A State Funeral 'over my dead body': Hutton

Ariontheweb is all in favour of tasteless jokes and comments, though I wasn't aware that the Queensland branch of the Greens felt the same way. It was a particularly tasteless streak is Senate wannabe Drew Hutton that lead him to speculate about the funeral of Sir Joh well before Sir Joh moves on to the great Sunshine Coast in the sky.

"This is a government which for 20 years was characterised by corruption, by authoritarianism and by environmental vandalism," Mr Hutton told the ABC.

"State funerals are supposed to be for people who have the respect of the community, and the admiration and affection of the community."

Sir Joh, 93, is suffering from advanced Parkinson's disease and requires round-the-clock nursing care.


The Greens have obviously conceded they're not going to win the nonagenarian vote.

Sir Joh: Not Dead

Comments

Ari Sharp said…
It would be a terrible thing if we were to go down the path of state funerals being denied to important public figures based on the political incumbant. Should Sir Joh do his best to hold on until the ALP are out of office in Queensland so that he can be assured of a State Funeral? Given how the conservatives are travelling in Queensland, he'll get well into triple figures.

Bottom line is that there is a level of civic achievement that demands a State Funeral, and to deny it based on a reconstruction of history is the wrong way to go.
10 July 2004 at 00:08
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can conspicuous consumption save the news business?

Image
It’s a dire time for the news industry. Readers are flooding to social media for content, advertisers are moving with them and costs are being cut at a brutal rate in a desperate bid to meet falling revenue. It is increasingly clear that business models that depend on amassing large audiences in order to provide a forum for advertising will always struggle against the “niche of one” audience that social media platforms can provide for advertisers. There’s been lots of talk lately about ways to fund public interest journalism. One idea is to tax the online aggregators – Facebook and Google, primarily – that sell advertising against the news content of others to support news organisations. Another is to make news subscriptions or donations to its producers tax deductible.  Both ideas are worth considering, but they do not abrogate the need for news organisations to seek better ways to draw revenue from consumers.  (It is alarming that discussion of efforts to build a
Read more

Thanks for all the fish

After 13 years with Blogspot, I've shifted blogging platform. So (drumroll, please), you can find my new blog here . Ari on the Web will stay online, so you can scroll through the archives for all sorts of embarrassing tidbits. To make it easier to find some of my writing on particular themes, I've grouped some pieces together under a few labels: Cancer Fatherhood Indonesia travels North Korea travels United States travels Undergraduate days   So as they say here in my new home of Japan, so long, and thanks for the all the fish.
Read more

Much in a name

Image
Naming a child is one of the greatest responsibilities a parent has. Short of some dramatic action by its bearer, a person is stuck with a name for life and all the nominative determinist consequences that flow from it. While opening it up to the whims of the democratic process was one option ( Baby McBabyface? ) and engaging the services of a baby name consultant was another, Melanie and I opted to take on the responsibility ourselves. Our criteria? We wanted a name that suited a child as well as the adult she will become. We wanted a name that conveyed both warmth and gravitas. We wanted a name that carried some broader meaning, within our family and beyond it. We wanted a name that was easy to say and easy to spell. And we wanted a name that sounded good, in its entirety and when each part stood on its own. For us, it wasn’t just the given names that needed to be chosen. With Melanie and I each keeping our family names when we got married, our daughter’s family name also
Read more