Club Troppo

John Quiggin has suggested that detained asylum seekers should be released on "bail" pending finalisation of their visa applications and appeals. It's a suggestion that I've also previously made, although in the context of implementation of a revived "Australia Card" secure na...

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One of the many great things about the blogosphere is that when you get bored with the political stuff (as I am at the moment - I can't even be bothered reading it let alone writing about it), there are usually more intimate posts to read and ponder. And some of them are very...

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Christopher Sheil has an excellent parsing and analysis of John Howard's "denial" statement in relation to the Scrafton allegations. As I mentioned in Chris's comment box, the critical weasel aspect is that Howard's statement in his initial paragraph " I had spoken to Mr Scraf...

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I wonder how many readers saw last night's ABC Four Corners program and, like me, were depressed if not horrified by the apparent degradation of the US criminal justice system by an extreme version of "plea bargaining", where not only do prosecutors and defence lawyers bargain...

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I attempted to kick-start a broad-based comment box discussion about vice-regal appointments in the Australian constitutional system. Unfortunately I failed completely. It occurs to me that it may be because I posted my comments under a post about Northern Territory Administra...

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I'm too depressed to talk about last night's Wallabies versus Springboks Tri-Nations decider. Fortunately Chris Sheil has fought off the after-loss lethargy and written a brief post-mortem update, and I managed to raise enough enthusiasm to insert some thoughts in his comment...

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it's my right to choose. I first heard about Phil Nitschke when he was working at Royal Darwin Hospital and he appeared in the local press waffling on about nuclear warships visiting Darwin and the lack of a disaster management plan in case an accident happened. The next time...

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The Northern Territory has its very own homegrown vice-regal constitutional crisis (well, controversy anyway). NT Administrator Ted Egan made some remarks about Aboriginal promised marriages on ABC TV Stateline last night, and is reported to have had a private conversation wit...

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Early Saturday morning ... crisp and cool ... managed to fight off insomnia and slept through the night ... looking forward to a delicious sleep-in ... BANG CRASH BANG BANG BANG ... LOUD VOICES. Christ what time is it? 6.30. Cunts. Blokes preparing for a fishing trip in the un...

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Given the slow and painful journey of middle-aged twice-bitten love, I was a bit disconcerted to read today's quotable quote in the NT News. It was by Bertrand Russell , and said: Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. I personall...

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I may have given readers the impression that I think Clive Hamilton is as big a goose as Alexander Downer. In fact I think many of Hamilton's insights are very valuable, especially in focusing Australians on the deficiencies of global capitalist consumer culture and the relent...

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It's fashionable both in the mainstream media and blogosphere to portray Alexander Downer as an effeminate goose. He may well be, but that doesn't mean his statement that Australia would not necessarily support the US in a war with China over Taiwan was wrong, either factually...

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Signposts is another new blog I've just found and will link. It's a group blog that looks at politics from a Christian perspective. And I see that Chris Fryer , whose blog I also mentioned below, suffers from muscular distrophy . Jen is always asking me to tell her stories, an...

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Darp Hau's blog is another one I've just stumbled across as a result of his posting a comment about rugby. He's another depressed, besieged fellow Manly fan. And yet another blogger who's been banned by the lovely Andrea Harris, the obergrupenfuhrer at Tim Blair's blog. Darp h...

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Yesterday I put my parents on the GHAN which will take them back to dark and wet Adelaide. After a couple of months in the Top End they'll suffer the cold seeping into their 80 year old bones. I don't communicate well with my father but I make sure that we bump along so that w...

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I've been idly following the discussion in rugby league circles about the possibility of adding two new teams to the NRL, probably one on the Gold Coast and one on the NSW Central Coast. Rupert Online reported yesterday that the Gold Coast consortium was totally opposed to shi...

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Clive Hamilton is his own worst enemy. His current ham-fisted attempts to promote proposed ALP policies to impose filtering software on Internet Service Providers to protect children from Internet porn are a case in point. By making the utterly stupid statement that "[n]o man...

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Queuing at the CDU cafeteria bain marie. Takeaway lasagne and apple juice for lunch. " Hello, Mr Parish ," says the woman at the counter, plump, middle-aged with a pleasant face. I look puzzled. " I really know your face from somewhere ," she explains. " Were you an Anglicare...

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This article by Paul Kelly in today's Oz provides the best short summary I've seen so far of the whole "children overboard" saga and the dilemma Howard faced on election eve: Howard is right to argue that the "children overboard" story did not win him the election. It was a su...

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Well, it looks like those dodgy polls (Omnipoll and that other one) were correct. Newspoll also shows Labor in front and going away (54 to 46 per cent on a two-party preferred basis). No wonder Howard looked and sounded like a confused old man in his multiple press conferences...

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