John Howard's blatant abuse of constitutional power came to an end this morning when he visited the Governor General and obtained a dissolution of the House of Representatives, and a federal election on November 24. This is the date that Peter Costello implied at the AFL Grand Final Breakfast last month.

The Prime Minister's election announcement has been purloined by the Liberal Party for use on their Youtube website. Unfortunately the Liberal Party apparatchik responsible for uploading the video has no concept of 16:9 ratios.

I'm normally reticent about United Nations agencies picking up Nobel Peace Prizes. Having said that, I thought the award this year jointly to the IPCC and to Al Gore was spot on - or, more to the point, given for the right reasons.

John Howard and his ministers are making announcements like there's no tomorrow (which, give or take six weeks, is almost certainly correct). Two more legs of his education platform, otherwise known as the Cultural Revolution (registered trademark under licence from the estate of Mao Zedong), have been announced today.

From the Treasurer's office this morning:

"The Federal Government will provide a total of $10 million towards two key projects on Hepburn Avenue, Treasurer Peter Costello announced today.

The Federal funding of $10 million will be allocated as follows :

"Labor believes that supporting executions – even by a nation state – gives justification to all kinds of fanatical lunatics to take the lives of others in pursuit of their own warped ideologies. That is why, at the highest levels Australia’s public comments about the death penalty must be consistent with policy. This is especially the case if we are going to tactfully and successfully drive a regional abolitionist movement."

- Robert McClelland, Wentworth Human Rights Forum, 8.10.07

Yesterday I quoted an unanswered Question In Writing posed in the House of Representatives to John Howard on November 17, 2004 - the second sitting day of the current (and soon-to-be-ex) parliament. The question relates to Government expenditure on corporate boxes at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where Howard and ministers wined, dined and occasionally watched the action as, among other things, Marion Jones cheated her way to victory after victory.

A selection of some of the more interesting unanswered questions in the House of Representatives which have been outstanding for more than twelve months:

Question Time in Federal Parliament is a joke and, as it is currently administered, serves no useful purpose. But you knew that. The real interrogation comes in the fine print of Hansard, that section at the back called "Questions Without Notice".

There's an interesting document on the Australian Parliament website.

Its URL is http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/notpaper/QONS.pdf.

Its title is "List of Unanswered Questions in Writing".

A cast of two in today's video release from the Nationals. One is a wombat, and the other is an inanimate wooden object. Pick which is which.

(Apologies for such a difficult question...)

The Australian Department of Immigration (currently the Department of Immigration and Citizenship) has rightfully been condemned for some dreadful actions over the years - turning away boatloads of refugees, passing the buck (in more ways than one) to cash-strapped Pacific islands, redrawing Australia's boundaries for migration purposes... even deporting Australian citizens who just happened to have non-Anglo names. And in the past week they've made us a global laughingstock yet again with the ludicrous Citizenship Test.