Journalism and other writing

A COUPLE of recent Australian developments show that xenophobic fury and trade wars are not the answer to foreign businesses taking domestic profits and jobs, as President Donald Trump thinks. The answer is to either just to accept the benefits of the cheaper goods and services that foreigners provide or to go out in active competition. [click to continue…]

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THIS week’s pledge by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to counter-balance China’s power push in the Pacific with a greater Australian presence on the ground offers a sliver of hope in an otherwise grim international outlook. There has been much wringing of foreign-policy hands recently over threats to the rules-based international order. The sources of that threat can be distilled to three. Russia is unabashedly using an arsenal of weapons of mass deception. China is expanding its program of weapons of mass construction. And, meanwhile, the United States has slowly and unilaterally disarmed itself of great portions of its diplomatic power. [click to continue…]

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SOCIAL media has been such a game changer that NSW is to have a look at how the 2005 uniform defamation law is coping. But some things remain constant: humans like to be liked, like to be respected and like to be trusted. It is in our evolved genes. So we should be careful. [click to continue…]

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EAST Hope Island, about 35km south-east of Cooktown, is one of the prettiest small tropical islands in the world. It is ringed with coral and a white-sand beach with rich bird and fish life. You can walk around it in 15 minutes, which I did on World Environment Day this week.

But something stood out on that pristine beach: a plastic soft-drink bottle. [click to continue…]

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RETIREMENT income has for too long been part of class and political warfare in Australia. The responses to the Productivity Commission’s damning indictment of the $2.6 trillion (and growing) industry suggest it is still alive and well. [click to continue…]

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VERY few inquiries – parliamentary, statutory or independent – get as many as the 16,500 submissions received by the review into religious freedom being conducted by former Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, whose report was handed to the Government last week. It rather puts the lie to the almost invariable response politicians, particularly those in government, give when questioned about freedoms, human rights and constitutional change – that these are second-order issues and that Australians are really most concerned with jobs and economic growth. [click to continue…]

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THE political equation is clear. On one hand, every year nearly everyone pays rego and third-party and mentally puts it down as a government-imposed charge. On the other hand, only a few hundred in the ACT and a few thousand nationally are injured seriously enough in road crashes to warrant a compensation claim. And thus, to dilute the blame for the former, the rights of the latter are made expendable. It is happening in the ACT. It has already happened in other jurisdictions. [click to continue…]

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WELL, the Liberal Party have certainly looked after their own in this Budget. With scarcely a year left of their wafer-thin 2016 mandate, they will lock in seven years of tax cuts culminating in close to a long-held neo-con dream of a flat tax rate that favours the wealthy. [click to continue…]

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