Here is an idea for how the ABC might deal with the inevitable round of cuts next Budget.
Clever bureaucrats when faced with funding cuts go for the jugular. They attack some popular vote-sensitive function and announce it will be cut. The backlash often results in a funding rethink.
Bahrein soccer player Hakeem Al-Araibi has Australian residency, has lived here for four years but has been held in a Thai prison for sixty days. He was arrested in Bangkok because an Interpol Red Alert warrant indicated that he was wanted by Bahrein authorities, in effect the royal family, for allegedly vandalizing a police station. The charge is spurious. (more…)
Unlike the National Party’s deputy leader. Bridget McKenzie, our Prime Minister presumably knows that James Cook and Arthur Phillip were not the same person.
They may have both been dead white male sailors serving the mad King George III, but they did so in different times and different places. Even Scott Morrison learnt that much at school.
And he probably also knows that Cook did not actually circumnavigate Austraiia. But what the hell, he could have if he’d wanted to – and this close to Australia Day, why waste a marketing opportunity? (more…)
Inequality is not an aberration that comes with neoliberalism. It is the foundation of neoliberalism, along with its partners in social crime: patriarchy and colonisation. As Sharan Burrow, the Australian General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), puts it so poignantly: ‘We live in a fragmented world.’ The excluded form the majority across the globe. (more…)
Indonesia’s announcement that it would release 80-year old Abu Bakar Ba’asyir, the spiritual leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), after serving two-thirds of his 15-year sentence for supporting a terrorist training camp in Aceh, took many by surprise. Australians were shocked that Indonesia showed so little concern for Australian feelings about JI’s 2002 bomb attack in Bali that claimed 202 lives, including 88 Australians.
(more…)
The evidence is now in.
Donald Trump wants a second term: his base is indispensible to this end; he must deliver on the biggest chunk of red meat he tossed it during the election campaign – the wall on the border with Mexico- which he would have Mexico pay for. Problem is, Mexico refuses. (more…)
The Australian Energy Market Operator’s report (summarised here by Sophie Vorrath) into the power failure (caused by a lightning strike) that affected Victoria, NSW and Tasmania in August 2018 illustrates the complexity of maintaining reliable electricity supplies across Australia’s east coast … whatever the power sources. However, the reporting of the AEMO’s findings by The Australian was less than comprehensive, misleadingly making it look as though the problem was entirely attributable to the failure of solar energy supplies – well, who’d have thought it?? (more…)
A regular collection of links to writings and broadcasts in other media (more…)
I’m with Jeff Kennett. I never thought I could say that, but I agree with him that Australia Day should be moved to 1 January – to commemorate the beginning of the Commonwealth of Australia, a new progressive nation, whose very name signified the ideals of collective commitment and communal wealth and a repudiation of old world aristocracies and inequalities. We didn’t thereby become a republic, but the name, voted on by constitutional delegates in the 1890s had a distinctively ‘republican ring’ as a number of disgruntled conservative constitutional delegates noted. (more…)
January 26 continues to be a nettlesome date for the official celebration of the Australian nation and as a commemoration of our colonial foundation. Apart from the significant nuisance that it falls so close to the end of the holiday season, when our minds and emotions are trying to deal with seemingly more pressing obligations, its continued existence really asks a serious philosophical and moral question about not just about the date but also whether it should be celebrated at all. (more…)
The Macquarie legacy is still with us. It underpins our best instincts to give all residents in this country, whether Australian born, migrants or refugees an equal opportunity in life, a second chance. That ethos of redemption is a core part of our history. (more…)
As we approach another Australia Day, public interest quickens and rhetoric escalates. On both sides of the front line the old trenches are reoccupied and well-known strategies rehearsed. The hostility of indigenous Australians looms large in the thinking of both camps. Opponents of 26 January frequently rest their arguments on the need to respond to those powerfully expressed sentiments. Defenders of the status-quo insist that the will of the majority should take precedence. (more…)
Inequality has risen in most of the advanced economies, including Australia. It is damaging both the fabric of our society and economic growth. The Government appears to acknowledge that it should pursue equality of opportunity, but not outcomes. However, the Government has done little that would improve the equality of opportunity, especially relative to the magnitude of this challenge today and in the future. (more…)
On 1 December, Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huwaei Technologies and daughter of its founder, was arrested at Vancouver airport by Canadian authorities. In October, Cuba’s ambassador to Japan and a colleague were refused rooms by the Hilton hotel in Fukuoaka in western Japan. As a US-based firm, a company official explained, Hilton is obliged to comply with worldwide US sanctions on Cuban officials. City authorities retaliated that Hilton’s actions were in violation of Japanese law. Of course, no foreign owned hotel operating in the US would go unpunished if it violated US laws.
The “broad church” messaging from the Liberal Party is self-evidently in disarray. The Member for Cook’s eagerness to spend a little shy of $7m on a re-enactment of the Captain Cook circumnavigation-that-never-was may be his major gaffe this past week. Or that dubious prize may go to his choice of newly-hatched Liberal, ex Labor President, ex-Liberal Democrat Warren Mundine as the PM’s preferred candidate for Gilmore, confirming the cherished “base” has no meaningful voice or power at all. A loss of even the outer forms of democratic engagement is deadly serious. But the LNP’s most consistent electoral problems are surely around gender, along with urgent, central issues of social inequity and race that are even further off their radar. (more…)
President Trump’s announcement of a second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in late February at an agreed but as yet unspecified location ( probably Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh) has reactivated interest in the search for a resolution of the “Korean crisis”. It followed a flurry of activity among key stakeholders over the past few weeks. (more…)
A National Day should be the anniversary of a central event in the life of the nation, a day when we all come together and celebrate our nation’s shared values – a celebration of the start of our nation’s journey, usually the attainment of independence, or some other significant national milestone.
The Economist’s Democracy Index is not all doom and gloom – there is hope, but it requires that we engage. Democracy is about much more than the next election!
It is not a mere coincidence that extreme right wing movements reject the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, which reflects their connections with the fossil fuel corporations from whom they receive funding, as well as a lack of concern for the living world. In the wake of Benito Mussolini’s adoption of “fasces” (a Roman symbol consisting of a bundle of birch rods enveloping an axe) as a symbol of his movement, the term fascism, for which there is no precise synonym in the English language, acquired universal consequence (). Although the Nazis were beaten in WWII, a plethora of parties―including neo-Nazis, characterized by violence, defense of the rich and hate of colored-skin people, immigrants, minorities, Jews, socialists, intellectuals and scientists―is rising around the world. (more…)
The Economist’s Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently published their annual “Democracy Index”, a comprehensive report on the state of democracy around the world. It warns that democracy is in decline after three decades of growth, and of the emergence of populist “strongmen”. Even in Australia we cannot afford to hide behind our proud democratic record – we cannot just show up at the polls, we need to engage.
Increasing awareness of distortion and deception in news media is accompanied by rising levels of anger about what amounts to an intelligence crisis in public communication. People with opposing views accuse each other of being useful idiots for the propaganda merchants, and failing to see the realities. Politicians are caricatured as idiots and clowns, glove puppets for oligarchs and corporate enterprises. This rhetorical trend may be a signal that we refuse to be taken for fools, but a growing obsession with the stupidity of others may itself be becoming a toxic influence. (more…)
A speech on the Left, patriotism and solidarity.
Like Martin Luther King Jr. did, we must speak out about the grave injustices of our time. (more…)
Balancing relations between China and the US is arguably Australia’s greatest foreign policy challenge in the 21st century. But is Australia getting it right?
It’s the economy, stupid” – a slogan and a focus that largely won the US presidency for Bill Clinton in 1992. He then went on to reap the benefits of Bush senior’s economic management, not yet evident at the time of the election.
The issue of economic management is usually a significant issue at our federal elections, with polling consistently suggesting the LNP has an edge as “better economic managers”.
Perceptions matter in politics, but realities are ultimately determinant. Even though both our major parties have warned recently of global storm clouds ahead for our economy this year, neither is actually prepared to spell out the full significance of the risks, particularly systemic risks, and neither is the Reserve Bank of Australia or Treasury.
At the key 19th Party Congress in October 2017, Xi Jinping set out his signature policy – Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era – which, unusually early on in his term, was inscribed into the Party’s Constitution as Xi Jinping “Thought”. Socialism with Chinese Characters was Deng’s contribution to the Party’s corpus. Xi added “for the New Era”. (more…)
Australia’s current approach to road spending will soon generate up to $20 billion every year in new public sector debt – making it impossible for any new Commonwealth government to benefit from much-needed tax reform and revenue increases. This also cooks the goose of the road freight sector which Australia’s economy relies upon, while the perverse pattern of spending neglects our local road networks thanks to the endless fascination with dubious new motorway mega-projects. (more…)
The three nations that gave birth to modern democracy are exhibiting its weaknesses. Democracy is showing its limitations in dealing with contemporary challenges in UK, the US and France. Saving democracy from authoritarianism and populism is a popular subject. Yet first the viability of existing democratic institutions has to be questioned. (more…)
The Coalition Government ended our car manufacturing industry which had an Effective Rate of Protection of 8%. It employed 200,000 people. We are told by the Government that the void in SA will be filled by building the new French submarines in Adelaide. The won’t. There will be only about 2000 new jobs in SA and the Effective Rate of Protection for the submarines will be 300%
Our economy and defence would be far better off if we had kept our car manufacturing industry,imported new submarines ‘off the shelf’ and maintained them in SA
Who said that conservatives are good economic managers and are the best to keep us safe?
Australia’s current approach to road spending will soon generate up to $20 billion every year in new public sector debt – making it impossible for any new Commonwealth government to benefit from much-needed tax reform and revenue increases. This also cooks the goose of the road freight sector which Australia’s economy relies upon, while the perverse pattern of spending neglects our local road networks thanks to the endless fascination with dubious new motorway mega-projects. (more…)