By sidestepping the usual quagmire a leader has to wade through, he has presented Australia with an idea whose time has come. Days will tell if he has the nation on side or the party. I’m sure most Australians would rather he had the nation on side.

Meanwhile, Muggins, on the other side, is waffling on about insulation standards, and as far as I can see, a rock’n'roller’s responsibility. I could be wrong there. The waffle is now so thick that I no longer understand a word he says.

People do, however, take these shenanigens seriously. None more so than the Razzies. The Razzies began as the Golden Raspberry Awards, a pisstake on all that is glam, glitz and glaringly awful about the Academy Awards. Now in their 30th year, the Razzies command almost as much attention as the back slapping event itself.

This year is no exception, and true to form they managed to inveigle gorgeous and funny Sandra Bullock to accept the award for worst actress. Appearing with good grace, and a darn sight more humility than most Hollywood actresses can garner on the big night, she raced in to collect her miniscule award before returning to a meeting with a media mogul.

In a twist that has farce falicitating fact, she is also nominated for Best Actress in the Bugs Bunny Awards. Yet I don’t reckon she gives a rip. After all, she’s already won the big one.

Well, in reality, children need not be asked what they want for dinner. Children are not there to be negotiated with, they are there to be taught, shown by example. Giving them own way is fraught with danger.

Like pets, children will not hate you for being disciplinary, but rather will take advantage of you if you let them run free. There is nothing to be gained by treating your children as adults. It is misguided. They are not adults and require firm handling, both for your sanity and their sakes.

This isn’t just for you, it’s for them. A free-range childhood is a recipe for disaster later in life.

To read a page of Jack Kerouac is to listen to a chorus by Charlie Parker, a solo by Wes Montgomery. Wes played songs, not jazz solos, but melodies, crafted on the spur of the moment. Wes was the greatest storyteller of mainstream jazz. He played like Buble sings, relaxed and comfortable, like Whitney hitting her high notes, strident and reaching, and always like the lounging Frank Sinatra. Wes was to the guitar what Kerouac was to the page.

It’s a joy to know both, and like cute puppies that makes me happy.

What makes you happy?

The inadequate response from Seaworld has been to step up security around the orca’s shows. The appropriate response would have been to return the mammal to the deep seas, and forgo our misguided need for such circus-style gratification.

Returning the animal to captivity, and subsequent enslavement, is in the worst interests of the animal.

In lighter news, Peter Garrett has been thrown out of the big pond, and is now Minister for looking after cute and furry animals, and any rock’n'roll issues that may be of use to the Labor Party.

While he’s no longer saving the whales, I’d suggest that he’s a whole lot happier in this cultural portfolio. Horses for courses. While not being an old politico, he’s certainly an old dog in the public relations sphere. What else is rock singing to a generation or two, but public relations?

This 50-something man has skills that are sorely needed in this Gen X,Y and Boomer society we are part of.

Having even less whale of a time, 80s pop diva, Whitney Houston, being derided by both critics and punters for lacklustre performances in Brisbane and Sydney, is on the eve of her Newcastle Winerys’ shows. Way back in the 80s, on her first tour to Oz, she found herself insufficiently prepared to perform live, and also overpowered by her support artist, John Farnham.

Farnham saved the show. But what could you expect from a teenage girl who had never performed live on the big stage. Back in LA she was royalty, albeit young royalty, niece of Thelma Houston, doyen of record producers for her stratospheric hitting of the high notes, to this day, embossed on vinyl and digitally embalmed on CD. The young Whitney was solid gold in the parlance of the day. That no-one had thought to send her on a band gig or two, a rough’n'ready tour, a get to know the ins-and-outs of performing, sadly impacted on her ability to sell her talents live across the world.

To suggest that her subsequent drug abuse is related to this prima donna treatment of a young diva is not for me to say, yet I’d say she would now be glad to be free of the circus that has imprisoned her. A great voice, once unchained, a life that could have been extraordinary, while singing to the heavens, instead, is destroyed in pursuit of the dollar. Whitney was a product way before she was a person. As a result we have possibly lost one of the greatest voices of the late 20th Century.

Given Whitney’s talent, there is much left in her voice, in her vocal ability to tell her story. Let’s hope she decides to. In the long term, a blues singer can tell a greater story than a soulless diva.

In the longer term, a mammal such as the aforementioned ‘Tillikum’, the giant orca, continues to live in captivity and slavery, performing tricks for food. Wanting only to return to the sea, it is a little cruel for officials to continue to enslave the orca, the great whale that has no reason to be contained by mere men other than for the almighty dollar.

Everyone loves a circus, except those trapped in the cages.

Most societies today strive for integration and assimilation of the myriad cultures that now make up their citizenry. France being perhaps more insistent than others. This doesn’t mean eradicating individual cultures, but it does mean not importing archaic traditions which have no positive social value in the 21st Century.

Wearing a full face covering is not a religious tenet. It is a tribal custom that gained currency some 2,000 years ago, in the Middle East. Then it was an oppressive edict laid down as law by men for the subjugation of women.

That women today are defending the right of other women to remain in chains is bewildering. Our security services, in conjunction with banks, government offices, pubs and clubs, libraries and passport offices, have banned the wearing of headgear of any kind. Our face is our passport to the rest of society. If I can’t see your face I may as well be talking to a robot, a machine, certainly not someone who wishes to interact with me on a human level.

The sooner we dispense with pandering to niche groups that choose to live in a modern Western society, ie, France, Australia, yet choose to drag centuries’ old customs and servitudes with them, the sooner we can welcome all cultures to our countries, and move forward into a more enlightened future.

It is only by being free of the shackles of the past that we can move forward freely. The burqa/niqab is one of those shackles.

Now we have him overseeing a real world situation, that of installing insulation, and what do we get? Exactly what you’d expect from a rock band singer. Nothing, not even tears of regret.

It’s a long way to the top, and then you fall, and fall Garrett must. There isn’t another chorus when peoples lives are at stake, when people have died due to programmes you’ve instituted.

I am already feeling an inclination to touch my monitor rather than reach for the mouse. With text, paragraphs move around the screen effortlessly. In music software, I push and point chord symbols, copy tracks. Using the thumb and finger technique of expanding, I open a track, edit notes, return to the score. I am a genius.

I sense that the ubiquitous mouse is on the endangered species, and as a mouse induced RSI sufferer I can think of no rodent more deserving of eradication.

Finger touch won’t be available everywhere however. I realise that rubbing a finger across my car window won’t open or close it. That it’s a 1985 Ford possibly has something to do with this. Similarly forgetting my keys to the office in the morning won’t be rectified by a quick swipe across the glass of the front door.

Perhaps we are still a long way from open sesame, but with the right fingertouch or swipe who knows where you’ll be able to go in the future.

Presumably these youths had an unblemished record before the start of the evening. A number of them now have criminal records, have spent a night in the lock-up and irreparably affected their future. And all for what? Were they protesting against their situation in life, or someone else’s situation? Were they indignant about the treatment of boat people, or other political pawns in the system? Perhaps as students they had a bugbear with the government about its policy in Afghanistan.

In actuality, none of these. This generation of pampered, spoiled and over-indulged brats were merely bringing the chickens home to roost for a generation of parents who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, say no. Now the police and the judiciary have the onerous task of being the ones to instill what should have been parental discipline.

Men aren’t the enemy, just as women aren’t the cause of all men’s woes. Belabouring the claims made by Greer and cohorts serves to stir up imagined discontent with today’s gender relations. Gen Y have only history to show them the feminist struggle; they have grown up accepting the world as presented. Their view of men is vastly different to that of their mothers.

Today girls play the same sports as boys, often they play them together. This was unheard of in Greer’s day. To compare the conditions that feminists then faced and girls and boys today face is chalk and cheese. We’ve come a long way baby, and we shouldn’t need to bludgeon society with our out-moded concepts of gender equality. As much is as practicable, it’s a done deal.

Yet we still read articles by Gen X journos, in the interest of selling papers, or attracting eyeballs, that belie belief. Men are the enemy, they can’t look after themselves, they can’t look after their partner, they can’t iron a shirt. Much fun is made of this fact. This from women who demand respect, yet show little outward respect for the man in their life, or the man who could be in their life.

Is it any wonder why some men choose not to join the club?