It puzzles me that one can say many outrageously left-wing things on Twitter and barely get a rise but when one raises criticisms of compulsory voting (CV) many left-leaning tweeps get very worked up indeed. Sometimes more worked up than they get about things like the possibility of the Liberals winning in NSW in a […]
16 Jan
Comments Off on The curious marriage of neoliberalism and nationalism
One of the main arguments of the neoliberal era has been centred on the decline of nation states and governments as actors in the economic sphere, replaced by decentralised market networks, multinational corporations and a new class of transnational capitalists. In her article in the Atlantic Monthly that I quoted in my last post, “The Rise of […]
16 Oct
In March 2009 I was the lead NSW delegate to the Australian Greens’ National Council in Perth when I experienced a curious fact of climate politics. Our state party put a proposal that the Senators pull back from having emissions trading as the key plank of climate policy, a position Christine Milne had enshrined in […]
12 Sep
Comments Off on Our s11
Yesterday was ten years since thousands of Australian blockaded the Asia Pacific Summit of the World Economic Forum at Crown Casino in Melbourne. You can read my blog post about our s11 and the impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the Overland Journal Blog (and reprinted below).
24 Aug
Saturday’s result can be viewed as a great exercise in democracy — or a poor second-best outcome. The independents now crucial to who forms Australia’s government would tell you it’s the former. Commonsense leans to the latter interpretation. —Michelle Grattan, 24 August 2010 As one might expect, the lack of a clear winner in Saturday’s […]
15 Aug
Among progressive environmental thinkers it has become de rigueur to attack economic growth as the main problem leading to ecological destruction and runaway climate change. The argument is put with certain variations, but the central theme is always the same: economic growth is infinite while the planet is finite, and so we cannot afford to […]
03 Aug
Comments Off on Welcome to the desert of the real: early requiem for our postmodern election
If postmodernism represents the philosophical and aesthetic logic of late capitalism, then we have certainly scored ourselves the ultimate postmodern election. Fragmentary policy announcements, a lingusitic turn on the messaging front and, of course, such self-reflexive narratives that it’s hard to tell what is “real” anymore. Actually, hold that thought, because there is nothing real, just […]
23 Jan
Comments Off on Compulsory voting: More to do with legitimating state rule than democracy