Painting Fakes

"Who is Edward Bellamy?", I hear you ask.  I would have asked the same until a few weeks ago, when I saw his book, Looking Backward: 2000-1887,  in one of our suburb's little street libraries .  I was intrigued and brought it home, and I thought I would share it with you before I put it back. Bellamy was born in Massachusetts in 1850 and came from a well-off family, going to university and eventually qualifying as a barrister.  He soon quit the law, convinced it was just there to uphold the plutocracy.  He could have been a classic 1960's 'angry young man', but born out of time.  From early in his life he was appalled at the slums just a short walk from his own well-off neighbourhood, and after quitting the law he worked as a writer and journalist, criticising child labour and labour laws that allowed prices to rise but wages to stagnate.  He was appalled by poverty and suffering, and was convinced there must be a better way. Looking Backward was the c...

I keep stumbling across something I find really perplexing, a vision of Australian unity which sounds innocuous, but is not. Because it's summer, let's start with a cricket tale.  You have probably heard of Usman Khawaja, a Pakistani-born Australian cricketer who has just announced his retirement at the age of 39 after a long, successful career playing Test cricket for Australia.  He is the first Pakistani-born player, and the first Muslim, to play cricket for Australia.  He is devoted to his Islamic faith, not in the sense of thinking everyone else should be a Muslim, but in the way it orders his life - he reads the Koran and prays every day, attends Friday prayers and fasts during Ramadan when cricket schedules permit, refrains from alcohol, is devoted to his family and generally tries to live by the tenets of his faith.  As he's got older he's also been more prepared to speak out on wider issues - combating racism in sport and elsewhere, calling out racist abuse i...

Way back when it was elected in 2022, Australia's Labor Government promised much needed reforms to Australia's environment laws.  These laws were delayed time and again, with the Nature Positive Bills only introduced into Parliament in late 2024.  If reports are correct, the Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek reached a deal with the Greens to pass them with some amendments, only for the Prime Minister to pull the plug after some strategic lobbying from the WA Premier.  Perhaps he felt it was too close to the election and he didn't want to give the Opposition a stick to beat him with.   Anyway, finally we have a new bit of legislation in late 2025 and the new Minister, Senator Murray Watt, is suddenly in an awful hurry to have it pass.  Unfortunately it's not very good, but fortunately the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee is holding an inquiry into it and taking submissions.  Here is mine.  If you want to, you can ...

It's very possible that we could act quickly to limit climate change, and yet still end up making the world significantly worse.  The best way to ensure we do this is to allow the world's mega-wealthy - the 3,000 plus people who have wealth of over a billion dollars or, even worse, the 15 or so who own over $100b - to keep their wealth.   Cover of 'Cobalt Red' If you want to know why this is, read Siddharth Kara's book, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.   Published in 2023, the book is an investigation into the cobalt mining industry in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Cobalt is an essential component of rechargeable batteries.  This means it is integral to the process of decarbonisation.  Mobile phones, laptops, smart TVs, Ipads - every electrical device big and small uses cobalt, although larger scale batteries these days do not.  The end users of this wonder metal are among the world's most recognisable and profitable g...

Nauru is back in the Australian news which can only mean one thing - Australia is about to exile some more refugees there.  Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke went to Nauru last week for a series of meetings that culminated in a deal for Nauru to provide permanent residence for up to 280 asylum seekers.  In return, Australia has agreed to pay the Nauru government a one-off $400m and then $70m per year thereafter.  It's not clear how long this nonsense will continue but if we assume it will last for five years, it will cost the Australian government a total of $750m, or $2.7m per asylum seeker. Nauru from the air. It just so happens that I went to Nauru for a few days some years ago.  I can't tell you what I did there, but I can tell you that it was a depressing place.  There were a lot of asylum seekers there at the time, living under a regime known as 'open detention'.  That is to say, they were free to roam the island at will.  Some were still living i...