Just twenty-three days after deposing Kevin Rudd, our ranga (redhead) Prime Minister Julia Gillard has called a general election for 21 August. The Oz blogosphere is looking for substance not just spin in this campaign.
Melbourne-based writer, blogger and activist Kevin Rennie originally wrote this article on an East Timor solution for refugees for an international audience as part of the European Journalism Centre's Th!nk3 blogging project. We reprint it here with his kind permission.
While we were away the Prime Minister apparently went into self-destruct mode. The Emissions Trading Scheme was scuttled. The budget was judged as lack-lustre but politically safe.
With the mainstream news headlines predicting the beginning of the end for Kevin Rudd, theangle's Kevin Rennie details why reports of the prime minister's political death are greatly exaggerated.
With the issue of overseas aid emerging as an election issue in Australia (as indicated in an earlier Th!nk3 post) the tabloid attacks/exposé on government expenditure and a series of electoral forums on making poverty history have begun.
Kevin Rennie interviews Clive Porabou — representative of the people of Bougainville — about the Mekamui people's continued opposition to the giant Panguna copper mine.
Kevin Rennie shares with us his thoughts about the European Journalism Centre's Th!nk3: Developing World as he flew back from the project launch in Brussels.
By Kevin Rennie: When the Governor-General’s representative in London visited Oz in 1954, I was six years old. We stood waiting patiently in Mt Alexander Road, near Melbourne’s Essendon Airport for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. We had been given little British and Australian flags to greet her passing by. The Union Jack in...
By Kevin Rennie: With just over three weeks till key climate talks in Copenhagen, there is little optimism that a binding agreement will be reached. In Australia, Kevin Rudd’s Labor government has positioned itself uncomfortably in the middle of the national debate. Many of its supporters feel let down by what they see as...
