Author Archive for Administrator

Guest post by Sam Clifford: The Borg’s not the only new kid on the block

Published
by
Administrator
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Brisbane, Queensland and Transport
. 27 Comments

One of the big credibility problems The Borg has with his “new face of Queensland” nonsense is that at least on the National Party side of the Pineapple Party benches, he’s surrounded by a bunch of time serving geriatrics. The younger members - including Deputy Leader Fiona Simpson - have hardly made much of an electoral impact either. There’s a risk to running on “age” and “renewal” - Anna Bligh is no John Howard, and she’s not that much older than The Borg himself. Nor has she been in Parliament seemingly forever - “fresh” Lawrence is approaching the 20th anniversary of his election. Sam Clifford from Public Polity takes a look at another big fissure in Lawrence Springborg’s narrative - the fact that the ALP has been renewing itself with some genuine talent.

It looks like some of the Class of ‘89, those ALP MPs who entered politics when the ALP finally defeated the Nationals, are going to step aside for the next election. MPs like Rod Welford, the Education Minister, will be sorely missed but there needs to be renewal in government to maintain strength and contact with the world outside. There are a number of promising young Labor politicians like Ronan Lee, Andrew McNamara, Grace Grace, Stirling Hinchliffe and Andrew Fraser who will form the next generation of Labor’s front bench and will shape the future of the state (much to the ‘Borg’s chagrin).

Ronan Lee, who wants to extend the CityCat network substantially, is probably the “Greenest” of the state MPs and, with Andrew McNamara, represents a new breed of ALP politician. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Sam Clifford: The Borg’s not the only new kid on the block’

Guest post by Feral Sparrowhawk: They’re (probably) not coming back

Published
by
Administrator
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Politics
. 79 Comments

Feral Sparrowhawk offers some thoughts on the future of the Liberals, something rather topical at the moment in the wake of Brendan’s big night out in Parliament.

Everyone knows the Liberals are in trouble, with the possible exception of Alexander Downer. However, looking at the discussion, both on blogs and in the MSM, this seems to be perceived to mean: They can’t win in 2010, probably not in 2013. However, the assumption seems to be that at some point the Liberals will be back (possibly merged with the Nationals). Much advice has been given based on the notion that ambitious Liberal leaders should be positioning themselves to lead in 2013 or 2016, rather than now.

I disagree. I believe that 2010 is likely to be the best chance the Liberals will ever have to get back into government. If they can’t win then, or at least give it a decent shake, there will probably never be another Liberal-led federal government in Australia.

A big call I know, but my thesis is that the Liberals are caught between two crises, both of which will likely see them whither in the long term. Every election will become harder to win, and after a while it will become difficult for them to even sustain the position of official opposition.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Feral Sparrowhawk: They’re (probably) not coming back’

Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled

Published
by
Administrator
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Government, Health and Media
. 113 Comments

LP has often been critical of the standard of mainstream political commentary in Australia, arguing that it concentrates too much on day by day horse race piffle framed by a narrow range of possible narrative scripts. We’re pleased to be able to bring you what we think is the best of the independent media coverage of the 2008 budget, a piece by Possum originally published in Crikey and reproduced at his blog - Possum looks beyond the headlines and delves deeper into Rudd’s governing style, and its implications.

Hands up who’s thoroughly sick and tired of reading about how Kevin Rudd is John Howard lite, a bloke that substitutes spin for government activity in those times when he’s not actually doing the big “Me-Too”?

Finally, hopefully, we can all now put that piffle to bed.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled’

Guest post by Terry Flew: Is America going backwards economically?

Published
by
Administrator
4 months ago
in Economics, Foreign Elections and USA
. 13 Comments

Another dispatch from LP’s Indiana correspondent:

Aside from the Democrat primaries, the major talking point in the U.S. this week is whether the United States is losing ground in the global economy. This is different to the question of whether or not the U.S. economy is in recession (or ’slowdown’ as GWB prefers to put it), but is rather about whether the U.S. is losing the competitive race against the emergent economies of East Asia and the Middle East, and indeed to Europe.

Two triggers to this have been Thomas Friedman’s ‘Who will tell the people’ article in the New York Times, and the launch of Zareed Fakaria’s book, The Post-American World and the various articles and TV appearances he has made around that. Both are arguing that as much of the world has adopted a free trade, pro-globalization agenda - as the U.S. campaigned for them to do throughout the 1980s and 1990s - the ability to compete successfully in the global market is understood mostly in terms of its threat to the U.S. economy.

Fakaria likes to use examples of ‘big things’ to make his point (Where’s the world’s biggest mall? - Beijing). Friedman compares the slow death experience of time spent at a major U.S. airport to the resort/business club experience of spending time at Hong Kong International Airport or Changi airport in Singapore. But both are saying that, having mostly won the arguments about globalization and freeing up international trade, the U.S. polity has largely failed to consider the implications for the U.S. itself of a more competitive global trading regime.

I am struck by how this debate differs in the U.S. to how it plays out in Australia. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Terry Flew: Is America going backwards economically?’

Guest post by Terry Flew: ‘The last trip to send the family pet to the vet’?

Published
by
Administrator
4 months ago
in Foreign Elections
. 36 Comments

LP’s Indiana correspondent is having a busy night in Bloomington! Here’s Terry’s latest dispatch on the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic primaries.

The Democratic Party primaries may appear to continue the status quo in the campaign, with Hillary Clinton winning Indiana as expected, and Barack Obama winning North Carolina as expected. But the magnitude of Obama’s win in North Carolina (58-42%) and the narrowness of Hillary Clinton’s win in Indiana (52-48%) indicate that the long Democrat contest is all but over for Hilary Clinton.

As one Republican strategist unkindly put it on CNN as the early figures came in, “This is the last trip to send the family pet to the vet.”

However you slice and dice the figures, it is now apparent that Barack Obama will be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, and that the super delegates will now be close to declaring for Obama, killing off the Clinton’s hope of a palace coup at the Denver Convention.

On the popular vote through the primaries overall, and including the disputed Florida primary (although not Michigan, where Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot paper), Obama has a 49% to 47% margin over Hillary Clinton.

What it means for the Democrats’ chances in November depends on how you read three factors. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Terry Flew: ‘The last trip to send the family pet to the vet’?’

Guest post by Terry Flew: Farewell to liberal Hillary

Published
by
Administrator
4 months ago
in Film, TV, Video etc, Foreign Elections, Media and Sociology
. 18 Comments

LP’s Indiana correspondent, QUT academic Terry Flew writes:

Bloomington, Indiana is where I am at the moment, at the University of Indiana. It is best known as the home of Albert Kinsey, John Cougar Mellencamp, and the ‘Hoosiers’, a basketball team about whom a film was made in 1986 starring Gene Hackman as a coach and Dennis Hopper as a drunk.

Indiana is one of the two states voting tomorrow (Tuesday May 5) in the protracted and increasingly acrimonious Democratic Party primaries. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have worked these two states hard, even though they both typically vote Republican, as the long march to the Democrat nomination continues.

The striking feature at present is just how far to the right Hilary Clinton has turned in the course of this campaign. Having struggled against Obama for most core Democrat constituencies, she has over the last month increasingly pitched her campaign at what are known here as the ‘Reagan Democrats’ - white voters, often older or less educated, anxious about change, deeply patriotic, and suspicious of liberal reformers.

Given that the Clinton years in the White house were viewed by most outside of the U.S. as at least notionally progressive, and that Hillary Clinton was for so long the bete noire of American conservatives, this has come as a bit of a surprise, at least to me. She appeared on the FOX News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor last week, her defence of religion and guns, and her threats to get tough on China and to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Israel is attacked seem to be straight out of the Republican campaign book. And the favour seems to have been returned. She is getting endorsements from FOX News, The Weekly Standard and Rush Limbaugh.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Terry Flew: Farewell to liberal Hillary’

LP Comments policy

Published
by
Administrator
4 months, 1 week ago
in Notices
. Closed

Beneath the fold is the regular repost of the LP comments policy. All commenters are asked to read the comments policy before posting and abide by the policy on threads. In light of recent discussions, please also note this comment.

Continue reading ‘LP Comments policy’

Guest post by Miriam Lyons: Summit Idol - Mostly covers but some real gems too

Published
by
Administrator
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Government and The Web
. 13 Comments

Director of the Centre for Policy Development, and 2020 summit delegate, Miriam Lyons, writes in today’s Crikey (republished with permission):

Suddenly ideas are sexy. The Australia 2020 Summit has done for Deep Thought what Australian Idol did for karaoke - what was once a mildly embarrassing hobby best practised under cover of drunkenness is now played live to a national audience.

Like music professors asked to comment on the success of Idol, most of the wonks who went through the last two days can’t quite decide whether to be pleased that so many people are paying attention to ideas or annoyed that serious attempts to grapple with complex, long-term policy problems were sometimes lost amidst the all-singing, all-dancing Summit show.

In the governance group Marcia Hines was played by Maxine McKew, who, after listening to report-backs from groups with ideas ranging from FOI reform to a new Federation Commission, entreated us to put a little soul into it. Kudos to youth summit delegate Owen Wareham who read between the lines, said something like “here’s a sound bite, if that’s what you’re looking for” and delivered a punchy straight-to-camera pitch for automatic enrolment.

I had a lot of sympathy with Ms McKew’s call for more ideas that would capture people’s imagination. Continue reading ‘Guest post by Miriam Lyons: Summit Idol - Mostly covers but some real gems too’

Guest post by Marcus Westbury: What’s the big idea? Start with the small ones.

Published
by
Administrator
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Art, Culture, Government and Sociology
. 51 Comments

Marcus Westbury, of This is Not Art and Not Quite Art fame, received a late call up to attend the 2020 summit. In this post, cross-posted at his own blog, he reflects on the issues confronting the “Towards a Creative Australia” stream.

What is the difference between a 1920s and a 2020 summit?

It’s not a joke. It’s the question that I have been mulling over since my last minute call up to the “Towards a creative Australia” stream of the 2020 summit next weekend. The seeming disparity between the stated goals and the mix of people that are being asked to discuss them inspired it.

Culturally, the difference between the 1920s and now are stark. The sheer diversity of cultural platforms and networks and the scale, speed and scope with which cultural activities take place has changed dramatically. Australian culture comes less from a small number of large institutions and more from a massive number of large and small scale companies, individuals, production houses, collectives, web sites, networks and initiators both here and around the world.

It is a cultural landscape made up less of fixed structures and more of fluid and dynamic forces. The key question is how to channel those forces so they flourish?

The answer to that question is easily sidetracked by the unrelated (but often legitimate) issues and ambitions of our professional companies and major cultural institutions. Half a century on from the Whitlam era few Australians would be convinced that a 2020 cultural vision focusing on innovation and initiative will be found in shovelling bigger buckets of money at conservative major institutions. Expecting it to trickle down through the layers of management to actual risk taking artists is naive at best.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Marcus Westbury: What’s the big idea? Start with the small ones.’

Guest post by Tanja Kovac: Annotating the Governance and Communities summitteers

Published
by
Administrator
5 months ago
in Government
. 18 Comments

Following previous posts from Robert Merkel and Ben Eltham on the participants in the 2020 summit streams on sustainability and a Creative Australia, we’re pleased to be able to publish another parsed list of summitteers - this time Tanja Kovac casts her eye over the participants in the Governance and Communities streams. In other summit commentary online today, Bernard Keane at Crikey wonders how the thing will actually work and if it’s going to be dominated by industry advocates looking for a bucketful of dollars, and for Crikey subscribers, Overland editor Jeff Sparrow looks at the summit and elitism and reveals the unbelievable truth of the horrible jingle that accompanied John Howard’s “Future Directions” manifesto in 1988.

Tanja’s annotated lists are over the fold.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Tanja Kovac: Annotating the Governance and Communities summitteers’

Guest post by Tim Norton: COAGulating the Murray Darling Basin

Published
by
Administrator
5 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Politics, Science and Water
. 11 Comments

Tim Norton is a communications and campaigns advisor for Senator Rachel Siewert, Australian Greens spokesperson on Water issues.

The announcement of the Council of Australian Governments that an ‘historic’ Murray Darling Basin agreement has been reached seemed to tickle the fancy of most people involved. Now that the fanfare has died down, it’s time to look past the rhetoric and back-patting to ask what is in fact being delivered, how does this differ from Howard’s previous water plan, and when will we see some change for the better in the Basin?

One glaringly obvious difference is that all the States are now on board … which is a good thing. However, the dynamics of Federal-State collaboration may be brought into question by the methods employed to reach this agreement. We wouldn’t dare call the extra $1 Billion for Victoria a bribe – it’s much nicer to think about the huge strides in cooperation and consultation, with the inclusion of a few nice sounding phrases in the Memorandum of Understanding along those lines.

Just what it is that has been signed up to may well be a concern – but the far bigger worry is not so much ‘what’ as – when?

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Tim Norton: COAGulating the Murray Darling Basin’

Guest post by Ben Eltham: Annotating the Creative Australia 2020 summitteers

Published
by
Administrator
5 months, 1 week ago
in Culture and Government
. 47 Comments

As a follow up to Robert Merkel’s annotated list of the sustainability participants in the 2020 summit, we’re very pleased to post Ben Eltham’s annotated list of the summitteers who are participating in the “Towards a Creative Australia” discussion. Ben’s gone beyond the call of googling duty in providing as much information as possible in as succinct as possible a format - check out the links for information on each summit delegate which often transcends a Wiki entry. Hopefully this listing provides a useful guide for all those wondering who any of the culture and arts summit participants who aren’t Claudia Karvan or Hugh Jackman are! Some of the best and the brightest have been keeping a very low web profile, though, so any information that helps fill in the gaps would of course be most appreciated.

LP notes once again that it’s totally pathetic that there’s no detailed information on the official summit website about the background, qualifications and experience of the summitteers. While we’re more than happy to provide a public service and fill in the missing biographical data, we do wish to say that our scepticism about the commitment to inclusiveness and transparency that supposedly characterises this talkfest appears to have been vindicated once again. We’re not happy about that!

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Ben Eltham: Annotating the Creative Australia 2020 summitteers’

Guest post by Anna Haebich: Spinning the assimilation dream

Published
by
Administrator
6 months ago
in Australiana, Books, Writers & Writing, History, Immigration, Indigenous, Politics and Sociology
. 27 Comments

Griffith University anthropologist and historian and Director of the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas Professor Anna Haebich recently launched her new book Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970 at the Museum of Brisbane. This post is an edited version of the talk she gave at the launch.

You know that feeling when you’re writing and you get to the point where you think why am I doing this? Surely everyone knows all this already?

Well it was a relief to me to find out since my new book Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950-1970 hit the road last week that quite a lot of people know very little about the history of assimilation. For most it’s an old policy for migrants and Aborigines. But of course assimilation is more complex than this and far more important for all Australians.

Assimilation is woven into the fabric of our nation and will always be with us. It goes in and out of favour and takes different forms but is always lurking somewhere.

Most people aren’t aware of this – it’s the people on the margins who have to assimilate. I was at a conference in 2000 with academics splitting hairs over when assimilation started and ended. Finally a frustrated Aboriginal voice called out ‘it started when you wetjalas first set foot here’.

Assimilation is so ingrained that we can be living it without even realising it. Present governments reject any connection – it has become a dirty word. Yet for the past decade we have been living a dream of retro-assimilation where nostalgia for the past is mixed with current visions of nationhood using today’s spin to create an imagined world of equality and shared values. Global fears and anxieties leave us susceptible to this phoney dream.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Anna Haebich: Spinning the assimilation dream’

Guest post by Naomi Parry: Debunking Windschuttle

Published
by
Administrator
6 months, 4 weeks ago
in History, Indigenous and Politics
. 167 Comments

As a follow up to the recent thread on Keith Windschuttle’s Stolen Generations denialism, we’re very happy to be able to republish this piece from today’s Crikey with permission.

Dr Naomi Parry, author of “Such a longing: Black and white welfare in NSW and Tasmania, 1880-1940″, writes:

The Weekend Australian of 9-10 February brought news that the intrepid history warrior, Keith Windschuttle, bane of leftist historians, now has “the facts” about the stolen generations.

Like most conservative commentators, and the previous government, Windschuttle argues that the policies that led to children being separated from their families were benign in intent. Using the example of NSW, he says children weren’t stolen from their parents but apprenticed as adolescents, to give them “the opportunity to get on-the-job training, just like their white peers in the same age groups.”

This is another instance of Windschuttle taking information and skewing it to fit his particular political and cultural agenda, although he is kind of half correct when he says the focus of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board was apprenticeship. Where he’s wrong is in asserting that he’s discovered this fact; that it was a benign policy, or was in any sense equivalent to white children’s experience.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Naomi Parry: Debunking Windschuttle’

LP Comments policy

Published
by
Administrator
8 months ago
in Culture and Notices
. Closed

Beneath the fold is the monthly repost of the LP comments policy. All commenters are asked to read the comments policy before posting and abide by the policy on threads. In light of recent discussions, please also note this comment.

Continue reading ‘LP Comments policy’