Category: Opinion

This week’s budget was an abdication of the fundamental reason for government: to do the things that must be done collectively, and cannot be done by individuals acting alone so as to nurture and protect people and society.
Essentially, the Government chucked unaccountable billions of dollars in tax cuts and concessions to business. The message was: do what you like with the money as long as you create jobs. Not a care or message as to what sort of jobs or what is to be achieved by them. Just jobs for jobs sake. Dig holes and fill them in and we’ll give you an investment allowance for a hole-digging machine and another investment allowance for a hole-filler-in machine….

CRISPIN HULL Ominously for conservatives and the religious right, Joe Biden was silent during this week’s debate about whether he would “pack” the Supreme Court…

Remember when political parties were condemned for being “poll-driven”. If only they were poll-driven (rather than donor-driven) now. We would have good population, climate, energy, tax and defence policies, as various publications in the past week or so reveal…

I was the superintendent of Mossman Hospital in 1983 as the Daintree blockade, led by Mike Berwick, was unfolding. While the Blockade was ultimately unsuccessful and a new road was carved from Cape Tribulation to Bloomfield, the Blockade led to the World Heritage listing of the Daintree Rainforest, limiting its development and totally preventing logging..Fast forward to 2020 – the year of COVID-19….The Bloomfield Track remains a windy unsealed road with steep sections. For an undisclosed reason, the new Council has re-opened the issue of building a bridge.  I don’t understand how this became a priority….

When NSW Nationals leader John Barilaro threatened to move all his members, including ministers, to the crossbench unless the NSW Government backed down on koala protection, Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian immediately called his bluff: do that and all National Ministers would be sacked and the Liberals would govern alone. There would be no change to koala protection.

There is something inherently human in the practice of ritual.From the sacred rituals of spirituality and worship, to the obsessive urgings of bedtime door-lock checks, rituals bookend the important cycles in our lives and they reinforce the gravity of occasions and locations for which our high regard must never become diminished.

In all, the Baby Boomers have had a pretty good run and a lot of them are only continuing that run because the lockdowns have saved their lives. It is time for repayment and to give the younger generation a (tax) break.

For many years, the residents of Port Haven and Ozcare have enjoyed secure and peaceful access to the beach, just a short distance from their homes, along a pathway through the pristine littoral vine forest which protects their community from storm surge and cyclonic conditions.
For residents, the walk through the forest and along the beach, and simply relaxing on the sea shore, is an integral part of their daily regime for physical and mental health and wellbeing.But that is all about to change…..

Another week and yet more examples of corporate greed and wrong-doing emerge. Big for-profit corporations are using JobKeeper funds as DividendKeeper and BonusKeeper. Facebook is making bullying threats over the Australian Government’s reasonable move to make it pay for content. Big business is urging the Government to scrap superannuation rises for wage and salary earners so it can pocket the money for profits, bonuses and dividends.

If Trump wins the Presidential election in November, it means only one of two things: that either he has succeeded in cheating at the election by stymying mail voting and undermining the election’s legitimacy, or that the American people have genuinely re-elected him despite his dangerously erratic foreign-policy forays; his destructive trade policies; his employment of toadies and cronies and his supplicancy to autocrats and dictators. Indeed, they would have endorsed those actions. Either way, the US would be neither a worthwhile ally nor a worthy one.