Category: Australia
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Getting Down to Business
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Tuesday, June 7, 2022 That’s the thing about writing fortnightly political and current affairs commentaries: My friend and long-ago colleague Dennis Atkins, a veteran of the Queensland and national political media field, wrote exactly what I had planned to write for this column, in the May 31 edition of the online newspaper InQueensland. […]
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Are We There Yet? No? Shame.
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Sunday, May 8, 2022 This isn’t the midpoint of the 2022 federal election campaign. It just feels that way, or possibly that we have yet to really start. In fact, we’re over the hump. Did anyone notice? Is anyone counting? There is a fortnight to go, a full 14 days of glee club […]
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Ho hum. Repeat.
AUSTRALIA | 2022 ELECTION Tuesday, Apr. 19, 2022 The Easter weekend, over which this column was crafted, was a campaign quiet spot. Every election campaign should have at least one buzz-free zone. This one’s got two, courtesy of ANZAC Day. A bonus! Thank goodness for small mercies. Though we always knew the big guns would […]
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Don’t Expect to be Excited
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS | ELECTION 2022 Tuesday, Apr. 5, 2022 Sooner or later, this week or next, Scott Morrison will make his prime ministerial trip out to Yarralumla on the lake in Canberra, to ask the Governor-General to authorise a half-Senate and full House of Representatives election. So runs the form, and such is the constitutional […]
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Bursting Balloons and Other Party Tricks
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS Tuesday, Mar. 22, 2022 With an extra 2.1 percent in their pockets, courtesy of the biannual indexation of the age pension and payable from Mar. 20, older Australians will have been celebrating, won’t they? Just asking. The increase was eaten up a long time ago, in higher food and petrol […]
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Dogs and other humans
LIFE IN THE SLOW LANE Friday, Mar. 11, 2022 Visiting service It would give the wrong impression were I to suggest that we conducted our morning shamble around the New Outanback Track religiously. Occasionally with incantations, yes, and imprecations, certainly; but never with piety. It’s around 2,800 metres, longer than the original Outanback in Bali, […]
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A Land of Droughts and Flooding Rains
POLITICS and CURENT AFFAIRS Tuesday, Mar. 8, 2022 Dorothea Mackellar wrote the poem My Country in 1908, from which the lines here – surely the most quoted – are taken: I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and […]
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Rocking, rolling, riding. Oops!
AUSTRALIAN POLITICS Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022 Political train wrecks come in many sizes. Some are insignificant, merely foot in mouth derailments or negligent slow collisions with the bumpers at the end of the line. Some are the full catastrophe, ripping up the rails and plunging off the trestle bridge into the ravine far below. Scott […]
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Welcome, Australia
Some thoughts on why January 26 shouldn’t be our national day Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022 Australia Day generally comes and goes as it pleases in my little corner of the blogosphere. Flag waving, anthem singing, feelgood nationalism and themed barbecues have never been my thing. I’ve been an Australian for 50 years and always counted […]
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Off Their Faces
SOCIAL MEDIA | Bans Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021 An old friend* has been banned from Facebook. It’s not a temporary ban, of the sort the platform’s annoying algorithms and equally irritating geeks might mete out to people who fail to genuflect to the Great Cursor, or who post something Zuckerberg geeks deem disrespectful, like saying […]
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