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 […]
11 Jan
Comments Off on After Arizona: The sickness at the heart of American society and its aetiologies
Despite shock being professed around the world, the shootings in Arizona over the weekend shouldn’t be surprising. The United States stands out for its high levels of political polarisation in a rich, industrialised country, and as Gary Younge points out, this polarisation has reached new highs during the presidency of Barack Obama. It is this […]
08 Jan
Comments Off on Dissecting feminism’s dead end
Now cross-posted at the Overland Journal blog. One Dimensional Woman is Nina Power’s 69-page treatise and call to arms, articulately railing against contemporary portrayals of women. Power’s anger is at the narrow confines within which women must locate themselves, and the “trademarking” of feminism for a range of projects that are harmful rather than liberatory. Acutely sharp in […]
07 Dec
Comments Off on Michael Costa, George Megalogenis & the strange death of ‘reform’ politics
Now also cross-posted to ABC’s The Drum website. The last fortnight saw the release of two significant contributions to the post federal election debate on the state of official politics, and more specifically its intimate connection with the fortunes of the Australian Labor Party. The first, the new Quarterly Essay by George Megalogenis of The Australian, is a detailed attempt […]
30 Nov
The Victorian Liberals’ victory came as unsurprising to me, and not just for the reasons outlined by the ever-perceptive Peter Brent. There has been voter crankiness against state and federal Labor governments that reflects the exhaustion of the party’s attempt to use technocratic managerialism as a substitute for traditional social democratic politics. As Left Flank has pointed out, this […]
16 Nov
Me in today’s The Drum Unleashed on the ABC website, where I look at the collapse of the Greens’ strategy to secure Liberal Party preferences in some key inner-Melbourne seats. Just why is a Left party playing these games? Since 2006 the ALP has hammered the fact the Greens are willing to do deals with the Liberals, a line […]
06 Nov
So what is politics? For most, politics is that thing that happens in Canberra and on Macquarie Street. That thing to be ridiculed, not trusted, obsessed over and argued about. It is that thing external from us, happening ‘out there’ in other locations, and reported in the media. Yet politics is also a practice, or potential […]
05 Oct
Today this tweet showed up in my feed: BernardKeane If Tony Abbott really wants to learn from the Tories he should start with their attack on middle-class welfare http://bit.ly/9vL8os It links to the fallout of a decision by the Con-Dem coalition to slash a billion pounds out of the UK’s universal child benefit, a decision […]
14 Sep
There has been much discussion in the left-leaning blogosphere about the stridency of the Murdoch media campaign against the “legitimacy” of the Gillard minority government. As Left Flank noted on the weekend, The Australian has editorialised that it is committed to having the Greens “destroyed at the ballot box”. In the AFR on Friday (paywalled, […]
14 Aug
Comments Off on Worse than the cure? The hollowness of Australia’s preventative health agenda
For too long the system has focused on treating people after they become unwell, and this has resulted in vast social and economic costs associated with chronic disease. —Commonwealth Government response to the Report of the National Preventative Health Taskforce, May 2010 “Prevention” has become the health reform buzzword du jour, accepted at all points […]
16 Jan
Comments Off on The curious marriage of neoliberalism and nationalism