by David Roffey

David's Archive is here [1]

As has been related by Margo elsewhere [2], one step on my journey to this place was a meeting with our local MP, Tony Abbott, to express our concerns about the way the war in Iraq had been handled. In that meeting Abbott said “if in the end there are no WMD and Iraq has a fundamentalist government, it won’t have been worth it”. We asked him if he was prepared to debate that in a public forum, and to his credit he said yes, and duly did – you can read a full transcript of the debate at the North Shore Peace and Democracy [3] website.

When we came to advertise the debate with a media release, Margo pitched up in our dining room with a bottle of red and (with frequent breaks for her to nip outside for a smoke) we talked into the night about how hard it was getting to have real debate in Australian politics – both sides just shout slogans and issue soundbites that belittle or ignore the other side – and there almost always is a real point of concern in the view from the other side.

NSP&D has carried on organising opportunities for people to debate issues in person – now once a month on the last Thursday – see the website for details – in the same tradition as Politics in the Pub [4]. But these gatherings of 50 to 100 people can only reach a few (and only a few can reach them).

Webdiary has been, and will be, an exciting experiment in taking the debate to anyone in reach of the internet – all of Australia, and many from abroad. It has covered an amazing range of topics of both parochial and global concern.

It was looking increasingly uncomfortable as the lead-strings from Fairfax got more stretched and twisted – and the question of what was exactly meant when a Webdiarist asked “what has you organisation said about this?” became harder to define.

As a completely independent site for debating the world, I believe we – you - have the potential to play a significant role in political, economic and plain human debate for the future. Imagine