Crispin Hull

Bringing the corporates to heel

Far too many economists, commentators (me included), policy advisers, politicians of all stripes, and voters were taken in by the intellectual appeal of economic rationalism in the 1980s and 1990s.

We failed to see how the selfish, the charlatans, and the opportunists in the corporate world would grasp the whole Thatcher-Reagan (and in Australia Hawke, Keating and Hewson) philosophy and turn it into a massive enterprise to grab public money and stuff it into their private pockets.

Medicare needs some CPR

Medicare is in urgent need of some CPR. Not just the pulmonary and cardio, but a resuscitation of every part of the human body and the medical procedures that can be applied to it.

The death by a thousand cuts of Australia’s once proud universal free medical insurance scheme continued unabated this month.

Security: the new political fault line

Last Friday’s cyber meltdown that affected everything from supermarkets to banks was an instructive event.

Like many, I have been trying to understand the recent tectonic shifting of political alignments.

How did hitherto business-supporting conservative political parties become not only champions of the working class but that the working class is increasingly supporting them? Donald Trump’s realigned Republican Party in the US and the Coalition in Australia are good examples.

Australia should measure up

Hello, how are you?”

Reply: “Not so good. The balance in the mortgage offset account has gone down to near zero because of rising interest rates. I got the house insurance bill this week. It was horrendous. The super balance isn’t too bad, but that doesn’t help much because I can’t get at it. The tax cut and cost-of-living bonus barely made a dint.” And so on.

The threat of a Muslim political party

Senator Fatima Payman’s resignation/expulsion/removal from the Australian Labor Party and results in last week’s British election have caused a fair amount of hand-wringing and “watch-out” warnings.

Labour in Britain lost seats to several pro-Palestinian independents and pro-Palestinian Greens, including to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Continue reading “The threat of a Muslim political party”

In Australia, populism goes up in smoke

The unanimous support in the Senate for the law regulating vapes was a pleasant departure from the growing polarisation in Australian politics.

For some time, it appeared that the Opposition was going down the path of opposing for opposing’s sake or rejecting evidence and science in favour of the commercial interests of their donors and supporters.

Kill climate war with election now

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should call an election now. It is plainly in the national interest to do so.

Normally, you would think, the party out of power has no power. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In Australia, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has exercised damaging power from without right now.

Climate and informatiom wars

The informationally challenged and the information poor get to vote, and the information deniers do their utmost to influence that vote. It is perhaps why democracy is the worst system of government possible – except all the rest.

The informationally challenged are, usually through no fault of their own, incapable of processing information and coming to solid conclusions. The information poor include all the informationally challenged plus those who could process information but are either preoccupied with other things or too lazy.

Population boom puts us in depression

“A word means what I want it to mean, nothing more, nothing less,” Humpty Dumpty said in “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”.

The International Monetary Fund says “most commentators” define “recession” as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. And the “growth” refers to growth in Gross National Product.

Hence we have the Alice in Wonderland conclusion that Australia is not in recession.

Anglosheric political madness

In politics, it seems, rationality has become but a small episode in a general theatre of madness.

In the US a convicted felon is poised to be President again. In Britain, a dying government is sending refugees to Rwanda and wants to draft 19-year-olds into “national service”. In Australia, the Opposition sees nuclear power as the salvation when coal power stations shut down, as if the power stations are pieces of Leggo – throw out a brown bit and immediately replace it with a silver bit.

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