TSI Staff

Let’s hear it for the aunts and uncles of recent memory. If Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, has her way they are destined to be termed a “parent’s sibling”. On New Year’s Day, Pelosi introduced a resolution into the house setting out rules for the 117th congress. Section two includes [...]

It’s always foolish to make new year predictions — and much the same can be said of new year resolutions. The former invariably turn into false prophecy, the latter frequently fail in the implementation stage. What can be said of 2021 fairly safely is that Australia faces its most uncertain future for seven decades. In [...]

Whatever happened to 2020, the Year of the Rat? Which, in this time of identity consciousness, is perhaps better termed the Year of the Rat, the Mouse and other Small Rodents. Alas, what was destined to be a time of plenty fuelled by optimism became an occasion of drought, fire, flood and pandemic-initiated (toilet roll) [...]

On Wednesday night ABC Online ran this heading: “Judge in George Pell appeal case to preside over inquiry into Afghanistan war crime allegations”. The reference was to the decision by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to appoint judge Mark Weinberg QC as special inspector of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan inquiry. Now, Weinberg is one [...]

In the early 1980s, I worked in the central office of the commonwealth government department responsible for securing the implementation of awards determined by the (then) Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, now termed the Fair Work Commission. During the 1982-83 recession, unemployment rose to more than 10 per cent. This was at a time when Australia’s [...]