There is the whiff of a Pyrrhic victory in the Dutton and No wins on Saturday.
Certainly, Dutton has demonstrated that disinformation, division and some outright lies can confuse and motivate large sections of the community. He has also given an insight into how he, the alt-right movement, social media warriors and bots will seek to influence the next Federal election campaign.
McKinsey may still be the go-to consultancy for many companies and governments but it is not faring well on legal fronts.
The Weekend Financial Times reports it has just paid another $US230 million to settle remaining claims relating to ‘turbo-charging’ opioid sales. This is on top of $US641.5 million already paid to US states over the issue. The FT says the part McKinsey played is ‘alleged’ but that’s an awful lot of money for an allegation.
When politicians are facing likely defeat they often desperately seize on an event or a development which they believe might turn the tide.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it can be counter-productive and sometimes it just looks desperate.
Arguably it worked for John Howard with boat turn backs and a hyperbolic campaign saying we would be overrun by terrorists and others if Labor was elected.
Business is always telling governments, and the rest of us, that Australia would perform much better if we and our rulers took their advice.
There would be fewer and lower taxes while ‘flexible’ freewheeling industrial relations policies and much less regulation are all common claims about how Australia could be improved.
The RSL was once one of the most influential, lobby groups in Australia. Today it is better known for the number of poker machines it operates.
Back in the day, as they say, they were knocking on doors in Canberra where the people they met to lobby often had returned service badges in their lapels. They had regular meetings with the relevant Minister and the comments of officials, particularly the late Bruce Ruxton, were widely reported in the media.
We will never know how many people over millennia have suffered from tragedies that continued through generations.
Prehistoric parents, who were killed by a wild animal they were hunting in the hope of feeding their children, may have been among the first humans to set in train the process.
Perhaps their young accepted it as part of life. Perhaps they were part of larger group that took them in. Perhaps they were just abandoned. Perhaps they may have had wise women to counsel them or perhaps they suffered a trauma which they carried forward first as warning tales and then as myth to their children and their children’s children.
Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s National Press Club speech has generated a lot of publicity – mainly about whether what she said was accurate or not – which it transparently wasn’t.
Senator Price, when asked if she felt there were any ongoing, negative impacts of colonisation on Indigenous Australians, replied “No, there’s no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation” – despite a literature which would fill a library demonstrating that she is wrong.
What do you think of when you think of Vienna? Probably not a model for affordable housing in Australia.
More likely cafes, waltzes, music, art, the Ringstrasse, Lipizzaner stallions, spies and Harry Lime or the brilliance of post-war Austrian foreign policy in convincing the world that Hitler was a German and Beethoven an Austrian?
There is a lot of discussion about the hate, disinformation, misinformation, lies and prejudice which have characterised the Voice debate.
But there is an additional response which is odd – the sneering at the proposal.
Some years ago the blog was at a function at the Melbourne Club. It is not a member needless to say, although was once asked if they wanted to join but passed for a variety of reasons including that it would probably be blackballed.
The Age/SMH Resolve Strategic poll on the Voice referendum was a dramatic reminder that progressives should always be ready for a profound kick in the guts.
The referendum campaign is not lost yet but it looks increasingly likely that it will be – despite the massive campaign launched by the Yes campaign.