The cost of having a say in world politics

On the eve of what was to be Australia’s first time as host of the Quad meeting, let’s reflect on the proposed cost – some $23 million according to Budget papers. It is understood more than 20% of the budget was allocated to the Federal Police, to ensure the security of invited dignitaries. The planned Quad meeting, with the leaders of Australia, India, Japan and the US to be arriving in Sydney, was scrapped after…

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Climate Crisis on Election Back-burner

My reading of election coverage (such as it is), is that both major parties have shuffled the climate crisis to the back burner. It must be crowded back there, with homeless people and refugees trying to stay warm. What has been widely ridiculed as the ‘shouty’ debate (on Channel Nine) said nothing meaningful about the most important issue of all – the climate crisis. Such has been the pre-occupation with the election here, we haven’t…

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Albo in poll position to win election

Now there’s a headline that could come back to bite me on the bum – election polling being the unreliable artifice it always has been. Polling is a mainstay of Australian electioneering. Various polls take the social temperature of a broad cross-section of the community. From this, they distil the information into numbers which they hope will predict who will win the election. Before we get into that, I consulted my preferred pollster, on-line bookmaker…

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Pork barrels and billboards ahoy

You can tell there is an election looming when the government promises to reduce the price of beer – a classic example of ‘pork barrelling’. The move to halve the excise on draught beer would save beer drinkers 30 cents on the price of a schooner (a New South Wales term for three quarters of a pint of beer). Pork barrel, or simply pork, is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localised…

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