The Wonderful World of Oz

I got asked today what I thought the biggest fault lines between Australian and American culture were.

There are many cultural differences, and of diverse origin, but I genuinely believe that escaping the rigid sexual/gender policing of the puritans has given straight Australian men a much more rational grasp on their personal opportunities for increased wealth and comfort than a lot of American men can understand.

I realise everything is relative, but if we look at the material lifestyles of Australians in their 30s now as opposed to when my parents were in their 30s or my grandparents were in their 30s, Australian working men in straight relationships today can SEE the benefit of equalised job opportunities for women and equal pay for women to *their own* quality of life.

The benefits to today’s dual-income households in terms of raw cash are lifestyle benefits - overseas holidays, mortgages (yes), private schools for their kids (I don’t support them but at least 30%+ of Australian families can afford them), hairdressers, new clothes (yes), subscriptions, renos - that were impossibly out of reach to my parents and inconceivable to my grandparents. Even though everyone in my family worked, structuralised inequality and limitation imposed on women in previous generations meant accumulating disposable income was really hard. When the feminist reforms started to take hold in the 1980s and my mum got a job in the public service that gave her career agency and development was when my parents (in their 40s) finally met the threshold to get a mortgage. Remember: until 1966, women used to get *booted out* of the public service and other career jobs as soon as they got married.

Add to this context that, Australians OVERWHELMINGLY support women’s reproductive rights and I think this is the KEY difference between them and us - because Australian straight men recognise that women’s reproductive freedom is their freedom, too: here, there’s no broader social pressue to have a family before the the time YOU PERSONALLY ARE GOOD AND READY to have one. You don’t have to marry someone just because you fuck them, let alone be forced to live with and raise babies with someone when you’ve barely worked out how your own dick works. Sex, parenting and marriage are three separate decisions to Australians and we should all fight very hard to keep it that way as two of the three you can’t undo and while the third you can undo, it will cost you half the house.

This freedom has meant - statistically - Australian men have more sexual partners and earn more money than American men before they settle down, they settle down later in life and when they do, dual incomes give them a material boost which is safety-netted by Medicare, free TAFE and deferred-payment uni degrees as well as superannuation.

So if you’re looking at the aggro coming out of America, consider the number of communities there - not all of them, maybe not even a majority of them but certainly those that dominate the “trump base” - where men are literally trapped into relationships they don’t really want, obligations they’re not enthusiastic about meeting, and circumstances that constrict every material, physical and emotional opportunity for a happy and contented life.

No wonder you’d be obsessed with guns and computer games and cosplaying militia on the weekend: you’d want to burn the world down.

For what? Some bullshit ideology that considers working wives to be a social status reduction, and some weird puritan hangup that considers rooting so sinful that forced pregnancies and unwanted kids are the punishment you deserve.

There are communities of misogynists in Australia because there are hateful weirdoes everywhere but as far as personal values go, from the most community-minded socialists to the most self-interested individualists around, I believe Australian men have had the chance to appreciate that this feminism business has done them a real solid and that’s why we don’t miss the guns at all.

Here endeth the lesson.

Van Badham
 
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To All Flag Marshals: Action Australia-wide and action at Australian overseas posts​

National Sorry Day - Monday, 26 May 2025​

and​

National Reconciliation Week - ​

to Tuesday, 3 June 2025​



National Sorry Day remembers and acknowledges the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities. National Reconciliation Week is a time for Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures and achievements. Further information about National Reconciliation Week this year is available at https://www.reconciliation.org.au/our-work/national-reconciliation-week/
Flying the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Flags on National Sorry Day and throughout National Reconciliation Week recognises the significance of these events for all Australians and is a sign of respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and culture.

From Monday, 26 May to Tuesday, 3 June 2025the Australian Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander Flag should be flown on additional flagpoles, where available, next to or near the Australian National Flag on Australian Government buildings and establishments. Other organisations are encouraged to follow this protocol.

If there is only one flagpole available at a flag station, the Australian Aboriginal Flag or the Torres Strait Islander Flag should not replace the Australian National Flag. Where two flagpoles are available, it is at the discretion of the authority concerned to determine which of the two flags is flown with the Australian National Flag. The Australian Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander Flag are equal in precedence and may be flown in any order after the Australian National Flag.

Further information on flag protocol can be found on the Department’s website at www.pmc.gov.au/flag

The financial and staffing implications arising from weekend and public holiday flag marshal duties are the responsibility of each organisation.

Your assistance is appreciated.
Commonwealth Flag Officer
20 May 2025

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet
1 National Circuit, Barton,
ACT 2600
 
Posted on a few big Australian exporter’s pages this morning. No new Harrington jackets or chelsea boots for the yanks.

IMG_6073.webp
 
Australia Post won't send anything to the US for now, except for letters, documents and gifts worth less than $150.

It's the same deal for items going to Puerto Rico, which uses the same postal network as the United States.

This decision is mostly impacting online retailers in Australia who use Business Contract and MyPost Business to send items to the US.

An express post envelope

Australia Post isn't the only one that suspended shipments to the US. (Getty Images: Don Arnold)

Australia Post isn't the only postal service that has made this extraordinary decision.

Norwegian, Swedish-Danish and Belgian postal groups Posten Bring, PostNord and bpost also paused their parcel shipments to the US last week.

Sendle, which mainly focuses on small to medium-sized businesses and online retailers, followed suit.
 
Candace Owens:
"Are you denying my visa?"

The Australian High Court:
"Well, we're not here to fuck spiders..."

The High Court ruling included the following sentence; “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.”

🤣
 
More for fxh - a love poem for Melbourne

What Toronto can learn about transit, museums and parks from Melbourne

Melbourne and Toronto are similar in many ways.

Both began their modern lives as distant outposts of the British Empire and grew into vibrant, prosperous cities. Both have been enriched by waves of immigration from first Europe, then Asia. Both boast thriving downtowns with thickets of glass towers. Both are national hubs for finance and the arts. And both are home to roughly a fifth of the national population, when their hinterlands are factored in.

They’re practically twins, separated at birth, on opposite sides of the globe. Except that everything in Melbourne is, well, better.

A Torontonian riding the rails in Melbourne can only hang his head in shame. The city’s network of trams (what Toronto calls streetcars) is one of the biggest in the world, with 1,600 stops and a fleet of nearly 500, big and small. It is run by a private company on contract for the state government. Though three-quarters of the system shares the road with cars, it seems to work much better than the snails on rails that cross downtown Toronto.

Along with the trams, Melbourne has 16 commuter rail lines radiating out from the city centre, most above ground but some under. It just completed a big expansion, Metro Tunnel, with five stations and nine kilometres of track. Like so many transit projects, it cost more and took longer than expected, but the result is quite magnificent.

What a contrast to the debut of Toronto’s Finch West light-rail transit line ‐ slower than a running human – or the non-debut of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Nobody can say when that almost mythical creature will stir to life.

Melbourne’s parks are spectacular, too. A quarter of the central city is made up of parkland and reserves, a credit to the city fathers of yesteryear. As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it: “These spaces were set aside in the mid-19th-century, at a time when many civic leaders in other cities were concerned with commercial development rather than with the quality of life.”

Britannica must have been thinking of the money-grubbing, penny-pinching leaders of early Toronto, who left it with precisely one big public park (High Park in the west end) and no public gardens that come close to Melbourne’s.

You could spend a week exploring the city’s amazing Royal Botanic Gardens alone. Novak Djokovic, a 10-time winner of the Australian Open, goes there each time he visits to commune with his favourite tree, a Moreton Bay fig. But there are at least a dozen more green spaces worth a visit, from the Treasury Gardens to the sprawling Royal Park.

Looking for culture? Start with the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia’s biggest and most visited museum, home to fine Asian collections and many other glories. Move on to the Melbourne Museum to see its enormous whale skeleton and new gallery devoted to an intact triceratops skeleton.

These spacious, well-organized, well-designed institutions make a visitor from Toronto marvel yet again at the hash that has been made of his city’s equivalents: the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, each the victim of multiple, incoherent renovations.

Unlike Toronto, Melbourne respects and celebrates its history. Exhibits at the Melbourne Museum and the Old Treasury Building document the city’s rise from dusty colonial settlement to the metropolis of more than five million that it is today. Toronto has been talking for years about establishing a full-fledged museum of Toronto history. It even has an obvious place to put it: the now-empty Old City Hall. Nothing happens. Embarrassing.

As for the waterfront, Melburnians can walk along the banks of the Yarra River, have a drink in a floating bar or visit the recently redeveloped St Kilda Pier, with its curving walkway and platform for viewing a colony of criminally cute little penguins (the world’s smallest).

Witnessing all the ways Melbourne bests Toronto, it would be easy to despair. Better to learn instead.

Melbourne is a great city because its leaders were ambitious. They wanted their home to be more than an antipodean backwater. They wanted it to be a stately, cultured city like the great European capitals they admired. Drawing on the wealth from a gold rush, they built grand churches and imposing government edifices such as the Parliament House of Victoria, the Flinders Street train station, the Royal Exhibition Building and the State Library Victoria, with its light-bathed domed reading room.

Today’s city builders are continuing the mission by digging the Metro Tunnel, restoring the historic Princes Bridge and refurbishing the State Theatre.

The lessons for Toronto are obvious. Treasure your history. Build up your cultural institutions. Invest in better transit. Be far-sighted. Be bold. Be more like Melbourne.
 
Fwiffo said:
More for fxh - a love poem for Melbourne

What Toronto can learn about transit, museums and parks from Melbourne

Melbourne and Toronto are similar in many ways.

Both began their modern lives as distant outposts of the British Empire and grew into vibrant, prosperous cities. Both have been enriched by waves of immigration from first Europe, then Asia. Both boast thriving downtowns with thickets of glass towers. Both are national hubs for finance and the arts. And both are home to roughly a fifth of the national population, when their hinterlands are factored in.

They’re practically twins, separated at birth, on opposite sides of the globe. Except that everything in Melbourne is, well, better.

A Torontonian riding the rails in Melbourne can only hang his head in shame. The city’s network of trams (what Toronto calls streetcars) is one of the biggest in the world, with 1,600 stops and a fleet of nearly 500, big and small. It is run by a private company on contract for the state government. Though three-quarters of the system shares the road with cars, it seems to work much better than the snails on rails that cross downtown Toronto.

Along with the trams, Melbourne has 16 commuter rail lines radiating out from the city centre, most above ground but some under. It just completed a big expansion, Metro Tunnel, with five stations and nine kilometres of track. Like so many transit projects, it cost more and took longer than expected, but the result is quite magnificent.

What a contrast to the debut of Toronto’s Finch West light-rail transit line ‐ slower than a running human – or the non-debut of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT. Nobody can say when that almost mythical creature will stir to life.

Melbourne’s parks are spectacular, too. A quarter of the central city is made up of parkland and reserves, a credit to the city fathers of yesteryear. As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it: “These spaces were set aside in the mid-19th-century, at a time when many civic leaders in other cities were concerned with commercial development rather than with the quality of life.”

Britannica must have been thinking of the money-grubbing, penny-pinching leaders of early Toronto, who left it with precisely one big public park (High Park in the west end) and no public gardens that come close to Melbourne’s.

You could spend a week exploring the city’s amazing Royal Botanic Gardens alone. Novak Djokovic, a 10-time winner of the Australian Open, goes there each time he visits to commune with his favourite tree, a Moreton Bay fig. But there are at least a dozen more green spaces worth a visit, from the Treasury Gardens to the sprawling Royal Park.

Looking for culture? Start with the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia’s biggest and most visited museum, home to fine Asian collections and many other glories. Move on to the Melbourne Museum to see its enormous whale skeleton and new gallery devoted to an intact triceratops skeleton.

These spacious, well-organized, well-designed institutions make a visitor from Toronto marvel yet again at the hash that has been made of his city’s equivalents: the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, each the victim of multiple, incoherent renovations.

Unlike Toronto, Melbourne respects and celebrates its history. Exhibits at the Melbourne Museum and the Old Treasury Building document the city’s rise from dusty colonial settlement to the metropolis of more than five million that it is today. Toronto has been talking for years about establishing a full-fledged museum of Toronto history. It even has an obvious place to put it: the now-empty Old City Hall. Nothing happens. Embarrassing.

As for the waterfront, Melburnians can walk along the banks of the Yarra River, have a drink in a floating bar or visit the recently redeveloped St Kilda Pier, with its curving walkway and platform for viewing a colony of criminally cute little penguins (the world’s smallest).

Witnessing all the ways Melbourne bests Toronto, it would be easy to despair. Better to learn instead.

Melbourne is a great city because its leaders were ambitious. They wanted their home to be more than an antipodean backwater. They wanted it to be a stately, cultured city like the great European capitals they admired. Drawing on the wealth from a gold rush, they built grand churches and imposing government edifices such as the Parliament House of Victoria, the Flinders Street train station, the Royal Exhibition Building and the State Library Victoria, with its light-bathed domed reading room.

Today’s city builders are continuing the mission by digging the Metro Tunnel, restoring the historic Princes Bridge and refurbishing the State Theatre.

The lessons for Toronto are obvious. Treasure your history. Build up your cultural institutions. Invest in better transit. Be far-sighted. Be bold. Be more like Melbourne.
Click to expand...
They forgot a vibrant live music scene -rock, jazz, classical etc every night of the week. Often with NO door charge.

Also Melbourne is the only city outside Asia where you can walk into any type of Asian restaurant and get a authentic Asian meal without worrying. And a range of reasonably cheap options. The Banh Mi or a Sushi Roll are ubiquitous Melbourne lunch time fare. And competition on quality is fierce. In winter its Pho. Even in the suburbs.
 
fxh said:
They forgot a vibrant live music scene -rock, jazz, classical etc every night of the week. Often with NO door charge.
Click to expand...

That died here after coronavirus. Most places are closing because they can't sell enough booze to offset no door or low cover charges.

Only the commercial venues driven by Live Nation or Ticketmaster sales are surviving.
 
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