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Friday 8th March 1996

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Prime Minister elect John Howard has cut his cabinet from 17 to 15. The cutbacks have triggered understandable anxiety amongst the shadow cabinet waiting to reap the rewards of the Coalition's win the federal election. Looks like Alexander Downer will keep Foreign Affairs but that old favourite Bronwyn Bishop will get dumped. She might have to go and join Bromwyn Bunny on her magical trips!

Political:

Hundreds of Aboriginals held a peaceful protest to denounce the new federal member for Oxley, Pauline Hanson, in the main Ipswich shopping mall yesterday. During the ralley she was called "Ipswich's version of Adolf Hitler."

Well respected Aboriginal leader Neville Bonner expressed his sadness that the comments had been so popularised "through the ignorance of one person." Bonner went on to say:
"Fifty years ago a small insignificant little man stood up on a platform and branded us ill as people. In Ipswich last week a little, insignificant little woman stood up and did the same thing."

Now what I cannot understand is that all she did was to quote the facts. Let me repeat that. All Pauline Hanson did was to quote the facts. Facts which have irritated the voting public for years. How does that make her a racist? How does her one letter inflame things? Who are the people doing all the threats, name calling and rabble rousing?

Yet for political expediency we now have the leader of the Democrats, Cheryl Kernot, the dumped Labor politician for Oxley, Les Scott and some other political heavyweights putting their support behind the ralley.

A ralley in which the people have said that Pauline Hanson should get the facts right - maybe they should look at themselves.

Business:

The newly formed CRA-RTZ mining group have come into the big league with profits of Au$1.7 billion for the 1995 calendar year. They join Australian's BHP, News Corp and National Australia Bank in the billion dollar profit club. The profit would have exceeded Au$2 billion but for an extraordinary loss of Au$300 million due to Kembla Coke and Coal write-offs. With a tax bill of Au$1.12 billion tax man must be smiling too.

Sport:

Ex Indy Car champion Jacques Villeneuve yesterday christened the new Formula One track at Albert Park in Melbourne with the fastest time of 1:33.04 in his Renault-powered Williams with an average time of 204.357 k/hr on the 5.26km track. His time in the lead up the Australian Grand Prix this weekend was a full second faster than that of team mate Damon Hill who was followed by Benetton driver Jean Alesi.

Social:

Conventional wisdom about the effects of a cold shower may be overturned by university research into athletic performances. Competitors in warm environments may considerably enhance their performance by taking a cold bath before the event Frank Marino, a lecturer at Charles Sturt University at Bathurst in New South Wales, has claimed. The same might then be said about sexual performance on the hot Queensland nights, or for that matter anywhere in the world!

In 1989 ex-premier of Queensland Wayne Goss told his troops to go and have cold showers to calm down when they got excited about getting into power. Seems like he got it wrong!

Personal trivia:

Travelled to the big smoke yesterday on business. Gee the Internet is becoming more and more prominent in the least likely of places. Great to see! Absolutely stunning day today with bright blue skies and warm temperatures. Paradise found...


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