As you might know, one of my unlikely ‘hobbies’ is watching rugby league games on television. It’s as exciting as things get around here, especially if your team is winning. Once or twice a year we go to a live game (at least $100 admission for two). The technology used to televise contact sport has led to a level of live scrutiny the game has never known before. Back in the day you could tackle…
Why is the media so enthralled with the utterances of ex-Prime Ministers, namely Paul Keating, John Howard or Kevin Rudd? Keating has been critical in recent months of the current government (his lot, I remind you) about defence issues. Keating first lashed out at the Albanese Government in March over the nuclear submarine announcement. He described the $368 billion arrangement to buy nuclear submarines through the AUKUS defence pact as “the worst international decision by…
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this blog may contain references to deceased persons. Reading an online ABC story about Ash Barty and her newly-born baby, I was struck by two things. The first was that the story had clearly been assembled with no direct input from Barty. Since retiring from championship tennis last year, Ash has made it fairly clear she values her private life. All the same, she’s famous enough…
While the world’s media was trying to get a handle on Russia and Ukraine, my counter-cyclical approach was to investigate the move towards a cashless society. Retailers and banks have been (stealthily), moving away from having their shop assistants and tellers handle cash. Maybe it was already happening, but the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the push by retailers in particular, to insist on people using a debit card to pay for goods and services. The rational…