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My heart feels for the forgotten Australians. For those who missed the advantages of well heeled parents and private schools. For those who never quite managed to save up enough for a deposit on a home. For those who rent their residence in an ever shrinking market but now pay through the nose. My heart goes out to the third of Australians forgotten by governments and swept under the rug of their lost concerns. Are we returning to an age where money and property determined your rights in the world? Perhaps, we never really left that unfair realm.
Culture Fresh Politics
Supposedly we live in an age defined economically, where the dollar worth of everything matters most. Why then are our politicians and their strategists forever focusing attention upon cultural stuff? The war on woke, the attacks on LGBTQI folk, and the endless anti-elite ethos. Every politician and political party wants to stand with the ordinary voter, apparently. Finger pointing at those categorised as elite reinvokes the old class warfare it seems. We the people vs those individuals too superior to represent our interests. These are all manipulations and part and parcel of the politics of grievance.
Culture Economics Fresh Politics
They say the pen is mightier than the sword, well, they used to anyway. In this case, Sampson was brought down by the ABC’s Four Corners. The Cranbrook Headmaster was undone by the revelations exposed by the national broadcaster’s flagship current affair program. Protecting paedophiles and a teacher bragging about looking up student’s dresses at a former school were, in the end, too much for the board of trustees. They had toughed out the many complaints by female teachers about their treatment by male staff and students at the exclusive private boy’s school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Principal of privileged private school falls on sword in resignation at bad form exposed over decades.
Culture Fresh
Watching the 4 Corners expose on the Soviet mole in ASIO I was struck by how unimpressive the people featured in this were. The Australian intelligence service betrayal by this senior espionage supervisor in the 1970s and 1980s was done for cash. These tawdry people playing cloak and dagger in the shadows reflected badly on this state funded service. These operations grew out of the Second World War and brought that mindset to peacetime. Selling secrets to the Soviets for large amounts of cash and getting away with it for decades tells us just how ineffective these services are.
I want to start this article by acknowledging the wonderful speech given by John Longmire at the Sydney Swan’s Club Championship dinner. That speech inspired me to write this piece. Sydney and the Black Swan Grand Final event. Hands up who knows what a black swan event is?
Book Review Culture Fresh Sport I want to start this article by acknowledging the wonderful speech given by John Longmire at the Sydney Swan’s Club Championship dinner. That speech inspired me to write this piece. Sydney and the Black Swan Grand Final event. Hands up who knows what a black swan event is?
Book Review Culture Fresh Sport
My late mother loved the ABC. She was a big fan of Philip Adams: and attended the Save Our ABC rallies back in the day. I wonder what she would make of the shallow rendition of the national broadcaster today. The ABC has lost its way after a decade of Coalition bullying. Budgets were slashed and repeated threats were made to the management about apparent bias. There was no bias, it was just the journalists and presenters standing up to the government and holding them accountable.
The sudden axing of the ABC’s current affairs programme The Drum is the final nail in the coffin for a progressive national broadcaster. More than a decade of Coalition sniping and undermining of the ABC has denuded it. Silencing of The Drum death knell for […]
The Murdoch’s News Corp is at it again in Australian politics, making news rather than reporting on it. Sky News Australia, that blatantly one eyed right wing tabloid TV channel, is hard at it beating up BS into inflammatory stories. Calling out the fear mongers. Liberal party cronies and ex-staffers bleat non-stop anti-Albanese malarkey. The Australian newspaper in concert with Newspoll declares major popularity slump for the ALP federal government. This strategy of polling to start anti-government waves of public sentiment has been a long standing one for News Corp. They can then run multiple stories across their platforms with headlines about midterm slumps. The rest of the corporate media picks up these stories and runs with them, including the now chastened ABC.
We are not joking about something like suicide or the depression that can follow from poor financial decisions and outcomes. It can be a very dark time for those who have cooked their goose with financial controllers around the place. A bad credit rating is not a death sentence: It just feels that way in the game of life. The free enterprise system, where we can buy and sell things like goods and our services, is sometimes like a very serious board game – where the stakes are high and not Monopoly™ money. Losing one’s reputation around money and assets can be a difficult proposition to win back. It is more than the discomfort of not being able to afford the things you want. In a highly materialistic nation like Australia your credit rating and wealth are akin to your mobility within the various stratas of society. Door can close in your face and it takes great resolve to soldier on and get through these hard times.
China has achieved an economic miracle by being one of the few developing countries to shift its status up and into a world superpower. A billion people have together created a modern economy in record time. Only a handful of nations have made the jump to developed economy from developing status in recent times and they are Singapore, Taiwan, and Korea. According to Professor Richard Werner none of the developing nations primarily being helped by the IMF or the World Bank have made this transition. Why is that? Why has the West and the US in particular been so unsuccessful in their efforts to facilitate such economic progress, despite their wealth? In his estimation, as an international economist, it is because the help these financial entities offer is largely exploitative. Bankers just want to make money, it is in their DNA, and they come from investment banks and their associates are still tied to these banks and corporations. Miners and engineering firms are in it for their own profitability above all other considerations when operating in third world places. There are, also, disagreements around economic policy, as there always are in economics.
The media’s obsession with polls in the political spectrum is damaging to our civil society. I think a keen illustration of this was the recent Voice to Parliament for Indigenous Australian’s referendum. The constant polling around this drove the political debate to a large degree. Australians watched as support for the Voice dropped over the weeks and months according to the polls. What had been reported prior to the constant polling as having broad public support was eroded with each update to the polls. What I saw happening was uncertain Australians finding certainty in going with the flow of public opinion. It became alright to say No via perceived safety in numbers, according to the polls. Polling and manipulation by media is damaging to civil society.
How can we have a situation where Australian banks are making record profits in the billions and we are getting scammed for billions at the same time? These scams utilise our bank accounts and banks to transfer their ill-gotten gains.
You know, one of the most fundamental failures of the neoliberal order over the last few decades has been its decimation of wage growth in Western economies. Not paying high enough wages to the world’s biggest consumers has hamstrung productivity in America. The US economy has been stuck in third gear for 20 plus years or more. All those smart cookies who thought it was a brilliant idea to move manufacturing offshore to developing countries, where they could pay workers peanuts, didn’t factor in the whole picture. Yes, production was much cheaper, but the impact on wages in America meant that consumers couldn’t afford to buy as much stuff.
The few serious offenders who have been released by the High Court of Australia from indefinite detention have already served their sentences. Xenophobic Peter Dutton fear mongering once again and raising anxiety levels among Australians. The Leader of the Opposition is both an embarrassment to the nation and a danger to the social fabric. The political point scoring by Dutton is at the expense of the judicial fairness of Australia. Why should these people have to serve further punishment if they have already served the time for their crime. Dutton is a disgrace and should be censured by the parliament for inciting ill feeling toward vulnerable human beings under the care of Australia.
It’s the old story, Leader of the Opposition banging war drums at home and criticising the PM for going out and doing things in the world. When he should be at home mud wrestling with Dutton. Hamas initiated war with Israel and that is Albo’s fault. According to Dutton, Albo should be touring Israel, just like Scomo, instead of wasting his time repairing the China relationship – our major trading partner and the economic elephant in the room. The Libs want to bang the war drums with China and blame the red menace for everything under the bed. Dutton sees himself as a mini Trump, voicing loud opinions on everything.
