Home sweet truckload of moolah

It was hot. We stood a few metres from the auctioneer. I launched bidding early, held my nerve until our limit. It kept going, 30 thousand more and it eventually sold.

I'm glad in some respects it went for that much; for a few moments there it looked like the bid after my last, a mere 5 grand higher, would be the winner, which for whatever irrational reason would be hard to swallow.

But given that the place was not outstanding to begin with, the market might be sending us a message.

Preston and Coburg suddenly look attractive.

Damn it was hot, still is. A day to blast any last drops of optimism out of our withered husks and force us to pick up our tents and head north, towards the distant pools of mud, hoping they don't turn out to be a mirage.

Sorry bub, daddy didn't get you somewhere to live today, I'll keep trying.

'Greg Sheridan: Lacking any clue'

Finally, the Australian figures it out. Truth in subediting.

Sherro kicks off:

The situation is so bad in Iraq that any new ideas from anywhere are welcome.

Here's an idea- you were wrong, we were right, resign and start writing about the scallop industry or trends in trouser pleating.

Hairing, Staring and Cloning

Not a great start, some senseless God Bothering:

The victory followed a visibly pensive Mr Howard and an emotional Mr Rudd telling Parliament they could not support laws allowing embryos to be created and then destroyed for research purposes.

Better, better:

Mr Rudd's cut-through leadership style has already antagonised a number of influential union bosses. Last night, the head of the Australian Workers Union, Bill Ludwig, lashed out at the re-election of Dr Emerson.

The faceless man who previously had Dr Emerson demoted loses non-existent face.

It is understood the head of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, Joe de Bruyn, is also upset at the demotion of Senator Hurley, who is aligned with the SDA in South Australia.

Most right wing member of Labor party contemplates joining the DLP. We'd be teary eyed.

Don't know Chris Bowen but the other members of the "must have four" are worthy- good to see hardworking Bob McMullan back. And it should be noted that factional co-operation allowed Rudd to have his way, recalcitrant union leaders notwithstanding.

On women and double standards, Matt Price has a bit of fun (though I must admit the hair really was extraordinary; the media might even have picked on a man for that sudden seismic shift!) running with the all hair approach to critiques of Julia's entrence into shadow vicehood:

Kevin Andrews rose to hammer Rudd on his slavishness to trade unions, but the unshiftability of his cut, matched with its downright preposterous blackness - more sable than raven - prompted widespread suspicions of a rug.

Marketed, curiously, as a "fresh" addition to Rudd's still evolving frontbench line-up, Bob McMullan raised a point of order. The best indication of McMullan's freshness is his distinctive comb-over, which officially went out of fashion in 1951.

Hmmm.

And lastly, for both Kev and Jools, a gift in their first week with the news of the full sale of Medibank Private. Well, Alan Jones went off about it on Sunrise this morning, but as there's nothing on any of the major media sites yet I'll wait to see the details. But it sounded promising.

Punching along with lots of energy and some talent on the frontbench. 3 out of 5, would have been 4 but 1 off for the early God Bothering.

What's wrong with doctor's wives?

In amongst the staw men and personal attacks the following comment, made in defence of a certain type of Green voter, cut right to the chase for me (with respect to the author, who was not at the ruder end of the thread):

"...sometimes people vote Green to make a point, thinking privately that they will never get into power anyway. In their heads, a vote for the Greens is a vote for caring for the environment. So by this logic, in voting Green, they are doing a "good thing" for society. "

Precisely. Follow the logic as these educated, well-off, well-read individuals (men and women, it can't be hard reading my last post to see I'm referring to both genders in the way chardonnay left refers to non-chardonnay drinkers) then cast their vote for:

Black bashing
Tampa and long term stays in detention centres
Anti-Muslim bigotry
Inciting racial violence
Guantanamo Bay and the Neocon war on everything
Anti-worker IR laws
Bans on gay marriage (gee, in all the Labor bashing on that topic how many people forgot whose laws and wedge attempt drove the damn issue)
Constant needling away at women's right to choose
Money flowing from the poorest schools to the richest
Your ABC becoming their ABC
Anti-diversity media laws
'Climate change, what climate change?'

etc
etc
etc

...So, they are NOT doing a good thing for society, not where you equate good thing with left thing.

No ifs. No buts.

I'm not gonna get any nastier than that, I have a couple of friends who fit this category. Generally, nice people. Politically, a waste of space.

In case it wasn't obvious I was not in the previous post or this one ridiculing people who vote Green who also know which side, broadly speaking, their bread is buttered on.

If you aren't defending the people I've described above, save me the breathless moral indignation.

** Initial snappiness edited back for irrelevancy. It'd be nice to debate the issue at hand, a little at least. **

A walk in the light Greens?

Now I'm more a Labor man myself, taken to an extreme this evening when I rocked up to Ashtanga Yoga in Fitzroy with my Eureka bluey on, but, despite the phenomenal vitriol that's been flying from Green supporters since their so-so effort in Victoria, I see the value in taking a peek at their future options.

Dark or light? That's a relevant question when you polled strongly in blue-blooded Liberal seats where money talks and tradies walk...in through the rear entrance. The Doctors' Wives club take a keen interest in the Greens that doesn't extend to Labor, mostly due to a strong aversion to unions.

Problem is, the Doctors' Wives haven't raised their Gucci monacles and examined the Greens' own IR policy in much detail, and when they do they may sniffle back to Petrou. But then again they may not, and the Greens' high primary votes in the inner city may keep climbing. What might they do to achieve this?

Get over hating Labor, and have a thicker skin: if you want to dish it out, and make the wheeling and dealing that goes on at every election into a front and centre issue, then expect Labor to play hardball.

Any dickhead knows that when they're putting ideology first Labor will preference Greens before any conservatives and Greens will do likewise for Labor. Unless you make it your policy across the board to 'let the people decide their own preferences', random aberrations that have the potential to empower the Liberals (lest it be forgotten the sworn enemies of all remotely left wing people in this country) are nakedly transparent for what they are.

The Greens rightly caned Labor over its Fundy First deal last time around, we copped it and changed approach, so you cop it too and don't sleep with the dogs then try to crawl out of it with weasel words about letting people decide. You were covered in fleas.

OK, OK, I accept we will have a difference of opinion over this, and I also concede Labor played close to the wind. Move on; at least we haven't yet sent a foreign policy wonk over to sleep with your leader and convert him. And I reckon he'd find Ruddy rather cute, in a Harry Potter ofTweed Heads sort of way.

The big one is to aim high and develop and cost your policies as if you might actually win power. In this regard you would be distinguished from the Democrats, whose ambition never moved far beyond removing middle class expenses from the GST over a few glasses of Sherry. I believe most Greens actually do hold bigger picture ambitions, or at the least aim to form a coalition with Labor then pull policy in their direction.

However I do not see how the policies add up, fiscally. A big-spending honeymoon followed by years of darkness is not really the revolution progressive politics needs. Every major policy area is full of promises involving the spending of public money, but these are not subject to the same budget scrutiny that's applied to Labor and Liberals. Rein it back a little, differentiate yourselves from the Socialists. A bankrupt nation isn't going to be a green nation in the long run.

In other words, have you ditched the 'it's ok we'll just raise corporate taxes 30%' approach that so often underpins the striving of the far left?

And where, exactly, do you stand on the PETA wing of the animal rights movement? Are you more conservation and wilderness focused or do you share a pot with the people who stick fishing hooks into sandwiches? I think it's the former, but it's this sort of detail that will bring your policies in to the light green.

Or relegate them forever.

Speaking of conservation and furry animals (they're nearly always furry in PETA ads), one problem for the Greens is nomenclature and the perception that you are a one issue party. I noticed this on the hustings, I also noticed it in discussions with old school Labor types trying to understand their fellow lefty opponents- many people assume for example that where Green votes are highest this is because of conservation issues. As opposed to gay rights, probably the biggest winner in the lower parts of Northcote where the Greens polled well.

The Greens have to work extra hard to get over this, much the way Labor has to work that bit harder to convince people with no connection to unions that it will serve their economic interests as well.

All can be tackled, with will and the right people. And a bit of honest self-analysis.

It's not being talked about like the big upheavals in Labor or the Liberal-National tussles, but philosophically the Greens have some big decisions to make if they are to grow in influence and become an influential player in Australian politics.

Taking some responsibility for their lack of numbers and looking hard at policy would be a good starting point. In my humble submission. With peace, comrades.

Go Balls Out Kevin

As we'd say in Darwin. It is worth fighting until there's blood on the carpet over this issue:

"I intend to get new talent onto the frontbench of the Labor Party and I've already indicated that Peter Garrett will be part of that new, talented line-up," he said."There'll be others as well, I'm confident of that. "I'll be leading this show and when it comes to the outcomes I want I intend to get them."I don't particularly care if others have opposing views - that's what's going to happen."

Emmerson, Tanner, Garrett, fingers crossed for some promotion of talent for once.

Speaking of which, Laurie Ferguson again proves to be the sharpest tool in the box when he calls for Gillard to take Treasury.

Gillard should not take treasury. McMullen, Tanner or even Emmerson for that one. I agree with the talking head on telly this morning and would give Gillard IR, myself.

C'mon kids, get it right...

A Gillard Conspiracy Theory

As predicted here, the Rove gaff was a bigger mistake than first perceived and has proven the catalyst for the end of Beazley. If Labor keeps the Bomber he is almost certainly doomed, because the narrow win will nonetheless act as a vote of no confidence.

Rudd is likely, though far from certain, to win this stoush (TM Liam 2005). But strategically why would he have wanted it? Hanging on until the next election was a win-win option for Ruddy. If Beazley won he would be foreign minister rather than a bleating opposition hack, and could set his sight on a 3 to 6 year timetable for the top job anyway.

But if Beazley lost, and it remains odds-on that Labor will lose regardless of who heads it, he, Rudd, would smoothly walk into the leadership and take with him some reformist clout and a mandate to run on some issue other than the twin IRs: relations and rates.

Now, if Rudd wins the challenge, it will be Julia Gillard who steps into the reserve spot, quietly fingering her partly-drawn dagger as she waits and watches his performance.

Is this her plan? Is it the plan of many of the unlikelies, such as Simon Crean, who are supporting the Rudd insurrection?

Thank you Pampar

For your granddaughter, the love of my life.

For your grit and determination, crucial in your escape from the jungle following your plane crash in WWII.

For being a good husband to Mammar, so that you could have a huge family together.

For your stellar career as the brains and technical skill behind a decade of Australian legislation introduced by both political parties- yes, your work on the Trade Practices Act and Family Law Act has, with a few bumps, held up and changed our society in myriad ways.

For being a warm and welcoming grandfather to me in the short space of time I knew you.

Your line continues, your great-granddaughter is nigh.

Rest in peace.

Work Warbles and Pussy Action

I work. I eat, I sleep and I work again.

Adapting is hardest for the cats, because while I may be phenomenally lazy when it comes to matters of domestic duty I have infinite patience for watching the cats play outside, scratching the sweet spot just behind or in front of their ears, throwing balls of paper or swinging Mr Bear (bear on a string, 'nuff said!).

Here's why:

"Luk Mao, itf a biwd I can eatst!"

I know, they aren't the cutest cats ever in the whole world, I just happen to be biased.

I am busy, I neglect my blog, cats, guitar, wife, other important matters. Not in any order of importance, I hasten to add. I'm not having a Leunig moment.

My cases are interesting. But I've gone in at a decent level so the expectation's on to get up to speed. The law in this field is vast and dense; I'm enjoying the intellectual challenge but it's intimidating. I read the work of others and I find errors of law. I set higher and higher bars for myself and find there isn't enough time in the day.

There is never, ever enough time in the day.

Beazley is getting off lightly

This may be the end of his career, and that would be a damn fine lesson in polical cynicism. He's getting off lightly because people are not really shining a light on what it says about the man who wants to lead the nation.

It says he really didn't know anything about the people involved. It says he doesn't watch or know anything about Rove, or Belinda, and is generally out of touch. Not a mortal sin in itself. It also says he's had no interest at all in the tragedy of Rove and Belinda, and her battle over many years with breast cancer. That he skimmed those bits to get to the serious news, considered the story too plebian.

Celebrity culture may be pretty vaccuous, but their struggle is a genuine tragedy and one that's moved most of the country. You don't have to like Rove's show much to know he's gone through hell, to have followed the story of that hell in at least some basic detail, to have put yourself in his shoes, thought 'what if I lost the anchor of my world, the keeper of my heart?'

His eyes, in the funeral photos, are the embodiment of hell on earth. They are filled with the anger we'd all feel with someone close torn away by something so random and unjust.

Beazley clearly wasn't all that moved, preferring to move on to read about his mate Murdoch's latest acquisitions in the business pages or what brilliant things his favourite nation the US of A was doing in a given week.

But, when she died, he still wanted to make a bit of hay. Well, the hay's on fire, Rudd's circling at last, and frankly that was just one misjudgement too many. Not the name error, but what it, in this context, tells the electorate about him.

Most of the media attention just seems to have focused on this as 'another Bomber gaffe'. But it was not just a gaffe, and it's so much more this time. And the public, who care a great deal about the Belinda and Rove tragedy, will see it for what it is.

Rudd, Gillard, your moment may arrive 12 months earlier than you expected...

One solitary judicial conservative

This is one of the most important cases with respect to the relationship between the Commonwealth and the States to come before the Court in all of the years of its existence. If the legislation is to be upheld the consequences for the future integrity of the federation as a federation, and the existence and powers of the States will be far-reaching. The Act in its present form is well beyond, and in contradiction of what was intended and expressed in the Constitution by the founders.

Kirby in full flight? No, these are some of the opening words in the judgement of Callinan J, political and jurisprudential conservative, and on first blush the only Justice of the High Court capable of sticking strongly to his judicial approach when it contravenes his (alleged) political leanings.

The conservatives' Mabo has been handed down.

Kirby is the only jurisprudential radical on the bench. It is his judgement, and his alone, that should have drawn the long bow from the short clear expression of power,

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to...

(xx) foreign corporations, and trading or financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth;

so that it confers the ability to regulate industrial and employment law at all levels, despite the fact that the founding hobnobs chose to make only the following clear reference to industrial law,

(xxxv) conciliation and arbitration for the prevention and settlement of industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any one State;

within that fine piece of British legislation.

Instead, and once again I stress that this is at first blush (I have all 200-odd pages in front of me but will not have read it until at least midnight!), Kirby supported the black letter conservative position (judicially speaking) that matched his more radical politics.

And the much-lauded judicial conservatives, with the exception of Callinan J (only HE gets the 'J' today), brought down a decision that is radical in its reasoning, centralising power, supporting the grasping expansion of the Commonwealth over the States, neutering the Federation and performing astonishing acts of hermeneutics on a group of words that clearly contain, by intention, no reference whatsoever to industrial or employment law.

It's early days. I'll read the decision. I'll wait with bated breath for Janet Albrechtson to scribble furiously about the decline of the judiciary and the need for a return to genuine judicial conservatism.

Only one judge has the right to adopt that mantle now.

(More analysis to follow on this topic in coming days...)

To fight another day

Pampar has, against the expectations of all in hospital and most who know him, beaten both death and the suffocating pools of water death placed in his lungs.

Mammar thought she lost him when his plane went down in the war. He pulled through then, he's pulled through again now. I thought he might, he's had his mettle tested many times and isn't likely to go easily.

I wonder if he's hanging out to meet his first great grandchild. It's a long time when you're blind and your organs are trying to pack up and retire on you, but I have my fingers crossed that he'll make the next couple of months and at least hear the news that he's paved the way for 3 subsequent generations. Better yet, we'll fly up there as soon as beloved is able and he can hold her in person.

Two ends of a lifeline arcing towards each other. Separated by the vicissitudes of birth and death.

They hold hands until death passes

Beloved's dear Pampar lies in hospital. His prognosis is not good, though we are talking about a man who was missing presumed dead in the war, who went on to advise Federal Attorneys-General and help shape the laws of this nation. So I'd say he's got a fair reservoir of fight.

But still, it isn't good.

His marriage saw out the majority of last century as well as all of this one. Mammar sits next to him now, in hospital, holding his hand. They still do that, holding hands- beloved and I took a sneak photo of them walking along the footpath in Civic, Canberra, like a pair of teenagers in crush.

Not all beautiful things fade with time.

His first great grandchild is only a couple of months from bringing new life into the world. He may never see her. I hope he knows that she will know all about him.

Mammar is still holding his hand, I wish I could give her a huge hug now and hold on until it all passes, until death moves on, with or without the man she's loved for so many decades.

We're all proud of Pampar, I hope he knows that. I'm proud to have known him as a belated grandson.

Hope hangs on double twist of death

Fearless leader:

Saddam Hussein's death penalty is a sign of democratic hope for Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard says.

Fearless leader:

Prime Minister John Howard has urged Indonesia not to execute Australians...

Some slime. No connection, just exasperation...

Brazil and I

Hundreds of procedures, institutional foibles and idiosynchratic quirks are wizzing around my tiny brain following my launch into the new job. I cannot, of course, discuss detail as always, but I'll say enough that it's pretty interesting so far. I apologise for scant blogging, including visiting others (bloglines has sat dormant for a couple of weeks!). A thought of the day on each of my favourite topics...

Cancellation of The Glass House ranks alongside pulling the Jones book and the Safran episode on tar-coif as low water marks in the ilLiberal era of right wing political correctness and censorship. There is so little to compare to The Glass House that the argument it's being pulled to make way for fresh creativity is transparent bunkum. Labor should indicate an intention to go after individuals who abuse their power so blatantly and hold them accountable- retrospective legislation and a royal commission should do the trick.

Missed the Fisherman, the doco that inspired a defo case I've discussed recently, but it's covered by the Legal Soapboxer.

My daughter is coming along nicely, gave a few kicks as I hummed to her tonight, which I believe was her trying to burrow her way to silence through the back of beloved's womb.

We look at houses. We look at more houses. We look at Preston. Slowly it starts looking prettier- the eye of the beholder is wearied and myopic.

And I jammed with the boys for the first time in months and months. With 2 of the 3 of us close to fatherhood, we may end up becoming the alternative version of the Wiggles so we can justify practicing, but any chance to belt something out would be a welcome diversion from the statute books.

Regards from new starter stasis...