Australia

Thursday

Deborah Ross

The Inbetweeners 2 is as filthy as a teenage boy – and it’s hilarious

The first Inbetweeners film made £45 million at the box office, and was such an unexpected smash there was always going to be a second one, which is fair enough. It is based on the TV sitcom (Channel 4, 2008–2010), which was a favourite in our house, not that I was ever allowed to watch it in the same room at the same time as my then teenage son. Why? I would want to know. Because you think I don’t know what ‘clunge’ is? Listen, I’ve had a clunge since before you were born. In fact, you wouldn’t have even been born had it not been for my clunge. But

Monday

Melanie McDonagh

The Down’s syndrome surrogacy story is horrible. But Britain has no right to sneer

To look on the heartwarming side, Australians have shown that they are rather more humane as a nation than the anonymous couple in the news for allegedly discarding one of the twins borne for them by a Thai surrogate six months ago. Scores of Australians have volunteered to adopt Gammy, the Down’s syndrome baby that was commissioned from Pattaramon Chanbua by an Australian couple only to be abandoned by his parents when they discovered his condition; they took  his healthy twin sister though (and the couple now deny knowledge of Gammy). The fund to pay for the baby’s medical treatment, generously funded by Australians, now stands at more than $180,000. The

Thursday

Tom Switzer

Australia’s Tony Abbott has made history by abolishing the hated carbon tax

A few years ago, the conventional wisdom down under held that Tony Abbott and his centre-right Liberal Party were crazy to oppose the notion of carbon pricing. The view was so commonplace among Canberra press gallery pundits that it seemed reckless to contradict it. Those were the days, remember, when global warming alarmism was all the rage around the western world. From Sydney to Southampton, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was a blockbuster. An Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, had declared that climate change was the world’s ‘greatest moral challenge.’ Nigel Lawson’s book, An Appeal to Reason, was rejected by every British publisher, to whom it was submitted. As one

Friday

Melanie McDonagh

Tony Abbott fights the good fight for aborigines’ rights

The status of aborigines in Australia has, to be frank, hardly crossed my radar until now. But that was before I met Tanya Hosch, a representative of the community who’s over here right now campaigning for them to get an honourable mention in the Australian constitution. ‘We just want to be acknowledged in the country’s foundational document,’ she says. ‘It really would make a difference to the way we feel that others see us.’ Australians, it seems, regard their constitution as a bit of a workhorse, clarifying various aspects of life without any of the grander aspirations of the US constitution. Most of them aren’t really aware that aborigines are

Thursday

James Mcnamara

The Australian literary icon who fooled her family

There aren’t many places you can get shouty about Proust without losing your job. The Lane Bookshop in Perth, Western Australia, is one of them. As an undergraduate, I’d pitch up there for work on Saturday mornings with as much song in the heart as a hangover allowed. Because for me the Lane wasn’t just a shop, it was a salon. The young staff, all writers, were encouraged (and fed, when cash was scarce) by the kind owners. Debates sparked between the shelves. And great Australian novelists came in to buy the books. The late Elizabeth Jolley was one of these. She must have been 80 when I last saw

Friday

Steerpike

Tony Abbott, the Prime ‘Nerd’ of Australia

There are two types of Australian male: the ‘julios’, a modern import who likes soft drinks and hair product, and the ‘nerds’, the traditional breed who like beer and Sheilas. Tony Abbott is a nerd. On his recent visit to America, Abbott could not have done less to counter national stereotypes. The customised surfboard he gave to ‘the dude-in-chief’, President Obama, could only have been bettered in the nerds’ catalogue by a crate of 4X and a cork hat. Mr S is looking forward to the White House releasing pictures of the board in action.

Monday

Rod Liddle

Save our Royals from Australian paws

How can we stop Australian politicians from touching up members of our Royal Family, in the manner of a libidinous BBC Radio disc jockey? If you remember, the former Prime Minister Paul Keating once groped the Queen, without even having first invited her out for a drink. Now the current PM, a man called Tony Abbott, has draped his meaty arm around the Duke of Cambridge, probably while making some over-familiar or even vulgar aside about his wife. “Punched above your weight there, you sly old bugger,” or something similarly grotesque. Obviously the Royals will need to visit the Antipodes from time to time, to let them know that we

Friday

Rowan Dean

The Royal Family beats Australia’s dreary political class hands down

Only a few hours before the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge landed in Sydney for the start of their much-hyped royal Australian visit, Barry O’Farrell, the popular Premier of New South Wales, stunned the nation by resigning. His reason? He couldn’t remember having quaffed a bottle of wine. (No ordinary wine, mind you, but a bottle of 1959 Penfolds Grange, valued at around GBP 1,700.) In years to come, no doubt among Barry’s many regrets will be the fact that he didn’t get to hob nob on the harbour with the glam royal couple. A timely coincidence, because what links these two events goes to the heart of why Australia’s

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Peter Atherton answers EDF, and Battersea Dogs Home answers Rod Liddle

Political best buys Sir: Fraser Nelson’s excellent article ‘Cameron’s Northern Alliance’ (1 March) made me wonder whether we, as voters, at the next election could benefit from a simple and independent chart (perhaps a Which?-style guide) comparing the policies offered by the parties, and the outcomes of the varying policies adopted across Europe. We all carry out research before purchasing insurance or booking a holiday by checking guides, so why not have something similar when choosing a government? It must be better than voters making a decision based on the superficial grounds of the party leaders’ secondary education or resemblance to a cartoon character. Stephen Marsh London WC2 The cost

Thursday

Mark Palmer

Warning: upspeak can wreck your career

A few weeks ago, I accompanied my daughter to an Open Day at Roehampton College, where she is hoping to start a teacher training course in September. I enjoyed it — and was impressed by the broad mix of motivated young men and women who, if all goes well, will soon be teaching the next generation of primary school children. Towards the end of the afternoon, the co-ordinator said she wanted to offer a few tips about the interview process that would begin once all the applications have been submitted. It turned out she had only one main tip: avoid upspeak. She stressed the point vigorously. Indeed, her message for

Thursday

Roger Alton

It’s not just Kevin Pietersen. England needs a whole team of new heroes

Englishmen used to be deported to Australia as a punishment. Now they get sent back to England as an act of mercy. There was not much of a campaign to ‘free the press box three’ after Australia’s immigration services ordered the eviction of the men from the Sun, Mirror and Daily Mail before the winter’s wretched Ashes tour was over. Having arrived with the players for the warm-up matches and watched as defeat followed humiliating defeat, they were the last men standing when the one-day series got under way. Other papers had kindly brought home their ‘dukes’ after the Test series and sent the ‘butlers’, as cricket reporters call each

Anne Chisholm

Germaine Greer’s mad, passionate quest to heal Australia

Like an old woman in a fairy story, Germaine Greer, now in her late seventies, has taken to lurking in a forest. Always inclined to reinterpret the world through her own changing needs and perceptions, and to instruct the rest of us accordingly, she has now written a book of passionate didactic energy about her quest for regeneration, personal, national and global. She explores in exquisite, sometimes  overwhelming detail the story of how in 2001 she bought a patch of subtropical rainforest in southern New South Wales, what she found there and what it has taught her and could teach the rest of us if we would only pay attention.

Thursday

Selina Hastings

Australia’s entrancing Sheila

The ‘dollar princesses’, those American heiresses who crossed the Atlantic in search of a titled husband, are familiar figures from the 19th and early 20th century. Less well known are the young ladies who made the much longer journey from Australia, and who, like their transatlantic counterparts, arrived in England with large fortunes, ready to be launched on an intensely competitive marriage market. Sheila Chisholm was one of these arrivals from ‘the Land of the Wattle’, as the colony was often described. The daughter of a wealthy grazier from New South Wales, she reached London in July 1914 with barely enough time to be presented at court before the outbreak

Monday

Alex Massie

India holds the cricket world to ransom; England and Australia agree to pay

Almost no idea is rotten enough that it can’t or won’t be defended by some scoundrel somewhere. Even so, the equanimity with which some folk have greeted the proposed ICC coup is startling. Sure, the likes of Andy Bull, Mike Selvey and Simon Wilde each note that the ECB-CA-BCCI takeover is seriously flawed but, gosh, something needs to be done about the International Cricket Council and, by jove, this is at least something. Besides, Giles Clarke and his two pals say they wish to protect test cricket so we should take that assurance at face value and all will be well. Or something. I must say that seems an oddly credulous approach

Monday

Alex Massie

A Carve-Up That’s Just Not Cricket

By god, you know matters have come to a wretched pass when you feel inclined to defend and protect the International Cricket Council. And yet, remarkably, such a moment is upon us. Like the old Roman republic, the ICC is threatened by a triumvirate. In this instance, Crassus is represented three times as India, England and Australia bid to carve up cricket’s empire between themselves. Few people doubt change is needed. The ICC has been broken for ages. It is easy to conclude that it has outlived its usefulness. Nevertheless, that does not mean any proposed alternative is going to produce better outcomes for cricket. The proposals for reforming cricket’s

Thursday

Anne Chisholm

Breakdowns, suicide attempts — and four great novels

Among the clever young Australians who came over here in the 1960s to find themselves and make their mark, a number, as we all know, never went back. A few became household names — Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries, Clive James — and British cultural life owes them a great deal. Madeleine St John, the novelist and semi-reclusive eccentric who smoked herself to an early death in London in 2006, was one of them; but although eventually she made a  minor literary reputation for herself, writing four novels in her middle age of which the third, The Essence of the Thing, made the Booker shortlist in 1997, she has remained largely

Friday

Ed West

Playing down Australia and New Zealand’s role in the Great War is shameful

Back in the 1950s my grandmother wrote her memoirs of childhood in Edwardian London, a story that ends in the summer of 1914, when she was 14. In contrast to the image we’re given of cheering men skipping to war, she recalls her father in tears at the breakfast table, lamenting that the politicians had failed. He foresaw total disaster (optimism runs in the family). She then finds that her brother has joined up, not out of excitement or glory but because he’s ashamed not to be in uniform; he survived, although broken by shellshock, and his elder son was killed in the next war. It’s clear from her recollection

Tuesday

Bruce Anderson

Can Lord Heseltine save the England cricket team?

Apologies may be in order. A few weeks ago, I was advocating aid for Australia. As we had set the place up, we had a duty when this once-proud daughter house was sliding into decline. We used criminals to get the country going, which worked well. Hard, amoral characters, they built a nation in their own image. That was Australia for two centuries: hard, amoral – and good at cricket. Then everything seemed to be going wrong. Perhaps it was the southern sun’s fault: melting down toughness and leaving a vacuum for decadence. It was time for the mother country to come to the rescue with fresh supplies of convicts

Friday

Bruce Anderson

Drink: The great white Burgundy disaster

We agreed that it was the gravest crisis facing mankind. It has led to dashed hopes, widespread grief and a universal loss of confidence in the future. As the scientists seem powerless, the world is thrown back on superstition. If the learned have no answers, one may as well listen to old Jacques, who remembers his great uncle’s advice about coping with phylloxera. I refer, of course, to oxidisation and white Burgundy. The 1996 was supposed to be superb and long-lasting. Friends of mine finally decided that the moment had come to begin enjoying their Chassagnes, Pulignys and Chablis grands crus. Aargh. Instead of vinous glory, harmonies of structure, subtlety

Tuesday

The Spectator

The Spectator correctly predicted that Australia would regain the Ashes

Australia have regained the Ashes, much to the dismay of the British side. But did the Spectator’s Australian edition predict this might happen months ago? Here’s Terry Barnes’s piece from August, in which he suggested that Australian cricket does well under a Conservative government, and terrible under a Labor one.    So the Australian Test cricket team licks its wounds after yet another disastrous Ashes series in which its top-order batting was too brittle and its bowling lacked sufficient penetration. What’s been overlooked, however, is that the crash in Australia’s Test fortunes since December 2007 coincides with the disastrous Labor tenures of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Tellingly, Australia’s greatest postwar Test glory