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Keywords: Crikey

  • AUSTRALIA

    Preselection esteems politics over merit

    • Fatima Measham
    • 14 March 2016
    10 Comments

    The debate over the Coalition's proposed senate voting reforms has highlighted the inter-party brokering that brings candidates into office. Yet if representative democracy were predicated on transparency, then another area deserves scrutiny: preselection. The mechanism for choosing party representatives clearly relies on powerful backers - politics - rather than merit. That is an obvious thing to say. But it carries repercussions for governance with which we have yet to grapple.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Millennials have allies in the emerging grey vote

    • Fatima Measham
    • 18 February 2016
    5 Comments

    The formative experiences of Australian early boomers include unprecedented access to university education and health care, immersion in feminist discourse, Aboriginal land rights campaigns, environmental activism, LGBT movements and pacifism. Quite remarkably, it mirrors some of the elements that engage millennials. While in some ways anti-boomer sentiment seems well placed, what it misses is that on social issues a 21-year-old might have more in common with a 61-year-old than a 71-year-old.

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  • MEDIA

    Battered broadcaster's Bolt delusion

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 27 January 2016
    13 Comments

    Josh Bornstein compared the ABC to the victim in an abusive relationship, desperately trying to ward off the next blow by anticipating the criticism of its enemies. Certainly, enlisting Andrew Bolt to participate in a documentary on Indigenous constitutional recognition seems like a pre-emptive defensive move against the accusations of bias that are routinely levelled against the national broadcaster. For Bolt the arrangement is win-win; for the ABC it's yet another example of self-sabotage.

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  • MEDIA

    A fascist by any other name

    • Jeff Sparrow
    • 17 November 2015
    15 Comments

    In journalism, 'he said, she said' often functions as an evasion. Reporters' loyalty should be to accuracy, which isn't about compromise between extremes. When denialists and climate scientists take diametrically opposed stances, the truth doesn't lie somewhere in the middle. Sometimes, one side's right and the other's just wrong. The same can be said of reporting about the rightwing United Patriots Front. While they deny being fascists, that's what they are, and that's what we should call them.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Known unknowns of the facial recognition capability

    • Leanne O'Donnell
    • 02 November 2015
    9 Comments

    In May, the Federal Justice Minister announced a plan to work toward a National Facial Biometric Matching Capability, due to start operating in mid-2016. The lead agency is the Attorney-General's Department, the same department frustrating telcos with its implementation of data retention. The lack of transparency around the project is concerning, as it has privacy implications for nearly all Australians. If you have a passport or driver's licence, your facial image is relevant.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Political donations reform is not so easy

    • Jack Maxwell
    • 29 July 2015
    5 Comments

    Political donations give privileged access to powerful public officials to those who are wealthy. But public funding does little to reduce parties’ reliance on private money and radical control measures can fall foul of the Constitution. A 2013 High Court judgment finding that a ban on donations infringed the constitutional freedom of political communication.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The depths of common cause between Australia and Nauru

    • Justin Glyn
    • 14 July 2015
    3 Comments

    In an impressive demonstration of how the revocation of citizenship can be made to work to defend the national reputation and lifestyle of a country against those who would wish it harm, five of the country's seven opposition MPs (in a 19 member Parliament) have had their passports cancelled for 'damaging the reputation and development of the country'. In Australia, at least for the moment, damaging of Government property will still be required for the Minister of Immigration and Border Protection to revoke citizenship under the new anti-terror provisions in s.35A of the Citizenship Act.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The wisdom of humane prison design

    • Mathew Drogemuller
    • 24 April 2015
    5 Comments

    The tougher the prison is, the tougher the prisoners will get, just to survive. Then, when they are released, all they know is crime and the only people they know are criminals with no money. But it doesn't have to be that way, as Norway's 'no bars' Halden facility demonstrates with its ensuites and flat screen TVs that mirror life 'on the outside' as far as possible.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stepping on to mandatory data retention's slippery slope

    • Fatima Measham
    • 25 March 2015
    6 Comments

    Mandatory data retention was a bad idea when it was originally floated during a Gillard Government inquiry. It is a worse idea now, and is set to become law for political reasons, not because it has been properly scrutinised. There are important questions that we should be asking, and we should not let ourselves be put off from doing this if we don’t know the difference between data and metadata (there is none).

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A hostile government could be the ABC's best friend

    • Michael Mullins
    • 06 October 2014
    14 Comments

    ABC management is compliant with the Government in foreshadowing cuts to programs it considers expensive and expendable, thereby shielding the minister from public criticism and from having to justify the blood-letting. Perhaps it need not bother doing the Government’s dirty work, as Essential polling has revealed that a majority of Australians is worried about cuts to the public broadcaster. If the government is more driven by polls than ideology, it will go easy on the ABC.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Hong Kong not in the mood for love

    • Antonio Castillo
    • 03 October 2014
    3 Comments

    Over the last 20 years, every time the people of Hong Kong have heard some 'menacing' messages from Beijing, they have responded and become politically active. The menacing message this time is the one I heard two years ago in the office of Leung Kwok-hung – better known as 'Long hair' – in the Legislative Council offices far from the epicentre of the protests: 'Beijing won’t honour its pledge’.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Time to take on the welfare sceptics

    • Catherine Magree
    • 29 July 2014
    22 Comments

    Imagine how the quality of the debate would improve if those who blamed the victims of poverty and illness for their plight were publicly labelled welfare sceptics or denialists, and forced to back up their claims. Social research academics would be thrust into the spotlight. If this issue received the scrutiny it deserves in the media there would be a sea change in attitudes to poverty, unemployment and income support over time.

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