Victoria Rollison's Blog, page 7

An Open Letter to Peter Costello

Dear Peter Costello, I am writing in response to your allegation that the mining industry has been ‘treated shabbily’ by Australia. Apparently you don’t think they’ve had a fair deal, what with the billions of dollars of profit they’ve sucked out of the earth, from the dirt owned by Australian citizens. What would you like? […]

The wrong diagnoses, the wrong treatment

If your doctor misdiagnoses your disease, you’re probably not going to get any better. The same problem will arise for people in the UK who voted to leave the EU because of assurances from Brexit campaigners that they could ‘solve’ globalisation. Similarly for Australian voters who chose the Hanson or Xenophon treatment, attracted to the […]

Between a rock and a judgemental place

Today is Equal Pay Day. This event was celebrated yesterday by former Liberal PM John Howard’s observation that women won’t ever achieve equal representation in parliament because women stay at home with children. Thanks Johnny! The fact is, modern mothers (as opposed to Howard’s 1950’s view of the world) are stuck between the proverbial rock and […]

Enough with the judging, Clementine

My favourite feminist, Clementine Ford, wrote this week about her experiences giving birth to her first child. I’m sorry to have to admit I was deeply disappointed with the way she framed her birthing decisions, and the sanctimonious judgement and culture of expert-doctor-mistrust which makes these decisions for all women, more difficult. It’s worth describing […]

An Open Letter to Malcolm Turnbull about Misuse of the Word ‘Free’

Dear Malcolm Turnbull On the day you took the job of Prime Minister of Australia, you laid your flag in the ideological-dirt by proclaiming your intention to run a ‘thoroughly Liberal Government committed to freedom, the individual and the market’. I’ll cut to the chase. This letter calls bullshit on your misrepresentation of the word […]

Census Fail: Failure of Liberal Ideology

We don’t yet know what caused the online census to crash. Either the site was attacked by hackers, or it couldn’t cope with the level of real traffic from people trying to fill in the survey. Either way, it’s a massive government failure. I’m not just talking about failure of security, planning, management and communication; […]

Trump: the re-establishment of white male privilege

The left is never going to stop the rise of President Trump, the worst imaginable outcome, without acknowledging reality: the US election is not a debate over ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. No amount of emotional appeals to do what is ‘right’ or ‘good’ or ‘fair’ or ‘smart’ is going to convince Trump’s growing legion of supporters […]

We need to talk about Steve

After watching Steve Price block Van Badham’s attempts to speak about the cultural problem of disrespect to women, in what could have been a training video to teach people exactly what disrespect to women looks like, I was angry. It wasn’t just that Steve was being rude and aggressive, interrupting Van while it was her […]

Missing in action: a tale of two narratives

It is hard to understand why the media are surprised at another undecided election result where we are once again headed towards minority government, since the polls predicted this knife-edge outcome for the last eight weeks. Either way, the media’s prevailing election campaign narrative, which congratulated Turnbull’s clever, safe, detail-light strategy has come crashing down […]

The Liberal’s ‘unsellable’ agenda

One of the most interesting post-election whinges we’ve seen from the Liberals is Perth MP, Andrew Hastie’s confession that he found it hard to stay on message with Turnbull’s ‘jobs and growth’ campaign, so ended up, in his words, basically running his own show. He explains that he realised he couldn’t keep up the party-line […]