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Life Without Oil

If you're not worried about the future of our civilisation, you obviously haven't been listening.  You wouldn't be alone in that - this is an incredibly hard message for us to hear and we would prefer not to listen at all.   Jeffrey Sachs says that one of the reasons American politics is controlled by big corporate interests is because ordinary citizens are disengaged and distracted.  I suspect a desire to avoid facing our uncertain future is part of the reason. I've been reading Life Without Oil: Why We Must Shift to a New Energy Future  by Steve Hallett with John Wright, published in 2011.  Hallett, who is clearly the lead author, is English by birth, currently associate professor of botany in Purdue University in Indianapolis and also had a stint teaching and researching at the University of Queensland just across the river from me.  Wright, very much the silent partner, is a journalist and I assume his job was to make the work readable for a non-technical audienc

Election 2015 - What Just Happened?

After spending a couple of depressing Saturday evenings over the past three years watching election results in which the Liberals/LNP gained substantial majorities, followed by months of pain as they set about shredding their respective governments' already feeble efforts towards equity and ecological responsibility, I finally get to talk about some good news! It's interesting that all the commentators, even the ABC's seasoned election analyst Anthony Green, were stunned at the size of the swing.  Green's initial flummoxed response was that he didn't trust the numbers he was seeing.  They turned out to be correct.  After sweeping the pool in 2012, the LNP has clearly lost its majority.  At last we have seen Annastacia Palaszczuk with a genuine, unforced smile . What's really interesting is that the opinion polls have been saying this for some time but no-one, including me, believed them.  We all assumed that come the election the undecided voters would

Election 2015 - Policy Platforms

The other day I was listening to ABC Radio and a talk-back caller told us about his daughter.  She is, according to her biased Dad, an intelligent young woman and wanted to think seriously about who she was voting for.  Like any young digital native, she went online and looked at the policies of the major parties.  According to her Dad, what she found is that one party (the LNP) had a set of constructive policies which outlined what it would do in government while the other (the Labor Party) just seemed intent on criticising their opponents. Now it's possible this man was an LNP plant (all the parties do this at elections) but it's also possible he was genuine.  If so, our young digital native has let herself down badly.  Perhaps the message is that what our young adults gain in comfort with the online world, they lose by having short attention spans.  Nothing to do with the rise of social media, and everything to do with being 18.  All that grey hair has got to be useful

After the Crash

After reading Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century  late last year, I found myself wanting to read more economics. I'm not an economist, but as a social policy professional I need to know enough about economics to recognise when economists are having me on.  If the economics gets too technical or includes too many equations it's right over my head, but if it's written in plain English I can usually understand it. In the last couple of months I've read two books written in the aftermath of the 2007 Global Financial Crisis - one about Australia and one about the USA. The first, published in 2011, is The Sweet Spot: How Australia made its own luck - and could now throw it all away  by Peter Hartcher.  Hartcher is not really an economist, he is a political journalist working for the Sydney Morning Herald.  If you've read his columns you'll know that he is on the "dry" end of the Fairfax spectrum, but at least he doesn't work for Murdo

Election 2015 - Being Cashed Up

It's taken until the second last week of the election campaign, but I finally have a piece of literature from my local LNP candidate, Leila Abukar. I like that the LNP has pre-selected a woman of Somali origin for my local seat, but it's depressingly familiar (no matter which party you talk about) that she's been nominated for a seat they are unlikely to win.  The LNP won Yeerongpilly in 2012 by a very slim margin, and within a year their succesful candidate, Carl Judge, resigned from the party in disgust.  He is running this year as an independent but it seems almost certain the seat will return to Labor. Still you can't accuse them of skimping on her campaign.  We've been reading about how much the LNP has out-fund-raised Labor and this is evidence right here. All Labor could afford on behalf of Mark Bailey was an ordinary, old-fashioned letter.  Enclosed in Abukar's letter, on the other hand, is a glossy, carefully crafted four-page A4 brochure and a

Manus Island

You don't need any special insight to understand what is going on in the Manus Island detention centre.  You don't need inside information or intelligence reports.  You just need a basic level of intelligence. The detention centre on Manus Island is a hell-hole.  It is made up of hot and poorly ventilated tin sheds on a tropical island.  Drinking water is rationed.  It is overcrowded and inmates have little or no privacy.  Residents have to queue for hours at mealtimes in the stifling heat.  There are inadequate health services, not enough toilets and showers, and no soap and water in the smelly latrines.  Don't take my word for it - read Amnesty International's report from their visit in November 2013.  They are still awaiting a response from the Immigration Minister. The inmates in this substandard human-rights free zone are not hardened criminals.  They are ordinary men who have fled persecution and danger in their homelands and tried to reach safety in Austr

Election 2015 - Being Local

Talking of local campaigning , last week I got a letter from Mark Bailey, the Labor candidate for Yeerongpilly. The opening sentence reads as follows. The upcoming election is an opportunity to make sure Yeerongpilly is represented by someone who will stand up for us and fight hard for our local area. Then he lists some negative local impacts of LNP government decisions over the past three years - loss of hospital beds and nurses in two of our major hospitals, the level of youth unemployment, increased electricity bills, the closure of a local high school.  Then he goes on. As a local resident and former local Councillor, I'll fight for more local jobs and to restore much needed funding for our frontline health and education services after Campbell Newman's savage cuts. I will always put the interests of our local community first just as I did as the Moorooka Ward Councillor.  That's my commitment to you. When Mark Bailey was the Councillor for Moorooka  I was w

Gillian Triggs

Just for something a little different, and a little more pissed off, here's something slightly removed from the Queensland Election.  You may have noticed some headlines recently about Human Rights Commission chairperson Gillian Triggs. If you read the Murdoch press, especially the Australian, they will be hysterical. Gillian Triggs backs Indonesian Wife Killer Detainee Tony Abbott blasts Gillian Triggs over wife killer John Basikbasik Gillian Triggs' advice a 'betrayal' of women The Guardian is more, well, guarded. Abbott attacks Gillian Triggs over call to free convicted refugee John Basikbasik You may notice that even though Triggs is far from a household name the headlines - even in the Guardian - use her name not her title.  I wonder why that would be? A quick summary of the story.  John Basikbasik is a West Papuan refugee who arrived in Australia by boat (actually, by canoe) in 1985.  He was granted a protection visa on the basis of his co

Election 2015 - Being Independent

Given current polling, one of the possible outcomes of the coming State election is a hung parliament, meaning that government will need to be formed with the support of independents and minor parties. Our major parties both hate this idea, and try to persuade voters against it.  Both parties are currently saying they won't form a minority government with the support of the cross-benches.  I don't think that promise is worth the air it was spoken into.  If we have a hung parliament, at least one of them will do a deal, even though they don't like it. They say they don't like minority government because it creates instability, but actually it's just because they are so bad at negotiation.  Plenty of countries have multi-party governments as a matter of routine, and they include some of the most stable democracies on the planet. The Queensland electoral system makes things difficult for minor parties.  We have no upper house, and a lower house made up exclusivel

Election 2015 - Being Anxious

I mentioned in my previous post that the LNP has been working hard for the past three years to create a climate of anxiety.  One person who doesn't seem to need much help to become anxious is Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk. Every time I have seen her in the media over the last three years her face has worn an anxious, harried expression.  She even wears it in the election advertising that has appeared on our TVs this week.  The only time it left her face was in the press conference she gave following the announcement of the election date.  Presumably she was told by her media advisers that she should smile more, so she tried one at the end of the conference.  It wasn't convincing. Of course she has a lot to be anxious about.  She was a low-profile cabinet minister in the Bligh Government - her most senior post was as Minister for Transport and Multicultural Affairs in the final year of the government.  Then following the electoral rout of March 2012 she found herse

Election 2015 - Being Strong

So, Campbell Newman has finally decided to put us all out of our misery by calling the 2015 election for January 31 this year.  His stated reason - that he wanted to provide certainty for business - tells you a lot about our present Liberal-National Party government.  This is the most business-friendly government - and people unfriendly one - we have had in a long time. I'm not going to pretend to give you an unbiased view of this election.  Let me tell you right up front, I won't be voting LNP.  Not that I'm much of a fan of the Labor Party either.  They have largely sold out to the same business interests as the LNP, but at least they are able to soften it with a slender padding of social responsibility.  I would like to be able to vote for a genuinely socially progressive alternative, but in the current environment I have to accept that my preferences will eventually flow back Labor's way. Anyway, having got that out of the way up front, I want to talk to you abo