I've just finished reading 'Not Happy John' - I've gobbled it up in the past week on a couple of plane rides, and it's bright cover has helped more than one animated conversation begin! Thanks, thanks, thanks.

Thanks for the passion and the honesty you brought to the book and for putting the whole thing together. Thanks for the balance in your analysis and the inclusion of people from other points on the compass, such as Harry Heidelberg. Thanks for the devastating clarity and the spirit of hope with which you unwrapped our story.

You unpacked some of the events that I knew already were on the nose, and you opened up inside stories that detailed things I had only guessed at, and some like the media ownership debates and Brian Harradine's role in it, that I had forgotten. (Your portrait of Harradine prompts me to write to him too.)

I'm a Catholic priest working mostly in education. Through my work, my song-writing and my own website, I've been doing a bit to help a conversation keep going around issues of justice, especially the asylum-seeker situation, along with a bit of advocacy on some particular cases from time to time.

I've just been listening to Bob Ellis talking with Richard Glover about his new book, speaking about the power of Murdoch and Co. Now and then the weight of the power of these anti-democratic heavies seems too large to deal with. It hits home doubly in the Church's case, as we see Howard and some elements of our own Church leadership in bed together when it suits them. The recent announcement re Notre Dame University's coming to Sydney is a case in point. Public reasons are given that are meant to massage the public perception - we have our own parallel phrases to Howard's 'National Interest' mantra. The real agenda is more a matter of ideological control.

You've brightened the landscape for me and I'll keep chipping away with fresh hope and energy - especially as this election looms. The election will be announced, we heard this afternoon, when 'It's in the National Interest.' Yeah right!!

Thanks again - you're a ripper. I'm grateful to you on several counts as some of my more politically clear-cut relatives are going to find a challenging blue-covered book in their Christmas package this year.