leoj,

To quote you -

"So easy to flick a bit of brown stuff...
Being constructive and balanced is hard."

Try taking your own advice.

Until you do your rants don't interest me.

Here's a great idea for Russia:

Is it a Russian interest for any particular Australian political party to win?

Then simply, grant Russian citizenship to all the members of the other party(s) - good riddance to them all!

Paul,

While I agree that MC should resign, the comparison of his position with the staggering incompetence of the greens is not there.

There is a stark difference, chalk and cheese, in that Senator Canavan is choosing to defend his case in Court. That is not something the two Greens were prepared to do. The Greens admitted fault chose to resign to prevent that from happening.

Greens administration/governance was criticised publicly by past and present leaders and the two Greens. That is also on the public record.

Canavan is best serving the interests of his electorate, the Parliament and Australian public. It will be interesting to have the Court examine the conditions, hopefully what was intended by s44 and other relevant provisions, for example its utility and effectiveness in treating risks.

Foxy,
It was you who put forward the irrelevant Q&A entertainment show (not news or fact, entertainment according to ABC management). It is discourteous and unreasonable to do that and then try to censor other comments. The subject newspaper's facebook page was indeed relevant and topical. The only problem where you are concerned is that the public reaction to the show was not something you wanted disclosed. See page 13, here,
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=7855&page=13

It is surprising but at the same time predictable that a 'young person's' Q&A comes up with 'issues' that identical to the predictable 'issues' of the 'adult' ones (sic, adult is a stretch). So inner-city Hipster ('Ultimo') Sydney.

However such shows are not understood by all viewers as the concept of 'entertainment' of ABC executives. That and all of the media and especially on The Box, should have regard for their effects on youth, especially where it is marketed as being for them.

There is no need for you to say that you don't read posts that you don't agree with. You have I believe done that to others besides my humble (and quick) contributions. Where you don't intend to comment you could do just that

leoj,

Most of the time I do ignore your posts however when
you continue to address and provoke me deliberately
I am forced at times to respond. I shouldn't but I do.

Yes,I did bring up the subject of the show Q&A as a
response to O Sung Wu's post on page 12 where he
stated he was fed up with all but a few of our politicians.
And I agreed with him on the following page
that the state of our political
affairs was in a bit of a mess.

My response was relevant to his comments, more so
than many of your posts in this discussion, because as I
explained in my post, Q&A's program that evening was a
youth-focused episode in which the younger generation
asked some tough questions of their peers, covering a
wide range of topics which showed that with youngsters
as caring as these were, our country's future was in good hands.

You then went on your rants through several
posts about "Leftism" et cetera, accusing the ABC of
all sorts of things (I'm surprised that you didn't bring
in George Soros, World Order, Totalitarianism, Socialism,
or Johannes Bjelke Petersen into the conversation).
You again accused the ABC of stacking the audience in favour
of the "Left" - and this a high-school audience. You stated
that it was absolute rubbish TV and a waste of taxpayer's
money and -
- then you have the gall to accuse me of irrelevance, and tell
me that I'm being impolite and discourteous.

How on earth can anyone take you seriously or even
continue to respond to what you write.

It’ll be interesting to see what the High Court determines in Canavan’s case.

One thing about constitutional law is that, compared to all other areas of law, it has relatively little case law with which to interpret it. And even then, what little case law there is has mostly been focused around the interpretation of the sub-sections of s 51 (i.e. the legislative powers of the Commonwealth).

I suspect that what the High Court determines in this case will depend largely on the worldviews and legal approaches of the current sitting judges. A predominantly formalist bench will likely uphold a more literal interpretation of the provision and insist that Canavan’s election was unconstitutional, and that any change to such a strict interpretation of the provision be put to a referendum. A more activist bench, on the other hand, may take a more purposive approach and find that the recent incidences are not in line with what the founding fathers had in mind when they drafted that provision, and that they could not have possibly foreseen the problems that it is creating today.

Whatever the High Court decides, it appears that it is high time we got some case law on how to interpret this provision in a modern day context.