Author: Alex Mitchell
-
Roozendaal starts job-hunting
When Eric Roozendaal departed the NSW Upper House in early May, the former general secretary of the NSW ALP and treasurer, delivered the most self-serving speech heard in several generations. “Electric Eric” made no attempt at self-criticism or to review his political career when he was in charge of the Sussex Street machine, co-managed the…
-
Ms Gillard prepares a legacy for herself
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has switched her attention from winning the next election to legacy-building. As her re-election hopes grow dimmer, Australia’s first female Prime Minister is concentrated on establishing her place in Labor history. Take the May Budget, the final budget before the government faces the electorate on September 14. It was not a…
-
War camp mass has Aussie premiere
This Sunday, April 28, 2013, an Easter Mass that was first sung by Allied detainees in a Japanese internment camp in Manila 70 years ago will be performed in the sugar town of Murwillumbah, far northern NSW. Sunday’s choral concert by the Chillingham Voices will be historic because it is only the second occasion the…
-
Tony Abbott aka the new Dr No
Prime Minister Julia Gillard scored a significant diplomatic success in China. She reached agreement with Beijing to hold annual ministerial talks, a status only enjoyed by a very small group of nations. The question is: when will Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his shadow foreign minister Julie Bishop denounce the Beijing-Canberra “axis of evil” and…
-
What was Thatcher’s greatest crime?
An epitaph for Margaret Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter from Grantham? “Reactionary, vindictive, mean-spirited, philistine, cruel, quintessential little Englander.” High points of her cold brutality included the war over the Malvinas (Falklands), crushing the miners’ strike and the Fleet Street print workers (for her ally Rupert Murdoch) and planting US cruise missiles in England after brutally…
-
Why the Rudd plot was sunk by farce
Suddenly the Rudd for PM fiasco makes sense. One of the key plotters was Sam Dastyari, the NSW ALP general secretary and one of the party’s most spectacular lightweights. His part in the abortive back-stabbing farce was revealed by Peter Hartcher in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald. As Hartcher doubles as unofficial public relations officer for…
-
Pro-Zionists attempt to gag MPs in NSW Upper House
Shaoquett Moselmane, a Labor MP in the NSW Legislative Council, is the first Moslem in the NSW Parliament. The former mayor of Rockdale, Moselmane is one of six candidates in the pre-selection for the seat of Barton which Robert McClelland is vacating at the next federal election. To raise his profile among Moslem pre-selectors in…
-
Behind the law and order frenzy
John Lawler, chief executive of the Australian Crime Commission, is a seasoned cop who is well acquainted with the political system and how it works. He read the pre-Christmas 2012 reports that Treasurer Wayne Swan proposed to inflict sweeping cuts across government departments and all agencies. He did what you would expect him to do.…
-
The Rooty Hill debacle
When Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced she was moving to Rooty Hill in Sydney’s western suburbs for a five-day pre-election campaign I checked the mainstream internet sites to discover how many “hits” the story had received from readers. The answer: very few. It didn’t rate in the Top Ten list of any of the sites…
-
The Italian job
Dysfunctionality seems to sum up the state of the Western world’s politics and economies, but nowhere is it more spectacularly displayed than in Italy. The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI – the first resignation since Gregory XII in 1415 – was accompanied by an avalanche of Vatican scandal. Scotland’s Cardinal, Archbishop Keith O’Brien, has resigned…