By Andrew MacDonald. Chatter around the lifting of Parallel Import Restrictions (PIRs) on books has become something of a feature of the start of the academic year in recent times. However, with speculation mounting that the Turnbull Government may seek to introduce legislation to abolish the measures – which restrict the importing of books for resale in instances where Australian publishers have exclusive rights – the stakes look to be rising. More...
By Andrew MacDonald. When examining the multitude of controversies that have punctuated Donald Trump’s short time as President of the United States of America, it is difficult to identify any one act as being more contentious than the next. Nevertheless, the late January Executive Order preventing nationals of seven majority-Muslim nations entering the USA would have to be a frontrunner – at least so far. More...
By Paul Clifton. The systematic underpayment of wages in Australia is a critical issue. Increasingly many workers are being paid less than the statutory minimum wage, and the minimum award or Enterprise Agreement wage rates to which they are entitled. The proliferation of this practice points to a crisis of compliance with wage standards. In the process, the living wage is steadily disappearing in practice. More...
By Jeannie Rea. Last week, I sent a letter to the members of the Murdoch University Senate arguing that applying to terminate the Enterprise Agreement will have fundamental impacts upon the University’s mission and damage the reputation and ongoing viability of the University. More...
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...
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