Along with 45 per cent of fellow Australians, I voted “Yes” on November 6, 1999 in the referendum as to whether Australia should become a republic. I would do so again – provided the question was similar. It has been claimed by some republicans that the (then) constitutional monarchist prime minister John Howard rigged the [...]
It is said that loss of high public office in a democracy can bring about a psychological condition akin to grief. This is understandable when men and women of substantial ego and ambition are voted out of office by their peers. Some Australian prime ministers handle the distress better than others. In recent times, the [...]
The increasing blur between the journalist as reporter and the journalist as activist was never more evident than before and after the High Court’s decision on Wednesday in George Pell v The Queen. The High Court rejected 21 out of 22 applications for leave to appeal on that day. However, in Pell’s case, Justices Gordon [...]
On any empirical analysis, Australia is one of the most stable democracies in the Western world. Moreover, it suffers none of the current political tensions that afflict Australia’s closest allies, Britain and the United States, under the leadership of Boris Johnson and Donald J. Trump respectively. Even so, a degree of hyperbole prevails in the [...]
The Liberal Party turns 75 this Sunday. It was on Friday October 13, 1944 that – at the invitation of Robert Menzies – delegates assembled at Canberra’s (old) Masonic Hall to discuss the establishment of a nationwide political movement. The conference commenced on a Friday and continued on Saturday and Monday. At the time, there [...]
The 70th Anniversary on Tuesday of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) coming to power, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, happened to be accompanied by some welcome doses of reality by Australian political leaders past and present. But not before a few commentators exhibited a familiar softness with respect to the Chinese regime. Appearing in [...]
On Wednesday, the morning after the unanimous decision of Britain’s Supreme Court in Miller v The Prime Minister, Jonathan Sumption appeared on Adam Boulton’s All Out Politics program on Sky News UK. Lord Sumption retired from the Supreme Court late last year. Earlier this year he delivered the Reith Lectures on BBC Radio 4. Boulton [...]
The decision of the Victorian government to force Catholic priests to break the seal (secrecy) of the confessional is the most recent example of symbolic politics. Meaning it is a gesture which will have scant practical effect and could be counter-productive but is guaranteed to attract substantial publicity. The Catholic Church has taught for centuries [...]
It’s difficult to understand the reverence sections of the Australian media give to visiting, or fly-in-fly-out, commentators and intellectuals. Take Alastair Campbell, for example, who was introduced by ABC TV Q&A presenter Tony Jones last Monday as “Tony Blair’s legendary spin doctor”. Well, so he was. It’s just that Blair ceased being prime minister of [...]
Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes referred to the curious incident of the dog that did not bark. This week witnessed another odd circumstance; namely, the unwillingness of certain media outlets to report former Greens leader Bob Brown’s cry about wind farms in northwest Tasmania. On July 8, the Hobart Mercury published an article by Brown expressing [...]