Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

Just how do we assess the effectiveness of this tax? A recent AC Nielsen report showed a 28 per cent drop in Ready To Drink (RTD) sales from April 2008 to January 2009, yet there was also a 14 per cent increase in the sale of spirits. Are young people just saving their pennies by upping their spirits intake? And are sales figures really the best way to judge?

We’ve all been there. You’re having a blue with your partner; your opportunity to retort opens so you throw in a ‘home truth’ and… your partner walks out. Us – 1; Them – 0. Cue: Your Smug Smirk.

Although Australia’s borders need to be secure and protected, efforts to deal with people smugglers who prey on refugees trying to make it to Australia must be intensified. Genuine asylum seekers should be wholeheartedly welcomed to Australia regardless of how they arrive, in accordance with this country’s United Nations obligations.

The Rudd government plans to create a NBN that will connect 90% of Australian homes, school and workplaces with speed that is up to 100 megabytes per second, investing a budget of $43 billion over a period of 8 years. It plans to use FTTP technology to create this NBN service and promises that the NBN to be a historical nation-building investment that will help to transform Australian economy and create jobs and business of the 21st century.

Australia needs to stop fear mongering and reach a cohesive, long lasting solution to a permanent problem. Boat people are not the poster children for what is wrong with immigration policy. They are just the tip of the iceberg.

The term 'illegal asylum seekers' is an oxymoron. According to the Migration Act, there is only a distinction between 'lawful non-citizens'(with visa) and 'unlawful non-citizens'(without visa). Unlawful doesn't mean illegal, as it is not a crime to arrive in Australia without a visa, whether by boat, air, parachute, spaceship, or catapult.

Earlier this year, as you might recall, the Federal government cut its skilled migration program by 14% in response to worsening economic conditions. Many people worried about Australia’s unemployment supported the decision - but they may not realise the number of working holiday visas is rising rapidly instead.

To the recently unemployed, the current economic crisis may seem like a flashback to the soup lines of The Great Depression. However, to many still working in high-paying sectors such as finance, law and technology, the credit crunch is merely a recurring news headline that could lower the cost of their next holiday.

The collapse of ABC has seen government funds being spent on bailing out ABC, rather than being spent on establishing new centres, or improving the quality of existing ones. One man’s greed has impacted on hundreds of thousands of families across the country.

This is Halbbildung: it is not half-education but the denial of education. Each step in the dismantling of the system through which I was educated, each step in the process from education to Halbbildung, has been marked by the rhetoric of standards and testing. With the implementation of each review standards plunged further into the depths of Halbbildung. Good luck! Get all the private education for your kiddies that you can. It’s not going to make any difference.

The new aircraft carriers proposed by the Chinese would end the domination of our region by the US navy. The Australian navy needs to rethink its policy on aircraft carriers. We will not always be able to rely on the US navy to provide air defence on the high seas; we will have to redevelop our own fleet air arm.

It's really all about keeping up with the Jones (or whatever the Asian equivalent may be) so now we spend 2% of GDP on armaments, White thinks it should be at least 2.5% – given we always need to ever more secure, why stop at 2.5%?

As the political debate heats up on who is to blame for the increase in the number of Afghan refugees, Malcolm “Returnbill” is pointing his finger at the “softening” by the Rudd government of Australia’s immigration policy. The reality – as the Human Rights Unit of the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan points out in a new report – is that the increasing civilian death toll in Afghanistan (and other places) is more likely to be the cause of the increase in refugee numbers than changes to Australia's immigration laws.

Pluses and minuses of federalism, poverty by electorate, campaign finance, electoral redistributions, electronic voting trials, FOI amendments and much, much more in this month’s update.

I am here to issue a national call to arms: and that is for the nation to bind together as one in a national campaign against unemployment. While government must take the lead, everyone has a part to play. And our end point is clear: to do whatever it takes at the global, national and local level to support local jobs and to help those who lose their jobs to retrain and to find a new job. (Kevin Rudd)

As to Hanson herself, you have to wonder at the cultural background that created the woman she was: women’s upbringing and enculturisation (and men’s), gender relations, and politics in general over the last couple of centuries and post ww2 in particular, perhaps against a sort of back drop of the sort of stuff that Prof Marilyn Lake discussed, concerning the Henry Lawson Bronzed Anzac / Pioneer myth and its sidelining of women...

Malcolm Turnbull and others baying for the blood of Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon, should think long and hard about their arguments. They appear to be saying that it is ok for officials of a government department to secretly and probably illegally, launch an investigation into the Minister to whom they are accountable. In the case of Mr Fitzgibbon, the intelligence gathering on him also smacks of racism. Mr. Fitzgibbon is friendly with an influential Chinese woman, a Ms Liu – so what?

A far more effective control of the danger of climate change would be to tax all emission materials (oil, coal etc) at the point of supply, start at once, and at a low rate that would not panic the natives.

The Afghan people are fighting us because we are the foreigners. We are pushing people into the arms of the Taliban and inflaming the situation with the likelihood of spreading the war into surrounding countries such as Pakistan and Iran.

Under pressure over the huge bonuses paid to executives of failing companies, the Government has finally announced it will take action. Mounting community outrage at huge payments to departing executives has led the Federal Government to announce an inquiry into the issue — but first it will pass law to give shareholders more power over payments.

In this month's update, among other matters, political donations, government advertising under Howard, electoral redistribution, parliamentary privilege, and whistleblower protection.

One of the ALP’s 2007 election pledges was to deal with perceived loopholes regarding political donations. In 2008 Senator Faulkner said, "Reforms to the donation disclosure regime are a priority because, in order to be fully effective, they must operate by the start of the next financial year." So, what happened in the Senate yesterday?

Imagine a welfare scheme that gave minimum wage earners nothing, but handed out $11,000 a year to those on the top income tax rate. Surely if any political party ever suggested such a scheme they would be run out of parliament and have their doors kicked down by commercial current affairs programs. (Centre for Policy Development)

We have an enormous opportunity here in Australia to absorb millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, store it safely as carbon, and put in back into the soil and increase the productivity and the health of our own landscape. A win-win. A win for jobs, a win for the environment, a win for agriculture. (Greg Hunt)

Molan says that the troop numbers required to win the war would be about 500,000. He also says that if the West in unprepared to commit these kind of resource we should “cut our loses now and get out”. I think he is right. I doubt if the US is prepared or now even has the will to commit the resources needed.

Too many women in the third world are being denied access to legal abortion. These women often have to resort to illegal backyard abortions. Many die as a result. It is time Kevin Rudd stood up for these women and gave them the same rights that Australian women enjoy.

“This so-called Rudd Bank proposal is a continuation of the globalist policies adopted by Labor under Hawke and Keating, which systematically handed the public resources that old Labor had built up for decades, over to private financial interests. "- CEC head Craig Isherwood

I'd argue that Gunns since the 'nineties is a subspecies of the privatisation/ PPP's phenomena that occurred over the last generation, forced on communities by burgeoning globalisation coupled with a giant con perpetrated by politicians and corporate interests on apathetic Western publics.

The Australian Human Rights Commission says asylum seekers are still being treated like political footballs and enduring "miserable" conditions at some immigration detention centres...The Government says conditions are improving and it is committed to a set of immigration values. But the Human Rights Commissioner, Graeme Innes, has told Naomi Woodley in Canberra that he's still waiting to see if those values translate into actual changes. (Brendan Trembath, Radio National's AM)

New South Wales likes to think of itself as Australia, but it isn’t. Back in 1887, the redoubtable Henry Parkes even proposed that the colony of New South Wales change its name to Australia – a move not unexpectedly opposed (and ridiculed) by the other colonies. But the sentiment persists. The former prime minister John Howard was a typical Sydneysider (an early Victorian term for those who lived on the Sydney side of the Murray). He professed not to recognise state identities or loyalties; we are, after all, simply Australians. (Norman Abjorensen)