Works of art often have far deeper value than just their aesthetic appeal, their prices or their creator.
Over the centuries works of art have been destroyed by iconoclasts, burnt, stolen or damaged with graffiti.
But there is one work of art which will be characterised by a different fate – exemplifying much that is problematic about the City of Port Phillip (CoPP) and the way it is run. It is a relatively minor event but an immensely symbolic one.
Almost everyone will have ideas on what should be the priorities for the incoming Albanese Government.
While the manifesto was policy lite there were many significant institutional proposals such as rebuilding the Public Service and depoliticising it. The Thodey Review would be a good start but a better one would be just to get back to the traditional concept of a professional, apolitical, expert group capable of helping formulate policy and implementing it.
Much of the discussion about the emergence of the Teal Independents has focussed on the Morrison Government and its attitude to climate change and women as if this was the primary cause of the phenomenon.
Yet while it is immensely influential it is also significant that another source of their emergence, and possible success, stems from broader developments in western democracies.
A little while ago two neighbours sent me a short booklet on 10 big issues facing Australia in the future.
The booklet was edited by Michelle Grattan, published by The Conversation, and included contributions from various Australian academics and commentators.
Introducing the contributions Michelle Grattan said: “Never have we heard so much from our politicians and other political players. The professionalisation of politics with its armies of advisers and spinners and the 24 hour medias cycle combine to give us more political noise than ever before.
The MIT Green Future Index 2022 provides conclusive independent evidence of the Morrison Government’s climate policy failure.
The Index, now in its second edition, “ranks 76 nations and territories on their ability to develop a sustainable, low-carbon future. It measures the degree to which their economies are pivoting towards clean energy, industry, agriculture and society through investment in renewables, innovation and green policy”.
A new book on Gallipoli – The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster: How globalised trade led Britain to its worst defeat of the First World War by Nicholas A. Lambert – has some exceptional features
For instance, the index contains no listing for Australia, Anzacs, Keith Murdoch or anyone or anything else Australian. The bibliography is a dense list of archival sources with the only Australian ones being the Birdwood papers in the Australian War Memorial and Andrew Fisher’s in the National Library of Australia. Charles Bean gets an honourable mention in the text and Alan Moorehead is mentioned less enthusiastically.
It is useful to remind ourelves that there have always been independents standing for Parliament and in recent years a number of high profile ones have been successful – such as in the power sharing arrangements with the Gillard Government – in achieving policy change.
But the current situation is remarkably unusual – particularly in terms of political perceptions and commentary. Why is it so? as Julius Sumner Miller asked.
Santos, one of the poster boys of the Morrison Government support (with your money) of fossil fuel companies, makes lots of claims about its climate and emissions reduction achievements.
But Santos’ 2022 Climate Change Report shows that despite claims about reducing emissions its emissions rose by 53% in 2020-21.
At some point in the election campaign the educational history wars are sure to be revived with Morrison and his stenographers in the Murdoch media dragging the aged horse out of its stable and giving it a few cracks of the whip.
The recent publication of What is History, Now? edited by Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb canvasses many of the issues which will be contested. It is published 60 years after E.H.Carr’s What is History? which provided a methodological framework for generations of historians and students.
Trust has declined across all Australian institutions according to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer.
Trust levels in business have fallen by 5%, NGOs 4%, Government 9% and the media 8%. Business and NGOs are still in overall positive territory although government is on the borderline with a 52% trust rating. The media is in negative territory with only 43% trusting it.