Citizen journo @Wendy_Bacon on Joe’s ‘Widen the Gap’ budget

[clear]Last night I headed over to FBi, a successful not for profit radio station in inner Sydney to meet up with the Budget_Aus team to listen to Treasurer Joe Hockey deliver his first budget speech. We were hosted by Heidi Pett and the rest of the FBi Backchat team who were working on their show about […]

Why Australians should care about World Press Freedom Day: @journlaw

Readers of NoFibs reap the rewards of citizen journalists expressing their news and views with a high level of free expression by world standards. So why should Australians care about media freedom on World Press Freedom Day 2014? Quite simply, because it is a ‘fragile freedom’ – continually under threat and only noticed by most people once […]

Civil disobedience and the #leardblockade: @adropex comments

[clear]   It was in January, whilst on a family beach holiday, that I first became aware of the protest happening at the Leard State Forest. I had not heard of the Leard before, however the words ‘Maules Creek’ and ‘Whitehaven’ vaguely floated into my consciousness as I read a Twitter report of the action […]

Your brief on the Santos #CSG #Pilliga saga, by @Wilderness_Aus

Introduction by Margo Kingston These are the latest media briefing notes of the Wilderness Society on the long-running fight to stop Santos fracking the #Pilliga State Forest on the Liverpool Plains in NSW for #CSG. I thought No Fibs readers might find the briefing useful as the story is now politically explosive and will get even more complicated. No Fibs […]

Cory’s book: Part 2 of a blow-by-blow fact check series by @adropex

[clear] [clear] By Lesley Howard @adropex 19 January 2014 In Chapter 2 “The First Pillar: Faith” Bernardi presents a strong and considered study of the historical contribution Christianity has made to Australia’s national development and how this heritage is represented in the laws and moral codes of Australian society today. Bernardi proposes that faith is fundamental to […]

Citizens Against Rorting of Entitlements (CARE) Policy Response Survey, by @budget_aus

By Rosie Williams 1 November 2013 Source: InfoAus What do you, I and US Secretary of State John Kerry have in common? We are all protagonists of grassroots activism. You can’t have democracy without the demos and I heard John Kerry tell of the grassroots activism leading to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency this […]

The intellectual grunt behind @Indigocathy Indi victory: @sarah_capper report

Image by No Fibs citizen journalist Wayne Jansson taken on election night, of Alana Johnson, Cathy McGowan and Mary Crooks.By Sarah Capper Sheila’s editor 20 September 2013 When Jeff Kennett lost the “unlosable” Victorian election in 1999, the Victorian Women’s Trust’s Mary Crooks wasn’t overly surprised. In the years leading up the state poll, in her […]

Costello’s free speech record

Queensland Liberals are taking a leaf out of the Howard-Costello playbook on crunching free speech for charities and non-government organisations. Just after we published my book chapter on Howard’s multi-pronged attack on free speech led by the IPA, readers advised that Campbell Newman was copying Howard’s policy of gagging NGOs who received government funding. Federal […]

Howard’s blueprint for Abbott to stifle dissent

By Margo Kingston March 12, 2013 This chapter from Still Not Happy, John! (Pengiun, 2007) is required reading for activists and people in non-government organisations which advocate for change. John Howard’s government systematically sought to stifle democratic dissent with the help of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA). Believe it or not, the Howard government […]