The release of the Draft Murray-Darling Basin plan earlier today, and the announcement that 2,750 gigalitres would be returned to the environment, was followed by predictable outrage. Irrigators said that…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Home – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 50326 - 50350 of 52349 articles
The idea that reading in dim light ruins your eyes isn’t my favourite wives’ tale about “leisure activities” causing blindness, nor is it the most obscene! In any case, it’s simply not true. I’ll begin…
As the Qantas dispute moves into the arbitration phase in Fair Work Australia (FWA), it is timely to consider whether the tests for access to arbitration under the Fair Work Act need refining. Prompted…
DURBAN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE: Progress towards a binding international agreement on targets to tackle global warming has been more than glacial. Yet despite growing alarm among the climate science…
TALKING ABOUT DEATH AND DYING – Can we be forced to live despite our wish to have our lives end at some natural point? What options do we have for having a say in how and when we are to die? Today we look…
Creating a 30 second YouTube movie that goes viral is the holy grail of marketing. So how is it done? Ensuring the success of a viral-produced movie is still largely hit-and-miss. Some of the more well-known…
Hard though it may be to believe, there has been a long-term, very significant decline in all kinds of violence around the world. In his most recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, Harvard evolutionary…
New Zealand goes to the polls today to elect both a government and conduct a referendum on the nation’s electoral system. It will cap off fifteen tumultuous months in the country. Christchurch has endured…
The release of the Coral Sea Commonwealth marine reserve proposal is a milestone achievement in marine protection. The area proposed to be covered is larger than that of many small European nations. In…
Welcome to the latest in our In Conversation series, between Australian of the Year Simon McKeon, and Fellow at the Centre for Accounting and Industry Partnerships, Department of Accounting, University…
MILLENNIUM PRIZE SERIES: The Millennium Prize Problems are seven mathematics problems laid out by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000. They’re not easy – a correct solution to any one results in a US$1,000,000…
Climate change – resulting in more frequent flooding of the Wooramel River that leads into Shark Bay – may threaten the unique stromatolites that make Shark Bay a World Heritage site. These stromatolites…
As the Leveson inquiry rolls on in London, and one witness after another testifies to the intrusions and violations endured at the hands of the British press, I am reminded once again of the collapse of…
The Coronial Inquest into the police shooting of Melbourne teenager Tyler Cassidy concluded this week, with Coroner Jennifer Coate ruling there was “an urgent need for training to focus on how to deal…
Paul Cleary’s book Too Much Luck: The Mining Boom and Australia’s Future, is a timely appraisal of the dramatic economic and social impacts, as well as the political ramifications of the current resource…
In his 2011 ASSA Cunningham Lecture this month, food policy expert Professor Tim Lang suggested that we “experiment” with alternative diets to reduce our meat and dairy consumption. Lang suggested that…
TALKING ABOUT DEATH AND DYING – What are the cultural and historical and reasons for not talking about death? Today, we have a philosopher’s perspective on the silence that is seeing so many die without…
The dramatic surprise resignation of Harry Jenkins as Speaker, on what was meant to be the final sitting day of the year for the House of Representatives (coincidentally also the fourth anniversary of…
A pair of bills currently making their way through US legislature has set off alarm bells among internet technologists and users worldwide. The aim of PROTECT-IP, in the Senate, and SOPA (Stop Online Piracy…
Westpac chief executive Gail Kelly this week warned about Australian banks are vulnerable to “the contagion effect” of Europe’s ongoing financial woes, after the Commonwealth Bank of Australia delayed…
Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd is cautious, but says we are seeing the first signs of change in Burma, but the government there still needs to do more for its people. He is correct in saying “It is in our…
Federal Labor’s mining profits tax was originally designed to be a redistributive measure from a very profitable section of capital to all of capital through company tax cuts. The mini-me Mineral Resources…
With joint replacement surgery becoming increasingly common, the flap over a large recall of De Puy hip implants has thousands of Australians worried about the quality and longevity their own hip replacements…
Medicines need not only to be effective but also safe. Now a Scottish study has shown that paracetamol, perhaps the most commonly consumed painkiller in the country, could lead to death if taken in large…
It seems we’re about to come one step closer to putting man (and woman) on Mars. Is this exciting? Of course it is. Nothing fires the imagination quite like the prospect of walking around on a planet other…