Would you I hold it against you? I certainly would

Not much of an intro to this one. The Liberals remained in power in NSW. Australia won the one day Cricket World Cup. And we wondered about what can be done when a pilot decides they want to crash the plane they are flying and the nature of mental illnesses that would lead to a person making that decision. Anyway none of these are covered in this.

In this edition:

- Forgetting The First Rule Of Pop Music
- Kerr's Cur


Forgetting The First Rule Of Pop Music

Mrs L was playing some Britney Spears in the car the other day and she played a song called 'Hold It Against Me'. My first thought was it had fairly blatantly ripped off the lyrics to the Bellamy Brothers song 'If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me'.

My second thought was how obviously sexual the song was. I then realised that the I had never picked up on the same double meaning in the Bellamy Brothers song.

Only took me 36 years to figure it out what the Bellamy Brothers were really on about.


Kerr's Cur

It's been just over a week since the passing of Malcolm Fraser.

In the years I've lived in Australia, there have been 3 Prime Ministers from the Liberal Party and all 3 of them have been intensely disliked by hardcore Labor supporters. Of the 3, I think the most hated was Malcolm Fraser. Of course the hatred centres around on the events of 1975 and the dismissal of Gough Whitlam.

I'll remember him as the Prime Minister who said 'life wasn't meant to be easy' without seeming to grasp it was his job to at least make life easier for Australian. Also as Prime Minister he failed to make the changes to the economy that were needed. It was the subsequent Labor Party that bought in the compulsory superannuation scheme, floated the dollar, dramatically cut tariffs and bought in a period of industrial reform and peace (although I think the changes went to far and ended up gutting the union movement in Australia).

My lasting memory of him as Prime Minister was on the day he conceded defeat after the 1983 election, with him blubbering away. It was quite pathetic and I remember having a laugh. For those of who didn't like him, it was good to see him struggling when he finally got his comeuppance.

Everything had gone wrong for Fraser during that campaign. He had wanted to run against Bill Hayden whom he had beaten in the 1980 election. He knew he'd be in trouble of Labor replaced Hayden with Bob Hawke. As Fraser was driving to see the Governor-General to ask to be allowed to call an early election, unbeknown to Fraser, Labor replaced Hayden with Hawke. Fraser attempted to start a scare campaign about how people's savings wouldn't be safe in the bank if Labor was office, and they'd be better off keeping it under the bed. Hawke dismissed the notion with 'you can't keep your money under the bed because that's were all the Commies are'. It seemed at encapsulate how out of touch Fraser was and that he had none of the panache of Hawke.

In the mid 1980s he became a figure of fun when he was found with no trousers in a seedy Memphis hotel, which became funnier when he claimed he had been given a Mickey Finn.

As politics in Australia, like in most of the Western world moved to the right during the late 1970s and 1980s, Fraser seemed to buck the trend. In the mid 1980s Fraser helped establish CARE Australia. For quite a while he was the face of the organisation as well as holding senior positions with them. Also Fraser took a position re refugees that were popular with hardcore Labor party supporters and unpopular with hardcore Liberal supporters.

At Gough Whitlam's funeral the animosity between John Howard and Fraser was such that like Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard , as well as Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, steps were taken to keep them apart. Fraser was also a strident critic of Tony Abbott. It got to the stage where Fraser was more popular with Labor supporters than he was with Liberal supporters. Following his passing it has been reported that a number of Liberal figures would not comment on his passing, apart from they would not speak ill of the dead.

Many years ago I saw a documentary on the UK mining strikes. There was a small piece on a village that had 2 pubs. Apparently neither pub would let in a bloke who hadn't gone on strike about 50 years earlier. Now that is seriously holding a grudge.

I'm a fan of grudges. I've refused to buy Nestle for over 30 years. I once went 18 months of not watching Channel 7 because they showed Red Dawn (thinking about that was probably a bit ridiculous, although Channel 7 didn't have many shows worth watching back then...so some things never change). And I've held grudges (actually I still do) against people I think have wronged me for very long periods.

I'm not a great believer in conspiracy theories, but I'm convinced that the US government orchestrated the overthrow of the Whitlam government. I'll attach an interview between Ray Martin and Christopher Boyce from 1982 here.

As it was Fraser crushed Whitlam at the subsequent 1975 election before beating him even more comprehensively in 1977. He defeated Hayden in 1980. If Fraser had waited, he would have beaten Whitlam in the 1977 election. However Fraser couldn't wait 18 months and let his ego and lust for power get so out of control, that with the aid of the tainted Senate (after 2 conservative premiers did not replace outgoing Labor senators with Labor senators) and 'Our Man Kerr' he plotted the dismissal of the democratically elected government of Australia.

Looking back on the Fraser government they didn't have the nasty right wing edge that the Howard did and the Abbott government does have. And certainly he should be given credit for what he did with CARE and for speaking up about our treatment of asylum seekers.

However Fraser either conspired with a foreign government or unwittingly did their work, to remove the democratically elected government of Australia. Apparently Whitlam forgave Fraser for the events of 1975. I haven't. And the good work he did after he left office, nowhere near makes up for what he did in 1975.