Yesterday I was attacked by a peacock on the Pacific Highway at Ulmarra (NSW North Coast) while listening to an update on Mark Latham's pancreatitis

It's great to be back home in Australia!

It seems like every day, something quirky and unexpected happens. You only have to get out and about amongst it and before long you get a bizarre situation like the one above.

I'm certainly not the only one to love this sunburnt country. I was driving between Brisbane and Sydney and have never seen that part of the country looking drier. I could have flown but I wanted to drive and reconnect with my homeland. Dorothea Mackellar juxtaposed many images of Australia in 'My Country'. She wrote of the beauty and the terror of this place.

The juxtaposed images and situations this country has a habit of dishing up have always meant that more than anything you have to respect it. The blue ringed octopus may be pretty, but don't pick it up.

John Howard

I am living in Brisbane and was wondering if anybody has started their own NHJ OR SIMILAR interest group? Erosion of our DEMOCRATIC rights are only the symptoms of something much more sinister going on behind the scenes.

As an individual Social Justice Activist I'm doing the best that I can in bringing awareness to the masses by way of personally made advertisement and of course the display (at every opportunity possible) of the NHJ book. I can be contacted at 0422 276 294 or normsense@yahoo.com.au. Thanks - Keep up the excellent work.

Thank you for the bumper stickers sent me - they'll all be on Noosa-area vehicles by this evening. When it comes to getting the George Bush clone of John Howard out of office, I am so happy to be able to do more - to feel empowered. I have a dream of a renewed and reinvigorated Australia. I am grateful, and will leave you with an idiom I love which seems appropriate. It is sheer folly to tear at ones hair in grief, as though baldness will lessen the situation.

There is a destiny, which makes us brothers

None goes his way alone,

For all that we bring into the lives of others

Comes back into our own

Requiescat In Pace Prime Ministerial Shame

It is with a profound sense of incontinent hilarity that NHJ! announces the retirement of Australian Political Satire, who this morning cited 'personal reasons' when asked what lay behind his surprise decision to flee public life prior to the next Federal election. Pressed on rumours of a breakdown of his fertile 30-year marriage to the political columnist Underlying Serious Observation - who has also recently announced her departure from Canberra - Satire acknowledged that both he and his partner's careers had suffered lately as a result of what he would only describe as 'current affairs', before adding that in his case he saw 'no point in carrying on now anyway, given that all the most audacious lines have been nicked by the Straight Men.'

Asked to comment on the unexpected retirement, the Prime Minister declined to moralise on what he said were purely 'private' matters, but did urge Satire to reconsider his decision:

Keep up the good work. Your comments pointing out that both Liberal and Labor essentially represent the same vested power interests are spot on. There is only one way to change the status quo...and that is for voters to rattle the cage.

The big parties keep waffling on about the need for stable government, but in reality this means maintaining the status quo. Change can only occur through instability, s what is needed is concerted efforts to elect ndependents, not only to the Senate, but also the House of Reps, State Governments and Local Government.

We are in an age of 'snouts in the taxpayer trough',and everyone is at it. It is my view that voters have forgotten why governments exist (if they ever knew).

Margo, you may be interested to read a letter I wrote to Mr John Howard this evening, August 18. It contains a brief view of my concerns. Keep up your own good work!

The Prime Minister, Hon. Mr John Howard, MP, The Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Mr John Anderson, MP, For Information: >The Federal Member for Longman, Hon. Mr Mal Brough, MP

An Appeal from a Conservative Voter

Gentlemen,

It is with some considerable difficulty and regret that I have the need to pen this letter, for I feel that in recent months the credibility of our conservative Government has taken quite a battering. I have laboured over the content of such a letter as this for some weeks, but I shall now give it my best shot.

I am acutely aware that the previous ALP government under Mr Paul Keating received numerous letters of condemnation from my desk as their credibility, in my opinion, was completely in tatters. However, since the conservative government came to

First of all, I have been a long time admirer of your views, and was unlucky enough to be too late to get a first edition first printing of your book. I have settled for the second print first edition. I heard you speak on radio 3RRR in Melbourne on the breakfasters show and was moved by your passionate defence of Democracy and your invoking of Menzies, because I only know Menzies as being a stronger truer version of Howard, and at the end of the day Menzies would be mortified to see what had become of his Liberal party.

I was bought up on politics; cut me and I bleed Hansard. When I came home from Primary and Secondary school Parliamentary Question time was on the radio, and the radio was on in every room in the house - including the smallest one. I watched the news, A Current Affair with Willesee and then This Day Tonight.

After 5 hours of Politics 5 days a week it eventually sticks. I knew more about the Whitlam sacking in 1975 than my Grade 5 School teacher. I

I am quite intrigued by this site - I find it honest and containing some truths that are rarely dealt with these days. I used to be a Union official, and in that capacity, enmeshed via the TLC and the ACTU enmeshed in Labor Party Politics.

My very first visit to Sydney for an ACTU annual get together revealed to me the disgusting machinations of the Labour Party in action and, literally, left me speechless. Everything that I saw and heard at that meeting, ran CONTRARY to what I believed, in how Unionism and the Labor Party was supposed to work. In fact it was bloody obvious that the rank and file existed for one purpose only, and that was for the survival and benefit of the OFFICIALS of the connected organisations.

Every motion moved at that meeting was basically designed to further consolidate the status quo. It was a sad and sorry day for anyone who ever believed in any of the promises that are so casually spouted from the mouths of the officials of these organisat

I have a friend in Northern NSW who is a 'Green's' supporter and as a result of reading 'Not Happy John' decided to become involved in raising awareness in his local community. The operator of an ISP in the local area, through whom my friend is sending emails to valid account holders and accepting and willing recipients, is a member of the 'National Party'.

Firstly this operator told my friend to stop sending these emails containing views that he was apposed to and then the operator 'blocked' my friend's emails from being delivered to the receivers. The originating emails are being sent from a legitimate and respected ISP, where there is a valid account.

So this 'National Member', as an operator of an ISP, believes that he is above the laws of the land. He seems to be 'actively' intercepting and 'censoring' email, which is illegal under the Privacy Act and he contravenes the rulings of operation from the TIO.

Has anyone else had experiences similar to this ?

It is good to see that NHJ - the book is doing well and also NHJ the organisation. From where I sit up here on the Sunshine Coast (in the safe Liberal seat of Fairfax, I can only give the cause of unseating John my ethical support. I wish there were some way of unseating our local member as well as Abbott, Downer & Ruddock and maybe Costello.

While I can sympathise with John Valder' desire to rid his party of Howard as a symbolic cleansing, I suspect that the ideological rot is far deeper and it will take nothing less than a time in the wilderness for the party as a whole to cleanse it of the corruption of the far right ideology that has become accepted doctrine. I' sure that he realises as much as I do, that John Howard is NOT a great ideologist or strategist - others have created that framework. At be, Howard is a good tactician - given the scenario, he is capable of playing it for all it is worth, with dogged determination.

The bigger question for John Valder is

Margo, I went, I saw and ended up on Chanel Nine's Sunday program strolling through Eastwood Plaza handing out 'Not Happy John' stickers and am now running as an Independent candidate against Ruddock!

Here is a link to a non-political petition to be given to Mr Howard and Mr Ruddock during the next election: http://203.147.191.19/declaration.htm. The text is brief and to the point and I have received a strong positive response from everyone who has seen it to date. For this reason I now want to start getting signatures.

My flatmate was employed to design some graphics for a small crew that have designed a web based game called, 'donkey john'. I understand that the game has the same look and feel as the donkey kong game, except it has John Howard throwing barrels of oil from East Timor into Australia. Class.See http://www.donkeyjohn.com

Margo, I have just finished reading your book and am now recommending it to my friends and family. While I have long felt unease with the direction and policies of the current government, your research has confirmed some of my suspicions and delivered many other tangible examples of anti-democratic behaviour amongst our 'leadership'.

I feel that it would be worthwhile to look at the government's position on industrial relations and the trade union movement in the context of the defence of democracy. In my view trade unions, as collective organisations, provide vehicles for democratic participation. This goverment, however, misses no opportunity to attack trade unions and John Howard recently listed a 'reduction in trade union membership' as an example of his 'achievements' in economic management.

Maybe this is is an area in which JH merely uses the old 'economics above all' mantra as a pretext to stiffle dissent? Of course is unitarist stance also keeps big busines

Ms Kingston, I feel the words 'thank you' are simply not enough to express my gratitude for the existence of your book. I'm at a loss to describe the feelings NHJ has evoked in me. It is as if the world around me has changed in the space of 24hrs; from when I picked up the book yesterday afternoon to when I put it down today.

The sad thing is I was not really surprised with the atrocities contained within; it merely cemented my disappointment and lack of faith in our 'honourable' representatives. I only hope the growing discontent among my fellow Australians will be represented by something dramatic and remarkable in the next election giving way to a positive change for all.

As it stands I, in my mere 20 years of existence, feel there something is drastically wrong with our society when the youth of the country not only lose faith in its leaders but never have any to begin with. For we are the future, yet we have little hope. Where are our inspiring leaders? Who a

I wrote this letter to John Howard on August 17th:

There was a time when Australia was regarded, around the world, as an honest broker, a small, proud, courageous nation. A nation that neither bullied nor crawled, willing to stand up to its friends as well as its enemies. A nation proud of being honest and forthright almost to the point of rudeness, always ready to barrack for the under-dog and both preach and practice giving everyone a fair go. A country in which I was happy and proud to live and glad to see my children and grandchildren grow up.

What have you done to it John Howard?

In the years of your stewardship I have seen Australia become a bully. Our public servants and bureaucrats are bullied into keeping quiet or giving only the advice that you expect from them. Political protest is stifled by