THE MEANING OF OZ - All you need to know!

Lmur this could only happen in South Australia with a Premier who is totally out of touch with the wishes of the public.

THE extraordinary public reaction to the final chapter in the life of billionaire philanthropist Richard Pratt points to many admirable features of Australian society.

It reflects a genuine admiration for the achievements of this self-made Jewish-Polish migrant " a success story of incredible proportions, and an inspiration for the millions of migrants, however humble their origins, who have been fortunate enough to make it to these shores.

It also reflects the deep appreciation of Pratt's great generosity, a man who has given of his bounty to a wide range of worthy causes, from the arts to his beloved Carlton Football Club.

But, having said that, there was something profoundly unsettling about much of the premature public eulogising of Richard Pratt in the days before he died, and the frequently over the top, unconditional praise meted out by politicians, from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd down, and just about every captain of industry in the land.

That there was a disturbing, dark side to Pratt " he was, after all, fined $36 million in the 2007 civil proceedings over massive price-fixing between his packaging company Visy and its rival Amcor " was pointedly ignored by those so intent on singing his praises.

Not only that, but the vicious assault on Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Graeme Samuel, the man intent on revealing that Pratt had possibly perjured himself in Visy's unsuccessful defence of the price-fixing allegations, bordered on the obscene.

Insinuations last week that Samuel's pursuit of Pratt had accelerated his decline in health were beneath contempt.

One can only speculate on what might have driven this unbridled, in-life beatification of Pratt, which received saturation media coverage.

Almost completely submerged in all the adulation heaped on him " there is now even talk of a state memorial service in his honour " has been the continued public humiliation of another once-revered Australian, former Federal Court judge and president of the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Marcus Einfeld, who is serving a three-year jail term for perjuring himself and perverting the course of justice in a bid to avoid paying a $77 speeding fine.

A small item in Tuesday's Age reported that Einfeld had been stripped of his Order of Australia " ironic, in view of the moves now afoot to reinstate Pratt's AO, which he had returned following the price-fixing scandal.

Einfeld, who was not a successful billionaire, generous benefactor or saviour of a famous football club, was, nevertheless, an Australian of very considerable stature and substance who had made a contribution to this country at least as praiseworthy as that of Pratt " in particular, to the welfare of Australia's most deprived citizens, the Aborigines.

Like Pratt, Einfeld, too, has a dark side " in his case, an inexplicable "fatal flaw", in the true Shakespearean tragic sense, that caused him, a prominent and highly respected judge, to perjure himself over the most trivial of trivial matters: a $77 traffic fine.

Einfeld's conviction and jailing " the court, of course, had no option but to deal severely with a former judge who had ridden roughshod over the most sacred principles of the legal system he had been sworn to serve and uphold " was a breathtaking fall from grace for a man of his stature. And, for anyone with an ounce of compassion, a deeply moving human tragedy.

Yet Einfeld generated not an iota of the support emanating from the politicians now eulogising Pratt or from the Australian public, which seemed to revel in the public humiliation of this once-revered figure.

There was no groundswell of public sentiment that his punishment, though justified in pure legal and philosophical terms, might, in more human terms, have been too harsh, that there might have been room for compassion.

And the fact that Einfeld, like Pratt, was suffering from prostate cancer when he was tried and jailed, appeared to elicit little or no sympathy.

The Australian public takes an often spiteful pleasure in the lopping of tall poppies. But not all tall poppies are created equal, evidently, as the contrasting treatment of Pratt and Einfeld clearly demonstrates. If the tall poppy in question happens to be a convivial good fellow with lots of mates in high places and an endearingly Aussie passion for his footy club, even if he may have been a price-fixer on a mammoth scale, he is more likely to be spared the secateurs than an aloof, somewhat arrogant former judge who, despite his magnificent record of good works for Aborigines and other underprivileged people, lied in a statutory declaration to evade paying a speeding ticket. Off with his head! What does all this say about us?

David Bernstein is a senior Age journalist

Smoke haze from Victoria's devastating bushfires has become trapped in the atmosphere above Antarctica.

The ferocity of the fires has seen smoke reach heights never seen before and it has now travelled south.

Rumours circulating (amongst the largely Turkish Muslim student population) that Swine Flu is being spread by eaters of pork!)