Keywords: Michael Mullins
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 01 July 2013
22 Comments
Kevin Rudd told colleagues during the week that he would not 'lurch to the left' on asylum seekers. Foreign minister Bob Carr was on message when he said there's been a change and most boat arrivals are now economic migrants rather than genuine asylum seekers. He is boldly asserting that the Rudd Government's moral credentials are intact by framing boat arrivals as a law and order matter and not a moral issue.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 24 June 2013
21 Comments
Rudd's rise from backbencher to Labor leader in the five years to 2006 was facilitated by his weekly presence on Channel 7's Sunrise. Here he created a persona seen as ordinary, trustworthy and familiar to the point of intimacy. Things went wrong when he was unable to work with colleagues to get things done for Australians who saw him as their mate.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 03 June 2013
18 Comments
The ABC's efforts to compete with commercial media restrict the diversity of its content and help to make the case for it to be sold off. It might do well to withdraw from audience ratings surveys in favour of juries or another mechanism better geared to measure the content diversity that is its reason for being.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 27 May 2013
3 Comments
The most memorable lines of Paul Keating's 1992 Redfern Speech are not about Indigenous Australians at all, but Europeans who stole their land, their children and their dignity. A number of commemorative days focus on the needs and rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but Sorry Day is not one of them.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 20 May 2013
12 Comments
Angelina Jolie's rational choice to undergo a pre-emptive double mastectomy has shown that science can improve human wellbeing with the use of highly specialised surgical techniques. But other rational choices we might make, in favour of techniques that involve therapeutic cloning, would do more to undermine human civilisation.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 13 May 2013
42 Comments
Victims of church sexual abuse have suffered a setback with NSW Government moves to impose a ten year statute of limitations. For many victims, it takes much longer than ten years before they are ready to tell their story. If they are forced to speak before they are ready, they may speak half-truths or not speak at all.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 06 May 2013
13 Comments
'Never see a need without doing something about it' is the principle that guided Australia's first saint Mary MacKillop. This is also what drives successful politicians, and the NDIS is a good but rare example of this. Unfortunately few political leaders are able to see a real need and successfully legislate to do something about it.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 29 April 2013
25 Comments
Wage increases for aged care workers should not be allowed to become yet another laudable but failed Gillard Government initiative that an incoming Coalition government refuses to countenance because of its stated commitment to fiscal responsibility. The dignity of older Australians is not expendable.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 22 April 2013
16 Comments
In a week of racist and xenophobic reaction to the Boston Marathon bombing, one US observer commented separately on Australia's racism, describing our country as one of the 'most comfortably racist places' he'd ever been in. Racism is a source of shame in the US, but part of the culture in Australia.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 15 April 2013
15 Comments
Under the Coalition's version of the National Broadband Network, super-fast access is not lost for those who can afford the internet connectivity equivalent to a business class flight. Those who cannot however will make up the large new underclass of the digitally disadvantaged.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 25 March 2013
23 Comments
Most of our attention on Thursday focused on the disintegration of the ALP, reflecting politicians at their worst. But one of Friday's minor headlines described the overshadowed Forced Adoptions Apology as Julia Gillard 'at her finest'. The emerging pattern of official recognition of the hurt caused to disadvantaged Australians by past public policy deserves more exposure.
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AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 18 March 2013
11 Comments
During the week, media power brokers portrayed Communications Minister Stephen Conroy as a Stalinist enemy of press freedom. This coincided with an assault on one of its core principles — the protection of journalists' sources — by Gina Rinehart, one of Australia's up and coming media barons. It appears politicians are scared to speak out.
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