Review:

‘Don’t Hide the Madness: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg.\

Edited by Steven TaylorThree Rooms Press, 341pp, $39.99 (HB)

by ROSS FITZGERALD

I met Allen Ginsberg in the early 1960s in the Indian holy city of Benares (now Varanasi). In the late 1970s I arranged for William S. Burroughs to teach creative writing at Griffith University in Brisbane, where I was based.

This idea lasted until a humourless bureaucrat freaked out after reading one of Burroughs’s books — probably ‘Naked Lunch’ or ‘Junk’ — and cancelled the invitation.

So we will never know …

But beware of Turnbull

But beware of Turnbull

            
By ROSS FITZGERALD

The return of the
Berejiklian government demonstrates that good governments can win a third
term, despite self-inflicted wounds. That will buoy the Morrison government,
even though it remains a long shot to win the federal election in under two
months’ time.

In New South Wales,
the Coalition has lost some country seats, but not to the Labor party. The
really significant fact is the rise of minor parties, especially the Shooters,
Fishers and Farmers in the bush, but also One Nation – especially in outer
metropolitan seats. Voters weren’t especially …

Review 

Jim’s Book: The Surprising Story of Jim Penman, Australia’s Backyard Millionaire

By Catherine Moolenschot. Wiley, 284pp, $29.99

by ROSS FITZGERALD

The person who mows your lawn probably does a fine job, but is there a book in that? And who would imagine an enticing story behind the franchises of Jim’s Mowing, Jim’s Cleaning and Jim’s Fencing?

Subtitled The Surprising Story of Jim Penman, Australia’s Backyard Millionaire, this quirky, in-depth, warts-and-all book unravels the truthful tale of a bloke who built Australia’s largest home-service franchise.

Catherine Moolenschot explains how David J. (Jim) Penman, by ignoring conventional ­entrepreneurial …

There’s a great deal riding on Warringah

            ROSS FITZGERALD

It might be a little unfair to describe the announced departures of very senior Liberals Julie Bishop and Christopher Pyne as ‘rats leaving a sinking ship’, but they’d hardly be scurrying for the door if they thought their ministerial careers would continue. With only four Liberal cabinet ministers left from the Abbott government’s starting line-up (Morrison, Dutton, Hunt and Cormann), not only has there been a changing of the guard but there won’t be much leadership experience to draw on if, as expected, …

Cavan Station: Its Early History, the Riley Legacy and the Murdoch Vision

By Nicola Crichton-Brown. HarperCollins, 232pp, $49.99 (HB)

Review by ROSS FITZGERALD

If anything is a reminder that Australia rode on the sheep’s back, it is Cavan Station. This massive sheep-run near the NSW town of Yass is the sort of pastoral property that helped shape our nation’s economic and social future.

Cavan Station, now owned by Rupert Murdoch — co-chairman of News Corporation, publisher of The Australian — has a special place in the history of …

Too-clever Shorten has given his political rivals a potential election-winning issueby Ross Fitzgerald Bill Shorten was too clever by half last week, and in more ways than people have yet noticed. By giving doctors the right to order boatpeople to Australia for medical assessment, he’s watered down Australia’s tough border protection regime, made deaths at sea more likely and drawn attention to an issue that’s the Coalition’s strength and Labor’s weakness.He’s put national security at risk just to win a vote on the floor of the federal parliament and embarrass the government. …

             ROSS FITZGERALD

The seat of Warringah, on Sydney’s northern beaches, has
never been marginal and has always been held for the conservative side of
politics. Nevertheless, it’s likely to be one of the most watched seats in the
coming federal campaign because the Labor Party, the Greens, and, it seems, a
handful of Liberals want to discredit the local MP, former PM Tony Abbott, by
driving him out of federal parliament.

  Late last year, the ‘Daily Telegraph’ reported union sources saying that they’d spend hundreds of …

The Squatters

Barry Stone

Allen&Unwin

2019, pp. 245, $29.99

By ROSS FITZGERALD

It’s tricky writing about the European
settlement of Australia. One has to keep in mind the fact that the
successes of settlement were predicated on the damage inflicted on the
peoples who lived here first.

Barry Stone’s The Squatters is a fine piece of carefully
researched popular history. And there’s no doubt that the story of Australia’s
pastoral pioneers is fascinating.

Stone tells the epic tale of those mainly British settlers and
selectors who spread across Australia claiming land,
constructing windmills and fence-lines, dry-stone walls and storehouses,
livestock yards and droving routes, a number of which are still etched …

Voters are in a punishing mood but Labor’s tax plans will punish us all

ROSS FITZGERALD

Having spent the Australia Day weekend declaring what a wonderful country we have, we can now go back to denouncing as incompetent rogues the people who have led it.

Our tendency to assert our country’s surpassing magnificence while excoriating as a class the people who have been in charge is odd. We love our country but we are not so keen on its political leaders, and, at least in recent times, can’t wait to show them the …

Books that changed me

Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 40 books, most recently ‘So Far, So Good’, co-written with Antony Funnell and published by Hybrid.

THE KING JAMES BIBLE

While attending St Mark’s Anglican Church in Brighton in Melbourne in the 1950s, I started reading ‘The King James Version of the Bible.’ This inspiring translation had a huge impact on my appreciation of the wonders of the English language and the possibilities of reading and writing about history. Although I have been a devout atheist for decades, reading the King James Bible …

       Is our democracy up for grabs?

            by  ROSS FITZGERALD

   Is it possible to buy your way into the federal parliament? It seems that we are about to find out via restored rich-lister Clive Palmer’s absolutely unprecedented multi-million dollar advertising barrage for a return to the parliament he so ignominiously exited just three years ago.

Exactly how much MPs and political parties spend in order to help get themselves elected is quite hard to pin down. There are the spending returns that registered parties are required to lodge with the Australian Electoral Commission that …