The federal government’s budget is due to be released on 9 May. Since assuming power in May 2022, the government released a budget in October that removed a lot of the excess and pandering to special interest groups that was inherent in the aptly abbreviated ATM (Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison) Coalition Government’s budgets of the previous…
It’s a very funny thing. In the US, the provision of services in such industries as security and intelligence is outsourced in a sprawling complex of contractors and subcontractors. In Australia, the entire military and security establishment is outsourced to Washington’s former mandarins, many of them earning a pile in consultancy fees. This, perhaps, is…
By Denis Bright Is the perceived strategic danger from China comparable to the threat of fear itself and the possibilities of global recession arising from these fears? A global recession or serious economic slowdown would certainly change the orientation of container sea traffic by switching from long-standing and profitable business partnerships with China to the…
Over eighty years ago Prime Minister John Curtin prepared a New Year’s Eve message for the Australian people. It was written three weeks into the war with Japan. It was published in the Melbourne Herald on 27 December, 1941: ‘Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America,…
Ok, just to be clear here, I’m not writing about the lack of action on unemployment benefits. I’m saving any comments on that until after the Budget because, well, I can sort of guess how that’s going to play out. Either Labor will do nothing to raise the rate and be widely criticised for it,…
Australia’s Liberal politicians – and their media friends – need to be very careful. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has helped created such a crisis of trust in America that there is no way to contest the unreality in which its audience so stubbornly believes. Weaponised unreality is a term devised to capture the idea that…
Rumours and streaks of hysteria are running rife about what such artificial intelligence (AI) systems as ChatGPT are meant to do. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy recently showed himself to be ignorant with terror about the search bot created by OpenAI. “ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn’t built into the model. Nobody programmed…
ACOSS (Australian Council of Social Service) Media Release Politicians from across the aisle, academics, business leaders, community advocates and other prominent Australians have joined in a rare display of unity to urge the Prime Minister to implement the first priority recommendation of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee and deliver a substantial increase to JobSeeker and…
Media Release The powerful NSW Labor Administrative Committee will this week consider a motion to request the Federal Labor Government to raise the rate of Jobseeker. Chris Haviland, former Federal Labor MP and Administrative Committee member will move the motion, which asks the Government to increase Jobseeker in line with the recommendation of the Government’s…
The recently concluded LIV Tournament in Adelaide was a matter of bread, circuses and golf. It was something of a triumph for the chief sponsor: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and, more notably, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Critics, and criticism about the regime and the blood-spattered House of Saud, were generally forgotten. This…