That November election night a year ago when Kevin Rudd defeated the conservatives, I guzzled French champagne. "Materialism has been defeated!" cried my wealthy host, popping another bottle to toast a new dawn of progressive values.

Our binge peaked: my Fabian friend jubilant because tomorrow he would wake glad-hearted, if sore-headed; as for me, sometimes intoxication just feels good.

Then Kevin hit the stage.

But instead of shaking a fist in triumph or dropping his head to honour the mysterious sorrows of victory, Kevin started up in that reedy voice, not sounding the warlord to have slain John Howard. His pitch, his intonation, his whole vehicle of being had the dreary, sing-song, measured reasonableness of some soporific, parodic dweeb of a vicar.

"Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward," proclaimed Kevin.

"To plan for the future, to embrace the future and together as Australians to unite and write a new page in our nation's history."

Outside fights for national survival, invocations of unity make me nervous - they are the control orders of mediocrity. And haven't Kevin and the ALP let rip with their prudish, paranoid, huddle-round-the-hearth wowser assault on Australia.

Remember the "alcopop" crisis and its tax hike on drinks vixens prefer for debauchery? Now how cruddy, how depraved must the Government believe us to be to dedicate at least $44 million to removing Australia from the internet's free-flow?

Welcome to Clean Feed, the ALP's compulsory, universal censorship - "filtering" - of the web. If Clean Feed proceeds after the impending pilot, Australia will top the democratic world in web censorship with internet service providers (ISPs) forced to block access to sites on a secret blacklist compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

Blacklists - conveniently exempted from Freedom of Information disclosure - are currently provided to makers of censorship programs already readily available. The ALP wants to force it on everyone. Why?

Federal Internet Minister Stephen Conroy said censorship would "reduce the exposure of children to illegal content". Illegal? What don't they want seen? Suicide bombings; high speed pursuits? Nah, that's news. Money laundering? Identity fraud? Not visual.

Child pornography has little attraction for kiddies and is already hunted relentlessly by police worldwide.

Let's be frank. It's about sex.

It's Chairman K'Rudd's War on Sex. On carnality. On voyeurism and lust. A war on the greasy insults flesh spits at this author of a Faith in Politics essay for Monthly magazine. In it he quotes Dietrich Bonheoffer's "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die" - typical nihilistic utopianism. Chairman, when porn calls a man, you can lop off the "...and die".

Our ruler only needed about 20 seconds of TV screen-grabs of Bill Henson's classically composed studies of troubled adolescence to declare them without artistic merit and "absolutely revolting". What a premature ejaculation.

Welcome to the PG Nation where realists of humanity - of our bare, bleeding, beautiful, barbaric psychologies and sexualities - are becoming dissidents under the Government's morbid fear of life in the raw.

On top of Clean Feed, the Government has the Australia Council for the Arts considering new "children in art" protocols, one of which is "protecting images of children from being exploited, including use of the images beyond the original context of the creative work". In the digital age, how can one determine all future uses?

Dig the next thought-control protocol: "Ensuring that everyone viewing the artwork has an appropriate understanding of the nature and artistic content of the material."

Even if we indulge the totalitarian fantasy of there being a single correct (and by implication sexless) interpretation, after a bout of university teaching this year let me suggest no one can ensure anyone understands anything.

And whiting-out irrationality's epicentre - young sexuality - is clearly the aim.

Let's be frank, Kevin. You must know puberty and adolescence bring sexuality and all its terrors, thrills, disappointments, cruelties, joys, enslavement, emancipations, humiliations, dangers, illusions and clarity - a host of forces defying "appropriate understandings".

Depicting it is not abusing it.

If the Chairman is to set art and porn policies for a non-theocratic society, he needs an education revolution.

Rudd could start with Camille Paglia's 1990 walloper, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. "Sex is the natural in man," writes Paglia.

And art? "Art is our message from the beyond, telling us what nature is up to."

Nature is harsh, Kevin. It's pre-Christian. In trying to hold it at bay with civilisation's countless regulations and restrictions we lose more than just its exhilarations and terrors. We lose its honesty.

Of course, people's hunger for deeper truths than those arising from insipid urban codes is insatiable, and we hunt everywhere for the reflected teachings of what we no longer dare approach.

Sport is one arena for a proxy experience of barbarity's intensity, but its lessons are too singular and repetitive to appeal to everyone.

Some prefer to touch the void through the babel of the arts, whether via Sophocles' ghastly Oedipus the King, Shakespeare's poetic Tragedy of Macbeth, Bret Easton Ellis's pornographic American Psycho, or Bill Henson's unsettling photographs.

They're all voyeuristic. But that's different to being real.

Pornography, that sludge Rudd hopes Clean Feed will dyke out, is more real, but sex between consenting adults in whatever combinations and permutations they devise is surely a natural right.

Why the fear of seeing it? Why force a Clean Feed on everyone?

And what's so "clean" about censorship? Another book for Rudd's Christmas reading is Friedrich Nietzsche's 1888 zinger, Twilight of the Idols: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer.

Sexual desire is the true sacred road, writes Nietzsche: "It was only Christianity, with ressentiment against life in its foundations, which made of sexuality something impure: it threw filth on the beginning, on the prerequisite of our life."

Maybe my champagne-quaffing election-night host was right: materialism - if taken as embracing the shock and grit of reality over heavenly, utopian delusions - has been defeated.

But I predict the coming of a most uncivil, uncouth, un-Christian disobedience.

Two words, Chairman: screw you.

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Anna Funder shot to international prominence with the publication of her 2003 book Stasiland, about the East German secret police, and the attempts of some brave citizens to resist their oppressors. Now working on a novel, the author has taken time out to write and deliver the final of the 2008 PEN International Voices lecture series. Her essay is about Courage.

Anna Funder trained as a lawyer before turning to writing. Stasiland won the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction in 2004. She is currently working on her first novel.

The duration of this video is 80'03".

This video is presented in conjunction with ABC Fora, a great source of talks and debates online.

Comments on this story appear both here on Unleashed and on the ABC Fora site.

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Any tourist to Berlin posing for photos at Brandenburg Gate or strolling through the Tiergartren, cannot fail to notice The Memorial of the Murdered Jews of Europe. It takes up an entire city block, and features 2700 slabs of concrete packed together on undulating ground.

The memorial, designed by New York architect Peter Eisenman has provoked criticism. The now former mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen complained that Berlin was attracting all the projects that dealt with remorse and guilt while other parts of Germany were able to bask in national pride.

Yet in acknowledging the past - in its architecture, art and filmmaking - there are some remarkable stories being told out of Berlin; stories that were previously suppressed through guilt, shame and a lack of confidence in sharing them with an international audience.

The last few years have seen some exceptionally good films inspired by Dark Deutschland: The Lives of Others about the loathsome activities of the Stasi in East Berlin of the 80s, Downfall - the story of Hitler's last days in a Berlin bunker, The Baader Meinhof Complex which deals with homegrown terrorist groups in West Germany in the 1980s and the more light-hearted Goodbye Lenin!, which farewells a country which suddenly ceased to exist - East Germany.

According to the Independent newspaper, "German cinema used to be the preserve of beret-toting university lecturers and media pseuds. Now, it seems, it has become the opiate of the popcorn masses. And not just German masses. Punters in Britain, America, Spain and Italy are forking over to see some extraordinary German films."

This winter in Germany, yet another local film has been released which prods at the country's war wounds. A Woman in Berlin is based on the real life war diaries of an anonymous German woman (later revealed as journalist Marta Hillers) as the Russians seized the capital.

Nina Hoss, who plays the lead role in the film told The Times, "That the Russians raped many local woman as they took Berlin, had been a taboo subject in Germany. The German soldiers came back from the war and did not want to know about the humiliation of their wives, daughters, even mothers. There was a double silence: the men about what they did on the front; the women about their suffering."

The book was published anonymously in the 50s to avoid the shame connected with the issue, and even when released in Germany it was downplayed despite its success in the U.S and Europe. One Berlin tour guide told me an American tourist fainted on tour when he heard about the rapes that occurred in Berlin: his mother had fled Germany after the war, pregnant, distressed and alone. The tourist had never heard about the wretched aftermath of the war, or about the "Russenbabies" - babies born to German women after the war.

There is some hope that in telling these stories, the more unsavoury and hidden aspects of Germany's past will be better unstood by future generations who will be less inclined to repeat the mistakes.

But the move towards opening the shutters on Dark Deutschland has not been without its critics. Some thought Downfall was too sympathetic to the perpetrators of the Holocaust, humanising them. But the new wave of German films doesn't seek to atone or apologise - or even explain - it just tells some of the more extraordinary stories of last century, that until recently were seen as too painful to depict.

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Run for cover! A recession is coming - life as we know it is about to exit stage left. Already signs of its imminent arrival abound. Children across the city are flocking to public schools, arriving in ties and boaters, their mothers afraid to waste shade purchased privately before the crisis hit. Women have been seen leaving cosmetic surgeries with noses intact, breasts that openly declare they have been suckled by young and stomachs that look more like soft curvy pouches than stainless steel kitchen benches. Lips can literally be seen deflating all over town. Brows furrowing like dry river beds.

Yes, the travesty that goes by that name - recession - is casting its ugly pall upon us all again and just how deep the ugliness will run this time is anyone's guess. There are reports of personal trainers found abandoned in parks, calling for help on public telephones. People not only walking but washing their own dogs. The reign of the mongrel returning as Huskies and Labradoddles disappear from our streets faster than an Afghan Hound. Kids out playing eye spy and cricket. Call 'DS' and the poor dears think you're playing hangman.

And the changes in our homes could be just as devastating. It's predicted that before long people will be brewing coffee on the stove again in small stainless steel pots. No longer free to be-our-own-barista, it's the end of frothy milk and 'chinos' in the homes of decent folk. Yes, $1000 expresso coffee machines destined to become like the luxury tea-making alarm clock of yesteryear. They say people will be drinking tap water by December.

Some have gone so far as to say pictures may reappear on living room walls in place of flat screen TVs. There's talk of people hanging on to their computers for more than a year. Repairing the dishwasher when it breaks rather than purchasing a new one. Some old doom and gloom bandits are suggesting keeping the same old fridge even if it's not brushed stainless steel or the next surface that comes into fashion. Old style cubbies built by dads with any old bits of wood they could find look like blemishing a garden near you. And watch out kids the pain's not going to stop there. The little ones look like missing out on ipods this Chrissie. Yep, Santa will be loading up the sleigh with those old rectangular trampolines now available on ebay for about fifty bucks - make sure to paint an X in the middle so they know where to jump. Childhood injuries will already be on the rise from siblings laying into each other, no longer sedated in front of X-boxes and flat screens.

Some things will just disappear completely. $400 face cream? Wiped out. Spas? Just baths again. Foie Gras? Gone. And all those geese will be joining that unemployment queue too. People have already begun to question $19 bowls of ice-cream (with terrifying ramifications). This is completely horrible but diners have been heard asking for doggy bags and it's not for the ice-cream. The doggy bags are a real disaster for our town's homeless who feed off the half a million completely edible meals we send to the dumpsters each year (actually the number is far greater but that's the amount the OzHarvest charity manages to save and redistribute to the city's homeless). Of course the homeless will be taking another kicking as we immediately cancel any tiny donations we make to the charities that help them.

And spare a thought for companies who will suffer even more pain than us poor folk at home. There will be months, possibly even years where they make a good profit but it just wont be bigger than the last. Profitable businesses that have lost their way to eternal growth.

Now, none of this is meant to panic you. Panic is just about the worst thing you can do in a recession. And it may sound odd because we're all up to our ears in debt - which is why this recession has come to pass - but the thing to do is stand tall, renew your capitalist vows and spend, spend, spend. If you don't, you'll experience increased feelings of agitation, the curtain will drop on our 80s revival and the economy will fall flat on its face. But if our worst fears are realised just remember, you can always paint your own toenails, there's a book in the glove box that can help you find your way and whatever little money you've got, just keep on blowing it.

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With the global financial meltdown meeting the climate meltdown head on, the potential to deal with both crises using the same solutions has been gaining support.

Last month, the United Nations Environment Program joined with Deutsche Bank and others to promote a 'Green New Deal' based on investing billions of dollars in the four pillars of renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean transport and ecosystem protection, reducing greenhouse emissions, building infrastructure and creating millions of new jobs. World leaders such as US President-elect Obama, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon have publicly embraced the proposal, with Obama listing a $150 billion clean energy plan as his top priority.

The 'Green New Deal', taking its inspiration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 'New Deal' to build the USA out of the Great Depression, is only the most recent embodiment of strategies put forward from Hobart to London over the last few decades, recognising that investing in protecting the environment is the only sensible economic plan.

The Greens have long been arguing that Australia's economic future depends on investing our current wealth in a clean, zero emissions future. Since the beginning of the current economic crisis, we have been calling for a 'Green New Deal' at home and for any economic support package to be directed at sustainable alternatives. A key aspect of this is our proposal to retrofit every home in the nation with energy efficient technologies such as solar water heaters and insulation.

That's why, after weeks of silence from the Rudd Government, I was delighted to hear the Prime Minister and his Industry Minister, Senator Carr, at least start using this language in launching their Green Car Package last week. Both noted that it was only by building environmentally sustainable cars that Australia's car industry can have a sustainable future - something I have been telling them for years.

But the devil, as always, is in the detail. And so much of that detail is still missing - right down to what is the definition of a 'green car' that will benefit from the package.

I welcomed the plan as the first step in recognising the importance of linking economic stimulus measures to the effort to build a new, zero emissions economy. But, in doing so, I noted that it was a small first step and that the Greens look forward to working with the Government to flesh it out.

Here is what we would propose:

In rethinking transport for a zero emissions Australia, the fundamental points are to help people to drive less and, when they do drive, to drive more efficiently and with the least polluting vehicles possible.

There is no reason why the Green Car Plan could not have been presented as a Green Transport Plan that would shift car manufacturing onto a green base and drive investment and job creation in rolling out buses, trains, ferries, trams and cycleways. Instead of thinking small, with changes at the margins to make cars that little bit more fuel efficient, we could see a plan to roll out an electrified vehicle fleet and all the infrastructure that will have to go with that - powered by a massively increased renewable energy grid, of course. American entrepreneur Shai Agassi has already proposed rolling out electric vehicle infrastructure in Australia. He should be given all the help he can to make it a reality. Agassi is only one of many entrepreneurs promoting intelligent networks, such as digital control systems for railways and smart electricity grids, which create significant efficiencies and make it easier to have an energy system powered entirely by renewable energy.

As well as investing in the infrastructure for public transport and electric vehicles, the Government should be investing in R&D and commercialisation for second generation biofuels which present a real potential for zero emissions transport without reducing availability of food crops or replacing standing forests with oil palm plantations, for example.

Aside from direct spending, there are plenty of big changes that can be encouraged through the tax system. The Greens achieved a small win by exempting fuel efficient vehicles from the Luxury Car Tax, already leading Audi to sell more efficient cars in Australia, but we propose a much broader tax shift to drive cleaner transport. We would replace the Luxury Car Tax altogether with a tax based on the fuel consumption of vehicles rather than their sale price. We would remove the Fringe Benefits Tax Concessions that encourage people to drive more. We would also take the GST off public transport fares.

When it finally decides how to define a 'green car', we will be calling on the Government to implement mandatory vehicle fuel efficiency standards. China and Europe are powering ahead of Australia with stringent standards in place and, without them, Australia will be left behind, regardless of the rhetoric of the Prime Minister and Industry Minister.

One policy the Government has ignored altogether is the tremendous impact of changing government procurement policies to buy more efficient and hybrid cars for the government fleets. Because of the fast turnover in these fleets, this simple change has a large flow-on effect by driving many more efficient vehicles into the second hand market.

The Government has not yet embraced very much of this obvious agenda. But, with the Green Car Plan, they took the first step of recognising that the economic meltdown and climate meltdown could be addressed at the same time. There is much more to be done but, perhaps encouraged by the election of Barack Obama, we can have some hope of stronger action in that direction in 2009.

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For many patient decades, New Zealand has cultivated the knack for kicking our national arse. Their rugby team is more terrifying; their sense of nationhood is more profoundly evolved and, of course, they selfishly hoard all of that lovely Polynesian water while we bake in the arid air of our own dire negligence.

And now it appears that Kiwi ladies enjoy a far greater level of equality with their Kiwi gents. This alarming news is like the research equivalent of the Haka.

The scary Haka report received some press last week and can be read here. Talk about dry. It's every bit as clement and accommodating as aforesaid Australian interior. But, what else might one expect from the mediocre entertainers of the World Economic Forum? In its raw form, the WEF's Global Gender Gap Report 2008 might not be a page turner. The data it turns up, however, is arresting.

To anyone who gives a hoot about basic human rights, the report affords some shockers. The least remarkable of which, to be fair, is New Zealand's primacy over Australia. As it happens, a whopping percentage of the total "Gender Gap" index is satisfied by the years in which a female has served as a head of state. And in NZ, as you know, they're accustomed to female leadership.

It was heartening, of course, to look across the Tasman these past decades and observe Clark's succession of Jenny Shipley. Girl on girl parliamentary action is always a sight to behold.

Nonetheless, one could argue that female governance is not a yardstick of equality sufficient to merit 11 per cent of an entire index. (Actually, I can't claim responsibility for this fair statistical reading. It was the New Zealand Herald. There they go again, those Kiwis. Beating us at something else: humility.)

Hence, Australian women may not dress like the Pussycat Dolls and practise obeisance before their male rulers as indicated by our final report card.

But. Still. Of the 130 countries surveyed, we're at a shameful 21. We were beaten by Moldova, Latvia and Lesotho. I must concede to Sarah Palin-itis when it comes to Lesotho. I don't know how to pronounce Lesotho let alone locate the damn place on an atlas.

Lesotho? It may be a very nice place teeming with liberated women and reconstructed men. Yet surely our secular nation with its lofty literacy rates, tradeable currency and, let it be said, prominent placement on most atlases has earned a higher ranking than Lesotho. Our dismal score seems incredible. Even the national broadcaster mistakenly reported that we'd made it into the top ten.

The report brings to our attention global woes that far exceed (a) Australia's miserable grade and (b) my woeful stupidity when it comes to identifying small African enclaves. Women remain the most impoverished persons on earth. Women of all ethnicities earn less than men. Although disparities in health and education are closing, they abide. It's all very rum and distressing and, frankly, I'd rather not consider how little has changed since those Second Wave sisters kick-started contemporary feminism back in the seventies. Except, of course, in Lesotho.

Such global problems are far too immense and miserable to even think about. So we should just reflect, then on our local example.

Skim our report card and find, Australian ladies rank very favourably in the WEF's educational attainment index. As we've all known for years, Aussie girls continue to collect degrees and generally kick male arse in the halls of the academy. Actually, we're up there, at number one, with Lesotho.

When it comes, however, to wage equality, we're a miserable 77th.
Almost needless to impart, Lesotho gives us another bath on this count.

Outside of education, it seems that Australian women fail to excel, or even equal, Australian blokes. The participation of Australian women in public and economic life is drear. There are those, of course, who would offer some blandishment re The Important Work of Motherhood. Such critics should immediately visit Lesotho where, apparently, women continue to reproduce children while (gasp) holding more positions of civic influence and earning something better approximating equal pay than their Australian sisters.

It is true that the WEF's index is skewed to a primarily economic view of all things. Then again, outside of Bhutan (the little kingdom didn't make the survey) nearly everybody's view these days is skewed to a primarily economic view of all things. One might hold forth about The Truly Important Things in Life until one is quite blue in the face. This does not change the broad consensus of late capitalism. Viz. that economic participation and stability is a reliable index of achievement. And what we've learnt from the Gender Gap report is that in Australia, women are losing their foothold in this fundamental field.

Honestly, I don't think blokes are at fault here. It's not as though they, inspired by the Howard era's dark love for the term "mateship", formed enclaves far more secretive than Lesotho and said, "Let's keep the harpies out". And, I don't know if we ought to blame the ladies either. In my world, women display just as much depraved ambition as their brothers.

As with most unsanctioned inequality in our era, this sort of thing just collapses into being. I like to think of it as an opportunistic infection. You know how when you're run down, you're more likely to get the flu? Well. Our Gender Gap credentials are a lot like that. For the last few decades, we've been exhausted by increased working hours and nourished on a perilously poor cultural diet. And, voila. The chronic illness of gender inequality was aggravated into new life.

What we need is a nice bowl of homemade soup and a good lie down.

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Ever seen a white-flowering Jacaranda tree? There's one in Sydney's Botanic Gardens. To find it go in the Queen Elizabeth Gate at the right of the Opera House forecourt, walk until you hit the first curve of the path then look straight ahead across the water. It's at the end of a line of colour that starts with a blazing red Illawarra Flame tree. Panning right there's a huge Jacaranda of the purple-flowering variety and in its lee a spreading Michelia with creamy white blossoms as large as dinner plates. Completing the colourful mosaic is this unusual Jacaranda, its delicate profusion of white blossoms punctuating the beautiful tapestry.

If you're planning to drive past to take a look, don't bother. The only way to see this spectacle is to get out of the car and onto Shanks' pony. (You'll need to do it soon. It's already beginning to leaf.) It'll be worth it. The gardens are a sensory delight at this time of year.

It's taken me almost half a century to discover the joys of walking. Since I have I've become somewhat of a zealot. Worse even than a reformed smoker. When you encounter sights such as the one I've just described it's no wonder. And in case you think I'm too Sydney-centric, I'm sure there are spring scenes like this all over Australia at the moment. Actually, I know there are. I've just come back from a week in Melbourne and country Victoria.

If botanical spectacles are not your 'thing' there are a myriad of other benefits to this under-appreciated form of exercise. I'm a walking example (no pun intended). Before taking up walking I was unhealthy. Leading a sedentary lifestyle, I had high blood pressure (165/95) and my liver was fatty with an alarmingly high enzyme reading - this is not good apparently. These conditions have reversed themselves. This I attribute, in no small part, to walking.

An ultra-sonographer friend of mine was recently in Sydney for a medical conference. How to unblock clogged arteries was the major topic of the conference. Clogged arteries lead to nasty things like heart attacks and strokes. The message from the conference (as she reported it to me) was that it was far better to prevent the arteries blocking in the first place as, while there were things that could be done, there was no miracle cure. The best exercise for arterial health was, you guessed it, walking.

I do understand that all this 'healthy' talk is no good if walking is not what you enjoy. We all know what we should do to maintain optimum health. Having the will and enough motivation is the problem, isn't it? It was something lacking in me for many years. Walking simply bored me. Perambulating aimlessly around a park, going nowhere, seemed to me a complete waste of time. I've solved that problem.

I use walking as a means of transport. And, I always include a small treat for myself during the walk. It might be a coffee at a favourite cafe en route, for example. Consequently, all those occasions where I would routinely get in the car - hairdressers, shopping, whatever, are now done on foot. I have also embraced 'local'. I estimate I walk between 40 and 50 kilometres a week - far less than the weekly kilometres I did in the car to accomplish the same tasks.

Nowadays, I have to make an effort to drive my car at least once a fortnight so that the battery doesn't go flat. I fill it up with petrol on average once every six months. (Isn't petrol expensive?)

Walking is saving me a packet in petrol and, bonus, my carbon footprint is now a lot lighter - great for the planet. (I would like to altruistically claim this as my motivation but really it's all been pure serendipity.) Furthermore, as a writer, I write while I walk. The best ideas come to me during a long walk and I can have a chapter or an article finished by the time I get home. It's a sure-fire cure for writers' block.

My son's a convert to walking too. After work, he used to take the crowded and unreliable train home, get changed, get in the car, drive to the gym, do a workout and drive home. He's ditched the expensive gym membership, saved the train fare and now simply walks home. He was going there anyway. His new regimen is both time and cost efficient.

Still not convinced? What about if I appealed to vanity?

A very critical friend said to me the other day: "You have the most amazing muscle definition in your legs." At first, I wasn't sure if it was a compliment. Was it like "Wow, your varicose veins are huge"? Thankfully, it wasn't. Muscle definition is a good thing and aspired to by gym junkies apparently.

My message is simple: ditch the car - you'll save money, your health, the planet and you'll look great in shorts. Happiness!

I'll see you under the white jacaranda.

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A quick look around the front yards of Australia in the middle of the previous century would have revealed a curious cultural phenomenon. All across the nation, Australians sought to decorate their hard-earned quarter-acre blocks. Houses were built, families moved in - and concrete Aborigines were planted on the soil.

It raises an interesting question - one that cuts to the core of the Australian identity. Are concrete Aborigines an overly racist symbol, or are they just a sign of a much simpler time? And, more importantly, what do our nation's lawn ornaments say about the type of people we were then, and are now?

Looking back, it's not hard to see where the demise of the concrete Aborigine began. By the time Australia slowly cottoned on to the fact that we were being made fun of by the team behind hit TV show Kingswood Country, the presence of the concrete Aborigine was de rigeur in the suburbs. The unofficial star of Kingswood Country was "Neville", the Concrete Aborignal, who got treatment almost as special as Ted's beloved Holden. He resided in the front yard of the Bullpit family, honoured by belligerent patriarch Ted Bullpit, whose own bitter discriminations were, at the time, the source of much mirth and not horror as they would be today.

Concrete Aborigines were, at the time, installed as a curious salute to the Indigenous population of Australia. They adorned front yards from Melbourne to Townsville, and Sydney to Perth. Of course, there was a time when the actual Aboriginal people populated the patches of land that would become our front yards - and they, too, stood proud and gazed solemnly at the land around them, keeping a steadfast watch as the years ticked by. Perhaps Australia was just trying to make some sort of rudimentary statement: we know Aboriginal people were here before us, and somewhere, deep down, we know that we've pretty much stolen the whole country from them without so much as a "do you mind?".

Generally, all concrete Aborigines looked the same - which is, now that I think of it, another significant check in the 'probably racist' column, but it was probably just because they were churned out of a single factory somewhere. Almost to a man, they stood proudly erect, spear in one hand, opposing foot resting against the spear-side knee in a stance that generations of Australia have come to accept as an idealised vision of the Noble Savage.

Of course, not all front yards had a concrete Aborigine. The euphemistically named "New Australians", possibly missing the significance of the nation's misguided salute to our Indigenous population, instead filled their front yards with ornately carved statues of lions, women holding jugs of water and small boys peeing in a graceful arc into a small pond. But the true Australian family had a "Neville" in the yard. They were as Aussie as greyhound racing, a pie and a beer at the footy, and taking a Monday off to go to the beach in the middle of summer.

But one day, slowly at first, they began to disappear. Australian front yard decoration began to move from the "concrete Aborigine phase" to the "Torana up on bricks" period, which was followed by the current trend - one that is purely seasonal. In the suburbs around my place, Christmas is celebrated by the adorning of the front yards with countless fairy lights and mechanical Santas, which are somehow both grim and jolly at the same time. How I long for the time when ornaments were permanent, and really meant something.

The concrete Aborigine is, at its very core, a symbol of a much simpler time; an Australia that was as unashamedly kitsch as it was unaware of the cultural and political significance of something that, by today's standards, is so brutally offensive the very idea of someone trying to resurrect it as an art form would most likely prompt indignant squealing from the more progressive corners of society.

But I don't care - because I'm calling for the reinstatement of the concrete Aborigine as part of our national identity. The drive to have them brought back to the cultural fold is, I'll admit, hamstrung by one small detail: no one I have spoken to seems to know where they came from. It's as if they appeared, by magic, to watch over the houses of the nation. Very little has been written on the topic, aside from the musings of the occasional nostalgic weirdo, a group whose fold I appear to be joining.

Ornamental Aborigines are effectively concrete oddities of indeterminate origin - suburban crop circles, if you will. And I fear, unless we do something soon, they will go extinct. Relics of a bygone era - a decoration whose time has come and, sadly, gone.

I hate to think what will happen in 1000 years, when this society we've built has crumbled like every other before it. Archaeologists - or, worse still, extraterrestrial visitors - may happen upon the handful that remained, buried beneath the scorched and twisted soil we will leave behind. Unearthed, the concrete Aborigines will be studied - and no doubt they, like many other historical artefacts, will be misinterpreted. Our society will be thought to have revered the subject of these concrete statues as Gods. How appalingly sad it is that nothing could be further from the truth.

Kevin Rudd may have apologised. John Howard might well have done his best to keep things under wraps. And generations of lawmakers before us have tried, mostly in vain, to help along the way. But Australia's record on Indigenous issues is, frankly, a litany of disasters, punctuated occasionally with visionary ideas that were shouted down by those who apparently 'knew better'.

Which is why, I believe, it's high time the charge was led to bring the concrete Aborigine back from the brink of extinction - not to celebrate the ignorance and bigotry with which they were first conceived, but to reclaim them as a noble salute to the original inhabitants of the land that we, as Australians, now occupy. It is, quite literally, the least we could do, after all.

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The launch this week of the Australian Sex Party ensures that censorship will be an almost unprecedented election issue in 2011 when the Rudd government goes to the polls.

Censorship is not an issue that Australians have debated much, perhaps because most Australians are against it. More than 70 per cent believe that x-rated videos should be legally sold across Australia.

Given that community attitude, the champions of censorship when they get to Canberra and get their hands on the levers of power just get on with it. Nobody asked the people of Australia whether they should withdraw Australian support from international family planning efforts. The Howard government just did it.

Nobody asked the people of Australia whether they wanted a new category of censorship added to the existing categories. Paul Keating just did it.

Nor did the Rudd government consult the community when it decided to tighten controls over the internet.

Fiona Patten likens the sex industry to the caged canary that miners in a less scientific age took underground, not because they wanted to hear it sing, but because the canary died first. When that happened the miners knew there were dangerous gases in the mine, and it was time to get out.

Censorship of sexual material is in due course followed by more general political censorship. The censorship tide ebbs and flows. In Australia today, the Rudd Government's proposed legislation to censor the internet through compulsory filtering means it is flowing.

Patten, the Chief Executive Officer of the Eros Association, is doing something about it. The Australian Sex Party has a 16 point program incorporating proposals that as the industry spokesman she has been seeking, unsuccessfully for years, and a few more as well that are calculated to broaden the new party's appeal.

The Party's manifesto calls for a national classification scheme for x-rated films, and a law against discrimination on the basis of job occupation, profession or calling. There should be mandatory equal numbers of men and women in the Senate and State Upper Houses. Pregnancy laws should be on the same basis as divorce laws, providing for legal, no-fault and guilt-free processes for women seeking termination.

It believes Viagra and Cialis and any other drug used to treat sexual dysfunction should be added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It would overturn the decision to cease contributing Australian aid to international organizations providing family planning services.

It seeks the repeal of Northern Territory laws making it illegal for Aboriginals to possess x-rated films. It proposes non-discriminatory immigration proposals, so that sex-workers would enter Australia on working visas instead of being lured in and kept as sex slaves without recourse to Australian law.

The Australian Sex Party stands for Paid Maternity Leave, for legal same sex marriages and equal rights under the law for gay, lesbian and same sex couples.

The new party also proposes a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in religious institutions. It would end the tax exempt status for religions, at which point Sir Humphrey would say: "How very brave of you Miss Patten." No doubt her response would be that the churches would fight them tooth and nail anyway. The real answer, as Eros likes to point out, is that 107 Catholic Priests and Brothers have been convicted in Australian courts on sex charges, and no workers at all in the sex industry.

The minor parties get elected to the Senate on the flow on of votes from the ALP and the Liberal and National Parties, because the ALP and the Coalition are in agreement that their mutual antipathy over-rides all issues of policy and principle.

So the Sex Party is asking voters to give them their first preference for the Senate and to vote the ticket of their preferred party in the House.

The quota of votes needed to get a Senator elected ranges from 34,000 in the ACT and 37,000 in Tasmania up to 600,000 in NSW and 460,000 in Victoria.

It looks like a big ask, but Barack Obama has just demonstrated how far you can go with the internet. There are about 1,000 shops selling sex toys and videos throughout Australia which will function as party branches, and if those four million customers for x-rated DVDs decide they do not wish to be branded as dishonourable and disgusting by the government they have elected and give their first preferences to the Sex Party, the result could be surprising.

The ALP has 32 Senators and the Greens five in the current Senate. The Liberals also have 32, with five National Party Senators. There are two independents.

Where the Greens purport to be tree-huggers, but in reality have a wide-ranging left-wing agenda which warrants the label Trotskyite, the Sex Party is narrowly focused on sex and censorship and on open government. It would be painless for either coalition or ALP voters should they agree with their goals to give them first preference for the Senate, and then move to the ticket of a major party for the House.

What the Sex Party seeks are sufficient numbers in the Senate to enable it to reverse the tide of censorship which began with Paul Keating and with Tasmania's Brian Harradine.

The canary argument is colourful, but it has force. Successively, governments have ceased to distribute the Gazette to the Press Gallery, and the daily Hansard proofs. The last Budget was notable in the reduction in the amount of factual information. They have now begun to announce reports without actually distributing them, as with the Mid Year Economic Forecast and Outlook, a very important document. The tendency to close up on information is becoming stronger.

Censorship, argues the Sex Party, starts with telling people they can't look at girls bottoms, which is an insult to girls, and ends by withholding strategic economic information, which endangers peoples jobs.

In totalitarian countries, they censor political material as well, but they start with the censorship of sexual material.

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The image of Ben Cousins being arrested shirtless in Northbridge last year was seen everywhere from local newspapers to international news broadcasts. The AFL's illicit drug policy was put in the spotlight and even became a Federal parliamentary issue during this time. This bad publicity made life tough for the AFL. Now after giving the green light to Ben Cousins to resume his football career, the AFL is going to make sure life will be tough for Ben Cousins in season 2009.

For the past twelve months Cousins has complied with and passed every drug test required of him by the AFL. At the same time he has remained in top physical shape striving to achieve the ultimate goal of getting another crack at AFL football. As expected the AFL opened the window for him to make his return, but while opening this window, the 16 AFL clubs may have shut the door on any Cousins comeback due to the onerous conditions and demands the AFL has placed on both Cousins and any club seeking to recruit the former Brownlow medallist.

The AFL should have treated Cousins as they would any other player in his comeback. Instead they have shown little faith in the current illicit drug policy and have angered the AFLPA by altering the drug code to deal with Cousins without seeking the prior approval from the player's body. In imposing the strict conditions they may also have deterred any AFL clubs that had a passing interest in Cousins from pursuing this path.

If Cousins is successful in his comeback he will be subject to the most stringent drug testing requirements ever encountered in sport. As part of his conditions Cousins will be subject to up to 3 urine sample tests per week, quarterly hair sample tests and also any random ASADA tests done under the Anti Doping Code. Many of you will think he is a confirmed addict who bought the sport into disrepute and therefore the AFL requirements are justified, but when you compare these requirements with other athletes and other sports you soon realise that no other athlete, returning to a sport from a drug imposed suspension has ever been subject to such onerous requirements. Shane Warne was not after inadvertently taking a drug masking agent, Oussama Mallouli the Tunisian swimmer who beat Grant Hackett in Beijing was not after he returned to swimming from a positive test for amphetamines and Ben Johnson, arguably the most notorious drug offender in sport, was definitely not subject to these stringent requirements on his return from testing positive to anabolic steroids.

If no other international sporting body has seen it fit to impose such demands on a returning athlete then why has the AFL seen it as necessary? At yesterday's press conference Andrew Demetriou sought to justify the decision by saying that the AFL had acted on expert medical advice in the best interests of rehabilitating Cousins. Sounds good in theory but in practice the onerous demands that will be placed on Cousins can only be detrimental to his successful return to AFL football.

To understand the arduous demands that will be placed on Cousins by this continual testing you need to be familiar with the task of providing a urine sample test. On most occasions the drug tester will be waiting for the player upon the completion of the game. The player is not only exhausted but also dehydrated after losing volumes of fluid through sweat during the game. The drug tester literally shadows your every move, beaker in hand, until you are ready to give a sample. He stands behind you as you sing the club song, walks along side you as you perform warm down, takes the seat next to you in the coaches post match address and finally watches over you as you provide the sample. Sometimes you are lucky and able to provide a sample relatively quickly but on most occasions this process will last in excess of 2-3 hours as a result of the complete dehydration caused by the game. One Hawthorn player did not join his team mates in the Grand Final victory celebrations until 10pm as a result of not being able to provide a urine sample. The testing is imposing, intrusive and it takes away from the one time an AFL player can relax and mentally switch off as a result of completing the game and releasing the inner tension surrounding his performance.

Now if this process is mentally onerous on a player who undertakes tests maybe 4-5 times per year, imagine how it will effect Cousins who will be subject to this process up to 3 times every week. It cannot assist his mental well being as he will never be able to switch off from the pressures of AFL football. Not only will the testing be mentally demanding it will eat into his training and recovery time which is vitally important for a 30-year-old athlete returning from a year off.

The testing criteria is not only tiresome for Cousins it is equally demanding on any club seeking to draft him. Demetriou said yesterday that any club interested in Cousins was taking on a risk. He was referring to the possibility of a relapse but could have easily been referring to the extent of resources that would be required by any club to cater for Cousins as a result of the demands the AFL medical experts have sought to implement. Not only would an interested party be required to provide access for the rigorous testing regime, it would also need to have an internal support structure in place for Cousins' rehabilitation. On top of this the club would face the extra media attention as a result of recruiting Cousins and may need procedures in place to shield him from the constant focus. The amount of resources necessary to support Cousins off the field takes away from those resources available for performance on the field. Through no fault of his own Cousins is causing detriment to the team as the individual resources required for him take away from those available to the team.

Of the 16 AFL Clubs only 2 have categorically shut the door on Cousins. Yesterday's decision by the AFL to treat Cousins as a special case in an endeavour to support him may ultimately backfire. Collingwood, a former suitor of Cousins, is said to believe the AFL does not wish the former Brownlow medallist to return and as a result is no longer interested in drafting him. If a club with vast resources like Collingwood can not justify drafting Cousins then certainly the lesser resourced clubs that may have left the door slightly ajar for a Cousins return will now have it firmly locked and bolted.

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The ongoing kerfuffle about funding Australian films we are told 'nobody' wants to see because they are so 'dark' doesn't seem to include the most obvious aspect of the problem. Much of what has been commissioned and made for exhibition at cinemas would be better shown on television, but the serious and persistent downgrading of television as an exhibition platform for anything but drama series, mini-series, serials and soaps has prevented that. So, the audience for which they are really made rarely gets to see them when they are first released.

Film people who have been intent on glamourising film production, by demanding we develop an antipodean Hollywood culture with stars and gossip and awards nights, find the concept of films for television - telefilms for God's sake - to be anathema. I think many would have worked better on television but that was not to be. Cinéastes, auteurs and hot shot producers had to have a cinema industry.

The most recent major thinkpiece was in the Weekend Australian Review of November 8-9 by Michael Bodey. In 'Turning the Titanic' Bodey tried to find out why the 'Australian film industry has lurched from crisis to boom and inexplicably back to crisis throughout its short, erratic history.' By way of explanation he quoted the view of the outgoing head of the Films Finance Corporation Brian Rosen who said the FFC could only fund what it was asked to - which was why too many 'small films that appeal to about 100,000 people... about lesbians, drugs and whatever else' were made and exhibited to empty cinemas.

Bodey also quoted producer Trist Miall (Strictly Ballroom) who supplied the explanation that the problem was 'small, dark films' which were not popular with audiences. A few days later the new president of the Screen Producers Association of Australia, Antony Ginnane, served down the same line: Australian films were 'dark' and 'depressing.' Consequently, he told SPAA at its conference on the Gold Coast (naturally) that Australian films had failed to 'find an audience.' Wolf Creek was as dark and depressing as it gets but it certainly found a movie theatre audience, but it was 'genre' (a non-supernatural horror movie).

For a long time, all kinds of people, with and without real knowledge, have been trying to analyse why Australians won't go to the cinema to see Australian films in enough numbers (currently paying less than 4% of the total cinema take), but rather than agreeing to the inevitable - that we've been showing them in the wrong place - they continue to look for other reasons why audiences stay away. Sadly, the latest conclusion is that we have been making the wrong films. However, to expect the funding agencies to suddenly come up with a strategy for picking winners may prove as futile as any other of the many answers on offer.

Genre may well be the critical defining element of the appeal of going to the cinema for the majority of paying customers. The dark films Ginnane doesn't like probably don't fit into any genre except the dismissive 'art house' which may be why people don't go to see them. Does anyone ask of a script of concept: wouldn't it work better on the 'genre' of the small screen? And if they do, then they are basically saying 'it's not a movie' so we aren't interested.

The insiders who have guided the way we think about the Australian film industry since the 1970s is based around a succession of theoretical and practical journals supported by various finding bodies including the AFC and the NSW FTO, the latest of which is Inside Film, which now has its own annual awards ceremony. IF started more than a decade ago as a lively how-to journal for young film-makers in the first digi-cam age, but now follows the path worn by Cinema Papers and Encore to become a trade magazine with cultural extras very much dedicated to promoting the 'industry' line - i.e. Australia has a film industry that must be maintained by effective funding and/or taxbreak policies.

Here's a quote from Tim Irons in the March 2008 edition of IF, a review of Tony Ayres' Homesong Stories. After listing the many awards and accolades and noting its wide critical acclaim Irons admits to being baffled why nobody went to see it 'making only what can be considered a very bewildering $452,488'. So why was it 'bewildering'? Or, in Michael Bodey's words, why had the lack of audience interest happened 'inexplicably'?

Why is it that writers Bodey, Irons and other enthusiastic supporters of the industry find it 'bewildering'? I think it is because they have been confused, by the 'industry' between films, movies and 'cinema', in fact between industry and culture. To me the cinema can only be a large building in which movies/films are shown to a big group of people who sit in the dark in front of a large bright screen with big sound. That's what going to the movies is about. There's something graphic and mysterious in the experience. The film doesn't have to be an action spectacular or an historical saga but it does have to have qualities that are tried and tested in the exhibition space. Something about it has to be big enough to fill or open up the screen, for a crowd. However, except for sporting finals, and unfolding crises, people don't need to watch television in crowds.

The pitiful box office returns for home grown films have baffled industry professionals and critics alike for years but, until recently, they have been reluctant to pick on the gritty street stories that came before the FFC, the AFC and the other funding bodies. The industry rubric which lay behind the funders' ideology was that Australians wanted (or needed) to see 'their stories' up on the cinema screen and if they were dark and gritty, so be it. Sadly, it didn't seem to occur to anyone that movies made weren't what an audience expected to be 'cinematic'.

All the critics, scabrous and otherwise haven't yet got the point of why it is that our movie industry isn't a movie industry. Andrew Bolt writing in the Herald Sun earlier this year quoted Drew MacRae, CEO of the Australian Directors Guild lamenting that these 'great films' just weren't 'getting through to audiences.' Bolt had no answers why except the culture war critique that the industry was dominated by supporters of multiculturalism. Judging by what Ginnane and Rosen have said his anti-multiculturalist explanation may be gaining wider currency.

Home Song Stories was not a cinema movie, but not because it was about Chinese people. It just wasn't really made with the contemporary cinema-going experience in mind. It's moving, poignant, often quite beautiful to look at and disturbing, it's just not what people paying $15-plus for a night out at the movies think about seeing. It's best quality is its intimacy. That too can work in the cinema, but it works better on the small screen. It's what the television, home-viewing experience is all about. The mass audience is too big for movies like Homesong Stories.

It was one of many dozens of movies made in the past two decades that has failed to interest Australian cinemagoers and baffled or bewildered their supporters who insist that they are telling Australians their own stories. It's an idea you hear a lot. The marginally more successful Romulus My Father had the same problem. This time it had a big star - an Australian actor who has been taken up by Hollywood because of his performance in a thoroughly cinematic (and truly 'dark') Australian movie Chopper - but Eric Bana didn't bring the paying customers into cinemas either. There's never any guarantee that a big star will do it for a small movie. Romulus is a little more cinematic than Homesong Stories. It has beautiful landscape shots but again the closeness of the emotional experience, the story of the boy and his father is intimate, and much better suited to the home viewing experience rather than the wide open spaces of the dark public arena of a cinema and the audio decorations of Dolby surround.

Why has the Australian film industry refused to understand this simple division of interest in its audience and that our stories are better suited to television? It may be as mundane and vulgar as a longing to have our own red carpet culture but in their eagerness to have an industry they may have lost it. The appeal of home-watching hasn't diminished, viz the explosion of DVD buying, renting and downloading to see television series like Six Feet Under, Dexter, The Wire or The Sopranos. Ironically, the appeal of this experience is probably related to the spread of widescreen television monitors.

Whether or not our films were too multicultural they did follow the accepted rubric that films should be funded because they put 'our stories' up on the big screen and until recently the failure of so many Australian films to appeal to audiences that love being entertained in movie theatres has usually been explained by their technical deficiencies, or the film industry's under-development (although not of the technicians): there was lack of interest or enthusiasm by the distribution companies and exhibition chains; inadequate marketing and publicity budgets; even though the ideas and stories were right, the scripts weren't good enough - or 'developed' as the visiting experts told us, and funders and producers were blamed for not allocating enough money to work them up to perfection. Now, it seems Bolt's view that the stories have been too politically correct may have prevailed.

Nobody wants to admit to the obvious truth. Most Australian movies aren't movies and the reason why they aren't 'developed' well enough for the big screen is because they are ideas and stories more suited to television. They are not made for the big dark building full of people. They have all kinds of qualities - intimacy, subtlety, frankness, which are well suited to (probably non-commercial) television, so why weren't they on? Because television isn't good enough to satisfy the egos of those brought up to be part of the industry that uses expensive state of the art equipment and likes walking the red carpets at Sundance, Cannes and Hollywood. These aspirations have meshed neatly with the anti-public broadcasting ethos developed by Labor and intensified by coalition governments over the past twenty years which have enthusiastically stifled the capacity of the ABC and SBS to make one-off dramas. That experience is now mostly confined to re-runs of cinema movies or foreign telefilms made for the BBC, or Channel 4.

The important culturally relevant stories we are told we should want to see up on there on the same silver screen as the Hollywood products are really ones we'd prefer to see at home. Perish the thought, but our film industry should have become a made-for-television industry instead of trying to piggy back itself on the overseas success of fluky international hits. Our internationally successful actors and technicians are the real success of our industry, but, if we really think we can make either dour little tales of the migrant misery or quirky comedy the world wants to see, or the occasional nationalistic blockbuster, there will never be enough work for them at home. It may take the failure of the restructured funding organisations and the 40% offset policy to finally convince us that what we are yearning for can't and won't happen the way we have wanted it for too long.

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In their photos they look as if they have attended one of those business seminars by someone who claims he can teach everyone how to be a billionaire and lesson one is to fix all you meet with a steely gaze, an unwavering stare, locking your eyeballs to their eyeballs. He who blinks first is a wimp and will give you all their money, and those who have attended the seminar will never blink first. I've always believed it was rude to stare someone down, guess that's why I am still a dollar or two away from making my first billion.

But I digress. As well as the unwavering stare, the other characteristic is often a grim kind of look, a set of the jaw, a clenching of the temple muscles, as if constipation was setting in. But it isn't (probably) constipation, it is a belief that life is grim, life is earnest, and if they relax for a moment a time machine, piloted by atheistic socialists, will whisk them back to the 1960s, which they will be forced to endlessly re-live.

Who are they? They are the hard-faced men and women who have done well out of the culture wars. They are true believers in God, queen, country and capitalism. Tiny in numbers (they could all have fitted into John Kerr's Rolls Royce; could just form the Editorial Board of Quadrant) they have made up for it with an assault on the institutions of social democracy as determined and as noisy as any group of anarchists assaulting police lines at a G8 summit.

And because they are so noisy, these Royalist Ironsides, they have managed to create the illusion that they are a force to be reckoned with. In World War Two the allies made fake tanks out of canvas and wood, and spread them out on fields in south east England to fool the Germans into thinking that a large invasion force was being prepared in that area. Our little band of brothers and sisters have cardboard cut out think tanks spread around the country. They generate many letters to newspaper editors, much in the way that a schoolboy given a thousand lines to write out might do it easily with 100 pens tied together. They phone talk back radio shows, hold small conferences with American neoconservatives as guest speakers, publish books about the left wing conspiracy to take over the country, and arrange demonstrations by small numbers of right wing university students against marxist professors. They make so much noise that they have convinced all the media outlets that they must be given equal time, have convinced cultural institutions that they must be given equal board membership. Have indeed convinced the public that these shrill right wing voices represent half the population and must, as a result of redistribution of influence, be given half the means of production of public opinion.

Back in the olden days, long long ago, once were communists. They all had steely gazes, and a sense of the grim reality of life, and were in such small numbers that each one had not a single ASIO agent observing them but a whole team, fighting over who could hold the telescope, listen to the telephone bug. They were in such tiny numbers that they were making the golden age of Menzies a bit untidy, as if an occasional thistle was growing in the manicured front lawns behind the white picket fences, so Menzies tried to get them banned. But failed.

People liked having them around rather like they enjoyed seeing the odd kangaroo hopping down a main street. Or perhaps they had a clearer sense of democracy than Mr Menzies. But if they tolerated them as they would an eccentric uncle, there was no suggestion that communist writers would have their own regular newspaper columns, that the boards of institutions would be filled with communists, that the voices on radio would address their listeners as comrades, that Australian Communist Institutes would provide regular interviewees on current affairs shows and news bulletins.

I wouldn't have voted to ban the communists in 1951. Nor would I vote to ban the neoconservatives now (although lord knows it is tempting, back satan, back). I think in both cases the cause of social democracy is best served by letting these foolish people speak out and remove all doubt about their ignorance and stupidity. Banning them would only provide them, and us, with an exaggerated sense of their importance.

But fair crack of the whip, cobbers, it's time to reduce the representation of the radical right to the level of their representation in society. Get them off the boards, out of the newspapers, off the radio, don't put them in front of tv news cameras, or on breakfast television. Occasionally one could just come out of the Gordon Gecko Institute for Greed and say a few words to a tabloid newspaper, one of their on-going series on eccentrics, but that would be their lot. Sort of like UFO believers, only less mainstream.

I'm sick of hearing that the world isn't warming, that phonics is the only way to teach English, that religious schools are good for you, that the war against terror is a real war, that George Bush was a great president, that the great depression was caused by Roosevelt, that the current crisis was caused by poor people, that Australian history begins at Gallipoli and ends with Don Bradman, that government should be drowned in a bathtub, that poor people are failures, that working people are overpaid, that Iraq was a good idea and is being "won", that taxes are evil, that school league tables are good, that conservation is green religion, that nuclear power is the energy source for the future, that flag burners should be put to death, that the war on drugs is being won, that children should be seen and not heard, and that women should be barefoot and pregnant. Enough!

By all means go and join little suburban cells (I believe three people is the classic number, which seems about right, room for a couple of cells then) of like-minded people, first swearing allegiance on a copy of "Atlas Shrugged", and then chatting over lamingtons wearing cardigans and pearls, standing under portraits of the Queen and John Howard, and reliving the glory days of destroying the waterfront unions and putting new flagpoles in every school and writing a citizenship test and sinking refugee boats. If we want to hear your opinions we'll ask, ok?

Don't call us, we'll call you.

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Arun Gandhi is the fifth grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and he was a young boy and actually living with his grandfather at the time of the tragic assassination. Born in 1934 in Durban, Arun has spent much of his life actively promoting the principles of non-violence and social activism that made is grandfather such a seminal figure of the 20th century.

Here at the International Baccalaureate North America in San Francisco, Arun Gandhi gives a personal account of the life of his grandfather, and discusses why he believes Mahatma's teachings are still relevant today.

The duration of this video is 55'40".

This video is presented in conjunction with ABC Fora, a great source of talks and debates online.

Comments on this story appear both here on Unleashed and on the ABC Fora site.

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• ABC Fora video link

I didn't always hate Bill Gates. Quite the contrary. Decades ago, when he was living on junk food in a garage tinkering with something called 'DOS' (which we understood to mean 'dirty operating system') I thought that he deserved encouragement.

Unlike most academics in the humanities I had a lot of respect for the pure and the applied sciences. It seemed to me that computers might one day be useful, and I pre-empted my retirement by buying one that was only slightly heavier than its shelf of operating manuals. Very soon, young Bill packaged up Word for word-processing and I sang his praises and put the full weight of my support behind him by buying a copy. I could process two or three hundred words at time on something that would have looked like a page if only the fronts of cathode ray tubes had come in portrait format.

The process was on the whole slower, less malleable and less reliable than a handwritten text, but these were early days and at first things did not go too badly. It was possible in theory, and sometimes in practice, to tell the computer what one wanted it to do by entering instructions on a command line. This all came to an end with a dastardly innovation called 'user-friendliness'. The command line disappeared and in its place popped up lists of options. There were usually about five options, three of which were definitely not what one wanted while the other two were incomprehensible. 'None of the above' was unavailable. Punting on either of the incomprehensible options could set you back an hour or two.

This was when I started to turn against Bill Gates. Then we got mice and Windows and endless updates and upgrades, all increasingly expensive and troublesome. Upgrading tended to produce a blue screen and to consign all of one's accumulated data to oblivion. Backups became mandatory, daily or even hourly. They then had to be re-made because they ceased to be readable almost as soon as they fell out of the tray.

About this time some of my arts faculty colleagues started to get in on the act, mainly because of something called Apple. This was a box that stood on its end, with a nasty little yellow screen inset near the top of one edge. It scored because academics could have it at a discount. Computing departments took it up, presumably because they got a discount too. Bill Gates seemed to think that this was just a nuisance that would go away and he maintained a heart of flint about the cost of his software and upgrades. Unfortunately, by then I had put so much sentimental dough his way that I was stuck with him. It hurt that whenever something went wrong, which was all the time, the young man with no social skills sent round from the computing department would only fix the Apples. (Or the Macs, as they soon preferred to be called).

I soldiered on. Because I had a full-time job and plenty of other troubles I could not keep up with advances in computer technology and software engineering. I had to take my unreliable machines back to the shop for a fortnight, or pay people with lawyers' six-minute clocks to come around and make them seem to work again.

Everybody knows now that personal computers do not work. My last computer had either the fourth or fifth version of Word (mysteriously identified as 'Word 6') on it, and it was incapable of reading most of my accumulated data because it had all been composed on Word 2 or Word 3.5 or Word 2004. But there are work-arounds for that, and it wasn't why I had to ditch that box. I had to ditch it because it had taken to stopping for no reason, sometimes offering me error messages telling me that it had stopped.

'Microsoft Help' is a more calamitous oxymoron than 'Military Intelligence'. Try typing into the search box something like: 'Why do random desktop icons come up in front of the text on my Word screen whenever I click 'Save'?' Well, just try. No, it's not my anti-virus program, and yes, I have re-installed everything. I have even had a new motherboard installed. And a new Ethernet card. By the way, didn't Michelson-Morley finally show that there is no ether? Did Bill miss that issue of Scientific American?

I have re-installed my operating system tens, perhaps dozens of times over the years. I have also re-installed all of my applications, which involves finding those old registration numbers that are either the wrong ones because of an upgrade or they are just useless for no identifiable reason. I have meditated long and hard on the Zen paradox that I need to go online to download whatever it is that prevents me from going online. Then, after re-installing everything, I have put back all those tweaks and macros and fonts and personal settings that had once all too briefly made life seem tolerable. It normally takes about six weeks to do this.

Should I go for a Mac this time? No, I decided. There aren't any discounts these days and I have many thousands of dollars and decades of misery sunk in a museum of PCs. Just one more try. Last chance for Bill. Fair go. A brand new box with a fast chip and lots of memory and Vista. Surely they must have got it right by now?

They have not got it right by now. I have just deleted a message telling me that the Window Task Manager ('Help' has never heard of it) has stopped working and been shut down. There is a user-friendly promise that if I communicate this distressing information to Mr Gates' old company I shall in due course be notified of a solution. In twelve months I have collected about ninety such malfunctions, to which the number of solutions notified, as at today's date, is zero.

I now find that I am unlikely to be able to send emails unless I first reboot my computer. I receive them reliably, but am least likely to be able to send them if they are turn-around replies. Google suggests fiddling with the registry, but I have decades of battle experience. I know that the emergency start-up disk after the likely crash will be useless because some automatic update or service pack has made it obsolete.

I've given up trying to make Word 7 believe that I want the spelling checker to use Australian English. Despite putting this request in five or six different places and fixing it as the default preference in three more places, every document sooner or later reverts to 'English (United States)'. This means, for example, that there is no such word as 'evolution'. The usual opportunity to insert it into a user-dictionary is greyed out. The Religious Right has a great deal to answer for. It matters to me because I write about cultural evolution quite a lot.

Addresses from my address book will not drop into snail-mail letters because I prefer to use an email—not snail-mail—program developed by a different company.

I mention these tribulations in the sure and certain knowledge that every Unleashed contributor has a comparable set of three of four or 50 things about their PCs that make them mad. Mac users pretend otherwise, but you'd be silly to believe them.

The plain fact is that personal computers do not work. I hold Bill Gates symbolically responsible because of my exemplary dedication to him, ever since that garage. I know that he has retired now and shall not demean myself by asking him to extend his list of charities to include me. I do not want a user-friendly letter from him promising that he hears what I say and is filled with compassion. I do not want to be told that his old company is designing an entirely new operating system, provisionally called 'Leghorn', that will be released next year (or the year after) under the name 'Chimera', pending its further change to 'Dodo'.

It will be very expensive, of course, and none of my present applications will run on it. But hey, don't I want the benefits of a free market?

Just hang on five minutes or so while I re-boot my computer so that I can send the email to which this little essay is attached to Unleashed. You can drum your fingers on the desk if you like.

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My wife returns to work in February after a year's maternity leave. So childcare has taken centre stage as a family issue: what do we do with our daughter for the three days my wife works?

I had always been somewhat opposed to childcare. I found it strange families would let a McDonalds-like institution, ABC Learning, care for their children. But now I'm getting an insight into the challenge of paying bills, maintaining careers and raising children. For many parents childcare is their only option.

My stance against ABC Learning has also softened after speaking to parents who swear by their local ABC Learning centre. Childcare, whether we like it or not, plays an important role in the lives of many Australians. The government should stabilize ABC Learning and oversee an orderly winding down of unprofitable centres and ensure there are alternatives.

There's no surprise the Rudd Government is using the company's woes to attack the former government's management of the childcare industry. But it is also using the collapse to ramp up its attack on free market capitalism.

The government clearly believes there are votes in criticizing what is being dubbed "extreme" capitalism, which the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, blames for the collapse of financial markets. The government says ABC Learning is another example of what happens when markets are left to their own devices. Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard says the situation is "a result of the former government letting the market rip".

But as Gillard also said, childcare in Australia is "highly subsidised by government. We, government, spend $1.9 billion a year on Child Care Benefit; more than $800 million on Child Care Tax Rebate." How on earth can such a massively subsidized industry be deemed unbridled market capitalism? I understand that Gillard is in part referring to the removal of caps on childcare places, but even she conceded that was necessary to meet surging demand.

With free markets under attack in the wake of the global financial crisis, there is naturally a focus on the negative impacts when markets fail or correct, which require government intervention. But it works the other way too: government intervention and subsidies often corrupt markets and weaken business, which also have serious consequences.

ABC Learning is an example of a company that neglected to run itself well and instead focused on milking the government. It chose as its chairwoman former Brisbane Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson, a politician. Atkinson confessed to the Australian newspaper: "I don't have any technical financial background, but I wasn't asked to be chairman for that reason". She probably meant her role was not to ensure a strong, financially disciplined company - but to cosy up to government. Some 44 per cent of ABC Learning's revenue came from government subsidies.

"I find that absolutely bizarre," Atkinson said. "This is a business subsidised by the Government. How can it be unprofitable?" Easily! Where the incentive is getting government subsidies, the discipline of market forces and competition are weakened.

Gillard also jumped on comments by Barnaby Joyce, the National's Senate leader, to support her attack on the former Coalition government. "The reason we have such a fiasco with ABC is because one organisation dominated too much of the market," Joyce said. "That is what you get when you get too much market centralisation." Allowing a concentration of market power isn't "letting the market rip".

The Government is using ABC Learning to ramp up its anti-market rhetoric. But rather than a failure of markets, it's a failure of government intervention; a failure of a bastardized form of capitalism and markets.

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While the world and America celebrates the election of Senator Barack Obama as the new American President, it is also important for the Republicans, the big losers to do more than sulk and engage in recriminations. The GOP needs to engage in creative change itself.

John McCain secured the GOP nomination for President by April 2008, long before the world economic melt-down. Senator McCain's big issue was his support of the surge in Iraq. However, by October - who cared? Probably not even John McCain. But the Republicans were stuck with a candidate who had virtually no understanding or interest in economics or fiscal policy.

In an effort to empower the electorate and take away power from the political bosses, both major American political parties now make use of popular primaries to select delegates to the national nominating conventions. These primaries became commonplace as a result of Democratic Party reforms in the late 1960s and were adopted by the Republicans in the 1970s. Delegates to the national nominating conventions are legally bound to cast their votes in accord with the primary election results. While this has energised the American democracy and further empowered the American voter, this process has also produced its share of unintended but nevertheless undesirable side-effects. Among these are the vast sums of money needed to mount a campaign and the problem of inflexibility of results.

Now that the last votes are in for 2008, it's time for the Monday morning quarterbacks to take up what might have been. Barack Obama received 52 per cent of the popular vote and won the Electoral Vote by seizing some of the Red States won by George Bush in 2004. While the result was decisive and momentous, it was not a landslide compared to Reagan over Mondale (1984), Nixon over McGovern (1972); Johnson over Goldwater (1964) or even Eisenhower over Stevenson (1956).

This is not to disparage the significance of Senator Obama's victory but only to recognise that the popular vote was relatively close.

Given the closeness of the vote in a number of key swing states like Florida and Ohio, it is not inconceivable that the Republicans might have won this election or at least presented a more viable candidate if their national convention in September had the option to override the primaries and select a candidate who had some economic expertise.

Mitt Romney would have been a formidable contender and, if matched with Governor Sarah Palin might have been unstoppable. Romney was a former state governor and very successful financier - economics was his forte. While Massachusetts governor, he implemented the nation's only universal health plan and understood budgeting and working with a legislature controlled by the opposing party. As chief of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics, he demonstrated an ability to clean-up a badly corrupted venture and pull-off a successful event.

As to his Mormonism, so repugnant to the Religious Right, the choice of Governor Palin, the darling of that element of the Party, would have had the same energising effect that it had on McCain's campaign; with this salient difference, Romney is a healthy (and rather handsome young man) and the issue of Vice Presidential readiness to take over the Presidency would have been largely irrelevant.

The Republicans should take advantage of their political winter and again try to make a 'more perfect union' by balancing the conflicting concepts of letting the voters choose their candidates with some process whereby the nominating conventions can override the popular choice if changing times require a change in candidates.

Unfortunately there is no obvious solution, but there is nothing like a decisive loss to stimulate a political party's creativity and ingenuity.

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Former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating; current Leader of the Federal Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull and former governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten are not the usual people you'd expect to see having a chat after dinner. But recently in Sydney, at an event hosted by the Oxford Business Alumni, the three of them got down to business, discussing all of the big events of the minute: the global financial crisis and what governments should do about it, climate change, China and Obama. The event is hosted by ABC Fora presenter Tony Jones.

The duration of this video is 79'01".

This video is presented in conjunction with ABC Fora, a great source of talks and debates online.

Comments on this story appear both here on Unleashed and on the ABC Fora site.

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Exponents of co-education who tout it as a superior model to single-sex education frequently base their reasoning on social imperatives rather than academic outcomes. They argue, perhaps flippantly, that our world is a co-ed environment for both men and women alike, and that the only societal segregation of sexes occurs in rest rooms, prisons and schools. However, they are merely observing that we co-exist. Unfortunately, they also believe that a co-ed school is a co-equal educational environment.

I would argue that our society is still a long way from being co-equal, especially in Australia where women comprise only about nine per cent of board directors in the top 200 companies; where women's pay relative to men's shows a salary gap of nearly sixteen per cent; where women still have a disproportionate responsibility for children and the aged; and where women are still under-represented in the top leadership positions in government, tertiary institutions and companies. In spite of young women succeeding in greater numbers and with better outcomes than young men at school and university, they often find that in their careers and public life, subtle and overt discrimination still occurs.

The debate about gender equality in education is a complex and evolving one, especially in the light of the new developments in brain research. The research has proven that girls and boys learn differently and single-sex schools give girls and boys the opportunity to be taught in relevant ways to suit their very unequal stages of development - particularly in the adolescent years. In fact, as a result of this research a number of co-educational schools, both in Australia and overseas, are now segregating classes at various levels to deliver more effective teaching and learning programs to both sexes. Susan Pinker, in her book The Sexual Paradox, argues that women need to be treated as equal, not identical, to men. Single-sex schools have long known this, applied the philosophy to their pedagogy, and therefore maintained a strong reputation for success.

In the United States a "co-ed" is defined as a woman who attends a co-educational college or university. Why just a woman and not a man as well? The implication is that a co-educational environment is for men and that women are invited to attend as special participants. In fact this equates with the sentiment often cited off-the-record among my school colleagues that a co-educational environment is "good for the boys". Not good for the girls?

Girls educated in a single-sex environment gain the benefit of not only an education tailored to the learning styles and needs of girls, but they are also more frequently exposed to strong female role models who exemplify what women can achieve in their lives beyond school. Clarissa Farr, principal of a UK girls' school observed, "Girls' schools are known for getting excellent academic results... Less well known is the way they prepare women to take centre stage in the modern world." The Sunday Times reported in a recent survey of more than 4,000 female American alumni, three-quarters felt their single-sex education was a key influence in their decision to take a leadership role in their post-school career. Demonstrably, a co-ed environment at school in the all important teenage years, when girls are forming their own identities and opinions, will not give them an optimal education.

As a society, we should absolutely want our young women to take their place alongside young men in the world beyond school, but it is still a world which requires them as adult women to maintain a strong vigilance about their right to equality and an active voice in their world - a world that is co-ed, but not yet co-equal.

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While we often think that Australia is a wealthy nation there are large numbers of low-income households who endure considerable financial difficulties in relation to their housing.

Census data released in mid 2007 indicate that around 1.2 million households are spending more than 30% of their income on housing related items¹. Many young Australian households have extensive mortgage debts and are struggling to keep up their payments even though interest rates have fallen over the past few months.

The average house price in the capital cities is now equivalent to over seven years of average earnings (it was only three in the period from the early 1950s to the mid 1980s). The shortage of private rental properties has enabled landlords to raise rents above the level of inflation and many young people now live in properties that are often in poor condition. There are 176,000 people on social housing waiting lists and an estimated 100,000 homeless people in Australia.

Why have politicians failed to take the necessary steps to tackle the systemic housing problems that impact on low-income households in Australia? The major reason is that powerful industry lobbyists have cajoled successive Australian governments to maintain generous subsidies to homeowners rather than provide sufficient resources to boost the supply of social housing. Presenting such an argument is likely to cause consternation. So ingrained is the belief that homeownership is a 'natural' form of tenure that most of us are happy to endorse government subsidies that accentuate house price inflation but have little impact on increasing the supply of housing. Of course, if you ask most of the 70% of Australian households who own their home, you will hear that homeownership has provided security that is not available in the private rental market and that social housing is a tenure of last resort. You will also hear that homeownership brings financial benefits that are not possible if you choose to rent. Certainly, there are benefits for many of us who are able to purchase our homes, but often to the detriment of those who are forced to rent either in social housing or the private market.

The significant financial benefits that have accrued to households who have bought their home are boosted by the failure of the market to match the demand for housing with the necessary supply. The Australian Bureau of Statistics noted that in the last financial year there were 157,000 new housing construction starts but as many as 200,000 new starts a year are required to keep pace with demand arising from the increase in households and migration.

It is time for new policies: the danger of boosting homeownership at the expense of other forms of tenure is evident in what has been taking place in the US. Although much has been written about the sub-prime mortgage market, its collapse can be traced to the failure of the US government to invest the necessary sums of money in social housing. Put simply, large numbers of people with poor credit histories in the US, who should have been able to access social housing, were encouraged to take out loans to purchase a home. The sub-prime mortgage market was bound to implode once house prices started to fall.

Yet rather than take the necessary steps to boost the supply of housing, successive governments have relied on direct government subsidies in the form of first time home-owner grants, the exclusion of imputed (owner occupied) rents from the income tax base and capital gains tax exemptions on profits made when owners sell their home. The government subsidies available to homeowners are not means tested and are therefore regressive in that they enable those with the most expensive homes to benefit the most. The First Home Owner Grant in particular enables recipients of the grant to bid a higher price than they would normally afford so the main beneficiaries are those who are selling their property. Even before the recent announcement by the government of an increase to the first time home buyers grant to as much as $21,000, research by Abelson and Joyeux² makes explicit the sums made available by the government for homeowners and housing investors. They calculated that the extent of the net subsidies (subsidies minus taxes) that accrued to homeowners in 2007 amounted to $6.3 billion per annum (about $1,600 per annum for each household), while private sector investors received a net subsidy of about $375 per annum. The generous tax subsidies made available to homeowners are not available to those who rent. Low-income tenants living either in the private market or in a social housing property are unable to accrue wealth derived from their home and are therefore likely to remain poor and socially disadvantaged.

There are other problematic consequences of the bias towards homeowners. The profits to be made in the owner occupied sector have encouraged developers to build homes with little regard to long-term environmental sustainability. Consider the coastal developments that afflicted Perth in recent years. Attempts by planners to limit the negative environmental impact of speculative house building development along coast lines and outer fringes have been mostly unsuccessful and all Australian cities now suffer from suburban sprawl with households often forced to travel long journeys on congested roads. The considerable financial support for homeownership therefore accentuates social divisions and operates as a barrier for politicians to initiate actions that will improve our urban infrastructure. Our pursuit of wealth has negative consequences. Australian cities are increasingly becoming socially and economically divided in ways very similar to those in North America. There is a lack of fit between the way we manage our housing system and our desire to establish harmonious and inclusive social environments.

Why has a society as wealthy as Australia managed its housing in this way? The short answer is that the vast majority of well-off households benefit from the arrangements now in place and would vehemently oppose a more neutral based tenure approach. The support for subsidies to homeowners is buttressed by very effective lobbyists representing property developers, mortgage lenders and house-builders all of whom make the case for cash subsides for first time buyers, reductions in stamp duty on house sales and an easing of planning controls.

The economic slowdown will almost certainly result in a drop in house building and a rise in unemployment could affect many recent purchasers, particularly those who borrowed heavily and bought at the top of the boom. Though it is early days, the government's response has so far been mixed. On the positive side, it has set up a 'national rental affordability scheme' to provide incentives to private landlords to let to low-income households. The expectation is this will result in an additional 50,000 rental properties by 2012. On the negative side, the government remains too susceptible to the narrative and arguments propounded by industry representatives promoting homeownership. Now is the time for the Australian government to reject this narrative and forge a new direction by investing in social housing.

1. Yates, J (2008) Australia's Housing Affordability Crisis, The Australian Economic Review 41(2) pp 200-214
   
2. Abelson, P. and Joyeux, R. (2007) 'Price and efficiency effects on taxes and subsidies for Australian housing' in Economic Papers 36 (2) pp 147-169
   

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I'm sure other Unleashed correspondents will put me right if my timing is out, but I think the American-based habit of checkout chicks and shop assistants saying 'Have a nice day' when completing a transaction, arrived in Australia in force in the early 1980s.

Always delivered deadpan with a complete disregard for any response that might be given (mercifully not mandatory) we gradually became immured to this meaningless ritual dictated to the staff by management keen to adopt the latest PR trends in customer relations from the US of A.

Not everyone took this on board passively. I recall the noted author Tom Keneally describing how he transfixed a hapless checkout lass with a beady eye as she delivered the ritual cliché, 'Have a nice day'.

'No thank you', replied the affronted thespian. 'I have other plans!'

'Have a nice day' is still well and truly with us, but there is a new mantra gaining ground which must be stopped. Paying for fuel at a servo with a credit card not so long ago, the young man behind the counter, said chirpily: 'And what are your plans for this weekend?'

I should have said, 'None of your bloody business', but cravenly muttered something like, 'Haven't really thought yet', and escaped.

My partner Ros had it happen to her, and instantly twigged that this was a bridge too far in the PR stakes. Quite pleasantly she said, 'Look I think that isn't something that you really need to know. I can only presume that you have been told to say that by your management, but you should tell your bosses that it is simply not on. You won't care at all what the plans of an ageing grandmother are this weekend - and not only that it is out of order for you, a perfect stranger, to ask such a question. Please don't do it again.'

We discussed this later, and I decided that some stronger action was needed to nip the spread of this particular social disease.

A week or so later the same over-friendly guy in the servo did it again. 'And what are your plans for today?' There was a queue of people behind me too, which made the time-wasting even sillier.

'Since you ask', I said leaning on the counter, 'I'm not looking forward to today very much at all. I'm due to have a colonoscopy at lunch time, and I certainly won't be having any lunch. In fact for the last 24 hours I've been taking massive doses of a laxative which cleans you right out for this procedure where they insert a tube in your rear end which has a camera among other devices, and they push this up into your bowel god knows how far - your bowel is one helluva big pipe winding about in your innards - looking for cancerous or pre-cancerous bibs and bobs. You don't really know what's going on because they give you this drug which allows you to respond to the doctor's demands to roll over on your side or whatever, but you don't remember anything afterwards. If they do find any polyps, benign or otherwise, they snip them off then and there with a little lasso on the end of the probe they use to explore the twists and turns of your bowel. I have to have a colonoscopy every three years now, and it's not something that I really look forward to. I mean the very idea of a doctor pushing some great tube up your fundamental orifice for an unimaginable distance isn't my idea of a fun day.'

I hadn't then seen 'Clive the over-loud commuter' on 'The Chaser' sharing equally or worse lurid private details with the rest of a railway carriage while shouting into his mobile phone - in one episode I saw he was reacting to the news that a test for venereal disease had come in positive - but I could sense that the queue of people behind me waiting to pay for their fuel were getting a bit restive.

'Anyway, since you asked, that's what's going to happen to me today.'

I nearly asked him what he planned to do this weekend, but his eyes had glazed over and I might have been lynched by the mob behind me had he started to tell me.

I really do think that the time has come to be pro-active about this kind of thing. Actually I'm feeling better about the 'Have a nice day' routine. At least you don't have to think about it and it's been going on so long now, it has absolutely no impact at all.

I'd be interested to hear of other experiences of over-the-top personal questions in public places - and how other sufferers cope. I guess we shouldn't be too brutal to the hapless workers condemned to trot out this stuff, but if nothing happens to peg back this insidious and meaningless quest for personal information in public places, it will just keep on keeping on...

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I've had a real bitch of a morning. My car keeps heating up. Some kind of oil leak, apparently. The office is infested with ants after some moron (me, actually) left a banana peel in the bin. My mobile phone bill has gone through the roof. I've missed an urgent deadline.

But heck, should I complain? I mean, things could be worse. At least I'm not an Arab.

Seriously. Don't let my surname deceive you. I'm a good old fashioned middle class South Australasian. As in, I'm a combination of South Asian and Australian (I thought I should clarify that in case you thought I was an Asian from Adelaide).

And no, I'm not racist toward Arabs. How could I be? Some of my best friends are Arabs.

These days, calling someone Arab has become a slur, especially in the United States of America. Barack Obama's middle name was made an issue of. Why? Because it was an Arab name. The fact that many Baghdad Jews commonly carried this as a given name or surname is irrelevant.

And who could forget that Republican rally when that crazy woman showed her support for John McCain by telling him on international television she didn't trust Barack Husse ... woops, almost used that slur again ... Obama. Her reason?

"He's an Ay'rab". She could've at least spelt it right.

And what was McCain's response? It sounded something like: "No, ma'am, he ain't no Ay'rab! He's a good family man." So you can't be an Arab and a family man simultaneously. At least not in America.

Now as we all know, that other prominent Republican Colin Powell endorsed Obama. Powell also praised John McCain for dismissing that Obama slur. However, Powell said McCain should have gone further.

"I'm also troubled by - not what Senator McCain says - but what members of the Party say, and it is permitted to be said: such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is he is not a Muslim. He's a Christian; has always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, "What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country?" The answer's "No, that's not America." Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be President? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own Party drop the suggestion he's Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America."

Colin's right. Obama isn't a Muslim, and we shouldn't give a rat's backside even if he was. However, that woman at the rally never suggested Obama was a Muslim. She didn't cast aspersions on his religion, something which he chose. She cast "aspersions" on his race, something beyond his control. She suggested he was an Arab.

Believe it or not, there is a difference between being an Arab and being a Muslim. If you don't believe me, consider this - the vast majority of Australian Arab migrants are NOT Muslim. The same situation applies in the United States. Defending Muslims from slurs isn't the same as defending Arabs.

And Arabs are also a broad church. Just ask the Prophet Muhammad. He defined an Arab as anyone who speaks Arabic. The Arab League includes countries from Sudan to Syria and from Morocco to Iraq.

Now you'd think that with the election of a half-white, half-Kenyan President, racism would have exited the US political stage. Even a hardened pro-Bush lady like Dr Condoleezza Rice couldn't bring herself to fly out to the Middle East (perhaps to oversee the US bombing of nasty Arabs in Syria and Iraq) until making these heart-felt observations:

"... this is a country that has gone through a long journey in terms of overcoming wounds and making race not the factor in our lives. That work is not done, but yesterday was an extraordinary step forward."

To underscore Dr Rice's optimism, President Obama offered the job of Chief of Staff to the son of a migrant, one Rahm Emanuel, who graciously accepted, despite having to give up his Congressional seat. His father was naturally thrilled. So thrilled that Dr Emanuel Snr was reported to have made this observation to two Israeli newspapers:

"Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House."

So the dad of the dude running the President's office reckons Arabs are only good for cleaning floors. I'm not impressed. Mostly it's me who does the vacuuming at home. And I'm no Arab.

Still, you don't choose your relatives. Rahm Emanuel isn't responsible for his father's alleged words. Even Obama admitted his late grandmother sometimes made comments about race that made him cringe. Hopefully Rahm is somewhat embarrassed.

So if you think race is no longer an issue in American politics, you obviously don't regard Arabs as a race. Or you couldn't care less about Arab collective sentiment. Whatever you think of Arabs, just thank God you're not one.

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Aboriginal leader and rights advocate, Patrick Dodson, was recently awarded the "2008 Sydney Peace Prize". Past recipients have included former U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and Palestinian activist Dr Hanan Ashrawi. Dodson is often called the "father of reconciliation" for his determination to build bridges between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

Here Dodson presents the "Peace Prize Lecture" in which he urges Australia to follow the lead of the American President-elect, Barack Obama, in its approach to dialogue with our Aboriginal people.

The duration of this video is 52'38".

This video is presented in conjunction with ABC Fora, a great source of talks and debates online.

Comments on this story appear both here on Unleashed and on the ABC Fora site.

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While speaking at a book launch in Sydney last week, Paul Keating remarked that Australians were not redeemed or born again at Gallipoli. Gallipoli was not the source of the ANZAC spirit, Mr Keating said. Gallipoli was shocking for Australia.

"Dragged into service by the imperial government in an ill-conceived and poorly executed campaign, we were cut to ribbons and dispatched and none of it in the defence of Australia."

There are many things about Paul Keating that annoy, but his penchant for self serving statements and insensitive arrogance - "the recession we had to have" - must surely have been contributing factors to his defeat by John Howard.

However, looking at the enterprise he was engaged in when he made the comments, the promotion of another true believer's writings, it is possible that they were said merely to obtain publicity for the book. If so, he was successful.

However, it would be a mistake to think that his only motive. There is a permanent thread woven through the warp and weft of Keating's Australian vision and his comments nearly always reveal a bitterness about Australia's relationship with Great Britain.

We know from the reactions that Paul's bon mots have touched a raw nerve, but were they accurate? Were they justified? For example, was Australia a reluctant colony dragged into WWI by an imperial government?

Put simply, the answer is no. Australia's army was a volunteer force and despite two referenda on conscription, it remained a volunteer force. No one compelled Australians to fight anywhere. They knew where the war was and they volunteered to show their support for the British empire of which there were a part.

Keating is correct to say that the Gallipoli campaign was poorly executed. However, since that has been taught to almost every school child since 1916, the comment is irrelevant to any consideration of the unifying mateship that arose among the Australian and New Zealand forces fighting and losing at Gallipoli. Surely, any such sentiment would be strengthened, even sanctified by the death and defeat of comrades on the beach at such a lonely place?

But Paul Keating seems to have assumed that World War I was only the reaction to a group of Balkan revolutionaries who killed an Austrian Prince; when, in fact, the German High Command (that is, the Prussian aristocracy) had been planning the campaign since at least 1905. The German Chief of Staff, von Schlieffen gave his name to a strategy to defeat France by invasion through Belgium and the capture of Paris. All it wanted was the opportunity which the murder of the Crown Prince provided.

The War to end all wars witnessed the death throes of a European aristocracy for whom personal worth was indistinguishable from a national glory derived from the invasion and capture of other nation's lands. WWI may have been fought principally in Europe, but it was a world war and had Germany won, Australia, along with every other nation would have become a satellite to the Kaiser. It was a world war, not because it was fought in Europe, but because German aristocratic ambitions threatened the rest of the world.

By ignoring such factors, we can see the shameful way Paul Keating attempts to undermine the national belief that the spirit of mateship germinated in the death and suffering of a battle waged on that lonely beach so far from home. It is this heroic effort of volunteers that he tries to belittle by insisting it was at the demand of the "imperial [British] government".

There is no mention by Paul in his boring monologue that it was a democratic Britain honouring a treaty with republican France. That in itself would be enough to sanctify the ANZACs and what they stood for. If more was needed he could have recounted how a German aristocracy waged a pre-planned war against peaceful France. But such strains ring too harmoniously for the discordant notes he wishes to sound.

What has always been instructive in the Keating narrative has been his obsession with distancing himself and Australia from the British.

He would have us believe that not until Kokoda was Australia under attack and only in that environment could an ANZAC spirit grow. And yet, that is not how the soldiers who were in New Guinea understood themselves. It was towards Gallipoli on ANZAC Day that they turned.

Still, his views about Kokoda are at least consistent with his opinion of Australia as an Asian country. When he was in office, he often reminded us of our need to engage with Asia. Unfortunately, his other comments give the lie to this sentiment. Not for Paul was retirement to consist of beach-combing on Bali or Phuket. For Paul it would be either the Paris option or Dublin.

However, disparaging ordinary opinions about the source of the ANZAC spirit wasn't his sole or even his primary intention in making those comments. His purpose was to raise by implication the Australian relation with Great Britain. He sought to sow a seed of doubt in the pubic mind that the ANZAC spirit could ever be born in an alliance with that country.

What makes Kokoda more ANZAC for Keating than either Gallipoli or the Western Front is that, at Kokoda there were no British. He can not concede in his mind that Australian affection for the British could play a part in the generation of our national identity.

A brief reflection on his Australian republic campaign will show how he galvanised Australian patriotism, not as he said, to make Australia a republic, for Australia is already a republic, but to engender support for removing the Queen as Head of State. As a slogan, "an Australian as head of state" was perfect for his scheme. It was catchy and it was easily remembered by the latt set who would adopt it as their own. As a Constitutional reform, however, it will prove, if it is adopted, the undoing of the republic by granting wide powers to an unelected executive.

We will never know and Paul probably doesn't know himself whether it is his Irish heritage and the great potato famine that make the word Britain stick in his craw, or whether it was