|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
NATIONAL
- COFFEE
The Coffee maker's awards 1999 went to City Grind & Bar Piazza. Sydney is confirmed with the best coffee on Australia. Other places in Australia filled the next five places.
Coluzzi in Victoria Street held previous awards. Spin find's Bill & Tony's in Stanley Street makes excellent coffee.
- POLITICIAN'S PRESIDENT - V - PEOPLE'S PRESIDENT.
The battle heats up. SPIN is predicting that the case for a people's president will win, which means we will not be getting a Republic this time round. The case for a politician's president is becoming somewhat extreme, with Turnbull using the word "lie" about the monarchist's case.
- FEDERAL POLITICIAN PAY
Politicians should not be paid "commercial" rates. They are not in business, they are in politics.
When the NSW state government wanted to increase MP's pay, they held a midnight votes just before Christmas to legislate on abstruse "administrative matters" that result in a 50% increase politician's pay.
If we could have direct government, enabled by legislation like that coming before the NSW Parliament, there would be no more of this pay nonsense.
INTERNATIONAL
- INDONESIA & TIMOR
Things are looking very bad for Habibe. Unfortunately for him, it seems pretty clear that the Suharto pardon was a deal. In all, he was a vast improvement over Suharto. He seems better than Megawati, also. In Australia, we say "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater".
In Timor SPIN is still wondering where all the dead Timorese have gone? In early September the media intimated that tens of thousands were being killed by the militia.
The original Indonesian takeover of Timor was wrong,
and
some not very nice people benefitted greatly. So the
relinquishing
of Timor was the right thing to do. The lesson must be that the
Indonesian
Army must be brought to heel.
This page published 17 October 1999.