I just saw this piece on The Advertiser's site about a new law which has come into force in South Australia The law "requires internet bloggers, and anyone making a comment on next month's state election, to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll." The law will affect anyone posting a comment on an election story on mainstream news websites. It reportedly also applies to social networking sites, and ...
The Brisbane Powerhouse is currently hosting the Festival of Tibet through until the end of this weekend. It is the second such occasion, with the first being organised at the time of the most recent violent crackdown by Chinese government authorities in Tibet. The Festival features a lot of Tibetan music, art and other cultural and spiritual activities. There are a range of workshops covering some of these areas, as ...
This week on my regular shift on 4ZZZ FM, (Brisbane’s independent music and news radio station), I interviewed Ember Swift, an interesting Canadian-born musician and advocate for activism. She recently made her fourth appearance at the Woodford Folk Festival, and is playing her final Australian show this weekend on Saturday night (Jan 23) at The Troubador in the Valley Mall. Her style of music has been labelled as ‘folktronic’, ...
Paul Syvret is one of the regular writers for the Courier-Mail. When he’s not writing pieces about politics and the economy – usually in a manner which tries to make economic news intelligible – he writes general opinion pieces. Maybe it’s the opportunity to sound off about something other than economics and politics, but from time to time he really lets fly. What is interesting is not that ...
The Japanese whale hunt in the Southern Ocean is always controversial in Australia. But, as predicted earlier this week, the political and public heat around the issue has escalated further in the aftermath of the ramming and subsequent sinking of the Ady Gil - a small trimaran - from the Sea Shepherd fleet, by a security ship from the whaling fleet. Most Australians are anti-whaling – a stance supported by all ...
The news that a vessel of the Japanese whaling fleet has deliberately rammed and sunk a small vessel of the Sea Shepherd fleet in the open ocean will lift this issue to a whole new level. It could well lead to serious harm to diplomatic and other relations between Australia and Japan. In looking at how things have come to this point, it is worthwhile outlining some background to ...
Blogging across nations A couple of months ago, I started doing a few http://www.asiancorrespondent.com/andrew-bartlett-blog blog posts a week at a new site called http://www.asiancorrespondent.com/ Asian Correspondent. In short, the site is an amalgam of standard news reports from countries across most of the Asian region – including Australia – along with posts a wide range of bloggers from those countries. It is still developing in both content and layout, ...
Annabel Crabb has written a piece on the ABC's new website, The Drum, admitting that she likes politicians - and then even goes on to say why. Perhaps not surprisingly, I think it is a good piece, although the Christmas spirit of goodwill might have made her a bit more charitable than she needed to be. It does make some important points though, including about the impacts that the ...
It seems more and more likely that the Copenhagen Summit will fall well short of what many people had hoped for. Some hope that the arrivals of some key players like President Obama and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh might still help bring about a positive outcome, but it is hard to see it happening. If the Copenhagen outcome does fall short, a crucial factor in what happens next ...
I mentioned in this post about appearing before a Senate Committee hearing as patr of their inquiry into the welfare of international students. That Committee tabled its report in the Senate in the final sitting days of the year. Almost all the attention at the time was on the legislation dealing with climate change, and the related leadership tension in the Liberal Party, so the report got fairly limited ...
Last week, Radio National's Future Tense program did a show on how political parties might change over the next decade or so. You can read the transcript or listen to a podcast of it at this link. I was interviewed for the show and they used a few comments of mine in their final broadcast. Given how central political parties are in our political system, I can't see them disappearing ...
Yesterday on my weekly shift on 4ZZZ, I did an extended phone interview with Queensland Liberal Senator, Brett Mason. He talks about the CPRS and the climate change issue, the upcoming election with new Liberal leader Tony Abbott and where things are at with proposed changes to the Youth Allowance. You can listen to or download the interview by going to this link. Brett lives in the inner-city ...
It’s the understatement of the year to say the Liberals are in for a very difficult few months until the election, now Tony Abbott has assumed the party's leadership by one vote (with one informal/abstain vote) This was as much an ideological contest as a personality contest or one based predominantly on leadership skills. While it is nice to see a contest around policy and ideological arguments, rather than ...
Following are links to some posts I've written elsewhere: Focus is continuing on the conditions Tamils taken off the boat in Indonesia are being kept in. But there's even worse happening in Thailand. Regional cooperation will need to be part of our future approach, but it will a hard, slow road. From Asian Correspondent, a look at where the CPRS is at with one sitting week of the Senate remaining. Also ...
Yungaba: Last change to see One theme which is rather common through Queensland’s history is a failure to recognise important aspects of the past or to value its built heritage. So perhaps in a sadly ironic way, it could be seen as apt that a very historic building, and most of its grounds, are about to officially pass into the hands of developers to be http://www.yungaba.org.au/development.html turned into upmarket ...
One of the benefits for me of not being in Parliament has been the chance to get more directly involved in community based organisations. One of those I have got more involved in over the past year or so is the Queensland branch of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (usually known as ANTaR). ANTaR started in the 1990s and has maintained a continuing role in promoting better community ...
It's nearly two years since the last election, when the Democrats lost all their seats, and over sixteen months since I finally left the Senate, as did the Democrats as a party. After a lot of thought, I’ve decided to get back into party politics and contest a seat at next year's federal election. It was formally announced today that I will be running in the seat of Brisbane, ...
Peter Mares is a long time follower of refugee issues and critic of the problems inherent in the former government’s approach to asylum seekers in boats. He wrote a piece in The Age which emphasised a point about the Howard’s government asylum policies which does not get highlighted enough. former treasurer Peter Costello wrote in these pages that the only way to prevent asylum seekers coming to Australia by ...
Given all the speculation and commentary about the two boats with Tamil asylum seekers aboard currently in Indonesia, I thought it would be helpful to publish some basic facts about the people. This information comes from Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre in Melbourne, a person I've found to very reliable on these sorts of things - certainly far more so than anonymous, speculative or presumptive ...
A leaking oil rig off the north-western coast of Australia has been spewing oil into the marine environment for over two months. Whilst there has been intermittent publicity about the ongoing oil spill, it certainly hasn’t galvanised wide-scale public concern in Australia. I have to confess that, like Northern Territory based blogger Bob Gosford, I am perplexed as to why this massive oil spill does not appear to have generated ...
Next,
This line from David Marr is one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of the farcical sound and fury which is Question Time in the House of Representatives:
It’s a bit like an RSPCA pound: never free of the spectre of being put down, the dogs bark and howl to attract attention.(0)
For those interested in basic facts about temperature trends in Australia and globally over recent decades, there is a great post over at Lavartus Prodeo by Brian Banisch, who has been following the data and the various scientific reports on this issue for a long time. Very much worth having a read of for those who are just wanting some facts.
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Many not for profit and charity groups have got a lot smarter over the years in tapping into some of the large amounts of money that get spent over Christmas. Christmas catalogues full of gifts for good cause groups have become widespread. In recent times, that has extended to bypassing a present all together, and giving someone a donation which actually goes direct to the good cause. This form of fundraising is now also tapping into social media, so much so that even my humble blog gets occasional requests to promote a cause from people who specifically target the avenues of social media to widen their reach. Here’s one example I recently received on behalf of World Vision.
More... (4)I’ve posted a piece over at The Stump about the links between global hunger and climate change, and the unfortunate parallels between the less than successful climate change summit in Copenhagen and an even more dismal outcome at the recent Hunger Summit in Rome, which received far less attention.
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Following are links to some items I’ve had published on other sites
More... (0)Disclaimer: The inclusion of a blog or website in this list should not be taken as an endorsement of its contents by me.
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