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- Nick Bryant
- 24 Aug 08, 10:15 GMT
Having marked already the 99.94 anniversary, Australia will celebrate the centenary of the birth of Donald Bradman on Wednesday. I've done a piece on that for our programme From Our Own Correspondent. I'd love to get your comments.
bradman_pa226.jpg
Staying with "the Don", the number of comments for that Brits' Olympics success piece reached a Bradmanesque score - 350 and counting. It almost became the blog equivalent of Bodyline, with some of the ugly nationalism, nastiness and peevishness that went with it. Time to call close of play on that one.
A couple of final thoughts on the Olympics. The response of Australia to what, let's face it, was still a pretty impressive medal haul, is fantastically Ruddwellian - another review. Where should the money be spent? How much money should be spent? Apparently, each of Australia's gold medals already cost A$50 million.
There have been a few calls to go down the British national lottery route, while others will no doubt think that encouraging even more gambling is madness.
Anyway, as we leave the Olympics behind, I'm going to pick up an argument that I made in Australia and the Rise of the Rest:
that the Beijing Olympics provided more evidence that this country is becoming an increasingly muscular middle power.
A few quick points:
- Australia provided a lot of the organisational expertise in Beijing. Leading lights in SOCOG, the Sydney Organising Committee, acted as consultants. Ric Birch, the creative genius who produced the opening ceremony in Sydney, also helped out in Beijing.
- Australia provided a lot of the coaching talent at the games for other successful countries. They talk about wind-assisted sprints, I'm surprised nobody here has yet produced a medal ranking for Aussie-assisted medals?
- Australian architects designed seven of the main Olympic venues, foremost among them the fabulous Water Cube. It was designed by the Sydney firm PTW.
- The Bird's Nest was built with Australian iron ore.
- Kevin Rudd's fluency in Mandarin has unquestionably boosted his diplomatic clout, both regionally and internationally. Whatever you think of the bloke, his linguistic skill has definitely won him the respect of his peers on the world stage.
- The Beijing Games has marked the ceremonial beginning of the Asia-Pacific Century, and Australia is a significant regional player. Bob Hawke and his foreign minister Gareth Evans were the founder fathers of Apec, after all; Paul Keating increased its diplomatic cache by helping to make it a leaders' forum. For the statistically-minded, six out of top eight countries in the medal table are members of Apec.
- Err, that's it.
A good games, with much to enjoy on both sides of the Oz/Pom divide.
London 2012. Can't wait. And guess what, Westfield, the Australian shopping centre giant, is already busy constructing the Olympic village...
Recent entries
- Nick Bryant
- 20 Aug 08, 08:26 GMT
teampursuit_cut_getty.jpg My heart sank when I heard that the open-top bus was starting to rev up its engine, and that Team GB's victorious athletes were to be paraded through the streets of London.
Can't we stick to pedal and wind power? Seems to work just fine, and is much more carbon neutral. For all the jibes about the Brits sitting and lying down for their medals, you have to admit the golds have been very green.
I thought the news was certain to bring a quick reversal of British fortunes. And then, as I ploughed through all your comments, the GB wunder cyclist Chris Hoy did his thing, as did speedy Victoria Pendleton (beating an Aussie to boot).
So, too, did Christine Ohuruogu - whom the Aussies have already tagged as the Cathy Freeman of the London games (Freeman, an aboriginal athlete, lifted Australian hearts at Sydney in 2000, also by winning the 400m).
"Just brilliant," shouted the Channel 7 commentator Raelene Boyle, a former Olympic sprinter herself. "Just brilliant."
That, I think it's safe to say, is something the Brits and the Aussies share. We both recognise sporting brilliance when we see it, and can sense its broader meaning as well. More than that, we both like to imbue our sporting achievement with broader, national meaning - hence some of the heated comments.
But are we also suffering from another bout of 'Oz/Pom Syndrome', a condition that triggers a stream of nationalist invective? Is it encoded in our DNA? Are we genetically predisposed to needle each other?
On occasions, I have succumbed to this condition myself, as my Aussie wife and my Australian mother-in-law would attest. I just can't help myself.
An example. I've just been trying to track down a sports reporter for help with a piece I'm planning for the lunchtime news, but he wasn't in. "He's probably resigned in protest at having to report on so many British gold medals," I suggested to his colleague who answered the phone. She came straight back with the "per capita" argument
The Oz/Pom Syndrome. There we were parroting the same old lines, ventriloquising the same old barbs. We could not help ourselves.
Then a moment of honesty.
"I just couldn't give a s****," she said. And, in that, I dare say she speaks for much of the Australian nation. The truth is that not that many Aussies are going to lose much sleep over this. And if anybody out there is, we'd love to come round and film you, ideally before lunchtime in Britain, so please get in touch.
That said, I suspect the British performance has unnerved a few people, like grumpy old John Coates, the AOC chief, who spends many of his waking hours thinking how Australia can accumulate more gold medals.
The reason? The British success has had a very Australian edge. Long-term planning, gutsy determination, supreme self-assurance and ruthless execution.
The British cycling team reminds me of the Aussie cricket team that white-washed England. Hayden comes in and hammers the bowling. Then Ponting does it. Then, when he's out, Hussey comes in and continues the punishment. They did it for five test matches running. Victory was not enough. They wanted, and achieved, complete domination. The British cyclists have emulated their success. They are scary.
A few other quick points:
- the per capita argument may sound a little desperate, but that does not mean it is not valid. Australia does do disproportionately well and has done, pretty much, ever since the national disgrace of 1976, when its team returned from Montreal without a single Gold
- lpankhurst pointed out that "medal" is a noun not a verb. It is on Channel 7, along with "to podium"... although I have to hear "to flagpole".
So how about a few others? To Hoy. To Pendleton. To Oz/Pom.
- Nick Bryant
- 18 Aug 08, 23:59 GMT
Britain Tops Australia in gold medals.
Not my headline, but the words of the Sydney Morning Herald.
It's an Olympic story that is getting quite a bit of play here - it got second billing on the SMH website, nudged off the top of the online podium by the resignation of the leader of a nuclear-armed country in one of the most troubled corners of the world.
So, yep, it must have been a close call.
And there was me thinking we'd have to wait for the Ashes next year for a good, old-fashioned Anglo-Australian stoush.
The last time Britain out-medalled Australia, Bob Hawke and Margaret Thatcher occupied The Lodge and Number Ten, and Rebecca Adlington and Stephanie Rice had not even entered the world let alone leapt into an Olympics-sized swimming pool.
Seoul 1988 - the Brits got 5, while the Aussies got 3. Thereafter, the Aussies have always ended up on top.
• 17/9 in Athens
• 16/11 in Sydney
• 9/1 in Atlanta
• 7/5 in Barcelona
That may happen at Beijing, too - although the failure of Australian men's swimming team to win a single gold (it's the first time that's happened since the Aussie annus horribilis of 1976 in Montreal) and the British domination in cycling makes it tough.
Even John Coates, the head of Australian Olympic Committee, has conceded publicly that the Poms might edge out the Aussies. "Not bad for a country that has no swimming pools and very little soap," as he himself would doubtless put it.
Meanwhile, the Australian sports minister, Kate Ellis, has been reminded that a week is a long time in sporting politics. Before the Olympics started, when she entered into her now famous wager with the British sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, she called the Poms a bunch of "serial chokers". This morning she was quoted in The Australian saying that the Aussies had become complacent. To rub salt into her self-inflicted wounds, she quoted from Tony Blair, who had told her that long-term investment produced long-distance pedal power.
Australia's 200m freestyle relay gold medal winners
To tread the dark path of sporting cliché - or to retread it - Australia has been a victim of its own success. The Australian Institute of Sport, established in the wake of the disastrous Montreal Games, set the gold standard - and has since been copied all over the world.
Then there's what might be called the "Troy Cooley syndrome". Troy Cooley is the Australian bowling coach nabbed by England who helped mastermind the Ashes victory in 2005 (when he returned to the Australian fold, he helped coach Ricky Ponting's men to the 5-0 whitewash).
The British cycling coach Shane Sutton won gold at the 1978 Commonwealth Games for - wait for it, Australia. Top quality coaches can reportedly earn five times as much in Britain than in Australia.
An Australian coached the Brazilian winner of the 50 metres freestyle, who edged out the pre-games favourite, Eamon Sullivan. The legendary Aussie swim coach, Ken Wood, openly sold his training techniques to the Chinese, which might have cost his protégé, Jessica Schipper, a gold (she was beaten by a Chinese swimmer).
Anyway, here are a few other quick thoughts, which will hopefully undermine a few dog-eared stereotypes rather than reinforce them:
• Are the Aussies win-at-all-costs competitors? Among others, the swimmers Libby Trickett, Grant Hackett and Leisel Jones showed themselves to be champions both in victory and defeat.
• Are the Aussies nerveless performers, athletic robots who can turn it on every time, as the Brits often appear to think and fear? The world record-holding swimmer Eamon Sullivan produced an under-par performance.
• The notion that Australian sports stars regard success as a platform rather than a peak, as the Brits are sometimes accused of doing ("open-top bus syndrome"), also fell apart a bit at this games. Libby Trickett and Leisel Jones both fell off a little after early golds (although they did make a great comeback in the relay), and Sullivan had set a couple of world records in the heats.
Who knows whether the Brits will ultimately beat the Aussies. But goodness me, the next few days are going to be close and fun.
Thanks, as ever, for your comments on the divisive nature, or otherwise, of Aussie sport. Summer unites and winter divides. Dare I say it, but I think BryantObsessed got it pretty much spot on, even if he did get sent to the comment "sin bin" for a later remark (I don't get to the see the ones that are blocked or held up, by the way).
And, as a few of you wrote, I should have spent a lot more time talking about that great summertime national sport: cricket (good to see the "Sheffield Shield" make a comeback?). And soccer, if you go by attendances, is definitely starting to challenge it, as MoMcCackie pointed out.
- Nick Bryant
- 18 Aug 08, 07:36 GMT
As much of Australia continues to enjoy that quadrennial "feel good factor" delivered by the Olympics (or will Beijing produce only a "feel pretty good factor"?), I'm going to be a bit of a killjoy and focus on what is making many people here feel bad. The uncertain state of the economy.
It is not even 18 months since the then Prime Minister John Howard made the optimistic pronouncement: "Working families in Australia have never been better off." But if Kevin Rudd made such a statement today, howls of laughter would quickly be followed by the foot-steps of men in white coats.
Former PM John Howard
Back in March, 2007, Mr Howard no doubt believed his upbeat assessment to be true, and not entirely without justification. The economy had just enjoyed its 16th year of uninterrupted growth, and performed more strongly than other OECD countries (the annual Aussie rate of growth was 3.6%, compared to the OECD average of 2.5%).
With 75% of growth in the world economy coming from Asian and other developing economies, Australia's resources boom appeared permanent and immutable. The country's terms of trade were at their highest in 50 years.
Perhaps John Howard made the mistake of looking too far west, to the Pilbara and other mining centres in booming Western Australian. Instead, he should have been keeping a closer eye on the western suburbs of Sydney, the home of the famed "Howard battlers", the hard-working, aspirational working class voters whose desertion from Labor underpinned a decade of conservative rule.
But even as Mr Howard delivered his Macmillanesque statement, the "battlers" were already grappling with rising prices and more costly borrowing. On the eve of the federal election in November, interest rates rose for the 10th time since 2002.
Since then things have got worse. Petrol costs have increased by 18% since this time last year, and household costs, such as mortgages and rental payments, rose by 62% between 2001 and 2006. Overall, the cost of living has risen by 4.5% in the past financial year, according to the Bureau of Statistics. The stock market, meanwhile, is down 26% since November, when it reached its peak.
"So many Australians feel overwhelmed by their housing costs and are unsure whether they really are much better off today than at the beginning of the decade," a study from the National Centre for Social and Modelling reported last month. Farmers tackle drought in Australia
Arguably, Australia is still better placed than most other western economies to ride out the global economic storm. Corporate profits are in good shape, and Western Australia continues to enjoy the China-fuelled boom (although a slowing global demand for Chinese goods could have a knock-on effect).
Moreover, Australia has not yet recorded one quarter of negative growth - let alone the two consecutive quarters of negative growth required for economists to start deploying the "r" word, recession. The Reserve Bank predicts growth will slow to 2%, the economy's most listless performance since the early 1990s.
Still, parts of the country - like much of the drought-hit bush and outback, along with much of the east - may already have entered a "mental recession".
So two questions: does all this gloomy economic talk ring true? And, if so, how badly is Australia hurting?
- Nick Bryant
- 11 Aug 08, 03:47 GMT
I wonder what the great, track-suited one, former Prime Minister John Howard, would have made of the Australian athletes' uniforms at Friday night's Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. Green and gold, those tricky sartorial staples, were replaced by blue and silver. Was that:
a) UnAustralian.
b) Moving with the times (according to the designer, 'the new colour combination better represented modern Australia and represented the youthful spirit of our Australian team.')
Or c) Categorical proof that fashion and sport do not mix.
But I digress. At this high holy time, when so many Australians happily become members of a nationwide, sofa-based cheer squad, I'm going to set out what may seem, to outsiders at least, like a perversely counter-intuitive argument.
Here it is: that sport divides this country as much, if not more, than it unites it. It demarcates this vast and sports-loving land along geographical, social and even ethnic lines.
Australian players gather after their 39-10 defeat to New Zealand in Auckland, New Zealand, 2 August 2008 Let's start with rugby union. I often find myself re-telling the story of the businessman arriving in Melbourne who turned on his hotel television hoping to catch the Bledisloe Cup, the showdown between the Wallabies and the All Blacks. Instead of marvelling at the haka, he found himself watching 'Doe, ray, me,' with Julie Andrews as the pack leader, and a front row made up entirely of smiling young Austrians resplendent in leather lederhosen.
Earlier this month, thrillingly, I had a similar experience. Instead of showing the rugby from Auckland, Channel Seven in Melbourne broadcast Cool Runnings. We were treated to the hapless Jamaican bobsleigh team rather than the much-improved Wallabies, because rugby union is not seen as a ratings winner in Victoria.
Generally, rugby union is an elite sport, for which private schools provide the main nurseries of talent and where most of the top clubs are to found in the more well-heeled parts of town, like Manly, the Eastern Suburbs and Randwick. Topping the local table in Sydney right now is Sydney University, the country's oldest and arguably poshest university.
Rugby league, by contrast, is the sport of the New South Wales and Queensland proletariat - a largely blue-collar game whose fan-base is mainly blue-collar. Again, it can hardly be considered a national sport. Over 80% of its participants come from New South Wales and Queensland.
Or take Australian Rules Football, which last week celebrated its 150th anniversary. Tellingly, it was first known as Melbourne Rules, then became Victorian Rules and finally Australian Rules when it spread to the other colonies. Now, it has become the country's most-watched sport, and is busily planning to set up new teams in Sydney and Queensland. But for all its rampant expansionism, ten of its 16 professional teams are still to be found in Victoria.
Soccer is another case in point. Australia did not even have a national team until 1922, and even now it is widely viewed as a sport populated mainly by the country's European immigrants. Reflecting its multi-cultural base and make-up, the Socceroos continue to field a polyglot mix of players, with surnames like Petrovic, Sprianovic, Zadhovich, Troisi, Djite, Vargas, Sarkies and Valeria.
Admittedly, the lines are being blurred. Melbourne Storm is currently the holder of the rugby league premiership - although its average attendance remains at 11,711, which is pitiful in sports-mad Melbourne. Similarly, in both 2005 and 2005 the Aussie Rules grand final was contested between two expansion clubs, the Sydney Swans and the Perth-based West Coast Eagles. And if you illustrate graphically how the fan-bases of various winter sports intersected and overlapped, it would look a Venn diagram.
There is also, of course, a paradox - a rich one at that - because sport has long been viewed a springboard for Australian nationalism, whether it be the country's nation-binding joy at Donald Bradman sticking it to the Poms, or Australians doing disproportionately well at the Olympics.
It's also interesting that the country's swim team is a source of such fierce national pride - which perhaps augments John Pilger's oft-quoted remark about the beach being Australia's 'true democracy'. Perhaps the pool - or at least water - is, as well.
Cricket, the great summer game, is another exception.
Australian success at the Olympics will no doubt produce the usual bout of face-paint nationalism, and why not? One of the many things I love about this country is the affection reserved for the national sports teams representing it at the Olympics - whether it's the Olyroos, the Hockeyroos or the Greco-Roman-roos.
But don't be fooled by the make-up, for its camouflages a quite different reality: that Australia is also divided by its infectious love and appreciation of sport.
- Nick Bryant
- 4 Aug 08, 09:59 GMT
One of my favourite yarns from the Sydney Olympics concerns the thin blue line painted onto the roads as a guide for runners in the marathon. In the middle of the night, as most of Sydney slept, someone armed with a brush and a can of blue paint decided the route was in need of a detour - and redirected it into a nearby pub.
I have just been compiling a report about the matchless success of the Sydney Olympics, which were famously described by the then President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, as the most successful in the history of the modern Games. Dawn in Sydney on the opening day of the Games
That diverted blue line helps lead you to the answer. Neither Sydney nor Australia took the Games too seriously. John Morse, then head of the Australian Tourism Commission, put it rather neatly. The organisers realized that the games were not only a 16-day sporting competition but an excuse for a 16-day party.
From the very outset, the organisers wanted to imprint their country's personality onto the games: its laid back approach to life; its sense of larrikin irreverence and fun.
They were helped by the army of volunteers, who cracked jokes and launched into song to entertain spectators waiting in lines and queues. They were aided by the "live sites" dotted around the city, which were originally intended as a way of dispersing spectators and thus preventing the transportation system from being overloaded, but which took on a life all of their own.
Sydney provided the most fabulous of backdrops, and the simple fact that the Games took place a year before 9/11 meant they were not swamped with overbearing security.
A sense of fun combined with a sense of inclusiveness. There was a strong belief that the Olympics could have a unifying impact on a country where 24% of its resident population was born beyond Australian shores. The organizers did so by creating - and then liaising closely - with a Multicultural Advisory Committee, drawn from Australia's ethnic communities. It worked a treat.
The organising committee also spent years drumming up support in the bush and the Outback. Cleverly, they targeted kids, knowing their infectious enthusiasm would transmit to their parents - as, indeed, it did.
In the Aboriginal athlete Cathy Freeman, the Games also had the perfect poster girl. On the first night, she lit the Olympic flame; on the 11th she won a gold medal in the 400m, and it vested the Sydney Games with an even greater historical meaning.
The Sydney Olympics has been described as Australia's Coming of Age: the country held up a mirror to itself and very much liked what it saw. Sandy Hollway, the CEO of the games, talks of how the opening ceremony dealt a fatal blow to what was labeled "the cultural cringe", an ingrained sense of inferiority. Samaranch described the opening ceremony as the "most beautiful" he had ever seen.
In a setting where metal provides the currency of success, for 16 days in September 2000 Sydney set the gold standard for the rest of the world.
I'd love to hear your memories of the Sydney Games, or what you think was the meaning attached to them. And why were they the best?
- Nick Bryant
- 29 Jul 08, 09:53 GMT
John Howard's immigration policy was neatly encapsulated by a single sound-bite. It was delivered two days before the 2001 federal election, before journalists at the National Press Club. "I yield to nobody in my determination to maintain the absolute right of Australia to decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they come," he said.
The backdrop to those comments, of course, was the Tampa crisis in August, when Mr Howard dispatched Australian special forces to board a freighter at sea to block 439 mainly Afghan refugees from entering Australia's territorial waters. Asylum seekers on the Tampa in August 2001
The MV Tampa, a Norwegian vessel, had rescued the refugees from a distressed fishing vessel in international waters. But Alexander Downer, the then foreign affairs minister, announced that "Australia has no obligation under international law to accept the rescued into Australian waters".
Legally, Downer claimed to be applying the strict letter of international law. But it was the Howard government's moral stance that drew international criticism from human rights groups.
Afterwards, the Howard government instituted what became known as the Pacific Solution, where asylum seekers were transported to detention camps on small islands in the Pacific Ocean, Nauru and Manus Island. They were sent there whatever the merits of their claims, and whatever level of persecution they were trying to flee. The claims for asylum were processed while they were kept under lock and key.
In October that year, the asylum issue flared again when the Howard government claimed that illegal immigrants on board a vessel intercepted 100 nautical miles north of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean had thrown children overboard - a claim a subsequent Senate inquiry found to be untrue. John Howard
In the 2001 election, John Howard's Liberal-led coalition won an increased majority. By contrast, Labor's share of the primary vote slumped to a 67-year low. John Howard's hardline stance on asylum seekers arguably won him the election. Fears about the dangers posed by foreign outsiders had already been stocked by the attacks of 9/11. These overlapping issues of national security and border security revived the government's fortunes. For much of the year, it had been trailing in the polls. Labor had been "wedged" on the question of asylum seekers.
During last year's election, Kevin Rudd promised to end the Pacific Solution, arguably a brave political stance for a party that had suffered in the past from being labelled weak on border security.
Back in February, the new Labor government made good that promise - effectively dismantling the Pacific Solution, when a group of 21 Sri Lankan asylum seekers were flown off Nauru.
Now the new Rudd government has gone further in its overhaul of asylum policy by ending the practice of jailing all asylum seekers - a mandatory policy, which in fairness to the Howard government, was instituted by the Labor government of the 1990s. Similarly, children will no longer be detained in an immigration detention centre.
The Australian government's detention centre on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean will remain open, and the government reserves the right to detain some people arriving by boat - mainly as a deterrent to people smugglers. But, crucially, the onus will be on immigration officials to justify why they pose a risk that requires confinement.
Some will regard this as a moral corrective, similar in spirit and application to the apology to Aboriginal Australians for past injustices and the decision to ratify Kyoto. Certainly, it marks another definitive break from the recent past.
Others will claim that it has weakened Australia's border community. This was the response from Senator Chris Ellison, the opposition immigration spokesman: "We have to have a strong immigration policy and legal system which says, 'If you come to Australia and you have no right to be here then you either return from whence you came or your matter is resolved, and whilst that is being done, Australia has the right to detain you'".
Who has got it right?
- Nick Bryant
- 28 Jul 08, 08:29 GMT
Is Kevin Rudd part of the global rise of the religious left? Or, more accurately but less evocatively, is he part of the rise of the religious centre-left?
Keen observers of the Australian political scene will remember that his campaign for the leadership of the Labor Party back in December 2006 was something of a faith-based enterprise. It was achieved partly on the back of a serious-minded, 5,000-word essay in The Monthly magazine on religion in politics. In it, he spoke of his admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who stood in defiance of the Nazis and was executed at a concentration camp in 1945 as a result. bonhoeffer_b234_getty.jpg
Rudd described him as "the man I admire most in the history of the 20th Century".
He also argued that a "Christian perspective, informed by a social gospel or Christian socialist tradition, should not be rejected contemptuously by secular politicians as if these views are an unwelcome intrusion into the political sphere. If the churches are barred from participating in the great debates about the values that ultimately underpin our society, our economy and our polity, then we have reached a very strange place indeed".
Other global leaders have enunciated a similar message from the centre-left. In his book Courage, Gordon Brown also eulogised Bonhoeffer, while Barack Obama regularly ventriloquises the religious teachings of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr (as opposed to the civil rights leader's searing critiques of white America, which he has a tendency to downplay because they blunt his "post-racial" message).
The global religious left's views on social justice are animated by their interpretation of the Bible as a social gospel.
I mention all of this because of the speech Kevin Rudd delivered in the open-air mass that launched the recent Catholic World Youth Day celebrations. I wonder whether a modern-day Australian prime minister has ever delivered such an overtly religious speech (any help on that front gratefully received).
His brief comments that day sound and read like a counter-blast to Richard Dawkins, the best-selling author of The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens, who has recently written God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Rudd offered a stout defence of the welcome place for religion in the public square.
"Some say there is no place for faith in the 21st Century. I say they are wrong. Some say that faith is the enemy of reason, I say, also they are wrong... It was the church that began first schools for the poor. It was the church that began first hospitals for the poor. It was the church that began first refuges for the poor and these great traditions continue for the future. And I say this, that Christianity has been an overwhelming force for good in the world."
For the leader of a secular nation, did Kevin Rudd go too far? Or is it only natural and entirely appropriate that Rudd's religious beliefs should find expression in his politics? And finally, the question with which I started, is he a happy standard-bearer in the global rise of the religious left?
PS Staying with religion, I've thought long and hard this week about how we reported World Youth Day, and whether we focused too much attention on the sexual abuse scandal. On reflection, I think our overall coverage was balanced. On television, radio and the website, we gave regular voice to the young Catholic pilgrims, along with their spiritual leaders, and reported on their infectious enthusiasm and impressive spectacle. Frankly, they received much more airtime than the critics. But we did report on the plight of the victims, and I firmly believe we were right to do so.
That we kept on revisiting the abuse story was largely due to the public relations of the Vatican and World Youth Day organisers. On his flight to Australia, the Pope indicated he would apologise. But doubt was cast on that by a senior Vatican spokesman later in the week who said, rather cryptically, that there was no guarantee of a verbal apology. Bishop Anthony Fisher, the co-ordinator of WYD, also kept the story in the headlines by suggesting that victims should not "dwell crankily" on old wounds (later in the week, he apologised himself).
Had the church simply announced beforehand that the Pope would apologise and meet some victims, and indicated when that would happen, the story would not have received anywhere near as much prominence. But the guessing game lasted the entire week. Even until the apology itself, the church kept reporters and the victims groups in the dark. The prepared text of the homily that Saturday morning, which was distributed to journalists, did not include the apology. His meeting with four victims chosen by the Catholic church on Monday morning was also kept a closely-guarded secret.
Many of you have already addressed this in your comments, but, as always, I'm keen to get your feedback.
- Nick Bryant
- 20 Jul 08, 07:32 GMT
How do you measure the success of an event like Catholic World Youth Day?
popemobile_getty226b.jpg If it is in the enthusiasm and devotion of its participants, then the Vatican will have deemed this an enormous triumph. Waving their national flags, strumming their guitars and performing their dances, the 225,000 pilgrims have stamped their personalities and spirituality on this city. Their flame-coloured rucksacks have added a splash of colour.
One of the main aims of this event is to strengthen pilgrims' faith in a manner which safeguards the future of the Roman Catholic church. At the climactic papal mass, which was celebrated at Randwick racecourse in Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, Australia's most senior Catholic, spoke of how the pilgrims were "alive with evangelical energy", and how young priests were "eager to preach an ancient faith".
But the Vatican will have to wait to see if the fervour that we've seen in Sydney translates into young men applying for the priesthood or young women showing a desire to become nuns. It needs them. Here in Australia, the shortage of priests has led to the twinning of parishes.
Catholicism remains Australia's biggest religion or denomination, with almost 28% of the population describing themselves as Catholic.
If WYD is judged by its staging and spectacle, the organisers will no doubt be delighted. With Sydney providing a uniquely telegenic backdrop, pictures of staggering beauty have beamed around the world.
Certainly, the event has been intricately and extravagantly choreographed, from the arrival of the Pope on board his papal boat-cade, with his robes billowing like a spinnaker in the wind, to the Stations of the Cross, the dramatic depiction of Christ's last hours on earth, which was performed in outdoor sites around the city. Sydney and the Roman Catholic Church - both know how to put on a spectacular show.
The Pope called it "an unforgettable experience". Throughout the week, his image was beamed on to one of the stone pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
So, impressive public pageantry - but what of the public atonement? Departing from the homily given to reporters ahead of time, Pope Benedict said he was "deeply sorry" for the "evil" of the sexual abuse scandal involving members of the Australian Catholic priesthood.
His comments were stronger than those delivered in America in April, but he did not meet the victims of abuse, as he did in the US.
That has angered victims, who wanted to hear directly from the Pope. Broken Rites, the main victims group here, also wanted the Pope to criticise Australian bishops for what they claim has been their mishandling of the scandal.
Victims were incensed by the comments of Bishop Anthony Fisher, the World Youth Day co-ordinator, who said they should not "dwell crankily" on old wounds.
What of the demonstrations from the NoToPope coalition, protesting the Vatican's stance on birth control, homosexuality and abortion? Much of the heat was taken out of the protests when the federal court quashed special regulations brought in by the New South Wales government which threatened heavy penalties for offending the pilgrims.
Protesters lobbed a few condoms in the direction of some pilgrims, and fashioned a popemobile of their own, but the demonstrations did not amount to much.
The federal and New South Wales governments have apparently spent A$160 million ($200 million) for the event. No doubt there will be a lively public debate over the coming week about whether it was all worth it.
Thanks for all your comments on the blog earlier this week, especially from Chris Sidoti, who was quoted in the original piece. Has anything you have seen, heard or witnessed changed the way you think, or reinforced your thinking? Or, put another way, how was it all for you?
- Nick Bryant
- 16 Jul 08, 15:52 GMT
The Pope in Australia. So much to talk about. So much to blog about.
I thought by now that I would be reporting on the first arrests under those highly-contentious special regulations brought in for Catholic World Youth Day, which threatened hefty fines for annoying or causing inconvenience to a pilgrim. They made an offence of causing offence.
The Pope arrives in Australia
Secretly, I'd rather hoped that the police would carry out a dawn raid on the surf school at Bondi that has been offering "walk on water" lessons for visiting pilgrims. But those killjoys at the federal court have spoiled all our fun, by ruling that the special laws brought in by the New South Wales parliament impinge of the right of free speech. Who would have thought it?
Then I thought about raising the intriguing question of why Australia's two foremost churchmen, Cardinal George Pell and Peter Jensen, the Anglican bishop of Sydney, are both leading lights in what some would call the fundamentalist wings of their respective churches. Both have taken staunchly traditionalist stances on pre-marital sex, homosexuality and the interpretation of the scriptures.
Archbishop Jensen was a founder of the Global Anglican Future Conference, the group which is so staunchly opposed to Gene Robinson, the Anglican communion's first openly gay bishop. Cardinal Pell has been accused of standing for "the kind of Catholicism that we saw in the Middle Ages," by no less a figure than Chris Sidoti, Australia's former human rights commissioner.
Is this mere coincidence that the two men both come from Australia, or part of this country's "conservative tradition" that I keep banging on about?
Then I thought about sharing some of the papal press coverage, which has revealed once again the fabulously irreverent streak of the Aussie media. "Benny and his Jet" was how Sydney's Daily Telegraph described the Papal flight. Channel 7 has taken to calling the papal retreat on the outskirts of Sydney his "Holy Hideaway". When the rail unions threatened a transport strike to coincide with World Youth Day, the Sydney Morning Herald came up with "Stations of the Very Cross".
But it's the headlines that arouse anger rather than amusement which are impossible to ignore. Earlier this week, I wrote about the sexual abuse scandal that threatened to overshadow this event, but since then there have been fresh allegations against Cardinal George Pell's handling of it.
They came from Anthony Foster, whose daughters were raped repeatedly over five years by a Melbourne parish priest, Kevin O'Donnell, while they were at primary school. Emma Foster never recovered and, after years of drug abuse, committed suicide earlier this year at the age of 26. His sister, Katherine, developed a dependency on alcohol before being hit by a drunk driver and left physically and mentally disabled. She now requires 24-hour care.
Mr Foster described to ABC's Lateline programme how Cardinal Pell, who was then the Archbishop of Melbourne, had allegedly stalled the family's fight for compensation. Their protracted legal battle took eight years.
The main spokesman for World Youth Day, Bishop Anthony Fisher, was asked about the controversy today. His response is worth quoting in full:
"The cardinal and I were otherwise occupied last night enjoying the youth festival so we didn't see the Lateline story. All I've seen is the reports in the newspapers today.
"Happily, I think most of Australia was enjoying [and] delighting in the beauty and goodness of these young people and the hope for us doing these sorts of things better in the future, as we saw last night, rather than dwelling crankily, as a few people are doing, on old wounds."
- Nick Bryant
- 7 Jul 08, 08:41 GMT
An Australian stockman surveys the bottom of a dry dam on his drought-hit property After all the shock associated with climate change are we beginning to experience the bore factor? Are the warnings becoming so frequent, and so very apocalyptic, that they have lost the capacity to arrest the public conscience?
Are we suffering already from "green fatigue", whereby we start treating interim, draft and final reports like white noise: something which is disturbing, even painful, but which we try to block out? Or are the warnings exaggerated?
Here in Australia the question is particularly pertinent, since the economist Ross Garnaut has just delivered his long-awaited draft report on how climate change could affect the Australian economy and outlined the case for a carbon emissions trading scheme by 2010.
Like the accomplished and politically astute economist that he is, Garnaut deployed numbers and statistics to maximum effect. If climate change went unchecked, he warned that by the end of the century:
- an extra 4,000 Queenslanders would die each year from heat-related deaths
- an extra 5.5 million Australians would contract dengue fever annually
- that the Great Barrier Reef would die
- a potential 90% reduction in water flows in the Murray-Darling river basin, which irrigates the nation's food bowl, would lead to the collapse of agricultural production.
In short, he was arguing that global warming presents an existential threat to the Australian way of life.
Judging from some early responses, these dire warnings about global warming have left many here cold. Here's Michael Costa, the treasurer of New South Wales and a senior figure in the Australian Labor Party: "Chicken Little arguments are no substitute for getting right the important details on issues of far reaching consequence... For example, claims from some quarters that the Great Barrier Reef would be destroyed if Australia, which emits less than 2% of global greenhouse gases, does not adopt an ETS [emissions trading scheme] are patent nonsense." A number of senior climatologists have also questioned the science underpinning his warnings.
Then there those from what might be called the protectionist camp, who argue that the kind of broad-based emissions trading which Garnaut is advocating would be an act of economic vandalism. Here's Alan Wood, the retiring economics editor of The Australian:
"If Australia moves ahead of the rest of the world to curb carbon emissions, there will be no benefit to Australia or the world but a potentially very high cost to us."
Critics of Garnaut argue that Australia emits just 1% of world emissions, and that what it does is essentially irrelevant without concerted action from India and China. The counter-argument is that Australia's per capita emissions are the highest in the OECD, that it is the world's largest exporter of coal and, like any responsible country, it has a moral compulsion to act.
No wonder Ross Garnaut called this policy problem so very "diabolical".
Potentially it also presents a diabolical political problem for Kevin Rudd, whose government is committed to launching an emissions trading scheme by 2010. That is also the year when he is likely to face re-election.
Rudd's approval rating has already has dropped to 54%, his lowest point since the election, partly because of rising fuel costs. A further hike on the eve of the next election as a result of the introduction of an emissions trading scheme might damage him further.
Again, the alternative view is that this kind of major reform could boost him, by burnishing his green credentials and demonstrating brave leadership. A recent poll suggested that voters prefer it when Rudd focuses on big ideas and grand visions rather than scrappy, day-to-day politics.
His predecessor as prime minister also offers a useful historical lesson. At the1998 election, John Howard won respect, along with a second term in office, by campaigning for the unpopular GST sales tax.
Last November, it was fashionable, especially in the international media, to headline the federal poll the "climate change election". Given the importance of Workchoices, John Howard's unpopular labour reforms, not to mention the question of whether a 68-year-old prime minister should be granted a fifth term in office, that was surely an exaggeration. But the 2010 election could easily be lassoed with that tagline.
So will Australians then be suffering from "green fatigue"? Or will the dramatic issue of climate change infuse them with the fierce urgency of now?
- Nick Bryant
- 2 Jul 08, 01:27 GMT
Peter Garrett has so far proved a much more accomplished rock star than politician. Politics seems to confine the former lead singer of Midnight Oil, a free-wheeling presence on stage but a strangely listless figure at the dispatch box.
As a front man, the sheer physicality of his jerky dancing-style and head-banging delivery was mesmerising. As an environment minister, many complain he has lost both his voice and "mojo".
During the campaign, the Chaser team ambushed him with a group of musicians, claiming he would only speak his mind with a band playing behind him. Then, on reaching government, Garrett was forced to the side of the stage. Kevin Rudd handed the climate change portion of his shadow portfolio to Senator Penny Wong, and barred him from talking on the subject in the House of Representatives.
This week Australia's rock star politician met America's movie star politician, the California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - "Oil be back" ran the headline in the Sydney Morning Herald. But the Governator has been much more successful at transferring his star power to the political arena than the Gyrator.
I mention all this because Australian rock and roll celebrates its 50th birthday this coming weekend. The midwife, apparently, was Johnny O'Keefe, whose landmark song, The Wild One, was released on July 5, 1958. To mark this happy occasion, Midnight Oil has been adjudged by a panel of judges assembled by the Melbourne Age to have produced Australia's number one album.
Its choice was 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1, the band's 1982 breakthrough album. Diesel and Dust, which featured the band's biggest international hit, Beds are Burning, also ranked in the top 10. As the Age notes: "If this poll is any indication, they are this country's favourite band and the most uniquely Australian." A musical variant on "Peak Oil".
Here is the top ten, by the way:
1 10-1 - Midnight Oil (1981)
2 Radios Appear - Radio Birdman (1977)
3 Living in the 70s - Skyhooks (1974)
4 Hi Fi Way - You Am I (1995)
5 Stoneage Romeos - Hoodoo Gurus (1984)
6 Gossip - Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls (1986)
7 (I'm) Stranded - The Saints (1977)
8 Kick - INXS (1987)
9 Diesel and Dust - Midnight Oil (1987)
10 Back in Black - AC/DC (1980)
For those who do not want to wade through the entire top 50, I can report that no former Neighbours' stars appears in it. (Is it mean to add the word "thankfully" to that sentence?) More controversial is the omission of the Bee Gees or Men at Work. Rolf Harris, who this week was inducted into the ARIA musical hall of fame, does not make it either.And poor old Johnny O'Keefe doesn't make the cut, despite holding the Australian record of 29 Top 40 hits. But, then, singles were all the rage during the Menzies era rather than albums.
So Midnight Oil is the best Australian band of the past fifty years. And uniquely Australian. Fair dinkum?
PS: Another cheesy headline of the week, again from the subs desk of the Sydney Morning Herald. This one announced the marriage of golfer Greg Norman to the tennis great, Chris Evert: "Norman gets his birdie".
- Nick Bryant
- 29 Jun 08, 07:52 GMT
Writing in his new blog, our UK home editor Mark Easton makes the case for a new British national anthem: one which, in his words, would inspire, stir and move people. Like Mark, I've often suffered from anthem envy, whether it's Land of My Fathers, The Star-Spangled Banner or La Marseillaise. I defy anyone not to be moved by that stirring scene in Casablanca, where Victor Laszlo belts out the French national anthem in valiant defiance of the Nazis. "Play it again, Victor," it makes you want to shout.
Australia, of course, has already gone through the process of ditching God Save the Queen. It started that process with a plebiscite in 1977, in which Australians were asked to choose between four alternatives: Waltzing Matilda, Song of Australia, Advance Australia Fair,and God Save the Queen. Advance Australia Fair got 43%, Waltzing Matilda came second with 28% and God Save the Queen got bronze, with 19%. Finally in 1984, Advance Australia Fair was officially adopted as the country's anthem just in time for the Los Angeles Olympics.
As an aside, the "anthem vote" remains one of the few plebiscites or referendums in which Australians opted overwhelmingly for change. At the risk of boring you rigid with mind-numbing trivia, only eight out of 44 attempts to change the constitution have been carried. It's why constitutional commentators sometimes call Australia the "frozen continent", another Aussie epithet to add to the list, throw in the bin or hurl in the direction of the barbie.
Since then, there have been occasional grumbles. John Howard, the former prime minister, was apparently a big fan of Waltzing Matilda, despite the now-disputed notion that Banjo Paterson's poem started life as a socialist anthem. Back in 2001, the Liberal Party Senator Sandy Macdonald called for AAF to be jettisoned, lest "we all go to sleep singing it". It was serviceable rather than stirring, went the argument.
Others have been slightly mystified by the lines: "We've golden soil and wealth for toil, Our home is girt by sea." Girt by sea? And curiously, in this laid back nation, "toil" features prominently.
Coincidentally, I've been compiling a report this week on the matchless success of the Sydney Olympics, and must have listened to Advance Australia Fair about a dozen times. The opening ceremony, that tear-jerking orgy of Aussiedom, featured the most rousing of renditions - arguably the finest ever. With the help of singer Julie Anthony, we also got to hear the words of the second verse, which carries special resonance for expats like me.
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross,
We'll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this Commonwealth of ours
Renowned of all the lands;
For those who've come across the seas
We've boundless plains to share;
With courage let us all combine
To advance Australia fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing
"Advance Australia fair!"
So a question: back in 1977, did Australia get it right? Or do you, as Australians, sometimes suffer from anthem envy yourselves?
redharrison.jpg
UPDATE: On the subject of rousing singing, over 100 family members, friends and former colleagues gathered on Friday afternoon to celebrate the life of the BBC's legendary Sydney correspondent, Red Harrison. St Paul's Church in Cobbity, New South Wales, echoed to the sounds of Jerusalem and God is our Strength and Refuge, sung with fitting gusto to the thumping beat of The Dambusters' March (as well as being a peerless broadcaster, Red was an accomplished pilot).
Piers Ackerman, a columnist with the Daily Telegraph and a long-time friend, delivered the eulogy. He spoke of Red's "mahogany voice... like well-loved timber" and saluted "one of the great communicators that this nation has ever seen".
The skies were blue and cloudless - a perfect day for flying.
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