Antipodean links
For the first time, more than 13.5m Australians are enrolled to vote.
Poll finds people overwhelmingly support the Federal surplus being spent on schools and hospitals. About that.
Academic study of Australian attitudes to space exploration finds that ordinary Australians just don’t measure up to the high standards of humanities/social science academics: Dr Toni Johnson-Woods says she and her colleagues found there is a prevailing belief that other planets and their natural resources are there simply to be exploited.
"The focus is on exploitation of the minerals. Basically, it's just Australia all over again," she said.
"You go out like the British did to Australia, you take everything you bloody can out of a place, and then you ping off."
She says the "spirit of exploration" that has marked the space age appears to have given way to thinking that is closer to that of pre-20th century colonialism.
Julie Bishop got bothered by a HSC question which the ABC reports as The question asked students to discuss the impact of Government legislation on employees. Which is, in fact, a biased question. It frames the issue as being all about (current) employees. It leaves out employers and possible employees. If you think labour market regulation is about protecting current job incumbents, then it is fine. But it is precisely rejecting or accepting that framing which is at the centre of political debate on labour markets. (And I suspect that the independent expert committee who framed the question are all employees and are not competing for entry-level jobs: which doesn’t make them evil, just unrepresentative in a systematic way.) Via catsidhe.
An article I linked to in an earlier post had this comment: Ms Gillard said Peter Costello, who would take over from Mr Howard if the Government were re-elected, was the "architect of these laws". "He's believed in radical industrial relations reforms all of his life," she said. On labour market issues, Labor are the conservatives and folk like the “ultra-conservative” H R Nicholls Society are the radicals. Political labels are such fun.
Poll finds people overwhelmingly support the Federal surplus being spent on schools and hospitals. About that.
Academic study of Australian attitudes to space exploration finds that ordinary Australians just don’t measure up to the high standards of humanities/social science academics: Dr Toni Johnson-Woods says she and her colleagues found there is a prevailing belief that other planets and their natural resources are there simply to be exploited.
"The focus is on exploitation of the minerals. Basically, it's just Australia all over again," she said.
"You go out like the British did to Australia, you take everything you bloody can out of a place, and then you ping off."
She says the "spirit of exploration" that has marked the space age appears to have given way to thinking that is closer to that of pre-20th century colonialism.
Julie Bishop got bothered by a HSC question which the ABC reports as The question asked students to discuss the impact of Government legislation on employees. Which is, in fact, a biased question. It frames the issue as being all about (current) employees. It leaves out employers and possible employees. If you think labour market regulation is about protecting current job incumbents, then it is fine. But it is precisely rejecting or accepting that framing which is at the centre of political debate on labour markets. (And I suspect that the independent expert committee who framed the question are all employees and are not competing for entry-level jobs: which doesn’t make them evil, just unrepresentative in a systematic way.) Via catsidhe.
An article I linked to in an earlier post had this comment: Ms Gillard said Peter Costello, who would take over from Mr Howard if the Government were re-elected, was the "architect of these laws". "He's believed in radical industrial relations reforms all of his life," she said. On labour market issues, Labor are the conservatives and folk like the “ultra-conservative” H R Nicholls Society are the radicals. Political labels are such fun.