Keywords: Parliamentary Debate
-
MEDIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 11 January 2022
1 Comment
Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Cristy Clark
- 10 November 2021
9 Comments
Peter Dutton has recently argued that funds for defamation actions should be a ‘workplace entitlement’ for Members of Parliament (MPs). I’d like to repeat that another way: the Honorable Peter Dutton, Commonwealth Minister for Defence, would like the taxpayer to fund MPs to sue members of the Australian public for defamation.
READ MORE 
-
ENVIRONMENT
- Michele Madigan
- 26 July 2021
15 Comments
For several decades, successive federal governments have tried but failed to establish a national nuclear waste repository, primarily to take waste from the nuclear research reactor site operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) at Lucas Heights, 30 km south of Sydney. Currently a site near Kimba on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula is being targeted.
READ MORE
-
MEDIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 23 February 2021
2 Comments
Instead of retaining its control of a fruit market, or preserving an oil monopoly, Facebook harnesses another resource: data. Any regulator or sovereign state keen to challenge the way the Silicon Valley giant gathers, monetises and uses that data will face their ire.
READ MORE
-
ENVIRONMENT
- Michele Madigan
- 22 September 2020
16 Comments
It may have taken five years but in the last session of the recently completed Senate Inquiry, finally a government department bureaucrat has used the phrase — '…it is a national issue.' Well certainly — 'When it suits,' one might respond.
READ MORE
-
MEDIA
- Isabelle Oderberg
- 13 March 2020
6 Comments
Most restaurants don’t grow all their own food. Of course, they can and may grow some produce, but their expertise is on the preparation, cooking and plating of the dish. They look to farmers to supply the raw ingredients. This is a pretty good analogy for the role of the national newswire, Australian Associated Press (AAP), which will be closing mid 2020.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 14 October 2019
8 Comments
The royal commission concluded that child safety, in all its organisational ramifications, raised questions of culture and governance for the church. If the Plenary Council 2020 doesn't take such issues seriously then it will be one indicator that the momentum around last year's official national apology has slowed.
READ MORE
-
ENVIRONMENT
- Tim Hutton
- 17 September 2019
15 Comments
The problem with the discussion about nuclear energy is that it is a distraction; an ideologically driven misdirection by those who are more concerned with opposing renewables and the 'green-left' than solving our country's energy problems. Nuclear just doesn't make sense for Australia at this stage of the game.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 03 April 2019
5 Comments
The next month will be full of sugar-hits and sweeteners, whether they be personal tax cuts, grants or special deals for organised interests. Every candidate and party is guilty of this in their scramble to win. Citizens are complicit too if their main concern is 'what's in it for me'. Churches play the game as much as any pressure group.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Jeff Sparrow
- 31 January 2019
18 Comments
John Howard promised to 'stay the course' in Afghanistan. So too did Tony Abbott, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. So complete was the political consensus that parliament didn't even debate the Afghan intervention until nine years after it began. Now that there's no longer a course on which to stay, we're due some accountability.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 17 December 2018
15 Comments
Let's hope all members of parliament can agree to the insertion of such a clause in the legislation providing assurance to religious educators that they can continue to teach their doctrine in good faith while assuring all students and their families that they will not suffer any detriment while sitting at the feet of religious educators.
READ MORE
-
RELIGION
- John Warhurst
- 11 December 2018
53 Comments
Scoring the performance of the Australian church is a complex task at any time. Dioceses and congregations vary enormously. The mission of church agencies continues unabated in education, health, social services and aged care. But by any measure 2018 has been a big year.
READ MORE