I've not much liked the James Bond flicks over the years; the comic adventure genre rarely appeals to me. Yet I liked Casino Royale. Director Martin Campbell gave the film depth and intelligence and Daniel Craig filled the more refined role well. But Quantum of Solace, with director Campbell replaced by Marc Forster, is disappointing.

The plot is thin. The action scenes are over-edited. There are so many cuts from view to view that its very difficult to follow. In one sequence it took quite while figure out whether Bond was pursuer or being pursued. The song over the opening titles is awful, a much-too-loud harsh squalling cacophony that has nothing to do with anything. I put my fingers in my ears.

As David Stratton writes in The Australian,

after a while, all the chase sequences blur into one: there are speeding cars and trucks alongside Lake Garda, speeding boats in the harbour of Port au Prince, speeding men on the rooftops of Siena, the latter scene remarkably similar to the one involving Jason Bourne on the rooftops of Tangier in The Bourne Ultimatum. These scenes aren't badly handled; it's just that, like the Bourne films, they're over-edited to the point where they are actually confusing. Quantum of Solace editors Matt Chesse and Richard Pearson worked on the Bourne films, too, and it's hard to escape the impression that the producers at Eon are trying to turn Bond into another Bourne, which would be a big mistake.

Craig does his best with this mess. He's blue-eyed and sexy (and fully clothed for all but a couple of seconds). His Bond is haunted, intense and loyal. Judi Dench gets all the best lines as M. Mathieu Almaric is fine as the villian, Dominic Greene, but we only see one side of his character, the sleazy side.

The removal of discrimination against same-sex couples from at least eight-five federal laws is a formality after the last of them passed the Senate last night. A bill to eliminate discrimination in areas including tax, social security and health passed with amendments and will go to the House of Representatives for final approval this week. In essence, the laws achieve this by extending the definition of a de facto relationship to include same-sex couples.

The bills add changes already enacted to grant gay people access to the federal family law courts on property and spouse maintenance matters after a relationship breakdown. They a Labor election promise and follow a 2007 report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry and report (which were obstructed by the former Howard government) an audit by the present government of Commonwealth legislation and a Senate inquiry forced by the Opposition. The Coalition had expressed support for the principle of equality for gay couples, but had to overcome opposition from its conservative members.

Especially gratifying to me is the passage of another bill to allow a person to benefit from their same-sex partner's superannuation, especially Australian Government employees, about which James and I gave evidence to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

I doubt that I will be able to sit through Baz Luhrmann's newly released movie Australia without cringing or simply walking out. Julian Glover in The Guardian calls it a "spectacularly bloated film -- a project so immodest that it has been named after the country it claims to describe."

Which is just the point. The film does not describe Australia. For starters, it is set nearly 70 years in the past. Its setting is largely rural, and we are a cosmopolitan urban nation. Glover writes:

I have just returned from Sydney, where the film - all sunshine and dust and sweeping shots of the outback - has been greeted with artfully disappointed reviews in the local press, as if writing anything too rude would undermine national pride. Australia is busy constructing cultural self-consciousness in a way Gordon Brown would love, and the film is part of that. When it reaches cinemas in Britain, after Christmas, there will be a huge attempt to sell the call of the Aussie outback to tourists, even though very few modern Australians now live there, and those who do are mostly overlooked by the suburban majority.

It seems a pity that a nation would want to define itself around a sloshy love story between a posh Englishwoman, played by Kidman, and a sweaty, bearded cattle drover

Well actually, Mr Glover, this Australian, along with, I suspect, most Australians, has no desire that our country be defined in such a way; in fact I resent it.

-- but where does national self-definition end and facile stereotyping begin? Imagine Belgium, the Movie (he spoke Flemish and she ate waffles); or queuing in the rain to see Britain, the Blockbuster (the trains were late but his love survived).

Anne Barrowlcough in The Times is more forgiving.

It has every Australian cliché you could hope for, from kangaroos and Nicole Kidman to aborigines going walkabout and, yep, Waltzing Matilda. There is even, within moments of the opening scenes, Rolf Harris's wobble board.

But Baz Luhrmann's long-awaited, and over-budget epic Australia manages, against the odds, to avoid turning into one big sunburnt stereotype about Godzone country. Instead, in what turns out to be a multi-layered story it describes an Australia of the 1940s that is at once compellingly, beautiful and breathtakingly cruel.

Fiona Williams of SBS says

the film falls short of unrealistic expectations. . . Given the weight of expectation and the hefty price tag, I’d like to deliver a more ringing endorsement than "it's not awful". . . . emulating films of a bygone era isn’t enough to create a modern classic . . . it is difficult to feel moved by a film that is so artificial.

Urban cinefile likes it (more or less).

Bonnie Malkin says in The Telegraph

Local critics had worried that the much-anticipated film Australia would present to the world a series of time-honoured Antipodean clich"s. Their fears were well founded.

Marc Fennell gives it 3/5 on Radio Triple J

The movie that’s supposed to save the Australian film industry, rescue Nicole Kidman's career, justify Baz Luhrmans monolithic ego, heal the Stolen Generation, cure cancer, slice bread, place man on the moon and improve upon the basic orgasm . . .

. . . The whole thing smacks of a movie that was half written, shot, reshot, rewritten, then reshot again then rewritten, reshot, redited, rewritten and then reshot and redited a final time . . . then they watched it once more and decided to spend $20 million on blowing up Darwin and hearding some CGI cows off a cliff. That said, there are some truly stunning cinematic moments . . . But almost none of it flows and fits together. Some parts are large and majestic, then it'll become cartoony. A bit of high-camp I can enjoy but, almost every 30 minutes on the dot the movie will stop to show us a bunch of Tourism Australia landscape shots.

The plot's key turning points have either too much or not enough emphasis and are often in the wrong spot. The whole last half of the movie (The Bombing of Darwin and so on) could easily have been shifted earlier for a punchier, more wrenching ending. Like I said, this movie wasn’t written it was re-written. And nowhere is that more obvious than in the amount of CGI used. The movie is filled with scenes that were half filmed on location, half on green-screen as reshoots. It's not that Baz has bitten off more than he can chew, it's that he's bitten off more than he SHOULD'VE chewed and then pigheadedly insisted on munching through it all, even if it does take 2 hrs and 45 minutes.

. . . Finally though, if you want a new drinking game.. take a shot everytime someone says 'Crikey' I guarantee you'll be too hammered to notice the movie's glaring flaws, and instead soak up the sheer glory of watching Baz snort his own ego through a wide-angle lens.

Usually reliable critic, David Stratton in The Australian is more generous than most.

I have to say, there's a lot of clichés in the script, a lot of familiar elements from other films of the past . . . and it's as though the film is aimed at not so much an Australian audience but an international audience, and especially an American audience.

I think probably it has the potential to be quite successful in America because it is, I think for Australians, a rather simplistic view of this whole period. It's the sort of film where if you make a point about half-caste Aboriginals in the first 10 minutes you have to restate exactly the same point another couple of hours further on.

The film is not without flaws, it's not the masterpiece that we were hoping for, but I think you could say that it's a very good film in many ways. While it will be very popular with many people I think there's a slight air of disappointment after it all. But I will say that the acting is of a very high level, especially given that some of the actors have been encouraged to perform in this rather stylised, theatrical way.

. . . Despite its flaws -- and it certainly has flaws -- I think Australia is an impressive and important film, and if I were to give it a star rating I would give it three and a half out of five.

Finally, Jim Schembri in the in the SMH:

. . . the anxiously anticipated Australia is not a bad film. But it's far from a great one, and certainly not one destined to be a classic. The film is fine, and never boring but, boy, is it overlong . . . at a mammoth 165 minutes it feels too much like a work-in-progress. There is a lot of narrative flab and longueurs in the first two hours and the film often has the pace of a steamroller with engine trouble. . . . Luhrmann also seems so eager to trowel on the Aussie clichés . . . that Australia is often simply irritating.

Certainly, I find it irritating that any film maker should presume to call any movie by the name of our nation, let alone a film full of out of date cliché as this one apparently is.

In 1972, the seminal book The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome presented some challenging scenarios for global sustainability, based on computer modeling of population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and the consumption of non-renewable natural resources. However, contrary to popular belief the scenarios did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th century. According to the book, the path we have taken will cause decreasing resource availability and an escalating cost of extraction that triggers a slowdown of industry, which eventually results in economic collapse some time after 2020.

Economists criticised The Limits to Growth, which has been largely ignored by policy makers.

Now Graham Turner at Australia's CSIRO has compared historical data for 1970-2000 with scenarios presented in the Limits to Growth. His report shows that 30 years of historical data compare favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century. The data do not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies.

Yet Turner argues that a sustainable economy is attainable. "We wouldn't have to go back to the caves," he says. The results indicate the particular importance of understanding and controlling global pollution.

In Christianity Today (18 Nov 08), Ruth Moon asks "Will U.S. diplomatic shift and [Franklin] Graham visit help Christians?"

"As long as the Kim Jong Il regime and its successors remain in control, [North Korea] is going to be a brutally repressive country," said Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former North Korea analyst for the CIA. "It's going to continue to be a dismal future for Christians."

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminary estimates that there are around 468,000 Christians in North Korea and that over 10,500 are martyred each year. Open Doors ministry lists the country as the world's worst religious persecutor.

Franklin Graham has visited North Korea twice and preached in a Pyongyang church in August 2008. However, observers are sceptical that his visits will have the impact attributed to those of his father Billy Graham to Communist Eastern Europe.

Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, is unambivalent. "If you do anything to help Kim Jong Il or give him higher stature, I think that you're basically partnering with the Devil," she said. "This isn't just a misguided, misinformed regime that needs to be introduced to the salvation of Jesus Christ. This is a regime that is totally against Jesus Christ."

Once again by B. R. Myers writes with clarity and sense about North Korea. (The Atlantic, 14 Nov 08). "To hope that a new administration in Washington can build trust with the North Koreans where their most sympathetic blood-brethren have so abjectly failed, " he says, "would be to take American exceptionalism to a new extreme."

Although "Obama's ascendance has inspired some to hope for a more conciliatory approach to relations with North Korea", Myers argues that from North Korea's perspective, nothing has changed, something the South Koreans have just spent fifteen years finding out.

Shortly after declaring in his 1993 inauguration speech that "no ally can come before our fellow Koreans," South Korean president Kim Youngsam repatriated Yi Inmo, a pro-Pyongyang partisan who had been imprisoned for decades. Conservatives were furious; they argued that surrendering Yi without conditions, and at a time of rising nuclear tension at that, would be seen in the North as a sign of fear. On the left, meanwhile, the president's move was welcomed as a bold step of reconciliation that the "fellow Koreans" would be sure to reciprocate. As it turned out, Pyongyang had a field day exploiting Yi's return from the hellish "Yankee colony" before threatening, in the following year, to turn Seoul into "a sea of fire."

As if to remove all doubt that the conservatives were dead-on in their predictions, North Korea's propaganda apparatus put out a novel in 2002 entitled World of Stars (Byeol eui segye). In the following excerpt we are told how the Dear Leader responded to the news of that first good-will gesture:

Comrade Kim Jong Il quickly skimmed the report. For a moment a smile crossed his face. "Just as expected. Hm. Well, take a look. They're finally bowing down." All eyes turned to the document. Soon their faces, too--faces that had been taut with excitement and tension--were wreathed in smiles . . . "Comrade Supreme Commander, the bastards, their backs against the wall, made this decision out of fear, didn't they?" "Yes, it's true," someone cried. "It looks like they were frightened of us, all right." Comrade Kim Jong Il just kept on smiling.

The novel then turns to the accomodationist "Sunshine Policy" launched by South Korean president Kim Dae Jung in 1998. For years his government sent enormous sums of unconditional aid to Pyongyang, pleaded the North's case with Washington, and even insisted that South Korean newscasters call Kim Jong Il by his preferred title of National Defense Council Chairman. But as far as World of Stars is concerned, "Nothing had changed"; the South Koreans were still acting out of fear. But at one point in the novel they request that the North do a little repatriating of its own. Naturally one of the Dear Leader's officials is stunned by this presumption.

"General," he said falteringly. "They're saying they're going to apply their principle of 'reciprocity' even to the issue of the long-term prisoners they couldn't convert, so it looks like once again we're going to have to . . ." "Make them eat another hard blow? Of course we have to do that."

As part of the celebrated Immortal Leadership series devoted to glorifying the Dear Leader's rule, World of Stars--which was republished in 2006--reflects the official line on South Korea to a tee. Every goodwill gesture that Seoul has extended to Pyongyang has either been ignored by the North's media or touted as a manifestation of fear. Observers sympathetic to the North shrug this sort of thing off, their apparent assumption being that Kim Jong Il spends millions on propaganda every day just to massage his own ego. But it is only in the context of this propaganda, and the bully-worship it espouses, that the DPRK's behavior has always made perfect sense--from its terrorist adventurism in the 1960s to its threat in October to turn Seoul into "debris" if the current conservative administration does not return to the accomodationist spirit of old. The South Korean left should start reading books like of World of Stars, instead of complaining that President Lee Myung Bak has destroyed the trust built up between the two Koreas. That trust was always a one-way street. If I may invoke the North's own assessment of the history of inter-Korean relations: nothing has changed.

There are lessons here for America as well. After all, our food aid to the North is still misrepresented in its media as war reparations wrung out of us by Kim Jong Il. (This is why, to clear up something that still puzzles foreign visitors, citizens are allowed to use the star-spangled food sacks as carry-alls.) To hope that a new administration in Washington can build trust with the North Koreans where their most sympathetic blood-brethren have so abjectly failed would be to take American exceptionalism to a new extreme. Let us hope that in his effort to avoid repeating George W. Bush's mistakes, Obama does not simply end up repeating Kim Dae Jung's.

Plainly not amused, Her Majesty the Queen of Australia came up with a salient question during a briefing by academics at the LSE on the turmoil on the international markets. As Simon Jenkins remarked in The Guardian (12 Nov 08), The latest Occam's razor award goes to Her Majesty the Queen. In the unlikely surroundings of the London School of Economics, she last week cut to the quick. Describing the credit crunch as "awful", she tapped a gilded economist on the proverbial shoulder and asked: "Why did nobody notice?" . . . Aha, ahem, said the director of research, Professor Luis Garicano. . . . He had certainly not expected an upper cut to the jaw. Monarchs are not supposed to ask leading questions, even when the nation is screaming for an answer. With his vocation suddenly on trial, the professor stammered, "Someone was relying on somebody else," adding, as if in moral afterthought, "and everyone thought they were doing the right thing." . . . We owe Garicano a debt at least for revealing something like the truth. . . . Thousands will now be thrown out of work, millions made poorer, hopes dashed, opportunities lost, perhaps more than anywhere else in Europe. Someone should be held accountable. Otherwise the same mistakes will be repeated and nobody will believe what an economist says again. In other words, the Queen deserves a proper answer. Read it all

Is Matthew Mitcham begining to fill Ian Thorpe's size 17 shoes in the way he has caught the imagination of sporting journalists and award-givers? He has won or is in the running for a slew of awards. He was joint winner of the Sport Australia Hall of Fame's 2008 Don Award, which recognises the sporting achievement of the year that most inspires the nation. Mitcham is one of eight finalists in the 2008 Fairfax Sports Performer Awards, in the category of Sports Performer of the Year.

On 14 Dec 08, the BBC will name its sports personality of 2008. British bookies are offering odds favouring F1 one world champion Lewis Hamilton. The Age comments that in the international section it will be hard to go past the likes of sprinter Usain Bolt. But Guardian columnist Richard Williams nominates Mitcham.

If the BBC's sports personality of the year award were run along the lines of the Booker Prize, with the nominations opened up to include entries from the Commonwealth and Ireland, there would be no doubt about my choice - and it would not be Rebecca, Lewis, Chris, Theo, Nicole or the other Rebecca. Or even Usain Bolt, come to that. It would be a young Australian who distinguished himself while the Beijing Olympics were drawing to a close.

When the 20-year-old Matthew Mitcham stood on the 10-metre diving platform for the sixth and last time in the Water Cube, he needed a massive score to overtake the shoo-in favourite, China's Zhou Luxin. What he produced was a difficult dive - a back two and a half somersault with two and a half twists - executed so precisely that it won perfect 10 scores from four judges and a total mark of 112.10, the highest in Olympic history. It gave him Australia's first diving gold medal since 1924 and it broke China's lock on the discipline, restricting them to a mere seven gold medals out of a possible eight. One hesitates to imagine the fate of poor Zhou, whose pleas that he had been vanquished by a moment of genius may have fallen on deaf ears.

[There was] admiration felt by those fortunate enough to witness him turning and twisting and cleaving the water with such grace and exactness. In a year of sporting wonders, particularly for the British, no single incident distilled sporting perfection quite as magnificently.

Photograph by John McRae for SX.

In the run-up to the US elections I wrote that although I loathe abortion, the single-issue politics surrounding it troubled me. It has been a worry that the choice of candidate for the most powerful job on Earth could hinge on this (or any other single) issue.

It appears that Roman Catholic voters favoured Obama. They may well have been concerned about abortion, but it seems they also understood that life is also about good health, freedom from poverty, and international peace. Catholic News Service reports on how well President-elect Obama did well relative to Senator McCain in 'Roman Catholic' states. It examines two measures: Roman Catholic population within a state and the percentage of Roman Catholics in a state's total population.

• Obama won in 12 of the 15 most populous Roman Catholic states. McCain took Texas (third most populous), Louisiana (13th) and Arizona (15th), but Obama captured California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Connecticut and Minnesota.
• By the other measure, percentage of the population that is Roman Catholic (which includes smaller states): of the top 15, Obama took 11: Rhode Island (the nation's only Roman Catholic-majority state at 59.5 percent), Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Nevada, Illinois, Delaware, Wisconsin, California, New Mexico and New Hampshire. McCain took Louisana (12th on that list) and Texas (13th).

On the other hand:

• McCain won nine of the 10 states with the lowest percentage of Roman Catholics in the population. From the lowest number of Roman Catholics to the highest, those are: Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Alaska and Utah. In Roman Catholic population those states range from 2.3 percent to 8.7 percent. North Carolina, which Obama took, is 4 percent Roman Catholic.
• McCain also won the 13 states that have the fewest Roman Catholics: Wyoming, Alaska, West Virgnia, Montana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Dakota, Alabama, South Dakota, Idaho, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

What to do with Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, whose crimes and double-dealing go on and on as he dishonours agreements and clings to power? Commonweal's editors wrestle with this dilemna in their 7 Nov 08 issue.

Until recently, Robert Mugabe, the eighty-four-year-old president of Zimbabwe, has answered those who criticize his regime by telling them to "go hang." He has expressed contempt not only for the concerns of the international community, but also for the opinion of the Zimbabwean people, whom he has tried to buy off or bully for most of three decades.

. . . Not even Mugabe, though, can ignore the disastrous effects of his government's corruption and incompetence. Zimbabwe is now a failed state. Eighty percent of its population is unemployed, and 3 million of its 12 million people have fled the country. Meanwhile, most of those who remain aren't getting enough to eat. The inflation rate is the highest in the world and one of the highest in history-officially 230 million percent, though some economists say it's really in the billions. In August the government knocked ten zeros off the country's currency, so that it could recycle old bank notes that had become worthless. The government can't afford to pay teachers, collect garbage, or bury the dead piled up in its morgues. The UN's World Food Program is now feeding 2 million Zimbabweans and, according to projections, may soon have to feed another 3 million. Mugabe himself remains comfortable, of course, but he can no longer pretend not to notice these things, and neither can the rest of the world. Nelson Mandela, long a defender of Zimbabwe's government, has publicly lamented the country's "failure of leadership."

Once it became clear that Mugabe's African allies were no longer willing to look the other way, he finally agreed in September to share power with the MDC. . . . But in early October, Mugabe unilaterally gave his party control of all the most important ministries, including those in charge of the courts, the army, and the police. The MDC was offered a few leftovers-for example, water management -- and later, when it insisted on something more important, the finance ministry, which is now powerless to stop the country's economic meltdown. Then, in a final proof of bad faith, Mugabe refused to give Tsvangirai a passport so that he could travel to Swaziland, where negotiations between the two men were supposed to take place. Mugabe showed up anyway, and acted as if he had been stood up. The talks were rescheduled, but the message was clear: Nothing has changed.

Nothing will change until the international community intervenes. China and Russia must be persuaded to stop blocking UN resolutions that would freeze the assets of Mugabe and his senior officials, ban them from all foreign travel, and impose a strict arms embargo. The fourteen member-states of the Southern African Development Community need to replace Mbeki -- who was recently forced from power in South Africa -- with a new mediator, one more concerned with Zimbabwe's welfare than with protecting Mugabe and his generals from future prosecution for political violence.

Finally, the United States and the European Union, which have taken the lead in opposing Mugabe's dictatorship, must keep up the pressure. Mugabe is counting on the West to lose interest in his country's problems now that he's promised a unity government. But it should be clear to everyone that his promises are worth as little as his country's money.

Oxford-educated Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck has been crowned the fifth King of Bhutan and at 28 is the world's youngest monarch. The crown was bestowed on the new king by his father, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, 52, who stepped down in 2006 as part of his five-year plan to make Bhutan a democratic constitutional monarchy. Democratic elections were held in March. The transition to democracy has been deliberately slow and steady and the monarchy will continue to play a central role.

Both the new government and the opposition support the monarchy's commitment to the intriguing concept of Gross National Happiness which aims to strike a better balance between the spiritual and the material. The four pillars of GNH are the promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development, preservation and promotion of cultural values, conservation of the natural environment, and establishment of good governance. It is to be hoped that this concept will also allow freedom of religion in Bhutan.

The International Religious Freedom Report 2007 of the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor found that the Bhutan's Government "limited this right in practice by barring non-Buddhist missionaries from entering the country, limiting construction of non-Buddhist religious buildings, and restricting the celebration of some non-Buddhist religious festivals." There were, however, no reports of violence associated with pressure to conform to Mahayana beliefs or reports of societal abuse or discrimination based on religious belief or practice.

Between two-thirds to three-quarters of Bhutan's 600,000 people practice Drukpa Kagyupa or Ningmapa, both of which are disciplines of Mahayana Buddhism, the state religion. Most of the remainder of the population are Hindu ethnic Nepalese.

Christians are 1 percent of the population and must practice their religion at home. No new buildings, including new places of worship, can be constructed without licenses. Proselytism is prohibited. NGO representatives living outside the country and dissidents have reported that only Mahayana Buddhist religious teaching is permitted in schools and that Buddhist prayer was compulsory in all government run schools, although the Government contends that there is no religious curriculum in modern educational institutions in the country.

Societal pressures toward non-Buddhists are reflected in official and unofficial efforts to impose the dress and cultural norms of the Buddhist majority on all citizens.

By Garrison Keillor:

Bravo, Barack, Mr. Steady, who cheerfully did the rope lines, made the phone calls, answered the same questions fifteen thousand times, bounded up the stairs, delivered his lines with warmth and wit, ran a tight disciplined army, and that, plus $700 million and an 80 m.p.h. wind at your back, is all you need to win the prize.

. . . A good shingle for the new administration to hang out, rather than The New Covenant or A Fair Exchange or English Spoken Here, would be Keep Seat Belt Buckled. Happy days are not here and the sky above is not clear.

. . . As for President-elect Obama, he can now stop dancing, which he's been doing for 20 months - in a democracy we want candidates to really, really, really want to be president - and get down to the business of patient, focused, rational deliberation and calculation, starting with the formulation of a Cabinet and a White House staff. Have them write up a presidential order for Jan. 20 saying that America will not employ torture, and maybe issue a blanket presidential pardon for your predecessor and his vice, and then set about the business of disappointing your followers and astonishing your enemies and doing what is right for our country.

Be good to yourself. Hire smart, stable people who can tell you things you need to know and not copy Bob Woodward. Keep some Republicans around. You're the man. You make us proud. You let us get to know you. You have the gift of speaking clearly and forcefully, whole sentences and paragraphs, while thinking at the same time, a good gift. You don't need a staff of writers to create a persona for you. You need engineers. Problem solvers. You're inheriting a raft of them.

Get on that treadmill every morning. Keep a daily journal. Let us see those darling girls once in awhile. Please don't play golf. Don't get a dog. Enjoy Camp David. Be happy. Don't hire people to tell you how to dress or who to be; you're a grown-up. Don't do crap that someday you'd have to go on TV and make cheesy apologies for. This job is one you were cut out to do and a big part of the job is to keep up the national morale and you are already doing that big-time. And thank you, sir. All those cheap motels, all those flights, all of that chip dip. We are deeply grateful.

Postscript: It's stated here that here that the Most Revd Dr Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of New South Wales, will officiate at the consecration of the Revd Stuart Robinson as the 10th bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn at St Saviour's Cathedral, Goulburn on Sat 31 January at 11.00 am.

The Rev Stuart Robinson, rector of St Paul's Chatswood in Sydney has been elected to be the new Diocesan Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn. I was privileged to be one of those who took part in the electoral session of the Synod.

Mark Hadley's piece in Sydney Anglicans.net is much superior to the error prone coverage in the Canberra Times.

Preparing for a normal day of parish work, Mr Robinson says the news has left him spinning. "I am thrilled at the opportunity to serve God's people in that wonderful, broad, interesting, forward-moving diocese," he says.

The Reverend Stuart Robinson is presently National Mission Facilitator for the Anglican Church of Australia. He is considered an expert on church growth, writing for Sydneyanglicans.net on mission, and is also chairman of Church Army Australia, which has pioneered missional church planting in Sydney and across the nation.

The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has welcomed the appointment. "Stuart is well known to clergy through his work on Fresh Expressions and has worked hard for growth in the Australian church," Archbishop Jensen says. "I congratulate him on his election and pray for wisdom as he takes up his responsibilities."

The Rev Stuart Robinson will become the tenth Bishop of the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn. Phillip Saunders, President of the Electoral Synod and Dean of St Saviour's Cathedral, who made the announcement on Sunday, says Mr Robinson brings to the position a wealth of experience in the national church as well as in parish ministry and in developing new and pioneering ministries. Dean Saunders is looking forward to the new bishop serving the church at a local and national level. "It is the role of the Bishop to provide leadership and vision for Anglicans within the diocese and to represent the church to the wider community," Dean Saunders says.

Mr Robinson is looking forward to challenge of working in a large and extremely diverse diocese. "The lovely thing is that God has put loads of competent women and men in active ministry there and I look forward to learning from and working with them," he says. The diocese of Canberra and Goulburn stretches from Bateman's Bay in the east to Wagga Wagga in the west, and from Young in the north to Delegate in the south and embraces Canberra, the national capital. It includes both rural and urban communities; some seventy ministry units, which include Anglican schools, Anglicare and St Mark's National Theological College. "The tough thing in all of this will be leaving St Paul's Chatswood," Mr Robinson reflects as he prepares for a funeral today and the various services and ministries for the week. "It has been a joy filled, exciting challenging journey."

My feelings about the election result are a bit tentative at the moment. Bishop-elect Stuart will not hide his personal preference for evangelicalism. But one must not associate the true concept of 'evangelical' with some of the extremisms of the Sydney Diocese and of assorted political right wingers who are so-called evangelicals. It is a much more subtle a concept than that.

Robinson is not a typical Sydney Anglican. He is, for example, a supporter of the ordination of women and has helped numbers of women to go to Newcastle and Canberra for ministry. I understand him to have been opposed to the decision of the Sydney bishops not to go to Lambeth. He comes commended by some Catholic-leaning dioceses. Stuart is clearly ready, willing and able to fellowship with people who use diverse traditions of worship -- from Anglo-Catholic to charismatic. I am delighted that he is a believer in and practitioner of healing ministry -- as a member of the Order of St Luke, in which Bishop Owen Dowling featured so strongly.

Robinson is also a nationally respected authority on church planting and building. I do believe that he will bring an emphasis to outreach, evangelism (as distinct from evangelicalism) and church growth. I support this if it is done so as to help people grow into Christ in a lasting way.

Some wonder whether Stuart will understand rural needs well -- this will take time. It will also be interesting to see what he makes of St Mark's. As to same-sex couples, I am unsure how he will respond. I have been assured this is a man who is a friend to most and a brother to many. But how this may effect his conduct as a church leader, I will need to wait and see.

He is our Bishop, and he is welcome!

---

The Reverend Stuart Peter Robinson OSL.

Born 1959

Ordained Ministry
2005-present. National Mission Facilitator, Anglican Church of Australia and rector, St. Paul’s, Chatswood and Area Dean, City of Willoughby
2004-2005. C.E.O A/g, Evangelism Ministries and Consultant in Mission and Strategic Planning, North Sydney and South Sydney Regions.
2001-2004. Senior Associate; (Mission Strategies, Evangelism and Church Planting), Evangelism Ministries (E.M), Sydney.
2002-2005. Founding minister, Peninsula Anglican Community Church, Pyrmont, Sydney, Australia.
1998-2001. Church of England Chaplain and Priest-in-Charge, St. Paul's International Church, Tervuren, Brussels, Belgium, Diocese in Europe.
1998-2000. Priest-in-Charge, The English Church, Province of Liege, Belgium, Diocese in Europe.
1996. A/g Vicar, St. Mary's Church of England, Shaw, Newbury, Berkshire, UK, Diocese of Oxford.
1995-1997. Founding Priest, Parklea Anglican Family Church, Parklea, NSW, Diocese of Sydney
1993-1997. Founding Anglican Chaplain, Nirimba Campus, University of Western Sydney, Blacktown.
1990-1998. Founding Priest, Quakers Hill Anglican Church, Quakers Hill, NSW.
1988. Curate, St. John's Anglican Church, Doonside, NSW.
1987-1988. Curate, St. Luke's Anglican Church, Miranda and Ecumenical Chaplaincy Team, Sutherland District Hospital.
1987. Ordination to Diaconate and Priesthood, Archbishop of Sydney.

Governance

2007-2008. Chair, Gawura Indigenous School, Sydney.
2006-present. Director (NSW). Bush Church Aid Society.
2003-2008. Chair, Council, St. Andrew's Cathedral School, Sydney.
2003-2005. Chair (and Founder), College of Church Planters, Sydney.
2003-2008. Chair, Gospel Outreach Ministries, Sydney.
2003-present. National Chair, Church Army, Australia.
1998-2001. Director, Central Committee (Church/State relations), Church of England, for Kingdom of Belgium.
1998-2001. National President, Anglican Council for Belgium (organisational/pastoral oversight of the 15 centres for Anglican ministry in Belgium).
1998-2001. President, Christian Impact Committee (an ecumenical mission-oriented group), Brussels.
1998-2000. Pastoral Oversight Board, Oasis Counseling, Brussels, Belgium.
1996-1998. Company Director, Pacific Christian Education Ltd., Sydney.
1996-1998. Director, Winning Men Ministries, Australia.
1993-1997. Chair, Educational Advisory Group, Pacific Hills Christian School, Sydney.
1993-1992. Founding Director and Senior Vice-President, Willow Creek Association, Australian Ministries, Ltd, Sydney.

Other Recent Ministry

2007-present. Chaplain, Order of St. Luke.
2006-present. General Synod Task Force on Mission/Fresh Expressions Australia.
2003-present. Clergy Schools, lay training schools and consultations and missions in the dioceses of North Queensland, Rockhampton, Brisbane, Grafton, Bathurst, Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra and Goulburn, Gippsland, Ballarat, Melbourne, Tasmania, Adelaide, Northern Territory, Perth, Bunbury (pending), Wellington.
2003. Study leader, National Anglican Youth Gathering, Morpeth, Diocese of Newcastle.
2002. Presenter, National Anglican Conference, Sydney.

Publications

Starting Mission Shaped Churches (2007)
Building The Mission Shaped Church in Australia – with TFOM team (2006)
The M.A.P: Mission Action Planning - with Mike Wilson and Cheryl Smith (2004).

Academic

1986. Diploma of Arts (Theology), Hons, M.T.C.
1983-1983. Bachelor of Theology, A.C.T.
1978-1981. Certificate in Theology, Vision College, Sydney.
1978-1981. Certificate in Management, NSW Dept of TAFE.
1978-1980. Certificate, Principles and Practices of Retail Management