When Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby tweeted on ANZAC Day that whatever the ANZACS fought for “..it wasn’t gay marriage or Sharia Law”, I was one of the thousands on twitter and elsewhere who gave him what could loosely be called a serve.

A lot has been said in recent times about Australia’s skills shortage and the so-called idle unemployed. Julia Gillard’s recent declaration of war against idleness saw her call on the unemployed to “pull their weight” and not give into welfare dependency.

Australia. The sunburnt country; the lucky country. So lucky, in fact, that we’ve got wall-to-wall poker machines to take advantage of that luck. Because, as everyone knows, Aussies love to gamble. Lucky, lucky us.

8:13am Awake to see disapproving blue eyes looming over self. Daughter demands to know when self is going to get up and why she has to be late to school ALL THE TIME. Fall out of bed, wrap self in dressing gown and ugg boots, stumble into kitchen, followed by disapproving daughter. Lean heavily on coffee machine.

8:17am Short but intense battle to extract son from computer headphones. Firmly ignore wails about vital importance of finishing Minecraft thingy, stuff son into blazer and herd children out the door to the car.

What is this malaise that’s gripping Australian voters? According to the latest opinion poll we’re deeply unhappy with Julia Gillard (disapprove 50%, approve 37%) yet we still prefer her to Tony Abbott as Prime Minister (Gillard 42%, Abbott 33%). Even more confusingly, despite our concerns about Abbott, it seems we would elect a Coalition government tomorrow if given the chance.

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Typing is not writing in the same way that a cocktail shaker is not a jug of margaritas.

Discuss.

Anyone who is interested in writing something is, at some point, going to have to type it (anyone who has tried to read a grocery list scrawled on the back of an envelope by someone under 40 will know that handwriting has sadly become extinct in my generation, its evolutionary advantage lost in the rapid migration of homo sapiens from parchment forests to the Information Super-Savannah).

Yesterday I bought a copy of Lindsay Tanner’s book, Sideshow: Dumbing Down of Democracy.

The book is not a memoir, it is in fact much closer to George Megalogenis’ Quarterly Essay Trivial Pursuit, than it is some tell-all political autobiography. The book’s central thesis is that the media and politicians are locked into a dumbed-down, trivial, vicious circle, which is, for the most part, instigated by dumb, lazy journalism and the dumb media organisation that encourage such journalism. So well argued and accurate is Tanner’s thesis that I think this may actually be the first time a book’s thesis has been completely proven correct before the book has even been officially launched.

Under the guise of Special Religious Instruction (SRI), Access Ministries have a backdoor into our primary schools to spread their evangelical, Old Testament-style Christianity. This is a terrible, terrifying idea and one that makes me question the integrity of the education system in Victoria.

Smoking is highly addictive, expensive and disgusting to be around if you’re a non-smoker. Is it dangerous as well? Of course it is. The facts about smoking are undeniable.

The ABS estimates that, despite Australia having one of the lowest smoking rates in the OECD, tobacco was second only to obesity in the leading causes of disease in this country.

There’s a wonderful irony in parenting, that we want to imbue our children with a strong moral code and yet we will tell them bare-faced lies when it suits our purpose. We tell ourselves that the deceptions are for their own good, whether to entertain them or shield them, and that it is alright to hide the truth, despite the fact that one of the first morals that we try to teach toddlers is honesty.

Perihan Abouzeid, the 26 year old owner of an online supermarket, is one of the young, female, twittteriffic activists that the media has so far put, not without justification, at the centre of the story of Egypt’s uprising. When I first met her a month and a bit ago, it was at a posh coffee shop on the island of Zamalek, an island on the Nile populated by foreigners and wealthy Egyptians. She was participating in a meeting of Shabab Masri (Egyptian Youth), a group she formed with other young activists during the eighteen day uprising that ousted Mubarak.

This narrative says only Apple are responsible for poor working conditions in China. Therefore pressure must be put on Apple to get Foxconn and other suppliers to treat their employees to the standards us rich Westerners are used to. All other “brands” that use Cheap Chinese Labour to produce your latest toy or pair of shoes can be excused.

Here’s what should happen: We’ll correctly put pressure on all the companies who source labour in low cost societies. Those companies will put pressure on their suppliers. Wage Costs will go up, manufacturing and supply costs will go up. Costs of your shiny new devices will go. You’ll happily pay those extra prices. No company will undercut each other by going to new cheap labour economies like Yemen or Uganda. Shininess will ensue.

It’s been two years since Duncan Jones’ debut feature film Moon (2009) hit cinema screens and there’s been an air of excitement and anticipation for his follow up ever since.

A bold directorial debut, Moon displayed Jones’ formal and tonal talents as a filmmaker. Its effective use of abrasive sound and an incredibly isolating mise-en-scene were on par with its intense ethical questioning; a film brave enough to offer conviction without resolve.

I have to be honest; this wasn’t the article I wanted to write. I intended to produce a snarky and confronting piece about motor vehicle advertising and quite possibly a review of a new car. But I’ve been distracted by sadness this week: one of the family has been dreadfully ill. Thankfully the metal child and not one of the flesh and blood variety. Yes, the engine I was so proudly lauding last month has developed a number of issues and possibly picked up one of the ‘World’s Worst Timing’ awards.

Cooking with spices is one of the most enjoyable and satisfying of culinary pursuits. It’s that giddy euphoria and excitement that one feels whilst cooking with spices that makes me do it over and over again. Spices are wonderfully aromatic, aesthetically beautiful and add a great complex of flavours to any dish.

The dishes that I have listed below are taken from Charmaine Solomon’s epic work The Complete Asian Cookbook. If you follow the recipe as it is written, you will create a fantastic meal. However, cooking dishes like curry from scratch and spice cooking in general allows for experimentation and creativity for the culinarian. I encourage you not to follow any spice recipe with great precision. Play around a bit by adding different quantities of spice and adding completely new spices into the dish.

There is always a lot of rabid, foam-at-the-mouth ranting going on at the King’s Tribune (and rightly so) but I have been pretty quiet – until now. I have decided, for this month’s wine column, I wanted to start getting a few issues off my chest, so let the whining begin…

Restaurant and Bar Wine Prices

If everyone did not already know, Australia (and the rest of the world for that matter) is floating in, literally, an ocean of wine. That is bad news for the many wineries that are enduring some very tough times; the good news is that the average wine sipper has never had a better choice of a decent drop to drink, at a more than pleasurable price – agreed?

Osama Bin Laden is dead, Barack Obama has a US birth certificate, and I have a weekly column with ABC The Drum. Does the joy ever stop, or even slow down, just for a few minutes?

You may recognise some of what follows, but let’s be honest most of it’s worth another look; I am aware of several readers who have wallpapered their bedrooms entirely with the back pages of The Tribune, and am told by highly-placed sources that the ABC has had to invest in a new server to deal with all the new traffic it’s getting.