The Gold Coast lynch mob

Tuesday, 2 July2008 - The law of the lynch mob has come to the Gold Coast and being urged on by the Murdoch tabloid the Gold Coast Bulletin . “EVERYONE should remember this man's face,” the paper urged its readers this morning. “Burn it into your memory, because it's up to the public to protect the children of Queensland from pedophile Dennis Ferguson.” more

Dear oh dear! Tory tricksters?

Tuesday, 1 July 2008 - The team of Mark Textor and Lynton Crosby, fresh from a success with a London Lord Mayor, are off and running again with another election. The New Zealand papers have been fascinated by the appearance of the pair as campaign aides for National leader John Key although they were unsuccessful during their last foray across the Tasman when Helen Clark won a third term as Prime Minister back in 2005. more

Farewell to an annual favourite.

Monday, 30 June 2008 - The mindless nature of across the board percentage cuts in government spending is illustrated perfectly this morning with the news that the Australian Bureau of Statistics will not be producing a 2009 edition of its Yearbook. Cancellation of the publication was announced this morning by Brian Pink, the Australian Statistician, along with the loss of 180 jobs. more

Obituaries premature

Monday, 30 June 2008 - One thing the Gippsland by election result proves is that the obituaries for the National Party after the last federal election were premature. The Nationals vote on Saturday was solid and taking the Coalition as a team, there does not seem to have been any major problem caused by the Liberals standing as well. The combined primary vote for the Nationals plus Liberals of 60.5 per cent is the highest since the election of 1996

Some bemused smiles

Friday, 27 June 2008 - There was much shaking of heads in wonderment throughout federal government departments this morning as public servants got around to reading the new Ministerial Staff Code of Conduct tabled in the Senate by the Special Minister of State John Faulkner. One aspect of the code in particular had the bureaucrats confused: “Acknowledge that ministerial staff do not have the power to direct APS employees in their own right and that APS employees are not subject to their direction.” The general attitude in many ministerial offices is to issue orders to departments at an extremely rapid rate demanding that they be attended to immediately as if the ministerial adviser was more important than the departmental head. more

Deciding who does what in troubled times

Friday, 27 June 2008 - The Federal Treasury and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority are finally getting around to deciding who does what in the event that Australia runs in to some really serious problems with its financial institutions. The two organisations have just agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding as to who is in charge of what which says that an early priority “is the development of a co-ordinated policy in relation to the licensing of financial institutions and the regulation of ownership and control of financial institutions.” It is amazing really that there is not one already but, says the MOU, “since the administrative responsibility for these is split between the Treasurer and APRA, and the Treasurer may delegate some of his powers in relation to shareholdings to APRA, these policies should be fully harmonised as soon as possible.” more

Keep repeating a Wong slogan

Wednesday, 25 June 2008 - Politics these days is largely about repeating glib slogans. Talking about a concern for working families is a prime example but Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is now making a worthwhile contribution to sloganeering. When she is asked these days about the cost of climate change measures she trots out : “failing to act, the cost of not acting, will be greater than the cost of acting.” more

A by-election coming on

Wednesday, 4 June 2008 - Just in case anyone had forgotten, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Tony Burke reminded us yesterday that there's a by-election coming on. There is going to be, you see, an independent audit (that's right – add another inquiry to the Labor Government's growing list) looking specifically at the treatment of Bass Strait scallop fishers by the former Liberal-National government. And where might those good fisher folk be? Why, down at the Lakes Entrance Fishermen's Cooperative, of course, right slap bang in the middle of the electorate of Gippsland. more

And an election too

Wednesday, 4 June 2008 - I had forgotten that Canberra had an election coming on in October until reminded by a television advertisement at the weekend. Not one of those crass party political advertisements but one of those inspirational Government service advertisements explaining how wonderful the ACT education system had become. The kind of advertisements designed to create a climate which encourages people to reward the good people who run the education system without the Labor Party having to pay the television station bill. And it's what we call democracy!

Saved by lack of size

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 -The big four Australian banks should not be surprised that Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan has resisted their entreaties to allow them to merge with one another in some combination or other for the evidence suggests that it is only their lack of size that prevented them from the financial stupidity that recently cost the big boys in other countries so many hundreds of billions. more

Strange thing this global warming – more ice in Antarctic

Monday, 2 June 2008 - To the non-scientist like me – a failure in matriculation physics 60 years ago is not a great recommendation as an expert – there is scope for a glass half full or a glass half empty approach when it comes to global warming. more

Aren't we clever fellows

Tuesday, 27 May 2008 - I can just picture the team of Rudd advisers chuckling as they came up with their alternative to Liberal Leader Brendan Nelson's five cents a litre reduction in petrol excise. Accuse the Opposition of fiscal irresponsibility for blowing out the federal budget deficit and then offer our own reduction in the petrol price by abolishing the goods and services tax on the excise component of the price. more

Wallowing in military history

Monday, 2 June 2008 - Nationalism is bubbling along nicely as the Labor Government continues with the policy of its Coalition predecessor in taking every opportunity to glorify the past experiences of Australians at war. more

Getting excited over petrol

Thursday, 29 May 2008 - Much excitement for the political journalists about the goings on in Federal Parliament but I would think there is much less interest among the readers. The papers are full of reports of “damaging” leaks of advice to Cabinet that was ignored and the debate between Government and Opposition on whether a Fuel Watch Scheme will lower or raise petrol prices. Despite the headlines and the prominence given to this political equivalent of a boxing match, those who obtain their information from the internet were unimpressed. The story came in number three on the most read list of The Australian and featured on only one of the four tabloid lists. more

Why the advice?

Thursday, 29 May 2008 - No analysis yet of why the view of the economists in the public service so unanimously provided Cabinet with the view that Fuel Watch was not such a good idea when the Labor politicians in Perth, who soon enough will face the judgment of voters on just such a scheme, would not dream of scrapping it. If it really did lead to higher prices it is a wonder that the people out west have not scared their politicians into putting Fuel Watch on the scrap heap. Perhaps the free market ideology of the government economists is prevalent as well in the Canberra press gallery.

Lack of secrecy a concern

Tuesday, 27 May 2008 - With only six months of a three years term gone there is no need for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to worry too much about the mutterings of discontent from the mob about higher petrol prices. Unless the Opposition is foolhardy enough to force an early election by knocking back substantial parts of the Labor Budget, the odds are that by the next polling day world oil prices will be lower than now. What should be concerning the Prime Minister is the leaking of the submission Martin Ferguson took to Cabinet commenting on the proposal to introduce the Price Watch scheme promised during the campaign. more

Lobbyist Con

Monday, 26 May 2008 - Concetto Antonio "Call me Con" Sciacca, a former Minister in the Keating Labor Government who lost a House of Representatives seat at the 2004 election, has joined the merry band of retired politicians in the lobbying business and has some prominent based companies as clients. The gradually expanding Federal Register of Lobbyists shows Sciaccas Lawyers and Consultants represents, among others, the Manildra Group, who have been major donors to the NSW Branch of the Labor Party and who have benefited by NSW Government decisions promoting the use of ethanol, and ABC Learning Centres Pty Ltd. more

Conflicts of interest and credit rating agencies

Friday, 23 May 2008 - Senator Nick Sherry, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, might be a junior minister in the formal scheme of things but the upheaval in the world financial community has given a new importance to the corporate law part of his ministerial title. When the financial markets of the world finally settle there are bound to be changes in regulations to ensure that there is not a repeat of the sub-prime crisis so the investigation into the role of credit rating agencies Senator Sherry announced yesterday is highly appropriate. more

The reaction to action

Thursday, 22 May 2008 - That social engineering does not have the precision of physical engineering is illustrated yet again by the reports that criminal syndicates have been making a mint running drugs to remote communities in the Northern Territory since widespread alcohol restrictions were brought in. more

A Hillary win discounted.

Wednesday, 21 May 2008 - This morning's big win by Hillary Clinton in the Kentucky primary this morning has not influenced the people with money one iota. The Crikey election indicator has moved even more in favour of Barack Obama with the probability a bout him becoming the Democratic Party nominee now assessed at nearly 93%.

Owl readers watch morning TV!

Wednesday, 21 May 2008 - That the Owl has all kinds of readers is now clear to me as one has sent me details of an appearance by Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard on the Mornings with Kerri Anne show on Nine last week where the subject of that peck on the cheek of Treasurer Wayne Swan (Crikey yesterday) was raised in an interview. more

No what if strategy

Tuesday, 20 May 2008 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last night told the National Business Leaders Forum meeting at Parliament House in Canberra of the three pillars of his Government's long-term response to climate change. The first is to help shape an effective global solution; the second is to reduce Australia 's emissions along the lowest cost path; and the third “adaptation - the changes we make to adapt to the impacts we cannot avoid.” All very fine words but what was completely lacking was any talk of what his Government is planning to do if global warming is a reality yet there is no agreement among the world's major emitters to reduce emissions. more

A hand on the neck and a peck on the cheek

Tuesday, 20 May 2008 - Rove Live, that major influencer of public opinion, has drawn to my attention the difficulty that Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has in working out how to relate to her male ministerial colleagues. more

Don't mention the war

Monday, 19 May 2008 - In Tasmania the war of words between the environmentally concerned and the timber giant Gunns continues but it is a war the Tasmanian Government is loath to even mention. more

Germans have acted, will Australia?

Monday, 19 May 2008 - The crisis in the Rhine Valley of the bees being killed by agricultural chemicals has seen the Federal German Office for Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) ban a wide range of insecticides including at least one being sold in Australia by Bayer. more

How will politicians handle the cost of climate change?

Saturday, 17 May 2008

The difficulties politicians will have doing anything about the costs of dealing with the curtaiment of greenhouse gas emissions was demonstrated clearly when Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson chose to make a five cents a litre reduction in petrol excise the key feature of his version of the budget. more

First on the list

Thursday, 15 May 2008 - Longevity in the lobbying business is clearly no impediment to speed. Stephen Carney set up his shingle on 1 st February 1979 and has darted around the corridors of power for four years of Malcolm Fraser, 13 years of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, 12 with John Howard and how the first six months of Kevin Rudd.

First on the list

And now he is the first (and sofar the only) member of his trade to register under the rules of the Lobbyist Register and Code of Conduct announced on Tuesday by Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner. more

Judging the budget

Thursday, 15 May 2008 - This year we will not need an opinion pollster to tell us what people think of the budget and the performance so far of a new government. The Gippsland by-election on 28 June will give us a real, live measure and Labor must be approaching it with some confidence. more

Plenty of working families

Wednesday, 14 May 2008 - One thing Federal Parliament was not short of yesterday was references to working families. more

Earning friends at last

Wednesday, 14 May 2008 - Environment Minister Peter Garrett has at last earned some friends among environmentalists in Tasmania. more

A case of self censorship

Monday, 12 May 2008 - The Victorian political writer for the Melbourne Age, Paul Austin, has had a big morning with coverage of the sacking of the Liberal Party bloggers who were campaigning against State Leader Ted Baillieu while working within the campaign unit at State Party headquarters. In two separate stories Austin details what Mr Baillieu calls the " treachery " of the sacked officers and gives extensive examples of the " vitriol " about Liberal Party people that was posted on a blog and distributed via email. There is no public access to the website itself but some extracts from it are available here. There is, however, one startling omission from this extensive coverage in The Age and that is the commentary made on "He who stands for nothing" about Austin himself. more

A sensible step back

Monday, 12 May 2008 - A report at the weekend that the Rudd minders have taken a sensible step back from their belligerent attitude to the press. Cameramen on Friday were allowed to cover the great man being interviewed in a radio studio.

A weak excuse

Friday, 9 May 2008 - The minders around Kevin Rudd excelled again yesterday with their bully boy treatment of the press gathered out the front of the new Fairfax headquarters which the PM was opening. more

Nostalgia rears its silly head

Thursday, 8 May 2008 - Throwing off the mistakes of the past is never easy; just look at the Liberal Party and its attitude to industrial relations. There is not the slightest doubt that the Work Choices laws of John Howard were a principal reason for the Coalition's defeat last year. Campaigning to restore Work Choices would guarantee defeat next time. Yet Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson could not help himself the moment a journalist gave him a peg to hang a comment on to suggest that John Howard was right all along – Work Choice legislation was good and abolishing it was bad. The man is a light weight and Kevin Rudd's honeymoon will continue forever if he is not replaced.

Market Moves strongly to Obama

Wednesday, 7 May 2008 - The verdict of the voters of North Carolina and Indiana is in and the market has interpreted Barack Obama to be the clear winner overall. He is now rated an 82% chance on Betfair to finally gain the Democratic Party nomination and at 86% on Intrade. I have pocketed my Indiana gains and quit my position supporting Clinton to finally get there. The plea for financial support in Hillary's “victory” speech had the look of desperation about it to me and the black vote support for Obama today was so strong that for the Democrats to deny him the party's nomination would potentially lead considerable numbers staying away from the polls altogether if their man is not on the ballot against Republican John McCain.

Market Gets Mayor Right

Monday, 5 May 2008 - The opinion polls were equivocal right up to the end but the market certainly predicted that the British Conservatives would end up winning the contest for Lord Mayor of London . On the eve of polling the probabilities were the Conservative's Boris Johnson 85.8%, Labour's Ken Livingstone 13.8% and all the others 0.4%.

In the United States the market based Election Indicator is pointing towards Hillary Clinton winning this week's Indiana Primary with Barack Obama to be successful in North Carolina . I'm taking the short price about Clinton in Indiana and am still happy enough that I've backed her to finally be the Democratic Party candidate for the presidency. more

People's Daily Goes Tabloid

Friday, 2 May 2008 - Good to see that western tabloid newspaper values have taken over the English language site of the People's Daily. Normally the site is a very staid affair with the most read list headed by such stories as: World's longest sea bridge to open in east China . But for just a little while this morning a story featuring this picture found its way to the top:

The contestants for the upcoming Miss Philippines Earth 2008 pageant, it was recorded by the Chinese Government Xinhua newsagency, hold signs encouraging motorists to cut emissions as they are presented to the media at a hotel in Manila April 29, 2008. Even though it is hard to get more serious than that environmentally correct message, the pageant did not stay on the list for long. Within hours that bridge had claimed top position. more

US growth surprise

Thursday, 1 May 2008 - A little optimism about the course of the world economy has returned after the release of figures showing that growth has not stopped completely in the United States.

The prediction market at Intrade now puts the chances of a US recession this year at 34% after being rated over a 70% probability earlier this month. more

The real reason to support Hillary

Wednesday, 30 April 2008 - Presumably the Democratic Party chose the system of super delegates for exactly the kind of circumstance that now confronts it. The national popular vote as measured in the primaries and caucuses might be supporting Barack Obama but the evidence is mounting that Hillary Clinton is more likely to win the Presidency in a contest with the Republican Senator John McCain. This is the kind of information that those super delegates will surely take into account:

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Sniffing the breeze in WA

Wednesday, 30 April 2008 - Things are hardly any better for the Coalition parties in West Australia where the bra snapping Liberal Party Leader Troy Buswell has managed a tear or two while fessing up to being a seat sniffer. This unique political practice is a radio talk show host's delight and will make it difficult for voters to take Mr Buswell seriously when the State election comes. more

Australia 's share of the Afghanistan burden

Tuesday, 29 April 2008 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, the would-be international leader, was lecturing the world again yesterday about the need for other nations to take an increased share of the burden of fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan . At a press conference where he expressed his condolences to the family of Lance Corporal Jason Marks, who was killed during engagement with the Taliban the previous night, Mr Rudd said “the key thing is to make sure that other parties engage in effective burden sharing, and furthermore, that there is an effective civilian correlation to the military effort.” It was a continuation of a theme that was central to the recent overseas jaunt which saw him attend a meeting of NATO ministers in Bucharest to suggest that others should send more troops to the region where Lance Corporal Marks was killed. There has not yet been any rush by those nations he pointed the finger at to do so and the table below perhaps shows why. A look at the deaths in Afghanistan per million of a countries population show that Australia comes well down the index of suffering even after this week's fifth death. more

The best and the brightest – 13 of 14 missed out

Thursday, 24 April 2008 - Only one of the winners of the nation's most prestigious award for academic research was invited to the Prime Ministerial talkfest. If you wanted evidence that there was something peculiar about the criteria used to decide those most likely to come up with the big ideas to transform our nation then surely this is it. more

Making Malcolm look a little silly

Wednesday, 23 April 2008 - One casualty of this morning's inflation figures is the credibility of Opposition Shadow Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull who has been pretending for months now that Treasurer Wayne Swan has been overstating the extent of the inflationary problem. more

A consequence of prohibition

Friday, 18 April 2008 - As the 2020 delegates gather in Canberra to consider, among other things, raising the drinking age as a means of stopping binge drinking, there's a little article in the edition of The Economist on the web this morning that perhaps they should glance at. The story tells how the Reagan administration in 1984, spurred on by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), ordered states to raise their drinking age back to 21 or lose 10% of their federal highway funds. As the magazine puts it, "the states buckled under this fiscal blackmail but—surprise!—under-age drinking did not disappear. In some ways, the problem got worse." more

The problem to come with climate change

Thursday, 17 April 2008 - All the nonsense being talked by the Federal Government about its efforts to keep down petrol prices is a perfect illustration of the problem to come when it stops talking about the need to curb carbon dioxide emissions and starts doing something about it. Labor keeps telling us that reducing emissions is essential and the best way of achieving that is by increasing the price of things like petrol that causes them. So why all this effort to reduce the petrol price? Logic suggests the Government should be happy that oil companies in reacting to higher crude oil prices are doing the job for it. more

Busy week for the GG's secretary

Wednesday, 16 April 2008 - The appointment of the new Governor General has not only been an occasion for journalists generally to praise the appointment of Quentin Bryce but also for some of them to take a cheap snipe or two at the way the incumbent Major General Michael Jeffery has performed the role and His Excellency is clearly not too happy about the criticism. His official secretary, Malcolm Hazell, has been active at the word processor sending letters to the editor defending the General's record as the Australian head of state and whether that is a wise thing to do or not it t least raises the question of what the role of a GG actually should be. more

Not reading The West Australian

Tuesday, 15 April 2008 - The last thing Australian banks need right now is for house prices to slump as they are in the United States and Britain so the ANZ Bank economist Alex Joiner can be forgiven for playing down the likelihood of that happening. more

Let the paying of the bribes begin

Tuesday, 15 April 2008 - When politicians wander around the country on election campaigns they like to have some goodies they can hand out to the voters to show what influential and nice people they are. This largesse at taxpayers' is dressed up with a grand title designed to make the little bribes a little more respectable and hence the Safer Suburbs Plan of the Labor Party. more

Paying the bankers

Tuesday, 15 April 2008 - The Chairman of the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority John Laker will not have been surprised that the international body of regulators like himself, the Financial Stability Forum, has decided that the way bankers are paid has contributed to some of the current bout of problems in the international financial system. more

A trustworthy Pom

Monday, 14 April 2008 - There's one thing we do know about Sir Peter Gershon, the adviser called in by Australian Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner to advise him on management of government information and communication technology (ICT). He is a man politicians have found they can rely on. more

The PMs Taiwanese friends

Thursday, 10 April 2008 - An acquaintance who has had a thing or two to do with China over the years tells me that Kevin Rudd the China consultant back in the 1990s had closer ties with gentlemen from Taiwan than he did with anyone from Beijing. Just thought I should throw that in to feed a little something to the conspiracy theorists! more

Lack of infrastructure may be helping

Thursday, 10 April 2008 - In all the discussion about the need for a greater investment in Australian infrastructure I am yet to see an analysis of what would happen to prices of things like coal and iron ore if the capacity of the nation's railways and ports had been increased to handle all of the current international demand. Presumably if we were shipping out all the tonnages that customers would like and which miners could dig up then the prices obtained would be considerably less. I am sure it will not be long before the Labor Government gives us another committee of enquiry to answer such a basic question. more

On the road again

Tuesday, 8 April 2008 - We left our wandering Liberal Leader last week having an “absolutely fabulous” first day of his Listening Tour of Australia on the Gold Coast. Since then his adventure has taken him to Brisbane where Brendan really learned about life and actually went to a petrol station where “one lady I gave a hand to get some petrol into her car, who put $30 in, was saying ‘gee, I really hope petrol comes down soon. I've got to buy groceries; we've got other commitments with the house and interest rates and so on' ”. Fancy that! Real people actually pay for things – which he saw when he helped bag people's groceries at a Woolies and learned that people are “not too happy about the idea of some sort of tax on plastic bags.” more

No Coalition polling joy

Tuesday, 8 April 2008 - The bad news just keeps coming for the Coalition of Liberal and National Parties. As if the Newspoll on Federal voting intentions out this morning in The Australian was not bad enough, the latest Newspoll state figures show that only in New South Wales is the Coalition even at 50:50 with Labor. Everywhere else the pollster is pointing to a continuation of the Labor monopoly on power. more

$US8 million reasons

Friday, 4 April 2008 - The consensus of opinion seems to be that Hillary Clinton's rally following the publicity given to Barack Obama's church going friends has abated. On the Owl's election indicator Obama is now rated an 83% chance of being the Democratic Party candidate and most commentators are asking why Mrs Clinton does not retire from the race. Campaign adviser turned media analyst Dick Morris reckons he knows the answer to that question. MORE

A market not a tax

Friday, 4 April 2008 - A fascinating study by the International Monetary Fund on the economic costs of global warming has just been published and it actually comes close to explaining why it is that we are about to have an elaborate market for carbon emissions rather than a tax that would achieve the same purpose of reducing emissions. The chief reason, says the IMF in its report “ Climate Change and the Global Economy ” is that taxes “may be politically difficult to implement.” This despite the fact that there are many reasons why taxes would work better. MORE

On the road with grey power

Wednesday, 2 April 2008 - Wittier writers than me over the years have written spoof diaries purporting to tell the story of politicians and/or their spouses but the Australian Liberal Leader Brendan Nelson is making sure that no one sends him up in such a satirical way. Dr Nelson is doing the job on himself and publishing on the Liberal Party website a daily account of his fravels around Australia.

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Housing horror stories will spread

Tuesday, 1 April 2008 - Last night it was Four Corners that highlighted the plight of people struggling with their housing mortgages. Soon it will be the turn of programs that ordinary people watch and then the political pain will really begin. more

Defence chiefs stop the killing

Tuesday, 1 April 2008 - Mark one up for the animal rights movement. The on again, off again, on again culling of the grey kangaroos on Defence Department land in Canberra is off again. The cease fire was announced on the departmental website just as contractors were preparing to load the deadly sodium pentobarbital into their poison darts. more

Populism reaches new absurdity

Tuesday, 1 April 2008 - The populism of this Labor Government has no bounds. While pretending to be fiscally responsible it is now about to waste millions on an inquiry that can prove nothing. more

He would say that wouldn't he?

Friday, 28 March 2008 - The Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens was remarkably sanguine about the Australian financial system when he addressed Smart Capital 2008: The Euromoney Australian Financial Markets Innovation Congress in Sydney. more

The too hard basket is a wonderful thing

Thursday, 27 March 2008 - Much was made in the run-up to COAG of plans to curb binge drinking and do something about the havoc wreaked on gambling addicts by poker machines but the words proved easier to utter than agreeing on deeds. The official conference communiqué shows that both matters have been transferred to the too hard basket. more

Do as I say not as we do

Wednesday, 26 March 2008 - Kevin Rudd is making a reputation for himself as a hard driving man who demands public servants begin work early and are ready to be called at home late as he establishes himself as a can-do Prime Minister. Yet, somewhat surprisingly, he is tolerating a very sloppy standard of service from his own personal office staff. more

The racial issue

Thursday, 20 March 2008 - An interesting contrast between the New York Times and the Washington Post on the one hand and Fox News and the New York Post on the other in the way they treated the coverage of Barack Obama's speech about race on 19 March. It makes the Rupert Murdoch meeting with Bill Clinton I wrote about yesterday look interesting indeed. more

This is the guilty man

Thursday, 20 March 2008 - The man most responsible for this tiresome repetition of working families is the American political consultant Vic Fingerhut who introduced the words into election campaigning in his home country and abroad.

He should not be allowed to escape with anonymity!

Bring out a booklet

Friday, 14 March 2008 I am sure they are feeling better over at ASIC because they have finally published a little booklet “Protecting Wealth in the Family Home” setting out the kind of rorts that mortgage brokers get up to when desperate Australians go searching for new finance when they find their house is about to be taken away.

Rorts like the borrowers involved in detailed case studies by ASIC who lost an average of 27% of their existing equity at a minimum cost of $20,120 within 12 months of refinancing. The booklet will enable the watch dog to say “we tried” as the housing crisis gets worse and the repossessions more frequent. more

Getting good at this

Wednesday, 12 March 2008 - One step forward and two steps back. The Labor Government is getting good at this business of retreating from tough decisions. Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has put on hold the passage of legislation to get the horse industry to pay its share of dealing with emergency disease outbreaks in the same way as cattle, sheep, pig, poultry and other major animal industries. more

Find another Peter Rae

Wednesday, 12 March 2008 - Now is probably not the right time for an inquiry into the excesses of the financial system that are daily being exposed. The circumstances are too fragile for that. Full knowledge of the madness of financial engineering and the risky behaviour of the nation's banks could well just increase the panic. But the day will come soon enough when Australia will need to reform the system to make sure that the same mistakes are not made again. more

Rod on the spot

Monday, 10 March 2008 - The campaign against the use of plastic bags relies heavily on stories of damage to marine animals, which inadvertently gobble them up, to gain public sympathy.

The ABC news website at the weekend illustrated the problem with a picture of a turtle with a large fragment of a blue plastic bag hanging out of its mouth that was “supplied” by a Rod Prendergast. more

Ticket clippers get clipped

Monday, 10 March 2008 - There is a rough justice in the way the world's ticket clippers are getting their comeuppance at the moment on world financial markets but unfortunately, in the end, it's invariably the rich wot gets the gravy, and it's the poor wot gets the blame. more

Give 'em a Serve Julia

Tuesday, 4 March 2008 - If there is one area of administration where state governments have clearly been in charge for over a century it is primary and secondary education so it would have been quite appropriate for Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, wearing her Education Minister's hat, to play just a little of the blame game with her State Labor colleagues about the latest official figures showing that school retention rates dropped in 2007 for the second year in a row. more

The anti-drink campaign continues

Wednesday, 27 February 2008 - “ Is this the last shout for pubs?” the Courier Mail asks this morning as the anti-drink campaign continues to gather pace with Tim Costello in the vanguard as one of Kevin “I'm really a wowser not a binge drinker” Rudd's hand picked 2020 leaders. more

The Professor should be pleased

Wednesday, 27 February 2008 - I don't know whether Milton Lewis is still a senior research fellow in Public Health at the University of Sydney but if he is then Prof Simon Chapman should call in on his academic neighbour for a briefing on binge drinking. more

Drink Less but Worry More

Monday, 25 February 2008 - The cue from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd that we should be concerned about the evils of drink is being taken up by tabloids with alacrity with the ABC joining in this morning with signs of alacrity. more

Planning for no climate change agreement

Friday, 22 February 2008 - Somewhere in a public service basement I hope there is some diligent official working on a plan for how Australia can best cope with global warming if the world community does not come up with an agreement to make the dramatic cuts in carbon emissions that Professor Ross Garnault reported yesterday are necessary. It is all well and good to work out how this country can contribute to a global policy and the adjustments that will be necessary if we do so but an important part of the “if” is what other countries do. more

No trade unionists today

Friday, 22 February 2008 - No maiden speeches by Labor members with a trade union background today but the comment "dull but worthy" suggested to me yesterday by a gentle critic provides an accurate summary of the contribution by Shayne Neumann , Labor, Blair. more

Thanks to Dean

Thursday, 21 February 2008 - Labor Leader Kevin Rudd might have forced Victorian Electrical Trades Union Secretary Dean Mighell out of the Labor Party but the Party's new member for Deakin, Mike Symon , is grateful enough to the former boss he worked for as a union official to put him at the top of the thank-you list in his maiden speech. more

Rating the maiden speeches

Friday, February 15, 2008 - William Wilberforce is making something of a comeback. For the second day in a row the old abolitionist Christian was nominated as the favourite of a Liberal MP delivering a  maiden speech. more

One for the List of Availability Entrepreneurs

Thursday, January 03, 2008 - I drew attention earlier this week to a New York Times report on what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels. At the time I had not expected that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology would so quickly join the entrepreneurial ranks but clearly it has. Today the Bureau released its Annual Australian Climate Statement 2007 which, with obvious relish, takes the egg beater to show what happened to average temperatures during the year. more

A Thin Edge of the Wedge

Monday, December 31, 2007 - I am a thin edge of the wedge man. I am wary of every intrusion of government in to my life. A little extension of power, no matter how well-meaning, inevitably leads to more of the same. The role of government tends to just keeps on expanding and was surely the origins of that saying about give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

A few lines in a story in the Murdoch tabloids this morning thus troubled me more than a little. more

Time for One Last “Me Too”

Sunday, December 16, 2007 - The reputations of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Peter Garrett are facing an environmental crisis. No, it is nothing to do with global warming and the two years of intriguing international negotiations to come. The good reputation of this nation's leaders depends on them continuing to adopt the policies of the departed John Howard one more time. Providing funding of $200,000 in 2007/08 to the Australian Orangutan Project (AOP) to continue the valuable work of the orangutan protection units as promised by Mr Howard will determine whether Messrs Rudd and Garrett are decent men or heartless cads.

Take a look at that photo. What a thing of beauty.

Surely Greg Terrill, the assistant secretary of the Heritage Strategy Branch in Mr Garrett's department, was broken hearted at having to send an email to an 11 year old Sydney boy with cerebral palsy taking away what Mr Howard had promised. more

The PM Shows he has Been a Bureaucrat

Thursday, November 29, 2007 - Kevin Rudd shows with the structure of his new government that he has a good understanding of how bureaucrats think and work and has avoided the temptation of pulling departments apart and reassembling them in new ways. more

Stand By for Moderate Common Sense

Monday, November 26, 2007 - I have the impression with Kevin Rudd that he actually is what he seems to be: an intelligent and thinking analyst of problems who will try and find sensible solutions. Those in the Labor Party who are hoping that Peter Garrett's flippant remark about abandoning the cautious promises after victory turns out to be true are likely to be disappointed. This Prime Minister is unlikely to be a great risk taker. more

To bomb or not to bomb?

Tuesday, 2 July2008 - Those players of the market on international events must be reading The Australian's Paul Kelly or, more likely, listening to the same people he met in Washington during the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue before writing his column this morning previewed on page one as Will Bush Bomb Iran? “Every sign is that Bush will shun the option of a military strike against Iran in the twilight of his term,” writes Kelly. more

The difficult task of damage control

Tuesday, 1 July 2008 - If the Australian papers have not depressed you enough with economic news this morning then give yourself a real fright by hopping on to the website of the Bank for International Settlements. This august body of advisers to the central bankers of the world has just released its annual report and heads its conclusion “the difficult task of damage control.” more

The meaning of Gippsland

Monday, 30 June 2008 - Back in 1983 the new Hawke team also enjoyed a lengthy opinion poll honeymoon but there were swings against it in five of the six polls. As the biggest of those swings was 5.0% to the Coalition we can say that there is nothing in the Gippsland result for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to be happy about. more

Real girls eat meat

Monday, 30 June 2008 - First fur wearers, now meat eaters. The animal liberation movement marches on with its campaigns targeting the rich and famous.

Latest celebrity to incur the wrath of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is Jessica Simpson who dared to wear a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Real Girls Eat Meat". more

Limiting the conversation

Friday, 27 June 2008 - With the list of clients of the lobbying firm Government Relations Australia Advisory Pty Ltd (GRA) now on the Australian Government Lobbyists Register , it is clear that David Epstein, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's chief of staff, and his wife Sandra Eccles, who is GRA's Canberra manager, will not be able to talk much about politics at all if conflicts of interest are to be avoided. This client list covers a very diverse range of subject matter between them. more

Taking their harpoon home

Thursday, 26 June 2008 - Don't make promises that you can't keep is not a bad rule for politicians as Peter Garrett, Kevin Rudd and the Sydney Daily Telegraph are about to find out. Before the last election Labor in Opposition thought promising to push hard to stop the Japanese whaling in southern waters was a vote winning thing to do. Now in Government, but having raised the expectations of whale lovers throughout the land, Labor is finding that being anti-whaling is not so easy. more

Not easy being green

Thursday, 26 June 2008 -It is not just whaling that is teaching a new government that it is not easy being green; petrol is proving to be a far more difficult issue. more

No progress in Seoul

Wednesday, 25 June 2008 - That the passage to an international agreement on climate change will be a long one was evident again on Monday when the representatives to the U.S.-led Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change in South Korea could not reach agreement on a target to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2050. more

And difficulties at home too

Wednesday, 25 June 2008 - The Coalition Liberal and National Parties clearly missed out during last year's election campaign on a potentially vote winning scare campaign. The evidence of recent weeks suggests that then Prime Minister John Howard could have had considerable success claiming that Labor was the party of high petrol prices. Instead, influenced by his Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull who wanted to appear green enough to appeal to the inner city trendies in his own electorate, the Government chose to go along with Labor's claim that reducing greenhouse gas emissions by all possible means was necessary. more

No joy for Jacob

Wednesday, 4 June 2008 - The Australian "economy could be heading towards its first quarterly contraction since 2000” wrote Jacob Saulwick in the Sydney Morning Herald on 30 May. Alas the release of the national accounts this morning shows it was not to be withy growth recorded of 0.6 per cent. Which gives these economists the SMH quoted a cross as well: Helen Kelans, of JP Morgan predicted “stalling of investments means economic growth could be negative for the first quarter of this year, the first time growth had been in the red since the last three months of 2000”; Paul Brennan, of Citigroup went for 0.1 per cent for the quarter with Stephen Roberts of Lehmann Bros going for 0.2 per cent.

See the Owl's predictions page.

Little joy in this opinion poll

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 - If the Coalition is kidding itself that there is good news in this morning's Newspoll then it will clearly catch at any straw. The Rudd Team's honeymoon clearly continues with the two party preferred vote still at 57% - 14 percentage points higher than that of the Coalition. more

Turnbull confirms the Howard-Costello Government's cowardice

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 - Shadow Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull confirmed in his response to the Treasurer's parliamentary statement on financial stability that the last government gambled considerably on no Australian deposit taking institution – bank, building society or credit union – getting in to trouble like the British Northern Rock bank as a result of the financial instability caused by the sub prime crisis in the United States. more

My goodness, a bipartisan appointment!

Tuesday, 3 June 2008 - The fascination of the Labor Government for outside policy advice continues with Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister Tony Burke getting in to the act with "an expert panel" to examine the social impact of drought on farm families and rural communities, as part of its national review of drought policy. There is one aspect of the appointments worthy of at least a little praise. Minister Burke has abandoned the churlish policy of his Coalition predecessor of keeping all the jobs for his own team by putting the former Liberal Member for the South Australian electorate of Grey, Barry Wakelin, on his panel along with former Labor Senator Sue West.

A bit like Lewis Carroll

Friday, 30 May 2008 - He's a bit like Lewis Carroll's queen is our Prime Minister. Not quite “ sentence first, verdict afterwards”, but certainly decide the guilty then have the federal police investigate. The leaking of details of departmental opposition to the Fuel Watch scheme was not done by a Minister. No sirree. It was a public servant wot did it and plod will hunt the villain down. And when it comes to punishment make it collective. Give all of those Canberra pen pushers a lashing. more

Conflicts of interest and credit rating agencies.

Thursday, 29 May 2008 - Senator Nick Sherry, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, might be a junior minister in the formal scheme of things but the upheaval in the world financial community has given a new importance to the corporate law part of his ministerial title. When the financial markets of the world finally settle there are bound to be changes in regulations to ensure that there is not a repeat of the sub-prime crisis so the investigation into the role of credit rating agencies Senator Sherry announced last week is highly appropriate. more

Don't be yellow Kevvie. Be green

Wednesday, 28 May 2008 - Politicians in many parts of the world, not just those in Australia, are getting a taste at the moment of just how difficult it will be to move voters from being concerned about global warming to actually doing something about it. more

The gravy train keeps rolling

Tuesday, 27 May 2008 - If basic law and order is not to be a state government responsibility, then what is? A rather basic question you might think but it ignores that wonderful thing called the vote. Federal politicians are happy for their state colleagues to get the anger of the people who do not feel safe but they also love being good fellows at election time. Hence the Rudd Government's Safer Suburbs Plan which allows lots of Labor MPs to make lots of little grants to people they are trying to woo. more

How to keep a promise

Tuesday, 27 May 2008 - Oh what a wonderful web, as they say. The Labor weavers have come up with a pain free way of honouring an election promise to put 500 more federal police on duty over five years. There will be, explained Commissioner Bill Keelty, before the Senate Estimates committee yesterday, 30 new recruits this year, 30 next year, 40 the year after – which takes us to the next planned election with 100 extra in total – and then, hey presto, as if by magic there will be 200 new police in each of years four and five. What a truly beautiful work of deception but there will be no point, I guess, in calling in the fraud squad.

The sleaze of politics

Monday, 26 May 2008 - A big weekend for sleaze in politics. more

A senior qualification

Monday, 26 May 2008 - Labor's Wayne Swan has added “seniors” to the list of qualifications that now accompany “working families.” more

A slight change of emphasis

Friday, 23 May 2008 - I notice a slight change of emphasis in the way that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd uses what is fast becoming that rather hackneyed phrase “working families.” We are now quite often getting a comma and a qualification after its use as in this example from a speech yesterday: “But we do want to build a strong economy that delivers for working families, working Australians , and those that are doing it tough – In other words, an economy that extends opportunity to all Australians.” more

A graceless apology

Friday, 23 May 2008 - There was a time when people used to speak about officers and gentlemen in the same breath but in Australia that appears to no longer be the case. An award for offering a graceless apology to a woman rightly aggrieved by a government must surely go to the Australian Defence Department for its belated statement last night half heartedly admitting it did wrong by putting the name of an entertainer in a note to the Defence Minister about allegations of "inappropriate behaviour during a Forces Entertainment Tour to Afghanistan." more

A sure sign about petrol

Thursday, 22 May 2008 - It is a sure sign that the public is interested in a subject when the Sydney Tele devotes a special section to the subject so Brendan Nelson might well be on the right trck with his promised reduction of 5 cents a litre in the excise duty on petrol. more

Tony gets an earn?

Wednesday, 21 May 2008 - Tony Abbott made no secret of the pains of adjusting to the loss of a minister's income which perhaps explains his somewhat plaintive plea on a blog he contributed yesterday on the site of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. more

A couple of sporting notes

Tuesday, 20 May 2008 - Good to see competition law finding a place in world swimming. more

Diamonds are forever

Tuesday, 20 May 2008 - He's a loyal fellow that Joe Hockey. In return for his seat in the prime camera position on the right hand side of his leader in the House of Representatives, Shrek is loyally backing Brendan Nelson. more

Thoroughbred industry should think about mulesing

Monday, 19 May 2008 - The leaders in the Australian thoroughbred industry should perhaps have a chat with the wool industry chiefs who every day seem to have to fight a new battle with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. This very clever animal rights group, which is having considerable success in persuading textile manufacturers around the world that the mulesing of sheep is cruel, is now turning its attention to what it sees as the cruelty of horse racing. more

Misusing by not using

Monday, 19 May 2008 - Giving members of parliament the right to say what they will within the confines of their parliamentary chambers, without fear of legal retribution, is an important component of our democratic system. This parliamentary privilege developed for just the kind of case which Greens Leader Bob Brown recently has spoken of – where a lobbyist offered him a bribe to vote in a particular fashion. more

Hop in to the wine cask

Friday, 16 May 2008 - If politicians were fair dinkum about believing that the price mechanism is the best way to reduce alcohol consumption they would not be fiddling around with what rate of excise should be applied to sweet and fizzy alco pops – they would be hopping right in and changing the way that wine is taxed. more

A somber Prime Minister

Friday, 16 May 2008 - Treasurer Wayne Swan tried to have his poker face on when Brendan Nelson was giving his budget speech last night but could not contain traces of an occasional smirk. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, by contrast, remained dead pan and serious throughout as well he might have. more

Problems with the net

Thursday, 15 May 2008 - Liberal politicians seem to be having more than their fair share of troubles with the internet. In Victoria Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu has been dealing with dissident Liberal Party staffers posting critical comments about him on a blog. Now the West Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell finds himself fending off an allegation which appeared on a blog back in January that he played football with a cuddly quokka. This internet scuttlebutt is getting as ridiculous as the weekly women's magazines!

A lot about a little

Wednesday, 14 May 2008 - Rarely in the course of Australian journalism has so much been written about so little. If Wayne Swan's budget speech was treated on its news merit there would barely be a line about it in this morning's paper. The only real items not previewed in advance were the predictions about what the end result of all the money raising and money spending will be in 13 months time at the end of June 2009. My vote for the best coverage goes to the Northern Territory News who splashed with the story of the driver who strapped in his beer with a seat belt rather than his five year old passenger.

Not Reading about Burma

Saturday, 10 May 2008 - That there is often a dichotomy between what editors think is important news and what their readers are interested in was shown again on Saturday morning when I surveyed major international internet news sites. In nine English language sites, all of them of a serious kind which publish a list of their most read stories, only at the UK 's The Independent did the tragedy in Burma rate on top as the most read.

Yet three of the newspaper web sites, including that of The Independent, had Burma as the lead story with another three featuring it second so we cannot blame the editors for the apparent lack of interest in the worst natural disaster so far this year. more

Swiss Government Averts Football Crisis

Friday, 9 May 2008 - The Swiss Government has changed import regulations to avert a crisis threatening the Euro 2008 Soccer tournament. Competition organisers feared the anger of visiting fans would be aroused by a shortage of chips at venues. The Swiss potato industry association, Swisspatat, had been warning there could be a fry shortage, as demand for potatoes before the soccer tournament had risen sharply. The association had asked the government to ease import restrictions. A spokesman for the country's Department of Agriculture told Swiss radio station RadioDRS this week that the government would allow an extra 5,000 tons of potatoes to be imported. more

The failed financial system

Wednesday, 7 May 2008 - Treasurer Wayne Swan is naturally enough preoccupied with his first budget for it is the short term course of the Australian economy that will determine his immediate political career but we should hope he is soon able to move on from concerns about inflation and the desirable level of government spending to start thinking about developing a better financial system than the one he inherited. more

Sacrificing the heart and soul, hands and feet

Monday, 5 May 2008 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to show himself a good party man at the NSW State Labor Conference at the weekend as he extensively quoted Ben Chifley including his reminder that “the Labour movement can only be great by the united efforts of all those who believe in it”. A very fine sentiment but a very hypocritical one from a Federal Labor Leader who until he spoke had been supporting a NSW Labor Premier determined to take decisions designed to split his party asunder. more

Bully boy ways (1)

Friday, 2 May 2008 - Labor Party staffers are gaining quite a reputation for their bully boy ways with John Olenich, who is on the staff of Federal Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong, the latest to engage in the game of bludgeoning journalists. more

Bully boy ways (2)

Friday, 2 May 2008 - Punishing the press is not just a Federal Labor phenomenon. They are pretty good at it over in Perth too. more

Rudd's retreat on privatization

Friday, 2 May 2008 - The way Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has used weasel words to try and escape any embarrassment from the humiliation NSW Premier Morris Iemma is facing at the hands of his Labor Party hardly inspires confidence about his ability to stick with difficult decisions. more

Minister for odds and sods

Thursday, 1 May 2008 - Special Minister of State Senator John Faulkner is fast becoming the Minister for Odds and Sods in the Rudd Government. more

That Troy Buswell is an awful snedger

Thursday, 1 May 2008 - I can thank the Irish for help in finding a word to describe the eccentric sniffing habits of Western Australian Liberal Party Leader Troy Buswell. Apparently in County Cork the practice of sniffing bicycle seats after women riders alighted was prevalent enough for the word snedger to be coined and make the urban dictionary of slang. more

Snedger's hard task

Thursday, 1 May 2008 - That the influence of a newspaper on voting behaviour is not a simple one is well illustrated in Western Australia where the Perth daily The West Australian has been running a vicious campaign against the Labor administration for years now yet the opinion polls show the Party still well ahead of its Coalition opponents. more

The sorry state of Liberals

Wednesday, 30 April 2008 - It would be hard to imagine how a State Government could be more laughed at by its people than that of Morris Iemma in New South Wales but the Newspoll published in The Australian this morning shows not only that Labor would win an election but its lead over the Liberal-National Coalition is actually higher now than it was three months ago. more

Once upon a time

Tuesday, 29 April 2008 - The upper echelons of the Commonwealth public service used to be the providers of policy advice to governments but rarely any more. The principal job these days of a mandarin is to provide secretarial services for someone else to come up with the bright ideas. more

A Rudd defeat looming

Monday, 28 April 2008 - The Liberal and National Parties might not be able to harm Federal Labor Leader Kevin Rudd but his own Party seems likely to do so this weekend. more

Beer, Smokes Up!

Tuesday, 29 April 2008 - They are a timid lot this Rudd Government. Here we had a chance for a return to a fair dinkum budget headline for the first time since the indexation of excise rates in the 1980s and they chickened out. Instead of waiting until budget night to slug the young drinkers and all of the smokers at the same time, Kevin Rudd decided to pretend he was not so much putting up a tax as moving to stop binge drinking. more

Winners and losers from tax changes

Tuesday, 22 April 2008 - It is axiomatic that if Australia really does get the “root and branch” changes to the tax system that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is promising, there will be losers as well as winners. And, such is the way of politics, those that lose from the process will be more likely to express their anger than those that gain will be to demonstrate their gratitude. more

A little diversion

Tuesday, 22 April 2008 - Holding a plebiscite on whether Australia should move to become a republic and the form of that republican structure if it should, would be a sound move for the Labor Government at the next federal election. more

Malcolm's full support

Tuesday, 22 April 2008 - No wonder, with figures like those above, to hear Malcolm Turnbull calling this morning for Brendan Nelson to be given “a fair go”. No Liberal in his right mind would want to take over when it is clearly not just the leader on the nose but the image of the whole party which is being rejected. more

Malcolm gets courageous

Monday, 21 April 2008 Liberal leadership aspirant Malcolm Turnbull must be confident he knows something that Treasurer Wayne Swan does not about the state of the world banking system and its potential impact on the Australian economy. more

A Governor General's Clothes

Thursday, 17 April 2008 - “I wonder how long it will take for people to start bagging Quentin Bryce's appearance,” wrote Catherine Deveny in the Melbourne Age this week . In a witty and entertaining piece with a serious point to it, Ms Deveny said society was very confused about what women should be. “A 1950s housewife, a corporate supermum, a neat size eight two weeks after giving birth, a wordless beauty, a devoted mother working part-time or a feisty ball-breaker in suspenders and stilettos.”

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel would understand that comment. She has been featuring in the world's press for wearing a low-cut dress to the opening of the Oslo Opera House. more

When politics meets sport

Wednesday, 16 April 2008 - When politics meet sport in the southernmost state the combination is irresistible. The plucky Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon, who looks very much like a Barry Hall sort of player when dealing with anti pulp mill demonstrators, is off to see Andrew Demetriou, the nation's real power broker, at AFL headquarters to try and get a team for Tasmania financed with the money of taxpayers. more

The declining internet news sites

Wednesday, 16 April 2008 - As the variety of news and opinion on the internet keeps growing it is probably inevitable that the early starters begin to lose ground to the newcomers but some of the major Australian media sites appear to be doing much worse than others. more

The power of Sky

Wednesday, 16 April 2008 - There's no doubt that Australians will learn more from watching and listening to Government Ministers answer questions at a community Cabinet meeting than they ever will from a telecast of question time in the House of Representatives. Last night Sky News showed again that it is on the way to becoming a competent and serious provider of news when it showed in full the meeting at Jamison High School in Penrith where there were serious attempts to answer questions from some in the audience of 500. more

What governments give … governments can take away

Monday, 14 April 2008 - I am surprised that some of my colleagues in the Crikey stable are getting all indignant about the decision of the Victorian Government not to pay compensation to Tattersalls and Tabcorp for not renewing their cosy oligopoly to cream money off poker machine players. The scandal here is not the taking away but the granting in the first place. more

Falling housing prices the coming problem

Monday, 14 April 2008 - It is not yet John Howard's barbecue stopper but the downward trend in housing prices is getting there. Over the weekend, and again this morning, there were reports of falling prices (see our Pick of the Political Coverage) and this will become Treasurer Wayne Swan's biggest problem over the next few months. more

A journey of harmony

Wednesday, 9 April 2008 - Chinese government officials are entitled to be a little quizzical about the reason Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has given for not being able to take part in the Canberra “journey of harmony” which is how the visit of the Olympic torch is officially described. more

Denmark 's schäferhund lover

Wednesday, 9 April 2008 -While Clover Moore is clearly a dog lover she has not yet gone to the lengths of kissing one of her four legged friends in public as Denmark 's Minister of Justice Lene Espersen did recently.

The power of an email reminder

Tuesday, 8 April 2008 -Goodness knows how these chain emails start but they can be a powerful weapon in political campaigning. This one I received from a friend yesterday has probably reminded millions of people by now of the kind of people President Clinton and her first man would be back in the White House.

Talking their own books

Monday, 7 April 2008 - It was amusing, to say the least, that the representative of one of those leveraged buy out groups was taken seriously by Glenn Milne in The Australian this morning as part of what is turning into quite a vicious attack on the Governor of the Reserve Bank Glenn Stevens. more

Why defend banks?

Monday, 7 April 2008 - If curbing inflation is one major task for a Reserve Bank Governor, then keeping public confidence in the banking system is another and more important one. Yet while the Governor can speak openly about the inflation fighting it is difficult to utter anything other than platitudes about the financial position of our banks for fear that frankness might provoke the kind of run seen on Northern Rock in Britain . more

Crime fighter has a conflict

Monday, 7 April 2008 - That intrepid crime fighter Peter McGauran will join Thoroughbred Breeders Australia as its chief executive with a nice little conflict of interest to deal with. more

With friends like these

Monday, 7 April 2008 - Those friends of Peter Costello truly are a disruptive lot. They spent years trying to get John Howard to quit so their man could have a go. That was unsettling enough. Now they are at it again, this time promoting the great spoiler as a rival to Brendan Nelson. more

Avoiding the register

Thurssday, 3 April 2008 - Legal and accounting firms – and, if Price Waterhouse Coopers is any guide, these days they often seem to be the same thing – are about to be given the opportunity by the Labor Government of a nice little earn. more

The lesson from Doha for climate change

Thurssday, 3 April 2008 - If there is one thing that economists tend to agree on it is that free trade is good and in every nation's interest yet the battle to bring down trade barriers is proving a long and arduous process. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was doing his bit in Brussels this week to persuade the European Community to reach agreement with the United States so the Doha round of talks on agricultural trade can continue. The matter is important to Australia 's primary producers so the effort was worth making however unlikely success might be. The exercise might also bring home to Mr Rudd the extreme difficulty of getting the countries of the world to agree on things even when they are in the overall interest of all of them. more

Limits to Cynical Spinning

Wednesday, 2 April 2008 - Surely there are some limits to political spinning, even in New South Wales ? The latest attempt by Premier Morris Iemma to divert attention from a crumbling transport system and decaying hospitals reaches new heights of cynicism. more

Rorts on the way up, rules on the way down

Tuesday, 1 April 2008 - The daily revelations of stock exchange manipulation are leading to calls for all kind of new rules and regulations but perhaps the only real requirement is to remind people every now and again that thin markets are more .likely to be distorted than big ones. It is now clear to me at least that many of the share prices that rocketed skywards during the boom were helped upwards by manipulators using borrowed money to create an illusion of demand. Now these rorters of the way up have met the short sellers on the way down they are crying foul and trying to get the rules changed to protect their ill gotten gains. more

Genetically modified support

Tuesday, 1 April 2008 - Advocates of genetically modified crops in Australia have received support from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) which claims their use would provide a benefit of $912 million in the Australian economy by 2018 relative to what would otherwise be the case. more

Swinging to Barack

Monday, 31 March 2008 - The contest for the Democratic Party presidential endorsement seems to be swinging back in favour of Barack Obama with the nationwide opinion polls now putting him as the choice of 46.2% of Democrat voters to 41.6% for Hillary Clinton. That gap of 4.6 percentage points is up from under 2 points a week ago. more

A final worthy contribution

Friday, 28 March 2008 - In one of those rare touches of bipartisan political good sense, the Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner has asked Democrat Senator Andrew Murray to play a role in reviewing budget transparency issues as part of the Labor Government's “Operation Sunlight reforms.” more

A proper man and a proper response

Thursday, 20 March 2008 - It was reassuring to learn yesterday of a political appointee who acted with propriety when the government changed last year. more

Same, same but different

Wednesday, 19 March 2008 - Tourists come across it when they step off a plane in south-east Asia ; Hustlers from hotels too poor to have their own brochure waving one from their more affluent competitors. Same, same but different, they cry. This morning it was Peter Beattie's turn. more

An agent of influence

Wednesday, 19 March 2008 - The security forces welcomed in the Hawke Labor Government back in 1983 with the claim that the Soviet Union was trying to recruit the former Federal Secretary of the Party, David Combe, as an agent of influence – not exactly a spy but a man who could help the Soviet cause without realizing he was doing so. more

A record number of working families

Tuesday, 18 March 2008 - They set a new record in the House of Representatives yesterday. There were 57 uses of “working families”. more

Twice a Maiden

Tuesday, 18 March 2008 - Ms Sharryn Jackson has made a comeback as the Labor member for Hasluck in the House of Representatives so really her speech on the Address in Reply yesterday was not a maiden speech. As she herself put it, “You can't be a maiden twice” but it is worthy of noting because it was so much better than the efforts of most of the 42 people in the parliamentary class of 2007. more

The harder they fall

Monday, 17 March 2008 - The British Government has nationalised a bank specialising in home loans. The United States Government has baulked at government ownership but provided the guarantees that allow the private sector to bale out an investment bank. Things are getting serious and it would be naïve to assume that Australia is somehow exempt from the excesses that resulted in the failure of Northern Rock and Bear Stearns. more

First hand experience

Thursday, 13 March 2008 - When the new Liberal member for Swan, Steve Irons , expressed regret that the Parliamentary apology given to Indigenous Australians “disregarded the good that can come from removing children from abusive situations”, he was speaking from experience. more

Danes with a sense of humour

Wednesday, 12 March 2008 - There is something amusing about those Danes. Here they are today complaining about the cruelty of a little bit of skin cutting on the bum of a sheep while at the same time campaigning for the right to kill whales after torturing them with harpoons. The world is a strange place but for the Australian wool industry this is no laughing matter. more

Editors like binge drinking

Tuesday, 11 March 2008 - Kevin Rudd has struck a chord with the nation's newspaper editors with his new anti binge drinking campaign .

They covered it with alacrity this morning. more

Some "what if" planning

Tuesday, 11 March 2008 - Hopefully the politicians full of zeal to do something about climate change are listening at the Outlook Conference run by Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) this week. more

Beating the retreat (2)

Monday, 10 March 2008 - The fuss over stories that the forthcoming Budget may remove some minor support payments to pensioners and carers is a perfect illustratiion of the difficulties governments always face when they take something away from people. more

An angry Joe

Friday, March 07, 2008 - Joe Hockey was once the warm and cuddly teddy bear representing a kind and caring part of the Liberal Party – the fellow who engaged in calm and jocular jousts on morning television with Kevin Rudd; the man John Howard turned to in a belated attempt to make Work Choices seem less threatening. That Joe Hockey has now departed and been replaced by a big loud mouthed bully of a politician who has got sucked in to thinking that ignorant boisterousness is the way to further his leadership ambitions. more

The day the mood will change

Wednesday, 5 March 2008 - The first really significant period for the Labor Government is not the first 100 days just gone but the time coming soon when working members of working families receive the next summary of their superannuation wealth. more

The Wise Aristotle

Tuesday, 4 March 2008 - I know one swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy. I know because Wendy Craik of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission reminded me so yesterday when she reported on the continuing dire state of her Basin. more

Eat a whale, save the planet

Tuesday, 4 March 2008 - Defence Department boffins will be scrambling for a copy of the latest edition of the Australian Law Reform Commission's journal Reform which ALRC President, Professor David Weisbrot AM, says is becoming a social and legal issue, as well as an important economic one - the treatment of animals. more

Enforcing the Law a Simple Solution

Monday, 3 March 2008 - The Tasmanian Labor Government might have expressed some reservations last week about the need to change laws to combat binge drinking but it will succumb this week to the increasing clamour to take action. The state Treasurer Michael Aird will this week introduce a Liquor Licensing Amendment Bill 2008 prompted, he says, by a recent review of the laws, as well as a growing concern over problems with binge drinking in Tasmania. more

The first 100 days

Friday, 29 February 2008 - Labor might have promised to stop blatant party political advertising being paid for with Government funds so I presume the glossy brochure First 100 Days will be funded from party coffers. more

The binge drinking debate

Thursday, 28 February 2008 - Prime Minister Kevin “I was only a binge drinker once” Rudd has given Tim Costello his support to making curbs on alcohol consumption part of the 2020 summit. more

A risky choice

Wednesday, 27 February 2008 - Labor leaders have had a mixed record over the years with the business leaders they most closely associate with. Paul Keating had his Warren Anderson connection, Bob Hawke his close relationship with Sir Peter Abeles. Brian Burke nurtured Alan Bond and Laurie Connell. John Bannon went down with Tim Marcus Clark and the SA State Bank. John Cain paid a price for believing in the wisdom of his State Bank and the fellows at its merchant banking arm Tricontinental. Now Kevin Rudd has hitched his fortunes to Rod Eddington. more

Further interesting appointments

Wednesday, 27 February 2008 - Hell hath no fury like the women's movement spurned. more

Thanks be to Robert

Tuesday, 26 February 2008 - Kevin Rudd proved back in November that just a little bit closer to the mid-point of public opinion than your opponent is where a successful political party positions itself. Thus he will not be at all concerned that Melbourne academic Robert Manne and some fellow “public intellectuals” are putting up ideas in a series of Dear Kevin letters. more

Forget the Sham - Follow the Congressional Practice

Monday, 25 February 2008 - The first sitting day of the new Friday sham Parliament was reported as expected – shown and written about as the joke that it was. The colleagues of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who talked him out of having a proper fifth sitting day on the weeks politicians come to the House of Representatives should be hanging their heads in shame. more

Wine companies would be fined but will juicy ones?

Monday, 25 February 2008 - I was conned again this morning when I went shopping at Woolies for breakfast and picked up a “rosie blue” labeled cranberry-blueberry juice. Silly me thought that would be a strong and interesting combination and it was only after tasting the insipid liquid that I realized I had paid my good money for 78% reconstituted apple juice. more

Governments suffer from rowdy scenes

Friday, 22 February 2008 - It might have been the Coalition members of the Opposition responsible for the rowdy scenes in the House of Representatives this morning but it is the Labor Government that will suffer most when the pictures are shown on the nightly news. more

A real Labor businessman!

Wednesday, 20 February 2008 - A man who has actually run his own small business gives a little variation to the new Labor members. Brett Raguse, Labor, Forde, was an apprentice compositor in the dying days of hot metal printing before part time study and a commerce degree led him to teaching and a company providing education and training programs in multimedia throughout Australia and South-East Asia. Not that differences in his background to most new Labor members should be overstated. more

Biting Malcolm back

Tuesday, 19 February 2008 - Mocking Treasurer Wayne Swan for not giving a definition of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment will surely be for Malcolm Turnbull one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. more

Rating the maiden speeches

Thursday, February 14, 2008 - The first speech of a new Member of the House of Representatives with a little bit of news in it is a rare thing but then very few new members come with a lengthy spell in a state parliament behind them. more

The wonderful hypocrisy of politics

Wednesday, February 13, 2008 - Labor's national leader Kevin Rudd and company spent many words condemning the scandal of the millions spent on government advertising before his last election. In Western Australia, Labor Treasurer Eric Ripper as chairman of the Cabinet sub-committee on communication, has "urgently'' asked the expenditure review committee, which he chairs, for $5.25 million for the first half of this year and a further $10.75 million until July next year. more

The Power of Tearful Eyes

Wednesday, January 09, 2008 - When you worked for Bob Hawke you soon realised that a choking voice and a tear or two was no disqualification to winning votes. There are some who think leaders have to be so macho they never show emotion but Hawkie proved them wrong time and again. Normal people occasionally show a little emotion and it is normal people who vote in elections. They don't expect an automaton as their leader and don't want one. more

Availability Entrepreneurs and Antarctic Ice

Tuesday, January 01, 2008 - Until I read the New York Times this morning I had not heard of availability entrepreneurs . John Tierney, that paper's always entertainingly readable op-ed columnist, used the expression in his New Year's prediction piece warning us we are in “for very bad weather.” In 2008, he predicted, our television will bring images after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. We will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what's in store unless we act quickly to cool the planet. more

The Normal Way is Down

Friday, December 28, 2007 - Perhaps it would have been nicer if we didn't know about it but Kevin Rudd serving meals at a Canberra homeless centre on Boxing Day was consistent with the views of a man whose Christianity appears real and deep felt. more

A Complacent AQIS

Wednesday, December 26, 2007 - The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported today that Chinese lawmakers are considering a law to ensure food safety and prevent food-born diseases amid increasing concern over food safety. The draft law on food safety, said Xinhua, was submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), or China 's top legislature, for the first reading on Wednesday.

The action by the Chinese Government follows a spate of recent incidents where food exported from China has been found to be contaminated. The latest of these, involving sea food was reported in The Owl newsletter on 20 December under the heading A Little DDT with the Christmas Prawn Cocktail. morer

A Little DDT with the Christmas Prawn Cocktail

Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - In Canada this month a Chinese sea food company was in strife after a cancer-causing antibiotic was detected in a shipment of frozen shrimp. That in itself was  not such a great surprise because there have been many questions recently in many parts of the world about the quality of Chinese products. What made the case of Zhanjiang Guolian Aquatic Products Corp different was that it alone among Chinese seafood exporters was exempted from automatic U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety inspections. more