Within the last week, I’ve been to three different events in Brisbane relating to a possible Charter or Bill of Rights. On Monday night of this week, Geoffrey Robertson QC, gave an address at Lourdes Hill College, organised by Riverbend Books. This one was attended by around 600 people, which was a very high turnout, [...]
March 27, 2009 – 11:07 am
While many Queenslanders last Saturday night were focusing on what the election result might be, a benefit show for jailed Palm Island man Lex Wotton was being held in the inner-Brisbane suburb of West End (which coincidentally is in the electorate of both the Premier and the Prime Minister). West End is also home to [...]
March 25, 2009 – 11:14 pm
As Australia moves away from some of our past discredited, damaging, expensive and inhumane policies in the area of immigration detention, it seems the USA and Italy have moved in the opposite direction. While there is room for further improvement, there is no doubt Australia has made major advances in recent years in the laws [...]
Last night I attended a forum organised by New Matilda on the federal government’s plan to introduce a mandatory filter for Internet Service Providers. I usually don’t find forums where all the speakers hold roughly the same view particularly enlightening, but the speeches were all to the point and not too long, which allowed a [...]
March 24, 2009 – 12:03 am
Three short quotes that speak volumes – from a great piece in the New York Times on Dr Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning physicist and new Energy Secretary in the USA. The quotes give an insight into the world of a scientist coming up against the (un)reality of bureaucracy, politics and the media. …… [...]
There is still over a week to go before all the votes from the Queensland election are counted, so final percentages and results in a few seats may end being a bit different from how they stand at the moment. But there are plenty of assessments that can be already made. A few comments, in [...]
One mantra of both major parties (and plenty in the mainstream media) that I’ve always hated is the claim that a hung parliament or a minority government is “the worst outcome” possible. It’s about as bad as the mantra that “a vote for a minor party or an independent is a wasted vote”, which under [...]
March 18, 2009 – 11:50 pm
I in no way cast aspersions on the genuineness of Family First Senator Steve Fielding’s concern about alcohol abuse. But he certainly has a very strange idea of what constitutes a good outcome when it comes to reducing it. His vote in the Senate resulted directly in alcoholic soda pops being made substantially cheaper, while [...]
March 18, 2009 – 12:53 pm
Regular readers of Crikey (and this blog) might recall some stories back in September last year detailing just one example of the gross injustice (and utter absurdity) of Australia’s policy to charge people locked up in immigration detention for the cost of their imprisonment. This practice has been widely criticised for many years, including in [...]
March 17, 2009 – 11:45 am
Among all the discussion of the possible flow-on consequences of the global financial crisis, one which may have very significant long ramifications is the impact on the long-term future of Europe as a political and economic entity. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman questions whether European governments were wrong to let themselves become so tightly [...]
