by Terri M. Kelleher Upper-house MP Fiona Patten of the Reason Party (formerly Sex Party) recently introduced her Education and Training Amendment (School Employment) Bill into the Victorian Parliament. Ms Patten claims her Bill is to prevent religious discrimination in the engagement of chaplains in Victorian government schools. She says that a person has to…
by Patrick J. Byrne Epidemiologists study the incidence, distribution and possible control of diseases. They find a good measure of covid19 deaths is to count “excess deaths”: that is the number of deaths this year compared with the average of deaths over the same period (say, January to August) in the past four years. While “excess deaths” is not a perfect measure, it largely overcomes a major problem with “number of covid19 deaths” as reported daily by governments. Daily figures often do not distinguish between those who die from the disease as distinct from those who die with the disease.…
by Chris McCormack GetUp’s foreign funding has seemingly diminished A $3.5 million 2019 election spend gleaned just one seat 3 Investigations into GetUp’s independence continue Despite $12.8 million in donations in 2018-19, partly foreign funded, and a $3.5 million election spend, activist group GetUp spectacularly failed to unseat the government in the 2019 federal election. GetUp targeted 30 coalition-held electorates across the country with particular focus on a “hit list” of nine coalition seats. Only Tony Abbott lost his seat of Warringah. GetUp apparently manned 935 polling booths, had 15 million ads seen, knocked on 36,315 doors, made 712,000 phone…
by Brian Coman In Part One of this essay, Brian Coman described distributism as an application of the principle of subsidiarity aimed at enabling human flourishing. That is, it takes seriously the judgement that the family is the first and closest human community and thus must be supported where faltering and left alone where it is doing its job well. Attachments and rights and responsibilities radiate outwards from the family in concentric circles of interdependency to local communities and eventually to national governments and the global community. Brian here brings the distributist position home with some personal investigations. On a…
