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Showing posts with the label Politics
What’s the Intergenerational Report really for? Projecting 40 years ahead is nonsense. The Intergenerational Reports have quite a different purpose – to justify what the government has already decided to do.
  That very silly stadium in Hobart. The saga of a billion-dollar football stadium encompasses tragedy and farce – and reveals familiar folly at the core of government policy-making.
  What will replace the Liberal Party? As the country moves left, the Liberal Party moves further right. If they’re no longer a viable party of government, what comes next?
  We’re getting submarines. So what will we lose? The navy wins. Losers will be the army, the air force, Medicare, hospitals, schools, the unemployed – and the nation’s safety.
  Are our schools really that bad? No, actually. Jason Clare teams up with the Murdoch tabloids to smear the school system. He’s playing a dangerous game.
  Quietly, Chalmers moves on WA’s dodgy GST deal. Nobody is going to be happy. A rather large time-bomb, bequeathed to Jim Chalmers by the previous government, is set to explode in just over three years from now.
  Is Labor serious about health? Doesn’t look like it. Mark Butler’s Medicare “Taskforce” isn’t action on health reform. It’s a substitute for action.
  Progressive politics always (in the end) wins. Here’s why. Throughout modern history, conservatives have won battles but lost the wars. It’s the other side – the reformists or ‘progressives’ – who eventually shape the world.
  Does gun control work? Australia’s much-praised gun laws have almost eliminated mass shootings. But they’ve done little about the homicide rate, and nothing at all about suicide.
  So there’s a crisis in global democracy? Actually, no. It’s the autocrats, not the democrats, who are in trouble.
Labor on refugees: just as nasty and even more secretive. Refugees in Australia’s detention camps learnt long ago that hope was an illusion. The new Labor government, endorsing the Coalition’s cruelty, has again shown them the bleak wisdom of hopelessness.
Neoliberalism: an obituary. The ideology which ruled the world’s economies for half a century has, after a long illness, finally died. Liz Truss tripped over its decaying corpse on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.
  After 50 years of cuts, is it now too late to rescue the ABC? For almost half a century, the ABC has been squeezed between two opposing forces – rapidly increasing costs on one hand, savage budget cuts on the other.
Is our unwritten constitution worth the paper it’s not written on?   When it finally became known that Scott Morrison, in darkest secrecy, had made himself the Lord High Everything Else, the solicitor-general said there wasn’t anything illegal about it. But was there?
Could the Greens (one day) govern Australia? Bob Brown is pretty sure about it. “It’s inevitable,” he told me. Bob, and many within the Greens, see environmental policies – on climate change particularly – as being the single decisive issue around which future politics will revolve.
Factions have crippled Tasmania’s ALP. Now the paramedics are here. Factional warfare has cost the Tasmanian ALP its two most popular and credible politicians; its parliamentary leader and state president; a state election; and two federal seats.
The loneliness of the long-distance health reformer: Stephen Duckett on politics, bureaucracies and the pandemic. Anyone who still thinks Australia’s health system is fit for purpose really hasn’t been paying attention.
The Renegade: Greg Barns on law, prisoners, a republic – and fleeing the Liberals. Even now, Greg Barns insists he’s still a liberal. Small l. That’s a bit surprising, when you think about it.
Does the Liberal Party have a future? If these were ordinary times, if it was only about one election result, the question would not need to be asked. These are not ordinary times.
Labor wins friends with cost-free policies. It can't last.   Here’s a list. The Uluru statement. The Biloela family. Corruption commission. Wages. Republic. Arts. Robodebt royal commission. Climate. Support for the ABC.