As 38 public universities face budget cuts from federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham where can they find their own cuts?
With the taxpayer salary bill for Vice Chancellors (VC) in excess of $34 million each year, the superstructure of Vice Chancellors, Deputy Vice Chancellors (DVC), and Pro-Vice Chancellors (PVC) is an obvious starting point.
Reducing VC’s salary packages from an average $1 million per annum to only just over three times the average salary for a full Professor, or about twice the salary of a Vice-Admiral in the Royal Australian Navy, would …

From The Courier-Mail, September 22, 2017 by Terry Sweetman
As Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s savage use of defamation writs not only silenced his political critics, it made the media understandably gun-shy when it came to looking under rocks.
Not even history was safe from his baleful glare.
In 1984 when Professor Ross Fitzgerald published the second volume in his history of Queensland, the first print run had to be recalled and pulped because of defamation action threatened by Bjelke-Petersen’s government.
The alleged libel concerned the government’s pursuit of conservationist and schoolteacher John Sinclair, who …

Our energy farce
by ROSS FITZGERALD
What a mess! Australia has the world’s largest readily available supplies of coal, gas and uranium yet our power prices are among the world’s highest. Moreover it looks like the lights are likely to go out this summer, especially in Victoria and South Australia. This is what happens when our energy policy is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions rather than to produce the most affordable and reliable power.
The absurdity of our position and its implications for our future as an industrial economy seem …