Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

I watched Insiders this morning with a friend who works in Parliament House and admired Andren immensely. Upon hearing the tributes from Howaerd and Rudd, and the solemn wish of Canberra' chief personal muckraker journo Glen Milne that we need more decent blokes like Andren in Parliament, she burst into tears. 

How could a Labor man make a flippant remark to a right-wing Sydney shock jock? Those types only get their own jokes, which they only make at other people's expense. And those types are hungry for publicity. They're not really human, Peter.What you've done is a real worry. Rudd's talking to swingers who need to feel safe about Labor. You've just handed the Government a gimme.

Webdiarist Susie Russell emailed me amazing news today which I thought you might like to hear. Yes folks, Vaile has agreed, under questioning from a talk back listener and citizen extraordinaire, to take a lie detector test on AWB!

MARGO UPDATE: What does it take for Labor to have the guts to try to clean up our mess of a justice system under John Howard? Before Parliament ended, the Democrats moved a motion in the Senate calling for an independent inquiry into the Haneef debacle. Labor voted against it, despite Rudd's call for an inquiry.But today it's all different, thanks to The Australian's Hedley Thomas.

Most people prepare themselves for disappointment but Margo Kingston put an excessive and dangerous emotional investment in to a Howard defeat (not a Latham victory) in 2004. She put a misplaced faith in to the spontaneous Iraq war protests and in to her online activism. She set herself up for failure. Then she burnt out.

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

Happy Birthday to Richard Tonkin

Not long after being elected into office in 2004 on a platform of alleviating the city’s traffic congestion, Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman announced that Brisbane City Council would proceed with Queensland’s largest public-private partnership to construct the North South Bypass Tunnel (NSBT), part of his TransApex project. Unfortunately Newman made one flawed assumption that plagued the project’s planning from the beginning and will soon likely see its demise – cheap oil.

Hi there. I wrote my first letter to the editor this week, published yesterday in the Canberra Times, about the Australian Christian Lobby's attack on the Greens. I did my first door knocking ever last Saturday - oh the pleasure in overcoming that fear - and yesterday I helped advise Kerrie Tucker when she filmed an election ad. The lesson there was not to be so bloody anxious and intense that it rubs off on the candidate! 

October site statistics and financials.

Isn't it weird. Amrozi is about to be shot dead as the Indonesian courts decide they can't even look at the nation's Constitutional protection of human rights re the Bali Nine plea not to be shot dead - because they're foreigners. I, for one, will never forgive this government for handing over our bloody stupid, off the rails young people for arrest, knowing Indonesia had the death penalty for such offences. Yet there is silence from Labor. Where is Labor's promise to never ever let this happen again?

The Spooky Men's Chorale supported the Not Happy John launches in 2004 and 2007, and for the 2004 campaign wrote their extended treatise on the politics of Australia and how to fix its problems, Vote the Bastards Out. Their performance at Gleebooks was one of the few good moments in the election campaign so far. Now they're launching their new release, Stop Scratching It - a treatise on how to run the War on Terror ...

We are now entering a long political drought. For in this election climate, we are complicit in a new and frightening dismissal in Australian politics. It is the dismissal of Human Rights.

Greens response to CES survey

"This is about breaking the code of silence that has developed after 11 years of the Howard Government. Access to government information and decision-making are keys to a healthy and vibrant democracy. It also means that members of the community can obtain reasonable access to government records and documents that affect their lives." From Labor's honest politics policy

Malcolm is Webdiary's candidate in Wentworth. He writes: "Well, the Federal Election is shaping up to be as boring as batshit so webdiarist Malcolm B. Duncan decided to enlist some help to fulfill a promise he made me a while ago.   The family pet writes...

In a recent article in the Jerusalem Post David Kimche highlighted the rise of support for one-state among some Palestinians in the context of a possible failure of the Annapolis conference. He envisaged the following scenario.

Recently, Andrew Hewett, Executive Director of Oxfam Australia was asked to address a joint meeting of the Uniting Church and Rotary on the business ethics of climate change in, of all places, the La Trobe Valley. This is what he said.

As this century unfolds I find that I am living in a changed Australia. While it is still a country of great potential we have gone backwards in a number of ways over the last decade. Our future is not simply a matter of sustaining economic prosperity ...  Australians need to address a range of other issues. The decision to join the invasion of Iraq ... was in my judgement, the worst foreign policy decision made by any Australian government since the end of World War II. (Richard Woolcott)

Kerryn Higgs: "As the campaign rolls on, we will hear the government’s specious arguments over and over again. Guy Pearse’s book provides a very useful antidote to the overblown claims of “world leadership” which will surely lace the rhetoric." Sally Woodward: "This book should be on the ‘must read’ list for all Australians, but none more so than those who believe or hope the Howard Government will come around on climate change if re-elected."

"During the election campaign, we are asking people to enter the Australia Fair site and email their local candidates (this will be automated) calling for action to improve fairness in Australia. We are also asking candidates to prepare statements for posting on the website." Peter Davidson, ACoSS

I felt a very complicated ethical dilemma when photographing a young deaf Hijabi ... .  I felt that in a way there was something a little exploitative about it, to use a person's religious obligations to make a particular visual statement. Muslims don't wear Islamic dress to represent "multiculturalism" or any other agenda, rather, they do it because it is an expectation of their religion.