Author: Alex Mitchell
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Lies and deceit behind siege of Martin Place
This week’s Martin Place siege will be remembered as the greatest intelligence failure in Australian history. It cost the lives of two innocent people in a tragedy which was avoidable if NSW police, the Australian Federal Police, the ASIO security service and the criminal justice system had been doing their jobs. The report ordered by…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Canberra takes first step towards Palestine statehood
Maria Vamvakinou, Labor MP for Calwell in Victoria, has tabled a private member’s Bill in Federal Parliament calling for the diplomatic recognition of Palestine, a step already taken by the House of Commons in Britain and the parliaments of Spain and Sweden. Ms Vamvakinou, a co-convener of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, told MPs:…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Salute to a courageous university vice chancellor
Step forward Professor Stephen Parker, vice chancellor of Canberra University, and take a bow while the nation-at-large applauds. This week Parker emerged from the suffocating conclave of vice chancellors where political conformity and conservatism rule, and robustly rubbished the Abbott Government’s plan to privatise higher education and turn it into a wealth-driven free-for-all. The timing…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Thoughtlines from the head of the civil service
Terry Moran AC was secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in Canberra from March 2008 to September 2011 during the turbulent chaos of Kevin Rudd and his successor Julia Gillard. Trained in nation-building and policy execution, Moran found himself managing a political crisis desk for politicians trying to survive the relentless pathological…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Abe leads Japan to a frightening dead end
Japan’s right-wing nationalist government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an enthusiastic ally of Tony Abbott, will go to an early election in mid-December. If you read the mainstream media and its business pages, “Abenomics” is a gleaming beacon of innovative policy to resuscitate the chronically sick capitalist economy. Ever since Abe announced a 10.3 trillion…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Tony Abbott’s peculiar idea of “mature debate”
How many “mature debates” has Prime Minister Tony Abbott called for? The High Priest of Negative Destruction is suddenly desirous of steady, serious, sophisticated discussion. “That is my hope,” he told Parliament recently, “that just for once it might be possible for us in this Parliament, one side and the other, the national government and…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – The irreplaceable nature of Edward Gough Whitlam
Everything that needed to be said about Gough Whitlam’s life has been said. And it has been done with a grandeur worthy of the man himself. The Sydney Town Hall memorial service was an affirmation of the virtues of a political life spent in the service of people and not wealth. All the speeches –…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Has Labor noticed Israel is now a pariah state?
Israel is a sick society. Before anyone accuses me of being an anti-Semite or reports me to the Jewish Board of Deputies, the Anti-Defamation League, Sharri Markson of The Australian or Michael Danby, the Labor MP for Tel Aviv, I’d like to point that the words are not mine. Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin said publicly…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Why Gough Whitlam was simply magnificent
I rejected social democracy in the early 1960s when I worked on the Mount Isa Mail and saw the Labor Party and trade union leaders betray the miners who were struggling for a pay increase against US-owned Mount Isa Mines Limited. Jack Egerton, later Sir Jack, president of the Queensland Trades and Labor Council, and…
-
Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Labor’s betrayal of Gough’s free university education
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…