Friday, March 30, 2007



BLOGGING: Leaving a Mark on Space
Recently I became even more curious than ever so I tracked down a Google hit and smiled when I found what search term had led them to Media Dragon, and this has been about the third time I've noticed this:
Who said I will breakfast from the Cold River where uneaten dreams are kept?
Speechless
In this category as a blogger I have nothing left to say ;-)
As of 8 September 1980 AD I consider myself to be the DownUnder Guy and as of 8 September 1997 I consider myself a kind of antipodean-bohemian blogger who understands the strange phenomenon which comes with blogging The Boomerang Effect... Martin Luther, Thomas Paine, George Orwell were all way ahead of us ... All writers great and small like me know well that without the Boomerang Effect of 20th and 21st Century stories like Cold River would never feature at Forbes Book Club or even dare to appear in every corner of this smallest planet in the universe ;-)



Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words. The result was "For sale: baby shoes, never used." The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done

Literature is language charged with meaning to the highest possible degree Knowing another language is like gaining another soul
Even the opening line needs to be a hooker. People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
To summarize: it's badly paid, the hours are weird, the office environment can be claustrophobic, you can't get the staff, you're selling your wares to big corporations who can roll over in their sleep and crush you if you don't make nice, nobody's going to give you a champagne reception, a stretch limo or a signing tour, there's lots of business admin stuff to deal with, and you still have to cram in a normal social life or you'll go mad.



If all writing were forbidden, the stories written in secret would be the ones we needed to read. It's not writing that should be encouraged but reading, widely and voraciously, reading the classics, reading the modern masters. That, if my university lecturers are right, is what will bring out the real writers among us. Magazine editors, publishers and writing competitions are groaning under the output of all those writing courses and I want to say stop. Stop if you can. And if you can't stop, write.
I sought the river flowing homeward, the sea washed down with ice that froze my blood. I seek the offer of the cleansing waters, the rinsing off of journeyed sands of sin. The oceans were untameable, their innocence now slap and sting with surf. Once long ago familiar, now changed by bathing of the boats. Home again and yet I'm not; the river laughs along the new-cut banks. Roots rise up, unwatered, dry and brittle. The song the river sings is of a different pitch, and I do not know the words.
No matter how serious you may take blogging, it’s still something that you do for yourself, with little to no editorial review, in as quick a manner as possible. [...] I guess I’m trying to say that even though I take even the quickest of blog entries seriously, it’s still not as rigorous as other writing.
Childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing)
Some writers argue the act of writing is the creative engine for plot and character. Others point out that writing without a concrete (or somewhat flexible) idea of where things are headed guarantees, at best, a lot of rewriting and, at worst, a substandard product. If you write what you believe in, what you are truly passionate about, the words will flow - well, most of the time. There are enough writers out there murdering their work with little regard. A really fine piece of writing dies naturally once it is completed. It stops breathing, and its heart stops beating.


• Everything I've Learned About Life I've Learned in My Father’s Workshop Writing is turning one's worst moments into money; [If there is any “secret” to writing, it is rewriting I don't mind a reasonable amount of trouble ; A national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information Sunshine Week ]
• · Think of it as "The Conversation" behind the Iron Curtain - Look at all these millions of Germans who behaved like monsters and you choose the one good German, Schindler, to make the film about. The Lives of Others: Stasi was shot in the back of the head at short range in 1981; one of the last documented cases of a disloyal Stasi agent being assassinated.
• · · 8153.0 - Internet Activity, Australia, Sep 2006 Wireless sparks more Internet connections: ABS ; Google beats the locals to secure top spot in digital media - Google has overtaken Sensis as Australia's biggest digital media company. Australian revenues in 2006 soared 108 per cent to $A206m. IT Builds a Better Idea Just remember, mate, even the pretty girls get hurt in the bus crash
• · · · By Tim Knapton 01/03/2007 AFR Smart Investor, Page 76-77: In 2007, online radio is due to overtake radio to become the third-biggest advertising medium in Australia. In the September 2006 quarter, spending on online ads surged by 58 per cent to $A263 million. Emitch, Photon Group and STW Communications have all been achieving solid organic growth as well as making acquisitions. Both Photon and STW have fairly high earnings multiples, but their business models appear capable of generating strong earnings growth. Emitch has advertising deals with Seven Network, News Limited, Fairfax Media and Publishing & Broadcasting Second life for online ads ; Australian media asset owner Eva Presser is best known for her publicity-shyness. Reclusive mogul to end long broadcasting love affair
• · · · · In Packer’s Lunch Neil Chenoweth explores the dark channels of money and power that flow beneath the surface of Australian society. Take a rollicking ride through crooked corporate Sydney. ; Underworld figure; On Figures in Lives of Others ...

Wednesday, March 28, 2007



You cannot hurt my feelings by disagreeing with me as I was married for 20 years to a rather disagreeable character … We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. Look on the light side. Failure may be the best teacher, but sometimes the lessons sure do hurt. That’s where a little levity can come in handy. Good sales managers are adept at this. For example, if their team misses a quota, they might say something like, “We fell a bit short this month. If we fall any shorter, we won’t have anywhere to look but up.” Quips like that don’t dismiss the issue; they are salves for bruised egos. And they have a dual effect: One, they raise the shortcoming; two, they allow people to move forward without dwelling too much on the past. Relief pitchers in baseball are of the same mindset; a pitch given up for a homerun might be described as a pitch that didn’t quite go where I wanted it to go. Case closed. As the novelist John Barth once wrote, "The story of your life is not your life. It is your story?' In other words, it is your personal narrative that matters, not the mere facts of your life. Your life narrative is like a permanent recording playing in your head. Over and over, you replay the events and personal interactions that are important to your life, attempting to make sense of them to find your place in the world. Let’s move on. My pioneering Australian Exposures

SPEAK UP, SPEAK OUT, BE HEARD You Only Live Twice
Our world might be getting smaller, thanks to technology, but virtual worlds and games are booming. Millions of people venture daily into these new and constantly evolving landscapes where they can conquer mythical armies, slay dragons and embark on other fantastical quests.

ABC managing director Mark Scott told a business forum that the ABC had bought an island on Second Life - an internet based virtual world. The ABC will become the first Australian media organisation to have a live presence in Second Life. "We're approaching this as an R&D concept, assessing the potential of Second Life and other 3D worlds," strategic innovation and development head Abigail Thomas said. Second Life is an internet-based virtual world, where users are able to interact with each other through their avatars, or constructed characters. Although this "world" has a number of competitors, including Active Worlds and There, Second Life has captured most media and commercial attention as a forum for social networking and trade: the ABC bought its "digital space", an island, for a non-profit rate.


ABC Buys Island in an Online Media Dragon World ; [Trevor Cook World; A university student's exploration of the "blog" and it's role in empowering and politicizing popular culture In critiquing the blog, I aim to critique both the media itself … ]
• · Mayne had finished awarding the best business news report to the Australian Financial Review's Morgan Mellish when Milne rushed up onto the stage and ... Morgan Mellish, The Australian Financial Review, for “The Robert Gerard Tax Scandal”. An investigation into South Australian businessman and Liberal Party ... The Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism - Business Finalists ; Kevin Roberts GREETINGS, I AM NOW BLOGGING
• · If you’ve ever been “dooced,” then you know. your blog made someone in the executive suite. uncomfortable. Blogging Shines New Light. on Corporate Culture ... Blogging Shines New Light on Corporate Culture ; Why software business models of the future probably won’t come in a box
• · · A shared online community modelled after Wikipedia, the free and highly popular user-created, web-based encyclopedia? Make room Wikipedia: internet-based collaboration could change the way we do business ; Journalists with the "Big Ego disease" often point at bloggers and other people without press passes and accuse them of not being "real journalists." But bloggers who provide analysis about newsworthy events are journalists. Who's a Journalist These Days? ;
• · · · Thank you to all the individuals in antipodean waters, and around the world, who read this site's ironic musings and links, and to those who have supported my labour of love with their thoughtful and expert suggestions, and insightful links and sources. Most of all thanks for the St Jozef on 19 March, and stay in touch ... The Blog - Another Tool in Your Arsenal: 100 most useful sites ; Study Focuses on Understanding the Political Influence of Blogs Understanding the Political Influence of Blogs: A Study of the Growing Importance of the Blogosphere in the U.S. Congress; Bloggers Abroad Face Government Retaliation Jozef Imrich®
• · · · · Our lives are becoming increasingly digitized—from the ways we communicate, to our entertainment media, to our e-commerce transactions, to our online research. As storage becomes cheaper and data pipes become faster, we are doing more and more online—and in the process, saving a record of our digital lives, whether we like it or not Envisioning the Whole Digital Person; T he US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far?


A film about a secret policeman in the former East Germany has taken top prize at the European Film Awards in Warsaw. The Lives of Others - or Das Leben Der Anderen - beat Spanish production Volver by Pedro Almodovar, although this still came top in five categories. The Lives of Others is a drama about how East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Ulrich Muehe won the best actor trophy for his portrayal of a policeman who becomes engrossed in a playwright and his girlfriend, both of whom he is spying on. The Less Secret Life of Others – Watchers Be Aware German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has said that Western audiences (those from West Berlin, he means, but it's all the more true for those of us points farther West) tend to regard his debut feature, The Lives of Others, as a thriller, while East Berliners experience it as a kind of therapy. Desperate Bureaucrats: The Lives of Others is the best surveillance movie since The Conversation. ; My greatest cinematic weakness is the movie conversation. A great action scene or shocker can pull me in like anyone else, but it's the words that mesmerize. A good movie conversation tugs at those appealing strings of voyeurism. You watch the intimacy of words, but they, and the scene, are not directed at you. It's amazing how much can really be done with words. With the right dialogue, you don't need a gimmick for the audience. You can vicariously have fun with another's conversation, or you can watch a story play out within the span of hello to goodbye.Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck: Among The Lives of Others

Mixing Arts with Business and Politics The Year of Magical Thinking on Bondi
It has been a busy year in the fortune-hunting business. Strong equity markets combined with rising real estate values and commodity prices pushed up fortunes from Mumbai to Madrid. In My Imrich Image

My mates at Forbes pinned down 946 billionaires, including 178 newcomers and 17 people who climbed back into the ranks after being absent for a year or more. Two-thirds of last year's billionaires are richer. Only 17% are poorer, including 32 who fell below the billion-dollar mark. The billionaires' combined net worth climbed by $900 billion to $3.5 trillion. That equates to $3.6 billion apiece.
Eligible Billionaires I Love Imrich Keychain Ach Laugh and the ironic world laughs with you …


The World's Richest Billionaires - Forbes ; [Publishers try to stave off Google, Amazon with book search; Off The Beaten Path Is Right on Track Cold River distribution ]
• · Mike Wilkins’ Insurance empire group Promina was criticised by the corporate regulator yesterday for disclosure shortcomings during its recent merger negotiations with Suncorp-Metway. Promina cops a $100,000 fine for tardy disclosure ; If we are to understand tax evasion and avoidance, then we need to understand why ordinary people as well as the wealthy continue in this societally unacceptable manner. Tax evasion is an illegal act and we therefore believe that the inclination of an individual to evade taxes is strengthened the more widespread tax evasion is in the population. Tax evasion - it’s acceptable (and how to fix it) Increased transparency in all limited liability companies
• · ANOTHER politician bites the dust after yet another scandal. It makes the front page but does anyone really care? Our politicians are so woeful, we're surprised only when they do something right. HECKLER: Self-serving politicians are dunces in the clever country ; Arts and Novels Made Good Junk
• · · The report of the film tax offset review and the Government’s broader film review Report on review of film tax support measures released ; Wishful Review of Cold River
• · · · Morgan Mellish has a timely piece in the Fin Review today (redeems the Fin for a day; Mellish by the way was the man who put the boot into Rodney Adler). ... Alert and Alarmed: The infrastructure plot thickens ; Though Florida Republican Congressman Mark Foley's solicitation of sex with underage boys working as Congressional pages is making front-page news, it is, regrettably, not unprecedented. Most Congressional sex scandals have involved adults, but four have included minors - at least two of whom were Congressional pages. I've taken a look at the historical record of such Congressional indiscretions, and in this column, I'll ask what, if anything, we can we learn from them - particularly, from those relating to Congressional pages? The Foley Follies: What Can Be Learned From The History of Congressional Sex Scandals, And How Can the Page Program Be Reformed?
• · · · · Moody teens: the excuse is chemistry
THEY answer back, throw tantrums and argue the point, but teenagers may now have an excuse for their moody behaviour. A hormone produced by the body to calm itself down during periods of stress seems to act in the opposite way in teenagers, making them more anxious, according to research published in the journal Nature Neuroscience. Moody Imrichs ; A Cup of Creativi-tea: Inspire Me! ; Creative Clusters
• · · · · · RSStalker.com provides RSS feeds to track price changes of Amazon.com products

Wednesday, March 21, 2007



I started working at Parliament House back in 1982 and inside the corridors of power one tends to discover much contempt for the electorate be it from Wran, Fahey, Unsworth or Carr parliamentary wings. By the time I left, the only period that really mattered in my 20 years as the Crown employee was the moment of the Hung Parliament. See John Hatton and the Charter of 1992 ... While journalists break a scoop here and there they are just as guilty for the rail mess as Ministerial staffers as most of the aspirants just aspire to survive and become like the Indian chief Walter Secord, the chief spinner of newspeak ;-) To push the trolley of truth is a dream of many - sadly the dream does become reality for many ... So it is election time in Sydney and taxing time world-wide as Lord Conrad Black shows how he stripped companies of profits … socialise losses and privatise profits …
The "Xenon" program -- a reference to the super-bright auto headlights that light up dark places -- was started in The Netherlands in 2004 by the Dutch equivalent of the IRS, Belastingdienst. It has since been expanded and enhanced by international group of tax authorities in Austria, Denmark, Britain and Canada, with the assistance of Amsterdam-based data mining firm Sentient Machine Research. Tax Takers Send in the Spiders

Can we change the heart of politics? Rattled Carr Legacy: CityRail buried damning report
HOT, late, overcrowded and understaffed – they are just some of the unfavourable impressions tourists have of CityRail trains.

Australia's biggest city is served by the worst rail transport system in the world, news reports said Wednesday. Sydney's commuter trains are performing well below those that serve other world cities, according to an international survey leaked to the Daily Telegraph. The embarrassing finding comes less than a week after 40,000 peak-hour commuters were trapped on trains for three hours. The survey was commissioned by Sydney's CityRail and produced by Hong Kong rail experts. Not surprisingly, CityRail tried to suppress a report that was delivered to it nine months ago. It showed CityRail trains travel 32 kilometres before getting delayed more than five minutes. In Hong Kong the equivalent measurement of efficiency is 396 kilometres. The cost of running a Sydney train is four times the international average and CityRail drivers are behind the controls for less than three hours of any seven-hour shift, compared to nearly five hours of similar at-the-wheel work in Hong Kong.
The report, authored by Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation, was scathing it its criticism. 'CityRail shows high overall cost as well as high station staff cost compared to MTR and other railways, coupled with relatively low efficiency,' it said.


Trains fail tourist test

Friday, March 09, 2007



In 10 days time is St Jozef's Day
Modesty is the art of drawing attention to whatever it is you are being humble about.

PAIN and suffering are the bread and butter of most sole survivors but Jozef Imrich insists his book Cold River is a celebration of happy times … CREATING MYSELF: How I Learned That Risk taking comes in All Shapes, Sizes and Packages, Including Me, his coming of age memoir, from his troubled-filled youth to his inspirational turnaround in exile ;-) Risk: what does it mean to you?
Join the riskiest quotes of all times ... Quote the worst line – and win tickets to Laugharne


Can we change the heart of politics? Tear Down Fake Walls
Time assistant managing editor Romesh Ratnesar's TEAR DOWN THIS WALL: A City, A President and the Speech That Ended the Cold War, the history and legacy of President Ronald Reagan's iconic (and initially underappreciated) 1987 speech in West Berlin, which helped bring an end to the Cold War, as told through interviews with many of those who both helped create and shape the speech as well as those who witnessed it firsthand, to Alice Mayhew at Simon & Schuster, on an exclusive submission, by David Halpern at The Robbins Office (NA). Mixed Emotions

Packer or Imrich familes are to celebrate weddings in Sydney ... Details of the hush-hush wedding have been leaked and contradict widespread rumours suggesting the weddings was to be held in Prague! or Paris! Sydney on 7 September 2007

YouTube playing starring role in presidential race ...
It is guerrilla politics at its cleverest: The mysterious Internet video that compares US presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Big Brother is the boffo hit of the YouTube Web site. Classic YouTube

Aha - 1 Political Pioneering Clinton
2 - Edwards

3 - He really is the real Bumma - Obama

Thursday, March 08, 2007



O n 8th of March the formula One and one make three is not without its attractions.
-Dostoevsky misquoted

I am here to write about The Power of the Human Spirit. Indeed, the human spirit has no limits. If you dream big, and you have the determination and the will to pursue your dream, it will become a reality. I dreamt of making stars;
I was given a planet of wet paint ...

Wet Paint Cafe
50 MacPherson St
Bronte 2024 NSW
Phone: (02) 9369 4634
Being located away from the beachside strip at Bronte has not done any harm to this cute little restaurant, which has firmly established a reputation as one of the seaside suburb's top nosheries.

The soft light of candles spills out onto the street and illuminates the tables of mostly couples and small groups. The gentle light lends the rustic old space a certain romance, making the yellow walls glow and transforming the tiny space from cramped to intimate. The menu is modern Australian, but sets itself apart with a Creole touch. The signature Louisiana stuffed chicken is a favourite with regulars, while the rest of the menu features plenty of Cajun spice. Local Paint

Local trend setters Local style but colours are from brazil ...

Wednesday, March 07, 2007



What makes greatness is starting something that lives after you. Michael Schaefer: Blog Pioneer

Cold River is among the sea of mixed emotions and gory specifics
Tribe of Hot Readers - I am humbled ;-)

The Curly Question
A version of this paper appears in Uniya Occasional Paper no.11, December 2006
One looks into the abyss in order to see beyond it.
Robert Jay Lifton
There is a scene in City Slickers in which the gnarly old cowboy Curly (Jack Palance) turns to the jaded city slicker Mitch (Billy Crystal) as they ride along the trail.
“Do you know what the secret of life is?”
“No, what?”
Curly holds up his gloved index finger.
“This.”
“Your finger?”
“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit!”
“That’s great, but what’s the one thing?”
“That’s what you’ve gotta figure out.”
According to Google, the Curly Question has been invoked by smokers to help them quit and by sales people to improve their figures. But it is essentially the “meaning of life” question. Why am I here? Does my existence have any value, my life any purpose?
Human beings have an innate need to find meaning in their lives. The trouble is, the things that people used to rely on to give their lives meaning — for the most part family, work and religion — are losing their grip for many in the modern West. Where does that leave those of us wracked by doubt, ambivalence and insecurity asks Mark Byrne? Are we forced to choose between existentialist despair, materialist denial or fundamentalist certainty?

Tuesday, March 06, 2007



Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
-Voltaire

Some writers feel that blogging drains too much creativity and hinders their “real” writing. Others feel that blogging can absorb so much time that they devote hours to posts about their cat instead of revising that novel.
Truer words were never spoken. Blogging, like journaling, is addictive. It’s also esoteric. Many diaries develop a private language all their own, and invariably that bleeds over into other writing as well. In the case of blogging though there is the additional sense of urgency because people are waiting for that next post… Well, at least in theory there are people waiting. Sometimes I wonder if I am just writing for the Googlebot, and then I wonder if it enjoys what it finds

The drama of our time is the coming of all into one fate A Tribe is Forming - One Touch Handshake
Best Advice:

It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you are not.
It's better to fail at something you love, than to succeed at something you don't.
Everyone is always offering advice on everything. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received? What's the worst (and why)?
A journal is the perfect place to learn the ways in which language communicates authenticity as opposed to the way language is a tool used by political, advertising and marketing coalitions to make us purchase something, to make us hate this group or that one, and to make us look through blurry eyes at the daily transgressions against freedom and humanity. Learning the authenticity of your own voice makes it harder and harder to write in an inauthentic voice or listen to one; it makes it harder to believe what others want you to believe against your will."
The best advice I have ever been given was not to give unsolicited advice because it falls on deaf ears an makes people defensive. The worse advice I ever got was unsolicited advice, it made me really defensive.


All Colours ...
• · Your journal is your private place … no more ;-)
Via Email from writers of note:

Body English. Write a “conversation” in which no words are said. This exercise is meant to challenge you to work with gesture, body language (or, as a baseball announcer I heard once misspeak it, body English), all the things we convey to each other without words. We often learn more about characters in stories from the things characters do with their hands than from what they say. It might be best to have some stranger observe this conversation, rather than showing us the thoughts of one of the people involved in the conversation, because the temptation to tell us what the conversation is about is so great from inside the conversation. “I was doing the opposite of Freud,” Desmond Morris says, of his famous book The Naked Ape that first studied the ways humans speak with their bodies. “He listened to people and didn’t watch; I watched people and didn’t listen.” Because of Morris, according to Cassandra Jardine, “when politicians scratch their noses they are now assumed to be lying—and the sight of the Queen [Elizabeth] crossing her legs at the ankles is known to be a signal that her status is too high for her to need to show sexual interest by crossing them further up.” Autistic children cannot understand human conversation even when they understand individual words because they cannot read facial expressions, which is clear evidence of how important other forms of language are. 600 words.
The First Lie. Tape-record a conversation. It’s a tried and true method of understanding how people talk, but still surprisingly effective. Obtain permission of the people you are taping. Instruct your group each to tell one small lie during the session, only one lie. Tell them, if they get curious, that some philosophers think that deception was a crucial learned behavior in the emergence of modern consciousness several thousand years ago. You can participate in the conversation yourself, but don’t become an interviewer. Let the machine run for a good long while, allowing your friends to become comfortable and less aware of the tape recorder. Listen to the tape a day or two later. Play it several times. Choose some small part of the conversation to transcribe (the lies may be interesting, if you can spot them, but more interesting should be all the other stuff they say). Transcribe as faithfully as you can. Do not transcribe more than one page of talk. After that, fill out the conversation with information about the people who are speaking, giving us only details about them that we need to know. The final product should be no longer than two pages long, double-spaced.

Friday, March 02, 2007



Websites around the world are getting a new computerized visitor among the Googlebots and Yahoo web spiders: The taxman. A five-nation tax enforcement cartel has been quietly cracking down on suspected internet tax cheats, using a sophisticated web crawling program to monitor transactions on auction sites, and track operators of online shops, poker and porn sites. Strom said now that the cat is out of the bag ... Tax Takers Send in the Spiders

Thursday, March 01, 2007



It is about time Dragon paid some attention to the NSW election to be held in 23 days on 24 March 2007. My prediction is hung Parliament, or widhful thinking dated 1991 when John Hatton and his charter 92 independents brought sunlight to the sunny Harbour City ... State Election 24 March 2007 especially what the Herald has to say Parties vie for biggest loser title

NSW Election 2007 - James Bond 007 Idle speculation: March edition: Morris Iemma v Peter Debnam
Skepticism about Labor’s figures has spilled over from Crikey, Tim Dunlop and this site and into the news pages of the Sydney Morning Herald, which reports suggestions from a "senior Liberal source" that ALP state secretary Mark Arbib was "making it up". The surveys reportedly had samples of 150 (which the Telegraph has thus far neglected to reveal), so the margin for error wouldn’t have been much different if he had been. Nonetheless, the Liberals went to some effort to debunk the alleged Labor findings, providing the Herald with a progress report of their own.

For those as keen on a punt as Mackerras, books on the election are being run by SportingBet, Centrebet, Sportsbet and Sports Acumen. They are currently offering short odds on Morris Iemma remaining Premier: $1.16 compared with $4.50 for Peter Debnam for each agency except Sports Acumen, which is offering $1.17 and $4.40. SportingBet is also taking bets on 14 individual seats, with the odds currently on offer converting into the following percentages. Note that this indicates the likelihood of winning the seat, rather than predicted vote share.


• The blog that matters in NSW Herald of Sydney - Czech out the Green punter at ABC - Spin cycle; [Larva to Butterfly; Wizard of Oz Politics ]
• · The Premier, Bob Carr, is poised to use his historic win of a third four-year term to conduct a definitive shake-out of his cabinet - including the creation of super ministries - and embark on a wave of far-reaching reforms 2003 of past years; I make my debut in the NSW Election Campaign
• · Exclusives by Kelvin Bissett: ; Poll Bludger 1
• · · Master Poll Bludger; Iemma and Debnam are blogging on the Daily Telegraph site I will never forget Macquarie Fields’, Peter Debnam