Club Troppo

This week's column is the third in about five weeks on super to co-incide with the introduction of super-choice. The other two are here and here . So as someone who commented on a draft said, I might be getting near the stage when I can call it a Gruen Plan. I wrote it in thre...

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Lots of you will have already been there, but for those who haven't seen it, John Falkner's speech in launching Latham's bio is terrific. And what did Falkner go an do? Resign :( *PS - thanks to Liam Hogan for correction on the simple task of spelling Faulkner's name. I left o...

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This looks like a recreational event that could take off in the Territory, perhaps with the requirement that in addition to having fun the participants should consume a slab of beer or so before taking the field.

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Gavin Kennedy, Adam Smith enthusiast after my own heart e-mailed me recently to tell me of a weblog post he'd done after reading a column of mine on on-line opinion (the longer version of which was posted at troppo ) arguing that economic and social success comes not from a pr...

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Armadillo afficionados might be interested to know that Cambodia has issued a postage stamp to celebrate a prehistoric armadillo .

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It's lucky I'm feeling positive about life generally, or this would be an unbearably depressing Friday night. Not only does Jen insist on watching some mind-numbingly dreadful Walt Disney telemovie starring Julie Andrews, but it's "Territory Night". The NT is the only part of...

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In view of the topical nature of Third World issues, this online journal from Africa may be of interest. A summary has been turning up in my mail for some time, courtesy of one of the many email groups that flood my in-box with more stuff than I can read. Clearly it has free m...

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This week's column comes out of the conjunction of my reading Jeffrey Sachs book on how we can cure extreme poverty in a couple of decades and the mounting hype about Live 8. Sachs' book is exciting in a way, though one also becomes aware fairly quickly that one is dealing wit...

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Having posted on Collingwood and racism last night, I came across this in the Sunday Age. The idea of sporting bodies getting involved in making our world a better place is a bit scary at one level. A bit like religious leaders lecturing us on politics (With the AFL getting po...

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Following the example of Nicholas Gruen who posted on some people who helped to save the world, I will put up some little-known people who were less involved in affairs of state but instead made their contribution in the world of ideas. Let me introduce Ian D Suttie, Bill Hutt...

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My team Collingwood has had an interesting involvement the modern social history of racism. At around the time of Pauline Hanson I used to argue that, though all the focus was on Pauline's contribution to making Australia more racist, we were in fact becoming dramatically less...

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I'm chaperoning my 11 year old daughter to the 2005 Children's World Summit for the Environment in Toyohashi City and Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture in Japan. I could go on here about how irritating the indoctrination of the young with all sorts of ridiculous ideas about the...

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I'm excited. I'm chuffed. I've published plenty of articles in journals and, though I thought some of them were good, and a number had important implications for various things, I've rarely had more than the slightest sign of life in articles once they've been published, unles...

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An amazing story was reported today, about another kidnapping crisis ending happily, and a captive rescued from cruel kidnappers: you can find it at At first I thought there'd maybe been a bit of a linguistic or cultural misunderstanding, and that maybe 'lions' was really a me...

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Do yourself a favour and read this superb post by guest contributor Kate at Mark Bahnisch's Larva tus Rodeo (can't help calling it that - I blame Nabakov). My sister Lynne has an intellectually handicapped daughter in her mid-twenties. She and her husband Ray have been through...

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Latest counting after Saturday's NT election suggests the CLP will most likely end up with just 4 seats, Labor 19 and Independents 2. It's a stunning Labor whitewash, equal to the largest victory the CLP achieved in its long years of dominance, back in 1983. Despite my modest...

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This week's column is on the shenanigans over the inquiry into Jayant Patel, the rogue doctor of Bundaberg. Since Troppo is kind of becoming a site of record for my column and I appreciate people's comments, I'm postiing it. Anyone who likes reading my columns might like it. B...

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" Ya know what the time is, mate ?" asks an Aboriginal "long grasser" sitting under the trees as we walk along the beach towards Rapid Creek footbridge on our evening constitutional. " Five past six ," I reply, ploughing onward to forestall any possibility of the usual follow-...

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When I went to law school, my criminology lecturer Gordon Hawkins taught us that research clearly showed that the death penalty had no measurable deterrent effect on murder/crime rates. But I recall thinking at the time that the evidence he cited didn't sound all that compelli...

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I wonder why the blogosphere zeitgeist is throwing up musings about the desirability of some latter day form of Athenian participatory democracy? Nicholas Gruen's post earlier today, in which he advocated a randomly selected "people's chamber" of Parliament, is a proximate exa...

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