God changes appearances every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. One moment he is a glass of fresh water, the next, your son bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning walk.
As always starting with Steve Job’s creation that changed everything in our lifetime the Imrichphone Govt begins myGovID digital identity trial
First
look at the new myGovID in action as Tax File Number trial begins
DIGITAL IDENTITY: Everything is in place for Australians to start establishing myGovID digital identity credentials, and the first of eight pilot programs is now underway to test and demonstrate the new product.
DIGITAL IDENTITY: Everything is in place for Australians to start establishing myGovID digital identity credentials, and the first of eight pilot programs is now underway to test and demonstrate the new product.
'Fair dinkum power': PM 'inspires' Atlassian co-founder to create pro-renewables
A tweet from Scott Morrison made Mike Cannon-Brookes so "mad" he registered
a "fair dinkum power" brand and created it five potential logos.
a "fair dinkum power" brand and created it five potential logos.
From capitalism to communism, explained
Everything, from your clothes to your phone to the train you last caught, has gone through what economists call ‘the means of production’. This is the way a commercial good or service is created and sold, all the way from its raw materials to how it arrives in your hands… or to your platform.
Most of these things (also referred to as capital) can only be created as a result of collective effort. No individual can reliably ensure everyone in a country of twenty-five million has a safe way to dispose of their waste or a place to go to when they’re sick. One person can’t even meet the most basic requirement of that population and ensure sure everyone is fed.
Of course, these things cost money to maintain. Whenever cost is involved, people want to know who pays. This is where it gets hairy. If one person owns ‘the means of production’, they have to pay for everything – and keep any and all profit made. If everyone involved owns ‘the means of production’ collectively, they share the cost – and any profit.
This is where the branches of different economic systems begin.
BBC has ‘failed’ on equal pay, MPs on culture select committee say BBC
Empowerement - The currency of the new economy is trust
Empowerement - The currency of the new economy is trust
Trust is the currency of creativity | Semi Permanent
DAVID WOLPE. The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting
Former policeman filmed Airbnb guests in shower with hidden cameras
Tony
Greathead presented himself as a good family man to his guests, but
filmed 34 women as they showered then uploaded the videos to a porn
site
MICHAEL KEATING. The Future Demands for Government Revenue
MUNGO MACCALLUM. A fairy story
Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, bears no hostility towards US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanagh. “I have always liked him. I have admired his career on the D.C. Circuit. I have spoken warmly of him. I have published him. I have vouched publicly for his character” he writes in The Atlantic. But he says that if he were a senator he would vote against his nomination, not only because of Dr Ford’s testimony, but also because when Kavanagh was appearing before the Senate he made intemperate and unsupported claims about a conspiracy theory against him, a violation of accepted legal standards.
Strange, is it not, that the Government released its quarterly update of Australia’s national greenhouse gas inventory on the same day that Justice Hayne released the Interim Report on the financial services royal commission and when the media were obsessed with football finals. The impression you may gain from the Government’s website is that our greenhouse gas emissions are falling – you must dig deep into the document or go to Renew Economy’s summary to see that our emissions have been growing strongly for five years.
Renew Economy also reports on Origin Energy’s assessment that the cost of energy from wind and solar farms is now lower than the marginal cost of coal generation, and the company is moving on from the government’s “base load” model of electricity provision – an evaluation confirmed by the extraordinary success of the big battery installation at Hornsdale in South Australia, an achievement publicised in international media. Key architect of the Paris climate agreement Laurance Tubiana warns that Australia is going against the consensus of the scientific community. “The Australian government, along with all others, needs to listen to the science and the economics, and lead the country towards decarbonisation” she said.
Another French diplomat, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking at Harvard’s Belfer Center, has called on Australia to join in an alliance of “goodwill powers” in order to revive the type of diplomacy that underpinned the Bretton Woods order, an international diplomacy under threat from the governments of countries such as the United States and Russia that favour unilateralism over cooperation.
“Progress ain’t what it used to be” writes Thomas Bollyky Director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, in his Foreign Affairs article Health without wealth. Globally there have been great strides in reducing deaths from malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrheal diseases, even in the poorest countries. But those same countries are starting to see chronic diseases that arise as a consequence of poor housing, poor education, poor infrastructure, and other public investment deficiencies.
“We are better educated than ever but it seems to be assumed that we can’t understand debate, ideas, choices and difference” writes John Kerin in an essay on Australia’s economic history from 1972 to the present day. Kerin came into Parliament in 1972 with the election of the Whitlam Government and served in the Hawke-Keating Government mainly as Minister for Primary Industry and for shorter periods in other economic portfolios, including as Treasurer and Minister for Trade & Overseas Development. (Recently he was awarded an Order of Australia for his services to primary industry.)
How well can one cope living on $39 a day? That’s the basic rate of Newstart and Youth Allowance, which hasn’t been changed since 1994, Jessica Irvine reminds us in an article “I loved the 1990s but I wouldn’t want to be stuck there.” (Since 1994 consumer prices have risen by 84 per cent, and average wages have risen even more.)
On ABC’s Saturday Extra (in case you missed it)
- Stephen Mayne about a new memorandum between the NSW Government and NSW Clubs.
- Journalist Anne Applebaum on why it is so risky being a journalist today as the number of murdered journalists rises, and Anthony Bubalo on the broader political aspects of killed Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
- Is the #MeToo movement as significant as the suffragette movement? With Susan Ryan and Claire Wright.
- What defines a nation? With US Foreign Policy analyst Joshua Keating.
- Sports journalist Caroline Wilson on the challenges she has overcome and the future of journalism, a speech she will deliver at the Andrew Olle lecture.
Other commentary
In a week when our attention may have been distracted by the Coalition Government in Canberra lurching from one catastrophe to another, there are still many researchers, thinkers, commentators and writers contributing to public ideas.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Ramsay, is in conversation with Andrew West on the ABC’s Religion and Ethics Report: “Rethinking how we measure citizen well-being”. He asks if our current economic model is moral, if it is workable? Have we learned nothing from the economic events of 2008?
The Social Research Centre at ANU has produced the 2018 edition of the Australian Values Survey. It finds small but increasing support for authoritarian forms of government, not encumbered by the inconveniences of parliaments and elections, particularly among voters in the 30-35 age bracket. There is declining confidence in political parties, Federal Parliament and the press, and a declining proportion of people describing themselves as “a religious person” – down from 57 per cent in 1981 to 37 per cent in 2018.
Jessica Irvine, writing in the Fairfax press, brings together various views on immigration – “It hits a nerve: the politicisation of the population debate”. Many opinions on immigration are formed on misconceptions and data misinterpretations, however, a situation not helped by the government’s failure to engage in an honest dialogue with the community. Abul Rizvi, a former Deputy Secretary in the Department of Immigration, has been a frequent contributor to Pearls and Irritations, most recently on the privatisation of visa processing and on Morrison’s idea of encouraging migrants to settle in the bush. At a University of the Third Age session in Canberra he presented a set of Powerpoint slidessetting out the numbers and trends in immigration (dispelling some myths along the way) and concluding with “priorities for Australia’s new minister”.
The Climate Council has released its report card on states’ performance in renewable energy: Powering Progress: States renewable energy race. Unsurprisingly Tasmania is in first place, while New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia score poorly. Some of the areas with the highest takeup of rooftop solar (areas where more than 35 per cent of households have rooftop solar) is in non-metropolitan regions, a finding that may have escaped the attention of the National Party.
It’s easy for most Australians to forget that a foreign military power has dropped atomic bombs on our country, but the traditional owners of the land in northwest South Australia, where the British detonated seven nuclear bombs, haven’t forgotten. James Griffith, Senior Producer of CNN International, has an article “Australia is still dealing with the legacy of the UK’s nuclear bomb tests, 65 years on”. He reminds us that the people of the Maralinga area still suffer health problems, that the area is still contaminated, and that the British still have not de-classified their records on the tests.
It started as theatre of the absurd, but by the end of the week it had become an increasingly improbable fairy story. Continue reading
Predictable speed cameras reduce benefits, says auditor
ROADS: NSW has made its mobile speed camera system too predictable for drivers, leaving them unconcerned about speeding outside a few key spots.
Giving driverless vehicles the human touch
TECHNOLOGY: Can driverless vehicle technology replicate the human rules of engagement between pedestrians and drivers?
Queensland Police Service wins PM’s top public sector award
GOLD MEDAL SHOWING: Find out who else came up trumps in the PM’s Awards for Excellence in Public Sector Management.
How AI will change the PGPA Act
KNOWHOW: To achieve the aims of the PGPA Act, government must embrace new means of analytics, such as artificial intelligence. (Partner article)
