Category Politics

• Quick Post: Hope, For A Good War

  “Agricultural land has not increased at anything like the same rate [as population] so things are going to have to change, as simple as that.
  “[Either that] or you put up with the food riots, or hope for a good war to reduce numbers. These are not alternatives.”
  Professor Batterham is the deputy chair of a working group which advised Prime Minister Julia Gillard on food security.

  If there’s one thing I’m grateful for about having had a liberal education, it’s an appreciation for academic freedom.

  Posted 5 April 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Embrace Labor's Delight

  SO THE PRIME MINISTER MADE a speech. As speeches go, it’s not actually that bad, speaking as someone who’s drafted notes for a few of them. Addresses the topic, makes some good noises, intelligently mentions the subject of the speech, isn’t boring. And since it seems to address precisely the experiment I’m taking with my life for the next little while, that of not entirely working, and doing some study, it’s of particular interest.

  To my mind it comes across a little bit too much as the Nightride bus of meaning, which has had to endure the 11pm-4am shift of habitual language, and has had the suffering drunks of pandering to the press gallery vomit half-digested cliché all over the back seats. Sure, it gets you where you want to go—but then you want to brush your teeth and have a shower. If think if I read the phrase “forwards not backwards” again I’ll go out and throw myself under a vehicular unit of public transport infrastructure. The front end, not the back end.

  Posted 2 April 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Skippy Felafel

  I’VE JUST PUT A TEAM together of your 17-year-olds who’ll be sick of living up in the land of the falafel in western Sydney playing in front of a 12,000-seat stadium that’s still not put up…

  That was Eddie McGuire, Collingwood’s house ghost, describing the alluring attractions of earning a high income and playing football in Western Sydney.

  Posted 1 April 2011 · Author Liam Hogan

• Political Quickie: Sartor vs. Obeid, Centre Unity Ultimate Fighting

  FRANK SARTOR’S OPEN LETTER to his brother begins thus:

  Posted 30 March 2011 · Author Liam Hogan