Return to home page

Other blogs/sites I follow: Christine Allen's // Gordon Price's // Ray Ison's // Sarah Jane's photo site // Travel Painting Blog // Roland Hemmert art site

Go to the Elizabeth Flats (our rental apartment) site

May 4, 2008: further to the story late last month about Troy Buswell, the Liberal leader of the opposition in "WA" (Western Australia) who admitted to sniffing the just-vacated seat of a female staff member, his tearful apology has only heightened the weirdness. It's also been confirmed that he snapped the bra-strap of another female staffer at a party and made inappropriate innuendos to others. Just another antediluvian bloke, you'd figure, except the newspapers have pictures of him with his wife, Margaret, an attractive, well-educated Aussie of Asian extraction, by his side. As for his future, there are now serious rumours of a leadership spill -- in Ozpeak, you "spill" leaders when you dump them or unhorse them. The disarray of the opposition is a break for the beleagured Labour government in WA, the most corrupt of the Labour State governments in this odd federation. The line in the national anthem, "We are girt by seas," should be sung as "We are girt by sleaze." -big news this week was the huge surtax placed on "alcopops," the pre-mixed drinks sold in liquor stores that the federal government claims are an incentive to binge-drink. They apparently are mixed with lots of sugar so they taste like the fizzy pop teenagers have grown up with, and become like training wheels for Australia's booze-fueled youth culture. Some mix alcohol with caffeine-hyped soft drinks like Red Bull, to make the drunks more alert when the fists begin to fly. Statistics show that in 2000 about 14% of female teens drank them, but by 2004 the figure had risen to 60%. "Super nanny" Kevin Rudd, the prime minister, has promised that a large (unspecified) portion of the revenue windfall would go toward an education campaign. A caller to the ABC suggested that the campaign should focus on the impact of all the drinking on girls' waistlines (the "muffin top" of flab spilling over the tight waistbands of low-rider jeans): "tell 'em an evening's drinking is the same as eating 6 Big Macs!" -a small victory was recorded a couple of weeks ago against a multinational corporate bully. Cadbury's lost its lawsuit against local candy maker Darryl Lea, in business since the 1920s, over the latter's use of the colour purple on its logo and its iconic Violet Crumble chocolate bar (Christine's childhood favourite). The court ruled that Cadbury could not trademark a colour; at the very least it couldn't stop a competitor from continuing to use one. -and further dispatches from this muddling country, the national rail system is back in the news as it will be unable to move the 26-million-ton grain crop to port later this year. This at a time of world food shortages and record grain prices! Bureaucratic inefficiencies, chronic union featherbedding, and generations of inaction by State and federal governments are to blame, say the farmers' representatives. The rail system is one of the longest-running jokes in the country: Mark Twain, more than a century ago, described his amusement at having to change trains at State borders because the line gauge wasn't consistent. According to the weekend paper, there are still 22 different line gauges in use in the country; on the specfic grain lines in Victoria, there are 2 different ones. The producers are, of course, resorting to truck transport. Environmental issues? Where?

Return to home page
Read April 2008 blog Read March 2008 blog  Read February 2008 blog
Read January 2008 blog Read December 2007 blog  Read November 2007 blog
Read October 2007 blog  Read September 2007 blog
Read August 2007 blog Read June 2007 blog
Read May 2007 blog Read April 2007 blog  Read March 2007 blog
 Read February 2007 blog Read January 2007 blog Read December 2006 blog

Go to my 2001-2 Australia travel book