Club Troppo

[caption id="attachment_19887" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Craig Thomson addresses Parliament (note Andrew Wilkie's expression)"] [/caption] More often than not these days, even day-to-day political "footie commentary" is purveyed with greater depth and perceptiven...

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If Don McLean could write a smash hit about the death of Buddy Holly , I can at least do a blog post about the death this morning of Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. The Bee Gees were hardly the most fashionable of pop groups among the cool kids, either at the time or now. But I re...

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Access to justice should be a big issue in Australia, as my Introduction to Public Law class explored yesterday in the context of discussing administrative law merits review.As commenter wilful observed on my last post about lawyers : I can reflect on my sister’s recent experi...

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There is quite a bit of current public controversy over refugees indefinitely held in immigration detention as a result of adverse ASIO security assessments which they cannot effectively challenge. Secret evidence provisions in ASIO regulations mean they can be denied all know...

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With low unemployment, low inflation and 20 straight years of economic growth, the Sydney Morning Herald's Jessica Irvine is astounded at how so many Australians are carrying on as if they live in a debt-wracked European basket case. Younger Australians have never seen a reces...

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[caption id="attachment_19809" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Rose Ashton-Weir and her mum"] [/caption] The twitterverse erupted in response to this story in yesterday's papers about a student suing her former school Geelong Grammar for compensation, saying that it pr...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKkgcKoPa9I&feature=channel&list=UL I've been having to go further and further in the world to get anyone to listen to me. But in any event, I enjoyed this breakfast radio interview in Regina Saskatchewan.

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http://youtu.be/TuIbEJz23uY I've often thought that in politics, the signature of honesty is not lack of dishonesty - an impossibility in party politics - but a certain discomfort with the the lies you have to tell. I'm giving Joe the benefit of the doubt on this one. And good...

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I'm doing a fortnightly column for the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald and here is the first column . Of course the thing that's missing from the column is how I think they should have handled fiscal policy - which would have involved not just more straightforward and confid...

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This year my accountant got sent accounts which as far as I could see involved writing the totals of a spreadsheet into the tax return and pressing 'send'. OK, it might have been a bit more than that, I don't really know, but what bugs me is that the documents she got indicate...

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Pseudonymous blogging lawyer Private Law Tutor confesses her occasional feelings of "shame" at being a lawyer: I’ve thought and talked and written about the deep discomfort that ebbs and flows in me with my work. Well, not my work as such, but the work that I do. The industry...

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In a piece for the Sunday Age , Chris Berg says progressives think conservatives are heartless because they "don't realise the right has a different and legitimate moral framework." Perhaps so, but what about libertarians ? Berg draws on Jonathan Haidt 's moral foundations res...

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I just happened upon this story in which Mike Rann who served SA as Premier for about a decade has been given a driver, an office and staff in a policy which provides such things to Premiers who have served for longer than four years. Other than the car - I don't know what's w...

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In a recent book on social justice , former Labor politician Gary Johns argues for "a major reconsideration of social justice as a rationale for the welfare state". In his essay 'When too much social justice is never enough' Johns suggests that social justice is primarily abou...

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Having recently congratulated John Quiggin on his many translations of his Zombie book, I was informed by a Korean today that the Government 2.0 Taskforce was translated into Korean here . Which, since it was written with a wider set of circumstances than just those appertaini...

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After I posted a comment on Ken's recent post about swimmer Nick D'Arcy and his decision to file a debtor's petition in bankruptcy, he graciously invited me to contribute a post if I am insistent on disagreeing with his take. Ken argues that there is something that doesn't see...

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Here's a picture of the moon and the sun juxtaposed. They cycle between being the same size in our heavens and being a bit bigger or smaller than each other. It's spooky. Just the right size to deliver a total eclipse, or an annular one, depending on how they are feeling at th...

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Want to save time and identify the best in Australian blogosphere writing? See these features built into the recently re-designed Troppo front page. If you can't find several excellent articles every day of the week among that lot, you're very hard to please: "Blog reading sel...

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[caption id="attachment_19655" align="alignright" class="pull alignright" width="262" caption="Swimmer Simon Cowley"] [/caption] There's been lots of media coverage of the washup of swimmer Nick D'Arcy's bashing of fellow swimmer Simon Cowley in a bar some 4 years ago. Underst...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e1xvyTdBZI Readers as geriatric as me will probably remember British comedian Benny Hill's famous spoof song Ernie (He drove the fastest milk cart in the west). It topped the UK Singles Chart in 1971, reaching the Christmas number one spot, and...

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