Notes from Pig City - Archive of author and journalist Andrew Stafford

Giving oxygen to thieves

Australian Politics, Media / July 31, 2015 / 4 minutes of reading

In early 2007, I found myself on the Atherton Tablelands, researching a story about politics in far north Queensland for the late, lamented Bulletin magazine. This was the year of John Howard’s demise and Kevin Rudd’s ascension, and I wanted to see how the men and women of the frontier saw the up-and-comer from their corner of the world.

The piece was called “The Seventh State of Mind”, an acknowledgment that, yes, Queensland is different, and north Queensland even more so. It also stemmed from a long conversation I had with Bob Katter, who neatly showed me how he would partition the state from Rockhampton up, with the aid of a folded serviette (which looks a bit like Queensland) and a knife.

Katter practically left me with my ears bleeding that day, but naturally I couldn’t resist leading my story with this prominent and long-serving politician’s call for secession. I reported plenty of other interesting views in my travels, including those of a Yungaburra lady who was convinced tampons were laced with asbestos and who sold “rainbow rags” (colourful sanitary pads) in her shop as an alternative.

But there was one person whose opinions I chose not to report. I encountered him in the township of Mt Molloy, and he regaled me with some startlingly racist views, including a claim that Aboriginal people had smaller brains.… Read more..

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Why Queensland will never Joh again

As the magnitude of the swing against the Liberal National Party in the Queensland election became clear on Saturday night, one unlikely voice cut through the sea of claptrap and said what his former colleagues would not. While ex-premier Campbell Newman, his potential replacement, Tim Nicholls and federal MP Jane Prentice frothed about the need to re-frame their party’s message in more palatable terms to the electorate, another former state Liberal Party leader – the once ridiculed Bruce Flegg – was prepared to admit the truth: his party had monumentally stuffed up.

Flegg was once the member for Moggill, a suburb of semi-rural acreage on the banks of the Brisbane River that seems to be populated almost entirely by retired doctors and veterinarians. In other words, it couldn’t be more blue-ribbon Liberal territory if you stuck a giant silver spoon on top of the Brookfield Town Hall. Flegg himself is a former GP. Last October, he lost his 10-year hold on the seat to another medico, Dr Christian Rowan (a former Queensland president of the Australian Medical Association) in a pre-selection battle that turned nasty.

So it’s probably not surprising that Flegg wasn’t shy about unloading on his party on election night.… Read more..

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The Riptides: Tombs Of Gold

Music / December 19, 2014 / 4 minutes of reading

People often talk about the fickle nature of the music business. Mark Callaghan, the former GANGgajang leader who has spent a long career in music publishing, knows it better than most. “It seems like everyone’s career is supercharged,” he says. “It happens really quick, but it’s also got great potential to be over really quick. It’s like the whole life cycle has been accelerated.”

Callaghan is talking about the present, but he could be easily talking about his first band, Brisbane’s much-loved Riptides. Playing a giddy mix of ska,surf and power pop, the band shot across the Australian music landscape like a meteor in the early 1980s, but a cocktail of line-up changes and bad deals meant they never reached their full potential.

A mini-album called Swept Away, a handful of brilliant singles (including the legendary Sunset Strip, one of the first releases on the Go-Betweens’ Able Label) and a compilation on Regular Records were all that appeared at the time, along with a live album, Resurface, which documented one of the band’s regularly riotous appearances at the University of Queensland Refectory.

Until now. Thirty years after the Riptides’ unseemly demise, Callaghan is issuing the band’s first album independently, thanks to a crowd-funding campaign that reached its goal within a fortnight, a testament to the enduring appeal of the band.… Read more..

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Fare game

Miscellaneous, Qld Politics / December 8, 2014 / 12 minutes of reading

It’s valued at around $60 billion. It operates, at last count, in 45 countries and over 200 cities worldwide. It’s gone to war with powerful taxi cartels, and the governments who protect them. Named tech company of the year by USA Today in 2013, it has just been given an “F” rating by the century-old Better Business Bureau, the American non-profit consumer protection organisation. Its CEO, a 38-year-old enfant terrible called Travis Kalanick, has wondered aloud whether he should have called it “Boober” – a reference to the pulling power, he claims, it gives him with the opposite sex.

Uber – the ride-sharing application which connects commuters with drivers of private vehicles for hire – is everywhere. After launching in San Francisco in 2010, its ascent has been vertiginous. Its runaway success is the product of a perfect technological storm: the ubiquity of smartphones, GPS technology, and peer-rated social media. It’s also undercut and exposed traditional taxi industries with mostly lower prices for passengers, and seemingly generous deals for its drivers.

Uber arrived in Brisbane in April this year, after roll-outs in Sydney and Melbourne beginning in late 2012. Its establishment in Australia has mirrored its trajectory overseas: it has been embraced by the public, in the face of howls of rage from the taxi lobby, which has leaned heavily on governments to crush the new kid on the block, citing concerns over safety, insurance, privacy, and the legality of allowing private cars to operate as taxi services.… Read more..

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A saint in the suburbs

Music, Qld Politics / July 28, 2014 / 12 minutes of reading

Late in the last week of January 1974, following a flood Brisbane would not see the like of again for close to another 40 years, a 17-year-old Ed Kuepper was on watch in the tough south-western Brisbane suburb of Oxley. There had been looting as the filthy water finally began to recede, and a caravan, from which residents could take turns keeping lookout, had been set up across the road from his parents’ house.

Kuepper – who had formed his first band, the Saints, just a few months earlier with school mates Chris Bailey and Ivor Hay – was a little tipsy. The local alderman, Gordon “Bluey” Thomson, had just visited, bringing beer. He was also carrying a revolver, which he gave to Kuepper. “Don’t drink too much, but look after the gun!” he told him.

Later, as the adults continued drinking, the young Kuepper walked down his street, “gun-slinging”, cockily twirling the loaded weapon as if he were a character in a western. Suddenly, a car turned into the street. Kuepper hailed it down, directing his torch into the driver’s eyes. It wasn’t until the vehicle was alongside him that he realised it was the police.

The driver looked the skinny teenager up and down.… Read more..

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Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum: three cheers for Crikey

Media / November 18, 2013 / 6 minutes of reading

Dear Crikey,

First, I’m sorry for all this fuss. I wasn’t talking about a revolution; I just wanted to get paid, and you picked the wrong guy at the wrong time to ask for a charity donation. I’ve had one foot in and the other foot out of journalism all year, partially as a result of the prevalence of this kind of malarkey. People who don’t feel they’ve got a lot to lose are dangerous. And what am I losing? The opportunity to write for you for nix? Woe!

I couldn’t have anticipated, though, that my screed on The Daily Review asking me to write for free would attract such attention. All it took was an entry on a blog that hadn’t seen much action lately, a reprint on mUmBRELLA and a mere 380 Twitter followers. It hasn’t resulted in any more food on the table, or enabled me to quit my night job, but it did start a conversation about for-profit media organisations exploiting writers – especially arts writers – desperate to get their names out there any way they can.

That’s a conversation writers and editors have needed to have for a bloody long time, so props to you for eventually responding to the fracas in your editorial on Friday.… Read more..

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