Category: Uncategorized

AGAIN we are seeing how hard it is to make significant reforming decisions in Australia. Continue reading “So much stacked against sensible reform”

By CRISPIN HULL
AT LEAST the Treasury is taking the new law and policy on Freedom of Information seriously – and cunningly. So seriously and cunningly, indeed, that FOI applicants are dismayed. Continue reading “Treasury stymies Coalition’s FOI ruse”

HERE we go again: another slug on landlords in addition to ever-increasing land taxes, stamp duty, development fees, planning rules, environmental-efficiency ratings, tree-protection orders, verge-protection plans and the list goes on, I can hear the property owners wail. Continue reading “Tenants suffer as market fails on energy”

LIKE most US Presidents, Barack Obama is copping it from the left and the right — this time over the intervention in Libya. From the left came the chant either that he should have gone in earlier to save civilians or that he should not have gone in at all because it will be just another (the third) US armed intervention into a Muslim country which is bound to escalate and bog down. Continue reading “Obama and Libya: so far so good”

VOTERS are rightly suspicious of a carbon tax. The task for the Government is to get people to understand its carbon scheme and for the scheme to be fair. It has to involve people. Here is an idea that might just do that. Continue reading “Carbon plan for everyone”

WE TAKE the Churchillian description of democracy as the worst system of government except all the others as a given, almost unimaginable to question. But it is likely to face severe challenge in the longer term. Continue reading “Democracy inept in the face of climate change”

WHEN the Feds were hard up in the 1980s and did not want to get the blame for tightening purse strings in the ACT it gave us self-government. That way some local politicians could take the flak from voters who would not take it out by turfing out a local federal Member, as they did in 1975 and 1980. So it is a little hypocritical for the Feds to then turn around and say you can’t have full self-government when the local government does something the Feds don’t like – like same-sex marriage or euthanasia. Continue reading “Well-governed ACT does not deserve Fed veto”

THIS week broadcaster Alan Jones called the proposition of human-induced climate change “superstition” and he launched an abrasive personal attack on Prime Minister Julia Gillard. It was hardly surprising. Continue reading “Superstitious Jones falls for the ad hominen fallacy”

EVENTS in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are now revealing yet again the utter failure of the Middle East policy of the Administration of George W Bush, much of which is being continued by the Obama Administration. Continue reading “How not to establish democracy in the Middle East”

WHAT a contrast. I used to think that state and territory level governments were inept, prone to corruption, stupid, and generally worse than the Feds every time. I used to think that the smaller the government, the worse it got. Continue reading “Secrecy has its political cost”