The Australian Institute of Progress was honoured to host author and MenziesResearch Centre executive director Nick Cater as the guest speaker at our first public event in Brisbane on Thursday night, September 18.
Topic: News
It’s Clive’s party and his Puppies don’t have voting rights
I THINK my colleague Hedley Thomas is on to something. The Palmer United Party is not a party. Members of the Palmer United Party are, in effect supporters, not members.
Rule D13 of the PUP constitution determines that the six Foundation members are Clive and family. Rule D26 determines that a majority of foundation members can throw out any ordinary member.
Rule W1 determines that the six foundation members exercise all of the powers of the executive until December 31, 2016.
Finally, rule W3 determines that the chairman (and federal president) is fully authorised to exercise all the powers of the interim executive committee.
Nice work, Clive.
Renewables and Fair Work Act stand in the way of employment
AUSTRALIA’S unemployment rate, 6.4 per cent, is at its highest in more than a decade. Suddenly, politics became a whole lot more real, but not necessarily tougher, for the Abbott government.
Brainstorming for a think tank
Today we had 29 people gathered together at the Ship Inn, South Bank to talk about the meaning of progress and future projects for the Australian Institute for Progress. The start of something big!
Becoming a parent is a privilege, not a workplace right
IT is the clear responsibility of an employer to intervene in a worker’s decision to have a child. They must remove all impediments to a parent’s return to work, including holding open a job, and preserving previous pay and conditions. Oh yes, and throw in free childcare.
If these do not happen, it must be discrimination.
This is the world inhabited by the Australian Human Rights Commission. Start with a privilege, make it a “right’’, and convince government to pass laws to shift costs to the employer and taxpayers. Great work. The ACTU would be proud of you.
Abbott must keep calm and cut power prices
THE British government in 1939 created the phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On” to prepare Brits for German attacks during World War II. The Abbott government should adopt it, and take heart.
Of course, the slogan belied the preparedness to assemble the immense power brought to bear by the Allies in 1944 against the fascist forces.
The Abbott government has to go on the attack. It is under siege from Red, Green and Yellow forces, which are unlikely to relent in the near term.
Piketty split – why soaking the rich won’t help anyone
It’s not Joe Hockey’s “leaners” Australians need to fear, it’s the new breed of economic “levellers” who believe that to make an economy work better you just need to dial down levels of inequality.
The equality industry conveniently overlooks progress
PROGRESS is found in human ingenuity, and concomitant success and failure. Strangely, reference to progress rarely appears in public debate, or in the literature.
One reason is that egalitarian ideology has displaced progress. It seems that for some, there can be no progress until we are equal.
Anti-social media
If you want to know how the left in Australia thinks, then check out Twitter. It will also explain the slow degradation of Australian political reporting into gotcha exposes and personal slurs.
‘Top gun’ barristers do not own judicial appointments
WHO would make the best chief justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland? Judging from the unseemly row over the appointment of Tim Carmody, not a knockabout barrister appointed by a boy Attorney-General.
Tim “I don’t claim to be the smartest lawyer in the room” Carmody is presently the Chief Magistrate of Queensland. Thick as a brick? Hardly. Carmody was appointed Senior Counsel in 1999, served as the Queensland crime commissioner from 1998 to 2002, as a judge of the Family Court of Australia from 2003 to 2008, and as commissioner for the Queensland Child Protection Commission of Inquiry, which reported last year.
There is no rule book to determine the criteria for choosing a judge, only a process. The responsibility for the appointment rests with the Queensland cabinet, on the recommendation of the Attorney-General.
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Will Rwanda get nuclear power before Australia? It's planning on having reactors up and running by the early 2030s - that's 3.5 years away now. Meanwhile Albo wants Australia to become a world leader in AI, but only if they have BYO electricity. How they gunna do that without