Margo, I have just finished your wonderful book and am almost in tears at the extent of the lies, deceit and corruption. But it has fired me up! I am in the middle of a mass email to everyone I know who loves Australia and is appalled at the direction JH has taken it. Keep up the good work, more people than you know support what you and your colleagues are doing. Have a great day.

Thanks for writing 'Not Happy John!'. I've just finished reading it - it took me about 2 days, a record short time. While I have never been a fan of John Howard - I grew up in Ipswich during the Bjelke Petersen and Malcolm Fraser reigns and I doubt I will ever vote for a Conservative Government as a result of that - there were so many other things you have opened my eyes about.

Yes, I think our democracy may be in trouble, but I also think that on the whole Australians can see through the bullshit they are being fed - believing that us voters will be sufficiently distracted by the Olympics that we will ignore everything else for a fortnight seriously underestimates us and anyone who relies on this kind of distraction to get the better of us will be in for a shock. This is not to take away from your central point though -- we must get involved. Feeling disenfranchised and excluded is the easy option, and simply an example of learned helplessness and an abrogation of responsib

In John Clarkson's (Narangba, Qld) posting dated 20/08/2004 of his letter to the Prime Minister, amongst others, he states that he is opposed to the change in the law, enacted by the current government, to allow dual nationality. He seems to think that this was a new development.

It is not.

Dual nationality has always been allowed for people emigrating to Australia and becoming naturalised whose country of origin allowed it and Australian citizens who were entitled, by birth, to the nationality of their parents (or even grandparents in the case of some countries). These groups represent in excess of 2.5m Australians.

The only people who lost their Australian Citizenship if they 'acquired' foreign nationality were those Australians who were not already entitled to it.

Therefore the repeal of Section 17 of the Australian Citizenship Act (1948) just brought the law into line for

Sometimes it seems like a cry in the wilderness. For those who will believe the premise that something pretty wild and vicious has our democracy in its teeth, let's not spend our precious time in arguing about the true nature of the enemy of our democracy, the dingo. Many, many people say the dingo is John Howard. They'd only be partly right. Others say the dingo is Rupert Murdoch or big business. Perhaps it's George Bush.

Facts are facts. We're dealing with a mongrel dog here. Its a bitser made up of the elements above and a lot more (nearly all of which are discussed in NHJ). A rabid mongrel dog that needs to be put down and only the people acting in concert have the ability to save our democracy from those pressing teeth.

What do you do when you feel threatened by a dingo or other wild dog? You don't argue about what its name is or what colour it is. You're in mortal danger and you need to remember the rules of 'How to be Dingo-Smart' (produced by Queen

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

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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