The Age featured an insightful analysis of John Howard's reign in Saturday's edition. Key quote:

'The coming election will be about the usual issues of health, education and industrial relations, but in significant ways, John Winston Howard will be on the ballot.'

Penguin publishing director Bob Sessions, and instigator of NHJ, says there is little interest in Howard the man. 'Let's cut to the chase. John Howard's a good economic manager, with no heart, apparently, and very little colour. The most exciting thing about him is that he goes for a walk every morning.'

I've just finished reading your very enlightening book, which I had to keep putting down because I kept becoming so angry at some of the things I was learning. I confess to being a long time Labor voter, so had always had my suspicions about Howard and his government. Now, you have provided confirmation of my suspicions. My main reason for being so angry is that he is robbing my children and grand-child of the right to free and universal education and health care. I also get angry at the thought of how we Australians are now viewed by the rest of the world. I hate the fact that we lock up innocent people whose only crime is trying to obtain a better life by coming here. I have written to several politicians from both sides and phoned up open lines programmes on radio, none of which seems to get me anywhere. So, thank you for the book and I hope thousands of people read it.

Fair enough, Martin English (and Mo Stoogers) - as NHJ!'s resident democratic umpy Hamish A points out, we PM-bashers can get a tad hot under the collar with our language, sometimes. Mea Culpa, mates - yet again. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea dickhead...sigh.

But...fair suck of the sav too, guys: as MK points out below your review, Mart, if you were actually to...er...read the book, you'd (hopefully) see that a reasonable slab of it is (somewhat painfully) devoted to acknowledging explicitly our own 'Howard-obsessive' faults and foibles, agreeing that we can't lay claim to any infallible moral supremacy - in the spirit of the book's core aim, which was and remains the same as that of this site: to help search out some common ground 'for all of us'.

This is the review I published in the August edition of my paper.

Defending our democracy

That's the subtitle of Margo Kingston's passionate book of more than 400 pages, actually titled (at her publishers' suggestion in order to be topical and thus sell more copies) 'Not Happy, John!'. It is wide ranging in its scope and Margo has included articles by five others, all contributors to her well known Webdiary, which can be found at the Sydney Morning Herald web site. Perhaps its wide range does it a disservice and I would suggest that it's more than one book: there's material and varying subject matter enough for three books.

Her thesis can be gathered though from the headings of the book's five parts: 'John's Australia', 'My Australia', 'Whose Australia?', 'Their Australia' and 'Our Australia', the second and last chapter of which is Democracy: Ten Ideas for Change, which are practical proposals for reclaiming our democracy.

She doesn't blame ou

I received 100 stickers - and wondered where I would give them out. I chose an Open Day at Sunshine Coast University. People of all ages accepted them with thanks and even requested extras for their friends. It felt good seeing their happy faces - they knew exactly what it was all about.

Shouldn't universities be at the forefront of free thought and democratic ideas? One man asked me if I had permission to hand them out, and I think security was on to me. Maybe I should have said I was promoting the number 7 book on the non-fiction bestseller list. Congratulations!

Get them out to the universities - get the students behind your case to save our democratic traditions.

Margo: John Joseph, you're a gem.

Ok I haven't done this blog thingy yet, but it's not for failing to have a few things bearing on my mind. It's probably for nervousness. I'm not my big sister. I'm someone else, and I'm thankful to Margo for the opportunity to help maintain this site, as well as the opportunity to express a little myself, amongst brilliant and colourful company.

For all the deserved gush about Margo's book on this site - and I'm in the company of the gushers in spirit - martin english is onto something when he scolds us for using jargonistic language to decry our enemy. I think he too quickly lumps the barely edited contributions of dozens of reviewers with Margo and the site as a whole, but if his point is that we should be careful to be concise and rigorous in criticism, avoiding treating any assumption as self-evident, then he has to be right.

Now with various close associates I have no trouble using the ph

Who would have ever thought 'the free world' would be wrapped in razor wire or Australia would be governed from Washington DC? Who would have thought Australia would lock up children? Who would have thought an Australian Prime Minister would place his country in harms way? How did John Howard get away with it and why wasn't he stopped?

'Not Happy, John' by Margo Kingston tells us why and champions the truth as liars rule. When historians document these times Margo Kingston's 'Not Happy, John' and 'Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip' will be key to understanding how one vengeful politician was assisted in the destruction of democracy in Australia. John Howard was able to demean us, disregard us, breech the Geneva Convention and every international treaty on human rights to which Australia is signatory.

Margo Kingston abided by the ethics of journalism where many of her colleagues failed. 'Not Happy, John' shows the method in this madness and Margo Kingston has h

G'day. 'Mo Stoogers' reckons he's a concerned Australian too, because he thinks Howard is cool and the nation would miss him. Here's his plea to other readers of the NHJ website.

'I cannot believe how any, intelligent Australian could want to replace one of Australia's best Prime Ministers and Governments with a proven failure leading a party who is a proven economic failure.

'Latham's record is that as Mayor he drove the Liverpool Shire to the brink of bankruptcy. And you dickheads want to replace Howard with Latham. If Australia is broke how is that going to defend our democracy. We have a strong democracy and economy thanks to Britan who has provided our system of Government, USA who provides our protection and John Howard who has made us strong economically.

'Stop being a bunch of dickheads and get behind Howard to keep that loser and failure Latham out of office at all costs.'

G'day again. Here's some great stuff on political and media ethics from Simon Longstaff, Executive Director of the St James Ethics Centre, on Meet the Press this morning. I agree with EVERYTHING he says, except on the Kernot/Evans affair, which I think Laurie OPakes was correct to report. The heated Webdiary debate on this one is at Your say on the Cheryl Affair, Sex and the politicians, Rights of reply and An affair to remember.



GREG TURNBULL: Some cynics see honesty in government as a contradiction in terms. Does it have to be that way?

SIMON LONGSTAFF: Well, it can't be like that. In a democracy, it ultimately depends on - all authority comes from the people and they, w

test

If, to quote from the homepage, the problems lie with 'Big Parties, Big Business and Big Media', is there so much emphasis on the one individual ? Believe it or not, there are parts of the country that prefer Howard to journos (but don't forget that it was while campaigning for gun reform in front of country people that he wore a bullet resistant vest. But that was years ago, and nobody in this country remembers past the budgie cage lining from last week.

Quite frankly, if I judged ALL criticism of Howard by the mindless schoolboy sloganeering (examples from reader reviews include 'Howard and his oligarchy', 'ashamed to be an Australian', 'our own 'Austrian housepainter'') that comprises most of this site, then I would have to assume he was a saint.

I know that ain't

I am angry, I am upset to the point of tears, I am terribly sad. This morning I was reading in NHJ about the extraordinary security measures taken when Bush visited Canberra and I have just witnessed, in Adelaide, the extraordinary measures taken to protect JH.

I went to the Festival Theatre complex to book some tickets and saw half a dozen kids on the footpath with home-made banners and at least half a dozen police. Walking in towards the theatre I saw the white car, number C1. Some Liberal function was happening.

When I came out I hoped JH might cross my path (no one thought me a threat apparently), but he didn't. I saw that the protestors had moved and police had followed them. I stood next to them and heard that they were forbidden to make their protest and had to move on.

Six teenagers, none of them resisting or shouting, were just trying to reason with the police. But six police were not enough. Along came a white car and out gets a plain clothes - what?

Margo, having returned from 18 months in Palau, where I became for the first time an SMH and webdiary fan, I am stunned. Having devoured the book in 24 hours, I am still shaking my head that through our lack of awareness our democracy is disolving like sugar in water. The insidious nature of the erosion of individual and NGOs right is appalling. It makes me shudder.

I view Howard as Gollum in LOTR 3, his power addiction is terminal to all around him. The vulnerable 'articulates' in society (feminists, gay, indigenous, socialists etc...) and the environment suffer .

All I can say right now is Mr Latham 'Get well and help Australia recover!!.' I will take Margo's sugestion and vote independent first, Labor second - the first time ever for a small l liberal voter. Thank you Margo!!

Max Suich, old time media heavyweight, suggests today in The Age that our media establishment is failing in its duty, primarily due to playing the he said/she said game with the political parties, rather than seriously questioning establishment power. It's a very NHJ message.

And, with the American election heating up, an increasing number of entertainers are taking sides and campaigning for Kerry or Bush. This Crikey piece examines the politics of Bruce Springsteen who has teamed up with a number of high profiles musos, along with moveon.org, to take their message of moderation around the US.

I would be interested in joining / starting a NHJ! movement in Perth. Any others in Perth interested?

NHJ responds (AL): Fantastic idea, Stevan. Any interested parties should contact Stevan directly and perhaps soon enough we can unfurl a NHJ banner from one side of Australia to another!