Well, you thought he couldn’t do it; you thought that Tony Abbott was indulging in intemperate exuberance [or telling fibs] when he said in 2013 that during the first five years of his reign as Emperor of Australia, he would create one million new jobs. Well, you would have to eat your words now, wouldn’t…
The most recent quarterly update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory states that emissions per capita, and the emissions intensity of the economy, were at their lowest levels in 28 years in the year to December 2017, a fact loudly stated by Josh Frydenberg in the hope that we won’t notice that emissions rose again…
As one gets older, one is immediately confronted by the shock of dates… No, I don’t mean going on them… Although that would be quite a shock too. I mean, the shock of when someone says something like, “When the GFC hit ten years ago…”, you tap your watch and go, “Ten years ago, I’m…
Part Thirty-five of a history of European occupation, rule, and brutal imperialism of Indigenous Australia, by Dr George Venturini. There are between 14,600 and 36,000 Sami in Sweden. Most Sami live in the north, but there are Sami all over Sweden. Today, only ten per cent of Swedish Sami earn a living from the reindeer…
I used to think Mark Kenny was a reasonably well-informed political commentator but I have felt recently that he was trying overly hard to give the Coalition the benefit of the doubt. And then I saw his latest offering and thought WTF, do we live on the same planet? The title – “As ‘ascendant Malcolm’…
It has the makings of another Intifada: appalling timing in terms of commemoration (the founding of the state of Israel; the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem in all-Trumpistan affair); popular protest with all its untidy trimmings; then a massacre clinically inflicted by forces with superior fire power. On Monday, the use of force…
You’ve got to hand it to the current government… Well, you do! There’s no way they could pick it up themselves. Anyway, I’ve noticed a certain phrase cropping up lately whenenver the Coalition is confronted with the idea that Newstart is so low that even economists think it should be raised. FFS, even John Howard…
When the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) delivered a scathing report into the government’s $89 billion Naval Shipbuilding Plan, warning of high levels of risk, cost blowouts and schedule delays, it was met with a typically arrogant and inadequate response from Christopher Pyne. “Key risks relate to the delivery of expected capability, program cost, ability…
The image of Antarctica in common circulation is environmental and utopian. The scientist of valour, the investigator thirsting for discovery in a litmus test environment that will give warning about current and impending variations in temperature that will affect the globe. Noble stuff indeed. On other occasions, the continent has tickled the conspiratorial mind. Did…
Politicians have been clambering to the top extolling something that has yet to exist. Scientists are claiming a job boom that has yet to transpire. Much fantasy and speculation dominate the creation of Australia’s Space Agency, an organisation that remains inchoate despite being launched on Monday by the appropriately named Michaelia Cash. Former CSIRO boss…