I’ll freely admit science journalism is a hobby-horse of mine, but I don’t think you need to be either a scientist or a writer to detect the not-so-subtle difference between the two headlines above. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking they were written about two different scientific papers; but they weren’t. They were […]
Stuart Robert and the coalition government are asking us to trust them with a pervasive and potentially privacy invading app, together with the data it collects. They’ve implied, but haven’t actually said, that without the app it’s unlikely current isolation restrictions will be be lifted—some not very subtle blackmail. [Edit 2020-0427 some things have changed […]
Commissioner Fuller is revealed as a polymath – law, medicine, taxation, foreign affairs, ethics, public health, sport, the list goes on.
Refusing help to people on boats is part of the Australian character, apparently.
An open letter to the ABC, regarding a headline (captured in archive here) and full article (captured in archive here) that proclaimed that the number of new cases had dropped for a second consecutive day. Dear ABC,Your article (archived here at http://archive.vn/SCGEj) misrepresents important data relating to the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the community. It does […]
Is The ABC Avoiding Climate Change? In a previous article I argued that it was; that in fact the ABC was guilty of “silent denial” by failing to highlight or even mention the well-established connection between climate change and bushfires’ timing and severity. (For example see the Department of Environment and Energy here, and the […]
I’ve already written about religion and discrimination in Australia here and here, about the fundamentally un-Australian, constitutionally dangerous and inegalitarian nature of mixing religion with our secular law. However the publication of the second drafts of the proposed “Religious Discrimination” legislation, and the collected examples of permitted exemptions published in The Guardian have prompted me […]
How the ABC is complicit in climate denial. Imagine, for a moment, that there is a massive measles outbreak all around Australia. Rural and regional areas in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia all suffer a huge surge in cases. People die. Many lives are changed forever. Imagine, now, that the ABC […]
In the video clip, the man hits the woman in the face. There’s no audio, and it’s a very short clip, less than two seconds, so it’s impossible to say what happened beforehand, or what happens afterwards. All you see in the video is the pair of them, some distance away: the man, hitting the […]
We all know the plot—it has been around since H. G. Wells’ War Of The Worlds, and has been re-imagined many times since then. The intentions of the aliens vary, from exploratory to utopian to malign, but Earth’s response is formulaic: Chaos Frantic international discussions National differences put aside as humans unite as one behind […]
You know the joke about the computer programmer who drowns in the shower because the shampoo directions say “Wash hair, rinse, repeat”, an infinite loop. Unfortunately the same thing is happening to our democracy, and we’re letting it happen. Scandal, defiance, rinse, repeat. It’s not an accident. Relentless escalation of bad behaviour, flouting and rejection […]
[This is an archived version of the original article. The updated article is here] One of the pillars of an open, democratic society is a free Press, however that freedom has two parts: the freedom to investigate has to be matched by an obligation to publish. Otherwise it’s not a free Press, it’s an organ […]
The Press is talking loudly at the moment about #RightToKnow, but that is, bluntly, a con. What’s more, it’s a con that distracts us from all the other real rights for which we, and the Press, should really be fighting. For a start, although the Press claims it’s about our “right” to know, what it’s […]
I’ve substantially rewritten this article, and the revised version appears here. If you’d like to read the original, it’s here.
On Wednesday the Minister for Home Affairs did what he and the Prime Minister have consistently claimed, and complained, he couldn’t do.[1] He blocked a medevac transfer, using the medevac law he and the PM had previously sworn made it impossible for him to block transfers. Apart from the stunning hypocrisy and barefaced lying this […]
