Antipodean links
Raising a good question about Kiwiland moving its aid from specialising in scholarships to doing all the fashionable aid causes.
A former staffer to Gordon Brown who is now head of Choice in Oz has quite a few observations about the difference between his new home and his old one.
Suggesting Oz would be improved by moving State governments out of the major cities and have more States.
Court rules than an employee who was validly sacked for repeated safety breaches has to be re-instated and paid compensation because of his poor job prospects.
The endless fight over IR laws in Oz goes on and on … And on.
Attacking the Rudd Government for reverting to tax law as weapon against the self-employed.
The insulation debacle continues, with lots of sackings: Peter Garrett gets to keep his job, however. I could make jokes about government doing something spectacularly incompetently, but it really tells its own story. Links on Peter Garrett’s demotion to minister for fluffy animals.
Tony Abbott is the second Catholic to lead the Liberals federally: there are some issues with his support within the Party.
Malcolm Turnbull, the first Catholic to lead the Liberal federally, is to retire from politics.
NSW Labor is appalling and NSW Libs are hopeless, but at least there is opportunity for humour:
The NSW Liberal Party has its own long and brutal history of factional bloodletting. But at least it has a process of Senate pre-selection, which means candidates are chosen by, and accountable to, a lot more people who are a lot more representative of the party than the number of unionists you can fit around a lazy susan.
Turmoil in the Wilderness Society: much of which seems to be driven by (a lack of) generational change within the organisation. Guy Rundle on environmentalism and climate change in an analysis utterly innocent of any sense of failure by anyone not on the “right”. Guy Rundle reviewing Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of why the left failed to make headway out of the recent GFC and GEC. There is an argument somewhere in the review I am sure. John Gray does so much better the contrast is just sad.
Noel Pearson on acknowledgements of (indigenous) country:
We all see and hear things that make us cringe sometimes. The sensible thing is to be gracious and let other people do what they think is proper. You don't have to do it yourself if you don't agree.
It is not a bad development in Australian culture that traditional owners are acknowledged and that there is a welcome to country.
Looking at the difficulties of indigenous policy as matter of poor communications and cultural distance:
… indigenous society in Australia had to travel from the paleolithic to industrial age more than 100 times faster than European cultures had to. …
Consider the “welcome to country” acknowledgements at the start of public events and speeches. Has it never occurred to such people that the previous 50,000 years of Aboriginal history in Australia was not all sweetness and light: that such acknowledgments can, in reality, merely be giving a tick from one set of dispossessors to a previous set of dispossessors. Which represents a moral advance how, exactly?
Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt’s speeches at the launch of KW’s book on the stolen generations are here. A review of the book by an historian. Another by someone who has taught Aboriginal kids in the Northern Territory.
A former staffer to Gordon Brown who is now head of Choice in Oz has quite a few observations about the difference between his new home and his old one.
Suggesting Oz would be improved by moving State governments out of the major cities and have more States.
Court rules than an employee who was validly sacked for repeated safety breaches has to be re-instated and paid compensation because of his poor job prospects.
The endless fight over IR laws in Oz goes on and on … And on.
Attacking the Rudd Government for reverting to tax law as weapon against the self-employed.
The insulation debacle continues, with lots of sackings: Peter Garrett gets to keep his job, however. I could make jokes about government doing something spectacularly incompetently, but it really tells its own story. Links on Peter Garrett’s demotion to minister for fluffy animals.
Tony Abbott is the second Catholic to lead the Liberals federally: there are some issues with his support within the Party.
Malcolm Turnbull, the first Catholic to lead the Liberal federally, is to retire from politics.
NSW Labor is appalling and NSW Libs are hopeless, but at least there is opportunity for humour:
The NSW Liberal Party has its own long and brutal history of factional bloodletting. But at least it has a process of Senate pre-selection, which means candidates are chosen by, and accountable to, a lot more people who are a lot more representative of the party than the number of unionists you can fit around a lazy susan.
Turmoil in the Wilderness Society: much of which seems to be driven by (a lack of) generational change within the organisation. Guy Rundle on environmentalism and climate change in an analysis utterly innocent of any sense of failure by anyone not on the “right”. Guy Rundle reviewing Slavoj Žižek’s analysis of why the left failed to make headway out of the recent GFC and GEC. There is an argument somewhere in the review I am sure. John Gray does so much better the contrast is just sad.
Noel Pearson on acknowledgements of (indigenous) country:
We all see and hear things that make us cringe sometimes. The sensible thing is to be gracious and let other people do what they think is proper. You don't have to do it yourself if you don't agree.
It is not a bad development in Australian culture that traditional owners are acknowledged and that there is a welcome to country.
Looking at the difficulties of indigenous policy as matter of poor communications and cultural distance:
… indigenous society in Australia had to travel from the paleolithic to industrial age more than 100 times faster than European cultures had to. …
Consider the “welcome to country” acknowledgements at the start of public events and speeches. Has it never occurred to such people that the previous 50,000 years of Aboriginal history in Australia was not all sweetness and light: that such acknowledgments can, in reality, merely be giving a tick from one set of dispossessors to a previous set of dispossessors. Which represents a moral advance how, exactly?
Keith Windschuttle and Andrew Bolt’s speeches at the launch of KW’s book on the stolen generations are here. A review of the book by an historian. Another by someone who has taught Aboriginal kids in the Northern Territory.