Author Archives: Ed Butler
A tale of two rallies
Yesterday in Canberra, there were two public rallies, both concerned with the same issue, both at polar opposite ends of their respective argumentative spectrum. On the one hand, you had a pro-wind farm rally, organised by GetUp! (never forget the exclamation mark!), featuring Christine Milne and Tony Windsor as speakers. An estimated 1,000 people attended. […]
Sexism and false equivalences
So I guess it’s my turn to pen a reply to Kath. Earlier today she wrote a piece here on AusVotes whose central thesis was that ‘I don’t believe that women are more the victim than men, or that the sexism is better or worse than other varieties of insults.’ Sorry Kath, but this is […]
That Vision Thing
Can we imagine, for a moment, two possible eventualities that could confront us on September 15, both apparently quite unlikely; a re-elected Gillard government and a re-elected Rudd government. What would they do? We have had a three-year period wherein, despite how you may feel about the government, there has been some fairly serious legislation […]
AusVotes Chat: the Blue Tie edition
Welcome to the inaugural effort of the AusVotes team to run a weekly podcast, hereby named the ‘AusVotes Chat’ until we think of something with a pun. We’re hoping to make this a somewhat entertaining look at the issues in the news, the issues that we find interesting, and most importantly, the things that have […]
‘Pressure is mounting’
There is a semi-codified rule here at AusVotes that we do not write about the ALP leadership. This is a rule I intend to hold true to, but events over the weekend have raised an analogy that bears mentioning, and may make clearer the motivations of those non-politicians in the relentless engaging in speculation and […]
Scary Internet and an apathetic public
Internet things are complicated. Hard to follow. Advocates of all things computing tend to speak in a language all of their own, replete with acronyms and neologisms. And, through no fault of the tech industry or its aficionados, it may be doing serious damage to Australian – and global – privacy and security. To begin […]
Faceless Feeney a massive mistake
With Martin Ferguson’s exit from parliament, the safest ALP seat in Australia becomes one of the more interesting subplots of the 2013 election. Ferguson (a ‘giant’ of the resources industry, apparently, but that rant can be found elsewhere) mumbled his way into the sunset and onto any number of mining company boards, leaving my own, […]
A bribe by any other name
Why do we allow corporate donations to political parties? At all? This is a question that occurs to me every year, surprisingly enough when the AEC release the (by now already dated) data on political donations. This is not an in-depth look at the numbers. I imagine one of our more details-oriented writers is presently […]
ALP: $6.00, Coalition: $1.10
Head out and about to homeless shelters and gambling support groups. Chat to the victims of problem gambling. Ask them what it was that they lost their fortunes, their houses, their families, and even their health to. There’s one response you’re damn near certain not to hear: “I couldn’t stop betting on games as they […]
Are we left with the right centre?
The other day, on the AusVotes2013 Facebook page, we received a concisely-worded piece of feedback. Apparently, AusVotes has become, in its brief lifetime, a hive of Coalition Groupthink™. Never mind the piece I wrote the other day suggesting that I couldn’t conceive of a rational argument for voting for the coalition, or lambasting Joe Hockey […]
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