In the presidential election run-off in East Timor last week, the front-runner from the left-wing party Fretilin, Francisco “Lú-Olo” Guterres, was comfortably defeated by Taur Matan Ruak, the former military chief and protégé of Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmão. Fretilin, an acronym for the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor, conducted an effective but…
For over 100 years, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has played a vital role in providing accurate weather forecasts for people across Australia, and was rightly regarded as a national icon. However, in recent years, it has been increasingly politicised in support of the Gillard Government’s climate change agenda, most recently in the…
Allegations that the federal MP for Dobell, Craig Thomson, a former federal secretary of the Health Services Union, and the union’s suspended federal president, Michael Williamson, misused union funds to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, have damaged the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the federal Labor Government because the Prime Minister has stood by Mr Thomson. The allegations against Craig Thomson go back to 2008, not long after he was elected to federal parliament as part of the “Kevin 07” bandwagon which defeated John Howard. Thomson’s successor as federal secretary of the HSU, Kathy Jackson, initiated an…
For decades, Australian families were able to rely on the ready availability of low-cost electricity, based on an abundance of low-cost coal, to maintain their standard of living. No longer. A study commissioned by the Energy Users Association of Australia (EUAA), and released last month, shows that Australia’s electricity prices have risen in recent years to near to the highest in the developed world, and seem certain to reach the highest. The study, Australian Electricity Prices: An International Comparison, was conducted by the energy economics consultancy, Carbon + Energy Markets (CME). The study is an exhaustive examination of consumer prices…
