Month: October 2006

A Canadian study shows the accident rate goes up by about 8 per cent on the day after daylight saving is introduced.

It is not an argument against daylight saving, because the study shows the rate falls by the same amount when daylight saving ends. It is more an argument about sleep deprivation and driving.

Anyway, people are probably more sleep-deprived all round in southern mainland Australia in October, as it gets light at impossibly early hours.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 28 October 2006 daylight madness”

The ABC’s 50-page “Introduction to the Editorial Policies 2007” may well be a rod for its own back, but sometimes it is a back that needs a rod taken to it.

ABC managing director Mark Scott delivered the document this week, ruffling a lot of feathers within the ABC and among print commentators and Labor and Green politicians.

Most commentary has been about the bias question (more on that anon). But perhaps a more significant change will come if Scott succeeds in his pledge to revamp the ABC’s complaints procedure.

The ABC, and broadcasters generally in Australia, have been too arrogant for too long.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 21 October 2006 abc editorial guidelines”

The Howard Government has developed the Hawke-Keating tricks of taking advantage of incumbency into an art form. However, its latest effort — in electoral law — might well backfire, just as one of Labor’s did.

As soon as it got its hands on a Senate majority, the Howard Government moved with indecent haste to push through its electoral changes which it has mendaciously called “Electoral Integrity” Acts. They became law earlier this year.

This week former Electoral Commissioner Colin Hughes and academic Brian Costar launched their book, Limiting Democracy, (UNSW Press and Australian Policy Online), in which they show how the changes reverse the direction of a century of democratic improvement in Australia.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 14 October 2006 elections”

Years ago Pryor did a wonderful cartoon of the Reverend Ian Paisley with a black, cavernous mouth out of which bats were flying.

Years later, the bats are still flying. Despite the IRA’s shown renunciation of violence, he wants more. He wants full retribution and reparation. He wants the IRA to repay all stolen money and turn in every perpetrator of every act of violence and theft to the police.

Northern Ireland is one of many countries formerly traumatised by internal conflict now emerging into peace. True, it had fewer victims, but its experience has similarities with that of South Africa, the Balkans, Rwanda, East Timor and Cambodia.

Invariably, some people – mainly victims — want to treat the acts of violence in the same way as crimes are treated in civil society whereas others – mainly perpetrators — want them to be treated as acts of soldiers in war.
Continue reading “Forum for Saturday 7 October 2006 retribution”