Displaying items by tag: Australian Politics

Australian leaders are fond of making apologies.  Perhaps one is owed to Cardinal Pell following his High Court exoneration.  Among the many public figures who owe such an apology, the Cardinal might well expect one from our Prime Minister.

The Government's decision to double the cost of a universities arts degree is short-sighted, philistine and utilitarian.

First they came for the explorers.  Statues' live matter.  The culture war has ramped up in these Covid times, perhaps unexpectedly.  It behooves those of us with an affection for tradition and freedom to, first, understand the war we are in, and then to comprehend what needs to be done to fight back.

China is in the news.  With Covid and with trade wars, the world has begun to question its embrace of China over these past decades.  With good reason.  A repulsive regime has been granted the keys to the world economy.  On our watch.

The Covid Crisis has thrown up its own set of "tribes", interest groups with different stakes in the way the thing is playing out.  Understanding the ideologies and the interests of the various players helps us all to make sense of the crazy times in which we live

Two important things happened on the weekend of 6-7 June.  A court upheld the right to protest in large numbers in public, even in times of real or manufactured health scares.  This has implications for lockdown policies.  The second important thing to happen was that we can go to Church again.  For this, we should, all of us, bend the knee.

The current time is a crazy time of postmodern politics, where previous certainties and categories are no longer relevant.  Trying to make sense of it all is an extreme challenge.  But there are ways of understanding the new politics, and of explaining how it all came about.  What hope there might be for a better future is less certain.

The COVID scare has hit us like a meteor, without warning and with great consequences for our freedoms and our rights.  Is what the State says right?  Is our way of life under threat?  And does the State even know what it is doing?

There is something rotten in the State of New South Wales.  The State is run by paid lobbyists who control the Liberal Party.  And the interests and philosophies of these puppeteers are decidedly not those of mainstream folks who believe, naively, that they control the governments that they vote for.  The governments are puppets.

Accepting that the Victorian institutions involved in getting Pell need reforming, this two part essay explores the uncanny parallels between the Pell case here and similar cases in the UK, and draws lessons from these in charting a course towards reform.