Club Troppo

As the Government turns up the heat in this campaign and tries to araldite the 70% Union Bosses tag to Mr, Rudds forehead, damning information about the Governments own front bench has surfaced which places this debate in a whole new light. One of the Governments key lines in...

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Not exactly home-grown art, but irresistible. Via Remember the West , original provenance unspecified. The News and Politics section is full of links on the election. But the Introduction to Missing Link is reknowned for its dignity and fair-mindedness, and not the venue for d...

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Not because I don't want to, but because I can't. I have been purged from the electoral roll. Like many Australian Diasporans I am in the curious position of being completely disenfranchised. My home country has kicked me off the rolls, yet I am not a citizen of another countr...

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Thirty Four Billion Dollars. Sounds a big number right? Its more than Ive got and Id hazard a guess that its more than youve got too. Its a number so large, such a very very big number, that only a Government can throw it around and still be taken seriously. Today Mr. Howard a...

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Review of Tao: On the Road and On the Run in Outlaw China by Aya Goda. Translated from the Japanese by Alison Watts. Published by Portobello Books. The painting reflects the artist, Young Number Four Son. If you want to paint, you must start by building your character. Paintin...

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So Mr. Howard has this morning climbed into the back of the Prime Ministerial Comcar slid across the shiny leather seat and ordered Jeeves to the Governor Generals pile to officially name the date for the election. It would, I suppose, have been a surreal moment. Sitting in th...

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The Dunera association had its celebration of the 67th anniversary of the Dunera's arrival in Sydney recently. Since my daughter had recently done a major assignment on the Dunera she and I flew up and she gave a little talk on what she'd found. I always enjoy being with these...

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Want to buy an expensive Swiss watch? Not everyone can afford a real one-a Patek Philippe timepiece can be worth many thousands of dollars, and some very exclusive makes, such as a Vacheron Constantin, can cost over a million! Still, you may have found a convincing lookalike i...

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When first drafting I'd intended this to be a one part post. But by the time the first post went up it had became a two part post. But when I got to writing up part two I continued and extended the discussion with Damien Eldridge which had begun in part one. Now it's time to m...

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Wilcox on the McClelland Affair, via Ken Lovell Hard on the heals of the Sudanese Affair is the Pine Boxes Affair; between them the two have raised the fury of the Government's boo-squad to new heights, whether from outraged principle or from fear that the tactics may work. An...

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Here's a guest post by an Open Source Programmer Con Zymaris You may not be aware of this, but you're probably reading this editorial using a product sourced from perhaps the world's largest monopoly market. A monopoly more profound and more ingrained than any run by a former...

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The emotional politics of Howard's aspirational nationalism There's a difference between guilt and shame. When you see yourself as a good person who's done a bad thing, you feel guilt. But when you see the bad thing you've done as evidence that you are a bad person, then you f...

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In an earlier piece on economic freedom I raised inter alia the issue of Australias welfare to work measures under Howard. This attracted some debate and it seems appropriate to reiterate my views on the topic. Australias welfare to work measures have involved a tightening of...

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This post is filed under life. How long have you got?

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CEDA have proposed a gradual extension of the age at which you qualify for the pension from 65 to 67 . What with all that hard policy lifting that Peter Costello's been doing on behalf of intergenerational equity (at the same time as lining the pockets of the country's aged su...

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Yes folks, that's what Julie Andrews says in the Sound of Music , and this week, amidst the ruins of all those securitised sub-prime loans, the International Financial Law Review tells us that the first rated securitization of subordinated microcredits securitisation took plac...

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Where do they get these numbers? It completely beats me. Reminds me of a line in Annie Hall in which Woody's mother says to his father in conclusion of their latest argument. "Have it your own way, the Atlantic Ocean is a better ocean than the Pacific Ocean." Or as Keynes said...

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The AES has an interesting graph which shows trending on how people consumed political information during elections. Unfortunately the trend ends at 2004, however, the internet was already rivaling talkback radio, newspapers and radio for media consumption patterns. I am sure...

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Paul Krugman's blog - at its pithy best on how right is wrong . And Steven Levitt making some very good points about how laborious the process is for publishing peer reviewed material. We're making progress but in many ways given the opportunities presented by the net, progres...

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Strange but true - in case you haven't heard, the world is full of amazing people with amazing stories who do amazing things . Perhaps this is a portent that the hideous catastrophes of the twentieth century are behind us. Well - obviously they're behind us. What I mean is, he...

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