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Keywords: Billionaires

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In defence of hope

    • John Ellison Davies
    • 02 August 2017
    7 Comments

    Why do we get out of bed in the morning? Out of habit certainly, but at some level we have to believe that in the day ahead we may make some small incremental progress toward our goals, whatever they may be. A small improvement in the garden. The flourish of a job well done. We must have hope that we will find some joy in the day, some satisfaction that brings a sense of well-being.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Political donations reform ignores insider politics big picture

    • John Warhurst
    • 20 June 2017
    5 Comments

    The revelations that several billionaires of Chinese origin have sought to influence Australian politics through large political donations have rekindled bipartisan concern to ban such donations. That it took investigative journalism by ABC and Fairfax media to generate such a rush to reform is a reflection on the Australian political class. While it is likely that reform legislation will be introduced and passed before the end of the year that will be only a very partial response to a bigger problem.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'Elitist' democracy not the answer to Trumpism

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 08 June 2016
    9 Comments

    Will Clinton defeat Trump? Perhaps - but the polls already show him doing far better than anyone expected. More importantly, an electoral loss might mean the end of Donald Trump but it won't destroy Trumpism. The constituency into which the Donald has tapped will almost certainly grow under the administration of a corporate Democrat like Clinton, even if it manifests in a different form. And what then? How much larger and heftier will the barriers against the popular will have to become?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Zen and the art of wealth amassment

    • Ellena Savage
    • 17 July 2015
    4 Comments

    There is a suburban myth about migrant families. The first generation toil, the second become professionals, and the third artists. Like all dynasties, the Rineharts are destined to one day represent the crusty relics of former glory. That's fine. I mean, why would the beneficiaries of other people's obsessive toils and struggle work, if they didn't have to?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    My personal climate change bind

    • Fatima Measham
    • 26 May 2015
    16 Comments

    Most people think that the effects of climate change as dire but far off. I don't have that comfort. My seafarer father plays a role in generating wealth for miners who then use it as a means to influence politicians - coal, industrial salt, iron ore. I am deeply aware that my government is committed to doing as little as possible to address climate change and its lack of a coherent, internationalist policy in Australia costs countries that are climate change-vulnerable, including where my family lives back in the Philippines.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election advice from ancient Rome

    • Dustin Halse
    • 12 August 2013
    11 Comments

    In 64 BC, the brilliant orator and lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero decided to run for the highest office in the Roman Republic. His younger brother Quintus, who possessed a penchant for the most outrageous acts of cruelty, penned a detailed memo outlining what his older brother needed to do to win the election. The current Australian federal election campaign would appear familiar to the Cicero brothers.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Inconvenient advice for a business-friendly prime minister

    • Michael Mullins
    • 08 July 2013
    4 Comments

    One of Kevin Rudd's key points of difference with Julia Gillard lies in his determination to project a business-friendly image for himself and the ALP. This may have something to do with his decision to dump former parliamentary secretary Andrew Leigh, who is Australia's leading inequality expert and clearly unsympathetic to the demands of big business on government.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Australia's pension fund perversion

    • David James
    • 03 October 2012
    7 Comments

    The demise of Gunns, Tasmania's biggest paper and pulp mill, has been greeted as a triumph of environmentalists over business. The saga encompasses much more than that. It poses some deep questions about ownership and accountability in Australia's financial system which are yet to be answered persuasively.

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  • CARTOON

    Abbott's big guns

    • Fiona Katauskas
    • 16 May 2012
    2 Comments

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tony Abbott's class war

    • Dean Ashenden
    • 15 May 2012
    19 Comments

    One way of conducting class warfare is to accuse your opponent of conducting class warfare, as Abbott did in his Budget reply speech. It is no coincidence that over the period when talking about class became the political equivalent of breaking wind, the actions of governments of both stripes have accelerated social inequality. 

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The truth about China the climate scapegoat

    • Sean McDonagh
    • 14 December 2011
    12 Comments

    Countries including the US, Russia and Japan refuse to sign any binding treaty to significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions unless China does the same. Their simplistic argument that China is now the number one emitter in the world overlooks important data.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    No clear villains in Facebook tragedy

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 28 October 2010

    Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly displeased with the film. The decay of his friendship with co-founder Eduardo Savarin during the creation of a site predicated on accumulating 'friends' is the film's greatest irony, and greatest tragedy. 

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