NEW environmental laws are undermining indigenous and non-indigenous property rights.
The protection of property rights in Australia is an important issue that is uniting indigenous and non-indigenous landholders.
Both are concerned that in recent years the introduction of vegetation clearing laws, compulsory property acquisitions and, recently, the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland threaten their livelihoods. So they are seeking recognition and protection of their rights where they have been removed by environmental and heritage laws, and just compensation if these rights are removed.
One unlikely champion to take a stand on this issue …

WHEN he was 14 and dressed in his school uniform, Ross Fitzgerald stood in the public bar of a Melbourne pub and at 11am ordered a brandy, lime and soda. The barman suggested he take off his hat. And so began the alcoholic life of an eminent Australian academic who, until he joined AA, spent every Christmas Day in a mental hospital between the ages of 16 and 25.
“I was so enclosed and enmeshed in myself”, he writes, “that I virtually didn’t see anything outside”.
Sober for 40 years, Dr Fitzgerald …

KEVIN Rudd’s threat to force “co-operative federalism” on to the states on the issue of health sees him reading the electorate very well.
The PM is keenly aware of how long a memory can last when you’ve been forced to wait for five hours in casualty with a sprained ankle, or how deeply personal the political becomes when you’re forced to endure the grinding pain of a worn-out hip for 12 months before you can get a replacement.
If he hasn’t fiscally hammered the states into an agreement, Rudd may well get …

“The truth is that, quite often, a little bit of me goes a long way, Ross Fitzgerald writes towards the end of My Name is Ross. It is a characteristically disarming observation. Fortunately he stopped drinking forty years ago. But this account of his years of drinking and pill-popping nonetheless fills a substantial volume. And a harrowing account it is. But, again characteristically, it is relieved with wit and verve.
The temptation, and Fitzgerald is clearly not one readily to refuse temptation, must have been to present this as a …

Ross Fitzgerald is today a prolific writer; a distinguished historian and a well-known public figure. He is also an alcoholic.
At the age of 25 he was a broken man who, in a few short years, had gone from being an honours graduate from Sydney University to a man who, after many admissions to mental hospitals, living on what few wits remained to him, and having exhausted the patience of his many friends, had reached the nadir of his life with death closing fast upon him.
Last year he celebrated …

ROSS Fitzgerald hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since November 1969. But alcohol has been the defining influence on his life. He began drinking as a 14-year-old (the barman suggested he take off his school hat when he asked for a brandy, lime and soda) and spent much of the next decade drunk.
Fitzgerald says he drank to pretend he wasn’t afraid and because of a difficult relationship with his mother and his genetic predisposition to addiction.
In person, he seems to inspire active like or dislike; in words, he …

CAN someone who hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol for 40 years still be considered an alcoholic? Ross Fitzgerald certainly thinks so, and his searingly honest memoir does an excellent job of explaining that rather odd-sounding perspective.
It must have taken a lot of guts for a well-known political commentator and academic like Fitzgerald to write such a brutal account of his struggle with alcohol.
The first chapters of the book, dealing with a decade-long bender that he began at the age of 14 , are the toughest to read – not …

HIS name is Ross and he’s an alcoholic. Don’t blame me. He outed himself in his own book. He can thank the Almighty God that no one reads any more or everyone will be pointing at him. On the other hand he has no one to blame but himself. He doesn’t even believe in God so he adds “Please” before the Serenity Prayer so it goes “Please God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to …

‘My Name Is Ross: An Alcoholic’s Journey’ is more than just a memoir. As Ross Fitzgerald makes clear, this is a book with a message. It can be located at the end of Chapter 10 where the author writes that one of the functions of this work is to reinforce this simple message , that “an alcoholic is a sick person who can recover, not a bad person who needs to get good, or a weak person who needs to be strong.
Later on, Professor Fitzgerald comments that “alcoholism is …

NOT every political player is naturally suited to doing the hard yards on the opposition benches.
With the government controlling the treasury purse strings, not to mention the parliamentary agenda, it is a simple matter to dominate the news cycle with a media drop. Announcing new programs and spending is always newsworthy, and carries more weight than opposition policies outside of the election campaign.
To combat this, an opposition shadow minister has to be relentless, quick off the mark and able to cut through the jargon with a memorable line. It is …

Ross Fitzgerald has plenty to write about in this memoir. He is the author of 32 published books, a broadcaster, film producer, columnist, academic, outspoken opponent of Queensland’s Bjelke-Petersen regime, political commentator and current and past member of numerous bodies ranging from the NSW State Parole Authority to the NSW Heritage Council. He is also a fellow book reviewer for the Herald, although it should be pointed out that we have never met.
Despite these achievements, it is immediately obvious that the defining characteristic of Fitzgerald’s life is that he …