Continuing my analysis of the Right of Australian politics, my first op-ed for The Guardian’s new Australian website is up today, and can be found here. The lack of enthusiasm for the conservatives was borne out in a remarkable poll of 24 marginal seats in March. It found a two-party preferred voting intention of 59.4% for the Coalition, [...]
09 Jun
Here is an edited transcript of the speech I gave at the Secure Jobs in a Green Future Conference. Thanks to the Search Foundation for inviting me along, and to the other speakers on the panel: Sally McManus, Andrew Giles, Cate Faehrmann, Nick Martin and Hall Greenland. You can now access many of the presentations [...]
05 Jun
When the pressures of modern society become too great for a person, when one’s chemical dynamic becomes such that they are unbalanced, that they cease painting within the lines, they come to us. These are the people that society would prefer just go away — the shadow people. The shadow people that project upon us [...]
04 May
In a couple of weeks I will be in San Francisco for the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, at which the latest edition of the APA’s diagnostic “bible”, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, will be released. From the look of the program, you’d think this is much like when previous [...]
01 May
Cross-posted from Larvatus Prodeo. Thanks to Mark Bahnisch for convincing me to return to this subject. I have to confess that I couldn’t bring myself to watch Monday’s Four Corners on the scandal of Australia’s “offshore” asylum seeker processing regime. I’m on the Sydney Refugee Action Coalition email list and read horrifying stories from Manus [...]
25 Apr
A few weeks ago the right-wing Australian think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) held a gala dinner to celebrate its 70th birthday. The event garnered extra attention thanks to a small but spirited protest outside the venue, which was ritually condemned by police and politicians. While the protesters’ political objectives struck me as diffuse, [...]
10 Apr
If there’s one thing the entire Australian Left agrees on right now it’s that “Thatcherism was a very bad thing”. But beyond that, it may be appropriate to ask what exactly it is that people think was a bad thing. The answer to that question rests on one’s interpretation of what exactly was going on [...]
01 Apr
Liz and I are pleased to be speaking at the Australian Left Renewal Conference: Secure Jobs in a Green Future, to be held at the University of Technology, Sydney, next weekend, 6-7 April. The conference is co-organised by The Search Foundation and the UTS Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre. Among the highlights will be a [...]
12 Mar
That aspect of the modern crisis which is bemoaned as a “wave of materialism” is related to what is called the “crisis of authority”. If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer “leading” but only “dominant”, exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their [...]
08 Mar
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Introducing AN INTEGRAL STATE, the new blog by Elizabeth Humphrys Recent years have seen a big increase in Marxist theorising on the state and its relationship to the capitalist system. These discussions have gone through several phases, from debates over the nature of globalisation in the late 1990s, to renewed interest in imperialism in reaction [...]
18 Jun
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