Like all policy instruments, the Future Fund was created to manage the challenges the country was facing at the time. The government has every right and reason to adjust and adapt the mandate to manage very different political and economic challenges today. The Future Fund (FF) was created by the Parliament at the time when the Continue reading »
Government
At least one group of experts is asking why proposed online porn regulation lacks natural justice, damages sexual expression and promotes risky technology. Regulating the content most people describe as ‘pornography’, the Draft Consolidated Industry Codes of Practice for the Online Industry (Class 1C and Class 2 Material) (the Codes) consultation closed last week. They Continue reading »
My recent review of the book, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism, by Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden (H&H) highlighted its ‘convincing, frank and honest account’ in just over 200 pages, and encouraged the Health Department in particular to listen to its lessons. The official COVID-19 Response Inquiry Report by Robyn Kruk, Catherine Bennett and Angela Jackson ( Continue reading »
Jews in Germany, Bosnians in former Yugoslavia, Tutsis in Rwanda, and now Palestinians in Gaza. In a recent interview, Francesca Albanese posed a rhetorical question: What kind of monsters have we become to see the live-streamed genocide of Palestinians and not act? When you look at Anthony Albanese, who founded the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, Continue reading »
A review of Steven Hamilton and Richard Holden, Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race, UNSW Press I started reading the latest offering by economists Hamilton and Holden on Australia’s COVID-19 experience while I was nursing a deep disappointment that the Albanese Government decided not to establish a Royal Commission Continue reading »
Over the last 10,000 years or so societies have evolved from relatively simple and loosely structured groups of people to the complex entities of the present nation-states (and even a nascent world society), but in this time period the human being, as an organism, has not changed significantly. So, what has changed? The interaction between Continue reading »
For some time now a considerable number of well-informed Australians have been warning Anthony Albanese and his government not to allow personal flattery and uncertain commitments to allow the United States to gain control of Australian foreign policy and defence policies. Yet unfortunately some leaders always know best, so the Albanese Cabinet has continued on Continue reading »
Lyndsay Connors (Pearls and Irritations, 14 November 2024) takes issue with my argument that the Commonwealth should get out or be pushed out of schooling. The argument for a Commonwealth exit is this: – By just about every indicator Australian schooling has been on the slide for at least 20 years, despite the Rudd/Gillard governments’ Continue reading »
As someone who has spent most of my life working with people for whom the system is profoundly broken, I wrestle with the same question that many middle-class people do: Why do so many disenfranchised people support figures like Donald Trump, whose policies often seem designed to further entrench inequality? The answer, I’ve come to Continue reading »
The question draws from what Trump effectively used in the closing weeks of the recent USA elections. Liberal-National Party (LNP) leader Peter Dutton is exploring a similar approach to winning government in the approaching Australian election. Employer groups are preparing to help him. Will Labor’s messaging on living standards satisfy the Australian working class? The Continue reading »