Article by an Australian writer about the forthcoming visit by Obama to Australia. Key but highly disputable quote: "Obamania!
Everybody loves Barack Obama — everybody, everywhere except Americans...  Obama has to visit places that the average Australian would keep away from. But by far most disturbingly, he has to declare his undying support and respect for a people he has no idea about."

Robert Stary (who runs one of Melbourne's biggest criminal law practices): "The draconian nature of the terrorism laws attacking the fundamental cornerstones of our criminal justice system - the right against self-incrimination, the right to silence and the presumption of innocence - has been at a significant cost to the community."

Mark Scott (managing director of the ABC)  "It speaks volumes for the community support for the ABC that almost every content decision attracts debate. But our programmers and schedulers need the freedom to innovate and challenge; to search for better ways to engage the audience."

Gittins re Australia: "The real question is whether the services sector jobs our children and grandchildren get will be at the unskilled or the sophisticated end of the spectrum. And that depends on how much money and effort we put into their education and training. We've gone for the past two decades underspending on education and training at all levels, falling behind the other rich countries. If we've got any sense, we'll use part of the proceeds from the resources boom to secure our future in the global knowledge economy."

Labor MP Mark Dreyfus: "Labor has a long history in government of implementing major reforms, from the workers' rights and pension reforms at the turn of the 20th century, to the environmental and social reforms of the Whitlam government in the 1970s, and the substantial economic reforms of the Hawke/Keating governments of the 1980s and '90s."

Ross Gittins on uncompetitve manufacturing in rich countries like Australia (and the US, UK etc) : "People don't seem ready to believe it, but this is a good news story. The lessons from BlueScope Steel's decision to sack 1000 workers in Port Kembla and Western Port are that, in the economy, benefits always come with costs. We can't have everything, and one country can't do everything well."

Colebatch: "The drastic cuts at BlueScope Steel [1,000 jobs lost] raise two key questions. Does it matter to Australia if we have a steel industry or not? And if it does, is it worth trying to keep it?"

Paul Sheehan (Sydney Morning Herald columnist) on the sex and politcis saga involving Labor MP Craig Thomson that threatens the Julia Gillard Labor Government of Australia: "On the basis of this threadbare [2010] victory Gillard survived as Prime Minister. Increasingly, Thomson looks the one most likely to take down the flimsy majority of the Labor-Greens-Oakeshott alliance.

Australian farmer Tim Duddy: "The only way agriculture and mining will be able to co-exist is if extractive industries are kept away from productive agricultural land and the precious water resources on which it relies."

Katharine Murphy: "So what to do if you are the Greens in the spring of 2011? Depends what the endgame is. If your collective ambition is to replace Labor as the party of the centre-left, then you play the long game. It's a zero-sum equation. You let Labor languish even if you take a hit in the 2013 election; you bank all the reforms of this term as your own, compete aggressively and care little what the consequences are."

The last 17 of 33 Australian troops who were guarding the Australian embassy in Iraq have been withdrawn and a Dubai-based private security firm Unity Resources Group (URG) has taken over. URG , with around 60 Chilean military veterans, was involved in the shooting of 72-year-old Australian Professor Kays Juma in March 2006.

Australian Police are hunting the creator of a fake Facebook profile that was used to impersonate an anti-racist  Sydney primary school teacher and frame him as a paedophile by targeting kids at his school.

Quentin Dempster (ABC journalist and broadcaster and former staff-elected director): "But the ABC, without public discussion, has allowed its skills base and creative culture to be eroded. As taxpayer funds are diverted to the commercial sector, the ability of the ABC to deliver on its public mandate is reduced. It is this trend that must be urgently confronted."

Hugh White (professor of strategic studies at ANU and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute): "America must learn to acknowledge and accommodate China's growing power, and China must accept a continuing and central role for America."

Eminent medical researcher Sir Gustav Nossal: "Higher education, research, innovation and a skilled workforce are where a healthy future for Australia lies. Whatever became of the clever country?"

Peter Costello (Former Australian federal treasurer): "[Greens leader] Brown has suggested a new licensing regime so that newspapers can be published only by ''a fit and proper'' person. By definition, a person who spreads hate is not ''fit and proper'' to publish a newspaper. So there you have a neat little formula to strip an owner or threaten a newspaper with closure. If its coverage engenders ''hatred'' for certain policies, then you take away the licence.

Populist short-termism is threatening Australia's glowing economic potential, write analysts Tim Dixon and Matt Browne.

Andrew Cox: "Images that shocked Australians a month ago are now sufficiently remote as to be once more ignored. Time is a more effective anaesthetic than any stun gun. Fresh issues demand our attention. A new carbon tax threatens to raise the price of meat by several cents and grasping self-interest will always trump ethical hand-wringing. It's safe to return to the butcher."

Shaun Carney: "In less than four years, Australians have done a complete about-face on the merits of a carbon tax. How could this happen and what does it mean?"

Coalition Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop: "

The Prime Minister cannot have it both ways – either coal mining has a future in this country under her clean energy future or it doesn't.

Her power-sharing partner in government, the Greens, have no such difficulty" [The Greens want to close down coal mines].

Professor Hugh White (professor of strategic studies at ANU, visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute): "As things stand, when we pull out in 2014, another 42 soldiers will have died and Afghanistan will be no different than it is today. Who could then deny that those lives will have been squandered for no purpose?"

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott: "'This is a Labor-Green carbon tax and it's going to drive up prices, threaten jobs and do nothing at all for the environment. You've got to ask yourself, what is the point of all this if millions of Australians are going to be worse off and we are not actually going to cut our emissions?"

PM Gillard: "We have world-leading renewable technology, a coal industry determined to cut pollution among the world’s richest reserves of natural gas. And we are a confident, creative people. I see a great clean energy future for our great country."

"

Cynthia Banham (SMH columnist): "Last week Barack Obama announced the US was withdrawing 10,000 military personnel from Afghanistan by the end of this year and 33,000 by the next northern summer... Australians want out of Afghanistan; a Lowy Institute poll this week found 59 per cent are opposed to our continued involvement."

Oscar Humphries (editor of the London-based art magazine Apollo and launch editor of The Spectator Australia.): "Today's Australia is the sum total of many nationalities, but it is still not an easy country in which to be a migrant."

John Pilger: "In Britain as in America, the object of training professionals in everything from banking to the media is to produce a class of “managers” who instinctively muffle dissent — even if no one tells them to do so."

Report: "about 500 sheep are killed by the kosher [Jewish]  method in Victoria each week... Inherently in Islam as long as the stunning is reversible... then stunning is allowed"

Michelle Grattan: "Labor's parlous state was always going to make the one-year-mark bad news...  Rudd had a choice. He could have shrunk into the background. Instead, he joined the CEOs' charity sleepout on Thursday night of last week ... In short, he put out a notice saying, ''I'm here!''

Richard Ackland: "Why not roll all these various bits of identification into one card? Asylum seekers would be given an ID card, too, with a chip in it. It would be a way of allowing them into the community while their cases were progressed, even to have jobs and go to school."

Ad man: "The carbon tax ads would be every bit as dishonest. The multi-party climate change committee (comprised of Labor, Greens, and independent MPs) has yet to agree on any of the specifics of the tax, whether it be the cost of carbon or who gets compensated. Forget the recipe – these guys are still squabbling over the ingredients."

Lynne Kossky (Minister for education in the Victoriian Bracks Labor government.): "While respecting the rights of families to choose to send their children to a public or a private school, we should not lightly abandon our historical provision of free, secular and compulsory education."

The latest Nielsen Poll has the Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition at 49%, the Labor Government at a disastrous 27% and the Greens at 12%, with former PM Rudd (deposed by present PM Gillard in 2010) preferred by 60% as compared to 31% for Gillard.

Michelle Grattan (The Age's political editor) quoting former Labor leader Mark Latham : ""Modern Labor is torn between two unsatisfactory organisational models: the soulless opportunism of factional/apparatchik control versus the fringe lunacy of democratisation. There is no third way.""

Ian Munro: "Victorian [Australia] branch members are deserting the ALP [Australian Labor Party] in droves, fed up with a party they say doesn't know what it stands for any more."

Dan Oakes (Age and Sydney Morning Herald defence correspondent): "Only the Greens have consistently questioned the need for our troops to be in Afghanistan, and their policy is instinctive and ingrained, not necessarily built on a careful analysis of the issues. Is there not one parliamentarian from the Labor Party or the Coalition who believes the Australian public should be fully informed about our rationale for being in Afghanistan? Surely it is time for somebody to speak up."

Freelance writer Clem Bastow: "The show's own assessment of itself is that ''it's about democracy in action - on Q&A the audience gets to ask the questions''. But when the pollies are too busy one-upping each other, they forget to answer."

Bob Beale: "Australians are directly responsible for at least 1.5 per cent of all that. Our tally is probably twice as much if we include all the coal and natural gas we sell other countries to burn. Indeed, we're punching well above our weight. For all their droning zeros and harmless flag-waving carbon molecules, Jones and his fellow deniers are headed down the same road as the rest of us, speeding inexorably towards 500 ppm - and by then we'll all be well over the limit."

Davidson: "If Australia has the wit to exploit our near limitless supply of natural gas, combined with the latest technology, it would rule out nuclear power or the need to retain brown-coal-fired power stations"

Non-scientist Australian politician Ross Cameron says that despite the Australian Climate Commission's recent "The Critical Decade: report stating that climate change is real, man-made and serious, public debate over the science must continue.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay: "I come from South Africa and lived under this, and am every way attuned to seeing racial discrimination. There is a racial discriminatory element here [in Australia] which I see as rather inhumane treatment of people, judged by their differences, racial, colour or religions."

Katharine Murphy (The Age's national affairs correspondent): "Why is the [Australian] Liberal Party still taking donations from tobacco companies? [Former Australian Labor leader] Mark Latham did his side a rare good turn by ending the ALP's acceptance of tobacco donations in 2004; it is past time for the Liberals to follow suit."

The Age reports that "The Christian group that provides religious education and chaplains in Victorian government schools will be investigated after its chief executive told a conference: ''We need to go and make disciples'' - yet such proselytizing is banned by Government guidelines

Top Australian political columnist Michelle Grattan on PM Gillard's new Budget as a way to salvage Labor's poor electoral support: "For the budget to launch the repair job, the balance, tone and sales pitch must be right."

Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith interviewed after the (alleged) killing of Osama bin Laden has "cautious optimism"about the war in Afghanistan where Australia contributes 1,500 soldiers.

Greens Senator Hansen-Young: "People who want the current mandatory detention regime changed should lobby their local Labor or opposition MP or senator to demand they back the Greens' bills. Only the Greens are determined to stop the demonisation of a small number of people who arrive in Australia seeking our protection."

The Australian Labor Government secretly worked with the US to weaken a key international treaty to ban cluster bombs, according to leaked US diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks.

On the eve of the Royal Wedding, leading lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC argues against the institution of Royalty that excludes Catholics from succession.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young: "They [EU] all agree with the polluter pays system and that taking action on climate change can also be good for business. The message to take home from our European cousins is that we are falling embarrassingly behind in facing the realities of climate change."

Michelle Grattan, political editor of the Age newspaper, "[Defence minister] Smith is marching in to change a culture where other ministers have failed...Why is the defence establishment, especially the military, so hard to bring to heel? "

Australian MP Julie Bishop, Deputy Leader of the Opposition: "One of the principal arguments of the Julia Gillard - Bob Brown government to justify imposing a carbon tax on Australia is that the international effort on climate change will leave us behind and that even China is taking dramatic action to reduce its carbon emissions. This is deeply misleading."

Grattan: "Gillard has to make sure the minor players, especially the Greens, get enough recognition to keep them firmly in the cart. But if she lets them grab too much, her fragile authority will be eroded. Put more bluntly, she needs to get across the message that she's the dog and they're the tail."

Waleed Ali: "The [Opposition] Coalition writes the political narrative which the government follows... Maybe this admittedly tiny gesture [defence of multiculturalism] signals a more general intent from Labor to speak in a voice more like its own and change the course of the political conversation, even on issues such as government spending. If so, the challenge is ahead. Labor has walked so far down the Coalition's road that it may struggle to find a way back."

Carney: "What we're witnessing is a crisis on the left of politics. The period since the 2007 election has been a test for the ALP and its supporters, and it has not done well. The coalition of blue and white-collar voters that backed Labor from the 1970s is shattering. Labor's middle-class supporters have been the first to leave, now attaching themselves to the Greens. Once the pressures of office were applied and Labor took some missteps, the inner-urban, middle-class part of the base started to take flight. There are early signs that the less affluent segments of Labor's base are also losing belief in the ALP. "

Professor Dennis Altman (political scientist and famous gay rights scholar) : "In last week's Four Corners interview, the two countries she [PM Jul;ia Gillard] spoke of were Israel and the United States. It is unfortunate that she was not pressed further to explain why she is so staunch a defender of the current Israeli government, nor how she would deal with potential tension between the US and China."

Anne Summers: "It is one of the great paradoxes of current Australian society that as the numbers of women in public life grow, we seem to become more anxious about whether they are "real" women; whether they are married and have children."

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young: "What is the purpose of the Australian of the Year award? Recognition of past achievements, recognising Australians who uphold our values? Endorsing role models for the rest of the community? Or simply rewarding hard work and determination?"

John Pilger: "The attacks on WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are a response to an information revolution that threatens old power orders, in politics and in journalism. The incitement to murder trumpeted by public figures in the United States, together with attempts by the Obama administration to corrupt the law and send Assange to a hell-hole prison for the rest of his life, are the reactions of a rapacious system exposed as never before."

Mark Dreyfus: "The Queensland Government has done the right thing in announcing a Commission of Inquiry into the state's devastating floods....Questions have been raised about release strategies for the Wivenhoe Dam, warning systems, and a host of immediate matters. The Commission will look at these too, but the land use planning and infrastructure issues are much more fundamental."

Senator Hanson-Young: "As the mop up of the past week's horrendous events in Queensland begins, the nation's shock at the horror and intense power of the floods has turned into an incredible display of community spirit and generosity. In one chaotic week streets, suburbs and towns were inundated in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, while thousands of kilometres away, firefighters struggled to save homes south of Perth."

Dick Gross: "Catastrophes shine an unflinching light on the human condition. In Queensland, the floods have simultaneously produced acts of radiance and dark venality. This flood, of biblical proportions, has called forth all the human extremes that adorn and despoil our species."

Julie Bishop: "There is a powerful La Nina effect, resulting in warm water surrounding Eastern Australia and directing moist winds over the eastern states. One measure of the weather patterns is the Southern Oscillation Index, which ominously has already reached record levels in terms of anticipated rainfall."

Alan Dupont (director of the University of Sydney's centre for international security studies): "As an important food exporter, Australia must get its house in order by giving substance to its worthy, but still unrealised, promise to integrate all aspects of national food policy ''from the paddock to the plate''. If we cannot guarantee our own food security with the resources of a continent at our disposal, we can hardly expect less well-endowed nations to do so."

Chris Middendorp: "by 2012-13, [Australian] private schools will have received $47 billion in funding, compared with $35 billion for public schools. It is hard to justify government funding of private schools, particularly when two-thirds of Australians are educated at state schools. The schools that receive government funding should be those that educate the majority of our population. We were among the first countries to initiate free and compulsory education, but we appear to have lost our way. "

Daniel Flitton: "Diplomatic editor of the Melbourne Age): "Reviews of intelligence and foreign aid will make sure the money is being well spent... "this is a chance for a sober assessment of Australia's six spy agencies, how they work together, with wider government, and with counterparts overseas. Intelligence has been flush with cash over the past decade. For example, the size of ASIO - the domestic spy agency - has more than trebled, so there is every reason to take stock, decide what is working, and make sure the money is being well spent. In a democracy, the public needs regular assurance, too, given that the agencies mostly operate in the shadows and deal in secrets."

Liz Hannan: "So often when there is a fatality, the stretch of road on which it happens is condemned as a ''blackspot''. Recriminations ring out. The accident could have been avoided had the road been ''fixed''. That's a too convenient way to exonerate drivers from the responsibility they bear.
... We haven't got better roads and, no matter what Labor and the Coalition promise between now and the election, we won't have them for a long time. It's up to us stop killing ourselves and each other."

Brigid Delaney: "Intellectuals tend to look down on bogans but maybe the intellectuals shouldn't be so smug. Things Bogans Like tells us that working in the mines is an apex of many a bogan's career path, as they can earn $500 a day plying their basic catering or construction skills. Sadly, junior intellectuals are not so lucky, being trapped in the low-paid vortex of part-time, contract and casual work in the creative industries."

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has blasted as "foolish" the United States' pursuit of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

Ambassador Bleich: "I will defend freedom of expression until my last day. This wholesale publication of purportedly classified material is a bad idea, and those who honour free expression have a duty to say so."

Dr Halter: "Researchers from Harvard University and the University of Vermont have found that humpback whales in the Gulf of Maine carry massive quantities of nitrogen from the deep sea where they feed to the surface and release it in their liquid-like faeces. Essentially, humpbacks function as an "upward biological pump". It turns out that humpbacks contribute more nitrogen to the Gulf of Maine than all the local rivers combined, an estimated 23,000 tonnes, annually."

Article reports huge differences in public open space in different suburbs of Greater Melbourne, Victoria, Australia , a problem that will worsen with rapidly expanding population.

Ford: "WikiLeaks has "assisted democracy in revealing the real views of our governments", to quote another letter supporting Assange. This is why rather than a threat, the new upstart global media player ought to be seen as a potentially revitalising boon for serious journalism"

Paul Austin: "Of course, new opposition leader Daniel Andrews and his crew might play what the sports commentators call a ''blinder''. But again, history suggests it is a much better bet that Victoria's next Labor government is at least eight years away - and that the next ALP premier is not yet in the leader's office."

Mark Dreyfus: "The international struggle to deal with climate change is back on track. At the UNFCC conference in Cancun, delegates from more than 190 countries agreed to make a major collective effort to reduce emissions and undertake adaptation measures. With Climate Change Minister Greg Combet and a delegation of Australian officials, I had the honour of representing Australia at the conference."

Paul Barratt, former intelligence analyst and a former secretary to the Australian Defence Department: "They feed us an endless stream of misleading drivel manufactured by spin doctors, and they withhold information about their real agenda and other inconvenient truths the public has a right to know about. This is now much harder to sustain.
Julian Assange will no doubt pay a heavy price for his role in this inevitable development, but in the long sweep of history he will be seen more as hero than as villain."

Flitton: "Australia's leaders have not been fair dinkum with the Australian people about the war in Afghanistan, to parrot a bit of slang loved by Kevin Rudd. That much is now plain. The government will claim the war has moved on since the assessments details in these leaked cables. This is true. But why should we believe the conflict is moving in the right direction?"

Nina Funnell: "In theory, Australians are unequivocally opposed to human rights abuses. In reality, many will condemn the governments of other countries where human rights abuses occur while simultaneously expressing complacency about human rights abuses occurring in our own backyard. In fact many individuals reject the notion that human rights abuses are routinely occurring in this country."

Kathleen Murphy: "this morning's revelations (via WikiLeaks) that Arbib chatted amiably to his friends the Americans about incipient leadership tensions within the government back in 2009... Obviously Mark Arbib is not a spy. Cute joke, and unfortunately Arbib has left himself open to a barrage of water cooler humour, but suggesting that seriously is ridiculous."

Rudling: "If you know that the 'reported molestation' takes place on the night towards 14 August, then it all becomes easier to understand. The tweets actually indicate that Anna really liked Julian and that there had been no molestation 24 hours earlier... The tweets don't match Anna's story given to the police on 20 August. So she simply deletes them."

Charles Purcell: "Australia has said that Assange will get proper consular help. Whether that is enough to defend or save him at this point is questionable. Assange concludes by saying: ''The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.'' That is undoubtedly true. But exposing the truth doesn't occur in a consequence-free vacuum. That part of history is unlikely to change any time soon."

Lowry: "A little like Kelly and the stolen horse, it was someone else, let's not forget, who ''stole'' the data. Assange merely published the documents. Is he any more guilty than other news organisations that publish the details?"

Australian activists: "Australia is based on an age when First Peoples were no people at all.... Our constitution reflects an age when the First Peoples were treated as ''no peoples'' and state governments under section 25 could prohibit racial groups from voting in state and federal elections. Unfortunately, without constitutional change, this is still the case. Our racist past remains embedded in our foundational document."

Garnaut: "Kevin Rudd describing himself as a ''brutal realist'' on Chinese power will not of itself damage the Australia-China relationship because it merely confirms what Chinese leaders have long suspected. When Rudd released the Defence white paper in May last year, a People's Liberation Army strategist told the Herald it was a ''crazy'' and ''dangerous'' document that might inspire a new regional arms race."

Jenkins: "two back-up checks were applied. The US government was told in advance the areas or themes covered, and ''representations'' were invited. These were considered. Details of ''redactions'' were then shared with the other four media recipients of the material and sent to WikiLeaks itself, to establish, albeit voluntarily, some common standard.
Advertisement: Story continues below. The State Department knew of the leak several months ago..."

Davidson: "The key to understanding why the Brumby government held on in the regional centres of Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong and lost badly in the outer suburbs of Melbourne - both to everyone's surprise - can be largely explained by the fact that they kept their promise to build the Regional Fast Rail network linking Melbourne to the regional centres but failed to do anything about the abysmal standard of public transport to the outer suburbs."

ABC News Report re WikiLeaks: "Australia is described as a "rock solid" but uninfluential US ally in secret US government documents made public by the controversial whistle-blowing website, WikiLeaks...About 930 of the WikiLeaks documents were written by US officials in Australia, but it is not yet clear what information they contain and the WikiLeaks website was struggling under the massive amount of traffic...Attorney-General Robert McClelland says he has established a taskforce to deal with any fallout from the new leaks, which he describes as of a "real concern" to the Government. Mr McClelland says the Australian Federal Police is assessing if any Australian laws had been broken."

Michelle Grattan: "Victoria's voice carries lessons and implications for Julia Gillard. While the flow-on effects shouldn't be exaggerated, life in Canberra could get tougher for Labor as a result of this state thumbing its nose at her old mate John Brumby. There are national messages for Greens and independents, too. Ted Baillieu's tough-minded preference decision has punctuated the Greens' rise, at least with a semicolon. This election has exposed their vulnerability, rather than reinforcing their strength. Nationally, they should beware of overreaching, in case people decide they've got too much power. For Adam Bandt, the Green MP for Melbourne there on Liberal preferences, the future becomes more problematic."

US studies professor: "The US was unable to push hard for a global deal at Copenhagen because domestic support for a national deal had collapsed. President Obama was left to reiterate his country's existing domestic commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by 17 per cent of 2005 levels by 2020, roughly comparable to Australia's Copenhagen commitment of a 5 per cent reduction on 2000 emissions by 2020."

Professor Smith re FOI and Victoria, Australia elections: "The Greens maintain that if either Labor or the Coalition wishes to form a minority government with the Greens, they will have to "completely overhaul current disclosure practices". Whatever the outcome of the election, Victorians can be encouraged by the responses to this survey. All parties have shown that they take the issues seriously and regard them as important. So should we. What will be critical over the next four years is that both citizens and the media - the watchdog of our democracy - do their utmost to ensure that the promises are honoured."

Colebatch: "Victorians have been blessed with two capable leaders running campaigns focused more on substance than spin.... Two decent, intelligent and capable leaders. Policies that address real rather than image problems. "

Summers: "When the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, visited Australia recently she did just two television events, a Q&A-style group interview before a mostly youthful audience, and a one-on-one (or should that be one-on-two?) with the amiable funsters Hamish and Andy for The 7pm Project on Channel Ten. Clinton was impressive on the Q&A event but while some of the audience questions were on serious subjects they were hardly tough. This format does not allow for follow-up probing."

"The victory, when it came, could not have been more emphatic: all seven judges agreed in a single judgment that the government was wrong to deny asylum seekers who tried to come to Australia by boat access to our legal system."

Key quote re landmark Australian High Court decision: "More than 400,000 Australians receive Youth Allowance or Austudy, but only those who earned extra income, such as through part-time work, would have a tax liability against which they could claim deductions."

Michelle Grattan: "Gillard has another spectre starting to haunt her. After being quiescent - many would claim intimidated - during the Rudd era, the caucus and others in the Labor Party are starting to flex their muscles. The stirrings are coming from all directions: from the factions, within the ministry and from union sources. ALP national secretary Karl Bitar - of all people - this week criticised the lack of discussion within Labor ranks."

Costello: "Suppose the Liberal Party breaks its long-standing practice and decides to preference Labor in the inner-city seats. That will save Pike and other Socialist Left MPs. What will it mean for the Liberal Party? It will mean Labor can then release all of the resources that would otherwise be tied up fighting the Greens to campaign against the Liberal Party in the suburbs - in marginal seats where the Liberal Party really does have a chance of winning."

Clinton-Gates: "Drawing wisdom and inspiration from what we have achieved together, the US and Australia stand ready to confront the challenges of this new century, just as we overcome the threats and obstacles of the last."

White: "China's growth is placing strains on Australia's alliance with America... China's rise presents the US with a serious challenge to its leadership of Asia for the first time in decades, and presents Australia with an impossible choice between our traditional alliance and our economic future. The two allies are as a result pulling further apart. Washington wants Australia to help resist China's challenge by increasing military and diplomatic co-operation, while Canberra just wants to avoid taking sides between our major ally and our major trading partner. The result is an alliance that, despite the warm words, is rapidly loosing strategic and political coherence. "

Leading Australian political writer Michelle Grattan: "Living precariously in a hung parliament, Labor might not find this the most comfortable time to be starting a debate about what it believes and where it should be going."

Senior Greens note the trend of unions back to Labor but don't seem too troubled by it. Union source: ''If you are blueing with us and we side with the Greens, the Greens are going to make all the difference in a number of marginal seats.''