�鶹��ý

All those scenes from Cairo of mass demonstrations look like the perfect expression of the big society. So we can only assume British PM David Cameron wants us to try something similar here. It would certainly encourage more people to take an interest in politics.

After as many as 2 million people took over Tahrir Square and the streets of Cairo, with millions more across Egypt, on February 1 to demand on end to the US-backed dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, the regime responded with a violent assault on protesters continuing to occupy the square.

Based on Psalm 137 By the waterholes of Mother Country we slung down our yidakis, and cut our bodies and drugged our minds in grief, as we remembered the dreamtime. And the settlers demanded from us a corroboree performance and a jail sentence, mutual obligation and a souvenir boomerang for the gift shop. How could we dance and perform sacred traditions for their markets? We have become aliens and inmates, invisible in this eternal land.

When you fly over the earth’s oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking. Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where once native vegetation grew. This is almost impossible to reverse.

Plans by the NSW Liberal/National coalition to cut $3.8 billion in state spending is yet more evidence that the Coalition is no alternative to the Labor Party in New South Wales. If anything, opposition leader Barry O’Farrell’s plan to cut public sector jobs and services will make things even worse. O’Farrell is hoping to romp in to government in the March state elections — not because people support his policies, but because people are so fed up with Labor. NSW voters deserve to know what the Coalition actually stands for, but it has said very little so far about its real policies.