Club Troppo

Why does the ABC insist on showing a never-ending stream of Pommie "celebrity" chef shows, when English cuisine (as it's laughingly called) is among the world's worst? Is this the last bastion of the great Australian cultural cringe? Is there really a huge audience for the see...

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John Quiggin has an excellent post on Ross Gittins' latest column about a new ABS study on Australian working hours. Gittins effectively suggests that the union-inspired concern about Australians working longer and longer hours has been exaggerated. JQ, on the other hand, sugg...

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Gareth Parker is back on deck and blogging full steam ahead. That's a relief, I feared for a minute that we might have lost one of the ozplogosphere's leading young talents. Anyway, Gareth's too young to have a midlife crisis. Despite his blogging sabbatical, however, Gareth's...

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Many apologies to readers that this blog has been effectively out of operation for several hours. We haven't been able to post articles; in fact I lost a very long one I'd been working on for over an hour, which made me very happy indeed. Readers also haven't been able to post...

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Further to my previous post Leadership Renewal , I felt I should make a centrist endeavour to maintain blogging balance in sexuality as well as political terms. Accordingly, here's a thumbnail of Geoff Honnor's nominee for Liberal Party deputy leader - gay icon, NIDA drama stu...

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The BlogGeist seems to be in fine form at the moment. Like yours truly, Uberleftie blogger Rob Schaap has posted an item which shamelessly exploits sex. In contrast to mine, however, Rob's piece has a certain passing intellectual elegance. PS - Rob also pays out on Frog post-m...

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I see that the esteemed Bernard Slattery has joined the ranks of bloggers granted protection visas by Troppo Armadillo's warm-hearted host Scott Wickstein . And in contrast to Phillip Ruddock , cash donations are not required. I'm also given to understand that another prodigio...

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One of Australia's leading newspapers was today condemned by an eccentric Scottish tourist and media campaigner for "blatantly sensationalist tabloid journalism". "The Sydney Morning Herald featured a 'crocodile shock' story on the front page of its Internet edition earlier ye...

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While I'm on a political leadership and election strategies theme, I observed in a comment to a post yesterday that a recent speech by Labor's prize nincompoop Mark Latham revealed the ALP's intended "wedge" propaganda lines for the next election. Thinking more about it, altho...

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The most evocative scene in tonight's ABC TV Australian Story program about Simon the Unlikeable was the very last one in Crean's office earlier today, right after the leadership vote he survived seemingly in comfort. Only Simon's loyal if none too bright wife Carole was happy...

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Remarkable! A moderate, sensible, even balanced column about Muslims from Miranda Devine. No it's not an oxymoron, and I haven't been ingesting hallucinogenic substances. Read it for yourself .

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Blogging and coughing and postponing starting the day's renovations. I see from a comment by Tex that he's from Darwin. He probably won't thank me for this, but the penny's finally dropped. Tex is the brother of Mark Textor, senior federal Liberal Party pollster and John Howar...

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Contrary to Geoff Honnor's opinion, I have little respect for Dodson and I think that many of the endemic problems that beset ATSIC, are at least partly the fault of Dodson in his previous incarnation. His recent address is the same old same old; long on rhetoric, short on sol...

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Raging flu ... bad back ... aching all over ... God I feel crook ... renovation frenzy ... must finish this weekend ... God I feel crook ... no energy for blogging ... co-bloggers hold the fort ... over and out!

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It seems the Teachers Union Health Fund has got itself in a spot of bother with government regulators over some of the financial deals the TUH board has done using members funds. In an article by Colleen Ryan as a sidebar to a feature on health funds in the AFR 13/6/03 (availa...

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When David Morgan suggests (AFR 12/6/03) "...accelerating the phased increase in the preservation age for superannuation from 55 to 60....." those of you currently aged less than 50 who are anticipating (semi)retirement at 55, should be re-assessing your plans. It's most unlik...

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When you live in Darwin, the horrendous levels of violence in our indigenous community are impossible to ignore. Even more so when my wife Jenny has taught in a predominantly Aboriginal school for the last decade, and when I've spent almost 20 years doing legal work for a vari...

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A friend of mine has suggested that the ALP leadership contest is like the intrigues at your typical Italian renaissance court. The only response to that is something like, "I knew Cesare Borgia, and mate let me tell you, neither of these dudes is Cesare Borgia." But my relati...

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Perry De Havilland (via Stephen Dawson on Libertarians ) has a strange little post on Samizdata , asserting that blogging should be seen as a marketplace rather than a democratic conversation space. The reasoning seems to flow from the extreme libertarian/neo-liberal viewpoint...

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John Quiggin has an excellent post this morning on John Howard's economic policies. It provides a perfect bookend to Christopher Sheil's piece on economic rationalism (see below). I especially like Jason Soon's comment: "My reading of Howard's commitment to free market reform...

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