I mused the other day about the fact that the large increase in Australia's newly-discovered projected consolidated revenue surplus, along with Howard's cynical spending promises in its wake, created a real opportunity for Mark Latham to " promise some really meaningful major...
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The God-botherers have entered the federal election campaign in a big way, with Catholic and Anglican leaders expressing public concern about the ALP's schools funding policy. Why the Catholics should do so, given that their schools are clear beneficiaries of the policy, is be...
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A few days ago I noticed a comment from Mark Bahnisch that indicated he had some experience in the industrial relations field, and had been a consultant to the Queensland government. Given that I have no particular expertise in the area myself and that the Howard government is...
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When US television network CBS presented explosive political documents without enquiring too closely as to their actual credibility, they unleashed a firestorm from US bloggers who quickly identified the documents as fakes. Soon enough, the ferment from political bloggers spre...
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JOHN Howard yesterday doubled his campaign spending promises in one unprecedented wallop, with a $6 billion package aimed primarily at young families and small business. Both John Quiggin and The Australian editorial today describe it as profligate and spending money "like dru...
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Catallaxy's Heath Gibson has made a comeback to blogging with a heartfelt mea culpa for his support of the US-led Iraq war and occupation. I supported the war as well (albeit with reservations). However, I didn't retire from blogging when I discovered I'd been wrong. Moreover,...
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Just as the polls early this week showed Labor clearly ahead (supposedly to an extent exceeding margin of error), so the ones released at the end of the week show the Coalition ahead by similar decisive margins. Bryan Palmer covers the latest polls here . Does public voting se...
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The RWDBs seem to automatically dismiss The Age's Ken Davidson as a communard dolt. So posting an item agreeing with him isn't likely to endear me to the anti-luvvies. But we centrists call it as we see it without fear or favour. Davidson raises a critical issue in his column...
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Isn't it interesting how captive Tory mouthpieces like Tim Blair and Terry McCrann only become interested in emphasising (or even mentioning) opinion polling margins of error when the polls start showing a clear ALP lead?! Left and centre blogs (like Troppo , Chris Sheil and B...
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For masochists who found the Great Debate between Howard and Latham to be rivetting television, and who have an interest in matters legal, you may wish to view the webcast of the Great Legal Debate between Coalition cadaver and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and his Labor cou...
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Apparently not all armadillos believe in deep civility. Nor are we all non-aligned centrists. Apparently some are even would-be active supporters of John Howard's vision of Australia's role in South-East Asia.
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(via a commenter on Chris Sheil's blog) This admirably detailed post on an American blog called Simply Appalling highlights and analyses the finding of the blond-haired body of an apparently executed man in the Tigris river just days after the "Horror Brigade of the Islamic Se...
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Alan from Southerly Buster has an excellent post on the Indonesian Presidential runoff that has resulted in Bambang Yudhoyono winning a smashing victory over Megawati Sukarnoputri, in a fairly unequivocal flowering of real, non-corrupt democracy. Who knows whether he'll be any...
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Two separate pundits in this morning's SMH remind Labor supporters not to get too carried away by the current positive poll figures. Ross Gittins , back from hols, says: We turn to the untried opposition only after we're thoroughly fed up with the government. (And, more often...
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I bet John Howard is hoping political scientist John Wanna is correct in his surmise that the undecided voters aren't listening yet . Because if they were paying attention to the incoherent gibberish Howard and Downer are spouting about pre-emptive anti-terrorist strikes on ne...
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I see some goober from the Weagles has won the AFL midfielders' award (once known as the "Brownlow"). When do they announce the award for best player out of all the other positions on the field? What a pathetic joke the Brownlow has become. Mind you, I would have given it to J...
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Tim Dunlop posts about Iraq interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's impending visit to the US, where he'll address the United Nations and (effectively) campaign for the re-election of President Bush. Tim suggests that this is utterly inappropriate given that Allawi is only a shor...
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There's an interesting contrast between the way personal smear negative campaign tactics work in the US and their relative lack of success in Australia. As Scott Wickstein pointed out in a comment to my previous post, the Bush memo fiasco and Swift Boat Veterans nonsense are n...
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I've been meaning to comment about John Quiggin's recent short post on the US elections. John said: The crucial issue is to determine which candidate has the better record on Vietnam, and will therefore make the better president. As I understand it: Kerry fought in Vietnam, bu...
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Sometimes I just can't resist rising to the bait when Paul Watson posts one of his very frequent mad, paranoid anti-babyboomer rants. That's because he actually raises some important issues, even though they're usually well hidden among all the self-pitying whimpering. Paul's...
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Bryan Palmer , who maintains the excellent political science site Palmer's Oz Politics , has a post noting the bookmakers' latest odds on the federal election race. Bryan also analyses the recently-published marginal seat polling, and concludes that Labor is likely to fall aro...
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This story in The Australian about the latest NATSEM study on income inequality trends provides a reminder about why Labor necessarily faces an uphill battle to persuade Australians to abandon the Howard government in the midst of an unparalleled era of general prosperity. The...
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I've been watching Fox News today as they have been covering the impact of Hurricane Ivan on the Gulf Coast near Alabama. It is a terrifying storm with winds around 200 kph and driving rain. You can read about the details here But what got me is that there are Fox News reporte...
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Quite a few election blogs have sprung into existence recently. Here's a list of the ones of which I'm currently aware: Peter Brent's Mumble election site (ongoing psephology focus, in operation for some considerable time) William Bowe's The Poll Bludger Matt Liddy's Poll Vaul...
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Mark Latham is quite right to complain about the Howard government's breach of the caretaker convention in failing to consult the Opposition about its decision to deploy a hostage negotiation team to Iraq following (probably false) reports of the kidnapping of two unidentified...
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Sometimes Troppo comment boxes attract very strange visitors .
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One aspect of Labor's education policy where I emphatically agree with Graham Young is in the area of values. Labor's policy document says (page 11): A Federal Labor Government will provide $150 million over five years to teach Australian values and improve discipline in schoo...
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Graham Young over on Ambit Gambit has a post about Labor's education policy release that trots out the usual kneejerk conservative slur against Labor: Latham's policy is based on "envy". But unlike most such defences of existing privilege , Graham actually argues his case. Upd...
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What impression might the average disengaged swinging voter receive (if any) of electoral issues in the news today? Will anything penetrate? Labor has just announced a $2.4 billion education policy package , which will " pump an extra $2.4 billion into the government and non-g...
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The Currency Lad is one of the more entertaining right wing bloggers around the place, mostly eschewing moronic RWDB thuggery in favour of piercing leftie pretensions by more gentle and effective methods. His take on Mark Latham's silly " ease the squeeze " line is a neat exam...
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It's a privilege to listen to someone with a really powerful and awesomely quick mind. Such was neuroscientist Professor Susan Greenfield, who was just on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope . Read the transcript when it becomes available if you didn't catch the program. One of the ma...
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Well, the bloggers' vote on the Great Debate is tiresomely predictable. The lefties at Chris Sheil's place scored it a smashing victory for Latham, while the RWDBs at Tim Blair's joint thought exactly the opposite (and reckoned the "worm" audience was rigged). This particular...
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My initial thought this morning was that there was no point in writing a federal election post in advance of tonight's Great Debate. But pondering a little further, I wonder whether the debate is likely to have a great effect anyway. In light of the Jakarta bombing, I suspect...
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I can't help musing about Paul Watson's tacky but amusing take on the Seven Network's newest "reality" TV show Playing it Straight , featuring Darwin barmaid Rebecca Olds trying to pick straight potential suitors from gay ones for a purse of $200,000. I won't be watching this...
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It still has quite an impact to suddenly notice that date "September 11" over in the left column, doesn't it? On this day three years ago I (along with just about everyone else in Australia and the world) was sitting in my loungeroom numb and transfixed, watching those planes...
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Some rather foolish people are suggesting that Australia should 'negotiate' with the rag-tag terrorist outfit Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). I would not normally comment on such a suggestion, but 29% of SMH readers seem to think it is a good idea. It should of course be dismissed out...
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Graham Young, who operates the group blog Ambit Gambit and prominent Australian e-journal Online Opinion , is a classical liberal in the finest sense. One of the manifestations of his studious liberalism is enlisting co-bloggers whose opinions differ markedly from his own. Jef...
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A wise man would leave well enough alone, and let the dust settle before venturing back into provocative blogging. But the combination of Bush, Blair, and sado-masochism is too tempting to resist. As this News Online story notes: For its 10th anniversary, upmarket London corse...
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In the wake of yesterday's tragedy in Jakarta, terrorism is back on the electoral agenda, whether we like it or not. It has not really gone away of course, but the political parties in Australia seem to have had a mutual non-aggression pact to not discuss the issue. That could...
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I can't help comparing the university where I work with St. Edward's hospital, the apocryphal institution in Yes Minister which won an award as Britain's most hygienic hospital because it had no patients to get the place dirty. I've just come back to my office with an armful o...
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It's probably an unworthy thought given that at least 5 people (presumably all Indonesian Muslims) have been killed, but I can't help wondering whether Abu Bakr Bashir is a closet member of the Liberal Party. National security and the War against Terror front and centre. Updat...
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Carolinkus is convinced that Satan is making her blog . It's taking up so much time that could be devoted to more worthwhile things, like spiritual contemplation. It's a familiar feeling for most bloggers, though most of us probably wouldn't put it in quite those terms. Bloggi...
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Online Opinion e-journal (run by Graham Young and Hugh Brown) has recently implemented a feature called The Domain , which provides a one-stop shop page displaying excerpts from and links to new posts on a range of prominent Australian political blogs including Troppo . It app...
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The Australian newspaper's evaluation of Labor's tax and family benefits package is surprisingly upbeat for a rag many lefties dismiss as blatantly pro-Coalition: Typically for Latham, the broad sweep of the policy vision is more attractive than some of the details buried with...
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Well, Labor's tax package has been released, and it looks very attractive, as Chris Sheil discusses here . Will it be enough to get Latham's campaign back on track? Certainly, Howard is doing his level best to keep derailing Latham's loco, with a pre-emptive medical care subsi...
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Insomnia strikes again. Surfing round the blogs, I finally noticed that Don Arthur has finally upgraded his computer from a dodgy Apple Mac (though I suspect he's only upgraded to another dodgy Apple Mac), and has been hard at work. But he keeps linking to Clive Hamilton . Cli...
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I haven't blogged about the appalling terrorist atrocity in Russia until now. The immensity, horror and pointlessness of the calculated slaughter of so many children is almost beyond comprehension let alone words. Several bloggers, including Darp Hau , John Quiggin and Rob Sch...
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Today's Sydney Morning Herald has an alarming article and a longer feature on the emerging practice of trial lawyers using expert witnesses (doctors, accountants, psychologists etc.) retained on a "no win no fee" contingent basis. It shows just how closeted one can get in the...
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Stan from South Pacific Federation Project has emailed me with a query about copyright and use of other people's material on blogs. Copyright isn't my specialist area (see Kim Weatherall's blog if you want someone who really knows about this area), but I have a basic working k...
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They're both simply engaging in the sort of expedient lying that is a working politician's everyday lot. Politics isn't a profession for saints. No, perhaps politics is not the career for the scrupulously honest, but that doesn't mean that we should be happy about our elected...
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The patent absurdity of Labor's " 27 Howard lies " document is underlined by a lie told by Mark Latham , reported in today's SMH, about the basis and effect of Thursday's High Court decision in Electrolux Home Products Pty Ltd v Australian Workers' Union (which I blogged about...
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Chris Sheil won't be happy about this Newspoll showing Labor doing badly in the Queensland marginals it must win to form government. And it looks like Latham has leaked significant aspects of his tax policy to George Megalogenis in the Weekend Oz. Two sandwiches and two milksh...
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As readers may have noticed, the "10 most recently-commented posts" sidebar feature is broken (blank). I don't know why. I suspect it's some sort of corruption of Scott's MT installation, because it won't allow me to rebuild the main index template to fix the problem. I've sen...
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In a second important decision handed down yesterday ( Coleman v Power ), the High Court by a 4/3 majority preferred freedom of speech over civility. It ruled that unflattering words about police used by a Townsville hippie protester in a pamphlet ("KISS MY ARSE YOU SLIMY LYIN...
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Yeserday's High Court decision in Electrolux Home Products Pty Ltd v Australian Workers' Union rejected the inclusion in an enterprise bargain of provisions imposing the fees of "bargaining agents" on non-unionists. The report in today's Australian newspaper summarises its eff...
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There is no doubt that the Prime Minister is in some political difficulty and is struggling to gain the initiative in the first week of the campaign. The essential Mumble website suggests that the ALP has a small but constant edge in the opinion polls, and entering the campaig...
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This story a couple of days ago caught my attention: AUSTRALIA is two years behind comparable developed countries in broadband services despite an accelerated uptake that doubled subscribers in the past year. The advent of less expensive entry-level products drove demand, says...
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Labor's "Howard is a lying rodent" campaign has hit a fairly major solid object. Just as many on the right of the blogosphere studiously averted their gaze from earlier stages of the Scrafton affair, so now the left is pretending that yesterday's resumed "children overboard" S...
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There might conceivably be room for debate about the extent to which John Howard is a "lying rodent", but in light of this post by Al Bundy there's no doubt at all that his most recent accuser Russell Galt well and truly deserves that label.
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