It Be True

Looks like you can never leave your entertainment reporter past behind!

Having fun filling in for the far superior Michelle Johnson on Trash Talk for The Age Online. I’ve met Richard Reid and interviewed Nelson Aspen and they’re good at what they do. Here’s my little effort, with technical wizardry from Andrew Webster, Marc Eiden and others.

ON ANZAC Day, Australians tend to congregate. At home this is easy enough, with the dawn service, BBQs in the park and the huge match between Essendon and Collingwood at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

In New York, you’ve got to work a bit harder, but it’s worth it. You can check out my Age article here, or the longer version down below.

The local Australian rules football team, the New York Magpies, put on a huge event on Pier 66 (also known as The Frying Pan) and hundreds of Australians, New Zealanders and slightly confused Americans came to party, jutting out onto the water. The Magpies are a great crew – men, women, locals, Australians – and it’s been fantastic to train with them over the past year. There’s some pictures of the day here.

DANIEL ZIFFER

NEW YORK

HIGH above the bluster and fury of New York City’s grey streets is the peaceful Anzac Memorial Garden, a small green tract of Australasia atop the iconic Rockefeller Centre.

Looking down over the posh boutiques of Fifth Avenue and up to the soaring St. Patrick’s Cathedral spires, Australians and New Zealanders will gather far from home this weekend to remember the fallen.

It is rarely open to the public but will hold the final event of a weekend of commemorative services co-hosted by Australian Consul General Phillip Scanlan and his Kiwi counterpart Paul Gestro and attended by US-based expatriots, officials and military personnel from the three nations and Turkey.

Earlier a dawn service at the southern tip of Manhattan, overlooking the Statue of Liberty, will lead into a celebration held by local Australian Rules team, the New York Magpies.

Luke Kavenagh, a financial analyst originally from Geelong, said the series of events provided a “good connection” to home for the masses of Australians working in the Big Apple

“It seems like there’s about 10 Australians in New York,” said Kavenagh, “until an event comes along and they come out of the woodwork.”

The Magpies’ Anzac Day event is one of the largest Australasian expat gatherings of the year, alongside Australia Day and the AFL Grand Final, drawing hundreds to an afternoon of bands, beer and BBQ.

Assistant coach Glenn Ormsby said the event attracted tourists and newcomers alongside Australians and New Zealanders who have lived in the US for more than 20 years.

“Whilst the day is a great celebration of the Australian and New Zealand spirit and culture,” he said, “the most important aspect of remembering those who gave their lives for our freedom is reinforced with a moving rendition of the Last Post and a minutes silence.”

The Anzacs have been remembered in New York since 1941, when New Zealand silent film star Nola Luxford – who became known as the “Angel of the Anzacs” for setting up a club that welcomed 35,000 visiting soldiers – established the garden after asking the Rockefeller family for a place to commemorate the force’s war dead. An annual service is held on the closest Sunday to Anzac Day.

“The Anzac visitors experienced the best of New York’s theatre, music, art and opera, for free,” Luxford’s biographer Carole Van Grondelle wrote. “They were put up in the homes of New Yorkers and invited to dances and parties. They met girls, went sightseeing, toured nightclubs and generally took maximum advantage of the infinite variety for which New York was justly famous.”

Luxford’s legacy is the garden, which sits on top of the British Empire Building, part of the famous office and arts complex constructed during the darkest days of the Depression. It features a rectangle reflective pool representing the Pacific Ocean and three garden beds symbolising the countries in the military alliance.

The US gets the largest bed.

ACTOR Geoffrey Rush has got insanely good reviews for his role as King Berenger in director Neil Armfield’s Exit The King. Co-star Susan Sarandon, not so much. Nice to know that my personal review of the show was backed up by the Times and institutions with actual clout.

The red carpet was a bit damp, but we managed to steal some words with Hugh Jackman and Tim Robbins, Sarandon’s partner. His tiny 2-cm long ponytail was secured with a rubberband, either a nod to frugality in these fraught economic times or the first thing to hand.

Check out my report, in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.

NOTE: An addition to my article suggested Julia Roberts was there at Thursday’s premiere. She actually went on Tuesday.

Hi. My article is in Sydney newspaper The Sun-Herald this morning. Here’s the longer version.

DANIEL ZIFFER
NEW YORK

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s dream of winning a UN Security Council seat might be dashed by ongoing international concerns about Australia’s record on human rights.
Australia’s poor treatment of its Indigenous population and refugees will come under scrutiny by an international human rights watch dog, amid continuing lobbying for a seat on the prestigious UN body that oversees military and peace-keeping operations.
The Human Rights Committee will today examine Australia’s human rights record and issues including the Northern Territory intervention and immigration detention.
Australian lawyers meeting in New York this week said a good report from the Committee would improve the Prime Minister’s bid to enter the Security Council, the “theme” of which concerns the promotion of human rights in the Asian region.
“It would assist substantially,” said Philip Lynch, director of the Human Rights Law Resource Centre. “Australia has put human rights front and centre of its Security Council bid.”
High-level representatives from the Immigration, Indigenous Affairs and Attorney-General’s departments will represent Australia in front of the committee during the two-day hearing.
Andrew Hudson, senior associate at non-government organisation Human Rights First, said the Committee objectively examined countries and their compliance with treaties and standards.
“It documents human rights violations wherever they occur and regardless of national political systems,” he said. “It will criticise Australia’s human rights record to the extent that it falls short.”
The Rudd Government should act on the Committee’s observations to improve human rights, Hudson said.
“Such constructive engagement with the committee would enhance Australia’s international reputation and demonstrate its capability to use a Security Council seat responsibly,” he added.
The bid for a seat at the Security Council in New York may cause changes in Australia. Unlike the US and the United Kingdom, Australia does not have a bill of rights, and proponents sense the bid could propel the Rudd Government to enshrine human rights in law, as they are in Victoria and other states.
Teena Bagli from the National Association of Community Legal Centres said human rights in Australia had to be secured for a bid to succeed.
“I think it’s vital for the Government – who has said human rights is important to them and is a part of their Security Council bid – to really walk the walk,” she said. “Hopefully it will just put a bit of extra light on Australia’s human rights protection domestically, which is not very comprehensive at all.”

Brilliant video from the Black Eyed Peas’ front-man will.i.am, who did the brilliant Yes We Can video, one of the most effective bits of web campaigning I’ve ever seen.

It\’s A New Day

OUR connected world means more than wearing fashions knocked off from Italians, manufactured in China and sold to Australians in English chain stores.

It means ties so close we have to accept that a US shopper flapping shut their wallet can send ripples over the ocean that turn into waves on our shores.

The International Monetary Fund and now the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have predicted that the financial crisis has probably tipped the world’s developed countries beyond the point of denial. They are in recession and are likely to remain so through the first half of next year.

The think-tank forecasts that economic output would shrink 1.4% in this quarter and 0.3% in all of 2009. Australia is one of 30 democratic market economies they included in their calculations and part of what they call an “aggregate shrinkage” in their members, for the first time since oil shocks rocked the world in the 1970s.

Predictions are just that, imperfect. In June the Organisation forecast growth of 1.7 percent in 2009 because they believed the worst of the financial crisis might have passed. But the sprawling casualties of the credit crunch mean their new guesstimate is probably closer to reality.

The impending global recession has its trendsetter in Europe’s largest economy Germany, but here in the US it is becoming increasingly hard to avoid the 800-kilogram downturn in the room.

Indicators of all stripes point down. Electronics retailer Circuit City closed 155 stores before filing for bankruptcy and the world’s largest coffee chain Starbucks released results as distasteful as their product. Profit tumbled 21% during the second quarter as people close their wallets on discretionary spending.

Car sales have fallen off a cliff, or rather been pushed by a combination of tight credit, people’s fears about holding on to their job and a lack of confidence in the future of America’s three largest car-makers. Years of hubris and poor decision-making have left them making cars consumers didn’t want, or – with rampaging oil prices – couldn’t afford to drive.

The Bush Administration has already pledged $25 billion (US$37B) to help the industry get fuel-efficient. Now they want another $25B in short-term government loans to stay afloat. Without it, General Motors warned, it would run out of cash in the first half of next year.

The price tag could be up to $75 billion (US$50B) for the reward of saving millions of jobs, which would occur if a manufacturer collapsed. In October, GM’s sales were down an astonishing 45% on a year ago; the second biggest company Ford dropped 30% and Chrysler fell 35%. The annual break-even point for U.S. automakers of about 16.2 million vehicle sales per year – they’re currently at an annual rate of about 10.7 million units.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has rejected claims his Government’s $6 billion plan will end up funnelled into the pockets of the US industry, because the cash needs to be matched by companies to be accessed. But if the new US administration can’t fix the industry it’s anyone’s guess.

Into this mess wades President-elect Barack Obama, who does not have super powers, but who does have Super Friends.

His Transition Economic Advisory Board - member of which you can see above – threatens a serious outbreak of competence in US administration. A kind of financially-focussed Justice League of America, the combined heft of the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Xerox chief executive Anne Mulcahy and Lawrence “former World Bank Chief Economist, US Treasury Secretary, President of Harvard University” Summers among others bodes well for solid solutions to the problems in the US and global economy.

You can imagine the meeting. “Hey, Omaha’s on the phone,” someone would say, as Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett, potentially the richest man in the world, chimes in with his thoughts.

The global financial community and the US economy need their help.

US unemployment figures have rocketed past the last recession’s top mark to 6.5%, their highest level in more than 14 years and the fastest rise in almost twice as long.

Manufacturing and construction took the biggest hit, but staff rolls were also slashed at retailers, hospitality providers and financial services firms.

Northeastern Illinois University professor of economics Edward Stuart said the figures got worse as you drilled into groups who attained only lower levels of education.“(And) the two worst industries you could be in right now are car manufacturing and house construction,” he said.

Only recently home builders could not keep up with demand and car makers toyed with converting their plants to only construct more profitable sports utility vehicles.

Now you can’t give either of them away.

An economy that needs to create 100,000 jobs every month to keep up with population growth, and where 70% of economic activity is consumption, has lost 1.2 million jobs in this year alone.

It’s scary stuff. The waves are already lapping at our shores, eroding away.

Good morning if you’ve come here from my article in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times or WA Today. I’m not here to freak you out any more than is already evident in the article, but there are tough times here. No easy, simple answers. No zippy structural changes which will bring the good times flying back.

But there are reasons for optimism – beyond just the fact that pessimism is the refuge of the weak.

* The US is about to elect a new leader: one who believes President George W. Bush has trashed the country’s international reputation – and understands why this is actually a problem. The presidency of Barack Obama is not going to be a sweeping broom or a magic wand, but after the ineptitude and ideologically-driven choices of the eight-year Bush administration, anything is an improvement.

* Stocks are cheap right now! The S&P 500 index just had its worst month since 1987, so there’s a lot of value in there which will tempt the last seven liquid investors in the world out of their caves.

Seriously, that’s about it. Every other sign is bad – things will get worse before they get better. But you knew that anyway. There’s no such thing as “this time it’s different”. The boom  we laughed through – and largely wasted as the roaring of excess drowned out voices urging frugality – has a corresponding bust and we are it.

The party I described was in a lavish hilltop mansion and celebrated the launch of Qantas’ hulking A380 and the the impending departure of chief executive Geoff Dixon. Here’s some of what I had to cut out for length.

Guests listened intently as John Travolta proposed a toast.

The Pulp Fiction star paid tribute to Qantas’ new A380 aircraft before moving to his main thread, praise for outgoing chief executive Geoff Dixon.

Since he was a child, Travolta had wondered what an airline boss would be like. “Somewhere between an artist and a businessman,” he said, “And I couldn’t get over (Dixon’s) boldness and risk-taking abilities”.  

At an astonishingly large Los Angeles hilltop mansion, 80 people stood and clinked their glasses in celebration.

Looking across the city, past the sixteenth-century masters in the lavish home of investment banker Alexander Cappello, you could feel numbingly insulated from the crises afflicting America: two wars, a stumbling economy and the destruction of domestic and global confidence in the country’s leadership.

But in the US you’re never far away from the edge, and in the valleys and plains of the expansive city, the fires that grew to burn bourses and economies around the world are still smouldering…

Dixon knows his boldness will be tested. This is not the most auspicious time to be launching a gleaming aircraft with 450 seats which Qantas expects people to pay “much more” for tickets. 

The Stateside debut of the hulking aircraft is part of Dixon’s farewell tour, before Jetstar’s Alan Joyce takes the post next month.

“There’s a good deal of talk around the world right now about trust and confidence and I think rightly so,” Dixon said. “These are challenging times and when I say challenging I mean very, very challenging indeed.”

Earlier, on the tarmac, he was more expansive.

“Obviously the current economic situation makes things a bit difficult for airlines,” he said, the steel-framed elephant in the room dominating the background. “I’ve never known a good time in the aviation industry to launch anything.”

The theatre befitted the enormity of the purchase, with Travolta striding from the plane in his Qantas pilot uniform, his Grease co-star Olivia Newton-John beside him as a flight attendant.

The new plane is huge – 20 have been ordered – and the crowd was similar. Tourism Australia chair and former chair of the Coles Group, Rick Allert, joined the airline’s “ambassadors” fashion designer Peter Morrissey, industrial designer Marc Newson and chef Neil Perry, former chief executive James Strong and long-time Qantas executive John Becquet and his wife Victoria Police chief commissioner Christine Nixon.

AN ASIDE: For the second time since I’ve been in the States I think my reporting has accidently started a small international incident.

Despite the splendour of the party, it was hard to avoid talk of increasing unemployment rates, frozen inter-bank lending markets and slowing consumer spending.

The problems stretch far beyond the housing the mansion overlooks.

“We have to react,” said Robert Wrigley, director of government relations with the plane’s manufacturer Airbus. “Before the crisis and the price of fuel went up so high … the best thing (we) could do was get new aircraft out quickly. Both we and (US competitor) Boeing were sold out.”

Now production is being slowed – even in an industry where delivery is measured in years. “We’ve slowed down the ramp-up,” he added, which would have seen production increased from 36 to 40 planes annually.

“That’s for down the pipe.”

What’s down the pipe for the rest of us remains unknown.

More importantly: how are you feeling? 

The conservative movement of “Evangelical” Christians so vital to Bush’s 2004 win never really backed McCain, who they saw as soft on their key issues of abortion and stem-cell research.

At a Washington DC summit, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins said the group would not be endorsing a presidential candidate. The Arizona senator had “On occasion (McCain) has been willing to – upon learning the facts – change his positions,” he told me.

In 2004 support of groups like the Council helped support Bush in 11 states proposing amendments banning gay marriage. All the bans were upheld and Bush won eight of the states.

But the faltering economy stole energy from groups seeking to pursue moral issues like abortion and gay marriage. A flowering of voices in the movement and a shift by younger members towards social justice issues also drained resources.

There’s a vote on election day in California for Proposition 8, which could cement marriage as between one man and one woman, ending their brief reign as the gay marriage capital. But Perkins the New York Times the gay marriage vote was “more important than the presidential election”.

Really? At a time of crippling economic uncertainty, with two interminable wars and around 50 million people lacking health insurance, the comment – and its interpretation – tends to underscore how the movement has marginalised itself.

TIMES are scary in America and nothing on the horizon suggests an outbreak of calm.

I had a very enlightening chat at a haunted house this week. It’s a fake, sadly, but scary enough. One of the operators, Jim Faro started out by doing up his house and running tours through it for people in the neighbourhood. Things became increasingly elaborate, and when he met another “Halloween Guy” in Jim Lorenzo, they joined forces. Blood Manor is the result – a floor in New York’s industrial district leased year-round… to operate for just 20 days in the lead-up to Halloween.

“Why do people even like to be scared, when they get enough of it day-to-day?” I had to ask. 

“For most people … it’s almost like a release,” he said. “They know it’s safe and nothing’s going to happen to them, but it’s a thrill.” Faro was sitting in his ticket booth – busy on two phones – and separated by just a wall from a room filled with foam pig carcasses and a blood-covered butcher roaming a cleaver. 

“These houses are scary, sure, and you’ll be scared as you walk through,” he added. “But then you go back out and the Dow’s down 800 points and the (bailout) is hundreds of billions of dollars? Now that’s fear.

The pumpkins, costumes and parties of Halloween make it one of the biggest festivals of the year, kicking off a holiday season that takes in Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this year, in the grave faces of the newly unemployed and commuters checking the Dow’s collapse on their iPhones, the mock terror is merging with how people really feel about an economic situation sounding worse with every new twist.

Alicia Harding is the venue director of Haunted House NYC a similar attraction on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She agrees the everyday fear is complementing the festive fear her house sells.

“The world is a scary place and normally we try to not be in these situations. But there’s a rush that comes with being scared,” she said. “(Patrons) know that nothing’s really going to happen to them, they’re not going to get hurt.”

The slumping real economy has boosted sales. Entertainment never really suffers in downturns, she said, pointing to the glittering birth of Hollywood from the ashes of the Great Depression.

“It has had an effect, a positive effect. They want that constancy. They don’t know what’s around the corner (outside). We’re much busier than we usually are.”

Who can blame them. Has anyone else stopped looking at the Dow, because you just can’t feel shocked anymore?

Added to this is the seemingly haphazard nature of the bailout. It feels like they’re fighting a fire burning somewhere in the kitchen, by overflowing the sink.

Professor of economics and finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Franklin Allen, said the government’s inability to push the merits of the bill – to Congress or the public – has been a “huge negative” in the ongoing situation. “If they’d been able to sell the bill better, the last couple of weeks wouldn’t have been so scary, in the bigger scheme of this crisis,” he said this week.

Days ago Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for economics and wrote “all signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long”. On Facebook the NYU professor known as “Dr Doom” for his gloomy, correct predictions of this bust, changed his status to: “Nouriel Roubini worries that the world is at risk of a global systemic financial meltdown and a severe global depression.”

This is more than talk. The “beige book” survey released eight times a year by the US Federal Reserve collates evidence from 12 major regions, such as San Francisco and Boston.

New figures revealed business worsened in each district across the country, with falls in retail, financial services, housing, tourism and manufacturing activity. Retail sales fell 1.2% in September, almost double the seasonal forecast, at the same time as the US Labor Department reported that prices paid to local producers fell 0.4%, while core prices rose 0.4%. US companies can’t push their increased costs up the chain without losing business.”

Scream, anyone?

TELEVISION is universal but humour isn’t, so don’t expect the NBC adaptation of Australian comedy smash Kath & Kim to tickle you quite like the original did.
The show is very funny, and nowhere near as bad as US critics suggested in a recent Sunday Age article. But it is a much broader, simpler comedy centred on a fraught mother-daughter relationship – a step sideways from the suburbia-skewering original that debuted on the ABC in 2002 and drew massive ratings for Channel Seven last year.
The differences between the shows make this one feel like a poppy cover version of a favourite rock song. Built to appeal to a vast US audience it has had some of the harsh edges knocked off, but people sitting at home in Fountain Lakes you will still laugh – a lot – as the situations play out.
“My marriage is over!” Kim (Selma Blair) wails, as she returns to her mother’s home, spelling out its finality. “O.V.U.R.”

Image from NBC, of Selma Blair (left) as Kim, and Molly Shannon as Kath. The show premieres Thursday, Oct. 9, at 8:30 p.m.

Her mother Kath (Molly Shannon) is appalled, as her daughter intrudes on her life just as her relationship with sandwich shop owner Phil Knight (John Michael Higgins) is blossoming.
Saturday Night Live veteran Shannon and Higgins, perhaps best known as the homosexual dog walker in mockumentary Best In Show, are brilliant as the new couple, their warm affection nauseating the sullen Kim.
Hellboy star Blair is less successful portraying the self-centred daughter. The character’s simpering – “I didn’t sign up for cooking dinner or being interested in how someone’s day was … I’m a trophy wife” – is initially funny, but quickly wanes. Gina Riley’s Kim had spunk in the Australian version, battling her mother and estranged husband with sauce and fire. But Blair’s divorcee goes further than being simply unsympathetic, she’s almost pathetic in her childish petulance.

Jane Turner (left) as Kath and Gina Riley as Kim from the Australian version of Kath & Kim.

The jokes are good, but the repetitive set-up where a character thinks or says a serious thought before being distracted by something frivolous, takes away their punch.
There are good reasons to think the series will prosper and improve. Twelve episodes have reportedly been made, with Riley, Jane Turner and original producer Rick McKenna as executive producers.
Pushing relentlessly is the NBC network’s chief programmer Ben Silverman, who shared Australia’s love affair with the series from when he ran a production company that adapted foreign programs The Office and Ugly Betty into successful US shows.
This debut episode is merely a taste. Future shows will reveal more about the characters, the US and – almost certainly – us.