Blogs
The ABC in a sorry state
May 24, 2013
When Tony Abbott painstakingly explains why, even if he wanted to, he cannot gut Tasmania's share of GST revenues, and the ABC asserts he is "avoiding" giving a straight answer. Could a rote adherence to Labor talking points have something to do with it?
Read more...Truth or consequences, Mr Abbott
May 24, 2013
David Cameron and Julia Gillard are each on the nose with voters, who have watched their leaders' whoppers piling up. There is a lesson there, one it is to be hoped will stay any Coalition impulse to mislead
Read more...The party that dares not speak its name
May 23, 2013
Bill Shorten was an eager beaver for the Labor cause when sharpening the knives that Julia Gillard arranged in her then-leaders' back. Now, though, he's just plain old Bill the Local Member, with nary a mention of his party to be found
Read more...Gillard's classroom gospel
May 23, 2013
Christianity and its shaping influence on Australian history and society are to be expelled from the classroom under Gillard's campaign to "reform" education. In its place, the post-modern creed of cultural relativism
Read more...The ABC's newest employee
May 22, 2013
Julia Gillard's $10 million pre-election gift to the ABC has borne fruit in the appointment of Age veteran Russell Skelton, a man of strong opinions, to head its new fact-checking unit
Read more...Craig Thomson's Consolation
May 22, 2013
Certain to be turfed out on his ear come September, the Member for Dobell will leave Parliament with a severance package ordinary Australians can only dream about. If an Abbott government is serious about reducing the deficit, parliamentary payouts would be a good place to start
Read more...The Constitution, under attack once again
May 21, 2013
Federalism's slow erosion has proceeded for the most part by fits and starts, the states' being gradually diminished by Canberra's appetite to insert itself in every aspect of Australian life. The latest effort to allow the direct funding of local governments is the most brazen bid so far
Read more...How I missed that story
May 20, 2013
Our contributor wasn't always the serious, sober scribe Quadrant readers know and respect. Once, long ago, there was a young reporter with rather more on his mind than covering long and windy speeches
Read more...Pilger alert! Pilger alert! Pilger alert!
May 17, 2013
Round up the usual suspect cliches, the dubious documentarian will need them all by the time he has turned his camera on pallid Australia's oppression of Aborigines. He'll be so busy, ib fact, he may have no more than a few moments to be feted on Q&A and other ABC programs
Read more...The fire sale at Fish River
May 17, 2013
"Brochuresmanship" is the order of the day whenever warmists are pushing their latest scheme to tame the carbon monster. When a potential investor sought further information on one such scheme -- an entirely reasonable request, given that real money would be involved -- the response was a stonewall
Read more...The age of envy and dependency
May 16, 2013
Regards of the tweaks and fiddles, no matter which programs are cut or fostered, any budget invoking the myth of boundless plenty will be written in the ink of delusion. It won't be pleasant when grim reality intervenes
Read more...Keep Canberra’s tentacles out of local councils
May 16, 2013
Federation's fathers saw no reason to include local councils in the Constitution and neither should we. Unless, of course, you regard diminished accountability, meddling from afar, the further shrinking of the states' authority as civic virtues
Read more...Crocodile Tears
May 15, 2013
Our Prime Minister had need of Kleenex when introducing the NDIS to Parliament. So what is she has to cry about?
Read more...Some Like It To Appear Hot
May 11, 2013
Among the most potent weapons in the arsenal of warmist advocacy are the various charts purporting to demonstrate ever-rising temperatures. What isn't made anywhere near so clear is the impact of the urban heat-island effect. Melbourne's records provide a good example
Read more...The Budget speech we'd like to hear
May 14, 2013
How could Wayne Swan plug the budget hole his towering ineptitude has created? Honesty would be a good start, followed by a hit list of the Canberra bureaucracy's greatest wastes of money and desk space
Read more...Wanted: Editors prepared to lead
May 13, 2013
We have heard much of the need for press reforms, even to the suggestion that a media czar be appointed to keep news organisations honest. If that is the goal, then the place to start are the nation's newsroom them, where objectivity has declined in step with plunging circulations
Read more...Demons in need of tackling
May 13, 2013
A storied Melbourne football club turns out every weekend to be thrashed and humiliated, prefering excuses and scapegoats to the unpalatable business of self-appraisal and reform. There is a lesson there, not least for Labor
Read more...A forest 'peace deal' that may be anything but
May 12, 2013
How much faith can we have in a pact that obliges angry forest activists to desist from attacking Tasmania’s native-forest timber industry?
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