"LIKE the assassination of JFK, it's one of the questions Australians over a certain age ask themselves: where were you when you heard Sir John Kerr had sacked Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975? This year, on December 2, it's the 30th anniversary of Gough Whitlam's legendary win at the polls, taking Labor to power [...]
"SENATOR Nick Minchin could be right. Paid maternity leave, as advocated by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward, may not do anything to improve Australia's low fertility levels. But he is wrong to say maternity leave will not have positive benefits for an ageing society. Most women are so well educated, empowered by earning their own [...]
"Recently my twenty (almost 30) something children looked at me blankly when I mentioned actress Diana Rigg. "Who's she?" came their collective response. It seems even the sixties icon of The Avengers, Diana Rigg as Mrs Emma Peel, can reach her use by date. But Australia's older citizens, from Prime Minister John Howard down, have [...]
"In Canberra, women's organisations from across Australia are celebrating the centenary of the Commonwealth Franchise Act (June 12 1902) which gave most Australian women a vote in federal elections and the right to stand for election. Most indigenous women, however, would wait until 1962 for their right to vote. Australia was the first country in [...]
"Socialism, strikes and suffrage once defined International Women's Day. But nearly a century after the first ever National Women's Day was declared in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America, the character of protest and struggle is giving way to more eclectic gatherings. In Canada the theme is human rights and peace; in Scotland the [...]
"LADY MACBETH and William Shakespeare have a lot to answer for. Along with modern-day journalistic beat-ups, they have delivered political wives a hard time. Former Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane and now Governor- General Peter Hollingworth can answer for himself. But it seems Janette Howard, wife of Prime Minister John Howard, is on shaky ground if [...]
"John Howard has finally taken up domestic issues in the federal election campaign. A pragmatic change of tactic for sure, as the recent ACNielsen poll shows a growing number of voters are concerned with health and education matters. And while polls after the leaders' debate and deployment of troops showed a swing back to the [...]
"Isn't it time we all moved on? Whether it's the faces of a decade ago in the so-called Keating piggery affair, or Labor's celebrations of past leaders, some of it worthy fundraising but all inevitably bringing on a media overdose of Whitlam, Keating, Hawke, even Hayden. No sightings of New Labor's bright young MPs. No [...]
"So Tony Blair has triumphed with the lowest turnout of voters in 80 years. Just one in four voters backed New Labour. Indifference to political rhetoric was the clear winner. And this was predicted, months out, in a surprising study from Demos. And as Malcolm McGregor observed (The Australian 21/6), voters in Britain have just [...]
"Whatever we were supposed to have lost in the sixties it was more than our virginity. Bettina Arndt, once editor of Forum magazine and a leading sex therapist, now advocates traditional family life and is concerned at lesbians as high school teachers. Obviously, three decades from the so-called sexual revolution, something has changed that's hard [...]