I am not a Trump-type conservative. Neither am I suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. However, there is reason to be concerned about President Donald J. Trump's incessant wish to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As The Australian reported on August 15, Trump recently called Norway's Finance Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, when he was walking in Oslo. [...]
COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN – SATURDAY 16 AUGUST 2025 Interviewed on ABC Radio Darwin on July 31, the recently appointed ABC managing director and editor-in-chief Hugh Marks received what sounded like a Dorothy Dixer style soft question. Jess Ong put it to her employer: “There is the idea, this commentary, that [...]
COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN – SATURDAY 9 AUGUST 2025 One of the first things a student learns about at law school is the importance of precedence. As defined by the LexisNexis Concise Australian Legal Dictionary, precedent is “a judgment that is authority for later cases, with similar facts; a case that [...]
COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN – SATURDAY 2 AUGUST 2025 How times change. On 28 July, Bob Carr, the former Labor NSW premier and former Minister for Foreign Affairs, was interviewed on ABC Radio National Breakfast by Sally Sara. It was essentially a soft discussion – with one exception. Sara put it [...]
COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN – SATURDAY 26 JULY 2025 It’s an unusual phenomenon when a senior politician acknowledges that he or she could have done better. But such an instance occurred on July 3 when Jason Clare, the Minister for Education, was interviewed by ABC TV 7.30 presenter Sarah Ferguson. At [...]
COMMENT BY GERARD HENDERSON FOR THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN – SATURDAY 19 JULY 2025 It’s fashionable in modern-day word usage for some to declare, “I’m sorry to say this but…” before stating something they fully intended and concerning which they are unapologetic. For my part, I’m not sorry for expressing the opinion that there is no [...]
My father, Norman, was a long-time member of the Australian Labor Party – until he was expelled by/resigned from the ALP at the time of the Labor split in Victoria in 1955. There was a not-unrelated Labor split in Queensland two years later. Norman became a member of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party which gave [...]
I remember former Liberal Party deputy leader Peter Costello saying, when he was in opposition, that just because some commentators were advising you what to do does not mean that they would vote for you. I was reminded of this when watching ABC TV’s Insiders last Sunday. Mark Kenny – a former Labor Party staffer, [...]
It's just over three decades since American satirist PJ O'Rourke wrote a book titled Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-Free Beer. I was reminded of this last Sunday morning when news reached Australia about the US strike against the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow. On any analysis, [...]
In his book On War, Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz wrote: "War is a mere continuation of policy by other means." And, in a sense, debate over policy is the continuation of war by peaceful means. On Thursday The Australian ran an article by Paul Keating titled "Marles's ceding of power to US a dark [...]