Category: Politics

The only word to describe Theresa May’s unnecessary recent decision to call an early election in Britain is “hubris” and that hubris has now led to irremediable humiliation. “Strong and stable” could have described her political position before the election, but as a campaign slogan, delivered with numbingly motoric repetition, it became risible as “Jobson Growth” had been in Australia last year.  

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Madness in the Coalition’s ranks over the Finkel report and sleaziness in ALP ranks over clandestine foreign donations are just the latest evidence that the current pack of parliamentarians is incapable of governing in the interests of all Australians. What this country needs is a strong political enema to clean out the political constipation from which the country is now suffering.  (more…)

Ian Marsh who passed away last week, was a highly original thinker with the genuine curiosity of a true intellectual.

Ian liked to describe himself as one of the last ‘Deakinite Liberals’. This apt description reflected:

1. Ian’s contributions to industrial policy, and especially how the state can help foster innovation, and
2. Ian’s preference for a more consensual negotiated approach to policy making, such as applied during the first decade of the Australian parliament. 

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The value of infrastructure depends on how well it is used. Australia’s main infrastructure problem is misuse of what we have; a symptom of an absence of sensible policies, advisory failures and lobbying to build monuments to keep the concrete flowing.

This article, about the Hume Highway, is the first in a series on this issue. Misuse of the Hume, Australia’s most important highway, has damaged the rail and trucking industries, caused harmful traffic in Sydney and led to sub-optimal locations of industry. The solutions – highway charging and removal of unnecessary truck restrictions – are well known; the continuing stubborn inaction on these is a sad reflection on Australia’s infrastructure advisers and decision makers.  (more…)

Britain’s election result was a shock, even in today’s volatile political climate.  The outcome is potentially disastrous, but it is unclear whether Corbyn could have pursued his agenda even if he had actually won. (more…)

The UK election result is heartening, joining a series of demonstrations that people want positive change. But in Australia we seem to be paralysed, no-one willing to pick up the torch, many still unwilling to change their old allegiances despite the manifest destruction around us. (more…)

There are many local factors explaining the comparative fortunes of Theresa May’s Conservative Party and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in last week’s UK election. Issues around Brexit are unique to the UK, and May’s campaign was inept. But Corbyn’s comparative success, in defiance of the assumptions of the media and self-appointed policy elites, carries a message that goes beyond Britain, all the way to our own democracy. (more…)

The conservatives of the Anglosphere still don’t get it: their elitist prescriptions for both the economy and the society that houses it are simply no longer acceptable. The mob are ready to reject what has been dubbed the political class and are scrabbling for solutions that can embrace more prosperity, and, even more crucially, more equality. There is no sign either May or Turnbull have either the skill or the desire to provide them.   (more…)

Our Prime Minister is obviously not as graceful and elegant as Marceau, nor, unfortunately, as silent: he has spent the last week of parliament repeating the same diatribe in ever-increasing volume in the hope that those few voters who watch question time on television will hear him even when they have reached for the mute button.   (more…)

It is all very jolly for Turnbull’s troops to indulge in nostalgia and sentimentality, but they should realize that those times are gone forever. Few Australians were even alive to remember them, and the rest of us don’t want to except in black and white movies.  (more…)