Author: Alex Mitchell
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – PM Turnbull’s main danger is not Bill Shorten, it’s Abbott
Remember the grim days when Tony Abbott was Prime Minister? His opponent, Labor Leader Bill Shorten, was miles ahead in the polls as preferred PM. Now that Abbott has been ousted by his own party and Malcolm Turnbull installed as Australia’s 29th PM, the polls have gone into reverse. In this month’s Newspoll, Shorten’s rating…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Murdoch’s legal fixer claims ABC’s top job
When are Australians going to get over the foolishness of giving uncritical support to women who become the “first female” to hold this or that top job? It is not gender which determines whether someone will be good at a job or not. It is the quality of their values. The great Martin Luther King…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – China’s slowdown starts to hit home
Surely, it’s time that the saying, “When Wall Street sneezes, the rest of the world catches pneumonia”, was updated. It retains some veracity because the New York Stock Exchange is the biggest in the world, US banks are the largest and the US economy is the global heavyweight. But what about China? What if Beijing…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Jihadist Abbott on mission to poison political debate in Oz
Tony Abbott, aka The Mad Monk, has positioned himself as PM-in-exile and adopted a sick-minded agenda to poison political debate and destabilise his successor, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. He launched the campaign this week with two “exclusives”: in Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney Daily Telegraph and on his Sky News, a demented Oz version of the media…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – It’s bombs away in Syria as invaders grab spheres of influence
Warplanes from the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Bahrain are now taking part in a war against Syria. All members of the war party have different agendas. Some are fighting ISIS while others are fighting the Damascus regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Others are supporting the…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Decision time: more war or global deal on climate?
The world is at a crossroads. The battle for our attention and support is between two opposed camps: global action on climate change or global war on terror. Or put more explicitly, it is a choice between: a) Saving life on earth by changing the way we live and moving to renewable energy such as…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Guess what? The Martin Place gunman was an ASIO agent
It is now obvious to everyone except Blind Freddy that the Martin Place siege gunman Man Haron Monis was an ASIO agent from the time he arrived in Australia in 1996. Final proof came this week when the NSW government-ordered inquest was recalled without notice and then banned the press and public from hearing ASIO’s…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – 40th anniversary of Whitlam’s dismissal: more questions
In the thick of Australia’s greatest era of social and cultural reform, a vice-regal coup succeeded in overthrowing the elected government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. It was November 1975 and the capitals of the Western world were swirling with hyper-inflation, OPEC’s “oil shock”, massive government debt and rising unemployment. A year earlier President Richard…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Turnbull captures the middle ground
Watching Malcolm Turnbull edge the Liberal Party from the frontiers of right-wing madness to the middle ground of middle Australia has become an absorbing pastime. Every week of his short time in the prime ministership, Turnbull has signalled a significant shift in policy to the centre ground. This week he declared that knights and dames…
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Alex Mitchell’s Weekly Notebook – Murdoch’s shadow looms over Turnbull
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…