January, 2009

Many people continue to assert that asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat should be rejected because they (allegedly) pass through other countries where they are supposedly safe.  See some of the public comments made in response to this recent piece on the ABC website by Rachel Ball from the Human Rights Law Resource Centre [...]

Change 26th January to Citizenship Day, become a Republic, and make Australia Day the anniversary of the adoption of a Treaty with Indigenous Australians. Easy! Australian of the Year, Aboriginal academic and activist, Professor Mick Dodson, has made the rather unremarkable point that many Indigenous Australians don’t feel overly positive about using January 26th to [...]

I used the focus on Barack Obama’s extraordinary achievement recently to write a post about some other politicians who overcame even higher odds at greater personal costs in 2008.  Of course many people who aren’t politcians show even greater perseverance and courage. Many of them remain anonymous, but some become known and on occasion they [...]

I have been a big fan of Obama since before the first contests the Democrat’s nomination in Iowa and New Hampshire. I am not suggesting I predicted he would triumph, but I closely followed the fascinating contests, quietly hoping that would be the outcome – (maybe not so quietly for people who had to suffer [...]

Many media outlets – including the readers of Crikey! – nominated Barack Obama as person of the year for 2008.  It will be hard work for him to retain that level of popularity through 2009, let alone four or eight years of Presidency.  However, the inevitability that he will fail to meet some of the [...]

The membership of the South Australian Democrats have made their choice to fill the Upper House vacancy caused by the retirement of the party’s sole remaining MP.  The vacancy is being filled by David Winderlich. 

Last month I attended a grants ceremony arranged by the Sydney based animal welfare group, Voiceless.  The ceremony also saw the launch of a report into the conditions faced by meat chickens in Australia.  Titled “From Nest to Nugget”, it is very thoroughly researched and contains a wealth of facts.  It was given some extra gravitas [...]

In this era of wide awareness about the need to reduce greenhouse emissions and debates about using pricing and market mechanisms to help achieve this, the state of Queensland maintains an absurd, expensive program of subsidising petrol by about eight cents a litre. Of course it is politically very difficult for any government to abolish, [...]

The Liberal Party’s shadow minister for education, Christopher Pyne, who has been around long enough now that he could reasonably be called a senior Liberal has written a piece for the Sydney Institute suggesting his party should be “tacking to the centre of the political spectrum.” He also states that “The Liberal Party as reformed [...]

Last week’s furore over the Keith Windschuttle/Quadrant hoax seems to have died down – you can read a summary of some of the reaction here.  While Crikey and one my fellow bloggers at this site put quite a lot of focus on it, I must say I found it hard to get very worked up [...]