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Scott Morrison, the Minister for Everything, convention, and the law
In a statement yesterday, a spokesperson for His Excellency the Governor-General of Australia David Hurley confirmed reports that, during the height of the response to the COVID pandemic in 2020, he had accepted advice from then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison to secretly appoint him to various ministerial portfolios. This post discusses the legal provisions and political […]
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What is democracy? — A procedural approach
In a previous post responding to an article in The Atlantic which argued that Australian democracy was at risk, I wrote that “democracy is a process, it is not a set of values”. I note here that, in the earlier post, I did not actually define what I meant by democracy beyond this assertion. The […]
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AEC Twitter experiment outrages election conspiracy theorists
The Australian Electoral Commission has logged on, and both drips and antivaxxers are outside the window shouting at them to log off. (Show yourselves, cowards!) Misinformation about voting is clearly at the top of the minds of election administrators around the world. The culture war is truly transnational and nonsense about Dominion voting machines, elections […]
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Scabs riot outside Victorian CFMEU headquarters; organisers attacked
Protestors from the pro-death movement held a violent protest outside the Victorian offices of the CFMMEU’s construction division today, violently bashing in the John Cummins Building’s front door and assaulting much of the union’s leadership who were trying to calm protesters. This protest is the latest in a number of unsanctioned “unionist” protests by the […]
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No Conor, Australia is not falling to COVID dictatorship
In 2020, American governments decided that it was acceptable to overwhelm their health system, permanently maim a potentially innumerable number of people with post-COVID syndrome, while slaughtering six hundred thousand of their own people in defence of their citizens’ right to go to a Denny’s. In 2021, the Australian states, who decided not to accept this outcome, ordered restaurants to use Uber Eats and click-and-collect: How utterly Orwellian?
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Could one stack The New Liberals?
Victor Kline, leader of The New Liberals, an upstart party which seeks to replace the Liberals on the centre, tweeted to those seeking to join the party, but who were unable to pay the party’s modest $50 a year fee ($10 for unwaged people), that there were generous benefactors who would “sponsor” their fees. The […]
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Neo-Nazi Neil Erikson jailed for attack on queer-friendly church
A couple of days ago, Melbourne neo-Nazi Neil Erikson, former media coordinator of the fascist outfit United Patriots Front and founder of at least fifteen spin-off organisations, was jailed for ten weeks by the Victorian Magistrates’ Court for his part in a horrific invasion of the queer-friendly Melbourne Metropolitan Community Church. He carried out the […]
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About that time Malcolm Fraser created a fake department…
With the controversy erupting earlier this year over Scott Morrison’s decision to keep embattled ministers Christian Porter and Linda Reynolds in his cabinet, it may be worth remembering how much worse it could have been had the Prime Minister not been able to find “real” jobs for Porter and Reynolds. He could have, as Malcolm […]
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The crisis of the 2021 Samoan election
Last month’s election in the small Pacific Island nation and the constitutional crisis that continues into this week has me asking: Was Samoa ever a democracy? By any intuitive account, yes. It has free elections for a parliament from which ministers are appointed and a head of state is elected, and the Samoan constitution grants […]
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A note on self-defence
The phrase “Israel has the right to defend itself” is said almost-reflexively in response to every single Israeli airstrike on Gaza. Of course, few here in the West would challenge this notion (and I certainly don’t seek to). Instead, I argue that the term self-defence has been erroneously deployed in this instance. The airstrikes, largely […]