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.
We are about to bombarded with hundreds of thousands of political images, ads and videos.
In the period between now and when Scott Morrison calls the election many of them will be paid for by taxpayers just as he has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the past few years on supposedly informational ads which actually promote his government.
The latest Roy Morgan Research Trust and Distrust quarterly report is bad news for Scott Morrison and the media.
The top line voting intention situation – LNP 42% and Labor 58% is bad enough- but the deeper feelings explored in the survey explain the onset of panic among some Liberal MPs.
When asked what, if anything, would worry you if the LNP were elected at the next Federal Election? representative responses included:
The Morrison Government is not only out of touch with much of the community but also with Australia’s business community – as demonstrated by the February 2022 Australian Institute of Company Directors member survey.
Morrison may believe in can-do capitalism but capitalists don’t seem to believe in can-do Scott Morrison.
Once upon a time, more than a century ago, stonemasons working on new Melbourne University buildings walked off the job in their campaign to win an eight hour working day.
Many workers today – whether casuals or professionals – would love such a life today.
In the early 1800s Victorian workers generally worked 14 hours a day for six days of the week. But in April 1856 the workers won an eight hour day and commemorated the win by holding an annual march from the Carlton Gardens to the Cremorne Gardens in Richmond – an event which unions and workers marked for 95 years. In 1934 a Labor Government made the day a paid holiday but the last eight hour day march was held in 1951,
Whether it’s a war, sports, politics or the launch of a new soft drink the PR industry is always there.
It’s sometime invisible – indeed one of the fundamental rules of effective PR is that you should never actually see it – it should shape things without anyone seeing how it’s done.
But this is increasingly difficult to achieve in a society so drenched with propaganda and PR that the tactics have become an issue in their own right.
If anyone wanted to test the validity of Marx’s comment about religion being the opiate of the masses they would undertake a systematic global survey to ascertain how lower socioeconomic status (SES) harms or protects psychological well-being.
Now seven academic teams from universities in Germany, Denmark, Korea, Switzerland, the UK, USA and Australia have done exactly that in a paper published in PNAS last year.