Do you get bitter, or do you prove that you are above it all?

~ Paul Hogan

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Quote:

''Do you get bitter, or do you prove that you are above it all?''. 
~ Paul Hogan

''I love Australia, I have just got a problem with a few Australians,'' 
~ Paul Hogan

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Excerpt:

AUSTRALIA'S World Cup bid turned to...  ... a squad of Hollywood stars including Paul Hogan, ... ... but the biggest surprise was the use of Hogan as an Australian campaigner following his lengthy tangles with federal law enforcement officials. At the time Hogan was approached to be part of the bid, he was in the midst of an acrimonious battle with the Australian Crime Commission as well as the Australian Taxation Office in relation to his financial affairs. Hogan had only recently left Australia after being temporarily detained by the tax office and was still under criminal investigation. But his lawyer, Andrew Robinson, said yesterday that when speaking with those close to him, Hogan, who has always maintained his innocence, said: ''Do you get bitter, or do you prove that you are above it all?''. ''I love Australia, I have just got a problem with a few Australians,'' the actor said.

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Full News Article:

Is this what we're pinning our World Cup hopes on?

2 Dec 2010, The Australian, PETER WILSON ZURICH 

ADDITIONAL REPORTING: VERITY EDWARDS, SUSANNAH MORAN

AUSTRALIA'S World Cup bid turned to a cartoon kangaroo, a squad of Hollywood stars including Paul Hogan, and the migrant success story of Frank Lowy for its final pitch to FIFA executives last night. The animated kangaroo appeared with another ''big red'', Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in a film by director Phil Noyce as part of the 30-minute presentation in Zurich early this morning ahead of the final vote to be held just after midnight tonight (AEDT). The film by Noyce, director of Rabbit-Proof Fence, was jammed with celebrities such as Ian Thorpe, dressed as a Bondi life saver, Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman but the biggest surprise was the use of Hogan as an Australian campaigner following his lengthy tangles with federal law enforcement officials. At the time Hogan was approached to be part of the bid, he was in the midst of an acrimonious battle with the Australian Crime Commission as well as the Australian Taxation Office in relation to his financial affairs. Hogan had only recently left Australia after being temporarily detained by the tax office and was still under criminal investigation. But his lawyer, Andrew Robinson, said yesterday that when speaking with those close to him, Hogan, who has always maintained his innocence, said: ''Do you get bitter, or do you prove that you are above it all?''. ''I love Australia, I have just got a problem with a few Australians,'' the actor said. 

Australia's bid to host the 2022 Cup is an uphill battle against the US and well-financed Qatar, as well as Japan and South Korea. It suffered late setbacks yesterday with a poor rating in a FIFA financial report and the loss of a key Oceania seat on the 22-strong voting panel. Upbeat to the end, the Australian team sought inspiration from the rags-to-riches story of bid chief Lowy. Extolling Australia's multicultural society, the 80-yearold shopping centre tycoon told the FIFA executives that ''as an immigrant to Australia I was very warmly welcomed''. ''I can assure you that if you take up our invitation to bring the FIFA World Cup to Australia then you, and the rest of the football world, will be very warmly welcomed too . . . by, perhaps, the most multicultural society in the world,'' he said. ''That fact has great positive implications for the World Cup as every team will enjoy a local base of passionate 'home country' support.'' Fellow presenter in Zurich, football executive Ben Buckley, insisted Australia's location made it ''a truly unique prospect within Asia''. ''Asia's wealth is growing faster than any other region and economists predict that Asia will be the economic engine of the world in 2022,'' he said. That message was trying to make an asset of a perceived weakness because a last-minute report by management consultant McKinsey had just advised the voting panel that Australia had the weakest revenue-raising potential of the five bidding nations, largely because its time zone would reduce US and European TV income. The upbeat Australian message also defied a late voting blow, with Tahitian football official Reynald Temarii refusing to hand over his place as the Oceania region's representative on the executive committee despite having been suspended because of corruption allegations. That left Oceania without a vote on the host cities for the 2018 and 2022 Cups, robbing Australia of a guaranteed vote when just three or four will be enough to avoid elimination in the first round of voting. The vote will see one candidate knocked out in each round until a bidder has 12 or more votes, with FIFA chief Sepp Blatter holding a casting vote in case of an 11-11 tie. The Australian and Oceania officials desperately wanted Mr Temarii to step aside so that a replacement could back Australia, but he turned them down yesterday, saying he wanted to stay and fight to clear his name of the corruption charges. Mr Temarii's lawyer, Geraldine Lesieur, said she could not comment on claims that Mr Temarii had met officials from rival bidder Qatar before making his decision. Ms Gillard said on radio yesterday the McKinsey report missed a very important factor. ''For the future of football, for this to be a truly world sport as they want it to be, they want to see growth in Asia,'' she said. FIFA is on thin ice. The bloated and imperious lords of football have long smelled of corruption but the sleaziness surrounding tomorrow's (AEDT) selection of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup venues could finally produce a long overdue backlash from governments and national football bodies around the world. The peak body of 208 national football associations today resembles the secretive and elitist International Olympic Committee of 20 or 30 years ago, but with a much worse taint of illegal and self-serving behaviour. The IOC eventually opened its doors to sunlight and younger, more relevant members and the differences between it and FIFA were nicely illustrated this week by the case of Issa Hayatou, a sultan's son from Cameroon. Hayatou was one of three FIFA executive committee members accused by the BBC's Panorama program on Monday night of accepting bribes in the 1990s from a Swiss-based firm which dealt in TV and marketing rights to the World Cup. Six of the 24 members who were originally supposed to vote tomorrow have now had serious corruption allegations levelled against them in the past month and, while two were suspended after an investigation by The Sunday Times, four will still be allowed to vote. Predictably, FIFA and its supremo Sepp Blatter criticised the newspaper report and then ignored the BBC program about Hayatou, offering the hollow defence a Swiss court looked at the issue some time ago and did not convict any FIFA officials. The truth is that FIFA officials were never the targets of that court case and Swiss corruption laws at that time did not cover bribing members of a ''non-profit'' body such as FIFA. But the new IOC is a different matter. Hayatou happens to also be a member of the IOC and that body was quick to act even though the bribery allegations related to FIFA activities. ''The IOC has taken note of the allegations made by (the) BBC Panorama and will ask the program makers to pass on any evidence they may have to the appropriate authorities. The IOC has a zero tolerance against corruption and will refer the matter to the IOC ethics commission,'' it said. The self-serving culture of FIFA was demonstrated by the refusal of Oceania's representative Reynald Temarii, one of the men who was suspended after The Sunday Times bribery report, to step aside so his regional federation could appoint another delegate who would be able to vote for Australia. Temarii says rather than obey the wishes of the people he represents he wants to stay on ''to restore my honour, dignity and integrity''. Temarii's lawyer told The Australian yesterday she did not know whether he had spoken to officials from rival bidder Qatar before making his decision. This one man's decision to deprive Australia of a guaranteed vote could fatally undermine the confidence of other delegates in Australia's chances. This is a five-way elimination contest in which just three or four of the 22 votes will be needed to survive the first round and try to pick up support from the eliminated country, which might be South Korea or Japan. The danger for FIFA is not that a relative minnow such as Australia will come away feeling cheated, but that this badly managed contest for 2018 and 2022 is going to make unhappy losers of more powerful countries such as England, Spain, the US or Russia. There is a widespread belief the 2018 joint bid by Spain and Portugal has done an illegal deal with the 2022 bidder Qatar to swap support for each other. If those two bids do triumph, the losers will scream for reform like never before. If Qatar in particular gets up, FIFA will look ridiculous. Qatar has everything a World Cup host needs except a fan base, a history of playing soccer, stadiums and an appropriate climate. In fact, its only assets are plenty of cash and rich skills in the backscratching arts that dominate FIFA. The safest results for FIFA, in terms of delaying demands for change, would be Russia or England in 2018 and the US in 2022, non-Asian selections which would also open the way for a lucrative Chinese bid for 2026. It would take a near miracle for Australia to win. Its bid has strong government support, top facilities and a sports-mad public, but it is burdened by a time zone that will lower the value of European and US TV rights, and a lack of clout in the shady corridors of FIFA.

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