A comment from Brexit seems to sum up the world of western politics today. A woman was asked how she would vote. “If you have money you vote to remain. If you have no money you vote to leave.” This neatly sums up a problem that is cropping up in a number of countries. People […]
Labor needs a Tampa moment to win the election. Remember when John Howard turned around his campaign with the Tampa crisis? I hope Bill Shorten has one up his sleeve. If not, here are some ideas. The Medicare scare campaign shows that Labor has learned a lot about campaigning from previous elections. Medicare sucked the life […]
One of my favorite authors is Hugh McKay the social researcher. The reason I like reading his material as he often makes you look at something in a different way. One memorable passage concerned a mother who has just washed the floor. Her son walks right across the wet floor leaving footprints and mud everywhere. […]
They call it democracy. Government by the people. The original concept developed in Greece and the concept was that the people’s views would be represented by their elected representatives. Just to make that clear, the elected representatives are there to funnel the views of those who elected them. Conceptually the idea is fine, but what happens […]
A comment from a journalist got me thinking. It was about the Nick Xenophon Party. The comment was “If we don’t know your policies, how can we vote for you?” I started thinking about the reason for a minor party developing their own policies. What is the purpose? Their party will never have the numbers to […]
Turnbull arrived like a messiah. A rock star. The Dali Lama. A year down the track he is just another PM struggling to win an election. What happened? The answer is “lots”. Let’s start with what people expected. To say the general public is disillusioned with politicians is like saying if I stand in the […]
The first few weeks of the election campaign were not going well. No surge in the polls. No capitulation by Labor. No gaffs from the Shorten team. Malcolm the Almighty was worried. He gathered a few of the most creative minds in the Liberal party together in the Cabinet room to discuss the future plans. […]
The year is 2046. 30 years from now. The Crumbling Blocks Royal Commission has just completed and released it’t preliminary report. For those who are not aware of the Crumbling Blocks Royal Commission it was set up to investigate the massive problems currently showing up in blocks of apartments built between 2010 and 2020. Most are […]
So Labor want a royal commission on the banks. The banks don’t seem to think it is needed. Then again, asking the banks if they want a royal commission on banks is like asking the Catholic church if they want a royal commission on child abuse. Nothing to see here folks. Please move along. The […]
The people we label “terrorist” presumably bring terror to our lives. Terror is defined as “extreme fear”. So do we suffer extreme fear when we think about terrorists? I recently spent some time in Paris. For a week I travelled every day to Saint-Denis where the terrorist attacks took place a few months back. Soldiers […]