ON MONDAY 23 March a reduced House of Representatives sat in Canberra ostensibly to pass a number of measures in the Coronavirus Economic Response Package Omnibus Bill 2020. Once this business was concluded, at 18.45, Attorney-General and Leader of the House Christian Porter presented a revised program of sittings for
Opinion
Ride-sharing comes to the Bush: don’t repeat Uber’s mistakes
DEPUTY PREMIER JOHN Barilaro should stand up for rural taxi drivers ahead of a roll-out of ridesharing services across rural New South Wales. When Uber was introduced in the city it decimated the taxi industry because the NSW Government didn’t offer enough support for taxi drivers until it was too late. Unless
The biggest #CensusFail: Communication with the public
By Matt Bevan, ABC radio The number of mistakes made by the Australian Bureau of Statistics leading up to and on census night was astonishing—and nearly all of them were due to poor communication skills, writes Matt Bevan. The idea of counting the population of your jurisdiction has been around for a
About fact-free politics, taking the train and Bulletin supplements
With a federal election on the horizon and recent news that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull knocked back New Zealand’s offer to take 150 of the beleaguered detainees on Manus Island, (our Manus policy now dubbed “the mess”), even long-time press gallery scribes are getting angry about the dangerous lack of
Our land and the Koala Capital of the world
Being a political Dinosaur
Criminal enterprises: lucrative for some, very expensive for all the rest of us
Serious and organised crime costs the Australian economy $36 billion per year, according to a new analysis undertaken by the Australian Crime Commission. The detailed cost analysis, which includes a cost breakdown of different organised crime types for 2013–14, is the first of its kind to be undertaken by the Australian
By Robin Tennant- Wood- The prime ministerial revolving door goes around again …
Jewish leader supports Pope’s call for climate action and critique of economic focus
Jenny Goldie continues the series of interviews with religious leaders on climate change, talking here with Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black. Rabbi Jonathan Keren-Black joined a delegation of leaders from various faiths in Parliament House, Canberra, on 22 June in endorsing the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si. Pope Francis had called for urgent
Two Fires burn brightly to honour poet Judith Wright
“Australian poet Judith Wright once famously advised her Nobel Prize-winning friend Patrick White not to get too involved in political activism because it might damage his art” (Sian Prior, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 March.2005). Fortunately for all of us, and especially the Braidwood organisers of the biennial Two Fires Festival,