Come the Revolution – Alex Mitchell
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Art Lovers the book
My book Art Lovers has just arrived from the printers, and it looks terrific! It’s the 60-year history of the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales – six decades of social and cultural change. I’ve loved working on it. It will be launched by the Governor of NSW, Professor Marie Bashir AC, during a…
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Rudd’s party reform: the real agenda
When the Federal Parliamentary Labor Caucus meets in Canberra on Monday, July 22, it will be a red letter day in the 120-year history of Australia’s oldest party. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has seized his return to the Prime Ministership and his soaring popularity to insist on a dramatic reform of the Labor Party. He…
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Why is Kevin Rudd selling his mansion in Yarralumla?
If a millionaire politician puts his home on the market in Canberra, it’s not much of a story. When it’s Kevin Rudd, that’s another matter. Kevin Rudd’s mansion in Yarralumla is up for sale, prompting more speculation that he hopes to return to his former Canberra home, The Lodge, the official residence of the prime…
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Julia Gillard fails judgement test
Close your eyes and imagine last year’s race for the White House between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney. As election day draws closer, Obama makes a headland speech saying: “Make no mistake about it, if Governor Romney is elected in November, African Americans will be excluded from positions of power in America. The…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Thatcher and the class divide
Spare me all the guff about Margaret Thatcher. British Labour leader Ed Miliband says that “we can disagree and also greatly respect her achievements”. Here in Australia Labor leaders, including Julia Gillard and Penny Wong, follow suit. I don’t respect her. We didn’t have “disagreements”. We were on opposite sides of the biggest battle between…
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