Month: September 2015
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Some final words on the Tony Abbott nightmare
Abbott’s sour farewell speech in Canberra confirmed his inappropriateness to be prime minister. Can anyone remotely imagine Bob Menzies, Malcolm Fraser or John Howard telling the nation “We are not the Labor Party” when leaving the prime ministership? But Abbott was still boxing shadows and the anti-Labor fantasies he acquired in his adolescence when he…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – After Abbott’s demise, the heat is now on Bill Shorten
This week began with a mutinous insurrection by Liberal Party MPs against their own leader, Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Ghostly memories of the overthrow of Bob Hawke (1991), John Gorton (1971) and Margaret Thatcher (1990) floated by. By the end of the week Malcolm Turnbull was the new PM, Abbott was cactus after one year…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – It’s bombs away for Abbott’s by-election
Bolshevik leader V I Lenin once said that during political discussions and world diplomacy “there is a time for the brush and a time for the razor”. Prime Minister Tony Abbott, aka “The Mad Monk”, has decided to use both the brush and the razor simultaneously. His token humanity – offering residence to 12,000 Syrian…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Joe Hockey will be thrown overboard from sinking Oz ship
Wednesday, 2 September 2015, deserves a special status in Australia’s calendar as the day when things started to unravel: growth in the second quarter fell to 0.2 per cent, the Aussie $ dropped under 70 cents to a six-year low and is heading towards 50 cents, the share market crashed to a new post-GFC low…