Insert celebrity endorsement here...

It’s the most talked about TV ad of the week in Australia, but who would have thought ‘our Cate’ would be the centre of such fuss over what has previously just been a political and environmental debate? Well, maybe Aussie entrepreneur Dick Smith saw this one coming - he declined to feature in the ad.

If you haven’t seen it yet, have a look...

Here’s the story so far: despite being one of two famous actors in this carbon tax ad (Michael Caton is the other), Cate Blanchett has been singled out and criticised by many, including federal opposition politicians, for her involvement. Her money and her ‘part-time’ Aussie status are just two of the things being called into question. Funny, last time she was nominated for an Oscar we had no problem shouting from the hilltops that ‘our Cate’ was flying the flag for Australia in Hollywood. But I digress…

This isn’t the first time Cate Blanchett’s been involved in supporting environmental issues and she’s proved she isn’t afraid to get political. She’s well know as a greenie-slash-political activist, in that Hollywood actress kinda way. So what’s all the fuss about? I’d like to say I think it’s solely the controversial carbon tax issue, but I suspect it’s not that simple.

Carbon tax opinions aside, shouldn’t Cate be applauded for the fact that she’s having a say in her country’s political process and future, and she isn’t getting a big fat paycheck for her appearance? I like that she genuinely cares, while so many Aussies are apathetic. Unlike so many other Hollywood celebrities who do those lucrative ads in Japan or cheesy iced tea endorsements (Hugh Jackman, I’m looking at you), it appears Cate is measured in her decisions to support political issues.

Yes, she’s filthy rich, but she pays Aussie taxes too so she’s got just as much right as the rest of us to have an opinion about the carbon tax. I know the rest of us don’t get our mug on TV to spruik our opinion, but lets be realistic about what that is – good old-fashioned celebrity endorsement. It’s nothing new, certainly not in the political arena, to gain the support of a celebrity to champion your cause.

The Federal Opposition are clearly worried about the influence Cate Blanchett might have on voters and public opinion in general, otherwise they wouldn’t be kicking up such a stink, but as usual, I think our politicians are selling us a bit short. While Cate might be highlighting the issue, I don’t think her 10 seconds or so on screen is going to change the mind of the masses who appear to oppose the carbon tax in the polls for a raft of different reasons.

So really the issue here is celebrity endorsement isn’t it? Are celebrities usually scrutinised so much about whether they fit the cause they are supporting, or if they’re being hypocrital, like Cate has been?

Whether it’s a political cause or simply a commercial product, do you think celebrities are too out of touch to influence our political opinions? Or is celebrity endorsement so common now it doesn't impact public opinion? Let us know what you think…

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Never Ending Election Campaign

Gillard and Abbott: all talk, no policies.

I don’t know about you – but I’m officially over the Australian Federal Election campaign. Just get us a Prime Minster already. It’s not that I don’t respect our democratic process, in fact, I love it. I’ve just had enough. So in an effort to wrap up the election that seems like it will never end…I’ve compiled my own list of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I will spare you all the ‘hung’ Parliament puns, which have been done to death in the past few days. And I’ve tried to keep the list a little balanced, but you might notice the Bad and the Ugly columns are pretty full. I think that pretty much sums up this election as a whole....

The Good

Social media emerges as a major player. This really was the first election where people (and not just journalists) engaged in debate and expression over the election campaign through social media like Twitter and Facebook. We even saw a couple of the major TV networks attempt to use a Twitter feed to broadcast public opinion during debates. It didn’t quite work – but it was a sure sign social media is here to stay. Never before have we seen an election where you could tweet Julia Gillard (@JuliaGillard) and tell her exactly what you thought. Sure, one of her press secs may have read it – but apparently she did start writing her own Tweets and even using hash tags (# topic identifiers) towards the end of the campaign. Labor seemed to get the message on social media and its importance by the end of the campaign - but the Coalition didn't get there at all. Tony Abbott didn't join the Twitterverse and obviously the party didn't see it as an important way to reach voters. The Coalition clearly need to move out of the dark ages.

Wyatt Roy the young gun. The 20-year-old has all but won the seat of Longman north of Brisbane; postal votes are still to be counted but Wyatt pretty much has it in the bag. I know he’s young and people will argue that he’s too young, no life experience, blah blah. But maybe the Australian Parliament could use some young positive naivety from a Gen Y-er. You go Wyatt. Just ignore the haters.

Wilson Tuckey is out. The maverick West Australian MP has made some appalling contributions to Australian political life during his time, but thankfully, we won’t have to listen to him anymore. He’s been accused of being acutely racist and even resorted once to calling Kim Beazley a ‘fat so and so’ whilst having a debate about an immigration issue. The fact that he lost his seat shows that all is not lost for a positive, progressive Australia. Great job WA voters.

A Greens candidate wins the seat of Melbourne. The Greens will no longer be referred to as ‘the party you waste a vote on’. The win by former lawyer Adam Bandt sends a warning shot to the major parties. The Greens are now (and some will argue were already) a real alternative to the major parties and can no longer be pigeon-holed as lefty greenies who don’t win seats.


The Bad

The ‘Real’ Julia. This was not a great choice of strategy for Labor. They clearly saw that the election campaign was not moving in their direction and that the media and public were sick of the spin. Julia’s attempt to free herself from this simply confused people and raised the question, who was she being for the first couple of weeks of the campaign when she wasn’t the 'Real Julia’? In her attempt to be the ‘real’ Julia we got ‘More of the Same Julia', and given the result (or lack of) at the polls in Saturday, neither were up to scratch for voters.

The debate about the debate. The back and forth between Tony and Julia on how many debates to have, when to have them and what to debate about became farcical towards the end of the campaign. Will someone just lock the pollies into debates and topics and end the pain for us all? I’d rather read stories about what their policies are, than how many debates we need to have and what they will or won’t be about. And it’s not the political journos’ fault. They are reporting on what’s going on day to day on the campaign trail – and if that sort of tripe is dominating the day, in the place of real policies, then we all lose. However, I think that with this election campaign, no matter what the trivial distractions were, we were never really going to see any real, solid policies.

The first hung Parliament in about 70 years. This is bad, if only because we don’t have a resolution yet. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is exhausted by the length of this election campaign. I know it shows democracy at work, and for that reason in itself it’s a great thing, but it will affect a lot more things than who is PM. It has the potential to affect economic stability. Confidence in our economy may suffer due to uncertainty about policy decisions. And it’s very likely that even if a minority government is formed, we could be sent to the polls again very soon (within the normal 3 or so years). It’s a pretty unstable situation.

Fiji: Island Paradise or Dictator's Paradise?

I saw an ad for cheap flights to Fiji last week – around the same time The Australian newspaper had an interview with the island nation’s nutso dictator (sorry, self-appointed military ruler), Frank Bainimarama, decreeing all sorts of things and giving plenty of poor excuses for his ever-increasing censorship of the pacific nation’s media.

I’d seen the media coverage over the past few weeks; most recently the expelling of our Acting High Commissioner, but what really got me was this picture.

(Image: Jachin Sheehy)

This page was run in the Fiji Times as a protest against increasing media censorship. Pretty shocking isn’t it? I wonder if Australians would put up with having half the front page of The Australian missing. I think not, but I guess when you have a military leader running the country, choice doesn’t really come into it.

Fear and Loathing in Oz: The asylum seeker question

As Australia waits to head to the polls and elect our government on August 21, we could be forgiven for feeling like we’ve woken up in 2001. Indeed, the raging debate of this election, where we choose between the left-leaning Labor, led by Julia Gillard, and the right-leaning Liberals, led by Tony Abbott, is something of a déjà vu for Australian voters. The main election issues are not schools, or hospitals, or even the environment and roads. Rather, we’re back to asylum seekers and immigration.

“Stop the boats!” they cry, announcing policies that would make anyone struggle to tell the difference between the two parties. This sort of pandering to the anxiety of Aussies really bugs me. It used to bug me when I was a radio journalist, and essentially (whether consciously or not) took part in the fear-mongering, and it still bugs me today. It frustrates me like those 6.30pm current affairs programs, seemingly intent on upsetting and incensing viewers who’ve worked hard all day, come home for dinner and the news, and are confronted at 6.30 with stories about people who are “different” from them, who don’t appreciate good Aussie values and traditions. Just last night, I saw an advertisement for a story to air about Muslim's holidaying on the Gold Coast. Accompanied as it was by ominous music, I waited for the point of the story, which as far as I can tell, is that indeed, Muslims are holidaying on the Gold Coast. Chilling. The pandering is obvious and embarrassing, and yet the stories are ratings winners. Why you’d want to be irate and offended while your food digests is beyond me.

And so now, almost 9 years after the Children Overboard Affair, Australia sits on the precipice of another election where it’s been decided the ol’ immigration and refugee issue is our most pressing concern.  

A boat is intercepted

Let’s look at some facts. This year Australia will provide 6,000 places to refugees, under the United Nations' refugee agency, and 7,750 people under our special humanitarian program. The queue jumping myth is just that, a myth. People who arrive in Australia on boats are not queue jumpers. They can’t be. The UN agency makes a list of those claiming refugee status, but our own government sets the intake, and has complete discretion as to who we’ll accept. Arriving by rickety boat from a war-torn country in no way guarantees you’ll be chosen over anyone else claiming to be a refugee. The government, in this instance, already has the power.

It seems like there are more and more boats arriving on our shores these days than ever before. This is true, and not. It’s important to ask why, and looking at the facts, the increase in boat people has little to do with a lack of hard line “stop the boats” policies. In 2001, before the American-led invasion of Afghanistan , there was a peak in boat arrivals: 43 boats and 5,516 people. Most of these people were escaping the Taliban. After the invasion, the numbers dropped again, as the Taliban’s position was weakened. This year, we’re up to almost 3,000 arrivals by boat. The defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan government has caused many Tamils to flee here, to Australia. Simply, increases in asylum seekers are usually due to violence in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Sri Lanka, and have little to do with political policy. Read more on the Department of Immigration and Citizenship website here.

Afghan asylum seekers off the coast of WA

So, the argument is not that we don’t need border security. We do. We need a deterrent for the people smugglers, preying on the vulnerability and desperation of asylum seekers. But what lacks, in all the fear-mongering and lowest-common denominator appeal, is a sense of basic humanity. Aussies have often seemed anxious by the arrival of “others”, from the time of the gold rush, right until now. It’s not just the refugees: Tony Abbott is promising to cut net annual migration to 170,000 people a year. That’ll get them voting! As much as their plight may not personally affect us, it’s our duty as human beings to ask ourselves who these “boat people” are. How terribly unbearable must your life be, the persecution and horror you must be faced with, if you see spending weeks (or months) in a leaky, unstable boat heading to a country thousands of kilometres from your own under appalling conditions, as your only means of escape? Then once you arrive: detention, behind razor wire. I’m lucky. I was born in a free, democratic country, where I can go about my life unharmed and without persecution. I count my blessings every day for this, because it could have so easily been the other way around. Perhaps our future and current leaders might think about that, and employ a little perspective before scaring up the emotions of their constituents.

Article 14.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948 states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Even if they arrived on a boat.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.