After more than six months of Parliamentary wrangling, the ALP’s flagship housing future fund bill finally cleared the Senate last week. For Australia’s neglected social housing sector, this presages a welcome revival of federally-supported capital investment, absent for most of the past quarter century. But, in a longer-term perspective, the resulting program will be significant Continue reading »
Government
The rehabilitation of the federal public service is a slow waltz – one step forward, one sideways and a couple backwards. To stretch the metaphors and with apologies to Don Gibson’s fine 1961 hit song, while the administrative ship of state is adrift in a sea of heartbreak, its principal stewards seem half asleep at Continue reading »
This is a PLEA to all sensible women (and men) to vote Yes in the referendum because the damages of a No win will move us backward, not forward. We will still need ways of remedying the serious mess of inequities initiated in 1788. The failure of Yes will show the lack of sufficient trust Continue reading »
Australia, with fewer secrets to hide, is more compulsively secretive than the US, China or NATO. General Angus Campbell is concerned about “truth decay” and artificial intelligence, worried that eventually citizens of this country will be unable to sift fact from fiction. Countries such as Russia were using disinformation as a weapon of statecraft in America Continue reading »
On 10 September 2023, at the end of refugee Neil Para’s marathon 1014 kilometre walk from Ballarat to Sydney, it was made public that Neil, his wife, Sugaa, and two daughters, Nivash and Kartie, had been granted permanent visas (his youngest, Nive, was born in Australia, and she was made a citizen when she turned Continue reading »
This is a story of what a voice can achieve and how easily it is undone by external forces. A little over 35 years ago I was Council Clerk and CDEP Coordinator for a small indigenous community in the far reaches of the Northern Territory tablelands. I saw my task was to act as the Continue reading »
“The evidence is compelling that human exceptionalism is a deeply-flawed construct – a grand cultural illusion – that has led modern techno-industrial societies into a potentially fatal ecological trap.” William Rees, Author, The Human Ecology of Overshoot. The long-standing, gender-dominant human cultural course has come to its final dark expression. The question now is, will Continue reading »
South Korea is among the nations with the highest coal power generation. South Korean government is moving ahead to launch commercial operation of the Samcheok coal power plant in Gangwon-do province in October defying opposition from civil society groups and the Catholic Church. Since October 2021, Catholic groups have been staging protests every month at Continue reading »
Discussion of the tenure of senior officials in the Australian public service continues in P&I, with some former officials recently pointing to the difficulty of giving the fabled “frank and fearless” advice when contracts may not be renewed. Others maintain that they retained autonomy under the current regime. Chris Wallace argues that a reversion to Continue reading »