Unimpressed

Being prepared doesn’t make me any less disappointed and outraged by this. I cannot believe that Kevin said this with a straight face:
“Climate change is an inconvenient truth and a truth that we can no longer conveniently ignore,” Mr Rudd said at the National Press Club.
“No responsible leadership anywhere in the world can ignore the [...]

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Obstruction numero uno

Steve Fielding:
The Federal Government’s luxury car tax bill has been defeated in the Senate after Family First Senator Steve Fielding and the Opposition combined to vote against it.
…
“The Government could do something if they wanted to to get this measure through,” he said.
“There’s no way that Family First can vote for a bill that’s going [...]

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Not entirely

This is a bit too optimistic for me:
Legislation to end discrimination for same-sex couples under Commonwealth law has been introduced in Federal Parliament.
It needs the word ’some’, or perhaps ‘most’. But this is the line the Government has run with, and they are certainly well ahead of their predecessors in promoting equality. And they are [...]

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I’ll put my hand up

Ken Lovell asks:
Is it permissible to speak harshly of the Rudd Government yet?
 

Yes.

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All or nothing

Shorter Shanahan:
Because the Rudd Government doesn’t plan to completely change every detail of immigration policy, they are exactly the same as the Howard and Keating Governments.
Yes, Dennis, detention centres will still exist. Some people will even be held in them. I will agree that the Rudd Government appears prepared to continue the semantic games about [...]

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Bravo

Labor has had to bear the responsibility of introducing mandatory detention. I am very pleased that it can also claim the credit for doing away with it.
ELSEWHERE: Senator Evans’s speech sets out the plan for reforming detention policy. There is commentary from both Andrew Bartlett and Tim Dunlop. As Tim notes, the Opposition has responded [...]

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Agreement with GrodsCorp

I has it.
UPDATE: On the flipside is this tactic from the Opposition, which manages to both (i) stall the Government’s plan to eliminate a clear form of discrimination and (ii) implicitly suggest that homosexual partnerships are on a par with siblings and other carers rather than married or de facto heterosexual couples. There should not [...]

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Freedom, openness and accountability

Free our speech.
Open our government.
Protect our democracy.

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Displaying the price tag

Senator Bob Brown has pledged that, if Parliament sits next week, he will make sure it doesn’t totally waste its time:
If the Prime Minister doesn’t call the election this weekend, I will introduce a private members’ bill when Parliament resumes next week requiring the total amount of taxpayers’ money spent on government advertising to be [...]

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Who’s letting the hospitals down?

Tim Dunlop breaks down some of the figures on federal-state proportional funding for hospitals:
In trying to untangle the rhetoric from both parties about their hospital policies the other day, one aspect I only touched on was the issue of funding. I noted that “the Federal Government…seems to be using the moment to decrease the [...]

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