by JOHN MIKKELSEN – BOB Hawke once infamously referred to a senior citizen as a “silly old bugger” before he inevitably became one. But it seems bureaucrats and some private enterprise operators want to make life ever more complicated for this significant…
by FRED PAWLE – THE Australian mainstream media marked the death of the government’s Censorship Bill today by censoring debate about it. As hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens celebrated the announcement on Friday evening that the government’s Bill will fail to…
by ROGER CROOK – BEN Chifley was no ordinary Prime Minister; he had come through the Labor ranks the hard way. A train driver by profession and driven (no pun intended), like his predecessor John Curtin, he had experienced a world war,…
by FRED PAWLE – OUR accents notwithstanding, it used to be difficult to tell the difference between Australians and Americans. We watched the same TV shows, listened to the same music and shared both a natural optimism about life and a scepticism…
by FRED PAWLE – THERE are many lessons the Australian government could have taken from the US presidential election. Don’t be authoritarian, don’t lie to the people, don’t expect a lame incumbent to win and don’t take an abysmal record in office…
by PAUL COLLITS – TONY Abbott is an easy man to like. It was always surprising to me that he was often reviled, certainly during his time in Parliament. The last time I bumped into Tony Abbott was at one of those…
by FRED PAWLE – PENNY Wong knows Australian tax dollars are being funnelled to Islamic terrorist organisations, contributing to the rape and murder of Israeli women and children. Asked earlier this year how she knew these terrorists would not wind up snatching…
by PAUL COLLITS – HISTORY repeats, first as tragedy then as farce, as Anthony Albanese’s guiding mentor Karl Marx once stated. I couldn’t help but notice one of Freebie Albanese’s more recent indiscretions. With a political tin ear that is hard to…
by FRED PAWLE – LOVE isn’t Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s strong point. We know this because he weirdly keeps banging on about it like a blue-haired feminist who won’t stop talking about her abortions. News Corp tabloids published an “intimate” interview with…
by JOHN MIKKELSEN – A FORMER Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser once said life wasn’t meant to be easy, but his plagiarised quote left out part of the original message. Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw added the more optimistic: “but take courage,…
