A Fair Dinkum Blue

‘THERE are few things more pleasing than watching the other team tear itself apart.

‘It’s not the same since Flick left’

If it’s not the Labour party amusing the Tories by splitting itself in two over top-up fees, it’s Manchester United rowing in the boardroom.

And now adding their own internecine squabble to the cabaret are the Australian prime minister, John Howard, and the female eunuch, Germaine Greer, as watched by the Telegraph.

Greer, who, like most Australians, lives in Britain, recently wrote an article in which she questioned the prevailing culture of her Australian kin.

‘If your ambition is to live on Ramsay Street, where nobody has even been heard to discuss a book or a movie, let alone an international event, then Australia may be the place for you,’ she said.

To us British dilettantes and daytime TV aficionados, there is little point in stating that Ramsay Street is a setting for Neighbours, a fly-on-the wall docu-soap about life in a Melbourne suburb.

And while Neighbours’ schoolteacher, Susan Kennedy, has tried to open minds, we must concur with Greer’s opinion that the emblematic show is something of a cultural wasteland.

But not so John Howard, who considers Greer’s piece to be ‘hopelessly out of date’.

He thunders: ‘I thought that was a particularly patronising, condescending and, dare I say, elitist article. I thought it was pathetic, I really did.’

But not too pathetic for him to ignore. Indeed, he’s got more to say in the Independent.

‘What she basically says is that the average Australian is too stupid to think about anything that’s the least bit philosophical or important.’

The Indy underscores that remark with: ‘He said it, not us.’

And the Telegraph says this exchange reveals how fragile Australia’s national ego is.

Although they do boast the world’s second best rugby union team…’

Posted: 28th, January 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink