Despite the live-cattle debacle and the ongoing asylum seeker issues, bi-lateral relations between Australia-Indonesia are looking very healthy at present. The current warm and co-operative relationship between Indonesia and Australia is likely to be tested however, over the next 12 months as both countries face national elections that will see a new Indonesian president installed and, if the latest polls are correct, Tony Abbott finally achieving his dream of becoming Australia’s next prime minister. The opposition leader’s 'dream…
I love to have fish 'n chips with my Dad on a Friday night at his retirement village restaurant, and then retire to the lounge to watch the footy. Particularly when the Dockers are being beaten! And it’s not hard to image just how fantastic it will be when the game is shown live from the new $1 billion Burswood Football Stadium...paid for by WA taxpayers. Well, mostly anyway. When I arrived home last Friday and picked-up the newspaper, I read a story about a young farming family who live in the country with an autistic child. Not e…
My next door neighbours who went to live overseas last month were nice people. They had lived next door to us for many years and we knew them quite well. Or sort-of ‘quite well’ that is. We would meet at the front of the house when watering the garden or moving the cars, and always it was pleasant and cordial. We were on first-names basis, but that was it really. And as we look back, only now I realise that maybe we didn’t have a relationship that was deeper and more embracing of really nice people. Don’t get me wrong; we did get on ju…
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