Welcome to “One small thing …”. We asked our authors what one small thing they, or you, could do for the environment. We’ll bring their answers to you on Friday afternoons. Today’s one small thing comes…
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What are we to make of reports this week that police are investigating a case of a young woman trafficked from the Philippines so a Sydney woman on an organ donation waiting list could have her kidney…
The Commonwealth Ombudsman yesterday launched an investigation into rising rates of self-harm among detainees of Australia’s immigration detention centres, after it emerged that 50 instances of cutting…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week used the example of Spain to indicate how Australia’s energy mix could be transformed. The potential for this transformation is nothing more than wishful thinking…
As the political stand-off around the US debt crisis looks set to continue into the weekend, US President Barack Obama is being tested whether he has the courage to stand his ground. Last week the President…
Australia’s economic future lies underneath our feet. The island continent is blessed with a variety of natural resources but none as plentiful or important as iron ore. Iron is a common element in soils…
In a joint statement published earlier this week, hacking groups Anonymous and LulzSec urged readers to boycott e-commerce giant PayPal, claiming: “PayPal continues to withhold funds from WikiLeaks, a…
Societies, if we are to take the Freudian line, prefer to subordinate chaotic urges in favour of dull order. Civilization implies stability. By the nineteenth century, human society was digesting a range…
Commentary from some sections of the IT community on the recent killings in Norway reminds us national security is still haunted by two visions: 1) With enough data it will be possible to comprehensively…
How often do we hear the argument that Australia’s moves to limit carbon emissions will achieve nothing unless China finally takes some action? This fails to recognise that China’s city mayors, the government…
The Murray Darling Basin Authority is about to release a Draft Plan for the management of the Murray Darling Basins water resources. As with all plans, there will be devil in the detail, especially in…
The latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report – Headline Indicators for Children’s Health, Development and Wellbeing 2011 – shows Indigenous children, as well as those living in remote areas…
Renewed speculation of an interest rate rise this year has come out of a surprise surge in Australia’s underlying inflation figures. But don’t blame it on the price of bananas, says Grattan Institute economist…
Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that infects about 3% of the world’s population. It’s a significant cause of both illness and death due to cirrhosis (advanced liver scarring) and liver cancer. By the…
The carbon tax is the latest attempt by an Australian government to legislate in order to avert disaster, this time to the climate. Whether the tax will become law sits on a knife edge, and the stakes…
Political scientists now commonly distinguish between ‘government’ and ‘governance’. The former refers to a hierarchical institution while the latter captures the idea of a general process of social steering…
As little as 15 years ago, the boundary between birds and dinosaurs was a fairly sharp one. On one side was Archaeopteryx, a 150 million-year-old magpie-sized creature from Bavaria, southern Germany, long…
Writing about the boss is a delicate proposition for journalists. Go in too hard and your job could be on the line; too soft and readers quickly come to suspect whose side you’re on. For this reason the…
Back in 1991, in the very earliest days of the internet, a group of high energy physicists began sharing their findings on a Los Alamos-based online archive called Arxiv. Their early experiments in the…
Prime Minister Julia Gillard was one of the first world leaders to visit Japan after the nation was stricken on 3 March by the earthquake-tsunami-radiation triple disaster. But the Australian government…
On Tuesday, the ACT government held Australia’s first virtual community cabinet using Twitter. Four ministers faced a barrage of tweets in an hour long question and answer session held with the electorate…
This morning, the discovery of Earth’s first Trojan companion was announced by a group of Canadian astronomers. The object in question, 2010 TK7, is a lump of rock just a few hundred metres across, and…
The Scottish eat their deer and the South Africans their springbok. Australia’s national icon is gentle on the environment, doesn’t emit methane, is good to eat and could be a great source of income for…
The new Victorian Health Plan 2012-22 offers a bleak prognosis: forever rising medical costs, doctors in the wrong places, hospitals overwhelmed. To make matters worse, it claims that patients can’t be…
The National Drug Strategy Household Survey Report 2010, which indicates the behaviour and attitudes of Australians to drug use, shows reductions in daily tobacco smoking, a range of mixed findings on…