Champagne, spiders and scandals

Last Sunday Gillian and I used our champagne breakfast voucher my sister gave us as an engagement present; entirely coincidentally, we bought the same thing for Anna and Matt for their engagement (Gill's cousin whose wedding in Armidale we went to a few weeks ago). So we went as a foursome last Sunday to Darling Harbour (a 30 min ferry ride for us). Here's some photos:

This weekend Gillian, Meg and Denise went to a wedding exhbition in Darling Harbour, laid on by the parent company where we are having our reception. So the whole 'Asburke' clan came along and we took the ferry in to the city. 

View from the ferry, approaching Darling Harbour

Whilst the girls were at the wedding exhibition, the boys went to the Botanic Gardens to wear out the little ones so they would sleep whilst the older ones enjoyed some beers in the Rocks.....

 

We also discovered thousands of little spiders in our stair well, that had just hatched in the railings going all the way up the stairs. They look quite cute....

In 2-4 months, they will look like this:

(a Huntsman spider recently escaping the rain in Balmain)

At this point I should add that ALL of those little spiders have now been 'removed' (very few reach maturity anyway); the huntsman spider is not venomous and is very shy. They are good to have around as they eat mozzies and other bugs.

Patrick had a sleep-over at ours last night, and Pete collected him this morning with the other two, including a trip to our local park.

* * * * * 

The news over the past week has been dominated by the publication of  the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) in to match-fixing that is, apparently, rife in Australian elite sport. 

Also in the news is state government corruption. Eddie Obeid was a major NSW Labor Party power broker during the previous state government and has been charged with the one of the biggest fraud in Australian corporate history - he allegedly stood to make around $100m in rigged mining tenders in the Hunter Valley, through insider information - buying up land on the cheap and then selling it at ridiculous levels of profit when mining companies then 'suddenly' decided they wanted to move in. He also has had connections with current federal Labor ministers.

From greed to hedonism: also in court last week was Craig Thomson - federal MP and former Labor Party member who has been bailed, following charges of fraud and using tens of thousands of dollars of public money from the Health Services Union to fund a debauched lifestyle - including prostitutes. He is still sitting as an MP. Did I mention the Peter Slipper affair? The man who has been accused of sexual harassment misuse of expenses (that sounds familiar) and who was until fairly recently the Speaker; that one is still rumbling along nicely.

No surprise then that the view of politicians is rock bottom. Just as well that there is compulsory voting here, as I am sure that if there wasn't then the federal election that takes place this September would involve the vast majority of people not showing up to vote. Pity the Prime Minister who announced the date of the election in order to seize the political initiative (to the surprise of all) - only to lose it immediately as within 24 hours Thomson was placed under arrest. 

Humming along in the background to all this is the Royal Commission in to child abuse in to religious organisations. The Catholic Church's failings - in particular, the complete inadequacy of its response through Cardinal George Pell, the leading Roman Catholic cardinal in the country, is nothing short of a total disgrace. 

In the world of sport, it will be interesting to see if the huge extent of corruption and involvement of organised crime prompts some soul searching about what top level sport should be about. Clearly it's about greed. The match fixing allegations dogging football in Europe has been headline news here, too; so it would naive to think that this is a peculiarly Australian problem. At least the Premier League is finally starting to get to grips with the out of control spending of football clubs, whose owners often run them at a massive loss.

One of the allegations this week about match fixing in AFL (Aussie Rules) involves people writing down the number plates of the the players cars in the club car park during a training session. Then, driving home from training, one of the players will be waiting at a red light and get a nudge from behind; the driver just happens to be an attractive young woman - they exchange numbers and then..... they're on the match fixers' hook.

It would not, of course, be a surprise to find similar things happening in the UK. Stay tuned to the news in the days ahead, as more revelations are certain to emerge....

A revealing finding from the ACC is that Google searches for banned growth hormone drugs is considerably higher here than in either the UK of US - suggesting that such drug use may be more culturally acceptable here, and that it is not just an issue that affects top sportsmen. Some of the elite schools in Australia have already begun randomly drug testing their elite athletes. It is a legally tricky area, but I understand that at Southport, the prestigious Gold Coast private boys' school, it is working successfully and with parental support.

Credit, at least, to the government in Canberra for calling for a Royal Commission. Credit too, to the federal workplace relations tribunal for its three investigation in to Thomson; and credit to the ACC for exposing the infiltration of sport by organised crime. Australians should be proud that, whatever the shortcomings of individuals and institutions, there are mechanisms in place to expose them - which is not the case in most other countries.

As the sports reporter on ABC radio joked this week, in the wake of Lance Armstrong, cricket match fixing, European football match fixing, and Australian organised crime/drug taking/match fixing: to hell with them - we should all just go back to playing village against village. 

But we'd all have to turn off our TVs first.