25 mars 2017

By Paul Clifton. The Turnbull Government is cutting payments to families on low incomes, continuing the freeze on Medicare rebates, issuing debts people have never accrued, and considering a tax cut for corporations. Meanwhile, Australia continues to give away its natural resources for free by not taxing corporations enough. More...

By Paul Clifton. Since the Trump train rolled into Washington, DC, citizens of the USA are starting to come to terms with dramatic changes in the way they are governed. However, for some sections of the US scientific community, the changes are potentially more destabilising still. Climate scientists are not necessarily an endangered species, but they are certainly feeling vulnerable. More...

By Paul Clifton. The Cambridge Analytica company was derived from a research collaboration in 2008 between two PhD students, Kosinski and Stilwell, at Cambridge University’s Psychometrics Centre, which had developed in the 1980s a personality profile test with the acronym OCEAN – for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism. OCEAN initially required filling out a complicated, highly personal questionnaire, but in 2008 Stilwell launched an online version in a Facebook app, MyPersonality, which took off and gave them the largest dataset combining psychometric scores with millions of Facebook profiles ever to be collected. More...

By Paul Clifton. We live in troubled times. US President Donald Trump has a media office that openly presents what it calls “alternative facts”, which would more accurately be termed barefaced lies. The Brexit vote and the election of Trump have been celebrated by those who say, in the words actually used by a Conservative MP in the UK, that people “have had enough of experts”. More...

By Paul Clifton. After the US election result, the majority of my academic friends seemed to cycle through Kubler Ross’s seven stages of grief in rapid succession. Shock and disbelief was quickly replaced by Anger. In the period before the inauguration the lefty, academic side of the Internet seemed to indulge in Bargaining (“maybe the electoral college won’t accept him?”) then guilt (“what about all the poor/white/rural/factory workers whom we ignored or laughed at”). After the brief high of the women’s march, like many of my academic friends I slid right into stage four Depression. The feeling has deepened, as many Australian politicians seem to be falling over themselves to line up behind the whole Trumpapoolza thing. More...

By Paul Clifton. It’s incredible how innocuous governments can make major change to legislation education sound. Phrases like “consistent treatment of public and private tertiary education providers” and “increased funding flexibility ...to respond quickly to changes in student demand and government policy” seem somewhat benign on a casual read. More...

By Paul Clifton. The QUTE Caucus was first set up within the NTEU in 2002 and re-invigorated within the Victorian Division some years later. The purpose of the QUTE Caucus is to develop networks between members within the LGBTIQ communities and foster opportunities for action within the Union and broader labour movement and community. More...

By Paul Clifton. Academic workload and unpaid overtime for general staff are key elements of the major case being run by NTEU in the Fair Work Commission, which has now stretched over two years. More...

By Paul Clifton. After a hard fought enterprise bargaining campaign, NTEU Swinburne University Branch successfully won a new conversion to secure work rights for casual academic staff in 2015. The provision is unique to our sector as it is the first of its kind to be won by NTEU members. More...

By Celeste Liddle. Invasion Day 2017 saw the largest protests and convergences seen in the country for decades. It reflected an unmistakable shift in public opinion when it comes to the recognition of Indigenous displacement and genocide and whether this should be a date our country celebrates. More...