The term ‘water crisis’ has entered the public lexicon of Australian society. A sense of impending water scarcity has been given critical urgency through growing recognition of climatic change in the amount, location and variability of rainfall due to anthropogenic warming of the atmosphere
In 1981 a young political junkie with progressive sympathies, Joe Trippi, joined the campaign to make Tom Bradley governor of California, and so the first black governor in US history. An alumnus of San Jose University,Trippi had taken in the ‘vibe’ of the incipient Silicon Valley. He suggested using a computer to help track voters and manage the campaign
Shortly after Barack Obama became the first US President to build his campaign around online social media, his new administration held an online ‘brainstorming’ session, seeking ideas for making government ‘more transparent, participatory and collaborative’
In Australia we cherish the freedom to tell it as it is. It’s part of our heritage, and now ingrained in our culture: we like our facts unfettered so we can form opinions in our own way, and speak up when things aren’t right
The internet has played a key role in the spread of racism, offering opportunities that amplify the reach and potential impact of White power, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamist and ultra-nationalist ideologies and actions. At the same time that racist organisations were discovering, exploring and exploiting the potential of the internet, the international community was recognising the dangers that the technology represented to community wellbeing and harmony
When Sleepers, Wake!: Technology and the Future of Work was published in 1982, my predictions about the potential impact of the ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Revolution were regarded as wildly exaggerated and hence not taken seriously. Thirty years later they read like a statement of the blindingly obvious and could now be dismissed as, ‘Well, it was always inevitable, wasn’t it?’
‘Equality’ dropped off Australia’s political agenda in the 21st century. Both sides of politics recognise that winning elections depends on winning votes from ‘aspirationals’. So progressive taxation was dropped, education is more stratified in Australia than the UK or US, and governments and political parties have abandoned ‘needs based’ policies
The Australian colonies began very unpromisingly as a convict society built on Aboriginal dispossession. Nevertheless, robust elected institutions soon developed. There was responsible government by the 1850s, full manhood suffrage by the 1860s, the secret ballot (a local invention) and payment of members
Recently, I visited Kenya. A huge legal conference held in the Jomo Kenyatta Conference Centre in the middle of Nairobi. The meeting gathered lawyers from all parts of the Commonwealth of Nations. This is the club of nations all but one of which were once ruled by Britain. Queen Elizabeth II is the symbolic Head of the Commonwealth
There has been much written and spoken about the issue of climate change over the past few years. These discourses build the case that there is a significant change in the global climate and that this change is the result of a continuing accumulation of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere