Food security
Just as you praise a political party… Christine Milne thinks we need a food security plan. While people discuss the threat of obesity in the suburbs and in the seat of power, nobody talks about the...
View ArticlePeak phosphate?
In this recent flamefest discussion of food security on LP, the topic of Peak Phosphorus came up. Phosphorus is not an element that most people tend to spend a lot of time thinking about. If you think...
View ArticleKatter’s wishlist
Bob Katter has gotten into the wishlist business. I haven’t yet found the complete document, but if the aspects of it reported in the media are representative, it’s going to be pretty hard for either...
View ArticleCraig Emerson and climate change protectionism
Sky News’s Australian Agenda (which, on first glance, appears to be The Australian Op-Ed page – Live and even more Right Wing!) had an interview with Craig Emerson in which he discussed the trade...
View ArticleProductivity Commission report on FTAs
You might remember the fuss in the leadup to the 2004 election about the Australia-USA “Free Trade Agreement”. Among the objectionable bits, the FTA locked Australia in to an intellectual property...
View ArticleRinderpest eradicated
I’d never heard of rinderpest, and I come from cattle country. And, absent human malevolence, the world will never hear of rinderpest again. Absent any cases for a decade, the UN Food and Agriculture...
View ArticleRobots now cheaper than Chinese labourers
It seems that the giant IT assembler Foxconn is seeking an alternative to paying its workers more (as discussed on this earlier thread). They’re planning to automate more, using industrial robots to...
View ArticleThe future of retailing
If you want a sense of the financial pain being felt by some shopkeepers at the moment, all you need to do is peruse the submissions to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into Australian retailing....
View ArticleFood security: a discussion
Christine Milne recently gave a speech in Parliament about “food security, food sovereignty, [and] the Year of the Farmer”. In it, the term “food security” is mentioned repeatedly; it’s a term we see...
View ArticleWhen we don’t even get “he said, she said” reporting
In the United States, National Public Radio has just announced a revision to their editorial policies. As Jay Rosen notes: With these words, NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst...
View ArticleThe Royal Mail to be sold off
Australian governments of the left and right have privatized any number of formerly state-owned enterprises. Politically, the process has seen responses between grudging public acceptance to vehement...
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Richard Denniss: Should we all move to New Zealand?
In an op/ed in the Canberra Times today, Dr Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute asks whether there is scope for hope on the left in an Abbott Prime Ministership. Denniss...
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Hockey’s Graincorp decision
Terry at Saturday Salon has raised the issue of Treaurer Hockey’s decision to disallow the US company Archer Daniels Midland’s (ADM) A$3.4 billion 100% takeover bid for the Australian company...
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