Howard’s
The Howard Government has announced that ‘boat people’ will in future have their asylum claims processed offshore. Quite apart from the astonishing expense of this approach, it is bad policy and made for bad reasons.
Editorial: Abandoning
Amanda Vanstone, would excise the entire coastline from the legal entity known as ‘Australia’ for the purposes of processing asylum applications from West Papuan refugees. In effect, we would no longer be a land ‘girt by sea’, but a land girt by a mean and tricky fiction.
Federal Politics: Of Tea Leaves and Sledgehammers by Michael Brissenden — 12 July 2006
Here we go again. The Canberra Press Gallery is often accused of being full of obsessed insiders. We peer through the nuanced tea leaves and strain to pick up the political whispering, and interpret all sorts of things that are of little relevance to anyone but ourselves.
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US/Israel: Empire and
The National Museum of American History is part of the celebrated Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. … it is at the centre of Empire, though the word itself is engraved nowhere. This is understandable, as the likes of Hitler and Mussolini were proud imperialists, too: on a ‘great mission to rid the world of evil’, to borrow from President Bush.
Nuclear Debate: Part One: The Plan by Julie Macken — 8 November 2006
In September 2005, the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, used his Condor Laucke lecture to declare that the death toll from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 was just 50 people. Four months later, George W Bush used his State of the Union address to launch his Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
State Politics: Sham or Shaman? The Truth Behind the Kennett Comeback by Hugo Kelly — 10 May 2006
There are two broad theories on Jeff Kennett’s 24-hour political resurrection: that Kennett was a serious challenger, believing that he had the authority and energy to reassert himself on Victoria’s political scene and save the State Liberals from electoral disaster. Or, alternatively, that the ‘Return of Jeff’ was a sham from the start.
Global Warming: Fair Weather Friends? by Robyn Williams — 24 May 2006
I like Bob Carter. Even in a kilt. He has that baritone warmth that men share when they assume they’re united against the Philistines.
Australian Politics: Howard the Un-Australian by Andrew West — 27 September 2006
Enough already! It’s time the Labor Party took John Howard’s incantations and shoved them down his throat.
Indigenous Politics: A Letter to Australians by Makinti Minutjukur — 13 September 2006
We are writing from Ernabella (Pukatja Community), our home on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in northwest South Australia. We are writing now because we feel that we are being pushed around by the Federal and State Governments. We also have the opinion that our people and our communities are being systematically disempowered.
Howard’s Australia: Howard the Ordinary by Bill Leak — 1 March 2006
March 2, 1996 marked the start of 10 long years of struggle for the nation’s cartoonists. John Howard’s ordinariness is one of his most effective electoral attributes, but it is almost impossible to capture. It’s a bit like having to draw something that’s not there.
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