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The Great Recession and the rise of populist economics - InDaily

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The Great Recession and the rise of populist economics InDaily Mirroring this global history, Australia’s economic growth rate has fallen from more than 3% p.a. before the GFC, to just over 2% p.a. since then. Private Gross Fixed Capital Formation has fallen from 22.2% of Domestic Final Demand in March 2007 to 18 …

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Originally published in InDaily 10/8/11

I AM now a university dropout. A burnt-out sell-out who could no longer cope with the vagaries of the tertiary education system.

I took a full-time job in the industry I’ve been fighting to break into for years and it feels damn good. I approach my new deadlines with gusto, and leave feeling like I’ve achieved something each day.

I also feel I’m doing my family proud, as none of them finished a degree before the age of 48.

The strange thing is, we’re still embarrassingly upper-middle class. The system seems to brainwash secondary students into thinking that admittance to university is the end, the ultimate goal, and the only way to financial security and happiness.

We should instead regard uni as but one means to any number of ends.

The number of pathways now open to young people to help them achieve their dreams is staggering. Apprenticeships, TAFE, VET, professional courses and good old-fashioned working are equally as valid for many professions.

It is true these days that a university degree is just a piece of paper, especially considering the proportion of Australians with a bachelor’s degree or higher has risen steadily since the ’70s. This is admirable, but when more people have the same qualification, the bar gets higher. Post-graduate work and experience are now the yardsticks more than undergraduate achievement. Uni is effectively the new TAFE.

So why do we still place so much emphasis on obtaining the parchment? Arts and humanities education is merely a time-buying mechanism for the uncertain. What about those who actually want to work in the arts and humanities? There is nothing professionally focused for us, just a broad stroke set of wishy-washy curricula that have little bearing on any kind of professional development beyond the highly nebulous “critical thinking” skill set.

Sorry, but if by age 18 you haven’t developed the ability to think critically at the basic level unis seem so desperate to impart, there is little hope.

I constantly hear of young people, especially those with professional parents, being coerced into slogging through a degree they hate through threats of being financially cut off or disowned.

A lot of parents and teachers seem to believe that indecisive kids are in need of a forceful hand to motivate them into a law/engineering/science degree. A “real” degree. But perhaps they are indecisive because they have been led to believe doing that degree is the only way to succeed, and that acting on the urge to deviate is terminally foolish.

Maybe parents need to afford kids the freedom to make their own mistakes instead of punishing them for their own.

In retrospect, it is amazing I was able to make it through school thinking a career in the arts was a viable option, with all the hand-wringing that seems to accompany such a declaration in other households.

Just because a job is going to earn your child a six-figure salary does not guarantee he or she will be happy.

Originally published in InDaily 1/8/2011

AS FAR as existential crises go, a desire for one to stop playing on one’s own lawn rates pretty highly.

Yes, that’s right, we are the senile teens. The mentally middle-aged kids playing dress-ups in Dad’s suit cupboard. Funny thing is, we wear it more comfortably than he ever did. The garment is not a shackle of the nine-to-five any more, but suitable attire for a casual drink or high-powered business meeting.

I have an ABN, for christ’s sake.

It is the job of kids to identify the traits of our forebears and act in the direct opposite manner. Given the bong-hitting, protest-marching, tree-hugging antics of our parents, it’s not at all surprising that we feel obligated to act with some measure of maturity.

Ms Keen, if that is your real name and not an alias adopted after a radical bombing of a nuclear waste dump, here are my responses to your “criticisms”:

There’s a reason they’ve scrapped NASA: Launching is damned expensive. Unfortunately, Gough Whitlam was ousted some time ago and university is no longer publicly funded. So while you starry-eyed employer-oldies wax lyrical about the mind-altering revelation that was your arts degree, we have to fight a tertiary education system bent on attracting the most lucrative students. These are, and I say this with no judgment, international students pursuing science and engineering.

It is not enough to simply do a degree these days. One must intern, and job around for little to no money. Who has time for stable, paid employment capable of supporting a rental on that schedule? Sure I’d love to bum around Europe every six months for five years, but I have career momentum to consider.

Grant, the first homeowner: Why blow 10 years’ worth of money on rent because you’re too big a ball of post-adolescent angst to settle down? May as well man up and start building your assets now that you’ve secured that graduate position. It’s not like we can rely on social security for our retirement (thanks guys).

“I Do” (pursuant to the following terms and conditions): Marriage is less sacred. That isn’t the gays’ fault, but more a condition of a highly mobile society that is contract-savvy. Trigger-happy celebrity matrimony has made a spectacle out of a once-solemn tradition. Marriage isn’t that big a deal, and neither is divorce, unlike in the post-war era. It just makes good business sense, in the medium term, to form a partnership with someone you can generally stand. When the partnership dissolves, you split the assets. Easy.

Yes the average age of marriage might be dropping, but how many will stay that way till death do they part? My guess is not many.

Branding opportunities: Not being a lady, I can’t really say what would motivate a young woman to take her husband’s name. I certainly wouldn’t. Maybe it’s just that faced with the choice, a disappointingly low (in the eyes of hardcore feminists) number would choose to keep their name. Whether this is borne of inbuilt social pressure on women to do so is a question I cannot answer, but the fact remains that if society’s views have changed as dramatically as I think they have since the ’50s, and the number of women choosing to keep their name has lagged, there is an element of ambivalence at play somewhere.

Highly critical mass: Baby boom. Baby “boom”. It is well known that Australia’s population growth has slowed dramatically since the end of said boom. Perhaps coincidentally, a large number of Australia’s radical social progressions have occurred in that period where the young outnumbered the old. It is a lot easier to create a “movement” when most people can move without a stick.

People get more conservative as they age; it is a fact of life. Idealism is beaten out of humans as they witness how crap the world can be and their views shift right. How are we possibly expected, then, in a representative democracy, to change minds when the media and politicians are hell bent on catering to their largest market: bilious fogies? Old people love to vote and buy newspapers.

It is also worth noting that there has not been a mass extinction of Gen Xers. You’re all still here. If you were so good at leading social change, why are we still so mired on basic issues of social justice like gay marriage? It’s like watching your fat old uncle watching the footy and saying: “I could play better than that in my day”. How about now, Uncle Phillip? Now that they’ve got GPSes and heart-rate monitors and micro-nutrition? I think the bar might be a bit higher.

Seriously, pass the passion pop: We have booze, but we also have meth.

Music: I don’t know exactly why that Leopard is so Def, but maybe it’s because it listens to shit music turned up to 11. Could you turn it down? I’m listening to acoustic orchestral indie-pop on my vintage record player and you’re really drowning out the bottom end.

Originally published in InDaily 18/5/11

I REMEMBER in early high school (around 2005, just to freak you out) we had a discussion in English class about generational nomenclature. It has never been a concept I have understood very well. It always feels like an exercise in mysticism along the lines of astrology, which lumps diverse individuals into broad categories of personality for an obscure reason.

Suffice to say, the teacher leading this discussion was a Baby Boomer-and-a-half.

The first two options thrown out for the name of my own generation were the iGeneration, Generation Me and Generation Y. Perplexed, I asked: “Why ‘Generation Me?’”

“Because your generation is so self-centred , of course!” she answered, without a trace of irony.

Only some years later did I grasp the millennial pun of “Generation Me”. I heard the “self-obsession” explanation many times more.

Are we so self-obsessed? Whether we are or not, those who came before us seem to make sport of branding us as such. We primped and preened for Myspace, we primped and preened for Facebook and now we primp and preen live for YouTube.

We are the lazy, entitled brats of the ’80s and ’90s who don’t know how good we got it. So we’d better get off the face-space and do something constructive or so help me God I’ll …

Ahem, sorry.

The idea of blaming someone for his or her youth is an hilarious reaction to ageing. Let’s face it, members of Generation X are worried because they’re middle-aged and don’t get to be radical any more, and the Baby Boomers are clearly just menopausal.

It does seem, to an outsider, that social media is an exercise in self-obsession. Creating a personal shrine to oneself that friends can visit and comment upon seems pathological.

But it is used to amazing ends by the people around me. Those participating in events such “Live Below the Line” and “World’s Greatest Shave” raise buckets of money from friends and family on Facebook. These are personal acts of sacrifice for a greater good.

We also saw during the Queensland floods how Twitter became a source of reliable information and helped many people find shelter or their friends and family.

Free access to the level of information available through the internet has resulted in my cohort being one of the most socially aware generations on the planet.

We had our bogeymen, like the “reds under the beds” or the Kaiser; we had Saddam, Osama and terrorism. However, our ability to research these issues ourselves led to a much more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of the threats than people had in previous generations before. The level of mass hysteria regarding radical Islam is much lower than that which resulted from the “Communist threat”.

We were raised on a diet of 40-Hour Famines, MS Read-a-Thons and Jeans for Genes days, with the ability to go away and research these causes to a degree that no generation before us could.

The name-calling has died down somewhat in the past two years or so. Perhaps that is because now the internet and social media have finally become acceptable tools for everyone, not just teenagers.

Perhaps it is also because people of my generation are starting to finish school, move out and find jobs without much fuss, none of which were predicted by my English teacher, who was convinced we’d all be living at home till we’re 40.

But I’ll tell you one thing – those kids born after 2000? I don’t like them. They’re just so spoiled and irritating with their floppy hair and iPhones and Justin Bieber.

Originally published in InDaily 16/10/2013

It is the reality of life as a critic that you inevitably find yourself sitting in a room, picking bits of salt and vinegar chip off your lap and being asked to judge people doing things that you could not hope to do yourself in a million years.

Multiply Michael Jackson by a factor of Cirque du Soleil, and it’s pretty much just a parade of people who are prettier than you, more talented than you and have achieved far more in their lives by your age. I tip my cheap, tacky hat to the talents of all the performers showcased.

That said, such phenomenal gifts create phenomenal expectations.

Cirque du Soleil’s latest offering in Adelaide is Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour. On the surface, the match between the Jackson canon and the Cirque universe is strong: themes of innocence, childhood, wonder, nature, growth, unity and all that other squishy, hippy malarky that both circus and pop can convey so majestically.

Jackson was all about transcending social constructs, something which Cirque du Soleil has amply demonstrated through its rigour, humour and commitment to storytelling.

I must offer context here about my own biases: I am a Cirque fan before I am an MJ fan. I remember visiting Le Grand Chapiteau for Saltimbanco and Quidam, both of which are touchstones in my memory of childhood. I remember an utterly immersive experience from the moment the tent rose over West Terrace, to the second we got back in the car. I was thrilled, I was transported, I was inspired.

So with that in mind, please accept my grudging disappointment with The Immortal World Tour.

For starters, the Entertainment Centre is debilitating to any kind of ambience the show is trying to evoke. With all the charm of a particularly dull steelworks, the arena and its industrial sensibility are totally at odds with the intoxicating Cirque I remember and love. Exposed wires, sound and camera ops trundling about and a feeling of flimsiness pervaded the set, which consisted of a two-storey stage behind a long catwalk and small, circular second stage.

The show began with a group of five Jackson-esque dancers in some of the King of Pop’s memorable outfits. They performed a graffiti-themed routine on wires before ceding the stage to the show’s guide and host – a mime in a silver, glittery tracksuit. An accomplished mime, dancer, popper and locker, this smiling man never seemed to be allowed to reach his full potential. This was a feeling common to many acts; constrained by songs and poorly structured “narrative”, the show was never sure who came first: Jackson’s ghost or the performers on stage.

The stand-out acts reminiscent of my early Cirque experiences were allowed to dispense with a the slavish biographical angle and create moments that illustrated Jackson’s songs – women in black, LED-covered bodysuits performing an aerial hoop routine to “Human Nature” in the dark on a backdrop of stars, two aerialists styled as swans performing “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”, and a pole dancer I wish to hire as my personal trainer for life.

Many of the other acts focused almost solely on dance, and often suffered due to the truncated tracks played. We would just be getting in to one routine and it would skip a second verse or bridge, not allowing the legendary build in Jackson’s songs to occur in full and robbing us of some potentially explosive moments. It seems unlikely that legendary perfectionist Jackson would have been happy with the standard of choreography on stage – imprecise, repetitive and hidden in bulky costumes.

The band looked like it was having fun up the back, but amid rabid and wildly overwrought sampling, the only two instruments I’m sure were being played live were the electric guitar and the cello. The rest were swallowed in a wall of noise that either re-created Jackson’s originals mechanically, or re-styled them using some contemporary electro-dance music tropes that didn’t really fit a show of this gravity and level of resource.

In the end, The Immortal World Tour fails to satisfy either as a Michael Jackson show or a Cirque du Soleil show, and this is disappointing given the calibre of ingredients in the mix.

Originally published on InDaily, 24/9/13

The seething mass of fans greeted every song with piercing screams at One Direction’s Adelaide gig, but what is it about the lads that provokes such hysteria, asks Will McRostie.

It is fashionable to dismiss pop stars, especially boy bands, as being low-brow, culturally devoid and pointless. No slave to fashion myself, I find the cult of celebrity to be a fascinating if unenviable way of life, both in terms of being an icon or an acolyte.

One Direction. What can I say about one of the most successful music franchises of the 21st century? The boy band consists of five British lads aged 19-21 – so all younger than me, god dammit. Each fits the classic boy-band archetype: Harry Styles is the cad, Zayn Malik the bad boy, Niall Horan the class clown, Liam Payne the “street” kid and Louis Tomlinson the “nice” one.

Musically, they are cookie-cutter power pop, with riffs and melodies you’ve heard a thousand times before. That’s not to say they’re bad – their mega-hits are undeniably catchy.

The Take Me Home tour marks the group’s second visit to Australia, and it’s obvious that their so-called international breakthrough has landed. The Adelaide Entertainment Centre was full – full – of rabid fans. I don’t mean rabid as in passionate. I mean rabid, as in a seething, pulsating mass of teen and pre-teen desire. I have never heard screaming like that in my life.

The opening act, 5 Seconds of Summer, was an Australian forgettable all-boy four-piece. The tweenage crowd lapped it up with requisite enthusiasm, but only really as an outlet for the excitement boiling over for the main event.

Once they had mercifully wound down, every beat, every moment, every lingering gap between filler songs was met with piercing screams of anticipation before the main act took to the stage.

What is it about the 1D boys that inspires such a response? They are undeniably good looking, but not more so than the average, well-kempt and genetically lucky 20-year-old. They displayed no particular wit, and their music is not Mozart. The only answer I can think of is that it’s their status as object. They are the object of a kind of emotional intensity not felt at any other point in human development – the first crush.

Projecting such feelings of desire onto abstract things is not a new phenomenon, and it seems natural for young people to invest these feelings into something abstract like a boy band. It will never let you down; it will never leave you; it will never hurt your feelings.

The interesting part of this ecosystem is the reaction from those outside the phenomenon – people like us, dear reader. It is, as I noted, fashionable to heap scorn onto these boys and the girls who love them. I even partook, with a semi-facetious live-tweet session before the gig, likening my journey to that of Orpheus into the underworld.

But what is it about this force that scares us so much? There is no denying the validity of these fans’ feelings – especially after standing in the same room as them for two hours. So why are we so uncomfortable with young girls displaying desire for boys? It seems to speak to an uncomfortable hypocrisy, especially when teenage male sexuality is so readily embraced, and problematic teenage male sexuality is so readily dismissed as “natural”.

To return to the concert – it was, frankly, quite sloppy. The boys seemed tired, and Malik and Styles, in particular, appeared disinterested in the proceedings. The banter was strained, their moves rather rote. Horan carried the show, bounding back and forth across the stage with terrier-like enthusiasm, while Tomlinson lost pitch, forgot the set list and suffered a fall after being squirted with water by Payne. He was refreshingly humble and quick to admit that he’d had a rough show, but it was jarring for those expecting perfect commercial polish.

The boys are obviously good singers and the group is well-balanced vocally. Between Malik’s piercing tenor, Payne’s falsetto and Styles’ solid mid-range, the sound is great when it’s great.

These days, the 1D boys look undeniably grown up. Stubble, tattoos and chest hair are beginning to jar against the “Teenage Dream” saccharine lyrics – even the little narrative video that played throughout the performance seemed to feature versions of the singers from a bygone age. Perhaps this contrast, combined with their obvious fatigue, created the tension I felt from the stage.

Perhaps it was just a bad night for 1D – first show in a new country. Yet there was an undeniable whiff of doom in the air. Maybe I’m projecting, but I would not be surprised to learn the days of 1D as 1D are limited. You can almost see the ambition radiating off certain members, and as they delivered with professionalism and precision, you couldn’t help but imagine their disdain for those still revelling in a freewheeling existence.

The One Direction juggernaut will roll on. Boy bands live and boy bands die – such is teen life. I just hope these five kids can navigate the dangerous waters of The Biz and continue their careers, because I’d love to see what they can come up with off the pop music assembly line.

Meanwhile, we should cut ’em some slack – it must suck being an object of such expectations, such commercial risk and such emotional intensity. And the next time “One Thing” comes on the radio, just dance along.

Originally published Jan 27th, 2012 at www.indaily.com.au.

I AM aware I have abandoned my portfolio as youth commentator over my last few columns, so let’s get real: Playgrounds are of great interest to me.

The same way people in ankle-exposing pants wax rapturous about “real people” architecture, I gush about the design and potential of the play equipment in parks and schools. I am that nearly-six-foot idiot who tries to squeeze through the climbing bridge, extolling how this one compares to the parks near my house and where I grew up.

My fondest memories of play equipment are from Horsham, Victoria: The Land that OH&S Forgot. A sixty-foot slide made of curved sheet metal that had the potential to burn, lacerate, fracture or some combo of all three. Climbing platforms made of once-splintery timber polished smooth by the hands people before you who got stuck. Suckers.

My primary school in the Hills was a little tamer, but the monkey bars and flying fox proved just thrilling enough. I can remember only one instance of a semi-serious injury in eight years there. Not too bad a hit rate.

The thing I remember most, however, is how many different things these playgrounds were in my and my peers’ imaginations. An air traffic control tower, a treehouse, a ship, a shop; we imposed a thousand locales on play equipment, as kids are wont to do. That the ground was always covered in bark chips in these diverse scenarios is of no consequence; it was a stimulating environment.

Today, I am aghast at the two-dimensional foam-rubber hells we call playgrounds. Artificial landscapes, drab equipment, high fences, statements of intent posted on the gate. Hydraulic exercise machines, bench presses and the like have no place in an environment aimed at primary kids. While platforms and slides can be anything you imagine, you’d be hard pressed to imagine a bench press machine as anything but a single-use contraption that belongs in juvie, not a primary school.

A friend recently recalled that her local primary school’s playground had a sign on the wall beginning with the hideously authoritarian “Play should …”

Play should not be anything, least of all prescribed from the top down by grown-ups. Play should be as free and imaginative as kids can make it, while still being safe.

It’s hard to tell where the modern attitude comes from. The SA Government Office for Recreation & Sport’s “Playgrounds Manual” is wonderfully jaunty, leading with the assertion that “interaction with and manipulation of the natural environment, together with simple, inexpensive and introduced elements can provide some of the most rewarding play”.

It goes on to recognise that “playgrounds are often developed as a statement to the community rather than being based on children’s needs”. The inclusion of exercise equipment in a children’s space is clearly a reaction to some manner of ill-conceived criterion developed by boring people to address the obesity crisis or something similar.

Boring people have no place in designing a playground.

Of course, play equipments should meet safety standards and be unable to decapitate, but you can bubblewrap to your heart’s content and “that kid” will still find a way to hurt himself. Children naturally test boundaries imposed on them, so why not embrace that spirit rather than being afraid of it?

Communities should demand quality play spaces for their kinder, whether from councils, schools or government. Tell them to lose the risk aversion and create spaces that respond to the needs of children, not commandments from on high about what the outcomes of play should be.