Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"‘The DVD that disgusted a city’ was one of the news headlines in the shocking case of a DVD produced and sold in Melbourne’s outer west by the self-styled "teenage kings of Werribee". What at first looked like a Jackass-style prank posted on YouTube, police are now investigating as sexual assault involving up to 12 youths. Sadly, amid the media storm, the trauma goes beyond that of the victim. Students from one of the district schools named by the media have had passers-by spit at them in the street. This degree of public hate contains an irony we shall examine. ": Stephen Smith

"As Halliburton-KBR is accused of massive construction overcharges in Iraq I wonder how much the Adelaide office has been involved. For around five years Adelaide was the Halliburton/KBR's Global Headquarters for Infrastructure. As this was in the period before and after the Coalition's occupation of Iraq, you'd have to assume that a lot of the contentious paperwork would have passed through this building on its way from Iraq to Houston.": Richard Tonkin

Webdiary is an open community site. With very limited exceptions set out in the Editorial Policy page, we publish every comment we receive that is coherent/comprehensible and not abusive to others. If you think the balance of the comments submitted has veered away from your position to the left, right, up or down, thensubmit some comments on the other side: what we won't do is start censoring comments simply to 'balance the debate'. We leave that up to you.

Similarly, unlike sites who moderate comments after first publication, we don't remove comments after they are published, unless a strong case is made out that they are abusive or against editorial policy and should not have been published. In the first ten months of 2006, we removed only two comments on those grounds. [Whereas the Guardian estimates that it removes up to 25% of all comments submitted to its Comment Is Free site after they are reported as offensive or unsuitable.] So, if you think a claim or reference in another comment is factually inaccurate, write in to say so (preferably with backing references to your view). We don't have time to fact-check everything, and anyway in many cases there are strong views and references on both sides of a dispute or debate.

"Our reputation as a successful multicultural society is now threatened. ... The new security laws diminish the rights of all Australians. I do not know of any other democracy that has legislated for the secret detention of people the authorities know to be innocent.": Malcolm Fraser
Text updated to transcript of speech as delivered

"Science is a noble pursuit, but genuine progress in scientific research is not easy to achieve. It requires a lot of time, continuous effort, uncompromising integrity, appropriate funding and material support, and unwavering commitment. Proposed scientific advances require careful validation and replication by independent scientists. Scientific knowledge is never final, but it evolves continuously. This is part of the great fascination of science, and it fosters liberty of thought.": John P.A. Ioannidis