Warning: Luvvies Delivering Moral Lectures

The Sydney Theatre Company had a fine old imbroglio in the past week. Three actors grabbed the limelight at curtain call of Chekhov’s Seagull on November 25 by donning Arab keffiyehs. Were they in support of Palestinians? Hamas terrorists? The disappearance of Israel? Who knows, but Jewish theatregoers and donors were rightly irate. In rapid sequence, management gave a lame response; the institutional chaos forced abrupt cancellation of the Wednesday evening performance; and management managed to grow half a spine and disapprove of their shows being hijacked by anti-Israel axe-grinders:

We acknowledge that this is a difficult and frightening time for people in our community and around the world…

We understand the actions at the curtain call and our immediate response has hurt many in our community. For this, we are deeply sorry. We support individual freedom of expression but believe that the right to free speech does not supersede our responsibility to create safe workplaces and theatres…We have emphasised to our performers that they are free to express their opinions and views on their own platforms…

We also recognise that when our audiences attend a production, they come to experience the content in that play and that play only, and that any exception to this needs to be done in consultation with the Company and consideration of our duty of care. Sydney Theatre Company believes everyone has the right to live in peace and safety, and through our art we seek to foster a better and more compassionate world. (My emphases)

I’ve acquired an overload of thespian material for this essay, such is the local turmoil over Gaza. If you don’t mind the incoherence, I’ll tackle the theatrical interludes in Sydney and Canberra; some silly stuff in Brussels from our much-loved actress and ex-STC artistic director Cate Blanchett; and the stunning no-show from the Human Rights Commission President as anti-Semites chant “Gas the jews” and others molest October 7-stricken visiting Israelis in Melbourne’s Crowne Plaza Hotel in the Docklands on the night of November 29.

In regard to the theatrics, an entire cast hijacked an earlier STC performance in Canberra on November 8 at a play called The Visitors, a co-production of STC and indigenous Moogahlin Performing Arts. At the play’s end the cast assembled as backing for actor Luke Carroll (Wiradjuri & Ngunnawal), as he read a diatribe against Israel. He added some whingeing about the Voice defeat, and he put whiteys on notice that his brethren haven’t finished their campaigning yet. His speech defies summary, being long on pulling at heart-strings but short on sense. I’ve transcribed it here[1]  including Luke’s final call for the audience to sign petitions including an anti-Israeli one from the far-left Amnesty International.[2] The audience sucked it all up, unlike the Jewish ex-STC supporters in Sydney.

Investigating Luke Carroll’s speech, I sampled the play itself, via the trailer and some script-reading. Playwright Jane Harrison is from the Muruwari people and her Aboriginal grandfather was shearer William “Deucem” Smith. She began her career as an advertising copywriter. Her play has seven clan leaders (two female – who knew?) in 1788 debating whether or not to welcome the First Fleet.

Judging by the trailer, the play would attract only masochists and Greens-voting ACT public servants. The Aboriginal actors are garbed in “fine modern suits” (atop this page)and various ties-cum-cravats, some made from mussel shells, though one actor wears slacks, white shirt and braces as he brandishes his spear and shield. The point of the suits, says Harrison, is to show the group as “high status”.

The Honi Soit review says, “At its heart, The Visitors tells the story of a civilisation (sic) built on generosity and community obligation, a people who cannot apprehend the concepts of colonisation and dispossession.”

Harrison has the “welcome to country” dating back not to Ernie Dingo’s Perth frolic in 1976 but way back further, to 1788, as scripted:

Gordon: The plan is –

(Gary holds up his hand.)

Gary: After the welcome, Gordon…:Protocols.

Gordon: Sure. I wish to welcome you to country, the land which provides for us, our Elders, who guide us with their wisdom of the ages, our warriors who defend us, the stories and ceremonies, which teach us lore. And I welcome you, the respected Elders of the surrounding nations.

Joseph: Joseph, Headlands of the Bay Nation. Spear Clan.

Albert: Albert, South Shore Nation.

Walter: Walter, Eel mob, River Nation.

Jacob: Jacob, North Shore Nation. We’re lovers and fighters. We love fighting – ay.[3]

Gary: Gary, Northern River Nation.

Gordon: Gordon, proud Harbour and Freshwater Nation.

Gary: Thank you, Gordon, for permission to hold this meeting on your country. Are we happy to speak this common language?

Jacob: Of course!

Incidentally, Jane Harrison in her MA thesis “Indig-curious” at QUT (2009, p46) says,

In the protocol and guidelines of the Australia Council this year [2004] the ATSIA board[4] have confirmed that Indigenous writing and writers take on the responsibilities of being more than academics and artists but take on the role of being educators. They are the informants of Indigenous history, art, law and culture.

I had no idea that the Australia Council (now “Creative Australia”) mandated Socialist Realism – as J.V. Stalin put it in 1932, “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks … And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul”. A video of the educative First Congress of Soviet Writers, redolent of the Australia Council, Sydney and Melbourne Writers’ Festivals and STC/MTC ethos is here.

Harrison’s thesis remarks that when noted American playwright Edward Albee visited Australia for seminars in 2006, he suggested the pervasive child abuse in Aboriginal communities should be fertile material for playwrights. But Harrison responded that non-Aboriginal playwrights were loath to be critical and Aboriginal playwrights feared backlash from their own brethren: “I would also be surprised if a mainstream theatre company would be brave enough to produce such a play,” she added, sagely (p47-48).

This brings me back to Sydney Theatre Company and its own protocols. A quarter (23.6 per cent) of last year’s income of $42.4 million came from taxpayers but the STC’s entire ideology is green-left-woke. Naturally, STC in a cloud of virtue backed the wrong horse on the Referendum,

an opportunity for all of us, together, to take a step toward reckoning with our shared history….Together, we can build a nation that is kinder, fairer, and more respectful.

Whatever, but those three actors’ keffiyeh stunt was neither kind, fair nor respectful to the paying audience, as STC had to confess.

Whatever, but those three actors’ keffiyeh stunt was neither kind, fair nor respectful to the paying audience, as STC had to confess.

Starting at the top, STC’s chairman is the ever-popular former QANTAS chief executive Alan Joyce, albeit on extended leave. He took office after the seven-year term of Jewish business man Ian Narev (CBA and SEEK), but seems to have worked in harness for less than a year. Apart from Joyce’s other titles, STC lists him and his husband, Shane Lloyd, as “Angels”. Their donation was doubtless affordable given that (apart from Joyce’s $21.4 million final payout) they sold their Mosman pile with jetty for $21m last July. Joyce, qua Angel, wrote in the annual report, “As a donor myself I know the impact that giving to STC has, and now as Chair I can confidently report that those donations are both valued highly and carefully used.”

Top pay at STC is undisclosed but the top five there shared $1.15m. “In addition, $507,116 (2021: $0) was paid to key management personnel in relation to non-employment contractual obligations”. (Annual Financial Report p15)

As a black-armband educator of adults and schoolkids, the STC pledged that from 2021 a quarter of its mainstage plays would be written by Aborigines and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) people, who would also represent a quarter of directors and 50 per cent of assistant directors. At least one play a year was to be Aborigine-written. STC over-achieved in 2022 with 30 per cent authorship by Indigenous/CALD, 27 per cent for directors, 56 per cent for assistant directors, and two plays by Aborigines.

STC also achieved over-parity in oestrogen, with 57 per cent of plays female-written and 67 per cent female-directed. Being a diversity-friendly employer, STC might soon be advertising male-only jobs, scripts and roles to help smash the matriarchy,[5] which is permitted in such a case by a loophole in the Equal Opportunity laws.

I might be wrong but STC appears to have further quotas: at least 20 per cent of plays are to be written by prominent leftist luminaries. Its 15 playwrights commissioned “to bring new writing to STC” include the outspoken Van Badham[6], Marieke Hardy[7] and Nakkiah Lui.[8] (AR p20).

The STC annual report describes its “equity ticketing scheme” as a pilot “for those facing social or financial barriers to attending theatre”. Last year it involved 681 discounted tickets for its two new Aboriginal-written plays. I don’t know if the scheme is the same “Mob Tix” discounts of up to 80 per cent offered by major arts houses not just to Aborigine-identifiers (without question) but to Maori and anyone else claiming “First Nations” status in their home abodes.

I mentioned that ex-STC artistic director Cate Blanchett (2008-13) gets a walk-on role in this essay. Since 2016 she’s been Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). On November 8 (coincidentally the same day as the Canberra protest by The Visitors’ cast), she addresses the EU Parliament in Brussels and calls for a Gaza ceasefire along with release of hostages. As an aside, the Goodwill Ambassador remarks — without any “goodwill” towards conservative politicians —

As an Australian, I can tell you that we learnt the hard way [about asylum seekers]. The devastating physical and mental torment that refugees experienced whilst being corralled offshore. The psychological damage to those guarding them. The billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted on a now discredited and largely abandoned approach. And, may I say, the resultant shame and regret that many of my fellow Australians feel now surrounding these ineffective and inhumane policies. (My emphases. Cate’s talk pre-dated the Albanese-inspired renewal of boat people).

Bagging the Coalition from her UN/EU soapbox is one thing, but Cate is concurrently rattling the can for big-ticket donations. She quotes Commissioner Filippo Grandi: “UNHCR alone urgently needs $US600 million before the end of the year … Humanitarians are tough, but humanitarians are near breaking point.”

It so happens that mostly under the conservative Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2021 and 2022 Australia donated a total $A64 million to UNHCR. Cate needs to mute her leftist credentials when touting for donations.

Turning now to the Australian Human Rights Commission, it does have links to the world of theatre, being such a clown show. If that whole $30 million bureaucracy working for Australia’s subjugation to UN corruptocrats were abolished tomorrow, the result would be wholly positive.

Right now Australian capitals and suburbs are beset by rampaging mobs of anti-Semites yelling “Gas the Jews” and “From the river to the sea”, the latter genocidal sentiment even parroted by brainwashed schoolchildren. In Melbourne on the night of November 29, Jew-hating ferals in Crowne Plaza’s Melbourne foyer hounded visiting Jewish families who had lost loved ones in Hamas’s October 7 massacre and hostage-taking. The families were forced to shelter in a police station until it was safe to return to their hotel rooms.

Search “Gaza” on the HRC website and you get just one item on the conflict, a  potpourri of platitudes on October 13 by HRC President (and acting Race Commissioner) Professor Rosalind Croucher AM. After gesturing vaguely at “horrific civilian fallout” in Israel and Gaza, with not a mention of the precipitating October 7 massacres and hostage-taking, she tut-tutted about “some commentary within Australia”. She spends a third of her wordage on un-named parties, which I take to be pro-Palestinian, being entitled under UN treaties to freedom to continue their “peaceful protest”:

As the response here in Australia escalates, the Commission has become increasingly concerned about the implications of some commentary within Australia, including people in public life [could that refer to those incendiary imams?] as well as people on social media. We need to ensure all levels of discussion adhere to the laws and principles which underpin our approach to human rights here in Australia.

Her press release continues,

In addition, President Croucher raised concerns of reports that people’s right to peaceful protest may be blocked in certain states and territories. This [treaty] protects individuals and groups wishing to express their views peacefully and publicly. It is imperative that this right is protected, and I urge authorities to keep this front of mind. We absolutely cannot tolerate any acts of violence, but we must also uphold the rights of people to express their views through peaceful demonstration. Any measures by authorities to override this basic human right need to be challenged at every level. (My emphases)

Contrast this mumbo-jumbo with the HRC’s all-too-specific legal  hounding for years of a trio of innocent students for their grumbles about being kicked out of an Aboriginal-only computer room at Queensland University of Technology.[9] The Federal Court threw out that HRC racial discrimination case in 2016. Contrast the HRC’s mumbo-jumbo with the HRC’s hounding of the Australian’s cartoonist Bill Leak over his allegedly “racist” cartoon about all-too-common negligent Aboriginal fathers. Leak in 2017 died at 62 of a suspected heart attack concurrently with the HRC’s harassment.

Professor Croucher in 2021-22 was on $434,000 as HRC President (Annual Report p114), with the Remuneration Tribunal granting her a total $493,530 last October.

The Senate Estimates Committee in April 2022 gave her a drubbing over her HRC’s financial crisis that required a $16 million federal bailout as a first step to preserve its solvency. “The buck stops with me as ­accountable authority,” Professor Croucher agreed. “I have acknowledged that in the public papers of the commission and to my commissioner colleagues and to all the staff.” She attributed the crisis partly to “an unaffordable number of staff being hired”.

She attributed the crisis partly to “an unaffordable number of staff being hired”.

In her latest annual report she wrote that the year had been “extremely challenging” as the HRC’s “financial pressures that had been building over many years culminated in an unsustainable financial situation which was reported to the Attorney-General, the Minister responsible for the Commission, as a significant issue.” The HRC had been “operating beyond our annual funding sources. This meant that we were no longer able to maintain the staffing levels that would enable us to undertake our statutory functions properly…We significantly reduced our expenditure, by first freezing recruitment and non-critical expenditure, then by reducing our staffing profile.” (p17).

The HRC’s current priorities – during Australia’s greatest race-riot crisis since the World War and world-wide the worst pogrom since the Holocaust – can be gleaned from its website announcements, as follows:

November 29: a Kviv-Copenhagen anti-torture initiative

November 28: Concerning Lao government human rights

November 28: New Disability Commissioner appointed

November 22: New approach to disability employment

The HRC news briefs are swamped by slabs of out of date “Yes” Referendum propaganda, namely a “Resource Kit” on the referendum “through a human rights lens. The resources seek to minimise harm by encouraging cultural humility and focusing the conversation on human rights principles.” As far as I am aware, no rampaging mobs of white supremacists gave Aboriginal-identifiers a hard time during the Referendum process.

The HRC produced “practical tips to engage in conversations about the referendum in ways that minimise harm”, including:

1/ Practise cultural humility

♦ Avoid deficit discourse

2/ Call out and actively combat fear tactics.

Strangely, the HRC is currently doing nothing publicly whatsoever — nil, zip, zero — to crack down on anti-Semitic “deficit discourse” let alone “calling out and actively combating” anti-Semitic fear tactics of the pro-Palestinian mobs and thugs.

Speaking for myself, I think it’s time for Professor Croucher to justify her half-million a year.

Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here

[1] Carroll said: “The cast want to come back out and say as a collective that we are actively sending our love to those who are being severely oppressed right now, at this very moment. It is truly shocking and from our small corner we wanted to say ‘We see you, we can’t help but see parallels between our [black] story and theirs. So we stand here and share our grief for the situation in Gaza. If there is one thing we know how to do and do well it is grieve. We internally scream and plead for humanity to turn inwards on those leaders on the other side of the world and for humanity to strike love into their hearts. It is love that is needed. We refuse to look away from the mothers, fathers, families and communities being pulled apart, especially the children… Those children in Gaza are our children too and their mothers are our sisters and we cry with them.

We all took part in the (Referendum) vote, this country said No to our Voice but we will not be silenced, we will build and repair and show you how to love. We can lead with love. Let your love activate you and demand more of yourself , more of your love ones, more from everyone within their arms’ reach and beyond, and let your love and heart rage and demand more from our leaders in this country. Make them do their job! Let them know they too can be unafraid to love. Will them to lead with love. Demand them to stop the bombings, demand them to send humanitarian aid, demand them to demand a ceasefire so our children can be free. Enough is enough!”

[2] The Amnesty petition demands an immediate ceasefire without any conditions for hostage release, which Amnesty in “Candide” mode suggests could be negotiated subsequently. It blames many of the deaths of an alleged 10,000 Gazans on “indiscriminate and unlawful attacks [by Israel]”:

“The humanitarian catastrophe stemming from Israel’s 16-year-long illegal blockade on the occupied Gaza Strip will only get worse if the fighting doesn’t stop immediately. Serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, by all parties to the conflict continue unabated… A ceasefire would also provide opportunities … for independent international investigations to take place into the war crimes committed by all parties … Tackling the root causes of this conflict, by dismantling Israel’s system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians, is now more urgent than ever. (My emphases).

[3] Fake Aborigine Bruce Pascoe denies any pre-colonial warfare.

[4] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts (ATSIA)

[5] As Alan Joyce put it in his chair’s report, 2022, “We also prioritized our commitment to diversity and inclusion, ensuring that our programming reflected the broad range of voices and perspectives that make up our community.”

[6] “Van Badham’s plays are typically concerned with the legacy of personal and political violence, critiques of Western consumer capitalism, dichotomies of middle- and working-class values, the assigned roles of women in Western Society and the relationship of art to history.”.

[7] Hardy, who ran the Melbourne Writers Festival as artistic director from 2017-19, “and her randy ex once paid a pros­titute to take part in a threesome. Sounding like a private-school mean girl, Hardy jokes about this sex worker’s “rough” (meaning working-class) demeanour and accent. “Grouse place! How long have yas lived here?’’ she quotes the call girl as saying, while observing snobbishly that she was wearing “a tight khaki Supre skirt”.

[8] The ABC in 2019 screened an episode of its “comedy”, Get Krack!n, where Lui, pretending to defecate on a cushion illustrated with a white face, shouted, “F— ’ whitey … I s— on your colonisation.” Lui also starred in a skit where Aboriginal guests took turns to call white people “c—-”.

[9] One student had written on Facebook, “Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation.”