Journalism and other writing
ISRAEL’S military spending is the sixth highest per head in the world. You might wonder why it would need any further help. Yet last week the US pledged to give Israel almost $US3 billion in military aid in 2010.
Continue reading “Religion behind US military support for Israel”
HERE are a few minor and major annoyances that big organisations and individuals should have a go at fixing in 2010. Continue reading “Some annoyances to fix”
ALL but the crankiest conspiracy theorists now accept that the world is warming and humans are causing it. But the baffling, illogical and scary thing is that political leaders seem blind to a critical element of the human causation – the more humans we have the more carbon emissions we will have. Continue reading “China right to link population to climate”
IN 1975 the then Liberal Opposition Leader, Malcolm Fraser, formulated a doctrine that an Opposition which controlled the Senate could refuse an elected government Supply (the money to govern) if the Government engaged in “reprehensible conduct”. Continue reading “People’s recall better than royal sackings”
OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott is on to something in portraying the Government’s climate-change policy as a great big tax and in ruling out an emissions trading scheme or any carbon impost. He is cleverly tapping into behavioural economics theory, whether consciously or not. Continue reading “Rational appeal to the irrational on climate”
IT IS broke and it should be fixed.
The double-dissolution mechanism in the Constitution is flawed. This week’s second rejection of the climate-change legislation and previous cases prove the point. The double dissolution is a sledge-hammer to crack a walnut. It requires expensive national disruption to resolve legislative impasses. We should be able to craft easier ways. Continue reading “Climate stalemate shows Constitution is broke”
IT IS hard to work out which cliché best suits the position of News Ltd, and indeed many newspaper companies. Is it between a rock and a hard place or is in on the horns of a dilemma? Continue reading “Murdoch gives ‘para-site’ a new meaning”
NEWS Ltd did not look down and shuffle its feet a bit. There was no sense of embarrassment or even bemusement.
This fortnight’s regular Newspoll published on Tuesday revealed an astonishing increase in Labor’s vote and a dramatic decline in the Coalition’s. The two-party preferred vote swung four per cent to Labor from 52-48 to 56-44 from the Newspoll a fortnight before. Continue reading “Too much riding on the polls”
FORMER NSW Premier Bob Carr and the cohort of conservative commentators who are wary of judges usurping elected representatives if we have a charter of rights should read a judgment brought down by the High Court this week. Continue reading “Judges can be trusted with rights charter”
YESTERDAY was the 10th anniversary of the defeat of the referendum on the republic. If successful, the referendum would have ended the last vestige of legal discrimination against Catholics and women in the Australian political system. Continue reading “Objections to monarchy still powerful 10 years on”