Last week, Radio National's Future Tense program did a show on how political parties might change over the next decade or so. You can read the transcript or listen to a podcast of it at this link. I was interviewed for the show and they used a few comments of mine in their final broadcast. Given how central political parties are in our political system, I can't see them disappearing ...
News has come through that Jack Evans, a pivotal person in the founding and development of the Australian Democrats, has died at the age of 80. I've previously written about other former Democrats when they have passed away, namely Sid Spindler, and Don Chipp. Whilst its dangerous to single people out, Sid, Don and Jack were amongst the most crucial people in getting the Democrats established and functional. Certainly when it comes to ...
The federal government should be commended for making such a comprehensive effort at casing so many perspectives in it consideration of electoral reform options, as well as for providing an apparently genuine effort at seeking public opinion. The second electoral reform Green Paper released this week by Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig covers a wide terrain, canvassing many options without actually promoting any. This post from The Poll ...
I’ve http://andrewbartlett.com/?cat=27 written on this blog about Indonesia quite a few times over the years, and had a couple of brief visits to Jakarta and once to Aceh. I’ve also tried to follow events in that country and speak with Indonesians – delegations and individuals – who are visiting Australia. The elections held in Indonesia over the course of this year have been very important to Australia and our ...
There is less than a week to go for people to put in personal submissions for the national human rights consultations, with the general cut off date this coming Monday, 15 June. If you were planning on having your say on how best to protect and promote human rights and responsibilities, now is the time to do it. The efforts at consultation, carried out by an independent committee ...
In May 2007, months after Fiji had suffered its latest coup, I noted reports that the military was trying to prevent access to anti-government blogs. Now the transition to a military dictatorship is complete, the censorship crackdown on the local media has been redoubled, leaving local blogs and other websites as a crucial source of uncensored news from Fiji. I've done a post on the Crikey website with more details.
Rational, long-time political and policy blogger Andrew Norton has developed an internet survey in an effort to identify how people define and describe their political identity. It looks to me like a decent effort, and the more people have a go at it the more useful his results will be (or the clearer it will be how much different people use the same terms to mean completely different ...
I wrote a couple of months ago about federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner’s efforts to develop government participation in blogging. To his credit he’s at it again, helping kick off a “Digital Economy Future Directions Blog” tucked away inside the website of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE). There have been some useful wider topics raised for those who are interested in digital economy issues, with posts on open ...
Another welcome development in the task of making it easier for the public scrutinise the work of their parliamentarians, with the launch of the Project Democracy website by the folks at GetUp! The Project Democracy site taps into the Open Australia site which I wrote about in this post. Jason Wilson, who previously worked at QUT examining and encouraging citizen journalism, recently started working at GetUp! to develop projects such ...
Supporters of the Obama campaign have set up a website aimed at giving the public a chance to put forward ideas, and comment and rate each other’s ideas. It’s billed as an “unofficial campaign thinktank”. Of course, a lot of it is about providing yet another way to draw potential supporters in and build on the already formidable database of contacts and small scale donors supporting Obama - ...
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 ...
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 participated in a panel of speakers at the Microsoft Forum on Politics & Technology earlier this week, along with Antony Green, Joe Hockey, Kate Lundy and Matt Bai. It was an interesting discussion, although I did get a bit irritated that the debate seemed to keep turning inwards into a discussion about how politicians can more cleverly use internet technology to win votes, rather than examining how ...
The potential of the Open Australia site that I linked to in this post has clearly raised the hopes and interest of a range of bloggers (like Peter Martin, The Podcast Network, Public Polity and LP). Kim at LP notes the site is based on a similar site in the UK. Another good example of an independent effort to open up access to the workings of an important institution is this site called UN Democracy (also in the ...
A website with great potential for opening up the happenings in Parliament has gone online. The Open Democracy site is just in the beta/testing stage, but it has the potential to serve a really valuable role. You can sign up to get an email alert every time your local MP speaks in Parliament, or every time a particular topic is mentioned. Go here and have a look and ...
On June 25, during my final sitting week in Parliament, I’ll be speaking at a Politics & Technology conference organised by Microsoft. You can see all the speakers and panellists at this link. The keynote speaker will be US political writer, Matt Bai. I guess it will sort of mark the point I make a shift from a blogging politician to a person blogging about politics. The roles of ...
More by accident than design, I happened to be near a television when it was screening the summations of the 10 groups in the 2020 Summit. From what I heard, and from looking through the initial report from the gathering, there seem to be a fair few reasonable ideas in amongst it all. Some other parts do seem to be overly full of motherhood statements, wishlists and jargon, but ...
There was plenty of cynicism voiced by many people about the 2020 Summit held in Canberra this weekend. I can understand why some might tend to feel that way, but I think there is less reason to feel cynical about it than the average Parliamentary sittings which provide the usual political activity in Canberra. I believe that the community has a far greater potential than government does for accurately identifying ...
There was a piece in the Sun Herald last weekend suggesting the Liberal Party is “preparing a major internet blitz to reinvigorate itself”. The article contained a juvenile little snark from an unnamed Liberal Party source suggesting that “Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey were the only senior former Howard government ministers who could use a computer.” (disclosure: Christopher Pyne is my Facebook friend, while the other two are ...
I was going to do a post pointing to a couple of papers looking at the use and role of the internet in political campaigning. However, in doing so I can across some far more interesting sites which reminded me that social activism is far more interesting, so I’m pointing to them instead. I think this area has much greater significance that the narrow confines of electoral contests ...
Next,
This line from David Marr is one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of the farcical sound and fury which is Question Time in the House of Representatives:
It’s a bit like an RSPCA pound: never free of the spectre of being put down, the dogs bark and howl to attract attention.(0)
For those interested in basic facts about temperature trends in Australia and globally over recent decades, there is a great post over at Lavartus Prodeo by Brian Banisch, who has been following the data and the various scientific reports on this issue for a long time. Very much worth having a read of for those who are just wanting some facts.
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Many not for profit and charity groups have got a lot smarter over the years in tapping into some of the large amounts of money that get spent over Christmas. Christmas catalogues full of gifts for good cause groups have become widespread. In recent times, that has extended to bypassing a present all together, and giving someone a donation which actually goes direct to the good cause. This form of fundraising is now also tapping into social media, so much so that even my humble blog gets occasional requests to promote a cause from people who specifically target the avenues of social media to widen their reach. Here’s one example I recently received on behalf of World Vision.
More... (4)I’ve posted a piece over at The Stump about the links between global hunger and climate change, and the unfortunate parallels between the less than successful climate change summit in Copenhagen and an even more dismal outcome at the recent Hunger Summit in Rome, which received far less attention.
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Following are links to some items I’ve had published on other sites
More... (0)Disclaimer: The inclusion of a blog or website in this list should not be taken as an endorsement of its contents by me.
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