Quick link: Bowe on what’s happening in the Senate
William Bowe has all the news on the shifting dynamic in the Senate. We know The Greens have won a Senator in each state, bringing them up to 9 Senators when the Senators elected yesterday take their seats on 1 [...]
Senate group preference tickets released by AEC
The AEC has released the Senate group preference tickets online. For those who might not be aware of how this works, if you vote “above the line” (that is, if you put a 1 in one of the parties’ or [...]
Where now for the CPRS?
So, the Greens aren’t too sad that the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was blocked in the Senate – indeed they were a key component of that blocking. From the GreensMPs website: “The collapse of the Continue Polluting [...]
How might the Senate tinker with the stimulus package?
Simon Jackman has the good oil on what Bob Brown and Steve Fielding are putting on the table as Senate deliberations on Kevin Rudd’s fiscal stimulus continue. Both are emphasising the unemployed and job creation (with Brown arguing for green [...]
OpenAustralia opens up the Senate
When I noted the establishment of OpenAustralia as a new initiative in facilitating public scrutiny of Parliament, I expressed a wish that the Senate would be included as well as the House – because that’s where a lot of the [...]
Taking off the gags
Tim Dunlop yesterday wrote about moves from the Rudd government to undo some of the gag-clauses placed by the Howard government on government funding for charitable institutions, in which he quotes a neat summation of the policy from 2006 by [...]
Bigotry as a family value
Family First candidates just can’t help themselves. After Andrew Quah, Ben Jacobsen is the next Family First candidate suffering a case of indecent exposure. The indecency in this case is bigotry as in Jacobsen’s strange request that Liberal candidate for [...]
Newspoll: Yawn
According to the latest Newspoll, the narrowing is on. Or something. Because with Labor still on a primary of 48%, it’s evident that some of any genuine movement that’s being picked up is coming from elsewhere – perhaps independents or [...]
Family First candidate dumped for exposing his policy
In the United States, a pleasing aspect of the so called family values politicians that pander to the religious right is that many seem to trip over their own self-righteous feet of clay. Witness the downfall of Larry Craig and [...]
Major failures on the environment
The Australian Conservation Foundation has released its initial progress scorecard of the environmental policy commitments of the ALP, the Coalition, the Greens, the Democrats and Family First. It’s not a pretty sight for either of the major parties. The Coalition [...]
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