On Friday, as a thoughtful start to the last day of my working week, I was treated to a delicious cup of coffee courtesy of the your rights at work mob.

It seems that the sitting member for the seat of Lindsay– Jackie Kelly is really angry that the Unions are active in her area and she has been forced to publish 20 four-page liftout newsletters in three Penrith newspapers featuring photographs of herself with the Liberal Party’s new candidate for Lindsay, Karen Chijoff.

“There are certain benefits of incumbency and when the unions are mounting such a dishonest campaign, as they have done on WorkChoices, I have an obligation to set the record straight. I’ve spent 12 years driving unemployment down in my electorate and I would not have voted for WorkChoices if it wasn’t continuing to contribute to full employment. I’m telling my community they are being told garbage about WorkChoices by the unions and Labor.”- Jackie Kelly

Now if Jackie had at least offered to bring back a few baguettes, I might have been more sympathetic to her protestations that she has put 12 years of hard work into the electorate.

In tonight’s Leaders debate we saw arrogance, obsequiousness and finally some assertiveness.

First the arrogance:

“Mr Howard revealed in two days time, Australian force commanders will begin discussions with their coalition partners about the evolving role for those forces.”-Source

This is supposed to be a revelation. What, after four years this is the first time that the Australian Military talk to the US military about their evolving role.

Then the obsequiousness: What have the government and the Australian force commanders been doing up until this big discussion tomorrow- reading the tea leaves, tossing a coin, whatever they were told?

Finally, some assertiveness:
After having the live feed was cut, sourced from an alternative place, cut again then sourced again, Channel Nine’s director of news and current affairs John Westacott defended using the worm live to air.

“I think it’s (the worm) an editorial decision for the Nine Network, not for the leader of the Liberal Party what we put to air. I can only agree with [News Ltd chairman] John Hartigan in his excellent Andrew Olle lecture where he said that political interference in journalism is increasing, not diminishing. And this is a perfect example – the leader of the Liberal Party trying to dictate one of the key events in the election campaign.” -Source

Image from here

For many years now only a handful of Australians have publicly joined the chorus of opposing our illegal involvement in the war in Iraq.

A recent survey has shown that:

“Sixty-four per cent are opposed to Australian involvement in Iraq, and 50 per cent to Australian involvement in Afghanistan.” – Sydney University’s US Studies Centre.

Thank you fellow Australians. Now if we can only follow the British lead of withdrawing troops.

Image from here