JUMAT BERKAH, MALANG, EAST JAVA

Becak drivers

STREET CHARITY  - THANK ALLAH  IT’S FRIDAY          

 Duncan Graham

Following the 7 October Hamas outrage Australia has been suffering an outburst of race and religious hate.  Lawyer Jillian Segal has been made a “special envoy” to counter antisemitism. A similar appointment is expected to confront Islamophobia and challenge the alleged linkage of Muslims with extremism and terror.

 Indonesia has more citizens following Islam than any other nation. Its numbers surpass the belief's birthplace in Saudi Arabia eight-fold.

Our neighbour is awash with faith. And hope, for bankers are claiming the Republic is racing towards being an economic world power. That doesn’t mean equality.

Just under ten per cent of the 275 million population live below the poverty level of  around three Oz dollars a day. They get by rarely with government aid, regularly through the religious community.

Seldom heard in the West’s media rants against Islam is its well-embedded principle of charity - particularly the Friday food routine.

There's no fanfare.  The givers give and the takers take.   Flaunting goodness is not good in Islam.

Unless there's an election campaign where look-at--me candidates get coverage by handing out oversized cheques, donor virtues pass unnoticed.

Seen through a camera lens one food rush in Malang (the second largest city in East Java) looks like a TV news clip from the Gaza Strip when an aid convoy arrives.

Pull back to a wider view and the shot is wrong: The surging crowd is small, only 80 people.  They're hungry but not famished. A few are disabled.

The surroundings aren't shattered.  The noise isn't from bomb bursts but badly-muffled motorbikes - one stickered PALESTINE. It belongs to Tommy Sasmito who calls himself a "public figure" because he's a reporter for a tease-and-sleaze tabloid.

No one protests his advocacy.  The nearest supporter of Israel is in Perth, 2,700 km to the south.  Here in Indonesia Judaism is banned, so few hear any other side.  No-one mentions Gaza - they just keep eating.

The break-fasters carry sheets of vinyl to spread on the pavement where they dine.  Their boxed meal includes vegies, a slice of tempe (fried soybean cake) and a dollop of boiled rice.

At this giveaway site - one of many - the donors are uniformed students on a three-week field study programme from an Islamic University in Yogyakarta, 360 km to the west.  They use the courtyard of the Government Treasury to organise their care sessions and get some money to buy the essentials.

The free-feed ritual is a mix of the Javanese culture of gotong royong (community self-help) and the duties of Islam. On Sundays, some churches  run food banks, though usually only for congregants’ families.

The system is praised by politicians because it relieves Jakarta from providing welfare programmes and pensions except for the desperate.

Kamaruddin Amin at the Ministry of Religion  reportedy said "there should be no poor people in Indonesia, if we all pay zakat.”  

This philanthropy  is supposed to be compulsory under Islamic law. Kamaruddin said  $37 billion  was needed nationally but less than eight per cent has been given.  So the locals fill in.

Traditionally caring for the frail and old has fallen to their offspring or the wider family if someone is childless. Villagers feed the elderly who care for littlies and do menial tasks while waiting for a call from Allah.

So the state dumps the needs of the poor on those who practise their religion  Fortunately for the disadvantaged, that’s a lot.

A few streets away Tety, who’s been on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, is supervising 150 handouts at the gate of her family’s kost.  It's an elite boarding house exclusively for 25 young women studying medicine at nearby Brawijaya University.

Why feed the poor?

“Today is Jumat Berkah (blessed Friday),” she said.  “It’s special and holy.  We don’t care about the person’s faith or their economic circumstances.   Our responsibility is to help humanity through the blessing of food.  There are no  demands on the hungry to reciprocate.  No questions.”

She appears to be right. Occasionally a terima kasih can be heard from the eaters, though no preaching from the servers or even a religious greeting.

In another part of the hilltown there's a line of mainly middle-aged men who claim they're jobless, and elderly women who identify as widows or divorcees.

They queue outside a dilapidated warung alongside a welding workshop. The word means a roadside stall though this one has rough tables and benches.

 From sunup till 10 am all eats and coffee are on the house courtesy of owner Anik Sumartini. It’s a loaves and fishes scene.

 Behind the counter feeding the hundreds is a cheerful clutch of women in Muslim headscarves, but Lisa Salhuteru is bareheaded.  

She's a Protestant driven by the same motives as her kitchen colleagues filling pots and washing pans following her holy book’s statement that silver-tongues minus charity are “tinkling cymbals”.

A couple of kilometres to the east the split road from the train station to the gateway to the city is a prestige thoroughfare well-gardened.

On a grass verge corner gather drivers of becak, the three-wheel cycles used to transport weary pedestrians.  The group starts with a dozen blokes who sleep in their trikes, but grows with empty-cupboard housewives. Eventually a car pulls up with a boot-load of food boxes.

 Rusnan, 66, says he was once in the film business, even going overseas with crews.  Now he’s having a bad spell but won’t elaborate other than a shoulder shrug and “inshallah” (it’s the will of Allah).  Fatalism is widespread.

The guys say on other days they scrounge waste bins for anything saleable, wave motorists into parking spots for 25 cents a car and direct traffic hoping for a tip.   The women often beg door-to-door.

They've heard the Australian government cares for its citizens and want details.

Caution calls; bragging about Oz pensions and access to welfare would bemuse if  added that some camp rough and use  food banks to get by.

Without the context of  taxation and the cost of living the questioners wonder why we whinge when we live in what they think is a paradise.  Maybe they’re right.

Disclosure:  The author believes he’s irreligious.

(Pictures of Jumat Berkah  here; //https://indonesianow.blogspot.com/)

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Tety

Faith is not an issue on Jumat Berkah

Anik Sumartini

Tommy Sasmito

The rush at the Treasury

Breakfast at Anik's Warung

First published 31 July 2024 in Pearls & Irritations: https://johnmenadue.com/street-charity-thank-allah-its-friday/

HEY OZZIES - TAKE A LOOK NEXT DOOR

 WHEN WILL WE  TREAT INDONESIA SERIOUSLY?

Guarantee: This report is free of US political toxins. The contents are purely local.

The title question deserves a cynic’s response: Only when the country next door becomes  a military dictatorship and mates with China.  Then we might wake up.

Indonesia is seventy times bigger than Bali where most Australians get their  experience of beach-and-Bintangs, probably imagining the other 37 provinces are much the same.  They’re not.

If  the  political scientists’  ‘arc of instability’ ever spanned the region, Indonesia isn’t there now.

The world's fourth largest nation with an impressive 5.3 per cent growth rate, has become an aid donor  and is dashing towards superpower status.  It’s not within coo-ee of struggling Pacific Island states crying for aid and getting attention in spades by playing footsie with the PRC.

Here’s proof we’re not serious: A decade ago the then Coalition Government paraded its New Colombo Plan  - a “signature initiative” whatever that means.  

The idea was to “lift knowledge of the Indo-Pacific …by supporting Australian undergraduates to undertake study, language training and internships in the region.”  Applause all round.

The name has a history: In 1951 a multi-state meeting in the Sri Lankan capital set up the show to help "developing countries".  We offered scholarships for  Southeast Asians to study in Australia. More claps.

 Some of Indonesia’s future leaders got to know Down Under and build lasting mateships.  That generation has largely passed.  The CP is now involved in drug use reduction, gender affairs and climate change.

The NCP reverses the original intent and looks fine till the data is analysed.  Students can go to any one of the 40 countries in the scheme. So far 12,000 Aussies have visited Indonesia across three decades, mostly for short courses.

But how to find a uni, a visa and help when all turns turtle? Students can go it alone, but it's easier using  ACICIS,  the Australian Consortium for In-Country Studies. It was an idea of now-retired Professor David Hill of Perth's Murdoch University.

This year the agency celebrates its 30^th birthday and reports some achievements.

More than 4,000 alumni are working in key areas of government, here and overseas.   In 2012 the now largely forgotten Australia in the Asian Century White Paper described the consortium as a “successful model for in-country learning”.

Last year Hill was given an Indonesian award for “promoting collaboration … and the Indonesian language.”

Despite the persistence of Hill and others, Canberra prefers to focus on the Pacific, particularly islands where Beijing has been poking around for niches to embed.

We wear our monolingualism with pride.  That’s gross; the Jakarta Post has told its readers what sort of neighbours they’re lumbered with by reporting:  “Australian students participating in Indonesian-language programs has hit a historic low …this trend could have an adverse effect on the broader bilateral ties.”

Ten Indonesian unis are involved with ACICIS.  Students keen to better understand our regional mates - as all governments urge but rarely facilitate - have access to 25 courses. They span from law to farming - plus the essentials - language and culture.

Every student backpacker is a de-facto diplomat showing through their involvement and enthusiasm that Aussies aren’t all Kuta hoons - or in the posse of America's Deputy Sheriff, as John Howard once reportedly positioned his nation.

But here’s the issue:  The ACICIS report  reveals that last year  it “assisted 436 Australian and international students to undertake study in Indonesia.”

Good on ya - except that Indonesian Government figures show the Republic has more than 4,000 “institutes of higher learning”.  Though only 184 are public they cater for 3.38 million students.

Many private unis are small and run by religious organisations and corporates. Quality is mixed and offerings are limited.  They have around 4.5 million enrollees.

The top campus is the public Universitas Indonesia. Internationally  it ranks badly at 206, even lower on some assessment sites.

Overseas study enthusiasts prefer China; Indonesia is seventh on the choice scale, just ahead of South Korea - although in second place (after Japan) in the Indo-Pacific.

A Lowy Institute report claimed “Indonesia’s education system has been a high-volume, low-quality enterprise that has fallen well short of the country’s ambitions for an ‘internationally competitive’ system.”

That was written in 2018.  There’s been some movement though little evidence of major reform in the past six years.  Jakarta also has to stir the possum if it wants its unis to draw foreigners.

As Indonesia has eleven citizens for every Aussie we need at least 4,500 students exploring the archipelago every year, not for quickies but long term.  Even then we’d only be a spit on the surface.

However the number sent through ACICIS is roughly the same as in 2018.

Juggling figures like this is a clumsy exercise taking no account of dropouts, course changes, policy shifts, definitions and other factors like Covid  - but it hammers the nail that we’re just not dinkum about the nation next door.

Next year  a semester in Indonesia is likely to cost a student in fees, fares, insurance and living costs up to $16,000, though this can be offset by NCP support.

 Adaptive frugals can get by on less (and learn more) if they live like locals.

ACICIS gets 2.53 per cent of the NCP’s mobility funding (mainly short courses) and is paying scholarships for long-term students. There are 120 competitive NCP scholarships for top students nominated by their campus.

That’s for any one of 40 countries.

ACICIS director Liam Prince said “the key blockages are  in the lack of clear, curriculum-embedded pathways to a semester in the Indo-Pacific by the Australian universities.

“Through size, proximity and geopolitical significance, Australia must have a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship.

“Australia’s side is in trying to see the world from an Indonesian perspective; it’s one of the necessary conditions for fulfilling the potential of the bilateral relationship.”

Former PM Paul Keating said: “We find our security in Asia, we find it by being useful in the Asian community, we find it by building coalitions and this is an imperative.”

It’s an idea still to be bought by  the electorate. Otherwise it would demand the federal government gets earnest about urging unis to prioritise  Asian skills.

Not everyone wants to do a PhD in Old Javanese but at all levels the curious and talented will want a taste of the New Indonesia. They need encouragement -  for all our sakes now and in the years ahead.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations,24 July 2024:  https://johnmenadue.com/when-will-we-treat-indonesia-seriously/

JOIN US? NO THANKS

 FACTS SACRED,  PACTS NOT

It's a hoary oldie publicity hook: Imagine something improbable  and feed off the controversy.

Launching a balloon’s a common tactic in domestic politics to see what might distract voters, but here we're talking about Indonesia and the big chessboard .

Foreign affairs is a discipline so multi-layered that even expert writers know their imagination will rarely blow hard enough to get their toy airborne. No matter - they'll get a reputation for innovative thinking.

Sam Roggeveen is director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Program. A former Office of National Assessments senior analyst, he has credibility and a go-to reputation.

In his latest Australian Foreign Affairs essay (The Jakarta Option) that  costs $25 to read, he argues that an Australia-Indonesia alliance is "necessary". Really?

The Interpreter website he founded spruiks the long write and a weird notion - that we’re lucky to have Indonesia as a neighbour and that relations could have been worse.  That’s an  assumption impossible to test.

Why now? Having a cashiered former general reinstated and promoted to four stars taking over the Republic from a civilian in October will mean seismic policy shifts.

But the coming avalanche doesn’t stir Roggeveen’s pro. Curiously absent is any reference to the  president-elect, the ultra-nationalist Prabowo Subianto who’ll be shaking up Indonesia.

The author ponders possible alliances with Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines -  rejecting Japan as too distant.

So to stop US-China rivalry in the region - a most worthy ambition - he settles on Indonesia ”to move military matters to the background of regional relations”.  Possible?

No, Sir.  But that doesn't mean we can't get to know each other better using trade, tourism, education and all other means apart from sharing the killing of strangers.

Hands are for shaking, not gripping an AK-47. Fingers are for picking noses, not squeezing triggers.

This old joke is apt. One man tells his mate: "You see that guy?  I hate him." The friend asks: "Why? You don't know him."  The response: "That's why I hate him."

 Here’s Melbourne University Law Professor  Tim Lindsey and colleague Dave McRae:

“There are no two neighbouring countries anywhere in the world that are more different than Indonesia and Australia. They differ hugely in religion, language, culture, history, geography, race, economics, worldview and population.”

 Indonesia has about 400,000 men and 30,000 women in uniform, and an equal  number of reservists. About 88 per cent of the general population are  Muslims so a similar figure among the forces is likely.

Australia's figures are 57,000 and 32,000, faiths unknown. It seems crazy that anyone might think we have invasion ambitions, but like uranium the residue of colonialism has a long life.

One survey showed a third of Indonesians see Australia as a security threat, hardly the basis for an alliance. Meanwhile, we worry about Islamophobia.

John Howard’s reported brag in 2000 that we’re “America’s deputy sheriff”  hasn’t been forgotten.

Roggeveen reckons that because our neighbour is a growing economic power that's "successfully negotiated a remarkable transition to democracy" (a claim worth challenging with more space),  we should march together to dissuade threats.

Conspiracy theorists would see a pact as a plot to make Indonesians front-line fodder in any East-West war. The author concedes that “Jakarta is often prickly. There’s been tumult and tragedy”.

Indeed. In 1965 the army organised militias to slaughter maybe half a million citizens in a purge against real or imagined Communists,  a genocide irrefutably exposed by Australian academic Dr Jess Melvin.

The most recent crimes include allegations of prisoner torture in shuttered Papua where thousands of well-armed troops are failing to quell tribal dissidents and rescue a NZ pilot taken hostage in early 2023.

This month it’s alleged that soldiers killed a Sumatran journalist and his family for exposing officers' gambling.  Roggeveen tries to sidestep these issues by arguing any pact would only involve the Navy and Air Force.

Impossible. They’re all together in the  Tentara (armed forces) Nasional Indonesia (TNI) with overall leadership often rotated through the services.

The Republic is mightily hostile to pacts, stressing its  “golden mean … mendayung antara dua karang (rowing between two reefs) principle:

“Indonesia’s foreign policy is independent and active …because Indonesia does not side with world powers.”

Roggeveen claims that a “wealthy Indonesia engaged in a close military partnership with Australia would be a major security asset for Canberra.”  

Maybe for the hawks, though not the doves as human rights activists would  alert the public to  Prabowo’s troubled past and his alleged threats to democracy.

The world’s fourth largest nation (after India, China and the US) is critically positioned at the end of the South China Sea, so of strategic interest to the PRC and the US.

Both have been wooing Indonesia to get onside. So far China is ahead; that doesn’t mean a forthcoming marriage but there’s been more bromance than hostility.

Since being first elected in 2014 Jokowi has met Xi Jinping eight times, but Donald Trump and Joe Biden half that number.

The New York Times reported  former Trade and Investment Minister Tom Lembong:   “Many Indonesian business and political elites believe China is the relevant superpower and the US is in relative decline — and, geographically, far away”.

Prabowo, who is in business and politics, went to Beijing after winning this year’s February election though not to Washington.  For many years he was banned from the US (where he got military training) and Australia for alleged human rights abuses.

If Prabowo returns  the last century dwi fungsi (two functions) system of the military commanding the police, and puts retired generals into running the public services, a military dictatorship will evolve.

Then the  idea of the ADF working with the TNI would vanish..

Writing on foreign affairs is largely dreaming aloud, so let’s try a nightmare:  Should the US help Taipei if Beijing attacked, Canberra might send a gunboat.  

In a world of few certainties here’s one:  There'd be no Indonesians among the crew.

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First published in Pearls & Irritations, 11 July 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/facts-sacred-pacts-not/

 

 

 

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SELLING CANCER? BEST TRY INDONESIA

 WHO RUNS INDONESIA?  TAKE A WHIFF

\Indonesian politicians are getting in a righteous tizzy over child protection. Their target is online pornography and gambling, and their condemnation is absolute. Curiously absent is another kiddy-harming vice that reportedly takes more than 200,000 lives a year.  

Next time you hand over a fifty to fuel a filthy habit, you'll wonder where to get coffin nails cheaper without getting caught in a Melbourne gang war.

Ponder no longer, dear reader.  We’re here to help. Nirvana’s next door.

You can indulge, avoid guilt from reading ghastly health warnings and have a splendid holiday.  And all before your next visit to an oncologist.

Addicts’ paradise is close - a bit over three hours if you live on the west coast, far less if flying from Darwin.

Once you've cleared Immigration and the money changers (tip - rates are better outside the airport)  taxi  to any convenience store and spend up.

For a pack-a-day person,  a two-week supply will cost around forty to fifty Oz bucks depending on the brand - and there are more than 3,000.

That's a saving of $700 - the cost of getting there. The bad news is importing. Oz Customs will sniff out your load.

Other expenses will be hotel and food between hacks, but also a fraction of Australian prices.  We only die once so why not enjoy, then come home to a cancer ward and covered by Medicare?

Political scientists should also make the journey north to witness the power of big baccy much of it overseas owned.  It makes the Australian fossil-fuel lobby look like the  CWA.

Tobacco control in Indonesia is as sensitive as gun control in the US. Proposed reforms get stymied.  Armageddon is threatened with every hint of public health trumping corporate profits.

Indonesia is supposed to be the only country in the world allowing ads for fags. The chair of the National Commission for Child Protection, Arist Merdeka Sirait, has been quoted :

 "The cigarette industry has defied Indonesian law. The government has been defeated by the cigarette industry."

 Ads show lads having grand adventures, scaling mountains, abseiling, and bush camping with mates.  In the pictures and videos, they're all young sporting heroes, ripping fit, clearly never touching the product they're promoting.

Some images show handsome professionals at laptops, struggling with ideas for a mighty project, then finding their creativity fires up with the snap of a lighter.

The cheekiest twist our slogan in English:  NEVER QUIT  often shows a sweating sportsman supposedly winning.

A favourite has a stack of white coffee cups with the top one steaming.  This flicks away the prohibition of showing the white stick.

Bans on the word 'mild' get bypassed with clever typography:  MLD is printed with the upright stroke on the L made bold.

To protect the kiddies no ads on TV till 9.30 pm.   So they’re shown on huge street screens at school route intersections, starting at 6 am.

There's a health message as a footer, usually a small photo of an ancient with a tracheotomy.  But we can't hear him gasping for life and don't know his name.  Could be an AI hoax.

Although there's some small text about the dangers its drowned by images of fun and success.  Occasionally a pretty woman peeps from behind but she's there to admire and reinforce.  Smokers get the gals, right?

A few trendy metro ladies light up to show they can keep up, but in this depressing story here's something positive: In Indonesian culture, a woman fingering a fag, however proper her appearance and morals, is reckoned to be a prostitute.

Advocates for women’s equality will rightly be enraged by this gross generality, but the reality is that the slur is effective; less than four per cent of adult women smoke.

The figure for men,70 per cent for over 14s, shows warnings aren't working.  Why should they?  In any group bonding with baccy, no one will know of anyone with a hole in their throat.

On the contrary, nearby will be an oldie with egg yolk fingers who's never been sick in his life - so here's proof that smoking doesn't kill. When Allah calls time's up. No need for an autopsy to find cause.

A few health-conscious cities ban smoking ads,  bravely forgoing the revenue raised by taxing  displays.

Overall the industry gives the government about AUD 13.6 billion. This year the excise ramped to Rp 1,193 a stick - about nine Ozzie cents.  

In Australia it’s almost $1.30, apparently making smokes in our country the dearest in the world.  The idea was high prices would force users to quit.  Instead it has created a new criminal industry flogging cheaper imports.

There’s a black trade in Indonesia selling leaf from small farmers seeking a better return on their crops. The government’s response has been even bigger billboards warning of penalties for selling black baccy.

These feature stern old men in uniform and oceans of text.

They’re no match for the leaping studs selling a clear and simple message:  Your life is humdrum, you’re locked into poverty and boredom.

Seeking  escape?  Just cough up the cash - three lousy bucks.

PS: While in Indonesia inhale some of the culture and taste real adventure.

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First published in Independent Australia, 5 July 2024: : https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/tobacco-industry-leaving-indonesia-up-in-smoke,18744

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOURNOS ALSO NEED TO EAT AND DRINK

 SOS - SAVE OUR SCRIBES                      

As legacy media dies we seek its phoenix.

With the new financial year comes a welcome slump in begging e-mails for newsletter subs.  Not just from the spare room laptoppers but also the towering unis that pay their vice chancellors millions yet want the public to fund an editor.

Appeals stress reading is free but production isn’t. The costs frequently exclude the work that makes the venture worthwhile - the journo’s fee.

This is like building homes but not paying the brickies whose skills are critical to the structure.   The labourer being worthy of his hire seems to have been forgotten despite its Biblical endorsement.

Commerce trumps scripture.

Nonetheless, our culture still retains faith in a healthy work-life balance and tends to despise exploitation.  

The Fair Work Act is supposed to  “provide a balanced framework for cooperative and productive workplace relations that promotes national economic prosperity and social inclusion for all Australians.”

On the  Labour Rights Index Australia gets ranked as having “reasonable access to decent work”;  the terms are subjective.

The mainstream media is wading through a gory field of sackings, euphemistically labelled "downsizing to restructure". The "production staff reductions" include the creatives whose work is central to sales.

Old media company boards have yet to discover how to treat hemorrhaging incomes; the first-aid kits are empty of bandages so they reach for the knife. Aesop defined their idiocy in Fable 87.

Ironically they’re now pleading for Canberra's help to fight the international social media giants though having long stressed abhorrence of government interference.

Many young idealists fought to get into the media believing in the public's need to be factually informed; we saw this as a basic human right built into the four-pillars of democracy.

The first three, Legislature, Executive and the Judiciary are funded by the public and that seems to be widely accepted.  But apart from the ABC the Media pillar has been outsourced to capitalism, not primarily to “factually inform” but to make money.

Cadet naivety rapidly turned to cynicism when working in newsrooms. Although we’d write forever, the quick learners soon understood that if the investors weren’t getting enough returns they’d spike our efforts and switch from selling news to baked beans.

With  Australia's taxpayer-funded national broadcaster ($7,7 billion across five years)  said to be central to our culture, we expect governments to be involved in ensuring democracy's right to know.

The feds are thrashing around for solutions as the  Meta Monster and Brother X refuse to pay for the stories that draw readers to their sites.

We might never have known of Tchaikovsky’s music or Michelangelo's paintings if the creatives had not been supported by patrons centuries ago.  The Renaissance was largely fueled by the wealthy paying the artists.

Without them, the little swans would clump on stage and the Sistine Chapel would be a bureaucratic beige.

This is not a plea for government control of the media.  May the wrath of the deities descend should we become like North Korea or Afghanistan, though we're nothing to write home about when liberties are measured.

We rank 39 in Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index, lower than NZ and the UK but better than the US.

The Reithian principles of educating, informing and entertaining that are embedded in the BBC Charter (1927) and adopted by the ABC are good for listeners and watchers. Why not the readers?

It was an accident of history because German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of  movable type in 1439 pre-dated the electronic media, so well in place before the lawmakers awoke.

 But that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to fix the problem of tired modern media and cash-famished hacks.

 NZ is showing a way to prop up the fourth pillar: The conservative National-Coalition government has decided a Cabinet Minister will run a media subsidy scheme. 

She or he  “will decide which media entities will be eligible to receive the proceeds of a levy the Government proposes to impose on Facebook and Google” estimated  to raise between NZ$30 and NZ$50 million a year.

A few even further right than the pro-business  government have called the idea “stupid”, “unprincipled” and “a move of breathtaking audacity” - but it’s going ahead.

Back on this side of the Ditch  the Greens are pushing for a "Billionaires Tax and a Corporate Super Profits Tax to make big corporations and the super-wealthy pay their fair share so we can properly fund public services… "  

They claim a six per cent levy would raise $48 billion across ten years.

Their ambition seems doomed because the big parties will ignore and the nation's 141 billionaires could use their ore-crushing power to pulverise the idea  

That doesn't stop them from sipping a nip of altruism before bedtime,  adding a slice of media to the arts generally considered to be painting, theatre, writing and composition.  To be fair, some philanthropists are already active in these four categories.

Then there’s sport; $97 million in the Federal budget over the next two years.

The money could go into an Independent Media Foundation separate from the government and donors, distributing pooled funds on application to newsletters that follow agreed guidelines like the MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics.

By mixing up the dough patrons like an imaginary WA mining tycoon - wouldn’t know if it was her generosity that was helping fund a commentary lauding or thrashing fossil fuel controls..

There are 25 independent  newsletters in Australia. Some have  too narrow interests or are run by salaried  uni staff, but others are the work of visionaries with ideas bigger than their wallets.  They need the IMF.  So do we.

This being Australia there’d be nay-sayers. Driving them away could reveal a new Renaissance - young creatives challenging old media, using fresh ways to  tell truths and engage honestly with the public.  

Farewell Rupert.

Disclosure: Like all contributions to Pearls & Irritations this piece is unpaid.  It’s not an ideal arrangement - writers also have to eat. But the rewards are  nourishing - exposing wrongs and pushing ideas alongside the thinkers that John Menadue has attracted and energised.  

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 First published in Pearls & Irritations, 5 July 2024: https://johnmenadue.com/sos-save-our-scribes/