Keywords: Rudd And The Sin Of Overwork
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ECONOMICS
But although the Coalition will never admit it, it looks suspiciously like there has been some bipartisan institutional learning about how to manage financial crises. If you want to stimulate an economy in times of crisis put the money directly into the economy, either into people’s pockets or to businesses who then pass it on to workers.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 09 February 2018
7 Comments
Ten years have passed since the Apology to Australia's Indigenous Peoples by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on behalf of Parliament and the nation. It seems longer. It was a time of great hope. Today, with respect to Indigenous affairs as to much else, fewer people hold great hope that anything good can come out of Canberra.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Warhurst
- 06 July 2015
18 Comments
The terms 'lie' and 'liar' have become so completely devalued that there are now far worse sins in modern politics. That is why it's hard to get excited about Opposition Leader Bill Shorten choosing to lie on air to Neil Mitchell about his involvement in discussions with Kevin Rudd to unseat Julia Gillard as Prime Minister.
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AUSTRALIA
- Zac Alstin
- 17 February 2015
11 Comments
The ancient Chinese text the Zhuangzi tells of a kingdom where the people rose up and killed their ruler three times in succession. Australia has seen two of its rulers 'killed' in succession since 2010, with a third now perilously close to extinction. Are we approaching a point where the highest expression of political wisdom would be not to run for leadership at all?
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Maureen O'Brien
- 12 March 2014
4 Comments
Soprano Deborah Cheetham was in her 30s when she was reunited with her birth mother. It was the beginning of her understanding of herself as a Yorta Yorta woman and member of the Stolen Generations. At the time she was in the throes of composing her opera, Pecan Summer, based on the 1939 protests by Aboriginals from the Cummeragunja Mission. She soon learned that the story was closer to her than she had realised.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Falzon
- 16 January 2014
1 Comment
Kevin Rudd says we need a 'new politics' or a 'new way'. Tony Abbott says we'll only get a new way by electing a new government. What is missing in both statements is the recognition that what we actually need is a new kind of economic democracy: a reconfiguration of our economic prioritising away from individualism towards the common good, and towards the participation of all rather than the exclusion of many.
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AUSTRALIA
- Marg Hutton
- 16 January 2014
5 Comments
In 2001 Prime Minister Howard tried to distance Australia from the SIEVX tragedy, in which 353 asylum seekers drowned, by repeatedly referring to the sinking as having occurred in 'Indonesian waters'. If there was any doubt then that SIEVX was an Australian tragedy, in 2013 there is none. There are now young kids growing up in Australia, who were born here and speak with Australian accents, who had brothers and sisters who drowned on SIEVX.
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AUSTRALIA
- John Menadue
- 18 October 2013
1 Comment
Some miners must be wondering whether they took the right course in opposing the Rudd Government's Resources Super Profits Tax, in which taxes would be levied on the profitability of the enterprise rather than royalties. Higher state mining royalties, lower commodity prices and higher costs will put the squeeze on the mining companies. It will be quite delicious to see them then urging a tax based on profits/losses rather than royalties.
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AUSTRALIA
- Cec Shevels
- 15 October 2013
7 Comments
In the 2006 Census, the number of homeless exceeded 100,000 for the first time. Kevin Rudd described this as a national disgrace and promised to cut the number in half by 2020. His Labor Government did make some progress — there was a fall in the number of rough sleepers and there was a welcome reduction in homelessness among Aboriginal people. Yet by 2011, the homeless numbers had risen again.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 18 September 2013
18 Comments
The Abbott Government that will be sworn in this week is democratically legitimate in an obvious and fundamental sense: the Coalition won the election, and will have a comfortable majority in the new house. But if governments want to claim that they are broadly representative of the nation, then it is surely a problem that the cabinet of 20 includes only one woman.
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AUSTRALIA
- Ray Cassin
- 09 September 2013
20 Comments
The Economist's leader writer and other international international observers including Joseph Stiglitz judged that, by most objective measures, Labor's achievements should be preferred to the Coalition's offerings. The big picture went unacknowledged in Australia's dismal, dispiriting election campaign.
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AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 04 September 2013
25 Comments
Over a meal with church members and local party officials in a small village outside Xian in China, a local asks after Lù Kèwén (Kevin Rudd). He had heard that Mr Murdoch was being very tough on him! This unsurprisingly is the only mention of Australian politics the whole week. But they were surprised to learn that yet again Australia was likely to lose its only Mandarin speaking PM. They have no idea of the alternatives.
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