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6 THE NATION
AUSE01Z50MA - V1
THE AUSTRALIAN, MONDAY, JULY 14, 2014
theaustralian.com.au
Political chaos is manna from heaven in a cartoonist’s world gone mad
INSIDE
NATASHA ROBINSON
THERE is a curse that strikes Bill
Leak frequently in the morning. As
the cartoonist rises from his slumber, before dawn, an idea strikes
him like a thunderbolt — brilliant,
inspired and devastating witty.
But it’s an idea that has arrived
too late, a good 10 hours after he’s
turned in his daily cartoon.
Leak calls it the cartoonist’s
version of d’esprit d’escalier — the
French term for “staircase wit”,
that infuriating moment when the
perfect retort comes to you when
you’re halfway up the stairs.
“I get up every day at five and I
like to be sitting in front of the
computer and reading the paper
and related material by half past
five in the morning and seeing how
much I can learn before I even
think about doing a cartoon.
“Ideas take a while. You find
out the facts first and the idea
forms itself gradually.
“And, if you’re a cartoonist like
me, you’ll find that they form
themselves rather too gradually
and the really good ideas occur to
50 years of cartoons at
theaustralian.com.au
ANNIVERSARY
SPECIAL
The works of Leak. ‘So many of them are already caricatures before I even pick up my pen and start working on them’
you the next morning instead of
the day before.”
Take one of his favourites of
last year, his portrait of Kevin
Rudd reclining by a lake in front of
his own reflection, which earned
him a Walkley nomination. “I used
to be a bit of a narcissist but now
I’m perfect,” says the caption,
above the heading: “Change we
can believe in”. Looking back now,
Leak wishes he’d used a different
heading: “On reflection”.
Royalties
must cut
poverty:
Scullion
When Leak’s Rudd cartoon
was featured on ABC’s Insiders,
presenter Jon Kudelka, also a
cartoonist at The Australian, called
that week in July — when Rudd
rolled Julia Gillard — “possibly the
greatest week for political
cartooning in the history of Australia”. But Leak reckons things
are only getting better for cartoonists: a grim observation for the rest
of us. “The really lean and difficult
times for cartoonists are times
when things are going rather well
for the country, because you can’t
make happy stories funny easily.”
“Disasters are much easier to
make fun of. If the political situation is in utter chaos and every
day brings new dramas, these are
great times for a cartoonist. And I
think things are chaotic beyond
belief at the moment. We’ve got no
shortage of nutters around in federal politics now, and nutters are
always good for cartoonists.
“Suddenly this elephantine sort
of character appears on the scene
in the form of Clive Palmer and
you just think, ‘How has it come to
this, how could this possibly happen? And you wonder what could
possibly be next.”
Leak recalls the advice of one of
his early mentors, the prolific cartoonist Patrick Cook, whose formula when it came to cartooning
was simple: to take a situation, a
character or a policy announce-
ment and exaggerate it to the point
of absurdity. But Leak believes that
such a rule of thumb is no longer
applicable to the current crop of
federal politicians.
“So many of them are already
caricatures before I even pick up
my pen and start working on them,
and a lot of the things they are saying have already reached the point
of absurdity,” he says. “I do think
the desire to be popular on the
part of politicians has warped or
As The Australian celebrates
its 50th birthday tomorrow,
we’ll be counting down the
years, continuing today.
Pages 10-11
caricaturised politics to the point
of unrecognisability.
“There is so much emphasis
now being put on how people in
the so-called Twitterverse are
going to respond to whatever comment you make ... that everything
is guarded now, the utterances
that our politicians make are very
contrived for that very reason.
Global youth leaders here to talk up jobs
How The Australian reported
the story on May 7
European business schools, as
was cited in The Australian’s recent report.
Instead of entrenching themselves in their roles, executives
should have as part of their key
performance indicators the requirement to find an indigenous
successor. “You should, morally,
be working yourself out of a job,”
Senator Scullion said.
He planned to make some announcements soon about federal
procurement policy so that it encouraged employment growth
and career advancement among
Aboriginal Australians.
He cited the case of housing
construction in indigenous communities, which would include
benchmarks for indigenous
employment in the same way it
specified that the house should
have a roof.
“It is not an aspiration any
more. It is a strict requirement
and it will be required under contract,’’ he said.
He said there were many “brilliant” Aboriginal people whose
careers should be advanced by
the growing income earned as a
result of the resources boom.
Senator Scullion flagged more
streamlined governance arrangements under the Native Title Act
for when determinations were
limited to hunting rights, for example. Under the act, groups
need to set up fully-fledged corporations when seeking a determination. Indigenous groups
were telling him they had to set up
these costly arrangements even
though “we don’t make anything
from camping on land”.
Senator Scullion also wanted
to compel Aboriginal corporations to incorporate under federal
law by making this a condition of
receiving federal funding.
Search for snowboarders
A SEARCH is underway on Victoria’s highest mountain for two
snowboarders who have not been
seen since Thursday.
The two men failed to return
from their trip to the Eskdale Spur
area of Mount Bogong in the
state’s northeast.
Their abandoned campsite at
Mitchell hut was found by walkers at about 6am yesterday and
police fear they have not been at
the site since the last snow fall
early on Saturday. Their tent was
empty except for sleeping bags
and some equipment.
The men, both aged in their
Asylum
airlift
ready to
resume
PAIGE TAYLOR
RACHEL BAXENDALE
PAUL CLEARY
THE Abbott government will use
its procurement policy to drive
higher levels of indigenous employment and career advancement
within
Aboriginal
corporations as a result of concerns over the hijacking of these
wealthy organisations by wellpaid, non-indigenous executives.
Indigenous Affairs Minister
Nigel Scullion said he was saddened by the failure of the mining
boom’s riches to improve indigenous welfare and was developing new policy to ensure that
indigenous corporations improved their employment outcomes.
“The royalty process across
the country just leaves me with a
sense of sadness, the amount of
money that is being paid out in
royalties and the poverty of the
people in receipt of those royalties,” he said.
Senator Scullion asked for the
documents relied on by The Australian for a detailed report showing how the chief executive of a
wealthy corporation had authorised substantial payments to a
small clique of indigenous
supporters, thereby bolstering his
position. One director’s creditors
and family members received almost $500,000.
The federal regulator for
indigenous corporations, ORIC,
said no breach of the law had
taken place. Senator Scullion said
it was possible that the law may
need to be strengthened.
He was concerned by the
number of well-remunerated executives working for indigenous
organisations who came to lobby
him and wanted to use the federal
government’s purchasing power
to make these organisations more
Aboriginal.
“I have people come and lobby
me …. (and) I have to say they are
all European people, they are all
non-indigenous people, who are
on a pretty good wicket batting
for one side or the other,” he said.
Senator Scullion said it was
“completely outrageous” for
executives of these corporations
to use indigenous royalty income
to pay for elite courses at US and
“They are aware of the fact that
they’ve only got to go to the toilet
and someone will tweet about it,
someone will misinterpret it and
apply that misinterpretation to
their retelling of it and by the time
they get to dash off that message
there’s bugger all a politician can
do about it.”
But though the descent of federal politics into absurdity has
been a boon for Leak, the cartoonist also pines for the days when
ideas would be given time to circulate, settle and mature.
“In the 30 years that I have
been actively engaged in doing
political cartoons, I have seen
such gradual deterioration in the
quality of debate and the general
standard of behaviour of our parliamentarians and the standard of
debate and the standard of the
people that actually make it into
the parliament,” he says. “It’s a
world gone mad.”
early 30s, have not made contact
with their families since Thursday, via mobile phone. They also
sent a photograph of their camp.
Police believe the men have an
emergency position radio beacon,
but have not activated the alarm.
Sergeant Simon Brand said
volunteers and nine search-andrescue officers headed up the
mountain to begin the search this
afternoon.
“Thankfully, we have a
number of experienced volunteers who have turned out to assist with the search,’’ he said.
AAP
ATTILA SZILVASI
Y20 delegates Tim Cameron, from Australia, and Sihini Trinidad Sanchez, from Mexico, in Sydney yesterday. ‘This is where joint projects are born’
They want the G20
to set evidence-based
solutions over politics
SIMON KING
WHEN the global young leaders
of tomorrow sat down at the Y20
summit in Sydney there was one
issue that united them — action
on youth unemployment.
After consultation with the
youth in their own countries and
three months of online debate,
the 120 delegates, representing
the G20 nations’ 18-30 year olds,
began workshops yesterday to
draft a communique to influence
the G20 summit — in Brisbane in
November — to act on three
key issues: youth unemployment,
youth entrepreneurship and
labour mobility. “We want G20
leaders to recognise that youth
employment is a serious issue ...
we want them to focus on that
when they develop their own
country plans,” one of Australia’s
five delegates Tim Cameron, 27,
told The Australian.
“In terms of Australia youth,
we really want the G20 to think
about really effective evidencebased ways to combat a problem.”
Mr Cameron, an economist for
the Grattan Institute, said Australia’s figure of 280,000 people
under-25 out of work was three
times that for unemployed people
over 25. “You’d always expect to
see that was higher ... but we think
the multiple of three is probably
not the right number — and it sets
it up for this generation to be shutout a little bit more than they
should be,” he said.
“The Y20 has the ability to
push things up to the G20 to get
youth voices heard in a time when
the youth are increasingly feeling
like they’re not being listened to.”
Mr Cameron said the group
was “pragmatic about the battle”
they faced in influencing the G20.
“The G20 is an economic
forum so we framed it as what are
the main economic issues and we
put the focus on that,” he said.
“Of course there are a whole
bunch of social issues that are
worrying young people.
“But it was pretty consistent in
my mind … there was nothing else
that they cared about more than
employment.”
At the end of the process, the
delegates will issue a communique to Joe Hockey addressing the key issues. This will
coincide with the start of the B20
business leaders forum beginning
in Sydney on Wednesday.
“In Australia, we need to have
a better culture of evaluation of all
our active labour market programs and figuring out what
works and promoting that rather
than basing policies on politics
rather than evidence,” Mr Cameron said. “That’s something we’re
going to push out post summit.”
For Mexican delegate Sihini
Trinidad Sanchez, 23, — whose
name means “hope” — addressing youth unemployment and
education were crucial.
“This is where joint projects
are born and changes are made,
and this is what we can do as
young representatives; think outside the box and act as liaisons,”
she told The Australian.
“It’s important to … take the
proposals talked about here and
also in national consultation to
local legislators and tell them this
is what youth want and how can
we engage with you.”
Adapting ‘green’ steelmaking to other industries
CHERYL JONES
THE inventor of “green” steelmaking, which uses discarded
tyres as a raw material in minimills, aims to transform other
industries through a $2.2 million
research grant from the federal
government.
Veena Sahajwalla’s centre at
the University of NSW is among
seven groups to be funded under
the Australian Research Council
industrial transformation research hubs scheme.
“The opportunity to partner
with other industry sectors has
been tremendous,” she said.
The industry partners in the
green manufacturing hub —
Brickworks Building Products,
Arrium Mining Consumables,
Tersum Energy and Jaylon
Industries — will put up an
additional $1.6 million.
Professor Sahajwalla, an engineer, won the manufacturing
and hi-tech design category (now
manufacturing, construction and
infrastructure) and the overall
prize in The Australian Innovation Challenge in 2012 for green
ENTRY DETAILS
theaustralian.com.au/
innovationchallenge
steelmaking, or polymer injection
technology. Her team took out a
total of $30,000 in prizemoney.
Green steelmaking, developed
with industry partner Arrium,
uses rubber from old tyres to
partially replace coke as the
source of carbon needed in
electric arc furnace steelmaking.
It boosts efficiency and diverts old
tyres from landfill.
The process is a sophisticated
form of recycling, which
Professor Sahajwalla labels the
“reform” of waste.
Arrium is using the method in
its plants in Sydney and Laverton,
near Melbourne, and has licensed
it to a South Korean steelmaker.
Professor Sahajwalla has been
working to extend the concepts
underlying green steelmaking to
the reform of combined glass and
plastic waste from old cars in a
greener method to make iron-
NIKKI SHORT
Veena Sahajwalla in her lab at the University of NSW
steel alloys called ferrosilicon
alloys.
These alloys are usually made
using silica and coke in an
expensive and greenhouse emissions-intensive method.
The work would tackle the
mounting global environmental
problem of cars at the end of their
lives.
The technology tapping glass
and plastic in old cars differs from
green steelmaking but it adopts
the philosophy underpinning the
earlier work.
Now Professor Sahajwalla
wants to see the “reform”
approach taken up by other
industries, such as building
materials.
Some construction materials
already incorporate waste but
waste used in Professor Sahajwalla’s scheme would probably be
more drastically altered in the
production steps.
She said the prestige and
publicity from winning the
Challenge had helped build
momentum in her work.
“The Innovation Challenge
award triggered a lot of these
other opportunities,” Professor
Sahajwalla said.
“It was because it was discussed in the media that we had other
industries contact us to talk about
what this concept means for
them.”
The awards — which have a
total of $65,000 in prize money —
have five professional categories,
ranging from minerals and energy to ICT, and a new Young Innovators section for students
under the age of 21.
A
Backyard
Innovation
category is open to the public.
Entries close on August 11.
IMMIGRATION officials will
today attempt the first removal
of asylum-seekers out of the
tense compounds of Christmas
Island in more than a week,
following a series of self-harms,
threatened self-harms and a
damaged runway that halted
transfers to Nauru.
A group of asylum-seeker
families was due to fly from
Christmas Island to Nauru last
Friday but the transfer was halted at the last minute when a
freight plane cracked the island’s
only tarmac.
The transfers had been occurring weekly, and it’s understood
that some of the asylum-seekers
sent to Nauru in recent months
have reported back to detainees
on Christmas Island that they
should ask to come too because
conditions are better there.
Guards told The Australian
that a group of women were still
being watched closely in the
family camp yesterday after
threatening self-harm over the
past week.
Exaggerated claims about the
incidents drew the ire of Tony
Abbott last week, who said: “I
don’t believe any Australian, any
thinking Australian, would want
us to capitulate to moral blackmail”.
Christmas Island shire president Gordon Thomson said
yesterday that the situation was
serious but a Fairfax report last
Wednesday that 12 mothers had
tried to kill themselves was
incorrect. “They have threatened,” he said.
Yesterday the Abbott government again revealed nothing
about the whereabouts of a boat
of 153 asylum-seekers intercepted somewhere in the Indian
Ocean more than two weeks ago.
The situation spurred a rally
of around 150 refugee advocates
in Melbourne’s Bourke Street
Mall.
Activists were calling for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to grant refugee status to the
Sri Lankan asylum-seekers detained at sea.
Greens senator Janet Rice addressed yesterday’s rally before
the group marched to Liberal
Party headquarters in Exhibition Street.
Socialist Alternative and
Socialist Alliance members
made up a large proportion of
the crowd, the former group selling T-shirts featuring the phrases “Abbott Hater” and “F..k Tony
Abbott” and handing out copies
of “Red Flag”.
The publication was earlier
this month forced to withdraw
citing legal concerns over a cover
featuring an image of the Prime
Minister getting his throat cut
with the words “One cut we’d
like to see”.
The Refugee Action Coalition, whose Melbourne affiliate the Refugee Action
Collective organised the rally,
also backed down from claims it
made in a press release last week
that up to “10 mothers in the
family camp have attempted suicide in the last two days on
Christmas Island”.
Refugee coalition spokesman
Ian Rintoul told The Australian
last week he “probably shouldn’t
have said attempted suicide”.