Opinion on politics and social policy
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@annabelcrabb thinks it is “Kevin Redux”, but could it be “Kevin Reflux”.
The only reason for changing from Gillard to Rudd is self-preservation on the part of 57 ALP federal members. That was obvious in Rudd’s acceptance speech.
Here was a man who has spent the last three years undermining the […] Continue Reading…
I don’t often use the term “unAustralian” because it is essentially undefinable, but reports this morning that Julia Gillard would demand that caucus decide any leadership vote by an open-show of hands rather than a secret ballot, licences me to use it.
For the secret ballot is an Australian invention, […] Continue Reading…
This week, the Parliament has been debating the Constitution Alteration (Local Government) Bill 2013. It is the legislation to authorise the amendment of the Constitution to recognise local government. If the referendum is successful, section 96 of the Constitution will read as follows:
During a period of ten years after the […] Continue Reading…
A lot has happened since the “Two cows” model of how the different “isms” run their economies first appeared. This is the latest instalment, which hit my email inbox a couple of weeks ago, updated to take account of the GFC and the Euro crisis.
The world economy explained with […] Continue Reading…
Yes, I’m a man, and I vote, and somewhere around 49% of the over 18 year old population shares those characteristics, so why would the Prime Minister set out to regularly antagonise us?
Picking on niche constituencies like billionaires, or dole bludgers, might be smart, but picking on a minority […] Continue Reading…
Joe Richards, while at school at Villanova College, Coorparoo, borrowed a priest’s regalia, and took himself up to Loretto College, offering to hear the girls’ confessions. I’m not sure how far he got, but I vaguely remembered the incident when reminded by Janine Walker before our ABC radio spot […] Continue Reading…
I went to school with Joe Richards, and nothing about “menu gate” surprises me. Even at 17 he was a colourful rogue, and made a great Major General in our 1974 production of the Pirates of Penzance. He was a complete ham, who a couple of years earlier had […] Continue Reading…
The IEA is hardly a left wing think tank. They advise governments on energy and are now warning that climate change poses a threat to the oil rig platforms in the North Sea. In an article by Tom Bawden in the Independent , the bigger waves and storms could […] Continue Reading…
The bad news is we are cooking the planet by burning fossil fuels.
The good news is we are running out of fossil fuels.
end of story, no problems, right?
Except that the big money has now moved into fossil fuels, heedless of the bad news above. When the housing mess […] Continue Reading…
Even the risk to workers in the NBN asbestos events would seem to me to be over-stated, let alone that to residents. Asbestos is a dangerous product, but huge numbers of us have experienced significant exposure to it without developing any signs of asbestosis.
In the 60s and 70s I […] Continue Reading…