2 Texans Down Under

Enrique Penalosa spoke here in Brisbane last week and opened my eyes to new ways of seeing cities.

Mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, for three years until 2001, Penalosa made major improvements in the city’s transportation system, put in 300 kilometres (more than 180 miles) of bicycle and walking trails, and left behind a network of 1,200 parks and public spaces.

What are cities for, he asked a packed auditorium at Griffith University, cars or children?

A highway through a city is like a fence in a pasture, he said, separating people from each other. Highways also give special privileges to some people (car owners) and not others.

And, “A city is a collective work of art.”

His fundamental beliefs include at least these two: human beings should come first (“humans are sacred”) and democracy depends on providing both equality before the law and the chance for the poor to move as freely outdoors as the wealthy usually can.

Sidewalks, bike paths, parks, other open public spaces, and mass transportation can further democracy and make cities great. When precedence is given to cars and highways, democracy suffers and cities fall short of their potential.

“Every great city has at least one great public space where even rich people Read the rest of this entry »

As I said yesterday, Aussies are paying close attention to Presidential election primaries and to fluctuations in the US economy.

The sharp drop in the share market that began here last month is attributed to fears of a recession growing out of policies shaped in Washington, D.C. The great majority of the well-informed here can hardly wait for a “regime change” in America and they expect the US to be on a saner course by this time next year.

But for hope of safety in rough economic seas, folks here are looking elsewhere, toward China.The supply of iron, alumina, coal, and other raw materials to China as its vast population moves up from poverty is buoying Australian prosperity now and is counted on to continue to do so.

The old economic health analogy, therefore, is applied to that country, not the US. An article in “The Australian” newspaper this week, headlined “China’s bubble quivers,” said, “If China catches a winter cold, Australia sneezes.”

Trade between these two countries topped $50 billion in the last financial year, the article by China correspondent Rowan Callick said, and nearly half of that amount came from the sale of resources from Australian mines.

“This dictates,” Callick wrote, the need to pay as much attention “to pronouncements from Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leaders’ citadel next to the Forbidden City, as from the Federal Reserve in Washington.”The importance of these pronouncements is heightened by the fact that Read the rest of this entry »

Surely nowhere outside the United States are the current election primaries — now evidently down to Obama vs Clinton and McCain vs Romney — being watched more intently than here in Australia.

Having just gone through their own election season and brought to power fresh leadership, the Labor Party and Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, Australians seem more attuned to politics than might otherwise be the case.

Neighbors and friends here have quizzed us about unique aspects of the American election system, just as we quizzed them about candidate selection, preference voting, and other matters here that seemed odd to us, last year.

At least as much attention in Australia, though, is being paid these days to the US economy. Is recession setting in or not? If it does, will the rest of the world economy slide downward with it? What effect will be felt here, half a world away but as near as each trader’s Internet connection?

The papers and TV news casts are full of speculation and commentary, especially now that some high-flying Australian companies have been brought low in recent days and weeks by bad loans and stock purchases made with borrowed money.

Yesterday’s “Australian” carried a story about a man who put $600,000 of his own money, most of his life savings, into a company called Gold Coast MFS. Shares in MFS were trading at around $5 in December, Read the rest of this entry »

The connection between my two countries — Australia and the United States — is amazingly strong and shows up often, both in the press and in private conversations.

For example, Barack Obama’s primary win in Iowa and Hillary Clinton’s win in New Hampshire got almost as much attention in “The Australian” newspaper this week as Kevin Rudd’s election as Aussie Prime Minister received a few weeks ago.

Both these two US election events were front page leaders here, accompanied by big photos. Inside the papers, there were long analytical articles, editorials, and letters to the editors. I’m certain we get better newspaper coverage of this Presidential contest from Aussie papers than we’d get from the smaller and thinner “Dallas Morning-News,” which is what we read while we were in Texas.

Being just back from a holiday trip, Kristi and I have been in conversations with fellow Brisbane residents about similarities and differences. Today at our gym I confirmed for someone who hasn’t traveled to the US that, yes, restaurant meals there do tend to be, by Aussie standards, huge.

And in today’s paper there’s a report out of Washington, D.C., about a new book asserting that obesity is now Read the rest of this entry »

Ambivalence seems to characterize the discussion of immigration in both the US and Australia. A more cynical view would replace “ambivalence” with “hypocrisy.”

In our adopted country, where a “whites only” attitude prevailed for a long time, business and industry leaders are now clamoring for changes in laws to allow more non-Australians in to fill jobs, skilled and not-so skilled. That was true while former Prime Minister John Howard was arranging to keep political refugees away from Aussie shores and subtly injecting race issues into his attempts to get re-elected.

Here in the country of our birth, where Kristi and I are now visiting, legal and illegal immigrants are sometimes used as scapegoats for various problems, and candidates for President, Republican especially, seem to be vying with each other to see who can appear toughest (or meanest) on immigration issues.

Sending illegal immigrants home en masse tomorrow, though, might crash the US economy by New Years.

Eating places employ the largest number of immigrants, according to the National Restaurant Association, about 1.4 million of them, 70 per cent of whom are in the lowest-paying jobs: cleaning, dishwashing, and doing prep work.

Although I held a couple of dishwashing and bus-boy jobs before I started college, few chefs currently working have ever known of an American-born citizen Read the rest of this entry »

A government was overthrown here Saturday.

You probably read or saw reports about it: Kevin Rudd and the liberal Labor Party snatched control of the country from John Howard and the conservative Liberal Party. It was a transfer of power by ballot and it was a joy to watch.

Having already become avidly partisan even though we cannot vote because we are not citizens here, Kristi and I were thrilled to see Rudd end Howard’s reign of more than 11 years. A leader of dubious veracity and limited vision has been replaced by a younger man who is middle-of-the-road on many issues but seems to grasp the gravity of global warming, the importance of openness in government, and need to preserve the Aussie tradition of “a fair go” for all citizens.

There was a lot at stake, and although Howard had on his stoic, strong face during his concession speech, Read the rest of this entry »

Friends in the United States ask whether or not we celebrate Thanksgiving here and I explain to them that, no, Australians miss out on “turkey day” and a lot of important holidays like July 4th, Evacuation Day, and Sam Houston’s birthday. And hardly anybody here remembers the Alamo.

That’s a tongue-in-cheek reply, of course, and Kristi and I will be joining an American friend and her Australian husband tomorrow for a Thanksgiving feast with others, as we did last year. It will be Friday here as we start the festivities, but still Thursday in the US.

Aussies are aware of this uniquely American holiday, though. In today’s “The Australian,” the paper’s New York correspondent comments on several “things we should thank America for,” including baseball.

Although I doubt our Aussie host tomorrow will agree, David Nason calls it “a game of wonderful nuance and sublime skill that is a worthy rival of cricket,” even if it is “an acquired taste” best enjoyed with a beer in hand.

The post-World War II Marshall Plan, so different from “the Bush-Chaney cock-up in Iraq,” is another worthy gift to the world from the US, Nason says, as is Muhammad Ali, cultural and religious tolerance, freedom of speech, and freedom of inquiry.

Nason notes that freedom of inquiry “remains the most important element of the checks and balances a decent democracy needs Read the rest of this entry »

Who pulled the plug on the worm?

It’s on page five in “The Australian” today but it continues to be one of the more interesting stories coming out of Sunday night’s John Howard, Kevin Rudd debate.

As I said in yesterday’s blog, Nine Network’s feed of the 90-minute debate was interrupted twice and Nine had to take its signal from another channel. Nine’s Ray Martin blamed Howard’s Liberal Party.

Today, the chief executive of the National Press Club, which ran the debate, took the blame and he wasn’t apologizing for it. Nine, he said, had been disobeying the rules so they were no longer entitled to the feed. However, news reports say he told colleagues that the Liberal Party had been “putting the weights on him” over Nine’s “worm,” an on-screen image showing how 70 undecided voters were scoring the two debaters as the event progressed.

Channel Nine and its worm, it turns out, drew more viewers than any of the other channels carrying the debate. The 1.4 million viewers watching Nine saw the 70 undecided voters with dials connected to the worm score a solid win for Rudd.

“The Australian,” which seems to me to be blatantly pro-Liberal Party, reported today that a poll it commissioned found that Rudd won the debate convincingly (70 percent) or marginally (eight percent) while only 18 percent of those polled thought Howard won either convincingly or marginally.

The worm gave Rudd the win by over 65 percent to less than 30 percent for Howard. The pollsters said 78 to 18.

In a column on the same page that gave the poll results today, Matthew Franklin, the chief political correspondent of “The Australian” says, “The Labor leader was widely seen to have scored a narrow victory in the nationally televised debate.”

They banned the worm. The worm showed up anyway. The worm says Rudd beat Howard in last night’s televised debate from the Great Hall of Parliament.

Watching Australian politics is a trip.

Here are the facts: John Howard has been Prime Minister for 11 years. Kevin Rudd is seeking to replace him in an election November 24, but nobody gets to vote for either one as Prime Minister.

Voters will cast ballots all over Australia for Senators and Representatives and when all the counting is done either the conservative Liberal Party will have won enough seats in Parliament to keep Howard in office or the less conservative Labor Party will have won enough to elevate Rudd to the top spot.

The incumbent got to set most of the rules for the Sunday night debate Read the rest of this entry »