A private member’s bill introduced into Federal Parliament by NSW Liberal Democrat Senator David Leyonhjelm (pictured below) to legalise the possession for personal use of cannabis is now under consideration by a federal parliamentary inquiry. Cannabis (marijuana) is the most widely used illicit drug in Australia. Senator Leyonhjelm is a radical free-market advocate who believes…
Since the 1980s, many governments, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), academics and some climate scientists have been issuing increasingly dire warnings that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is creating run-away heating of the environment – the “greenhouse effect” – with catastrophic consequences for life on earth. This has…
Few words in contemporary political discourse elicit the hostility provoked by the word “populism”. To be populist, according to the prevailing intellectual fashion, is to be backward-looking, anti-intellectual and xenophobic. The rise of populism is frequently described as a reversion to the 1930s-era fascism (though, interestingly, it is never identified with…
Severe power shortfalls have hit New South Wales for the first time, as the impact of the closures of coal-fired power stations in South Australia and Victoria is compounded by maintenance issues at power stations in NSW. Australia’s largest aluminium smelter, the Tomago Aluminium plant (pictured) near Newcastle in NSW, which has operated 24…
