On Line Opinion - Australia's free Internet journal of social and political opinion.

Find our home page at www.onlineopinion.com.au

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University of Sydney: Sydney Conservatorium Chamber Orchestra - concert With Imre Pallo (conductor) and Josephine Allan and Daniel Herscovitch (pianos) playing: Rossini's The Silken Staircase Overture; Mozart's Concerto for 2 Pianos No.10 E flat major K.365; Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor K.550.

September 2, 2005.

Time: 7pm. Also on at 4pm Saturday September 3.

Tickets from City recital hall, Angel Place, 8256 2222.

Location: Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Cost: *$28/$25/$22/$10.

Contact: Steven Burns.
Phone: 02 9351 1263.
Email: sbu...@conmusic.usyd.edu.au.
More info: www.music.usyd.edu.au

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New Articles

Poverty: lazy louts or in need of aid?
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3760
Feature - Philip Mendes - posted 22/8/2005

A 'poverty professional’ fights back!
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1927
Feature - Peter Saunders - posted 22/8/2005

Reduce poverty and sustainability will follow
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3771
Feature - Eric Claus - posted 22/8/2005

Poverty in Australia - an ACOSS view
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1925
Feature - Andrew McCallum - posted 22/8/2005

Stoning the Aussie Mossie?
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1926
Religion & Spirituality - Irfan Yusuf - posted 22/8/2005

The case for assimilation
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2719
Religion & Spirituality - John Stone - posted 19/8/2005

Decline in feminism? The backlash myth
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2466
Society - Paul Norton - posted 19/8/2005

Kim Beazley's Tampa?
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2569
Domestic Politics - Nicholas Gruen - posted 19/8/2005

East Timor: short-changed on oil
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2540
Domestic Politics - Tom Clarke - posted 19/8/2005

The fight for full employment
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2730
Domestic Politics - Hugh Stretton - posted 19/8/2005

The questionable future of genetic engineering
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2500
Environment - Jeremy Tager - posted 18/8/2005

Political parties ignore Generation Y at their own peril
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2568
Domestic Politics - Rebecca Huntley - posted 18/8/2005

Don't say the F-word!
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3766
Education - Kevin Donnelly - posted 18/8/2005

Why Christianity's particularity is better than John Lennon's universalism
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3765
Religion & Spirituality - Peter Sellick - posted 18/8/2005

Where to now in the war on terror?
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3769
International - Graeme Mills - posted 18/8/2005

What's the Coalition doing right?
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2789
Domestic Politics - Dennis Glover - posted 17/8/2005

The Hicks case is becoming a constitutional crisis
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3768
Law & Liberties - Tony Smith - posted 17/8/2005

Life is extra risky for women in immigration detention
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2840
Law & Liberties - Eva Cox and Terry Priest - posted 17/8/2005

The benefits of GM crops
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3764
Environment - Jim Peacock - posted 17/8/2005

The frightening reality of chronic diseases
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3748
Health - Kevin Pittman - posted 17/8/2005

What's wrong with the Labor Party?
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2854
Domestic Politics - Dennis Glover - posted 16/8/2005

Taxing Australian federalism
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2795
Domestic Politics - David Hamill - posted 16/8/2005

Build it and we'll pay
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2928
Nation Building - Mark Christensen - posted 16/8/2005

The new tension in the workplace
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2588
Domestic Politics - Christian Seibert - posted 16/8/2005

All should condemn Islamic fundamentalism's homophobia
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=34
Religion & Spirituality - David Skidmore - posted 16/8/2005

Poor campaigns fail the poor
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3759
Feature - Howard Glenn - posted 15/8/2005

African 'Rockeconomics'
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3740
Feature - Helen Hughes - posted 15/8/2005

Greenpeace anti-GM campaign doomed
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2633
Environment - Jennifer Marohasy - posted 15/8/2005

George W. Bush and the life of Bryan
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2784
International - Helen Pringle - posted 15/8/2005

African nations are not solely to blame for poverty
www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=3763
International - Andrew Hewett - posted 15/8/2005

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The Domain

Monday August 22, 2005

Ambit Gambit

Bob Quinn loses in by-elections?
Could Bob Quinn lose his job as a result of winning the Queensland by-elections? That's the seemingly bizarre analysis running around the Queensland Liberal Party. It goes like this. Michael Caltabiano, the winner in Chatsworth, has entered Parliament with the...
More
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/000808.html

Two significant victories
The Queensland Liberal Party has had two significant victories in the Redcliffe and Chatsworth by-elections. With swings in Redcliffe of around 7% and 12% in Chatsworth voters have told Premier Beattie to fix the health system. They have also put...
More
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/000807.html

John Quiggin

Gate Gourmet appeal
One of the striking features of industrial relations reform is that as strikes have declined, lockouts have increased. According to a recent ACCIRT study (PDF), most working days lost in long disputes (more than a month) are due to lockouts.
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/22/gate-gourmet-appeal...

From the sidelines....

New Economist: Asian blogs 1: Simon World
New Economist: Asian blogs 1: Simon World Economic developments in China, India and the rest of Asia are of great interest to me. Starting from today I will be building up a new blogroll of relevant weblogs from the region...
More
http://trevorcook.typepad.com/election/2005/08/new_economist_a.html

Imagining Australia

Don't Leave!
I mentioned on the blog a little while ago that Chris Ryan and I had written a paper on the effect of minimum school leaving ages on earnings. I wrote it up for the SMH today. They published a rather...
More
http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/08/dont_leave.html

Jennifer Marohasy

Quolls for Sale Instead of Cats?
I have been in Melbourne over the weekend. I had the most magnificent meal of Kangaroo Saturday night over-looking the Yarra River. The choice of dish was perhaps influenced by the book I am reading. Michael Archer (Dean of the...
More
www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000809.html

Wollemi Elephants
Where would you plant a Wollemi pine? According to The Australian, fewer than 300 saplings of the relic giant tree which can live for 1,000 years are to be auctioned by Sotheby's soon. But why stop at a 90 million...
More
www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000805.html

Friday August 19, 2005

John Quiggin

Intelligent falling
Via Chris Mooney, here's a quick introduction to the latest controversial addition to the science curriculum.
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/18/intelligent-falling...

The Road To Surfdom

Fear inflation
As the IR debate unfolds (in the usual dishonest Howard way) Robb Corr is doing a great job of keeping track.
People might also be interested in this Parliamentary Library paper, 'Workplace relations reforms: a chronology of business, community and Government responses'. As I've said before, the PL is a great resource.
www.roadtosurfdom.com/archives/2005/08/fear_inflation.html

Troppo Armadillo

Year after year the old men disappear
Barista has just done a great post on an iconic World War II picture revisited and reinacted. It reminded me that a few days ago I got an invitation to the Australian Maritime Museum for a celebration of what must...
More
http://troppoarmadillo.ubersportingpundit.com/archives/009404.html

Jennifer Marohasy

Telstra was Meant to Save the Environment
With all the talk about Barnaby Joyce and the sale of Telstra I am reminded of the Natural Heritage Trust - established from the sale of T1. And this is what John Anderson said in the Australian Parliament on 19th...
More
www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000804.html

Thursday August 18, 2005

Ambit Gambit

Only the Liberals are under real pressure in the by-elections
In the Redcliffe and Chatsworth by-elections, only the Liberal Party is under real pressure. For Peter Beattie a loss would be a good management tool. It would say to his back-benchers that his government is not impregnable, so they should...
More
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/000800.html

The Road To Surfdom

No such thing as Margaret Thatcher
I touched briefly in the post below on the growing tide of conservative hatred of the West as it manifested itself in their whining about multiculturalism. There is a stark example of the trend in this piece by British Conservative MP, John Hayes (no link, sorry, behind a subscription wall):
www.roadtosurfdom.com/archives/2005/08/no_such_thing_a_1.html

Jennifer Marohasy

Could it Get Wetter, as It Gets Warmer?
CSIRO climate change modeling has generally concluded that as it gets warmer, it is going to get drier. I will give two examples: 1. CSIRO News Flash on Monday 15 August 2005 titled 'Natural change, greenhouse effect influence WA rainfall'...
More
www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000803.html

shannonsays.com

The Ashes: Why England can't win
There are some forces in the universe so immutable that it takes something extraordinary to change them. Chief among these is the one that impels Australian captains not to lose the Ashes, something that had begun to look increasingly likely...
More
http://shannonc.blogs.com/shannonsays/2005/08/the_ashes_engla.html

Wednesday August 17, 2005

Ambit Gambit

eDemocracy or eBureaucracy
Who or what is eDemocracy about? That's a question I posed to a panel at the United Nations International Conference on Engaging Communities currently being held in Brisbane. I've been to a few conferences on eDemocracy recently and one thing
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/000799.html

John Quiggin

Climate change modellers vindicated
Via Jennifer Marohasy, I found a report on three articles in Science that put the closing seal on the most significant issue in the debate about the reality of human-caused climate change: the disagreement between climate models and data from satellites and radiosonde balloonsThe big expert on satellite measurements of climate is John R.... However, it was discovered in 1998 that the satellite data had problems of their own, arising from a failure to correct for the gradual decay in their orbits.
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/16/climate-change-mode...

Tim Blair

Qualified Stalker
Cretan Chris the Onanist, whose readers are engaged by his "search for the truth in all things", writes:
Blair qualifies as a stalker because a conspicuous oddity is the starkly one-sided nature of the attention. I detest Blair’s politics and his disingenuous, snarky blogging style. Hence, I never read his blog.

Troppo Armadillo

Qld Economic Strategy
My editor wanted a piece on the Beattie Govt's economic strategy in the context of two by-elections being held this weekend. So here it is - with an additional graph that couldn't go into the Courier Mail.
http://troppoarmadillo.ubersportingpundit.com/archives/009400.html

Jennifer Marohasy

Organics Use Less Energy?
My recent writings on GM food crops, including in The Land newspaper last Thursday, have resulted in some emails suggesting that I am wrong and that organics, rather than GM, really are the answer. I received an email with a...
www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000801.html

The Samwise Polemic

Gays can be bigots too!
It is always interesting to see bigotry alive and active within minority communities. Depending on your view it can also be ditressing if it is relevant enough to damage a good cause.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSamwisePolemic?m=121

Senator Andrew Bartlett

First Birthday for this Blog
I posted my first blog entry a year ago today. It started out by saying "I'm currently trying to think of ways to break through some of the limitations of our political process." I then went on to talk about mandatory detention and basic principles of the rule of law in a democracy, topics I touched on many more times.
http://andrewbartlettonline.blogspot.com/2005/08/first-birthday-for-this...

Tuesday August 16, 2005

John Quiggin

A modest proposal
Britain, France and Germany are busy trying to persuade Iran to abandon efforts to develop nuclear weapons, so far with little success.
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/08/15/a-modest-proposal/

Troppo Armadillo

Animal Liberation: I claim to have been misrepresented
At the end of question time in Parliament any member can speak to a claim that he has been misrepresented. I claim to have been misrepresented. I was interested in the responses to my earlier post on Peter Singer's...
More
http://troppoarmadillo.ubersportingpundit.com/archives/009396.html

An African voice on aid
Critical comments from a Kenyan economist James Shikwati on the perverse results of western aid to African states. SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them. Shikwati: But...
More
http://troppoarmadillo.ubersportingpundit.com/archives/009388.html

Imagining Australia

BrisVegas Bound
I'll be in Brisbane on Wed and Thu, speaking on the state of social capital scholarship at the International Conference on Engaging Communities on Wednesday morning (apparently the conference is even being webcast), and then talking separately at the IPAA,...
More
http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/08/brisvegas_bound.ht...

Catallaxy

On sex and fertility
Amazing! Is Paul 'Magic water' Sheehan promoting teen pregnancy? Are the 'chain women to the kitchen sink' brigade reintroducing their views by stealth through the 'fertility vs materalism' false dichotomy? And notice how sexual freedom is conflated with pregnancy when the two desires are clearly different.
http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/?p=1087

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Regards,
Graham Young
Chief Editor

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On Line Opinion is owned and published by National Forum.
Editorial Advisory Board:
Brian Johns, Leonie Kramer, Michael Kelly, Peter Donoughue, Ray Evans, Michael Williams, Kathy Sullivan, Tom Worthington, Julian Cribb, Helen O'Neil, Lucy Turnbull.

Acknowledgement of Collaborative Editors
The following people and groups have collaborated in producing this edition of On Line Opinion, please visit their websites to find out more about their organisations:

Carly Hammond and James Ensor,
Oxfam Community Aid Abroad
www.caa.org.au/

Terry Flew,
QUT
www.creativeindustries.qut.edu.au/