The misadventures of Troy
It is said by some that Australia is the most governed country in the world, and that may be so. Perth is a collection of independent cities, each with its own council and an overarching Lord Mayor. Surrounding the cities are shires, probably the equivalent of counties or districts, and above all of them the State Government with both an upper and lower house. At Federal Government level there are also upper and lower houses and they are Australia’s supreme law-making and governing bodies. With both state and federal governments making laws, and cities and shires similarly empowered, there are rules aplenty, but all within a strict pecking order. Federal laws take precedence over state laws and so on down the chain, but it is not quite that simple. It is a quite complex myriad; here in Western Australia, for example, there are state labour laws, conservatively based on those of the last Liberal Federal Government and federal laws which come from the ever-so-slightly more progressive Labor Party. The two sets of laws come from diametrically opposing philosophical points of view but somehow they co-exist, federal law prevailing only where there is a conflict between the two separate sets of legislation.
Confused? Then add in the relationship between contract and legislation and what should be the international principle that legislation takes precedence over contract. Simply put, people cannot enter into contracts which conflict with existing laws. But here it is not quite that straightforward; some contracts enabled under federal legislation can take priority over state laws. In the university sector, for example, collective agreements are formed under federal law even though each agreement is made with a local university on an individual or enterprise basis. And in what seems completely inconsistent with the law of contract, these agreements override state laws even though they are enforced within the state. And on that basis I’ve given up trying to understand it all.
But if that is a problem, the State Liberal Government has a greater problem of its own this week. Treasurer, Troy Buswell, who has survived a “chair-sniffing” incident with one of his staffers and another where, at a function, drunk, he snapped open the bra clip of a Labor opposition member, has today been forced to admit an affair with the local Green member for Fremantle. Buswell had little choice; the story broke at the weekend with Green Adele Carles admitting the truth of rumours of a four-month affair with Buswell. In a written statement, Carles said that, although she could portray herself as the vulnerable one who had been taken advantage of, this was not true and that they made a mutual, albeit stupid decision as two consenting adults.
In a press conference today, Buswell admitted the affair and of misusing parliamentary entitlements so he and Carles could meet, and between the pair of them they may have set the world’s record for the number of resulting apologies. Perhaps the Guinness Book of Records should be consulted? Carles publicly apologised to her husband and three daughters, her mother, father and brother, mother-in-law, father-in-law and brothers-in-law and their extended families, to Troy Buswell’s wife and their children, to her fellow State Green MPs, Bob Brown and the federal Greens, their voters and supporters, the Premier, state parliamentary colleagues and staff at Parliament House, the Labor Party and to her constituents in Fremantle. Buswell repeatedly apologised to the Premier, his wife, boys, colleague and constituents.
To Buswell’s credit, his misadventures have been with women from the broad range of political hues which shows that, sexually at least, he is not driven by ideology; and it is as well, he says these incidents haven’t affected the way he has done his job.
Buswell has become well-practised at apologies; when confessing to the chair-sniffing incident, after two-years of denial, he broke down and cried. Today the admission was less emotional, he having clearly toughened up in the face of adversity. His was a prepared speech in which he neatly sidestepped all major questions of public interest.
This is a tough one for the State Government, and it is always a pleasure to watch conservative governments struggle with their demons. Buswell says he won’t be stepping down but he may have to think again. Despite being Treasurer, he was recently done twice for incorrectly claiming parliamentary travel expenses; it seems he did not know the geographical difference between Perth and Busselton, some two and a half hours south. This time, however, he has admitted using his ministerial car to facilitate the affair and to paying for accommodation on his parliamentary credit card and this may be his undoing. Odds are that the Premier, Colin Barnett will have no choice to sack him, despite only a week ago describing Buswell as the best treasurer in the world.
And while there may be trouble in state political circles, we have had trouble on our own doorstep. Just down the road at the Bayswater Hotel, there was a brawl on Saturday night. More than thirty people started scrapping in the pub, moved to the car park and then, with authorities on the way, “fled” to the nearby Bayswater train station.
That’s my station and this is all a bit too close for comfort. It is as well I was tucked up asleep at the time.

Postscript: Buswell resigned today after discussions with Premier Barnett. It was claiming expenses wot did 'm in.

Three more “c” words
Australia is agog following the death in Barwon high security prison of Carl Williams, the baby-faced gangland killer who was serving 35 years for the murder of four people and who was believed to have been associated with the deaths of at least ten others in a series of vicious reprisal killings. His life-story was the subject of the original television series of Underbelly, Williams was one of the kingpins of Melbourne’s underworld and none too pleasant a chap it seems. But for days now we have relived the moment of Williams’s death, again and again, bashed from behind with the stem of an exercise bicycle all under the constant watchful eye of the prison’s CCTV system. Apparently there are some questions to be answered about why it took twenty-five minutes after the bashing for any of the guards to pay any attention.
But agog we are, the media are howling outrage about the fact that Williams and other gangsters have been glamorised by the media, other media than the ones howling that must be. The Underbelly series, which dramatises real-life organised crime, has been so successful that it is hard to know whether life is imitating art or vica-versa and the third series, which started a fortnight ago, has been subject to relentless media coverage. We have the real-life characters on magazine-style shows telling viewers what they think of their television portrayals, being filmed attending socialite functions and occupying favourite spots in corporate boxes. Just a week or so ago, another Melbourne Underbelly identity, Mick Gatto, was in Perth, feted by the television cameras, walking the celebrity carpet into the Danny Green boxing match, a big thing here; this week he was back on television giving his views on his foe, Williams’s death. Interviewed on television news, Gatto said that, while he felt sorry for William’s daughter, he was going to enjoy a lovely day. With that he sat back, grinned and lit a cigar, almost as big and fat as Williams himself.
More forthcoming was “veteran criminal” Chopper Read who told media that when he heard the news of Williams’s death he spat out his drink and laughed his head off. “He was just a big, fat, wobbly-bottomed boy from Footscray. He wasn’t much of a man at all. He was nothing,” continued Read.
He added, for the sake of colour, that he and Gatto are the only two of the major Melbourne underworld figures left and is predicting, probably rightly so, that no-one going to kill Gatto right now because he is much too popular.
Meanwhile, the widow, Roberta, spent the day after the death at the beauty salon to look her best for her New Idea interview, reportedly worth as much as $250,000.
At work, we too have encountered shadowy figures of our own from the twilight world. Or almost, as a meeting between the Corruption and Crime Commission and my boss took place behind closed doors in an internal, windowless room; my involvement limited to ensuring that the clutter from my desk was cleared away should that create a bad impression as these fighters of crime moved through the building. So silent were they that I neither saw them arrive or leave, but I knew when they were there because of the hush throughout the building as those not invited craned to hear whatever their business may have be through the muffled walls of that windowless room.
With a staff of 154 in Western Australia, the Commission, reverently referred to as the Triple C, is empowered to combat and reduce the incidence of organised crime but I learned and this is true, it is not actually empowered to investigate organised crime itself.
And that, I think, explains why they were at our work. Not that the boss has revealed any details, but a paper subsequently obtained reveals that the Triple C has been doing the rounds of universities telling vice-chancellors and senior managers that investigating bullying “may well” be within their statutory brief. They are hot on it too, and who would I be to disregard their vigour when it concurs so uniformly with mine. Bullying in universities occurs, the Triple C believes, because of the skill level of staff (managers) involved in change management, stress on staff and students, an absence of sanctions on perpetrators and a lack of commitment by VCs and senior management to zero tolerance of bullying and violence. Better still, the Triple C believes some universities are more careful about protecting their reputations than managing misconduct, and are prone to attacking whistleblowers rather than investigating their complaints.
As every day passes, I like this country more.

A rugged encounter
There are times when it is perfectly acceptable to mock a person for their physical appearance and this could well be one of them. While it may be common knowledge outside our sphere, it transpires that Australian cricketer Doug Bollinger is also known as Doug the Rug for reasons that became obvious when his Chennai team tasted success in the Indian IPL cricket league the other night.
Bollinger has been previously mentioned on our travels, he is one of those is thoroughly dislikeable Australian players, a real lad, full of it, looks indulged and gives the appearance of being completely self-absorbed. So, while things are going his way, all is well and good, but when not, look out, and that’s just what happened here.
Doug, we learned, has something called “replacement hair” and things turned more than a little bit sour when his Chennai teammate Suresh Raina tried to remove the rug during celebrations after the team’s win against the Kolkata Knight Riders. Bollinger furiously extracted himself from Raina’s grasp, and with both hands brushed back the hair which had “clearly moved off the scalp for a brief period.” Reports are that he is so sensitive about his hairdo that, when asked recently by an Australian journalist whether he was worried that the ferocious Wellington wind might play havoc with his thatch, he tersely refused to answer the question.
Of course the papers have had a field day after Doug’s hairy or rug-ged moment? "Bollinger keeps his Head" trumpeted the Australian Associated Press after his "hair-raising encounter", while Raina was credited with being after a scalp of his own.
Also none too impressed are the tourism people in Margaret River, about two and a half hours south of Perth by car. A little like New Zealand’s Marlborough, the landscape around Margaret River is dotted in vineyards with boutique wineries popping up in every nook and cranny and the town’s main street awash with craft shops and trendy eateries. Without a doubt this is the place in Western Australia for wine, its Semillon Sauvignon Blanc rather good, and with that, the region has a new found popularity among the upwardly mobile as a trendy weekend destination. Imagine then the shock to have the region’s service industry described in the autumn edition of a no less august a publication as the Western 4 Wheel Driver as people so unfriendly they have stony faces that look like they have been sat on by a rutting stag. “Talk about service with a frown,” says the magazine’s editor, Nick Underwood, tourists are clearly seen as the “human equivalent of weeds.”
With subscribers in such far-flung places as Oman and Cyprus, W4WD is clearly a magazine of international influence, and Underwood would not have enhanced the region’s prospects with his continuing descriptions. Along with about twenty others, his first encounter with locals left him needing “something to wash the bad taste of indifference from [the group’s] memories” and so they pulled into a winery only to be “accosted by the person in charge who must have just taken a swig from a seriously corked bottle of Chateau Vinaigrette”. That person told him he couldn’t just turn up with a large group; they needed to phone in advance. “Fair dinkum,” continued Underwood, “it was all we could do not to speed as we bore north to open shops and better attitudes.”
It was as well we didn’t stop as we passed through Margaret River one recent Sunday; we hadn’t phoned ahead, the place was chocker and we would not have wanted to be served by people who looked as though they had been sat on by a rutting stag. The winery we stopped at had run out of the particular tipple we were seeking and the young woman told us it was unlikely it would ever be made again because the winemaker didn’t like it one little bit. That was, despite it being their only variety to sell out completely and the subject of requested orders. As Mr Underwood rightly surmises, the customer is not always right.
On a completely different topic, a study has shown that the longer couples are married, the less time they spend talking to each other. According to The Sunday Times, the survey reveals that older couples restrict their conversation to about three minutes per hour, the topics limited to the weather and practical things like passing the tomato sauce. As would be expected, young lovers hardly shut up while newlyweds are down to 40 minutes of chat per hour, couples together sixteen years at 16 minutes to the hour and veterans of twenty years or more down to five minutes.
On that basis the Braithwaite-Churtons should be at about 4 minutes per hour, which seems quite a lot really.

Sittin' on a Docker the bay
For a fleeting moment I thought I was at a Hurricanes rugby match. Inside an oval stadium the crowd bayed for the umpire’s blood, the home team’s lead ebbing away as penalties mounted against them. But such thoughts were only fleeting, this stadium was bigger and an almost capacity house of 38,000, almost all dressed the purple of the Fremantle Dockers, roared in support and spurred their team on just as it looked they would crumble at the hands of the Geelong Cats. Welcome to the Australian Football League (AFL) or Aussie Rules Rugby as it is commonly known.
And that is where this match differed from a Hurricanes’ encounter. The stadium was bigger; the pitch 180 meters long and about 120 wide and the crowd, instead of whinging and wilting before the final whistle and heading home in the face of defeat, started a cacophony of relentless chants, thunderously so, urging their team to pull back from the brink. It was ear-splitting, deafening; these were fans like nothing else, infinitely more passionate than rugby union supporters and at the same time somehow more civilised than English football fans.
It would be pointless to try and explain Australian Rules football, it is helter-skelter, seemingly a cross between Celtic and other forms of football, the various rugby codes, handball and netball all at once and played at a frenetic pace, the players each looking like they’ve had a methamphetamine hit before running on the field. And perhaps they had, last week two West Coast Sea Eagles were fined for making mobile phone calls in the three-quarter time break, they claimed to their ruck coach but in reality probably to their dealers.
Before the game there are five, four, three, two and one minute sirens, each one resembling an air raid warning and I looked overhead, waiting for the rumble of World War II Lancaster Bombers, but then I realised the war was more than sixty years ago and we were in allied territory.
That aside, there are a stack of goal posts at the each end of the field; a kick, punt-style, between the centre ones earns six points, a kick between the outside ones a single point. There are four, twenty-five minute quarters, but each quarter runs to about 33 minutes for no apparent reason, the game taking more than two and a half hours in all. There are about ten umpires, the main one bounces the ball on the ground at the start and at breakdowns, each time initiating a melee for ricocheted possession, and then there are the throwers in. They’re a weird mob, when a ball goes into touch one of these odd people, back turned to the players, returns the ball to the field of play by a carefully choreographed, blind-throw over the head. And if that is strange, whenever goals are scored, tight-panted umpires go into an almost orgasmic frenzy comprising something resembling the bird-dance, popular in the 1980s, followed by waving of flags, semaphore-style, quite to whom it was impossible to tell.
Subiaco Oval is the shrine of AFL in Perth, and the name is something in itself. Kiwis may pronounce the ground as Sue-be-ar-co, in Australian it is Sue-be-ack-o, and while pronunciation lapses can result in mocking, talking Australian, or ‘Strine, just isn’t right. My boss is named Lyn, in New Zealand pronounced Lin, but here in the West it is Len. Aside from the obvious comparison to the Johnny Cash tune, A Boy Named Sue, it just feels plain disrespectful to call a female boss by a boy’s name. So I don’t.
But back to Subiaco Oval, we, some work colleagues and I, had seats the equivalent to being in the God’s at a London West End Theatre, perched high, ever so high, above the field while the players scrambled their way through what seemed about three days of football below. “Subi” could never be described as a comfortable stadium; the seats are more rigid and upright than on a Jetstar aircraft and seemingly built to paralyse anyone with poor posture. Slumping would certainly have resulted in being unceremonially catapulted to certain death several stories below, so we didn’t dare. We watched, riveted, instead.
If the game was entertaining so too was the young man seated next to a couple of youngish women directly to our front. Clearly unknown to each other before the match this young man commenced a a flirting ritual, his confidence buoyed in direct proportion to the amount of beer he consumed. As the Dockers pulled back from a twenty point deficit he became more animated, as they took a slender lead his hands tentatively, then confidently, clasped around the buttocks of the nearest woman, and as they took the lead he pulled her, vice-like, in close embrace. When the final air raid siren sounded giving a seven point winning margin to the Dockers, our young man was as keen to score a winning goal as had been the Dockers; the poor woman, also in an almost choreographed sequence, was attempting to wriggle out from under him. This could have been the Kama Sutra, although clearly she was experienced in escaping such encounters; last heard she was telling this clumsy but eager young man that she was leaving the ground in the opposite direction to him, but this was no obstacle; he was leaving in whichever direction gave him the most hope, and he thought her accompanying him to the Subiaco Hotel was a suitable option.
A couple of hours later, after drinks and a dinner at an overpriced but delicious Subi Indian restaurant, the northbound platform at the train station was all but deserted. That is aside from me and that same young man, forlorn, drunk and alone. Clearly the fortune of the Dockers hadn’t translated into equivalent success for him but I refrained from asking for a score card.
Perhaps next time because I’ll be back for another game now that I’m a true, fair weather, Dockers fan.

Barely rooted
There are some stories, even among our favourites, which should have died a natural death, and it was expected that the Tree Man of Thornlie would become one of those which amused and entertained us for a while and then quietly went away. But it is not the case; this story just refuses to go away. Richard Pennicuik has come down from his tree after 110 days aloft claiming a moral victory after his favourite eucalyptus melliodora withstood the big Perth storm. Immediately he was whisked off to a local radio station to be given a makeover, a shave, haircut, new suit and silk tie, all televised for our new celebrity, and that could or should have been an end to it all.
But so often with fame or infamy comes complication and while Pennicuik was getting his makeover, a supporter climbed the now fenced off tree and, mysteriously, a new platform appeared lodged between the branches. It was enough to spur on the enraged council to proceed with its prosecution against Pennicuik.
The complication is not so much the new tree man, but the fact that Pennicuik’s new advisors are the sort of people who, to put it mildly and in Australian, are drongos. The sort who possess that sort of smug, superior, know-it-all, cat that swallowed the canary, confident moral authority that has foundation only in their well-oiled imaginations. Think social creditors and crimplene trousers.
The trouble with relying on social credit lookalikes for advice, as Pennicuik should have been able to figure out, is that their form of flawed logic and unimpeachable self-belief can only compound rather than resolve problems, Consequentially, support, credibility and respect can be lost in a flash and people like Pennicuik lose the moral high ground and be relegated to the same turf as every other inconsequential nutter.
With his advisor, Pennicuik turned up in the Armadale Magistrates Court yesterday and then refused to enter a plea to a charge of obstructing the Gosnell City Council in its bid to chop down his tree. The basis of the refusal, that the prosecution notice spelled his surname in underlined capitals and had his surname preceding his Christian name rather than the other way around as it appears on his birth certificate. Not surprisingly, the Magistrate described Pennicuik’s argument as absurd, accused him of wasting the court’s time, adjourned the hearing so he could get legal advice and, quite sensibly, refused to allow his so-called advisor to act as a “McKenzie Friend”, a legally unqualified person who helps another in court.
This man’s name is James Dean and unlike his 1950’s namesake, he could be described as a rebel without a clue. Pennicuik now leaves all of his public comment to Dean, the latter telling The West Australian newspaper that the Magistrate might be ignorant of the definition of a McKenzie Friend, that a plea couldn’t be entered under a name other than that exactly on the birth certificate and that local authorities were unconstitutional and didn’t have the jurisdiction to “manage or control our commonwealth land.” Oh dear.
Former neighbours Terry and Barbara Anderson came for dinner the other night, and Marty set out to impress them with the purchase of wine branded Catching Thieves. The name wasn’t mean to convey any subliminal, negative message; it was just a nice looking bottle from the highly regarded Margaret River region.
What the purchase apparently showed, however, was a susceptibility to be taken in by “childish” names which, according to the experts, are making Western Australian wines and wineries an international laughing stock. The Sunday Times reports that names such as Greedy Sheep, Moaning Frog, Mongrel Creek, Devil’s Lair, Howling Wolf, Swooping Magpie and Wombat Lodge have drinkers scratching their heads. The worst offender, the Bare Rooted label, illustrated by copulating Koalas.
Wine makers are defending their naming rights, saying it is all a bit of fun and that only wine snobs would object to names that create a unique selling point. Not to be outdone, wine writer Peter Forrestal suggested that there were no howling wolves at Margaret River last time he checked.
Next time, we will be more careful when choosing wines.

The “c” word
I’ve never liked the “c” word, never have and never will, and so it seemed inexplicable that I would submit not once but twice during our travels to invitations go camping. Another “c” word could be held responsible, cousins, for on both occasions the submission came at the hands of this particular line of relative; the first time in England with one cousin and the second, at Easter, with another, Fiona, her partner Gary and two of their friends.
Camping is a phenomenon which is difficult to comprehend; it involves days of planning and preparation, poring over maps, taking trips to the supermarket, collecting cookers, eskies, and icepacks, filling gas bottles, and assembling a collection of tents and sleeping bags, air mattresses, cooking utensils, shovels, lights, tarpaulins and ropes - just to be denied the comforts of home. Not that I lifted a finger, others did it all.
Camping apparently necessitates a 4.15am wake up. The sensible option of sleeping-in at Easter gives way to the daft notion of starting early to avoid road congestion as Perth empties out, and so it was we were on the road at 5.00am. Even at that time the freeway looked like an automobile beauty contest; who has the flashest SUV, whose is most loaded the gunnels and how many canoes can be lashed to roof racks at once?
We had a destination in mind, a place called Sues (yes, no apostrophe) Bridge, about three hours south of the city, in the middle of the Blackwood State Forest, about halfway between Nillup and Nannup. But not Sues Bridge camping spot, that was too orthodox, we headed down rutted tracks to a clearing among the Karri and Jarrah, up the bank from the Blackwood River, and set up home in a private, tranquil little spot. And it was nice, but it may have been an omen to discover that my camera battery was still in its charger back in Perth and, as night drew, my warm clothes, especially washed for the occasion, left in the washing basket. No-one was at all interested in the fresh fruit I had brought; camping is about red meat and onions, baked beans and bodily functions.
Being in a state forest means no fires, and no fishing; curiously, while there was a sign prohibiting procuring Marron, a fresh water crustacean, it went on to limit catch-bags to ten at a time. Our attempts to lure them with prawn tails failed and so we weren’t put to the test of determining whether a ban was consistent with a limited bag. Instead, we stretched out in the languid warmth of the day, listened to the AFL on the car radio, beat the Australians at bush cricket and then a game resembling a cross between petanque and bowls and, at night, thrashed them at cards. A monitor lizard, about 4 feet in length, investigated our camp site and nosed around in one of bags of rubbish, not fazed at all by humans, blue wrens darted about and a fat Kookaburra sat high above us.
If that sounds idyllic, there is another side. Think red Australian dirt which gets everywhere and, when wet, turns to slushy, gritty mud which gets tramped through and penetrates everything. After Fiona managed to become attached to a leech while washing in the river, I decided that stinking like a polecat was preferable to being clean, and the mornings brought a litany of how poorly and uncomfortably everyone slept. It drizzled, then rained, the tarpaulins leaked and little rivers of mud tricked across the canvas groundsheet around our feet. We huddled, played Five-Hundred under gas lights and moved closer together as the weather closed in from all sides. Far from being a restful and pleasant spot, the place became a prison as turns had to be taken to leave the campsite for supplies and exploring the area as someone had to be there all the time to guard against the possibility of light-fingered visitors.
Adversity gives rise to another curious phenomenon; after all the planning and preparation, the travelling and expectation, no-one wants to admit defeat, or even that remaining might not be the brightest of ideas. Certainly not me, the soft city boy in whose honour this whole weekend had been planned.
Thank goodness then for Fiona. She was the one to blurt out what everyone was thinking. With a worsening weather forecast, why stay here when we could be warm and dry at home? The thought of hot showers, toilets and watching the AFL on television instead of listening seemed perfectly logical.
And who was I to argue?