A recent poll by the Lowy Institute suggests many young Australians are ambivalent about the virtues of democracy, while leading democracy scholar John Keane warns that democracy has reached a ‘tipping point’ similar to the 1930s. Three political thinkers give us...
Read MoreIn the midst of a two-party dominated and heavily-scripted federal election campaign, I spoke with the widely-respected and independently-minded Senator Scott Ludlam (Greens, Western Australia) about his life-long interest in urban thinking and city life as a laboratory of new...
Read More[caption id="attachment_10147" align="alignright" width="300"] PHOTO: Do cities hold the key to our democratic future? (By Florence Roca)[/caption] Senator Scott Ludlam has city life and urban thinking hard-wired into his political genes, and believes that cities are becoming political laboratories. John Keane...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="383"] PHOTO: Do cities hold the key to our democratic future? (By Florence Roca)[/caption] Senator Scott Ludlam has city life and urban thinking hard-wired into his political genes, and believes that cities are becoming political laboratories. John Keane...
Read MoreMy first moments with His Holiness last week were not quite what I’d expected. In pulled the police-escorted motorcade, sirens wailing, blue lights flashing, bang on time, according to plan. As the motorcade drew to a halt, the small welcoming...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="668"] The army massacre of June 4, 1989, in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square should be remembered everywhere. EPA/Michael Reynolds[/caption] It's 24 years since the Tiananmen Square uprising. In an interview with John Keane, democracy activist Chin Jin...
Read MoreAn earthy citizen of a country led by politicians and journalists bugged by “boat people”, Chin Jin fits no standard categories. Now the foremost democrat in Sydney’s thriving Chinese community, he first set foot on the north-west shores of Australia...
Read MoreReaders interested in some of the big political ideas and trends of our time may like to listen to a recent talk on the greening of democratic politics. Hosted in Sydney by the newly-foundedInstitute for Democracy and Human Rights, it aimed...
Read MoreThis talk aims to provoke discussion about the long-term, ‘deep’ effects of green politics on the language and institutions and ‘imaginary’ of democracy. Some of these effects are more obvious than others, he points out. In half a generation, green-minded...
Read MoreDeutsche Bank headquarters, Frankfurt Heike Rehm/flickr The following draft reflection on the subject of banks and democracy has been prepared for presentation at a forthcoming OECD meeting in Paris, in late-May 2013. The text is obviously much too long for any ‘normal’...
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