my latest over at goldcoast.com.au … No pot of gold in voting

you can read it here, or you can read it here, complete with comments from the readers. always entertaining, i find.

WHEN are people going to stop thinking that a change in council or state government is going to provide some kind of miracle answer for the Gold Coast’s troubles?

If our ongoing readership survey is any guide, only 26% of goldcoast.com.au readers consider themselves to be on the right-hand side of politics, and yet all I hear here are continual calls for the sacking of both Ron Clarke’s mob and Anna Bligh’s team.

(Please do take a few minutes to take the survey — it would help us a lot. Ta.)

And then, lo, the sun will come out from behind a cloud and there will be more police, more development, less waste, a deeper Broadwater, better public transport, less crime, and an Oceanway everybody will love.

Apparently.

Expecting money and/or resources from a state government for this city in the current political climate, short AND long-term, is a pipe dream.

Why? Because neither side of politics sees the point.

Of the 10 Gold Coast area state seats, six are held by LNP members.

Of the four ALP members, only Margaret Keech’s seat of Albert could be considered ‘safe’. She won the seat polling 49.98% of the vote in 2009, 11% ahead of her nearest rival.

Of the six LNP members, only one — Alex Douglas’ seat of Gaven — could be considered ‘at risk’. Douglas won by just 2% in 2009.

The winning margins of the other five LNP members range from 4.3% (Michael Crandon in Coomera) through to a whopping 32% by John-Paul Langbroek in Surfers Paradise.

The Gold Coast is blue-ribband conservative virtually from top to bottom.

It’s been that way for a long time because this is where developers came to spend their money, and where they will come to spend their money again.

It doesn’t take a planet-sized brain to acknowledge that business people — particularly developers — are always going to lean towards the party that favours the top end of town.

So here’s the Gold Coast’s problem.

The conservative side of politics doesn’t need to spend money on the city in order to win the majority of seats here. They’ve already got at least five seats in the bag, with maybe another 3 or 4 potential wins. They just have to turn up.

The left side of politics won’t spend the money here because they don’t believe it will do them any good at the ballot box.

In other words, they don’t think they can buy enough votes to gain any more seats on the Gold Coast.

It won’t stop them promising, or even spending money on us between now and the election, but it won’t be in the amounts or areas that we need it.

The council elections are another matter.

Never has a council needed replacing more than the one we’ve been stuck with for the last eight years.

But even if it’s a whole new team of bright-eyed bushy-tailed councillors with a new mayor, things won’t change until the bureaucracy is dealt with.

There is something inherently wrong with the way this Council spends money, distributes money, employs people and deals with the public and potential investors and developers.

That doesn’t come from the councillors themselves.

Until someone has the balls — either at the council or state government level — to put a broom through the bureaucracy’s methods and personnel, nothing will change.

So vote away, gentle readers, vote away. Change is going to have to come from the bottom up, because there is no magic bullet from above.

What else is on my mind this week:

• Why are the Australian cricket team wearing sports bras? Yes, I know it’s just the design of the shirt. But why? Is it an absorbent patch? Are cricketers particularly sweaty between the shoulderblades? Will this shirt make them capable of not flailing around outside off-stump like a flag in the breeze? Because nothing else seems to.
• Stephen Smith will be the next leader of the Australian Labor Party. You heard it here, oh, fifth or sixth, I expect.

my latest at goldcoast.com.au … Santa isn’t Jesus, people

once again i appear to have pissed off the bigots. shame really. you can read it here, or you can read it, complete with hilarious comments from the peanut gallery, over here.

IT’S been a royal pain this week being the moderator of comments on this website, thanks to the whole ‘Secret Santa’ affair.

It took about 10 minutes for the online comments on this story to devolve into the usual racist rants about how Australia is a Christian nation and if you don’t like our ‘traditions’ you can head back to your Muslim enclave in the back-end of whichever Third World country you crawled here from.

Over-reaction, much?

Inaccurate, much?

One teacher in one classroom decided to respect the beliefs of ALL the kids in her classroom by making the ‘Secret Santa tradition’ — and that’s a total misuse of the word tradition, by the way — into a ‘secret friend’ instead.

End of story.

Santa Claus, for those of you who seem to think he’s some kind of Christian icon, is a grab-bag of medieval myth and commercial opportunism, nothing more.

The most Christian thing that could be said about the origins of the Fat Man in Red is that perhaps he began life as a fourth century Greek Christan bishop called Nicholas of Myra who had a reputation for gift-giving and was later canonised.

But there are pagan lines of origin as well, most notably Odin, who flew through the sky being pulled by eight-legged horses. Tradition says that kids would put out their boots, filled with food for the horses, and Odin would reward them with gifts. Sound familiar?

The Dutch had Sinterklaas, the Scandinavians had Tomte.

The Brits had Father Christmas, who was invented in the 17th century.

It was, unsurprisingly, the Americans who turned Santa into the money-making phenomenon he is today.

Coca-Cola really did the trick by using Santa in their 1930s advertising campaigns.

So, please, don’t bitch about Christianity and unAustralian and all that horsepuckey when it comes to Santa Claus.

His connection to Christmas is snow, fireplaces and a fun way of giving kids presents.

Those of you who’ve taken the opportunity to do a bit of teacher-bashing this week are just looking for an excuse to hate on those who don’t appear to follow your particular belief system.

This teacher took into account the beliefs of all her students and decided that ‘secret friend’ was more inclusive than ‘secret Santa’.

That’s it.

For a multi-cultural nation, Australians have an unhappy knack of making themselves look like a pack of isolationist bigots sometimes.

There’s no big threat to your way of life. Get over it.

my latest column over at goldcoast.com.au … ‘Socialites’ and the damage they do to the Gold Coast’s image

You can read it here, or you can read it here, complete with a classic set of comments from the gentle readers of goldcoast.com.au. Worth the click, for the comments alone.

SIXTY Minutes didn’t do the Gold Coast any favours last Sunday, that’s for sure — I just don’t think it was for the reasons everyone assumes.

I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life watching that wide-eyed, breathless, over-dramatised piece of selective reporting.

Did you SEE those women? Oh my god.

Oh, no, wait … not the crime victims, no.

I’m talking about those ‘socialites’ … hooly-dooly.

If they seriously think they are representative of the best of the Gold Coast we are in deep, DEEP trouble.

I’m totally unbothered about the so-called ‘crime explosion’ 60 Minutes seemed so concerned about.

We’re a big city. Crime happens in big cities. Fact of life.

Go to certain parts of London late at night alone, you’re going to get done over as well.

Paris is gorgeous, in my top three cities in the world. Still got mugged on the Metro.

Sydney produces someone who, allegedly, can kill 10 senior citizens in their beds.

Melbourne has an underworld they make television series about, for crying out loud.

If tourists come to a big city like the Gold Coast expecting no crime, then they’re naive and innocent and shouldn’t be allowed a passport for their own protection, frankly.

No, crime wasn’t the big damage done to our reputation by 60 Minutes.

‘Socialites’ like the ones who seemed so keen to show Liam Bartlett their assets last Sunday are doing more damage than any crime stat.

If anyone has high hopes of convincing the nation and the world of our sophistication, class and elegance, then one look at that report will expose what a laughing-stock we can be at times.

We have these nice hotels and other venues and yet they seem to be filled with D-grade socialites who wouldn’t make it past the doorman in a European city of any class.

‘We don’t mix in those circles’, one said when Liam Bartlett quizzed them about the Coast’s crime scene.

Riiiiight.

Because there’s never been a dodgy developer or convicted conman running around at the same cocktail parties as you, ladies?

Peter Foster, darling of the social set more often than not, comes immediately to mind.

When are the Surfers/Main Beach set going to realise there’s more to this city than the fake nails, fake tans, fake smiles and pseudo-sophistication of the social scene.

This town needs to get real, seriously.

i know i’m a journalist as well, but seriously ….

finally …

… now that there isn’t a news limited email address broadcasting my every post to my beloved corporate overlords, normal service will resume.

Test

This is a post designed to show anyone who needs to unsubscribe from this blog how to do it. At the bottom of the email should be an unsubscribe option. Please use it.

Everyone else, please ignore.

you know what’s creepy, dear reader? i shall tell you

i was cruising my site stats yesterday and discovered that one of my colleagues subscribes to this, my (very) personal blog, using his work email address.

i use the term ‘colleague’ fairly loosely — we actually have little do with each other on a day-to-day basis, but technically he is higher up the chain than me. we’re certainly not what i would call ‘friends’.

now, either this guy is so bewitched by my humour and beguiling spiels on Rachel Maddow and the last film i saw, and is so online-ignorant as to not realise that subscribing with his work address means every single personal post i have published here has gone and continues to go THROUGH THE NEWS LIMITED EMAIL SYSTEM …

or, he’s monitoring me for some professional reason. in which case he’s going to be sorely disappointed. i certainly wouldn’t post anything of interest to the upper echelons of News Limited here. reckless i may be, stupid i am not.

i prefer, i think, to believe that he’s just dumb.

so here’s the bottom line, fella. you’re absolutely welcome to subscribe to this blog USING YOUR PERSONAL EMAIL ADDRESS. why you would want to do so is beyond me, but hey, who am i to deny the Magnetism of the Cate.

but have the courtesy, and the respect for my personal privacy, to UNSUBSCRIBE YOUR WORK ADDRESS, eh?

seriously.

UPDATE: Well, he hasn’t unsubbed yet. perhaps he hasn’t checked his work email yet. perhaps he thinks i’m not talking about him. perhaps he’s just rude.

My latest over at goldcoast.com.au … ‘Winners are grinners’

You can read this here, or you can read it here:

YOU beauty!

Saturday morning’s decision to award the Gold Coast the 2018 Commonwealth Games is the best thing to happen to the city since the glory days of the IndyCar racing — and then some.

You won’t find a bigger group of cynics than a newsroom full of journalists, and I’m not ashamed to say that in Friday afternoon’s editorial conference there weren’t too many of us in the room who thought the city would win the bid.

Not only that, we didn’t think many people would show up yesterday morning at the Broadwater Parklands either.

I’m pleased to say we couldn’t have been more wrong.

Not only have the comments on goldcoast.com.au since the win been overwhelmingly positive, but at least 5000 people turned up to cheer the result and celebrate some rare good news for the Gold Coast.

Good on you!

Of course there are the whingers and the Negative Nellies who want to remind us all how much it’s going to cost, and how awful the traffic’s going to be and how much higher the rates are going to be.

Apart from the traffic, I think the rest of those complaints are just complaining for the sake of complaining.

Of course it’s going to cost money. Infrastructure always does.

I’ll tell you what else it does — creates jobs, creates confidence and creates facilities we’ll still be using 50 years for now.

If anything, winning the Games has accelerated the process of making this city the best it can be.

Get over yourselves, whiners!

Would you rather we not get that infrastructure at all? Or at a slower rate, on a whim of a politician who may or may not need our votes?

This way the politicians — regardless of stripe — are committed, publicly, legally, GLOBALLY, to providing top-class facilities by April 4, 2018.

Where’s the loss in that?

One thing’s for sure, if we all sit around grumping about how awful it’s going to be, it will be.

The Commonwealth Games, and the World Expo six years later, turned Brisbane into a fantastic place to be. I was in my last year of high school. Trust me, it was AWESOME.

The same thing will happen for the Gold Coast if we throw ourselves into this wholeheartedly.

So, c’mon, whingers. Get up off your miserable backsides, and head out into the sunshine and feel how excited this city is, suddenly.

Give it a shot.

my latest blog over at goldcoast.com.au … Lying in the name of God …

you can read it here or you can read it here.

IT’S been fascinating in the last 24 hours to watch the comments accumulating on the story we published yesterday about religion and the Census.

One commenter — ‘Tim’ — managed to express his opinion very succinctly: ”No funding for imaginary friend.”

Five words that sum up what a lot of people feel … that government funding for organisations which support one particular belief system says plenty about that government’s judgement of other belief systems. And it says nothing positive, and certainly nothing about tolerance.

The fact that quite large proportions of that government’s constituents may not be members of the country’s supposedly predominant belief system is precisely why we have a Census, of course.

For those who haven’t read the latest brouhaha over the ‘what religion are you’ part of the Census — here’s a brief summary: The Christians want us to mark ourselves as Christian on the Census, even if we’re not. That way the ‘undesirables’, that is the non-Christians among us, won’t get any government funding.

That’s a gross over-simplification of course, but then so is the hysterical flapping going on about what is essentially housekeeping.

The Census is about finding out who actually lives here. It’s a collection of facts.

Wow. There’s a concept.

Fancy gathering facts so that we can have rational debate in this country instead of the usual blowhard, fear-mongering and obfuscation that usually passes for public discourse.

Really, Christians? Really?

You’re so insecure about your place in Australian society that you want us to LIE — how very Christian — about our beliefs just to make sure your church schools get the funding you think they deserve?

I say again … Wow.

Of course, as usual, this all boils down to racism, xenophobia and intolerance.

What the so-called Christians are saying is ‘be careful, Australia, because if we don’t all pretend to be good Christians and all the Muslims tick the box marked ‘Muslim’, the government might be forced to give the nasty foreigners somewhere to worship … oooooo’.

Boogaboogabooga.

Please.

One day the extremists in the Christian faith (and in Islam) will realise that it is possible to be a good, caring, moral, productive, non-threatening, generous person even without believing in their God. Or any God, for that matter.

When that day comes we’ll all have to find another reason for hating each other enough to kill in the name of a belief system.

We will find another reason, of course, because humans wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren’t arguing with someone about something, but at least we won’t be pretending it’s all in the name of ‘God’.

Hypocrisy, thy name is ‘organised religion’.

my latest blog over at goldcoast.com.au … Turnbull the only Libs’ choice

you can read it here, or you can read it here.

I’M not up to date on what it is a grateful Australian woman gives to a man who’s doing the right thing by her these days, but whatever it is I hope Julia Gillard has bought a dozen to give to Malcolm Turnbull.

If you’re not aware of the week’s doings, let me fill you in.

On Thursday Mr Turnbull gave the inaugural address to the Virginia Chadwick Foundation, a speech which was passionate and effective in its defence of climate change science and a gentle, if barely disguised swipe at Tony Abbott, the man who knocked him out of the Liberal leadership.

Mr Abbott famously once described climate change science as ‘crap’, and he struggles at times to keep his true feelings buried under his party’s more moderate position.

”If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of insipient Bolshevism,” said Mr Turnbull this week.

”Normally, in our consideration of scientific issues we rely on expert advice. Agencies like the CSIRO or the Australian Academy of Science are listened to with respect.

”Yet on this issue there appears to be a licence to reject our best scientists, both here and abroad, and rely instead on much less reliable views. Some of those less reliable views are from scientists although most are not.

”Those of us who do not believe the CSIRO is part of an international Green conspiracy to undermine Western civilisation or do not believe that leading scientists like Will Steffen are subversives should not be afraid to speak out, and loudly, on behalf of our scientists and our science. We must not allow ourselves to be deluded on this issue,” he said.

”Australia generates most of its electricity from burning coal much of it very emissions intensive brown coal in Victoria or South Australia.

”That is why our carbon dioxide emissions are among the highest in the world on a per capita basis — a reason why the Chinese (whose emissions are about one-fifth of ours) and the Indians (whose are less than one-tenth of ours) find our regular references to their emissions — and why should we do anything until the Chinese or Indians do something — why they find those references incredibly galling.

”Those of us … who have represented Australia at international conferences on this, know how incredibly embarrassing statements like that are when you actually confront the representatives of those countries.”

Mr Turnbull continues to be opposed to the Gillard Government’s proposed carbon tax, but with every reasoned word he speaks on the subject, he makes Mr Abbott look like an unsophisticated rube and an extremist.

PM Gillard is struggling to sell the carbon tax to the people and in the short term Mr Turnbull’s backhanded clips to the back of Mr Abbott’s (and his sycophantic supporters’) head is akin to a kiss on the cheek for her.

Part of Mr Abbott’s sledgehammer response to the carbon tax is to promise instant repeal the second he becomes PM.

Well, here’s a bold prediction.

Tony Abbott’s never going to be Prime Minister of this country. The Liberals will have Malcolm Turnbull back in charge before the next Federal Election.

And I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts Mr Turnbull’s response to the carbon tax will be a lot more nuanced and supportable than ‘instant repeal’.

Bring on a reasoned debate. Anything’s better than the ‘crap’ we’ve been served up so far.

You can read the full transcript of Malcolm Turnbull’s speech here.