leunigA renowned Australian cartoonist has said he lost his prime spot in a Melbourne-based newspaper after he drew parallels between the Tiananmen Square protests and Covid-19 vaccine mandates in a new cartoon.

Cartoonist Michael Leunig, sometimes referred to as Australia’s “living national treasure,” has revealed that he was forced out of his position on the editorial page of The Age daily newspaper after publishing a political cartoon criticizing the government’s push for mandatory vaccination.

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There’s a major greenwashing event taking place in Australia. After decades of attacking the climate movement, the Liberal Party and the Murdoch press have—so they tell us—finally seen the light, jumped aboard a newly minted “green and gold” bandwagon, and set course for “net zero by 2050”.

 

 

by Anneke Demanuele, James Plested

 

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A key aim in the appointment is for the Nationals to have a senior minister who is across the detail of the climate policy to make sure the party secures the safeguards it is being promised to prevent climate measures hurting regional communities.

The Nationals are confident of gaining changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation to ease what they see as “green tape” on farmers and miners, sparking a likely fight in Parliament over the scale of the changes when Labor and the Greens want stronger checks on new projects.

 

More infrastructure spending will also be part of the final package, including support for an extension of the inland rail project being built from Melbourne to Brisbane.

turgidity...

I’m impressed with federal Education Minister Alan Tudge’s contribution to the national curriculum debate (“Tudge push on history ‘plays politics with children’,” October 23-24). The minister’s farcical statement: “Our society is the wealthiest, most liberal, most egalitarian and most tolerant society that has ever existed in all of humankind” is so facile and biased I suggest it has a place as a discussion proposition in upcoming HSC history exams. This would provide a broad platform for students to discuss their understanding of nuance, perspective and complexity when analysing the impacts of significant events in Australian history.

- Adrian Brown, Cammeray

 

 

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Consistency, persistence and stubbornness. They can be tremendous virtues, so long as you are sure you are right.

And, if you're not, then as economist John Maynard Keynes is said to have stated: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

National Party leader Barnaby Joyce and his key lieutenants may finally have capitulated after months of internal bickering over whether to endorse a carbon emissions reduction target at the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow.

The last-minute deal was short on detail, with vague mentions of regional jobs and uranium but nothing on renewables.

wheelFrom bikes to booze, the global supply chain is on its knees

 

The integration of the global supply chain has served the world well for years. However, it’s now under pressure just as the economy recovers.

 

By Shane Wright and Nick Bonyhady

 

Before a new bicycle hits the road or a mountain trail, it has usually already travelled thousands of kilometres.

malcolm...Barbados Elects Its First Head of State, Replacing Queen Elizabeth

 

The country’s Parliament chose Sandra Mason, the governor general, to assume the symbolic title, a decisive move to distance itself from Barbados’s colonial past.

 

The island nation of Barbados has elected a female former jurist to become its next head of state, a symbolic position held since the 1950s by Queen Elizabeth II, as the country takes another step toward casting off its colonial past.

orstraya

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the rest of the world usually pays very little attention to Australia.

Sometimes we're mixed up with Austria. Sometimes, the US president appears to momentarily forget the prime minister's name. 

new cars

If you ask Scott Morrison about electric vehicles he throws poor, and inaccurate, marketing lines at you, such as they will “end the weekend”, they “won’t tow your trailer – it’s not going to tow your boat”, as he did when former Labor leader Bill Shorten backed fairly modest objectives concerning the electrification of our vehicle fleet in the run-up to the last election.

Our nation drifts further and further behind the world on electric vehicles, or as Volkswagen puts it, Australia is becoming “an automotive Third World”.

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The European Union has postponed the next round of free trade talks with Australia for a second time amid simmering anger over Canberra's decision to cancel a $90 billion submarine contract with France.

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At a recent IMF event on recovering nations from the coronavirus pandemic, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that the COVID-19 coronavirus plunged over 100 million people into poverty, with over 4 billion people with little or no social support. 

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Matt Canavan’s attempt to force the government to release the modelling on its net-zero plan was a transparent attempt to further scorn the emissions cuts he abhors.

 

The government’s refusal to do so, defying a Senate order, capped off another unedifying week for accountability and openness in government.

The week-long charade of the Nationals’ ham-fisted negotiations over net zero was what dominated headlines, with both Coalition parties extracting what they wanted from the drawn-out drama.

 

But it was some complicated parliamentary parlour games that eminent barrister and anti-corruption advocate Geoffrey Watson described as having “trashed integrity” and “a new low”.

 

piggies

How to justify making grants not recommended by the relevant department? Easy – just say you do.

That’s what is disclosed by Freedom of Information requests into the wealth of federal government not-recommended-but-given grants.

And when National Party ministers get their hands on a pork barrel, public servants’ analysis of projects’ suitability and priority seems to matter particularly little.

targetsMedicare cuts prove the Coalition is bad for our health

 

By Michelle Pini | 21 October 2021, 7:00am |  37 comments |  951 | 

(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)

 

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'Who the Hell Shrunk Mike and Why?' Twitter Explodes Over Pompeo's Dramatic Weight Loss...

 

Two months ago, Pompeo joined Sean Hannity on Fox News to rip into the Joe Biden administration over its "panicked" tactics in Afghanistan. However, all Twitter was obsessed with was his slimmer looks.Ex-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has left the public curious following his appearance on Fox News this week, as many social media users noticed he'd lost a staggering amount of weight.