Tag Archives: Oz Politics

I tried to avoid instant reactions to the election outcome in May. But now that lots of people are making claims I regard as dubious at best, I think I may respond. Before doing that, I thought it would be useful to make some general observations about mistaken/dubious claims that are commonly made in post election analysis, particularly following a close election. Just about everyone, including me, is prone to these kinds of reasoning. Feel free to discuss, give examples, and so...

That’s the message being given to Australian social science and humanities researchers from the systems of journal rankings adopted in many disciplines. This point was made to the Senate recently by historians from opposite ends of the political spectrum, Greg Melleuish and Stuart McIntrye, who are more interested in researching and arguing about Australian history than in following Northern hemisphere fads Here’s a submission I wrote in relation to Economic Analysis and...

It’s always nice to see evidence that supports your prior beliefs, which is why it’s important to avoid confirmation bias (seeking out confirming evidence, while ignoring or discounting the other kind). Since this ANU study of voters’ choices in the leadup to the May election is, AFAICT the only one to be published so far, I can cite it without fear of this bias. I’m not usually keen on the excuse that “we lost because we didn’t get our message across”, but in relation to the last...

Another day, another disastrous and anti-democratic decision from the High Court. The Court has already disqualified a large proportion (perhaps a majority) of Australians from standing for Parliament. It has now excluded a huge group from any participation in our democracy, beyond the bare right to vote. The case in question concerned a public servant, employed in the Immigration Department, who criticised the department under a pseudonym (which proved inadequate to conceal her...

To say I’m depressed about the current state of Australian politics would be an understatement. But of all the things that depress me, the possibility of a section 44 case against Josh Frydenberg is the most gratuitously awful. If someone had said, ten years ago, that the Australian-born son of a Jewish refugee was ineligible to stand for Parliament because he had failed to secure necessary documents from the neo-fascist government that currently rules Hungary, they would have been...

I’ve been writing for a while about the global emergence of a three party system, consisting of (a) the Trumpist right, (b) a green-socialist-social democratic left and (c) the remains of the former consensus between hard and soft versions of neoliberalism. How does this analysis look after the Federal election and Labor’s defeat? The first point to observe is the crucial role of essentially random shocks. As with Trump and Brexit, we’d be having a very different discussion if...

A number of comments on the Folau case have made the point that Folau failed to pay attention to the terms of his contracts with Rugby Australia [1] and also with GoFundMe, with the implication that he has only himself to blame for the outcome . That’s a cute debating point, but it’s not one that should be used by those of us concerned with protecting workers’ rights. The use of contractual terms to constrain what workers say and do outside working hours is a misuse of the power of...

Like everyone else, I expected a Labor victory in the election. I expected good things from that, and I see lots of bad consequences from the actual outcome. Still, my personal disappointment is muted by the fact that I found the campaign so utterly depressing. The shift to positivity I noted a couple of weeks ago only lasted for a day. I saw the positive ad I wrote about only once. By election day, like the majority of the Australian public, I just wanted it to be over. The...

The first half of the 2019 election campaign was the worst I’ve ever seen, especially relative to the possibility for real debate. Both sides ran continuous attack ads focusing on the opposing leader, playing into the gladiatorial model favoured by the Press Gallery. Labor, in particular, seemed to have forgotten it had any policy offer. Since Labor’s policy launch, things seem to have improved substantially. The fact that the launch took place at all, rather than being reduced to...

I’ve been generally appalled by the performance of the media in the current election. This article by David Crowe in the Nine/Fairfax papers is the perfect illustration. Asking what is wrong with the current election, Crowe concludes The fact is that neither leader has inflicted a killer blow against the other. The idea that an election is a gladiatorial contest between “leaders”, staged for the entertainment of the Press Gallery has never been put more simply and clearly....