Crispin Hull

FIRST, I have to declare a bias. For a long time I have had a soft spot for New Zealand and New Zealanders. It began in 1989 when as Editor of The Canberra Times I was telephoned by the features and op-ed editor of the Christchurch Press asking me if I knew of anyone on my staff who might be interested in writing a weekly column about Australian politics. Continue reading “NZ showing admirable maturity”

STEPHEN Hawking’s publisher told him that every equation in The Brief History of Time would cost him 10,000 readers. This column would be lucky to muster that many readers, so I will refrain from putting in an equation, and use words instead. The equation is Hull’s Equation for Removing Tax Brackets. Continue reading “Remove tax brackets with sliding scale”

IN 1993, sociologist Hugh Mackay concluded that Australians were anxious about too much change. His 1993 book Reinventing Australia concluded that Australians were frazzled by too much change, especially economic change which had debased job security with casualisation and contracting out. Continue reading “Australia: stuck with no courage or vision”

THE tyranny of the minority was on display this week. A little over half of the Coalition has all but bound all their MPs to vote against a private members’ bill to allow same-sex marriage. Continue reading “Gay marriage: captain picks an unnecessary path”

THE Constitution and the relatively small size of the Australian House of Representatives probably condemn us to often having a partisan Speaker. Continue reading “Doomed to partisan Speaker”

THE next conference of the Climate Change Sceptics Association should be held on the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico, where my wife and I have been this the past week. Continue reading “Central America — no place for scepticism”

WE WERE were at Guantanamo Bay (on the Cuban side) on Monday, the day that the US and Cuba formally re-established diplomatic relations with a ceremony in Havana, on the opposite side of the island. Well, anyone could see the official ceremony on television. What you cannot see on television is the sense of anger and humiliation in the eyes of Cubans when you mention Guantanamo. Continue reading “Congress should end hypocritical Cuba blockade”

THE memorial to the 20 or more women, children and men who were hanged or died in jail in the early 1690s in Salem just outside Boston is simple and unusual. It comprises a low stone wall on three sides of a rectangle about 50 metres by 30 metres. Evenly spaced stone seats – one for each victim – are embedded into the wall. Continue reading “Salem witch hunt, surely not in Australia?”

I HAVE yet to come across anyone who was in favour of same-sex marriage changing their mind to be against it. The traffic is all one way. So the longer Prime Minister Tony Abbott puts off a vote on it the more likely the Australian Parliament will legislate for it. Continue reading “Traffic all one way with marriage views”

ECONOMISTS looking back at the woeful economic performance of Argentina in the 20 th century say that at the beginning of that century Argentina was wealthy but not modern. Continue reading “Australia could plunge like Argentina”