Club Troppo

Over the next couple of days I'll be peripherally involved with the Charles Darwin Symposium titled " The Eye of the Storm: Northern Australia's Location in an Arc of Instability " being conducted at my place of employment. I'm co-ordinating the digital recording of the procee...

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Molly, our elderly neighbour has just popped over. She lives a few houses down the river and is one of the few residents left who can remember the days when Undercliffe was a bold Chifleyite housing solution to the overcrowded slum terraces of Surry Hills and Erskineville. To...

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Dennis Shanahan ran a piece, in Saturday's tree edition of the Australian - no online link - covering a speech that Wayne Swan gave to the Blaxland FEC on Friday night. Much of it was predictable stuff: "if we get it wrong at the next election we're out for a dozen years; Howa...

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Earlier in the week, Thabo Mbeki - in New York attending the UN General Assembly meeting - granted an interview to the Washington Post , wherein, he observed: "Personally, I don't know anybody who has died of AIDS." Asked whether he knows anyone with HIV, he added quietly, "I...

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Keeping a blog gives you a glimmer of insight into what it must be like to produce a daily current affairs program on radio or TV. Finding enough fresh and interesting material to put to air can be problematic on slow news days. Of course, blogs aren't really like that, in tha...

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Federal Liberal MP, Teresa Gambaro, burst from deep backbench cover this morning with the funniest tax proposal since Pauline Hanson's little - "take 2 away from 2 and add 2 " - side-splitter convulsed the nation back in 2001. Ms Gambaro - also from Queensland, oddly enough -...

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I've been catching up on surfing my favourite blogs (it seems many blogspots were down yesterday) and I came across a 'pome' on Gummo's blog. Even though I'm a "wise old wood god" who has seen the offspring of "first primeval calf", to tell you the truth I don't understand why...

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Big Armadillo and expert in legal hairdressing jurisprudence, Ken Parish, has announced his 50th birthday. Ken confided "long lunch plans" as celebration. I would not anticipate a learned exposition on Callinan J's judgment re Hanson, anytime soon.

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Perth uberblogger, Gareth Parker, turns 21 today. Run on over and cheer him up with predictions as to how long it'll be before he goes bald, and stuff.

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Those who lament the UN as a bastion of lefty luvvies should take heart from today's release of the latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Fresh from the trenches you might say.... The first ever UN global survey on amphetamines and ecstasy, claims that in the pa...

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There's something profoundly Australian about an heroic, one-eyed Kangaroo named Lulu rescuing her owner. She may well be suffering under the misapprehension that she's actually a Blue Heeler - she may even bark like a dog - but never mind. We know, deep down, that she represe...

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Mark Latham has achieved his aim of deflecting attention from Simple Simon's poor poll results by hyping his 'saving plan for low income families'. Mr Latham said breaking the poverty cycle was crucial in overcoming many social ills, such as welfare dependency and crime. "If y...

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Allison Henry, the national director of the Australian Republic Movement had one of those characteristically, ill-humoured pieces in the Oz this morning that always manages to reduce the Republican cause to a joyless, lemon-lipped bitchslap. Harry "Blue" Windsor is plainly ent...

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Earlier this afternoon we drove down towards Palmerston (Darwin's satellite city, more commonly known locally as Palmerslum) to inspect progress on the Darwin-Alice Springs Railway. Track-laying reached Palmerston on Friday and was supposed to be due to end 10 km further north...

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I had a relatively late start to REAL work. I was having such a good time at Uni (supported by my wife; I only agreed to marry her providing she graduated successfully and was able to keep me etc. etc...) Then after one year masquerading as a teacher, bumming around Europe for...

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Margo Kingston has a fascinating follow-up piece on the AEC and its current Commissioner Andy Becker. This story may turn out to be more significant than I first imagined. Update - EvilPundit highlights a Labor-related body called the "Fair Go Alliance" that also seems to fit...

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Slim Dusty passed away this morning. There'll be the odd pub with no beer in Tamworth tonight..... (and a patently insincere and tasteless tribute from Ken Parish).

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This article from News Online may say more about Australia's World Cup prospects than all the pundit analysis to date: Rugby league recruit Lote Tuquiri jumped up on to the canopy. Matt Dunning and Matt Burke were "up close" at the front of the boat when the crocodile lunged....

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Margo Kingston's Web Diary hosts an excellent post this morning by UNSW Latrobe law lecturer Joo-Cheong Tham discussing the issues surrounding whether the Australian Electoral Commission should require Tony Abbott's delightfully deceptively-named Australians for Honest Politic...

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There's plenty of room for cynicism about the Howard government's motives in Tony Abbott's introduction into Parliament today of tough new legislation regulating the troubled building industry, just as there was in relation to the Cole Royal Commission that gave rise to the pr...

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