As a bit of a side project, I’m trying to identify all the neighbourhood centres and precincts in Brisbane that could be pedestrianised. Obviously huge chunks of the CBD and Valley but I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on where else.

I accidentally started Discourse with my Screen Australia snark but it's so funny that people are trying to refute me by pointing to a bunch of movies that came out BEFORE I WAS BORN. I AM MIDDLE AGED.

Yet again The Age is uncritically publishing a story about a research paper from The Australian Population Research Institute and whitewashing them as objective academic experts instead of a thinktank of washed-up cranks. At least this time it isn't just another anti-migrant tirade.

I spent a few years writing profiles of Australians from all different walks of life, which forced me to think about this to some extent. I have no good answers but the sense I have is that colonial Australians don't really associate themselves with, or engage with place.

Anyway I finally saw Fury Road in Black and Chrome in the cinema. That’s movies baby. BORLFF real.

Seeing trailers for some upcoming Screen Australia backed films and it’s amazing how so few Australian Stories involve cities at all. Everyone in our cities are completely devoid of stories. Our streets are narrativeless. Only the Bush has agency.

no doom loops for me, please. virtuous cycles only

Some really solid recommendations out of the interim report but the one that jumped out to me — the weird boards guy — is that University Councils don’t even have the same regulatory requirements to recruit for subject matter and public administration expertise??? That’s like bare minimum!

Applying for a rental property in Australia currently requires you to hand over a horrifying amount of personal and financial information and I'm yet to get an adequate answer from a real estate company about how they protect the information of current and prospective tenants

A target of 62-70% will lead to well over 2°C of warming. This decision makes it clear that this government does not care about young people. We won’t stand by while they wreck our future.

General tickets for Parallels 2025 are now on sale 🎟️ Speaker and playable showcase line-up on our website 📺 www.freeplay.net.au/parallels25

I'm all for making ideas more accessible. It's why I think opeds and thinktanks are so important. But for two leading public intellectuals to flaunt the idea that they don't read academic articles anymore and just read Twitter and blogs from people they already agree with is pretty damning.

This report paints a very grim picture for everywhere north of the Murray River. Meanwhile here in Brisbane, we’re not even planning for the fires, floods and heatwaves we already get — let alone far more frequent and far more extreme ones.

The more I think about universities governance, the more I’m of the opinion that they should be converted to full public entities and governed like government agencies. You can easily spin commercialisation and research grants into some related GOCs.

Inner West Council in Sydney is proposing to do just this as their “compromise” with the state government’s TOD. Condemning apartment dwellers — overwhelmingly renters — to live on a highway, nowhere near trains or trams, breathing in fumes and dodging cars, just so quiet side streets stay the same.

Lauren's landlord is a Magistrate - the minimum salary for one in Victoria is $360k (or $20k PCM after tax.) But they couldn't afford to fix the bathroom????? www.theage.com.au/property/new...

An exciting new campaign coming out of South Australia about drafting a 10 year state charter for democratic renewal, led by some former senior public servants and leading policy and legal academics. These are exactly the kind of people who should be leading a similar campaign here in Queensland!

A little forward sizzle but my JSCEM submission touches on what might be a Mutually Beneficial Solution for thinktanks.

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a new car more than I’ve wanted a Renault 5.

Australian universities are in a governance crisis. VC pay blowouts, scandals, mission drift — these aren’t random, they’re structural. This new working paper with @marijataflaga.bsky.social & Keith Dowding digs into why the system is broken, and how to fix it. doi.org/10.25911/MWW... A thread:

Silksong is out today - and I am so excited to share my deep-dive into the game's development. I spoke with Team Cherry about Silksong's design, its origins, and the creative principles that drive their work. I'm thrilled to share it:

In an extremely unemployed move, I’m at my second pipe organ recital in a week. Tonight’s was Richard Curgenven’s Unstable Steady States — a composition for three differently tuned organs played concurrently, generating destructive waveforms that physically assail the listener. Tactile apprehension.

Silksong, Australia’s biggest cultural export since Bluey and Fury Road came out today. It’s expected to make roughly $500 mil in sales over the next few months. That’s even more than Fury Road’s global box office take. It’ll be interesting to see how — if at all — our legacy news media covers it.

The federal government has again raised the prospect of expanding the parliament. In today's post I take a look at how long redistributions take, and how they take longer now than they did in 1984, so if they want to move on parliamentary expansion they need to do it asap.

If you value the arts, creative writing and free artistic expression now is the time to subscribe to @overlandjournal.bsky.social people.

It's been so many years that I forgot how demeaning and infuriating applying for JobSeeker is. I'm on hour three of filling in forms and I only just got to the new horror that is Workforce Australia Job Seeker Snapshots. And I won't even speak to a human until mid next week at the earliest.

Joining hundreds of Brisbane’s most normal brains to watch the Big Planes practice their river flyovers today.

JSCEM's inquiry into the 2025 federal election is finally open for public submissions. Don't let the very detailed terms of reference fool you. The magic "and related matters" means the Committee can consider anything and everything to do with our national democracy.

A few months ago, I wrote to the Special Minister of State calling for representation rates to be a priority of this term's Electoral Matters Committee inquiry. It's great to see I wasn't the only one.

This rule is what led to me being struck by four different trucks in six weeks in Texas, both on my bike and on foot.

In an open and actively contested internal leadership election, 85% of the vote is an absolutely gobsmacking result. Turnout was around 35% so around one in three Greens members voted for Polanski.

NEW SUBMISSION CATEGORY ADDED! AJPS invites Reform Notes from practitioners and/or academics that set out proposed innovations about (or relevant to) aspects of Australian politics practice - e.g. proposals for or modifications to existing political institutions, procedures, laws and practices 1/4

Because councils don’t routinely gather this information, we just don’t know the scale of unrepresentativeness in planning consultations. But it’s hard to look at this and international academic research and not conclude it’s a democracy for landlords only.

For those not familiar, these days Gary Hardgrave is a columnist and political commentator written up by the Courier Mail fairly often and he’s the host of 4BC’s Drive show, one of Brisbane’s most popular talkback shows. About as mainstream as you can short of a sitting MP.

There's something to Melbourne being home to Australia's most organised and vocal fascist groups while not being able to turn out many others to political actions - while Brisbane can turn out huge nativist and revolutionary conservative crowds but are largely disorganised electorally and in action.

Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie on the privately funded return to action of Brisbane’s government-shuttered pill testing site: “We do not tolerate it, we will not allow it and we will legislate or regulate against those private providers.” www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/que...

rotating objects is an awesome way to see what items look like from all different types of directions - without the troublesome walking that would usually be a part of that process. rotation is integral in every industry from logistics to fiction, where authors "turn" ideas around in their minds

big news. org behind Bris’ shuttered pill testing site has philanthropic funding to reopen a few hours a week after Crisafulli govt dropped theirs. Health Min office now saying govt does’t support this either, & will ensure position is “strictly maintained & enforced”. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08...

More local NIMBY nonsense, this time even CLOSER to the CBD. I had a skim of the nearly 200 submissions. It's all the same conservative nonsense. Apartments make suburbs unsafe. They're for poor people while simultaenously not being affordable housing. Too many cars. Not enough parking.

the ABC is world class. imagine another organisation running a program to develop young talent and reach new viewers, giving feedback and notes over the course of a year, then reviewing the final docs, saying 'this doesn't appeal enough to an older audience' and picking up zero projects

Here’s a state of the #ausunions I wrote up for Jacobin (drafted before the Qantas decision). jacobin.com/2025/08/aust...

It's time to get rude and mad on the internet and poorly draw on Google Maps again because local NIMBYs are Up To Some Nonsense. Here's Alderley. It's an inner city suburb about 7km north of the CBD or 25 min by bus or train and on the intersection of three main roads.

the novelisation of the Bluey movie is just under 350 pages and has a long section about how the expansion of Brisbane's public transport for the 2032 olympics will raise the crime rate and sink the Heeler’s property value

In a related point, this letter from Winter published in the Inquirer today seems to include a bunch of policy promises that Labor didn’t take to the state election. Baffling to spend the last month saying you won’t compromise on election commitments — then do so unilaterally in your capitulation.

Labor having a bigger megaphone means this will absolutely become this term’s “builders not blockers”. While I’m in favour of playing negotiation hardball, we have to reckon with the fact that not only does Labor not want to negotiate with the Greens, they’re electorally rewarded in doing so.

I had a midday panic about not achieving anything this weekend and made a giant apple pie (pictured) and a giant shepherds pie (whole lamb leg and root vegetables slow roasted in a mint and apple sauce topped with pommes aligot, not pictured). Please clap.

I just rewatched Archimarathon’s walkthrough of Austin Maynard Architect’s Parklife 1 and the joy that comes through is invigorating. I return to how one of the best cultural interventions the ABC could do today is commission a Grand Designs series just in apartments. It could change the country.

Parallels returns and early bird tickets are available now. Check out freeplay.net.au for tickets and info, with a full lineup and general release tickets coming in September

Another one of the systemic exclusion of renters from urban politics — whether it’s chronic underrepresentation in decision-making spaces, repeat studies that show that renters aren’t proactively engaged in consultations, or how local council elections make it harder for renters to even vote.

"Paris started with periodic, strategic closures of key streets, then day-long closures of the entire city center, always in the context of the conversation about air quality, livability & noise…It's a very smart way of doing it." — @brenttoderian.bsky.social in BlogTO www.blogto.com/city/2024/12...