Published last week in Crikey Speakers of parliament are well remunerated. In the commonwealth they receive nearly $200,000, more than most ministers and 75 per cent above the salary paid to parliamentarians. And they are well cosseted. They enjoy extensive office suites with...
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Yesterday's Independent newspaper carries a powerful article by Henry Porter . It charts the loss of civil liberties in the UK created by nine years of the Blair Government. He describes clearly and powerfully how, given a choice between personal liberty and collective securit...
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From a few weeks back. The High Court decided in 1997 - the case was Lange v the ABC - that Australia's constitution necessarily implies "a limitation on legislative and executive power to deny the electors and their representatives information concerning the conduct of the ex...
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Belated Match Report, I know. But, having finally caught up with the tape, I do have a few thoughts to share, not all about that match (video highlights here now). Match Highlights: Matt Rogers : Sure, he went off and would have been sick to do it, but he's a sure thing to sta...
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I was wired at birth to allocate capital and was lucky enough to have people around me early on - my parents and teachers and Susie - who helped me to make the most of that. Warren Buffett It's presumably in the papers and I've missed it, or it's a hoax but courtesy of slashdo...
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Other things being equal, taxing goods is bad. Of course other things are not equal and we need the money. But we should only be taxing goods after we've exhausted the scope to tax bads. Taxing bads is good because the effect of the tax is to reduce the output of the bad. Thus...
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Ross Gittins has a nice piece in Saturday's SMH on the economic nonsense talked about 'competitiveness'. He begins with this quote from Hugh Morgan. As the pace of globalisation increases, the reality is that governments are in competition with each other. This means that the...
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David "Barista" Tiley is out of hospital after a harrowing surgical and subsequent ordeal. Fortunately, as ubiquitous commenter Nabakov observes, the loss of part of the bowel and the whole of his spleen (not to mention a heart attack along the way) hasn't done David's writing...
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[photopress:snap.jpg,full,pp_empty] Take it from me, snapping your fingers at a waiter does not work.
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What is Timor Leste President Xanana Gusmao up to in threatening to resign ? Is it just a spur of the moment emotional outburst, behaviour for which the President has been known in the past? Or is there a greater element of strategic calculation involved? If Gusmao does in fac...
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Peter Costello has announced that 4,100 pages of inoperative law will be removed from the taxation legislation. This is a Good Thing I guess, but I'm not sure I'd give it a reception quite as enthusiastic as Henry Thornton . You little ripper! Treasurer Peter Costello is going...
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I don't mind the odd cleansing ale but it seems that the result of the annual Rugby League Week players poll revealed a culture of binge drinking . And with perfect timing Parra's Tim Smith is ejected from a hotel after an altercation with cricket star Micheal Clarke and the D...
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Readers with an interest in NT politics might care to tune into the streaming audio version of this morning's ABC Local Radio morning program, where (among others) yours truly discussed a sudden outbreak of ill-discipline in the Martin government backbench. A memo from indigen...
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I only have a few observations to make, and won't have an after match report this time - I won't even be able to see this match live. Which is a shame because it will surely be worth watching! I think it will be a great contest, and I wouldn't be surprised if Australia win by...
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A photo titled Observer, of an East Timorese man at a market, taken by Joel Santos ... For a long-time observer of East Timor, last night's Four Corners program made compelling viewing. Liz Jackson presented pretty conclusive evidence that dismissed Interior Minister Rogerio L...
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One of the things that I've always liked about economic journalism is that it was putatively about some reality 'out there'. Political journalists and commentators often disappear into the endlessly self referential whirlpool of spin in which 'the perception is reality'. So it...
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On several occasions during my years in private legal practice, I observed the phenomenon of a company liquidator and his solicitors whose main goal appeared to be transferring the company's assets into their respective office accounts as quickly as possible. Of course, it's o...
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On Saturday I mentioned that our U21s beat NZ (21-17), for the second year running in the last round of pool matches, although unlike last year, NZ progress to the semis anyway, to play South Africa, who beat France (14-10) on Saturday as well. In their turn, the French are no...
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What a weird match! Yet wonderful because Australia were stronger, more creative and more organised and accordingly won , weird because the scrums were an odd battle until, without anyone at the ground understanding, they were no battle at all as England's props succumbed to i...
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I was walking in the Dandenongs with my kids the other day and told them of the extraordinary capacity of the lyrebird for imitating the sounds it hears in the bush (not much in the way of human speech unlike parrots). I don't know if they believed me about its virtuosity, but...
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The lefties over at Larva Rodeo have gone into a Henny Penny "sky is falling" frenzy ( here and here ) over the appointment of Keith Windschuttle to the ABC Board , joining Janet Albrechtsen and Ron Brunton as appointees seen by many on the Labor side as unacceptably partisan...
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It seems that happiness research, which I wrote about recently , has been going on for a very long time. I discovered this while blog browsing late yesterday. At the excellent new arts group blog Sarsaparilla I came across a reference to an anecdote at theatre critic Alison Cr...
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Speaking of equality of opportunity (which I was earlier today), occasional Troppo contributor and legendary economist Fred Argy gave an excellent speech on the subject (or more specifically, on social investment directed at enhancing social mobility, which amounts to the same...
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A bit of an experiment as I'm going to live blog the second State of Origin game. Can Queensland square the series and resurrect origin? Or while the mighty Blues achieve another series win? Settle in with a adult beverage of your choice and enjoy the ride over the fold. Pre g...
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A blog roundup is a type of post traditionally undertaken when you're bored and need a short break from the tedium of the working day, but are too lazy or lacking in inspiration to post anything original. Attention-seeking legal academic James McConvill appears to have done th...
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Australian Squad: I must say I think Connolly's forward picks are a little odd. Start with the front row: clearly (I think) Paul is on the bench because he has booked his flight to the RWC, but then does that mean that Baxter is also booked? I suspect it does. Now what about t...
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Hors d'Oeuvres of Australia have always been a particularly odd accoutrement to our national life. They were introduced as a bit of constitutional minimalism to convert the royal honours system into a more nationalistic system during Whitlam's time. But they still had the crow...
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I would wake up and thank God that I am not only a professional rugby coach but the coach of the potential triple-RWC champions. On that note, I would quickly down my morning nip before my thoughts went any further! As it is I am not he, and so I shall merely speculate as to w...
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'Unbelievable Win for the Socceroos' was how Michael Lynch of the SMH expressed it, and unbelievable was the exact word on my lips too when Tim Cahill's shot crashed off the post and back into the net, making the score 2-1. We couldn't find the game on any of our 35 TV chanels...
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Firstly, my thanks to Ken Parish for the offer to post rugby reviews here. As someone with a more than middling interest in the game, I am delighted to try my hand. In case I might lack any incentive, I have the luck to be starting at a really crucial and fascinating period fo...
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World Cup is of and running, and with the opening games we have already had a taste of some of the teams from around globe, which has sent body-clocks adjusting to a new form of nocturnal existence as thousands of viewers patiently wade through the early hours of mornings hopi...
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Round 14 sees the top eight starting to firm up and makes a good time to give a mid season report card on all clubs and even go out on a limb with the likely grand finalists. If the first 14 rounds are a guide, to make such a prediction this far out is fraught with danger but...
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Some good lines, courtesy of Tim Harkowitz . If there is no self, whose arthritis is this? Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated? There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was th...
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Courtesy of Slashdot, here is a picture of Jupiter with the two most perfect storms in the solar system heading towards one another. This is what is reported on the NASA website. Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The beh...
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I closed yesterday's post on national imprisonment rates by rhetorically asking why the mainstream media hasn't perceived as newsworthy the quite marked increase in imprisonment over the last decade and more. One reason may be that, despite significantly greater resort to impr...
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A US prison, but you get the picture ... The ABS's fascinating report Measures of Australia's Progress 2006 received a certain amount of coverage in the MSM when it was released last week. Most of its findings are very positive. But one disturbing aspect that hasn't received a...
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Prompted by comments from Uncle Milton and Chris Lloyd under my previous post about an apparent blowout in state public sector numbers and wages over the last few years, I decided to look a bit more closely at the claims of the IPA's Mike Nahan that state governments have "squ...
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I thought it was funny anyway
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Nicholas Gruen was certainly in tune with the zeitgeist when he posted about the lack of vision in Australian government, especially in relation to the way governments have spent the massive revenue "growth dividend" of the last few years. But of all people, it has been the Da...
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Yes, the federal government listened to the people and scuttled the sale of its 13 per cent share in the Snowy Hydro Corporation, and NSW reluctantly followed. But if you consider the statements by relevant ministers, you will find a farrago of deception. Most people will not...
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Customary Law is in the news again, but the Greek Gods aren't. Maybe they should be, perhaps their old dramas and poems would allow us all to see in dreaming a non-kissing cousin in the dance we have no choice but to partner. Remember a good dancer has good balance and that no...
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I don't often get time these days for a leisurely browse around the blogosphere. But I found a few spare minutes today, and happened to stumble across an unbelievably trivial but nasty spat between the lefties at Larva Rodeo and compulsive attention-seeking legal academic Jame...
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I heard this track (2 Meg mp3) on Andrew Ford's marvellous Music Show this morning. It's quite striking I thought and perhaps many troppodillians have heard it. But I hadn't. It won't take you long to figure out who is singing it, but some other things about the song might sur...
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In his book "A time of hope", Donald Horne details a remarkable passage in a speech about how we have all lost our bearings and how we needed to appreciate our environment more, worry about money less etc etc. The thing that was remarkable about it was not what it said it was...
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What a week. In terms of footy played round 12 had some great games and two golden point results. As for the players, one launched a spray at his team mates via the media, another was caught out after an on field incident was ignored by everyone else and one player ended up 'b...
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