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 […]
Global heating update
Last month we had a look at the Bigger, better, new hockey stick from a study by Marcott et al. Since then Skeptical Science has a post on the phoney skeptical/denialist critique of the study. We now have a new […]
Lazy Sunday
Since we don’t live by politics alone (I sincerely hope), what else did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Nestle and the human right to water [part 1]
There is a video doing the rounds at the moment of Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe declaring that water isn’t a human right and arguing that the best way to ensure fair distribution is through privatisation and assigning a market value […]
Guest post by Tad Tietze: What is neoliberalism, anyway?
A follow up to Mark Bahnisch’s post on neo-liberalism, originally published at Left Flank. Tad Tietze writes: A few weeks ago the right-wing Australian think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) held a gala dinner to celebrate its 70th birthday. The […]
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 […]
Should we spend more on healthcare?
The Grattan Institute’s report on long-term pressures on the budget should not come as a shock to anyone. In short, it says that the government’s tax take has dropped off, the mining and carbon taxes won’t deliver significant revenue, health […]
Electricity price conundrum: the effect of renewables
Rooftop solar costs are projected to add more than $240 per year to average electricity bills within five years, according to research from the Queensland Competition Authority (QCA). In November last year that’s what we were told would happen if […]
Overflow Thread
The last overflow thread was some time ago, so here’s a new one. [This thread has now closed, use a more recent Overflow Thread, please]
Overflow threads are set apart for side discussions (especially leeeengthy comments and perennial stoushes), as part of our system for keeping other threads on-topic.