The big story in Australian politics this week was the shocking state of the political debate on electricity. Giles Parkinson says, when you thought it couldn’t get any dumber, it did.
‘People will die due to renewables’, said Turnbull government MP Craig Kelly.
Commentators who don’t understand the grid should butt out of the battery debate, said Ketan Joshi, a communications consultant for the renewable energy industry. Continue reading Saturday salon 15/7
The New Daily sport editor James Willoughby’s article Cricket tour of South Africa cancelled over pay dispute is typical of the coverage. The players want everyone to be treated fairly, and want the grass roots to be looked after. Seems Cricket Australia wants the same, but with a different way of carving the pie. The chasm is so wide people are talking about an Ashes tour being junked, and worry about the future of the game.
Yet most of the reporting and commentary misses the main point – Cricket Australia refuses to attend mediation or offer any genuine flexibility in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) negotiations. They simply will not deal with the Australian Cricketers Association. Continue reading Saturday salon 8/7
That was the headline on the front page of the AFR on Friday.
Households are facing increases of up to 20 per cent, but businesses on five-year contracts signed in 2012 are facing hikes of as much as 83%. Continue reading Climate clippings 209
Cardinal Pell is to come back to Australia to face “historical sexual assault offences“. There have been and will be many words written about Pell, but I liked Sean Kenny at The Monthly. Kenny is worth reading on the current political follies, but he says the Pell case reminds us that there are more important changes happening in society.
Charging someone so senior in the Catholic church would have been unthinkable not so long ago. Sexual abuse of minors is finally being taken seriously. Continue reading Saturday salon 1/7
Coal India, the largest coal mining company in the world, has announced it will close 37 mines because they are no longer economically viable. That’s around 9 per cent of the state-run firm’s mines.
Also:
I got a heads-up from John D, Mark’s Facebook was onto it also. Prospective migrants would be asked questions about clean coal, according to RenewEconomy, who don’t normally do satire. They got it from The Australian, and the man from The Monthly on RN Drive says it was real, so was it?
The link was to this site, so was it real, or a spoof? Surely the latter!
So I Googled IELTS and found that Peter Dutton says the idea that an academic test is required for citizenship and migration is a load of cobblers. Continue reading Saturday salon 24/6
A shocker this week was the fire that destroyed the Grenfell Tower in London, a 24-storey building with 120 apartments. The latest count is 30 dead, but the final toll could be much higher as people were incinerated, many difficult or impossible to identify.
Unfortunately people were told to stay in their units, until it became apparent that the fire was spreading up the cladding on the outside of the building – then it was too late for many. Continue reading Saturday salon 17/6
The BBC has the results – it’s a hung parliament.
Theresa May did a Malcolm Turnbull, by calling an election to strengthen her position, and scraping back in by the barest of margins. Continue reading Saturday salon 10/6
The major polls currently have Labor ahead 53-47 at both Newspoll and Essential Report on a Two-Party Preferred basis. Andrew Beaumont has commentary. Labor would have 82 seats to the LNP’s 63, with 5 Other.
Essentially Turnbull and the LNP are going nowhere. However, the leaders approval ratings are dreadful. In Essential Turnbull is net -11 and Shorten -14. In Newspoll Turnbull is -19, and Shorten -20, both up a bit, with Turnbull’s the best since September 2015.
Newspoll took a look at Leadership traits across the years since Rudd in September 2008 and Gillard in July-August 2010. Their ratings are simply stellar compared to what we think of our leaders now. Continue reading Saturday salon 3/6 (late edition)
No doubt you remember this from Saturday salon 13/5:
Margaret Court, tennis legend, later Pentecostal Christian minister in 1991 and now a minister at Perth’s Victory Life Church, brought a storm upon her head when she said she would no longer fly Qantas because of Alan Joyce’s advocacy for same-sex marriage. Continue reading Saturday salon 27/5
The ABC has got wind of a story that Adani, if the Carmichael coal plant goes ahead, will pay only token royalties to the Queensland Government.
Whether true or not here is a big handshake:
That’s the story from David Graham at The Atlantic, who details fully the events over just 10 days, some of which haven’t been picked up by our media.
The bottom line is that Trump is not up to the job, his minions are not up to saving him, often mislead him or don’t tell him the truth, he doesn’t take much notice of them, and the place leaks like a sieve. This will play out over a long period, but there are serious questions about whether his presidency can achieve anything. Continue reading Saturday salon 20/5
