Productivity Commission report on FTAs
You might remember the fuss in the leadup to the 2004 election about the Australia-USA “Free Trade Agreement”. Among the objectionable bits, the FTA locked Australia in to an intellectual property regime that combines the worst features of the Australian [...]
Quote of the day
While most of the country is preparing for the holiday season, and those of us who are political tragics have our eyes turned to Wikileaks, the dull narrative of ‘Gillard must be a reformer’ (which has replaced the old dull [...]
Political tragics a tiny audience, media researcher finds
Trevor Cook has a fascinating snippet in a post today from an interview with Dr Sally Young, a researcher at Melbourne University, about the tiny size of the engaged audience for the discussion of public affairs in this country: SALLY [...]
Wikileaks and Cablegate: what’s the political issue here, exactly?
A claim was made on the previous thread that the effect of Cablegate, and perhaps Wikileaks’ practice more generally, was to create a “catalytic tipping point”. Let’s be clear about the fact that evidence of US imperialism and nefariousness has [...]
Wikileaks: How not to write domestic political commentary on Cablegate
Exhibit One: Michelle Grattan. I’m sure, dear reader, you can find some others. The weird thing about the response in the Australian media to those revelations about #Cablegate which pertain to Australia is just how narrowly domestic that response has [...]
Wikileaks: Five theses on the politics of Cablegate
1. Human rights talk tends to crowd out politics: it becomes an appeal to the liberal principles of the dominant order, and a supplication that the liberal state and the mechanisms of justice act as they purport to promise. Hence, [...]
Spotlight the Spin
Our weekly look at media spin tactics: let’s dissect the PR and propaganda that aims to blow one’s own horn, bury one’s errors, resurrect the shambling zombie corpses of well-flogged deceased equines, and ooh look! A Big Distracting Thing!
Radical transparency and history
From the point of view of an outsider looking in, the results of Bradley Manning’s document dump have been more positive than not – not least in demonstrating that the state secrets emperor really does have few clothes. The pushback [...]
Lazy Sunday!
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!
Deal reached in Cancún #COP16 #Climate
The New Statesman is reporting that an agreement has been reached in the international climate change negotiations in Cancún (COP16). The post is here. While the agreement reached will not be legally binding, Sophie Elmhirst reports that support for the [...]
Piggy in the middle: The UK Lib Dems and student fees
I think the only real coverage we’ve had of the vote in the House of Commons the other day on trebling the cap on student fees to 9000 pounds (with a huge clawback of basic teaching funding to ensure that [...]
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