Tag: democracy
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No satire or ridicule please – this is parliament
I had not previously been aware that the rules of parliamentary broadcasting preclude “satire and ridicule”. Annabel Crabb raises the issue at the ABC, and reports that many politicians themselves are unaware of this. First, prohibiting ridicule does seem a little redundant. One may well decree that there shalt be no ridicule, but it’s meaningless when…
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Poor persecuted Monckton
His Great and Wondrous Beneficence the Lord Christopher Monckton did, after all, give a lecture at Notre Dame University. Attempts (initiated by Natalie Latter) to dissuade Notre Dame from lending Monckton its credibility did not come to fruition, though drawing attention to his Lordship’s rank lunacy is always a small victory in itself. As the…
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Abbott
Tony Abbott is like Gaius Baltar – the anti-hero from Battlestar Galactica. Both are men motivated almost entirely by political expediency in pursuit of power, and seek to escape from the things they’ve said and done in the past. Abbott, I think, must operate with the presumption that – if he eventually wins the Prime…
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And for my next wish…
Just [intlink id=”1083″ type=”post”]as I hoped[/intlink], we have a hung parliament. A few days after the event, all I can say is this: Rob Oakeshott, you legend. Oakeshott, one of the three independent kingmakers, has proposed a unity cabient, wherein the two major parties would share power. Doubtless there is much scepticism to be had…
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I vote for a hung parliament
How did it come to this? The Greens, supposedly a party of the “far left” (whatever that means), are now the flag bearers for a market-based policy – carbon emissions trading. Rudd along with three successive opponents – Howard, Nelson and Turnbull — all pledged to introduce or support an ETS. Now the Labor Party…
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Was it right?
Tony Abbott wasted no time in conjuring up the “midnight execution” imagery to describe Julia Gillard’s usurpation of power, and a little later trying to explain why this wasn’t precisely the same thing that he himself had done to Malcolm Turnbull six months earlier. (He probably had to go all out, because Gillard out-polls him…
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The American hypothesis
I have a hypothesis on politics – a somewhat unfortunate hypothesis given its implications. Roughly speaking, it’s this: the workability of democracy diminishes with large populations. I’m not talking about the logistics of holding elections, but about the ability of society to engage in meaningful debate. My reasoning goes like this. Insofar as I can…
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How the sausage is made
People like me should never, ever be told about parliamentary RSS feeds. Unfortunately, I found out anyway, and soon after discovered a report from last week entitled Plebiscite for an Australian Republic Bill 2008 (tabled by the enchantingly-named Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee). Briefly, the proposal is to hold a plebiscite on whether…
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Yes and no
I came home from a dinner with the rellies to find that the daylight savings referendum had been defeated, which was mildly disappointing but hardly surprising. There’ll be another referendum in a while. At least I remembered to vote this time. However, I am surprised and intrigued that the Greens candidate Adele Carles managed to…
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The wrath of the plebiscites
A friend once told me that he opposed a referendum on Australia becoming a republic. If it were held he would vote “yes”, but he opposed holding it. I look back fondly to that nuanced political position, which many without thinking would probably dismiss as a contradiction. Today I’m not a staunch republican – I…