Timor-Leste’s presidential election looks to have produced a strong victory for Fretilin’s serial candidate, Francisco ‘Lu-Olo’ Guterres. While results remains unofficial, based on a largely complete tally, Lu-Olo was looking to have around 57 per cent of the total vote for the mostly ceremonial role of president. This means that Lu-Olo will comfortably surpass the […]
Category Archives: Economics and Public Policy
The Netherlands goes to the polls next Wednesday in what is likely to establish a new model for European politics as it increasingly confronts the rise of the far right. As far right parties appeal to larger blocs of votes, political competition is becoming one of centrist parties banding together to block political extremism. ‘Godwin’s […]
On Monday, the public hearings for Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence began. The public hearings follow the completion of community consultations and the close of written submissions in late May. Nearly 1000 Victorians – advocates, experts and policy stakeholders – provided submissions to the commission. They called for change in the justice, health, social […]
In early May, 2015, news services reported that Denmark, one of those wacky Scandinavian countries that just seems to be obsessed with being progressive, would allow retailers to only offer card payment, and allow them to ban cash as a means of transaction. For quite a while, Scandinavia has been all about a cashless society. In […]
In the 2015 Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) Annual Alcohol Poll, 34 per cent of Australians said that they drink to get drunk, 43 per cent said they had vomited as a result of drinking, and 75 per cent said Australia has a problem with excess drinking or alcohol abuse. But in the same […]
Signs of plenty in Athens continue to be on public display; long lunches at cafes, an apparent lack of necessity to work, all of the signs of a relaxed life that have long characterised what is often perceived by outsiders as indicators of a relaxed Mediterranean life. But no street café, no train or street […]
If one was to believe the reporting on Hong Kongs pro-democracy demonstrations, especially the reporting in Hong Kong, one could be mistaken for believing that it was all but over. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. There is no doubt that the numbers in Hong Kong Central have diminished, especially during the day, […]
http://theconversation.com/the-australia-asean-partnership-at-40-past-dilemmas-and-future-prospects-31279
Although the concept of credit has been around for thousands of years (the Latin word, credere, means ‘to believe’), legend tells us that the first credit card appeared in 1949 when Frank McNamara, head of the Hamilton Credit Corporation, went out to eat with Alfred Bloomingdale. At the end of the meal they realised […]
When Indonesia’s 180 million voters go to the polls tomorrow, they will be deciding whether Indonesia continues, more or less, with further developing its democratic experiment, or whether it turns away from a relatively open society that is necessary to allow democracy to flourish. While the choice might appear to be obvious to anyone committed […]