Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Paul Hester - sad pressures of an idol

The suicide of Paul Hester raises age old questions of the potential dangers of stereotypically 'artistic' lifestyles.

This imagery of emotionally tortured artists[whether applicable or not] has been presented irresponsibly in the media, with the recent death of Hunter S Thompson and previously, iconic rockers like Cobain and Hutchence, not to mention the vast number of musicians/actors whose deaths have been substance and alcohol related.

Perhaps it is time for the media to reassess the image pressure that they put on artists and allow them down off the self-serving media-created pedestals and disregard their callous stereotyping, so artists can live and function as human beings instead of Idols.

It is a tragic irony that Mr Hester could have so many people around him on a regular basis and have known such popularity, and yet still felt so isolated.

It is terrible when a life is taken, particularly at the futility of a life taken at one's own hand, let alone when perhaps all it would have taken to prevent, is a hand from someone else.

It is great that there are organizations like
BeyondBlue who work so hard for a prominent public profile to assist those in emotional pain.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Brenden Abbott:The Postcard Bandit Movie

The 2003 movie, The Postcard Bandit, based on journalist Derek Pedley's book, No Fixed Address, about the life and crimes of former Rivervale lad and career bank robber, Brenden Abbott, has finally been released in the video shops.

Considering the rather unique criminal mastermind of Abbott, it is a disappointing script and screenplay with little vision or understanding of the genre and the casting of Tom Long 'sounds like a porn star[BA],' as the lead, may well have heralded the death knell on this ambitious project.

Whilst Long has performed most impressively in comedies like The Dish, to cast him as the hard-as-nails and stockily built Abbott in a gritty crime drama, really detracted from the credibility of the character.

Long was seemingly a fish out of water covering this material, his accent and delivery were laboured and he was well and truly shown up by, Brett Stiller, who played Abbott's younger brother, Glenn Salmon.

Stiller's eerie likeness and depiction of the erratic and highly-strung young man, were some of the film's saving graces along with the performances of Annie Byron as Abbott's mother
'another day, another varicose vein,' and Tasma Walton as Frankie, one of Abbott's romantic interests in the movie.

In an era where actors are struggling to find work it is difficult to understand how the casting could have gone so wrong, particularly with so many locals on the crew and the real characters available for research and to add real life colour to the screenplay.

The violence in the movie was not made real to the audience who really got no feel for the heart-stopping fear that the witnesses to the robberies would have felt.

The production similarly, didn't seek to portray the massive contradicton in justice which occurred in the Queensland prison system when Abbott was confined to the UN Human Rights Watch condemned supermax conditions for the next 32 years, which would more appropriately be reserved for the likes of sex offenders.

The popular media image of Abbott as a Houdini caliber escape artist essentially served to cover the flaws in security at Sir David Longlands Prison, where he had previously excaped from and probably, saved some poor public servant's head conveniently from the inquiry chopping block.

The Sydney Morning Herald made the quite vital point in their review of The Postcard Bandit, that the makers of The Postcard Bandit had based their production mostly on the writings of Derek Pedley, and did not meet, or research, even the lead characters.

Overall it was a fairly lighthearted, superficial and mind-numbing revival that in no way did justice to the myth built up by the Australian media and the police Abbott eluded for so long, nor the gravity of both violent crime and the vileness of incarceration.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Mark McGowan, Tourism Minister & the Dying city

Today, the city finds itself in the midst of yet another heatwave, which feels a little like all our wrongdoings have caught up with us very suddenly.

In Perth, our water and electricity supplies can no longer sustain the ever-expanding urban sprawl[at least the trade in outer-metro brick and tile dogboxes is booming] and fuel has risen in price to $1.10 per litre.

An interesting article in The Werst today [which I cannot link to of course, because to view the story you need to be paying subscribers - so no free advertising in The Daily Magnet for you, Mr Strongarm] discussed the number of world class events which have been axed by the state government.

The latest to crash and burn being the World Rally Championships' Telstra Rally Australia[don't Telstra have enough money anymore?].

One bright spark who never says die, Adrian Kirk-Burnnand, has created an e-petition to allow rally enthusiasts to have their voices heard, as seemingly, they have been left out of the decision making process by tourism minister[no irony intended] and innovative giant, Mark McGowan.

The official release from the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport will explain all about Mr McGowan's latest brainwave to place the most isolated city in the world on the map.

Rally Newsletter has this summary of the short-sighted decision.

Please take the time to sign Adrian's petition Keep Rally Australia in WA, Perth which he has thoughtfully created for all rally enthusiasts to voice their opinions on the matter.

Part of the appeal of Telstra Rally Australia was not just that it gave Perth a standing in the international forum, but rather, it exposed our very isolated city and its inhabitants to an exciting and culturally diverse sport which showed that our unique conditions have relevance in world motor sports and offers a point of reference to Perth's place in the international arena.

Rally Australia has inspired generations and Perth has contributed several world class rally drivers and technicians, not to mention the amount of employment and revenue the event has provided the hospitality industry every year.

Mr McGowan's decision to axe the Perth Rally instead of using better marketing strategies to make it more financially viable in the future, has made a sacrifice of diversity, which as the most isolated city in the world, is a cost Perth residents cannot afford.


Monday, March 21, 2005

Howard's Culture of Secrecy strikes again

New measures to police political campaigning have far-reaching ramifications which could be used to limit indy-media and freedom of speech via defamation laws which are widely touted as the privilege of the wealthy or corporate sector.

The heavy restrictive legislation which has curtailed the media fulfilling their function as the fourth estate of democracy, has seen steady growth during John Howard's time as prime minister.

Mr Howard made no secret of his disdain for the free voice of the ABC which he felt impacted negatively on the election campaign which brought him to office initially.

It should also be noted that conservative and controversial journalist, Janet Albrechtson, who was heavily criticized by MediaWatch previously, was recently appointed to the ABC Board by the Howard government.

The proposed legislation will require bloggers with political content to put their name to their work and failure to do so could lead to a $5000 fine.

Newly owned Crikey media's Hugo Kelly, had this to say about the new legislation,
Censorship in cyberspace?
Hugo Kelly writes: The plan by Special Minister of State Eric Abetz to crack down on political bloggers is causing shivers in cyberspace.
Bloggers and spammers could be forced to put their names to political commentary in a bid to close a loophole in the nation's electoral laws, reports Misha Schubert in The Age.
Stirred by the appearance of such sites as www.johnhowardlies.com and http//www.liarsforhoward.org/, Betz has flagged a clampdown on web publishers who refuse to identify a person who authorises their content.
Bloggers are waiting nervously to see the draft legislation.
The new rules will be good if they can stops party stooges using phony organisations to spread propaganda, says one blogger, but it's going to be "a nice little earner" if they can slap a $5000 fine on every blogger in the country. A $5000 fine would be a death sentence for many a blogger.

As individual web publishers, bloggers being sued [successfully or not] by big business for voicing their opinions, could well be enough of a deterrent to silence many Australians from taking an active interest in politics and airing opinions in the governing of their country.

Whilst being terribly useful for the current government in silencing dissent in the short term, this will lead to future generations becoming less interested in politics, there is already much discussion of Australian youth being disillusioned and feeling irrelevent in the governmental process.

This legislation is absolutely unnecessary in Perth of course, as we already have a liberal hold over our only independent daily newspaper, which is monitored only by the likes of ABC's Media Watch, who dosed out a fair wolloping on last week's show about The Werst's inaccurate and sensationalist reporting in relation to their exclusive break-through investigation of PMH.

Is this political enough to put my name to?

Monday, March 14, 2005

Quotable Quotes...Four Corners: Terence Hodson

In Channel 2's 4 Corners program this evening Andrew Hodson quoting his father,
career heavy-weight jack-of-all-trades criminal, Terence Hodson,
summing up how he ended up in the Constabulary's employ[as a criminal informer]...

'..it was the perfect job...'

So what could have gone wrong for Terry Hodson and his colourful acquaintances that fateful day, I hear you ask???

'Never rob a house in a Neighbourhood Watch area.'

Now one has to assume that he is probably referring to a Neighbourhood Watch area that actually has members and a suburb manager.
With all the altruistic public sector hype about community crime prevention, this quote is as good a motivation as any for the Office of Crime Prevention to keep the Neighbourhood Watch program which is rumoured to be on the chopping block, up and running, if not perhaps administered a little more effectively.
Now any half-decent 'odd-jobs' man will confess that his worst enemy is the ever ubiquitous curtain peeking, 'Mrs Kravitz.'
In what some would call a karmic twist of fate, it was Terence Hodson's life of crime that ended up turning the couple, themselves, into worried window watchers in their latter years.
No one could ever condone what happened to the Hodsons, but I have to admit towards the end of the program feeling a little peeved at the comfort of those who prosper from a life of crime and wondering how many people died as a result of the drugs Hodson dealt - and indeed of those, I wonder how many were afforded a quick, painless death?
Alcohol and drug abuse are of course, one of the main contributing factors in domestic violence which takes many lives[not quickly OR painlessly], nationally, every year, not to mention the lives of many generations of children who have been tragically effected by family violence.
Then, one would also have to take into consideration the lives of those drug abusers' families, who are emotionally tortured and financially run into the ground, whilst watching their children slowly killing themselves.
So how many victims did the Hodsons leave behind?



Access at last...

Due to unforeseen exhaustion and log-in problems today's post will be tomorrow's post.zzzzzzzzzz

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Bernie Matthews: The Real Deal

Bernie Matthews: The Real Deal
7/12/04

'Katingal was a sterile, windowless, concrete building that housed forty cells, electronically controlled from a central control panel, A stainless steel unit set into the wall served as a toilet with separate buttons for flushing and drinking water, a large slab of concrete served as a bed.''...when the second major breakdown occurred and cut off air supply to every cellblock. For three days, we pushed the water out of the toilet bowl and sucked fetid air through the shithouse pipes to survive.'

'June 3, 1978 the Pavlovian experiment in behaviour modification and sensory deprivation ended. I finally saw daylight again. It had been two years and eight months since I had breathed fresh air or walked longer than nineteen paces in a straight line.'

Excerpts from 'The Brutes of Katingal' by Bernie Matthews


Freelance journalist, Bernie Matthews, is amongst the few free, living survivors of Katingal, a correctional institution which breached so many international human rights conventions in the subsequent judicial inquiry it was found to be unlawful for the N.S.W. government to even use the term 'prison' in its name.

As a young man Mr Matthews spent eleven years in gaol and nine of those years in isolation.

"Katingal Special Security Unit was designed to house the State's most incorrigible prisoners under conditions of extreme maximum security in which the prisoner never saw natural light and all air was pumped into the building. I was the third prisoner transferred from Grafton in to Katingal and I am the only Australian ex-prisoner alive to have served the longest time confined inside Katingal."
Whilst many others wilt under the pressure of such deprivation, some becoming suicidal, Bernie Matthews wrote three plays, Tumbling Dice, Squaring Up and The Other Side is Greener, two of which received readings at the 1976 and 1977 Australian Playwrights Conventions. In 1977 Bernie Matthews' poetry also featured in a compilation by the Department of Corrective Services, which featured the artwork of Brett Whitely.

"Society cannot do without prisons but society is blissfully unaware of what happens inside those tax-payer funded institutions and how the treatment inside prisons can impact on society."

"Upon arrival at Grafton I was stripped naked and baton-whipped unconscious by five prison guards. This practice was called the 'reception biff,' I was baton-whipped on numerous occasions for;looking, talking, being out of step," Berrnie Matthews said.

"The prison experience made me an angry man but it also reinforced a determination in me, apparent when I began pursuing a journalism career. I had contacts that mainstream media could never attain. There were stories that the mainstream media never pursued."

"Uni studies occupied the majority of my prison time and I suggested to other prisoners that it was a way of improving yourself and doing prison time in a vacuum of study."

Bernie Matthews is completely at ease discussing his significant achievements and abilities, a confidence born of almost a lifetime of surviving in male dominated environments where showing vulnerability could bring about one's demise. But he isn't bridging up, having fought years of extraordinary ground breaking battles for the basic human rights of prisoners, such as free speech, defamation defence and compensation for wrongful imprisonment, his actions speak for themselves. He talks boldly of possessing a chameleon-like quality, which allows him to confidently express his thoughts eloquently in any language from prison yard dialogue to the formal jargon of judges and academics. This along with a cache of acclaimed stories and media awards clearly shows he has not mellowed over the years, but merely rechannelled his aggression into a very effective means of facilitating change and raising public awareness of justice and law reform issues.

As a desperate young man facing many years ahead of him in gaol, Bernie Matthews escaped from custody twice and a media and political beat up was launched which pushed a frightening and false profile of him as a rapist into the public eye. A vague retraction appeared in only one paper and he spent years fighting for protection from misleading representations of criminals in the media, and then in 1976, Matthews petitioned the Australian Law Reform Commission about unfair defamation laws on the basis of the
Golder precedent in the European Court of Human Rights. Justice Michael Kirby, the then Chairman of the Australian Law Reform Commission, addressed Matthews’ submission by advocating that the European Court of Human Rights Golder precedent used by Matthews in his submission, should be a basis for Australian defamation law.


Matthews was baton-whipped unconscious by guards during a riot at Katingal in1977 but out of this horrific attack came his first contact with
Anne Summers and with it, the first glimpses of the potential for media to effect positive social change. Anne Summers, who worked for the National Times, wrote a story which brought the abuse and plight of Katingal prisoners to public attention, and later went on to attain a doctorate in communications, and become the CEO of Greenpeace International and achieve international acclaim as a journalist, social activist and feminist. Despite prison officials' attempts to conceal Matthews in the isolation unit of another gaol until his injuries had healed, Ms Summers managed to obtain evidence from the doctor who had treated him at Long Bay. She also gave him his first paid job as a journalist in 1978, writing a book review for the National Times.


After the closure of Katingal in 1978 he was transferred to Parramatta, he was elected to become the editor of the prison magazine, 'Contact,' and soon found himself in a battle with corrective services over freedom of 'accurate and truthful reporting of events that occur behind prison walls.'

"During one edition I conducted an interview with
James Edward 'Jockey' Smith who was a notorious bank robber, we canvassed the subject of police corruption, adverse pre-trial publicity and the practice of police verbals, and received the ire of the NSW Police Department who tried to get the magazine banned. A Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Col Allison, published a report in January 1979 condemning the prison mag and claimed the interview never took place."

Mr Matthews lodged a complaint to the
Australian Press Council, which became a landmark ruling for free speech and transparency in gaols, and noted the existence of media manipulation and Sydney's media working in collusion with N.S.W. justice officials who were later discovered to be corrupt. The edition of the prison magazine 'Contact,' which prompted the matter became a text for law students at the University of N.S.W. The Australian Press Council’s findings said, "the Council…is very much alert to the difficulties some disadvantaged groups of citizens face in making their position public, and suggests that the Press makes special efforts to help them in such cases."

"The role of prison magazine editor created a catalyst for my later career in journalism… that would not have evolved without the guidance and assistance of journalism mentors such as former National Times journalist, Anne Summers, former Walkley award winner and NSW & Queensland journalist, David Halpin, and ABC Current Affairs producer, Tony Collins," Matthews said.


The late seventies subsequently afforded Matthews opportunities to build acquaintanceships with members of the media through an unusual media interest lifting the lid on prisoners' experiences and accountability in the justice system. Over the late seventies and after his release in 1980 Matthews wrote prolifically and his reputation for campaigning for law reforms and as a journalist grew steadily. Amidst this growing status however, his ever-controversial public stance on corruption, law reform and justice issues, was likely to have been at the root of his wrongful imprisonment for murder in 1983.

"I was acquitted at trial but nearly 3 years of my life evaporated…I was loaded up on the word of a criminal informer who was granted immunity from prosecution and I was also verballed by 2 detectives," he said.

He was released in 1985 without compensation, inquiry or an apology, for two years of his life having been stolen away, in addition to the years of study and hard work to reform and create a straight life on the outside. However, persecution by corrupt justice officials only added to the fire in Matthews' belly, and after his release he began lecturing at schools, universities and speaking at high profile national and international conferences and televised debates.

Matthews appeared on talk-back radio with
Kathryn Greiner (who was the wife of the then NSW premier, Nick Greiner), expressing disgust over N.S.W. criminal informers being paid with freedom and large cash sums, to the detriment of public safety and the integrity of the justice system.

"I illustrated (on the show) two significant cases in which prisoners had been rewarded with freedom and in one case that freedom had resulted in one of the worst rape/murders in NSW history (
The Anita Cobby murder). I also criticized the possible rewarding of a prisoner with a $250 000 reward for his testimony in the Hilton bombing trial. I did not know that two high ranking NSW Police officers (who were later dismissed from the police for corruption) were already in the process of recommending that he be given the reward."

Shortly after the show,
Nick Greiner announced he would veto the practise, which prevented underworld 'supergrass' Ray Denning, receiving a $250,000 payout and, seemingly as retribution, the two detectives involved in Denning's claims **verballed Bernie Matthews for the Sunnybank[Qld] armoured van heist of $694,000 and two murders, tearing at the fabric of his now stable career, marriage and settled home life.
** The practise of verballing discussed in numerous official corruption inquiries, is the fabrication of evidence to gain a conviction.

Bernie Matthews was, once again, released a year later, following the Queensland arrest of two of the original offenders, with no apology, no compensation, no corruption inquiry and no home, family or work to return to.
"For the next five years I fought for compensation from both the Qld and NSW governments for the extradition and wrongful imprisonment," the Lismore journalist said. Both the Queensland and N.S.W. governments, tied any right to compensation with convenient bureaucratic red-tape and virtually justified turning a blind eye to wrongful imprisonment.

Broke, disillusioned, defamed and alone, Bernie Matthews set about creating his own compensation, via his old stock trade, robbing banks, and arrested within hours of robbing a bank in Brisbane, Bernie Matthews was returned to gaol to reinvent himself once again, this time, as a model prisoner. He maintained his writing and in 1998 won two scholarships to the University of South Queensland was paroled in 2000 and reinstated as member of the
Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance in 2001.

"In 2004 I became the first ex-prisoner/ journalist to receive 2 awards at the Queensland Media Awards for my contribution to journalism, I am hoping I live long enough to take out a Walkley as my crowning achievement in my journalism career," he said. Matthews is currently completing a degree at the USQ, looking after his godson and has just penned an article on former
fellow Katingal prisoner, Russell 'Mad Dog' Cox for The Bulletin.

Matthews' best advice to those going through the same turmoil he has survived,

"you can use the prison experience in a positive way by remembering and using it as a yardstick to prevent your return when things in the outside world go a bit astray."
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