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.
For many decades Australian political parties slavishly followed British party policies and rhetoric and then those of the US.
The only real difference was that Liberals in Australia first got into line behind the Tories, and nowadays the Republicans, while Labor was more likely to follow Labour or the Democrats.
After Waterloo the Duke of Wellington allegedly said: “It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.” Like many historic quotes it got refined over the years and became: “It was a damned close run thing.
Whichever it is particularly apposite in the light of a recent Nature article (31/8) by Anna Ikarashi on the origins of us homo sapiens.
Stop the presses! Abandon the broadcast schedule! Flood your social media sites with your posts! Man bites dog!
An Australian media outlet has described much of what the Yes campaign is actually doing rather than focussing on who said what about the latest No talking point. It did, nevertheless, tack on to the article some of the latest details of what the No campaign was doing even if they were more aspirational than reality. But despite that the article was revelatory.