Stimulated
Possum at Crikey: An interesting thing happened on the way to Christmas last year — the $10.4 billion Economic Security Package not only worked, but worked nearly exactly as Treasury had forecast it would. Peter Martin: “The bonus cheques had [...]
In defence of Kevin Rudd's stimulus package
It’s been suggested – apropos of the title of my last post on the federal government’s stimulus plan – that I was expressing cynicism by calling the piece “Never get between Australians and a pile of money”. Actually, that was [...]
Never get between Australians and a pile of money
THE Opposition will vote against the Government’s $42 billion financial stimulus package, Malcolm Turnbull says. “Someone has to stand up for fiscal discipline,” Mr Turnbull told the House of Representatives. “Someone has to stand up for levels of debt for [...]
Bill Ludwig's war on science
The Australian Workers Union has produced its fair share of Sir Rodneys of the Class War who double as Colonel Blimps of the Culture Wars. AWU National President Bill Ludwig has upheld this tradition with a bizarre speech on climate [...]
Refuting the "accident theory" of the Global Financial Crisis
The current line from the defenders of the free market faith is that unfortunate failures of regulation were the cause of the Global Financial Crisis, and thus of the growing travails afflicting us in the real economy. Thus neo-liberalism, the [...]
Kirby J goes out dissenting
Legal Eagle has an erudite post at Skepticlawyer dissecting the High Court’s decision on an appeal on the constitutionality of legislation enabling the Northern Territory Intervention in Wurridjal v Commonwealth of Australia. She notes that Justice Michael Kirby, who has [...]
Costello can't resist clowning around
An interesting comment on a previous thread about the Labor government’s “decisive state action” campaign suggested that Rudd had laid more than one trap for the Liberals with his essay in The Monthly. As well as forcing Malcolm Turnbull and [...]
The politics of the Rudd essay and the stimulus package
In retrospect, the timing of Kevin Rudd’s essay in The Monthly [discussed in this earlier post] was obviously significant. There’s been a concerted messaging campaign going on for about a week to lead up to today’s stimulus package, which is [...]
The Googlization of Everything
Robert Darnton has written a long and interesting article about the Google books class action at the New York Review of Books, entitled Google and the Future of Books. In the article, Darnton begins by describing a mythologised but historically extant [...]
Are you feeling stimulated?
OK, the stimulus arrives. The big-ticket items? School maintenance and building construction, new public housing, free insulation for owner-occupiers, and a general showering of cash on anybody with a pulse. Initial thoughts – a big tick for the insulation plan [...]
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