2008

The release of the report of the Clarke inquiry into the Dr Mohamad Haneef debacle that occurred at the tail end of the previous government has generated a lot of commentary.  This report on the ABC’s website drew over a 100 comments in just a few hours.  I followed this issue with interest, as I had a [...]

The news that the federal government is going to put some asylum seekers in the massively expensive, high security detention facility on Christmas Island for the first time is being portrayed as unavoidable.  This report says the government has been “forced” to open the centre after the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat rose to [...]

Putting an end to the appalling humanitarian disaster in Zimbabwe which has been unfolding in a slow-motion sort of way for a number of years has clearly been beyond the capability of the global community, even when things have reached the current quite astonishing degree of disintegration of virtually the entire economy and almost all [...]

There is no other single issue affecting the future of each one us as much as the risk of climate change. The federal government’s newly released carbon trading White Paper is about the only story today that really matters long-term.  The emissions reduction target of just 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 is [...]

A belated contest for a House of Representatives Congressional seat in the USA has delivered a result against the trend.  A Republican challenger with no political experience defeating a Democrat incumbent with decades of experience in the current electoral climate is significant in itself.  In addition, the winner is someone who came to the US [...]

Australians often like to poke fun at how allegedly insular people from the USA are when in comes to events outside their borders.  But the fact that a tiny number of asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia generates pants-wetting front page coverage in Australia suggests we might be no better when it comes to [...]

A couple of years ago I wrote about the Italian experiment in allowing expats to vote as part of a specific off-shore constituency.  It was perhaps unfortunate (although not surprising given Italy’s post-war electoral history) that the first time this experiment was tried, the expat representatives held the balance of power in the country’s Senate and [...]

Not too long ago, it would have been common to see alarm from environmentalists about of the destruction of forests to create farming land.  But this week, the Senate saw the Greens vote with the Nationals because of a measure which is causing “alarm over the destruction of farming land to create forests”.