Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

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!