These are turbulent times. The catastrophic bushfires may have wiped it off the front page, but last week saw the passage through federal parliament of the Government’s $42 billion ‘economic stimulus package’.
The sky is white today. The sea has turned slate grey, and the deep swells rocking the Mona Lisa slowly from side to side are ripped with white foam. We have been out of sight of land for only two days since leaving behind the lonely outflung arms of Aotearoa, and our world has contracted to the swaying confines of this long white liner. Some time around sunrise tomorrow the coastline of New South Wales will come into view and my brief sojourn with the Peace Boat will be over.
One of the few advantages of being new to this job is appreciating it’s strangeness with fresh eyes. Three times a year, while the Senate is in recess, an intriguing and largely overlooked ritual takes place in the airy committee rooms of Parliament House in Canberra. Senior public servants, heads of departments and a highly qualified army of advisers and minders converge for five days of cross-examination in front of the Senate’s eight standing committees.
It’s been a long time since there has been much of a focus on affordable housing by the Federal Government. For many years, Government policy has been skewed toward housing as just another investment instrument, with tax concessions encouraging a speculative bubble which was great for many of those who got into the market and a disaster for those left behind. At the same time, State Governments have cut budgets and run down public housing stock, creating the situation today of interminable waiting lists and the spectre of homelessness alongside some of the wealthiest communities on the planet.
For most of the country the mining boom is a good news story of mining royalties and economic resilience that has carried us – so far – through the turbulence on world financial markets. However from close-up in the coastal Pilbara, the resources boom has distorted the local economy beyond recognition. Some are making and taking a great deal of money out of the region; others are struggling to survive.
The Rudd Government needs to take a careful look at Martin Ferguson’s handling of the latest tragic chapter of Australia’s 50-year nuclear waste story. A cursory review of the history of Government attempts to force nuclear waste dumps on unwilling communities shows an unbroken record of Government failure. It’s time for new thinking.
2008 is off to a very interesting start. Although I don’t formally take up my position until 1 July, I was invited to the opening of Parliament, which turned out to be a far more moving experience than usual.
On Saturday 24 November 2007, the thirteen and a half million enrolled Australians wrote the Howard Government into history. Not just a mild rebuke, but one of the most delightfully unambiguous electoral demolition jobs our country has ever seen.
in a state veering between high anxiety and flaky exhaustion, one last appeal for hands on deck…