Tag: Australia
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My ‘hot take’ on the Greens’ 2025 election performance
A week after polling day, finally the political commentary and hot takes are starting to sound less reactionary, less pushing a pre-existing agenda, less desperately seeking a byline. I turned down a couple of media opportunities early in the week, then on Thursday I ended up in a background conversation with an ABC radio producer…
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The Truth is Out There – Civil Society Supporter Emails in the Federal Election
When Ariadne Vromen and I started talking about researching civil society organisation activity in the 2025 federal election, one of the methods of analysis that I wanted to add (from what she and Serin Loane had done in 2022) was the supporter emails these organisations send. In my mind, CSOs use emails as a key…
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Community Campaigning can Trump Populism [article]
Originally Published by ABC Religion and Ethics, 26 May 2022. “This was not your typical election outcome. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is forming government with the lowest primary vote in history. The moderate men of the Liberal Party were wiped out in urban areas by moderate liberal women. Populists Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson…
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Blind arrogance or sheer ignorance
I am not prone to anger, but this sentence from the first front page article of The Saturday Paper got my blood boiling: “These deaths weighed heavily on the conscience of politicians as they struggled in 2012 to find a policy that would stop people undertaking the journey.” Love3 Share Tweet Share Pin
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Black Hawks, Minstrels, and a losing war
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing that the government has been rolling out the propaganda machine for the armed forces and the war in Afghanistan. Love0 Share Tweet Share Pin
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Australia’s Education Sausage Factory
Since the recent protests by Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney, the media spotlight has been on Australia’s international education industry. It’s an export industry estimated to be worth around $14 billion a year, and the industry that I’ve earned my living from for the last four years. I started working as an English teacher…
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Not such a good head for politics…
International media last week (and continuing into this) was concentrated on the presidential elections in Iran and the death of Michael Jackson. Both are engrossing, for very different reasons. Iran needs to release the remaining British Embassy staff asap (or Downing Street will write them a very angry letter) and the latest I’ve heard about…
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Swine Flu – Catch it, Bin it, Kill it!
So how serious should we be taking swine flu? Is it a real global pandemic or just the latest story for the media to dance around with blazing torches? Yes, close to 100 people have died due to the virus, and unlike other flu strains the majority of humans have no natural resistance to it,…
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They came from somewhere
The explosion on a boat of asylum seekers off the north-west of Australia, killing five and injuring more, has rekindled some familiar issues and debates. From the right of the fence, we’re given the impression (yawn) that Australia is in danger of being over-run by economic refugees arriving by sea to take advantage of Australia’s…