Sceptic Watch: The Monthly

Green Army: Communications

Paddy Manning:
Beneath all the politicking, there is one almighty driver for the Greens.
It’s the climate, stupid.
The temperature is still rising,

the sea is turning acid, [and]

the coral is dying. …
Which is why, in the end, the Green vote, and the fate of the Greens, matters.
(A Good Hard Look At The Greens, August 2016)

Kevin Rudd:
Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation …
(National Climate Change Summit, 31 March 2007)

Kevin Rudd

Labor Prime Minister: 2007–10; June–September 2013

… Warren Buffet had recognised the emerging risks of financial innovation, easy money and weak regulation in 2003 when he noted that many of the new financial instruments were akin to

financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.

In its 2007 annual report, the [Bank of International Settlements] warned that

[Years] of loose monetary policy have fuelled a giant global credit bubble, leaving us vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump. …

The time has come … to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed, that the emperor has no clothes.
Neo-liberalism … has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy.
[It] now falls to social democracy to prevent liberal capitalism from cannibalizing itself. …

[The] pursuit of social justice is founded on the argument that all human beings have an intrinsic right to human dignity, equality of opportunity and the ability to lead a fulfilling life. …
Accordingly, government has a clear role in the provision of such public goods as

universal education,
health,
unemployment insurance,
disabilities insurance and
retirement income.

(The Global Financial Crisis, February 2009)

Robert Manne: Historical Denialism in Australia

Robert Manne: The Eye of Murdoch

Wayne Swan: Trickle Up Economics

Kevin Rudd: Neoliberalism versus Social Democracy

Anne Summers: Andrew Bolt and the Making of an Opportunist

The Monthly

Black Inc.

Rape among the lamingtons, May 2017.
Anne Manne.
Freedom Abbott, September 2014.
David Marr (1947).
Bullies Versus Science, July 2012.
Mike Steketee.
The 0.01 Per Cent: The Rising Influence of Vested Interests in Australia, March 2012.
Wayne Swan (1954): Labor Federal Treasurer, 2007–13.

Mitt Romney, is wealthier than 99.9975% of his fellow Americans, and wealthier than the last eight presidents combined …

Across 17 OECD economies, Australians in the bottom 20% of income earners are the equal third most likely to lift themselves out of that situation within three years. …

Shortly after World War II, Australia and the US were roughly equal in the percentage of total income going to the top 1%. …
[In] 2008, the top 1% in the US received around 17.7% of all income, while the figure is just 8.6% in Australia. …

Between 1979 and 2007 in the US, the top 1% saw their after-tax incomes rise 275%, while the middle two thirds saw their after-tax incomes increase by less than 40%.
[The] top 0.1% net over half of all capital gains in the US [and] their tax rates have been in decline for five decades. …

[This] inequality has become self-reinforcing, as immense [wealth has created] unstoppable lobbying power which [blocks any attempt] to impose reasonable levels of regulation and taxation. …
Republican candidates have pledged … to repeal the Dodd–Frank Act [— the regulatory] response to the 2008 Wall Street collapse. …
[A] Pew Research Center survey found that friction between rich and poor in the US is now a greater source of social tension than the issues of race [or] immigration. …

John Plender [writing in the Financial Times has] warned that the excessive greed of those at the top of the economy [is] causing a crisis of legitimacy that is eroding business’s social license [to operate]. …
[A] recent poll that shows Americans’ support for free enterprise has fallen … from 80% to 60% [in just ten years]. …
We can’t afford to let [the market system] be undermined by the excessive greed of [the] irresponsible few. …

[In Australia, a coalition] of industry deep pockets, conservative political support, biased editorial policy and shock-jock ranting has been [marshaled to entrench the position of the] vested interest[s]. …

[The] foray by Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, into Fairfax Media, [was reportedly] an attempt to [obtain] greater influence on public opinion [in order to] further her commercial interests …
[John Singleton] told the Sydney Morning Herald that he and Rinehart had been
able to overtly and covertly attack governments … because we [employ people] like Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones and Ray Hadley who agree with [us. …]
Australia’s future [depends] on retaining a strong, united, middle-class society.
[A society] which recognizes the need for public investment in skills, infrastructure and education …
[And one which will continue] to extend a social license to the market so Australia’s flair for entrepreneurship, innovation and free trade can continue to create more wealth for all …

The Bolt Factor: Andrew Bolt and the Making of an Opportunist, 21 September 2011.
Anne Summers (1945).

[In 2002, Andrew Bolt] opposed Labor’s decision to guarantee … 40% of all winnable seats … to women because
women are more likely to act irrationally.
Bolt argued that the greater likelihood of women … to favor alternative medicines, yoga, horoscopes, feng shui and the like made them unfit for holding office.
Not only were female politicians more likely to be
"superstitious New Agers" but "more dangerously, they’ll tend to show … an irrational fear of useful things like nuclear power and genetically engineered crops." …
Bolt asserted that the ALP quotas would produce dud sheilas:
given so many talented women, particularly mothers, actually prefer not to have full-on careers or buck-stops-here jobs.
But his greatest fear … was the possibility that our parliament would become populated by witches.
Noting that the latest census had found the number of witches in Australia had jumped more than four-fold in just six years, he stated that the risk of having a woman at the top was just too great.
We’ve had enough ministers practise voodoo economics and do vanishing tricks with our money … without Labor putting a witch in charge.