Global warning

An eminent American academic came to Sydney last week to alert us to an ongoing war, one in which nothing less than our entire way of life is at stake, writes Michael Hutak.

Dr Stephen Schneider - adviser to every US president from Nixon to Clinton - arrived to spread the news not about global terror, but global warming.
With the issue of climate change hotting up, concerned citizens collected at the University of NSW in Sydney last Thursday to hear the accomplished "greenhouse guru" spell out the planetary consequences of the industrialised world's love affair with coal-fired production.
However, as one of the lead authors of the documents that formed the scientific basis for the Kyoto Protocol, Schneider is the first to admit that predictions of what will happen are not cut and dried.
"There's no statistical way to figure out what 2100 will look like," he told the audience. "The weather is a chaotic, dynamic system that cannot be predicted beyond two weeks. Instead what we have is climate models, which are inherently uncertain.
"Add to this the uncertainty of human behavioural activity and global warming by the year 2100 will range from anywhere from 1(degrees) or so to up to 6(degrees) -- from the relatively mild to the catastrophic."

Matthew Collings: Strictly modern

Intriguing connections surround the recent Australian visit of British art critic and author Matthew Collings, best known here for his British Academy Award-winning television series, This is Modern Art.

Collings, who has charted the rise of the so-called Young British Artists movement of the mid-1990s, wound up a sell-out speaking tour last week with a talk at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, where his subject was "The Solemn and the Trivial versus the Serious and the Playful". Collings' witty, plain-speaking accounts of the works of YBA stars such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst have done much to demystify art for the general public.

But now he believes that, while the popularity of modern art is on the rise (in Britain, at least), artists should have no obligation to be popular. Indeed, art is "neither democratic nor a form of entertainment but is a specialised endeavour for those willing to make the serious effort to engage with it".

Australia grapples with its emotions in aftermath of Bali bombing

by Michael Hutak

672 words
17 October 2002
Agence France-Presse
 

SYDNEY, Oct 17 (AFP) - Australia's moods are shifting by the hour from grief to anger to compassion five days after the nation's worst terrorist incident so far.

Talk radio, acknowledged as a barometer of public opinion, has been inundated with calls about the bombing, and trends are beginning to emerge.

A national media monitoring firm, Rehame, has tracked 1,300 calls since Saturday's attack and reports that overwhelmingly people are using radio as an outlet for expressions of grief and dismay at the attacks.

However other issues are emerging, many fueled by the assumption that Islamic radicals linked to the al-Qaeda network were behind the bombing.

More than 20 percent of callers have criticised the Australian government's strong alignment with the US administration of President George W. Bush.

"People are starting to draw the link between the attacks and the prime minister's unconditional support for US-led war on terror," said Matthew Mitchell, a media analyst for Rehame. "They're now starting to say that we are paying the price for that support."

"You have to rememeber that in the six weeks leading up to the attack, feeling against support of war against Iraq has been consistently at 60 percent, so this was to be expected," he said.

"But the anti-US feeling is very strong, with many callers critical of George Bush's 'underwhelming' response to the Bali attacks, and of the US media's focus only on American casualties."

Another trend emerging is a strong anti-Muslim sentiment, underlined by an attack Tuesday night on the home of Imam Ahmed Shabbir, a prominent Sydney Muslim cleric, and the firebombing early Thursday of a mosque near Melbourne.

Mitchell said most anti-Muslim feeling was emanating from Sydney, Australia's most ethnically diverse city which has seen racial tension following a series of notorious gang rapes in 2000 perpetrated by local Lebanese youths targeting what they called "Australian" women.

The crimes inflamed prejudice against the Lebanese community.

Callers to one of Australia's best known "shock jocks", John Laws, were running strongly against Muslims, said the program's producer Stuart Bocking.

"It's reopened old sores in the community," said Bocking, who cited the Afghan refugee issue at the 2001 federal election, the September 11 attacks in the United States and this year's trials of the Sydney gang rapists as lightning rods for the racial vilification of Muslims in the country.

"All this had died down a bit recently but the Bali bomb has reignited it and brought the bigots out of the woodwork again."

Other radio programmers report that the blame game had been less prominent.

"We've been struck by how many people simply want to know how they can help," said Richard Glover, a presenter on Sydney's ABC 702.

"We've had our share of conspiracy theorists, but the main thread, and perhaps a surprising one, has been an outpouring of compassion and sorrow for the Balinese people."

"Many people are saying that it's actually bringing the Australian and Indonesian people together in a way we have never been before, and that that's a good thing," he said.

Glover said that despite much anger about the failure of Australian intelligence agencies to pass on US warnings about possible terrorism in Bali, there was also a sense that most people would still have embarked on their holidays.

"People are angry but there's been no widespread call for revenge out there," said Glover. "It's more an fatalistic attitude of the kind that says 'there but for the grace of God go I'."

Mitchell said while Prime Minister John Howard was under harsh criticism for his closeness to the United States, there was also much praise for his government's relief operations.

"But next week when the death toll is finalised, then you will see the start of some serious finger-pointing."

ENDS

Sydney suburb Coogee mourns the loss of six sporting sons in Bali blast

by Michael Hutak
805 words
15 October 2002
Agence France-Presse
English

SYDNEY, Oct 15 (AFP) - Bedecked with flags advertising a popular local beer, the Beach Palace Hotel overlooks idyllic Coogee Beach, the focus of one of Sydney's most affluent suburbs.
In a very Australian gesture, those same flags flew at half-mast Tuesday, as residents mourned the death of six local sportsmen in Saturday's bomb blast in Bali.
Like scores of sporting clubs around the nation, the Coogee Dolphins Rugby League Club -- born and bred at the Beach Palace -- began their annual end-of-season holiday in Bali last week.
Today they count their dead: club president Clint Thompson, 29, team manager, Adam Howard, 26, treasurer Shane Foley, 33, and players Joshua Iliffe, 28, Gerard Yeo, 20 and David Mavoudis, 28.
"We're all still trying to come to grips with it," said the Dolphin's secretary, Mal Ward, who was all booked to go on the trip but decided to cancel at the last minute, preferring to spend time with his son.
On Saturday night, all 11 in the Dolphins' party were in the Sari Club in Kuta. Miraculously, five decided to leave the club just minutes before the blast.
"They then had to identify the bodies of their mates," said Ward, "and I just feel for those five, for what they've endured and what they've seen. That's a memory they will have to carry for the rest of their lives."
The Dolphins are an amateur club which plays rugby league football for the love of the game -- and to raise funds for local charity.
Every year they raise more than 10,000 dollars (5,500 US) for the Sydney Childrens Hospital.
The chief executive of the Hospital's Foundation, Elizabeth Crundall said the generosity of Dolphins was "typical of the community and sporting groups we rely on to survive."
"They've paid for physiotherapy equipment, for special beds, and they also would come and visit the kids in hospital. The kids loved them," she said.
"It's appalling that those who have been so giving of themselves should be struck down so senselessly."
The Dolphins and the Beach Palace have grown up together, the club was founded in the public bar the same year the hotel opened, in 1992.
"We've backed the boys since they started," said the Beach Palace manager, Tim Crowe.
The pub sponsors the club, paying for their sporting gear and outfits and by "putting a couple of hundred bucks on the bar after a game," added Crowe.
"A lot of them are locals who drink here all year round. We had 150 Dolphins supporters in here yesterday for a wake and it was a surprisingly happy occasion, with everyone remembering the good times."
The bad times are right now, as the enormity of the tragedy sinks in.
"Some of the families of our boys were there and they were able to see how many people were at the wake offering their support and that was good," said a Dolphin member, Paul Vanni.
"I think we all took solace yesterday in the fact that we were there in numbers and everybody was able to grieve with each other.
"We're still together and I suppose if you're looking for something good amongst all this tragedy, then that was something."
Vanni said five of his mates' bodies had been identified, even though badly burned, and the sixth was presumed dead. "We know he was with the other guys at the time so there's very little hope," he said.
"We considerd having a special memorial service but we also realized that we have six funerals to attend," Vanni said. "That will be the sorriest time."
Leading Australian thoroughbred jockey Simon Marshall was close friends with Adam Howard, who was also involved in the racing scene.
"It's just devastating," Marshall told AFP. "Adam loved his football, he loved horse racing, he loved life and he lived it to the full... for a 27 year old kid in his prime to be cut down like this is, well, there's no justice, is there."
The Dophins were not alone in their grief, with several football clubs across the nation counting their casualties and awaiting news of the missing.
The suburban Australian Rules football club in Kingsley outside Perth has seven players unaccounted for and presumed dead, and in the small New South Wales town of Forbes, three members of the local football team are believed to have perished in the massacre.
Back in Coogee, Ward was adamant: "We'll definitely carry on."
"We're more determined than ever that for the memory of the blokes we've lost there's no way we'll let this club fold."

ENDS

Ken Burns: oxymoronic hybrid

Dubbed the world's most influential documentary film-maker, Ken Burns has made his name and fortune bringing the past to life. "I've become so influential," Burns told The Bulletin, "that one of our most respected historians said recently that more Americans get their history from me than from anywhere else, to paraphrase the [American] ABC news slogan."
Burns delivered the keynote address at the 2002 NSW Premier's History Awards last Friday. Premier Bob Carr had been trying to get Burns to Australia since he instituted the awards in 1997. He was booked to come last year but September 11 intervened. Yet the director of the most watched documentary in television history, the epic nine-part The Civil War, admits he is "completely untrained in American history".

Consumers: A Matter of Trust

By Michael Hutak, 9 May 2002

Australian Financial Review
MARKETING 2002

Expect a more demand-driven market. So you'll need to earn the trust of customers.

AMERICAN CAPITALISM is in for a bumpy ride over the next two decades. Manhattan marketing guru Elliott Ettenberg says business priorities will need to shift from satisfying shareholders to delighting customers. This is not a rehash of the new economy's customer relationship management fad. It is the parting shot from one of the most influential forces on the US economy in the past half-century: baby boomers.

The Next Economy: Will you know where your customers are? by Elliott Ettenberg (McGraw-Hill, $56.95).

AMERICAN CAPITALISM is in for a bumpy ride over the next two decades. Manhattan marketing guru Elliott Ettenberg says business priorities will need to shift from satisfying shareholders to delighting customers. This is not a rehash of the new economy's customer relationship management fad. It is the parting shot from one of the most influential forces on the US economy in the past half-century: baby boomers.

"Forty-five to 55 is the peak spending age, and spending drops off sharply from there as people start to focus on savings and investment," Ettenberg said from New York. "And as we move through the first decade of the millennium the baby boomers are turning 50-plus, the kids have gone, they're moving to smaller quarters, working less, spending less and are starting to withdraw from the marketplace."

Ettenberg says the impact of the economic withdrawal of the wealthiest 28 per cent of the US population can't be underestimated. Faced with diminishing national savings, ballooning personal debt, shrinking customer loyalty and what Ettenberg calls "marketing impotence", companies will need to rebuild a bridge of trust between the discerning customer and brands that add value.

Ettenberg wants to reinvent marketing, which he argues is in terminal decline. In his latest book, The Next Economy: Will you know where your customers are?, Ettenberg says the way to rebuild the economy is to develop better, more accurate customer data.

He wants to see "concierge marketing", where consumers outsource their decisions to specialists who procure, package, deliver and administer purchases. Unlike conventional middlemen who represent producers to sellers, concierge marketers will represent buyers to sellers. They will charge for the service. But consumers, who have become disenchanted, will be happy to pay.

Ettenberg also forsees "horizontal co-marketing". Where in conventional vertical marketing, retailers and manufacturers share advertising and marketing costs, horizontal co-marketing means retailers, manufacturers and service organisations co-ordinate efforts - not around particular products but categories of consumers.

Ettenberg says our "new economy" is a transitional stage straddling the old - and his next economy. He argues that the postwar economy of the 1960s, 70s and 80s was driven by baby boomers and was based on products and services, eking out market share with a focus on efficiency. The new economy was built by "generation X geeks" who pushed technology to the forefront, and demonstrated the importance of information as a driver of economic growth. Success in the "gold rush" of the new economy was measured by time-to-market, but that deployment of technology has, says Ettenberg, failed to add value to our lives. No-one can afford to ignore the internet but the big mistake of the dotcom boom was that business saw it as a technological challenge. This has resulted in a selling interface between companies and consumers that is so unfriendly that it generates more frustration than it does satisfaction.

Ettenberg believes the key to selling in his next economy will be an economic, social and psychological problem - a marketing challenge. For the old categories of age and gender he prefers psychographic models of market segmentation, and endorses analytic models such as SRI's proprietary Values and Lifestyles typology (based on people's desires, beliefs, needs and attitudes) which allow marketers to access people's psychological make-up - something systems based solely on demographics or geographics are unable to discern.

 

Boss: Visual Values

Michael Hutak

8 March 2002
Australian Financial Review

Corporate art for legal offices; women versus women; phone etiquette via voicemail; promoting ideas for a better workplace.

News that Minter Ellison has appointed Sydney art consultant Amanda Love to crank up its corporate art collection begs the question: what is the value of art to an organisation? "Our clients come from all over the world," says ME partner, Lindsay Powers. "We hope to promote the artists we collect by exposing our clients to their work. Equally important, however, are our staff, who work long hours. We hope the art we display creates a stimulating environment, and that our dedication to Australian artists makes them proud to be a part of the firm."

Allen Allen & Hemsley, of Sydney, had one of the best corporate collections of contemporary and Aboriginal art in the country. After its merger with Melbourne's Arthur Robinson in 2001, the collection was scattered across 12 offices in seven countries. Group marketing manager Chris Fogarty cites three core benefits: "First, we are always asking our lawyers to come up with inspiring solutions, so we want to provide them with an inspiring environment. Second, legal firms typically have paintings of judges and racehorses on the walls, so because our collection is so eclectic it generates a lot of healthy discussion around the place. And third because we only buy emerging or unknown artists, it's a reminder for us all of the firm's commitment to community involvement."

Tough Love For Queen Bees

A new study has found a general bias, from both genders, against successful women, writes Michael Hutak.

Janne Chung, when senior lecturer at Edith Cowan University, Perth, conducted a study to discover whether the evaluation of a manager's performance is affected by the gender of the person doing the evaluating, and/or the gender of the person being evaluated. Her findings were published in the latest Australian Journal of Management (vol 26, no 2).

Thirty-three men and 24 women were asked to rate the performance of two managers - one male, one female - who had responded to two scenarios. Both managers had handled one scenario successfully, the other unsuccessfully.

When rating the female's successful scenario, both men and women were harsher than they were with the male's successful scenario. However, in the unsuccessful scenario, there was no such difference: both the female and the male manager were rated equally. This suggests a general bias against successful women.

Chung says the bias is enough to influence human resource decisions - such as hiring, remuneration or promotion - where competition is stiff. It may also cause frustration and lead to the premature exit of successful women, to the detriment of the organisation.

Chung, now an associate professor in accounting at Canada's top business school, the Schulich School of Business in Toronto, says a possible explanation for the lack of feminist solidarity among the women in the study is the "queen bee syndrome".

"Many senior women who have struggled to get to the top find they don't like competition from younger women," she says. 

Boss Magazine, Australian Financial Review

Get The Message?

Boss Magazine

Michael Hutak
391 words
8 March 2002
Australian Financial Review

There is no master plan to success in business! Getting started is what really counts . . . even wisdom doesn't matter nearly as much as getting started.

Fred DeLuca, co-founder of the Subway franchise, from Start Small, Finish Big (Warner Business, $29.95)

VOICEMAIL HAS become pervasive, but still we fumble with its use - mumbling, slurring, omitting, rambling and losing valuable business in the process. Don't waste people's valuable time is the first mantra of business communication, says Manhattan business consultant Hilka Klinkenberg. She founded Etiquette International in 1989 and advises major corporations like Sony, IBM, Andersen, Con Edison and Salomon Brothers on all aspects of social and business etiquette. Klinkenberg lists her top 10 voicemail tips:

* Think about what you have to say before you pick up the phone. A series of "ers", "aahs", and "ums" leaves a bad impression.

* Don't just speak clearly, speak clearly into the receiver. Don't cradle the phone under your chin while shuffling papers on your desk. And stifle any background noise - radio, TV, screaming kids, office parties and so on.

* Never slouch back with your feet on the desk. Poor posture changes the position of the diaphragm, making your voice sound lazy and disinterested. Sit up straight.

* Identify yourself. Nothing is more infuriating than messages of the "Hi, it's me. Call me back!" variety.

* Leave your contact number at the start and the end of the message. And say it slowly. Here's a tip: Write down the number yourself as you say it. Chances are your recipient will have time to do the same.

* Avoid telephone tag team by leaving as much relevant information as possible. Your recipient can then return your call prepared with the information you were seeking.

* Conversely, don't leave long-winded details about your day's itinerary. No-one cares. Just tell us when we can call you back.

* When you do leave a time to accept a return call, make sure you are there to take it.

* Change your own answer message to advise when you are on holidays or otherwise unavailable.

* Never leave bad news on voicemail. It's not just inappropriate, it's cruel. Breaking up with a lover via voicemail may be a convenient way out, but remember: they know where you live.

Somewhere Man: Phillip Noyce on "Rabbit Proof Fence"

“I wasn’t looking for a script to come back to Australia. I didn’t think I could come back. I thought that I had become a nowhere man, that as a migrant worker working in America I had perhaps alienated my sensibilities from the way Australia had developed in the 10 years since I had left.”
At Fox Studios in Sydney, Phillip Noyce takes a break from sound editing to talk to Australian Style about Rabbit Proof Fence, the film that after 10 years in Hollywood has brought him home; the same film that, ironically, he hopes will secure his international reputation as one of the cinema’s leading visionaries.
Back in Australia now for almost two years, Noyce has been simultaneously directing Rabbit Proof Fence, to be released nationally this month (February), and The Quiet American, based on the Graham Green novel and starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser (due for release late 2002).
A mountain of a man, unshaven and refreshingly unkempt, Noyce makes a habit of lighting up a cigarette, taking one drag then putting it out.

Gillian Armstrong: Shades of Gray

Gillian Armstong hopes by the time you read this, there will be no need to introduce CHARLOTTE GRAY, the acclaimed Australian director’s latest film and her first in four years. If life has followed the script, word of mouth (not to mention a healthy dose of good ol’ fashioned movie marketing) following the Christmas US release of the $US25 million World War II drama should have thrust Armstrong‘s film into Acadamy Awards contention, and her star Cate Blanchette into the running for another Best Actress nomination.

"I'd be hopeful for Cate,” the 51 year old director of 14 feature films told Australian Style in December last year. Our audience with Armstrong takes place at a Bondi hotel, a week after locking off the final print and two days before flying out to LA to begin the US publicity tour, a task the director faced alone, with Blanchette due to give birth to her first baby.

"The poster has just gone up on every bus stop in LA,” said Armstrong. “We open in America on December 28 in a select group of cinemas and then we go wide in January, which means we become eligible for the Oscars. That's why we've been working day and night to finish the film, but we literally only finished the mix three weeks ago. I mean, we had to screen a workprint with a ‘temp’ mix for all the long-lead magazines in America, and we’ve only locked off the final print ourselves a week ago.”