Skip navigation

Category Archives: economics

G20, can it save the world? – Australian Options spring issue

 


G20 pic1

G20 in OZ: can it save the world? is the focus of the Spring issue of Australian Options. Topics covered in a wide range of articles include: Australia may be hosting the G20 but it is no G20 leader, the BRICS bank proposal versus the G20, the widening gender pay gap is about to get worse, inequality in Australia, and developing an alternative progressive economic agenda.

The editorial, ‘The unseemly rush to a war without end’, can be read here. To subscribe, go to the website membership page.

Here are a few of the cartoons illustrating this issue.

economic agenda pic1economic agenda pic 4

gender gap pic

economy pic2

Follow Me?

Follow me LR pic

This month’s New internationalist Scratchy Lines cartoon.

Australian Federal Budget 2014

This week’s NFP Kneebone cartoon for the Pro Bono news website:

Budget 2014 pic

Heavy Lifting …cut?!

Heavy Lifting pic

Australian’s are told they will have to do ‘the heavy lifting’ to get the budget out of deficit. In this political climate many not-for-profit community organisations face uncertain funding – and futures.

Posts on the Pro Bono news website give plenty of background, and here’s the NFP Kneebone cartoon from the website.

Palm Oil complexities

Rapid appraisal of emerging issues in the oil palm sector in Palawan Island (The Philippines): Environment, livelihoods and corporate accountability, was a scoping report produced by a collaboration between Palawan State University and the Stockholm Environment Institute. It aimed  ‘to feed the ‘rich picture’ that emerges from the preliminary results back to people in Palawan’.

As part of the feeding back the results these three diagrams were developed to be used in presentations. There was a lot of ‘rich picture’ to juggle onto each page.

Oil Palm pic A

When the pic

Pathways pic B

 

When are basic rights a luxury?

‘Advocacy and Disability Not for Profits have reacted strongly to suggestions that funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme [NDIS] may be cut back or the roll-out slowed. The Coalition Government indicated for the first time that the National Disability Insurance Scheme may be hit by funding cutbacks as part of so called “budget savings”’. Read more from the Pro Bono news website here.

Pro Bono is the ‘online hub for people engaged with Australia’s Not for Profit Communities’.

Here is my NFP Kneebone take on the report:

NDIS Asylum pic

Fine print…

The focus of this month’s issue of New Internationalist is fracking. As NI Co-operative member Dinyar Godrej writes in his web-only extra: ‘The even greater madness is to put the urgency of doing something about climate change on the back burner (in a manner of speaking) just because fracking may offer a few more years’ worth of fossil fuel’.

There is plenty more in the magazine – and on the website, covering a wide range of issues. Here is my Scratchy Lines cartoon from page 8:

Free Trade LR pic

Taxing Options

Issues cover Winter 2013

Support alternative media – become a member of Australian Options – and get to download copies of the journal. The Winter issue features articles on taxation, climate change and more – including an interview with Frank Stillwell, political economist.

If you thought that Governments reducing taxes, but spending on health, education and the things governments should invest in (not to forget saving the planet), doesn’t add up … you were right.

Here are a few cartoons from the issue:

 

Mug pic  more tax pic privatisation Stillwell pic sorcerers apprentice pic

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australian Federal Budget 2013

Here are my cartoon ideas for the Pro Bono news website. Pro Bono is the online hub for the Not for Profit (NFP) sector in Australia. The ideas came from a couple of articles: Budget: Gaping Hole for Poorest Remains, and the 14 May SACOSS Responds to Federal Budget media release (can’t find a link to it). To quote a couple of paragraphs:

However, the enormously disappointing part of this budget remains the failure to address the longstanding inadequacy of our support for unemployed Australians by not increasing the Newstart allowance.

SACOSS Executive Director Ross Womersley said …”Interestingly, this budget contains $3 billion to purchase 12 attack aircraft. Increasing the base rate for single allowance payments by $50 per week would cost approximately $1.8 billion per annum.”

Budget pic2

Budget pic1

Myer Brookes-ed

Yesterday Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes said that the proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme would hurt retail sales:

“Remember, a lot of our customers have equity portfolios, they’ve got superannuation and they get the bills each week, and suddenly the Medicare levy costs them another $300 from July next year and that’s $300 they might have spent with us.”

After outrage at his statement he gave a very limp apology of sorts  ‘to those who may have been offended or hurt’ by his comments.

Graeme Innes, Disability Discrimination Commissioner has started a petition challenging Myer to employ more people with disability, click here.The petition has almost 25,000 signatures already.

Brookes Myer pic