Senate preference mayhem: 0.2% of the vote could be enough to win
This election sees a record number of parties contesting the Senate and a record number of candidates. Even people like me who enjoy filling in all the squares below the line on the Senate ballot paper...
View ArticleMore on Senate Preferences
The possibility of people getting elected to the Senate with virtually no public support has been greater coverage, with a piece in today’s SMH and Antony Green letting fly about it on the ABC this...
View ArticleOn War and Remembrance
Since I took up studying teaching, all that half-silly/half-sinister commentary that happens from time to time alleging Australia’s school children are having their brains filled with left-wing...
View ArticlePolitical donations: buying influence and outcomes.
The furore in New South Wales over developers and resource companies seeking to buy influence through political donations has died down a bit as focus has turned to the federal Budget. Whilst no one is...
View ArticleThe Liberal’s compulsion to turn public assets into private wealth – and get...
The LNP in Queensland have been softening up the public for a privatisation binge pretty much from the day they got elected in 2012. In recent times, they’ve kindly made the public pay millions for a...
View ArticleDemocrat stalwart dies
The role of the Australian Democrats as a political force is beginning to recede into history. It is now over six years since the party ceased having representation in the federal Parliament. But I am...
View ArticleKeep focus on review & reform of Parliamentary entitlements system
The best thing about the resignation of Parliamentary Speaker Bronwyn Bishop is not that it ends one of the worst, most vociferously partisan Speakerships in living memory – although that is certainly...
View ArticleSenate Voting Reform: Correcting the Crap (part 1)
This upcoming federal election will be the tenth I’ve been involved in. As all these have been with a smaller party – either the Democrats or the Greens – and in all but the first I’ve been involved in...
View ArticleSenate Voting Reform: Part 2 (Cowardice, Conviction, Politics & Principle)
Crikey is normally pretty good at cutting through political bluster to identify what is happening underneath. So it was disappointing to see them having a shot at the Greens for refusing to acquiesce...
View ArticleSenate Voting Reform: Part 3 – Is this the Greens’“GST moment”? (hint: No. No...
I have read a range of comments by people asserting that the current controversy over the Greens support for repairing the Senate voting system will by the “Greens GST moment.” As I am well-qualified...
View ArticleSenate Voting Reform: Part 4 – How do you vote someone out if they don’t need...
There are many problems with how the current Senate voting system has evolved, but perhaps the worst is that it subverts the most basic aspect of a democracy – the ability to vote somebody out if...
View ArticleFirst, Do No Harm
I must have given hundreds of talks and speeches of various types over the last twenty years on the issue of refugees and people seeking asylum – and written plenty of pieces on the topic (not least on...
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