91Èȱ¬

In Monty Python's famous Bruce sketch, a bunch of beer-swilling Aussies, resplendent in khaki, welcome a "man from Pommeyland" into their elite band of Bruces. He is the latest recruit to the Philosophy Department at the University of Woolloomooloo.

One of the Bruces teaches classical philosophy, another lectures in Hegelian philosophy and a third is an expert in logical positivism, as well as looking after the sheep dip. The fresh recruit, "New-Bruce", is down to teach Machiavelli, Bentham, Locke, Hobbes, Sutcliffe, Bradman, Lindwall, Millar, Hassett and Benaud.

Whether inadvertent or not, Monty Python's pot-shot at intellectual life in Australia touched on some of the prevailing thinking of the post-war years, when some of the country's leading intellectuals felt like isolated figures in what they viewed as a barren cultural landscape. In 1958, the Nobel prize winning author, Patrick White, spoke derisively of "The Great Australian emptiness, in which the mind is the least of possessions". The Melbourne-based social commentator Arthur Phillips, who wrote in 1950 of the "cultural cringe", spoke of the "estrangement of the Australian intellectual".

The journalist Donald Horne, who penned The Lucky Country, had this to say of his country back at the beginning of the 1960s: "Intellectual life exists but it is still fugitive. Emergent and uncomfortable, it has no established relation to practical life. The upper levels of society give an impression of mindlessness triumphant....Australia might seem depraved, a victory of the anti-mind."

On the back of the last blog about the health of Australian literature - and thanks for such an informed and erudite response - I wondered whether it was worth assessing the health of intellectualism in Australia.

Admittedly, it is hard to measure in any meaningful way, but you could marshal a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that it is in fairly good shape. There's the popularity of literary festivals, which are reporting record attendances; the loyal readership for high-brow magazines and journals like The Australian Literary Review, Quadrant, The Quarterly Essay, The Griffith Review and The Monthly; and the launch of and which run a lot discussions, lectures and interviews on some fairly esoteric subjects.

Public intellectuals have also been in the forefront of some of Australia's most pressing recent debates, from environmental degradation (the novelist, Richard Flanagan), to bushfire policy (the Melbourne-based academic, Robert Manne); from asylum seekers (the writer David Marr) to indigenous affairs (Noel Pearson); from anti-terror laws (Richard Flanagan again) to marine conservationism (Tim Winton).

In her excellent book, Literary Activists: Writer-intellectuals and Australian public life, the academic Brigid Rooney argues that the first decade of the 21st Century has seen an upsurge in literary activism, despite claims to the contrary. "Australian literary writers have been furiously engaged in activism and debate," she writes. "Indeed this period has seen the efflorescence of Australian literary activism."

If the Howard years brought greater activism, the Rudd years were supposed to deliver greater acceptance - certainly of public intellectuals on the left or centre-left. Remember, the new prime minister gathered a thousand of the country's finest brains for the 2020 Summit last year, and asked them to think big.

Yet with this huge intellectual blood-bank at his disposal, Rudd made only a few withdrawals. Of the 962 separate ideas to emerge from two-days of summitry, only nine were minted into policy.

There is an argument that Australians favour the pragmatic over the abstract, the practical over anything that whiffs of pretentiousness. This might have undercut the influence of some public intellectuals.

In his newly-published book, the Liberal party politician, Tony Abbott writes: "Conservatism prefers facts to theory; practical demonstration to metaphysical abstraction; what works to what's in the mind's eye. To a conservative, intuition is as important as reasoning; instinct as important as intellect." Arguably, you could replace the words "Conversatism" and "conservative" with "Australia" and "Australian" this passage would still ring true. Certainly, Kevin Rudd often seems to prefer the programmatic over the philosophical. His phrase of the month, uttered at a press conference in Berlin, was "detailed programmatic specificity" - a formulation which apparently left German translators flummoxed.

Now back to the cricket...

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Is Australian literature about to be handed a death sentence?

The question has been raised after the release of a report from the Productivity Commission, the government's economic think-tank, which has recommended the abolition of restrictions on importing books, which have driven up prices but helped nurture local authors.

Under the existing law, Australian publishers are given a 30-day period to release a local version of a book that could be imported more cheaply from Britain or America. Aussie bookshops are then compelled to sell the Aussie version of the book, even though they could source the same books more inexpensively abroad.

The idea is that Australian authors, like Tim Winton and Kate Grenville, are protected for 30 days and get paid decent royalties for internationally-acclaimed books. After that grace period is up, foreign-made imports pay a much lower royalty.

The argument is that the next wave of Tim Wintons - literary pun unintended - would not emerge if the present system was scrapped.

The big bookshops and supermarkets claim it places them at a competitive disadvantage, because consumers can now import cheaper books themselves through online stores.

They also argue that the Aussie consumer is subsidising the whole scheme through inflated prices. The Productivity Commission report basically agrees.

In language that seems to borrow heavily from the Kevin Rudd phrasebook, the report notes: "Reform of the current arrangements is necessary, to place downward pressure on book prices, remove constraints on the commercial activities of booksellers and overcome the poor targeting of assistance to the cultural externalities".

Consider that last sentence again: "overcome the poor targeting of assistance to the cultural externalities".

Deciphered, this means that the Productivity Commission believes that local authors would be better and more efficiently supported by direct grants rather than the present system.

Having come under attack, some of the country's leading literary lights have deployed the most powerful weapon at their disposal: words.

The Tasmania-based author Richard Flanagan has been typically vivid: 'It is inconceivable that a national Labor Government would so casually destroy Australian culture in support of the free-trade zealotry that gave the world the global financial crisis.'

'Yet it is that which the Australian people must now conceive of as possible. If Kevin Rudd adopts this report he will go to his grave as the man who made a bonfire of Australian writing, and hailed the ash as reform.'

In a submission to the Productivity Commission, Tim Winton wrote: 'Copyright recognises and enshrines the value of original work. Copyright is the single most important industrial fact in a writer's life, the civilising influence of a culture upon a market.'

All this puts Kevin Rudd in an awkward position, as he weighs whether or not to accept the commission's findings. Since entering The Lodge, the Prime Minister has instituted two literary prizes - one for fiction, one for non-fiction - which are among the richest in the world. He has also written a number of lengthy essays for The Monthly, the Australian equivalent of the New Yorker.

Yet there are also times when he likes to parade his anti-intellectualism - critics would say his philistinism - with his strange use of language, and phrases like 'Fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate'.

As a self-proclaimed economic conservative, he may warm to the market-based economic arguments laid out by the Productivity Commission. But as an Australian nationalist and part-time public intellectual he may be persuaded by the need to protect some of the country's most premium cultural exports: its writers.

This is also an issue with worldwide resonance: how do small- to medium-sized countries protect their culture in this age of rampant globalisation?

PS. Ironically, It has been a very strong year for Aussie literature, what with Tim Winton's enchanting paean to the sea, Breath, and Steve Toltz's riotous Fraction of the Whole, which was short-listed for the Booker. I suppose you could also argue that Aravind Adiga's sharp-eyed take on modern-day Delhi, White Tiger, which won the Booker, had a faint 'Made in Australia' stamp, since he was educated here.

For weeks, I've been meaning to blog on the book of the moment, The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. Trouble is, I went to buy it at the airport before leaving the country, and it was sold out. So, I'm going to read it over the next month, and will blog on it four weeks from today. If you want to weigh in on a book that is supposed to offer an especially acute take on the Howard years, and haven't read it already, you have 28 days to do so.......

PPS Strangely, I'd written this before Whitlamite's tirade, but it got superseded by the Ashes. This irrational hatred of cricket? You are starting to sound like my wife.......

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I've been getting calls from London this morning for reaction to England's victory in the Lord's test. The working assumption seems to be that Australia must have suffered a national convulsion or entered into a bout of fitful introspection.

Our breakfast television show wants me to make sure that I show viewers the morning papers, with the expectation, perhaps, that the front pages will be edged with black and feature eight-page, souvenir pull-outs marking the death of Australian cricket.

But I can report that the sun is shining, there are no signs that the sky has yet fallen in, and that if the country is on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown it has not teetered over the edge.

The notion that Australians have spent the morning in a state of crankiness, cussing the wretched English, is as wayward as Mitchell Johnson's bowling or as fragile as Philip Hughes' technique against short bowling. As far as I can tell, Australia this morning is not in a giant, antipodean sulk.

Sure, Australians love winning. But they also recognise and appreciate brilliant sporting feats - even when they are on the wrong end of them. Andrew Flintoff produced a stunning display of fast bowling on the final morning of the Lord's test, and that's the line that most of the papers here have taken this morning.

'Flintoff Lords it over Australia in historic win,' reads the front page of The Melbourne Age.

'Hooroo, Hoodoo,' reads the Sydney Morning Herald, alongside a picture of Flintoff being mobbed by his supporters, a reference to the 75 years that it has taken England to beat Australia at Lord's. Hooroo means good-bye.

'Flintoff Destroys Aussies at Lords,' says The Australian.

Much as England fans had a sneaking admiration and affection for Shane Warne, Australian fans seem to have the same dialogue with Flintoff. He's also the sort of bloke who Aussies warm to: uncomplicated, unpretentious, the opposite of posh, a tough competitor and a natural born winner. He also likes his beer. Australians can also appreciate the sentimentality of Flintoff getting a five-wicket haul in his final Lord's test.

Aussie sports fans are also realists. They know this is a side in transition, weakened massively by the absence of its legends. I also don't get the feeling that there's much affection for the new-look Aussie team. The retirement of Gilchrist, Warne, Langer and McGrath not only took away some of Australia's finest players but its most likeable blokes. The new side is lacking in personality as well as experience.

I also get the feeling that there are a lot of Australians who would not mind seeing Ricky Ponting fail. There seem to be two Rickys: the one we saw after the game in Lord's, who was fabulously magnanimous in defeat; and the one who can be peevish and petulant while the game is in progress. Remember, many Aussies turned against Ponting in the aftermath of the Bollyline affair with India, thinking the Baggy Greens were getting a dose of their own medicine when the black all-rounder Andrew Symonds was allegedly called a 'monkey'.

Confessedly, I've always liked the Australian captain. He doesn't tread the dark path of sporting cliché in press conferences, and the few times I have met him he has been personable, interesting and surprisingly candid. But he doesn't command the respect or affection of Steve Waugh, Mark Taylor or Allan Border. For all his flaws, many Australians would have loved to see Shane Warne become captain when Steve Waugh passed on the batton.

If there has been much introspection this morning in Australia, it has been of the sporting kind. What has happened to the form of Mitchell Johnson, a world-beater at his best? And can Phillip Hughes fix his technique? Remember, he was talked of before this tour as the new Bradman, a curse if ever there was one.

Aussie sports fans also know that it's daft to write them off. Only a boofhead would do so. Still, history is not on their side. In three out of the last four times that Australia have gone 1-0 down in an Ashes series, they have gone on to lose the series as well.

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Australia's runaway television hit of the winter reached its teary climax on Sunday night, with the final of Masterchef. More than 3.7 million viewers are thought to have tuned in, the largest audience for a non-sports telecast since 2001.

The winner of the cook-off was mother of three Julie Goodwin, who impressed the judges with her home-style cooking and homespun tales. With misty eyes, she spoke of her love of family and food.

An Aussie battler to the core, Julie said she would use her $A100,000 prize money to open a restaurant on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where she would 'serve good food, unpretentious food'.

The loser was Poh Ling Yeow, an artist from Adelaide who had stunned the judges with her modern Malaysian cooking, much of which she had learnt from her mother.

I came to Masterchef late, but was hooked immediately. An unexpected ratings winner, I wonder what explains its success.

Along with the taste good factor, there was certainly a feel good factor - and perhaps audiences have been particularly receptive to that in these feel bad times.

Certainly, the contestants were an inspiring bunch with noble culinary intentions, which sometimes bordered on the evangelical. As Julie Goodwin said in her emotional victory speech: 'When people leave my restaurant I want them to feel loved'.

The judges were unusually nice, as well, and opted for a much more benevolent style of adjudication that the normal reality show knockabout. Rather than reducing contestants to tears, they tried hard to build them up. In fact, the judges seemed to cry almost as much as the cooks.

A few Australian commentators have noted that in the age of Obama - and the age of Oprah - its fashionable to be 'nice'. During the Ozcar scandal last month, Miranda Devine, a conservative columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald, reckoned that Malcolm Turnbull's assault on Kevin Rudd had backfired so spectacularly because he had come across as Mr Nasty. She cited the success Masterchef as part of the trend towards niceness.

Perhaps a better example is the public revulsion at the British chef Gordon Ramsay for his potty-mouthed outburst at the television host, Tracy Grimshaw. That kind of shtick is so pre-global financial crisis. Since last September, people have wanted to be soothed rather than savaged. They do not want the furnace-like temperatures of Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen, but the warmth and sentimentality of the Masterchef set.

Here, it's worth contrasting the success of Channel Ten's Masterchef with the disappointing ratings of Channel Nine's home decoration reality show, 91Èȱ¬Made. 91Èȱ¬ renovation is for prosperous times. 91Èȱ¬ cooking is a fact of life of a downturn, as the empty tables in some of the country's most fashionable restaurants attest.

I'd like to think that the success of Masterchef also reaffirms Australia's status as one of the world's great lifestyle superpowers. Surely there are few countries where the food is so good, so varied and so appreciated. When The Bulletin magazine came up with its 100 most influential Australians of all time, it listed the cooking guru, Margaret Fulton, alongside Donald Bradman.

The food here is also so very diverse. Top-notch Greek, Italian, Malaysian, Chinese, Russian, Lebanese, Vietnamese, French, Japanese, Spanish, along with all the fusion spin-offs.

After all, is not food the most glorious expression of Australia's multicultural melting pot?

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If you are reading this in Australia, then you maybe suffering from Ashes lag? Or perhaps you burned the midnight oil to watch Mark Webber become the first Aussie in over a quarter-century to win a Formula One grand prix (which is all the more impressive since he broke his leg in a charity bicycle race in Tasmania last November). Maybe it was Le Tour that got us staying up late into la nuit. Doubtless, some racked up a night-time hat-trick, flicking furiously between all three.

For the armchair sports fan, it's not the tyranny of distance that's the problem during the northern summer, but the trickiness of the time difference - nine hours between the east coast of Australia and the south coast of Wales. Sports-induced sleep deprivation. I wonder how much it costs the national economy? At least it combines two of Australia's great passions: the love of sporting world-beaters and, the following morning, the love of world-beating coffee.

Confessedly, I fell asleep with my earphones in at about two in the morning, and then went on to have the cricketing equivalent of a new father's interrupted sleep - awoken by screaming commentators, rather than a screaming baby. So since there was no further wicket in the final 40 minutes of play, I was away with the fairies when the England bowler, James Anderson, needed all those glove changes, the time-wasting tactics which provided the early morning headline: .

With characteristic bluntness, this is what the has had to say on the matter: "The England captain is either a weak leader,'"said Conn, "or has no idea about the spirit of cricket." Ricky Ponting's press conference comments are also getting a frequent airing. He described the time-wasting tactics as "pretty ordinary" and not in the spirit of the game.

But for all its controversies, the dramatic end to the First Test showed that hopefully we are in for another classic series - lacking the high quality of the 2005 series, perhaps, but filled the same high tension.

Overall, I thought the first test in Cardiff reinforced a few points in some of the last few blogs and undercut some of the others. There was further evidence of the cricketing celebritocracy, with the Australian WAGS in prominent attendance (some traditionalists, veteran players among them, have argued they should not have come over until much later in the tour). We've also heard from the cricketing MAGs - mothers and girlfriends. In the tabloid press and on tabloid tv, has complaining about the influence of his fiancé, the model Jessica Bratich.

For all that, the Aussies showed a lot of the toughness, doggedness, bloody-mindedness and team spirit that were the hallmarks of the Waugh, Taylor and Border eras. They made England field for more than 12 hours, after all, and piled misery upon misery by racking up four individual centuries. The fear factor might have been diluted, but Ricky Ponting's new-look side showed itself to be formidable nonetheless.

The cricket writer Gideon Haigh also highlighted one of the great flaws in much of the pre-match commentary. When Australia's bowling attack was compared with England's bowling attack, it was thought to be weaker. But the true and relevant comparison should have been between Australia's bowling attack and England's batting line-up.

I thought the television and radio coverage of this Test Match reinforced one of the points made in the "Pom influence" blog and how the broadcast media, in particular, reinforces it.
Readers outside of Australia might be surprised to hear that the two television stations covering the Ashes, SBS and Fox Sports, both rely on the commentary feed from Sky Sports in Britain. Similarly, ABC Grandstand is relying upon the 91Èȱ¬'s Test Match Special - although, happily, ABC's Jim Maxwell is an integral part of the team.

As a Pom, it's always comforting, and faintly nostalgic, to hear the commentary of Jonathan Agnew and Henry Blofeld. But perhaps if Kerry O'Keefe was on hand, his cackle would have made it all but impossible to fall asleep...

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Kevin Rudd has been in Rome this week, but do not expect him to cry 'Civis Romanus Sum' when its comes to the case of Stern Hu, Australian national and Rio Tinto executive detained in Shanghai on suspicion of spying and stealing state secrets. Roman citizens could expect to be protected by the Roman empire if ever they were taken in custody on foreign soil. The British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, liked to think that Britons were afforded that same entitlement, as well. But Kevin Rudd has taken a very different approach with China, such is the worry about offending Australia's second biggest trading partner.

In Canberra, the relationship with Beijing is a matter of extremely careful calibration - and especially so for the Mandarin-speaking Mr Rudd, who has long been sensitive to the 'Manchurian candidate' jibe.

No doubt wishing to play on this, the opposition has been calling on him to take a tougher line over Mr Hu's detention, and to publicly voice his concerns to China. As they have delighted in pointing out, he has the linguistic skills to do so.

But speaking to an ABC reporter in Italy, all Mr Rudd would say was that his government was moving 'calmly, methodically, and step by step' - which happens to be a pretty neat summation of his governing philosophy. (When Mr Rudd was asked about asylum seekers earlier this week in Malaysia, he offered the same formulation, saying it was being dealt with in a 'methodical, calm, effective way.')

Certainly, the relationship with China is vital, especially when the Australian economy is teetering on the brink of a technical recession. Only this week, the Reserve Bank of Australia cited the strengthening of the Chinese economy as a key factor in its decision to keep interest rates on hold.

Still, it is wrong to argue that Australia's prosperity is solely China's gift, the modern-day variant of Donald Horne's 'Lucky Country' argument back at the start of the 1960s that Australia's status as a resources powerhouse helped compensate for unimaginative political leadership ('Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck,' is his book's most ringing quote).

After all, the resources boom really only kicked in around 2003, and Australia has enjoyed 17 years of economic growth. Similarly, the key market for Australian coal is Japan rather than China.

So is the Rudd government being too meek in its dealings with China, over the Hu case and in general, and are the Chinese taking advantage of this timidity?

This is the view of Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of The Australian: "There is an air of contempt in the way the Chinese authorities have failed to respond to Australian government requests for information and for consular access to Mr Hu until today.

"What does the much touted Australia-China relationship add up to if Beijing treats Canberra with such conspicuous discourtesy and indifference?"

In recent weeks, we have heard Mr Rudd speak Spanish and Italian in public. But don't expect to hear that Latin location, Civis Romanus Sum, any time soon.

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Dazzling and disorientating, two glamorous front covers from two of this month's glossy magazines show the new, emergent face of Australian cricket. One features the Australian vice-captain, Michael Clarke, dressed in a range of fashion forward clobber, which includes a designer leather jacket and tight, metallic denim jeans. The other features Mitchell Johnson's girlfriend, Jessica Bratich wearing significantly less apparel: a green and gold bikini emblazoned with the Southern Cross.

Both underscore how the culture of Australian cricket is changing, and why the Australians are no longer the outfit they once were. They serve as reminders that the comparative decline of Australian cricket is not limited to the exodus of playing legends but extends to its off-field philosophy and dressing room culture.

The focus naturally has been on the absence of Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden. But something else is missing, as well: the sheer bloody-mindedness of the Border years, and the austerity and discipline of the Waugh era. But the winning Australian cricket culture been also contaminated by the fripperies of Australia's celebrity culture, as the fear factor has come to vie with the celebrity X Factor.

In this new celebritocracy, Michael Clarke and Lara Bingle are obviously cast as Posh and Becks; Brett Lee is celebrated as much for his Bollywood melodies as his chin music; and Mitchell Johnson achieves almost as much fame as the torso of the 'Men of Cricket' calendar as the tormentor of visiting batsmen. After being sent home from England in disgrace, Andrew Symonds meets the televisual requirements of the age by seeking prime-time, public redemption: a soft-focus confessional on Sixty Minutes.

As Jessica Bratich reminds us, the WAGs - wives and girlfriends - have also come to enjoy a much higher public profile, which is sometimes more Lads mag than Ladies pavilion. In announcing his retirement, Matthew Hayden spoke wistfully of the "brothers of the Baggy Green". But the WAGs have encroached on this male dominion.

Ashes winning captains of recent vintage have sought to reinforce the team's rich cultural heritage. Steve Waugh heightened the veneration of the Baggy Green, a surprisingly recent "tradition," by ordering every player to wear it during the side's first fielding session. Then there have been those graveside visits to Gallipoli and other European battlefields where Australian diggers shed their blood en route to Britain, and the quasi-religious significance of the team song, Under the Southern Cross, which is belted out in the dressing room at the conclusion of every victory.

This high holy ritual became the focus of a dressing room spat at the end of the home series against the South Africans, when Simon Katich took exception to Michael Clarke reportedly wanting to hurry up the singing of the song so he could leave the dressing room. Traditionalists saw it as powerfully emblematic: a clash of cricketing civilisations, in which the old rubbed up against the new. Simon Katich was cast as the preserver of traditions.

Of course, it would be foolish to write off the Australians as a bunch of starry-eyed softies. Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey remain some of the most serious-minded of modern-day cricketers. And the great blonded one himself, Shane Warne, wasn't exactly a shrinking violet on the celebrity circuit.

But there is a strong sense that the Australians are not as single-minded as once they were, and therefore should not be feared to anywhere near the same extent. Ask yourself which one would you rather face. Steve Waugh in his fanatical pomp? Or Michael Clarke in those fantastical designer pants?

We have entered a new era in which Australian cricket has become more metrosexual than macho. More hair gel than zinc cream. More tight metallic denim than conventional baggy green.

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A new report has drawn fresh attention to Australia's great fly-over problem: the condition of Aborigines living in indigenous communities. Since reporting from the Northern Territory earlier in the year, the closest that I have come to an Aboriginal community is 30,000 feet, and this geographic remoteness partly explains why indigenous affairs are so easy to push to the fringes of the national consciousness.

Were this an urban or suburban problem, it would surely have received more political and public attention. And since the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, Aboriginal leaders have felt that they have been swept even further to the fringes.

Another oft-heard complaint is that the reconciliation process, of which Kevin Rudd's national apology was the central component, is intended primarily to assuage white guilt - it is a "whitefella's project". But would not indigenous groups have felt even more aggrieved had the prime minister not said sorry? That, after all, was always one of the chief complaints against John Howard.

The inventory of statistics comparing life for indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has always made for grim reading, and the latest findings of the Productivity Commission are no exception. Compiled every two years, the report measures indicators of disadvantage in 50 separate areas. There's been no improvement in 80% of them.

Perhaps the most disturbing finding is that cases of child abuse among indigenous children have more than doubled from 16 per 1000 children in 1990-2000 to 35 per 1000 in 2007-2008. Indigenous children are six times as likely to be abused as non-indigenous children.

The report is not unremittingly gloomy. It suggest that the life expectancy gap is closer than previously thought. In 2002, the gap was estimated at 20 years for men. For 2005-2007, it seems to be 12 years. But the common-held view is that this report chronicles decades of policy failure.

Kevin Rudd has described the report as "devastating". Many thought that the soothing words of his historic apology to Aborigines for past injustices could hardly have been more eloquent. But everyone knew that formulating a policy response would be much more difficult than drafting a parliamentary address.

As part of its Closing the Gap initiative, the Rudd government had pledged some $A4.6 billion towards indigenous communities over the next six years.

, a reporter with The Australian who has probably done as much as any mainstream reporter in bringing these kind of issues to the attention of the nation, has this to say of the new report:

"Governments throughout Australia have been aware of the horrific statistics for many years, and have done little to save children from continued abuse. A royal commission - where witnesses are protected, where perpetrators are identified, charged and removed from the communities - is a necessary starting point. But no Labor government has the courage to do that because it would upset its leftist supporters who contend that 'white interference' is culturally inappropriate."

His comment seems like a good place to start the debate.....

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Australia's national airline has long been known as the 'flying kangaroo', but it might be time to rename it the 'flying former parliamentarian'. Once again freedom of information laws have thrown a harsh light on the perks that MPs enjoy at the taxpayers expense. Although, in this instance, it's the lifelong perks handed to many former MPs.

'The gravy plane: 20,000 freebies,' screamed the Sydney Morning Herald in its front page exclusive. It notes that the Life Gold Pass scheme, under which some former parliamentarians get to enjoy unlimited business class travel anywhere in Australia, has cost the tax-payer $A8.3 million (almost 4 million pounds) since 2001.

Some of the beneficiaries have not sat in parliament for over 20 years. Some have used the free flights to travel, with their wives (who also get this entitlement) to some of the country's fanciest travel destinations, like Hamilton Island in Queensland where that British fella who won the Best Job in the World has just taken up residence (he might have the best job, but clearly he hasn't got the best superannuation package).

Topping the frequent flyer list is the former National Party leader and Speaker, Ian Sinclair, who has taken over 701 flights (a bill which came to $214,545 - although he repaid $11,731).

The rules were revised to limit retired politicians' air time, but more recently retired Canberra 'pollies' who do not qualify, still get 25 free trips a year - or, put another way, just about one every other week.

Historically speaking, Australian MPs are not as well off as they used to be. At Federation in 1901, parliamentarians earned $A400 a year, which was five times the average wage. Now, the base salary is $A127,060, which the Australian Financial Review reports is less than three times the average wage. Their pay has also been frozen for a year, costing backbenchers $5470.

Kevin Rudd gets $A330,356 a year, which makes him Australia's 440th most well renumerated chief executive (he's just above the person who runs the Reject Shop, oddly enough). But, 'fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate,' he does get his own plane, a harbourside residence in Sydney, a place to hang his hat in Canberra, a chauffer-driven white Holden and the occasional dinner with Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett.

So are Australia's politicians flying high on the hog?

PS: The Pom Influence thread is still going strong - and many of the entries, as so often happens, are more enlightening than the original blog. Talking of the cultural cross-currents between Britain and Australia, I read a nice story the other day about the British writer and comedian, Stephen Fry, who was paying a visit to Los Angeles. He found himself feeling faintly homesick when he heard the music of Rolf Harris.

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