Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

This thread is a work in progress. From this evening on the moderators will add excerpts and links to the speculation, commentary etc. about the first Labor budget since 1995. In the meantime, if anyone wants to start talking about the budget, feel free.
Update #3: Peter Costello says that Wayne Swan is the "luckiest treasurer in the world."

The one constant about democracy is that the job description for the national government never changes. Government is meant to provide security and public infrastructure, to correct for market failure, and to avoid telling people how to live their lives. (George Megalogenis)

These are times that cry out for leadership. But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? (Lee Iacocca)

The ostensible argument for power privatisation is that NSW needs the money for schools, hospitals and other expenditure. The reality is that sale of capital is touted as the way to finance ongoing expenditure, analogous to the classic case of the farmer who sells off a bit of the farm each year to keep the family clothed and food on the table.

Colonel Davis' testimony could well herald an annulment of the powers of the military tribunal and negate the only conviction it has produced...

Being a carer may not be the most recognised job in the world, but it is by far the most rewarding. Now when people ask me what I do, I am proud to say that I am a carer, knowing that by doing this job I am giving Warren the greatest gift of all - a life worth living. (Tania Hayes)

The case against members of ABC TV's The Chaser's War on Everything has been dropped. Here's why.

If you throw enough money at something, it will make money. With publicists you can create a mystique into which nature will introduce scandal. You can fill people's heads with information that they'd prefer not to possess. We could be doing so much more to turn more kinds of music into self-propagating entities, but we don't.

This well researched book is meant to help labour activists rediscover history, not, Mason says, “to piously learn lessons” but to see where activism leads, what reactions various patterns of revolt bring. He notes that when work becomes humane, fair and representative, the red fire tends to be quashed. If only more would listen.

Norman Mailer once wrote: “My long experience with human nature … suggests that it is possible that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state.” Mailer was a novelist, and his business was being provocative. I found his article … to be food for considerable worthwhile thought. After the thinking, I decided he was wrong.

Back in 1980, Zimbabwe was the bread-basket of eastern Africa. Blacks and whites were living in (relative) harmony, the economy was in good shape. … Now, 28 years on, millions of people have fled to neighbouring countries, inflation runs rampant, and starvation is rife.

Hope was the last casualty and it was not till 1921 that the family felt they had to let go, and held a memorial service. The file of these letters, some photos of a handsome lad, and a small envelope labeled pressed flowers from the service are all that remain, along with his name amongst the missing on the Menin Gate in the Belgian village of Ypres.

If you want the job done, get Paul Kelly, Archie Roach, Bogle, Williamson, Schumann, Missy Higgins and Lior into a studio with a well stocked bar for the weekend, and they'll give you what a team of musicologists could never create in a million years.

It seems our ex Prime Miniature is now a cult hero amongst born again Aryans. Readers of Webdiary may be interested to see some of the interchange. ADDED: It should be noted that there is no evidence that ex-Prime Minister Howard actually said any of these things attributed to him, and some are clearly extracted from other sources.

The way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with a growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse. (International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development)

Robert Manne's collection Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia covers some interesting ground, if relatively superficially (or "readable", according to the blurb). But what I find more interesting is what it doesn't cover.

The latest update from the Democratic Audit program at Swinburne on how our democracy is working.

To make the best of the Australia 2020 Summit, its participants would do well to put into practice some of the Choir of Hard Knocks's street level messages. Not only within the arts, but also by application to life. A ‘vision’ needs to be a popular one; but we can do without the same old spectacle of experts and celebrities that displaces that which it claims to represent.

Nelson's crusty salts, fresh from their Waterloo, would be better off hoisting John on his own petard than giving him a cushioned chair in the crows' nest. Certainly they don't need a figurehead that, politically speaking, has just killed the electoral albatross?

The financial and economic crisis now upon us is by far the most menacing of the past century - even more so than the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is not just a "subprime" crisis; it is systemic - affecting the entire financial system. (James Cumes)

Kevin Rudd’s comments in London have stirred the pot again on this perennial issue, and Greg Barnes, organiser of the 1999 Republic Referendum Campaign, returns to the fray with his recent Melbourne Age opinion piece.

For a cops and robbers tabloid, the Herald Sun has been way off the pace in terms of the underworld connections to Opes Prime. The Age has been leading since day one and today’s front page story is perhaps the most significant contribution yet. (Stephen Mayne)

This is the Crossroads of Australia at the head of the Spencer Gulf, intersection of national highways and railways, of water and gas pipelines, fibre optic cables, botany from north, east and west, and 30 or so different Aboriginal cultures, the focus of the songlines. It might be one of the most redneck towns on the continent; but it’s also one of the prettiest, set in space and light where the Flinders Ranges touch  the sea. And there’s clearly a demand for traditional high culture.

One thing you can't accuse of our Dear Leader is that he is lacking guts. Not only delivering his speech to students at Peking University in Mandarin, he again repeated his concern about Tibet.

Grain prices have suddenly doubled worldwide and are expected to remain at these levels. For the billions of people who spend a large percentage of their income on food, mostly the urban poor in developing countries, this is and will be a disaster.

As computers become more powerful and more and more information is gathered about individuals it will be very easy to track people simply by their buying habits. We will not need to know their names, just a profile will be enough to identify them. Human being are extremely predictable.

Demonstrations are a legitimate form of public dissatisfaction by those who feel their impotence to influence government action or non action – in the present instance e.g. a boycott of the torch relay in view of the situation in Tibet.

Last year ... I said [the troop surge] is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success. I see no reason to change my judgment now. (William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.)