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 […]
I have a fairly straightforward question that I would really like answered. Seriously, not glib, partisan hackery… a really want an answer. How does one spend 14 BILLION in additional money on public schools and *not* get a political win out of that? I get that ‘more money for schools’ is a fairly normal election […]
Some articles that I’ve encountered over the past few weeks looking ostensibly at opposite ends of the democratic machine brought home to me the truism behind Churchill’s quote that “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The first was an article […]
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 […]
Hi all, For a while now I’ve been talking to Dragonista and others about beginning and running a podcast to be housed on Ausvotes2013. Similar to the blog itself, I’m driven here by the desire to provide a space for reasoned discussion and debate by involving people who are knowledgeable or who have a significant […]
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 […]
Here’s the next instalments of Stranger Than Fiction. Week 3: In which an investigation is launched, votes are counted and punches are thrown Week 4: In which the sharks begin to circle, numbers have no meaning and inspiration is born Remember – please do not read this if you are easily offended – the writing style […]
There are moments in the electoral cycle where I find myself wondering what on earth all these people are whinging about, because there doesn’t seem to be a real issue in sight. Confected nonsense about potential damage from refugees or other immigrants stealing jobs, who lied or not, or some alleged character slur from 30 […]
Here at AusVotes 2013 we’ve been given the opportunity to bring to our readers a fascinating work of politico noir, Stranger Than Fiction. The serialised work by Anonymous* is fiction based in the reality of this year’s federal election. I describe it as politico noir because it evokes the crime fiction of James Ellroy but is […]
Reading Simon Jackman’s Guardian article Opinion polls tell us Labor can’t win it dawned on me I was reading another article discussing the seeming inevitability of a Coalition victory in September. What if Australians elect another hung parliament and Labor negotiates to form government (discussed here and here)? You may laugh off this as a possibilty, but the point is forecasts […]
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