Come the Revolution – Alex Mitchell
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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 –…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Journos who expose ASIO now face ten years in prison
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…
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Alex Mitchell’s WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Why Tony Abbott is called the Mad Monk
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…
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ALEX MITCHELL’S WEEKLY NOTEBOOK – Charge the ‘lying rodent’ with war crimes in Iraq
The legendary Canberra political correspondent Alan Ramsay was asked why he referred to Prime Minister John Howard as “toad” in his sulphurous columns. “Because the Herald won’t let me use turd,” he replied. Fair enough. However, I prefer “lying rodent”, the description given to him by a Liberal colleague, Senator George Brandis, in 2004. Charge…
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