Once front runner Howard Dean is out of the race for Democrat candidate in the next US presidential elections. He somehow squandered a healthy lead and some $50,000,000 (whew! a lot of money for nothing). Now it looks like a shoot out between Kerry and Edwards, with Kerry the […] Continue Reading…

Watching the ‘Four Corners’ report on the destruction of Tasmania’s old growth forests gave me a real sense of déjà vu. The slippery government dealing, the dodgy forest management agency, the huge private firm with tentacles everywhere, and the various passionate people appearing on either side all reminded me […] Continue Reading…

This whole debate about politicians’ pay and superannuation is a classic example of self-interest being peddled as economic logic or public interest. There is enough hypocrisy flooding the airwaves on this to make even the most cynical politics watcher want to spew.
So let me say this: most politicians would […] Continue Reading…

The other night I watched on SBS (where else?) as a mother buried her child. It was in Sudan. She and the child had been chased for weeks around the burning deserts of Sudan by the Sudanese army searching for its elusive enemy. The child, a six-year-old boy, had […] Continue Reading…

The Liberals are pulling out some of the oldest tricks in the book to hammer newly resurgent Labor. One of them is to accuse anyone who questions a whole range of developments of being anti-American.
There are two basic problems with this critique. The first is that we are suffering […] Continue Reading…

“The end of the beginning.” J M Barrie’s clever twisting of the more common phrase seems an appropriate place to start a post about John Howard’s pirouette on Parliamentary super. The political dual between Latham and Howard is getting a Peter Pan feel about it.
[…] Continue Reading…

Yes, it’s the old ‘Pay peanuts, get monkeys’ argument as certain pollies (like Peter Costello) defend the incredible benefits ex-pollies get, such as very generous superannuation. Well, my response is that right now we pay our pollies big bananas, and we mostly get monkeys anyway.
There is no way that […] Continue Reading…

I watched Parliament Question Time yesterday on TV to see how new boy Mark Latham did. He played it straight on a day dominated by the FTA, and governemnt gloating. It was definitely Mark mark II, careful and calculated.
John Howard is worried, you can tell from the hyper-aggressive body […] Continue Reading…

So, after what the media tells us was a Herculean struggle, a free trade agreement between the US and Oz was signed. It is a lot less than was promised by the government and the impression lingers that George called John and put the pressure on. Not that I […] Continue Reading…

Having just won Michigan and Washington in the latest democratic caucuses, it looks like John Kerry is a shoe in for Democrat presidential candidate in the next election. The bad news about this is that Kerry’s credentials as a senator do not suggest he’ll do much worthwhile as president, […] Continue Reading…