
Why politics shouldn't influence how much we pay judges
Dec 16, 2018 12:59 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Have you ever wondered who determines the salaries and benefits paid to judges, and on what basis they decide? Until I was asked by the Canadian Provincial Court Judges Association, an independent federation of provincial...
Government agrees to national anti-corruption body – with strict limits
Dec 16, 2018 12:57 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The government has given in to pressure to set a new Commonwealth Integrity Commission but its operation would be strictly circumscribed, without the ability to hold public hearings into allegations of corruption against...
Brexit rooted more in elite politics than mass resentment
Dec 16, 2018 12:53 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
Thirty months after the British voted to exit the European Union, or the EU, nobody knows where Brexit will end up. Champions of the exit hoped to free themselves from the EUs constraints especially requirements for...
No coups occurred in 2018. Will next year be so stable?
Dec 16, 2018 12:50 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The past year may have felt politically tumultuous, between Saudi Arabias brazen killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, the resurgence of authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and Donald Trumps unorthodox approach...
Monday's MYEFO will look good, but it will set the budget up for awful trouble down the track
Dec 15, 2018 17:34 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
An appallingly perfect storm is brewing for the federal budget: a government with much more income than expected a federal election due within months a government well behind in the...
Morrison’s health handout is bad policy (but might be good politics)
Dec 15, 2018 16:31 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The A$1.25 billion Community Health and Hospitals Program Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced this week should be awarded a big policy fail. The move sets back Commonwealth-state relations by decades and its...
The John Birch Society is still influencing American politics, 60 years after its founding
Dec 10, 2018 02:47 am UTC| Insights & Views Politics
The retired candy entrepreneur Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society 60 years ago to push back against what he perceived as a growing American welfare state modeled on communism and the federal governments push to...