Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

This announcement by the Prime Minister, if correctly reported, is a recipe for disaster because of its open-endedness. The agreement of the Leader of the Opposition is equally rash. To guarantee deposits for the big four with substantial assets makes some limited sense but ...

The “greed-is-good” era brought the stock market crash of 1987, the savings and loans debacle in the United States and the global recession which gripped many countries in the early 1990s. It is perhaps time now to admit that we did not learn the full lessons of the greed-is-good ideology. And today we are still cleaning up the mess of the twenty-first century children of Gordon Gecko. (Kevin Rudd)

Henson has done nothing wrong under the law and for lawmakers to be carrying in this manner is actually an appalling dereliction of their role in our political system. Indeed arguably undermining of it. They need to be called on this, every one of them.

NSW's record seems to confirm that privatisation is, indeed, just old-fashioned plunder as practised by the Conquistadores, Vikings, Mongols, etc. Revenue generating assets paid for over previous decades by taxpayers have apparently been sold off for no better reason than to line the pockets of private investors, bankers and stockbrokers.

Indigenous affairs watchers should prepare themselves for some staggering incompetence. Even those already well-versed with government failure after government failure in Indigenous service delivery are going to be shocked. I can smell a Royal Commission on the horizon … and if Jenny Macklin has any sense, she’ll start drawing up its guidelines later this afternoon.

Are funerals for the living or the dead? I am still not sure but I tend to think they are for the living, except one’s own of course. That is most certainly for the dead.

"The dramatic drop in the stock market that we saw yesterday will have a direct impact on the retirement accounts, pension funds, and personal savings of millions of our citizens. And if our nation continues on this course, the economic damage will be painful and lasting. "  - U.S President George Bush

Not since World War II has any boat, no matter how small, arrived on our shores, with the intent to have its passengers clandestinely settle in our country and disappear into the community. It's time Minister Evans stops acting like John Howard, and it's time he stops uttering the nonsense lines of the widely reviled former Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock.

September stats

Smashed. Plastered. Blind. Hammered. Legless. It almost sounds like a car accident. Pissed. Blotto. Shit-faced. Just the response we hear so often when we ask how a mate was last Saturday night. Only for a country that seems to take such pleasure in getting drunk, we sure don’t make it sound like too much fun.

Animal cruelty cases are not new in Australia. Just under a month ago a koala was found bashed, dead and mutilated in Brisbane’s north-western suburbs. Although the people are searching for the ones who are responsible for these actions, the process is often slow.

If the code is serious about bringing a female audience to the game, it will need to ask itself whether it’s a few bad apples in the bunch, or if it’s the sport’s culture that needs to be turfed.

Survey results released today by The Heat Group, marketer to Australian women, show there’s been a huge groundswell of support for the demand issued by the ACTU for greater transparency by employers of gender pay data.

Family First Senator Stephen Fielding has become a surprise power player in the proposed increase to the luxury car tax (LCT), with the Rudd government expected to reintroduce the bill to the Senate this week with changes that both the Family First Senator and the Greens have lobbied for.

On 7th September the 16th Sydney Biennale came to an end. As I am originally from Italy, a country where art is a substantial part of everyday’s life, I was interested in seeing how this important event could affect the approach of Sydneysiders towards contemporary and visual art.

Sir Gerard pointed out, as did others, that it may be that when we say we are willing to compromise our freedoms, we may mean that we are "willing to compromise the human rights of others, believing that the laws and practices we have accepted will have no impact on ourselves".

I put my mug of tea down on the table and picked up my pen to return to the Sudoku. She entered the room. Although She had fallen on hard times largely as a result of the depredations of those in my profession, I could never look at her, ageing although she now was, without my heart heaving into my mouth.

Nothing happened. Did the pope have better security protection than George W. Bush? Or the Chaser was afraid of religion? Julian’s answer in the public lecture showed the other side of the program’s logic. It is an international event; it’s religion; the police got preparation this time; and it would have been more or less the same plot if we did it again.

Every time the USA elects a new President, it seems that the whole world is voting. Everyone has an opinion and the media is full of headlines on the topic. On November 4, however, the final decision will be made solely by US citizens. And in an election that looks to be a tight race up until the very end, every vote counts. Including my own.

On 3rd August, American giant Starbucks closed 61 of its 85 shops in Australia. After over a month and hundreds of jobs lost, I and many other coffee lovers still think about what went wrong and why did Starbucks fail to break the Australian market.

One of my friends is walking the Kokoda trail this year to raise money for breast cancer research. I’ve seen her fundraising efforts, and that of the other women walking, and I have been really blown away. Viona Young had an idea for raising money for breast cancer research, and in her first year of trying raised so much money that only corporate sponsors raised more than she did. This is one of the few things in recent memory that I have been really impressed by. Good luck to all the women walking.

We watch the Games day and night, share athletes’ pain and pride. We want to know how good our county’s sport is. We hold high expectation for our Olympians. We do care about how much gold medals our athletes can win. But the Olympic Games are a global party. They are truly about participation and enjoying sports.

Acts of incest that produce offspring have sparked inquiry into the personality of accused perpetrators and the psychological and physical effects on victims and their offspring. In considering the extreme and extended nature of these cases I believe it is fair to speculate on the mother’s role in the incest family dynamic.

Some of the Socceroos supporters think Australia will have a comfortable journey to the World Cup finals. However in my opinion there still have some tough games on the way. When the qualifying games get underway again, any small mistakes would put the Socceroos’ ticket to the World Cup finals at risk.

Melbourne is on track to take over from Sydney as Australia’s city of the future. While Melbourne is planning to cut the number of cars, introduce a city bicycle rental system, built more affordable housing and increase public transport, the NSW government is abandoning Sydney’s infrastructure improvement. Economic growth in Melbourne has been double that of Sydney in the past 12 months...

Even though 747’s have been around since the late 60’s they have kept the record for the safest aircraft in history so far. They have flown more than half the world’s population in the last 40 years with 3.5 billion people at the end of 2005. The bottom line is the 747, despite its great safety record, is an aging aircraft.

After the result of a Housing Industry Association survey being announced two months ago, Bernard Salt, a demographer in Sydney, says there are some other reasons besides expensive house rental keep the trend that Generation Y live with their family going up.

Since I began watching this issue a few months ago, coverage has certainly increased, but public interest largely has not. Even if the effect on agricultural supply and pricing is ignored, if nothing more this is a case study of the needs for appropriate oversight of the planning and development process, and the rights of landowners and the state when it comes to resources.

Every Saturday the same: stressed people run through Sydney, armed with the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Domain section. It is hunting season - house hunting season! A month ago I was one of them.

The bill was introduced by Senator Coonan for whom I have great respect as a lawyer. She is senior counsel, an experienced commercial lawyer and no dill. One might have expected that she would produce legislation that had legs (she has too). She did.