Just a sop opera
THIS week has been a one-sided argument.
The Sydney Opera House was hijacked by the gambling industry. This incursion had support from shock jocks, State Government MPs and even the Feds.
The cowtowing to the horses went all the way to Daggy Dad himself — Scott Morrison.
Daggy chuckled and smirked as he reminded us of his tourism and marketing credentials.
He was the bloke who initiated the Lara Bingle bikini ads: “Australia … where the bloody hell are you?”
Yes. This is the sophistication and nuance that Daggy brought to the opera house conversation. He even labelled one of the greatest pieces of architecture on the planet the “biggest billboard” in the country.
He invigorated himself with his unbridled bombast. To me, it is obvious. It is wrong to use a public building as a banner space for hire. Daggy wouldn’t throw a condom ad up St Paul’s Cathedral, so why would he be supporting a gambling ad on the Sydney Opera House?
The figures on the damage are overwhelming.
This Federal Government hates the arts.
Former arts minister George Brandis oversaw a once in a lifetime cultural catastrophe. He halved the Australia Council with no consultation and created a whole new Department for Excellence, which is now defunct.
They burned arts and culture with a flamethrower, just for fun.
So it’s no wonder they’re prepared to take the “get over it” line on this one.
But in Daggy Dad’s defence, this wasn’t even his idea.
In fact, it isn’t even a conversation that he had to have.
Most other prime ministers would have stepped away from the microphone and claimed this was a local issue for the City of Sydney.
But Daggy loves a bit of parochial.
He knew that throwing another log on the bonfire of Leftwing outrage would win a few votes in the ’burbs and provide a cosy smoke screen from the fact that his Government is ignoring the latest red-hot warnings that
global damage from climate change is happening in real time.
This week a statement was released calling on all nations to do something to save the world from catastrophe. Daggy sells himself as a family man, but he is ignoring the future of his own children.
The study concludes that allowing the globe to go beyond a 1.5C increase is playing chicken with our planet’s “liveability”.
What’s worse, this 1.5C increase could be exceeded in just 12 years.
So the odds are, that by 2030, if we don’t all do something different the race is over.
Not the Everest. Not the Melbourne Cup. The Human Race.
Daggy doesn’t want to splash that information up on the opera house. He is a Christian, a man who prays for rain and says science is debatable. He thinks there is a need for a mixture of coal and more coal to get “fair dinkum power” in Australia. But all this is distraction. The biggest story should not have been the opera house. It should have been the announcement that the Andrews Government was taking steps to ensure that people at risk will be treated with some respect.
Fare evasion is a problem for people who are homeless.
In Victoria now, a year-long trial is offering weekly and monthly public transport passes to keep vulnerable people from getting caught up in the justice system.
Emergency relief groups will have the chance to purchase discounted travel cards that can be distributed to clients for free.
Housing Minister Martin Foley said many vulnerable people were being “unnecessarily caught up in the legal system” because the existing day pass was not meeting their needs.
“This will help fix that,” he said.
This is social progress, an opportunity to help people get back on their feet and to the appointments they might otherwise miss. This is what Jesus would do. Remember him? He didn’t project gambling ads on the tabernacle, he threw the money lenders out of the temple.
Of course anybody who does that today would be branded a socialist and blocked on Twitter by staffers for Matthew Guy and Scott Morrison.
But you get the rough idea. We can determine what kind of country we are living in by the actions we take and the statements we make.
Public transport and public spaces belong to everybody. They are not the property of wealthy shock jocks or politicians.
But it doesn’t have to happen this way. In 2018 we should be living in a country that values community over society and an opera
house, just as much (if not more) than a market place.