Year: 2013
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Ms Gillard prepares a legacy for herself
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has switched her attention from winning the next election to legacy-building. As her re-election hopes grow dimmer, Australia’s first female Prime Minister is concentrated on establishing her place in Labor history. Take the May Budget, the final budget before the government faces the electorate on September 14. It was not a…
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War camp mass has Aussie premiere
This Sunday, April 28, 2013, an Easter Mass that was first sung by Allied detainees in a Japanese internment camp in Manila 70 years ago will be performed in the sugar town of Murwillumbah, far northern NSW. Sunday’s choral concert by the Chillingham Voices will be historic because it is only the second occasion the…
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Tony Abbott aka the new Dr No
Prime Minister Julia Gillard scored a significant diplomatic success in China. She reached agreement with Beijing to hold annual ministerial talks, a status only enjoyed by a very small group of nations. The question is: when will Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his shadow foreign minister Julie Bishop denounce the Beijing-Canberra “axis of evil” and…
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What was Thatcher’s greatest crime?
An epitaph for Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham? “Reactionary, vindictive, mean-spirited, philistine, cruel, quintessential little Englander.” High points of her cold brutality included the war over the Malvinas (Falklands), crushing the miners’ strike and the Fleet Street print workers (for her ally Rupert Murdoch) and planting US cruise missiles in England after brutally…
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Thatcher and the class divide
Spare me all the guff about Margaret Thatcher. British Labour leader Ed Miliband says that “we can disagree and also greatly respect her achievements”. Here in Australia Labor leaders, including Julia Gillard and Penny Wong, follow suit. I don’t respect her. We didn’t have “disagreements”. We were on opposite sides of the biggest battle between…
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Scottish writer’s stand on Palestine
There’s sad news about Iain Banks, the Scottish novelist. He has cancer, and only months to live. His brilliantly imaginative novels include The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road, and he can also write in a lighter vein. I liked his satirical post-9/11 thriller Dead Air. There must have been something in the air in…
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Event for Sydney readers: Alex Mitchell with Hall Greenland
Tuesday April 16, 6pm, Better Read Than Dead Bookshop, 265 King Street, Newtown (upstairs room). Alex and Hall Greenland (pictured), author of Red Hot and Greens candidate for Grayndler, will discuss the current ICAC inquiry, the future of the NSW Labor Party and the upcoming federal election.
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Cyprus, the pundits and Geldof
Yesterday the media across Europe were full of the news that Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Dutch finance minister and head of the Eurozone group, had let the cat out of the bag. Cyprus, he had said, showed the way forward in dealing with bailouts, by going after private investors and bank accounts. He had to water down…
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Why the Rudd plot was sunk by farce
Suddenly the Rudd for PM fiasco makes sense. One of the key plotters was Sam Dastyari, the NSW ALP general secretary and one of the party’s most spectacular lightweights. His part in the abortive back-stabbing farce was revealed by Peter Hartcher in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald. As Hartcher doubles as unofficial public relations officer for…
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Pro-Zionists attempt to gag MPs in NSW Upper House
Shaoquett Moselmane, a Labor MP in the NSW Legislative Council, is the first Moslem in the NSW Parliament. The former mayor of Rockdale, Moselmane is one of six candidates in the pre-selection for the seat of Barton which Robert McClelland is vacating at the next federal election. To raise his profile among Moslem pre-selectors in…