The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'kevin rudd'
2010/2/15
Journalism researcher Nina Funnell recounts her encounter with Australian PM Kevin Rudd:
At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the "excuse" that "all" young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I've come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.It would appear that, in post-Howard Australia, there is an increasing tendency to treat women who shirk their childbearing duties as demographic bludgers of sorts, freeloaders who are cheating society of what they owe it.
Similarly women who do not wish to have children should also not be punished or labelled non-maternal. As a young woman I find it frustrating to see women like Gillard constantly attacked and ascribed derogatory labels like ''empty fruit bowl'', as though her worth is a sole function of her ability and inclination to reproduce.This is not unprecedented across societies; other states have, in the past, rewarded fertile women and punished those who shirked their reproductive duty to society. Mind you, those other states have included Ceaucescu's Romania and Nazi Germany, and are probably not a club Australia should seek to join.
2008/5/23
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's nephew, Van Thanh Rudd, is entering a stencil-style painting (of Ronald McDonald carrying an Olympic torch past a burning monk), in an exhibition in Vietnam; a painting which bears a striking resemblance to a Banksy piece:
Rudd has acknowledged the similarity, claiming that it is "a direct reference 2 Banksy". (I wonder whether he acknowledged the fact that about half of the painting is a copy of another, more famous, work when he applied for the exhibition, or only now.) Of course, there have been works which were even more copied (most notably Marchel Duchamp's "L.H.O.O.Q.", i.e., a postcard of the Mona Lisa with a mustache drawn on, or Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans), though those were commentaries on the original work, the artistic process or the nature of originality. Rudd's work, however, appears to be intended as a commentary on the Olympics/American imperialism/Chinese oppression of Tibet (delete as applicable), and thus such an explanation doesn't hold water.
2007/12/31
The Australian government announced mandatory internet filters. Under the scheme, all ISPs will have to provide a "clean" feed free of pornography, which will be the default. It will be possible to opt out of this, which will either involve requesting an unfiltered (or less filtered) feed from the ISP or, after getting one's age verified, getting an account on a government-run "adult content proxy". What it will involve is Australian internet users having the choice of having access to adult content blocked or signing a "perverts' register". Then again, the government has promised that the system will not affect download speeds (which are already lagging behind the rest of the world), so perhaps the whole thing will be quietly placed in the too-hard basket after Family First (whose votes are needed in the Senate) are satisfied that Rudd & Co. are fellow wowsers.