I have a done a separate post/speech on some of the broader issues in the Budget. One other small but very important measure which I wanted to make specific mention of was the formal confirmation that the iniquitous temporary protection visa (TPV) will finally be scrapped, nearly nine years after it was introduced by the Coalition government, with the formal support of the ALP in the Senate. Read more »
Pre-Budget speculation gets fairly tiresome after a while – mostly just scene setting leaks and people writing and saying things to fill the space before they have something substantial to write and talk about. Budget night provides the relief of actually getting into the real thing after a lot of mostly empty shadow-boxing. Read more »
It is understandable that the media and community tend to focus on the people killed in action in wars, as well as on the civilian casualties in the war zone. But it does mean that the ongoing impacts on the soldiers who return home can be forgotten – especially those who return apparently unwounded. Read more »
It was over three weeks ago that I wrote about Steve Posselt’s kayaking crusade to highlight the stupidity of the planned Traveston Dam on the Mary River. On April 12th, he started his month long journey kayaking up the Brisbane River, down the Mary River and back down to Brisbane. Read more »
The previous federal government used the spectre of child sexual abuse as justification to scrap the permit system contained in the Land Rights Act, which required people wishing to visit Aboriginal freehold land in the Northern Territory to first obtain permission. It was cheered on its efforts by its ideological fellow-travellers, who were happy to smear anyone who did not support the move as protecting paedophiles and other child abusers. Read more »
When the Olympic Torch made its brief stop over for a run around the block in Canberra last week, Australia’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials gushed about the “values of the Olympic movement”, coupled with some tsk-tsking about pesky protestors ‘hijacking’ that movement for their political agendas. Read more »
A couple of years ago I did a series of posts on possible options for tax reform. There was quite a deal of debate around the country at that time about ways we could improve the fairness and efficiency of our tax system – all of which basically went nowhere. The major parties instead shrunk the issue down into the usual pre-election tax cut auction. Read more »
More by accident than design, I happened to be near a television when it was screening the summations of the 10 groups in the 2020 Summit. From what I heard, and from looking through the initial report from the gathering, there seem to be a fair few reasonable ideas in amongst it all. Some other parts do seem to be overly full of motherhood statements, wishlists and jargon, but I should wait to see the full report before passing a full judgement. Read more »
When Earth Hour was happening at the end of last month and millions of people turned their lights out for an hour on a Saturday night, I put out a media release suggesting that another easy personal action people could take which would have a much bigger impact was to cut back on eating meat and dairy products. Read more »
I’m in Darwin at the moment for Committee hearings into two separate private Senators’ Bills. One, introduced by Bob Brown, is aimed at restoring the right of the Northern Territory Parliament to legislate in areas relating to euthanasia. The other was introduced by me and is aimed at instituting a national system for providing compensation to the Stolen Generations. Read more »
First I was agreeing with Greg Sheridan, and now I find myself agreeing with long-serving Qld Liberal MP, Peter Slipper, who has strongly criticised Kevan Gosper, Australia’s senior member of the International Olympic Committee, for his ridiculous slurs against pro human rights and Tibet protestors as “professional spoilers filled with hate and resentment”. Read more »
I took a break today and went for a drive up for the day up to Lamington National Park and O’Reilley’s Guest House which has been operating up there for nearly 100 years. I stayed there a few times with my family when I was growing up and visited a few times since. It’s been a few years since I’ve been up there, and it is quite a large establishment these days. Read more »
Further to my preceding post about the effectiveness or otherwise of politicians using the internet to genuinely engage with people, I thought I would have seen a bit more comment about a genuine blogger, Jeff Ooi, being elected in amongst the upset results of the recent vote in Malaysia, (as I mentioned in a previous post). Read more »
Last week, Ted Mullighan, a former Supreme Court Judge in South Australia, produced a report containing over 50 recommendations and detailing his findings from a three year long inquiry which heard evidence from hundreds of children who had been subjected to sexual abuse. Read more »
There is no doubt that a media driven campaign to whip up concern about the possibility of the non-existent Carers Bonus being ‘cut’ in the upcoming Budget played a key role in the government’s decision to announce a few weeks ago that a ‘one-off’ payment of a Carers Bonus will be paid again (for what will be the fifth ‘one-off‘ Read more »
Friday April 4th marked the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. King’s legacy and impact is greatest by far in the USA, but he has become known around the world as a voice for human rights and non-violence.
This piece by Joseph Palermo at The Huffington Post gives an interesting perspective on that legacy and on King’s final days. It is interesting to speculate on how King would be portrayed today had he not been killed. As Palermo notes, Read more »
Robert Merkel notes that Australia’s first carbon sequestration experiment was opened this week. The Otway Basin Project in south-west Victoria is trying to inject up to 100 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide 2km underground in a depleted gas reservoir. Read more »
Public hearings for the Senate Inquiry into housing affordability got underway in Canberra today. The Inquiry is due to report by June 16. The first day of hearings included evidence from people such as the newly expanded Housing section in the Department of Families, the Master Builders’ Association, the Planning Institute, the Urban Development Institute, Housing Industry Association, NATSEM, and Treasury. Submissions and the transcripts of hearings can be read by following this link. Read more »
I was going to do a post pointing to a couple of papers looking at the use and role of the internet in political campaigning. However, in doing so I can across some far more interesting sites looking at social activism, so I’m pointing to them instead as I think this area has much greater significance that the narrow confines of electoral contests – important though those obviously are. Read more »
I’ve read a lot of fairly negative commentary about Earth Hour, the ‘lights off’ event which is occurring from 8pm tonight. Read more »
There have been a few elections held in different parts of the world in the last week or two. They have been extremely varied in content and style, which is a reminder of how many different ways democracy can manifest itself, and that there is more to freedom and democracy than being able to vote every now and then. Read more »
Cutting ten billion dollars in spending from the Defence Department sounds dramatic – until you notice it’s to be spread over ten years. Read more »
There is heaps of commentary on the Budget on a myriad of different websites - a couple I found of interest are here, here and here. Read more »
Andrew Leigh has posted some useful figures on his blog that are worth pointing to next time someone suggests that politicians should be paid more. He has provided a rough percentage breakdown of the annual income of individuals and households. In short, it whows that only 2 or 3 per cent of the population earn over the $120 000+ a year which politicians get. Read more »
Whenever I travel along the main road between my office and my house, I go past a big billboard not far from where I live. A new poster has been put up there recently which boldly proclaims “The Future of Queensland has a Face”, alongside a large photo of National Party leader Lawrence Springborg. Read more »
I marched in Brisbane’s Labour Day parade today – only the second time I’ve done so. I was part of a group marching in support of justice for the group of Queenslanders who were the most exploited and ripped-off workers throughout most of the Twentieth Century – Aboriginal workers whose wages were taken by governments and never given back. Read more »
I have been reading a book by Rosemary Neill called “White Out – how politics is killing black Australia”. Read more »
A couple of http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21350058-12250,00.html recent http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21354315-12250,00.html articles by Paul Kelly in The Australian repeated a range comments by Australia’s Ambassador to the USA, and former head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson Read more »
There are lots of people commenting on many blogs about the 2020 summit and its outcomes, including a growing number of firsthand descriptions from participants. As I was reading a lot of them anyway, I thought I’d list them in a separate post. They aren’t in any particular order of merit, although I’ve put ones from summit participants towards the top. I’m sure more will appear over the next few days - I’ll add them here as I find them. Read more »
There was plenty of cynicism voiced by many people about the 2020 Summit held in Canberra this weekend. I can understand why some might tend to feel that way, but I think there is less reason to feel cynical about it than the average Parliamentary sittings which provide the usual political activity in Canberra. Read more »
As I mentioned in my preceding post, I’ve been at Committee hearings in Sydney and Darwin this week examining two proposed pieces of legislation – one to provide compensation to members of the Stolen Generations, and one which seeks to restore euthanasia laws in the Northern Territory. Read more »
I went to a boat ramp in inner-city West End this morning to help support kayaker (and water engineer) Steve Posselt as he started a month long journey aimed at drawing attention to the stupidity of the Queensland Labor government’s Traveston Dam. Read more »
First I was agreeing with Greg Sheridan, and now I find myself agreeing with long-serving Qld Liberal MP, Peter Slipper, who has strongly criticised Kevan Gosper, Australia’s senior member of the International Olympic Committee, for his ridiculous slurs against pro human rights and Tibet protestors as “professional spoilers filled with hate and resentment”. Read more »
I think it would be an understatement to say that over many years I haven’t often agreed with most of what Greg Sheridan, a foreign affairs commentator with The Australian, has written. Read more »
There was a piece in the Sun Herald last weekend suggesting the Liberal Party is “preparing a major internet blitz to reinvigorate itself”. The article contained a juvenile little snark from an unnamed Liberal Party source suggesting that “Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey were the only senior former Howard government ministers who could use a computer.” Read more »
I was in Karratha, Western Australia today with the Senate Committee inquiring into housing affordability. I hadn’t been to this town before, although I have previously been to Port Hedland, which is ‘just up the road’ (about 240 kilometres). Read more »
Kevin Rudd is reported as saying he still hasn’t made up his mind whether or not to attend the Beijing Olympics.
“What we’ve said to the Chinese consistently since then is that we’re not in a position to confirm whether we would go, it will depend entirely on timing constraints as we get closer to the event and that remains our position.” Read more »
Amnesty International launched a new website this week called Uncensor, with lots of information on the use of internet censorship to restrict information access and freedom of speech, as well as updates on the continuing failures in the human rights record of the Chinese government. In the spirit of the upcoming Beijing Olympics, the Uncensor site comes complete with its own mascot – Nu Wa. Read more »
I’ve been at public hearings over the last three days for the Senate Committee inquiry into Housing Affordability. I won’t give running commentaries on all the evidence presented here. Read more »
This afternoon I sat in on a meeting of about 50 Aboriginal people at Musgrave Park in Brisbane. They had come together to talk about the Queensland Government’s decision to take back some of the money the government had put forward six years ago by way of recompense for a small part of what was taken from Aboriginal people over decades through the process that has become known as Stolen Wages. Read more »
The news that the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is not attending the Olympic Games is a reminder that there is a lot more to boycotts than governments telling athletes they can’t go. Read more »
The federal Parliament is now on a seven week break, and doesn’t sit again until May 13th, the day the Rudd government brings down its first Budget. In the case of the Senate, this will be just the eleventh sitting day for the year. However, there is a lot of work in the Senate that happens outside of sitting days, not least through Senate Committee inquiries. Read more »
Last month I spent a few days in Taiwan, participating in a conference examining the human rights situation in China in the leadup Read more »
The fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq has provided plenty of reflections on the consequences and correctness of that decision. The Easter long weekend is probably as good a time as any time to read back over some of what was said at the time of the invasion. Read more »
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