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Author: Tony Kevin

  • AUSTRALIA

    Hung parliament could be the making of Gillard

    • Tony Kevin
    • 24 August 2010
    22 Comments

    There was a massive loss of confidence in Labor's policies. The Australian electorate saw through the triviality of what both major parties were offering. Gillard would deserve her party's full support in leading a Labor Government in a hung parliament. This may be the making of her as a great prime minister.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The trial and sentencing of Comrade Duch

    • Tony Kevin
    • 28 July 2010
    2 Comments

    The former head of the Khmer Rouge's main interrogation centre has just been sentenced to 30 years prison. There are important lessons internationally. If a state becomes evil, its orders must be resisted.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Remember SIEV X before waging war on boat people

    • Tony Kevin
    • 06 July 2010
    14 Comments

    Julia Gillard has invited people to say what they feel on the issue of how Australia should manage its borders. It's worth recalling what happened when an Australian Government last instructed its defence force to vigorously repel asylum-seeker boats.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Goodbye Kevin, hello Julia

    • Tony Kevin
    • 25 June 2010
    15 Comments

    We have just experienced a Shakespearean moment. There is real excitement in the land, a sense of new beginnings, as the Elizabethan figure of Julia Gillard takes the reins as Prime Minister. Rudd, to his credit, has accepted the inevitable with grace and dignity.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Reviving climate hope

    • Tony Kevin
    • 21 June 2010
    9 Comments

    The new Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres is well qualified to help heal the wounds of Copenhagen. If the West can learn the lessons of those failed talks and move forward with modesty, flexibility and sensitivity, we may hope for progress.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Bushfire commission's climate denial

    • Tony Kevin
    • 28 May 2010
    9 Comments

    The Black Saturday Royal Commission seems to be ignoring scientific evidence that climate change was a major causal factor. The possibility that Victoria's cool mountain ridges and valleys are drying out and that such ferocious fires are the way of the future might be a truth too much to bear.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Shame under Howard and Rudd

    • Tony Kevin
    • 27 May 2010
    29 Comments

    The Howard years made me feel ashamed to be Australian, and I felt about his electoral defeat the way East Germans felt about the Berlin Wall coming down: as a kind of cleansing. Rudd disappoints for a different reason.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Climate action after Rudd

    • Tony Kevin
    • 04 May 2010
    24 Comments

    Rudd is technically correct that the opposition parties stymied his CPRS bills, but the buck stops with his disappointing climate policy leadership. Upon the failure of Australian parliamentary politics, we need now to find the courage to support mass non-violent public action modelled on Vietnam War protest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Plane tragedy prolongs Polish-Russian curse

    • Tony Kevin
    • 13 April 2010
    4 Comments

    The Devil himself could not have better orchestrated Sunday's air tragedy at Smolensk Airport. It was to be a symbolic moment of reconciliation between two neighbouring countries that have been separated by war.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Vote One Zero Zero against climate inaction

    • Tony Kevin
    • 19 March 2010
    34 Comments

    In Australia's next federal election, I'll vote One, Zero, Zero — Greens 1, Labor 0, Coalition 0. This is the only way I can fulfil my voter duty, while recording protest at the failure of our major parties to offer real policies on the planet's climate crisis.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    MySchool: helping rich schools get richer

    • Tony Kevin
    • 03 February 2010
    7 Comments

    It is disingenuous for Labor education ministers' to say MySchool will create political pressure to boost 'under-performing' schools. Meanwhile parents, voting with their feet, may foster the very outcomes they fear: underprivileged, low-morale schools breeding a generation of alienated, under-achieving kids.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Chaotic endgame in Copenhagen

    • Tony Kevin
    • 18 December 2009
    3 Comments

    At conferences like this, an atmosphere of crisis is necessary for final deals to be achieved. Kevin Rudd will not want to define the summit as a failure so, hopefully, his notorious 5 per cent emissions reduction target will be left behind.

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