Month: June 2008

Majority will often does not prevail. Some issues excite such passion that the minority will change their vote on that issue alone. Moreover, they will campaign with time and money against politicians who dare support the majority view.

Euthanasia is a good example.

Opinion polls suggest a fairly large majority is in favour. But a dedicated group of vehement opponents who will assuredly campaign against it. Continue reading “Justins case no anti-euthanasia argument”

The total record on getting referendums through is poor, just eight in 44, but Labor’s record is appalling, just one in 24.

And that one was a no-brainer for even the dullest Australian voter. It said do you agree that the Commonwealth should have the power to give you more money in social security payments. Yes or No? More money. Too easy. Continue reading “Local government needs constitutional caution”

Petrol prices, grocery prices and bank fees are causing a little political pain at the moment.

You cannot mention them without mentioning the word “competition”, so perhaps Prime Minister Kevin Rudd should have a look the way football works. I don’t want to draw some crass football-mateship-team-spirit analogy. Rather we should look at the economic model of football. And comparing Australia with Europe might help. Continue reading “Football gives Rudd competition lesson”

How deep is the shlook that Warren Entsch is in?

I use the word shlook because that was the word used by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley in the House on Thursday last week. Schlock is low-grade material, rubbish, particularly low-grade entertainment.

But Mr Beazley was more interested in its depth than shallowness. And it is quite deep, despite the best efforts of Prime Minister John Howard and Attorney-General Daryl Williams to extract him from it (the low-grade material, that is).

It is fairly apparent that Entsch breached Howard’s code of conduct for minister’s, but as the code is administered by Howard himself, and Howard regard the breach as a technical slip nothing will happen on that score.
Continue reading “1999_06_june_entsch oped”

In the past week or so we have seen emerge the first couple of cases under the reformed 2006 uniform defamation law.

Alas, the law is not much reformed, nor is it entirely uniform.

The cases were high profile because they involved celebrities, insofar as one would regard Mercedes Corby, the sister of a convicted drug smuggler, a “celebrity”. The plaintiff in the other case was Judy Davis, an accomplished Australian actress. Continue reading “Corby case leaves us no wiser”

This rule is that 80 per cent of users of computer programs use only 20 per cent of the programs’ functions and that 20 per cent of users use 80 per cent of the programs’ functions.

(As an aside, if you saw my colleagues Grattan, Warden, Macklin and Abjorensen, you’d wonder why it wasn’t called the 90-10 rule or the 95-5 rule, but never mind.)

The challenge to the 80-20 rule has come with two new graphics programs. One has been on the market a short time, PagePlus from Serif, and the other, CorelDraw 5 is to be launched in Australia next week.

Corel is the Rolls Royce, Mercedes and Porsche of graphics programs. Hands up those who can afford to drive and Rolls Royce, Mercedes or Porsche.
Continue reading “1994_06_june_graphs”