You pays your dues and you gets ... Bill Shorten's innovative approach to making sure AWU workers get what is good for them (or good for someone, anyway). Now that he has moved on, aspiring to lead not just a union but the entire nation, is his grip any less clammy?
Life's just not fair. There you are, a famous Hollywood actor who gets to hob-nob with the Obamas, and you turn up in country where the locals should be awestruck by your stellar presence, but instead they raise a stink about a pair of yappy Yorkies evading quarantine requirements. The absolute gall of Barnaby Joyce to insist that the law applies to all, even celebrity dog smugglers!
Once upon a time -- quite a few years ago, actually -- the climate was cold and the gift of a juicy loin of mammoth was the way to a cave maiden's heart. Now that things are somewhat warmer, well, things have changed.....
Time was when Australia's inner cities were hives of industry, with factories and workshops around every second corner. These days, well the factories are hipster lofts and the sound of a shift-ending whistle is seldom heard. Yes, the demolition of tariff barriers has seen the arrival of lots of cheap consumer goods, but not everyone is celebrating
Quadrant's Online cartoonist has become something of an election issue in Queensland, where the usual shriekers, howlers and scolds have taken offence at his depiction of Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk in her birthday suit.
Has the latest anti-Muslim backlash started yet? Well sit tight and the cookie-cutter keyboard ticklers at Australia's two most deplorable newspapers will tell us all about it. When all is not said and journalism left undone, regurgitating cliches is a lot easier than reporting on the real world
At some point tonight, early if the polls are on target, Victorians will learn which major party gets to set fees, fines, and taxes for the next four years. One wants to build a road tunnel that might ease the pain of the state's withering industrial base. The other will pay for whatever its union mates demand. No matter the winner, there will be 5 million losers
At Nuremburg they would have used a rope and a short, sharp stop to remedy Herman Goering's inclination to consider himself a prime example of the Master Race, before which he and his kind demanded the entire rest of humanity prostrate itself. His own solution -- a cyanide capsule hidden in a jar of cold cream -- saved the hangman any trouble. But that was then. Today, as Zeg observes via the link below, the preferred cure for those imbued with bloody contempt for lesser mortals is a publicly financed course in "de-radicalisation"
On Budget Day it is good to remember things are rather different on Struggle Street in Canberra. Instead of waiting for cheques, the locals sometimes get to write them. Strangely, the more they spend, the worse the neighbourhood gets
New South Wales goes to the polls tomorrow, with the latest polls suggesting Labor leader Luke Foley's union-assisted efforts to gain a boost by opposing privatisation of the electricity system just isn't working
A government that can't sell its budget and disappoints its friends. An Opposition that has made a virtue of ignorance. And a country brimming with potential that is going nowhere. Welcome to Australia, 2015
Like all politicians, Bill Shorten's talents for baby-kissing, hand-shaking, speech-giving and truth-tickling are on tap …
“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice. And …
It's the oldest bureaucratic skill in the book: when confronted with budget cuts, slash the services most valued by the largest number of people -- then re-direct their anger against the government that made you implement them. Mark Scott may not know much, but that bit he has mastered
Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen has had a few words to say about Joe Hockey's latest budget. Trouble is, apart from his promise to re-instate a carbon tax, those thoughts came across as a muffled muddle. That's what happens when you help to dig a monstrous hole, stand proudly at the bottom of all that debt, and lecture those on higher, firmer ground about their fiscal and moral deficiencies.
How do you become a "world respected climate expert"? Well, you could study old bones, like paleontologist-turned-public spectacle Tim Flannery. Or you might win a Nobel for revealing the mysteries of T-cells, like medico Peter Doherty, who is now another go-to authority on climate change, punitive tariffs and Bjorn Lomborg's eco heresies. It's great work, if you can get it! Scare politicians into squandering billions of dollars on white elephant desalination plants and, as Zeg observes, you still get quoted by admiring reporters.
Whether we need data-retention to combat terrorists is a matter on which reasonable people can disagree. What seems to occasion no discord in Australia's newsrooms, now to be exempt from having phone and email records picked over without a court order, is Australia's real enemy
Hangovers, the curse of the drinking class, generally last no more than a day or so. In Queensland, where Labor partied hard and hearty as the monumental swing against Campbell Newman & Co. was tallied, the headaches of the voters who fired up that celebration may well endure for years
It's just so cool being in thick with the caring set -- and so easy too! Print out a 'je suis Charlie' sign, punch out a couple of tweets that are heavy on the hand-wringing and then luxuriate in that special, rosy glow of moral superiority. And after that? Why not decry moves to scrap Section 18C because everyone who is smart enough to have an Arts degree knows free speech can give offence and that's, like, heavily into being unacceptable, man.
That the Greens have a problem with Barbie should come as no surprise. This is, after all, the party that believes the cow that jumped over the moon was propelled by planet-threatening flatulence, sees the Magic Pudding as a model for taxation policy and crusades for Little Boy Blue's right to present himself as Little Girl Pink. In the playground, as Zeg notes, children are not quite so, er, broad-minded.