Age profiles great acting helmswoman

Following a puff-piece by its Sydney stablemate, the Spencer Street Soviet yesterday ran its own profile of the acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard. The Age opted for an interesting headline and layout treatment (right), given Gillard’s history with the Victorian Labor Left and, in particular, her membership of the Socialist Forum. The SF was set up in the mid-1980s as a gateway through which members of the declining Communist Party of Australia could enter the ALP. That is not to infer that Julia Gillard was ever a member of the CPA, but to indicate the position she occupied on the political spectrum. More

SMH barracking for Gillard

The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday used the experience of an impressionable 12-year-old girl, who met the acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard, to declare a national love affair …

The gushing puff piece by Mark Metherell, focusing on politics by gender, reported the meeting of Gillard and 12-year-old Amanda Tangas More

Happy 108th birthday, Australia

Professor David Flint, national convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, said on Tuesday that as Australians celebrated the new year, it was important to remember that on 1 January 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia was established. More

A return to common sense is needed

Sen Cory Bernardi

Australia is facing a number of immediate and future challenges. Yet the global financial crisis, rising unemployment and climate change are potentially less damaging to our long term interests than the death of plain old common sense.

In recent decades, what was painfully obvious to previous generations has been lost in a plethora of big government programs and politically correct babble.

The wisdom of past ages that included such gems as “only buy a home you can afford” and “money you borrow always needs to be repaid” lent themselves to a prudent society. More

Malcolm Turnbull’s New Year’s message

History wars and hysterical bores

This was one of those years. Once again, the past 12 months have been marked by a sense of irrationality in the air along with gross hyperbole and false prophesy aplenty on the ground. Gerard Henderson

Tourism needs another Hoges

When Paul Hogan was asked in October what he thought about this year’s Australian Tourism campaign—the one that’s based on Baz Luhrmann’s Australia movie—he was reported to have said that he was “not crazy” about it. More

Rudd’s program for the homeless fails to address problem’s root cause

The media are always more keen to cover a news story if the issue at hand can be presented as a “crisis’.

So we get the climate crisis, the financial crisis, with its credit crisis, the aged care crisis, the energy crisis (which seems to have passed), the water crisis and Murray-Darling crisis, the child care crisis, a global food crisis, student housing crisis, and even the biodiversity extinction crisis. More

Climate zealots cooling on Kevin

PM Kevin Rudd at the National Press Club.
(ABC1)

Kevin Rudd has released his emissions reduction target - five per cent by 2020 - and no-one is happy.

On one side of the spectrum, columnist Andrew Bolt says Rudd is still going to make us pay more to solve a problem that probably doesn’t exist.

On the other side, the global warming true believers are in a state of shock.

Mr Rudd is being called everything under the sun.

One of those taking issue with Mr Rudd’s five per cent target is someone called Josh Wyndham-Kidd, a 17-year-old who seems to have all the answers. More

Bill of rights to entrench minority interests

From the left: indigenous barrister Tammy Williams, Jesuit intellectual Frank Brennan
and former SBS newsreader Mary Kostikidis, in the Weekend Australian today.

In another move that shows that Kevin Rudd’s conservative posturing in the lead up to the last election was nothing but a smokescreen designed to fool the gullible, the counterfeit conservative this week launched a new assault on Australian democracy. More

People smugglers aim at Australia again

Malcolm Turnbull

The arrival of the sixth boat of people smugglers off Broome just today, shows there is a real problem with the security of our borders, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said today.

“The Prime Minister spent last week in parliament denying there was a problem with people smuggling,” Mr Turnbull said.

“We have seen six boats arrive since August, since the Government abolished temporary protection visas. Now, they were introduced in 1999 specifically for the purpose of discouraging people smuggling. When the Government abolished these temporary protection visas they said it would have no impact on the level of people smuggling, on this vicious trade that puts so many human lives at risk, and, of course, threatens the security of our borders. More

Max Teichmann: the Left was his target

MAX Teichmann, one of Australia’s most incisive political commentators, died last Saturday in Melbourne, aged 84. His main claim to fame was as an astute observer and fearless critic of the institutional Left and its academic cheer squad. But boyhood memories of the Depression More

Coalition tensions

Coalition tensions come against a backdrop of simmering dissent on the right wing of the Liberal Party about Mr Turnbull’s policy direction, including the decision to give the Government’s industrial relations laws in-principle support, and his stance on the Government’s plans for an emissions trading scheme. The Weekend Australian

Turnbull must axe industrial ideology

MALCOLM Turnbull has to turn the Rudd Government’s industrial relations policy into a economic debate about jobs if he’s to extricate himself from dancing with a dead cat called Work Choices. Dennis Shanahan

Bill of rights would empower courts

A bill of rights would give extraordinary legislative power to the courts, Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said on Sydney radio yesterday.

Asked by 2GB’s Ray Hadley what a bill of rights would mean for Australians, Mr Turnbull said he had concerns about putting a bill of rights in a constitution. More