My assessment is not based primarily on scientific analysis but on many years in Treasury and outside of analysing proposals for government intervention to solve perceived “crises”. Much analysis of the present proposal requires little more than common sense.

The astonishing bipartisanship on an environmental issue that threatens Australia’s ability to compete internationally has quickly inspired a startling proposal on “how to save” Malcolm Turnbull by “doing a Whitlam”.

I asked David Karoly why he had not replied to my invitation to attend a lecture by a US scientist who described the kind of science he presented as a “scam”. K said he was on leave, to which I responded “you could have replied”.

The IPCC projection of the “very likely” average temperature increase to 2100 has a range of uncertainty that is so wide (50-60 per cent) as to make it meaningless for policy decision-making.

The timing and framing of this first survey of environmental views and behaviour is not inconsistent with the apparently increasing tendency of the public service to serve the interests of the government rather than the wider national interest.

Surveys have obvious implications in terms of the all-important US policy position on global warming. Unfortunately, our major political parties seem way behind the ball game in gauging both community attitudes and the fundamental flaws in the science used in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Prime Minister Rudd is clearly wrong in attributing the crisis to policies that reflect the neo-liberal views of free marketeers. President Obama is also wrong in taking a similar view in the United States, as is Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the UK.

In the second reading speech introducing the Fair Work Bill, […]

The Institute of International Affairs in Melbourne has got a new life. One result is that on 5 Feb, 2009, we had a brilliant presentation by Greg Sheridan on Obama and what he might mean for US foreign/defence policies and for US/Aus relations.