Discovering Democacy & Citizenship - An informal community discussion group being held in Room 3, Rosny Library, Rosny, Tasmania commencing Tuesday 7th September 2004 2:00-4:00 PM. Thank you for the inspiraton in your book Margo, this has been incredibly timely and re-affirms my social activist commitment to 'raise public awareness' .

Continue your great work...Kind regards

Philip, Global citizen

The NHJ campaign in Bennelong is getting unprecedented levels of media coverage. Saturday's Financial Review featured a full page look at John Valder's ambitions. It makes for compelling reading.

The battle in Howard's backyard

Robert Milliken

The Valder campaign has an unsettling edge. It could be unprecedented for the serving Prime Minister to face a move to unseat him from a party elder statesman. John Valder, a former president of the Liberal Party and one of Sydney's best-connected fund-raisers, stands before a meeting in Cammeray, in the city's lower North Shore Liberal heartland, and says: 'The Howard government has become grubby. It's tainted. John Howard started out as Honest John. He basked in that. Now people laugh. He's perceived as Grubby John.'

Valder was speaking to supporters last Tuesday on the strategy for their campaign at the forthcoming federal election to oust John Howard as the MP for Bennelong. He wants the coali

Great book Margo. It has finally exposed what John Howard is, and that is a meglamaniac of the highest order. If this man is voted in for another term our democracy will be further eroded and this great country of ours cannot afford that.

It is such a great shame that some of our daily newspapers are gagged and this farcical goverment is not exposed more so the general puplic can evaluate what is going on in our so called democratic society without having the wool pulled over their eyes. So this great book has been a real eye opener to the average family like ours and at the next election we will do something to preserve our great democracy.

The High Court of Australia has confirmed that politicians can brazenly lie at elections with impunity.

(See Evans v Crichton-Browne, 1981)

Under the Electoral Act, The High Court confirmed candidates can say what they like to get your vote. And if they are elected on their lies, you have no opportunity to do anything about it until they come up for re-election. And they know it! So what can the poor voters do?

Well, if the pollies can't be sued under the Electoral Act, how about suing their political parties under civil or criminal law? Can it be done? Consider this:

Political parties who win 4% or more of the total vote receive an indexed grant from the public purse for each vote cast in their favour - currently it's almost $2.00 per vote. This amounts to tens of millions of dollars at every Federal election (they also

A great book to read but has had an effect on my blood pressure for sure. Now is the time for Howard to be kicked out with his cronies, like Abbot & Costello, Vanstone and et al. Reading the letter from Scraffton it really shows how they duck for cover and pass on the blame to the bureaucrats who cannot respond.

The Howards should be sent a bill for the BBQ party that he arranged for Bush and if he does not pay it send in the debt collectors like the way the Government does for overpayments mistakes it makes.

What a great book! Thank you for having the guts and determination to expose Howard the Coward. What lies, what corruption, it makes my blood boil!! It's time Howard was ousted!

PS: Where can I get the stickers from??

Gayl

NHJ! (JR): The best source of stickers now is John Valder's 'NHJ' juggernaut (office number 02-99296818 or email anyonebutjohn@yahoo.com). His campaign launch, where apparently they'll be on sale for $1, is at 10.30am on Tuesday, August 24 at the Eastwood Masonic Hall, 186 Rowe St, Eastwood (the Western end of the Rowe St Plaza).

I can't agree with the idea of suing politicians for lying as suggested by retired engineer. We'd then have courts deciding the truth of what was said/promised. People fought long and hard and beheaded at least one king to make Parliament supreme.

The best solution is to vote the bastards out.

I read your book to and from work for about a week, and several people on the tram asked me about it, seeing the front cover. I ended up having some interesting discussions with my fellow passengers, and surprisingly found a lot of common ground and, even from committed liberal voters, a sense that all is not well. My optimism is restored!

I've just returned from the US and was delighted to see how many advertisements there are on TV, not from the Democrat party, but advocating against Bush's re-election. Would anybody here be able to raise the money to do that?

Margo: Perhaps local groups could raise the money for ads on local TV or in local papers? Another reader, Ian Grant, also suggests that people could print off fliers for letter box drops where you live.

Small-l Liberals and true Burkian conservatives who watched John Valder on Sunday this morning may well have been a tad discombobulated by JV's final rather...er, 'cheeky' dig at the kind of tactic the on-going evolution of his once-beloved 'broad church' may yet introduce to Australian 'conservative' politicking:

GRAHAM DAVIS: But to sink the knife in one last time himself, John Valder makes yet another extraordinary claim - that so far to the right has John Howard taken the Liberals that he now fears a violent reprisal from the Party's more ardent supporters among the Young Liberals.
JOHN VALDER: It could take things as extreme of people like myself being roughed up, which I think is, in modern politics, the dirt units get out ...
GRAHAM DAVIS: When you say roughed up, you mean physically?
JOHN VALDER: Physically.
GRAHAM DAVIS: What, you're worried about being physic

I have wondered why I have constantly felt angered and a sense of fleecing by this government, but I am now able to now begin to put my finger on what I haven't quite been able to understand - thanks to your book.

I have endeavored over the past 7 years to add up the deceit, lies, spin, mistruths about the Howard government and the list grows daily. I have mostly been a Labor supporter over the years, but became concerned by a sense of arrogance and dismissal of the people by Keating in his last years.

I like you decided in 2001 to vote Greensm - shame more voters don't support Bob Brown. Howard has taught us that to lie and get away with it is OK. He has made it a pastime. And I now feel sick to the stomach each time I hear him speak more crap and never take ownership on truth and real human issues.

I enjoyed your book, however, I did find the subtle suggestion that Pauline Hanson represents people who feel suppressed by Government, Big Business and Big Media a little difficult to swallow.

Hanson was elected because she appeared on the Liberal ticket (even though she had been disendorsed shortly before the federal election). She had also stated bigoted/conservative (words that are synonymous with eachother) views concerning the unfortunate plight of the indigenous members of our Australian community. Categorisations such as the 'Aboriginal industry'evidence such bigotry because they are entirely false and expressed for the purpose of vilification.

Hanson then got her juggernaught moving following her maiden speech in parliament where she stated that Australia was being swamped by Asians and that Multiculturalism did not work. No other comments were given any significance by the media.

It is not difficult to categorise her support as predominately from th

I'm enjoying the book immensely. My wife has commented that I've been thumping the table at breakfast. Actually it is good to feel that that anger over the damage that's been done to our democracy can be purposefully directed. And shared. I'm looking forward to hearing you speak about the 'State of the Nation' at the Melbourne writers festival.

We are learning about Fact and Opinion, and Denotation and Connotation in my Year 9 English class. Many in the class have rated a Shampoo commercial over a war report as containing more reliable facts! These are kids from the Western suburbs who are deeply suspicious of our Pollies as well as our news coverage.

Just today, a couple had the rest amazed and raving about the duplicity of George W depicted in Fahrenheit 9/11. (They led the conversation, I just chaired). I hope and pray the sentiment is coming from their voting parents.

I'm Very Happy to be aboard the Bandwagon,

I have just returned home from the Adelaide Imprints Bookshop launch of your book. Thank you for including us in your itinerary, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing you speak. I hope you have provided a lightning rod for the regime change you spoke of.

Unfortunately time beat the questions, but I wanted to report an observation, and hear your opinion. I might add I have not read your book yet, though plan to as soon as my partner has finished reading it - he keeps having to put it down to calm down his rage every now and then, so it seems to be working!

Around the time of Tampa, I became concerned about the greater use of marketing style 'jargon' being used by the Government, and particularly John Howard, that is repeated by the press without contradiction, so in the end you hear the general population using the same words (thereby convinced somehow that the government is correct).

When I was a kid, people in desperate need of asylum were called 'refugees' or '

I bought the book while having a lunch time browse and I'm up to page 9 and feeling better already. I was feeling particularly cheesed off with John and his mates this week.

Last week my daughter brought home the papers for a school council meeting. I'm on the council of her value free zone (sorry I should say her public school). Included with the papers was a note from the principal saying that our local member (Trish Worth) had been on the phone to him and wanted to know if Brendan Nelson could visit the school during the election campaign.

My blood boiled. They use every opportunity to bag public education and now they want photo opportunities. They are pouring public money into private schools. Just a coincidence that the school (Unley Primary School) is at the liberal voting end of one of the most marginal electorates in Australia (Adelaide).

So I went to the school council meeting and tried to sink the visit. No luck - the principal said the state educa