dear jo

this december, we celebrate a very important 30th anniversary: it is 30 years since jo vallentine was elected to the senate.

On October 19 I was invited to participate in a ‘Men of Letters’event in Sydney — an occasional departure for the wonderful women of letters team. ten of us were…

a week in afghanistan

This is a lightly edited diary of the Parliamentary Defence Exchange 3–13 April 2012 to Al Minhad, Tarin Kot, FOB…

Failing the climate: senate speech on the CPRS

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (1.17 pm 24 November 2009) -

I rise to add my remarks on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [№2] and related bills with a sense of deja vu, because we were here a couple of…

thanks to you, the real opposition

END OF YEAR SENATE SPEECH TO GET A FEW THINGS OFF MY CHEST.

Welcome to Western Australia

Tonight I rise to invite Prime Minister Tony Abbott to visit the beautiful state of Western Australia. I do this in good faith, because we are only a matter of weeks away from a historic by-election that will not just determine the final makeup of this chamber after July but…

i. checkmate

There is an old story about the original creator of the game of chess, a wily mathematician who submits his invention to the ruler of the country. Asked by the delighted queen what he would require by way of reward, the mathematician requests to be paid in gold. He proposes the queen place one single…

your taxes, mapped: the openeconomy project

Web-based financial data visualisation

at the end of the world

i. cause

The rice paddy on the edge of Iitate village is 30km back from the coast, framed by steep forested hills, and we stop here briefly because the scene is so strangely heraldic.