more on the publicly funded memorial service for a very rich man

An email exchange between A and I...

A:

the kerry packer memorial shits me the core too - makes me quite angry - the crikey email sums up the situation beautifully...and people bang on about his generosity! - paying off the home loans of strangers etc etc - fuck that! don't people realise that when a billionaire gives away $10,000 it's eqivalent to the rest of us giving away $1 - which most of us do everytime we walk down smith st...and unlike most wealthy australians - the myers, pratts etc etc - he didn't establish a charitable trust - tight cunt.

Me:

SOOOO true re: “generosity” of the mega-rich. Even giving away significant proportions of their income isn’t really very generous. If someone with $10 billion gives away $9 billion, they still have $1 billion. And the way people talk fondly about how big his balls were because of his “big” gambling – balls my arse! Like you point out, if he loses $27 million in one night in Vegas, It’d be like you or I losing $100. I doubt our friends would be telling stories at dinner parties about their high-rolling risk-taker mates.

A:

did you see any of the memorial service? it was sooooo bad - i cringed the whole way thru it.....i just wanna know one thing - if you took a poll - what percentage of australians would a) think he's great; b) neither like nor hate him; or c) think he's a complete flog bag? have you seen any polls like this? or a similar poll about whether australians in general approved of kp being given a govt sponsored memorial service?....also have your heard/read anywhere how much it cost us?...still not happy, can't let it go.

A poll in the Sydney Morning Herald found that something like three quarters of respondents thought the service shouldn't be publicly funded, but I doubt SMH readers represent a broad cross-section.

There were some pretty inane statements made about the protestors at the service, which was reported here in the Sydney Morning Herald. You can tell from her that "Ms Natasha Lang, 46, a promotions manager of Vaucluse, who came to watch the guests arrive" is an activist with a rich vein of social conscience running through her psyche said:

"Kerry Packer was fantastic person. Everyone should take a leaf out of his book. I think the protest was shocking. They've got nothing better to do than complain when we are a positive country and we need to get positive energy happening.''

Same can be said about those few hundred thousand idiots who protested the Iraq war -- how dare they threaten our "positive energy"? For shame!

And the treasurer, Peter Costello, wasn't to be outdone:

"What's the point of protesting at someone's funeral, they're gone," Mr Costello said. "I think you should let people rest in peace, that's my view and I don't really care who it is."

Hitler? Pol Pot? I'm not suggesting Packer was anything like either of them, just suggesting that it wasn't a very bright comment from Pete. And, even if you agree with him, he's at least partly missing the point. Some, if not all, of the protesters weren't protesting about Packer -- they were protesting the service itself, decrying the fact that taxpayers were shelling out for public service to a very rich and very private man whose contribution to Australian society is, if nothing else, debatable. Specifically, these people were part of the Kerry Packer Dis-memorial Collective, who protested "the iniquity of using taxpayers' money to stage a media extravaganza and salute a man who boasted about evading tax." Pete added that:

"I think they're totally misguided and if they think they'll win any public support they won't."

I wouldn't bet on it. He went on to say Packer was a:

"very significant media player by world standards."

And that's what it's all about if you want to be an un-un-Australian Aussie champ, isn't it? As long as you're big on the global stage -- be it in sport or business -- then you're a "great Australian". God forbid we'd have the national self-confidence to finally stop seeking fawning approval from our big brothers on the other side of the world.