Mark Bahnisch
Sexualising Keynes: Not just about Niall Ferguson
British historian Niall Ferguson recently made some very stupid claims about Maynard Keynes: that Keynes’ sexuality and childlessness led him to ignore the long-run consequences of deficit spending. Ferguson, who started off as a historian of finance but who has [...]
O’Connor’s evidence free policy: Leadership does matter
In his guest post, Tad Tietze observed of Immigration Minister Brendan O’Connor’s fact free rhetoric on 457 visas: …there is no publicly available evidence that this mass rorting is actually happening. O’Connor, you might recall, made a lot of hyperbolic [...]
Already doing more with less: “Gonski” and the Gillard cuts to higher education
I’ve been critical in two previous posts about the appallingly stupid higher education cuts, which were perversely made to fund “Gonski”. (Note that David Gonski does not support the uni cuts, so perhaps that’s one reason why the government has [...]
Austerity Australia?
Julia Gillard is seeking to make a virtue of “sharing the budget pain” as she prepares us all for a horror budget. Treasury has apparently discovered its previous predictions of revenue were way off, and we’re now told that everything [...]
Queensland’s revenge? Palmer and Katter’s anti-systemic double act
Populist politics often feed off perceptions of geo-spatial neglect, intertwined with class grievances (from classes that are not conscious of being such). Hence the Hanson phenomenon, largely confined to outer metropolitan and regional (not really rural) districts of Queensland, itself [...]
Another higher ed funding graph Labor is spinning misleadlingly on Facebook
I was critical in a post the other day of the assumptions that were not disclosed in the graph circulated around Facebook by the Labor Party and Julia Gillard purporting to reassure people about the impact of cuts to higher [...]
The NBN thread we had to have: Malcolm Turnbull’s pomegranates
I’ve been spurred by this story to post a Roundtable thread on the Coalition NBN alternative: Malcolm Turnbull has used an anecdote about being half naked and covered in pomegranate juice to spruik the benefits of the coalition’s national broadband [...]
Misleading Meme from Julia Gillard (or a Labor commsbot)
No doubt some folks on Facebook are taking comfort from the meme posted on the Labor Party and Julia Gillard’s FB pages: Labor is the only party that properly invests in higher education: Let’s let the facts give the perspective [...]
Tweedledee, Tweedledum: all electoral systems were not created equal
The Australasian Study of Parliament Group is hosting a talk by a friend of mine, Sacha Blumen, at Queensland Parliament House tonight (5.30pm for 5.45pm). Details are posted below, and more here. I’m hoping Sacha might send me the text [...]
So much for the education revolution?
A lot of the criticism of ‘Gonski’ as a political slogan (from folks such as Simon Crean and Kevin Rudd) is that no one much knows what “I give a Gonski” means. The detail of the policy has not, as [...]
Towards a sociological concept of neo-liberalism I
Who’s afraid of neo-liberalism? Writing last year, Terry Flew inveighs against neo-liberalism as a shibboleth in academic discourse, signalling a distaste for markets but vague in meaning. Flew appears particularly exercised about its use in cultural studies, arguing that it [...]
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