Well, I might have been giving Optus incidental plaudits over the PM’s broadband roll-out, but their telephony service still stinks. It took them until Tuesday last week to fix the phone line. The fault was all their’s. (Read the previous posts here and here). That means it took them 11 days to check-out and fix […]

John Howard’s just delivered bandwidth hogs the best reason to vote Liberal. His broadband proposal is technologically better than Labor’s and is a third the cost. He’s also delivered a practical demonstration of the difference between Liberal and Labor in government. No wonder Labor is pointing the finger at the Liberals’ political communication strategy – […]

There is nothing wrong with the ACTU manual and method for identifying and persuading uncommitted voters. It’s just old-fashioned door knocking. What’s more, in 1996 the Liberal Party did something similar. In Queensland we telephoned thousands of voters in marginal seats asking how they would vote and what issues interested them. Then, when the election […]

Paul Keating’s Wednesday night appearance on Lateline is more good news for Kevin Rudd. Rudd, Swan et al were suitably dour, with you-can’t-speak-ill of the deadpan faces, but must have been inwardly smirking. Here’s John Howard trying to paint them as men of the past and high interest rates, and here’s the living spectre of […]

I eventually received a response from Optus, 91 hours and 27 minutes after I gave up on their telephone system and logged a complaint through their online system. Only problem is that they want an email address that relates to their client. And as all of our email addresses go via our server and not […]

The problem for liberals is that there are not enough of us to ever constitute a majority. So if you want to influence government you need to make an alliance with the representatives of labour, or capital. 31 years ago I decided that capital was the least unpalatable option. I’ve never doubted that judgement, although […]

Research into hurricanes in the North Atlantic indirectly suggests that the last 100 years in Australia have been relatively wet. Forget about Greenhouse. Just the normal swings and roundabouts of the climate have the potential to be devastating. According to a paper (pdf 292 kb) published in Nature, intense hurricane activity over the last 5,000 […]

I didn’t think it would happen, but Therese Rein has decided to sell her Australian business, thus more or less removing the conflict of interest that Rudd has. I say “more or less”, because the value of the business is dependent on the current job placement regime staying in place, which is in Rudd’s gift […]

Rudd’s handled his “Reingate” fairly well because he’s been prepared to say he was “sorry”. It’s exactly the way that Peter Beattie has managed to prosper in Queensland as he stumbles from one disaster to the next. Beattie is so blatant that it has become a running joke amongst participants in our surveys. The standard […]

Therese Rein’s businesses represent real ethical challenges to Kevin Rudd, but it is unlikely that the government will pursue them, for fear of incurring the wrath of Australian women. Today’s Australian carries the story that Rein underpaid some workers. Rudd says that it was an honest mistake. That’s hard to swallow, and one should give […]