When Rudd goes to international shindigs like the one in Italy, he has to play a delicate balancing game. He must be seen to be an active player without revealing Australia’s insignificance on the world stage. This is because Australian politics, and especially this government, is far more reliant on the international stage for prestige than its political weight on that stage permits.
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Terry McCrann has responded to the call for a new inquiry into the financial system with a snark-filled piece which is of sociological, if not intellectual, interest. Let’s jump to his last para Many Liberals like former NSW Labor Treasurer Michael Costa. GetUp! has officially launched Censordyne , an ad and website campaign combo to help stop the Government from introducing Internet censorship in Australia. The group hopes to show the ad on Qantas flights in August when politicians are on flights to Canberra as Parliament resumes. Watch here: Children’s welfare groups Save the Children and the National Children’s & Youth Law Centre joined GetUp! in the campaign, issuing a joint statement (PDF) : We argue that the tens of millions of dollars that such a scheme will cost should instead be diverted to appropriate child protection authorities and police to prevent the abuse of children, and towards effective community-based education strategies that give children and parents the skills to protect themselves In the Fairfax broadsheets this morning, constitutional law academic George Williams gives his reading of the High Court’s judgment in Pape v Commissioner of Taxation and the Commonwealth of Australia. As readers may recall, earlier in the year UNE academic Bryan Pape challenged the constitutional validity of the government’s tax bonus payments My Icerocket self-search (admit it, we all do it), led me to this marvellous project. The Invisible Library is a collection of books that don’t exist, except in the pages of other books. It is physically manifesting at the Tenderpixel Library in London , but will resume invisibility after 12 July. Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution draws from Tom Palmer’s new book and comes up with 5 main categories of libertarians: 1. Why will the copyright to most Beatles songs end up scattered to the winds, in the hands of anonymous - or big-capitalist - shareholders? If you will, you could try blaming poor tax advice, Yoko Ono, and the extravagant lifestyle of Michael Jackson. Plus a large host of minor players and - quintessentially - a lot of poorly-handled relationships. Today’s column from Herald Economics editor Ross Gittens: “After being paid to study the performance of politicians for the past 35 years it finally occurs to me that the problem with democracy is the same problem we have with competition in markets: for it to work well requires more effort and attention on the part of voters (or customers) than they’re prepared to devote to it .” [my emphases] Read the rest here . |
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