WE would condemn any society that refuses prisoners the right to rehabilitate themselves.
Yet this is exactly what the Queensland government is doing by stifling the artistic aspirations of those behind bars.
In September 2009 the Queensland Parliament passed legislation (Section 28 of the Corrective Services Act 2006) that prevents the artworks of prisoners in the state being sold or exhibited.
They can be gifted, but only with permission from the Queensland Department of Corrective Services.
In fact this overly punitive and ill-conceived legislation introduced by the Bligh Labor government runs contrary to international …

A COMPANY or product brand is a highly valuable asset that can change customer behaviour and shift demand through the creation of a positive image.
A brand’s equity is derived from the goodwill and name recognition earned over time, which in business translates into higher sales and profit margins over those of competitors.
Take Facebook. Over a remarkably short period, Facebook has built a brand image that represents all that is current, creative and cool in the technology world. IBM, on the other hand, has struggled with its brand over decades but …

BACK in the 1960s and 1970s, before the internet, before WikiLeaks, there was something called the alternative press. Sometimes it was called the underground press, with echoes of armed partisans resisting an occupying army.
It claimed to offer the real information, all the news the media refused to print and that governments tried to suppress.
But what if it was all a fraud? Sydney-based Michael Wilding’s new novel ‘The Prisoner Of Mount Warning’ explores this hypothesis.
What if the alternative, or some of it, was not alternative at all but run by an …

TO measure how much clout the Australian Greens command in the minority federal Labor government, look no further than Julia Gillard’s backflip on a carbon price.

On the eve of the election the Prime Minister emphatically ruled out pricing carbon, yet now she has made it one of her key policy targets for next year.
With the Greens keeping Labor in power, the political landscape has changed dramatically and voters can do nothing about it at present.
Gillard used the close election outcome to excuse the backflip: …