The flap about Mathias Cormann’s Schwarzeneggerian description of Bill Shorten as a “girlie man” isn’t too significant in itself. But in the context of other developments, it suggests a couple of patterns that represent big problems for the Abbott government.
First, Cormann has joined Joe Hockey and Arthur Sinodinos in making an idiot of himself. There’s now no-one among the key economic ministers who has any real credibility left. Add to that the hopelessness of the key spending ministers (Andrews, Dutton and Pyne) and it becomes clear that the Budget fiasco was, as they say, no accident.
At this point, it’s hard to see how the government can turn the economic debate around, even given a radical reshuffle of the existing team. Their best hope is probably that attention will remain focused on foreign policy.
Second, coming on the heels of a string of similarly disastrous statements from prominent rightwing figures (Barry Spurr, Alan Moran, Aaron Lane) it’s a pretty clear indication of how the Australian right talks when they think no one is listening, or forget that they are on record, and how far out of touch they are with today’s social mores.
Essentially, they are living in a bubble where they imagine that media figures like Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine and Alan Jones represent the views of the majority of right-thinking people. In reality (most obviously in the case of Jones, but equally true of Bolt and Devine) these are people who make a good living by taking the views of the most bigoted 10 per cent or so of the Australian population (AFAICT, Australia is no better or worse than most other countries in terms of the prevalence of bigotry), and reflecting them back to the same audience in a more-or-less coherent form.
Except in rare and much resented cases like libelling people on account of their race, the Bolts and Devines are protected by the rules of free speech and the fact that they serve the interests of the Murdoch press. But that’s not true for politicians, thinktankers or participants in public inquiries. In these venues, as I know from my own experience, anything you say can and will be used against you. Unfortunately, for the Australian right, the racist, sexist and generally nasty stuff that goes down a treat at Young Liberal meetings and similar can no longer be laughed off when it gets out in public.
John Quiggin 
It’s true that in terms of oratorical skills or even etiquette, Cormann is not exactly faced with competition in the Everett Dirksen, let alone Disraeli, league; but he always struck me as having a marginally greater competence in spoken English than the cabinet’s obvious bogans, beginning with the Dear Leader himself. (So he can hardly defend his “girly man” stuff through pleading ignorance of linguistic nuances.)
Having consulted Wikipedia, I now attribute Cormann’s more-or-less-adequate stringing together of English sentences to the fact that he is, um, Belgian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Cormann#Early_life
Cormann’s alma mater, the University of Louvain/Leuven, is/was a weird sort of place. I don’t know details of what it was like in Cormann’s day. But during the Vietnam conflict it had a bad reputation for Berkeley-style shenanigans, aggravated by (a) its low-level civil war between Francophones and Flemings, (b) its magnet-like attractiveness to draft-dodging Catholic-in-name-only students, kicking against what remained of the pre-Vatican-II goads.
But before that, Louvain/Leuven used to give degrees to polymaths like Fulton Sheen, who was fluent in at least six languages. From Sheen to Cormann in the space of less than a century … such is, ahem, progress.
Are we going to wake up and find we have been living a nightmare,. Has to be an explanation.
Cormann and Pyne are doubling the wager and defending Cormann’s statement. I am quite happy that after shooting himself in one foot, Cormann wants to shoot himself in the other foot… with Pyne’s support. Hmmm, maybe Christopher wants his portfolio.
JQ – in that triumvirate mentioned, you missed the egregious Janet Albrechtsen.
David Marr on Insiders a month or so ago made the observation that the Liberals oft stated claim of being the better economic managers was looking decidedly shaky. If the average punter starts to no longer believe this to be true (despite the commentary from those mentioned), then what have the Liberals left to offer the electorate ?
There were by elections in WA and NT yesterday. Leaving aside all the usual stuff about swings against governing parties and State/Territory elections’ relevance to the federal mood…
In WA it was Troy Buswell’s vacated seat of “Vasse”. Historically an ultra-safe Liberal seat. The Nationals contested it in a three-way with the Greens – the ALP were either too ashamed or sensible to run, depending on your point of view.
Last year Buswell won it with a 21% majority. Yesterday the Liberals won it but with a 17.8% swing against them (it was roughly 53% Liberal to 47% National, after preferences).
The Greens got 18% of the primary vote and were ahead of the Nationals in 6 out of the 13 polling booths.
In the NT it was the electorate of “Casuarina” (previously ALP by 9.3%). Again, a “safe” ALP seat. They held it but had a swing against them of 4.1%. The Greens got 11% of the first preferences.
All info thanks to Antony Green from the ABC.
Does he say these things about Shorten because he sees himself as a core man?
@kevin1
J.Q. should have titled this thread, “Time to terminate Cormann the Barbarian.”
Is Cormann making a “Last Stand” before attempting a “Total Recall” on the gaffe that might “Sabotage” his career?
@bjb
Culture war …
Anyone who thinks that economic decisions should be made in terms of the masculinity of the maker of the decision should not be let within a mile of the levers of power.
Unless Cormann possesses martial arts skills I am unaware of, I would back Shorten in any altercation between Cormann and Shorten.
Pr Q said:
Ahh who can forget the way that Pr Q’s professional career was ruined, he was banned from campus and publicly disgraced after his personal emails, in which he was unwise enough to let off steam about the current scene, were illegally intercepted and “got out in public”. Oh wait a minute, thats in Bizarro World. In reality I dont think Pr Q has suffered greatly for his personal attitudes or political beliefs.
BTW nice use of the passive voice to describe the crime of email hacking which Pr Q spent the better part of a year denouncing when it adversely affected his side of politics. And he has the nerve to denounce “tribalism” on the Right.
Spurr’s racist and sexist and sizeist rant was childish and offensive but no more than harmless venting of a grumpy old man to an old friend. Also it was not aired in a “public inquiry”, a lecture room or an official letter-head of the university. So much for “protect[ion]…of the rules of free speech”.
BTW the main reason the l’affaire Spurr has gottens so much traction is because the educational bureaucracy is desperate to undermine the conservative reappraisal of education curriculum. It all boils down to turf protection in our rent-seeking society.
But the witch hunters sniffed blood and are out in force, brandishing pitchforks and alofting torches. George Orwell and Arthur Miller were so right about the pack mentality of thought police. So a scalp must be produced, as it was in the case of Murray, Summers, Watson. Kazanawa, Richwine, Drew Fraser et al, Notice a pattern? The phrase “permanent purge” is the one that comes to mind.
FWIW I loathe and despise the way political debate is no conducted on both sides of politics, with so-called “liberals” all falling over themselves to proclaim the virtues of free speech in theory. But never missing a chance to pervert free speech in practice: speech codes on the Left and commercial-in-confidence codes on the Right.
More and more the general gotcha vibe of Australian political culture reminds me of the squalid scene portrayed by “The Lives of Others” when Stasi snitches played the critical role in protecting the ruling ideology, with the main aim of assisting the jockeying for position in the Politiburo. I sorely miss the old Australia when dobbers and snitches were ostracised. But thats what happens when mateship goes, replaced by a society of boot-lickers, crawlers and holier-than-thouers with a keen eye for the main chance.
The Stasi analogy is not rhetorical hyperbole. The GDR was not run as hard totalitarianism like Stalins purges. It was soft totalitarianism, well described by Anne Applebaum. Most of the pressure to conform was professional, not political. Officials steamed open mail to hunt down deviations from party orthodoxy. If you dont cooperate you will be passed over for promotion, lose a place in a uni course or a lease on an apartment.
AFAIK not one single AUS media-academia figure has come out for the rights of men to say what they like in private. Isnt all the fuss Pr Q was making about the NSA hoovering up peoples digital correspondence based on fear of the plausible scenario where authorities can use intrusively obtained sensitive personal information, relayed in private, to blackmail or pressure inconvenient figures? But who needs Big Brother when so many Little Brothers are prepared to act as unpaid Junior Auxiliary Thought Police.
Nearly 70 years ago Pastor Niemoller denounced the cowardice of German media-academia for its supine attitude towards the Nazi regime. But German intellectuals at least had a good excuse in that the Gestapo really would put you in a camp if you spoke out against Nazi invasions of liberty. But no AUS media-academia figure would lose their job if they spoke out for free speech and privacy in this case. Yet they are all silent when it is politically inconvenient. Pastor Niemoller would not be surprised:
The LNP have literally run out of arguments.
It may be a key point in time: the moment when it become impossible to simply claim Labor were/are incompetent.
I think the govt have dropped the economic debate, popped it into the too hard basket, preferring to wrestle with foreign affairs. That’s a fairly safe tactic used by both sides of govt.
Abbotts reaction to Barry Spur was to dumb it down to his own level, which isn’t too high.
If the emails really were hacked I condemn that, as I condemn the “climategate” hacking. I’m guessing Professor Q feels the same. However, given that some of these emails were sent to quite a few people it seems to me far more credible that someone decided they were over being spammed with this stuff by Spur.
If you don’t like the Spur example, look at all the candidates the LNP have had to dump for somewhat milder versions of the same views, not to mention the words leading figures in the young Liberals put on their open access Facebook pages.
Plainly, the meaning of words, phrases and of course by extension, whole bodies of text is derived from an examination of the interaction of typical usages and their context. Context includes audience, the way a specific person or group of people have used words before, events and phenomena know to the group using the words which may hail them in a specific way.
The phrase ‘suppository of wisdom’ would until recently have been simply an an amusing malapropism. Now it has a context bound up with the Abbott narrative, and someone here using it might be taken not as someone speaking in ignorance but making an ironic reference. Uttered in the UK or the US to an audience unfamiliar with this context it would still be simply an amusing malapropism.
I confess, I always feel a little uncomfortable when I hear a woman self-describe as being ‘a bit of a b|tch’. The woman is probably saying that she is often very prescriptive about some matter, and intolerant of breaches. Context is a guide here. Yet for me, the hyperbolic term cannot be separated entirely from its life as a term of misogynist abuse. Yes, it’s a handy metaphor which in a sense rejects the misogynist construction that women should be passive and ‘feminine’ rather than assertive ‘harradins’. And yet, should women ever suffer the term? I’d say not. I feel much the same about the ‘sl*t walk’ stuff. Their assertion of their humanity is beyond reproach, and one can admire their desire to rattle the chains that bind, but as long as males remain privileged and in a position to shape the identities of women, these chains remain an offence rather than a a symbol of courage.
So even if Spurr really did think he was being ‘ironic’ or ‘whimsical’ I’d be bothered at his trade. The terms he chose only have lexical force because of the mountains of barbarous coercion attached to them. Without this, they’d just be arbitrary signs. I’ve also seen nothing at all to suggest that Spurr was in any sense critical of the provenance of these terms. Unlike the ‘sl#t walk’ crowd who are very publicly challenging and trying to redefine the context in which the term is used, it seems that the provenance of Spurr’s ‘whimsy’ is in challenges to his privileges as a European. It’s an uninhibited attempt to blow of steam generated by existential angst. Spurr undoubtedly knew he couldn’t do this in public, and accordingly, I presume, chose consenting adults, but underlying this, we may infer, was a desire for solace and comfort from others similarly troubled. That’s the salient context. That’s not ironic. It’s simply unguarded.
Spurr’s feelings are of course his right. His desire to unburden himself to fellow travellers is also a right. In this limited sense, Brandis is right — one does have a right to be a bigot. Had he done all of his ‘relief’ bigotry in private with consenting partners but otherwise conducted himself according to professional norms it really would be none of our business.
It seems though that this was not the case, and not merely because we know his public views on indigenous culture, but because his expatiations have entered the public domain, and accordingly, have now acquired new meaning, whatever Spurr intended at the time. He has lost control of these words and their history in public discourse is not merely implicit but explicit. A public institution charged with the duty of nurturing insight and fostering inclusion now has to declare, in effect, whether it endorses Spurr’s commentary as a valid contribution to its mission. Spurr threatens to redefine the ethics of the institution and its claims about its mission.
This simply cannot stand. Spurr’s position is untenable, and would be whatever his intent at the time he composed the offending emails. Spurr may not accept that context defines terms — though even for an fundamentalist empiricist, if he is one, that seems implausible here. Poetry is figurative. The audience is key. His audience is now everyone.
USYD needs to act in an exemplary way in this matter. They ought to sack him and robustly defend any counterclaim for unfair dismissal, should it arise.
PS: the comparison with the theft of emails at UEA is simply silly. Firstly, those emails evidently breached no UEA policy or agreement, nor did they in anyway invite suspicion about the professionalism of those involved.
Not so Professor Spurr.
@Jack Strocchi
His emails were hacked?
Well that throws the a whole new light on the affair. I agree with you about hacking, spying and particularly I share your hatred of this partisan tribalism.
I hadn’t heard the ‘hacking’ angle, so I searched the internet for about 10 seconds.
You got that from those notorious liars, tribalists and phone-hacking scum at News Ltd, didn’t you?
Anyway, Newmatilda says, in part:
I’m calling ‘concern troll’ on you Jack.
@Robert (not from UK)
Louvain University split into two in 1968, a Dutch-speaking and a French-speaking university. Probably made it less lively.
Regrettably, must AGAIN concur with a Fran Barlow corrollary.
There is nothing in the individuation of people like the ones Prof. Quiggin has mentioned that makes any allowance whatsever for genuine consciousness and self reflexivity..it is all reactive and subjective with these unfortunates, so we are left in a dark age for yet more generations.
@Jack Strocchi
Martin Niemöller was imprisoned in a concentration camp.
Barry Spurr has not been imprisoned in a concentration camp.
Is the distinction too subtle for you?
@j-d
Yes, but the Godwin is the glittering prize at the end of the most impressive slippery slope.
@Jack Strocchi
“Spurr’s racist and sexist and sizeist rant was childish and offensive but no more than harmless venting of a grumpy old man to an old friend.”
Seriously? Why would you go to the effort of trying to justify the behaviour of a man who thinks in a ‘childish and offensive’ way and from his position of power – which was quite probably unearned – old boys networks and all that – feels a need and a right to express these childish and offensive judgements of other people?
So many old academics like Spurr are the product of the old boys network and simply not ‘superior’ in any way. For sure you can argue that one has a right to be a bigot but clearly a superior man would understand that there is a responsibility to not be a bigot.
And childishness is definitely not harmless in a man with power.
Childishness of thought is not limited to one area. This man cannot compartmentalise his thinking and only use the ‘childish’ thought patterns when he is talking to his appreciative friend. The attitudes that he expresses are are not trivial and do negatively affect his behaviour toward those of us who are being spoken of with such disrespect and disdain.
Grumpy old men who want to vent should retire, find a Men’s Shed and learn to use power tools.
And….. from my perspective here in the regional areas, the “main reason the l’affaire Spurr has gottens so much traction is because” it makes clear to the ordinary person, however they vote, that the old men we are supposed to look up to are really just silly old farts and no better than the rest of us.
He is a laughing stock among the LNP voting conservatives in my town; the women of all political persuasions are bonding over this further example of old men behaving badly.
Jack, nothing more from you on this thread please. To others, no further response to Jack
Just to state my views on the privacy issue, if one of the recipients of Spurr’s appalling messages republished them, then he has no legitimate grievance. If, as the Oz claimed and NM denied, his email was hacked, that’s a criminal offence. There’s a grey area between these two which may or may not be clarified over time.
More generally, Julie is spot-on. Spurr is noteworthy because he is so typical of this country’s old rightwing male elite. As they say in the US, born on third base (private school, then Sydney Uni which has looked after him ever since) and thinks he hit a triple.
So, you join a select bunch of left wing luminaries who see it as Politically Incorrect to draw attention to ISIS murdering people and to a peasant family murdering its daughter because they were shamed she had been brutally raped by a Holy Man.
Maybe there is no link between these people’s actions and an interpretation of Islam which seems to be shared by significant numbers of people. It is certainly worth drawing attention to the appalling crimes and to ensure universal condemnation form those claiming to speak for Islam or any other creed and political party.
To recap, the tweets you find objectionable were as follows.
The first retweeted a report that an Afghan peasant family had “honour killed” their 10 year old daughter following her being raped by an imam and used the words “Even ordinary Muslim families are infected by evil” (Note it did not say ALL muslims).
The second retweeted a report that ISIS was beheading children and rhetorically asked, “Is there ever anything but evil coming from Islam?”
@Alan Moran
Both tweets sound like a rallying cry to vent at Muslims to me, Alan. I’d object.
A view that many following this blog would share but you are hardly impartial
mate, statements like “Even ordinary Muslim families are infected by evil” and “Is there ever anything but evil coming from Islam?” vilify muslims. if you can’t see that, then i don’t know what to tell you (except that you’re the last person who should be accusing someone else of being “hardly impartial”).
@Alan Moran
Impartial? You’re not impartial either so it seems ridiculous to mention it. Why don’t you address the point. The behaviour of one group of people is being used to insite loathing against a majority, would you regard all catholic priests as criminals because of the actions of a few and the subsequent attempts by the church to hide the crimes?
Derogatory speech is largely about two things. It’s about rehearsing and recruiting. Persons speaking in a derogatory manner are rehearsing in words what they wish to see acted out by themselves or supporters. Such language also seeks to gather recruits to the point of view for concerted acting out.
In reply to Alan Moran, where is your outrage about the fact that Saudi Arabia regularly executes people by decapitation by sword and the USA regularly executes innocent parties (sometimes wedding parties) by drone missile attack?
@Alan Moran
That’s a vacuous objection. I’m entirely unsympathetic to religion and it’s in that sense that I have a salient predisposition on the matter. My other predisposition is to regard every human being as having an equal claim to the respect of his or her fellows.
This goes to the ordinary meaning of the words cited in the tweets.
In the first, you describe “evil” as a disease that is endemic in Muslim communities. That’s a basis for suggesting that Muslims generally should be shunned (for fear of either catching it or becoming a victim of it). Your disclaimer, that you didn’t say “all muslims” is unimpressive and entirely subverted by “even ordinary Muslim families”. The claim is clearly generic.
The second asks rhetorically if anything but evil coming from Islam — but unless you’re saying that a host of recent Noble prizewinners, for example, including Malala Yousufzai (sp?) are instantiations of evil, the rhetorical question is answered. You invite those who see Islam as a disease to sound off about their own perceptions.
Your commentary is clearly vituperative in relation to about 1 in seven of the world’s populace, and encourages others to deal with them with suspicion.
Now in government they seem to have lost their filters. I reckon Cormann had a long lunch where they asked him to do his Arnie party trick and he so liked the reaction that he used it on Sky TV.
Before the election it’s all ‘Of course, Fran, I’m not a right wing nut job’, and now it’s ‘Of course, Speersie , I love coal, hate renewables, and the budget cuts will only affect the poor and our political enemies. Let’s bomb Iraq!’
I am disappointed but hardly surprised that people on this blog fail to understand context
How old is Prof. Spurr? I mean I am 60 and his views seem antediluvian to me! He is hankering for the days of White Australia when the Queen’s photo portrait looked down on us from its gilt-edged frame in glass protected majesty. I can remember those days (just) as a young primary school student. The thing is at that age you don’t really cathect (invest emotional energy) with such things. At that age, they are just the strange props of adult rituals and beliefs which remain alien, arbitrary and incomprehensible to a young child.
Either Prof. Spurr is a lot older than I am or he has somehow invested a lot more emotional energy in hankering for a vanished past than dealing with a vibrant, ever-evolving present. He is either old or old before his time. Emeritus disease seems a fair possibility too. Poor fellow, put him out to pasture to graze on his fond delusive memories of yesteryear.
so, what is the context in which “Is there ever anything but evil coming from Islam?” is not a hateful and gross generalisation? do tell.
Alan Moran links to his page “Regulation Economics” from which I assume he is proud of and stands by everything on this site.
“18 years and no warming – Sunday October 12, 2014
Michael McLaren speaks with Alan Moran from Regulation Economics, who discusses the case of the missing warming.”
So, here we have a climate change denialist. Little wonder he is also an “ethnic and sexist insults” denialist ie. denying that ethnic and sexist insults have occurred or if they occurred that they mean anything.
Maybe we should try the “Defence Dept. test.” Given what has happened in the Defence Dept. would such emails from an officer to several fellow officers be ignored now? No? So, we are expected to have a lower standard for a place of learning than for the Defence Dept.?
“I am disappointed but hardly surprised that people on this blog fail to understand context”
You really don’t know how to construct a cogent argument do you? Fran has gone to the trouble of providing a comprehensive and elegant take down to which you seem ill equipped to respond. It is the case that, and I use the term with Spurrsian intent, you are, in fact, a rhetorical ‘girlie man’?
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
@patrickb
Not a good idea. Don’t adopt their lamentable standards and epithets, even in jest.
Yes but, we of the left don’t want to be accused of having the same irony deficit that the grey men of the right display so, er, unironically. Having entered the term into Hansard, as it were, I think it’s fair to beat them with their own stick. In addition, it was such an utter bizarre and juvenile thing for a grown man in such a responsible position to say that it has lost any real meaning. It, and the utterer, are a figure of fun, ridicule even.
@Alan Moran
Speaking as a teacher, I see no evidence that you have the capacity to read contextually, and have the standing to make such a generalisation.
Is there some unappreciated “context” that would lend a different interpretation than I have asserted in relation to the tweets cited above? That last post of yours would have been an excellent opportunity to advance it, making your point substantively rather than through snark. Perhaps, having had time to reflect on it, you will offer it now.
I hope so. Better late than never.
Jack, take a month off commenting
No, it is not time to ditch Cormann. Now is the time to keep him firmly in place, on maximum display, where he can do the most damage. He must be forced to explin what he means by “girly man” so that his gender attitudes can be deconstructed and left dangling in the breeze like animal intestines, drying in the sun, bringing all sorts of dirt into the open.
The same applies to the execrable Professor of Poetry, whose name should never be mentioned in company or public again.
There appears to be no end to the depravity of the right in Australia; it’s members expose themselves as the true carpet biting loonies of Australian history and culture. The ghost of Bjelke Peterson and Sir Henry Bolte, the last state leader in Australia to approve a hanging, have embedded themselves in the psyche of the reactionary right, forever. Just when it all ought to be proceeding to plan some emotionally scarred and socially impaired dolt opens his mouth and spews filth all over everyone present all the while nudging and winking at his mates and pretending to hide his glee.
So, I want more from the whole lot of them, from the mining magnates, Clive and Lambi, Pyne and whatever happened to Barnyard Joyce? to the media clowns, and I want more of their nastiness to be exposed because we can force feed the whole damn mess of them back down the throats of the roughly one in two Australians who put this shower of shite in office.
Reading others’ mail is unbefitting? Tell that to the NSA and the spooks. Hey, maybe it was someone with a security clearance who uncovered the hateful emails!
@Alan Moran
I don’t understand why you are making this objection here. It was the IPA, not anyone at this blog, who decided your position was untenable following the publication of your tweets. If they were taken out of context, or otherwise misrepresented, your grievance should be with them. And if anyone has joined a group of “luminaries who see it as Politically Incorrect to draw attention to ISIS murdering people” it is your former employers, allegedly for the mercenary reason that they feared the loss of donations from the Muslim community (Oz article, no link)
AFAICT you have made no public criticism of the IPA’s decision on this matter, which the post above simply reported. If you think that decision was unfair, you should say so now. Otherwise, you should cop it sweet, and stay silent.
Nobody seems to have commented on the fact that Barry Spurr is a professor of poetry. Shouldn’t all his views, therefore, be charming and uplifting?
@Alan Moran
The two statements
‘There is a link between these people’s actions and an interpretation of Islam which seems to be shared by significant numbers of people’
and
‘There is never anything but evil coming from Islam’
are not equivalent. They aren’t even roughly equivalent. They aren’t rhetorically equivalent, either. The first is reasonable. The second isn’t.
Nor is it reasonable to expect that every time an appalling crime is committed it will be condemned by every representative of a religion or a political party. There are, unfortunately, far too many appalling crimes for that.
@Ikonoclast
How old is Barry Spurr? The website of the University of Sydney discloses that he was first appointed to a lectureship in 1976. That makes it highly likely, I should say, that he is over 60, and fairly likely that he is under 70.
I saw a bio saying that he came to Sydney as an undergrad in 1970 (ex Canberra Grammar), which would put him about 62.
I found a series of photos of Barry Spurrstanding with some Australians or South Asian and Asian students. The backdrop appears to Aboriginal artwork. So it is good to see that he didn’t let his prejudices get in the way of official duties. Or did he? That’s the question. The university has no choice but to dismiss him.
Aren’t the Klu Klux Klan Christians ? I wouldn’t like to think all Christians must be tainted by their actions.
For a professor of poetry Spurrs prose shows a distinct lack of imagination. He simply relies on the same old worn out labels and phrases.
@John Quiggin
So you think I should not comment when you say, “disastrous statements from prominent rightwing figures (Barry Spur and Alan Moran, Alan (sic)Lane) it’s a pretty clear indication of how the Australian right talks when they think no one is listening, or forget that they are on record, and how far out of touch they are with today’s social mores”.
IPA has not made such a statement. It is your statement I am addressing. You are saying that I was making public tweets when I thought no one is listening and accuse me of being out of touch with today’s social mores. It is your own political correctness that is archaic – we now face serious security threats that should not survive the paternalistic double standard of treating one form of extremism with empathy.
@John Quiggin
Interesting. His views seem more like those of a generation that would now be about 92 y.o. or of that vintage.* I mean brought up much more within the beliefs of the British Empire, God is a White Man and the White Australia policy. This is not so much a case of retarded socio-cultural development but of retrograde socio-cultural development. Interesting too that it afflicts a large sub-group of a whole class – propertied, right wing males over 50.
* Actually some of this generation were far less benighted than Prof. Spurr so it’s not fair to point at them all.
@Alan Moran
The probability of my being murdered by a religious extremist is less than the probability of my being killed by a car running me down on a pedestrian crossing. I actually have been knocked down by a car on a pedestrian crossing (although obviously not killed) and yet I continue to cross the road, even at exactly the same pedestrian crossing, accepting that risk, as people mostly do — and reasonably so.
What’s more, the probability of my being murdered by a religious extremist will not be reduced by people saying bad things about Islam. You are not helping.
@sunshine
Yes, for a supposed Prof. of Poetry to be a reactionary is a great contradiction IMO. How could a reactionary even begin to understand the true radical nature of poetry?