COMEDY: The Chaser’s SPIN

The federal election campaign is ripe for satire with The Chaser dedicating a new live show to the foibles of politics. Irfan Yusuf went along to the Enmore Theatre in Sydney’s inner-west hoping for a laugh, or two, or three.

In the late 1990’s I found myself working in a law firm in Balmain, a trendy suburb in the inner west of Sydney. One afternoon I walked into the building where my office was located and noticed a pile of newspapers on the floor. The masthead read “The Chaser”. I picked up a copy and took it into my office along with the lunch I had just purchased. It was hard for me to eat lunch as my sides were splitting at the laugh out loud fake and silly news and irreverence of this newspaper. These pages which contained enough blasphemy and defamation to have even the Divine Court sweating with anxiety. Nothing was sacred to The Chaser.

This troupe of white blokes who put together the newspaper, many graduates of the prestigious Sydney Grammar School, were the funniest bunch of private school d!ckheads to hit the comedy scene. Their humour was so juvenile that you wonder whether they were still in their St Ives Prep School. I was laughing myself silly and so loudly that my boss, who was in a conference with a client in the adjacent office, had to enter my office and politely tell me to shut the f#ck up.

Years later I noticed The Chaser were on ABC TV with some ridiculous anti-news show called CNNNN. It really was the staff undergrad university reviews were made of – pranks, toilet humour and irreverent interviews with clergy. It was so stupidly predictable yet it made me laugh.

After 9/11, I wasn’t in the mood to laugh much. Countries that shared my faith were being bombed by countries that shared my culture. The West had declared a War On Terror, though everyone knew it was a war on certain kinds of Islam and Muslims. In Australia, it was a war on just about anyone who was deemed Muslim. This time, The Chaser used juvenile humour to declare a War On Everything.

My young step-daughter was affected by the venom thrown at her and people of her faith by the likes of John Howard, Pauline Hanson, Andrew Bolt, Paul Sheehan and other persons off dubious credibility. Her only relief was sitting with me and her mum on a Wednesday night and tuning into The Chaser. We laughed as Osama bin Ladin videos were shown with stupid subtitles declaring a jihad on everyone from Bronwyn Bishop to Justin Bieber. We found it hilarious when Chas would put on a fake beard and a long white robe and interview a terror suspect out on bail. One of our favourite skits was their fake reality TV show The Biggest Muslim. You can still watch it on YouTube.

The Chaser kept so many of my mob sane by lampooning and ridiculing the powers that demonised us – John Howard, Tony Abbott, Philip Ruddock and many more. Even Sheik Taj El-Din Hamid Hilaly, the infamous “cat meat” mufti, didn’t escape Chaser-style pranking. It was all serious fun designed to remind us of how stupid we were to believe the paranoia and prejudice we took for granted.

In 2019 I moved to Perth and found myself working in a toxic environment. In the afternoon I would drive home laughing my head off listening to a podcast of The Chaser afternoon show on Sydney’s Triple-M. By the time I had driven from Mandurah to Rockingham, I was in stitches. After seven hours in such a depressing workplace, The Chaser were the perfect antidepressant.

While I was in Perth, the Perth Comedy Festival invited The Chaser to perform live on stage. It was a two hour show with an intermission. 

Afterwards, the boys set up a stall outside the theatre where you could buy merchandise and have your photo taken with the stars, among them a grumpy Charles Firth and some tall blonde dude who looked like an actor in Home & Away.

So it was with high expectations that last week a friend and I went along to watch The Chaser at the Enmore Theatre as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival. This was a condensed show (only one hour) and the boys looked very tired. Their audience (including me) were also exhausted thanks to all that Omicron crap.  

I hate writing critical reviews. I know how hard artists work, Comedy is tough even when you’re a seasoned comedian with a massive reputation. I’ve been backstage with Nazeem Hussain before a show and watched him pacing the floor nervously rehearsing his lines and gestures. But honestly, the worst thing I can say about The Chaser on this night is that they were very tired and one hour wasn’t enough time to flesh out their comedic argument. Their performance was brave and valiant, reminding me of former Australian cricket captain Alan Border scoring a century with severe injuries.

So much political satire consists of “in jokes” designed to give you a warm feeling inside as if you are laughing with the intelligentsia. This wasn’t The Chaser. Even a political novice would have understood the jokes. Some skits involved a strong degree of audience participation. I felt part of the performance, not just a spectator.

The highlight for me was watching Mark Humphries skewer the former head pastor of Hillsong. Sheer genius.

Perhaps the best praise for The Chaser came from an American lass who worked at Elizabeth’s Bookstore in Newtown. I went there to see if I could pick up some old copies of The Chaser magazine. “You’ll find them in the Australiana section,” she told me.

Why put them there when they should be in the humour section?

“Seriously, these guys aren’t just comedy,” the Yankee bookworm explained. “They’re an Australian cultural institution.”

I’m sure my step-daughter would agree.

First published in True Crime News Weekly on May 17 2022.

POLITICS: Manipulating division a fizzer in London's mayoral election

Sadiq Khan studied law and worked as a human rights solicitor. He was made a partner of the law firm within a mere three years. He ran controversial cases pursuing the human rights of some very unpopular figures. Khan left practice and in 2005 was elected to Parliament in his local seat of Tooting. Yet being lawyer to the damned didn't stop him from securing 1.3 million votes in last week's London mayoral election, in what George Eaton in the New Statesman described as

the biggest personal mandate of any politician in UK history.

What could have stopped Khan was his Conservative opposition's constant insinuation that Khan's ancestral religious culture (his parents are Indo-Pakistani Sunni Muslims) somehow made him less desirable as mayor.

Ironically, the sister of the Conservative candidate not only married another politician surnamed Khan but also adopted his faith. Jemima Goldsmith is no longer married to Pakistan's former cricketing legend and political leader Imran Khan. She expressed disappointment and disgust in the way her brother's campaign spent so much time trying to link Sadiq Khan to Muslim "extremists"

Zac Goldsmith's campaign was overseen by the firm of Australian election strategist Lynton Crosby. The campaign included sending leaflets to voters with Hindu and Sikh-sounding names saying that Sadiq Khan would place heirlooms at risk by placing a wealth tax on family jewellery. Pamphlets also made an issue of Khan not attending a welcome ceremony for Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi at Wembley Stadium in 2015.

Similar leaflets were sent out in the 2015 UK general election calling on Gujarati Hindu voters to support the Tories, claiming Labour supported laws banning caste discrimination!

Such strategies are sadly nothing new. In his 2007 book The Hollow Men: A study in the politics of deception, Nicky Hager includes an entire chapter detailing the methods used by Crosby's firm C|T Group in Britain and New Zealand. The book is the product of a series of leaked internal NZ National Party correspondence and emails obtained from disgruntled political staffers, party supporters in business, conservative think tanks, pollsters and fringe fundamentalist churches during the period of the leadership of Dr Don Brash.

The book provides detailed material on the methods and messages C|T shared with the NZ National Party. These included techniques to identify the prejudices of "soft" voters, which included using immigration as a wedge, especially if it meant stealing votes from more extreme anti-immigrant parties.

It all sounds terribly familiar. It's a shallow form of conservatism based not upon values but prejudices. It seeks to replace the sound aspects of the status quo and gradual reform with a political order built upon the manipulation of underlying divisions.

But in the London mayoral election, such strategies repeatedly backfired. For instance, in an interview with the Evening Standard, Zac Goldsmith made an issue of Sadiq Khan sharing the stage with an alleged Muslim extremist Imam Suliman Gani.

To share a platform nine times with Suliman Gani, one of the most repellent figures in this country, you don't do it by accident.

To his credit, Khan did not respond. He didn't need to. Gani soon tweeted a photo of himself standing with a smiling Zac Goldsmith. Gani had also openly endorsed and supported another Tory candidate in the 2015 general election.

It was a formidable barrage of innuendo and Muslim-phobic prejudice thrown at Sadiq Khan by devout Muslim Imran Khan's former brother-in-law. Khan's Muslim heritage wasn't referred to. It didn't need to be. The subliminal message was clear – a person of Pakistani Muslim heritage with alleged links to terrorists (heck, don't they all?) should not be entrusted to the mayoralty of a major Western (and hence white Christian) city.

What the Tories and their pollsters failed to realise is that London's Indians don't all support Indian PM Narendra Modi. Even if they did, Modi is not seeking election as London mayor. Tamil voters are not just fixated with jewellery. Simon Hattenstone reports in The Guardian about a letter received by Barbara Patel, a retired biochemist whom some smart cookie at Conservative HQ had imagined to be a Gujarati Hindu. In fact she was white and Jewish, her husband's family being Muslim! 

Conservatives need to come to terms with the fact that all us non-whites are not an angry divided rabble who make voting decisions based upon some Anglo stereotype. We care about the same issues anyone else does. Poor Londoners, whether Hindu or Sikh or Jewish or Muslim or Catholic or Callithumpian really don't care about whether the mayor delivering them affordable housing meets the stereotype of a toff or a terrorist.

If Cypriot Turkish Muslims in the inner south of Melbourne can vote for a Jewish MP for Melbourne Ports and Filipino Catholics in Mount Druitt for a Muslim MP for Chifley, why can't Londoners of all persuasions vote for the son of a Muslim bus driver? As for me, I'm just happy another solicitor has taken power.

Irfan Yusuf is an award-winning author and lawyer who in his past life was a federal Liberal candidate for the western Sydney seat of Reid in the 2001 federal election. First published in the Canberra Times on 12 May 2016.

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS: Australian Liberty Alliance candidate once sang songs of jihad

Angry Anderson is the new Senate candidate for the anti-Islam Australian Liberty Alliance. But Rose Tattoo was once on the side of Afghan jihadis.

I’m so excited. One of my musical heroes is running for Parliament. He’ll be a candidate for the Senate, representing me and millions of other New South Welshmen. And even better, like me, he’s a somewhat conservative chap.

Though I doubt Angry Anderson would be happy to have me as a fan. Back in year 9, I was a bit of a jihadist. It was 1984, the year that was the name of a famous novel written by a British foreign fighter named Eric Blair. I found the novel boring, but my year 9 English class all adored Angry Anderson’s passionate lyrics. That year the band he fronted, Rose Tattoo, released their Southern Stars album. The first single was an extraordinary anthem for freedom entitled I Wish.

Anderson sings of the struggles of the Catholics of Northern Ireland and the Solidarity Movement of Poland. During the guitar solo, the video clip shows images of freedom fighters past and present — Gandhi, Khomeini and some priest I am not familiar with. Then the following inspirational words:

I wish I was a hero 

Fighting for the rights of man 

I wish I was a tribesman 

In the hills of Afghanistan

Afghan tribesmen? Fighting in Afghanistan? In 1984? Who were they? Who were they fighting? 

They were, of course, the Afghan jihadis fighting the Soviet Union. And they weren’t fighting alone; Saudi Arabia and the United States were supplying them with advanced weaponry. If you don’t believe me, ask Charlie Wilson, who helped arrange it all. Lots of Arab volunteers were fighting with the Afghans as well. If you don’t believe me, ask Osama bin Laden. He was organising their kit, accommodation, recruitment, medical treatment, etc.

OK, it’s too late to ask Charlie and Osama, as they are deceased. Still, you can ask Tom Hanks if you like.

Angry Anderson’s wish became my wish. Like Anderson, I wanted to be a hero fighting for the rights of men, rights being trampled on by the Soviet communist empire. I wanted to fight in a war in which global Islamism and the global Western right were together on the same side, just as they continue to be, on the ground, across much of the so-called “Muslim world”.

Good on Angry Anderson for making jihad such a fashionable topic for this hard-rocking Anglican-school boy. The people he praised, those he wanted to be were fighting for freedom, for liberty, for the West and for Islam.

Yes, a rather strange form of Islam. An Islam that many Muslim theologians at the time found rather difficult to understand, let alone swallow. But I guess if Ronald Reagan is leading the jihad, it must be good.

So as Angry Anderson accepts his endorsement to run on the anti-Islam Australian Liberty Alliance platform, I hope he recalls with fondness the days when he was singing his jihad anthem.

First published in Crikey on 10 May 2016.

POLITICS: Wizardry required to govern Oz

Tony Abbott has been handed a resounding victory but he is likely to inherit major problems in the Senate. 

Back in the 1980s, when I was an innocent Sydney teenager, politics was so much simpler and hence so much more boring. We had Labor and we had the Liberal/National Coalition. Labor behaved as Labor should, while the Coalition were as conservative as expected. There was also a third force, called the Australian Democrats, who were boring as all buggery and whose sole responsibility was to "keep the bastards honest" in the Senate. Exactly how this was done went right over my young head.

These days, Labor is behaving like the Coalition while the Coalition's rhetoric sometimes makes me wonder whether they are channelling Genghis Khan. Instead of the Democrats, we have the Greens and a host of independents who often hold the balance of power in the Senate and can make governing almost impossible. 

The last six years has seen Australia's Labor Government at war with itself. In 2010, Australians went to the polls, facing an ostensible choice of Labor's Julia Gillard and the Coalition's Tony Abbott. They got a hung Parliament. A handful of independents went with Julia Gillard to form a weak Government.

But over the weekend, the nation decided they wanted a break from unstable government hamstrung by fringe interests spoiling the law-making process. Tony Abbott was handed a decisive victory. Kevin Rudd, who stabbed Julia Gillard in the back after she stabbed him in the back, just managed to hold his seat.

Abbott ran a disciplined campaign with few gaffes. Actually, that isn't quite true. There were some absolute doozies from the Abbott camp. On one occasion he praised Western Sydney candidate Fiona Scott for her sex appeal. Scott went on to tell the ABCTV current affairs show Four Corners:

[Asylum seekers are] a hot topic here because our traffic is overcrowded." When asked to clarify, she replied: "Go sit on the M4 [freeway], people see 50,000 people come in by boat - that's more than twice the population of [western Sydney suburb] Glenmore Park.

And I thought all the traffic at Bondi beach was the terrible Kiwi drivers.

Scott comfortably won her seat. Tony Abbott has a huge majority in the House of Representatives. He can easily form a government but he has no control over the Senate. Few governments ever have had a Senate majority, but at least they've known who they must negotiate with. But this time around, the Senate looks likely to have an undisciplined unrepresentative selection of minor and single-interest parties holding the balance of power.

In NSW, a mega-libertarian bunch calling themselves the Liberal Democrats confused a swag of Liberal voters. Voters had to complete a Senate ballot paper big enough to wrap around like a sari. The Liberal Democrats were fortunate enough to be placed first on the ballot paper. Their incoming Senator David Leyonhjelm, a former veterinarian, told Fairfax Media, "Looks like I'm going to be the senator for the donkeys".

Leyonhjelm supports a virtual flat income tax, freedom to carry concealed weapons, an end to bicycle helmets and rolling back the "nanny state".

The madness doesn't end there. In May 2012, billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer approached the Coalition to run as a candidate in the seat of then ALP Treasurer Wayne Swan. Mr Swan's response was: "The Liberal Party, particularly in my home state, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Mr Palmer". Palmer was a major donor to the Coalition.

When he fell out with the Coalition and formed the Palmer United Party (PUP), the eccentricities only multiplied. In China Palmer is building a massive ship, the Titanic II, which will retrace the ill-fated voyage of its predecessor. He is also developing his own Jurassic Park on the Sunshine Coast which will contain 160 giant dinosaurs, each of which can move and make some loud noise.

After the election, Palmer and his party will make some serious noise in Canberra. His private jet, painted with PUP colours, has made some noise in the sky. He is still in with a chance to win his Queensland Lower House seat, and there will be at least two PUP senators as well. One of them is rugby league legend Glenn Lazarus, nicknamed "The Brick With Eyes". Sounds like a formidable senate negotiator.

My favourite? The Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party (AMEP) in Victoria who look set to pick up a Senate spot after achieving a whopping 0.52 per cent of the primary vote. Candidate Ricky Muir is just your ordinary Aussie bloke who doesn't mind uploading videos on YouTube of him throwing kangaroo poo at his brother. Muir, who has had a long stint in politics with his 3-month AMEP membership, told ABC: "If you haven't spent much time in the bush, you go out there and you'll discover that there is poo everywhere."

I guess they don't call Canberra the bush capital for nothing.

Tony Abbott is going to have a hell of a time negotiating with the motley crew likely to inhabit the Senate.

Irfan Yusuf was a Liberal candidate in the 2001 elections. Politically he prefers to be left right out.

OPINION: Egypt's re-revolution going viral

Muslims around the globe are joining protests on streets and on social media against military takeover.

Protests have spontaneously erupted in cities across the Muslim world, from Istanbul to Lahore to Jakarta. Apart from some clashes with police, mostly the protests have been peaceful and matched by parallel protests on Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media.

Meanwhile, photos of the dead and the living in Egypt's nascent democracy are going viral. There is a photo of Habiba Ahmed Abdel Aziz, a multimedia volunteer for the Muslim Brotherhood standing in the crowd holding a camera on small stand. Next to this is a photo of her lifeless face in a white shroud. But it isn't just ordinary Egyptians being murdered by a military that each year receives millions in military aid from the US. Soon news spreads across cyberspace that an Egyptian athlete who won bronze at the London Olympics is among the dead. The 17-year-old daughter of a Brotherhood leader is filmed being cut down by a sniper. 

Indeed, Egypt's counter-revolution is being televised to those who care to watch. Egyptian protests are making international headlines while their parallel international equivalents are being ignored by our allegedly honest independent Western media outlets. Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and perhaps Asia's most vibrant democracy, has close spiritual ties to Egypt, home to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, perhaps the most Sunni Muslim seminary in the world.

Large numbers of Indonesian religious scholars are Al-Azhar graduates. Egyptian religious culture is regarded as reflective of the epitome of orthodoxy in many parts of the archipelago. Hence Indonesians have hit the streets following the 3 July coup.

The United States prefers not to use nasty terms like "coup" to describe the military removal of a democratically elected government followed by a massacre of its citizens. To do so would threaten its ongoing $1.5 billion military aid package to the Egyptian military which underpins the Camp David Peace Accord with Israel. Protecting the security needs of the only democracy in the Middle East is far more important than supporting nascent democracies in other Middle Eastern nations. Or to quote the Israeli ambassador to Cairo: "Al-Sisi is not a national hero for Egypt, but for all Jews in Israel and around the globe."

The United States and Israel have a firm ally in the democratic moderate secular nation of Saudi Arabia. The last thing Saudi's absolutist absolute monarchy would want is a host of Arab springs in its own backyard. At first, Saudi Arabia's role in Egypt's democracy was to act as puppet master for the Salafist faction.

Saudi Arabia has now directed its Salafist allies in Egypt to back the Egyptian generals. It is also using its influence in the Arab media to flex its muscle. In Kuwait, well-known preacher Tareq el-Swaidan has been sacked as director of a Saudi religious channel due to his Brotherhood links.

The Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal wrote on Twitter that Mr Swaidan had been dismissed "for admitting he belongs to the Brotherhood terrorist movement". The Saudi dictatorship has pledged $5 billion to the military junta.

The mastermind behind the military takeover and massacre is hardly a staunch secularist. General Abdul Fattah el-Sisi was appointed by former President Morsi in August 2002 to head the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). Sisi was trained in Egypt, the UK and the United States. Unlike other SCAF members, Sisi is a deeply devout man. Despite the support it is receiving from the US, Sisi's military rulers are flooding the country with anti-American propaganda, claiming that the US Government and media are supporting the protesters. Successive military regimes have used this kind of paranoia to deflect attention. 

Egypt is moving forward headlong into the past when elected presidents won polls with 99 per cent of the vote. The Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi wasn't perfect, but he was Egypt's first elected President. Egyptian media were free to lampoon him without risking imprisonment and torture.

We now have no idea where Morsi is being held. On the other hand, former military strongman Hosni Mubarak, the man overthrown in Egypt's revolution who faces trial, has been released. In the long term, Morsi's opponents have little option but to rally not only around the army but possibly their original nemesis. 

Egypt's anti-Brotherhood liberals have proven to be democracy's worst enemy and the army's best ally. As an electoral force, they proved disorganised, unable to agree on a presidential candidate to oppose the Brotherhood. They seem only able to unite against a power, not for a cause. In Egypt, liberals have given up on liberal democracy.

First published in the New Zealand Herald on Tuesday August 27 2013.

Words © 2013 Irfan Yusuf

EGYPT: Trying to understand how liberals could support a military coup

[01] The Egyptian army has moved in, suspending the constitution and removing the democratically elected government of President Mohamad Morsi. The opposition, consisting of a hotch-potch of supporters of the former dictator, some opposition parties and allegedly liberal opponents of the Muslim Brotherhood party (to which Morsi belonged), are cheering the end of democratic rule.

[02] Few Western news channels have broadcast the speech given by Morsi after the army announced he was being deposed. A partial English translation can be read here. 

[03] The elections which elected Morsi were largely regarded as free and fair. Many of those supportying Morsi's ouster were also supporting dictator Hosni Mubarak's ouster which took place when he resigned in February 2011. Jonathan Steele from The Guardian argues these points further here.

[04] Morsi and his aides have been taken into military custody. The Army has issued arrest warrants for some 300 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Are we now back in the days of President Gamal Abdel Nasser when the MB would be mercilessly hunted down and tortured? Will we be seeing military tribunals set up to try and hang MB members as took place under Hosni Mubarak?

"In the space of one night we are back 60 years," said Amr Darrag, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member and former minister for international co-operation. "All of our leaders are being arrested in the middle of the night. Their houses are being stormed. Their children are being scared. All of our remaining leaders are banned from travel and this is just the start. "Yesterday we were part of the government doing what we thought was best for Egypt. Even if you don't agree with us, this has gone too far." 

[05] In his book Nasser The Last Arab, Palestinian journalist and Arab nationalist Said K Aburish writes about Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser's paranoia about the MB. Aburish further alleges that the MB received support from the United States, who prevailed upon Saudi Arabia to bankroll the MB not just in Egypt but across the Arab world. This was apparently confirmed by the son of Said Ramadan, one of the MB's senior leaders. Jordan's King Hussein provided MB leaders with diplomatic passports, and millions were directly transferred into Said Ramadan's Swiss bank account.

[06] "This is a celebration of the end of democracy" were the words of Channel 4 newsreader Krishnan Guru-Murthy. One protester he later interviewed had these words:

We feel excited. We feel so happy. We don't believe it. We don't believe it. We can do this everytime we have a president that who ignore us, that who doesn't see us, we will not just throw him away but we will kill him.

Liberal sentiments indeed.

[07] And what do the Yanks reckon? David Weigel writes in Slate that the Obama Administration is probably very happy with the outcome.

So we're back to a simulacrum of the 2011 situation. Power hasn't been taken from a secular autocrat. It's been taken from an increasingly religious and autocratic politician, someone who'd won an election but might have lost to a unified opposition ... No, despite years of "congratulations to Egypt!"-style pablum, this is probably the outcome the administration prefers. It's a mess that removes an unpredictable force right next to Israel, and replaces it with a reliable, undemocratic force.

[08] A New York Times report of 3 July 2013 seeks to explain why the military at first accepted the MB and then why their patience with Morsi wore thin.

Although many in the military distrusted Mr. Morsi’s Islamist background — the Brotherhood had been outlawed before the revolution — they welcomed his inauguration in June 2012 as an exit from the accountability of governing. Mr. Morsi also granted two key demands: squashing the possibility of postrevolutionary prosecutions of military officials for Mubarak-era crimes and passing a Constitution that excused the military budget from parliamentary oversight. That, plus the perception that Brotherhood members were at least competent and disciplined managers, appeared to give the military confidence that the Islamist group would be a worthy partner.

Apparently the army became upset with the economic stagnation and then protests in the streets. I'm not sure if an army is equipped to enforce desirable economic policy.

[09] The same NYT report ends with this perceptive remark:

... analysts said the opposition was naïve in cheering the military’s return to power as a step in the postrevolutionary transition to democracy. “The liberals and the revolutionaries are too quick to hop into bed with the military — it is not their friend,” said Mr. Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The most important thing from the military’s perspective is preserving its place as the locus of power and influence in the system.”

To be continued ...

CRIKEY: NSW election: the ethnic vote battle that is Lakemba

With the NSW election coming up on March 26, there will no doubt be plenty of attention paid to the so-called ethnic vote. And with even safe ALP seats up for grabs as O’Farrell’s barrel of promises rolls across western Sydney, ethnic organisations will use the opportunity to promise votes. For a price, of course.


In Lakemba, things aren’t exactly promising for the Libs. Although the Liberal candidate for Lakembasecured a two-party preferred swing of some 13% in the 2008 byelection, it remains rock-solid Labor. The only problem is that an outsider wouldn’t be sure who the ALP candidate actually was. Sitting MP Robert Furolo for some reason has omitted words such as  ALP and Labor from his posters. Unlike last time ...

Lakemba isn’t a popular place in some circles. Dr Jeremy Sammut, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, sees Lakemba as an example of the "M&M" problem of "disintegration". Sammut claims that "Lakemba and its surrounds ... remain ghettofied ... [with] jarring realities on the disintegration of some parts of Sydney from the mainstream, and the failure to repeat the successful patterns of integration of other ethnic groups".


And presumably ghetto-dwellers presumably vote the same way, obeying the dictates of their leaders. Enter the Lebanese Moslems Association (LMA), which manages the Imam Ali ben Abi Taleb mosque on Haldon Street, the largest of around 10 mosques in the seat and where Sheik Hilaly often leads the service.


In the 1995 state election, which then Premier John Fahey lost of Labor’s Bob Carr, Hilaly openly backed Michael Hawatt, then (and indeed now) the Liberal candidate. Hilaly’s voice could be heard on a loudspeaker stuck to the roof of a station wagon telling voters in chaste Arabic how to vote for Hawatt. A few days before the ballot, a host of Fahey ministers were at the Lakemba library showing their support for Hilaly’s campaign. And all to no avail. Tony Stewart easily defeated Hawatt, and Carr managed to knock off Fahey.

The LMA is also no stranger to politics. It was often involved in branch stacks on behalf of competing ALP factions. Back in the 1990s when Tony Stewart competed with former premier Morris Iemma for the Lakemba preselection, a former LMA president and local solicitor allowed his office to be used as a base for a dummy branch set up to support one of the factions.


In the 2001 Auburn byelection, whose ballot was held on the Saturday before the 9/11 attacks, Liberal leader Kerry Chikarovski sought endorsement for her candidate in Auburn from Hilaly and the LMA. She got it. The Liberal candidate obtained a primary swing of less than 1% in a ballot with no compulsory preferencing. Scott Morrison was campaign manager and state director.


Just how representative is the LMA anyway? Last time I checked, the LMA excluded over 50% of voters by not allowing women to be full members. Then again, "mainstream" Australian organisations such as the Melbourne Club are also happy to only have chicks working in the kitchen.


And like the Melbourne Club, the LMA is becoming a bastion of Liberal Party activism, throwing its support behind a swag of Liberal candidates, among them Michael Hawatt in Lakemba. Personally I think this is a politically inept move for any community organisation, but then again I’m probably one of those ghettofied M&M types.


The Libs shouldn’t fall into the trap of accepting ridiculous claims by community organisations of delivering votes. People don’t vote because of some alleged ethnic or organisational affiliation. People vote because their parents voted a certain way or because they like the candidate or for some other reason usually divorced from race or religion. And they hardly ever vote a certain way because their imam tells them to.


And that makes the LMA’s reported move of endorsing candidates completely futile. Still, at least this time around they’re backing a party and not some Muslim-only ticket as their senior imam did recently.


Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf



Bookmark this on Delicious

COMMENT: Watching the election in boganville ...

I have my computer with me at McDonalds in Mackay city, taking advantage of their free internet connection. I'm surrounded by alien and ugly looking creatures with tattoos running up and down their arms. But I needn't worry about them reading what I type. It's likely they cannot read.

OK that's a little slack. 95% of them cannot read. And their English vocabulary is generally limited to words consisting of no more than four letters.

A large number of these people would have voted for the Liberal National Party (LNP). You have to wonder about people who would vote for a party whose name makes it sound more like a New Zealand soft drink than a serious political choice.

I'm told such people don't by any means represent the majority of people in this fine city. I won't be staying here long enough to find out if this is true.

But what of the ALP? Ever since Julia Gillard decided that irrational hatreds and fears of boat people is the way to survive in politics, the wingnuts in the Coalition have had even more reason to scream "STOP THE BOATS". Including those who themselves own at least one boat.

Anyway, as at 10pm, it's almost impossible to tell who is going to win. Or even whether there will be a winner.

If the Greens win both Grayndler (unlikely) and Melbourne (almost a certainty), can the ALP work with them in government? And what is Andrew Wilkie wins Denison in Tasmania (which I think he already has), what kind of minority government would the ALP form?

Then there is the issue of the three independents (Tony Windsor, Bob Katter Rob Oakeshott) who both have histories in conservative politics. Windsor has worked with a Labor government when he was a State MP. Would he work with Gillard and deny Abbott the Prime Ministership?

But let's give credit where credit is due. Tony Abbott has brought back the conservatives from the political wilderness. He worked hard. He showed discipline, far more so than his political opponents. He was always out there. He travelled the length and breadth of the country.

For sheer hard work, if anyone deserves to be PM, it is Tony Abbott. But I hope he doesn't become PM. Why?

Because he is surrounded by wingnuts who want to turn the Coalition into the Australian chapter of the Tea Party. Tony is a good decent man surrounded by an assortment of morons, bigots, racists, homophobes, muslimphobes, commonsensephobes refugeephobes, Sinophobes, Asiaphobes and closet anti-Semites.

For the sake of the country, let's hope Julia remains PM.



Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

Bookmark this on Delicious

POLITICS/CRIKEY: Northern Qld politics no place for wusses, sheilas

Politics in the central Queensland mining town of Mackay isn’t a game for wusses. Or women for that matter. Which might explain why not a single female candidate showed up to the Dawson "Great Debate" last night at the Mackay Entertainment & Convention Centre. It’s not that chick candidates wouldn’t have been interested. It’s just that there were no sheilas running this time around.

Unlike the LNP candidate George Christenson, few conservative women I know would be stupid enough to spend their university days writing stuff that single-handedly offends Jews, women and gays.

When asked about the remarks published in The Student Advocate in 1998, Christensen said sorry to everyone for his "pretty stupid and quite frankly offensive" comments he made "when I was a teenager" and emphasised how he had never believed his mum was stupid. One prominent academic, Heather Nancarrow from nearby Central Queensland University, told Christensen she had asked each party for their policies on reducing violence against women and children. She’d received stuff from all other parties present (Greens, ALP and Family First) but not from the LNP. Christensen replied words to the effect of "I’ll get it to you before the election. It’s been a busy week".

On the other hand, how many left-of-centre women would you know who, like ALP candidate Mike Brunker, would end up in a fight with the president of a local turf club and be facing criminal charges a week out of the election? Brunker denied it all and told us about how he’d "copped it on the nose" from the said Cyril Vains (himself an ALP member) and merely defended himself. The editor of the Daily Mercury, who was chairing the debate, noted that the defence involved Vains receiving cuts to his eye and a bruised face. Brunker responded that he had lots of witnesses including a minister of religion. At this point, one lady screamed out: "Good on ya Mike. We still love ya!".

Apart from this heckler, there were very few sheilas in the audience. Or indeed blokes. The hall must have had a capacity of about 1500. Hardly a fifth of that number showed up. Among the no-shows was a candidate from the Citizens Electoral Councils. I doubt he’d have been missed.

The Greens chap Jonathan Dykuj began his presentation by acknowledging the traditional owners of the area. This caused a tiny ripple of applause up the front and a much larger groan around the rest of the hall. Perhaps Christensen should have just focused on the blacks and left the sheilas and poofters alone.

Speaking of the backwardness of black fellas, some bloke representing the local branch of a forestry lobby group got up and lectured us all on the evils of world heritage listing before reminding us of how "white man had discovered the value of our forests". No one took him seriously except Christensen, who reminded us that people should be able to chop down trees on their property.

Christensen also kept going on and on about the mining tax, which was killing local businesses and sucking millions of dollars out of the local economy each week. "Talk to the mining contractors and ask them about how they are suffering." Then one bloke stood up and declared: "I’m a mining contractor and my business is going gangbusters. Which mining industry are you talking about?"

Some bloke surnamed Kelly lambasted the ALP over its broadband plans in Tasmania and then asked Christensen a dorothy dixer about the LNP’s NBN proposal. Christensen then lambasted the ALP’s proposal as being based on outdated technology like optic fibres. He must have been a little perturbed to see on Lateline Tony Smith says that the Coalition’s plan is built upon the same outdated technology. And the questioner, Mr Kelly, wouldn’t have been happy to be identified by the Greens candidate as being the husband of former National Party MP De-Anne Kelly

The only sombre moment was when one brave woman stood and said she was a consumer of mental health services. She wanted to know what each party was doing to attract mental health service providers to the area. On this issue, the candidates decided to stop verbally punching each other and address the issues.

As I walked out with the crowd, I could see some Convention Centre staff looking rather desperate to get home. "Full house?" I asked one. They sniggered and responded: "Should have advertised it as a mass debate."

First published on the Crikey website on 19 August 2010.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

Bookmark this on Delicious

OPINION: ALP can mine marginal seats

Julia Gillard has impeccable working class credentials. Her parents were one of many “ten-pound Poms” migrating to Australia in 1966. Her first speech, delivered on Remembrance Day 1998, referred to her identifying with local communities of families on low incomes and possessing a fighting spirit.

Gillard's own father was a coalminer. He must have had many a tale of hard work, sacrifice and danger in the mines. And of terrible working conditions and poor remuneration.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Gillard's grandfather was injured in a mining accident.

My father was one of seven kids in a coal-mining village and their father was injured in a mining accident, which means he could only do surface work, which was not as well paid.

Mining seats are crucial for Labor to retain or win if Gillard is to be elected and remain Prime Minister. One such seat is the very marginal central Queensland seat of Dawson, currently held by retiring Labor MP James Bidgood.

The seat takes in Mackay, a large coastal city, as well as the popular tourist destination of the Whitsundays. While there are no coalmines within the seat, Mackay and other cities are home to a large number of people employed by mining companies or their contractors.

One cannot overestimate the importance of mining in providing jobs and livelihood to the people of Mackay and the rest of Dawson. During the past decade, Mackay has become the location of choice for many mining service companies supplying and consulting to mine operators.

The fighting spirit of many mining families isn't the same as that referred to in Gillard's maiden speech. Fly into Mackay and you might find some of the same issues miners have always dealt with. The airport walls are strewn with advertisements for personal injury solicitors, many specialising in industrial accidents. The Daily Mercury, the local newspaper, regularly prints front page stories of industrial accidents and fatalities.

But living dangerously is also very lucrative. Mining is no longer a working class game. John and Moira Gillard would not have had it so tough had they found themselves in central Queensland today. In Sydney or Melbourne, an auto- electrician can earn $60,000 per annum. In the Bowen Basin coal reserve in central Queensland, the same tradesman earns more than double this amount.

For a Sydney-slicker like myself, landing in Mackay felt like landing on another planet. I'm used to working in a snobbish, highbrow place where the number of figures on your paypacket is almost always determined by how many letters you have after your name. A perusal of the MyCareer jobs website showed advertisements for a maintenance supervisor ($115,000 per annum), a drill and blast crew member ($140,000) and a production supervisor ($150,000). These jobs are all based in Mackay, the largest city in the seat of Dawson.

In Mackay's city centre you'll find shopfronts for RBS Morgans and Bell Potter Securities. Parked outside are hotted-up utes and trucks, the luxury vehicle of choice in this part of Australia. With even contract dump truck operators earning $60 per hour, it's little wonder the stockbroking firms are doing a steady business here.

In his maiden speech on March 17, 2008, Dawson MP Bidgood said:

The Labor Party is the miner's friend always has been and always will be. The coal industry has a true friend in the Labor Party, a true friend that will not give up on the industry. Dawson's economy relies on a sustainable coal industry ...

Mining companies would have you believe that a super profits tax could lead to the sky falling down on communities such as Mackay. To what extent has this campaign worked?

One would expect that miners and contractors might feel shocked to learn just what small proportion of mining company profits is taxed. But anecdotal evidence shows that miners have little concern for how much tax their employers pay. They know they’re on a good wicket, and arguments about limited resources aren’t going to help.

What could help the ALP's chances is offering to pour money into infrastructure in these areas. The sad reality is that multinational mining companies see local resources and communities as fodder. Regional councils such as Isaacs, Mackay and Whitsunday are struggling to provide sufficient infrastructure to keep up with the growth in economic activity arising from the mining boom.

The nature of mining work has its social costs. Miners work long shifts, spending between four and seven days away on site or underground followed by a roughly equivalent period of time at home. The resulting strain this places on marriages and relationships (especially on children and youth) is then picked up by poorly paid community sector workers.

Politics is all about numbers. Key seats like Dawson need to be factored into the equation. At the heart of this is the mining tax. Mining companies need to pay their fair share, and they have often failed to contribute to the infrastructure and social mess their operations leave in our regional areas.

If Gillard cannot create a wedge between mining workers and their bosses over tax, she can at the very least sell to workers the idea that mining company dollars are desperately needed to improve the quality of life for residents and to properly resource services desperately needed.

In other words, any tax must be directly linked to improved services in mining communities. Perhaps mining companies could be granted tax concessions if they could show substantial investment in community projects beyond what little is already done. Perhaps some kind of community development fund could be established. This will not only be smart marginal seats politics. It will also be sound policy.

Most importantly, it will show that mining companies are being slugged not just to pay nebulous public sector debt but rather to benefit the communities that benefit them.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author currently based in Mackay. This article was first published in the Canberra Times on Friday 2 July 2010




Bookmark this on Delicious

POLITICS/COMMENT: Religious Freedom in the Land of the Free ...

This column was first published in NewMatilda on 17 January 2008.

_____________________

Barack Obama could convert to Judaism, have a sex-change operation and marry Daniel Pipes. He’d still be eligible for the top job, writes Irfan Yusuf

Here’s a memo to all you God-fearing American voters out there: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. He never has been, even if his biological father was a Kenyan Muslim and his step-father was an Indonesian Muslim. And even if he went to school in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority State.

So what exactly is Obama’s religious affiliation? Who knows? Indeed, who cares?

No Mormons please, we’re evangelical

Believe it or not, many Americans do. Just ask all those evangelical Christian Republican voters in Iowa who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the smart and talented Mitt Romney, and that minority of Michigan Republicans who refused to vote for him.

Romney might be a self-made man. He might bring much needed political skills to the White House. Unlike a certain Texan who once appointed John Howard as his Deputy Sheriff, Romney might actually be able to string a sentence together without inadvertently injecting too much wit and wisdom.

But forget all that important stuff. What really matters to a huge number of Americans is that Romney is — perish the thought — a Mormon. You wouldn’t think he was, would you? Romney doesn’t wear a black name badge on the front of his coat or even sing his amended version of that old Christopher Cross song (which goes something like “When you get caught between the moon and Salt Lake City ).

But I guess for evangelical warriors, Romney’s faith is a deliberate deception of all those poor God-fearing real Christians.

In my high school year, I had two close mates, one Jewish and another Mormon. Ours was a low-church evangelical Anglican school, and our school chaplain one day decided to show us all a video called The God Makers. The video claimed to expose Mormon teachings, which Mormons allegedly hide from the rest of us.

After the movie, some evangelical kids poked fun at my Mormon friend, saying: “What kind of stupid religion teaches that men can become God?"

My Jewish mate retorted: “I know. It’s almost as dumb as claiming God became a man!"

You’d think American Republicans would show more maturity than a couple of 16-year-olds.



No (former) Muslims please, we’re Neo-con

Romney may not be prepared to disown his ancestral faith, but Democratic candidate Barack Obama can’t get enough of disowning his. Obama has used every opportunity to reassure Americans that he has absolutely no trace of Islam in him.

Obama sees Christianity as a faith mobilising people to pursue social justice. In this respect, his vision is similar to that of our own Kevin Rudd. Further, Obama’s statement on faith clearly states that religion shouldn’t be used to divide the nation.

Given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers.

But all this doesn’t help Obama. As American Muslim stand-up comedian Azhar Usman told one audience:

Check this guy out. He’s first name rhymes with Iraq. His middle name is Hussein, and his last name is almost Osama!

If you believe what lunar-Right commentators like Daniel Pipes say, you’d think Muslims were lining up to kill Mr almost-Osama. On Christmas Eve, FrontPageMagazine.com published a sectarian rant written by Pipes titled ‘Was Barack Obama a Muslim?’

Pipes concluded Obama was an ex-Muslim who converted to Christianity in his college years. Because of this, Pipes claims

Mainstream American Muslims … would … be angry at what they consider would be his apostasy.

I can’t find any evidence of mainstream American Muslims getting angry over Obama’s religious choices. Perhaps Pipes could show me the anger in this column by one of America’s most widely read Muslim writers?

Pipes doesn’t stop there. Eight days later, he provides evidence that ...

Obama was an irregularly practicing Muslim who rarely or occasionally prayed with his step-father in a mosque.

On that basis, Pipes titles his article ‘Confirmed: Barack Obama Practised Islam’.

On that basis, I can confirm that former Liberal Member for Parramatta, Ross Cameron, also practised Islam. On the day before his election to Federal Parliament in 1996, I took Cameron to a Friday prayer service. Cameron addressed worshippers, then joined them in prayers, copying all the postures of Islamic congregational worship. To this day, I’m not aware of a single Muslim from Parramatta or elsewhere who has threatened to kill Cameron for abandoning the faith.

Why God won’t get to vote in the US Elections

In 1786, Thomas Jefferson successfully moved Virginia’s Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom. In his autobiography, Jefferson praised the inclusiveness of the Statute which allowed for ...

... the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and the Infidel to play an equal role in public life.

Other Founding Fathers made clear the new federal republic would allow followers of all religions and none to hold high office. This has been enshrined in the US Constitution, which states...

... no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

That means Hillary can become a Mormon, divorce Bill and become Mitt’s second wife. Obama can convert to Judaism, have a sex-change operation and marry Daniel Pipes. They’ll still be eligible for the top job.

American Neo-cons can only make an issue of a candidate’s faith by ignoring the clear intent of the Constitution. And to think they call themselves conservatives.

Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf



Bookmark this on Delicious