australian politics
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Australian election
Written By: - Date published: 3:26 pm, August 21st, 2010 - 23 comments
Our cousins on the West Island are winding up their election day soon, culminating a dramatic couple of months for Australian politics. It may be that Kevin Rudd gets the last laugh…
Rorts in the age of internet advertising.
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 pm, August 11th, 2010 - 15 comments
The Australian Liberal party has been posting sponsored links on Google websites pushing voters seeking information on independent candidates and candidates from other parties through to Liberal websites. The Sydney Morning Herald says: This week, a Google search by the Herald of the names of about 200 Labor, independent, Greens, Democrats and other minor party […]
MFAT leak too convenient
Written By: - Date published: 10:16 am, July 23rd, 2010 - 16 comments
Why would someone in MFAT feel the need to interfere in the Australian election by leaking to the Australian media? I’ve been accused of conspiracy theories in the past but this leak seems all too convenient when National’s old mates Crosby Textor are up against it in Aussie.
Private Prison Profile
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, June 29th, 2010 - 74 comments
When National get their ideological wish to get a prison privately run here, the most likely candidate will be Australian/UK prison company G4S. In the ‘care’ of these crime profiteers, an Aboriginal man died in a Western Australian prison van, during a four hour ride without ventilation in 50 degree plus temperatures that gave him 3rd degree burns. And that’s far from the only abuse.
Beware the young advisers – they reflect their masters
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 am, June 27th, 2010 - 25 comments
An interesting parallel between Kevin Rudd and the Key government’s leadership style surfaced in our papers this weekend. On Saturday, Tracy Watkins had this to say in the DomPost: Dislike of the Australian leader seems to have reached legendary proportions in the three years since he won the election a dislike surpassed only by the […]
Congratulations Julia Gillard
Written By: - Date published: 9:05 pm, June 24th, 2010 - 14 comments
It’s been a big day for Julia Gillard. Up late last night with Kevin Rudd and John Faulkner, the ALP’s elder spokesman, doing one of the hardest things in politics which is to front up and tell someone that you have worked with closely that it is time for them to go. Rudd’s subsequent late-night […]
New Australian PM
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 am, June 24th, 2010 - 39 comments
Kevin Rudd is gone, and Australia has its first female PM.
It’s been a dramatic fall for Rudd, who was so incredibly popular for his first two years in office.
Rudd for the chop, Gillard to take the reins
Written By: - Date published: 1:13 am, June 24th, 2010 - 16 comments
Kevin Rudd has lost the support of the powerful Australian Workers’ Union and an array of the ALP’s factions to Julia Gillard. It’s been a dramatic fall for Rudd, who was so incredibly popular for his first two year’s as PM (if it can happen there…). Gillard will make a stark contrast to the strange conservative leader of the Liberals, Tony Abbott, but has a lot of work to do.
Buyer’s remorse on both sides of the Tasman
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, June 8th, 2010 - 30 comments
Aussies are looking more and more likely to elect Abbott. Terrible. Guy’s a chauvinistic prick who admitted you can’t trust a word he says. Shows how poorly Rudd has done some things. People are thinking the Liberals weren’t so bad after all. Likewise, Goff is in with a decent sniff in 2011. Solely because of […]
Abbott laughingstock for saying Aussie should copy Key
Written By: - Date published: 8:42 pm, February 21st, 2010 - 27 comments
The new Aussie Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, has been widely derided for saying Australia should ape National’s economic policies. “Abbott’s remark came the day that Australia’s unemployment rate fell from 5.5 to 5.3 per cent. The NZ rate? It’s 7.3 per cent.” We should copy their stimulus policy, not the other way round.
Tony Abbott elected Liberal leader
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 pm, December 1st, 2009 - 15 comments
According Melbourne paper The Age, Tony Abbott is the new leader of the Liberal Party, winning the leadership by one vote over Malcolm Turnbull. Abbott becomes the Liberals’ fourth leader in two years. I guess that now means Rudd will have to call a general election to pass his Australian ETS… Surely Rudd should romp home?
Aussie Minister shows guts, foresight and concern; ours… not so much
Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, October 25th, 2009 - 31 comments
Australia’s Federal Industry Minister Kim Carr has criticized Bridgestone’s closure of its Australian and New Zealand operations and the 1000 redundancies it’ll bring. Carr is looking at ways to alleviate some of the unemployment problems for the laid-off aussie workers but criticizes Bridgestone for pulling out (and no doubt relocating to countries where workers get […]
Bridging the Big Ditch
Written By: - Date published: 10:04 am, August 20th, 2009 - 22 comments
Mr Key is off in Australia this week promoting further measures to bind the two countries into a single economic market, and slash red tape on trade, investment and business, and to shape the two economies into a force that can team up to position themselves for the world after the global economic crisis.. Well […]
Whatever it takes, except anything
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, May 8th, 2009 - 6 comments
A reader has spotted that Hide wasn’t the only minister telling porkies in Parliament yesterday. Fortunately for Bill English, he’s too smart to breach privilege: ‘The Government is concerned about anyone losing their jobs; that is why we will do anything we can to help people to keep secure the jobs they have or to […]
A sign of the times?
Written By: - Date published: 7:30 pm, February 20th, 2009 - 5 comments
This item in the Brisbane Times caught my eye as to how the whole nature of campaigning is changing – and the mixed blessing of Facebook: A senior Liberal National Party staffer has been reprimanded over comments she made on a website attacking Premier Anna Bligh. Katherine Smith, a media adviser for LNP deputy leader […]
BastardWatch
Written By: - Date published: 2:28 pm, January 26th, 2009 - 54 comments
After losing their last four seats in the Senate after Australia’s 2007 election, the Australian Democrats are trying hard to stay relevant and in the public eye. They see their fortunes resting on the party’s founding mantra to “keep the bastards honest”. So they’ve translated that term coined in 1980 by then leader Don Chip […]
Join the job queue – an Aussie perspective
Written By: - Date published: 6:28 pm, January 23rd, 2009 - 5 comments
Jobs, jobs, jobs seems to be the theme of the day. After reading that Microsoft has announced that 5,000 jobs are to go (the first mass layoffs in its 34-year history), and Sony signalling bigger than expected losses ahead ($US2.9 billion, the first in 14 years) this article from the Sydney Morning Herald seems to sum up the […]
Job losses in Aussie
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, January 23rd, 2009 - 17 comments
Across the Tasman Kevin Rudd’s plea for employers to save jobs has fallen on deaf ears, with some of Australia’s biggest companies (mining, retail and automotive sectors) announcing plans to axe jobs. BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest miner and Australia’s top profit earner, will lay off about 3300 Australian workers — 8 per cent of the total [BHP […]
Work choices
Written By: - Date published: 4:48 pm, November 24th, 2008 - 48 comments
Watching this new ad from the Australian Council of Trade Unions on employment law reform was kind of depressing – while the Aussies are looking forward to getting their work rights back under a new government, ours is drafting up legislation to take them away. Time for a change eh? Guess we should have read […]
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