Access all areas

I’ve been working as a journalist in Britain for about four years. In that time I have interviewed opposition leader David Cameron twice, reported on a visit by Prime Minister Tony Blair once, and attended one speech by Chancellor Gordon Brown.

I’ve been working as a journalist in Australia for about four weeks. In that time I have interviewed Prime Minister John Howard, federal Treasurer Peter Costello and New South Wales opposition leader Peter Debnam, and attended a speech by New South Wales premier Morris Iemma.

(I should stress that by interview, I mean an informal session involving a number of reporters freely firing out questions – I’m nowhere near important enough to get one-on-one sit-down interviews with senior politicians.)

The comparison illustrates just how different Australia’s media and political culture is from Britain’s. Here political leaders make themselves available for questions from all journalists on any subject almost every day, and John Howard seems to do a sit-down radio or TV interview every day. In Britain politicians and their aides attempt to shape the daily news agenda by using announcements, initiatives, speeches, leaks, exclusive interviews and press calls where it is made clear the Minister will not answer questions on any subject other than the one in hand. The classic cycle would be a leak about a new policy to a Sunday newspaper, followed up with speculation on the Sunday morning TV and radio political shows, then coverage of the expected announcement in Monday’s papers, reports of the announcement itself on Monday’s TV news bulletins, and finishing with full accounts of what was actually said in Tuesday’s papers. It doesn’t always go to plan – someone from the Home Office recently told me The Sun had “completely f***ed up” a planned announcement by breaking the story early – but when it does the Minister can get three days of favourable front pages.

I am probably understating the extent to which this management/spin/ manipulation (delete according to vehemence of feelings) also goes on in Australia. But senior politicians here are definitely more accessible and less shielded by layers of advisers and media handlers. I think this makes for a less frustrated relationship between Ministers and journalists – none of the papers here is as bitterly opposed to the government as The Daily Mail in Britain. Although it does also seem to lead to rather over-cosy links with the establishment in some cases – I’m not sure I approve of journalists using politicians’ first names professionally.

Another factor, of course, is the national security situation. Recently there has been a run of stories about shortcomings in the protection of the Australian Prime Minister – a high school student was able to hug John Howard to wish him a happy birthday (this in itself says a lot about Australian politics) while holding a screwdriver he had been using to fix his boat; a film maker was dropped off at the wrong quay in Sydney harbour and found himself at the PM’s residence, but was able to climb over a fence to get out without being challenged by security; an intruder walked into the PM’s Sydney offices and wandered around etc etc. But nonetheless when I went to John Howard’s Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, yesterday, I was allowed through the gates and onto the lawn without having my ID or rucksack checked by any of the federal police protection officers wearing the classic ill-fitting black suit and sunglasses combination also favoured by the British Special Branch. This contrasts with the procedure for getting into Downing Street these days, which involves having your press card checked and all your bags put through an x-ray machine. And you don’t even get close to the PM or the Chancellor. (Incidentally, Kirribilli House, which is located at the end of a leafy, breezy, tranquil side street north of the Harbour Bridge and overlooks the harbour, must be the nicest prime minister’s residence in the world.)

You also have to consider the relatively small number of media outlets in Australia, which means even a press call with the PM is unlikely to involve more than four TV crews, four radio reporters and four print journalists – there don’t seem to be anywhere near as many photographers fighting for pictures over here. And the extra importance of talk radio stations – in Sydney at least – probably necessitates more frequent press calls.

Whatever the reason, it’s refreshing to have the chance to ask politicians whether they’re lying rather than just assuming that they are.

Big Britain?

Sydney’s beaches were packed over the weekend as the city sweltered in unseasonably early summer weather. The temperature reached 38C in the western suburbs and a shade under 37C in the city itself, something like 14C hotter than the normal average for October. Unfortunately I was working all weekend, so was stuck in the office writing about people having a good time in the sun. (This is quite normal for journalists, so I got over it pretty quickly.)

I was off on Monday so I decided to make up for missing out on the weekend fun by making my first pilgrimage to that Sydney icon, Bondi beach. The weather had taken a turn for the worse – relatively speaking – and it was fairly overcast with a slight chill in the air: jeans and t-shirt weather rather than swimming trunks and sunscreen weather. The train doesn’t quite go all the way to the beach, which puts Bondi nicely on Sydney’s fringes and makes getting there enough of an effort that it feels like a mini-vacation. The nearest station, Bondi Junction, is surrounded by a web of roads and a huge, maze-like shopping centre with the atmosphere of a suburban London town centre like Uxbridge or Acton. It’s not very gnarly. But as you get closer to the sea, a 20-minute walk away, backpackers’ lodges and internet cafes start replacing TV repair shops, the and you start hearing more British accents. The beach was almost abandoned when I visited: there were no swimmers and only a brace of hardy surfers in the water. I took this as a hint that probably it wasn’t a good day for a Brit with nothing but his 100m swimming badge for protection to take to the water.

After sitting for 20 minutes or so, mesmerised by the big waves wrapping themselves around the little surfers, I set off on the beautiful coastal path that runs down to Coogee beach. Along the way it goes past various smaller beaches, including Tamarama. Also known as Glamourama, this has a reputation for being the place where the beautiful people hang out. On Monday it was deserted, apart from a man in a fluorescent yellow vest shovelling sand in a JCB (he was probably a body builder underneath), and the only hint to its normal state of affairs was a sign saying ‘No dogs’. The sea was a lot calmer here and I thought about diving in for a dip, but decided it would be embarrassing when the bored-looking lifeguard had to save me.

I was impressed that the council had built lots of small playgrounds alongside the path to keep young children amused. Until I realised that they were actually workout benches – each to exercise a different muscle – for the many joggers who were steaming past me. Australians take keeping fit pretty seriously – apart, that is, from the ones responsible for the “obesity crisis” that is currently provoking endless national soul-searching and buck-passing.

Along the way sweet-looking little girls tried to sell me chocolate muffins, and the path passed through a huge cliff top graveyard full of family vaults from the mid-19th century. I’m not sure which was eerier.

The walk got me thinking. Many of the names that I came across – Clovelly, Eastbourne, Waverley, Bronte – were more British than Britain. (For the record, Bronte is a beach, Waverley was the name of the cemetery, I walked along Eastbourne Road, and the president of Clovelly golf club almost ran me over.) And Bondi feels a lot like a British seaside resort – or at least it did on the grey, windy day that I visited. The beach is also a similar shape to Fistral beach in Newquay, albeit much longer and with rather larger waves . Brits fit into Sydney so naturally – hardly anybody ever comments on my accent, other than fellow foreigners – that it sometimes feels like a bigger version of Britain. There are three British newspapers – the Guardian Weekly, the Weekly Telegraph and the International Express – at most newsagents, and the top British football results make it onto the evening news. Most of the people I’ve met so far have some close connection – a parent, a grandparent – to Britain. But then you walk a bit further down Oxford Street or a bit deeper into Hyde Park, an odd-looking bird flies out at you, the scent of eucalyptus comes from nowhere, and the wild strangeness of the land hits you again.

Toilet humour

An Aussie film tip: go and see Kenny if it gets a UK release. It's a comedy about a guy called Kenny who delivers and services portaloos for events like music festivals and the Melbourne Cup. There are some great one-liners and it's also surprisingly touching - it's this year's The Office.

Fare play

As with many of the best relationships, it didn’t start well. Having stepped off a 23-hour flight from Britain – on which all substances that might make you smell of something other than soggy airline food and endlessly recycled body odour were banned – I was keen to get to a shower quickly. It wasn’t far to Erskineville, the suburb where I was going to be staying, so I broke one of my cardinal rules and decided to get a taxi that I wouldn’t be able to claim back on expenses.

Here the problems started. After waiting at Sydney Airport’s taxi rank for a few minutes I got to the front and was directed to a cab. Unsure how well known my road in Erskineville was, I asked the driver if he knew Railway Parade. He instantly lost the ability to speak English and, muttering something in an incomprehensible dialect, waved me on to the next cab. The same thing happened again, and then again, and again. Nobody else seemed to be having any problems getting a taxi; I was starting to worry that Erskineville was rather more dangerous than I had been told.

Fortunately the next cab driver, a very upbeat Somalian guy, agreed to take me to Erskineville. He filled me in on all the places in Sydney I could meet British people (any bar, essentially), cheerily gave a run-down of the latest atrocities committed by Somalia’s militant Islamists, and explained that my mistake in the taxi queue had been to give my destination before getting in the car. A schoolboy error, I realise: Sydney taxi drivers are just as annoyed at the prospect of a piddly $20 fare from the airport as a London cabbie would be at Heathrow if you asked to go to Hounslow.

But since this awkward beginning I’ve come to realise that Sydney’s cab drivers are one of the city’s hidden treasures. Unlike London taxi drivers, who are likely either to deliver a ten-minute monologue about foreigners sponsored by the British National Party or to sit in threatening silence, here cabbies will ask how your day’s going and then either shut up or keep talking depending on your mood.

Last week I was on early shifts, which here start at an eye-rubbingly antisocial 5.30am, and one of the few things that made this bearable was the banter I invariably got from the cabbies who drove me into work. The best was a hyperactive Turkish driver who, before I had even put my seatbelt on, had said to me: “You are Christian, I am Muslim! We are brothers, we worship the same God! Don’t worry, I won’t kill you! Ha! I am only joking!” Given that it was still 5am, I think I’m forgiven for not coming up with a witty retort. He also assured me that Australia wasn’t actually a cultural desert, although you had to look hard for the culture, and told me where in Sydney I could meet British people (a recurring theme). Two mornings later I had a stereotypically Australian cab driver – broad-rimmed hat, khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, beetroot-red complexion; I was disappointed he wasn’t whistling ‘Waltzing Matilda’ – who somehow managed to turn the fact that I wasn’t too bothered about exactly where he dropped me off into a blazing row. When I finally got out, he asked me, “Are you happy now?” before driving off looking like I’d just spilt his Fosters.

Perhaps it’s because I’m not from round these parts, perhaps it’s because most of Sydney’s taxi drivers are immigrants who like talking about soccer, perhaps it’s because the image of itself that Australia generally projects doesn’t do justice to the country’s racial complexity. (A side note: current TV advertisements about Australia’s citizenship requirements feature only white new citizens. I’m not always convinced by arguments about the need to “display diversity” but this just feels misleading.) But I’ve found cabbies here have a refreshingly different take on Australia’s optimism.

Footy fever

I am well on my way to becoming an honorary Australian: I spent the weekend watching footy and drinking beer as a prelude to visiting the beach on Monday. All I need to do now is wrestle a couple of crocs and barbeque a few shrimps, and citizenship (of the People's Republic of Stereotypia, formerly East Cliché) is mine.

I wondered why the customs guards were so strict when I flew into Sydney Aiport and why they asked if I'd been suffering from sudden palpitations, euphoria or deep depression. But it soon became apparent there was a simple explanation: Australia was in the grips of a highly contagious outbreak of footy fever.

Now from what I can tell, pretty much every sport is called football over here. You've got soccer (aka footy), rugby league (aka footy), rugby union (aka footy) and Aussie rules (aka footy). I believe cricket is different, but it wouldn't altogether surprise me to hear someone refer to it as footy.

On the second and third nights after my arrival both remaining Sydney teams got knocked out of the rugby league competition, making it the first time a New South Wales side hadn't reached the grand final. But a local team - the Swans, aka the Swannies - made it through to the deciding match of the Aussie rules season. (This, I learned, was very significant - as I understand it, the Australian constitution stipulates that Sydneysiders play rugby league and Melburnians play Aussie rules.)

Unusually both finals were played on the same weekend. Australia being Australia, they dominated the news agenda in the preceding week - in Sydney there was speculation about whether one of the Swans would miss the game because his wife was about to give birth (she very sportingly produced the baby early), and nationwide pundits debated whether Aussie rules was now a truly national sport (there were no Melbourne teams in the final). It was hard to get away from it: on Friday afternoon my mobile phone provider changed the location marker that flashes up on the screen of my handset from "Sydney CBD" to "Go Swannies". (I wondered whether they'd cynically done something similar in Perth, where the Swans' opponents, the West Coast Eagles, are based.)

I watched the Aussie rules final on Saturday afternoon in a pub (technically it was a "hotel", but I think I would have got a funny look if I'd asked for a room for the night) up the road from where I'm living. In an attempt to get into the spirit of things I wore a red-and-white t-shirt to match the Swans' colours. This had one interesting side-effect. The t-shirt, which I bought in Moscow in April with my last remaining roubles, has the very touristy slogan "CCCP" and is sure to annoy anyone who's ever lived under communism. After the game, an ageing Frenchman in the pub beckoned me over and in a bizarre mixture of French and Australian slang ("Bonjour, mate" etc) explained he was a communist from Marseilles and liked my t-shirt so much he wanted to buy me a beer. I declined, but throughout the game of pool I played next he kept waving and shouting "Parti Communiste!" at me.

Given that it was Aussie rules rather than rugby league, nobody was too upset when the Swans lost by one point. But I was impressed by how good-natured everybody was, even towards people who were loudly supporting the Eagles - I doubt a Manchester United fan watching his or her side play Liverpool in a FA Cup final in a Merseyside pub would last long.

Personally I thought the rugby league final - between the Brisbane Broncos and the Melbourne Storm - was less exciting, but I enjoyed the process of choosing which side to support. One of the girls I was watching the game with went for Melbourne because the shopping was better there, while most of the lads backed the Storm because "you've got to hate Queensland". It should be said that this inter-state rivalry is very playful and doesn't have any of the nasty vehemence of English football fans' feuds.

But I say we should encourage the Australians to keep playing their 57 different varieties of football. After all, if they were to start concentrating on soccer, we'd be in trouble.

The other side of the story

Alyssa, the Australian journalist I'm swapping jobs and flats with, has a great blog about her time in London here. Her comments on my bathroom will strike a chord with anyone who's ever stayed with me in East Dulwich.

Court out there

This week I was sent to report on an inquest that turned out to be the most bizarre I have ever covered.

In many respects it was a deeply tragic story: about a troubled teenage boy who became a prostitute in the Kings Cross area of Sydney and disappeared before he was due to give evidence against a number of alleged paedophiles. His body was found three-and-a-half years later buried in a shallow grave on the side of a canal.

But the case had a surreal humour that left the court in hysterics at times. The boy had been befriended and taken in by Ian Roberts, a very well-known retired rugby league international (probably the equivalent of Gazza in UK fame terms) who also happens to be Australia’s first openly gay high-profile sportsman. This week Ian Roberts was giving evidence, and he was also cross-examined by a 78-year-old man who allegedly sexually abused the boy and is one of the prime suspects in his murder.

There is a twist: Ian Roberts revealed in court that he had himself (allegedly) been sexually abused by this 78-year-old man when he was a teenager. (Under Australian law this can be reported.) He had to sit in the witness box and answer virulently homophobic and offensive questions posed directly by his alleged abuser, stood just a few metres away from him.

Another twist: the old man made sensational allegations in open court that an internationally-known Australian figure was part of a paedophile ring. (His name can’t be reported, and there’s no evidence that it’s true anyway.)

The case had me gripped, especially when the feisty coroner threatened to put the old man in the cells if he didn’t shut up. And when, in response to a witness explaining that south Sydney girls in the early 90s “didn’t put out”, the coroner said, “Good on those south Sydney girls.”

Putting my foot in it

I nearly caused a diplomatic incident when I went out for a run yesterday.

I planned to head for the local park marked on my guidebook’s map and do a couple of laps before retracing my steps. This park, however, turned out to be more of a grassy knoll (I checked for concealed gunmen and Oliver Stone before proceeding) and a couple of laps wasn’t really enough. So I decided I’d run down a few back streets.

Unfortunately, but inevitably, I very quickly got lost and was trying to work out where I was when I turned a corner and saw a couple of men in overalls sweeping the pavement. Not thinking anything of this I ran on… straight into a section of newly-laid cement. The guys who were mending the pavement found this pretty funny, although their boss shouted something along the lines of, “Bloody look where you’re running, you flaming galah!”

I was half-tempted to suggest that they go with the flow and turn the pavement into Sydney’s answer to Hollywood’s Walk of the Stars (or whatever it’s called), but thought this might get me a thumping.