“Attempting to control rural areas in Afghanistan always eventually ends up boiling down to personal survival” (Evan McAllister, former Marine staff sergeant, New York Times, July 28, 2018). It genuinely doesn’t matter how the security boffins within the Pentagon frame it: the Taliban have fought the United States, through sheer will of force and mania,…
By Keith Antonysen Previously, whenever climate scientists have talked about the ills created by climate change they have spoken about the end of the century as being a time when bigger tribulations can be expected such as sea level rise, acidification of Oceans, and higher temperatures. Unfortunately, the time scale has moved towards contemporary times. What has…
By Callen Sorensen Karklis Recently it occurred to me that I needed to update my enrolment details to vote as I’ve just recently moved for study purposes close to my University. The recent Super Saturday by-elections throughout the country reminded me of the need to vote come next year’s upcoming federal election. As many of you…
Data is rarely inert. It moves, finds itself diverting, adjusting and adapting to users and distributors. Ultimately, as unspectacular and banal as it might be, data sells, pushing the price in various markets whoever wishes to access it. Medical data, given its abundance, can do very nicely in such domains as the Dark Web. With…
The federal LNP certainly seized upon Longman as its best chance on Super Saturday. Cheered on by initially favourable opinion polls, Prime Minister Turnbull persisted with his enthusiasm for the LNP’s Tax Packages. Most of the tax redistribution favours privileged income earners, large corporations and banking institutions. Just a week out from Super Saturday, Brisbane’s…
In both the Senate and the media, questions are being asked about Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to gift almost half a billion dollars to a few mates to save the reef. And they should be. Much as the government may think it is a law unto itself and that the Treasury is its own personal piggy…
The Yes Minister series portraying the skulduggery of Whitehall during the Thatcher years throws up a salient reminder how certain things do not mix. Should the art portfolio be slotted alongside television? Probably not, but politics is politics. Civil servants will intrigue and seek to influence the minister of the day for their own advancement.…
You wouldn’t be Josh Frydenberg for quids. He has Victoria, Queensland and the ACT all dubious about the NEG being not ambitious enough on emissions reduction. Tony Abbott is on 2GB saying we should pull out of the Paris Agreement. Barnaby Joyce has said he won’t support the NEG if higher emissions reductions pressure is…
It does little to allay the grief of relatives and friends, but the MH370 report on the doomed, and ever spectral Malaysian passenger liner merely added smidgens of further speculation. The report from Malaysian authorities into the disappearance of the Boeing 777 on route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014 will do…
Sometime last night it became clear that the Government wasn’t going to win any of the seats, Christopher “The Fixer” Pyne began telling us that it was only to be expected. Governments never have swings toward them in by-elections, apparently. Why, there hasn’t been an occasion since 1920 of anyone doing that! Really, Labor shouldn’t…