Category: Politics

The Greeks said it succinctly: the system of tyranny is only as good as the worst man who can become a tyrant. Step forward, Peter Craig Dutton, Master of the Universe.  (more…)

The new Liberal Party Federal President Nick Greiner is aiming for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he’s doing it the hard way.   (more…)

The National Party represents a declining demographic with values out of step with most Australians. In most democracies it would be sidelined as a fringe group. It holds disproportionate political influence only because we are not facing up to the need to break from our dysfunctional polarised political system. (more…)

Just about the last thing Malcolm Turnbull did before leaving Australia last week was to inveigh against his colleagues navel gazing. (more…)

A raft of surveys have confirmed what everyone knows. We’re increasingly unhappy about the rollout of a technically inferior National Broadband Network. (more…)

The most remarkable thing our Prime Minister said last week was not his claim that the party founded by Sir Robert Menzies was not Conservative but Liberal – even liberal, a touch progressive.

This has furrowed brows and raised gorges, and not only from the right wing rump and their media claque. But it was at least a matter of debate, and so was duly debated.   (more…)

From time to time our newspapers pen articles about road reform.  They raise the need for spending to be more efficient and less guided by the electoral pork-barrel and for more value to be visible to motorists. The call for efficiency is particularly understandable as tax revenue become scarcer: the Westconnex motorway project in Sydney would almost fund the latest Gonski education reform package. Westconnex would also fund almost half of Australia’s latest submarines purchase[i].   (more…)

Cricket’s two most powerful bodies have reached an impasse over pay. The enmity between the two runs deep – blinking first ain’t an option. Thus, all our elite players (230+) are currently unemployed. HOWZAT for a dilemma? (more…)

The fire in the Grenfell tower in London has heightened awareness of fire risks in tall buildings in Australia. The pressure to increase height limits and urban density, and to create sustainable and efficient buildings, must not lose sight of the fundamental engineering and design requirements for fire safety, and of the need for robust regulatory oversight of these standards. (more…)

A recent report by Infrastructure Australia recommends franchising state public transport services, with Commonwealth incentives for so doing. It claimed that this would realise around $16 bn of financial savings, which could be spent on infrastructure. The report assumed there to be inherent but undisclosed inefficiencies in state government services, without providing evidence of such inefficiencies. (more…)

Tony Abbott has announced his intention to stay in politics in order to protect and promote what he calls “liberal conservative values.” He claims his values are at the very heart of Liberal Party philosophy. Meanwhile Cory Bernardi seeks to trump this by asserting that his new party is the one true home of Australian conservatism. What this latest ideological imbroglio points to is the fact that the Australian Liberal Party has always been an unconsummated marriage between liberalism and conservatism. Perhaps Liberal Party supporters need reminding that nearly all unconsummated marriages end up in bitter divorce. (more…)

Malcolm Turnbull was off in Hamburg, schmoozing his fellow leaders in the hope of getting something – anything – done about North Korea, terrorism, trade, Donald Trump – something – anything. (more…)

It is understandable that members of the Parliamentary Liberal Party are furious with Tony Abbott. But they fail to realise that his behaviour is a manifestation – admittedly a stark one – of traits that are embedded in the Liberal Party.
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Pearls and Irritations recently posted a series of articles on the theme Making Housing Affordable. The series focuses on Australia’s housing affordability crisis. Most of the articles were posted just before the Federal Budget, but a few were posted afterwards, by way of a reflection on the relevant Budget reforms (or lack thereof). The date of publication of each article on Pearls and Irritations appears after the title. (more…)

We can at least talk about it without pretending it isn’t really there.   (more…)