Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"One immediate issue Democracy Watch is mobilising against is the federal government's attempts to raise the disclosure threshold from $1500 to $10,000. This effectively means an individual, corporation or union could donate $9,999 to every state, territory and federal branch of a major party without the source of any of these donations having to be disclosed. That would total $89,991. This proposal is appalling and it must be stopped." Democracy Watch President, Brad Pederson

"International counter-narcotics policy is currently driven by pressure for rapid and visible results. But eradication and alternative livelihood projects mainly affect the lowest end of the value-added chain, the farmers, with no real impact on those higher up, such as large landowners and local traffickers, not to mention the extremely powerful drug lords and the international cartels and mafias. Most landless farmers find it difficult to switch to different crops, being caught up as they are in the illegal opium-denominated market, which forces them to live at the mercy of the drug traffickers, who provide them with access to credit and market outlets." Emma Bonino

"The fall out from the riots on Sydney’s beaches continues amid accusations that the State government and police have ‘gone soft’ on Australians from Lebanese backgrounds." Dale Mills

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"I've just spent a few days down at Narrung, on the side of Lake Alexandrina near the Murray's Mouth. No telly, no net, no shops, no dogcatchers... just one of the world's most beautiful shorelines. One every few hours the soundscape is disturbed by a mechanical engine, but that's okay because it reminds you that the noise that you spend your city-life blotting out is not part of the nature you're now inhabiting." Richard Tonkin

"While a free society recognises limits to inequality, it also accepts that inequality exists, for it provides hope for many by showing what one might achieve with ability and luck – or perhaps even luck alone. Inequality adds color and variety to societies; it is one of the marks of lively, flexible, and innovative countries. It is thus not bad in itself, even if its excesses must be capped in the name of citizenship for all." Ralf Dahrendorf

"Today I have formally tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister from the position as Defence Minister and Leader of the Government in the Senate." Senator Robert Hill

"Australia withdrew from an international tribunal which would have allowed objective assessment of each country’s merits as to where the border should be placed. Critics say the currently agreed border is in violation of international law, but Timorese had little choice but to agree to Australia’s terms. As both parties represent the richest and poorest countries in the region, the bargain is weighted heavily in Australia’s favour." Dale Mills

"One year after the Indian Ocean tsunami, what are the lessons? The biggest one is that it was the type of disaster to which policymakers pay too little attention – one that has a very low or unknown probability of occurring, but that creates enormous losses if it does occur. Great as the death toll, physical and emotional suffering of survivors, and property damage caused by the tsunami were, even greater losses could be inflicted by other disasters of low (but not negligible), or unknown, probability." Richard Posner

"How easily the mighty can fall. One minute you are touted to head the International Atomic Energy Agency, the next you are about to become embroiled in an international bribery scandal!" Richard Tonkin

A former senior police officer who worked as a detective at the Australian Crime Commission is in court next month on 16 charges relating to the theft and supply of drugs. The Australian Crime Commission was set up in 2003 to deal with threats posed by nationally significant crime.

"In today’s world, only national governments are large enough to be able to do so with any assurance that the pension assets will actually be there when workers retire. I am enough of a social democrat to believe that if there is an economic service or benefit that citizens value extremely highly and that only the government can provide, then the government should provide it." J Bradford DeLong

"The latest conflict between protesters and Japanese whaling vessels occurred on January 15 when a grenade-tipped harpoon was fired near Greenpeace activists off Mawson Coast, part of the Australian Antarctic Territory." Dale Mills

"It may surprise the reader to know that a majority of Americans support a stronger United Nations, believe in international co-operation, favour spending money to help out poorer nations and even support the International Criminal Court (ICC). All this despite the current Bush administration’s pronounced displeasure with the UN." Chris Saliba

"With ‘Bomber’ Beazley finally seeming to be ready to declare Labour’s own ‘phoney war’ with the government over, the benign picture of the situation in Iraq painted by Hill is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, whilst the difficulty confronted by the ‘coalition of the willing’ in trying to work out how to extract itself from the disastrous mess is matched only by scale of the problems it has created." John Richardson

"This Sunday, I head for Indonesia with four others. We are part of a delegation from Australia participating in an exchange program arranged by those fabulous folk at the Australia-Indonesia Institute." Irfan Yusuf

How will President George W. Bush’s administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the United States that now compares to that of Richard Nixon’s administration more than thirty years ago. Aryeh Neier

The issues surrounding the possibility of a pandemic of the H5N1 strain of avian flu are extraordinarily complex, encompassing medicine, epidemiology, virology, and even politics and ethics. Moreover, there is tremendous uncertainty about exactly when H5N1, which now primarily affects birds, might mutate into a form that is transmissible between humans, and how infectious and lethal it might be. Henry Miller

Specialist in Pacific media and journalism and their contexts, Dr Mark Hayes, is a very close Region and Fiji watcher, as well as traveller Out There, attempts to make sense of what's going on in Fiji, one of the three Pacific Forum countries (the others are the Solomon Islands and Samoa) scheduled to hold elections during 2006. Dr Mark Hayes

"Any 'diarists fancy doing an analysis of which former Howard staffers are now working for Big Pharma? Or any former staffers of other pollies for that matter? How many former pollies and political staffers have gone on to drugs after politics?" Craig Rowley

"Acting Prime Minister Mark Vaile said this week the government would consider removing the “anti-evergreening” amendments to the legislation enabling the Free Trade Agreement with the US. These amendments were introduced to ease enormous public concern about the USFTA’s potential to undermine the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS)." Robyn Clothier