October 30, 2008 – 10:12 pm
Next time you hear someone talking about our “non-discriminatory” immigration system, keep stories like this one in mind – a doctor who has already been living and working in Australia for over two years, being denied permanent residency because he has a 13 year old son with Down Syndrome. Whilst this sort of thing only makes [...]
October 28, 2008 – 7:29 pm
I’ve tried not to get caught up in taking shots at the way The Australian newspaper interprets Newspoll findings. There are enough other people willing to make comment any time they believe there are flaws or distortions, and there are plenty of other issues for me to focus on. But today’s effort was just too [...]
October 24, 2008 – 11:49 pm
On Wednesday I attended a rally outside the Brisbane District Court, held to show support for Palm Island man, Lex Wotton, whose trial had been going for two weeks. The jury started deliberating on the Thursday. When I saw news that they still hadn’t reached a decision on the Friday afternoon, with Lex having spent [...]
October 23, 2008 – 8:11 pm
There has been a recent run of fairly good results for the Greens in a range of polls at state and territory level, including their best ever result in the ACT where they will determine who forms government (though they have been in that position before). This has led to a run of commentary pieces [...]
October 21, 2008 – 1:52 pm
Post-election political posturing in its own way can be as important as pre-election political posturing, but given that the voters have just spoken, maintaining some connection with reality is probably a bit more important. Which made me somewhat surprised to see these comments from ACT Labor Leader Jon Stanhope: ”We have won this election. The [...]
October 21, 2008 – 6:56 am
For hundreds of thousands of Australian residents, next month’s New Zealand election has greater significance than the recent WA or ACT polls or the NSW by-elections. By global standards, both New Zealand and Australia have a very high proportion of their population who were born in another country. In 2006, 22.9 percent of people usually living [...]
October 20, 2008 – 11:10 am
It is fair enough for the Prime Minister to use the forum of Sunday night commercial television to get his message out to people about his views and actions on the global financial crisis. It is reasonable for any politician to use any means at their disposal to try to inform people about what they are [...]
October 19, 2008 – 11:14 pm
The by-elections in New South Wales turned out much as expected. Thumping swings against Labor, but still only enough for them to lose one seat, while the Nationals’ discomfort also continued with their failure to stop Port Macquarie staying in the hands of an Independent. Cabramatta was always likely to stay Labor, given the 29 [...]
October 18, 2008 – 2:26 pm
The DemConWatch website is a US blog which has provided a wealth of information on the Presidential campaign, focusing initially on the Democrat nomination and since then on the Presidential and Congressional contests. It is run by partisan Democrats, and doesn’t hide its bias in that sense, but it none the less provides solid, well [...]
October 15, 2008 – 11:44 am
The government’s announcement that they are injecting $1.5 billion into boosting the First Home Owners Grant looks like bad policy to me, regardless of the wider economic situation. If that amount of money can be spent rapidly to boost housing numbers, it should be put into boosting public housing stocks, or else into the new [...]
