The Environment Council of Central Queensland (ECoCeQ) has been in the Federal Court this week arguing that the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek has acted irrationally and unlawfully in her risk assessment of the expansion of 2 very large coal mines in NSW. The proponents of these mines, the Mount Pleasant Optimisation coal mine expansion and Continue reading »
politics
Where’s Cardinal George Pell when you need him? Gone to God, I know, but as one of the founders and a former Chancellor of Australian Catholic University (ACU), he would be horrified at what is currently happening there. Why? Because, as media outlets reported, ACU has decided “to axe dozens of humanities jobs … entirely Continue reading »
Voice proponents flood the streets of major cities as Australian media battles its ‘cult of forgetfulness.’ Senator Jacinta Price’s National Press Club speech last week generated a lot of publicity – mainly about whether what she said was accurate or not – which it transparently wasn’t. Senator Nampijinpa Price, when asked if she felt there Continue reading »
A new US investigative report has excoriated the controversial Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program which included the USS Canberra – commissioned in very unusual circumstances with great fanfare by the US Navy recently in Sydney. Should its revelations about the manifest failures in the USN’s procurement performance – with former officers describing the LCS class Continue reading »
In Asian media this week: Canada, India tensions have sorry history. Plus: BRI shows most countries shun ‘decoupling’; Myanmar rebels ‘will never give up’; China to dominate green car market; Putin and Kim lead ‘axis of outcasts’; China decline the fashionable chatter in Washington. By the time of this month’s G20 summit in New Delhi, Continue reading »
The ‘disinformation’ (read: lies and bullshit) being propagated about the indigenous Voice to Parliament by the Murdoch media, among others, harms our society. It promotes division, celebrates and cultivates ignorance and bigotry, oppresses a minority and diminishes us all. Why do we tolerate such behaviour? Such News Corp behaviour has become normal. Any person or Continue reading »
“War is good for business.” So reads a quote from an arms industry executive in a recent Reuters article titled “At London arms fair, global war fears are good for business” about Europe’s biggest arms show, the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International. You will probably be unsurprised to learn that Reuters does not name Continue reading »
Inherent in the nature of insanity is the fact that those inflicted by it are unaware of their mental state. As the emission of greenhouse gases continues, global warming accelerates, bushfires and floods engulf the planet, new fossil fuel projects are subsidised, climate science is ignored, climate change projections are kept away from the public Continue reading »
Magicians regularly use distraction to trick us into perceiving one thing while another is happening. Politicians use similar tricks to signal concern about public policy problems. Recently there has been an organised campaign to get us to believe that NAPLAN literacy results can all be explained by differences in the methods used to teach reading. Continue reading »
Two significant reports concerning people with disabilities are due be released. First will be the Independent Review of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and second, the findings of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability. Underpinning both inquiries is Australia’s commitment to the United Nations Convention on the Rights Continue reading »