Politics Factlets: Australia

Today is Election Day in Oz with the likelihood of a change in government.

Here are some factlets about Australian politics and government.

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The Tree of Knowledge, Barcaldine, 1997

The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is descended from Labour parties, parties in various countries that were mostly social democrats or democratic socialists, traditionally allied to the labour movement and trade unions. The ALP was founded in the 1890’s in the Australian colonial parliaments prior to federation. The founding of Queensland Labour, and thereby the ALP, originated with a meeting of striking pastoral workers under a ghost gum tree, the “Tree of Knowledge”, in Barcaldine, Queensland in 1891. The Balmain,New South Wales, branch of the party claims to be the oldest in Australia. The tree was poisoned in 2006 and the ALP offered $10,000 reward for information as to the culprits. The tree has been successfully cloned and young Trees of Knowledge are growing Barcaldine. The preserved trunk of the original tree remains in Barcaldine and is pictured below.

The preserved stump of the tree today.

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The ALP pre-dates both the British Labour Party (1900) and New Zealand Labour Party (1916) in party formation, government, and policy implementation. The name was changed from Labour to Labor in 1912 due to the influence of the American labor movement, a prominent figure in Labor politics being the American King O’Malley. That’s from the ALP website. It also made it easier to distinguish the name of the party from the labour movement in general. There is no truth in the suggestions that that all the “u’s” had been grabbed first by the union movement (TWU, AWU etc), or that there is no place or caring for you in Australian Labor.

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The Liberal Party was founded by Robert Menzies in 1945 by an alliance of various free enterprise parties. Menzies claimed that it represented 'the forgotten people': office workers, shopkeepers and small business owners who supported themselves and their families and did not look to governments for assistance. 

Menzies had become Prime Minister in 1939 as the leader of the United Australia Party but led a minority government when the leader of the Country Party, Earl Page, refused to support him. By 1941 he had lost so much support within the UAP that he was forced to resign office. 

Having formed the Liberal party in 1945, he won office in 1949 and thereafter kept his bottom on the Prime Minister’s chair for a record 16 years, from 1949 to 1966, becoming Oz’s longest serving PM. Noted for his quick mind and ability to deal with hecklers, while he was speaking in Williamstown, Victoria, in 1954, a heckler shouted, "I wouldn’t vote for you if you were the Archangel Gabriel." Menzies replied "If I were the Archangel Gabriel, I’m afraid you wouldn't be in my constituency."

The Liberal Party today is regarded as conservative, right of centre with a platform of economic liberalism and social conservatism.

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In 1932, Francis De Groot, a retired cavalry officer, managed to get himself selected as part of the honour guard at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. When the ribbon was about to be cut, he galloped forward on his horse and slashed the ribbon with his sword, declaring the bridge open in the name of 'the decent citizens of New South Wales'. The ribbon was then tied back together and the ceremony continued. De Groot was carried off to a mental hospital, declared insane and later fined for the replacement cost of one ribbon.

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Australia was the second country to give women the vote.

South Australia gave the vote to women in 1895; New Zealand did so in 1893,

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The secret ballot was first used in Victoria and South Australia following the granting of responsible government. Other states introduced secret ballots as follows: 1856 - Victoria & South Australia 1858 - New South Wales & Tasmania 1859 - Queensland 1893 - Western Australia. The secret ballot was referred to as 'kangaroo voting'. Worldwide, secret voting is often referred to as the 'Australian ballot.

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In 1954, Bob Hawke was immortalised by the Guinness Book of Records for sculling 2.5 pints of beer in 11 seconds. Bob later became the Prime Minister of Australia.

Bob Hawke, himself to become PM, Shows PM Whitlam how it's done.  Hawke's record was set with a jug, not a Yard of Ale, thereby avoiding the killer splashback.

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Prime Minister Harold Holt went for a swim at Cheviot Beach, near Portsea on 17th December 1967, and was never seen again. The event has been referred to as 'the swim that needed no towel'.

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The Australian Coat Of Arms has a kangaroo and an emu on it. The reason being, kangaroos and emus can’t go backwards, they can only walk/hop forward.

(I have read elsewhere that that is an urban myth but the website of DFAT, the Australian Government Depart of Foreign Affairs and Trade, states: “ It is thought the kangaroo and emu were chosen to symbolise a nation moving forward, reflecting a common belief that neither animal can move backwards easily.”)

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Oops, wrong One Nation graphic

Australia is the only continent on Earth occupied by one nation.

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The last convicts were transported to Western Australia in 1868. 

(Before anyone takes me to task and says that the pic above is outside Hyde park barracks in Sydney, let me say that I have deliberately used that pic to recommend an exhibition on there to 31.12.2016 of convict life and times. The Barracks were used to house Sydney's convicts and the exhibition is well worth a visit).

Last Words: Lavinia Fisher

"If any of you have a message to give the devil, give it to me quick -- I'm about to meet him!"

- Lavinia Fishert (1793-1820)

The above words were spoken by Lavinia Fisher as she was about to be executed by hanging on 18 February, 1820. She is today recognised as the first female mass murderer in the United States.

Born in 1793 but origins unknown, she and husband John Fisher, who was executed with her, owned a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. Although she and her husband killed and robbed numerous male guests who came to the hotel, the lack of evidence and the couple’s popularity meant that suspicions about missing guests did not go anywhere. The usual pattern was that guests were given drugged tea and, once asleep in their beds, were dumped into a pit by Lavinia's pulling on a lever, causing the bed to collapse.

Their enterprise came undone when a guest, John Peeples, secretly dumped his tea because of his dislike of tea. The questioning by Lavinia as to his means had made him suspicious. That night he slept in a chair and was woken by the sound of the bed collapsing. He jumped out the window and notified the law. 

Both Lavinia and her husband were convicted of highway robbery, a capital offence and both were sentenced to hang.

John Fisher got religion whilst waiting to be hanged and protested his innocence to the crowd gathered to watch the hanging. He then begged their forgiveness, apparently not realising that the innocent needed forgiveness. 

According to one observer at the time, Lavinia was not as calm as John:

“She stamped in rage and swore with all the vehemence of her amazing vocabulary, calling down damnation on a governor who would let a woman swing. The crowd stood shocked into silence, while she cut short one curse with another and ended with a volley of shrieks.”

John Fisher was then despatched.

Lavinia was hanged a day later, having argued that they could not hang a married woman. With John Fisher executed, they simply hanged Lavinia, now no longer a married woman, the next day.

Moments before the trap was to be sprung she called out the above quoted words to the crowd, then cheated the State and the hangman of their final moments of triumph – before the hangman could hang her, she jumped off the scaffold and hanged herself.

Politics Factlets and Trivia: World Politics

As we here in Oz approach Saturday's Federal election, it seems appropriate to have a post or two on politics. . . 

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Largest Political Division:

The Commonwealth of Nations, commonly known as the Commonwealth, covers an area of 31,462,574 km2, 12,147,768 square miles. It's a free association of 53 independent sovereign states, most of which are former British colonies, with the exceptions being the United Kingdom and Mozambique.

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The Most Decisive Election

North Korea's general election on 8 October 1962 recorded a 100% turn-out of electors and a 100% vote for the Workers' Party of Korea.

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The Largest Election

The largest elections of any country were those beginning on 24 December 1984 for the Indian Lok Sabha (“House of the People”) with 542 elective seats. The government of Rajiu Gandhi was returned in polls where 379,000,000 electors were eligible to vote. There were 480,000 polling stations for 5,301 candidates manned by 2.5 million staff.

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The Most Bent Election

President Charles D.B. King won the Liberian presidential election on 1927 with an officially announced figure of 234,000 - a majority over his opponent Mr. Thomas J.R. Faulkner of the People's Party. The President thus claimed a 'majority' more than 15.5 times greater than the entire electorate.

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The Closest Election

On 18 January 1961, in Zanzibar, the Afro-Shirazi Party won by a single vote the seat of Chake-Chake on Pemba Island,  the closest general election ever.

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Narrowest win

On 7 August 1979 in Mississippi, USA, Robert E. Joiner was declared the winner over W.H. Pyron with 133,587 votes to 133,582. That's the narrowest recorded percentage win in an election. The loser got more than 49.999% of the votes for the office of Southern District Highway Commissioner.

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The Highest Personal Majority Election

In March, 1977, Ram Bilas Paswam, 30, the Janata candidate for Hajipur in Bihar, India set the highest ever personal majority by any politician, 424,545. The electorate was 625,179.

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The Largest Communist Party

Partito Comunista Italiano has been the largest national Communist party outside USSR and communist states. It has a membership of 2,300,000 in 1946.

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The Most Mature Electorate Election

In Andorra, a person must be at least 25 years of age to be eligible for voting.

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The Largest Ballot Paper

The State Assembly (Vidhan Sabha) elections in Karnataka on 5 March 1985 had 301 candidates for Belgaum city.

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The Most Coups 

On 30 June 1984, President Hernan Silez Zuazo, 70 was kidnapped by more than 60 armed men from his official residence. That's the 191st coup in Bolivia since it became a sovereign country in 1825.

5 Lemony Snicket Quotes

Lemony Snicket is the legal pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler (born February 28, 1970). Snicket is the author of several children's books, serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events (his best-known work) and appearing as a character within the series. Because of this, Lemony Snicket is both a fictional character and a real person. As a character, Snicket is a harried, troubled writer and researcher falsely accused of felonies and continuously hunted by the police and his enemies, the fire-starting side of the secret organisation Volunteer Fire Department.

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Art: DALeast

One of the features of street art, good street art, not the mindless spray painting of a nickname on a wall, “tagging”, is that it is often innovative, different, original. So it is with the street art of DALeast, an anonymous Chinese born artist living in Capetown in South Africa. Aged 29, he paints his works with a spray can on walls, bridges and buildings, sometimes over 100 metres in width in a style that looks like thousands of 3 dimensional metal shards. In reality they are all painted on flat surfaces. Although he lives in South Africa he spends 6 months of every year travelling and has left his works on all the continents. Works are done in a hurry to avoid arrest; he was arrested in China in 2008 before the Olympics in a pre-emptive precautionary blitz.

Here are some of his works:

Mural of two cats fighting, London

Large mural of a flying bird, Honolulu, Hawaii

Dolphin leaping, Paris

String of camels, wall of parking station in Miami

Stags on a wall in Vienna, Austria, detail of one of the stags below

Eagle, Cape Town

Whale, side of a warehous, New York.  Note the size in comparison to the pedestrian.

Eagle, Cape Town

Big cat pouncing, splintering, London

Diver, Los Angeles

Pulitzer Prize for Photography 1965

Caution: Disturbing images

Continuing the list of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Photography, from inception in 1942; and the World Press Photograph of the Year, from inception in 1955.

Pulitzer Prize for Photography
Year:	1965
Photographer:	Horst Faas
Photograph:	Combat photography of the war in Sth Vietnam 1964

Horst Faas, pictured in 2008

Although legendary photo-journalist Horst Faas (1933-1912) was best known for his images of the war in Vietnam, his bio makes Chuck Norris look like a pussy.  Horst Faas was the John Wayne of photo journalists.

Here is the bio on him from Wikipedia:

Born in Berlin, Germany, Faas began his photographic career in 1951 with the Keystone Agency, and by the age of 21 he was already covering major events concerning Indochina, including the peace negotiations in Geneva in 1954. In 1956 he joined the Associated Press (AP), where he acquired a reputation for being an unflinching hard-news war photographer, covering the wars in Vietnam and Laos, as well as in the Congo and Algeria. In 1962, he became AP’s chief photographer for Southeast Asia, and was based in Saigon until 1974. His images of the Vietnam War won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1965. In 1967 he was severely wounded in the legs by an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade)) and used a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In 1972, he collected a second Pulitzer, for his coverage of the conflict in Bangladesh. Inside Bangladesh, photographer Rashid Talukder considered it too dangerous to publish his photographs and he released them more than twenty years after Horst's photographs had appeared.

Faas is also famed for his work as a picture editor, and was instrumental in ensuring the publication of two of the most famous images of the Vietnam War. The notorious :Saigon Execution” " photograph, showing the summary execution of a Vietcong prisoner by Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan, taken by Eddie Adams in Saigon on February 1, 1968 was sent under his direction. Nick Ut's famous “Napalm Girl” photograph caused a huge controversy over at the AP bureau; an editor had objected to the photo, saying that the girl depicted was naked and that nobody would accept it. Faas ordered that Ut's photo be sent over the wire.

In September 1990, freelance photographer Greg Marinovich submitted a series of graphic photos of a crowd executing a man to the AP bureau in Jiohannesburg. Once again, AP editors were uncertain if the photos should be sent over the wire. One editor sent the images to Faas, who telegrammed back, "send all photos."

In 1976, Faas moved to London as AP’s senior photo editor for Europe; he retired in 2004. In retirement he organised reunions of the wartime Saigon press corps and ran international photojournalism symposiums.

He produced four books on his career and other news photographers, including Requiem, a book about photographers killed on both sides of the Vietnam War, co-edited with fellow Vietnam War photojournalist Tim Page.

According to the 1965 jury that made recommendations for the Pulitzer awards:

“First choice: a portfolio on the Vietnam war by Associated Press photographer Horst Faas.  The jury was struck by the richness and diversity of the photographer’s work, consisting on the one hand of spot pictures, made in the midst of violent action, laden with the drama of the instant, and on the other hand a series of studies filled with artistry, compassion and deep sensitivity to the tragic environment of war.”

The recommendation was accepted by the determining Advisory Board and Horst Faas was awarded the 1965 Pulitzer.

Faas has such an extensive body of outstanding work that it is had to select images.  The Pulitzer jury was spot on in saying that his photographs graphically bring home the horror of war and its effect on humanity, not only on the innocent civilian men, women and children but also on the soldiers. On viewing his photographs, one is struck by the dehumanising, the poignancy and the randomness of death and war. . . 

Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon, in January of 1966

A South Vietnamese woman mourns over the body of her husband in 1969

A father holding his son, a small child covered in napalm burns. The photograph was taken on March 19, 1964, shortly after Vietnamese forces had devastated a small village where suspected communist Viet Cong were hiding. The attack killed dozens of innocent people.

A father held the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers looked down from their armored vehicle on March 19, 1964. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas into a village near the Cambodian border. This photo was one of several that earned Faas the first of two Pulitzer Prizes.

A South Vietnamese soldier uses the end of a dagger to beat a farmer for allegedly supplying government troops with inaccurate information about the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in a village west of Saigon, Vietnam, on Jan. 9, 1964. This photo was also one of several that earned Faas his first Pulitzer.

Flying low over the jungle, an A-1 Skyraider drops 500-pound bombs on a Viet Cong position below as smoke rises from a previous pass at the target, Dec. 26, 1964.

January 1965:   The sun breaks through dense jungle foliage around the embattled town of Binh Gia, 40 miles east of Saigon, as South Vietnamese troops, joined by U.S. advisers, rest after a cold, damp and tense night of waiting in an ambush position for a Viet Cong attack that didn't come

An unidentified U.S. Army soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet, June 18, 1965, during the Vietnam War. He was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Battalion on defense duty at Phouc Vinh airstrip in South Vietnam.

In this Nov. 27, 1965 photo, a Vietnamese litter bearer wears a face mask to keep out the smell as he passes the bodies of U.S. and Vietnamese soldiers killed in fighting against the Viet Cong at the Michelin rubber plantation, about 45 miles northeast of Saigon.

In this March 1965 photo, hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into the tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, Vietnam, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border. 

See more of Horst Faas’s Vietnam work at:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2012/05/15/photographer-collection-horst-faas-vietnam/5689/

Horst Faas on assignment in Vietnam