While the focus has been on the Liberal Party's dominance of the federal Senate to push through bills
with little care for deliberation, or parliamentary process, we see
Labor passing bills with extreme haste in the NSW Parliament too.
From the article;
SOME of the most far-reaching changes to police powers and civil liberties in years - the counter-terrorism bill, which allows police to lock people up for 14 days without charge - passed through the NSW upper house at 2am yesterday, after just a day's debate.
...
Unlike the federal bill, the state laws received no scrutiny from a parliamentary committee, and Labor, independent and Greens MPs complained that the bill was being rushed through too quickly.
The
Terrorism (Police Powers) Amendment (Preventative Detention) Bill 2005 was amended on the 30th of November, and on the 1st of December the Legislative Assembly agreed to the amendments. Unfortunately the NSW Hansard is busted on the NSW Parliament website, I
cant go back and look at the Hansard for the 1st of December as the link is broken (incidentally
the link for the Legislative Council Hansard is broken too).
So, while I can't confirm the amount of debate, it looks like amendments were rushed through the Assembly;
Second Reading: 30/11/2005
Date Committed: 30/11/2005
Reported with Amendments: 30/11/2005
Third Reading: 30/11/2005
Date Passed: 30/11/2005
I can recall when the attacks occurred on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, I went home from work and watched it on television, except the media distilled it down to a twenty second screen grab, that shows a plane hitting a tower - over and over. The plane would start a few hundred yards out, and then there was the big orange ball of aviation fuel going up. This was repeated ad-infinitum, on all channels. I turned the television off, as this constant repetition was making it into a Hollywood-style action movie, and desensitising me to the horror I felt when I realised these attacks were deliberate.
I fear I am suffering the same desensitisation with all the anti-terror laws, beating down on liberty and advancing the power of government to act in an arbitrary and silent manner. The rhetoric of "keeping us safe from violence" is constant, and parliament is so weak, the people have no voice, such that legislation like this is rammed through without debate.
Unfortunately I can't turn parliament off, or ignore it, so that I remember a time of greater liberty and prior to the dominance of the national security state and shadow state given legislative steroids by a supple and compliant parliament. There is a reason why the Federal and State Parliaments are avoiding debate on anti-terror legislation, they dont want there to be a debate on liberty. Government always loses that argument.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
