Sport

Aussies love their sport, they love any sport. They have a very competitive spirit when it comes to sport and of course they do excel in this area. The Sydney Olympics where staged with an almost Swiss precision and it seemed that the entire nation was experiencing one huge, collective orgasm while the games were on.

However there is a darker side to this obsession. Australians are very bad losers. While the winners are feted, the losers tend to be shunned, talked of in hushed tones like the black sheep of the family. To be honest, if you are a sporting winner then Aussies will overlook any deficiencies or shortcomings you may have. You could be a baby eater or even worse you could be the putrid, drug addled Ben Cousins and they will still forgive you as long as you can score those goals.

Why such an emphasis on sport? Well to be honest Australians haven't put their stamp on the world in any other areas. This is after all quite a young democracy and it hasn't given the world any artists, composers or writers of International repute. OK, so there was Dame Nellie Melba and Dame Joan Sutherland, but these are not exactly household names among the general public. I think early on Australians realised the limits of their culture creatively and decided that with all that space around them sport would be a much better option.

The Second Oldest Profession

It's Election time in Australia with only ten days to go before Polling Day. For several months now the opposition Labor party have maintained a decisive lead in the polls against the Liberal Party, who are actually a bunch of Conservatives. Yet the media are still trying to drum up excitement by suggesting that things are neck and neck.
The Conservatives, sorry, Liberals have been led for the past ten years by the world's first democratically elected Marsupial, John Horatio Howard. On his daily jaunt from Kirribili House he can often be spotted taking a nibble from the leaves of a nearby Eucalyptus tree. This explains his often dazed expression during long sessions in Parliament.
His challenger is little Kevin Rudd, the worlds only living personality donor. To say the man is bland would be a very great understatement. Yet the amazing thing about Rudd is his ability to wear a coat of many colours over this blandness.
On any one day he can come across as reactionary as Howard or as revolutionary as Che Guevara, if Che was Blond, Mousey and came from Queensland.
The thing is, the Australian public is an unfathomable beast. They have lain dormant for many years while the government eroded civil liberties, denounced asylum seekers and dragged the country into an unwinnable war over oil. As long as they could buy their MacMansions and their stocks and savings went up, they weren't too bothered. Could it be that they will now vote John Howard out of office because their a bit bored and they fancy a change?