Club Troppo

With so much commentary on the upcoming contest between "Ease the Squeeze" and "Be Inert and Embalmed" I thought I'd shift attention to Scandinavia where once again a decision will be shortly announced for the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. If I were not so time-p...

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As you can see from the post immediately below, Don Arthur has joined the Troppo blogging mob. Don is a longstanding stop-and-start blogger, due to the demands of employment and postgraduate study and research. His most recent blog is here , but Don found he was unable to upda...

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In a series of posts John Quiggin argues that the era of dry politics is over (see here , here , and here ). Andrew Norton almost agrees . He argues that market oriented reform is here to stay, but so is big government. In the US the Weekly Standard 's Fred Barnes writes that...

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The more I think about it, the more depressingly convinced I become that Howard is going to win on Saturday. It's not just the opinion polls or Howard's confident demeanour, or the fact that the betting markets have turned decisively against Labor. It's also that basic conserv...

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John Quiggin hypothesises that John Howard's new-found enthusiasm for tax-and-spend policies may be based on " a fundamental change of view about what the Australian public wants from governments, one in which more and better services rank ahead of tax cuts ", rather than just...

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It seems that my previous posts on values ( here and here ) were reflecting the zeitgeist to an even greater extent than I imagined. At the same time, High Court Chief Justice Murray Gleeson was also reflecting on the role of values (albeit from the perspective of a judge call...

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As has happened through most of the election campaign period, two of the major opinion polls are contradicting each other, and the latest Newspoll is yet to be released. ACNeilsen shows the Coalition comfortably in front (52% to 48% in two-party preferred terms) while Morgan's...

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Fortuitously given the ongoing skirmish between Chris Sheil and myself about the utility of the label "left", RWDB bete noire David Marr delivered a long lecture partly on that very subject a couple of days ago. It's reproduced at tiresome length on Margo's Web Diary. Incident...

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Christopher Sheil , the blogger about whom one dare not speak the name "left", posts an extract from a new book by animal lib Oz philosopher Peter Singer, which deconstructs/demolishes the libertarian justification of inalienable rights to private property. Of course, there ar...

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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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