Reflections on WWI and artificial intelligence’s takeover
THIS week marks the centenary of the beginning of the Battle of Passchendaele in which my grandfather, Hartley Stening, a British soldier, “won” the Military Medal. I was reminded of this by our family historian, my sister Cordelia. Tens of thousands of men died in the ensuing three months, for virtually no gain other than the greater glory of God, King and Country. The Military Medal was created in World War I for “other ranks” – the cannon fodder.
Tony Abbott’s conservative manifesto correctly questioned Australia’s high immigration and the build-in-Australia conventional submarine program, but there was some dog-whistling in the arguments. On immigration, the dog whistle was a xenophobic call for a slow down so present immigrants could get time to settle in and assimilate. On the submarines, he wanted an off-the-shelf one, but he thought it should be a nuclear one, which would be the thin edge of the wedge for a nuclear power industry that would in turn undermine renewables. 
ONE morning this week I did an agile, exciting and even innovative traverse of the R. G. Menzies Walk on the northern side of Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin. What a progressive Menzies was. Menzies, who founded the Liberal Party (not the Conservative Party, as we were reminded by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull this week), certainly did not hold the view that government spending was prima facie bad and spending on aspirational things was self-evidently bad.
HUMAN nature does not change much. Politicians are as idealistic, selfish, greedy, altruistic, competent, incompetent, foolish, smart and gifted as they ever were. So the explanation for Australia’s decade of political dysfunction must lie elsewhere. 
WHAT does “off the record” mean? When I taught journalism at the University of Canberra I routinely asked my classes this question when covering the treatment of sources. The answers were varied. The question has arisen again in the light of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s speech at the “off-the-record” press gallery mid-winter’s ball and the enlightening Four Corners program on how Chris Masters got his material on the “Moonlight State” that blew apart the systemic corruption in the Queensland Police three decades ago.
WHAT does “off the record” mean? When I taught journalism at the University of Canberra I routinely asked my classes this question when covering the treatment of sources. The answers were varied. The question has arisen again in the light of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s speech at the “off-the-record” press gallery mid-winter’s ball and the enlightening Four Corners program on how Chris Masters got his material on the “Moonlight State” that blew apart the systemic corruption in the Queensland Police three decades ago. 
THE minimum-wage earners are knocking at the door and just one more increase like the one this month will push them through it. The door is the second tax rung above which they will pay 34.5 per cent of any additional income in income tax and Medicare levy. It is a scandal of unfairness. These people have very few deductions, so once the minimum wage surpasses $37,000 which it will almost inevitably do after the next rise, they will be paying more than a third of their marginal income (any extra income in the form of overtime or penalty rates) in tax. The same marginal rate as all the people earning up to $87,000. How can that be fair? 
DELEGATES at the First Nations Constitutional Convention at Uluru have rejected symbolic constitutional recognition with some justification. In 1999 Australians rejected (55-45) a proposal to insert a preamble in the Constitution which included the words “honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation’s first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country”.