Sweet Caroline We called it! In August Crikey reported on the likelihood of Caroline Kennedy getting the nod as US ambassador to Australia, and finally it’s been confirmed. As University of Sydney’s James Curran pointed out back then, Kennedy — with her experience in the region and close relationship with US President Joe Biden — makes a nice change from what we we usually get: “Most of them we get are these presidential bagmen, campaign donors sent to Canberra as a thank you or a sunset posting.”
And lest we take the months between the rumours and the appointment as a sign of disrespect, it’s worth bearing in mind that Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, had left the post unfilled for nearly three years before appointing the immortally named Arthur B Culvahouse Jr.
Maurice Less Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull gave an opening address at the ANU last night, launching Transitioning to a Prosperous, Resilient and Carbon-Free Economy — for which he also provides a foreword. And as has been his wont since leaving office, he wasn’t holding back. He described Scott Morrison’s “technology not taxes mantra” as “simply hoping something will happen”. He talked about the “crazy troika” opposing climate change — right-wing media, government figures and “most rational” fossil fuel interests. To illustrate just how crazed it can get, he gave an anecdote about former ABC chair Maurice Newman.
Turnbull recounted that about a decade ago he was discussing with Newman why Newman was so confident climate change was a hoax, and Newman responded with some “nutty screeds” he’d downloaded from the internet. Turnbull says he countered by having ANU scientist Will Steffen prepare a brief document summarising the key points of climate change. Presented with the paper, Newman apparently responded: ” ‘That’s it, the ANU, they’re all part of the same cabal. Them, the United Nations, the CSIRO, the ABC, they’re all part of the same conspiracy.’ And you know, that sounds crackers.”
I must protest Well, here’s a lesson in making your voice heard — make sure there are people where you’re protesting. A series of texts collected by freelance journalist Elise Thomas shows the faintly heartbreaking moment when anti-vax protesters operating under the name Freedom Vic realise among themselves that — in attempting to picket Media House, where The Age was housed until recently — they had been picketing an empty building:
Delightfully enough, this isn’t the first time a similar thing has happened. In August, protesters targeted London’s Television Centre building, furious at the BBC for promoting vaccines. Except the BBC had moved out nearly a decade earlier. So unless they were protesting Channel 4’s Adam Hills vehicle The Last Leg (in which case, obviously, they’d have our full support) it probably didn’t reach the desired ears.
The art of campaigning It’s not just the “Voices of” campaign targeting the government in vulnerable seats. A new campaign group called “Fund the Arts” is apparently “planning to run a comprehensive media and marginal seat campaign in the lead-up to the 2022 federal election”. The group is organised around not only on the piffling support the arts industry has received during COVID, but what it calls “25 years of government neglect”.
Its organising group includes, among others, friends of Crikey such as academic and journalist Ben Eltham and PR director and lobbyist David Latham. It also boasts a few big names from the arts, including writers Kathy Lette and Clare Wright, Darren Middleton from Powderfinger, Augie March drummer Dave Williams, actor Rhys Muldoon, Indigenous artist Richard Bell and many others.
What have you got against Adam Hills?