(Cross posted from What the people want) As a recession seems more certain, climate change has dropped significantly in importance. Financial issues dominate, although there may be a softening in their importance as well in favour of more bread and butter issues. This may be a reflection of respondents becoming habituated to the recession and […]

There is just one glow of hope visible from the disastrous betrayal that the Rudd government has burdened Australia with: there is likely to be an increase in citizen activism at all levels of society. ‘It’s the environment, stupid!’ Get ready to see T-shirts with this message, even if I have to make them up […]

How could you make the ABC Learning debacle worse? Well, increasing their costs at a time they are trying to sell their centres would be one way, and not something that a government who has just thrown $50 million plus at them would think of doing. Would it? Well, apparently that’s just what is about […]

New Greens MP Ronan Lee has probably handed the Liberal National Party its first seat at the next election. Lee, until yesterday the Labor member for Indooroopilly, is unlikely to hold the seat for the Greens. His defection should cause enough problems for the ALP that the LibNats will pick the seat up. Lee was […]

What exactly is the new Liberal National Party? While according to the Queensland Parliament’s website it exists, some of its members are acting as though the merger had never happened and the National and Liberal parties still exist, at least at a federal level, in Queensland. Barnaby Joyce, whose slogan, according to Fran Kelly, is […]

Not sure whether this is a self-serving post, or whether long-term the association will cause me minor embarrassment, but until Nathan Rees became an MP I thought I was the only person involved in politics whose CV contained both an English Honours Degree and a stint as a gardener. Then Rees popped-up. We also both […]

According to my occasional employerThe Australian, I am still a “top Lib”. In an article entitled “More top Libs opt to sever LNP ties” reporter Greg Roberts says: Mr Young, who survived an attempt by the Liberal Right faction to expel him last year, said he would not apply to renew his membership. He said […]

If it wasn’t for Australia’s housing boom The Horseman, Stephen Kastrissios’ first feature film, may never have been made. It was financed out of the sale of a house he bought just a few years ago. Which gives me a problem: how do you review a movie made for just $80,000? For the investment it […]

It’s a difficult process to get the right to own a URL with the extension .org.au. You have to be able to demonstrate that you have a sufficient connection with the URL to be entitled to use it. That generally means having a company or trading name that is close. So how did the National […]