PROFESSOR ROSS FITZGERALD
Peter Sainsbury response ” Tobacco, not alcohol causes most harm in Australia ” (Pearls & Irritations, April 15) makes some valid claims.
But as far as harms are concerned, it is important to understand that, unlike tobacco, consuming alcohol often causes extreme violence and dangerous social disturbance in many drinkers .
Professor Ross Fitzgerald, Redfern, NSW
April 16, 2025
Tobacco, not alcohol, causes most harm in Australia
April 15, 2025
Ross Fitzgerald correctly asserts that alcohol is a significant sources of illness, trauma, premature death and social distress for users and people close to …
Alcoholics Anonymous in Australia is celebrating its 80th anniversary with a national convention in Sydney this month.
ROSS FITZGERALD, who has been sober for 55 years, looks at the organisation’s history.
Australia was the first country outside North America to hold AA meetings. The first such meeting was on March 1, 1945, in Sydney.
The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in Australia in 1945 was my friend Dr Sylvester Minogue, who was the medical superintendent of Rydalmere Hospital in Sydney.
Dr Minogue was an alcoholic, who from time to time had to be incarcerated in …
PATTEN COMEBACK IS MORE THAN SMOKE AND MIRRORS
ROSS FITZGERALD
As the Australian voter’s penchant for independents and minor parties continues to grow, the Senate is becoming a very colourful chamber.
In the federal election, there will be a fascinating contest for the last Senate seat in Victoria.
This is where a David and Goliath clash between Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and the Legalise Cannabis Party will take place.
The latter’s lead candidate is former Australian Sex Party leader and Victorian MLC Fiona Patten.
With Palmer set to invest much more than the $123m he …
Keith Windschuttle ( 1942-2025) by Ross Fitzgerald
Australian historian and polemist Keith Windschuttle was editor and then editor-in-chief of the nation’s leading conservative magazine, Quadrant, from 2007 until 2023.
For a while a supporter of the New Left, in the late 1970s Windschuttle moved to the political right. Intellectually, this involved a spirited attack on the then prevailing postmodernism in Australian universities, and defending the need for historians to be as empirically objective as possible.
As an historian, Dr Windshuttle is best known for his controversial, multi-volume, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History.
Published in …
Obituary for Keith Windshuttleby Ross Fitzgerald, Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University.
Fellow historian and long-time friend Professor Ross Fitzgerald said that “Windshuttle argued that, to support their own political and ideological agendas, some Australian historians had either invented or falsified the amount of racial violence that occurred in colonial times.”
“In this regard, Windschuttle extended the claims of pioneer Australian historian, Professor Geoffrey Blainey, by focusing on what he regarded as false statements about the extent of racial violence in early 19th Van Diemen’s Land,” Prof Fitzgerald said.
The …
by PROFESSOR ROSS FITZGERALDAustralian Australian cigarettes are the most expensive in the world. After a 282 per cent increase in cigarette tax since 2013, a legal packet of 20 cigarettes now costs about $40.
In Australia, as in other countries, cigarette smokers span the socioeconomic spectrum, but the poor are vastly over-represented, writes
Not only do more low-income people smoke more compared to better-off members of the community, but they also smoke more cigarettes per day.
If we look at an Australian atlas showing the distribution of lung cancer, the parts that …
Seventy years since the beginning of the Labor Split in 1955.
by ROSS FITZGERALD
It is 70 years this month since the beginning of the Great Labor Split of the mid-1950s.
Dr H. V. Evatt, MHR for the Sydney seat of Barton, who briefly had been president of the United Nations General Assembly after WW2, became federal ALP leader in 1951.
From 1951 to 1954, Evatt was in a factional marriage of convenience with the anti-communist wing of the Australian labour movement . He even enlisted the help of Melbourne-based B. A. (Bob) Santamaria, …
ROSS FITZGERALD
It may be an inconvenient truth but the fact is that, in terms of its harm, alcohol is by far Australia’s most dangerous drug.In 2025 the situation with regard to alcohol abuse in Australia remains dire.
One disturbing trend is an exponential increase, among Australians aged 15 to 25, in out-of-control drinking, and especially in binge drinking among teenagers of both sexes, but especially among young girls.The nightly news often features some personal and family tragedy that is the result of this national health problem.
Unfortunately, in our society there is …
Friends,
Here is the link for SBSTV’s Insight program on elder health Tuesday 18 March at 8.30 pm
The episode will be available at this link after 9:30pm on Tuesday 18h March – once it has finished airing on television.https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/news-series/insightProf Ross Fitzgerald, Redfern NSW 0419 661869
Re SBSTV’s Insight program about elder abuse and elder health
The episode will be available at this link below after 9:30pm on Tuesday 18th March – once it has finished airing on television on Tuesday 18th March at 8:30 pmhttps://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/news-series/insight
This program will also be available at any time afterwards on SBS On Demand.A YouTube version will be available for international viewers in the weeks that follow.
Professor Ross Fitzgerald AMRedfern , Australia 0419 661869
Queensland’s autocratic ALP premier and Australia’s only Communist Party MP:The St Patrick’s Day bash.
Professor Ross Fitzgerald AM
History and politics buffs should either be made aware, or be given cause to remember, that in Brisbane, on St Patrick’s Day 1948, Australia’s only Communist Party MP, Fred Paterson, was almost murdered by a Queensland policeman, almost certainly at the instigation of someone higher up.
From 1944 to 1950, Frederick Woolnough (‘Fred’) Paterson was the CPA member for Bowen in the Queensland Legislative Assembly.Soon after his election, it was said of Paterson that only …
