Bubble trouble: Australia’s free market housing failure
To understand the scale of the current property boom, consider that the number of fixed cranes atop dedicated residential projects in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane is greater than the combined total of New York, Boston, Washington (DC), Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco,...CONTINUE READING
Hanson supporters sook over mural
The side exterior wall of Newtone Betta Home Living in Footscray is well muraled. One orange-faced character, shown in four stages of life, could be straight out of Motörhead. He goes from moustache to goatee to pencil mo then full angular styling, with a constant full black mullet as his...CONTINUE READING
Comedy Company at the Magistrates’ Court as fascists wait for hearing
“It’s no different to what was on the Paul Hogan show or the Comedy Company.” Steven Joyce is standing on the footpath outside the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court. He’s here to support far right United Patriots Front (UPF) members Blair Cottrell, Chris Shortis and Neil Erikson. The trio have...CONTINUE READING
A political shift masking an economic assault
Two weeks after the federal budget, we need to separate the political narrative from the economic reality. On one hand, we have what seems a profound shift. A Liberal Party that originally came to office with histrionics about a “fiscal emergency” and a debt and deficit “disaster”, which r...CONTINUE READING
A federal budget for business, as usual
Don’t believe the hype about a volte-face. It’s business as usual for the federal Liberal government – under the latest three-word slogan, “security, opportunity, fairness”. The government remains politically constrained after the 2014 overreach, as evidenced by its new-found love of “good...CONTINUE READING
How to get mental toughness like the filthy rich
Steve Siebold talks to rich people. A lot. A founder of the US-based Siebold Success Network and publisher of the Mental Toughness blog, Steve teaches people about “the secret they call Tiger Mentality”. His 2010 book, How Rich People Think , based on hundreds of interviews with millionair...CONTINUE READING
A terror whose name we dare not speak
Money corrupts. And too many young men are being seduced and radicalised by its lure. Greed-fuelled extremism is not a new phenomenon. Many communities have dealt with it, going back millennia. In the 8th century BC, Amos, a contemporary of Isaiah, thundered against the wealthy of Sion, th...CONTINUE READING
A new world disorder
Things used to be different. For more than 70 years, the generally accepted position within the United States ruling class was that the country would stand at the apex of a Western order governed by treaties and institutions that advance the general interest of all states involved, the US...CONTINUE READING
'Never had it so good', but welcome to the class war
“Never had it so good”, read a 4 March headline in Melbourne’s Herald Sun . Natasha Bita, the author of the piece, noted the “Lucky Country lifestyle for working Australians”. “Even moaning Millennials are on a good wicket”, she said. There is a certain truth to all this. But there’s also...CONTINUE READING