Author: Alex Mitchell
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Mad Monk is on death row with execution date pending
Tony Abbott will remain prime minister until after the NSW election on March 28, Anzac commemorations at Gallipoli Cove on April 25 and his second federal Budget in May. Then all bets are off. His survival is directly linked to this week’s poll which tested public opinion on federal Liberal leadership. Malcolm Turnbull easily topped…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Field Marshal Abbott’s Last Post at Gallipoli?
Part of Field Marshal Tony Abbott’s survival plan is to present himself as a modern-day heir of the ANZACs. The embattled Mad Monk is travelling to Wellington today to meet NZ Prime Minister John Key to announce a 400-strong joint training mission to Iraq. On April 25 when the 100th anniversary of the catastrophic defeat…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott is channelling President George Bush
Who’s speaking here? “We are a free and fair nation. But that doesn’t mean we should let bad people play for us for mugs, and all too often they have. Well, that’s going to stop.” Amazingly, it was the Mad Monk speaking during his weekly broadcast, a PR concept he’s borrowed from the White House.…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Mad Monk
Prime Minister Tony Abbott is swinging from the yardarm like a piece of carrion; his party will cut him down and toss him into the sea when the smell becomes intolerable. Liberal MPs prefer to “give a man another go” so the fatally wounded corpse may hang around for a few months longer. Labor ruffians…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbottwatch latest: he’s a goner
Tony Abbott is gone as Prime Minister. The only pertinent questions are how and when. All this week’s speeches, interviews and TV broadcasts are the actions of a desperate politician trying to save his skin. They won’t work. When he said that 2014 had been a “year of achievement”, voters shrank in horror. When he…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Update on the Mad Monk file
Popular ridicule spells political death for any political leader. That’s because it is almost impossible to overcome and undermines the capacity to lead and carry authority. In just 18 months Prime Minister Tony Abbott has managed to reveal himself as mad and bad. Now he’s a joke. What broke the back of his most loyal…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Top cop joins PUP and Parrot to rubbish Premier Newman
Two bizarre opponents have emerged to make life agonisingly difficult for the embattled Queensland Premier Campbell Newman in the closing days of the campaign for the state election on January 31. Mining billionaire Clive Palmer and Alan Jones, the millionaire commercial radio ham, have commenced personal vendettas against Newman alleging he is a “liar” and…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – The road to Hebdo and why I won’t be Charlie
1. Classical English liberalism was destroyed and buried in the trenches of World War One when British Prime Minister David Lloyd George shrugged off his pacifism and became a Cabinet warmonger. The fledging British Labour Party split over support for the imperialist bloodbath with Arthur Henderson leading the majority faction into a wartime Coalition in…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abbott’s secret begging mission to Baghdad
Just before New Year the Abbott government’s final action as chair of the UN Security Council was to vote against a resolution supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state and ending Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The only other country to vote against the declaration of Palestinian national rights was…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Heard the one about balancing the budget?
The words are burned into collective memories: “Today, we take decisive action to deal with the debts we have inherited.” The year was 2010 and Britain’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was announcing his plans to end the UK’s budget deficit by 2015. Now he’s wading through even deeper deficits and his promise…