Category: Australia
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When Mr Keating Came to Town
Just a quick note, on current matters. Paul Keating will be feeling pleased with himself. He’s managed to distress a number of luvvies, media and otherwise, with his remarks at the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday. He even got a reprimand from the prime minister for daring to say that diplomacy was about…
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The Mad World of Manipulative Mendacity
How The Australian’s breaking news website portrayed China’s response on Mar. 14. The boys are about with their tin drums again. They’re dressing in uniform and singing marching songs. The Australian’s breaking news service popped up this colourful fear-maker yesterday asserting that the Chinese have said we’re a target. They haven’t, and won’t, short of…
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I Confess
AUSTRALIA | Taking it on the chin Like the flatfooted NSW premier, Dom Perrottet, though in my case through a compulsion known only to someone else’s god, I feel the need to confess. Moreover, the significant lack of judgment of which I am culpable and for which I am compelled by unknown forces to plead…
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Poltergeists of Christmas
Where we live, in a small area on the outer edge of the ever expanding Australian suburban universe, we are a fail-to-fit on most of the local demographics. This doesn’t worry us. We’ve never been fit-in people. But it does interest us. Most of the time, when the tradies who make up most of the…
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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,…
8degreesoflatitude 