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Tag Archives: economics

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

Dog eat dog?!

New internationalist May edition is out now.

The cover story is Land Grabs: big investors buying up land in Africa (and Asia, central and southern Americas), for large scale agribusiness. “Villagers were displaced after their chief gifted community farmland for a motorbike’, however there is a growing groundswell of people saying ‘we’d rather have our land’.

The Scratchy Lines cartoon for May is sort of  ‘meanwhile, back in Europe’….

Life of Europe

Waiting for evolution… or what?

Andrew Rixon of Babelfish Group has been running free webinars working up to his Strategic Planning for Managers and Consultants program. After reading the key text for each webinar I have drawn up cartoons that can be used to illustrate some of the ideas in each webinar. Here are a few….

reinvent pic1

reinvent pic2

Vision pic

Pig-toons?!

 

Hans T from Germany is a cartoon fan and is writing to cartoonists around the world hoping to get back a signed ‘pig-ture’, he and his wife being collectors of pig cartoons.

 

Here’s my attempt….

flying piggy pic

 

 

Census sense

id Informed Decisions are the Australian and New Zealand ‘population experts’ providing demographic profiling and forecasting:  ‘We believe that by making demographic information accessible to the broadest possible audience, and promoting evidence-based decision making, we are contributing to a fairer and more sustainable society’.

Their id blog has many observations drawn from a range of data. A prime source of data being the 2011 Australian Census.

Here are some of the small graphics drawn for a number of the blog posts.

The coffee economy

The coffee economy

2012 review

2012 review

Grim reaper

Grim reaper

Economic modelling

Economic modelling

 

Discover Frank Fisher!

 

Frank Fisher, who died earlier this year, was an inspiration to many people, an environmental educator committed to ‘social transformation to a more sensitive self-aware world’.  Among other things he was professor in the National Centre for Sustainability, Swinburn University of Technology, Melbourne.

 

Frank established The Understandascope in 2005, the name coming from cartoonist Michael Leunig’s cartoon. It was relaunched this year as a website www.understandascope.org – to continue Frank Fisher’s vision of ‘a more circumspect, humble and considerate society, increasingly sensitive and responsive to the consequences of our actions upon each other and the rest of nature’.

 

The Understandascope has launched an ebook Everyday Transcendence: the influence of Frank Fisher. Discover Frank Fisher and a link to download the ebook here.

 

Frank Fisher was a committed cyclist. Here is one cartoon from the ebook.

Fisher cyclist pic

 

 

 

 

Affordable housing … oxymoron!

 

Affordable housing doesn’t seem like a big ask ….

 

 

A recent cartoon from the Pro Bono news page.

 

 

 

 

From Micro to Macro….

 

 

The next set of books from Independence Educational Publishers has appeared. From the Poverty book here is a cartoon illustrating a positive article on the value of microfinance.

 

 

Elephant in the room…

 

 

The focus of the latest issue of New Internationalist is Youth. The cover states:  ‘Youth rising – why apathy is not an option’, and to quote from one article “young people are carrying the can for capitalism’s structural failings’. Those who do read the magazine will know that it presents a global snapshot (and fact-shot) of complex issues.

 

 

This month the cartoon does relate to the theme – as well as using a bit too popular metaphor.