Clover Moore's Proposed Green Soviet Stone the crows! Green energy should be free – just like healthcare. If there is one thing environmental activists abhor more than economics it is what they call consumerism and everybody else refers to as civilisation - air conditioning and computer games, television and hot water, fridges, labour saving gadgetry [...]
COMPETITION’S GREAT – PROVIDED IT DOES NOT TAKE PLACE Stone the crows! Everybody approves of competition, as long as they don’t have to compete. Responses to the draft report of the Competition Policy Review, chaired by Ian Harper, have closed and some of them share a common theme - that competition is a fine thing [...]
A NEW DOUBLE STANDARD – FOETAL ALCOHOL BABIES & OBESE CHILDREN Stone the crows! Booze upsets society more than bulk. In the north of England a young woman who, despite advice, drank heavily while pregnant and gave birth to a disabled child is waiting on a court’s judgement on a charge of attempted manslaughter.[i] The [...]
WHITLAMISM IS BACK. WITH KATE & KEN & SHIRLEY Stone the crows! The case for economic reform isn’t universally endorsed anymore. A few weeks ago former treasury secretary Ken Henry made a speech arguing that advocates of reform have sold us a pup, of the lower case kind. As he put it: The narrative goes [...]
Funding puts the vice in vice-chancellor Stone the crows! We now value education but mistrust university leaders. Christopher Pyne will be hoping this week is better than last - because that one was a shocker. On Tuesday, Clive Palmer knocked back the education minister’s university reform package, specifically the plan to deregulate undergraduate fees. Free [...]
World War I – The Battle Of The Historians Stone the Crows! Don’t mention the war The Australian Historical Association has decided to ignore the rest of us and have its own World War I centenary. While most interested Australians are reading about the awful experiences of the diggers in the Gallipoli trenches, academics will [...]
MANDATORY DETENTION FOR CATS – WHAT NEXT? Stone the crows! They will need the ammunition to use on the cats. There was a fuss last week about feral cats killing 75 million native animals a day.[i] The figure was not sourced and it seems no one knows how many cats are out there.[ii] Which inevitably [...]
The Suffering American Middle Class – A Movie We’ve all Seen Before Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, and resulting recession, the commentariat has carried on like pork chops about the demise of the American middle class dream. A late example is the book and film Gone Girl, which has a couple living in [...]
MEDICAL RESEARCH: THE GRANT THAT KEEPS ON COMING Stone the crows! The government is back in the winner-picking business. Industry minister Ian Macfarlane’s industry policy is imminent and one of the things he wants is for government to support growth industries backed by applied academic research in “agribusiness, mining technology, energy, oil and gas, advanced [...]
TO STOP EBOLA – STOP CORRUPTION As plagues go, Ebola is pathetic – yes it is lethal once individuals are affected but it is very hard to catch. According to the World Health Organisation, Ebola spreads through “human-to-human transmission via direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other [...]
