Category: Uncategorized

THINGS are getting more difficult for pollsters. Polling techniques and interpretation may be getting more sophisticated, but the critical base of all polling – the random sample – is getting harder to come by. Continue reading “Getting harder for pollsters to sample”

AT LAST, a tomahawk is being taken to the defence budget. Pity it wasn’t an axe. If we can save $1.3 billion by delaying the purchase of the joint strike fighter and a few other things, think how much more could be saved by not buying them at all. Continue reading “Military toys we do not need”

WE ARE taxing the family home at the wrong time. We now hit people with a large amount of stamp duty when they buy. Continue reading “Taxing the family home at the wrong time”

IN THE early 1960s we had, at the Rectory Beechworth, a state-of-the-art reel-to-reel tape recorder. My father had brought it from England when we emigrated. It was the size of half a suitcase and weighed a tonne. It recorded only through a microphone. Continue reading “Torrent of abuse tackled badly”

FIRST Western Australia, then Victoria, then NSW and then Queensland. Is the ACT next? More of the ACT anon. So, are the conservatives on the march? Possibly. But there is another explanation. Continue reading “State Govts ousted because they just cannot keep up”

AS YOU read this, the Global Atheists Convention is being held in Melbourne. Census statistics show that people describing themselves as atheist, agnostic or of no religion has steadily risen every census since the Australian Bureau of Statistics was founded. Continue reading “Changing rationality and atheism’s rise”

THE longer a government stays in power the more secretive it gets – simply because it has more things to hide. Some further evidence for this proposition emerged last week with the release of the Information Commissioner’s report on charges under the Freedom of Information Act. More of that anon. Continue reading “Very expensive ‘free’ information”

THE Red Corner boxer who has been knocked out in the first 30 seconds of the first round by the Boxer in the Blue Corner is not in much of a position to claim “we wuz robbed”. But Labor in Queensland was robbed. It won 27 per cent of the vote and only nine per cent of the seats. Continue reading “Democratic dysfunction in thumping Qld result”

WESTERN Australian Premier Colin Barnett feels hard done by. So hard done by that he is willing to chuck his lot in with the miners in a High Court challenge to the mineral resources rent tax. Continue reading “Miners clutch at constitutional straws”

THE politics of scaremongering comes in short, exaggerated language – talk of disasters and catastrophes, usually when some small government benefit is being removed or the sacred surplus is threatened. The really scary stuff, though, comes in measured, dispassionate words in a longer discourse of fact and argument. Continue reading “Get rid of middle-class welfare”