Proof copies are now online for today's Hansard of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council. I haven't read the whole lot, and probably won't bother, but there was a lot of political football being played in the lower house debate, despite the bill having bipartisan support. In the upper house, where there are more minor parties represented, the debate seemed to show more literacy, with questions being raised by the Greens and Democrats as to whether, considering the police crackdown since Monday, the amending legislation is necessary at all.

And then, alas, there is David Oldfield, MLC, the former mentor of Pauline Hanson who sits in the upper house as an independent, having been elected in 1999 before the deregistration of One Nation as a political party. His speech, well, to quote the President of the Legislative Council in response to a point of order:

"...the comments of the Hon. David Oldfield about Lebanese people are racist and bordering on unparliamentary."

Oldfield comes up for re-election in March 2007.

Before I finish tonight, a sidelight to Sunday's displays of flag-waving nationalism of which John Winston Howard was so proud on national television the following night. Among the other Australian icons being paraded by the "We Grew Here You Flew Here" brigade was Blinky Bill. As I mentioned on Tuesday, John Huxley reported on this in that day's SMH.

Now while the original adventures of Blinky Bill, written by Dorothy Wall, have passed into the public domain, the character himself has not. Blinky Bill is owned by Yoram Gross-EM TV, the respected and highly successful producers of films and TV programs for children whose studios are about two kilometres from here. Gross is a survivor of the Holocaust and it's hard to imagine anything more incongruous (not to mention illegal) than using one of his properties for neo-fascist purposes.

(Acknowledgement to the anti-racist blog Fight dem back! for bringing this to my notice.)