With the Gaddafi regime on the verge of collapse, the world is waiting for the money shot - an image of a shackled or dead dictator paraded through the streets as a lowly criminal.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants to see more, she wants to see the man brought before an international criminal court; a nice thought but looking through the history of fallen dictators, let's just say "justice" is pretty unlikely to happen.

Dead, deposed or distant is all you really have to hope for, so let's hope too much blood isn't spilled in getting one of these results.

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Now some will say it's an exaggeration to suggest that this marks Australia's evolution to a one party state.

But how else can you define the last week?

For instance, the CPRS has been debated rigorously behind closed doors with Turnbull taking credit for amendments that will supposedly save thousands of jobs whilst still protecting the environment. Yet, his party's and the media's response, has been to focus on internal bickerings and leadership spills. 

Ignoring any work Turnbull did.

This has basically led to Rudd's little legislative baby being seen as his accomplishment- a dangerous precedent that will allow him to distort future debates based on 'his' successes. It will also allow him to claim the mandate of the people as the opposition's opinion polls drop and they as a party become even more dispirited.  

Without a balance and without real debate, we should be scared.

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The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, came out last week and made two gaffes at the Vietnam War Remembrance Day. The first was when she said that General Giap, Vietnam's iconic war hero, was dead. The second was when she said that the Vietnam War "is just a page in the history books".

Some of the actors might have passed on (not Giap, who turned 100 yesterday) but the history isn't dead. 

For the Vietnamese it hangs over everything, appearing in literallly every single state owned newspaper every day as if it happened yesterday. For veterans on either side it also seems inconsiderate to consign it to dead history, it is very much a living memory and it will live on, long after they've gone.

Maybe it would have been better to remember them by not saying it was time to forget.  . . read more

Tony Abbott, the self-styled ideological love-child of Bronwyn Bishop and John Howard has been playing some pretty petty party politics; stone-walling any Labor policy, regardless of its merits.

So step up Paul Keating, the ideological love-child of a brick wall and Jack Lang.

He has launched a vicious and burning attack on Abbott calling him an "intellectual nobody [with] no policy ambition", and the "poor man's John Howard".

Hard to disagree with, and hard to see how Abbott will slip out of the shadow of the anodyne if he doesn't start voting with Australia's, and not his interests in mind.  . . read more