Shaggy Dog Comments...

Issue 727

Our Knowledge Nation Award goes to self-exiled ALP backbencher Mark Latham, who's right into talking with his constituents via the WWW. Acknowledging that not everyone in wired up, he wrote 'If you do not have access to the Internet, please let me know by replying by email'.

Speaking of which, we received a fax from Elizabeth Hamilton and 23 other residents of Rous Mill who wanted to vote ‘No' in our Internet poll asking whether people wanted a third village on the Alstonville. Unfortunately (or fortunately), even we can't rig the survey results by entering multiple votes on your behalf, since the system is designed to prevent that sort of thing going on. For the record, we've had 71 votes – 39 (55%) saying ‘no', 22 (31%) saying ‘yes' and 10 (14%) saying they wanted more information. Our Internet Poll for the coming week asks how much you're prepared to pay to recycle (or not) in Lismore.

Less than 12 months ago, Cathy Freeman won a foot race, and the deluded declared it was a great moment for reconciliation. Of course that notion was complete bollocks. Tomorrow the five ring circus will announce who's going to host the 2008 Olympics. The choices are Beijing, Paris or Toronto. Proving that morality and sport don't mix, many of this nations former Sydney Olympics contingent have been happy to take the Chinese dosh and throw their weight behind the Sino push. Cathy Freeman's been one of the leading apologists for Mao's Communist regime. Of course China's greatest contribution to reconciliation was the invasion of Tibet, which crushed religious freedom, dispossessed and suppressed the people and discriminated against Tibetans in favour of Chinese. Maybe Ms Freeman's become used to that sort of behaviour and thus can't see what's so morally wrong with giving the Games to China. We'll be rooting (to use the vernacular) for Toronto, since Canada has never dropped nuclear bombs in our backyard or pumped their swimmers full of steroids.

It's NAIDOC week and tomorrow, appropriately, is Black Friday. But we still have a long way to go on race relations if an incident on the XPT train last Thursday night is anything to go by. As the train pulled into Lismore an elderly woman discovered she'd lost her camera. A quick-thinking rail official kept the doors of the train locked while he bailed up a handful of koori kids travelling home and accused them of stealing the camera. He didn't have any proof, and they'd been no suggestion that the youths were in any way responsible. It's simply logical that the colour of your skin determines your occupation, which in this case means thief. The official interrogated the kids, demanding the camera back and saying he'd called the police (he hadn't) before he gave up and they were finally allowed to leave. They didn't take too kindly to the accusation, and became upset, agitated and finally abusive, which in some minds, only reinforced their guilt. But think about it. How would you respond if someone suddenly came up to you and accused you of a crime simply because you had blonde hair – or your eyes were green? There's a NAIDOC street march through the CBD tomorrow. It's a small step in a very long walk all the people of this nation have yet to make. (And if you're reading ‘this garbage' again Mr Betteridge, perhaps you'd like to write and explain why white people in this country have a history of treating cats with more respect and tenderness – and getting upset about slights against them – than they treat Aboriginal people).

We have to say we're 100% behind would-be deputy PM Tony Abbott (which is probably the safest place to be) when he says that people are living in poverty because the government can't stop them 'making mistakes that cause them to be less well-off'. After all, look at all the idiots who bought Telstra 2 shares.

While around 13.3% of the nation was found to be living below the poverty line in 1999, the charming Mr Abbott, who once employed One Nation ratbag David Oldfield, reckons that one of the reasons why people are poor is cause they spend too much on booze and fags – both multi-billion dollar excise earners for government. If the poor were smart, they'd get a job as an MP before getting on the piss. That way your drinking is taxpayer funded. The Prime Minister recently spent $15,000 on a consultant to recommend wines to put down to improve the Lodge's cellar. A year down the track, most of the wines, which were to mature for 4-5 years, have been drunk. But then his chances of being round to drink them in 2005 are disappearing faster than a Bundy and Coke at a B & S ball.

Meantime, the reality of our caring, sharing, mutually obligated government was revealed in Centrelink statistics for the punitive breach system initiated by Howard and his henchman Abbott. A Melbourne PhD student, Susan Lackner, had to get a lawyer to appeal under the Freedom of Information Act to extract the truth, but according the Centrelink's own figures, 23,000 young people were wrongly breached, thus depriving them of welfare payments. Of course another mistake anyone below the poverty line could make, leaving them less well-off, is voting for a Howard government.

It was good to see that after Browns Creek was cleared recently, it wasn't too long before the native wildlife returned to colonise the area once again. This splendid creature shoppingtrollius feralis, once endangered due to its habit of veering suddenly in the wrong direction, is now quite common throughout the town, and can be found on most streets. Fearing a plague, Cr Frank Swientek raised the issue of a cull in council recently. Council's trolley wrangler Bill Moorhouse led a swoop on the creek, where he rounded up 18 of the little blighters. Mr Moorhouse has written to local supermarkets saying council has taken the shoppingtrollius feralis to council's refuge centre and for $50 each, they can have them back. He awaits a response.