Category: Uncategorized

FIFTY years ago this week, Prime Minister Robert Menzies set in train a policy which still stirs up controversy and division – the clash between private and public education. Menzies did it in his classic understated and politically artful way. The policy was stated in just 78 words, more than 5000 words in to his 7000-word election manifesto for the election to be held on 30 November 1963. Continue reading “Menzies began half a century of educational inequality”

I HAVE enlisted the help of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and the various economists who crafted cost-benefit analysis to help decide what to do about climate change. I hope that you, too, can do the same thing. Kant took a universalist approach. The test for morally commendable action was: what would happen if everyone did this? Mill’s test was the greatest good for the greatest number — utilitarianism. Continue reading “Philosophic approach to solar panel cost-benefit”

A SPLENDID thing is emerging from the US Budget crisis. It is indirectly and slowly forcing the US military to adopt more sensible policy. Instead of being “the policeman of the world” – which only gets everyone’s back up, it is being forced to concentrate on core US interests. Continue reading “US military: Republicans do right deed for wrong reason”

THE passage of the ACT Marriage Equality Same Sex invites some reflections on the law and politics of marriage and the Australian Constitution. Continue reading “Howard messed up blocking gay marriage”

FIRST to Andrew Forrest’s $65 million gift to the University of Western Australia, then to Queensland’s bikies law. Forrest has said that he and his family had agreed that they had more than enough to live on in whatever style they wanted, so they should give the surplus to good causes. It means he is sacrificing exactly nothing with this gift. It is easier than giving away unwanted second-hand clothes for him. He does not even have to drive to the Salvos bin. Continue reading “Charity starts and ends with sacrifice, not money”

IN 1968 an obscure pop-folk group called The Idlers Five produced a silly, mediocre hit called “Melborn and Sideny”. Included in the brash, jingoistic ditty were lines so excruciatingly bad that they became seared in my memory: “We’ve got Australian Rules and the Melbourne Cup each year. Sydney’s girls are way out front but we’ve got stronger beer.” Continue reading “In and idler moment when population did not matter”

LET’S hope the Case of the Twittering Immigration Employee (Michaela Banerji) has not ended with her dismissal. The rights of all public servants are at stake here. Continue reading “Should public servants be political mutes?”

CHRISTOPHER Pyne should grow up. He should leave behind the undergraduate battles of the University of Adelaide in the late 1980s. He has a more serious task of making the best of Australia’s universities. Continue reading “Uni reform more than union-bashing”

GOUGH Whitlam was asked in his first media conference after taking office in 1972 how could he fulfill his promise to end national service with a hostile Senate likely to stop any repeal of the National Service Act. The response was swift and imperious: The Minister would simply instruct the department not to conduct any ballots to call up the young men. Continue reading “For the climate it is a changing”

ACT MLA Jeremy Hanson was certainly correct when he predicted this week that the ACT Government’s proposed same-sex marriage laws will end up in the High Court. There are several major constitutional questions. The first questions is: Who has standing to challenge such a law? Then the question arises as to what is marriage as defined in the Constitution? And then whether the Commonwealth’s existing Marriage Act leaves any room for a state or territory to enter the field. Continue reading “ACT gay marriage Act set for court challenge”