Corruption is back – and how Joh Bjelke-Peterson created Punk Rock.

Tony Fitzgerald returned this week to drop yet another bombshell of a yarn about how the Queensland government was sliding back into corruption levels not seen since his Fitzgerald inquiry of the late 80’s that managed to expose the notorious dealings of the very close to insane Joh Bjelke-Peterson, his police bovver boys, and odd ball ministers.

This Fitzgerald fella sure knows how get the good stories. He’d make any jouro insanely jealous, however we must remember that the Queensland corruption thing was in the first instance largely kicked off by Chris Masters incredible report on Four Corners in 1987.

The Fitzgerald inquiry managed to topple 18 years of one of the most bizarre right wing police states Australia has ever seen. The good news was as a reaction to things like prison for trying to protest, Bjelke-Peterson can be thanked for creating one of the most genuinely subversive art and music scenes around. And from this The mighty Saints were formed, the band that taught the English about real punk rock in 1976 - the year before the Clash and Pistols. That's right folks. Without that insane “don’t you worry about that Jana” peanut farmer Joh Bjelke-Peterson we would never have had “Know Your Product” or “(I’m) Stranded” or Ed Keupper or the wonderful red wine fuelled ramblings of the master poet himself Chris Bailey.

But back to corruption, NSW was soon to follow with the creation of ICAC – The Independent Commission Against Corruption. This managed to bust open some of the deeply entrenched police corruption in NSW.

But there was always one piece of the puzzle that went missing. How come Victoria managed to dodge the corruption inquiry bullet? VIC State governments of all colours have always managed to slip and slide away from any “expensive” cleaning out of there dodgy brothers closet, but we know corruption brews there like everywhere else.

So Queensland needs another sweep out, as Fitzgerald noted amongst other things, political patronage can now be bought. I’m glad to hear QLD Premier Anna Bligh suddenly finding favour with the idea of banning all political donations, what a bright idea. Of course the Greens have been calling for this for years, but watch the hacks of both parties squirm when this question is raised for real.

My final word is what a crime it was that the old bastard Joh Bjelke-Peterson never followed his police minister into gaol for a really long time – see the wonderful show “Joh’s Jury” featuring a young spritely Noah Taylor (before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory kids)) that shows how Joh managed to worm out of that one.

BP - The PR mask falls away

Loved an article spotted in the Sydney Morning Herald last week BP's spin doctors can now breathe easy by Julian Lee. Somewhat ironic that it could be found in the section on Media and Marketing, because this presumably is mostly only read by those in that industry.

In essence the article is the sorry tale of the mighty green-wash attempt that BP has been pushing down our throats for the last ten or so years. Short of attempting to market the US military as "liberators" of Iraq ( I believe that job was largely taken up by Liar Supertarts Burson-Martsellar) this has to be among the most laughable PR exercises ever.

BP - known as Brittish Petroleum to most of us - seriously attempted to re-brand itself as "Beyond Petroleum". Yep suddenly one of the worlds biggest petro-chemical corporate monsters really truly deeply cared about the environment.

Me and my little bunch of greeny freaky friends were rather amused from the start - and the big rumour was they were spending substantially more on advertising their new found enviro credentials than actually doing anything about it.

Sure they bought a couple of little solar start-ups, but nothing that would get in the way of their far more serious business of selling oil and the by-products.

Well it now appears all fears were justified..like all cons it crumbles in the end,

But it is yet another example as to why we cannot trust commercial media or news outlets that are not constantly vigilant against this level of mass PR. The amount of money and energy that such mighty corporations can pump into such concepts is staggering, and such campaigns can largely be taken seriously even when they are as dumb as this one...