Like my co-Samizdatista Jonathan Pearce, and like Mark Holland of Blognor Regis, I have also been watching the Winter Olympics. In truth I find the winter Olympics to rather more fun than the summer Olympics, partly because it is genuinely a more lighthearted event with more of a party atmosphere than the summer games, and partly because power in the world is rather turned upside down. (Here is a competitor from Norway - he must be good. Here is someone from the United States of America - he will be mediocre). Mostly though, I think it is the simple insanity of many of the events that I find most enjoyable. Winter sports lead to extremes of human achievement that (a) one is amazed that they are possible, but not so much as (b) one wonders why anyone would actually do this, and how the sport was invented in the first place, for surely the first twelve people to try it must have ended up killing themselves.

Mark wonders just how Britain has a luge team, or as he puts it...

Anyway, I get to wondering how on earth a chap from Pinner decides to take up the sport. I mean, say for instance I'd been so inspired by the top luging at the Calgary Olympics that I'd immediately thought, "That's the event for me!" where am I supposed to go from there? If I'd have gone to my games teacher, Mr "Manly" Stanley, and said, "you know how this football and rugby doesn't interest me at all, well instead I fancy taking up sliding down an icy tube at 130 km/h whilst lying on a glorified tea tray". What's he supposed to do? Phone up the local British Luge Federation affiliated club? That's not going to happen is it.

Of course, in Australia, the answer as to how and why people take these things up, is that there is an official taxpayer funded organisation that encourages them to do it. At the winter olympics, Australia tends to specialise in something called the "Womens aerials". For those who have not watched aerials (one of the events in a wider school of insanity called "freestyle skiing"), it involves skiing down a slope, up a ramp, doing three backwards somersaults and a double twist, and then landing on the snow on your head and breaking your neck.

Actually you are not supposed to land on your head and break your neck. You are supposed to land upright on skis and continue down the mountain. Landing on your head and breaking your neck does appear to happen relatively frequently, however. Again, the question of why anyone would do this does come to mind, and the question of why the Australian taxpayer pays for it comes to mind even more.

And to answer this, we have to go back to the 1976 summer olympics in Montreal. For the first time in a very long time, Australia won no gold medals. This was widely perceived as a national catastrophe. Government ministers descriped it as "disgraceful", and it was generally assumed that the rest of the world was laughing at us with derision. (I am assuming that this is pretty much the first that any of our non-Australian readers have heard of it, but if by any chance you were laughing with derision at Australia in 1976 for this reason, I would like to hear about it). It was decided by the federal government that something had to be done about this, and a state funded organisation named the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) was set up to indentify potential Olympic medal winners and coach them to gold medal winning glory.

And at its stated aim, this seemed to work. Australia won a few gold medals in each of 1980, 1984, and 1988, and we were generally happy.

However, something happened in the world in 1989. The cold war ended. Suddenly, many experienced sports coaches with experience in running state funded success at all costs sports academies were out of work. While the United States and West Germany even did their best to poach the best scientists and engineers from the former communist bloc, Australia poached many fine East German sports coaches, and invited them to do what they had previously done best. Like East Germany and the Soviet Union, Australia was interested mainly in appearing as high up the medal table as possible, and didn't care so much in what sports or events the medals were won. They got down to the old East German trick of identifying sports and events where the competition was weak, an concentrating on those events. (One side effect of this both in East Germany and Australia was a greater concentration on women's events, where there was often less depth in the fields). Plus, they established an incentive scheme in which sports which won Olympic medals received increased (taxpayer) funding and those which did not had their funding cut. (In particular, Australia specialises in weird track cycling events too obscure for anyone capable of winning a stage in the Tour de France from having the slightest interest in. Like most cycling teams, the Australians have had their share of drug scandals as well).

At its stated aim of winning lots of gold medals, this scheme was hugely successful. In the summer games, Australia went from 3 gold medals in 1988 to 7 in 1992 to 9 in 1996 to 16 in 2000 (possibly boosted by home town advantage) to an utterly outrageous 17 in Athens in 2004. (In the last two games, Australia managed to finish higher than all nations other than the United States, Russia, and China). Rather than giving Australians the chance to cheer a few times in a couple of weeks, the AIS had managed to give us an East German like procession of medals. The funding system had grown out of control in terms of total budget, and the incentive sheme had led to a concentration of funding on a smaller number of more successful sports.

And, while Australian does contain mountains with ski resorts, and while substantial numbers of Australians do ski recreationally, winter sports are not something we traditionally devote a great deal of time to. However, the incentive scheme of the AIS applies to winter sports just as it does to summer sports. The same process of identifying sports with weak fields in which we might win medals went on, and one of the events that came up was the women's aerials. This actually requires similar skills to certain gymnastic events, and the required skiing skills are only moderate. As the AIS already had a gymnastic program, retired female gymnasts were encouraged to take up skiing. And it worked, Australia produced a number of fine woman aerial skiers, which culminated in Alisa Camplin winning the gold medal in the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002. (Just as an observation, in her career Camplin has suffered a broken collarbone, broken hand, separated shoulder, torn Achilles tendon and nine concussions). As this was successful under the incentive scheme, funding for women's aerials (and winter sports in general) was of course increased at the AIS, and Australia once again hopes to win medals in the event this year.

Thus a government program expands, even one devoted to encouraging women to do extremely dangerous reverse backflips in freezing conditions. Really.

Update: Someone in the comments has asked me just how much money exactly the Australian government spends on this. Perusal of Treasury documents gives a budget of $111 million Australian dollars (at current exchange rates that is $US82m or £47m - the Australian population is about a third of the British population and about one fifteenth of the US population) for "Excellence in sports performances by Australians" (ie elite athlete development) for the 2005-6 financial year. There is also some money spent by state governments on similar programs, but the federal expenditure makes up the bulk of it. If you (generously) assume that Australia wins 20 Olympic gold medals (winter and summer) every four years, and the budget is $110m a year, then the gold medals are costing the taxpayer $22 million each. To me that seems a lot.

"We've taken the biggest surge in national income in years and squandered it. The punters are spending every cent they can and Canberra is encouraging that by handing back its share of the commodity price loot as tax cuts."

Who would say such a thing? Sounds like the rantings of some bleeding heart welfarist think tank, rather than Australia's leading economics consultancy, as Access Economics likes to describe itself.

Yes, Keynesian wannabes Access Economics released a report fretting about interest rate hikes, and it feels the answer is to remove the financial options of individuals and ensure that the government collects and hoards ever more of the people's income. I suppose one should look at it this way; some day soon you might benefit if you find yourself in a geographic or demographic sweet spot that the government needs to court come election time.

Talking about rum plans, this proposal from Deloitte floats an admirable (though not particularly original) idea - swapping tax deductions on work expenses for across-the-board tax cuts. Liberals will start to choke when they see Deloitte's adjustment of the progressive income tax rates:

The poorest tax payers would see their rate cut from 15 per cent to 4 per cent, with the 42 per cent tax rate paid by people earning $75,001-$125,000 falling to 33 per cent. The top 47 per cent rate paid by those earning more than $125,000 could be cut to 44 per cent.

Deloitte would surely have access to the masses of theoretical and empirical evidence showing the superior economic benefits of shrinking the gap between top marginal rates of income tax and the lower rates, not to mention the moral argument. Why this EC (and I do not mean European Community, though maybe I do...) drivel, then? Why do Deloitte believe they need to field a taxation proposal that is going to win elections?

Thankfully, the political party that prides itself on its fiscal responsibility and economic liberalism holds government in Australia. Yet we have a curmudgeonly treasurer (chancellor of the exchequer) who steadfastly refuses to budge over our absurdly high top marginal tax rate of 47%. He is more than happy to ladle out benefits to politically useful groups, however. Oddly named, the Liberal Party of Australia, when one considers it is run by big government conservatives.

Couple these few good men with the leading economics consultancies, who seem to be trying to outdo each other in the social crusading stakes.

Have these people never heard of the Chicago school? I despair.

I have not commented on the recent riots in Sydney, which have been reported in the global media, for the reason that the scale and size of them are not particularly great. They certainly have been overblown in the media, both in Australia and overseas.

Of course, that is not to detract from the nastiness of them for the victims. People have been beaten, stabbed, and had their property vandalised in a deeply unpleasant way. But compared to what happened in Paris, these disturbances are very small beer.

However they are also very different to the Paris riots because the causes of them are totally different. In Paris, people were rioting because of the perceived heavy handedness of the French state and discrimination issues. There may or may not have been an Islamic element as well.

The Sydney disturbances were nothing of the sort. They were started by outraged 'surfers' and beach bums who were incited by populist media types, and also by some deeply unpleasant racist thugs. They were continued by the people that they were protesting about- the gangs of thugs who have been causing a constant law and order issue for Sydney residents for several years now.

These gangs have been allowed to 'run amok' because, not to put too fine a point on it, they are Lebanese Muslims. The nominally 'centre left' ALP state government has been too terrified of being accused of racism to uphold the rule of law. This leads to massive double standards in the enforcement of justice, which has been a feature of policing in Sydney.

There have been two developments in consequence to these riots, both of which are deeply depressing. The first is that the NSW State government is using the riots to claim for itself massive increases in police powers in order to 'deal' with the situation. Those who have seen the NSW police force in action over a long period are unlikely to have confidence that these powers will not be abused.

Secondly, the Australian media has indulged itself in a veritable orgy of self-flagellation about race relations in Australia and 'multiculturalism'. The few blogs willing to point out the law enforcement issues involved have been ignored.

Equality before the law is supposed to be a core principle of any government that fancies itself to be democratic. Yet in Australia, no one wants to talk about it. Draw your own conclusions.

In the Sydney Morning Herald entertainment blog, Edmund Tadros made this rather extraordinary claim on Wednesday:

Australian blogs will never be as hard-hitting as their overseas counterparts because of our restrictive laws.

Now, I wonder, why would anyone think that? How do you define 'hard-hitting', anyway?

Is a hard-hitting blog one that causes events, especially public events?

Is a hard-hitting blog one that changes public opinions, or stimulates thought?

In the United States, political groups have used the internet to telling effect, and blogs have also exerted a powerful if difficult to define effect on public debate. The rise of Howard Dean, the Trent Lott affair, Rathergate and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were all things that could have happened in the context of the Australian legal environment.

Australia also had an election in 2004, but there was only one major effort to use the Internet to influence the Australian public, that being the 'Webdiary' of Margo Kingston, (which was then hosted by the Sydney Morning Herald). The reasons why 'Webdiary' was so ineffective in the public debate were numerous, but the principle reason must surely be the total intellectual incoherence of the site and the vulnerabilitiy of the main contributors to the most paranoid interpretation of public events. The most famous example of this was probably the famous 'anti-gravity' article in 2003, but it was never easy to take seriously a campaign lead by a senior journalist who could not spell. Margo's spelling errors and flights of fancy deprived her campaign of credibility and provided a rich lode of material for the likes of Tim Blair and "Professor Bunyip" to mock and ridicule her.

The more prosaic truth is that many Australian blogs are not very good, and those that are good tend to either be more interested in talking about policy of interest to a small few, or are devoted to dissecting and satirising Australian culture. The plain fact is that 'the great Australian political blog' is yet to be born. There's plenty of room for an Australian blog with journalistic skills and political savvy to wake up the slumber in Australian politics, and it has nothing to do with the Australian legal climate.

But it certainly will not be a blog that chewed through $44,000 in its first 10 months as an independent entity.

Seventeen people have been arrested in Sydney and Melbourne and charged with various offences with relation to an intention to commit terrorist attacks on Australian targets. Police found chemical stockpiles in their raids which were similar to the sort used in the London bombings in July.

There is no indication as yet as to what the terrorists had in mind as targets, but it does appear as if the groups had reached an advanced stage of planning. As a result, a co-ordinated surveillance effort of 18 months was turned into a massive police operation involving domestic security services, the Australian federal police and state police forces. They swooped in co-ordinated raids to apprehend the suspects.

The suspects all appear to be followers of one Abdul Nacer Benbrika, a radical Muslim cleric based in Melbourne.

This is a major tactical victory against terrorists in Australia, because it demonstrates the ability of police and security agencies to effectively counter bomb-making efforts before they have a chance to succeed. Islamist extremists who wish to strike in Australia now clearly know that they will have to devote greater efforts to security and that in turn means less efforts can go into creating mayhem. This in turn means that international groups are less likely to devote resources like bomb-makers, money and propaganists towards a 'hard' target like Australia.

In the long term, though, it is nevertheless of concern because this affair reveals that even in faraway Australia, Islamic hatemongers can find willing tools that can be manipulated into fulfilling their murderous fantasies. Until the hatemongers are stopped, it seems that the terrorism will continue, with all the loss of life, liberties and humanity that follows.

Australian civil liberties are looking increasingly shaky as the Australian government proposes sweeping new laws that give security services astonishing powers to control 'people of interest'.

UP to 80 Australian Muslims could immediately be placed under effective house arrest under the Government's proposed anti-terror laws.

The laws mean they could each be required to wear tracking devices, or prevented from working, or using the telephone or internet, or communicating with certain people.

Fancy that. The state wants to have the power to rob you of your right to make a living and put an electronic dog collar on you.

The laws will apply to anyone who has trained overseas with any of the 17 banned terror groups, including al-Qa'ida, Jemaah Islamiah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Abu Sayyaf and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The intent of the law is that authorities leave these people alone if it is considered they no longer pose a security risk.

Oh, so that makes it okay, then?

I must confess to having mixed feelings about this. I do not want people who have been hanging around that sort of outfit running around in Australia without some sort of supervision. I loathe these barbarians and their theological nonsense, and I concede that we do not live in a perfect world.

But to see people who have not actually committed an offence to be deprived of their ordinary right to make a living, and to be dragged hither and yon at the whim of an Australian beaurocrat is almost as grating as an Islamofascist.

There are real threats that Australia have to face. This story outlines how the Australian government sees the situation. But there are some troubling aspects.

For example, there hasn't been any sort of terrorist attack in Australia since 2001 by Islamic extremists. The report claims that they've already disrupted several attacks. Therefore it seems that the onus is definately on the Government to prove the case that it actually needs these new powers. Instead,

The Government insists it should be taken on trust that the new laws will be carefully implemented and used only sparingly.

Only the most casual observer of the Australian political scene will have any trust in the government's ability to do so. The Australian government has been mired in controversy over mis-management of the immigration system, and its competence in security matters is hard to assess. And with the re-introduction of 'sedition' laws, the government's ability to prosecute people for their opinions is wider then ever.

All this is troubling enough, but what is even more alarming is the way democratic governments all over the world seem to be competing with each other to take more powers to control and imprison their citizens. The common thread is that if you are different, you are a threat.

Care to explain to me how that makes dealing with real terrorists any easier?

Australian blogger Tex has an encounter with a former Green Party candidate, and learns a few things. Not least about economics, where Thom Lyons explains that:

Socialism is the syetem of choice is the most prosperous countries.

as well as several choice facts about 9/11, Cuba and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Tex has more patience with this sort of character then I do. But the sad thing is that Lyons' views are becoming more and more prevalent in Australian society.

The surging interest in cricket in England is having an effect in Australia. The South Australian Cricket Association warned today that the England vs Australia Test due in late 2006 might well be sold out. At least 6,000 English visitors are expected for the match.

And they immediately followed that up with yet another demand for government funding to expand the seating capacity of the Adelaide Oval.

I am confused. Do I laugh now, or do I cry?

The other day I was driving round my local area of Adelaide when I noticed four youths sitting down on the pavement, a gap between each one, as police interrogated them for some reason. I thought it was curious; I thought it doubly curious when I returned ten minutes later and they were still there, still being interrogated by the local police. I would have thought that by then, the police station would have been more appropriate. But then the methods and means of the local police have always baffled me.

I wonder what accents the police officers had. The South Australian police have found it hard going to find suitable local candidates so they are looking to hire British police officers to meet the shortfall.

One thing that the British recruits might be surprised to find is that Australia does have a 'class system' and its most eloquent expression is in the way police treat members of the public. People who are clearly unemployed or blue collar factory workers, such as myself, will generally get a pretty raw deal in any dealings with the police and at the other end of the spectrum, members of the legal fraternity can claim special rights under the 'Mates Act', like this chap did.

On one level, this story is an interesting example of globalisation at work. An organisation with specialist HR needs can now search for people from around the world. On another level, it is a warning, not least to any Brazillians in raincoats in Adelaide, to exercise caution. SA police are armed at all times on duty, and the State is not your friend.

Australia is not famous for higher education. Indeed, "Australia" and "Higher education" would strike most people as an oxymoron in the "French Military Victory" class.

Needless to say, the Australian Government has long tried to nudge Australia's university system towards some sort of quality, and has permitted private Universities to be established. In addition, the government has encouraged students from overseas to pay their way through Australian universities, as a way for universities here to raise money.

Recently, the government has also allowed Australians to enter universities by paying their own way.

This move towards a more financially sustainable education system has not been well received by many members of the Australian academic ecosystem. One of whom has put together a rather amusing parody website which takes a humorous potshot at trends in Australian university education.

Underling the parody is the normal assumtion that anything in the private sector must be inferior, and that any private qualification must obviously be worthless as it can be bought.

But the site has caused a bit of a flurry of attention in various educational quarters in Australia, and one consultant has been tracking the progress of this satirical site.

This recalls to me the time, long ago now, when I was studying like a demon in order to obtain the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) qualification, back in the dark days when networking involved lots of wires. As it was, I was dating a university student at the time and she was appalled that I had to acheive an 85% score to pass and obtain the qualification. She was doing sociology or something of that ilk in a Melbourne university and told me smugly that she only needed to score 55% to pass. Easy for her, but who do you think knew their subject better? After all, Cisco had a real stake in me being proficient in knowing how to use their product.

Thanks to Professor John Kersey for alerting us to these sites.

It is hard to know what to make of this article, which seems to be pressing for an ID card system for Australia. Australian Prime Minister John Howard seems to be not so keen on the idea, but refuses to rule it out.

More depressing is the quote from the chief of the Australian Defence Association calling for ID cards because terrorists do not like it:

Australia Defence Association chief Neil James said he believed Mr Howard was considering an identity card because it was identified as one of the chinks in Britain's counter-terror armour. "If you have a look at Europe the terrorists gravitate to Britain because all of the European Union countries have some form of national identity system," he said.

Unfortunately this is fairly indicative of the quality of debate in Australia regarding security matters.

(Hat tip- Tim Blair)

Chen Yonglin, a Chinese diplomat with inside knowledge of his country's large scale espionage activities within Australia, has revealed that the Chinese intelligence services sometimes 'forcibly repatriate' (i.e. kidnap) political enemies in Australia and bring them back to China. He has also just tried to defect in order to tell his story and has, with indecent haste, been refused political asylum within only 24 hours of asking for it.

Why? Because too many members of the Australian ruling class are in the pockets of Chinese business interests and allowing Chen Yonglin to defect could cause the Chinese government to threaten lucrative trade deals with Australian companies.

Our Australian Samizdatistas have often told me just how cynical and corrupt the people at the top of Australian politics are but I still find this deeply disturbing. These are shameful days down-under and I hope a lot of Australians are angry as hell.

Fancy that.

An interesting email arrived in my inbox this morning. It was from Stephen Mayne, telling me, along with 5,300 other subscribers, that he and his wife had sold their e-magazine crikey.com.au for $A1 million.

The interesting thing about this is the business plan that Mayne established. Although the website holds plenty of interesting articles about Australian politics, news, sports, media and business, the main effort that Mayne and his team put their energies into is the daily news email. Subscribers pay a fee, and in return, the daily email with between 15 and 20 news and gossip items come into their inbox.

It is a gossipy sort of publication, but no more so then the mainstream Australian media, and it was at least a different point of view then the reliably statist points of view that are published in the mainstream Australian press. Although Mayne has given up control, he will still be contributing so I hope the 'crikey.com.au' spirit lives on, and I am pleased for Mayne personally. The man has worked incredibly hard over the last five years to build up his little niche in the Australian media.

And it also gives hope to others that there is a long term viability to 'new media'. You do have to work incredibly hard, and take risks, and you need a bit of luck. The only equivilent online publication I can think of is the Indian website Tehelka.com, which, after many adventures, seems to have made the transition from online to print media. (Samizdata magazine, anyone?). So well done to Mayne, and I hope he enjoys his new fortune to go with his more established fame.

In case you get caught short Down Under, the Australian government has a website to help you.

None of us are getting any younger. This truth, long recognised, has finally dawned on the Australian government, and the media is in panic mode about the cost of it all.

No wonder. Australia has a socialised medicine and health system, so the costs could well rise to infinity. At least we will be able to read about it because one of the few medical procedures in Australia that are not regulated to death is laser eye surgery.

But there are none that are as blind as those who will not see.

We will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns. I don’t think people should have guns unless they’re police or in the military or in the security industry. There is no earthly reason for people to have... ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia

So said re-elected Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in an interview on April 17 this year. (Audio here). While Howard is certainly America's friend in the war against Islamic fundamentalism, you should actually be careful before assuming that he shares your position on much else. This is after all a man who once introduced a hypothecated income tax specifically for the compulsory purchase of people's firearms.

(Link via Tim Lambert.)

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has called an election for October 9. So we get to choose once again between a fuzzy right-wing statism, or a 'Blair wannabe' statism. You will excuse me if I do not get ferociously excited about this choice.

One of the worst things about Australian elections is the placards that political parties insist on hanging on street poles. At no other time of the year are any other organisation permitted to do this, but political parties do like their perks; inflicting an eyesore I call it.

I am not going to vote - I will defy the State, and not vote. That is an offence which will cost me a parking ticket fine. It is actually also illegal for me to advocate not voting to other people as well.

As to who will win, I think the 'Blair Wannabe' Party will win; I wrote about this back in June and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. In the great scheme of things, this is a small matter but it will consume the local media and blogs here for the next six weeks.

Although Australia and the US have signed a free trade agreement, it is an imperfect document, with many exemptions on both sides. In Australia, there has been a loud campaign to have existing 'local content' rules for Australian television excluded, and this campaign has been successful.

The 'local content' rules mean that a certain proportion of television programmes that are broadcast on Australian television must be locally made. The scrapping of this rule was an American objective in the free trade negotiations, as it meant that US television companies were restricted in their access to the Australian television market by what in effect is a quota.

Australia resisted this; we should not have.

Australian television has had local content rules for a long time, they provide that at least 55% of the programming on Australian television between 6am and midnight must be locally produced. This creates a local internal market for television, which is actually quite a cut-throat industry. The economies of scale mean that Australian television products are not cost-competitive, but they do rate well.

That is the rub- many of the people involved in the industry here do not wish to concern themselves with anything so grubby as 'ratings'; but would rather follow their artisitic vision. A noble thing, to be sure, but television is a business. Local variants of the 'reality tv' genre have been ratings winners and have made a lot of money for their networks through advertising sales.

The local lobby present a 'nightmare' scenario where Australian television is totally dominated by US television product. This seems curious since Australian television networks are more worried by market share rather then raw cost. But then the local content lobby are more about emotion then cool business sense. In point of fact, the ratings show that many of the best rating programs are local productions.

But there is a strange sense of values in the local content lobby. Their catchphrase seems to be 'telling Australian stories with Australian voices'. But this is a remarkable way to be going about it. It is almost like forcing a 'book quota' on Australian readers, making Australian readers read a set proportion of Australian written books.

What is screened on Australian television screens should be decided by the television networks, who make (more or less) rational decisions based on the ratings of what people want, rather then by a government directive decreeing what is best for them. It is most unfortunate that this principle has been lost again.

After legalising prostitution last year, the New Zealand government has now issued a 100 page Occupational Health and Safety manual.

The recommendations - which the New Zealand Herald said will also be distributed to brothels and sex workers - include detailed advice on safe sex practices such as the storage and handling of sex toys and disinfecting equipment.

Employers are asked to ensure condoms in a variety of shapes and sizes are always available, and to provide beds that support the back for a variety of services to be performed without strain or discomfort.

Sex workers are cautioned to watch out for occupational overuse syndrome, often caused by rapid repetitive tasks or forceful movements, and to carry a small torch in case they need to check clients for sexually transmitted diseases.

Comprehensive training of staff in the safe use of all equipment, particularly for fantasy work, is also recommended.

Ah, governments. Where would we be without them?

On August 17, 1980, a woman named Lindy Chamberlain reported to the police that her nine week old baby daughter Azaria had been taken by a dingo (ie a wild dog) from the tent where she and her family had been holidaying in a campsite near Ayers Rock (Uluru) in Australia's Northern Territory.

The events of the resulting Azaria Chamberlain case, in which Chamberlain was ultimately convicted of the murder of her daughter, and the conviction was later quashed after the forensic evidence was completely discredited, are epochal and notorious in the country's psyche. There are occasional media and news events when a whole nation is watching. What they are and will be is sometimes hard to predict, and it's sometimes hard to tell just why everybody is watching, but this was one of those cases where people were watching because of the bizarre quality of the case and the luridness of the allegations. And as nothing has ever really been settled, the case has lingered on in the media in the 24 years since. Despite various claims, most people (including myself) have been of the belief that we would never see definite evidence as to exactly what happened.

At least, not until this week. As it happens, a story that has been told this week that may or may not be true (although once some excavations have taken place we will know), but which is almost as strange as the original events, and which would (if true) explain all the facts. Although maybe it will be true and we still won't have any definite proor, because four of the five people involved are dead, including those who would know the location of the body. So perhaps an old man has just made up a story.

But first, the background.

After Mrs Chamberlain reported the loss of her baby to the police, a huge search took place, but the body of baby Azaria was never found. However, some of the baby's clothes, in particular the jump-suit that she had been wearing at the time of the attack, was found. At a subsequent inquest, it was determined that in the state it was in, the suit could not have been ripped off the baby by the dingo, and that it would have had to have been removed by a person. The inquest came to the curious conclusion that the baby had been taken and killed by a dingo, and that the body had been later disposed of "by person or persons unknown".

This was a curious and unsatisfactory finding, and in the belief that additional evidence had been found, the relevant coroner's office reopened the case later that year, and a second inquest took place. Evidence was presented that bloodstains had been found on the floor of the Chamberlain's car, and that the car had been used to dispose of the body after Lindy Chamberlain had killed her own daughter. It was ultimatelly ruled that sufficient evidence had been found for a prosecution, and in 1982 Lindy Chamberlain was put on trial for murder.

At this point, all kinds of allegations flew around Australia. Michael Chamberlain was a pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which was not a religion most Australians knew much about, and strange stories went around about blood rituals and other goings on in this in fact fairly inoffensive church. Lindy Chamberlain had been calm and collected after losing her baby, and had later sold her story to a women's magazine, which somehow wasn't "appropriate behaviour" in the circumstances. (Hysterics and crying would presumably have been better). In any event, the case went to trial, and Lindy Chamberlaiin was convicted of murder, and spent four years in prison.

However, as the years went on, it became clearer and clearer that the evidence against her (which had been mostly circumstantial in the first place) was weak. There was a question of motive, and there was no body, and there were obvious defences that were actually not used in the trial but one thinks would have been if the Chamberlains were lying. ("So what if there was blood in the car. Azaria had a nose bleed on the way to the camp site"). Eventually, the forensic lab that had supposedly identified the blood was demonstated to be completely incompetent and it seems now more likely that it was red paint (yes, really). Azaria Chamberlain was released from prison, and evntually her conviction was overturned and she was paid compensation. Her marriage to Michael Chamberlain collapsed at some point, but since then she has remarried and got on with her life.

And that is where the case has rested for the more than a decade. In Australia the story has come up in the media from time to time. Every now and then some suggestion as to what happens will come up, or there will be a report of a dingo attacking another child (but being fended of by the child's parents) or similar, strengthening people's beliefs that Lindy Chamberlain's story of the dingo was true. That is certainly my own feeling. At the time of the trial (I was 13 at the time) I professed to not caring, as a reaction against the extent of the media coverage, and I didn't pay enough attention. A few years later I came round to the view that I didn't know what had happened but that Lindy Chamberlain had clearly been denied her presumption of innocence, and the case against her had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. I few years after that I discovered that I in fact completely believed her, and that I believed that the baby had been taken by a dingo (as I still do).

In 1988 a film was made about the case, directed by an Australian but starring an American (Meryl Streep) and produced by a British company, and the case became well known around the world. Not in the all encompassing OJ sense it was known in Australia, but as one of those things that people might know about Australia. "Oh, there was that story about the baby and the dingo". (For some reason, the even stranger story that Australia once lost a serving Prime Minister who went swimming and was never seen again is less well known). The story has sort of worked its way into global popular culture. There have been references to it in The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and various other places.

Which was where we were this week. Australia was going through one of its periods where it remembered the incident. A second dramatisation of the story has been made for Australian television, this one starring Miranda Otto (most famous internationally for playing Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings but very well known on Australian television in Australian movies prior to that). A television program had coaxed Lindy Chamberlain into doing an interview for what is believed to be a substanial sum of money. And then this week the extraordinary story came out. A 78 year old man from Melbourne named Frank Cole has stated that he and four friends were shooting for dogmeat at Uluru on August 17, 1980. One of them shot a dingo, and discovered the body of a human baby in its mouth. They were shocked by this, but were reluctant to go to the police, because shooting (and having a dog) in a National Park was illegal.

The friends separated, and drove back to Melbourne, and Mr Cole states that he does not know what happened to the body. One of his friends may have buried it anywhere between Uluru and Melbourne, which is a very long way. There is some thought that one of his friends may have buried it in his back yard in Melbourne. It may be that excavations will take place shortly to determine if Azaria's remains are there. Certainly the rest of the story will be investigated, and Mr Cole and his late friends will no doubt be investigated to see if the rest of the story matches, if they were indeed at Uluru at that time, and if perhaps the location of the remains of the body can be determined.

If indeed the story is true. It could be a complete fabrication. In combination with the dingo story in the first place it is just so weird that one almost thinks it is true. And if it is true, Mr Cole and his friends allowed a tremendous injustice to take place, which they could have prevented at any time by coming clean about their story.

The reason why academic politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so low.

This quote from Henry Kissinger could easily be applied to Australian federal politics. And, with a Federal election in the offing, the stakes are getting lower and lower. Australian politics, more then ever, resemble drug-gang warfare- there are two gangs, both eager to secure the lucrative cash flows that come with the commanding heights of the Treasury Benches.

This may surprise the casual observer of the political scene. On the surface Australian public life seems to have a frantic flurry of debate, on foreign policy, on health, and on values. But a closer inspection reveals that this is just surface froth, designed to sate the appetites of the media machine and the political junkies. Beneath the scenes, one sees that the purpose of all these debates are simply designed to enjoy the power and perquisites of office.

In Australia the time and date of the election is at the choosing of the Prime Minister, and he studies the signs, looking for the opportune moment to strike. The opinion polls suggest that the ALP has a slight lead over the governing Coalition, but the bookmakers, who have the edge in accuracy in predicting Australian elections, have the Government as firm favorites to retain office (for what it is worth, Bush is just ahead of Kerry, although prices vary from firm to firm).

So what is this government that is, if you believe the bookmakers, about to be elected for a fourth term?

John Howard has been Prime Minister since 1996 and everyone has a clear view about him. His strengths are obvious, as are his weaknesses. His most obvious attribute is determination. He has been written off so many times and yet bounced back to defy all his critics. Even now it seems difficult for him to win. However, his come from behind election win in 2001 was a more impressive comeback win then what would be required from him now.

Howard is not, and never was, fashionable- he rarely has ever been popular with the gatekeepers of the media, those valiant seekers after truth. But he is widely seen as a 'safe pair of hands' and a competent administrator. That is certainly true and it counts for a lot in these uncertain times. It counts enough to keep him in with a fighting chance despite his shameless populism and rampant dishonesty- like Tony Blair, he has squandered what credibility he had so the political class as a whole generally believes nothing he says.

You can believe one thing he says- he really does want to continue as Prime Minister. He is a social conservative, and he would have it be known that he's an economic liberal and small-government man, but these latter attributes do not have any relation to the truth. He is in fact a classic right-wing statist.

He dominates his government- like Blair in Britain, he overshadows his main finance minister and internal part rival, Peter Costello, but while it is plausible to think that Gordon Brown might one day unseat Tony Blair, it is quite impossible to think Costello could do the same here.

The Howard government is nominally a pro-business, tax-cutting, small government party. Its actual record here is poor- the tax system has been fiddled with at the margins, and half the phone company has been privatised, but that is all - a poor outcome indeed after eight years in office. Part of this is because the Australian Senate is a permanent stumbling block to reform, and the minor parties that hold the balance of power there are generally left-wing. But fundamentally, Howard is a statist, who has faith in government programs of various natures to deliver useful outcomes.

In addition, he has learned that government money, carefully directed, is a wonderful way to bribe key parts of the electorate. Many of these dollars have flowed to the interests of the National Party, the partner in his Coalition government, which is a party of agrarian socialism and social conservatism. (I have complained about farmers before.)

Is this government irredeemably useless? In my view it has been okay in the response to the terrorist threat that has become a global menace. Australia has in effect occupied the Solomon Islands in a bid to prevent it becoming a failed state, an act which it did unilaterally and without the support of the United Nations. However, since this has been a very successful operation, even the local media have not opposed it.

In terms of keeping the local economy out of trouble, it has done a middling job- but the Australian economy is still hampered by regulatory handicaps, crony capitalism (which often has legal protection, most notably in broadcast and media industries) and subsidies. Future generations will rue the lost opportunities of this government.

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Against the government is the Australian Labor Party (ALP). There is, it must be said, not much in common between the British Labour Party and the Australian version, beyond a shared trade-union heritage. The ALP is a wide ranging centre-left party in principle, but it is fact no more 'socialist' then the governing Coalition is 'free-market'. It is simply a vehicle for several ambitious men and women to indulge their taste for power.

In fact it must be said that the most free-market government in Australian history was the ALP government led by Bob Hawke which was elected in 1983. Michael Jennings's recent post on aviation policy gives an example of how that government went about its deregulatory business. It nevertheless has a taste for left-wing statist ideas, and in no sense could it be described as libertarian, unless those liberties have a self-indulgent slant to them.

Because Australia is a federation we do in fact have a very clear idea of how an ALP government might look like, because the ALP actually is in office in every state and territory government in the country.

The main characteristic of these governments is that they are populist, and socially authoritarian. The party has to balance economic management with social activism. The Australian electorate is one of the more economically literate electorates in the world, a searing recession induced by interest rates on mortgages rising to 17% in the early 1990's having made the Australian public keenly aware of the importance of balanced budgets and the like.

But the ALP has to satisfy its own activists who worship on the alter of state spending as the cure for all the ills of mankind. This can lead to tricky situations but the activists are usually satisfied with high office, and are usually pragmatic enough to ignore their social consciences when their electoral interests are involved. (In contrast, the Liberal Party activists, having no conscience at all, can pillage the Australian taxpayer and sleep soundly at night.)

In general, the ALP State governments are very good indeed at this balancing act. They are able to appease the public sector unions in the most part without blowing out budget deficits. And they are in the happy position of enjoying a windfall of money courtesy of GST tax,(the Australian version of VAT, introduced in 2000) which in Australia goes into state government coffers rather then the Federal governments. Hilariously, the Federal ALP bitterly resisted this tax which has benefited their State colleagues so much.

The challenge for the Federal ALP in government is in managing the economy and foreign policy. I suspect that they will defer to their departments on both, as they will be keen to appear competent in these factors- meanwhile, I expect some sort of 'initiative' somewhere else to be developed as a rallying cry to satisfy the activists- possibly (hopefully) a renewed push on making Australia a republic

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What do the electorate make of all this? Not much. The Australian public is for the most part famously apathetic to politics, which is why we have compulsory voting in Australia. It is an amusing diversion to guesstimate what the turn out would be if it was not compulsory to vote in Australian elections, but no one seriously suggests that it would be above 50%.

Generally, the elevation of the mercurial Mark Latham to the leadership of the ALP has seen a revival in that party's electoral fortunes, but it must be qualified that Latham is a polarising figure. He is seen by many as a loose cannon, and his style as a man and a political leader is felt to be a turn-off by women. It must also be remarked that much of the revival of the ALP in the opinion polls is in the ALP's own seats- with Latham having less bite in the marginal seats that is required to win the election.

There are also significant regional variations in the different Australian states. Latham has revived the ALP position most strongly in Queensland, somewhat less strongly in South Australia, and has actually lost support for the party in West Australia. In the most populated state, New South Wales, there has actually been little change.

The main issue of the day, the war in Iraq and Australia's involvement in it, is a very volatile issue. It is not that Australians worry about the course of events in Mesopotamia, but rather they care about the honesty of the government in dealing with it. This is not surprising, and is a issue in the US as well. There is also the vexing question of terrorism. After the political impact of the Madrid blast, it is possible that al-Queda's South East Asian affiliate, Jemiaah Islamia (JI) might fancy its chances of doing a repeat performance.

Although the political effect of the Bali attack on Australia was to strongly rally people behind the government, the truth is, no one knows what the political effect of a terrorist strike during an electoral campaign might be. It remains the deadly wildcard in the election brew.

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From a libertarian point of view, it is irrelevant who wins the election. Neither political party has the slightest interest in libertarian ideas, and it must be said that this is merely a reflection of the mood of the electorate. Taxation is quite high in Australia but a well organised individual with a good accountant can avoid most of the worst of it. (although wage and salary earners can not).

Both sides of politics are running on a nannyish social agenda, a high tax and spend agenda, and there is not a hint of a promise to wind back the state. Increasingly I'm inclining to the view of Perry de Havilland that democracy is nothing more then kleptocratic populism. Certainly, the way parliamentary politics is practiced in Australia can be characterised as such.

I am loathe to tip against the bookies, but I predict that the voters will toss the Howard Government out of office, and the ALP will enjoy the benefits that accrue from a thumping landslide win. The general rule in Australian politics is that when the party of government changes, it changes in a very big way. It seems to me that all the signs are there this will happen again.