Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Blow up the pokies!
" There was the stage
Two red lights and a dodgy P.A
You trod the planks way back then
And it's strange that you're
Here again - here again "
" And I wish I, wish I knew the right words
to make you feel better
Walk out of this place
Defeat them in your secret battle
Show them you can be your own man again "
Two weekends back I was listening to the Whitlams' Tim Freedman singing these words at his Adelaide concert. It's a sad point that so many pub music rooms have disappeared to create space for the enticing electronic noises of these games that nobody can win.
As a member of a family who made a decision not to have poker machines in their pub because of the detrimental effects on society (and from where Freedman sang the sad song), I've followed Nick Xenophon's political career closely. I applauded his efforts to get clocks put into SA pokie dens, and also the insistence in promoting gambling addiction help services. I have no doubt that, given the lack of ethics displayed by the poker machine industry, anything profit-reducing would not have been implemented if people like Nick (and his many friends) hadn't insisted on measures being taken to get people out of "the zone" with some dignity intact
There are around a dozen pubs in Adelaide without the one armed bandits, and I think that Nick has a lot of work ahead to provide alternative viabilities to the hotel industry before they'll consider throwing out the machines. However, the fact that he is taking his stance to such levels is to be applauded, and I wish him well in his endeavours to turn the tide. Milking people of money in such a manner is atrocious.
Here's Xenophon's maiden speech to the Senate of Australia, given last week:
"Mr President, before I begin let me offer you my sincere congratulations on your election.
I look forward to your independent, wise, and even-handed guidance in this chamber.
While this is my first speech in federal parliament, this is not actually my first speech in a parliament.
Eleven years ago I decided to run as an independent for the upper house of the South Australian Parliament to highlight the devastating impact poker machines were having in my State.
I never expected to win.
Unlike so many poker machine players, I knew the odds and the odds were against me.
But I ran to make a point, and thanks to an improbable series of preference deals I was elected.
I well remember making that first speech in the South Australian upper house.
Back then I was awed by the task ahead, and today I have the same feelings.
A six year term can seem like a long time.
But after a decade in the South Australian Parliament I know all too well that there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done.
Especially while fighting for the rights of asbestos victims, I was painfully aware of the limitations of time.
So as I stand here making my first speech, I am actually thinking a lot about what I’m going to say in my last speech.
Will I have made a difference?
Will I have fought the battles that needed fighting and helped those who needed helping?
Will I have sought every opportunity to make life a little better for people, a little fairer for people, and maybe even a little easier for people?
______________________________
No-one makes it to this place on their own and I have a lot of people to thank.
Most of them I will thank privately.
______________________________
I know I’m an independent, but over the years I have been absolutely dependent on a loyal band of supporters who were ready to help me fight for what I believed in.
I still struggle to comprehend how twelve hundred volunteers saw fit to give up their time and their labour to help me on election day.
I am awed by the support of the almost one hundred and fifty thousand South Australians who sent me here to advocate for them, to be their watchdog.
I will always be grateful for their support.
I do want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my mother and father who emigrated from Greece and Cyprus respectively almost six decades ago.
I am immensely proud of my heritage and I am so grateful for the support of my parents, my family, extended family and friends.
I want to thank the Honourable John Darley for assuming my responsibilities in the South Australian Parliament, as well as for his wise advice and encouragement.
I would like to thank my running mate at the last election Roger Bryson, and also Tim Costello who for the last eleven years has been a mentor and a great friend.
And there is one last supporter I would like to thank by name, and that is my beautiful son Aleksis.
He is both my mate, and my meaning.
There is no greater force in this world than the love a parent feels for their child.
As a father I am immensely proud of him, and I will work tirelessly to make him proud of me in this house.
_____________________
A lot of people ask me where I am on the political spectrum.
Am I conservative, or progressive?
Well, apart from a youthful indiscretion while at uni where I flirted briefly with the young Libs, for most of my life and in my political career I have tended not to see things in terms of left or right.
Instead I try to think about what is right and what is wrong.
On the issue of poker machines that isn’t hard to do.
Poker machines are an unsafe product that causes untold harm to the most vulnerable in our community.
Today, in this country there are hundreds of thousands of Australians who in some direct way have been damaged by the poker machine industry.
In my former life as a lawyer, and since, I’ve seen so many good people whose lives have been ruined by these machines.
I could not stand by and say nothing.
According to the industry’s own figures poker machines make more than 50% of their revenue from problem gamblers.
For a long time I have debated the industry, quoting studies and experts and reports that quantify the devastating effect these machines have on those who become addicted.
But in a way I now realise this has played into the gambling industry’s hands.
You see, I quote an expert and then all they do is quote some other expert with some dubious figures in order to muddy the waters.
The industry does this not because they want to win the argument.
They know they can’t. Their position is untenable.
Instead, all they really want to do is keep the argument going, because as long as they can do that, they can keep their machines running, and take money from problem gamblers and their families.
Their arguments, their denials, all echo the tactics used by the tobacco industry in decades past.
And I say enough is enough.
The debate is over.
These machines are unsafe and need to be removed from the community.
State governments have also become addicted to these machines thanks to the four billion dollars a year they receive from poker machine taxes.
My decision to run for the Senate was triggered on September 11 last year when I read about the then Opposition leader’s views on poker machines.
He said he hated them and he knew something of the impact they have on families.
I was encouraged.
Not only was the now Prime Minister right, the Australian people knew he was right on this and many other issues.
My message to the Prime Minister is simple.
I want to work constructively with him and his government and the cross-benchers and the opposition, to eradicate this scourge from our suburbs, as well as internet gambling from our lounge rooms.
As Tim Costello says, with online gambling it’s now possible to lose your home without ever actually having to leave it.
Poker machines are a litmus test of good government. If governments are willing to sacrifice their own citizens for gambling taxes what else are they getting wrong?
___________________
When I first made it into the upper house in South Australia, a lot of politicians, state and federal approached me in the same sort of way I suspect they would approach the village idiot.
I remember meeting the Honourable Phillip Ruddock at a community event in Adelaide in 1998 where he asked me what party I was from.
I replied I was an Independent who ran on a ‘no pokies’ platform.
He looked at me stunned and said words to the effect of: “You actually got voted in on that?”
His reaction and the initial reaction of a number of my state parliamentary colleagues reminds me of Tony Benn, the old left wing warhorse of the British Labour Party who once said:
“It’s the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you’re mad, then dangerous. Then there’s a pause – and then you can’t find anyone who disagrees with you.”
This was my experience in state politics, and I hope on key issues I will experience the same here.
So, the poker machine industry can consider itself put on notice.
_________________________
I also want to work constructively with the government and indeed all my colleagues on what I believe is the biggest crisis facing our nation and my state in particular….the crisis facing the Murray-Darling Basin.
It’s too big, too important to be treated as a partisan issue.
This crisis reflects not just environmental failures, it also represents a failure of federation.
For more than a century state governments have put parochial interests above the national interest, and allowed this once great river system to be drained to death’s door.
We know from the High Court’s decision on ‘Workchoices’, the extent of Commonwealth power.
I believe that power should be used for the good of the entire river system, and the communities that depend on it for their survival.
The irrigators need help and the environment needs protecting.
This should not be state against state, region against region, irrigator against environmentalist.
With one river system, there should be one set of rules that runs the rivers in the national interest.
Governments should not give in to the temptation to play divide and rule as the river dies.
It was Mark Twain that likened the River Murray to America’s great river, the Mississippi.
However, as the Courier-Mail’s Mike O’Connor wrote last week:
“Were Twain to see the Murray river today it is unlikely he would repeat the comparison, for the Murray and its sibling the Darling are dying, strangled by a combination of political apathy, cowardice and stupidity.”
In 1999 Phillip Coorey wrote in The Adelaide Advertiser of a leaked CSIRO report that said Adelaide’s water would be too salty to drink in two days out of five by 2020 unless there was a major shift in water management along the Murray-Darling river system.
We’re still waiting for that major shift.
I cannot accept that the Council of Australian Governments agreement of July 3rd this year, which won’t be fully implemented until 2018, reflects the urgency required.
The science says, we can’t wait.
How can one of the wealthiest, smartest countries on the planet be facing an environmental disaster in the Coorong and Lower lakes reminiscent of the devastation of the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union?
This is not a crisis the current federal government created.
Like a tragic game of pass the parcel, they just got left with the mess when the music stopped.
The government did not cause the problem, but they do have the power and the opportunity to deliver a solution.
I believe that only a full federal government take-over of the entire basin will achieve this.
_______________________
In October 1942, during the heat of a federal election campaign, allegations emerged about a ‘Brisbane line’ – that the nation north of Brisbane would be dissected from east to west and would be abandoned in the event of a Japanese invasion.
I wonder whether there’s a ‘South Australian’ line. Perhaps it would start somewhere to the east of Renmark and stretch to the west of Ceduna - a line that’s not planned or pre-meditated, but none the less caused by political decisions.
A line that deems part of this country as being expendable.
And make no mistake, not acting is still making a choice.
This line will come into being in the absence of bold action on water.
None of us want to see that come to pass, but perhaps by imagining the worst we will be spurred on to fix this problem.
____________________
I also want to play my part in helping raise the level of political engagement in this country.
Donald Horne referred to Australia, with calculated irony, as the ‘lucky country’ to make the point that we shouldn’t rely on luck alone, and I think he was right.
Luck is great, as long as you don’t count on it.
We must never take our luck for granted and we must work hard to protect what we have.
This place, the Australian Senate, by virtue of the powers afforded to it by the constitution is entrusted to play, amongst other things, a watchdog role over the executive arm of government.
I say, as would many others, that that role was diminished in the last three years.
____________________
And good governance isn’t just about what happens in parliament.
The authorities set up by acts of parliament have to be given real authority and adequate resources to do their job, whether it’s the ACCC, the Australian National Audit Office or the Ombudsman.
Our trade practices laws need to reflect a commitment not just to free markets, but also to fair markets.
_____________________
Good governance is also about the freedom to speak out when it’s in the national interest.
In 2007 News Limited journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus were convicted of contempt of court. Their ‘crime’ was refusing to testify in a matter relating to a senior public servant, Desmond Kelly.
Mr Kelly had been accused of leaking cabinet documents that showed the then government intended to short-change war veteran’s entitlements to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
The story was in the national interest. The public had a right to know.
The journalists, and any source, should never have been charged.
Nor should Allan Kessing have been charged and convicted. He was a customs official accused of leaking a report on security breaches at Sydney airport that lead to a $200 million dollar emergency upgrade in airport security.
_________________________
For democracy to work we need to know not just the good things about a government, but also the things that don’t reflect well on it.
If you really believe in a citizen’s right to exercise democratic choice, surely we must all agree this has to be an informed choice.
Finally on the topic of good governance I note that we’re not just the lucky country, we are also meant to be the clever country.
So that does make me wonder whether it’s that smart to be cutting the budget of the CSIRO given all the challenges created by climate change.
Policy choices must also be informed and based on the best evidence available.
_________________
A lot of people talk about the power of this Senator, or that Senator.
But none of us have any power other than the power entrusted in us by the people, the voters.
They give us this power and they can take it away.
That’s why I don’t swear allegiance to a party.
And that’s why I don’t swear allegiance to any one ideology.
That’s what I believe independents must do.
An independent must take every issue as it comes and ask ‘If we change things, who might it hurt and who will it help?’
And then hopefully make the right choice.
I also don’t believe in horse-trading.
Horse-trading implies a willingness to vote for something you don’t believe in, in order to get something else you want.
Sometimes when people do try and horse-trade they can end up with a donkey, or worse still, end up making an ass of themselves.
_________________________
The task ahead won’t be easy.
It’s going to be hard work, but I have been given the job and I am ready for the responsibility.
I’m acutely aware of the expectations and obligations that face me.
I am reminded of that quote from my role model and some might say my kindred spirit Woody Allen in the opening scene of the movie Annie Hall.
The film opens with Woody Allen’s character Alvy Singer looking into the camera and saying:
“There’s an old joke: 'Uh, two elderly women are in a Catskills Mountain resort, and one of ‘em says: ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible’. The other one says ‘Yeah, I know, and in such small portions’.
Woody goes on to say “ Well, that’s essentially how I feel about life. Full of loneliness and misery and suffering, and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly."
I’m sure that’s how I‘m going to feel while I am here…but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
___________________
The great Australian novelist Tim Winton once said that “ordinary life flows with divine grace”.
I like that quote.
It’s another way of saying that everything and everyone has value, and I think that’s important to remember.
______________________
Anyway, I have probably said enough for now.
I’m conscious of never taking more of the Senate’s time that I need to, to have my say.
And I’ve got the next six years to get to know everyone here.
But if you do want the Readers Digest version of my approach to this job, here it is:
I would rather go down fighting, than still be standing because I stayed silent. "
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News from the Pokies Inquiy
{News extract]
The AHA's p.o.v. is a bit like saying that eating McDonalds doesn't make kids fat.
Fascinating
Geoff, shooting from the lip is an occupational hazard. No worries.
Ian, fascinating what the working class used to do when it had cultural as well as political and economic authority.
As to gambling - I once put a bet on a horse on a tip given me by a bloke called 'Snowy the Pole'. Shoulda' known better. On one other occasion I accompanied a mate, an unemployed rabbi, to Packer's casino. He had a system for roulette. It worked up to the point that the table limits defeated the system. Never mind. Came out with our stake intact.
The only time I had a successful bet was on the disk lickers before the swabbing got too sophisticated. Now, that was a funny night.
Jimmie Comerford's life was meaningful, Master Pahoff
I invite you to Google his name, restricted to Australia, and you'll see what I mean. Or follow this link to the SMH article re. Jimmie' s account of the shooting of Norman Brown during the Rothbury lockout:
A life that meant something mate. Feeling uneasy, are you?
Wowserism and democracy
Anthony, I never met the late and great Jim Comerford, even though I read much about him and by him in the miners' union paper Common Cause while researching the 1949 Coal Strike for a university thesis.
In my experience though, those opposed most vehemently to grog, gambling or whatever have had nasty experiences of same in their familes. My own grandfather was a compulsive gambler, and though a hard worker and a skilled worker, lost most of the money he ever earned on the horses. That effect passed boxcar-like down the generations. I have never been into gambling, having been indoctrinated against it by my mother from infancy.
In my opinion, the town of Broken Hill in NSW reached the highest point ever of democracy. In the town's heyday, the writ of the NSW government stopped somewhere to the east of it, for it was run by the Barrier Industrial Council, which meant the trade unions of the town. If a miner's kids were going hungry because he was blowing it in two up games, the BIC put an embargo on him. Once that was in place, no gambling joint would let him in, on pain of being embargoed ('declared black') itself.
A senior cop, newly appointed to take charge of policing the town, once decided to take the BIC on and show them who was boss. He shortly found that no business would have him as a customer, no shop would serve him, no tradesmen would come to his house; no milk, no bread, no nothing. He shortly took a transfer and left town.
Broken Hill people had a pride in their town unrivalled IMHO anywhere in Australia. Despite all the two up joints in the town, its people to my knowledge did not have a gambling problem.
Jim Comerford
My comment about the late Mr Jim Comerford was careless and gratuitous, to say the least. I withdraw it.
Pokies - I love them
Pokies, I love them. I have played the pokies since I was a young sailor in Sydney. It was one of the spices that, to me, made Sydney just that little bit more sophisticated than Melbourne, where I grew up.
I know many of you may think I am a sick puppy but some people gamble on horse racing, some will bet on roulette, for me I like the pokies.
Before I moved to Cairns my wife and I frequently came here on holidays. On one of these trips my wife put 5 cents into a pokie machine and won $2,500 which more than paid for the holiday. Believe it or not, one of the reasons we moved to Cairns was because it had pokies.
Now you probably think we are crazy. Well, my wife and I don't drink, and we don't smoke. My wife doesn't drive so we own one car, a Honda Jazz, which costs me about $50 a fortnight to fuel. We live pretty simply, so once a week we go to the pokies and spend two or three hours feeding the machines. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. We usually have lunch and for us it is a pleasant afternoon and puts a little extra spice into our life.
Some of you might say that a few people can't control their gambling and as a result you would like to deny my wife and I the privilege of our once a week outing. I say to you a lot more people destroy their lives drinking and smoking, so before I give up my vice how about you giving up yours?
Gambling is a risk, so is mountain climbing, around the world sailing, and other more expensive and dangerous hobbies. People get killed doing what they enjoy, life is often risky. To me my flutter on the pokies is nowhere near as dangerous or as expensive as some of these pursuits.
One of the benefits of poker machines is that they provide a safe environment to take my wife for a cheap meal in nice surroundings. A three course meal at the local club costs $6.50. There are hundreds of other retirees enjoying the meal, dancing and a band. Some like us will play the pokies, some will not. All enjoy the afternoon and for some it is their only social outing.
The money that goes into the poker machines goes to charities and to the football or RSL club. I could donate $100 or I could put it into the machine and have some fun.
I compare the club environment in Queensland to the hotels available in Western Australia. Give me the clubs every time. As I have said it was one of the reasons we moved to Cairns.
So Richard, before you take my pokies away I want you to close your pub.
Alcohol and tobacco do a lot more damage to our society than gambling.
Before we move closer to the "nanny" state and put us all in cotton wool don't point fingers at others there will always be three pointing back.
You CAN have too much of a good thing
John Pratt: "So Richard, before you take my pokies away I want you to close your pub"
I wish I, and my family (group decision) had the lack of social ethics to be able to have put the bloody things in. A Porsche in the driveway would be lovely, for starters.
It didn't fit with the kind of community life we try to promote. You know, talking to each other, having a few tunes together, that sort of thing.
I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. From where I sit, the level of poker machine addiction appears to be much higher than alcoholism. And with alcohol there's a set of mandatory responsible practices to minimise over indulgence. With the machines, as long as you've money in your pocket you're a customer.
The libertarian aspects of everything are tricky. So many things are illegal because too much is bad for you. As I mentioned, I have trouble with the ethics of selling grog occasionally, and have been nagging the front-bar regulars since the funeral last week.
I don't like situations where you are encouraged to participate to a harmful level. Maybe that's a hypocritical distinction, but it's one I choose to take.
Slaves and lotus
Amazing isn't it. With each new thread you get a realignment of alliances and slants on an issue.
Am with Jenny Hume – yes, Virginia there are social problems, including addictive problems, that cause much grief for sufferers and those close to them. Therefore I must disagree with Alan Curran who I think needs to reconstruct beyond a lazy and incoherent half-conception of "freedom" as mere manifestation and performance of or for, pathological, animalistic, appetitive, selfish unconsciousness. Get back to problem solving mode, mate – much more rewarding!
Richard, I don't think Xenophon is "wowserish"; am actually hoping that in time he will develop into another Peter Andren or Andrew Bartlett; a sort of informed centrist. Tell me who you would prefer out of Xenophon and near-incoherent, morally blinkered and intellectually inflexible Fielding, for example.
But yes, Richard, I do agree that communities and individuals have become robotic and atomised. Fewer people interact with their families (work ?), more are likely alienated from their work, (likely) fewer listen to live music, go to plays, "hobby", or attend community sport or the art gallery and generally interact with other people, rather than be perpetually "zoned out" via foxtel, women’s mags, drugs and booze, headsets, texting and habituative recitation of political or religious bigotry and self righteousness (yes, it is a "rush" and am as prone to it as are most here) , etc, etc.
Put simply, unconsciousness is not the same thing as freedom, surely to god?
I just think gambling is one of those traps that remains manifestive of a misanthropic, contemptuous and ultimately nihilistic and self loathing pathology working through the organisers playing off addictive tendencies. Additionally, we consider the aspect of the wider pathology that includes sheer laziness of some of the participants.
Jesus Christ; there's a real world out there!
Anyone read about the Bihar floods in India, for example, or do the majority remain in their self gratificative, infantile stupour, as per usual?
Although I shouldn't be too critical, since am addicted to the internet and other aspects of my own comfortable life. Heaven help me if I become so slothful as to no longer be able to even read, let alone understand the Writing on the (subway?) Wall.
"If it costs you more than just money, etc ..."
An expensive way to pass time
Many years ago I put a zac into a one armed bandit, pulled the lever and it gave me three zacs back. Yippee I thought, collected the cash and bought a middy.
Never bothered to do it again; reckon I had used up all my poker machine luck on the first pull.
Anyway, when you do the numbers it is easy to see nobody can win playing the pokies; a waste of time really or an expensive way to pass time.
Why am I not surprised?
I have only skim read this thread. So if there is a single word here that supports the proposition that adults are not children and are responsible for their own actions, then I would be grateful if somebody pointed it out.
Anybody here who is prepared to say that self righteous, snot faced, smug gangs of people, who assume they know best for other people, should be told to shove it where the sun don't shine? Apart from me of course.
Somebody here mentioned that these machines were outlawed from somewhere on the vote of some half dead, dribbling old Commo. Or whatever.
Why am I not surprised?
What about human rights though?
In the South Australian parliament a couple of years ago the Democrats put up a motion declaring that Woomera and Baxter were a crime against humanity and Xenophon voted it down. Children tortured, not a crime? Women raped and abused, not a crime? Men battered and locked in isolation, not a crime?
I think the pokies thing is the biggest beat up in our history - how many people are killed by the addiction compared to alcoholism or smoking or drunk driving? Can't find a single case of "person died because of pokie arm".
I personally find the things a crushing bore and the only time I spent a $1 in them was in the Canberra workers club in 1988. I was so bored I went and got drunk instead.
Stats. released this week showed that NSW reduced irrigation from the MDB by 42% last year, Queensland by 21% and Victoria by 33% - South Australia increased their usage by over 6% and the lower lakes district received nearly 200 mls of rain while the northern areas had little or none yet Xenophon is still trying to trash Penny Wong.
I can't think of a single thing Xenophon actually accomplished where as even the dopey Steve Fielding pulled off the best coup of the last few years by getting Howard's last draconian anti-refugee laws thrown in the bin with a bit of not very subtle blackmail.
Invaders
Geoff and Marilyn, I owe you both a decent reply when i can get my head around it. I went to a mate's funeral last week (57, heart attack) at which a tinnie in a stein went down with the coffin. Sure, he could've bought his much-loved beer anywhere, but he bought a lot of it from us. I haven't quite come to terms with it.
You are right, though, Marilyn, in finding the machines boring. Give me Space Invaders any day.
Natural control
Western Australia only permits poker machines (and bans the more "additive" types) in its one casino. The State Treasury doesn't seem to need the revenue from them. Has any thought been given to comparing the extent of gambling problems in WA compared to other states?
BTW I am very grateful to the WA Governments of both major parties who have resisted the temptation to flood every suburb with this unnecessary evil.
"WA - Wowsers' Australia"
Australia has 10% of the world's poker machines!
I too, am grateful, Ruth Conway, that we do not have these home wrecking "pokies" in W.A.
There is an interesting article here about gambling.
Here is an excerpt:
It is concerning that so many women get hooked on these "pokies"
I remember some years ago, when at the casino with friends one evening, I noticed that most of the people using these machines were women.
Aha!
I can only imagine, Ruth Conway, how many Australian Hotels Association lobbyists are quietly beavering away at that little "problem". Talk about untapped potential! All those miners up north with nothing to do ... the mining corps could get their wages back, if they were lucky.
Hooray
Apparently Kurri Kurri Workers Club was the last in NSW to install pokies. This happened sometime in the late 1970's or early 1980's. The reason was a stand out old communist called Jimmie Comerford (Miners Federation) whose position on the board allowed him to object to them on the grounds, as I recall his words, "We're not having kids go without food and shoes while their parents piss their wages up against the wall and feed 'em down the pokies".
Count me a wowser.
Wowser
Xenophon is a stuntman. His mind spins media tricks like a premier's spins factions. Having experienced his modus operandi once and watched him continue to play his way through the press and into the Senate, I find it hard to find where the stuntman stops and the Senator starts.
I first heard the definition of wowser, Jenny, from Xenophon's lips, over the airwaves, just before the Federal election. "I've just recently learned that wowser means we only want social evils righted" he proclaimed on the morning ABC, and the pause after his words suggested that the presenters didn't quite know how to respond. In effect, without saying that he was a wowser in any sense, he identified himself with (branded) everyone who is a wowser in any sense. Brilliant timing. Parliament should not underestimate this man.
Maybe I'm bit cynical, what with having spent fifteen years in one of the last bastions of what he supposedly aspires to recreate. and not having encountered him (except for us letting his party use our bar as location for his last state election TV ads) in a long time. Maybe he's not much of a pubgoer.
I'd be interested to see how high Nick's political aspirations are. I think he will end up with quite a fair bit of political clout. I think he will exercise that clout to aid the causes of those he believes he represents.
I also think he's a wowser.
Straight from Wik - wowsers and louts
Richard, well here is the Wik on the subject:
Wowser is a slang expression, most commonly heard in Australian and New Zealand English. It originated in Australia, at first carrying a similar meaning to 'lout', i.e. an annoying or disruptive person. However, around the beginning of the 20th century it shifted to its present meaning: one whose overdeveloped sense of morality drives them to deprive others of their pleasures. At this time, the term was particularly applied to members of temperance groups such as the antipodean branches of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
John Norton (January 25, 1858 - April 9, 1916), editor of Truth, claimed to have invented the word in 1899 [1] and the term was frequently used by artist and author Norman Lindsay, who fought many celebrated battles with "Wowsers" over the sexual content in his art and writing.
The Australian writer C.J. Dennis defined it thus: 'Wowser: an ineffably pious person who mistakes this world for a penitentiary and himself for a warder'.
In recent years, the term has been most often applied to morality-oriented politicians Fred and Elaine Nile and Brian Harradine.
As I have written earlier the women in this family were very much a part of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union back in the very early 20th Century. I guess that means I have a true blue wowser heritage. It seems, however, wowser has become a more broad term for social do gooders.
Still can't stand the taste of the stuff, but I don't try to stop the Scot except when he gets with other Scots. Doctor's orders has him in total abstention mode at the moment. Am not sure how long that will last.
I say good luck to Xenophon. At least the man stands for something and I see water is his second big issue. You might get a touch more down your way this year as there is heaps of snow in the high country for a change. Might make some decent run off.
Cheers.
Checking Wowsers Jenny Hume
Bit busy but I shall investigate further. Wilkes seems to think it is an Australian colloqialism but that it might have derived from a variant of "wow" meaning "to whine; to grumble, make complaint" recorded in 1876 in The English Dialet Dictoinary ed Joseph Wright Oxford 1898-1905. Now, those dates are a bit odd. Might have to check with Gerry.
Apart from that, you're just annoyed that your Housebound can't hold his liquor and falls over in gutters.
As for pokeis, what's wrong with behaviourism and variable reinfocement schedules? After all, it's the only proven method of getting a pigeon to guide a nuclear missile - two problems solved at once in my opinion.
And Xenophon, I ask you, is he Welsh or something?
Bihar and housebound
No Paul Walter, Bihar has hit my screen but all I can do is send some money. I get email alerts through the Christian charities I support who collect for this sort of thing. So the churches have some uses after all I would say.
Those scenes of people standing in water for a week with no food, just terrible. The sheer scale of it all. India is making economic progress but it needs to build some capacity to have an emergency response similar to that of the Chinese in Sechuan. Just too awful for words. Internet , yes far too addictive which is why I now force myself to switch off before 11 pm.
Malcolm B Duncan, yes he's been falling over of late, but I cannot this time blame you. Nasty virus after-effects but scared the hell out of me. Doc says no grog, so he's on water. No chocolate or coffee either. And so now I am feeling bad just because all his little treats are denied him.
Will await further advice on the origin of wowsers, or should that be louts?
Gambling derelicts
Well Libby, I agree it is not some sort of derelict that supports the gambling industry, but you got it right – it sure can reduce people to being derelict. Two families I know lost everything due to the habit of one parent and they were in the higher income bracket, one in fact a psychologist. But of course the poorer the gambler to start with the more serious the impact on the family.
All forms of gambling have the potential to addict and ruin families, though the poker machine is probably one of the worst by its very nature.
We could get rid of these things tomorrow if the political will was there. The amount of money the things bring in in tax could be replaced with a slightly higher tax on the high income earners, or out of the surplus to the States to compensate, and there would be savings in all the services currently having to be directed to meet the social problems created by the things.
But I doubt Rudd will do anything. He made a lot of noises about a lot of things before the election, but like all politicians he now back tracks. He'll put this one, like he has the live export industry in the too hard basket. Yes he voiced his objections to the former before the election too, now he doesn't want to know.
I heard the smoking bans had had some effect on poker machine use. I also recently saw a program on the life of the man who made his fortune out of putting these things in clubs. Very rich, never plays the things himself though. Surprise surprise.
I am not sure about your definition of a wowser. I don't like a drink unless it is o/j, simply because I cannot stand the taste of the other stuff. I can't be bothered with the pokies - too impatient - I would have to win within five minutes in order to stay for a second round. I love a good joke though whether it is blue or green, and yes I love a good singalong in the pub, particularly those little Irish ones - but I also love one in a church. Not sure where I would stand on a wowser scale of 1-10.
Maybe we should look at labels like wowser because it is when some people are labelled, if they find that excludes them, then they are likely to join just to feel they belong. Drugs and binge drinking kids spring to mind. If we are going to use the label wowser, maybe we should work on turning being a wowser into a positive rather than finding one has to somehow justify oneself for not being one. Worth a thought I guess.
BTW, welcome and I too would vote for the Senator should he be standing in our State.
Duty of care
Richard: Posting Nick's speech was inspired by a post from Libby Mitchell this morning, in which she sent one of the new Senator's earlier speeches. In the course of the conversation she sent this, her maiden Webdiary post. Welcome to Webdiary, Libby, and thank you for this!
Duty of Care Inc is a non-profit community organisation in Australia committed to supporting communities, consumers and their families who have been negatively impacted by poker machines. Our goal is to raise public awareness, to educate and to lobby government for poker machines to be made much safer for consumer use by introducing safety technologies to preserve consumer rights to be responsible money-managers and to stem community economic losses, or to have the machines banned. In effect we want licences, 'smart cards' and other consumer tools for self-management to be introduced (along with shorter opening hours, not ATM's in venues) or we want pokies gone from ourlocal communities. We are concerned that modern, powerfully harmful and dangerous consumer products, poker machines, have been thrust by a self-interested and rapaciously influential gambling industry upon largely ignorant societies across the world, to be falsely peddled as 'harmless recreational toys'...and as community 'economic saviours'.... to desperate governments who have now been drawn inextricably into a web of deceit, misrepresentation, harm and unethical business dealings. This has weakened governments and much more...our local communities
Duty of Care Inc is committed to ensuring that traditional negative societal views of 'gambling addicts', that have effectively provided a 'cover' for the poker machine gambling industry's wider economic motives, in allowing the machines to be accepted initially with no public sympathy or tolerance for those harmed, must be changed. Duty of Care Inc was started initially in 2004 by 3 women (Lana O'Shannessy, Sue Pinkerton, Libby Mitchell), none of whom matched the 'typical gambling addict' model that was then being touted and still is touted, yet all of whom had suffered personally from poker machine addiction. Prevailing social attitudes depicted the poker machine gambling addict as a defective, low-income, low-educated, socially and economically marginalised 'problem-personality, substandard deviate'. We challenged that notion. The gambling industry in our opinion, pushed and thrived upon this erroneous promotion of the poker machine gambling addict as 'deviate' to further isolate and shame into silence the very normal, previously effectively-functioning human beings that visibly were becoming extremely but silently addicted to poker machines. Silence was required to prevent citizen rejection of poker machines and to allow for business growth. The gambling industry has power to promote itself unequally and deceptively in our opinion. We want to break that web of silence that has shrouded pokies addiction and prevented positive action to occur...to make poker machines safer to use if possible....or to ban them. The silence is supported too often by addicted governments to> > protect their profits and now, as Nick Xenophon has pointed out, shaming and silence also assists the addicted gambling industry profiteers.
We believe that poker machines are deceptive and misleading and dangerous products, like 'cars with no brakes' that have hugely harmed many normal people and families. More importantly by sucking disposable consumer income to the tune of billions of dollars annually, poker machines are now the 3rd unmentioned major cause of our consumer credit> > crisis....fuel and interest rate costs are the only 2 mentioned. There is far too little attention paid to poker machines as being a destructive economic influence in countries globally. Far too little is said about the destruction or other retail industries at the expense poker machines. Far too much ignored are the plights of ethical and responsible industries who are now struggling to compete with the gambling and their related industries.
Duty of Care Inc links with gambling care groups across the world and is well aware that authoritative research is not being published effectively that if known, would change community attitudes. We are concerned that the social fabrics of our community lives are being destroyed and weakened, creating unsustainable business and community development. We decry the argument that pokies provide for community good hence should be well-valued, since it is unethical in our view to promote any fund-raising body if it harms others in order to raise its funds for public good, or other-wise. Poker machines are NOT harmless toys and they do not constitute mereharmless game-playing for the majority of people who use them. In fact a huge 60-90% of all users of poker machines are adversely harmed yet true findings are hidden. We are calling for full licensing of pokies'-users and we hold that 'right now we protect our fish better than we do our people and families who are harmed by poker machines'. It is time to legislate the poker machine as a potentially dangerous product and to legislate to bring in effective consumer protections that uphold community rights to reaching sustained development"
And by the way, Richard, I love a drink, a live-music sing-along at the local pub, a blue joke and a two-up game as much as I love a flutter on the pokies... have never been a wowser in my life, in my opinion. Have never over-spent on any other form of gambling so I hate being labelled as a "social derelict" by an abusive industry which has committed itself to social and economic dereliction. and dereliction of duty. Amen!