Bartlett’s Blog

The Federal Opposition's Indigenous Affairs shadow minister, Tony Abbott, is spending three weeks in a community on Cape York in far-north Queensland. He highlights one of the real difficulties for parliamentarians in meaningfully engaging with Indigenous (and to some extent also other) communities.  The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the 'seagull syndrome' — we fly ...

I have been a dyed in the wool Obama fan from the time I read his books last year. It isn’t overly edifying watching him do the inevitable and unavoidable ‘tracking to the centre’ since he secured the Democrat nomination, but understandably he wants to win, and I think the rest of the world also needs him to win in a very big way. In any case, the ...

The economic ramifications of the further fall in house prices in many parts of Australia are being widely debated. Hopefully, it will not cause any let-up in the pressure for further action to address the continuing crisis in housing affordability. Apart from anything else, these house price falls are unlikely to provide much relief for those in the private rental market, which is where the worst price pressures ...

Since finishing up in the Senate, I have been trying to take the opportunity to do a range of different things, focusing on areas where I think I can be useful and/or which I find interesting or enjoyable. Apart from spending more time in pastimes like music or social cricket, and speaking at and attending events about  human rights, animal welfare and the environment, a lot of my ...

This report from Reporters Without Borders details the decision by European satellite company, Eutelsat, to stop broadcasts into Asia of an independent US based Chinese-language broadcaster NTDTV, using the dubious claim that the halt is due to a ‘technical problem’.  NTDTV includes stories on human rights issues amongst its coverage, and not surprisingly the Chinese government has condemned its material. Equally unsurprisingly, they have applied commercial and political pressure to satellite ...

I’ve mused a number of times about the potential impacts of blogging on politics and politicians, and the differences between various countries. One longstanding blogging politician is Peter Black, a Liberal Democrat member of the Welsh Assembly, who has been at it for over five years. He has written an interesting piece on the impacts of blogging and the internet on politics, focusing particularly on Wales, but also the UK more ...

The International Olympic Committee has been putting on a gold medal performance with their attempts to look surprised by the Chinese government’s brazen censorship of the internet and restrictions on the actions of journalists, in breach of the pledges they made when the were awarded the Games. Here's a link to the IOC's Fundamental "Principles" of Olympism, which includes many noble assertions, such as "Olympism seeks to create a ...

It is wonderful to see the news that the federal government plans to finally scrap mandatory indefinite immigration detention and adopt the common sense (and much cheaper) approach that people should not be locked up for extended periods just because they are without a valid visa, unless there compelling reasons to do so.  Immigration Minister Chris Evans’ speech outlining the changes is available here.  It is worth reading in ...

The media reports all suggest that, despite some major last minute turmoil on the Liberal Party side, the merger of the Queensland Nationals and Liberal Party has now gone past the point of no return. Regardless of anything else one could say – and many many things no doubt will be said about all this now and well into the future – it is no mean feat to bring ...

Very interesting suggestion reportedly made yesterday by federal Superannuation Minister, Nick Sherry – floating the removal of the 15 per cent super contributions tax for women as one way of bringing their retirement savings into line with men. “Women spend significant more time out of the workforce than men and super splitting is not a solution, it's just playing around the edges,” he said.   Senator Sherry was referring to a ...

There is heaps around the blogs giving some detailed analysis of the government’s greenhouse green paper, (which doesn’t seem very green at all to me). I’ve put a bunch of links at the end of this post. Given the seriousness and urgency of the threat, I’d rather a focus purely on the policy assessments of whether what’s been put forward is likely to have enough of an impact in ...

This morning I attended the launch of the Brisbane Social Enterprise Hubs’ accelerator program.  Social enterprises build economically sustainable businesses specifically aimed at providing employment, income and business experience to people from more disadvantaged backgrounds. The focus is on building social capital alongside the financial returns, rather than being driven by wealth creation and (maybe) using that to address social issues. Cheryl Kernot worked in the area of social business ...

There is an excellent article by Joe Tucci & Chris Goddard, examining the federal government’s discussion paper on the establishment a national framework for protecting children against abuse and neglect. It is a welcome thing that we are finally getting some national leadership on this issue. However, the article points out that the discussion paper focuses mostly on adults and families, giving little specific attention to the rights and voices ...

Australia’s recently introduced citizenship test is currently being reviewed by the new Immigration Minister, Senator Chris Evans. Germany is in the process of introducing a similar test, which will operate from Sept 1st.  Some of the criticisms of it are similar to those that have been raised here. This article, reporting on a conference on immigration issues between Germany Turkey, quotes Mustafa Unal, a Turkish MP, and Dieter Oberndorfer, a German ...

The huge crowds that attended each of the public forums held by Professor Ross Garnaut after the recent release of his draft report were quite astonishing, but also very reassuring. I went along to the Brisbane meeting last Friday. It was held in the main auditorium in City Hall. It seats over 1000 people and was pretty much full. Given how hard it is to get large numbers of people along ...

This post by Gary Sauer-Thompson's blog reflects on some of the common (mis)characterisation of blogs as being not credible and non-transparent in comparison to mainstream journalists. I must say I find talk about bloggers versus journos fairly pointless, as there is plenty of overlap and we’re really just talking about people writing words and providing information and/or opinion.  It's the content that should matter, not the label attached to ...

Some interesting statistics in the latest issue of The Tally Board from the Australian Electoral Commission which show how important the internet has become for basic information about elections. During the 2007 federal election, there were more than 3.2 million visitors to the AEC website and over 14.4 million page views. This compares to over 800 000 visitors who viewed more than 6.8 million pages at the 2004 election. The AEC ...

I had an unexpected reminder when I opened today’s Courier-Mail of just how cute my daughter was as a baby. An unnamed uncredited photo of my daughter at one day old with her tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb, was used to illustrate a story (syndicated from the Daily Mail) about older men fathering children. The newspaper obviously just used a stock newborn baby photo from their archives, ...

A strong sign of the high level of public interest in climate change and carbon trading is the fact that all the public forums held by Ross Garnaut this week following the release of his report have been full. I am hoping to get to the one in Brisbane tomorrow. There’s been ample commentary about the Garnaut Report and the wider issues in the blogosphere and the mainstream media. I ...

The Dennis Ferguson issue continues to garner a lot of media in Queensland. As Paul Norton notes in a comment on a previous thread, the Courier-Mail has been running strongly on whether or a not a form of Megan’s Law – where the community is notified when a sex offender is living in their region – should be adopted. This is the sort of action that might make parents feel ...