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I am fast becoming a bingeing Pom. In this the land of the "manscaped body", my abdominal muscles are in serious danger of repetitive strain as they struggle to fight the good fight of reining in my spreading girth.

My last two postings took me to an embattled superpower, America, and an emerging superpower, India. Now, I find myself reporting from one of the world鈥檚 foremost culinary superpowers, with the attendant perils for my waistline.

Sydney claims still to be its unofficial capital (though Melbournians would no doubt disagree), a city so fixated by food that the appointment of each new restaurant critic attracts almost as much attention as the casting of a new James Bond.

And in many ways, the creme de la creme of the food commentariat have the same licence to kill 鈥� the make-or-break power to doom any new establishment on the basis of a few unsatisfactory mouthfuls.

Out on the food frontlines, it鈥檚 not uncommon for chefs to fight back. A former critic, Matthew Evans, told me how he鈥檇 been threatened with violence, sued for defamation and even followed by a private detective after posting an unfavourable review. Then came the ultimate "foodie" insult. A chef decided to name a dish in his dishonour after he had the gall to call it stupid.

But it鈥檚 hard to feel much sympathy for him. For a time, Matthew had the joyful task of compiling the 鈥檚 fabled meal of the month: a fantasy menu of the finest four courses from the finest restaurants. In the journalistic world, can anyone think of a more mouth-watering assignment?

The Herald even has its very own food agony aunt. Want to rustle up a plate of marbled wagyu beef, with asparagus, baby beans, girolle mushrooms and summer truffles: then look no further.

That job was long filled by celebrity chef, Bill Granger, famed in these parts for his scrambled eggs and corn fritters (I kid you not). So here鈥檚 another question for Bill to ponder: why are so many Australians so very obsessed with food?

"Food is the first way we get to appreciate other peoples鈥� cultures, whether it鈥檚 the Italians or the Chinese,鈥� Bill told me, over a cup of soya latte. 鈥淚t鈥檚 one of the main ways here that new immigrants have won acceptance.鈥�

That鈥檚 surely true. Australia鈥檚 increasingly exotic menus reflect its increasingly multicultural hue: a flavoursome melting pot in which Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, Eastern European and Chinese restaurants flourish.

In a country seeking closer ties with its closest neighbours, it should come as no surprise that Sydney鈥檚 most celebrated chef, the world renowned Tetsuya Wakuda, is a specialist in Asian fusion who arrived here in 1982 from Japan.

And perhaps it鈥檚 no coincidence either that the politician who built her reputation on opposing immigration, Pauline Hanson, the erstwhile leader of the nativist One Nation Party, ran a fish and chip shop in Queensland.

The success of new Labor MP Maxine McKew in becoming only the second candidate in Australian history to unseat a sitting Prime Minister was partly due to the support she received from large sections of Bennelong鈥檚 Asian-Australian communities.

Fittingly then, the Golden Jade Seafood restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood, the purveyors of fabulous dim sum, sometimes felt like her unofficial campaign headquarters.

Not so long ago, I attended a citizenship ceremony at Sydney town hall, a joyful occasion at which more than 40 new citizens from more than 20 different countries pledged allegiance to the Australian flag.

The city of Sydney could hardly have been more welcoming. There were gift bags for the new citizens and a concert pianist whose repertoire included "Waltzing Matilda" and the 1980s ballad "I still call Australia home".

After the ceremony, there was also some typically Australian fare on offer: a plate of Lamingtons, a soft sponge coated in chocolate and desiccated coconut, and meat pies with a garnish of tomato sauce. I, of course, will happily scoff both. But I couldn鈥檛 help wondering about, and being grateful for, the more multicultural menu which this country now has to offer.

All that remains is to wish you happy eating over this festive period. And remember, if you鈥檙e thinking of tossing a shrimp casually onto the barbie then you should surely give serious consideration to splashing it first with a dash of squid ink sauce and applying a coat of tomato foam. Your status as a culinary superpower surely demands nothing less.

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In five years time will cricket still be Australia鈥檚 beloved and unrivalled summer game?

Up until 18 months ago, the answer would have been a resolute and confident 鈥榶es,鈥� perhaps with a couple of expletives attached. For nobody surely would have even bothered to ask the question.

Now, though, Mssrs Ponting, Gilchrist, Hayden et al face an expected challenge from the , Australia鈥檚 sprouting professional soccer league, which is still only in its third season.

How about this bouncer from Brisbane鈥檚 , which likely had the administrators at Cricket Australia hopping around at the crease? "Soccer has speared a warning shot at cricket by claiming the sport鈥檚 once vice-like grip on the hearts and minds of Australians in summer is loosening."

As evidence, the paper compared the crowds at Brisbane鈥檚 colosseum-like Gabba during the first test match of the summer with the number of fans flocking to the A-League fixtures that same weekend.

Whereas just 15,379 spectators watched 鈥榙ay three鈥� of the test match against Sri Lanka, 31,884 turned out to see Melbourne Victory against Sydney FC. The following day, 7,629 passed through the turnstiles for 鈥榙ay four鈥� of the cricket, while 13,808 saw Queensland Roar take on Wellington Phoenix.

Boosted by the success of the Socceroos at the last World Cup 鈥� a team than was unlucky to be knocked out by the eventual winners, Italy 鈥� the A-league is booming. Season ticket sales are up 52% on last season, while there鈥檚 been a 150% growth in tickets for the Socceroos.

Cricket, by contrast, has had a fairly dismal start to the southern summer. The two-match test series against Sri Lanka was an instantly forgettable affair, with the hosts recording two lop-sided victories. The gloomy weather here has not helped either, with the second one-day international against New Zealand at the Sydney Cricket Ground a virtual wash-out.

As for the domestic inter-state games, the crowds could quite happily be accommodated in a couple of phone boxes.

Arguably, the only unqualified success has been the Twenty20 limited overs thrash between at the WACA in Perth, with its miked-up players, rock music, jugglers, fire twirlers, stilt-walkers, seven-piece brass band, post-match fireworks, and dunking machine to provide a splash for each boundary and wicket.

was originally introduced to provide a much-needed shot of adrenalin to the county game in England. The problem is that now it is becoming a worldwide addiction, for fans and administrators alike.

The idea, as the peerless cricket writer Gideon Haigh has noted, was to attract cricket 鈥榯olerators鈥� rather than cricket lovers 鈥� or, as he memorably put it, design 鈥榓 game to the specifications of those who don't like it.鈥�

For cricket purists, the inaugural Twenty 20 in South Africa this past September ended with the worst possible outcome: a fantastically successful and well-attended tournament which ended in a win for India, now the commercial driving force behind many of the unwelcome changes in the game.

So that prompts another question. What is the future of test cricket?

Cricket Australia will tell you that test matches have never been more popular. Just look at the 2005 Ashes series in England, arguably the most close-fought ever played, and the sell-out return series in Australia last summer.

But the administrators are clearly fretful, having announced their desire to trial day/night test cricket by the end of the decade 鈥� an innovation which they claim will deliver bigger prime-time television audiences and attract new people to the game.

This trial balloon was shot down within a few hours, when the world鈥檚 leading ball manufacturer, Kookaburra, said it was impossible to produce a ball which could be seen both at day and night.

Still, it has left the traditionalists seething. Mike Coward of , another exceptional cricket writer and historian, speaks for many. "Test cricket is sacred because it has stood apart from all its mutations and from all other sport for 130 years. This makes it unique. The moment it does not stand apart is the moment it will be despoiled and doomed."

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When listeners of ABC Radio National were asked earlier this year to nominate their most , Jesus topped the list with his Sermon on the Mount, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr came runner-up with "I Have a Dream" and the former Australian prime minister Paul Keating came third with his reconciliation speech in Redfern.

The Daily Telegraph noted at the time that "Keating moves a nation, but can't beat Jesus". But he did outpoll every other Australian, granting the Redfern speech the recognition that many of you clearly think it merits.

The speech was delivered on 10 December 1992, on the eve of United Nations' International Year of the World's Indigenous People.

The setting was highly symbolic: Redfern, an inner city suburb of Sydney where in the early 1970s the Labor government of Gough Whitlam had helped a group of Aboriginal squatters purchase and renovate six terrace houses, a landmark project which became Australia's first urban land rights claim.

Even if you loathe Paul Keating, or fundamentally disagree with what he had to say that day, as political oratory the speech is undeniably impressive (when his chief speech-writer, Don Watson, presented him with the draft, Keating apparently did not alter a word).

Perhaps the most was the one in which Mr Keating appealed to his fellow non-indigenous Australians. It is worth quoting in full:

"The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians. It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters, the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion."

He went on: "The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognition of historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening of Australian social democracy to include indigenous Australians. There is everything to gain."

When I suggested that Kevin Rudd might consider delivering a televised address on the subject of reconciliation, a number of you pointed to the Redfern speech and commented that Australia had been there and done that.

But is it worth a repeat performance? Or an updated sequel?

A few quick thoughts. Mr Keating delivered his speech almost 15 years ago to the day, which means that, although listeners of ABC Radio National can clearly remember it, there's a huge chunk of the Australian populace which probably does not.

Similarly, the problems which Keating addressed manifestly remain unresolved.

There's also a growing political consensus about the necessity for symbolic gestures deployed in combination with practical measures.

John Howard railed against the 'black armband view of history' which the Redfern speech gave voice to, but in the final months of his prime ministership acknowledged the need to recognise indigenous Australians in the preamble to the constitution, which marked a partial embrace of the kind of symbolism which he had rejected for so long.

In his address before the Sydney Institute, which Peter Hartcher of the Sydney Morning Herald memorably likened to a "deathbed conversion", Mr Howard noted: "I have always acknowledged the past mistreatment of Aboriginal people, and have frequently said that the treatment of indigenous Australians represents the most blemished chapter in the history of our country."

Still, though, he refused to apologise, claiming it would be reinforce a sense of victimhood.

Looking back at the video of the Redfern speech, I'm not sure whether the presentational trappings were quite right. Mr Keating delivered it at what looked and felt like a community festival in Redfern Park, on a stage festooned with balloons. His audience was made up predominantly of Aborigines.

The point of a televised nationwide address is to bring problems directly into the living or lounge rooms of the nation as a whole. The aim is to deliver sometimes uncomfortable truths into this most comfortable of settings. To eyeball the country.

When prime ministers or presidents speak from behind their desks or from their official residences, they bring the symbolic weight of their offices to bear on the problem at hand.

It does not look or feel like a photo-opportunity. It is not part of a fleeting or fly-by visit. It reinforces the impression that they truly mean business. The symbolism signifies engagement and intent.

True, Martin Luther King delivered his speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But that was the most solemn pulpit which America has to offer, replete with the brooding statue of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.

That remarkable speech, delivered in August 1963, started rather flatly, and didn't really ignite until someone standing behind Dr King urged him to tell the audience about "the dream", a rhetorical rift he had used before to enormous emotional effect.

A few minutes and a few memorable "I Have a Dreams" later, King believed he had "subpoenaed the conscience of the nation".

In his own way and in his own words, is there not a case for Mr Rudd trying, like his Labor predecessor, to do the same?

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When President John F Kennedy belatedly brought the full weight of his office to bear on the problem of racial equality in the US, he delivered an eloquent, and at times extemporaneous, televised nationwide address from behind his desk in the Oval Office.

JFK explained in his speech on 11 June 1963 that a black baby born in America had 鈥渁bout one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, [and] twice as much chance of becoming unemployed鈥�. Life expectancy for a black child was seven years shorter, and the likelihood was that, after a lifetime of work, he or she would earn only half as much.

A similar speech from an Australian prime minister, highlighting the stark differences between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, could give voice to an even more disheartening collection of statistics.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians born between 1996 and 2001 had a life expectancy of 59 for males and 65 for females. That鈥檚 around 17 years lower than the average life expectances for all male and female Australians born between 1998 and 2000.

Between 1999 and 2003, what鈥檚 called the age-standardised death rate for the indigenous population was 2.8 times greater than that of the non-indigenous population.

The unemployment rate for Aborigines is three times higher. Their chances of being incarcerated are 13 times higher.

The gang rape of a ten-year-old girl in northern Queensland, and the fact that her self-confessed rapists were allowed by the judge to walk free, has shone a spotlight once more on the prevalence of child sex abuse in indigenous communities.

The in the Northern Territory, Little Children Are Sacred, which was published in June, this year, called the problem 鈥渁n issue of urgent national significance鈥�. After discovering evidence of child sex abuse in each of the 45 communities they visited, the authors blamed the problem on 鈥渢he cumulative effects of poor health, alcohol, drug abuse, gambling, pornography, unemployment, poor education and housing and general disempowerment [which] lead inexorably to family and other violence and then on to sexual abuse of men and women and, finally, of children".

Depressingly, they also predicted it would take 15 years 鈥� or the equivalent of an Aboriginal generation 鈥� to make inroads into the problem.

Announcing a national emergency, the then Prime Minister John Howard ordered a federal intervention in the Northern Territory aimed at protecting these vulnerable young people. It included a prohibition on alcohol and pornography in Aboriginal areas and a bigger police presence.

At the time, Labor supported the intervention, but with reservations. This weekend, Jenny Macklin, the newly-installed indigenous affairs minister, will discuss the future of the intervention with Aboriginal leaders in Darwin.

This week she also which will culminate in a formal national apology to the Stolen Generations for past injustices 鈥� although the new government has not yet said when it will come.

When the moment for an apology does arrive, perhaps Kevin Rudd should think about emulating John F Kennedy by elucidating this most complex of questions on national television. Re-reading JFK鈥檚 speech now, one paragraph in particular leaps from the page: 鈥淭hose who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality.鈥�

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By the end of this week, Australia could well have experienced the rather bizarre triple whammy of having a Welsh-born acting prime minister, a New Zealand-born national rugby coach and, of course, an English-born head of state.

As Kevin Rudd flies off to the United Nations climate change conference in Bali (accompanied by his climate change tsar, Penny Wong, the country鈥檚 first Asian-born and also first openly gay minister), he leaves behind in charge his 46 year-old deputy, . She was born in Barry, South Wales, a seaside town a short drive from Cardiff.

Quite why her parents decided to swap the murky waters of the Bristol Channel for the roaring foam of the Great Southern Ocean is a matter for them. But in 1966 they decided to relocate to Adelaide as 鈥渢en pound Poms鈥�. Julia was a girl of gilt-edged ambition, chirpily forecasting that one day she would become Australia鈥檚 prime minister. Now that prediction has almost become a prophecy.

She becomes the acting prime minister just days before the Australian Rugby Union seems set to appoint a Kiwi as the coach of the Wallabies: , who last week lost out on coaching his first choice, the All Blacks.

In both countries, his possible appointment is being viewed warily as a serious case of trans-Tasman treachery. How could a Kiwi coach the Wallabies? How could the ARU even countenance such an indignity? The controversy brings to mind that wonderful, if not entirely applicable, quote from former New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon: 鈥淣ew Zealanders who leave for Australia raise the IQ of both countries.鈥�

So what of the antipodean future of the third person in that foreign-born triumvirate, the British monarch and Australian head of state, Queen Elizabeth II? Should Buckingham Palace be concerned that the Lodge is now occupied by a committed Republican?

During the campaign, Kevin Rudd sought to play down his Republican credentials, telling The Australian on the eve of the election that the constitutional question was 鈥渘ot a priority鈥�. Back in July, on a visit to Melbourne, he said that Australians should again be consulted about the future of the monarchy, but that it was not a 鈥渇irst order concern鈥� of an incoming Labor government and he offered no timeline.

Certainly, he鈥檚 in no rush to call another referendum. When Australians were , the monarchy survived by a vote of 55% to 45%. But the Republican movement has long claimed that the then prime minister, and arch monarchist, John Howard, split the pro-Republic vote by offering in the referendum a president appointed by parliament rather than a head of state directly elected by the people.

For this act of subterfuge, Malcolm Turnbull, the then figurehead of the Republican movement and a future Howard minister, famously called him 鈥渢he prime minister who broke the nation鈥檚 heart鈥�. After that, as one observer recently put it, the Republican movement was placed on life support.

If the movement has flat-lined then Prime Minister Rudd has already hinted at a possible revival. He did so at his swearing-in last week, a rather dismal ritual which one Australian journalist called 鈥渁 vice-regal ceremony which would hardly have been out of place in the British Raj鈥�.

Whereas John Howard pledged in 1996 to 鈥渂e faithful and bear true allegiance to her majesty, Queen Elizabeth II鈥�, Mr Rudd opted for a monarch-free alternative. Standing before the governor-general, the Queen鈥檚 representative in Australia, he promised to 鈥渨ell and truly serve the Commonwealth of Australia, her land and her people, so help me God鈥�.

Still, he hardly advertised this symbolic shift. Quite the opposite. The only newspaper to pick up on it was the Canberra Times (and seemingly the only journalist to remark upon the Times doing so was Alan Ramsey, a columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald).

Had Malcolm Turnbull been elected as Liberal leader, the Republican movement might have enjoyed some bipartisan consensus. But the man who beat him, Brendan Nelson, is a constitutional monarchist.

So a new referendum on an Australian Republic could be hazardous, especially for a government in its first term. As Labor strategists well know, of the 44 referenda held here, only eight have ever been passed.

So another calculation for the statistically-minded prime minister: he has to decide whether standing up for his Republican principles is worth the political risk.

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