Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Australia hesitated after the successful party room coup against Liberal Party prime minister Tony Abbott on September 24. The lumpen columnists who had barracked incessantly for “The Mad Monk” resented the arrival of Malcolm Turnbull and, quite frankly, they were disoriented. Which way should they jump now? Once the message…
Stephen Harper, the insufferably arrogant conservative Canadian politician, has been chucked out of office by the neophyte Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau. Trudeau has scored a treble victory: as the son of the late Pierre Trudeau, he has restored the family name to a place of honour in Canada’s political history; he has ended the…
Only a few months ago, federal Attorney-General “Gorgeous” George Brandis, NSW Attorney General Gabrielle Upton, plus a swirl of judges, lawyers and academics, were celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. This month the same bristling crew are extending detention without charge to 28 days for “terrorism” suspects as young as 14. The proposed measure…
Journalists covering the Greek crisis were briefed at IMF seminars to give the bankers’ view in their reports from Athens. Panayiotis Roumeliotis, the former Greek delegate to the IMF, made the accusations in evidence to MPs sparking a media scandal of far-reaching proportions. ESIEA, the Athens journalists’ association, has launched an investigation into the corruption…
I walked through Sydney’s Martin Place on Wednesday, June 3, the day after vandals smashed windows of the Lindt Café, the scene of the fatal siege last December. The footpath was crowded with television cameras, photographers, tourists and rubber-neckers. People were taking “selfies” with the café as a backdrop. In their own way, so was…
Stage management of the coronial inquest into the Lindt café siege broke down in spectacular fashion this week with the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions scrambling to ban publication of embarrassing evidence. The DPP wants to suppress evidence of why the siege gunman Man Haron Monis was on bail on serious criminal charges when he…
“The fix was in” when Dr Richard Di Natale was elected unanimously as the new Greens leader. The resignation of Christine Milne was sprung on the party’s Canberra representatives this week. It succeeded in sidelining deputy leader Adam Bandt, the Melbourne MHR who had been expected to succeed Milne. But to the Tasmanian Greens, i.e….
A royal commission remains the only way to establish the facts about the complicity of John Howard’s security committee, the Australian Federal Police, ASIO and ASIS in the arrest the Bali Nine drug smugglers and this week’s execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. Senator Nick Xenophon’s well-meaning parliamentary committee inquiry should not become an…
Politicians, the media, the RSL and the military lobby have kicked an own goal. Incredibly, they have managed to tarnish the Anzac legend and turn off a large number of Australians. How did they do it? By crassly politicising the event and grossly commercialising it. The Abbott Government invested some $200 million in the 100th…
NSW Opposition Leader Luke Foley is rarely photographed without Jodi McKay at his side. She is the ex-TV host who has just won the seat of Strathfield after being parachuted into Sydney’s inner-west by Foley himself. Ms McKay is channelling the role which Cheryl Kernot once played for federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley. He would…
