In the early 1990s I asked Gough Whitlam for the greatest crime that the Hawke-Keating government had committed against his legacy. “HECS,” he replied unhesitatingly. I said that the Treasury argument was that the cost was growing exponentially as more people sought higher education and university budgets ballooned. Gough then delivered a short, sharp utterly…
My union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, has denounced the Abbott Government’s National Security Legislation Amendment Bill No 1 as “an outrageous attack on press freedom in Australia”. It was passed with the full support of the Labor Opposition led by Bill Shorten. Only Greens MPs objected. MEAA federal secretary Chris Warren condemned the…
When I said Prime Minister Tony Abbott and some senior Cabinet members were suitable cases for clinical treatment, I meant it. Here’s just one reason why. At a Sydney press conference on September 19, Abbott said: “It is a serious situation when all you need to do to carry out a terrorist attack is to…
Australia is at war again in the Middle East. This time in Iraq and Syria, two leading Arab nations with a century-long history of struggle for national independence. Both were ruled for almost half a century by rival branches of the Arab Ba’ath Socialist Party, a bourgeois nationalist party which talked “socialism” but sponsored native…
1945 was a watershed year in post-war British history. Not only did it mark the end of World War Two but it also saw the humiliating defeat of wartime leader Winston Churchill in the landslide victory of a Labour Government. Nobody predicted a Tory defeat. Indeed, the mainstream media and the entire British Establishment were…
The black arts of marketing, Murdochism and right-wing academia have made the term “working class” almost as much of a taboo as the word “socialism” in mainstream public discourse. As Noam Chomsky says about the US, “you’re supposed to say ‘middle class’ because it diminishes the understanding that there’s a class war going on”. (Occupy:…
A gaping wound has emerged in the Liberal Party over the ABC’s reporting of the bugging of the Indonesian president, his wife and various ministers. The Abbott-Howard clique, which represents the right wing of the Liberals, is furious that Australia’s spy agencies have been caught out – redhanded. But more importantly they are incandescent that…
Former Premier Nathan Rees’s private life has been aired in Sydney’s Tank Stream media, The Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald, to devastating effect. Reporters Andrew Clennell and Sean Nicholls have climbed into Rees over an affair with a 40-year-old mother of two which occurred a year ago. Two consenting adults have brief affair…
Complaints have been made to the Reserve Bank of Australia over bipartisan political remarks made by board member Roger Corbett supporting Tony Abbott in Saturday’s federal election and rubbishing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. An RBA official said all complaints would be investigated and the findings made public. Senator Doug Cameron, a Labor frontbencher, called on…
Fairfax Media chairman Roger Corbett has breached Reserve Bank Board protocol by publicly commenting on party politics, attacking Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and supporting Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. His widely-reported comments created a storm of comment in today’s mainstream media with Mr Rudd saying: “It’s a free country, anyone can what they like.” Up to…
