Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

To achieve change we need to break down existing mental models. We do this by continually challenging existing models, at every opportunity and avenue. The financial crisis provides an opportunity, as people are more amenable to change in an environment of uncertainty. Let’s use it wisely.

People from the Eastern Suburbs will tell you that the North Shore is nothing compared to their suburbs and people from the North will of course tell you their part of the city is the best. Ironically, people from other suburbs will say none of the two is that good because of the people living there.

If Australia is to stay a living nation we need to provide ourselves with continuing moments of definition, great moments in our history that reflect both our changing nature and yet reinforce the principles by which we govern ourselves. For our generation of Australians such a moment of definition will be the establishment of our republic.

The presence of various ethnic communities and different cultures is one of the trademarks of the modern metropolis and Sydney, with its ethnic and linguistic diversity, prides itself on being the most multicultural city in Australia.

Out of the war came a lesson which transcended the horror and tragedy and the inexcusable folly. It was a lesson about ordinary people – and the lesson was that they were not ordinary. On all sides they were the heroes of that war; not the generals and the politicians but the soldiers and sailors and nurses – those who taught us to endure hardship, to show courage, to be bold as well as resilient, to believe in ourselves, to stick together. (Paul Keating)

You might remember about a month ago, a 7-year-old boy fed 13 animals to a crocodile at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre. During his 30-minute killing spree, the boy beat animals to death with a rock, then threw them to the croc to finish off.

While Australia generally does well in international rankings, those rankings can blind us to a larger truth: Australia will not succeed in the future if it aims to be just a bit better than average. I believe that we need to revive the sense of Australia as a frontier country, and to cultivate Australia as a great centre of excellence. ... Today the frontier that needs sorting is the wider world, and complacency is our chief enemy. (Rupert Murdoch)

Games have been around for ages. They appear in different forms such as riddles to charades, tick-tack-toe to hang-man, snakes and ladders to chess ... But all that has been digitized now and converted into online computer games that allow you not only to be able to play with friends and family on game night, but to connect online and compete with the players worldwide.

They seem to be the ultimate nuisance of modern society with their cool, self-focussed and pleasure-oriented lifestyle. They are criticised for being financially immature and unwilling to take on responsibility ... there is a common perception that Generation Y tends towards serial job-hopping and lacks practical workplace skills and realistic expectations about salary, promotions and job requirements.

I suggest he could do the country a greater service by taking the long view of history, from now just on a hundred years ago... Whether Kevin Rudd decides to give young Australians the appropriate lead or otherwise, they will work it out. But what they will most appreciate is some direction for their thinking based on substance and truth and mature reflection which, in this case, a century of hindsight provides. (Paul Keating)

My sister's kids have been planning a 'reverse Halloween' with their primary school class mates. This involved a little stint with the local Oxfam activist (nice hippy gal), the kids giving out Fair Trade chocolates in the main shopping centre...

Forget the dead tiny mouse with a pair of diamond eyes and the brooch with a real bird wing, this time is ossuarium, a container for holding the bones of the dead. Macabre is the forever theme in Julia DeVille’s works. Whenever you feel gruesome or attractive, Julia DeVille is always there.

Would this bloody breakfast never end? Then again, what ends are there? Howard’s End [available in all good bookshops, published by Penguin]? Will there be a Malcolm’s End and when might it be and for which one of us?

Julia Bishop, we x chromosomes seem to agree, is like the Head Girl who is selected by the Headmistress, not by the student body. Julia Gillard's breasts are too small, hips too large, seems a popular verdict. Sarah Palin has the ready popular appeal that Pauline Hanson had for a moment or two. Is she the future?

The decision to axe one of this network's most distinctive and important programs has been approved by the director of ABC Radio, Sue Howard, and it will condemn Radio National to even greater irrelevance. (Stephen Crittenden)

After Treasurer Foley's announcement yesterday, planted on ABC Local radio in the morning and moved through the media over the day, our Premier and our Infrastructure Minister trotted themselves out on the telly overnight to suggest the possibly that abandoned projects might be saved by Federal funds.

In Australia, there are three key arenas in which the limits of racial, cultural, ethnic and religious diversity are tested. The first is in the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The second is at our borders as defined by our immigration policies. The third is in the policies directed at managing cultural and ethnic diversity in Australia. (Petro Georgiou MP)

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.

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.

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.

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.