Strewth: join the club

Possibly as a belated response to the Jeffrey tribe’s arrival in 1976, the citizenship laws are to be tightened.

Possibly as a belated response to the Jeffrey tribe’s arrival in Australia in 1976, the nation’s citizenship laws are to be tightened. As it was announced by Malcolm Turnbull, journalists imagined the person best positioned to clarify it all was the Prime Minister himself. Asked one hack, “Could you give a summary of those things you believe all Australians should sign up to?” There may come a day the PM attempts a trial separation from his tendency to supply his words in bulk, but it certainly wasn’t yesterday: “What we will … the answer is yes, but the discussion paper that (Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s) department has released is going to engage public discussion on this. As indeed Phil Ruddock and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells did a little while ago and that’s been a valuable part of it, too. I think we understand, you know … Australians … Australians have an enormous reservoir of good sense, and we know that our values of mutual respect, democracy, freedom, rule of law, those values, a fair go — these, they are fundamental Australian values. They’re not shared in every part of the world. That’s true. But they’re shared by us. And we are entitled to say if you want to be a citizen of Australia, there are a few things that we want you to demonstrate that you share.” Perhaps one of the first tests for prospective citizens would be to translate Turnbull into English. Dutton, meanwhile, provided answers for any future multiple choice test. To wit: “If kids are roaming the street at night as part of gangs, in the Apex gangs or elsewhere in cities like Melbourne, whether or not that is adopting an Australian value. Clearly it’s not.” Dutts is from Queensland and he’s here to help.

Mateship sails

John Howard mucked around with such things as well, not least in the proposed constitutional preamble he worked on with Les Murray, the fruit of their labour containing the line, “We value excellence, as well as fairness, independence as dearly as mateship”. Alas, this was later watered down, then shot down altogether along with the republic question it was fatefully tied to in the 1999 referendum.

Your answers please

A quick quiz starring the following Bill Shorten quote: “This country cannot be run with two prime ministers. One of them has got to go.” Did he say it in:

(a) 2010?

(b) 2013?

(c) Yesterday?

Station to station

It has been inexcusably long since we paid a visit to that great photographic oeuvre that is Paul Fletcher Looking at Things. The Urban Infrastructure Minister yesterday visited the Sydney Rail Management Centre at Central Station. What is most striking is the relative absence of colour. In comparison to some of his great earlier works — for example, the tension between the luridly coloured tropical flowers and the resolute brownness of Fletch’s suit in his Singapore airport portrait — this one plays out almost entirely in black, white and grey. With this simple device, the eyes of the observer are thrown straight to the faces of the protagonists: Fletch and Steve Troughton of Transport for NSW.

The men who watch trains go by.

These are the faces of men who sense darkness and promise, suddenly uncomfortably aware of just how delicately in balance are the competing possibilities of victory and annihilation. The last time we saw someone with a look like the minister’s it was Princess Leia in the Rebel base, hoping against hope the Death Star would be blown up before it lived up to its name. Count the number of pollies who could get that much into a public transport snap and you’d still have enough fingers left to play the ukulele.

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