Archive for July, 2009

The international student mess

Published
by
Robert Merkel
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Education and Foreign policy
. 32 Comments

Andrew Bartlett has a typically measured, insightful post on the multi-stranded mess surrounding international students, particularly those from India.

On top of Andrew’s piece, I’d just like to add that I hope the government is careful in how it reforms the rules surrounding Australian study and immigration. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the current rules for gaining permanent residency, a lot of students have enrolled in courses on that basis; kicking the ground from under them now is not only going to hurt a lot of students, it might further damage Australia’s international reputation. But reform is necessary. There are courses (and not just in the scam colleges that have been the focus of recent attention) which seem to be designed primarily around meeting residency requirements. I can’t help wondering if this is to the detriment of sound and rigorous curriculum design.

Warming oceans

Published
by
Brian
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Climate change and Environment
. 72 Comments

On Wednesday on The World Today there was an item about the ocean surface warming. There were a few talking points covered in the segment.

First was the warming of the Arctic where we are told that:

the predictions are that between 2013 and 2015 there will be no summer ice in the Arctic.

You can check the progress for 2009 via the Greenleap Arctic Watch. If you scroll down to the third image you’ll see that 2009 is now tracking as second only to 2007 in terms of ice loss and could even exceed 2007 by summer’s end, but probably not by much.

Remember that ice cover is defined as >15% and the ice is getting quite thin, so it’s quite plausible that the end will come quickly.

Continue reading ‘Warming oceans’

When can I get complacent, then?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Crime, Law and Terrorism
. 44 Comments

Foreshadowing changes to Australia’s anti-terror laws which will apparently “make them tougher”, Robert McLelland warns us not to get too comfortable:

Mr McClelland says because an attack has not happened yet here, Australians may be becoming a little too comfortable and relaxed.

“I do think there is a danger of complacency and I do see evidence of complacency,” he said.

He says he is about to unveil a raft of changes to Australia’s counter-terrorism laws, including one targeting those who radicalise people, then try to tip them over the edge into launching an attack based on political views, ethnicity or religion.

When news of this measure first broke, it caused a stir with some defence lawyers arguing that the laws are already too wide but Mr McClelland says the risk of incitement is real.

“The reality is the Government isn’t contemplating this law out of a vacuum. We are contemplating it in light of knowledge that we have,” he said.

Nobody has died in a terrorist attack in Australia since 1986 – and in that case, the only person who died was the bomber. Given that the government has doubled the size of ASIO, and passed a whole raft of fairly draconian laws relating to terrorism, don’t we have the luxury of asking, at a measured pace and with actual public debate, whether the threat really merits further restrictions?

Bernard Salt: pop demographer

Published
by
Ben Eltham
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Immigration, Media and Sociology
. 48 Comments

KPMG consultant and media columnist Bernard Salt has been available for comment on just about any social or demographic topic for some years now. These comments rarely do justice to the hard work of statistical analysis performed by real demographers, for instance at the ABS, but journalists and editors rarely let that get in the way of a choice quote or column by this ubiquitous “commentator and advisor to corporate Australia on consumer, cultural and demographic trends.”

Salt is the master of the sweeping generalisation and throw-away insult.  Today’s comments in the Murdoch press are a good example:

“Migration figures out this week show Australia’s population is still growing at record rates, and these people must live somewhere. They go to the most affordable areas, and the fastest growing area at the moment is Melbourne’s western front – places like Werribee, where you can still pick up a house and land package for less than $260,000,” Mr Salt said.

“The urban elite think that if something is more than walking distance from their terrace house boundary, it must be unsophisticated and uncivilised.

“It’s the modern version of the cultural cringe that you need to be near cafes, bars and restaurants for this culture to rub off on you. People are living just as meaningful lives going to little athletics, to church and the local sausage sizzle. This satellite existence is the new Australia.”

Actually, no it’s not.

Continue reading ‘Bernard Salt: pop demographer’

NUMBYism

Published
by
Robert Merkel
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Activism, Climate change and Environment
. 60 Comments

The world’s first clean coal power station (discussed earlier here on LP) has been operating for a little while now. It’s working fine – except for one little problem. All the CO2 is still ending up in the atmosphere. As the Guardian reports, they can’t get a permit to use the proposed storage site because of local protests.

Mind you, it seems that wind farms are also suffering persistent NIMBY problems in the UK.

If climate change is an emergency – and it’s pretty clear that it is – haven’t we reached the point where the concerns of local communities are sometimes going to have to come second to the pressing need to find energy sources that don’t fry the planet?

Guest post by Glen Fuller: Kyle Sandilands, Jackie O as trauma jocks

Published
by
Guest Poster
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Ethics and Media
. 292 Comments

Cross-posted from Event Mechanics.

So we’ve had shock jocks for some time. Now we have trauma jocks. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Glen Fuller: Kyle Sandilands, Jackie O as trauma jocks’

Melbourne University’s endowment woes

Published
by
Robert Merkel
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Economics, Education, Industrial Relations and Markets
. 76 Comments

The stoniest of the sandstone universities is wielding the axe. And it’s the global financial crisis’ fault, apparently.

MELBOURNE University will slash 220 full-time academic and administrative staff because its financial position has taken a battering in the economic crisis.

In an email to staff, vice-chancellor Glyn Davis said the crisis had devastated investment returns and a so-called ‘‘economic response program’’ would result in 50 academic and 50 administrative staff taking voluntary redundancies.”The University of Melbourne has income from students, it has income from research, it has income from its endowment and with the global financial crisis unfortunately the income from the endowment that’s been built up over 150 years has collapsed,” he said.

Continue reading ‘Melbourne University’s endowment woes’

Books in the digital age

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Notices, Sociology and The Web
. 2 Comments

I’m speaking on the 11th of August at an event organised by the Queensland Writers Centre:

Books in the Digital Age:The Future of Writing

With the rapid changes in Australia’s writing and publishing industry, where will books fit in the digital future and how will this affect how we read and write?

As part of QWC’s Wordpool series of three lectures for 2009, we’re looking at the the future of… books, writing and journalism.

Digital publishing invites writers and readers to think differently about the dynamic relationship between content and the container in which it’s consumed and shared.

Join Mark Bahnisch in a discussion as to what this means for Australia writers and readers, as he attempts to answer… what is the future of writing?

When: Tuesday 11 August, 6:30pm

Where: Room KG-B-304, Queensland University of Technology,

Kelvin Grove Campus

Cost: Free for QUT students, or $15. Bookings required

Bookings: Phone QWC on 07 3839 1243, or via www.qwc.asn.au

Cross-posted at BrisCulture.

Work-life balance; we’re doing it wrong

Published
by
Deborah
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Feminism and Parenting
. 32 Comments

Professor Barbara Pocock, of the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, thinks that we shouldn’t be talking about work-life balance at all. We should call it work-life interference, and try to measure how much work interferes with our life.

Professor Pocock leads a research team that conducts an annual survey relating to work-life in Australia. The survey has been running for three years now, so she and her team are starting to be able to pick out some trends. The most recent survey shows that part time work is no magic solution to the work-life balance struggle.

Professor Pocock, director of the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, told The Weekend Australian full-time working women should not kid themselves that going part-time would solve their problems.

“A third of full-time working women overall, 40 per cent of mothers and 25per cent of women without children, say they would rather work part-time,” she said.

“But this study suggests a lot of women will be disappointed by the amount of emotional relief they get by going part-time. On average, it will be better, but it is certainly not as big a change as you might expect.

“Everyone thinks those two free days mean you can run a house without help. So women tend not to purchase substitutes for their own time — they are much less likely to use a cleaner. But on the other side of that is a workplace that is often asking you to work from home or be available on those days off.”

Continue reading ‘Work-life balance; we’re doing it wrong’

Malcolm Turnbull is the new Brendan Nelson

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Media and Polls
. 79 Comments

… with less Emo. The poll that News Limited owns is out. Possum reports:

In fact, this whole poll is pretty much identical to Nelson’s last…

On the beauty contest that is Preferred Prime Minister, Turnbull’s PPM rating has, for the first time, ducked below Undecideds.

Possum subtitles his post “Perpetual Honeymoon Edition”. In fact, the media seems to have finally given up (at least for now) the claim that Kevin Rudd and Labor are enjoying a somehow undeserved or ephemeral honeymoon. The prevailing press gallery assumption has shifted to the next election being a Labor cert and a Liberal rout, and I’m not sure that only a double dissolution over climate change would see 20 or so Coalition seats topple.

Is Rudd’s only enemy now complacency?

The Mad Monk

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Books, Writers & Writing and Politics
. 121 Comments

I’ve got a feeling that the mix of a seemingly random collection of crazy authoritarian policy ideas (covenant marriage, raising the pension age to 70, bringing back WorkChoices, the federal government taking over everything) and arrogant self-congratulation that appear to make up the content of Tony Abbott’s book based on the extracts that have appeared is not doing him or the Liberal Party any good.

And will anyone actually buy the thing?

Possibly the only winner in this publishing deal is Labor (and maybe News Limited…)

Elsewhere: Andrew Bartlett.

Something rotten in the state of Queensland?

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Authoritarianism, Brisbane, Crime, Media, Politics, Queensland and Sociology
. 39 Comments

From today’s Crikey:

There has been a certain feeling in the air of deja vu over the past fortnight in Queensland. The jailing of a former Minister, allegations that government was far too close to business, a government sinking rapidly in the polls while making “tough decisions” and, the piece de resistance, the exposure of systemic misconduct in the elite Armed Robbery Squad of the Queensland Police.

The timing of this sequence of supposedly unlikely events was interesting. Much is being made of the 20th anniversary of the release of the Fitzgerald Report. The date falls this Thursday, and Tony Fitzgerald QC himself will be commemorating the occasion with a public lecture at Griffith University.

So is something again rotten in the state of Queensland?

Lurid stories of convicted criminals wining, dining and bonking on dodgy day release jaunts supposedly to gather intelligence for the coppers dominated local press coverage. This a week after revelations of the jailed Gordon Nuttall’s bizarre plans to make himself premier — shades of Russ Hinze perhaps.

The reality, though, is more prosaic.

Continue reading ‘Something rotten in the state of Queensland?’

NHHRC report out

Published
by
Robert Merkel
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Economics, Health, Policy and Politics
. 20 Comments

It’s out:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says there will be no decision on health reform in the next six months, after a Federal Government health review recommended sweeping changes in a landmark report released today.

The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report, entitled A Healthier Future for All Australians, called for a major shake-up of the country’s health system, with the Commonwealth taking over the funding of most services.

It recommended a Commonwealth takeover of primary care and outpatient services, as well as the establishment of a public dental system.

You can read the report in its multi-megabyte PDF glory here.

Continue reading ‘NHHRC report out’

Australia’s history in song

Published
by
Paul Norton
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Australiana, Federal Elections, History, Music and Politics
. 45 Comments

I know it’s nowhere near the Dismissal anniversary, but I couldn’t wait to share with LP readers this gem.. I stand to be corrected but I know of no other song that quite captures the mood of November-December 1975 like this one.

The band that played the song, Roaring Jack, were a celtic folk-thrash band that were very popular on Sydney’s inner city pub circuit in the late 1980s. Their frontman Alistair Hulett subsequently recorded a series of solo albums and has since returned to his native Scotland where he continues to be a singer, songwriter and performer of note.

Is it perhaps more than just a curious coincidence that two of the pivotal events in Australian history – the Gallipoli campaign and the Dismissal – have been most eloquently interpreted in song by two Scottish-born songwriters – Eric Bogle (The Band Played Waltzing Matilda) and Alistair Hulett (The Ballad of ‘75)?

Lazy Sunday!

Published
by
Mark
7 months, 4 weeks ago
in Life
. 7 Comments

Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!