....are we there yet?

Shane in a Hole

G'day Petals,

It's a truism that five minutes into a long car journey children will often ask, "Are we there yet?" And there's an old metaphor saying that if you're making a situation worse you are "...digging a hole for yourself," and that the best way to minimize the problem is to stop digging.

But this is Australia, in which the ruling rabble Mk2 is digging us all into social and economic oblivion.

It has come to light that these genii who tout themselves as the best of economic managers actually fall way short of their myth-making hyperbole.

In 2021 Qatar will make royalties of around $26.6 billion from shipping some 100 million cubic metres of LNG. Australia on the other hand, shipping around the same volume, will receive $800 million. Even after the Henry Tax review of 2010 warned that The resource Rent tax "...fails to collect an appropriate and constant share of rents from... projects"  ...and that... "the uplift rates are over-compensated for..."   Now, let's hear again what fine models of economic management they are.

Trentham Falls

A new chapter in the race to the bottom has also been seen with Senators MacDonald and O'Sullivan reprising the thuggish, boorish untermenschen roles last performed when the duo attempted to pillory Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs in a past senate enquiry.

This time their victim was Solicitor General, Justin Gleeson who not only had the temerity to disagree with the Ruling Rabble's faux Attorney General, Senator Bookshelves Brandis but also point out to him that he couldn't agree to changes in the law without consultation.

 Gleeson, also objected1/, to Brandis using his earlier opinion – that a particular bill would withstand high court challenge – when the bill had been changed since that time and 2/ , that Bookshelves be the only person who, first, should be asked for permission before anyone sought advice of the Solicitor General.

This is the definitive  Brandis: an oily, slippery, mendacious and dictatorial bully-boy from the Deep North whose overweening ambition is best seen in his scant regard for the national good and his corralling all power to himself.

It's interesting that Brandis is so inept both politically and as Attorney General. He not only keeps getting caught out but in the ensuing fracas of his own making he serves only to further highlight  the unbelievable incompetence of the Ruling Rabble Mk2.

Trentham Falls

"So, we artists are not “legitimate students.”
Our profession will not “benefit Australia economically”.
You want to “encourage students to study”….by taking away opportunities for the next Hugh Jackman, Jackie Weaver or Tony Sheldon, to name a few?"

Writing in his blog,   AbStar921 – Musical Critic    takes acute aim at un-education minister Flappy-Head Birmingham's proposal that the best way to have an "innovative and agile" nation is to 1st, make Uni fees so high only the wealthy could attend and 2nd to make every course business/work related... so... 
F***k the Arts! 

Taking a leaf from Pastie Paterson's IPA inspired drivel, Flappy-Head exposed his truly Neanderthal lack of cognisance of culture as the basis of civilization because, as he sees it,  there's "no economic benefit in the arts."

I did warn years ago Petals that the Huns were at the Gates.  http://shanewombat.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/viewing-nice-things-and-huns-at-gates.html           
Well, they've well and truly arrived.

Trentham

And speaking of Holes...ex-Maj. Gen. James Molan architect of the "Turn-Back-The-Boats" policy last week exposed his... right between his ears.

With a truly disturbing Goebbels-like performance, patronisingly batting away or ignoring any dissenting or alternative opinion, Molan claimed that even though he hadn't been there, our refugee concentration camps on Nauru and Manus "....you will find the most extraordinary medical facilities that most Australian towns would give their right arm for.....”  and, "...we are so far ahead of refugee camps throughout the world that it is not funny.”

He is one who will never admit his view is not the most considered and correct one. His world view is, it seems, is the only view and one part of his rationale over the Iraq war (and ignoring the false reasoning for going there in the first place,) was that, "there were more Iraqi's alive when I left  because of what I did than there otherwise would have been."

We can only be thankful perhaps that this blinkered vision of aggression was an unsuccessful senate candidate for the ruling rabble in 2016.

It's a pity the Ruling Rabble Mk2  can't concentrate on running the country instead of attacking Conroy's replacement in the senate.. oohh, hang on, they are.... into the ground!

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

looking and being watched ...

Shane Wombat with his brushes

G'day Petals,

Mrs Wombat and I waddled along to the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery to have a gander at some of the finalists for the Archibald prize t’other day.

Probably the most important portrait prize in Australia for its prestige and with its $100,000.00 winner’s prize the Archibald attracts hundreds of entries from most of the country’s best painters.

Ballarat Backspace

Following are some of the works that attracted me.

 Adam Alcorn’s portrait of Alice Fraser is beautifully handled. It’s fine delineation of the eyes and face gradually soften backward in an almost conical fashion leaving the whole suspended in space. It has a quiet authority that commends you study it.

Alice Fraser- Adam Alcorn

Both Wei Bin Chen and Matthew Kentmann show deft paint handling in their works.  M K’s making me think of Goya and Bacon and Wei’s, Fragonard, and as he notes, Lucien Freud, as both artists with authority, explain the subject.

Self-Portrait No 6- Wei Bin Chen

Nigel Milsom, Sunday 3 may 2015- Matthew Kentmann

Prudence Flint’s “Baby”, I nearly ignored because of its seemingly simplistic Brack-like graphic qualities but was rewarded with further looking. The intensity of the gaze of “the mother” to the “baby” and back has a really odd effect in tending to isolate each in its own sphere. Flint was influenced by C14th paintings of the Madonna and Child where you do see this separateness in the subjects due to the attention to detail offered in these works. In its coolness and structured space this is a very potent work with “baby” looking at its “mother” in an unnervingly omnipotent manner. Ghirlandaio meets Fra Angelico

Baby- Prudence Flint

“El cabeceo” too, has Marcus Wills paraphrasing earlier art forms of the likes of Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling and folding religious triptychs. As a commission to celebrate the subject’s marriage the minutely drawn detail and wit make this work a delight to look at and the reverse wings with both subjects nude, one frontal the other from the rear makes you wonder which feast day is the “Icon” opened or is it for guests to venerate? 

El cabeceo- Marcus Wills

More good fun is being had both metaphorically and in actuality in Leslie Price’s “Hill End bacchanal.”   Painted tonally deep on black velvet as a homage to kitsch and as a passing look at Poussin and Caravaggio via Donald Friend and celebrating his subject, painter Luke Sciberras’ penchant for copious wine laden revelry, this is a hoot of a classical folly in the Australian bush .... Peacocks, pulchritudinous attendants and all.

Hill End bacchanal,(portrait of Luke Sciberras- Leslie Price

A bravura Kandinsky-like portrait in a single session is “Laurie” by Tanja Karl. The intensity of the moment is well shown as is the movement wanted by Tony Curran’s depiction of Luke.

Laurie- Tanja Karl

Luke - Tony Curran

And The Winner of “The Archibald”, Nigel Milsom’s  “Judo House pt6 (the white bird)” an intense, forensically faceted realisation of  barrister friend Charles who is there but not, is analysing but looking somewhere else…a riveting painterly work which hits the right note of presenting the subject not the painter.

Judo House pt 6 (the white bird) - Nigel Milsom

A good show …of much Australian talent….

BFAG

The Crow, Ballarat

We then crossed the road for lunch at The George Laneway to be watched by a big Crow who was intent on taking our food if we left it unattended.

Wombat Droppings

the chronicle of a once egalitarian nation’s inexorable slide into fascism.

Willy Shortstuff, Laboring to be leader of a relevant alternative political party is now attempting to alienate the 14% who support him by lowering the voting age so kindergarten children will be eligible to vote.

He squawked this information to a deathly silence, as people contemplated Rabid-the-Hun’s latest epistle from London. Rabid was addressing a gathering of social misfits of the “Iron Lady” cabal where he said that although Jesus’ notion  “love one another” was fine in principle it just wasn’t practical and was really not relevant in contemporary Capitalist society. Although warmly applauded by those who understood this re-writing of now defunct Xtian philosophy, he was also castigated for his use of the word “society” as the “Iron lady” had proved long ago that this didn’t exist.

Closer to home, Shylock Frydenberg has been arguing the case that selling coal to India is our greatest moral responsibility. Unfortunately his arguments are not only just as attractive, but as thin as the hair on his head. He denied that having taxpayers subsidize an Indian company to pollute the Great Barrier Reef and destroy farmland was not in our national interest.

His Great Leader, Malcon Turnbullfop then popped up in this conversation to say we had a very bright future with Nuclear energy. His newly minted Chief Scientist, Rontgen Funk declared it a very clean energy not at all like the type seen at Three Mile Island, Fukushima and Chernobyl.

“Shylock” with “Horse-Shite” Coorman have also been spruiking the benefits of turning Industry Superannuation Funds over to the banking sector. That these outperform all other “super” funds with none of the scandals and associated investor losses that the banks do so well at, is the very reason the playing field needs levelling. As “Horse-Shite” intoned, wreathed in cigar smoke, “We are the Liarbril Party, the lowest common denominator is our philosophic benchmark.”  They both denied that this exercise was another way of stopping Union funds from being distributed democratically.

Torn Posters, Police Lane Ballarat.

Senator, Simon “No-It’s-Your-Shout” Birmingham understands level playing fields too, and is trying to level public education... totally!  “By adopting the American style of education, we will forge greater cultural ties, allow everyone to fail and it will be cheaper for business executives; although parents will also have to foot the bill for the armed guards that come with this system.” he is alleged to have said.

There really need to be an enquiry into what’s in the water in South Aussie, as “No-It’s-Your-Shout” seems as infected with similar incipient educational ideas like his predecessor Chwissie “The-Whyne-and-Perfect-Prat-of-a-Prefect”, Pyne.

Concentration Camp “Leaners” on Nauru and Manus Islands are being offered the chance to re-locate to the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Anti-Immigration Minister (also incompetent and sacked Health Minister) “Dodo” Dutton declined to comment as it was a  “Look-Over-There” matter but did wink when it was suggested that, A/ they weren’t likely to drown in Kyrgyzstan, B/ It could be cheaper than the $40,000,000.00 for four Concentration Camp Leaner to go to Cambodia and, C/ he got the idea from his hero, Adolph Schikelgruber’s 1940 one of relocating Germany’s Jewish population of “Leaners” to Madagascar.

Senator “Vichy” Abetz was apparently very excited by the concept saying that Great Uncle Otto did something similar in France in the 40’s too.

Dodo has also announced that charities looking after the welfare of child “Concentration Camp Leaners” will have to pay a fee of $2,000,000.00 which will be non-refundable if they have been found guilty of telling the truth about Ruling Rabble policy. “Truth is relative, “ he is thought to have muttered as he was led away by his black-shirted personal bodyguard, Obersturmbannfuhrer Roaming Quisling of the Border Farce.

The basics of all the above are true… only the names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Hoo-roo Possums,

Shane

Chopper searching... second this week....