The Debatable Land

Australian Summary

Having come-off second-best in our West Indies game, I'm duty bound to suggest (gently) that I've had the better of Norm in the Australian leg of the series. In large part, of course, this reflects the luxury of being able to select Don Bradman with the first pick, just as Norm benefitted from choosing Gary Sobers first last time. In each case the player picking first has been able to acquire two players for the price of one. That's quite an advantage.

Having Bradman in my side permitted me to pick Keith Miller second, to provide balance, and my two favourite Aussie fast bowlers with my third and fourth selections. After that, the bonus was remembering that Bill O'Reilly was eligible for selection, thanks to a solitary test in 1946. His presence, plus that of Ritchie Benaud, ensures that my side is also stronger in spin-bowling than Norm's. 

Norm's side benefits from Gilchrest's presence obviously, but Healy, Benaud and Lindwall ensure my team bats down to 9. I'd also suggest that in Miller, Morris and Harvey my team also has the cricketers to play with greater style and panache than Norm's (Warne and Gilchrest excepted).

I was all set to make Keith Miller skipper - even though he never captained Australia - until I remembered that I had in fact also picked Richie Benaud who must, the claims of Bradman and Chappell notwithstanding, be given the job.

Department of Wildlife

SM, a friend from college days, draws my attention to this gem:

Australia's top treasury official is taking five weeks leave to look after endangered wombats.

Ken Henry, treasury secretary and animal conservationist, has warned that hairy-nosed wombats are "on death row".

But opposition politicians - and even wombat lovers - question if now is the time to be thinking about wombats.

Inflation is at a 16-year high, interest rates are up and fuel prices are rising. Mr Henry will also miss a central bank meeting.

Mr Henry will be looking after 115 hairy-nosed wombats in an isolated spot in northern Queensland, with no mobile phone coverage and two-and-a-half hours on a rough track from the nearest town.

"There are 10 times as many giant pandas in the world as there are these guys," said Mr Henry.

The opposition isn't sure this is a great idea even though, in what must be one of the lines of the year, Brendan Nelson acknowledges that "I think we all love the hairy-nosed wombat."

More details here. This strikes me as entirely admirable. Indeed, Mr Henry is setting an example other politicians public officials (edited, thanks Peter) should heed. Certainly politicians - and we - would be better off if they a) had interests outside politics and b) took longer holidays. Much longer. One suspects that Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling would appreciate five weeks off, looking after, say, the petrels and puffins on St Kilda.

Photo of a hairy-nosed Wombat by Flickr user Macinate. Used under a Creative Commons license.

First they take Canberra, then they take...?

Melanie Philips, I'm afraid, continues to show signs of becoming Britain's answer to David Horowitz. Her latest salvo culminates in this absurdity:

Annapolis is America’s Munich — and Israel is the new Czechoslovakia.

Previously Philips, unsurprisingly, lamented John Howard's defeat in Australia. For myself, I rather think that 12 years in office is long enough and, absent an entirely hapless opposition, it's important to turf incumbents out of office, regardless of which party they happen to be. (It is not a good sign for Gordon Brown that Labour will have been in power for 13 years when the next election is held).

Still, none of that matters. Philips concedes that even though there were plenty of excellent reasons to vote against Howard, loyalty to the Bush Doctrine must trump each and every one of them:

Yes I know that the election result is said to have been about domestic issues rather than foreign policy. Yes I know that Kevin Rudd is much more of a centrist than the Labour party he leads. Yes I know that the Liberal party got up to some truly despicable tricks (see the excellent Andrew Bolt) and seems to be well past its sell-by date. But the gloating by the left tells you all you need to know about the way in which the defeat of Australia’s epic Prime Minister John Howard will weaken the free world in its war to defend civilisation.

This is madness. It's unwise to permit your judgment to be governed by the reactions of the sort of people who post comments at The Guardian.  But, really, is it also too much to ask that Philips provide even a teensy piece of evidence to support her conclusion that Australian voters have doomed us all? Apparently so, and all because Kevin Rudd,

ran on a platform of pulling troops out of Iraq and endorsing the ludicrous scam of man-made global warming are enough in themselves to tell the jihadis that Australia has now lost its (one-man) nerve. Australia just made itself (and the rest of us) a whole lot less safe.

Incidentally: why are the people most convinced "western civilisation" faces mortal peril from lunatic Islamic terrorists also the people most convinced that there's no such thing as global warming at all and, consequently, all the forecasts of planetary meltdown are just another trap the careful westerner must be wary of avoiding? Where are the people who believe in a civilisational death-struggle and the imminent threat of global climate change? Or is it that no human brain can survive the presence of two apocalyptic fantasies without short-circuiting itself, leaving it's owner a hopping, bug-eyed loon?

Who knew that it's impossible to think that climate change and terrorism are each serious problems that left unchecked could leave us in a spot of bother but that, if addressed, need not portend the end of the world?

Of course, I dare say that for every person convinced global warming is a man-made scam designed to undermine the west, there's an eco-clown convinced that Bush (and Cheney) ordered the 9/11 attacks to have their War for Oil and do their best to melt the icebergs and chop down every tree in the world.