Back in September 2014 a young man died in a Brisbane hospital after he had contracted a leg infection on Manus Island where he had been held in detention by Australian immigration authorities. Brisbane Coroner Mr Terry Ryan found his death followed a series of clinical errors and delays, including a lack of…
“Politics is not a reality television show,” scowls ScoMo, in a cameo piece to camera, Thursday, in the “most hysterical presser in our nation’s political history” according to Shadow Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus. Labor doesn’t help with its smart-arse stunt news conference late Thursday proposing to support the Coalition’s botched and dodgy encryption legislation unamended given…
By Stephen Fitzgerald The rich get richer and the poor get poorer! With record corporate profits as wages stagnate and living standards for workers plummet this saying is starting to ring true. This is not just happening in France but, across the entire western world where right-wing political bodies govern on behalf of the financial…
“Trades-unions, composed of the workmen in the different trades, were recognized in the time of the (first Roman) monarchy, and no effort was ever made to dissolve them, until they began to exert a political influence.” (R. W. Husband; Legislation against Political Clubs during the Republic). By the time of the return to Roman Imperial governance with Julius…
When the crossbench moved to end the shameful practice of holding innocent people hostage in the pretence that this is a valid way to keep our borders secure, Scott Morrison went ballistic. “I will do everything in my power to ensure that these suggested changes … never see the light of day,” Mr Morrison said.…
Now, I don’t like to say, “I told you so!” I just like to be so right against all odds that I don’t have to say anything beyond: Now, I don’t like to say, “I told you so!” However, when I told you that Scott Morrison was going to skate through the gap created by Dutton…
By Henry Johnston Earlier this week my neighbour asked, “Is America a democracy?” I replied, “America is a republic which aspires to democracy via its Constitution and Bill of Rights.” We continued our discussion from the perspective of white and non-white U.S. citizens, but our conversation eventually ended in stalemate. We agreed Shakespeare’s line, now…
Australia is being seen as a test case. How does a liberal democracy affirm the destruction of private, encrypted communications? In 2015, China demonstrated what could be done to technology companies, equipping other states with an inspiration: encryption keys, when required, could be surrendered to the authorities. It is worth remembering the feeble justification then,…
By John Haly The media and public’s desire for a Federal anti-corruption body and the search for revealing transparency has met with a lagging response by the government. From the mantra of “on water matters” when resisting transparency around refugee issues to the failureto submit Peter Dutton to the High Court over his extraordinary profiting from the public purse, the…
To Hope or not to Hope. George Theodoridis For a wedding gift, Zeus gave Pandora (Allgifts, in english) an urn which contained all the ills that face humanity. Sickness and death and pain and hate and suchlike destructive things. The urn, which was made of the same clay from which Pandora was made (there’s…