Dear John,

1999 called. They’d like their failed referendum back.

It must be said that acknowledging past mistakes, and offering to give formal symbolic recognition to Aboriginal people, is an outstanding first step. But given the context — indeed, will Parliament be sitting next week or won’t it? — something tells me that step #2 might not come soon, if at all.

And for crying out loud, while a USyd law degree is wonderful it does not qualify you to arbitrarily nominate events as ‘history’, nor to choose words for one of the country’s most important legal documents, no matter how many times you try.

• When John Howard announced he was bringing us a new era of federalism, I felt a sudden urge to check over the Constitution again. And strangely enough, I don’t see anything to back him up there (though of course, IANAL, and the High Court has hardly disagreed with centralisation over the years). But given how his desire to hand-pick a hospital for a $60m payday ignores sensible planning, I doubt silly matters like what our founders thought will stop him.
• This was interesting, I thought, in light of the Ruddster’s proposal to work with the states (shock! horror!) on infrastructure spending and housing affordability. Once upon a time, Labor were the centralist party and the Libs were federalists …!
• Speaking of housing, this week saw the final report of the State Opposition’s housing affordability “taskforce”, which can best be summarised as a whinge saying “wah, wah, wah, it’s all Labor’s fault!”. Lemme just say that if supply of land for houses is, as they claim, the one and only cause of expensive accommodation prices, why are our pubs not full of tradespeople lounging around because there isn’t enough stuff being built for them to work on?
• And finally, even bigger whinges are coming from the poor old Federal Police commissioner, who seems to think that he can just insist upon our respect, and that his “ongoing” investigation is going to, er, deliver evidence good enough that he might even get an extradition order before holding his next press conference. Or something.