Category: Articles

  • Denial in carbon politics

    This is a follow-up to my previous post on Greg Hunt’s paradoxical lack of enthusiasm for discussing climate change policy. He’s very quiet on the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy, and very loud on the Coalition’s promise to remove Labor’s carbon tax. (Highly suspicious, given that one is theoretically necessitated by the other.) But will the…

  • If not the carbon tax, then what?

    Greg Hunt, the Opposition’s spokesperson on Climate Action, is trying very hard to convince anyone who will listen that the Coalition can and will repeal Labor’s carbon tax if it wins government. He responds to a well-considered piece by David Forman on the political difficulties of doing so. I want to make two points about…

  • Compulsory voting

    I have a few things to say about compulsory voting, since scrapping it has been put on the table by Queensland state government. (Oh Queensland, what would we do without you?) I happen to be a fan of compulsory voting, not because it’s the status quo, nor simply because it’s “our duty” (although that is a…

  • Gun Freedom Flowchart

    One of the major rationales for gun ownership in the US — I’m led to believe, against all reason and common sense — is that the government needs to be kept in check by a bunch of armed militias. Militias, you understand, are the epitome of democratic process. Here are my own thoughts on this…

  • Palestinian statehood

    Some people have lost sight of the notion of a win-win situation in the Middle East. We do have a lofty overarching notion that there are peace negotiations to get back to when everyone is sufficiently chummy again, but, at some level, we don’t truly believe this. The political paradigm there sees everything as (a) bad for Israel,…

  • Edumageddon

    So I read that Ernst & Young has released a report on the future of universities, saying bluntly that “Over the next 10-15 years, the current public university model in Australia will prove unviable in all but a few cases”. With all due respect, bollocks. E&Y’s document (embedded at the bottom of the ABC article)…

  • Multi-party politics

    I’m reminded by the ACT election how much more interesting politics can be when there are more than two choices. If I lived in the US, I think I would despair at the monotony of the eternal struggle between the Democrats and Republicans. However, Australia still hasn’t truly come to terms with multi-party politics. We…

  • Carbon tax lies

    The word “lie” attracts a disproportionately emotive response compared to other forms of deception. Nevertheless, I will briefly point out that Tony Abbott has told a very succinct lie in the following statement, quoted by the ABC, in relation to electricity transmission costs: The whole purpose of the carbon tax is to raise the price…

  • Where it begins

    The Curtin University Student Guild elections have been under way for the last three days, and campaigning for many days before that. Two factions hold sway: Left Action, with its uncompromisingly red posters supporting a range of social justice and funding issues, and Unity, with its simple orange posters endorsing better WiFi and upgraded cafe facilities. I…

  • Political imagination

    For the public benefit, I shall elucidate some actual and hypothesized political systems in terms of (a) our ability to imagine them, and (b) their actual likelihood of existence. First, the status quo — a sleazy and mildly corrupt but largely representative democracy. Nobody really believes that this is actually how things are, because we’re all too…