senate days | scott ludlam

when asked anything

Couple of weeks ago I dipped a toe in the wilds of Reddit for the first time, hosting an Ask Me Anything for an hour and a half after Parliament had risen for the night (The thread is here http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1edbxj/i_am_scott_ludlam_australian_greens_senator_and/) There is always something faintly intimidating about finding your way in a new social network, particularly one that’s been around as long as Reddit. Unique social customs, taboos and pitfalls have evolved that you only really discover by lurking for a bit and then accidentally stumbling into them when you finally do start to play.

29 May 2013

your taxes, mapped: the openeconomy project

Web-based financial data visualisation This week is budget week, an annual ritual which seizes Canberra as the tail end of Autumn begins to give way to the sharp, beautiful winters of the capital. The gravity-well around which this chaos of Ministers, lobbyists, journalists and interest groups is orbiting, is a dense set of documents which set out the nation’s finances for the next four years.

17 May 2013

the filter, reloaded

Another chapter has opened on the internet filtering debate in Australia. You might recall a scrappy and quite effective campaign that raged from 2007 to 2010 against a Government proposal to force ISPs to block the somewhat arbitrary ‘Refused Classification’ list in Australia. On the eve of the last election, the campaign had become strong enough that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy dodged sideways and announced the issue would instead be studied by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC), effectively taking it off the table for the 2010 election.

17 May 2013

victims of prosperity

Something has gone badly wrong in the housing affordability debate in Australia, even as our cities continue to break new records for extreme housing stress. The conventional wisdom has the definition of ‘affordable’ resting on cheap land at the far periphery of our great cities. Even if this wasn’t wiping out extensive tracts of urban bushland and peri-urban farming country at an accelerating rate, the fact that sandlots far over the horizon are the only places that even vaguely fit the definition of ‘affordable’ show how dysfunctional the Australian housing market has become.

25 October 2012

at the end of the world

i. cause The rice paddy on the edge of Iitate village is 30km back from the coast, framed by steep forested hills, and we stop here briefly because the scene is so strangely heraldic. At first glance, this looks like any other rural Japanese town in late summer, but it isn’t any more. The precise geometries of the fields are softened with neglect and waist-high weeds. Two empty police cars sit out front of the vacant community hall. Crickets hum in the mid-day humidity, in sleepy counterpoint to the rumble of diesel engines. A work team of several dozen

24 August 2012

with friends like these…

By now, anyone following the extraordinary twists in the WikiLeaks story will have heard the Government, from the Prime Minister on down, insisting that they have provided full consular assistance for Julian Assange, and don’t know anything about US plans to prosecute him. These statements tend to be delivered in a tone of wounded innocence, as though the Government can’t believe that people don’t appreciate the strenuous efforts they’re making to support this Australian citizen. It is a peculiar form of consular assistance that is being delivered here. It extends to the Prime Minister pre-emptively judging the work of

21 June 2012

over and out

The Prime Minister’s speech on Afghanistan at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) included some surprising and welcome concessions to the two thirds of Australians who believe it is time for our military forces to leave the country.

18 April 2012

a week in afghanistan

This is a lightly edited diary of the Parliamentary Defence Exchange 3-13 April 2012 to Al Minhad, Tarin Kot, FOB Mirwais and Kandahar Air Field. Thanks in particular due to Captain Simon Petie, whose patience and generosity in looking after four special needs individuals made this trip so valuable. Day 1 – Al Minhad Airbase, UAE It’s about 8:30pm local time, on a bunkbed with the sound of an air conditioner and the roar of cargo planes for company.

18 April 2012

on an agreement

The 2010 election delivered up a ‘plague on both your houses’ outcome that is still kicking out the occasional aftershock. To a visitor from Europe there would be nothing particularly remarkable about the idea of a multi-hued Parliament in which political parties and independents are forced to sit down and negotiate on the passage of laws. That, after all, is what Parliaments were designed to do. But there’s something in the Australian political culture, from the press gallery to the opposition benches, that refuses to understand or assimilate the reality of a minority government.

1 April 2012