Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

|| Rebecca Solnit on disasters, human behaviour and economics || David Burchell on The Latham Diaries || David Brooks on conservative divisions over Bush and Miers || Alexander Downer on the fight against WMDs || Amin Saikal says Iraq threatens Middle East sectarian balance || Robert Winston on the reasons human believe in God || John Castel on why Greenpeace is a mess || Peter Schjeldahl on the art and power of graphic novels || John Nichols on hating Bush after death || In the papers: National, Opinion, Business round-up ||

"As a new world country Australia, like the US, is a melting pot. But for all our travel and our formal recognition of multiculturalism, how well do we know and understand the rest of the world? Many of us can find our way into Times Square and out of Piccadilly Circus, but after repeated assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan since September 11, I have a sense that, culturally, more gulfs separate us than there are bridges that link us meaningfully with cultures that we now need to understand so much more intimately than ever before." Paul McGeough

"ICAN is all about returning Australian parliaments to the people and putting representation back into politics in this country. The best way to do this is to encourage people to stand as true independents who will represent their electorates free of the vested interest of a party. Parties are about getting and keeping power for themselves. Representation and the voters come second." Peter Andren

"Bill Farmer has been nominated by Howard as Australia's next Ambassador to Indonesia, which is one of Australia's most important diplomatic posts. To be Ambassador requires judgment and management skills of a high order. Terrorism has created a new volatility in the relationship. A high order of diplomatic advice and judgment to the Australian government is required at all times." Bruce Haigh

"The Law Council says that there is an escalating groundswell of opinion in the international legal profession against draconian anti-terror laws - there is a rapidly growing international view that more faith needs to be shown in our traditional legal protections." Media release.

Webdiary General Manager David Roffey sets out some answers on where we are and where we're going.

"In May of this year I announced in Parliament the framework of the Government’s proposals to reform Australia’s workplace relations system. Today the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and I are delighted to release ‘WorkChoices – A New Workplace Relations System’ which explains, in detail, how the new workplace relations system will work." Prime Minister, John Howard

"After three lovely months of traveling through Australia and meeting people, one Wednesday afternoon during the second week of September I was called by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, or ASIO, and asked to come in for an interview. I asked if I was required to do so and the woman at the other end of the phone said "No, you are not obliged too." I then asked if this would affect the remaining two weeks of my time in Australia and she said she couldn't say. I should have listened with closer attention to that non-answer." Scott Parkin

"As McKnight points out, there is now no socialist movement to offer an alternative pole of attraction. The 150 year old socialist tradition has largely gone, unremarked and unmourned. The New Left, which rose in the 1960s and matured in the 1970s, has also joined socialism, at least as the world knew it, in the dustbin of history. “It’s now clear,” he says, ” that the socialist component of the New Left was the last gasp of an older Left, not the promise of a renewed one.” In its place, he sees the modern ‘broad’ Left (which to him includes members and supporters of the ALP, Democrats and Greens across to some current supporters of the Liberal and National parties.) But as far as he is concerned, all those people are standing on an eroding philosophical sandbank." Ian MacDougall

"I think the Bill is a disgrace, but it is also an opportunity to show to the better informed how the fight to the death between politicians in the Howard administration and the "refugee lobby" is a callous one, and that for the politicians, backed up by the best of their legal advisors and legislation drafters, this fight is one they're fully prepared to fight - and it seems there's no limit to the budget. No doubt they, the politicians, are set for another win in the context of a Senate majority, but it will not necessarily be a win for public opinion of those politicians." Jack H Smit

"I come to this forum as a consumer of media and as someone who’s been fortunate enough to sit a little on the inside and observe aspects of how it appears to work. At my first real job at the Small Arms Factory in Lithgow I bought the Daily Mirror every afternoon on my way home. I used to savour the football and cricket think pieces from the likes of Phil Tressider and Ian Heads and Geoff Prenter and they brought me up to speed with the notion of cliché. At the time I had no idea that this would be my career-making preparation ... " John Doyle

"Brendan Nelson? To be fair, he did not begin the game of Squeeze and Hassle the universities. John Dawkins, Minister for Ed in the Keating government, did a fine old job of pushing universities into mergers and into marketing. He had vice-chancellors, deans and professors writhing in knots. Did they deserve Dawkins? Were they so stodgy and protective of privilege that they had to be tortured and forced to mend their ways? Probably -- a little." Harry Robinson

"The list of examples of questionable ADF conduct over the past four years is very telling. Let me just flesh out the list a little to remind readers of what the substance is. All of these instances are serious cases where the ADF command structure or senior ADF figures in positions of authority and presumed accountability, set aside their own service rules and codes of conduct, and their service loyalties, in their anxiety to give the PM what he wanted of them, or what they may have guessed he wanted of them. And of course, this is how authoritarian unaccountable power structures operate - the subordinates interpret what the leader wants done and they do it, without asking him to specify exactly what he wants done - because they know he does not want to know the detail of what was done or how it was done." Tony Kevin

"The Senate inquiry into the administration of the Regional Partnerships Program (RPP) and Sustainable Regions Program (SRP) has concluded and now it is time for the spin." Craig Rowley

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, Prof. John McMillan, today released the report, prepared by Mr Neil Comrie AO APM, into the circumstances of the Vivian Alvarez matter.

Message from Webdiary General Manager David Roffey: For a trial period starting today, we will be publishing Wayne Sanderson's The Daily Briefing. As Wayne's own description of the service states: "The Daily Briefing provides a morning round-up of the local newspapers plus selected quality articles from international publications ...  the best writing, analysis, social commentary, critical thinking and humour from around the world, drawing on newspapers, magazines, think tanks and web sites everywhere. ... It is your guide through information overload. Today, an excerpt..."

"If you think the whole ‘rotten, infested’ lump of politics can’t be changed, read a little history. I suggest you catch up on the victory of the suffragettes, the abolition of slavery, or the crumbling of the Berlin Wall. None of those breakthroughs came from giving up or copping out of politics. All of them involved committed people, just like us, getting involved in and transforming the hopelessly unfair, rotten, stinking politics of their day." Bob Brown

Historically, journalists have been charged with informing the democracy. But their future will depend not on only how well they inform but how well they encourage and enable conversations with citizens. That is the challenge. Websites like Webdiary understand the importance of Dan Gillmor’s basic premise: "My readers know more than I do - and that's an opportunity." The ability of anyone to make the news has given new voice to people who used to feel voiceless—and whose words we need to hear. According to Dan, webdiarists and citizen journalists are "showing all of us—citizen, journalist, newsmaker—new ways of talking, of learning. In the end, they may help spark a renaissance of the notion, now threatened, of a truly informed citizenry." Jozef Imrich

"It is a common query: they're collecting all that money, stamp duty, land tax, payroll tax, fines, duties, registration fees, licence fees, etc; where is it all going? I suspect the answer is that an enormous amount is going in patching up infrastructure that is past its use-by date and should simply be abandoned. Far too much of it is going on the Newcastle-Sydney-Wollongong corridor and not enough on regional and rural NSW. My proposal is that we stop band-aiding and start rebuilding from the edges in." Malcolm B Duncan

"In July we went to Bali for a wedding. The bride and groom were Sydney-based Kiwis who love Bali and wanted to support the island and its wonderful people. We loved it too, and made a small investment in a resort so we could go back again and again. We still intend to do that, despite the events of Saturday night. Once again the primary victims of the blasts were local people. If we abandon the predominantly Hindu people of Bali because of the acts of fanatics we will only hurt them more." David Roffey

"If it is possible to induce an additional 80,000 people to enter the work-force through modifications of the personal income tax situation, then perhaps the haphazard and individually punitive approach of changing pensioners over to Newstart Allowance, while at the same time introducing all sorts of one-off exemptions, was a really silly way to go about the Prime Minister's ambitious adventure." Marie Coleman

"Two RAAF helicopters, one about 300 metres behind the other, were flying circuits around central Canberra... They each appeared to be mounted with two large lethal-looking missile launchers, slung beneath the cabin. As the helicopters flew maybe 100 metres above my head, I saw these four launchers clearly. I wondered if the loaded missiles were armed, and I wondered what would happen if one of these helicopters were accidentally to crash over populated central Canberra." Tony Kevin

"The Old Right in Australia was often seen as a single force, labeled "conservatism" but it was actually an amalgam of different political ideas and trends, some of which now oppose the current neo-liberal and neo-conservative hegemony. The great icon of Australian Right, Sir Robert Menzies, for example, supported social justice and the welfare state. The Liberal MP who now holds Menzies' old parliamentary seat, Petro Georgiou, points out that "pro-market purists" in the modern Liberal Party damn any notion of social justice as a 'Labor plot' when it was in fact a foundation stone for the Liberal Party." David McKnight

"Labor MP Julia Irwin has now earned herself the title of a serial offender, being lambasted by some of the leading lights of the Jewish community for her recent comments in the adjournment debate. True to form, her own party Leader, Kim Beazley, joined her critics. If the question is: can I find anything which is not right with her comments - then skip the next two paragraphs and read on. However that might not be the only relevant question." Sol Salbe

"The news of Murdoch's grand plans to dominate the Internet and China's cyberspace crackdown has got me thinking about the future of the Internet and e-democracy once again. I think about the millions of ordinary people using the World Wide Web to connect with each other and see this as an essential tool for power dispersal.  The age of the Internet has brought with it exciting, fresh ideas about the disintermediation of power and peer accountability. But who is responsible for the standards and functions of the network itself? I came across this recent article by Bill Thompson on openDemocracy.net in which he charts the history of Internet governance, reflects on what has been lost as accountability passes from the hands of the geeks to those of the politicians and lawyers, and offers his proposal for redressing the democratic deficit." Craig Rowley