is true.

Secondly, after the crucifixion, the record shows the disciples were A liberal, symbolic, Easter Egg, counterfeit construction of the crushed men. They’d been expecting to see the man they followed as resurrection may be non-threatening to followers of other religions, God be triumphant at the cross, perhaps smiting all the Roman but it will never set them free like the Truth. If I was on a road to soldiers and proving to all that he was God come to deliver justice Hell, I’d want to be told. Wouldn’t you?

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 25

FIRST DRAFT

MATT HAYDEN

Even Kofi Annan’s got his own weblog now…

MARCH 21 2005 Man, this investigation into Kojo and me is a real drag. It’s total pressure, 24-7! I thought having this position meant I wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of thing. Like, dude, where’s my diplomatic immunity?

But no, they have to investigate everything. Everything, going back aaages. Like, hello! Cotecna? Who are they? I don’t remember.

Cotecna, Coshmecna.

And that Paul Volcker guy. Man, he is such a wingnut.

The worst thing is that I appointed him. Sheesh.

What was I thinking?

Hey, Volcker! Investigate this. posted by GenSec at 12:26 PM Permalink Comments (124) Trackback

MARCH 24 2005 Man, this Cotecna thing is really ruining my reputation. Like, I just ran a Google ego search. I’m a pariah!

Not so long ago I was a superstar on the world stage.

I was pretty fly (for a black guy). Not any longer. I’ve gone from hero to zero in, like, days. This is sooo not happening.

Not that I’m in this just for the glory, mind. I just want to do my job. And it’s one helluva tough job.

No, really! It’s not all receptions and champers and canapes, you know. There are medals of honor to receive; genocide reports to quash. (Like, words are important, dude. There really is a difference between 26, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

mass murder and genocide, okay? Trust me.) Still, when all the drudgery is done I can enjoy the best part: I get to be concerned. I just love that ... Being concerned – it’s a buzz, man!

That’s why I hate all this controversy. I want to be concerned about the world. I don’t want the world being so concerned about me. You dig? posted by GenSec at 4.34 PM Permalink Comments (67) Trackback

APRIL 1 2005 It’s April Fool’s Day, alright. Now the World Bank is headed by a neo-con.

I had to put up with sniping from that guy and his cronies for, like, years man! “You’re too weak with dictators ... Act on Iraq ... Do something, for God’s sake” ... Etc. But the UN couldn’t win, could it? When I did nothing, the Yanks had a field day. But if I’d said go in and kick butt, the member states would have gone all medieval on my ass. As I posted at the time: Saddamned if you do. Saddamned if you don’t.

Why won’t they shut up about “oil-for-food” ...

Hey, Wolfie and Co., read my lips: I did not have financial relations with that man Saddam Hussein!

But now I’ve got to have financial relations with Wolfie?

Jeebus, what a drag. I might just quit after all. posted by GenSec at 9.40 AM Permalink Comments (57) Trackback

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Slavery was supposed to be a thing of the past. But in the dark corners of Australia, it is still flourishing – and as SHAUN DAVIES reports, despite recent efforts the government is losing the fight against the devastating trade in human property

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 29

t’s a story that’s guaranteed to break your heart. A 22-year- increasingly trading in a less risky commodity: human beings. Interold law student from Thailand, promised a job in a restau- national estimates of total trafficking levels (which includes traffickrant where she can legitimately earn millions of baht (the ing for the labour market as well as the sex industry) vary wildly, but Thai currency), flies into Australia in late November 2002 the US government believes the total figure is somewhere in the with high hopes of saving up enough money to buy a car. vicinity of 600,000 to 800,000 persons ever year. Interpol and the But within 24 hours, the student’s situation takes a nightmarish United Nations both rate the issue as a top priority. turn. Instead of starting work in a restaurant, she is taken to a house Some experts say that the rise in trafficking for sexual servitude to in Surry Hills, handed a g-string and informed that she owes her developed nations has been brought about by demand. Women new employers $200,000. from rich countries don’t want to work in the sex industry, but at She has been bought to work as a prostitute – and she can’t leave the same time more men are using sex workers, so demand is outuntil she pays the money back. stripping supply – and organised crime is filling the gap.

Shipped from brothel to brothel, she is forced to have sex with up Others say the push is coming from the supply side. Sex workers to 20 men each day. If clients refuse to use condoms she can’t turn from poor countries want to migrate to developed nations but them down. At night she is locked in a house with fourteen other cannot do so legally. So they look to traffickers to sneak them into a girls. She begs clients for help – and exchanges phone numbers with country of choice. some of them – but no-one comes to her aid.

While we know for certain that Australia is a destination market So on the afternoon of January 5, 2003, the student makes a for trafficking, it is impossible to know exactly how many women decisive move. She convinces her manager to let her use the brothel’s are brought here each year, says University of New England acatelephone, telling him she wants to order a pizza. Locking herself in demic Kerry Carrington. a bathroom, she dials the number she found in the ‘big yellow ‘For a start it’s difficult to quantify any form of crime – it’s always book’: 000. going to be hidden. But an added issue here is that it’s not only the ‘I want police help me, understand?’ she tells the operator. ‘Peo- criminals. The victims may also hide the crime because of other ple come here, lie on me, work in store... Help me, I want to go consequences,’ she says. home, OK?’ A recent Government report claimed there were probably less The manager bursts into the cubicle and ends the call abruptly, but than 100 trafficked women in Australia. However, Carrington is police raid the brothel later that day and take the student away to a more inclined to agree with groups who put the figure much higher woman’s refuge.

– around 1000 women every year.

The student’s disturbing alleCarrington has one major gripe gations, heard recently in open with the Government’s policy on I want police help me, understand?’ court in Sydney, led to the arrest trafficking - criminal justice visas she tells the operator. ‘People come are only granted to women when of two women alleged to own here, lie on me, work in store... the brothel, and another man there’s a strong chance their evialleged to have managed it. All dence will lead to a successful Help me, I want to go home, OK? three have pleaded not guilty two prosecution. Otherwise they are charges including exercising ownrepatriated to their home counership over a slave, knowingly conducting a business involving sexual tries and back into danger when the syndicates that trafficked them servitude and causing a person to remain in sexual servitude. They seek revenge. are facing jail terms of up to 25 years.

‘I think it’s dubious to say that this meets our obligations under In some ways the case is a landmark – the first of its kind since human rights laws,’ she says. current legislation against human trafficking was introduced in 1999.

‘As there is no guaranteed migration outcome for assisting a prosIt is also the first since the Federal Government allocated $20 million ecution, there is still little incentive (for the women) to assist prosover four years to combat sex slavery in 2003, following public pres- ecutions. Those victims unable to assist the prosecution of trafficksure after the death of a trafficked woman named Puontong Simaplee ers for fear of reprisal, either against themselves or their families in Villawood detention centre. abroad, or other reasons, remain unprotected.’

This substantial package funded a new federal police task force, as Senator Ellison’s spokesman told Investigate that the visa regulawell as education programs for police and immigration officers. The tions were fair and ‘provide support to people in genuine need Government also placed an official in Thailand with a brief to com- of protection and who are assisting law enforcement agencies with bat sex slavery and created new visas that allow trafficked women to their investigations’. stay in Australia. (See sidebar.)

But in an interview with the ABC in 2004, the Senator was more A spokesman for the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator direct: ‘We don’t want to make it too attractive for people to come Chris Ellison, told Investigate that the government has been ‘doing here because they’ll think that they’ll get very good benefits and its utmost to fight this crime through concerted domestic, bilateral, so they can come here and then claim to be a victim and enjoy regional and international efforts’. those benefits.’

But those who work closely with trafficked women believe much But Carrington says that each woman’s case should be critically more still needs to be done. And it seems that the crooks are getting assessed while she is on a bridging visa. If her case meets a civil level smarter – finding methods to avoid detection and legal loopholes of proof (that is, it seems true on the balance of probability), they to escape prosecution. should get a longer-term visa.

So are we winning the fight against sexual servitude and slavery?

Shirley Woods, an outreach worker for Australian NGO Project And if not, what more can we do?

Respect, works with trafficked women on a daily basis. She believes Besides weapons and drugs, international crime syndicates are that the approach of police and immigration officers has come a

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long way since the days of kicking down brothel doors and shipping illegal workers out as soon as possible, though Investigate was supposed to meet with an allegedly trafficked woman from Thailand for this article who was picked up by DIMIA and deported before we could speak with her.

However, Woods says there’s some way to go before officers can handle cases of trafficking with the deft sensitivity that would make trafficked women trust them.

‘I think it’s a matter of more people knowing the right questions: “Do you have your passport?”, “Where do you live?”. A lot of women are shipped from brothel to brothel and don’t know their address,’ she says. ‘There are a lot of questions you can ask.’

In October 2003, the AFP delivered an intensive four-week course in dealing with trafficking to senior investigators from DIMIA, state police agencies, customs and the tax department. Woods believes these education programs will eventually have an impact.

‘It’s very difficult because it’s almost an instinctive thing. So I think that as more immigration and police officers work with trafficked women the situation will get better.’

The jewel in the crown of the Government’s trafficking package is the Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Team (TSETT) – a kind of sex-slave commando force which the AFP says is ‘modelled on the successful narcotics strike team approach, with intelligence-driven investigations and the flexibility and capacity to respond quickly to the highest priority cases.’

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It’s difficult to quantify how effective this task force has been. We do know that the AFP has conducted 38 investigations into sexual servitude and slavery-related offences since 2003, and that a total of 15 people are currently facing charges for these crimes. he AFP has not responded to queries about the current level of trafficking in Australia. But Project Respect’s Shirley Woods says she has come across more trafficked women since the taskforce was established (which, she points out, may just be chance).

She believes traffickers are getting smarter.

‘There’s been a huge shift away from Thai women and towards Korean women recently because they can get student visas here. The whole payment system and everything has changed,’ she says.

In one recent case, Woods says, trafficked women in a Melbourne brothel were actually given one-third of the money they earned. But of this third, an extra portion went to the brothel owner to service the woman’s debt, and another portion was given to an ‘interpreter’ who couldn’t speak Korean. All up, the women still only kept oneninth of the money they earned.

‘I think the traffickers have sat down and had a think about what the legislation means and how they can get around it,’ says Woods.

‘I’m interested in how they’re getting around the education issues associated with student visas - maybe they’re paying off [English language] schools.’

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pledged $150 million to eradicating sex slavery over two years. But sex industry lobbyists are vehemently opposed to the abolitionist approach. It’s supply, they say, not demand, which is driving the trafficking market.

‘I think when you consider (the abolitionist) argument in a global context it doesn’t make sense,’ Scarlet Alliance president Janelle Fawkes says. ‘Many people travel for work, often to another country where the earning potential is greater.’

She gives the example of Burmese women who migrate to Thaiiona Patten, spokeswoman for the Eros Foundation, says giving sex workers temporary visas would com- land to do sex work, which she says does not make sense in terms pletely undercut the trafficking market. She points out of demand.

‘Trafficking happens not because of an unmet demand by clients, that many Thais pay huge amounts of money to legitimate employment agencies to organise a job and a visa but a demand by sex workers who seek to enter Australia to work in in Australia – at least as much as trafficked women pay to brothel the sex industry. It’s a worker’s market, not a client’s market.’

As Investigate goes to print, the trial of Tran, Qi and Xu is still in owners. The problem, Patten says, is that sex workers can’t go to a progress. Another slavery-related trial has just begun in Melbourne legitimate employment agency.

‘From the industry’s point of view, we see sex work as valid work. and three further matters are ready to go before the courts.

Compare this to 2003, when By enabling women to come only one person had ever been out here and work legally in a Prostitution is set up for men. That’s convicted of sexual servitude system where you can ensure offences in Australia: Melthat they’re working in safe conwhat trafficking tells us so clearly. bourne brothel owner Gary ditions, where you can ensure When there are enough women who Glazner, who made an estithat they’re not being exploited, mated $1.2 million peddling is that not a better thing?’ agree to do prostitution the industry women to the sex industry.

However, Patten admits that will use them, but if there aren’t... the For his crimes, Glazner (who any political party who took up industry brings women in, with was tried under the Victorian this idea would be committing Prostitution Control Act 1994) electoral suicide. absolute disregard for their choices, received a pathetic $30,000 Ranged against Patten and desires, hopes fine and a 30-month susother sex industry groups (such pended sentence. as the Scarlet Alliance and Although the situation has improved, trafficking will never be SWOP) are abolitionists who say that cutting demand by outlawing prostitution is the only way to stop trafficking. Project Respect presi- completely stamped out unless there is a major shift in our approach to the sex industry as a whole. If there is a market for traffickdent Kathleen Maltzahn is a careful advocate of this position.

‘We’ve got to go back to asking who prostitution works for – and ing (whether supply or demand-driven), criminals will always find it’s not the women who do it,’ she said in a 2004 lecture. ‘Prostitu- ways to exploit this – no matter how well-trained the AFP’s special tion is set up for men. That’s what trafficking tells us so clearly. taskforce is.

While a controversial idea, a legitimate working scheme for forWhen there are enough women who agree to do prostitution the industry will use them, but if there aren’t... the industry brings eign prostitutes might cut the market from beneath the trafficker’s women in, with absolute disregard for their choices, desires, hopes.’ feet, and give these women a chance to come to the country for a ‘We need to stop talking about prostitution as if women’s choices short time and provide a regulated working environment. But realmake it happen and start asking about men’s choices. Without this istically, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Australia will embrace the idea of visas to foreign prostitutes. For now we’ll have work trafficking will continue unabated.’

In the US, a different group of abolitionists are dominating the to rely on more basic initiatives and the experts agree that the Govtrafficking debate – the Christian right. Groups such as the Interna- ernment is heading down the right track. It just needs to walk a little tional Justice Mission have the ear of President Bush, who has further and a little faster.

Kerry Carrington also believes that the traffickers have changed tactics. ‘I’ve heard anecdotally that the modus operandi of the traffickers is now to circulate the women and move them along, so that they can avoid being detected,’ she says.

Some advocates believe a radical approach is needed to defeat trafficking - issuing temporary visas to sex workers so that they can legally work in Australian brothels.

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WHAT’S IN THE PACKAGE? The Government’s $20 million package attempts to deal with attempts deal with trafficking through a number of initiatives, including: ■ The establishment of the AFP’s Transnational Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking Team – there have been AFP 38 investigations into trafficking since 1 January 2004.

■ The creation of a new position to combat trafficking - Senior Migration Officer Compliance (SMOC). This position is based in Thailand, which has until now been the source country for most women trafficked into Australia.

■ Changes to visa regulations. Women who may have been involved in trafficking are now granted a bridging F visa which 34, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

allows the AFP to assess their case. If a woman can assist the AFP in a prosecution she is granted a criminal justice visa. Women deemed to be in some kind of danger if they return to their home country may be granted a witness protection visa (trafficking).

■ Education of immigration and police officers to ensure that trafficking is recognised and that women are not deported before they can give evidence.

■ Proposed amendments to legislation that will bring Australian law more closely into line with UN trafficking protocol. These have been tabled in the senate and are under consideration.

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Unhappy with your looks? Forget a nosejob, go get a whole new face. It sounds far-fetched, but face transplants are soon set to leave the realm of fantasy and become reality. Along with human cloning and stem cell research, it’s one of the most ethically tricky medical procedures to come down the pike in decades but, hey, you can’t stop progress. How are Australia’s doctors responding to the ethical challenges?

Will face transplants be the new botox?

Are embryos the only place to get stem cells? JAMES MORROW sorts through the medical facts and Hollywood hype and looks to see if medical technology is

GOING TOO FAR?

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hen cricketer David Hookes died last year after being bashed to death outside a Melbourne hotel, it was a tragedy – but one with some degree of a silver lining.

While Hookesy, at 48, died too young, his senseless death was ultimately not for nothing: the former batsman and radio commentator had signed up as an organ donor, and as a result, as many as ten other Australians were given the gift of life. And it didn’t stop there. According to Australians Donate chairperson Marcia Coleman, the publicity surrounding Hookes’ death and the subsequent formation of the David Hookes Foundation to promote organ donation caused a 21 per cent spike in the number of registered organ donors. In a country where nearly 1,700 people at any given time are on years-long waiting lists for vital organs, Hookes’ death took on a new meaning.

But even if most people feel good about organ donation as it currently stands, new frontiers of medicine are being explored in America and Europe that are pushing the limits of both technology and ethics. Right at the top of the list would have to be the controversial exploration of face transplantation – an 36, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

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idea first introduced to the general public via the 1997 John Woo been forced to say, ‘thanks but no thanks, this has all gone too far’. shoot-‘em-up Face/Off. The world’s first hand transplant, performed on New Zealander While doctors and scientists around the world have been pursu- Clint Hallam in Lyons, France, in 1998, was famously a disaster. ing this holy grail of plastic surgery for years, at the moment the Hallam had a dodgy criminal background (he lost his hand in a Americans are leading in the race to be the first to perform a full facial circular saw accident in a Christchurch prison while serving a twotransplant. Doctors at both the Cleveland Clinic and the University year stretch for fraud) and went on to profit from the surgery by of Louisville say they are working hard to figure out the nuts and making paid appearances to show off his new hand, often one step bolts of the procedure and are seeking the right candidates for the ahead of the law. What’s worse, he also had terrible trouble coping procedure. In Cleveland, doctors have been experimenting with face- with the regime of anti-rejection drugs he was required to take. to-face transplants on rats, while in Louisville, researchers have been Ultimately, Hallam successfully campaigned to have the new hand perfecting their techniques on dead humans. removed, saying that he felt ‘mentally detached’ from the limb.

‘When plastic surgeons talk about the face and doing a face transIf it all sounds sort of ghoulish, well, that’s because it sort of is. plant, what they are talking about is using a freshly-harvested flap of Especially because faces are, by definition, incredibly personal things, skin and underlying fat from a donor who recently died – usually in it is only natural for people to worry about the implications of an accident, but possibly from a pathological condition, and attach- moving them from person to person – even if the recipient is badly ing it to someone else’, explains Dr. Alf Lewis, Vice President of the scarred or otherwise deformed.

Australian Society of Plastic ‘The face is such a powerSurgeons, when asked to ful identifier of a person that explain the mechanics of The face, it really is you. It’s how you’re once you start talking about the procedure. a face, you are identified. They don’t put a photo of your transplanting ‘The procedure itself would talking about transplanting backside on your driver’s license, they put an identity’, says Dr. Greg involve taking this skin and underlying fat and possibly a your face. That is you to you and the rest Pike, who serves as acting little bit of muscle, and then director of the Southern of humanity reattaching it under microvasCross Bioethics Institute cular conditions [similar to in Adelaide. the sort of microsurgery that is used to re-attach, say, fingers severed ‘In purely surgical terms, all you’re talking about is a situation in an accident] through the microscope to the major blood vessels where you have a damaged faced here, a new spare face there, and of the recipient joined to the donor. simply swapping them. This is a purely material way of looking at ‘This is all technically possible in the present state of play’, adds the situation without considering the consequences that might go Lewis, who notes that ‘there is no doubt that it could all be done any with the element of the new identity that the individual is receving, sophisticated medical community, of which Australia is an example, which is tied up in the meaning of the life that was. These things and the microsurgery and plastic surgery involved is already being can’t be ignored.’ practiced here every day of the week.’

This where what Pike calls ‘the “yuk” factor’ comes in. To go But who would the recipient of the face look like? Themselves, around with some form of the identity of someone else, and to the donor, or some combination of the two? And, perhaps more have to think about what that person might have done or been, is importantly, could they handle looking in the mirror every day and potentially very disturbing. Doctors and ethicists agree that if a face seeing…someone else? transplant is ever performed, the recipient will need to receive extensive in-depth psychological counseling to cope with the mental side hile to the casual observer, a rat is a rat is a of things just as he or she will need anti-rejection drugs to deal with rat, the Louisville team in the United States the physical consequences. which has been practising on rodents be‘Whilst sometimes the yuk factor can be problematic if taken lieves that a facial recipient would wind up alone, it can also act as a sort of primal warning system’ that can set looking like some sort of combination of off ethical alarm bells and tell doctors and researchers to tread caretheir old self and their new face. Dr. Lewis agrees, and notes that fully about a new procedure, he says. muscle tone, which is a key component in how any face looks, ‘would ‘The average Joe on the street has a pretty good view of right and be dependent on the muscle being attached to the fat.’ wrong, even if they haven’t necessarily thought it out to the point ‘The facial muscles are quite unique in that they originate from where they know why. Ultimately, an ethicist isn’t that different; all bone but insert not back into bone, like in limbs, but into skin in an ethicist does is unpack those views.’ the face. That means that if you put this new donor skin and fat Dr. Lewis agrees, saying that there really are profound ethical and over the muscles which would be exposed after you remove the scar psychological concerns with a procedure like this, for both donor or growth or whatever, it will attach by scar-tissue adhesion and and recipient – factors which all but guarantee such a procedure produce some element of movement,’ says Lewis. would only be used in the most extreme cases, and certainly never ‘It wouldn’t be as good or strong or subtle as normal, but there for run-of-the-mill vanity cosmetic surgery. For one thing, the side would be some return of movement.’ effects of anti-rejection drugs used in such a procedure would As to how the recipient of a new face, no matter what they looked potentially be very serious; for another, unlike a hand transplant, like before, might cope with their new look, earlier procedures there’s no undoing a new face. involving transplanting other parts of the body suggest it’s not as ‘I suppose you could argue the recipient would become accus(relatively) simple as replacing a heart or liver. In fact, at least one tomed to not looking like their original self, and they would have to person whom a procedure was supposed to help was eventually have a lot of psychological counseling and education to cope with

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the fact that they would never look like themselves’, says Lewis.

‘We know from our cosmetic surgery experiences on the face and nose and other parts of the body that patients often have deep psychological concerns about their appearance. And I think that the psychology of this is a profound topic that needs to be discussed very carefully.’

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ore challenging, adds Lewis, is the problem of finding anyone who would even be willing to donate such a personal part of themselves, noting that ‘it’s a big ask to get someone to sign their face away on their drivers’ license, and a big ask to ask the

relatives of an 18-year-old girl who just died in an accident about something like that.’

Concludes Lewis, ‘The face, it really is you.

It’s how you’re identified. They don’t put a photo of your backside on your driver’s license, they put your face. That is you to you and the rest of humanity.’

But if face transplants are still the stuff of rats and research labs, research into other controversial therapies such as cloning and stem cells derivatives have both the potential to change many more lives, while at the same time raising even hairier ethical concerns. Researchers in several countries are currently exploring the idea of what is technically known as somatic cell nuclear transfer technology, which involves taking the nucleus from one cell and implanting it in

an egg cell that has had its nucleus removed.

Currently banned in Australia, this is the technique that was behind Dolly the Sheep – the world’s first cloned mammal.

What is still legal in Australia, however, is stem cell research – a technically complicated and often ethically messy arena where public perception is manipulated not so much by the ‘yuk’ factor as the celebrity factor. If stars like John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, however unwittingly, introduced the notion of face transplants to the wider world, it is the tougher cases of celebrities like Christopher Reeve which are being used – and sometimes abused – to push for more work with stem cells, specifically embryonic ones.

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and which have the potential, theoretically, to turn into just about anything – a liver, a kidney, bone tissue. They are often tough to come by, and for some time one of the most popular places has been from frozen embryos that were created by fertility clinics and no longer needed. Their use opens up a minefield of debate not just about when a human life is worth respecting, but also whether these forms of stem cells are all they’re cracked up to be. And until very recently these embryonic stem cells have long been considered superior to adult stem cells, which can be derived from a variety of other sources.

‘Typically when embryos are harvested for stem cells, we’re talking about blastocytes that are five to six days old, and consist of a couple of hundred cells’, explains Greg Pike. Pike opposes embryonic stem cell research and believes that the debate over the size of an embryo or the number of cells that make it up fundamentally misses the moral point.

‘I recall a senator during the debate over stem cells saying, “well, it’s just a few cells and it’s smaller than a full-stop, so what’s all the fuss about?”, and I felt like saying back, “you’re just a clump of cells, too, only you’re trillions of them.” Stephen Hawking’s universe was once that tiny; how do you put a value on that?’

For ethicists like Pike, ‘the significance of the early embryo is that we’re talking about a new member of the human family’ – a stance he readily admits puts him at the opposite end of the spectrum from people like Peter Singer, an ex-pat Australian who is now a professor of bioethics at Princeton University in the United States.

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he is an ethicist, believes that ‘just because [embryos] are biological members of the species Homo Sapiens doesn’t give them the right to live’, a position he happily takes to its horrifying logical extremes.

(Among other things, Singer believes that each life is valuable in terms of its rationality and consciousness, and argues that for that reason the life of an adult chimp is more valuable than that of a human infant. Of course, Singer also argued in an infamous essay entitled ‘Heavy Petting’ that the taboo against bestiality should be done away with.)

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ut between these two extremes stands a lot of misinformation, much of it perpetuated by a media that is more interested in anything-is-possible whiz-bang technology on the one hand and compassion (particularly for celebrities) on the other. When people started talking about a paralyzed Christopher Reeve being able to walk again thanks to embryonic stem cell research, the barn door was swung wide open for just about any piece of well-intentioned misinformation to run free.

‘I think part of the problem with embryonic stem cell research is that there has been a lot of publicity around celebrities pushing stem cells for research and suggesting the definite promise of therapeutic outcomes’, says Dr. Adrienne Torda, a senior lecturer in medical ethics at the University of New South Wales.

‘But the nature of research is that it is open-ended. You can’t promise definite outcomes, and there are many hurdles in developing a therapy that often take decades to resolve.’

Pike has similar concerns as Torda, and worries that feel-good celebrity involvement in ethical and scientific issues can stifle debate. ‘I for one found it very difficult to talk about stem cells when Christopher Reeve and the idea that stem cells can make Superman walk again was being pushed by the media’, he recalls. ‘Anyone who had anything different to say felt like that had to keep their mouths shut.’

There are other ways to get stem cells – for example, from the blood in umbilical cords of newborn babies, which is often donated by parents, as well as from hair, bone, and other body tissues. Research involving these adult stem cells does not have any of the same ethical quandaries surrounding it as that which revolves around embryonic stem cells or human cloning (after all, no new human life is created or destroyed, no matter how small). Even better, after years of being thought of as second-rate, at the moment these cells also are showing the most promise in the lab.

Researchers in Israel, for example, are currently working on a treatment that borrows stem cells from a patient’s own bone mar-

row to produce a chemical that could restore muscle movement to Parkinson’s Disease patients; human trials are slated to begin next year. In Britain, meanwhile, work is being done that could see the end of dentures as adult stem cells are being used to grow new human teeth.

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loser to home, researchers at Griffith University in Queensland recently discovered that adult stem cells taken from the nose had just as much potential to be grown into any other type of human tissue as the far more controversial embryonic ones. ‘Our experiments have shown that adult stem cells isolated from the olfactory mucosa have the ability to develop into many different cell types if they are given the right chemical or cellular environment’, Prof. Alan Mackay-Sim told The Australian recently, further shaking the conventional wisdom that only embryonic cells are useful for research.

In speaking to Australian doctors and ethicists, one thing that comes through is a desire to break bioethics out of the ivory

tower and into the wider community – even if it means letting other countries take the lead in some areas of research – so that the public is comfortable with and informed about where researchers are heading. ‘We don’t say yes to everything we can do, and we are way behind many other nations that are doing these things. We need to engage many more people in the discussion and figure out how people feel’, notes Adrienne Torda. ‘Legislation has to be constantly moving, and the more you educate people, the better you can make decisions about moving those legislative boundaries’.

While this sort of approach may be frustrating for those who see medical technology as just another high-tech space race, it is also the safest route ethically – and when one is dealing with human lives, no matter the size, doctors cannot be too careful in observing Hippocrates’ ancient edict: First do no harm. And, as recent Australian discoveries in adult stem cells have shown, sometimes the safe route is also the more successful one.

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Biometric passports. A worldwide database tracking one billion people. Cameras on every street, tracking every move. Opinions that must be registered to be published – if they are legal at all. Is this a vision of some fictional Orwellian hell, or the world just around the corner? JAMES ROBERTSON and JAMES MORROW look at the growing tension between webloggers, privacy activists, and ordinary citizens and the world’s governments in the post-9/11 era

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he story read like it could have come from China, or Iran, or any number of totalitarian states: an individual’s testimony to a government inquiry breaks open a massive scandal involving the ruling party, allegations of corruption, and as much as $100 million dollars in false payments – all tied in to an effort to undermine a separatist group seeking their own state. Thanks to an official order, though, the testimony is secret, even though (or perhaps because) it has the power to bring down the national government. Despite everyone in the highest circles of the capital city knowing the story, the press can only barely allude to it, under pain of prosecution.

But that doesn’t mean the information doesn’t make it out to the wider world. In a neighbouring country, a few individuals with their own weblogs, or blogs, throw the damning information out onto the Internet, allowing anyone with a computer and a web browser to find out the whole story. Anyone, that is, except those in the place where it is happening: in the country where the scandal is taking place, individuals are not allowed to post any of the information on their own sites, or even link to a site in another country that details the charges. ‘Anyone who takes that information and diffuses it is liable to be charged with contempt of court’, warned a government official. ‘Anybody who reproduces it is at risk.’

Amazingly, the scandal – and the subsequent threat to crack down on anyone disseminating crucial information about it – took place in Canada, a country that likes to think of itself as one of the most liberal, tolerant, and enlightened nations on the planet. An interesting story on its own, the tale highlights the growing tension between individual citizens and their governments as technology allows each side to keep ever-closer tabs on one another. Even in free and democratic states like Australia, the United States, and Great Britain, technology is radically changing the way government relates to people and vice versa. What political philosophers call the ‘night watchman state’ – in which the government’s roles, as Harvard’s Robert Nozick once defined it, are ‘limited to the functions of protecting all its citizens against violence, theft, and fraud, and to the enforcement of contracts, and so on’ – is a thing of the past. Instead, politicians on both the left and right are using technology, the threat of terrorism, and a natural desire to increase their own power to slowly but surely turn liberal democracies into ‘panopticon’, or ‘all-seeing’, states with the sort of surveillance powers the old Soviet Union and her satellites could have only dreamed of.

ARE YOUR PAPERS IN ORDER? Already, anyone wishing to travel to the United States will soon require a passport embedded with biometric and RFID (radio frequency identification) tags which are not just expensive and intrusive, but also open up a huge Pandora’s box of privacy issues. For one thing, the RFID tags will contain a wealth of unencrypted data and will be readable by anyone within range with the proper scanning equipment, creating a huge new opportunity in the growing identity theft market. Business and tourism groups in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe are all asking Washington to back off from the new requirement, but so far the response from the U.S. State Department has been, ‘our country, our rules’. Which might be fair enough were there not plans to, by 2015, make the new biometrically-encoded, radio-tagged passports standard around the world and create a global database of one billion travelers, their movements, and their personal details.

Ironically, while these measures are all being enlisted in the fight against the very real threat of international terrorism, the data in the 44, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

ZUMA

The company Gemplus presented a new sort of passport at the CEBIT 2005 exhibition on March 14th.The passport includes biometric data of the individual owner and Gemplus produces the necessary RFID chip and antennas that need to be implemented into the passports.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 45

A digital camera photographs Diana Cano, 19, a non-immigrant from Guadalajara who is visiting Sacramento from Mexico, in the International Terminal at Sacramento International Airport.

Most foreigners who enter the United States will now be photographed and fingerprinted. new passports will actually create a boon for identity thieves and their customers, including terrorists, drug smugglers and the like.

Furthermore, at a practical level, much of the technology that the US is leading the international push for is actually quite unreliable. Some 39 international human rights groups from Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America have all signed a letter protesting the technology, noting that ‘even the most reliable uses of this technology one-to-one verification using recent photographs - have been shown in US government tests to be highly unreliable, returning a false non-match [where technology doesn’t recognise people with a valid photo] rate of five per cent and a false match rate of one per cent’.

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ore worryingly, they point out that while free countries may use this technology to keep an eye out for bad guys, more repressive regimes could also use it for their own evil purposes, such as cracking down on dissidents. ‘We hope that the choices of biometrics have been driven primarily by logistical and commercial concerns and were not intended to facilitate the conversion of travel systems into a global infrastructure of surveillance’, the letter concludes. ‘But we are deeply concerned that this may become their unintended consequence.’

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up, slowly but surely, even in free countries. Be it the near-fanatical push by the United Kingdom’s Home Office for national identity cards that may wind up including DNA fingerprints of every citizen or hidden cameras, often with face-recognition technologies linked to police stations everywhere from American suburbs to (as is now being proposed) Sydney’s King’s Cross, government agencies are using everything from the threat of terrorism to the fight against day-to-day street crime to use technology to be everywhere and see everything.

Which is one reason why the current tensions – not just in Canada – between webloggers and their governments represent the thin edge of what could be a very large wedge. Exposing the old canard that ‘if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about’, cases in Canada and elsewhere are showing that when it comes to technology, governments are increasingly worried about the power of technology to keep an eye on them, and would rather keep it in their own hands.

CANADA’S WAR ON WEBLOGS In a bygone era of print media supremacy Canada’s ban would have gone unchallenged; indeed, the Canadian daily the Vancouver Sun made its reluctance to defy government orders clear in an editorial, writing, ‘It’s a shame [we] can’t publish anything that’s going on in

“I just won’t do it, it’d take the fun out of the entire concept. All this law will do is make more people host their websites overseas’, says one blogger of potential Australian regulations” the…inquiry. When the publication ban is taken off we can all talk freely about what’s going on in our country. Until then our collective lips are sealed’.

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ut weblogs are changing all that.

Already a thorn in the side of totalitarian states like Iran, China, and Burma, where dissidents use the internet as a way of challenging the government’s media monopoly, bloggers in the democratic world are about to learn that an unfortunate consequence of their growing influence is greater attention from governments, as regulators worldwide begin to consider the possibility of reigning in a medium that had previously been a forum for unbridled free expression.

The problem for bloggers is the fine line they tread between fulfilling the role of legitimate journalists and, as their detractors term them, pyjama-clad partisans.

This group of supposed dilettantes, many

of whom lack any traditional journalistic qualifications, are beginning to challenge the establishment media for its reach of influence. Readers have embraced the openly partisan format of blogs, the most popular of which can boast daily readerships comparable to the national newspapers and lay claim to having broken some of the biggest stories of the past year.

There are no barriers to internet publication, however, and anyone with a computer and the inclination to do so can establish their own blog free of charge within minutes. Blogs are also free from any external editing which allows their author’s to diarise, write political commentary and deliver a mix of observations, criticisms or updates on a limitless array of subjects without paying attention to concerns about political correctness, bias or even readability.

Governments are pointing to this lack of professionalism across the internet as justification for not giving bloggers and online

publishers the same freedoms as members of the traditional press. While print journalists and contributors to the mainstream media are protected by legal precedent that enshrines their free political communication, the law has been slow to respond to the explosion of online political content, giving legislators a chance to fill the void and place clear limits on their freedom of expression.

Leading the Australian push is Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz, Special Minister of State and newly appointed head of the Australian Government Information Management Office, who says he is giving ‘very active consideration’ to introducing reforms that would make bloggers and online publishers subject to the provisions of the Australian Electoral Act. The legislation, expected to be introduced after the coalition takes control of the Senate on July 1st, would place bloggers in the same category as political advertisers, requiring them to include the name and address May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 47

of the person authorising their website content and making publishers of unauthorised political material subject to fines as large as $5,000.

typical entry will include a satirical recount of the day in the life of the Prime Minister: ‘Just got back from APEC. This year it was in this place called Chilly which is in this country called South America, except it’s nothing like Real America, ‘cause it’s full of poor foreign f particular concern to most bloggers is the broad people. Like Centrelink.’ definition of what constitutes political or ‘elecBrown fears that any regulation will stifle political satire, which she toral’ material as it is defined by Australian Elec- describes as being an ‘essential part of any democracy’. Claiming she toral Law. Section 4(1) of the Electoral Act says will refuse to abide by any regulations that force her to reveal perthat electoral material may include ‘any […] refer- sonal details, Brown says, ‘I just won’t do it, it’d take the fun out of ence to, or comment on: the election; the Government; the Opposi- the entire concept. All this law will do is make more people host tion; a political party or candidate; or any issue submitted to, or their websites overseas’. otherwise before, the electors in connection with the election’.

But overseas options for bloggers are fast running out, with simiThe issues that fall under the definition and be subject regulation lar legislation being mooted the world over in an emerging alliance include the performance of the government, taxation levels – even between legislators and the media establishment – all of whom gay marriage. seek to limit the reach of blogging, which is becoming a serious rival An Australian Electoral Commission official, who declined to be for the mainstream media. named, told Investigate that the application of such a wide ranging In the United States bloggers are facing a challenge from the Federal definition to online content would be ‘difficult, broad…and poten- Election Commission, which is considering a similar set of regulatially dangerous’. tions to those being proposed in Australia. The proposal, supported Also problematic is the interpretation of what constitutes an by traditional media outlets like National Public Radio and the Ameriadvertisement under Australian electoral law. Defined as being any can Prospect, is an extension of the McCain-Feingold campaign fiform of publication or notice that contains ‘electoral matter’ the act nance law and is billed as a response to ‘the increased use of the could potentially to any expression of political opinion, internet by federal candidates, political committees, and others to comregardless of whether the author has any links to a political party. municate with the general public to influence federal elections’.

The traditional Early indicamedia are exempt tions show that Governments are increasingly worried about the from the regulalawmakers could tions and the law treat political power of technology to keep an eye on them, and no longer places speech like camwould rather keep it in their own hands restrictions on paign contributhose who write tions by measurletters to the editor or callers to talkback radio; creating a legal situa- ing and limiting, in dollar terms, the amount bloggers contribute to tion where opinion expressed within the pages of a newspaper is campaigns by writing about them: ‘We’re talking about any decision considered legitimate free expression but self-published material on by an individual to link [to a candidate], set up a blog, send out mass the internet is subject to regulation. e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet,’ said Senator Andrew Bartlett, deputy leader of the Australian Demo- Republican FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith. crats, has a rare vantage point on the issue, as both a sitting member A 44-page draft released by the FEC early last month indicated of the Senate that is expected to approve the legislation when it is that all websites that display political content would be immediately introduced and as a blogger himself. regulated by default upon approval of the legislation. The proposal Bartlett, who uses his blog to communicate with his electorate sparked uproar from civil libertarians who have forced the FEC to directly, suggests that bloggers should be afforded the same reconsider their position, but bloggers are still nervously awaiting freedoms and protections as journalists, noting that he often looks the Commission’s final decision on online content regulation in to blogs for analysis in preference to the traditional media, ‘The July. The Australian government is said to be keeping a close eye problem with the political coverage in the mainstream media is that on proceedings. it lacks substantial coverage of policy…they’ve tried to turn parliaThe problem for citizens in a democracy, wrote the American ment into a soap opera.’ essayist A.J. Liebling is that, ‘freedom of the press is only guaranBartlett warned that any legislation is likely to have ‘unforseen teed by those who own one’. Blogging, at least for now, has changed consequences,’ impacting on ordinary, private citizens while politi- that; acting as a countervailing force against the media’s ability to cians and public figures will have few qualms about making their set the political agenda and placing the power in the hands of citiidentities known. zens again.

These restrictions will have a significant impact on the way in Most disconcerting of all, then, is not the immediate impact of which people use the internet as a publishing medium; the govern- the global move to regulate the internet but the fact that government will effectively make anonymous political or social commen- ments want to move against a forum that encourages free exprestary illegal. sion at all. Considering that much of the resistance to the growing The announcement has sparked outrage amongst bloggers, many influence of the government on individual lives is coming from of whom publish their thoughts under pseudonyms and almost bloggers, the fact that the charge is being led by the world’s leading all of whom would feel uncomfortable about making their per- democracies is particularly worrisome. sonal details freely available over the internet.

For Ruth Brown, a 19-year-old university student who came to prominence last year by blogging under the name John Howard, a

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DAVE EDWARDS, Sydney, NSW Roofer, plumber & carpenter

“Combining hard labour with strategic foresight in often uncompromising weather is not everyone’s cup of tea”

ave Edwards has been a Sydney-based roofer, plumber and carpenter for the last seven years, specializing in inner-city renovations. ‘My work involves variety of tasks – I’ve been roofing, laying floorboards, pouring concrete, doing formwork, framing, bricklaying, digging foundations, all aspects of building pretty much. A lot of manual labour is involved in the job.’

While Mother Nature does not make any special allowances for those who toil outdoors all day, your typical roof carpenter isn’t going to let discomfort stop him from earning a buck.

‘Oh yeah, you work all year round! You could be digging trenches, digging footings in 42-degree heat eight hours or more a day – and you’ve got a lot of heavy lugging around to do’, he says.

‘Because you have these tasks to do – pouring concrete, putting up the frame-work, and so on, you need to string it all together at the right time. You can’t just postpone everything because of inconvenience.’

Dave’s work over the last few years has demanded a combination of brain and brawn.

‘Say, in the inner city where I work, access to the sites can be pretty bad. You’ve got to take all the material through the front door – all the heavy materials. Throughout all of this, you have to be perfectly organized, and have your mind on the job constantly. It’s extremely labour-intensive, yet you also have to be thinking a couple of weeks ahead all the time and have everything set up in the right order. You can’t store much on site, so when you need things, they have to turn up and get installed right away.’

Combining hard labour with strategic foresight in often uncompromising weather is not everyone’s cup of tea: ‘It can be a logistical nightmare. There are a lot of situations where you might have outdoor work but if it is going to rain, you can’t just stop. The project has to continue somehow - if that means working in the rain, then you have to do it.’

Is he complaining? Of course not - he loves his job. But for Edwards, enjoying work time is balanced by the daily trials and tribulations that come with servicing the Sydney housing boom.

By Steve Edwards

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teling a falling g d o d r o n o ed ne? Probably getting vomit ti u e o r r e h -5 w o b -t 9 jo mal ant a rt of the nor : they fix our a o Would you w p d d n e e r e m o id s w n and was co ty’s forgots, some men ie u c f ephone pole o s o f t o s e e r r a e ke c ily for th ouble, and ta tr in not. But luck e ’r e w e us when ho really are homes, rescu w s n a li a tr s u eA ten. They’re th

DOING IT TOUGH

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MELISSA YOUNG, Melbourne, Victoria Disability Support Worker

“The fist of a powerfully-built woman emerged from the foam and left Melissa out cold on the tiles”

have been knocked unconscious on several occasions, thrown down a cliff, had my thumb bitten off, been saturated in deliberate projectile vomit, punched and kicked,’ says Melissa Young.

Melissa’s not a member of the SAS, part of a new extreme fitness craze, or a contestant on a Japanese game show. For much of her working life Melissa has been a disability support worker.

While it sounds dangerous, Melissa talks about her job with humour and perspective. It is obvious she has a passion for people and for bringing quality to their lives. These incidents were all cases of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, she says, though she admits that supporting people with a disability is challenging.

Despite the dangers and humiliations, Melissa says the job was a fabulous experience. ‘The variety in the work is incredible. Some people may have mild learning disabilities, but they can be the best friends you’ve ever had. Other people may have much higher support needs due to behavioural issues.’

It is the issue of behaviour that often places disability support workers in threatening situations.

Like anyone, people with a disability get angry and frustrated, and support workers must diffuse those emotions that may cause their clients to become violent and aggressive. Melissa says the answer lies in being able to communicate and treat people with respect.

Melissa recalls one incident where she was concerned that a person she was working with had drowned. It was a scary moment. She went over to the side of the spa at the public pool they were at and as she bent down to try and see through the bubbles the fist of a powerfully-built woman emerged from the foam and left Melissa out cold on the tiles.

Why would anyone return to work after an event like that?

‘I really enjoyed the challenges of working with people who have behavioural issues. This area does have elements which can be “dangerous”, but with the right supports it works out fine.’

Melissa just left disability support to become a training consultant for the Victorian State government, which is role that allows her to continue to manage risk and support the disability workforce.

She is thrilled that support workers are now trained to engage laterally with their work. Melissa adds that by treating people with disabilities with rescect and supporting their needs, a lot of the tougher aspects of the job can be avoided.

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Photography: JAMES MORROW

CHRIS WILKINSON, Sydney, NSW Paramedic, Westpac Air Ambulance Service

“It was thirty-six hours later when we found him. I tunneled through tons of unstable rubble to find him deep in the darkness, it was minus-twelve degrees, and I stayed with him for eleven hours”

he Westpac Air Ambulance Service team is the ultimate go-anywhere rescue service, and Special Casualty Access Team member Chris Wilkinson is one of the men who make the famous chopper a lifeline to hundreds of Australians every year. Chris is trained in abseiling and caving, and can work in snow and at sea as well. The job is all about teamwork and commitment, and it allows some truly amazing feats – like the team’s specially-developed technique for plucking people from the surf in just three to five seconds.

‘I always wanted to be a paramedic’ Chris says. He started his training almost two decades ago, and now at age 42 he is one of only 64 senior paramedics in all of NSW. ‘This is very difficult training, 55 to 65 per cent fail, with intense physical and mental discipline, and the training is always ongoing and developing. You have to have the right temperament and the will to succeed’.

For Wilkinson, a typical day might involve attending to a motorcycle accident or finding lost bushwalkers, but his proudest achievement is the four bravery medals he received for his work after the infamous 1997 Thredbo avalanche in the Snowy Mountains. Eighteen people were killed; Chris rescued the sole survivor.

‘It was thirty-six hours later when we found him. I tunneled through tons of unstable rubble to find him deep in the darkness, it was minus-twelve degrees, and I stayed with him for eleven hours’, he recalls.

This is human endeavor and instinctual willingness to help at its highest level. When asked if he still gets nervous, he admits, ‘When you’re suspended on a wire three hundred feet above treacherous surf it will always get the heart pumping!’

By Ben Wyatt

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Photography: NATHAN WYATT

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MATT BOYLE, Castlemaine, Victoria Alternative Builder

“Many materials are tough to work with – especially telephone poles” att Boyle doesn’t build houses like other people. Halfbuilder and half-artist, his methods could easily be described as unconventional. While the finished product of his work is stunning, his on-site safety issues are more challenging than your run-of-the-mill house site.

A chainsaw is Matt’s tool of choice. ‘If a sharp chainsaw is going right, you can get to spots you can’t get into with any power tool,’ he says. ‘It is probably the first thing you have in your trailer.’

With chainsaws, a 60-year-old army truck, 20-year-old crane and a penchant for mud bricks, Matt works with owner-builders to create unique homes.

Known for his scavenging ability, his building style is highlighted by the use of heavy recycled materials: poles, stone and steel. It gives his houses solidness and the feeling they are connected with the earth. But he notes that in working with these materials, the biggest challenge is getting them all on-site. Many materials are tough to work with – especially telephone poles.

‘We’ve had some hairy moments. We were lifting one heavy beam up, and it started slipping out of the sling. The crane was shaking off its chocks and everyone had to run around and move fast. It was alright, but there was no other machine we could get in to do it.’ Not surprisingly, the safety issue demands constant attention.

Matt and his crew build organically. Once a wall starts to go up, they work with how the space feels.

‘Building like this, you work around yourself all the time. Having versatility is crucial – being able to change things and get stuff right,’ he says.

‘One of the toughest things is scaffolding. When we build a house, we basically build a whole house outside it before we start. I think we’ve built scaffolding one hundred times in different ways for different jobs.’

Over time, carrying mud bricks, manoeuvring 10-metre telephone poles and working with solid timbers and steel has taken its toll.

‘I’m turning 30 this year, and I’ve done a nerve in my lower back.

I’ve got to be careful now. I think that’s probably more from stupidity. If you take it a bit slower and have a few guys there, it is smarter.’

For this reason, Matt always makes sure his workers are aware of the risks: ‘You’re never doing the same thing twice. You’re always “winging it”. You have to keep learning stuff all the time. It isn’t stuff you can get out of a book. On all the trailers now, we have little safety messages so you are always thinking about it. You don’t want anyone ending up paraplegic or anything. At the end of the day, it’s just a house.’

By Dan Donahoo

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THE INVESTIGATE INTERVIEW

Helen Clark has been New Zealand’s PM since 1999, and her Labour Party has had about as firm a lock on power as is possible in a democratic country. But all that could be changing – and fast, especially with a election in the offing. In an interview with IAN WISHART that continues to make headlines on both sides of the Tasman, former NZ cabinet minister John Tamihere spills the beans on the inner workings of the Kiwi government, and what he thinks it is doing to the country. For New Zealand’s left, Tamihere is ...

THE

GHOST IN THE

MACHINE

INVESTIGATE: John Tamihere, you’ve been cleared by the Serious Fraud Office of any wrongdoing, you’ve got a fight on your hands for your electorate seat this year, and I see Labour Party President Mike Williams suggesting a mid-to-late September election…

TAMIHERE: I reckon it is going to be earlier. Just in case a number of economic issues start to deteriorate.

INVESTIGATE: Labour has managed, in the past 20-odd years, to capture Liberal economic theory while retaining a socially liberal outlook. How did they do it?

TAMIHERE: We’re lucky in a number of regards. One is that there’s no huge economic debate anymore over socialism, or communism versus capitalism. That’s gone. Capitalism has won, and the argument now is about best practice, best structure, best systems, and it’s nowhere near as exciting for the masses.

There are two other things that must follow. Labour is now business-savvy. We never had that before because you had unionists who begat our party who believed all bosses were bad bosses. That chasm has now gone, because SME’s [small-to-medium enterprises] 58, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

produced 86% of all new jobs in the past five years, nearly a quarter of a million, and that will increase. Because more people are becoming business-savvy. Not all businessmen are bad. The biggest sweatshops we’ve got are hospitals, run by the government and funded by the government. And so the caterers and the cleaners are actually government funded, and they’re jumping up and down at their own government.

Award rates are a joke because they bear no resemblance to the capacity of the business sector to achieve it, and that’s why those general wage rounds are anathema to reasonable economics. I mean, you get a number of people jumping up and down seeking a five percent general wage order – get a life!

INVESTIGATE: What sort of power do the unions still have with the Labour party?

TAMIHERE: You know, they come in all ‘ra ra ra’, and the next minute, you know, it’s welcome to the real world, when they’re exposed to a whole bunch of competing advice and information that they’ve never had before because it’s always been the union line

FOTOPRESS

“One third of kiwi families don’t have a male in them. That’s not good…all the young males need and are desperately craving for is a male role model who’ll acknowledge them, acknowledge where they’re at and be supportive of them, which is what a normal father does”

before. Unions. I can’t stand them. I had a big pow-wow with some of them. You go into town, have a meeting with them. Won’t name any names but they were all sitting there, and I said to them, ‘All of you sitting over there were all on good jobs, and you all sold us out under Rogernomics in the eighties’. Now I actually think a lot of things happened under Rogernomics in retrospect which were extraordinarily good, but when you’re suffering you take a more vested interest. These guys were all running around in their bloody Falcons and they were on $55,000 those years, which was bloody good money. And what did they do? Nothing! Now some of them are politicians.

INVESTIGATE: Looking ahead three to six years, what do you think the unions are aiming for in the Labour Party.

TAMIHERE: Well, obviously greater influence. I think we f...ed up with our 2004 amendments to the Employment Relations Act. I think it’s very silly, a number of things that we did then, merely to give unions greater organizational capabilities. I don’t think it’ll translate to greater union membership, but having said that it’s another

impost and imposition on business. It’s really ugly. Because as business downsizes and subcontracts, if it was me I wouldn’t have anyone in the union. The ‘union’ was our company, our whanau.

Guys that actually make small businesses work, as you’ve correctly indicated, they’re not bad employers otherwise they screw their own business. The other thing is a lot of small businesses in NZ are familial, either direct family or references from mates.

INVESTIGATE: The union movement is angling for more of its old heyday, but in your opinion that’ll backfire if the activists achieve that?

TAMIHERE: Yes. Mark Gosche never delivered for them, so they’re bringing in Maryann Street, and she’s a very capable person.

I’ll tell you this: Burton was actually meant to be the Speaker but as soon as Street came in and got a high place on the northern regional list, that was it.

You see, these people think in timeframes of ten to fifteen years, it’s only bastards like me that struggle through the current term. So when you’re positioning for high places, they’re thinking that far May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 59

ahead...yeah, they purposely planned to lose. ‘That era’s gone, we’re new, and we’re coming. He’s gone, Helen’s it’.

INVESTIGATE: This goes back to the great conspiracy theory.

Most people like you and I can’t get our heads around the idea that someone can sit in a darkened room and figure out where they want to be in fifteen years. Where do they get the time to do that?

TAMIHERE: They don’t have families. They’ve got nothing but the ability to plot. I’ve gotta take my kid to soccer on Saturday, they don’t. So they just go and have a parlez vous francais somewhere and a latte, whereas we don’t get to plot, we’re just trying to get our kids to synchronise their left and right feet. They don’t even think about that.

I’ve got a fifteen year old whose testosterone’s jumping and he’s scrapping around at school. Now they don’t have that, and because they don’t have that they’re just totally focused. You’ve also got a fully paid organization called the union movement, who can co-opt fully paid coordinators. These people just never sleep.

INVESTIGATE: How dangerous is it to be in the Labour Party?

TAMIHERE: If you’re a free and independent spirit, very dangerous. Like, if there was a popularity poll for me, I can assure you that there’s more ministerial klingons voting on the old PC against you, and yet I’m on the same team! They sit there, typing away, muttering, ‘come on SFO, let’s nail this bastard!’

In this outfit it’s all ‘rosy’ on the outside, not the inside. When I used to make a contribution in cabinet, on the cabinet papers, I’d go, ‘Hang on’, and she’d go, ‘you want to be difficult again, do you?’

I’d say ‘it’s not about being difficult, it’s just that a number of these amendments are pointless. You’re just scoring brownie points off the other side when you’ve already beaten them. I don’t think you need to do that. I think you can lighten up on some of these points and still achieve what this mob over here want, the Blues Brothers over here, Maharey and his mates.’ Thankfully, my advice was accepted on a number of occasions.

INVESTIGATE: What do you make of the ‘machine’ that exists on the ninth floor at the moment?

TAMIHERE: Oh yeah, there’s definitely a ‘machine’ all right. It’s formidable. It’s got apparatus and activists in everything from the PPTA [Post Primary Teachers’ Association] all the way through. It’s actually even built a counterweight to the Roundtable – Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Its intelligence-gathering capabilities are second to none.

INVESTIGATE: How good is the media, or are they totally useless and sycophantic?

TAMIHERE: They’re utterly and totally useless. And sycophantic. You know and I know there’s no investigative journalism done in that bloody gallery. In an information age, we’ve got more ignorant people out there than there’s ever been.

INVESTIGATE: Labour’s enjoying the benefit of that, but surely there’s got to be a day of reckoning..

TAMIHERE: Not when the journalists know they’ve got to deal with this government for another three years, and the same goes for business. Right now there are people writing cheques out in the corporate sector who wouldn’t bloody cross the road to pee on us if we were on fire, for the same reason: at the end of the day it’s business. They’ve got to deal with this party.

And the other mob aren’t helping themselves much. Even if they wanted to, they’ve got no one who can articulate it.

INVESTIGATE: How much longer can the current machine dominate?

TAMIHERE: The current machine wants to become, in all ways, the natural party of government, and just have us vote different 60, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

coalition partners on the fringes. Has kiwi culture changed that much?

I don’t know.

INVESTIGATE: What is the most powerful network in the Labour executive?

TAMIHERE: The Labour Party Wimmins Division. Whether it’s bagging cops that strangle protestors they should be beating the proverbial out of, or – it’s about an anti-men agenda, that’s what I reckon. It’s about men’s values, men’s communication standards, men’s conduct.

I spoke to the boards and principals association in Wellington, and I showed them a picture of two girls with their fists clenched, standing on top of two young male students. The object of the exercise was to prove that once again the female students had romped home academically against all the boys. If the positions in the photo were reversed, all hell would break loose.

Where else in the world do Amazons rule?

I don’t mind front-bums being promoted, but just because they are women shouldn’t be the issue. They’ve won that war. It’s just like the Maori – the Maori have won, why don’t they just get on with the bloody job. I think it becomes more grasping.

INVESTIGATE: Will Labour win this election?

TAMIHERE: It’ll win it. Who it does business with to maintain it…she’s too savvy, mate. It’s too clever. You’ve got Cullen – we wouldn’t survive without Cullen – he can cut a deal on a piece of legislation, he can change a single word in a piece of legislation without those other bastards [coalition partners] knowing about it, and it melts down everything they wanted but they still think they got their clause in. The pressure, they bring pressure to bear on individuals.

INVESTIGATE: How intense does the pressure get?

TAMIHERE: Close to fisticuffs!

INVESTIGATE: Very un-PC! TAMIHERE: I always kick the officials out when I know it’s going to get a bit tetchy, because you know they’ll blab all over the place. So I say ‘hang on mate, I want to talk political now, get them out’. And Cullen goes, ‘oh no, no, he’s ok’ or ‘she’s ok’. And I say ‘It might be for you, but not for me. I’m uncomfortable’.

What you do is you always use the wimmins’ language: ‘I’m feeling unsafe!’ And the women, as soon as they hear that, they’re instantly with me. ‘I’m feeling unsafe in here’. [chuckles] INVESTIGATE: Where do you see yourself being, three years from now?

TAMIHERE: Well, as long as I’m doing the business and championing the right debate. The issue you’ve raised about where we’ve arrived, and whoever identifies that and encapsulates that, but more importantly is able to bring the masses with them, will set a new benchmark for New Zealand nationhood.

Because it is there. The sense of belonging is for everyone and the Maori don’t have a mortgage on that.

INVESTIGATE: You can get trapped, as you’ve made the point, looking back instead of forward, and letting bitterness over the past poison your future. They don’t grow as people or move on.

TAMIHERE: The Weisenthal Institute is the same. I’m sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed, not because I’m not revolted by it – I am – or I’m not violated by it – I am – but because I already know that. How many times do I have to be told and made to feel guilty?

Same with the Maori, I hear them talking about how they were burnt out of the Orakei marae in 1951 and so on. Big deal. What are we doing about it? Well, we’ve fixed it, actually. So what are you

“I tell you what, if I was on the other side mate I’d have cut the bloody Labour Party to pieces over moral issues. There’s a huge pendulum swing against what my leadership stands for” going to tell your children? It’s part of their history. It’s not baggage and it’s not an anchor. It’s part of their folklore.

INVESTIGATE: What’s Helen like?

TAMIHERE: A very complex person, a very, very complex person. And she’s been made complex by the range of sector groups she’s been made to engage with and occasionally confront. But she’s no good with emotions. She goes to pieces. She’ll fold on the emotional side and walk away or not turn up. She knows it’s going to get emotional and it upsets her.

We’ve never had a great relationship. I said to her, ‘look, I don’t give a f..k about the unions. You’ve got enough of those. My job is to bloody talk to kiwi males who are feeling out in the cold over the whole thing and also to stand up against some of the PC bulls..t.

And that’s why I said to Chris Carter, ‘I’m standing against that bloody civil union bill mate, because you’ve already had enough! I voted for one piece of social engineering and now you’re f..king coming back for another! Those two queers never got it right. I said you can have one, Civil Unions or Prostitution, make up your mind.

And so I gave in on Prostitution. And then he comes up to me and harangues me, because he wants to be the first get married on April 1, the tosser, and he says to me ‘but you’re a minority John, you understand’.

I’ve got a right to think that sex with another male is unhealthy and violating. I’ve got a right to think that.

INVESTIGATE: Why are these policies so popular on the ninth floor?

TAMIHERE: Because Helen has been brutalized by people who have called her lesbian, no children and all the rest of it. Her key advisor Heather Simpson is a butch, and a lot of her support systems are, Maryann Street and so on, and she’s very comfortable in that world and comfortable with it. I’m not.

And so that’s why it’s got strong legs. And when you go down through that building [the Beehive] it is infiltrated with it, in key policy and decision making processes and the upper echelons of the ministries, and it skews things, it is an unhealthy weighting, because even if

FOTOPRESS you give a policy directive they’ll skew the policy underneath you. You wake up and think, ‘am I wrong thinking this way?’

But that’s when they’ve got you. They’re trying to make men think and act like them, but I’m not one of them. In my view this is a circuit breaker because you can actually rally numbers. That group of women has only one worldview, and men have to organize themselves to deal with that, and start winning the debates. Men can actually reassert a position. It’s about social conduct and performance. It’s about good father role models. It is about societal mores that will achieve that, not the police.

INVESTIGATE: And some of the chickens coming home to roost would be?

TAMIHERE: The number of do-gooders who are paid extremely well in government. We’ve got 180,000 fewer unemployed, but a bigger bureaucracy than when we did! What the hell is going on here?

We’ve got a range of poor incentives. We say to people ‘you stay in a state house at 25% gross’, and we’re teaching them to be crooks.

There might be four income earners in there – we’ll never know it.

And instead of trading up and moving on, we’re encouraging them to stay in there. One third of kiwi families don’t have a male in them. That’s not good. But we got a document printed that tells us all the young males need and are desperately craving for is a male role model who’ll acknowledge them, acknowledge where they’re at and be supportive of them, which is what a normal father does. And if the father’s not there we’ve got to find a male role model somewhere else. And we can’t get them in primary schools, because we’re all ‘molestors’, all ‘rapists’, or ‘potentially’ we’re going to do it. So we’ve got to shift that attitude and provide scholarships to encourage men back into the education system.

Men’s problems are traditionally dealt with by the criminal justice system. Women, on the other hand, get a bloody Cartwright Inquiry and get millions of dollars thrown at their breasts and cervixes. Men get nothing. You need a debate that we can tackle unfair and stupid policy with.

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WAYNE’S WAY Butcher. Cop. And one of the most storied coaches in Rugby League. JENI PAYNE sits down with legendary Brisbane Broncos coach Wayne Bennett – and finds a seemingly quiet man who still has a maxim for every moment and a winning management style all his own

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ayne Bennett is a man of few words. He says he’s been ‘at war’ with the media since his days as a player. He admits he has come a long way from the Blackhall Bacon Factory of his youth. But his achievements and accolades as a coach, footballer and father keep him from ever being described as an ‘unsung hero’.

Recognised as one of the country’s most influential and innovative coaches, Bennett is the longest serving coach of a single club, has one of the best winning percentages in the game, and ranks second in the number of premierships won as a coach at an elite level.

While Bennett is wary of the media and is notorious for the sparsity of his comment, his colleagues, former Broncos players and high-profile commentators are effusive in their praise. He is not just respected, he’s revered.

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Allan Langer, former Broncos Captain, told ABC’s Australian Story in May 1999 that Bennett is ‘like a father to all the players and if anyone’s got problems on or off the field, he’ll fix them if he can’.

Steve Waugh, former Test Cricket Captain, writes in the foreword of Bennett’s book, Don’t Die with the Music in You (ABC Books, 2002): ‘Bennett’s greatest strength is the simplicity of his message’.

Waugh says he admires the man because ‘he gets the most from his players and what he says actually works’.

Journalists and fans alike respect Bennett for eschewing the fanfare and limelight, in preference for getting the job done with minimal fuss but plenty of gusto.

Bennett began his working career at a bacon plant, biding his time until he gained entrance to the police force. He started as a police cadet in March of 1966 and over the next two decades honed his talent for recognising strengths and weaknesses in his fellow man.

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ards, and at the end of the day, if a player steps over that line, we let them know.’

As an organisation, the Broncos is strong from the top. Stability of management has been a huge help in getting through rough periods, says Bennett, who makes no secret of his fondness for the game.

‘I love the things that it teaches you. It teaches you to be disciplined. It teaches you not to give in. It teaches you to be taken off, it teaches you to handle disappointment.’

Married with three children, Wayne is first and foremost a family man, but he admits that the choice between family and football can be a tough decision.

‘That’s what happens to players too. Nothing replaces the mates you make. A lot of players go into the game thinking their careers ennett was also coach of the successful Queensland State will never end. But they have short career spans – you can’t be in it of Origin sides in 1987 and 1988 and was appointed for 30 years like other professions – and it’s hard to adjust when it all the inaugural Queensland Super League coach for the comes to an end.

‘It’s a false world of media, adulation, money, people doing all 1997 Tri-Series against NSW and New Zealand. He made a successful return to State of Origin in 1998, where he kinds of things for them. Then when they leave, it takes two or guided Queensland to an historic 2-1 series victory over NSW. The three years to adjust. Family and friends are there for support, but Broncos’ success in 1997, winning both the Telstra Cup and the Visa nothing replaces the mates you make in footy.’

The Broncos boasts a form of exit strategy for players, but Bennett World Club Championship resulted in Bennett winning the title of acknowledges, ‘it’s not foolproof. No sport has really done it well’.

Super League Coach of the Year.

As for his own exit plans, Bennett is reluctant to think about Then in 1998 he attained the highest accolade, chosen as the Australian coach for the final two Tests of the ANZAC series against retirement. ‘As long as I’m enjoying it and getting the results, I’ll New Zealand. Down one-nil, Australia eventually came home victo- keep doing what I’m doing. I don’t look forward to the day that I’m not part of the Broncos.’ rious thanks to his inspired coaching.

His own motivation after 18 years in the job comes from what he Also in 1998, Bennett made history by becoming the first coach to steer his club, his state and his country to victory in each of their calls ‘a fear of failure’. He confesses: ‘I just don’t want to let people respective series. He was also named Queensland Coach of the Year, down. I try and keep myself fresh and keep an even keel, not up and Australian Domestic Team Coach of the Year and, on a personal down with the highs and lows. You need to have balance in your life too.’ level, Queensland Father of the Year.

As respite from the game he loves, Bennett escapes Brisbane with Again in 2000 he was named Coach of the Year when the Broncos his family and heads to won both the minor and the farm in Warwick to major premierships.

It’s a false world of media, adulation, ‘chase cattle’ at least one Success followed in day a week. ‘It’s a good 2001, when Queensland money, people doing all kinds of things for change from city life’, won the State of Origin them. Then when they leave, it takes two he says. series thanks in part to or three years to adjust. Family and friends Above all, he says his Bennett’s remarkable formula for maintaining coup of recalling veteran are there for support, but nothing replaces balance is to ‘not take Allan Langer from Engthe mates you make in footy yourself too seriously’. land. The same year, the Known for his innovaQueensland Government added Rugby League to the Queensland Academy of Sport pro- tive approach to coaching, Bennett says he is not into change for its own sake. ‘I’m not faddish, but if there’s a better way of doing gram, with Bennett appointed Director.

His CV might read like that of a champion, but Bennett the man things, let’s investigate it. The one thing I learned from my time as is a complex blend of humility and fortitude. Despite the shy, reclu- a police officer is that experts employ experts.’

Ten years ago he introduced full-time weight training to the sive image he projects, he is actually an extraordinary communicator who leans on tried and true tenets that hit their mark with his Broncos and now clubs all over the country accept that as part of routine training. Rehabilitation and recovery are currently in the spotplayers every time.

‘I collect quotes and clichés,’ the coach tells Investigate. ‘Things like light, particularly with the emphasis on remaining a drug-free sport. “there’s always room for improvement, it’s the biggest room in the But perhaps Bennett is best known for getting the best out of people. ‘I only demand what they’re capable of,’ he explains. house”. They’re memorable, they motivate you and they’re true.’

He may be fond of persuasion rather than punishment, but Bennett believes the fundamental key to the Broncos record, and his history of coaching success with the club, is its family ethos Bennett doesn’t pussy-foot around: ‘Young men want challenges.

– even though he doesn’t like the term. ‘It’s overused in this We are doing them a great disservice if we don’t drive them to be modern society for all kinds of things. I’d say we care about the their best. But you can’t go over the top.’

Bennett likens his role to a general manager of a company or an players and we expect the best out of them. There’s a huge support network at the Broncos. We’ve ridden through a lot of crises, army officer, and admits to being a strong-willed coach, a trait that but the difference is the players themselves. We have high stand- periodically frustrates diehard fans.

In 1971, 1972, and 1973 he played Rugby League for Queensland, and in 1971 he was one of only two Queenslanders picked in the Australia side to tour New Zealand.

He began coaching in 1976 at club level, and in 1986 became Queensland Director of Coaching. In 1987 he became a full-time coach with the Canberra Raiders. In his first season with the Raiders, Bennett coached the team to their first-ever Grand Final and was named Coach of the Year.

In 1988 he joined the Brisbane Broncos as their inaugural coach and soon guided the club to five premierships; two World Club Challenge titles; and three pre-season titles: the Panasonic Cup (’89), Lotto Challenge (’91) and Tooheys Challenge (’95).

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‘We love them and appreciate them, but you can’t try and impress them or change your plan to suit them – or the players. If you start listening to fans, it’s not long before you’re over there sitting with them.’

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ikewise, shareholders are not his focus either. ‘I don’t give a sh*t about them. They get rewarded.

The team comes first, then the fans. But I have to make myself happy too and that comes from standing by my decisions and being confident I can make the right ones.’

The Broncos have been scandal-free for a number of seasons, compared with their southern counterparts. Bennett bristles at questions about the causes and the culture that breed the headline-making acts and points out that sexism and delinquent behaviour are not unique to League.

‘Sad to say, but it’s society’s problem, not the NRL’s. It’s a heap of rubbish to say players need counselling or a welfare officer. Alcohol is the biggest problem. Drunkeness.

Fights, sexist behaviour, brawls – you never see it happen when they’re sober. It’s become such an issue in the community that the Premier is talking about bringing in curfews to address it.’

One suggestion to the problem of lewd behaviour: more women in administrative

and management roles in rugby league.

Another is regular courses on treating women with respect. The theory goes that men who are not adequately socialised in a female environment do not acquire the skills for ‘sexual negotiation’. They’re pumped up, pissed, and partying – and not au fait with the subtleties of dealing with the opposite sex. They use brute force to satisfy their needs, then they revert to the silence of the code, ‘what goes on on tour, stays on tour’.

But Bennett says: ‘That’s nonsense. These men all have mothers, sisters and friends that are women. They’ve all been educated to senior levels in a system that is full of females.’

His actions speak loudly too. On tours with the Kangaroos, journalists have reported that Bennett is frequently seen in the hotel bar calling ‘last drinks’ for team members, insisting on respectable hours and equally respectable behaviour.

‘You have a choice in life,’ he says. ‘You can sit back and criticise or you can try to make a difference.’

The title of Bennett’s book, Don’t Die With the Music in You, refers to a quote from the American intellectual Oliver Wendell Holmes, who observed that many people spend their lives getting ready to live and then time runs out for them and they die without reaching their potential. In it, Bennett imparts many of the professional

and personal guidelines he lives by. The difference between talented players who consistently achieve their peak and those who fail to perform, according to Bennett is attitude. One of the greatest discoveries of our age, he says, is that a man can change his destiny by changing his attitude. He asks readers to ponder these questions to help put work, life and success into perspective: • Am I allowing my life to be governed by daily activities, or do I choose to live in accordance with good principles?

• Am I allowing my life to be governed by outside forces?

• Am I so busy putting out fires that I don’t have time to start any?

• Do I have important goals and dreams I am committed to, or am I creatively avoiding commitments by filling by life with daily activities?

Reading his book, it’s impossible not to embrace his cache of clichés, as sage and as practical as any Dr Phil espouses.

‘People try to make our game complex.

But however great, it remains a simple game,’ he says. He then attributes to Maxwell Maitz a pearler that could just as easily have been penned solely for Bennett: ‘Nothing is more simple than greatness. Indeed, to be simple is to be great.’

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LIFESTYLE

MONEY

DON’T DO IT YOURSELF Most financial advisors are here to help.

Here’s how to pick the right one

C Peter Higgins

an you remember the days when financial licensing, registration and monitoring of financial advice came from a trusted accountant or bank advisors. Importantly, ASIC is also responsible for manager? Things were simpler then: cars had the complaint process and legal ramifications if you, bench seats in the front; we went to drive-ins; we ate as a customer, believe that you have been inapproprimeat pies and not Macca’s; we played sport for fun ately advised. and not money; sex was safe and rugby was dangerWhat do financial advisors need to do to become ous; and we had a father figure for a Prime Minister. licensed? A prospective applicant has to fill in a 58Well, perhaps not everything has changed. page licence application form which not only quesBut it’s a different world today, and there’s a whole tions his or her qualifications but also delves into new breed of people out there who want to tell us their personal financial situation, risk management what to do with our money. Along with accountants skills, and knowledge of compliance policies and disand bankers, Australians now have to contend with pute resolution mechanisms. guidance from such people as financial advisors.

ASIC has a register that lists training courses and I understand where the cynics are coming from when individual assessment services that have been approved they say that the burgeoning financial advice industry by ASIC authorised assessors as meeting ASIC’s trainis a self-made one. But in point of fact, I have spoken ing requirements in relation to their Policy Statement to many accountants, and their general consensus is No. 146, which governs this sort of thing. that they are pleased that financial advisors exist.

Once a financial advisor is registered, he or she is Accountants say advisors listed on the ASIC take the heat off and alwebsite (www.asic.gov.au) As in real estate, the financial low them to focus on and it is a simple matter what to do with customof doing a search to advice business is very much ers’ profits, rather than tryensure that they are corone of caveat emptor ing to make them in the rectly qualified. first place. So let’s agree A requirement of their on one thing: love them or hate them, financial advi- licence is that every financial advisor must have a sors are here to stay, and we have to learn how to ‘Financial Service Guide’. This is a document which manage them and assimilate them into our financial outlines the range of services that they offer, who strategies. We need to better understand who they they work for, and any associations they might have are, what they can do for us, what they can’t do, and with financial institutions. You should be aware that what we can do if we are not happy with their service. almost all financial advisors have some sort of assoThe first question has to be, just what exactly is a ciation with a large bank or other financial institution financial advisor? Greg Tanzer from the Australian such as a managed fund provider. Is that a conflict? Is Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) it a problem? According to Tanzer, ‘It is not providexplains that ‘financial advisors are qualified, and ing that you know about it. The issue is that they can allowed under the law to give advice on shares, man- still give you advice from these institutions. Many aged investments, superannuation, even insurance: customers actually want advice on the products availreally [any] financial type investments’. ASIC is the able from these institutions because they do bank federal government authority responsible for the with them.’

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Early financial planning…

Adds Tanzer, ‘They also have to tell you about commission arrangement and how they are being paid. They have to tell you up front’.

Financial advisors also have to be a part of some sort of external dispute resolution scheme. These schemes are put in place to save you time and money so that you don’t have to go to court. They are neutral, objective, non-associated schemes that go through certain procedures to ensure that disputes are managed fairly, openly, and equitably. One of the most common is the Finance Industry Complaint Service (FICS). All financial advisors have to be part of one of these schemes and you should ask them about this before you sign up with them.

Financial advisors also have their own industry group, the Financial Planning Association. This organisation sets ethical industry standards and has its own complaint resolution procedures.

If after all of this preparation you find yourself in a position where you have some major issues with your financial advisor, then your first step is to contact ASIC. ASIC has powers to take disciplinary action against financial advisors, which could include banning them or initiating criminal proceedings.

ASIC’s current acting chairman, Jeremy Cooper, succinctly explains that ‘clients seeking advice about how to invest their money to secure their financial futures, like all people, have a right to feel that the guidance and information they are receiving is genuine’.

This organisation is not a paper tiger, either. Just a couple of months ago, a NSW financial advisor was sentenced to an eight-year jail term with a non-parole period of five years after pleading guilty to fifteen counts of misappropriating client funds and three more counts of dishonest conduct. ASIC also took civil action in this matter in 2002 when they obtained an immediate injunction against May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 67

…can prevent misery later on the financial advisor in question, and later obtained orders from the Supreme Court of NSW to permanently restrain the person in question from providing financial products and financial advice, or dealing with client funds. In 2003, ASIC also permanently banned this particular financial advisor from acting as a representative of a securities dealer or of an investment advisor, and from providing any financial services.

This particular financial advisor had got himself in this position because he defrauded nine clients over a two-and-a-half year period of over $1.7 million. He advised each of his clients to invest their funds into certain investment products or term deposits. They all assumed their money was being placed into legitimate investments. But contrary to his clients’ directions, the money was used to meet various business and personal expenses. ASIC has made it clear that stealing clients’ money will not be tolerated. Cooper sums it up, stating: ‘The prison term imposed … is a reminder to all financial advisors that ASIC will pursue those who defraud the community and abuse their clients’ trust, and that they will get caught and punished’.

I should make it very clear that these sorts of proceedings are very rare because disputes are settled before court action is required, and of course, the vast majority of financial advisors are doing the right thing. Like any industry, it is the small handful of individuals that give a bad name to the hard-working ethical majority. You Tips for you to use before you hand over your hard-earned to a financial advisor: ■ Search the ASIC website to ensure that they are licensed.

■ Ask to see their Financial Service Guide.

■ Ask what areas in which they are qualified to advise you.

■ Question their commission and payment arrangements.

■ Understand fully their associations with any financial institution.

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should also be aware that in many cases it is actually the client that is at fault for not fully understanding or investigating what is being offered. As in real estate, the financial planning is very much one of caveat emptor.

We are charging through the 21st century with a sort of millennium madness that is producing many changes. Like any change, some is good and some is not necessary. Regardless of your own personal opinion about financial advisors, they are here to stay. In the most part financial industry professionals see this as a good thing, but what about we that require their advice. For mine, as a prospective client, I see their role as a value added service that should help me manage and maximise my financial situation, but like most things in this life I am responsible for what I do and the decisions I make.

I do not want to be a part of a society full of whingers that is always looking for someone else to blame, or something else to fix self created problems. It is up to me to fully understand and investigate what an individual financial advisor is offering and what regulatory requirements they have met. If I research correctly and ask the right questions, I will be in a better financial position. It may sound a paradox, but if I were to be in the middle of a dispute I would prefer it was the result of something that my advisor had done rather than my inability to be proactive.

■ Be fully aware of what services they can offer.

■ Ask them to explain, and sight, the external dispute resolution scheme that they are a part of, i.e. FICS. This is important in case you do have a dispute with them.

■ Ask if they are a member of the Financial Planning Association.

■ If in doubt contact ASIC at www.asic.gov.au or call their hotline number: 1300 300 630.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 69

LIFESTYLE

TOYBOX

GET MOVING! Communicate, commute – and have fun doing it

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he original Bose® Wave® Music System was a wake-up call: no-one expected such great sound from something so small. Now, the brand new Bose® Wave® Music System has set a new standard combining performance, elegance and simplicity with even greater clarity and definition. This next generation produces sound with even greater instrument clarity and definition by reproducing onehalf octave lower musical notes whilst using proprietary dual tapered waveguide speaker technology, delivering a rich sound with even deeper notes.

RRP: $999

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-Free software is an incredibly simple accounting package tailor-made for Australian small businesses and contrac tors. All that’s needed is internet banking access, and B-Free software. No need for double entry book-keeping, no confusing accounting jargon, and no previous accounting experience required! If you can read your bank statements, then you can successfully prepare a basic set of accounts including BAS submissions using B-Free.

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pple has unveiled the second generation iPod mini lineup with a new 4GB model priced with a recommended price of $299 and a new 6GB model priced at A$359. Both iPod mini models feature increased battery life – up to 18 hours – plus USB charging and an ultra-portable, lightweight design available in four vibrant colours. iPod mini also works effortlessly with Apple’s iTunes music software and features Apple’s patent-pending Auto-Sync system. This means it works seamlessly with iTunes to automatically download an entire digital music library onto iPod mini with just one click, keeping it up-to-date whenever iPod mini is plugged into a Mac or Windows computer using USB 2.0.

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it bikes started out as personal transportation for race crews in the 1990s, and have since burst on to the mainstream. Now around $3,000 including GST will buy a ride on one of the hottest pit bikes around, the 110cc Thumpstar. Featuring a 110cc flat-top piston engine, wave rotor front and rear discs, 4104 tensile front and rear axles, and 33 mm telescopic forks, the Thumpstar is just the ticket for any adrenalin junky.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 71

LIFESTYLE

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY

MUST-SEE TV Josephine Cooper reports that Pioneer’s latest plasma TVs are finally living up to the technology’s promise

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lasma screens are the trophy wives of the tel- of a unit’s life, when such burn-in is most likely to evision world. Seductive in their shiny slim- occur, but until recently, it’s also just been a problem ness, deep-pocketed men (often in league with that plasma users have had to either learn to live with their partners) have been damning the cost and throw- or figure out tricks to avoid. ing over their old, boxy boob tubes for these new, And in what may be the ultimate insult, many younger, skinnier models from almost the first day plasma buyers are discovering that despite all the they came on the market. money they spent on them, their new loves aren’t But that doesn’t mean these new relationships have really up for a long Sunday afternoon watching sports. always been happy: along with the initial entry price, Although manufacturers have been struggling with flat-panel plasma units generally require expensive ac- the problem for years, until recently, most plasma units cessories such as tuners to get them out of bed in the suffered from all sorts of unpleasant (and unpleasmorning. What’s more, while they start out as bright ant-sounding) syndromes when they tried to handle young things, the dirty little secret of this wall candy is fast-motion action of sport, such as jitters and smearthat they are also subject to burnout: leave it on too ing. Unlike a standard TV, the plasma screen simply long, or with the contrast set too high, and the bright, can’t keep up with the action, which means that on vibrant colours of the unit’s many units, a flying football first heady days start to go or cricket ball will appear like Pioneer has so far sucdrab and fade. Furthermore, a comet, complete with tail. ceeded by tackling head-on from their first day out of It can also mean problems the box, plasmas have a with lip-syncing: depending the biggest problems of problem handling dark colon the quality of image plasma TVs thus far ours, especially black, propbeing fed it, sound doesn’t erly: because every gas cell in always keep up with motion, a plasma unit is on all the time, and because there is and everyone starts to look like they’re in a poorlyno black backdrop as in a standard TV, it takes a lot of dubbed old Japanese movie. power to come close to displaying the dark range of On the flip side, the good news is that this young the spectrum properly. Even at the best of times, technology is great with the kids: plasmas are plasma owners have for years had to live with blotchy absolutely tailor-made for digital productions such being the new black. as Pixar movies, which explains why flicks like Plasmas have what might be called a long memory Finding Nemo and Toy Story get so much play at the as well; many users report that just a couple of weeks electronics retailers. of watching, say, CNN is enough to burn the netIt’s all almost enough to make a plasma buyer want work’s logo into the screen for good. (Think of how to go back, tail between his legs, to his old convena bank’s logo and welcome message is always faintly tional unit: ‘I want you back. I’m sorry I dallied with visible in an ATM screen, no matter what is being that new technology. Remember all the great times we displayed. Now imagine having spent several thou- had watching the Ashes together?’ sand dollars for the privilege of that burn-in.) Part of Or, as one online commentator put it recently, this has been avoidable by keeping contrast set low ‘Plasma TVs cost a hilarious amount of money, and and the channels flipping during the first few weeks are ridiculously non-durable. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll

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LIVING COLOUR: Older plasma units were great for nature docos, but not hot for sports go back to my still-good-looking, several-years-old rear projection big screen TV.’ Plasma screen manufacturers have started to realize that they have a real problem, both in terms of the real limitations of their product and, just as if not more important in the tough world of the marketplace, reputation. Makers of plasma units at all price and size levels are all waking up to the fact that they need to either lift their game, or get out of it. Sony, for one, has reportedly decided to withdraw its plasma screens from the market, and Fujitsu has sold half its own plasma business – there were just too many problems.

On the other hand, electronics maker Pioneer has decided to take things in the other direction and break through some of the barriers that have become all too apparent in the flat-panel market and create what might be called next-generation plasma TV. And it seems to be working: their latest models, (the PDP505HD and PDP435HD, coming in at 50 and 43 diagonal inches respectively) received top honours from EISA, the largest editorial multimedia organisation in Europe.

Pioneer has so far succeeded by tackling head-on the biggest problems of plasma TVs thus far. For one thing, the whole issue of colours and skin tones and natural-looking reproduction has been solved through what they call their ‘Advanced Super CLEAR Drive

System’: basically, this means that their panels can recreate a ridiculously huge number of colours, 2.79 billion to be exact. This is a huge advantage when it comes to faithfully reproducing colours at the dark end of the spectrum, ensuring that blacks are truly black. Unlike previous plasma units, which were great only for certain limited types of programming (especially those demonstrated at the shop), these are screens that really are good for everyday TV watching.

A second advantage of Pioneer’s new product is that they have ditched the traditional glass panel filter that traditionally sits on the front of plasma units. Because the glass filter often had the annoying side effect of creating multiple reflections between the filter itself and the display unit, Pioneer developed ‘direct colour filter’ technology that not only is crisper (and lighter) than old-fashioned glass panels, but also improves contrast, making images clearer in bright locations.

One more thing that Pioneer has done right: They’ve recognized that there are more places for a flat-panel unit to go then just on a wall, and as such have come up with a pretty schmick-looking stand to hold the thing. Free speakers are a nice extra touch, too, even though the recommended retail price of the two units have just dropped by a thousand dollars a piece – the 43-inch model clocks in at $6,999, while the top-end 50-incher will set you back $8,999.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 73

LIFESTYLE

SCIENCE

SMART OF DARKNESS You’d have to be pretty dim to buy the latest scare story being pushed by the greenies

N James Morrow

obody knew it at the time, but thirty years would trigger global conflagrations and economic ago the environmental movement suffered catastrophe throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s. the greatest blow to its credibility since a Instead, doom-mongers have spent the last decade grumpy 19th Century Scottish churchman named focused on global warming, using language surprisMalthus made his now-infamous prediction that, due ingly similar to that of Malthus (‘an angry Gaia will to a lack of ‘moral restraint’, the world’s population smite us for not having the moral restraint to resist would soon outstrip food supplies. For it was on 28 buying 4WDs’). And in a day and age when the April 1975 that the American magazine Newsweek ran a Bureau of Meteorology can’t reliably predict on Thursstory on the new ecological scare that was sure to doom day whether Saturday’s barbeque will be a washout, the human race: not overpopulation, but the Kyoto treaty holds a gun to the heads of Western global cooling. economies – all based on what are essentially some That’s right, cooling. very long-range weather forecasts.

Here’s how their package, ‘The Cooling World’, Which is why the latest nightmare scenario to make began: ‘There are ominous signs that the Earth’s headlines around the world is particularly – one might weather patterns have begun to change dramatically even say darkly – amusing. According to a handful of and that these changes may portend a drastic decline scientists, life on Earth is actually getting dimmer. in food production– Here’s how a BBC with serious political report recently aired Which is why the latest nightmare implications for just in Australia put it: about every nation scenario to make headlines around the ‘Noticed less sunon Earth. The drop shine lately? Scienworld is particularly – one might even in food output tists have discovered say darkly – amusing. According to a could begin quite that the amount of soon, perhaps only sunlight reaching handful of scientists, life on Earth is 10 years from now. the Earth’s surface actually getting dimmer The regions deshas been falling tined to feel its over recent decades. impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada ‘If the climatologists are right, their discovery holds and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number the potential for powerful disruption to life on our of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas – parts of planet. Already it may have contributed to many thouIndia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indone- sands of deaths through drought and famine, and sia – where the growing season is dependent upon that even the direst predictions about the rate of glothe rains brought by the monsoon.’ bal warming have been seriously underestimated.’

What a difference a few decades make. Not only is It gets better. According to this handful of experts the U.S.S.R. a thing of the past, but global cooling is (cut from the same cloth as the boffins who, thirty an all-but-forgotten article of the greenie faith, con- years ago, predicted we would all be taking ski holisigned to the dustbin of embarrassing eco-history – days in Fiji when not clouting each other over the along with predictions that the world would run out head for the last handful of maize), global dimming of fossil fuels by the year 2000 and that mass famines is a double-edged sword. This sudden bout of plan-

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BRIGHT EYES: Will global dimming make this the fashion of the future? etary mood lighting is bad, they say, but without it things would be a whole lot worse: ‘By allowing less sunlight to reach the Earth, global dimming is cushioning us from the full impact of global warming, climatologists say. They fear that as we burn coal and oil more cleanly, and dimming is reduced, the full effects of global warming will be unleashed.’ In other words, when we’re not making the world hotter, we’re making the world … cooler. We’re damned in both the doing and the don’t-ing, but either way, as the narrator of the BBC’s program on dimming put it in the conclusion, ‘we have to take urgent action to tackle the root cause of both global warming and global dimming - the burning of coal, oil and gas.’

We may have to make very difficult choices about how we live and how we generate our electricity. We have been talking about such things for 20 years. But so far very little has been done in practical terms. The discovery of global dimming makes it clear that we are rapidly running out of time.’

This is the same sort of end-is-nigh apocalyptic language that environmentalists (and their philosophical ancestors) have been preaching for centuries. Malthus told us all to practice some “moral restraint” and stop procreating, lest we all die from mass starvation.

Today’s greenies frame the debate in the same moral terms even as journalists and scientists vying for headlines and grant monies outdo each other in trying to freak the public out.

Global dimming is the latest attempt to give some scientific ballast to global warming, which has never borne a lot of close scrutiny.

Indeed, many environmentalists now like to call it ‘climate change’ instead – a deft semantic shift that means just about any freak storm can now be blamed on John Howard and George W. Bush. And it is pretty clear that the science behind dimming is overhyped bunk as well; as Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies put it recently after seeing the BBC documentary, ‘The suggested “doubling” of the rate of warming in the

future compared to even the most extreme scenario [is] highly exaggerated. Supposed consequences such as the drying up of the Amazon Basin, melting of Greenland, and a North African climate regime coming to the UK, are simply extrapolations built upon these exaggerations … while these extreme notions might make good television, they do a disservice to the science.’

So what is it that is so attractive about global dimming to its supporters? As with Malthus, the answer is not so much scientific as moral, and an underlying discomfort with modern life and all its trappings. Just look at some of the other rhetoric of radical greens these days: people consume too much, waste too much, products come in too much packaging, our food comes from too far away and all this divorces us from one another and the Earth. But this ignores the fact that all this economic activity is actually good for people and, ultimately, the environment: when I got married four years ago in New York City, for example, New Zealand lamb was the main course. This may horrify some as wasteful, but their outrage ignores the fact that those few dozen plates of lamb, multiplied countless times every day, help pay the wages of hundreds of farmers, abbatoir workers, drivers, pilots, fuelers, mechanics, loading dock workers, chefs, and so on – in other words, the sort of ordinary people whom we are supposed to be more in touch with.

The problem with environmentalists is that, after thirty-plus years, it gets awfully hard to take anything they say seriously. Yes, the outdoors is lovely and nature spectacular, and no one wants their kids to grow up breathing thick and smoggy air – which is why economic development is the key to cleaning up pollution, not relying on a bunch of spurious climate models and a distrust of capitalism. When people are allowed to get rich, they can not only desire a cleaner environment, but do something about it as well.

In the meantime, the environment is too important to be left to environmentalists.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 75

LIFESTYLE

HEALTH

TYPE-A FOR EFFORT A little hard work never killed anyone, but coping poorly with it can do some real damage

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Claire Morrow

eep working like this and you’ll give yourself in all probability, proudly describes himself (or heran ulcer!’ The year is 1982, and all they do is self) as a ‘Type-A personality’. Everyone he or she work, work, work. Late into the night and knows warns them of their health risk. (Then again, early into the morning on this damn fool scheme of when did you last meet someone who described themtheirs. These are driven men, mavericks, pursuing their selves as calm and worry free? I just took an on-line stress test, and apparently my low score indicated that research until finally one of them gets an ulcer.

And what was the grail these blokes were chasing? I am in severe denial about my stress. I think they Proof that stress and personality are not the major were trying to sell me something.)

But if this hard-charging type-A isn’t destined for a factor in the development of peptic ulcers. The men were Australian doctors J. Robin Warren and Barry stomach ulcer, then what kind of problems does he Marshall, and they intentionally gave Marshall an ulcer or she face? Although it runs contrary to conventional to prove their hypothesis, namely, that the bacterium wisdom, having a ‘Type-A’ personality in itself has Helicobacter Pylori (and not worry or stress) is what also repeatedly been shown not to cause heart disease. causes ulcers. It took a long while to persuade the (In hospitals the joke is that this must be true, bemedical world of this, so it is little wonder that many cause cardiologists do not, as a rule, have particularly amongst us still believe stress causes ulcers, amongst sanguine personalities). More often than not, it is how people choose to other things. cope with the Science has been High stress often appears to cause illness, stress that brings hard at work on when in fact it doesn’t. The stress causes them to grief. the stress-andAggressive and health connection bad behaviours, and the bad behaviours high-energy for some time cause health problems workaholics do now, and it’s now many of things to very clear that – for rats – being confined in a small cage with lots of other deal with their stress, and smoking and drinking (ofrats, an unpredictable food supply, and the odd elec- ten a lot) is at the top of many a type-A’s list of hobtric shock is definitely not a healthy way to live. bies. Thus high stress often appears to cause illness, Human studies are not nearly so conclusive. For every when in fact it doesn’t. The stress causes bad behavstudy that sees a link, another one doesn’t. Time for iours, and the bad behaviours cause health problems.

Did I mention that there would be hair-splitting? some hair-splitting.

But this is a useful distinction, because behaviours So-called ‘type-A’ personalities are hostile, impatient and competitive. Picture a red-faced fellow running like smoking can be changed. Of course, if society across the road (can’t wait for the traffic lights), yak- stopped rewarding angry men who work hard king into the mobile phone that is wedged between with nice jobs and lots of money that kind of his shoulder and ear while at the same time shoveling behaviour might also diminish, but that’s another story.

The counter-argument that turns this on its head is a burger and coffee into his mouth. This type of individual is often described as a workaholic. He (or she) one I hear a lot, and basically goes like this: ‘If I don’t is also probably very good at his or her job, very likely deal with my aggressive feelings by yelling at people feared and reviled by employees and underlings and, and slamming my phone down, all those repressed

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HANG IT UP: Stress may not kill you, but stress eating might feelings will make me even more sick, even give me cancer’. Nice try, but no. Instead, it’s the same old story: genetics, diet, environment, smoking, booze, plus some other factors for some specific types, all cause cancer. Personality doesn’t.

But, despite the lack of a connection to heart and stomach problems, too much stress is definitely not healthy. Remember learning about the body’s fight or flight response in high school biology?

Sense danger; flood body with stress hormones like adrenaline; in crease heart rate; make breathing rapid and shallow; constrict arteries near the skin (to curtail blood loss); increase blood pressure; release energy stores. All very, very good things to do if you happen to be cornered in a dark alley or need to flee a lion on the African veldt. But these physical responses to stress are of very little help in most offices – unless it is a particularly bad day.

One stress hormone that does have an impact on health is cortisol. This stuff raises blood pressure, increasing the work the heart has to do (fine in the short term, bad in the long) and suppresses the immune system, which means that it can lead to more infections and the like. Lots of cortisol, lots of the time, leads to lots of irritating colds and flus. So chill out. Take a deep breath and breathe out slowly. Now try to keep your blood pressure low and brace yourself for one last little nag.

And don’t even bother with ‘I don’t have time to…’ speech. If you’re a busy person, you don’t have time to be sick either, so take the time to look after yourself now.

Here’s the deal: Stress isn’t good or bad. But lots and lots of stress is bad. Go fix it so that disasters don’t happen constantly in your life, or failing that, teach yourself to cope better when they do.

Practice saying the words, ‘thank you for telling me,’ instead of ‘what!!!!! How the !@#$...’ This works equally well for ‘Mummy, the dog did a poo on the sofa’ as, ‘Sweetheart, I love you, but I’m moving to Rio with the tennis pro’.

Also, stop doing all the things that really will shorten your life, and maybe even make it unpleasant while it lasts. Sorry. Let’s do that again. The cardiologist is going to say that. I’m going to say this: do one thing to be healthier. Maybe it’ll be enough. Maybe it will lead to other lifestyle changes. If you know you eat terribly, and you don’t want to change, at least take the odd vitamin. Run to the shops for your smokes, instead of driving. Drink with dinner, instead of for breakfast, that kind of thing. For my money, I’d start with exercise.

Even if it feels terrible the first twenty times, it will actually start to make you feel good. You will enjoy it, your mood will brighten, and you’ll sleep better. Maybe you’ll smoke less and eat healthier as well.

It’s also easier to start doing something and make a new habit than it is to break an old one. If you think you might be getting a bit overwhelmed with stress or have some niggling physical problem, see the doctor. She’ll probably say what I said, only in a bossier tone, but better safe than sorry.

Look, you know what you’ve gotta do, so do I. I’m just going out for a run. To the shops…

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 77

LIFESTYLE

FOOD & DRINK

HOMEMADE PROZAC When the weather’s cold and the sun sets mid-afternoon, Eli Jameson finds brightness in the kitchen

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t has always amazed me that when T.S. Eliot wrote ing or simply watching the 7:30 Report over a quiet the line, ‘April is the cruelest month’, he wasn’t drink pays a myriad of dividends. Out of a concestalking about the onset of winter. Of course, this sion to age and arteries, I don’t do this very often, but is hardly surprising given that he lived in the northern lately I’ve taken to tossing the results of this together hemisphere. But for myself, April, with all its attend- with some pasta, cream, and good freshly-grated ant rituals – the changing of the clocks, the airing of cheese (see recipe).

Another old standby for when people come by the the jumpers – has always been a grim affair.

Somehow, it’s hard to be cheery when the sky turns house is a lamb-and-pasta dish I picked up when I lived in New York (and yes, I realize that complaining black at what always feels like four o’clock.

To cope with this seasonal black dog, I’ve tended to about a Sydney winter after spending one particularly take refuge in good food and cooking: after all, much bleak December-through-February living next to the better to stick a roast in the oven than your head in East River does show a lack of perspective, but bear one. Not only does keeping the cooker on full-bore with me). This involves getting some lamb steaks, help heat at least one end of my drafty circa-1890s flattening them out, rolling and tying and them up terrace house, but it also provides something in the into little parcels with mint, rosemary, and cheese. neighbourhood of an acceptable substitute to that I then brown the packets, set them aside, and make a rich red sauce in the same favourite summer pastime pan – deglazing, of course, – namely, standing in front There is something about with some hearty red wine. of the barbeque searing off That done (and here’s the ribeyes and drinking shiraz cooking that makes for a beauty: all this fiddly work at 8:30pm, when it’s still welcome distraction from can be done in the afterbright and sunny. the winter blues noon), I boil up some Another advantage is that orichiette pasta, and serve winter comfort food (for lack of a better, and less hackneyed, phrase) can be as it in bowls with some of the sauce and a couple of simple or as complicated as one likes. For the home lamb rolls. If you’re out to impress, cut the lamb on chef with a busy work schedule who still likes to muck a bias and arrange artfully on top of the pasta.

Whether simple or complicated, there is something about in the kitchen a few nights a week, this is a great advantage: if I’ve knocked off a bit early and am home restorative about the whole cooking process that shuts by six or seven, then I might happily bread and fry off the white noise of the previous twelve hours and some eggplants, knock up a red sauce, grate a few makes for a welcome distraction from a bout of winter cheeses, and boil some spaghetti (perhaps even mak- blues. As American novelist Nora Ephron once put it, ing the noodles myself, if the mood strikes) to wind ‘what I love about cooking is that after a hard day, there up with a ridiculously huge platter of eggplant is something comforting about the fact that if you parmagiana that will keep me in lunches through the melt butter and add flour and then hot stock, it will get week. (Fill a good bread roll with a few rounds of the thick! It’s a sure thing! It’s a sure thing in a world where leftovers, wrap in foil and bake until gooey). Other- nothing is sure; it has a mathematical certainty in a world wise, tossing a tray of veggies in the oven to roast for where those of us who long for some kind of certainty an hour or so while pottering around the house tidy- are forced to settle for crossword puzzles.’

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ROAST VEGETABLE PASTA Even though it takes a little while to roast the veggies, the actual work time involved in this pasta is virtually nil. And all the cream and cheese makes the healthy bits of the dish much more palatable.

You’ll need: • 250g dried pasta, such as fettucini, papardelle, or rigatoni • An assortment of baby eggplants, fennel bulbs, zucchini, onions, et cetera – whatever looks good at the market that day, roughly chopped • 200ml whipping cream • 1 cup (or more) freshly-grated grana padano cheese • Fresh parsley, for garnish • Olive oil 1. Place the chopped vegetables in a roasting tray with a good glug of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Toss the lot around to coat, and place in a reasonably hot pre-heated oven. Meanwhile, place a pot of salted water on the stove to boil.

2. After about 45 minutes or so, check the vegetables – when they are good and soft and roasted, throw the pasta in the water.

3. Warm some cream in a wide saucepan, bringing just to the boil.

When the pasta is a few minutes away from being al dente, remove the vegetables from the oven and toss with the cream. Add a good handful of the cheese.

4. Drain the pasta, and toss with the cream, vegetables, and cheese.

Serve in warmed pasta bowls and sprinkle on some more cheese and fresh parsley.

Serves four

WINTER-WARMING BEAN SOUP Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian This a great winter soup that’s not too complicated for a weeknight and packs a spectacular payoff. Plus, with the exception of the optional truffle oil, it costs virtually pennies a bowl to make. My family eats vats of this over winter.

You’ll need: • Approx. 250g Great Northern beans, soaked overnight • 2 litres vegetable stock • 2-3 peeled garlic cloves • Dried mint, oregano and/or other dried herbs • Olive oil • 3-4 diced onions • 2 starchy potatoes, peeled and diced • Leaves of one silverbeet or one head rocket, thinly shredded • Fresh parsley • Salt and pepper • Good extra-virgin olive oil (or, for something really special, truffle oil) 1. In a biggish, heavy-bottomed pot, bring the stock and the beans to the boil. Skim off the froth that comes to the surface, and add the garlic and dried herbs. Give it a good stir and simmer, loosely covered, for up to an hour or until the beans are tender. At this point, crush the garlic cloves against the side of the pan.

2. In a second, bigger pot, bring some olive oil up to a mediumhigh heat and add the onions and potatoes, stirring so that nothing sticks and everything picks up a bit of colour (about five minutes),

with a shot of salt and pepper. Add the silverbeet or rocket, stir until just wilted, and pour the other pot with the beans over the whole affair. Bring it all to a boil, then simmer and stir occasionally for about half an hour.

3. Just before serving, toast some thick slices of good crusty country bread and set aside. Using a wooden spoon, mash some of the potatoes and beans against the side of the pot – this nicely thickens the broth. Check seasoning and ladle into bowls, and drizzle a little good extra-virgin olive or truffle oil over each dish.

Serve with toasted bread.

Serves: an army.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 79

LIFESTYLE

TRAVEL

RED LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT Gary A. Warner says that if you look beyond the sleaze, Amsterdam is full of treasures

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orget the canals. Forget the coffeehouses. For- Europe, a dream to navigate compared with the creakget the acres of Rembrandts and Van Goghs. ing facilities of London, Paris and Rome. A highForget all that wooden shoes and tulips and speed train leaves every 15 minutes for the 20-minute silly Hans Brinker and his silver skates stuff you ever ride from the airport to the city center.

I don’t go to a city for its airport (if I did, I’d never heard, read or saw.

Before you go to Amsterdam, get your brain around go back to New York City). But Amsterdam’s is nonethe other Amsterdam. The in-your-face Amsterdam. theless a big plus.

The morning after I arrived in Amsterdam, I was The CBD shops that sell postcards of genitals painted to look like Santa Claus. Where delivery boys fighting jet lag. I stepped out of my canal-side hotel on pink bicycles deliver marijuana seeds. Where porn and wandered the quays for hours.

The trees had lost their leaves, revealing glimpses and prostitution flourish in the most picturesque redthrough the bare branches of old houses that line the light district in the world.

Get ready for it, all of it, because it is going to smack waterways. Homes were hung with Christmas lights and garlands – even many of the 2,500 houseboats you right in the head whether you like it or not.

How you react will determine whether you see along the canals were decked out in yuletide finery.

The heart of the city is the Grachtengordel, the three Amsterdam as the most liberal, liberating metropolis concentric canals that in Europe or a beautiful the city center. old jewel wrapped in an Drinking is a wonderful pastime half-ring Viewing the mansions oily envelope of sleaze. in Amsterdam. Try a light-tasting of the Herengracht, For the better part of two decades, I fell in the Hoegaarden or a dark De Koninck the bridges over the Keizergracht and the latter category. Four beer. Or better yet, a traditional houseboats fronting times Amsterdam was the artists’ lofts of the penciled in on my itinjenever, a gin-like drink often Prisengracht is one erary, and four times I infused with fruit or herbs of the most popular found reason to get out strolls for visitors. the eraser.

In all, there are 47 miles of canals in Amsterdam, But when I realized I’d been to nearly every major European city – I had been to Brussels twice – I and each mile seemed to offer a postcard image: A woman carrying a cello on her back as she pedaled her decided it was time to give Amsterdam a shot.

I’ve always had a long list of reasons not to go. But bicycle toward the city center. A mother singing “JinI came away with more reasons potential visitors gle Bells” to her kindergartner as they skipped by. Preshouldn’t repeat my mistake of waiting so long to teen boys bundled up against the cold playing soccer on a canal-side strip, making moves that would fool experience the Dutch metropolis.

Amsterdam has a great airport. You never get a most Australian high school teams.

When you get thirsty, watch your language. Ask for second chance to make a first impression, and a ‘coffee shop’, and you’ll get more than a caffeine Amsterdam gets off on the right foot.

With its one terminal that has just two levels, buzz – it’s the popular term for places that legally sell Schiphol is the easiest, most modern airport in marijuana and hashish. If you ask for a ‘café’, you’ll

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likely be sent to one of the 1,000-plus bars in the city. (Do go.

Drinking is a wonderful pastime in Amsterdam. Try a light-tasting Hoegaarden or a dark De Koninck beer. Or better yet, a traditional jenever, a gin-like drink often infused with fruit or herbs.)

There are the grand cafés whose luxurious interiors will seem familiar to anyone who has walked into a fancy café in Paris, Vienna or Budapest.

I prefer the old, small taverns called “brown cafés” for their stainedwood interiors and dark, drapery-blocked doorways. Press past the curtain at Hoppe near the Spui Square, and you’ll go back three centuries in time. It’s a cramped but cozy place that’s especially good in the off-season, when the hordes of summer tourists aren’t trying to elbow in for a seat.

Another good choice is ‘t Doktertje, which means ‘the little doctor’, another timeworn spot where for less than $10 you can get a drink and sit for as long as you like. I brought along my journal and enjoyed wasting a couple of hours in the corner.

My favorite of all was In De Waag, a bistro and bar inside the last remaining gatehouse of the old city. This imposing brick pile was once the weighing house for goods, and later the site of the city’s executions. I had a bowl of spliter wtensoep, the traditional stick-toyour-gut pea soup with duck rillettes, washed down with two hazereducing cappuccinos. Between bouts of reading the International Herald Tribune, I perused my e-mail and watched a Webcast of the surf at Pipeline in Hawaii from one of the café’s computers. The total of a bill is called a ‘rekening’. I smiled at the apocalyptic-sounding word for a tab so small.

Go ahead and make your pilgrimage to the Rijksmuseum to see Vermeer’s ‘The Kitchen Maid’. Take in ‘The Sunflowers’ and ‘Wheatfield With Crows’ at the Van Gogh Museum. Just save time for some of the smaller museums around town.

I enjoyed my visit to the Amsterdams Centrum voor Fotografie on a narrow street just off Dam Square. The collections change constantly at the modernist glass-and-steel show space. One day it may be large-format photos juxtaposing cuts of meat or raw animal parts with flowers. Another day it might feature military-installation still lifes from around Europe.

If there is a must-see museum in Amsterdam, it’s Anne Frank Huis, where the young Dutch Jewish girl wrote her famous diary while hiding from the Nazi occupiers during World War II. She and her family were turned in to the police and she died in the BergenBelsen concentration camp just two months before the war’s end.

Her diary describing her hopes while hiding has become one of the most widely translated books in the world.

One of the great charms of Amsterdam – albeit a sometimes dangerous one – is the sea of bicyclists making their way around the city. People wheel wildly around the cobblestone and brick streets as if they are invincible. There’s no headgear, and even at night there are young men and women wearing black on bicycles without lights.

Lights and reflectors are just one more thing to get ripped off – Amsterdam logs more than 100,000 stolen bicycles a year.

With bikes parked outside where they are pelted by inclement weather and preyed upon by thieves, there’s little incentive to ride a fancy 10-speed or gizmo-laden mountain bike. Most are your simMay 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 81

ple one-speed models that you brake by backpedaling – not very different from what most Amsterdamers’ ancestors would have ridden.

It’s possible to rent a bicycle and make your way around the city as locals do. Just be prepared for some kidney-jarring old streets and maniac wheelers – especially during the morning and evening rush hours – who will be more than happy to run you right off the road.

Until World War II, the Dutch ruled Indonesia, and one of the great treats of a trip to Amsterdam is to enjoy a rijsttafel – “rice table” – which is made up of up to two dozen small plates presented at the same time, including fried rice with pork called nasi goreng, and satay – skewers of chicken, pork and beef with peanut dipping sauce. Beware the spicy sambal chili sauce. Two of the best places to experience the rijsttafel are Tempo Doeloe on Utrechtsestraat and Kantjil & De Tijger on Spuistraat.

For a more domesticated taste, try patat, the local version of what we call chips. The crisp, fresh, fried potato strands are only a distant culinary cousin to the greasy slabs served up in fast-food joints.

They’re served from outdoor stands scattered all around town. One of the best is Vleminckx on Voetboogstraat. Locals have it with mayonnaise – so speak up when you order unless you want your order drowned in the white stuff.

There are a number of big baroque barracks on the main plazas and a few design-oriented boutique hotels like Blakes, the local branch of Anouska Hempel’s London-based temple of trendiness. But part of the charm of a stay in Amsterdam is cozying into a canal-side 82, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

hotel that’s been sewn together from neighboring town houses.

I stayed at the Pulitzer Hotel, with its sparkling gold lights outlining the roofs of the 17th-century homes that form its facade. Though it’s affiliated with the Sheraton chain, there’s none of the artificial feel of a business hotel.

A perennial favorite among travelers is the Ambassade Hotel, a small hotel made from a string of canal houses not far from Spui Square. One that’s not in a lot of the guidebooks, but that I found charming, is Hotel van Onna, a nice canal-side budget hotel. The rooms are small and Spartan, but I loved its pretty Christmas ornamentation inside and out.

Another small hotel enjoying a lot of buzz these days is ‘t Hotel, an eight-room mansion turned hotel built in 1690 that houses its own antique shop. Rooms look out either on a canal or over the pretty gardens.

I’ve already got a list of what to explore next time. Yes, there will be a next time. First, a return in the spring – I’ll put up with the crowds to experience the flowers. I’ll wander the pretty Leidsegracht canal and go see the Poezenboot – a barge filled with cats – that’s moored on the Singel. I’ll drop into the Amsterdams Historisch Museum to see if it offers better insight into how the 17th-century stolid commercial town became the free wheeling place of today.

After so long avoiding Amsterdam, I want to go back. It doesn’t intrigue like Berlin or warm like Rome. It doesn’t have the treats of Paris or the ease of London. But it deserves better than the justpassing-through Brussels treatment.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 83

LIFESTYLE

BOOKCASE

CRAZY FOR YOU This month’s crop of books looks at sanity – and the lack thereof – and sees novels by authors new and established

GOING SANE

By Adam Phillips

Alice McCormick

London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005. Distributed by Penguin Books. ISBN: 0241142091 $29.95 ‘If sanity was a game then how would you learn to play it if the authorities could only tell you when you had broken the rules, but not what the rules were?’

In his new book, Going Sane, Adam Phillips highlights a gaping hole in our language.

Madness is lavished with attention from all quarters, but its perceived opposite, sanity, is barely ever mentioned. Famously mad characters abound in literature and the arts while their sane counterparts fade into the background. The word ‘sanity’ appears only once in Shakespeare, whereas ‘madness’ is referred to over two hundred times. Consideration is similarly uneven in dictionary definitions. Whole sciences are devoted to the study of madness, yet until now a study of sanity has been too dull a notion to consider.

Going Sane’s basic premise is that it might be useful to know what true sanity is: ‘It should matter to us, especially now, that sanity is something we can’t get excited about’. (Phillips must be using the royal ‘we’ as he is definitely getting very personally excited.)

Typically, the definition of sane is ‘not mad’. Justifiably unsatisfied with this, Phillips analyses the reasons that sanity is so difficult to define. Traditionally, madness is equated with loss of control, while sanity is law-abiding. To be mad is to be excessive, unpredictable, dangerous; to be sane is to be safe. He contends that the opposition between sanity and madness is not as absolute as has sometimes, rather often, been asserted.

Going Sane begins with the casual attitude that it will all come together in the end (which it does), but the book’s no good to anyone if you can’t get through Part One. Lengthy, muddy notes toward a definition of sanity are enough to send anyone barking. A little

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bit more of the humour that mitigates his earlier books wouldn’t have gone astray.

Many interesting points are raised but they lose impact in the jungle of information presented.

Phillips has a habit of bracketing his insights: the sane, as so often happens, are rarely contemporary. He is clearly brilliant enough to write on these matters, so the unpolished delivery must reflect a conscious decision to keep it loose. Going Sane has no index; it’s not supposed to be that kind of book.

Anthropologists, philosophers, writers and poets

are all thrown into the mix. There are quotes from the likes of Freud and Foucault, and many obscure sources too. This amalgam of quotations in Going Sane indicates an obsession with well-written doctrines, regardless of origins. The theories are expansive rather than reductive and to distil them is to deny them their scope.

For almost twenty years, Phillips worked in child psychotherapy. In Going Sane he examines many different schools of thought.

There are those that believe children reflect our primitive selves and will thrive with sufficient understanding and those that sanction the taming of this wild side, all the while paradoxically aware that it’s an impossible task. He writes, ‘All modern prescriptive child-rearing literature is about how not to drive someone (the child) mad, and how not to be driven mad (by the child).’ Phillips conducts an open-minded discussion of the contemporary approaches parenting, ever so quietly exploring the folly of our ways. Did I mention he was clever?

The term ‘thought-provoking’ is bandied about like a power tool so perhaps a combination of radical and perceptive is a better way to describe Going Sane. I argued along as I read it, which was not as unpleasant an experience as it might sound. Going Sane crystallised personal beliefs and opinions on subjects that might have otherwise have passed through the censor unchecked.

Often compared to Alain de Botton (author of best-selling Status Anxiety and originally famous for How Proust Can Change your Life), Phillips is also a philosopher of happiness. Both men filter centuries of impenetrable wisdom into a palatable format fit for contemporary taste and have a reputation for laying it straight. Phillips doesn’t match de Botton’s wit and has never been anywhere near as hip. However, it could be argued that de Botton is in the business of rehash while an ambitious Phillips plots out new turf.

Colours magazine recently devoted an issue to the mentally ill featuring vivid portraits of people from all over the world confined in treatment facilities for the ‘mad’.

Unnervingly, when interviewed, many of them don’t sound that unhinged. There is a photo of a man living in a small African village who has been chained to a tree stump for roughly seven years. Phillips can expound on the glamourisation of madness all he likes, but there are real people (literally) at stake who might argue otherwise. It is a shame that despite all the best intentions, academic excursions rest somewhat uncomfortably in the context of human suffering.

THE SINGING

By Stephanie Bishop NSW: Brandl & Schlesinger, 2005. ISBN: 1876040548 $26.95 Stephanie Bishop’s first novel, The Singing, does not have any songs in it. The ‘singing’ in this book is atmospheric - it refers to the essence of the work rather than its substance and was probably a good call given that anything along the lines of ‘Decaying Love’ would not have had quite the same ring.

While a broken love story about a relationship that folds under the weight of longterm illness may not immediately have punters reaching for their wallets, the quality of Bishop’s writing certainly will.

Triggered by a chance meeting with an ex many years on, The Singing is the story of one woman’s endeavour to understand and contain the past. The relationship begins as they always do, with the sense that this was the start of the rest of their lives. After a time, the woman develops a serious illness that no one can name and quietly watches the world as her health deteriorates. Her partner assumes the role of caretaker. A natural to the task, he has a history of falling in love with fragile women. He has left his children from a previous relationship and he has also abandoned his painting for work that can support them.

The Singing is prefaced with a quote by Virginia Woolf that begins ‘the Public would say that a novel devoted to influenza lacked plot’. No doubt, Bishop is hoping to head them off at the start with this one – however, afraid of Virginia Woolf as I am, I have to say I found the story a little indulgent. Nevertheless, the writing is sublime.

With a poet’s gift for expressing the symbolic in literal terms, Bishop thankfully also has the clarity to avoid any of the funny business that often pairs with this tendency: ‘I saw words fall from him… I did not know what they were but I knew they were there. I heard them hit the ground.’ She apprehends the point in a relationship when there is nothing left to say. The heroine feels ‘like a statue of a woman whose lips are open while her mouth remains filled with stone’.

Like Woolf, Bishop is intrigued by ‘that very ordinary thing of the present depending on the past and the future depending on the present, and visa versa.’ Memory has always been a hot topic. I think both Freud and Aristotle would appreciate Bishop’s take on it: ‘We do not get over anything. It becomes, over time, less acute, but it comes back, it always comes back, hitting me hard in the chest when I least expect it and never quite making it to that tame place that is known to us as memory.’

The Singing is startlingly well-written and there is a lot of hype surrounding Bishop’s debut. Helen Garner is launching the book in Melbourne and has described Bishop as ‘a striking new voice, calm and fresh’. It even has a painting by Tim Storrier on the cover.

Bishop, 25, is doing well to have the big guns on side so early in the piece but then again, good novelists almost always start young.

Stephanie Bishop has taken the time it takes to compose something beautiful and the results instil great trust in her abilities as a writer. It’s a promise not quite fulfilled, I feel, but then how many writers hit their stride on the first attempt? Helen Garner pulled it off with Monkey Grip, which was an immediate success. More recently, Gregory David Roberts managed it with Shantaram, but it does not generally work out like this; Charles Dickens is not exactly famous for Sketches by Boz. Reviewed by MICHAEL MORRISSEY:

WORKING WITH MONSTERS

By John Clarke Random House, ISBN: 1740511549 $22.95 They intimidate. They manipulate. They show no remorse. They are superficially charming. And they may be sitting at the desk next to you. That’s the surprising –or unsurprising – message of this book. From movies like Psycho and a thousand sequels we all feel we know what a psychopath is – someone who kills without feeling – except sadistic enjoyment. Psychologist John Clarke May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 85

has some grim news: the majority of psychopaths are not homicidal maniacs but are instead all around us, in the workplace.

It is a male-dominated field. Clarke estimates between one and three per cent of the adult male population are psychopaths, while only .5 to one per cent of women qualify.

Clearly, women have some catching up to do, unless they’re just more subtle about it.

As Clarke sees it, psychopaths are highly intelligent, score well on job applications, and often rise quickly up the corporate ladder.

Having no conscience, they feel no guilt, and can therefore fly through a lie detector test.

Apart from the well-known criminal variety, Clarke analyses in detail three ‘civilian’ types of psychopath: organisational, corporate criminal and occupational. The difference between the organisational and occupational psychopath seems a bit subtle; the former is on his way up the ladder, while the latter may stay on the same rung for ages.

The corporate criminal psychopath, meanwhile, has his eye on fraud.

The corporate criminal type is very similar to a con artist: the guy who plays on the victim’s weakness, extracts money for some get-rich scheme, and when challenged, as Clarke puts it, states that ‘maybe the victim really does not deserve to have the dreams fulfilled as they do not have the courage or the determination to achieve them’. The victim may at this point be asked to inject even more money into the ‘scheme’ to prove their commitment to the psychopath. The psychopath may pretend the extra money is still not enough to win back his `trust’. Eventually, the victim, as well being financially drained, is emotionally crushed. When the 86, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

scam is revealed, the victims lose confidence in their own ability to make decisions because the biggest final decision they made ‘proved to be the biggest mistake of their lives’.

It’s hard to come up with a punishment to fit the crime and Clarke doesn’t even try that’s not his bag. Chillingly, he warns that treating rather than curing psychopaths may make them worse: in group discussions psychopaths ‘may learn more effective methods for committing crime’. Clarke does, however, make a number of practical suggestions to ‘manage’ the organisational type beginning with talking to employees about bullying.

If the pattern of manipulation and bullying sounds like someone in your office, Clarke warns against a quick amateur diagnosis and recommends a professional be called in. A warning sign of psychopathological presence: well above-average rates of resignation. Consider yourself warned.

SURRENDER

By Sonya Hartnett Viking, ISBN: 0670028711 $29.95 Surrender is a passionately wrought tale of adolescent obsession. The narrator, Gabriel, makes a pact with wild-boy Finnigan. To his regret, one might imagine. Or not? Blood oaths, pacts, secret societies, friendships unto death are, it seems, built into the male psyche. At a revolutionary level, let us speculate, it may be the dog-wolf in us – the part of the psyche that says survival depends on close ties with fellow warriors, banded together against the enemy.

There is a fierce poetry to Harnett’s style that sits nicely with the more inward-thinking Gabriel but less well with the near-psychotic Finnigan. Gabriel, who is in hospital reflecting on his short life, says of himself, ‘I weigh perhaps as much as a small suitcase carrying the necessities of a night’ – a lovely encapsulation of self diminishment, an insightful sliver of self doubt. When Finnigan, vicious arsonist, declares, ‘I wanted to break my knuckles on his pathetic rebellion, crack his skull on his poxy immunity’, it comes across as a tad overwritten, not the more urgent demotic voice one might expect. The narrative only allows very short excerpts from Finnigan which to my mind makes the book imbalanced.

A dual first-person narrator has worked well in such noted novels as The Collector, The End of the Affair and A One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding and it works best when the two voices are widely separated in tone and language and each given plenty amounts of space to have their say. Part of the problem I had with Surrender is I don’t relate well to books that have dogs as prominent characters. Then there is Vernon, Gabriel’s idiot brother. So we have two characters who, by necessity, have nothing to say.

The hatchet blows that suddenly strike Gabriel’s mother and father have the same leisurely yet shocking quality of the Southern Gothic novel – of, say, Flannery O’Connor – yet they shock us less. Surrender is full of a dark and vivid poetry that invites us to admire but not quite so successfully to feel.

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA

By Philip Roth Jonathan Cape, ISBN: 0224074539 $49.95 A new novel by Philip Roth is always an event worthy of notice – will it win the Pulitzer or the National Book Award? My guess is, not this time. While Roth’s latest book has dazzling passages that show the aging virtuoso can still write like an angel, there are also plenty of dull stretches, making this an uneven work. It lacks the authoritative passion of the recent American Pastoral and The Human Stain.

The Plot Against America is a fictional rewrite of American history which has the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh ousting Roosevelt as president in 1940 – a critical time in world history as Hitler’s armies were swarming over Europe. The book belongs to the growing number of novels that portray a world where Hitler won – books like The Sound of His Horn by Sarban, The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick and Fatherland by Robert Harris.

Like Hitler, Lindbergh offers political solutions in very simple terms: the election is a choice between Lindbergh and war. Choose Lindbergh and America stays out of war, choose Roosevelt and involvement in world war ensues. To the dismay of the Roth family, Lindbergh is given the mandate and America begins a slow, inevitable slide into pro-Nazi anti-Semitic fascism. A lesser writer than Roth might have had it happen at breakneck speed, yet the slowness of its unfolding is its fictional undoing. The gradual extinction of liberal pro-Roosevelt voices like popular columnist Walter Winchell and the detaining of Roosevelt himself takes too long.

Worse, when they do occur they are not all that convincing nor dramatic. Dramatically speaking, the novel has a saggy midriff. The intermingling of large public events, narrated in newsreel style, and the personal lives of the Roths doesn’t quite gel.

As with most Roth novels, the best parts lie in family divisiveness – the bitter arguments between turncoat son Sandy and his father Herman, the stubborn heroism of cousin Alvin. The frighteningly bland Rabbi Bengelsdorf, connected to the Roth family by marriage, who espouses his repugnant views during an uneasy dinner party, shows Roth’s passion for ideological debate at its most lively. Alvin gets the novel’s finest line when he says that Bengelsdorf is ‘koshering Lindbergh for the goyim’. Disappointingly, Lindbergh is a remote grey presence never dynamically present and his ‘kidnapping’ by Nazis is a weird and unconvincing echo of the real-life kidnapping of his son.

In case any readers might literally believe in the gloomy events outlined in the novel, Roth

includes a lengthy postscript giving potted biographies of major historical personages such as Lindbergh (the meeting with Goering and the swastika-crowned medal all true!), Roosevelt, Henry Ford, Winchell – and the full text of Lindbergh’s 1941 speech wherein he claims that Jews have a dangerously large ownership of motion pictures, press, radio and government and are using that influence to get America involved in the war.

Despite its winning touches and alwaysassured (though suitably doctored) historical and clever social detail, The Plot Against America lacks the grim dramatic darkness of 1984 – which was after all another ‘what if ?’ novel – a black view of a world completely run by communist totalitarianism. While 1984 always seemed gloomily possible, The Plot doesn’t quite convince – and the postscript, while a fail-safe document for those who have either forgotten history (or never knew it), has the ultimate effect of sabotaging the premise on which the novel is based.

SATURDAY

By Ian McEwan Jonathan Cape, ISBN: 0375435328 $49.95 Booker Prize-short listed Atonement was arguably one of the best novels of the last ten years and Saturday, McEwan’s tenth novel, is also a finely written and powerful work - though of a lesser stature. The main character of Saturday is a highly respected neurosurgeon, loyal husband, a man of principle who, when all is said and done, is that rare thing in fiction: a good man (though some my find him stuffy). Being good is not always good enough to deal with life’s

bitter twists. And goodness unassailed by wrong, evil or harm would be fictional suicide. Henry Perowne surveys all human beings through a merciless medical gaze and when he is threatened by a petty psychopath whose car he has pranged, he can’t help noticing that Baxter’s ‘poor self-control, emotional lability, explosive temper’ is ‘suggestive of reduced levels of GABA among the appropriate binding sites on stratal neurons. This in turn is bound to imply the diminished presence in the striatum and lateral pallidum – glutamic acid and decaboxylase and choline acetyltranferase’.

In short, Baxter has Huntington’s Chorea.

It’s a swag of medical minutia to flood your brain just before you are about to be thumped, but the exhaustive and meticulous detail that McEwan has lovingly researched – much in the manner we have come to expect from American rather than English novelists – serves McEwan’s dramatic purposes very well. In the end, we start to see as Henry Perowne sees. However, it’s much more than medical insight; it’s the true stuff of novelist’s irony when Perowne, who has every reason to hate Baxter for his thuggery towards his family, is called upon to operate on the fellow’s brain after he has been of necessity nearly de-brained by his son.

The passages of threatening, then escalating violence, are superbly done in thriller-like mode.

These contrast with the – by comparison – almost duller passages of family background in which McEwan can sometimes sound like that other well known document-maker of twentieth century life, Iris Murdoch. Satisfying as Saturday is, it is thinly plotted compared to a Murdoch novel – it sometimes feels like a novella roller-pinned out to a novel.

The attempted political dimension to the novel – numerous encroachments into Perowne’s eyes and ears of contemporary events in Iraq, considerations of Bush – are rather less successful than the expertly detailed medical-cum-violence drama that is the book’s inner heart beat. Nevertheless, the argument between son and father brings out a more conservative side than the good surgeon expected – and makes the perceptive psychological point that different people provoke in different ways. This seems but a minor flaw in Perowne’s stable upper middle class moral strengths, which border on the priggish. The trouble with a happy marriage (choke) – and a happy family (gag) – is that it is not the stuff of arresting fiction, though McEwan makes a fair fist of it.

He even gets away with the happy ending and I’m not sure if I’m happy about that.

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LIFESTYLE

AT THE MOVIES

CRASH IS NO TRAINWRECK Also: Nicole Kidman’s latest is not what you think it’s about, and Australia (finally!) produces a decent movie

Shelly Horton

Crash

The Extra

Released: April 28, 2005 Rated: PG

Released: April 14, 2005 Rated: PG

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aaaay! Finally, an Australian film that had me laughing more than cringing! The Extra is a funny romantic romp with the loveable Jimeoin starring as…well, he doesn’t have a name in the film.

Extras never do.

The premise is simple. Normal dude wants to be a movie star. Movie stars are rich, get all the chicks and go to great parties. Unfortunately, because of an outstanding lack of talent, all he can manage is a few roles as an extra. Viewers travel along with Jimeoin in all of his wide-eyed innocence as he meets jaded child stars, pompous lead actors and money sharks in pursuit of his dream.

It’s the same old crew Jimeoin always surrounds himself with, but when you’ve got a great cast, why mess with it? Jimeoin has the simple bloke routine down pat. His sunny optimism makes him a loser one cares about.

But it’s not just about the star: there’s also a great supporting cast to back up The Extra. Rhys Muldoon nearly steals the show as Curtis Thai-Buckworth, a former child star who’s now a ‘writer-slash-director’: his desperation is palpable. Katherine Slattery is luminous as Jimeoin’s love interest. Forget Julia Roberts – Katherine has the best smile in the biz. Bob Franklin is up to his usual standard as the underworld gangster with a brain. Kristy Hinze is beautiful but vacant.

And Shaun Micallef is at his arrogant best as Detective Ridley, a cop with his own TV show who wants to be an actor. Seriously, just to see the flare with which he his flicks open his police badge is almost worth the price of admission alone.

The Extra is fun, it is well made, and it shows there’s still a faint pulse in the Australian film industry yet.

’m not racist, but…’: That’s the sentiment which best sums up this gripping emotional drama about just how horribly people can treat each other. It also shows a side of Los Angeles that’s not in any tourist brochure.

In Crash there are a number of stories that intertwine (think Magnolia), each one more spiteful than the next. First there’s the carjacking: Larenz Tate and rapper Ludacris are totally believable as carjackers who think they are modern-day Robin Hoods because they only steal from rich white folks. Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock are pitch-perfect as the white-bread middle-class carjacking victims. Don Cheadle and Jennifer Esposito are exceptional as the police officers investigating the crime.

Next, you love to hate Matt Dillon as a racist cop who molests a black woman (Thandie Newton), putting rookie cop Ryan Phillippe in an emotional and ethical dilemma.

But for me the most powerful storyline concerns a Persian immigrant (Shaun Toub) who is trying to run a small shop and Michael Pena, who plays an unlucky locksmith who finds himself the target of years of repressed anger, frustration and despair. This pairing leads to one of the most powerful scenes I’ve seen on a movie screen in a long time.

Written and directed by Paul Haggis (who adapted Million Dollar Baby), Crash could have been an unwieldy mess. But he’s a maestro who crams tension into each scene and brilliantly juxtaposes and links the stories until they build into the kind of crescendo that leaves you struggling for breath.

Crash is emotional and thought provoking. I left the cinema promising to be a nicer person.

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Y

HALLELUJAH! Jimeoin sees the light and makes a film worth watching

Birth Released: April 28, 2005 Rated: M

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orget what you may have heard. Anyone who claims Birth promotes incest or paedophilia has missed the whole point.

Nicole Kidman’s latest film is a powerful story about loss, love and grief. There has been so much hype surrounding Birth that the actual story has been lost in the furor. Nicole Kidman was booed at the Cannes Film Festival because in the film her character has a bath with 10-year-old boy who says he’s a reincarnation of her dead husband. Later she kisses him. And I’m not talking a motherly peck. I know - ewww! But somehow it works.

Let me explain why. Birth is all about reincarnation. Anna (Nicole Kidman) lost her husband, Sean, to a heart attack a decade ago.

Imagine the shock when ten-year-old Sean (Cameron Bright) waltzes into her life and claims to be a reincarnation of her dead love. Anna’s family, headed up by matriarch Eleanor (Lauren Bacall), treats the boy and the idea of reincarnation with the right amount of contempt and jaded realism you’d expect rational folk to display. But here’s the creepy thing: young Sean knows all sorts of facts that only the husband Sean could have known.

There’s a stand-out scene where Anna is at the opera and the camera stays on her face for a full three minutes – a long, long time in movieland. As the music soars, emotions play across her face, and we realise at the same moment she does: she actually believes him.

Now I’m certainly not a card-carrying member of the “Our Nicole” fan club. I think she’s generally over-rated and definitely too skinny.

And I certainly don’t think she deserved an Oscar for donning a fake nose in The Hours. That said, this is one of her finest performances yet. In Birth, she isn’t trying to be a movie star, she is doing what she does best – character acting. Kidman throws herself headlong into Anna’s mind, which is one faulty unit. Watching her you yearn for the intense all-consuming love Anna felt for her husband. I think it helped that she lost her signature red locks and, with a nod to Rosemary’s Baby, goes for a dark Mia Farrow-esque pixie cut.

Cameron Bright is actually ten years old. His performance as Sean is measured and wise beyond his years. He plays an adult in a child’s body so well you start thinking…well…maybe…he is a reincarnation.

Lauren Bacall is powerful as always. The music is superb. The cinematography is classy.

Did I like the film? No. It gave me the willies. I rushed home from the cinema to scrub myself under a hot shower. But the story sticks in your head for weeks and not many films do that these days.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 91

LIFESTYLE

MUSIC

MILD SURF(ER) Also: Thievery Corporation steals the show, and Waylon Jennings’ son is on-target

Jack Johnson ‘In Between Dreams’, Brushfire/Universal

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oody Allen once likened being mellow to a process of ripening, then rotting.

Listening to terminally chilled surfer/ folkie Jack Johnson’s latest album feels like a similar fate, at least initially.

Johnson blissfully faces the music – all of it – with a grin, a sandy voice, and a Catalina-bound sound.

His sparsely arranged tunes sometimes lean toward soul-jazz (‘Situation’) or percolating funk (‘Staple It Together’). But there’s scarce variation to Johnson’s doggone-diddly cheery demeanor.

However, Johnson’s deceptive simplicity, subtlety and understatement become shockingly infectious upon (many) repeat listens. ‘Dreams are made of real things’, he sings on ‘Better Together’. That attitude guides his cozy romanticism through shuffles (‘Banana Pancakes’) and sambas (‘Belle’).

Oh, and he’s also releasing this latest CD in environmentally-friendly packaging and converting his fleet of tour buses to run on green bio-diesel fuel, making his band’s movements “carboneutral”.

Doggone it.

Reviewed by A.D. Amorosi

Thievery Corporation ‘The Cosmic Game’, ESL

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ob Garza and Eric Hilton, the Washingtonbased duo known as Thievery Corporation, are master collaborators: The guest vocalists they enlist define the character of each album, whether it’s Bebel Gilberto on 2000’s sultry The Mirror Conspiracy, the Farsi-singing Loulou on 2002’s multi-culti The Richest Man in Babylon, or the elder-statesmen 92, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

alternative rockers who join the Jamaican, African and Indian singers for the psychedelic Cosmic Game.

Anchored in the dub, trip-hop, and down-tempo club grooves that make Thievery Corporation the American Massive Attack, Cosmic Game pulses with a swirling, trippy tension that’s more pent-up than chilled-out.

‘Well, let’s start by making it clear who is the enemy here’, the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne softly croons on ‘Marching the Hate Machine (Into the Sun)’, establishing the political paranoia that courses through ‘Revolution Solution’ (with Perry Farrell), ‘The Heart’s a Lonely Hunter’ (with David Byrne), and other simmering sonic journeys.

Reviewed by Steve Klinge

Shooter Jennings ‘Put the O Back in Country’, Universal South

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S

hooter Jennings comes out swinging on his debut – and we’re not talking about Western swing. As the band leans into the chip-kicking honky-tonk of the title song, he complains that ‘there ain’t no soul on the radio’ and throws out a challenge: ‘Are you ready for the country? Are you ready for me?’

It’s not hard to figure out where he got the attitude: he’s the son of Waylon Jennings. That’s a giant legacy to live up to, and if the 25-year-old doesn’t quite yet come across as the saviour of country music, or if he doesn’t possess a voice with the deep authority of his father’s, he is certainly off to an impressive start as he stakes out his own territory.

‘Busted in Baylor County’, ‘Steady at the Wheel’, and ‘Daddy’s Farm’ are swaggering blasts of Southern rock, but Jennings shows there’s real heart behind the bravado with more reflective numbers, such as ‘Lonesome Blues’, ‘Sweet Savannah’ and ‘The Letter’.

Reviewed by Nick Cristiano

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 93

LIFESTYLE

THE SPORTING LIFE

ON FOR YOUNG AND OLD A recent dust-up at the Gabba brings back fond memories of a childhood spent watching Wrestlemania

S Jake Ryan

port: it’s our great leveler. As Australians, it is serious injury. Then, as he tried to return to his posinot only our passion, but for some of us our tion, he was cannoned into directly on the injured livelihoods as well. It’s the main reason we get shoulder by Scott and Michael. I was ropeable. They out of bed on a weekend. It’s the reason why, when appeared to be hunting an injured player and I thought most of us grab a newspaper, we go straight to the it was against the spirit of the game. More important, back page. We treat team rivalries as seriously as wars I thought it was a blight on Scott and Michael as and love it when we can get stuck into our mates human beings. about their team’s failure to win again.

But after speaking to Nick and reviewing the situaOur warriors carry this ethic onto the field: the play- tion, I now look at it in a slightly different light. As ers are our heroes, and we tell anyone willing to listen Nick has been quoted as saying, he had no idea how about how they are tough in the clinches, bold and severe his injury was at that moment. He pushed the courageous. They are playing for a jumper worn by so trainer away, and tried to return to his position – thus many favorite sons before, and are competitors with a making him fair game – and he was unlucky to get never-say-die attitude who are taught to never give a caught in between a fracas involving Aaron Hamill sucker an even break. and Scott and Michael. He holds nothing against the But do these heroic clichés still apply when the Brisbane pair and says that it was ‘part of the game’. opposition is lame and The Brisbane pair were injured? I’m referring cited by the AFL and I must admit I cried and thanked both were cleared; howspecifically to the Nick Riewoldt incident that God the day I witnessed the great- ever, the AFL also issued took place in the AFL’s a stern warning to make est showdown of all time at opening game at the sure this was not a freWrestleMania 19 Gabba. Just after the quent occurrence, stating Saints’ newly-appointed that targeting injured captain had popped his shoulder, he was confronted players is a big no-no, and that officialdom would come by two of the toughest players in the caper, Mal Michael down hard on anyone who chose to do so. and Chris Scott.

So, ultimately, what do I think? I give benefit of the Was this right or wrong? Is it any different to Port doubt to the Brisbane boys: Even if it was intentional, Adelaide’s Chad Cornes testing out Brisbane’s can you blame them? After all, they were tag-teaming Jonathon Browns’ troublesome knee in last year’s one of the best players in Australia, the newest milGrand Final, or Nigel Lappin copping a hard time lion-dollar man, the franchise player. He had already from Collingwood players when he played in the ‘03 kicked three goals and was keeping his side in the game.

Grand Final with broken ribs?

When you put that next to everything I wrote above To be honest, I’m still undecided. I was livid when about the pressure involved at the elite level in a winI saw the incident at home on the couch. Nick is a very ner-takes-all game, millions of Australians watching at good friend of mine; we grew up together on the home and remembering the deeds of the favorite sons Gold Coast playing footy, and he was a great friend of the past, Riewoldt was probably lucky they didn’t when I needed one after Bali. At the Gabba, he looked rip his arm off. And believe me, if you gave Chris Scott to be in great distress and was obviously carrying a half a chance, he probably would.

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94, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005

And speaking of competitors tearing limbs off each other, I am very excited about the WWE’s WrestleMania Revenge Tour’s arrival in Australia this month. If you don’t like wrestling and laugh it off as nothing more than a hoax, than perhaps you’d better stop here.

However, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool follower like myself who has been watching it forever like me, read on.

I grew up watching the exploits of the Junkyard Dog, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Jake the Snake Roberts, Macho Man Randy Savage, and of course, the 8th wonder of the world, Andre the Giant. I watched the sport evolve and become a worldwide institution as Brett Hart hit the stage, the Heartbreak kid Shaun Michaels strutted his stuff, and the Undertaker with Paul Bearer rained havoc on everyone.

Then the new generation arrived. The Rattlesnake Stone Cold Steve Austin became one of the biggest sports stars in the world.

The game Triple H followed him and along with his posse ‘Generation X’ and China (who brought women’s wrestling to the world) became one of the biggest partnerships in the history of wrestling.

Kane dominated with his size, and the greatest of them all, my favorite wrestler of all time, and one of my heroes (at 23 I still have his poster on my wall), The Rock was whipping everybody’s ‘candy

asses’. Then came Kurt Angle, Edge and Christian, the Hardy Boyz and the Dudley boys that risked life and limb in some of the greatest matches of all time. The iconic Hulk Hogan made a triumphant return, and I must admit I cried and thanked God the day I witnessed the greatest showdown of all time between the Great One, The Rock, and Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 19. That day will live with me forever.

And now they are here. At the Burswood Dome I will see this amazing show live. John Cena, Kurt Angle, Bradshaw, Torrie Wilson and the rest of these magnificent athletes will put on a show like know other. I’m truly excited about seeing the old-school Undertaker back. The ‘dead man’ will come out with his big hat, the whites of his eyes showing, the bells chiming, reminding me once again of the fun I had watching him as a kid.

The only thing I’m unhappy about is that I will be attending by myself. I have a ringside seat (which I get to take home with me), but believe it or not, I was still unable to entice anyone to come with me. My mates, my family, and even a few girls (which hurts the most) all think I am an idiot.

And you know what? They’re probably right.

May 2005, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, 95

LIFESTYLE

DIARY OF A CABBIE

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE Devoted wife, house full of kids, money in the bank.

For some passengers, it’s still not enough

A

Adrian Neylan

round midnight, a fella in his mid-thirties ‘So how come you’re out tonight?’, I asked. hurried out of the Bondi Hotel and ‘I felt like doing something different’, he replied. approached the cab. ‘Where to, mate?’, I asked, After a high-profile career as a sportsman he owned hitting the meter and easing away. ‘Where do you and operated a chain of very successful businesses. suggest?’, he countered. He was looking to bat on yet The job exposed him to many women who thought had no idea where to do so late on a Sunday night. he was wonderful, yet complained endlessly about ‘What are you after’, I asked. ‘Just somewhere for a their husbands and boyfriends. Whilst he was a good quiet drink or you wanna tear it up?’. He took a deep looking bloke, he had managed to stay faithful to his breath and paused to consider his preferences. Finally wife. Until he succumbed to the advances of a woman he said, ‘I want to go somewhere there are beautiful from work. ‘You slept with her?’, I asked. girls dancing – somewhere dark, but not strippers.

‘No, but we had sex – and you know what’, he said, Girls I can have a drink with and talk to’.

‘I told my wife!’

When I suggested a men’s club, of which there are ‘Jeez, mate, you’re a thrillseeker’, I said. ‘How did a few in Sydney, he took offence: ‘What, you mean she take it?’ lap-dancers?’

‘Not too bad’, he said, ‘once I told her it was ‘Yeah, in the city’, I said. ‘Those girls are classier just sex and nothing emotional. I mean, sex on its than strippers, but do pole dancing and stuff ’. By own is simply plumbing. It’s love and affairs which now I was guessing, having threaten women’. never been inside a men’s club.

We approached Kings ‘Nah, they’re just sluts ‘Nah, they’re just sluts who Cross in silence and I thought take your money’, he spat with about what my passenger had who take your money’, he some disgust. ‘I want regular told me. He was clearly thinkspat with some disgust women out for a good time’. ing, too. A man who’d been I considered suggesting it was with the one partner most of a fine distinction, but thought better of it. his adult life. It must feel like a betrayal of sorts I ‘Well, in that case you’ve got a number of choices’, figured, no matter how one rationalised it. ‘Oh well’, I told him, ‘depending on how much money you I finally piped up, ‘at least you’re honest about it’. have and the type of conversation you’re after’.

What else could I say? It was tempting to suggest ‘Put it this way’, he said, ‘I’m a married man with that if he was in any way fair, he must now extend the three kids. It’s not like I’m trying to pick up or any- same right to his wife, though he came across as too thing. I just want to be close to beautiful women egotistical to do so. Indeed, he never once mentioned dancing. I want to watch them, you know what that he loved his wife, or praised their marriage.

I mean?’.

Whether he realised it or not, the dynamic in their No, I thought, but I’ll indulge you for a $20 fare. long-term relationship was now altered, maybe irrevo‘I’ll take you to the Cross’, I said, ‘there’s a pub up cably. Having tasted illicit sex he was now insisting he there with a disco on the first floor’. After heading off just wanted to watch beautiful women dancing. Late I asked him, ‘You’re not from Sydney?’. on a Sunday night. Yeah, right.

‘Yeah, I am, but I’ve been married for twelve years Good luck, mate. You’ll need it. and never go out. I’ve got no idea about the night life’.

Read more of Adrian the Cabbie at www.cablog.com.au

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96, INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.COM, May 2005